Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days #1)(77)

Its venom spreads a swath of torment across my face and down my chest. I try to shove the scorpion angel away, but all I can do is feebly nudge at it.

My muscles are beginning to freeze.

The stinger suddenly rips out of my neck. It feels barbed, like it’s pulling my neck inside out.

Another scream rips through me but I can’t release it. My mouth only opens a crack. The muscles in my face just twitch instead of contorting in agony. My scream sounds like a weak gurgle.

I can’t move my face.

Raffe whips the tail in his hands and drags the abomination off me. He is roaring, and I realize he has been screaming all this time.

He grabs the scorpion fetus, swings it like a bat, and whips it into the scorpion tanks.

Three columns shatter as it crashes through them, one after another. The room fills with the dying screeches of aborted monsters.

Raffe crashes to his knees beside me. He looks stunned. And oddly shaken. He stares at me as if he can’t believe what he sees. As if he refuses to believe what he sees.

Do I look that bad?

Am I dying?

I try to touch my neck to see how much blood is flowing, but I can’t get my arm to move all the way up there. I watch it come up a third of the way, trembling with effort, then fall limp. He looks stricken when he sees my feeble attempt to move.

I try to tell him that the stinger venom paralyses and slows down breathing, but what comes out of my mouth is a mumbling that even I can’t understand. My tongue feels enormous and my lips too swollen to move. None of the other victims looked swollen, so I assume I don’t either, but it feels that way. Like my tongue has suddenly become large and clumsy, too heavy to move.

“Shh,” he says gently. “I’m here.”

He pulls me into his arms and I try to concentrate on feeling his warmth. Inside, I feel like I’m trembling with the pain but outside, I’m utterly still as the paralysis spreads down my back and legs. It takes all my willpower to keep my head from drooping on his arm.

The look on his face scares me as much as the paralysis. For the first time, his face is completely unshuttered. As if it just doesn’t matter anymore what I see.

Shock and grief line his face. I try to wrap my head around the fact that he is grieving. For me.

“You don’t even like me, remember?” That’s what I try to say. What actually comes out of my mouth is closer to a baby’s first attempt at babbling.

“Shh.” He runs his finger tips along my cheek, caressing my face. “Hush. I’m right here.” He looks at me with deep anguish in his eyes. Like there’s so much he wants to tell me but feels it’s too late now.

I want to stroke his face and tell him that it will be okay. That everything will be all right.

And I wish so badly that it would be.





CHAPTER 43



“Shh,” says Raffe, rocking me in his arms.

The light around Raffe’s head falls into shadow.

Behind him, Beliel’s dark form rises into my field of view.

One of his new wings is mostly torn off and dangling by a few stitches. His face is contorted in rage as he lifts what looks like a refrigerator over Raffe’s head the way Cain must have hefted a boulder over Abel’s head.

I try to cry out. I try to warn Raffe with my expression.

But only a whispery exhale comes out.

“Beliel!”

Beliel swings to see who yells at him. Raffe also swivels to take in the scene, still holding me protectively in his arms.

Standing in the doorway is the Politician. I recognize him even without the terrified trophy women following in his wake.

“Put that down, now!” The Politician’s friendly face is marred by a frown as he stares down the giant angel.

Beliel breaths heavily with the refrigerator hefted above him. It’s not clear whether he’ll comply.

“You had your chance to kill him out on the streets,” says the Politician as he marches into the room. “But you got distracted by a pair of pretty wings, didn’t you? And now that he’s been seen and rumors are running wild that he’s back, now you want to kill him? What is wrong with you?”

Beliel hurls the refrigerator across the room. He looks like he’d like to throw it at the Politician. It lands with a crash out of sight.

“He attacked me!” Beliel stabs his finger at Raffe like a crazed infant on steroids.

“I don’t care if he poured acid down your pants. I told you not to touch him. If he dies now, his men will turn him into a martyr. Do you have any idea how hard it is to campaign against an angelic martyr? They’d forever be making up stories of how he would have opposed this policy or that.”

“What do I care about your angel politics?”

“You care because I tell you to care.” The Politician straightens his cuffs. “Oh, why do I bother? You’ll never amount to more than just a mid-demon. You just don’t have the faculty to comprehend political strategy.”

“Oh, I comprehend it, Uriel.” Beliel curls his lip like a growling dog. “You’ve turned him into a pariah. Everything he ever believed in, everything he ever said will be the ravings of a demon-winged, fallen angel. I get it more than you’ll ever understand. I’ve lived through it, remember? I just don’t care that it gives you an advantage.”