Iniquity (The Premonition Series Book 5) (22 page)

“So you’re offering your soul for his life?” Byzantyne’s low, menacing voice jolts me out of my thoughts. He indicates Reed with a gesture over his shoulder.

My eyes lift to Reed’s green ones. He struggles to get loose from the Cherubim. “Do not do this! I am prepared to die!” Reed orders. His regal charcoal-colored wings flail with effort. He is maybe the most beautiful angel I’ve ever seen. Elegant and passionate in a way that Power angels almost never are. They’re normally robotic precision. Ready to do their duty—obsessed with killing—anxious to destroy anything they deem evil—drone-like, but not this one. He’s a knight.

My attention turns back to Byzantyne. “Yes, I’ll champion this angel.”

“You believe you’ll win!” Byzantyne’s eyes glisten with hunger. “Still so naïve, even after all of this time. You can’t possibly defeat me!” His enormous chest puffs as he hits his fist against it. The sound is a drumbeat.

I raise my glowing chin. “Then you don’t mind if I ask for whatever I want should I win?”

His eyebrows lower, settling at an arrogant angle. “Not at all. I’ll enjoy hearing what would make you do this, aside from ridiculous naiveté, I might add.”

“Well, then…first, when I win, Reed will ascend to Paradise. He gets to go home.”

Byzantyne’s eyes widen. He looks back at Reed. He did not see that coming. “I can only erase his debt. I cannot give you his ascension,” Byzantyne replies.

“No, you can’t, but he can.” I look at Atwater next to me.

“It will be done,” Atwater agrees immediately—maybe too quickly. I would step on his foot if I had a body and we weren’t hovering above the ground. I try not to look at Atwater. His easy response will make Byzantyne counter.

Byzantine peers at me thoughtfully. “But if you lose, the Power ceases to be.”

I want to dispute this, but it will only make the wicked Seraph dig in harder for it. Byzantyne looks baffled by my first point. I need to keep him unbalanced.

“Second, I don’t ever want to have to return here to fight Emil.” I gesture toward him, watching his handsomely ugly face twist with rage once more. “He never gets to come back for any more lifetimes. He has to stay buried in Sheol.”

“She can’t do that!” Emil lurches forward.

Byzantyne holds up his palm and stops Emil in midair with the gesture. “CEASE!” he orders. Emil slinks back, but his eyes betray his venom.

Byzantyne returns his attention to me. “You don’t enjoy meeting your inescapable in every lifetime? You could surrender—accept no other missions.”

“I cannot ask another soul to endure his cruelty in my stead.”

“Always the little fixer, aren’t you? You would deny him a chance at redemption?” Byzantyne’s lips twist into a wicked grin at the very thought of Emil attempting to gain redemption.

“If it means saving future souls who would fall because of his influence, then yes, I would.”

“Isn’t that heresy, Simone? Aren’t you all worthy of redemption?”

“Are we?” I ask, knowing he doesn’t think so. I am giving him something he wants. I hope he doesn’t see through it.

“There is one small problem in your plan. You’re challenging me. I cannot kill a human. If I did, I would find myself in the same situation as that Power over there. How would I fight against you?”

“That Power over there has a name. It’s Reed.”

“I don’t care what his name is. How do we solve our conundrum?”

“What if I’m not human when I return?”

Byzantyne laughs with derision. “What else could you be? You’re a soul!”

“If I had a different body—not human? Would that work for you?” I’d be holding my breath if I had a body.

“In theory, yes, but what other body could a soul inhabit—”

“Angel.”

Byzantyne appears to have stopped breathing. “What you suggest is…”

“…Is what you’ve always wanted—to be an angel with a soul. To prove to everyone that angels are worthy of redemption—more so than humans.”

He can hardly contain his glee. He attempts to hide it though. “Still, even with an angelic body, your soul would not die, it would fall to me.”

“If I lose and you kill my body, then my soul is Sheol’s, but I won’t lose.”

“I want your soul mate as well”

“No!” I nearly shout it. “You never get him! He goes free!”

“But you’re together. He’s part of you.”

I can’t let Nicolas suffer for eternity. If I lose my soul to Sheol, I want him to be free. “I will see that our soul mate connection is severed.”

