The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(95)

He raised his head and dropped back onto his haunches. The air was cloudy. Chunks of ceiling covered the carpet. Cybele shoved a chair aside and crawled out from under the table. Luc followed her more slowly. They looked ghostly, their faces and clothes covered with plaster dust.

“Are you all right?” Arthur asked quietly. He might have killed them.

“Yes,” Cybele said quickly.

“No thanks to you.” Luc glared at him. “What the hell was that?”

Arthur lurched to his feet. Too quickly—the room went spinning. He pitched forward, avoiding Cybele’s outstretched arms and grabbing the edge of the table instead. Cybele shoved a chair under him. He lowered himself into it.

She eyed him uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he muttered.

“What happened?” Luc asked.

“Memories.” Arthur rubbed the spot between his eyes. “Too many memories.”

Cybele eyed him. “Merlin’s?”

“Yes. Merlin’s. And so many others. They were like...like tornados inside my skull.” He slumped against the chair back. “Is that...do I smell coffee?”

“I’ll get you some.” Luc glanced from Arthur to Cybele, then disappeared into the kitchen.

Cybele, kneeling, retrieved Merlin’s staff from the floor. “You did it,” she said, looking at him wonderingly. “You fixed it.”

“And almost killed you and Luc in the process.”

“Luc’s hellfire blocked the worse of it.” She bent her head over the staff and ran her fingers over the wood. “You fixed it, Arthur. You can’t even see where it was broken.”

A dull thump sounded overhead. They both looked up at the ceiling.

A second thump. And another.

“What the hell?” Luc, coming from the kitchen, set a steaming coffee mug on the plaster-covered table.

Cybele shrugged. “I guess our upstairs neighbor isn’t happy with all the noise we’re making down here.”

Luc frowned. “There is no upstairs neighbor. This is the top floor.”

A rapid volley shook the ceiling, the impacts coming too quickly to count.

“Something’s hitting the roof.” Cybele ran to the window. “Shit! It’s the hellfiends. They’re falling out of the sky.”

Luc made a beeline toward the door, Arthur close behind. Cybele, after a moment’s hesitation, grabbed the staff and followed them. The stairwell at the end of the corridor led up to the roof as well as down to the lower floors. They raced to the upper landing. Luc kicked open the door.

A hailstorm of hellfiends rained down on the roof. Each creature exploded in a burst of ash and flame as it hit. The unholy shower was already abating, perhaps because the demons were learning to avoid the airspace directly above the building. The fiends flew right and left around it, as though aware of some invisible threat.

Fewer and fewer demons fell, until at last the barrage stopped. Arthur strode onto the roof from shelter of the stairwell. Cybele and Luc followed him. He tipped his head back. Dark, roiling clouds of hellfiends covered the rest of the city, but directly overhead, the sky was brilliant blue.

Luc looked at Arthur. “Damn. You killed a shit ton of those things.”

“The staff killed them,” Arthur replied.

“Michael was right.” Cybele’s eyes glowed with excitement. She thrust the staff into his hands. “Can you do it again? Can you take out more of them?”

“Wait just a freaking minute,” Luc reached out and grabbed the staff, just above Arthur’s grip. “I wouldn’t be so quick to try whatever the hell that was again. You nearly killed Cybele and me.”

Arthur looked up at the sky. Hellfiends, in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Except directly overhead.

“Go back inside,” he told the others. “I’ll see if I can do it again.”

“All right,” Cybele said, tugging on Luc’s arm. Luc sighed and released the staff. They backed into the shelter of the landing, Luc pulling the door shut behind them.

After a few moments and several deep breaths, Arthur set the staff upright on the roof before him. Legs braced wide, he gripped the shaft, left hand above right, and closed his eyes.

A full minute later, he opened his eyes. Nothing. Worse, he felt no spark, no flame, no life at all. The staff, though no longer broken in two, was nothing but a few pieces of tangled, twisted wood. Merlin’s touchstone might as well have been a powerless chunk of coal.

Arthur wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or terrified at this new development.

He strode to the door. Cybele and Luc loitered in the stairwell behind it. “Well?” Cybele demanded. “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” Arthur said. “The staff’s dormant again. Or maybe it’s dead for good this time. In any case, I can’t feel a thing.”

“What about Merlin’s memories?”

Arthur closed his eyes. “I think—” He blew out a breath. “Damn, I think they’re gone, too. At least, I can’t see any of them. I remember other lives. But Merlin’s? No.”

“But...you’ve already seen Merlin’s memories. They have to be inside you. They can’t just disappear.”

At one time Arthur might have agreed, but now? He couldn’t be sure of anything. “I don’t know what’s happened,” he said. “Maybe they’re still in there. Maybe I just need to find them. But...don’t get your hopes—”