Torment - Lauren Kate [40]
A moment later, Cam was sprinting across the empty parking lot. He was racing toward a girl. A very pretty girl about Luce’s age, dressed in a long brown cloak. She had delicate features and white-blond hair pulled high into a ponytail, but something was strange about her eyes. They held a vacant expression that, even from this distance, struck Luce rigid with fear.
There was more: The girl was armed. She held a silver bow and was hurriedly nocking an arrow.
Cam barreled forward, his feet crunching on the gravel lot as he moved straight toward the girl, whose bizarre silver bow gleamed even in the fog. Like it was not of this earth.
Wresting her eyes away from the lunatic girl with the arrow, Luce rolled to her knees and scanned the parking lot to see whether anyone else looked as panicked as she felt. But the place was empty, eerily quiet.
Her lungs felt tight—she could hardly breathe. The girl moved almost like a machine, with no hesitation. And Cam was unarmed. The girl was pulling back on the bowstring and Cam was in point-blank range.
But it took her a split second too long. Cam plowed into her, knocking her onto her back. He brutally wrestled the bow out of her hands, snapping his elbow against her face until she let go. The girl yelped—a high, innocent sound—and recoiled on the ground as Cam turned the bow on her. She raised her open hand in supplication.
Then Cam loosed the arrow straight into her heart.
Across the parking lot, Luce cried out and bit down on her fist. Though she wanted to be far, far away, she found herself lumbering to her feet and jogging closer. Something was wrong. Luce expected to find the girl lying there bleeding, but this girl did not struggle, did not cry.
Because she was no longer there at all.
She, and the arrow that Cam had shot into her, had vanished.
Cam scoured the parking lot, snatching up the arrows the archer had spilled as if it was the most urgent task he’d ever performed. Luce crouched down where the girl had fallen. She traced the rough gravel with her finger, baffled and more terrified than she’d been a moment before. There was no sign that anyone had ever been there.
Cam returned to Luce’s side with three arrows in one hand and the silver bow in the other. Instinctively, Luce reached out to touch one. She’d never seen anything like it. For some reason, it sent a strange ripple of fascination through her. Goose bumps rose on her skin. Her head swam.
Cam jerked the arrows away. “Don’t. They’re deadly.”
They didn’t look deadly. In fact, the arrows didn’t even have heads. They were just silver sticks that dead-ended in a flat tip. And yet one had made that girl disappear.
Luce blinked a few times. “What just happened, Cam?” Her voice felt heavy. “Who was she?”
“She was an Outcast.” Cam wasn’t looking at her. He was fixated on the silver bow in his hands.
“A what?”
“The worst kind of angel. They sided with Satan during the revolt but wouldn’t actually set foot in the underworld.”
“Why not?”
“You know the type. Like those girls who want to be invited to the party but don’t actually plan to show up.” He grimaced. “As soon as the battle ended, they tried to backpedal up to Heaven pretty fast, but it was already too late. You only get one shot at those clouds.” He glanced at Luce. “Most of us do, anyway.”
“So, if they’re not with Heaven …” She was still getting used to talking concretely about these things. “Are they … with Hell?”
“Hardly. Though I remember when they came crawling back.” Cam gave a sinister laugh. “Usually, we’ll take just about anyone we can get, but even Satan has his limits. He cast them out permanently, struck them blind to add injury to insult.”
“But that girl wasn’t blind,” Luce whispered, recalling the way her bow had followed Cam’s every move. The only reason she hadn’t hit him was because he’d moved so fast. And yet Luce had known there was something off about that girl.
“She was. She just uses other senses to feel her way through the world. She can see