I lay on the floor, the cool stone of the Maze pressing against my swelling face. If every part of my body had hurt before, it felt three times as bad now. If Antares hadn’t broken any ribs, it would be a miracle.
There was a little pulse in my hand from the sword.
“I’m getting up,” I said.
It pulsed again when I didn’t move.
“I’m getting up,” I repeated, and this time I pushed myself up to my hands and knees. It was hard to breathe. Yup, I was pretty sure Antares had broken a rib.
A little match flame burst to life inside me again. The Maze had given me my magic back. Gee, thanks for nothing.
The sword pulsed again, this time more urgently.
“What now?” I said wearily, and used the wall to help me stand.
I was still there, eyes at half-mast, the sword furiously pulsing at me, when Ramuell entered the corridor.
16
I LAUGHED, AND I SOUNDED A LITTLE CRAZY. “OF course it would be you.”
Ramuell grinned at me. His teeth looked sharper than they had before I’d killed him.
“Not broken yet, little Agent?” Ramuell asked, and somehow I knew it was the voice of the Maze talking through him.
I stood away from the wall and held out my arms, showing the Maze my injuries. “Bruised but not broken.”
“I have defeated more powerful beings than you in my time,” the Maze said in Ramuell’s voice.
I narrowed my eyes. “And beings more powerful than you have underestimated me before.”
The Maze laughed, a long and sinister chuckle. “We shall see. I am not about to be laid low by a mere human.”
The sword pulsed, and the magic inside me surged up in answer to its call. I smiled at Ramuell, and echoed the taunt Antares had made at me.
“Come and get me, then,” I said.
Ramuell laughed again, and as he laughed the form of the nephilim slowly disappeared. “Oh, I will, little Agent. I will.”
I waited, braced, but Ramuell’s form didn’t reappear. “Just an errand boy, then.”
I started forward, trying not to think about how much every part of me howled in pain. I wished Gabriel had taught me how to heal myself the way the angels did. Of course, the Maze would probably have taken that ability from me anyway, so there was no point in wishing for it.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” I said. My mom used to say that. It was one of those phrases that made sense if you thought about it, but sounded kind of weird to say.
“Okay, now you’re rambling,” I said aloud.
The silence of the Maze was getting to me. I never realized how much I depended on the constant stream of chatter emitting from Beezle. As friendly a companion as the sword was, it definitely lacked something in the conversation department. It had been kind of a relief to exchange villain/hero wisecracks with Antares and Ramuell.
I walked for a long while, my feet dragging, my free arm wrapped around my broken rib. The sword emitted a steady glow of sunlight so that no surprises could pop out of the darkness. I turned right whenever I could and hoped that I was getting closer to the center, and Gabriel.
I didn’t hear him approach. All of a sudden I rounded a corner, and Nathaniel stood there, looking implacable. My magic winked out again, and I felt a surge of panic. All I had was the sword.
Then the sword betrayed me.
Nathaniel held out his hand and the sword struggled out of my grip and into his.
“I believe this belongs to me,” he said. “And so do you.”
He stalked toward me, and I froze, recognizing the look of intent on his face. I held out my hands, but I had no sword and no magic. This time he was relentless, and I really was powerless to stop him.
When he finished and stood up, I felt like something in my soul was broken forever.
“Get dressed,” he said.
I pulled on the ragged remains of my clothes, tears I couldn’t stop falling from my eyes. He reached for my wrists and clamped a pair of handcuffs over them.
“You belong to me now,” he said and pulled me to my feet.
Gabriel stood before us, a look of contempt in his eyes. He was disgusted by me, and I knew he had seen what Nathaniel had done.
“Gabriel,” I said, and reached toward him, my hands bound together. “Gabriel, help.”
He spit in my face, and then he turned and walked away. Amarantha waited for him and he entered her embrace willingly.
I howled in pain and in anguish, all the shattered pieces inside me splintering into shards. “Gabriel, Gabriel, no! Gabriel, DON’T LEAVE ME!”
Nathaniel jerked at my handcuffs, pulling me like an animal. “You are mine, now and forever.”
Gabriel disappeared around the corner. The light of the sword seemed to dim, and the light of my heart sputtered and died.
I heard a long, sinister chuckle. Ramuell stood where Nathaniel had been.
“Had enough yet, little Agent?”
Had enough. Yes, I’d had enough. Had enough of always being the helpless one, the powerless one. Had enough of being human in an alien world, had enough of seeing the only man I’d ever wanted walk away from me.
Gabriel wouldn’t walk away from you,
a little voice in my head said.
He did. He always does.
No, he wouldn’t walk away if you needed him. He wouldn’t leave you to Nathaniel, to danger. He would never go to Amarantha.
He wouldn’t leave me. That’s what I told Beezle. He wouldn’t leave me.
“He wouldn’t leave me,” I said aloud, and I flexed my wrists. The handcuffs broke and fell away. The sword returned to my hand.
As I looked into Nathaniel’s surprised face, I swung the sword that the real Nathaniel had given me. I can’t say that I didn’t feel a ton of satisfaction in watching his head roll way down the corridor, even if it was only a puppet of the Maze. I felt my magic surge up inside me once more as I gazed into the eyes of the foe I had vanquished once before.
I had defeated Nathaniel. I had killed Ramuell. I had
survived
. I wasn’t powerless.
The Maze-Ramuell looked surprised as I stalked forward. The nephilim took a step backward away from me, and I knew then that the Maze would never beat me.
“You will not break me,” I said, my anger giving me strength, taking away the pain. “You will not break me, because I know that this is not real.”