“You would give up your soul mate? For a Power?” This makes no sense to him. I have to keep him unbalanced.

“I’ll do it to see you cease to be—to banish Emil to Sheol for eternity. It will give my soul mate peace like he has never known in any lifetime.”

“You think your soul mate is too good for all of this?”

I want to wipe the smirk off his face. “My soul mate is the best part of us. I’ll pay the cost of this, not Nicolas.”

“Does he know that you’ve fallen in love with your guardian angel? It’s why you force him into mission after mission—so you can be near Xavier,” Byzantyne taunts.

I cringe at how well he knows me. “I accept mission after mission to fight my inescapable. You play Emil whenever you can because you know I’ll agree to face him. It’s you who is obsessed with me.”

“Oh, I am obsessed, Simone. I would love to have you all to myself and violate you in every possible way.”

He means every word. “You know nothing of love, Byzantyne, and that’s how I’ll beat you.”

“You’ll beat me with love? That sounds salacious. I’m so looking forward to it. Now let me tell you what I demand in exchange. I cannot have you return as a more powerful being and have you unmatched by us. That hardly seems fair to have the strength of an angel with the latitude given to a soul. It’s gluttonous of you, Simone. Unless…” his scheming gaze falls on Emil, “I’m allowed a champion of my own.”

I close my eyes briefly. “You need a champion? That’s a little cowardly of you. Are you afraid of me?”

“Afraid? No. I merely seek to maintain a balance, and because I don’t have a soul, I will require a soul to act in my stead. I choose your inescapable, Emil. He will return here as a half-angel. He’ll dance circles around the pieces of your broken heart.”

Emil, who kills for fun, can’t believe his good fortune. He knows what this could mean. He’ll be one of the most powerful beings in the universe. He’ll believe himself God-like, even though he cannot even imagine how miniscule he really is.

Emil sizes me up once more, his depraved soul growing darker. “I accept,” he says without hesitation.

“Does Heaven agree?” Byzantyne lifts his eyebrow to Atwater and waits for him to respond.

Atwater pauses for a moment. His eyes become white, losing any indication that he has irises as they disappear. His body trembles as if enduring a shock from some outside force. It only takes a moment for his eyes to become normal once more. He stops shaking. “Heaven accepts.”

“I still feel as if Simone is getting the better part of this bargain.”

“What is it that you want?”

“I want you blind. You have something planned. I don’t know what it is, but you came into this lifetime hoping for this outcome. Didn’t you?”

“You know I can hardly predict what will happen when I enter a new life. There are too many variables to ever know the outcome of a life.”

“It’s not so hard when you know the players.”

“But I never know the setup, do I?”

“Don’t you? Still. I want you to go into this next lifetime with no prior knowledge of these negotiations. You don’t get to know who you are or why you’re here. And whoever is sent to protect you from us will be blind to the goal of the mission as well.” Byzantyne looks down at Xavier on the ground. My guardian angel is unconscious, having succumbed to the pain of having his wings readjusted. “He doesn’t get to know your mission either.”

“We don’t have to know the goal of the mission or that it involves you and Emil when I return here. It’ll be the only logical choice though, given Emil is my inescapable and you’re his handler. What other reason would I have to come back here?”

“As you say,” Byzantyne accepts my logic. “You will be born into this next life as a human, so you will know nothing of Heaven or your inescapable. You’ll follow the biological progression of an angel with an angelic body. You won’t have angelic strength until you begin to evolve. When that time comes, if you make it that far and begin your evolution into angel, you will lose Xavier and whoever else is protecting you. They must ascend. You’ll be left on your own. No one else is to be told of your arrival on earth or your purpose here.”

“Someone has to know.”

“Atwater can know—Heaven can know, but they can’t tell you or the players in our game.”

“Xavier will never agree to leave me.”

“Then Heaven will have to force him back. He doesn’t get to stay with you.”

