Iniquity (The Premonition, #5)(30)
“You’re sick.”
“I remember the time when you couldn’t take a breath without my permission.”
“You enjoyed that.”
“I enjoyed you.”
I lower my head and beat my wings harder, no longer fighting his pull on me, but using his magical force to propel me right to him. I use my legs to coil around his waist. Driving my arm forward, blood spatters my face as I punch a hole through his chest and pull out his still-pumping heart. “Well then, how do you like me now?” I ask as his mouth opens in shock. His evil, hooded eyes meet mine as his body crumples. I unwind my legs from him and let his body fall to the street below with a sickening thud.
The throbbing pain in my abdomen eases as I pant, my wings beating to keep me in the air. Wildly, I look around at the street below. Mr. Kendrick, the retired postal worker who organizes our annual block parties, is on his front porch, staring at me with a look of horror on his face.
I hold up my hands to him, inadvertently displaying the waning heart in my fist. As blood drips from my wrist and elbow, I try to reassure him. “It’s okay, Mr. Kendrick.” Frozen for a moment, he just stares at me. The front of his pants darken as he wets himself. “I won’t hurt you,” I say, but I only scare him more. He stumbles back with a lurch, bumping into the yellow wood siding of his house before he pivots to his door. He rattles the black handle, his shaking hand like a club. When he manages to open it, he backs inside before slamming the door shut.
Numbly, I look down at Emil’s body in the street. As I drop his dead heart on the ground, I look for signs of life in him, but he’s still. A thousand different emotions assail me; the most prevalent among them are hope that he’s dead and fear that he’s not. All around me, the war between the angels has taken to the street. They’re tearing each other apart, hundreds of them, staining the snow red with their need to destroy one another.
Slowing the beat of my wings so that I land on the pavement, I stay well back from Emil’s body. I glance over my shoulder, looking for Xavier; he’s taking apart a fallen Seraph with his bare hands. The other divine angels are wreaking havoc on their enemies, too. I move to help Xavier, but I hesitate as Emil’s corpse begins to change. His coat alters from a gray military trench to a short, black leather jacket. Emil’s features shift as well. His hair turns from strawberry-blond to black, his skin tone darkens, his small, straight nose grows larger and becomes aquiline. Dark hair sprouts from his chin as his lips widen and lose their perfect symmetry.
My bloody hand comes up to cover my mouth as I rush closer to him. Crouching near, I pick up his cold, dead hand, and stare at the face of Owen Matthews—my date to the Delt formal in what feels like a lifetime ago. Tears of horror come to my eyes. His throat has been ripped open where I had stabbed Emil.
Mr. Kendrick’s front door opens as Emil emerges with his hands shoved in the pockets of his gray trench coat. He strolls toward me with a sanguine smile on his lips. Chaos swirls around him as angels pounce on one another, slashing and cutting. Dappled brown feathers are being shred from a divine Power angel as a fallen archangel’s fists tug on them while they wrestle in the snow. Emil ignores everyone, walking around flailing forms before stopping next to me. I rise to face him.
With a nod toward Owen, Emil assesses, “Your boyfriend. You killed him.”
“Owen was never my boyfriend! He was just a random blind date!” I gnash my teeth, realizing what Emil says is true. I killed him. I tore Owen’s heart out with my bare hand. Taking a deep breath, I smell the scent of urine on Emil. I realize what’s happening. “You possessed him!” I accuse. “Mr. Kendrick—you’re in his body—somehow. It’s all an illusion.”
Emil’s smile is blasé. “They’re so willing to let me in, Simone. They’re weak,” he replies with a casual shrug as he looks at Owen. “All I had to do was promise your boyfriend here that I wouldn’t hurt him if he let me in. It was really that simple. Humans are so willing to cooperate with us.” He looks at me then. “They so rarely say no.”
“And if they did say no, you’d kill them.”
He shakes his head. “Not true. If they say no, then the laws of Paradise protect them. It’s not like it was for you in Lille. When we reunited there during the war, I would’ve killed you had you defied me, just like I’d killed your aunt. You and I were both humans in that lifetime. Now, I can’t touch a human unless they allow it.” His head dips conspiratorially towards mine. “Fear is the best weapon. You see? They, the humans, have to agree before I can possess them, but it’s not hard to convince them. Most people are willing to do anything out of fear—agree to anything—hurt someone else just to save themselves. The irony is that it is what truly damns them.”
My mind reels. “Freddie—Alfred—he was an angel—a reaper—he killed my uncle—my human uncle!”
“Did he?” he asks with a smile. “That’s not how I heard it. I heard that he convinced another human to slaughter your uncle while he watched. Otherwise, he’d have had to pay the consequences for his actions from both Sheol and Paradise. They’d never let him live after that. We just can’t openly kill humans. It’s not how this is done. It’s a game of souls, Simone. Sheol doesn’t like it when our angels give Paradise an uncontested soul, especially one that we’ve been after for several lifetimes. Given the right set of circumstances, your uncle could’ve been ours.”