Finale

CHAPTER 17

HE’S BLUFFING. IT’S A TRAP. HE’S TRYING TO make us panic so we’ll be too busy concentrating on whatever fictitious disease he put inside me to play this smart.” I jumped out of bed and paced my room. “Oh, he’s good. Real good. I say we call him back and tell him he’ll get the knife after he swears an oath to stop using devilcraft. That’s a trade I’ll agree to.”

“And if he’s not lying?” Patch asked quietly.

I didn’t want to think about that. If I did, I’d play right into Blakely’s hands. “He is,” I said with more conviction. “He was Hank’s protégé, and if Hank was good at one thing, it was lying. I’m sure the vice rubbed off. Call him back. Tell him there’s no deal. Tell him my wound has healed, and if there was anything wrong with me, we’d know by now.”

“This is devilcraft we’re talking about. It doesn’t play by the rules.” There was both worry and frustration behind Patch’s words. “I don’t think we can make assumptions, and I don’t think we can risk underestimating him. If he did anything to hurt you, Angel . . .” A muscle in Patch’s jaw contracted with emotion, and I feared he was doing exactly what Blakely wanted. Thinking with his anger and not with his head.

“Let’s wait this out. If we’re wrong, and I don’t think we are, but if that’s the case, Blakely is still going to want the knife back two, four, six days from now. We’re holding the cards. If we begin to suspect that he really did infect me with something, we’ll call him. He’ll still meet us, because he needs the knife. We have nothing to lose.”

Patch didn’t look sold. “He said you’d need the antidote soon.”

“Notice how vague soon sounds. If he was telling the truth, he’d have a more specific time frame.” My bravery wasn’t an act. Not one part of me believed Blakely was being forthright. My wound had healed, and I’d never felt better. He hadn’t injected me with a disease. I wasn’t going to fall for that. And it frustrated me that Patch was being so cautious, so gullible. I wanted to stick to our original plan: drag Blakely in and curtail the production of devilcraft. “Did he set up a meeting place? Where did he want to make the switch?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” Patch answered in a calm, measured tone.

I flinched in confusion. “Sorry. What did you just say?”

Patch walked over and cupped his hands around the back of my neck. His expression was immovable. He was serious—he intended to hold out on wopeuo; me. He might as well have slapped me, the betrayal stung that bad. I couldn’t believe he was going against me on this. I started to turn away, too enraged to speak, but he caught me by the wrist.

“I respect your opinion, but I’ve been doing this a lot longer,” he said, his voice low and serious and heartfelt.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Blakely isn’t a nice guy.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said bitingly.

“I wouldn’t put it past him to infect you with something. He’s been messing around with devilcraft far too long to have any sense of decency or humanity left. It has hardened his heart and put ideas into his mind—crafty, malicious, dishonorable ideas. I don’t think he’s making blind threats. He sounded sincere. He sounded dead set on carrying out every threat he spoke. If I don’t meet him tonight, he’ll throw away the antidote. He’s not afraid of showing us what kind of man he is.”

“Then let’s show him who we are. Tell me where he wants to meet. Let’s grab him and bring him in for questioning,” I challenged. I glanced at the clock. Five minutes had passed since Patch ended the call. Blakely wouldn’t wait all night. We had to get going—we were wasting time.

“You’re not meeting Blakely tonight, end of story,” Patch said.

I hated how infuriatingly alpha he was being about this. I deserved an equal say, and he was brushing me aside. He didn’t care about my opinion—that was just a thinly veiled platitude. “We’re going to miss our chance to catch him!” I argued.

“I’m going to make the trade, and you’re staying here.”

“How can you say that? You’re letting him call the shots! What has happened to you?”

His eyes locked with mine. “I thought it was quite obvious, Angel. Your health is more important than getting answers. There will be another time to get Blakely.”

My mouth hung open, and I shook my head from side to side. “If you walk out of here without me, I’ll never forgive you.” A strong threat, but I believed I meant it. Patch had promised we were a team from now on. If he cut me out now, I’d view it as a betrayal. We’d been through too much for him to coddle me now.

“Blakely is already on edge. If anything feels off, he’ll run, and there goes our antidote. He said he wanted to meet me alone, and I’m going to honor his request.”

I shook my head fiercely. “Don’t make this about Blakely. This is about you and me. You said we’d be a team from now on. This is about what we want—not what he wants.”

There was a knock at my bedroom door, and I snapped, “What?”

Marcie pushed the door open and stood in the entrance, arms folded snugly over her chest. She was wearing a baggy old tee and boxer shorts. Not what I pictured Marcie wearing to bed. I would have expected more pink, more lace, more skin.

“Who are you talking to?” she wanted to know, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “I can hear you yapping all the way down the hall.”

I swiveled my attention back to Patch, but it was just Marcie and me left in my bedroom. Patch had vanished.

I snatched a pillow off my bed and flung it against the wall.

Sunday morning I woke with a strange, insatiable hunger clawing at my belly. I pushed myself out of bed, skipped the bathroom, and headed straight to the kitchen. I opened the fridge, eyeing the shelves greedily. Milk, fruit, leftover beef stroganoff. Salad, cheese slices, Jell-O salad. None of it looked remotely appealing, and yet my stomach twisted with hunger pangs. I stuck my head in the pantry, raked my eyes up and down the shelves, but every last item had the appeal of chewing polyester. My unaccountable cravings intensified at the lack of food, and I started to feel nauseated.