“Not real?” the Maze said. “Are not your injuries real, your broken bones? Were you not defiled by Zerachiel’s son?”
“No,” I said, and as I said it my rib bone knit back together, my limping leg grew straight again, my cuts and burns and bruises healed. All the shattered pieces inside me were made whole.
“It didn’t happen,” I said. I stood before the Maze with my heart and my body in one piece. If there was a trace of darkness, a trace of fear, left inside me, the Maze would never find it. “Do your worst. You will never, never, never defeat me.”
The Maze gave me a speculative look through Ramuell’s eyes. “I never thought to be beaten by a creature as low as you.”
“Yeah, well, I have a long history of not living up to people’s expectations of me,” I said.
The Maze gave a short bark of laughter. “Lucifer’s will beats strongly inside you. I should have seen this.”
“It’s not Lucifer’s will,” I said. “It’s mine. Now, if we’re not going to dance anymore, take me to Gabriel.”
Ramuell bowed to me. “As you wish, my lady.”
The corridor we stood in slowly lightened. I realized the structure of the Maze was disappearing. The walls and ceiling faded away until we stood on an open, rocky clearing surrounded by the enormous trees of Amarantha’s forest. In the center of the rocks was a cage, and inside the cage was Gabriel, looking at me in astonishment.
I started toward him.
“I have not enjoyed playing the game so much in many years,” the Maze said behind me.
I didn’t look back as I answered. “Wish I could say the same.”
Ramuell’s laugh echoed behind me, and then slowly disappeared. I didn’t care. I only had eyes for Gabriel.
I slowed as I approached the cage. Gabriel sat in the dead center, well away from the bars. He squatted on his haunches, still dressed in the ridiculous loincloth of Amarantha’s. There were burn marks on his wrists from the cuffs she had put on him. He looked haggard and exhausted, but there was something in his eyes that I hadn’t seen when he’d first entered Amarantha’s throne room. Hope.
“Madeline,” he said, and his voice sounded raspy and underused. “The cage is bespelled.”
I nodded. “Right. On the off chance that I actually made it here Amarantha wouldn’t have wanted it to be easy for me. You can’t touch the bars?”
He shook his head. His dark hair, normally so impeccably groomed, hung in lank and sweaty tendrils around his cheeks.
“I saw something like this in the Forbidden Lands,” I said. “The Grigori used cages that caused the nephilim unspeakable pain whenever they touched the bars.”
“That is what happened to me when I touched them,” he said.
I studied the bars for a minute, and then the sword wanted my attention. “Of course. Stand back as far as you can, Gabriel.”
I swung the sword near the top of the cage and it cut cleanly through the bars. I slashed it at the bottom and several bars fell outward, creating a makeshift doorway. They sparked as they hit the rocks.
“Step out carefully,” I said.
Gabriel folded his wings as small as he could to his back and inched through the bars. I didn’t breathe until his bare feet touched the rock and he stood before me.
He put his hand on my cheek and I sank into his touch, all the horror and blood and fatigue of the last several hours coming back to me. It hadn’t been real, but it had
felt
real when it was happening.
“Gabriel,” I said, and there was a lifetime of longing in his name.
“You came for me,” he said, wonder in his eyes, his lips a breath from mine.
“Of course I did,” I said, and then he gave me what I needed.
After a long time we came apart, mouths swollen from kissing. He wiped the tears that I didn’t know I cried from my cheeks.
“I believe Amarantha will be quite shocked when you return with me,” Gabriel said.
“Then let’s go shock her,” I said. “And remind me to give that bitch a smack in the mouth just on principle.”
“Well, well, isn’t this a touching scene,” said a sneering voice behind me.
I turned around to see Antares standing a few feet away, looking quite the worse for wear. One of his horns had been sliced in half and he was covered in whip marks. Blood streamed from a nasty-looking cut above his eye.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I said. “What are you, part cockroach? How did you get out of the Maze?”
“The walls suddenly disappeared,” Antares said. “I assumed that meant I had defeated it.”
No,
I thought sourly.
I defeated it, and you just got the benefits.
Apparently the Maze wasn’t done having fun with me yet.
“So now that I have defeated the Maze, I will return with the thrall and claim all honors from my master Focalor,” Antares said.
I was tired, I was hungry, and I really just wanted to go home. I was not in the mood to play games with Antares.
Before he could think, I summoned a ball of nightfire and then turned it into a rope. The rope lashed around him and he cried out in surprise. I pulled on the rope and swung it to one side to launch him into the cage that had so recently held Gabriel. Antares slammed into the electrified bars and howled in pain.
Somehow I knew that the sword could rebind the bars that it had so recently cut. This new knowledge was more than a little disconcerting. It was like having Evangeline inside me again. As useful as the sword had been for me, I wasn’t sure I wanted another entity working through me.
I waved the sword at the fallen bars and they lifted from the ground, rejoining the rest of the cage. Before Antares had stopped screaming I had pressed the blade to the cuts in the metal and they instantly resealed. Antares was trapped.
“What was that again about claiming honors from Focalor?” I asked.
Antares glared at me. “You will pay for this, sister.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. You see, you are an outcast from Azazel’s court. That means that Focalor is in big trouble for harboring you against the laws of Lucifer’s kingdom in addition to all of his other crimes. It also means that Azazel will be very happy to know your location.”
I leaned close to the cage and showed Antares my teeth. “Do you think our father will be happy with you when he finds you?”
Antares couldn’t hide the fear in his eyes. “I will be long gone before Azazel arrives.”