Covenant Read online

  Angela wanted more than ever for it to be Christmas Day. She longed for cheeriness and a mug of steamed cocoa by the fire. Every normal, typical Christmas thing she’d never had as a child. But that was impossible when she had to find a mysterious door, enter it, and keep her best friend from dying.

  So instead, she found herself standing in front of the Luz Institution where Stephanie Walsh had been sequestered.

  The forbidding structure nestled directly on one of the tallest sea cliffs of Luz. All poorly mortared stone, its many towers jutted out from one another like tree branches. Even with the lights of so many candles in its windows, they resembled cheerless yellow eyes peeking from a black, many-armed monster.

  Angela wasn’t surprised to find the interior just as bleak, with seawater leaking constantly through various chinks in the floor. There were enough fireplaces to warm every patient and volunteer, but the glow the fires gave off seemed false.

  The volunteer nun who’d been assigned to Angela had guided her through a dark brick lobby, where she’d quickly signed in as a visitor. Then they’d traveled up a long set of stairs to a floor where the stone had been whitewashed. Every corridor looked the same and smelled of antiseptic and musty blankets. At last, they’d arrived at a wing where a few volunteer novices chatted outside of a metal door marking a patient’s room. A crucifix had been hung over the entryway.

  Here I am.

  Angela glanced at the sign nailed to the right of the door.

  STEPHANIE LAURENTON WALSH

  She licked her dry lips. Nervous butterflies tumbled in her stomach.

  A nurse strolled by, staring for a moment at Angela’s scars and blood-red hair. Panic shot through Angela. Any moment they would grab her and lock her up in Stephanie’s place, imprisoning Angela for a past that wasn’t quite her fault—just like they’d imprisoned her a few years ago. She could practically hear the lock clicking, sealing her doom. She could taste the terrible food all over again and hear the voices of the psychiatrists plying her endlessly.

  Until she realized that it was Stephanie’s door being opened, and it was a priest talking to Angela, encouraging her to make this opportunity count for them both. And then she was inside, alone with Luz’s most notorious blood head witch.

  Stephanie rested on a plain corner bench near her gable window, staring out at the snow. She looked simultaneously like the Stephanie that Angela remembered and someone completely different. Her dark red hair had been cut to her chin, and her green eyes had a vacant soulless glaze to them that reminded Angela of Sophia’s most fathomless expressions.

  She wore plain white sweatpants and a white T-shirt. At the edge of her bed, someone had left a bible.

  A ceiling lamp flickered overhead.

  Writing and odd symbols that Angela vaguely recognized covered the walls. She could make out a motif repeated over and over, the figure of a person on some kind of strange horse. Stephanie held the marker between her fingers, resting its tip near the edge of her lap. Angela tried to read one of the paragraphs to her right, but the scribbles made little sense. So she sat down and waited for Stephanie to talk. When nothing happened, she ventured in a small voice. “Stephanie? It’s Angela.”

  Stephanie didn’t move.

  “It’s Angela Mathers. Do you remember me?”

  Nothing.

  This, then, was the result of Stephanie’s ambitions. Lucifel, the Devil, had possessed her and used her in an experiment to open Sophia, Raziel’s Book. But the attempt had backfired, and Stephanie succumbed to the insanity meted out to any soul who wasn’t either one of the greatest angels in the universe or protected by them. Initially, the priest had said she’d raved and called out strange names, at last settling into a chant that spoke over and over of eyes and darkness and unnameable terrors within a mysterious book. Now, she was mostly catatonic, expressing herself through her writing.

  There was almost nothing left of the witch who’d helped murder Angela’s brother and won a demon’s affections.

  Even now, Angela could hear Stephanie accusing her, saying how unfair it was that Angela was the Archon, and Stephanie herself had been left with nothing.

  It had been Stephanie’s most obvious regret.

  This was awful. She didn’t even seem to recognize Angela. Yet . . . Angela couldn’t give up yet.

  “It’s Angela Mathers,” Angela whispered, trying one more time. “The Archon.”

