.

But it had not, and would not. They collected the souls of the departed, storing them in the Aether Globe until God returned to claim them. One by one, they began to fall, more as of late. Malachi had puzzled over that, continued to. His fall had been accidental, but there was no reward he could imagine that would tempt him to this pain voluntarily. Blood rushed beneath his skin. Bones and muscle ached. He had never ached before. Without wanting to and with no way to stop it he died more every moment.

      Time. He’d never had a concept of it before. With nothing but eternity to measure it by, it had never meant anything at all.

      Somewhere in the tunnels, they moved toward him. He expected them. He’d seen so many fall, during the first war over Lucifer’s petty jealousy and since, he knew what he would endure. Soon enough, he heard the rustle of wings in the darkness, and then the darkness was no more. When the Angelic Host assembled, it was a sight to dazzle a mortal’s eyes. They gazed at him dispassionately. He thought he knew what they felt and realized they felt nothing. Now that he was Human, or something like it, he knew true emotion. It hurt. He envied them.

      Warm, golden light surrounded him, and he climbed to his knees, looking to the source. Above him, the circle of light receded to a single point of sheer brilliance. He lowered his gaze, closed his eyes, but the light had already marked his vision. Red spots swam behind his eyelids.

      “Broken One,” a voice intoned sternly, and then, softer, “Malachi.”

      When he opened his eyes, he saw two pale feet before him, bare as they peeked from below a robe of pure golden light. Azrael, Angel of Death. Fitting it would be him.

      Malachi reached with trembling hands to lift the hem of the Archangel’s garment. He kissed it, balled it in his fists. It felt like cloth under his fingers, though he knew it was an illusion, immaterial, and he wouldn’t have been able to touch it in his old form.

      “Rise, Malachi,” Azrael commanded, and Malachi did. Still, he could not look at the face of this creature he’d so recently been. He could not see that face, so beautiful and genderless, full of understanding and compassion, but no mercy. Never mercy.

      “You have fallen.” The voice was the same. Comforting without promising.

      “It was an accident.” The words seemed so inadequate in the face of the charge. “I would never have fallen through choice.”

      Azrael reached for him, lifting his hands, and Malachi did look at his face then. The Archangel’s face displayed only mild interest as he unwound a flame-red strand from Malachi’s fingers. “You touched a mortal.”

      “I did not know it was mortal. It had the appearance of an immortal from the Lightworld. I thought to kill it.” He flinched at his own explanation. There was no reason to have touched her, no directive from the Creator to kill the ones that were not like them. He had made the choice to fall, and for such a foolish whim.

      “The affairs of the denizens of this Underground, mortal or immortal, are not our concern.” Azrael’s sad, kind smile reflected the truth. “You have chosen. And you have fallen.”

      The faces of the Host assembled around them faded. The light grew dimmer. Azrael stepped back.

      “No!” Malachi looked desperately at each one, sickened to know it was the last time and certain there was some way to make them understand. “It was not my choice. I had no will of my own! Even now, my will is that of the Creator!”

      The light around him flared again, and he fell to his knees, knowing what would come. Flashing whips of gold lashed his wings, his back. He’d watched this so many times, wondering why they all cried out as their wings were pierced and torn, certain that mortal pain could not be so unbearable. He’d been wrong. The agony of it stole the breath from his lungs. His fragile mortal hands clenched against the rough stone beneath him, splintering his fingernails and tearing them loose from his flesh. He screamed, not to pray to his absent God, but to release the fearful pressure in his chest, to lessen some of the pain.

      And then, the spectral lashes were gone. Alone in the darkness, Malachi collapsed, unable to support his body enough to prevent crushing his ruined wings. He turned his hot face to press his cheek to the cool ledge. Sticky red oozed slowly across the stone, feathering into the thirsty pores to create a dark, wet stain.

      This would kill him. The pain, the blood, the desperation. No being, mortal or immortal, could withstand such suffering. He closed his eyes, resigned and a bit relieved to know it would not be long now. He waited hopefully for the flutter of wings and the Angel who would return him to Aether. It seemed ages passed, and still they did not come. The searing pain dulled to an agonizing throb, and the wetness at his back congealed. He wondered if it was a sign of imminent death. Many of the souls he’d claimed had been victims of gruesome violence. They had not bled in torrents as he had. But it seemed to take so long.

      At every noise, be it a drip of water or the click of vermin’s claws against the ledge beside him, he startled, sure it was time. His hopes soared, then crashed, and with each repetition the anticipation and disappointment magnified. He remained alone, stranded in his mortal prison, stranded on an island in a seemingly endless sea of filth. If he had the strength, he could find his way to Aether, the place in the Darkworld that the Death Angels had claimed as their fortress. But the halls would be empty to him. Another Angel would not show him their face until the moment of his death. And he did not have the strength. He would wait, for help or for death, it did not matter which.

      Finally something did come along. Slogging through the fetid water, whistling a simple tune that echoed almost sinisterly off the stark walls. A light shone, not the holy white of death. Yellow, mechanical, dirty and dank as everything in this Underground. It bobbed with the movement of its bearer, and as it moved closer, Malachi saw the shape of a man, painfully thin, hair curled from the damp, wearing an odd contraption to keep the water from his garments. He waded to the ledge, took off his strange hat with the light atop it and held it away when Malachi lifted his arm to shade his eyes.

      “Holy shit.” The man sniffed, wiped his nose on his forearm. He looked up and down the tunnel, as if guilty of some crime he’d not yet committed. “What the hell are you?”

      Too fatigued, too ambivalent to bother answering, Malachi looked away.

      “Right. Okay.” The hat clattered against the ledge, and the man muttered as he seemed to be looking for something. Malachi did not care, as long as he left him to die in peace, and soon.

      The sting of something piercing his arm caught him by surprise. He looked from the syringe in the man’s hand to the slightly apologetic expression on his face.

      “Listen, buddy, this is really for the best,” he said, wiping the needle on his shirt before returning it to a pocket. Malachi’s vision faded. His stomach churned. And then he knew no more.

      Three

      The training room of the Assassins’ Guild was deserted. No one would come to practice or spar at this hour, which was exactly why Ayla had retreated there. The night guard, a retired Assassin, grumbled when she’d roused him to open the door, but she’d not apologized. She needed time to meditate on her failure in the Darkworld, time to formulate the answers to the questions she knew she would face. A more intelligent Assassin would think of a quick lie to cover such shame, but Ayla had no talent for lies. She became tangled in and tripped over even the most simple falsehoods.

      No, she would probe the root of what had gone wrong, find that answer for herself before Garret or, Gods help her, the Guild Master, sought it and she looked a fool.

      Or an incompetent Assassin, which she assured herself she was not. Beneath the high cement pillars of the training room she moved across the rough floor, wielding a simple wooden staff as she moved through her forms. She would start with the easiest weapons and move to the most demanding, working all night if she had to in order to punish herself for her ineptitude and prove she was better than the weakness she’d displayed in dealing with the Darkling.

      The Darkling. How was it that now, when he was almost certainly dead, victim of some insidious