“Then during the attack…” Seb looked down at his feet as they walked. “I think she really wanted to die. I almost couldn’t get her out.”

Alex stared; his steps stilled. “What attack?”

Seb stopped with a quick, surprised glance. He closed his eyes. “Oh, dios mío, she hasn’t told you.”

Alex grabbed his arm. “Told me what? What’s happened at the base?”

Seb’s eyes were reluctant. “There was an angel attack about two weeks ago,” he said at last. “Almost everyone was killed.”

Alex stood stunned as Seb told him the details: how the angels had struck with no warning during a training session; how Sam had died and Willow had tried to run into the final fray.

“I had to fight with her to get her out,” Seb finished. “She was kicking, struggling – she wanted to die with them. No, she just…wanted to die.”

Alex had one hand over his eyes, pummelled by every word. “I should have been there,” he said roughly.

He sensed rather than saw Seb’s shrug. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“I should have been there anyway – they were my team,” Alex snapped. He dropped his hand…but couldn’t force away the image of Willow standing over Sam’s body, crying and shooting at the angels. Or of the others, almost all dead.

The world was icy and silent – the sky overhead brilliant with stars. “They were my team,” Alex repeated finally. The words tasted like dust.

32

“AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” RAZIEL asked, his tone conversational. He stood propped against the desk in the Schenectady Church of Angels office, idly cleaning his fingernails with a letter opener. “Do not lie to me again, Zaran.”

The dark-haired angel sat clutching his temples, visibly trembling. He’d been sitting there for over two days – since just after Raziel had arrived, in fact. All that time without feeding, for to shift into his angel form would make him vulnerable.

He wasn’t handling it very well.

“I’m not lying,” he gasped. “Nothing happened. I flew down the corridor, and no one was there, so I flew back to tell the others.”

“Mmm, yes, so you keep saying.” Raziel motioned to Bascal, who stood waiting by the door with two other goons. “You know, I’m feeling rather peckish,” he confided. “What about you?”

“Sure am,” said Bascal with a leer. “Want me to call for a couple of A1s?”

“Delightful.” Raziel noted with satisfaction how pale Zaran had become at the mention of food – angels, unlike humans, could not go for very long without partaking of sustenance. Zaran’s aura had been shuddering for hours, its edges a vivid, painful blue.

Raziel straightened up and stretched as Bascal headed out. “You know, it is funny how all roads keep leading back to you,” he said. “Willow Fields did not die; I’d stake my own life on it. And the entrances she was nearest to could only be reached by the corridor you say you flew down. So where did she go?”

“I don’t know – I told you!”

Idly, Raziel picked up the small photo Bascal had given him. “Such a pretty girl,” he mused. “You must have thought it a shame that she had to die.”

“I didn’t think—” Zaran broke off. Raziel raised an eyebrow and smiled.

Low murmurs came from the outer room as Bascal returned. He’d left the office door slightly ajar behind him; through it they could see a starry-eyed pair of humans – and then silence came as Bascal fed. His halo pulsed brightly through the crack in the door.

Raziel had enacted this little performance several times already with Zaran; this time it could truly be called a success. The high-cheekboned angel sat staring as Bascal fed, his aura shaking with weakness and fatigue. “I – no, I didn’t—”

“Didn’t what?” Raziel asked gently.

“Didn’t think of her! I didn’t—” With a moan, Zaran buried his face in his hands. “All right,” he whispered raggedly. “I saw them – saw them both. Her and the other half-angel.”

“And you let them go,” hissed Raziel.

“It was just the spur of the moment – it was the other half-angel, you see. He…he’s my son. I didn’t want him to be hurt.”

Ah. The mystery of Seb’s parentage finally revealed itself. “How fascinating,” Raziel said coldly. “And how quaint of you to feel such a human emotion. What about Kylar?”

“He wasn’t there.” Zaran’s eyes were still fixed on Bascal; his fingers gripped the chair’s arms. “That’s everything. Let me feed now – promise you won’t hurt me if I do.”

“Oh, but I don’t think it is everything. What aren’t you telling me?”

Zaran shot him a wretched look. His face was pale, clammy with sweat.

“I know there’s something, you see,” Raziel said softly. “I may not be very psychic any more, but I’ve become quite, quite adept at body language. Yours is very revealing right now.”

Zaran sat frozen. His throat moved.

Without taking his gaze off him, Raziel called, “Bascal, I don’t think I’m hungry after all. Take the humans away, will you?”

“No!” burst out Zaran. “All right. Willow fell in front of me during the fight, right after she beat Margen. And the expression on her face – I think she got something psychically from Margen before she killed her.”

Electricity surged through Raziel. Margen had been one of the few angels to know about Pawntucket. Willow knew, then, that he planned to destroy her hometown.

And that meant, unless he was very much mistaken, that she was in Pawntucket right now.

Raziel smiled. Suddenly he felt almost friendly towards Zaran – the wait before the attack had been well worth it. “Why don’t you go and feed?” he suggested gently. “Go on – we won’t hurt you.”

Zaran didn’t move at first, his expression an agony of disbelief and desperation. Finally, with a weak lunge, he bolted out the door. A moment later, light from his angel form poured in through the office doorway.

Raziel nodded at Bascal’s two goons; they straightened and slipped into the other room. There was a blaze of light as they, too, shifted – then winged shadows struggling briefly on the wall. A broken-off scream from Zaran. A moment later, drifting pieces of light glinted at the corner of Raziel’s vision.

“Goodbye, Zaran,” he said, carefully placing the photo back on the desk. “It was a pleasure knowing you.”

A few hours later Raziel was still in his office, eyes narrowed in thought as he leaned back in his leather chair. The information was even better than he’d first thought.

Pawntucket, with Willow leading them, would be preparing for the attack, of course. It didn’t matter; they’d be crushed in moments. Yet now that it came down to it, merely killing the girl seemed anticlimactic…especially since the quakes seemed to have awakened such a power in her over human auras.

Raziel had no doubt now that the Mexico City anomaly was because of Willow: people who she’d merely lived near, perhaps, or whose auras she’d brushed against on the street. The sheer power that implied – not to mention the energy shift he’d been sensing in the world. If that was linked to her too, and he could get her to harness it…what couldn’t he do?

Yet to do that, he’d need to control her.

Raziel’s gaze fell on the photo of Willow again. He narrowed his eyes at the smiling girl. “You’re a worthy opponent, but I am more so,” he murmured, touching the brass frame. “And I will get what I need from you.”

A knock came; he glanced at the clock. Almost three in the morning. “Yes?” he called with a frown.

A human church official peered in. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. But there’s a woman here to see you.”

“At this hour?”

The man shifted uncomfortably. “She says she’s been travelling for several days, down from the Adirondacks, with no car. And that it’s urgent. She says…” He took a breath. “She says that the fate of the angels depends on it.”

Raziel’s eyebrows shot up. “Send her in,” he said after a pause.