Bitter Night by Diana Pharaoh Francis Read Free Book Online

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    A sudden change swept the faery, a hardness, as if he had turned to stone. His skin looked as gray as the Moai statues of his Easter Island homeland. The gold in his eyes spiraled slowly, his eyelids drifting half-shut. A prickle chased across Alexander’s scalp.

    “Know that you stand at a threshold,” Kev intoned, his voice dropping. “Cross, and you cannot again close the door. There is both peril and promise on the other side. Turn back now without either consequence or prize.”

    Selange hesitated. “Can you see an outcome?”

    Kev’s head tilted. “I see only the threshold. I feel only the possibilities. It is for you to take the final step and know what could and will be. Or turn around and leave the threshold unbroken.”

    The hardness melted away and his skin once again turned warm brown. Kev blinked and stepped back, waiting. Selange did not move.

    “Who has come?” Alexander asked.

    Selange started, coming out of her reverie. She smoothed her dress, lifting her chin and taking a breath, her red lips curving in a false smile.

    “Guests. They are expected. Let us not keep them waiting.”

    With that she walked deliberately past Kev and pulled open the carved doors. Alexander hurried to join her.

    They stepped into a round, windowless room forty-five feet in diameter. The vaulted ceiling was well over two stories above. Inlaid in the wood floor was the anneau floor, composed of a circle surrounding a pentagram with a triangle in its center. At the very center was a silver disk the size of a Frisbee. The walls were bare and the wood of the floor was scuffed and scarred. But Alexander’s entire attention was fixed on the creature standing inside the glowing lines of the triangle. He drew his gun from its holster on his hip and started to step in front of Selange to shield her, but she stopped him, resting trembling fingertips on his arm.

    “He is safe enough inside the wards.” Her voice was firm, belying her nerves.

    Alexander held back, but remained tensed and bristling.

    The angel was nearly seven feet tall. He wore ragged blue jeans, and his feet were bare, as was his chest. Sprouting from his back was a pair of wings, the feathers black and iridescent. Glimmers of blue and orange flickered along the bottom edges of his primary feathers. Where his wing tips brushed the floor, charred scores appeared, matching those on his pant legs where he had not been careful enough. The smell of Divine magic rolled off him, mixed with the stench of burning feathers. His eyes were red and his white hair was cropped short, his face and body chiseled like one of Michelangelo’s statues. He appeared to be about twenty, though he was undoubtedly many thousands of years old.

    “I offer greetings, Lady Selange,” he said with a mocking bow. He was careful not to step on any part of the glowing triangle.

    “I hear your greeting,” Selange answered cautiously, not offering any welcome that might obligate her. “Do you bring a message from your mistress?”

    “She offers this proposal.” He pulled a scroll out of the air, holding it up.

    “What does it say?”

    His brows rose tauntingly. “I am not privy to her private correspondence.”

    “Very well.” Selange muttered something and gestured. The star lit with witchlight. More words, another gesture, and the light of the triangle faded. “If you would, place the message within the star and return to the triangle.”

    He turned the scroll in his fingers, then sauntered forward and bent to set it down. He then retreated. Selange reactivated the triangle, but made no effort to release the star and retrieve the message. The angel said nothing, merely standing with his thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his jeans, his gaze fixed on her with a malice so cold it seemed to chill the air. There was a coiled stillness about him, a crouching wildness, like the first flickers of a wildfire.

    If Selange’s wards did not hold, Alexander was not sure