It was still dark out, a few minutes before five, and I lugged myself back to bed. If I couldn’t eat my pains away, I’d sleep them off. Trouble was, my head felt perched on a Tilt-A-Whirl, vertigo reeling me up in its madness. My tongue was dry and swollen with thirst, but the thought of sipping something even as bland as water made my insides threaten to heave in revolt. I briefly wondered if this could be an aftereffect of the stabbing, but I was too uncomfortable to do much thinking.

I spent the next several minutes rolling around, trying to find the coolest part of my sheets for relief, when a silky voice whispered in my ear, “Guess what time it is?”

I let out a genuine groan. “I can’t train today, Dante. I’m sick.”

“Oldest excuse in the book. Now get out of bed,” he said, swatting my leg.

My head hung over the side of the mattress, and I eyed his shoes. “If I throw up on your feet, will you believe me?”

“I’m not that squeamish. I want you outside in five. If you’re late, you’ll make it up to me. An extra five miles for every tardy minute sounds about fair.”

He left, and it took all my motivation and then some to drag myself out of bed. I laced up my shoes slowly, locked in a battle with raging hunger attacking me from one side, and sharp vertigo from the other.

When I made it to the driveway, Dante said, “Before we get started, I have an update on our training efforts. One of my first acts as lieutenant was assigning officers over our troops. I hope you approve. Training of the Nephilim is going well,” he went on without waiting for my response. “We’ve been focusing on anti-possession techniques, mind-tricks as both offensive and defensive strategies, and rigorous physical conditioning. Our biggest area of weakness is spy recruiting. We need to develop good information sources. We need to know what fallen angels are planning, but we’ve been unsuccessful up to this point.” He looked at me expectantly.

“Uh . . . okay. Good to know. I’ll be thinking of ideas.”

“I’d suggest that you ask Patch.”

“To spy for us?”

“Use your relationship to your advantage. He may have information on fallen angels’ weak points. He may know of fallen angels who’d be easier to flip.”

“I’m not using Patch. And I told you: Patch is staying out of the war. He hasn’t sided with fallen angels. I’m not asking him to spy for the Nephilim,” I said almost coldly. “He isn’t getting involved.”

Dante gave a brief nod. “Understood. Forget I asked. Standard warm-up. Ten miles. Push yourself on the back half—I want you sweating.”

“Dante—” I protested weakly.

“Those extra miles I warned you about? They go for excuses too.”

Just get through this, I tried to encourage myself. You have the rest of the day off to sleep. And eat, and eat, and eat.

Dante worked me hard; after the ten-mile warm-up, I practiced vaulting over boulders twice my height, then sprinting up the steep slopes of a ravine, and we brushed up on the lessons I’d already learned, particularly working mind-tricks.

Finally, at the end of the second hour, he said, “Let’s call it a day. Can you find your way home?”

We’d traveled quite far into the woods, but I could tell by the rising sun which way was east, and I felt confident I could make it back alone. “Don’t worry about me,” I said, and left.

Halfway to the farmhouse I found the boulder we’d deposited our belongings on—the Windbreaker I’d shed after my warm-up, and Dante’s navy gym bag. He brought it every day, toting it several miles into the woods, which had to be not only heavy and awkward, but impractical. So far, he’d never once unzipped it. At least, not in my presence. The bag could be stocked with a myriad of torture devices he intended to employ in the name of training me. More likely, it held a change of clothes and spare shoes. Possibly including—I laughed at the thought—a pair of tighty whities or boxers printed with penguins that I could tease him endlessly about. Maybe even hang on a nearby tree. There was no one around to see them, but he’d be embarrassed enough knowing I had.

Smiling sneakily, I pulled the zipper back a few inches. As soon as I saw the glass bottles filled with ice-blue liquid lined up inside, the pangs in my stomach twisted ferociously. Hunger clawed through me like something living.

Unquenchable need threatened to explode inside me. A high-pitched scream roared in my ears. In one overpowering wave, I remembered the potent taste of devilcraft. Awful, but so worth it. I remembered the surge of power it had given me. I could barely keep my balance, I was so consumed by the need to feel that unstoppable high again. The skyrocketing jumps, the unmatched speed, the animal-like agility. My pulse was giddy, beating and fluttering with need, need, need. My vision blurred and my knees slackened. I could almost taste the relief and fulfillment that would come with one little sip.

I quickly counted the bottles. Fifteen. No way would Dante notice if one went missing. I knew it was wrong to steal, just as I knew devilcraft wasn’t good for me. But those thoughts were dull arguments floating aimlessly at the back of my head. I rationalized that prescription medicine in the wrong doses wasn’t good for me either, but sometimes I needed it. Just like I needed a taste of devilcraft.

Devilcraft. I could hardly think, I was so smitten and grsmiw it was weedy for the power I knew it would give me. A sudden thought seized me—I might die if I didn’t get it, the need was that potent. I would do anything for it. I had to feel that way again. Indestructible. Untouchable.

Before I knew what I’d done, I took a bottle. It felt cool and reassuring in my grip. I hadn’t even taken a sip, and already my head was clearing. No more vertigo, and soon, no more cravings.

The bottle fit perfectly in my grip, as if it were meant to be there all along. Dante wanted me to have this bottle. After all, how many times had he tried to get me to drink devilcraft? And hadn’t he said my next dose was on the house?

I’d take one bottle, and it would be enough. I’d feel the rush of power once more and I’d be satisfied.

Just once more.