  Stephanie’s green eyes widened. She snapped her head around and stared at Angela. She looked so odd without her heavy makeup, without her overly adult aura of sexuality. The more she examined Angela’s sorority coat and scars, the more Stephanie’s eyes welled up and her lip trembled angrily, making her seem even more childish.

  She curled up, choosing the window again. “Angela,” Stephanie said weakly. “You’ve come to laugh at me.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Angela said. “I came because I need your help.”

  Stephanie turned her head aside, but there was no denying that she seemed curious, almost astonished by Angela’s admission. After a while, she peered back, as if making certain Angela was still there.

  Angela came closer. “Do you have anything you want to say to me? This is your chance. You can talk, and I’ll listen.”

  “You’re the Archon,” Stephanie murmured.

  Angela nodded. “Yes.”

  “And I—” She clenched her fingers and pitched the marker onto the floor. “I’m the Ruin.”

  No, Stephanie. But you let the real Ruin of the universe, the Devil, possess you. And now look at what’s happened. You’re a shell of who you used to be.

  Thank God, there were no mirrors here.

  “I want Angela Mathers to know,” Stephanie whispered, “that her secret is safe with me. She’s the only one who can stop her, after all.”

  “Stop who?” Angela said a little too quickly.

  “Lucif—” Stephanie’s mouth snapped shut. She wrapped her arms around herself like the name was literally painful.

  “Stephanie,” Angela said, kneeling down in front of her. “Someone told me that if I don’t enter a door, Sophia is going to die.” Angela glanced at the tiny window in the room’s door, hoping they weren’t being observed too closely. She took out the paper from her pocket and showed it to Stephanie. “Do you know what this paper is referencing? Does it have something to do with Luc—” Angela caught herself, closed her eyes, and tried to stay calm. “With the Devil? Please, I need to know.”

  Stephanie took the paper and examined it, front and back. When she read the poem on the back, a strange wash of recognition came over her face. “Kim wrote this,” she said simply.

  “What?” Angela leaned forward, her heart racing. “Are you sure? But that’s not his handwriting—”

  “Don’t trust him,” Stephanie whispered, and she grabbed Angela by the arm. Her grip was like iron, but her hands shook. She peered at Angela intensely. “Don’t trust anyone, Angela.”

  “Why?”

  Stephanie laughed. “Look at me—that’s why.”

  “That’s not a real explanation,” Angela said, aware she was losing her patience.

  “All right, fine,” Stephanie said, becoming icily serious again. “Kim said he loved me and he lied. Is that enough of a reason for you?”

  Angela tried to speak more gently. “Do you know where Kim is?”

  “In Hell,” Stephanie snapped. “Where he belongs. Stay away from Kim, Angela. Kim’s father was a blackbird. He can’t change who he is. And if he’s not mine, you can’t have him either.” Stephanie wrung her hands together, whispering meanly, “Not you, or me, or anyone else.”

  Angela stood up, taking the paper back from Stephanie. This conversation was going nowhere after all. She should have known better than to think that Stephanie would have the answers so desperately needed. But Stephanie had a terrible though real connection with Lucifel, and if anyone wanted Angela in trouble, it was the Devil. Perhaps Stephanie’s mind was just too far gone t
o be of any real use, just like Father Schrader had said.

  “Good-bye, Stephanie,” Angela said. She wanted to say something more, but came up empty.

  She had just turned around again when Stephanie clamped down on her arm even tighter than last time.

  “Wait,” Stephanie said. She sounded truly afraid this time. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone. I’ll tell you where the door is.”

  “You know?” Angela said, astonished but still worried that Stephanie was hedging again.

  Stephanie glanced around the room, her eyes wild. “You don’t understand. Luci—I mean, she makes me see things. Hear things. She said you would come and talk to me and that I would have to help you.”

  Angela stared at Stephanie, fear throbbing inside of her.

  “They won’t let me send you letters, Angela. So I wrote the words on the wall. Otherwise—I’d forget. There are so many of them.”

  Words on the wall? But all Angela had seen was nonsense, gibberish—

  She gasped.

