Covenant by Sabrina Benulis Read Free Book Online

I owe him.”
    â€œYou mean you feel like you owe it to Nina,” Sophia said, sighing. She spread her skirt and sat on the couch next to Angela. Silently, Sophia gazed into the fire, letting the light play on her preternaturally smooth skin and flicker in her fathomless gray eyes. At times like these, Angela remembered with a distant kind of terror that Sophia wasn’t quite human at all but a Book in the form of a person. “And maybe you should go,” Sophia said, her very human voice breaking the spell. “No need to stay here in this creaky house while everyone else dances the night away.”
    â€œBut you’d be by yourself,” Angela said.
    Sophia smiled. “I was alone long before I met you, Angela. I am sure I will be alone long after we part.”
    Angela shook her head. “We won’t part. I’m not going anywhere. That’s such a pessimistic way to think.”
    â€œI know,” Sophia whispered. She clenched the paper tighter.
    â€œWe’ll find you a nice dress and you can come with me. I’d rather have you as a date than Camdon,” Angela said, winking.
    Sophia didn’t laugh.
    â€œWhat is this?” Angela snatched the paper from her friend’s hands, sensing it was responsible for Sophia’s sudden change in mood. She perused the odd script, her eyes narrowing. “What is this? A joke? Sophia?”
    Sophia stared into the fire.
    Angela inspected the paper. It was obviously very old and felt like parchment. The scripting was in English, but written with an unsteady hand that suggested the writer had never tried the language before. The words were terse and all the more terrible for it.
    Angela Mathers, you will enter the door. Or Sophia will die.
    That was all.
    Angela blinked. All at once, she saw the door from her vision, and the dark stairs that led down, and down, and down. She saw Sophia standing in front of them in her terrible beauty as the Book of Raziel, telling Angela not to enter, her face saying to run away whatever the cost as she slammed the door shut.
    That door? But who could have known about the vision I had?
    â€œThis is ridiculous,” Angela said heatedly. “You’re the Book of Raziel. You can’t die . . . Can you?”
    Sophia turned away. “Flip over the paper,” she whispered.
    On the reverse side, a very familiar poem had been written in pale ink.
    Blackbird escapes hungry
    The Fly of doom
    Her hellfire smoke eager
    To scorch, consume
    All but the One seeing
    Who will assume
    The mantle and title of Covenant,
    Ruin.
    â€œKim left me this poem before he disappeared,” Angela said, her mouth suddenly bone dry. She forced Sophia to look at her again. “Where did you find this paper?”
    â€œIt was on the table where you and the others had been eating. It was on your plate, deliberately placed there. Along with something else.”
    Sophia left the couch and returned with a large but very dead black snake. She held the snake like a rope, allowing Angela to grasp it by the tail.
    The moment it touched Angela’s hands, it disintegrated to black ash and slipped between her fingers.
    As Angela watched the ash fall, her heart seemed to drop out of her, plummeting with it.
    What other warnings did she need? The crow at the windowsill, the bleeding Grail, the vision of the door, and now this. Fate was moving, and Angela didn’t want to move with it.
    â€œNo,” Angela said. “I’m so happy.” She looked at Sophia. “ We are happy.”
    â€œBut did you really think the dream would last forever?” Sophia said softly. “Angela, I am the Book of Raziel, and I must be opened in time. The universe continues to crumble. Don’t be mistaken by the beauty of the snow—the world is freezing slowly but surely, but as always, Luz will suffer first. It is all coming to an end. The only question that remains is, ‘How fast?’ Israfel is