“You okay?” Eve asks.
I shake my head and walk a few steps to bend at the waist and vomit. I hadn’t eaten much all day, so I gag and gag until I feel my belly settle.
Shadows seem to move over the silos. It smells like a dumpster, and my instinct says to run away and never come back. I turn around and stand there, feeling as if this is the last day I’ll see Gabriel the Virtuous, who would be disappointed if he knew those kids were behind the Veil, and disappointed I went after them myself instead of making his nine o’clock and reporting the incident. Even if I reported them missing, Gabriel wouldn’t go after them or send anyone else either. His rules were simple. Stay at the school. Those who disobey are on their own.
Eve laces her fingers with mine. “We shouldn’t linger here,” she says. “Let’s go.”
Our platforms make so much noise as we walk that I’m wondering if the Marked will come out of the shadows to kill us. Dread sits heavily in my belly. I want to vomit again. “I’m gonna be sick again.”
“Hold it in,” Eve says. “The more you vomit, the more you’ll feel the dread and anxiety about being here.”
“Why?”
“Gabriel’s power is holding the Veil. It’s making you feel like you should run away, making you feel things that aren’t there. Fear. Dread. Death. Anxiety. But it’s not real. Once we pass this part, we’re in. The initial Veil layer was the commander’s and Raphael’s powers, but we made it through, so we can make it through Gabriel’s too. Before the Veil thinned, if we didn’t die on impact, we’d break in half, and if that didn’t work, we’d commit suicide in this area.” She points. “Right over there. You see them?”
It’s dark, but I let my eyes adjust to what I’m seeing. Oh God, those aren’t discarded clothes, those are dressed skeletons. “This place gives me the creeps, Eve.”
“Me too, but if I can manage, so can you.”
We keep walking, and the farther we go up the street, the less stench there is. I’m almost at the point where I feel like I’m walking down a dark street back home in Ilean, the town I grew up in. The dread in my belly won’t go away, and I glance at Eve, who makes a face and says, “A few more steps. Gosh, Gabriel’s power can be annoying.”
Anything having to do with Gabriel is never annoying to me, but I say nothing and push onward, Eve practically dragging me toward…nothing, really, but she’s determined, and I trust she knows the way. She tugs my arm to move faster, but I can’t because I’ll break my ankles if I jog.
We arrive at the top of a small hill with a fork in the road. Black and gray fog rises around our feet. The smell of cinnamon and vanilla mixes with the dread, and my belly wants to lurch again.
“All done.” Eve sighs. “Better, no?”
I nod, not wanting to sound like a pussy. Dread is lead in my belly now, and someone is making dreadful cinnamon vanilla cookies. Yuck.
We walk into the swirling fog, and Eve sighs. “One more rule. Don’t trust anyone in here.” She levels me with a strange look. “Not even me.”
“I’m counting on you to show us a way out.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Shit. I keep up with her because I’m crazy, and I can’t stop thinking about those kids and not seeing them in class on Monday, knowing I could’ve at least tried to get them out with all their limbs attached. “Maybe it’s Lucifer’s power making me sick.”
Eve snorts. “Lucifer doesn’t make women sick. Trust me.”
Fear sprouts inside me like a plant rising out of the ground after rain, but there’s also this sense of trepidation, excitement, as if I’m about to do something dangerous, something Gabriel would definitely disapprove of, something un-virtuous and sinful.
The scent of cinnamon and vanilla starts reminding me of winter nights and my mom baking cookies and letting me steal them right off the pan. The image is soon replaced with Gabriel’s nude body, and my hands are touching him everywhere, even in the places he’d never let me touch.
My nipples perk, my breasts feel heavy, and I’m hot all over as the dark fog disappears and a city bursting with lights, life, sound, smells, people appears out of nowhere. We’re standing in the middle of it. Mouth agape, I look around and up. Rectangular towers with tinted windows rise so high, they might reach the stars. People wear beads around their necks, weird-shaped sunglasses, and funny colorful hats and dance to various types of music coming from giant speakers attached to the buildings. Women wear barely any clothes. Men have no shoes.
Suddenly, I don’t feel so awkward or out of place. I could fit in here with the dirty thoughts of my teacher, mentor, hero, archangel I know is chaste. I want to return to him and tempt him straight into sin.
“This is not what I expected it to be,” I say, and my gaze returns to where Eve should be standing, except she’s not. I look around, calling out for her. The street’s busy. People bump into me, and I move to stand near the wall, hoping to pick her out from the masses.
The fear I won’t find her and get lost in the Veil and rot on the sidewalk makes me bend and vomit again. I wipe my mouth, then straighten my shoulders.
“The dread I feel is not real,” I say to myself. “Get it together.” Gunman said the palace is the place to be, and judging by the waves of people moving up the street toward a statue of some sort, that must be it. Terrified, my hands shaking, yet also curious and awkwardly aroused, I join the crowds. As I walk, I see people having sex, drinking, smoking, fighting, screaming, kissing, laughing, and generally making more noise than I ever heard in my life.
Everyone looks happy—no, ecstatic—to be here. I want to live here. Frowning at the wavering thought, I watch thousands of shiny blinking billboards with beautiful women and men lying by the pool, playing cards, or selling… I’m fairly certain I’m reading correctly. This one billboard I’m about to pass under reads:
Blow job: Twenty
Sex, one partner: Two hundred. Two for three hundred.
***All prices in fifteen-minute increments.
***Coins only
I spot a large structure with a massive pool of water in the front that looks more like a lake than anything else. A giant black fountain in the shape of a winged angel rises from the middle. Water spouts from his penis. Inside the lake-sized pool, people, like fish in a pond, wiggle between each other’s bodies.
Leaning my elbows on the railing that separates the sidewalk from this property, I pause to gape at the black-marble modern fortress that stretches as far as my eye can see.
On my left, people are crossing the bridge. I join them and walk along while admiring the structure, the lake, the lights, the life, the…splendor. This is definitely not what I expected. I expected anarchy and Marked on the streets while demonic creatures flew overhead.
A white-winged angel with pale skin that matches his pale hair lands at the top of the fountain man’s penis. From Eve’s detailed description of what Azrael looks and feels like, I gather this must be him.
The crowd screams and pushes me against the bridge’s railing. My chest hits the top iron bar, and I grip it, trying to push people back. They’re pressing me against the railing, and I can barely breathe. Gasping for air, I look up at the angel, pleading with my eyes because I can’t utter a word since my chest is being compressed and I feel like my lungs are being smashed. The big man behind me will squish me.