Torment - Lauren Kate [131]
Around them, the others had stopped fighting. The tire swing rolled to a stop, thudding against the corner of the fence. Roland’s wings slowed to a soft beating and carried him down to earth. Everyone was still, but the air was charged with an electric silence.
Luce could feel the weight of so many gazes falling on her: Callie, Miles, and Shelby. Daniel, Arriane, and Gabbe. Cam, Roland, and Molly. The blind gazes of the Outcasts themselves. But she couldn’t wrench herself away from the girl with the depthless white eyes.
“You won’t kill him … just because I say not to?” Luce was so baffled, she laughed. “I thought you wanted to kill me.”
“Kill you?” The girl’s mechanical voice lilted upward, registering surprise. “Not at all. We would die for you. We want you to come with us. You are the last hope. Our entrance.”
“Entrance?” Miles voiced what Luce was too surprised to say. “To what?”
“To Heaven, of course.” The girl peered at Luce with her dead eyes. “You are the price.”
“No.” Luce shook her head, but the girl’s words knocked around inside her mind, echoing in a way that made her feel so hollow she could barely stand.
Entrance into Heaven. The price.
Luce didn’t understand. The Outcasts would take her, and do what? Use her as some sort of bargaining chip? This girl couldn’t even see Luce to know who she was. If Luce had learned one thing at Shoreline, it was that no one could keep the myths straight. They were too old, too convoluted. Everyone knew there was a history, one Luce had been involved in for a long time, but nobody seemed to know why.
“Don’t listen to her, Luce. She’s a monster.” Daniel’s wings were trembling. As if he thought she might be tempted to go. Luce’s shoulders began to itch, a hot prickling that left the rest of her body cold.
“Lucinda?” the Outcast girl called.
“Okay, hold on a minute,” Luce said to the girl. She turned to Daniel. “I want to know: What is this truce? And don’t tell me ‘nothing,’ and don’t tell me you can’t explain. Tell me the truth. You owe it to me.”
“You’re right,” Daniel said, surprising Luce. He kept sneaking glances at the Outcast, as if she might spirit Luce away at any moment. “Cam and I drew it up. We agreed to put aside our differences for eighteen days. All angels and demons. We came together to hunt down other enemies. Like them.” He pointed to the Outcast.
“But why?”
“Because of you. Because you needed time. Our end goals may be different, but for now, Cam and I—and all of our kin—we work as allies. We have one priority in common.”
The glimpse Luce had seen in the Announcer, that sickening scene with Daniel and Cam working together … that was supposed to be okay because they’d agreed upon a truce? To give her time?
“Not that you even stuck by the truce.” Cam spat in Daniel’s direction. “What good is a truce if you don’t honor it?”
“You didn’t stand by it either,” Luce said to Cam. “You were in the forest outside Shoreline.”
“Protecting you!” said Cam. “Not taking you out on moonlight parades!”
Luce turned to Arriane. “Whatever the truce is—or isn’t—once it’s over, does that mean that … Cam’s suddenly the enemy again? And Roland, too? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Say the word, Lucinda,” the Outcast said. “I will take you far from all of this.”
“To what? To where?” Luce asked. There was something appealing about just getting away. From all the heartache and struggle and confusion.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret, Luce,” Cam warned. It was strange the way he sounded like the voice of reason, compared to Daniel, who looked practically paralyzed.
Luce glanced around her for the first time since leaving the shed. The fighting had ceased. The same felt of dust that had coated the cemetery at Sword & Cross now caked the grass of the backyard. While their group of angels seemed fully intact and accounted for, the Outcasts had lost most of their army. About ten stood at a distance, watching. Their silver bows were lowered.
The Outcast girl was still waiting for Luce to answer. Her eyes shone in the night and her feet inched backward