It’s as if he has punched me in the stomach. I want to curl into a ball and hide. What he is proposing is sure disaster for me. I try to imagine it. I’ll be a new being alone in the world, weak and transitioning into angel with no protection. I scrutinize the warrior angels surrounding us. They’re not what one would term as open-minded. I glance at Reed. His clever eyes see the torment of my decision. Restrained from me, his face is a mask of agony, watching me struggle through this. “What would you do if you met an angel with a soul, Reed?” I ask as if we’re the only two beings in the room.

He doesn’t smile, but there’s a tender quality in the look that passes from him to me. “If it were anyone else, Simone, I don’t know. But, because it will be you, I’d have a better chance at harming starlight. I would protect you. You can trust me.”

Byzantyne barks with laughter. “A Power with the eloquence of a poet! Do you believe him, Simone? He’s programmed to murder anything that could be seen as unnatural. It’s innate in him. He’d be made blind as well. He wouldn’t remember any of this the moment he leaves here.” Smug humor resonates from the Seraph.

Reed strains against the Cherubim holding him. Their blue feathers rustle and thrust, trying to maintain control and subdue him. It takes four of them to hold him back from Byzantyne. His voice hardens, “You believe you know me? You think I’d slaughter innocence—that I am a mindless drone? Give her to me to guard when you drive away her guardians. If you’re right, I’ll shatter her heart for you, and then you’ll win before it even starts,” Reed challenges. “But if you’re wrong, you’ll only have an infinitesimal Power with which to contend.

Byzantyne’s eyebrows twist like threads above his brown eyes, arching as Reed uses the Seraph’s boastful words against him. “Oh, this is interesting! Should I give you to the Power, Simone? He has been stalking me for months now. It was fortunate for me that you’ve been a dazzling distraction for him. I may not have known he was near if it were not for his penchant to watch you. He hovered around you as if he’d never seen a female before in his miserable life. Will love triumph, Simone, as you so desperately want to believe? Will you stake your eternity on his love for you?”

Reed’s green eyes pierce me. “I will not fail you, Simone.”

The deep, mesmerizing quality of his voice slices through my fear and I reply, “I will stake my eternity on it.”

Byzantyne, looks from me to Reed in disbelief. I hardly spare the Seraph a glance because I’m entangled in the radiant smile on my knight angel’s lips. The dark-haired demon hums with superiority.” You’ll blow into this Power’s life, a dead leaf on and autumn breeze. He’ll tear you down and bathe in your blood within the first hour of your meeting.”

“Why are you afraid then, Byzantyne?” I ask.

“I fear nothing.” He wants me to believe he’s already won.

“You should fear us,” Reed mocks him. “We’ll slay the demon you keep on a leash.” The divine Power turns a menacing grin on Emil. Emil flinches, more smoky essence curling off of him. Reed looks back at Byzantyne once more, “And then we’ll come for you, wherever you are. You can hide in fire and we’ll find you.”

“You will lose,” Byzantyne replies, the muscles in his face tightening as he attempts to be unemotional.

“Then you won’t mind if I add one more thing if I win?” I interrupt.

“Name it,” Byzantyne croons condescendingly.

I turn to address Atwater instead of Byzantyne, because this has to be granted by Heaven. “I want a love of my own choosing.” I force myself not to look in Xavier’s direction.

Byzantyne laughs with derision, as if I’ve asked for the most inane thing imaginable. “So this is truly all about Xavier after all. You would sever the ties to your soul mate and challenge me just to be with him? Such fealty and loyalty to an angel who watches you get butchered in every lifetime you live—and for him no less. He orchestrates your demise. You do know this, don’t you? If it’s to his advantage for you to die in order for him to defeat me, he does not hesitate to use it. No matter what price you have to endure. You are his pawn. And, yet, you love him still. Love is blind.”

“We both know the risks going into every life.”

“Yes, but do you know how easy it would be to get you out of some of the torture he allows you to suffer? He’s ruthless when it comes to you. He absolutely does not care what happens to you.”

“He’s doing his job.”

“Always at your expense,” Byzantyne gives me a fake look of pity. “I only tell you this because I would not do that to you. If you were mine, I would cherish you.” There is some truth to what he says. It’s in the yearning in his eyes as he looks at me. He does want me, maybe even more than I ever imagined. But he wouldn’t cherish me. He wouldn’t even know how.