  It couldn’t be . . .

  Angela snatched the paper from her coat pocket and held it up to the light on the ceiling, its scribbled side facing the lamp. There they were. The same symbols and words that had been written on the paper, Stephanie had written backward in her whitewashed cell. All over the walls of the room, Angela could read the poem’s verses in heavy block scripting.

  Her eyes darted wildly, taking in words here and there.

  Blackbird escapes hungry . . . hellfire smoke . . . the One seeing . . .

  And in thick letters: Covenant. Ruin.

  Stephanie forced Angela to look at her again. “It’s only a matter of time. It’s only a matter of time until the blackbird escapes her cage.”

  “You mean Lucifel?” Angela said. Her voice was almost nonexistent. “Someone’s going to let her out of her prison?”

  Again? But that was right—Angela only fought Lucifel’s shadow, and that had been terrible enough.

  Stephanie breathed heavily, her face white and fearful. “It’s only a matter of time. Get ready, Angela. I know where the door is, but when you go through it, you will have to go down very, very deep. Very, very far.”

  “To where?” Angela said, her breath nearly leaving her.

  Stephanie couldn’t even look at her anymore. “To Hell.”

  Lucifel is definitely the one behind this. Sophia was absolutely right.

  “The door?” Angela almost shouted. “Where is it, Stephanie?”

  Stephanie looked completely bewildered. “It’s right in front of you.”

  “I don’t have the time for riddles!”

  “It’s true, it’s right in front of you,” Stephanie shouted back. “Right here!”

  Angela whirled around, seeing nothing but four walls with writing on them. “Where?”

  “Anywhere,” Stephanie said, but she regressed into a whimper as if realizing how ridiculous that sounded.

  Angela shook her head and pushed back her hair. She wanted to scream, but instead she leaned against the wall and tried to gather her thoughts. This was the best she would get out of Stephanie—confirmation that it was Lucifel ultimately behind the dreadful note. There was an entrance to Hell in Memorial Park now, but there had been no activity from it since last year, and every time Angela checked, it remained the same—buried in rocks and dirt, the ground sealed tightly from invaders. Sophia had helped her put some wards in the earth and those had apparently done the trick, making the former cemetery just another barren spot in Luz.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to check one last time.

  But when to get there? Running through her mental schedule, Angela realized she would have to wait two days for the park to reopen to visitors for Christmas. The Vatican guarded it so closely otherwise, she’d never get past the gate.

  So that was it then. But it was also better than nothing. Better than a dead end.

  As if sensing their conversation had finally ceased, Stephanie clung to Angela with mad fright behind her green eyes. “Angela, please don’t go. You can’t stop Lucifel—you can’t save Sophia.”

  Angela fought with Stephanie, but the girl clung harder.

  “Please, don’t go through the door, Angela. You’ll never come back and it will be the end for everything. Lucifel will kill you and open Sophia, and then it will all be over. Don’t you see the snow falling? Can’t you see the universe dying? Angela, listen to me. Ride away. Don’t let them get you. Ride, ride, ride—”

  Stephanie’s words became frightening shrieks of despair. In an instant, the door to the room slammed open. Angela found herself torn from Stephanie’s terrified grip as a group of nuns and two nurses in white attempted to pin the girl to the bed. Stephanie kicked and swore, but they subdued her after a short time with an injection from a small needle, and it was all over.

  It seemed like only a few minutes more until Angela was thrust back out in the snow and ice, her heart pounding, her left hand burning, and the Eye certainly weeping blood, unable to find a door that apparently was right in front of her.

  Six

  That night, I dreamed I rode a horse to a revolving city of stars. Then I plucked one of those stars from the sky and gave it like a jewel to her. —ANGELA MATHERS

  Friday arrived with more snow than usual, and a terrible sense of tension in the air.

  Two more days until Angela could enter Memorial Park.

