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The man lost any levity in his voice. “It’s part of the arrangement, and believe me, I wouldn’t choose this either. Fact is, he’s my last chance, so yeah, I’m sorry, but I go with him. And if you say no, by the way, I’m going to level us all like that.”

The man snapped his fingers, a brilliant white spark flaring against the night sky.

After a moment, Wrath turned to John. “This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was on earth, there was a plague in central Europe—”

“Okay, that was so not my fault—”

“—that wiped out two-thirds of the human population.”

“I’d like to remind you that you don’t like humans.”

“They smell bad when they’re dead.”

“All you mortal types do.”

John could barely follow the conversation; he was too busy staring into Tohr’s face. Open your eyes . . . open your eyes . . . please God . . .

“Come on, John.” Wrath turned back to the Brotherhood and started walking. When he came up to them, he said softly, “Our brother is returned.”

“Oh, Christ, is he alive,” someone said.

“Thank God,” someone else groaned.

“Tell them,” Lassiter demanded from behind. “Tell them he comes with a roommate.”

As one, the Brothers’ heads snapped up.

“Fuck. Me,” Vishous breathed.

“I will so pass on that,” Lassiter muttered.

Chapter Fifty

Phury walked through the glowing white expanse of the Sanctuary, going over to the Scribe Virgin’s private entry. He knocked once and he waited, willing a request for an audience.

When the doors opened, he expected the Directrix Amalya to be the one who greeted him, but there was nobody on the other side. The Scribe Virgin’s white courtyard was empty save for the birds in their white-blossomed tree.

The finches and canaries were out of place, and all the more lovely for it. Their colors were bright against their background of white branches and leaves, and hearing their calls, he thought of the number of times Vishous had come over here with one of the fragile things cupped in his palms.

After the Scribe Virgin had given them up for her son, the son had returned them to her.

Phury went over to the fountain and listened to the water fall into its marble basin. He knew when the Scribe Virgin appeared behind him, because the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“I thought you were going to step down,” she said to him. “I saw the path of the Primale unfolding for another’s footfalls. You were supposed to just be the transition.”

He looked over his shoulder. “I thought I was going to step down as well. But, no.”

Odd, he thought. Beneath the black robes that shielded her face and hands and feet, the glow of her seemed dimmer than he remembered.

She drifted over to her birds. “I would have you greet me properly, Primale.”

He bent down low and said the proper words in the Old Language. Also paid her the service of staying in a bow, waiting for her to release him from the supplication.

“Ah, but that is the thing,” she murmured. “You have already released yourself. And now you want the same for my Chosen.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “You need not explain your reasoning. Think you I know not what is in your head? Even your wizard, as you call him, is known unto me.”

Okay, that made him uncomfortable.

“Rise, Phury, son of Ahgony.” When he did, she said, “We are all products of our upbringings, Primale. The constructions that result from our choices are laid upon the foundation set by our parents and their parents before them. We are but the next level in the house or paver in the path.”

Phury shook his head slowly. “We can choose a different direction. We can move ourselves along a different heading of the compass.”

“Of that I am not sure.”

“Of that I must be sure . . . or I’m not going to make anything of this life you’ve given me.”

“Indeed.” Her head turned toward her private quarters. “Indeed, Primale.”

In the silence that stretched, she seemed saddened, which surprised him. He’d been prepared for a fight. Hell, it was hard not to think of the Scribe Virgin as anything other than an eighteen-wheeler in black robes.