He staggers, taking me with him. His wings drop from around me, and that’s when we all see my glory sword buried in his chest.
I have struck his heart.
The blade brightens as I readjust my grip on the handle. All around the wound his flesh sizzles, it heats and burns, the way it did that day in the woods with Samjeeza so long ago, when I destroyed his ear with glory, but this wound is on a much greater scale. Asael’s mouth opens and closes, but no words come. The light of my sword is pouring into him. He looks at me like he doesn’t recognize me, his hands grasp at my shoulders, but he is suddenly weak, and I am strong, so very, very strong.
I push the sword in deeper.
He screams, then, a boom of agony that rattles the walls of the barn and makes everyone but me cover their ears. The lightbulb over our heads shatters and rains down on us. Smoke pours off Asael as he leans against me, and I want to get away from him. My teeth come together as I put my hand against his collarbone and draw the bright sword out of his body. I step back. He falls to his knees, and my arm moves almost with a mind of its own, a mighty sweep that severs one enormous black wing from his shoulder. It bursts into bits of feathers and smoke.
Asael doesn’t even seem to feel it. His hand is still at his heart, and suddenly he lifts his arms toward the sky in some sort of silent plea.
“Forgive me,” he croaks, and then he falls onto his face on the dirt floor of the barn, and disappears.
No one speaks. I bow my head for a minute, my hair falling wild around my face, the heat of the glory sword still moving through me, up my arm, curling around my elbow in bright tendrils. Then I look up at Lucy. She’s still clutching Tucker by the arm, her face slack with horror and dismay.
“Let go of him,” I say.
She pulls him closer. The sorrow blade appears in her hand again, wavering but there, substantial enough to do damage, and she holds it out, gestures at all of us.
“Get back,” she says, her dark eyes wild with panic. She’s outnumbered now, outmatched without her big bad father to get her what she wants, but she’s still dangerous. She could kill Tucker, easily.
She wants to.
“Let go of him,” I say again more firmly.
“Luce,” Jeffrey says gently, stepping forward. Christian has dropped his circle of glory, and the barn feels plunged in darkness. I don’t even know what time it is, day or night, the pale light outside the barn window sunrise or sunset. Since time is wonky there, I don’t know how long we were in hell.
“No,” Lucy says. She glares at me, dashes tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “You. You have taken everything from me.”
“Luce,” Jeffrey cajoles her. “Put down the knife.”
“No!” she screams. “Get back!”
I raise the sword, threatening, and she shrieks. Her wings are out in a flurry of black feathers, like Christian’s but the opposite, obsidian with spatters of pure white across them, and she lifts Tucker effortlessly, caught by one arm and the front of his coat, her wings beating furiously, carrying them upward, crashing through the high window in the hayloft. For the second time that night glass showers down on us, and I cover my face with my arm to keep it out of my eyes, and when I look again she’s gone.
My glory fizzles out.
She’s taken Tucker.
Without a word I’m after them. I’m flying before my wings are all the way unfurled. I pause in the air above the ranch, turning, searching for where she’s gone, and to the east I see a small black smudge against the light of the sun rising in the east. It’s morning, then. I hear Christian’s voice somewhere behind me, his cry of “Wait! We’ll go at her together!” but I can’t wait. I streak off after her, flying harder, faster than I’ve ever flown before. I fly and fly, following her, over the mountains, high, where the air grows thin and cold. I follow her as she veers north and then east again, and it becomes clear to me that she doesn’t know where she’s going. She has no destination. She’s simply flying to get away. She’s running scared.
Anywhere you go, I will follow, I promise her silently. She’s strong, what with the sorrow blade and the speckled wings and all, the child of Asael and some unfortunate angel-blood like Christian’s mother. She’s fast, and powerful.
But she can’t fly forever.
Within minutes we’re deep in Grand Teton National Park, Jackson Lake appearing below like a long gleaming mirror against the land. Lucy pushes higher, moving more upward than out now, and I wonder what she’s planning. The air is very thin, and my throat feels dry with each labored breath I take; my lungs complain for oxygen.
Stop! I scream at her.
She slows and hovers, her wings threshing the air almost gently. She’s tired.
“Enough,” she pants when I’m about twenty-five feet away, her voice ragged. She turns to me in the air. Tucker is limp against her, his arms and legs dangling, his head thrown back. We’re so high up, seemingly level with the tops of the Grand Teton. I worry that he can’t breathe at this altitude. I worry that she’s stabbed him with the black dagger. I worry about that half-crazy look in her eye.
“Give him to me,” I say.
She smiles slightly, ironically, and I can see Angela’s “oh yes, I’m scheming” expression on her face. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to see Angela the same way again, as only herself and not related to these people.
“Then come and take him,” she spits out.
The sorrow blade singing through the air catches me off guard.
It’s a bad throw, but it clips my shoulder and part of my left wing. The pain is intense, piercing, the kind of pain that slows the mind, and so it takes me a few beats longer than normal to understand what she’s done.
She’s flying off again.
And Tucker is falling. Down, down, he’s falling.
Toward the lake, so very far below us.
I forget about Lucy. There’s only Tucker, and I know the moment I start for him that I’m not going to be able to catch him.
I try. I narrow my body, I push toward him through the air, but he’s still too far away to stop him.
It’s terrible, those few seconds, but a peaceful kind of terrible, the way he turns over and over in the air as he falls, gently, gracefully, almost like a dance, his eyes closed, his lips parted, his hair, which has grown longer over the months I haven’t seen him, caressing his face. The world opens up below us in a rush of blue and green.
And then he strikes the water.
I’ll hear that sound in my nightmares for the rest of my life. He comes down on his back, hits the surface so fast, with so much force, that he might as well have hit concrete. The splash is enormous, obscuring everything. I hit the water a few moments later, only thinking to retract my wings at the last second. The water closes around me, over me, cold as a knife stabbing me, knocking the air out of my lungs. I push upward, break the surface, gasping for air. There’s no sign of Tucker. I turn in the water frantically, searching, praying for a sign, some bubbles, something to give me an idea of where to look, but there’s nothing.
I dive. The water is dark and deep. I kick downward, my eyes open wide, my fingers out and groping.
I have to find him.
Feel for him, comes that voice in my head. Feel for him with more than just your hands.
I push deeper, turn in a different direction. My chest asks for more air and I deny it. I dive deeper, reaching for him with my mind, a tiny flicker of something that might be him, and when I’m about to give up hope and go for more air, my fingers catch his boot.
It takes an agonizingly long time for me to get him to the surface, then to the shore, then out of the water. I drag him up on the rocky bank, screaming for help at the top of my lungs, then fall to my knees beside him and put my ear near his chest.
His heart’s not beating. He’s not breathing.
I’ve never learned CPR, but I’ve seen it on television. I’m crying raggedly, stifling my sobs so I can breathe into his mouth. I press on his chest and hear a bone crack, which makes me cry harder, but I keep doing the compressions, willing his heart to pump. I can feel when I touch him that he’s already hurt so badly, so many bones broken, organs inside of him injured, maybe beyond repair. Bleeding inside.