  She couldn’t stand it, and she often found herself pacing throughout the Emerald House after her classes, waiting for more mysterious notes that never arrived, keeping an eye out for more snakes that never appeared. Now, everything was too quiet without a single sign of Troy, of her crow familiar, Fury, or even of members of the Order. Angela slipped off her arm glove and examined the Eye, which had also stopped bleeding and aching for a good while. She would have thought the past two days had been nothing more than a bad dream, except that over and over in her mind, she could hear Stephanie’s panicked screams, and her ominous prediction that if Angela entered Hell, she would also never return. That Lucifel would ultimately win.

  I can’t take this anymore. Why can’t I make time go by faster?

  She slid out a chair in the kitchen and slumped over the table, sucking in the warm scent of spice pie. In the hearth room, Sophia sang carols as she wrapped presents.

  “Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, and good cheer to all . . .”

  Angela cradled her head in her hands, her mouth suddenly pasty and dry. Her ears continued to ring with Stephanie’s words as they blended with Sophia’s song, becoming a hundred times louder.

  Angela’s first real Christmas and she had to spend it like this. It wasn’t fair.

  She listened for a while longer to Sophia’s song, then got up and grabbed the spice pie from the counter, heading into the hearth room with the pie, some plates, and two forks. Sophia was busy putting the finishing touches on a package, her small fingers in the middle of deftly tying a red satin bow as Angela entered. She paused while Angela set the spice pie in front of her, and then without a single comment Sophia returned to her work.

  Sophia was waiting for Angela to speak first, but what else could be said at a time like this?

  At any moment, Angela felt like the earth’s jaws would open and Sophia would fall into a black pit of nothingness, screaming while white bony arms yanked her down harder the more she tried to escape.

  Outside a crow screeched.

  Angela flinched, almost dropping her pie on the floor.

  Sophia looked up from her gift-wrapping, visibly concerned. “Angela, worrying won’t change anything.”

  Angela grunted and shoveled a forkful of pie into her mouth. “I’m not worried,” she said between chews.

  Sophia shook her head. “You’re a terrible liar.” She stood, searching through the presents for something. “And I think you need to get your mind off all this for the next two days. Go to the Christmas Ball with Camdon, and then we’ll go to Memorial Park the next morning and c
heck the Netherworld Gate again. It’s all we can do, and fretting about it won’t change anything. Besides, Lucifel isn’t stupid. She knows you will need a reasonable amount of time to find the door. Her main concern will be that you actually enter it.”

  “You mean that’s where you come back into the picture,” Angela said, setting down her empty plate. “Fine. I guess you’re right . . .”

  But she couldn’t escape the terrible feeling that Lucifel would prod them through that door somehow.

  “I know I’m right,” Sophia said certainly. She leaned down, picking up one of the gifts. “Besides, going to the Ball will shut the Order up for a while. Just showing your face at a public event will make them happy.”

  Angela sighed. “I hate it. We should have a society that welcomes everyone and anyone, not just blood heads. They have the whole thing backward, and it’s just making everyone that much more suspicious of each other.”

  “Very true,” Sophia said gently, her expression pensive. Then she turned and handed Angela a fist-sized but prettily wrapped package with green paper and a silver bow. “For you,” she said, smiling beautifully. Her stormy gray eyes held a gentleness Angela had never seen before. Sophia’s voice was musically sweet. “I always loved this human holiday the most. Merry Christmas.”

  “Oh,” Angela said, grasping the gift like it was made of gossamer. “Thank you . . . Sophia, I—”

  This was it. Angela’s first exchange of gifts. Ever.

  She laughed, and then she laughed again for laughing in the first place.

  She could have stared at the crisp green paper all night, completely absorbed in its pattern of stars and its tinsel bow. She felt like she held a gigantic diamond. “Wait. Hold on,” Angela said hurriedly, setting the gift on the floor and rushing upstairs to the cedar wardrobe in her room. She rustled through a pile of clothes on the floor, emerging with a package sadly wrapped in old newspaper. By the time she returned and handed the gift to Sophia, her cheeks were on fire and she was gasping for breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, already feeling unbelievably inadequate. “I didn’t know you could find fancy paper on the island—”