"I lack Raphael's gift for healing," Elemiah murmured. "I can't take all the pain away, as he did. But I can improve the situation, at least, if you'll let me."

  It took way too long to even open his eyes again, much less vaguely remember the burst of emerald power that had filled the church, and that he'd gotten up again, unhurt, afterward. "Is that what happened?" It didn't matter. He tried to flap a hand dismissively, but the hand wouldn't flap. Or do anything else, either. No wonder he hadn't been able to block Nicky's punches. His arms didn't work anymore. "Do your worst, man, it's gotta be better than this."

  Chris's vision faded out again, or maybe Eli just squinted. "I'm not sure how my worst could be better."

  "Just heal him, Elemiah," Arioch said impatiently from somewhere out of sight, and an oddly soothing wash of flame flared over Chris's eyes, and then the rest of him. It burned the pain away, or at least most of it, like fire could somehow reduce swelling and bruising to days-old memories instead of fresh injuries. He grunted, checking to see if he could breathe easily again, then sat up and forgot everything else as he caught sight of Nicky, sagging on the floor like a rag doll without support. Only rag dolls would have caught fire by now from the heat and glow spilling off his brother's face and arms and body.

  "I can't hold it." Nick's voice was thin and high and scared. "I'm going to burn up, I'm burning up, I can't hold it, Chris. It's too much, the angel…I can hold the demon but not the angel power, Saboac wanted the angel power but it's too much, I can't—"

  "Why the fuck?" Chris swung his gaze toward Arioch, toward Elemiah, looking for an answer, and unexpectedly found one in Arioch's regretful voice.

  "Saboac was desanctified," the fallen angel said softly. "Made unholy by God herself. The grendel power is demon-born, and because demons are born in turn of humanity, an Exalted can carry that magic, use it, wield it. But angels are another thing entirely, Christopher. Remove our capacity to touch the divine, and all we are is monsters. That's what desanctified is, to the Spheres. Even whole, even not scattered through your brother's mind and power, Saboac cannot wield the divine, not anymore, no more than a—" His hesitation as he searched for a metaphor was obvious, and wasted precious time. "No more than a corrupted battery could hold a charge," he finished after a few seconds. "The power might reside in it momentarily, but then it fails. Your brother is failing, Christopher. I'm sorry."

  "No!" The word ripped from Chris's lungs, filling his throat with the taste of blood as he turned back to Nicky. Any lingering pain, any memory of it, disappeared in a rush of adrenaline, and his whole self was awake, more awake than he could ever remember being. "No. No. No, listen to me, Nicky." He grabbed Nick's shoulders, then his jaw, making his little—baby, younger, definitely not little—brother look at him. "No fucking way, Nicky. Look. Look."

  Nick's jaw was hot, or maybe Chris's hands were cold. He felt cold all over, like hope and life were draining out of him all at once. "Look, you remember just before college, Nicky? You remember when you got so fucking drunk and smashed up that window? You were gonna lose your scholarships and everything? What'd you do? What'd you do then, Nicky?"

  "I…" Nick's voice broke and cracked. Tears leaked down his cheeks but didn't make it to his jaw, to Chris's fingers. They burned up instead, his skin too hot to let them flow. "I asked you to help. I didn't know what to do. It was gonna…I was scared I wasn't gonna be able to do…anything, with that on my record."

  "And what'd I do?"

  "You took the blame. You fucked up your own life, Chris. You screwed yourself so I'd be okay."

  "Nah." Chris managed a little grin. His heart was cracking right out of his chest. "Wasn't that big a deal. First offense, misdemeanor, all that. Paid a fine, did a few days in jail, no big deal. But it got you to college, didn't it, Nicky. Got you out of our stupid lives, that was the point."

  Nicky gave him a broken smile in return. "Wasn't your first offense. Wasn't your offense at all."

  "First one anybody ever pinned on me. Last one, too. It's okay, Nicky. This is too much for you to handle, all right? So I'm gonna take the heat. I been watching you, Nicky. You're throwing that power around like it's a baseball. I just need you to lob it into me."

  "You'll die." Elemiah's shock obviously overrode any diplomacy he had left, and even Arioch's voice rose with incredulity. "You're human, Christopher. You share none of your brother's Exalted status."

  "'cept I'm lousy with demon blood too, you said," Chris said steadily, without looking at them. Nick was shaking his head, violent little motion hardly more than a tremble, but it didn't matter, he was gonna do what Chris told him to, because that's what big brothers were for. "Maybe I can hold out long enough to save Nick's ass. And if I croak, you guys gotta keep an eye on him." He shot a glance toward the angels, catching a glimpse of Eli's drawn face and Arioch's colorlessness. "Don't let him go sucking up any more demons."

  "I don't suck demons," Nick whispered.

  Chris cracked a startled laugh and pulled his brother into a hug. "There ya go. There's my smartass brother. C'mon, Nick," he said more quietly. "Let me help you, okay? It's what I'm good for."

  "That's not true, Chris, you're good for everybody. You help people."

  "Let me help you," Chris said again, and Nick finally agreed.

  CHAPTER 20

  Nick didn't do it on purpose. He didn't even think he could do it on purpose, because he didn't know what he was even doing, but what he didn't want was to kill his brother so he could live.

  There was just too much power, that was the problem. He couldn't hold it all, and no matter what the angels said, Chris wasn't lousy with demon blood, not the way Nick was. Not in a way that meant he could control it, if what Nick did even was controlling it.

  But even so he was human, and the demon magic wanted human souls to eat, so it surged toward Chris, trying to escape Nick's subjection. All by itself, it opened a channel, rushing to pour into Chris, to gain strength of its own so it could fight back against Nick.

  That, though, that, Nick could control. He didn't even know how to open the channel, but the power did it for him, and once it was there, at least he could make sure Chris burned up with angel fire, not frickin' demon magic. That had to count for something, in the grand scheme of things.

  Not nearly enough, but something.

  The power didn't care. It wanted out, and whether it burned Nick or Chris up didn't matter. Both was fine, if that was what happened; all it wanted was to not be contained in a useless human vessel, if 'want' could even apply to angelic essence. The demon magic did what Nick told it to, or at least couldn't escape him. It flooded back through him where it had been compressed by the angel fire, and if Saboac was in there screaming anymore, Nick couldn't hear it anymore. Maybe it had burned all the way out itself, unable to take the influx of divinity. That would be a gift, too.

  Chris's hug slackened, a sudden weakness that shot a spike of terror through Nick's gut. "No! Chris—?"

  His brother's skin glowed from within, permeated with magic that human bodies weren't supposed to hold. The veins in his face were lit from behind, or from inside, standing out under his skin like phosphorescent rivers. He was breathing, but only just, shallow gasps that sounded like they hurt. Nick caught his weight as Chris slumped further, then lowered him to the floor, helpless tears spilling down his cheeks. "Chris? Chris, please don't die…"

  "I'm sorry, Nick." Elemiah came to his side, regret in his voice.

  Nick surged to his feet, facing the angel with hands clenched in fear and anger. "Aren't angels supposed to be able to heal? Didn't you help me? Didn't you just heal him?"

  "You're Exalted." Eli sounded ancient, exhausted. "Your power, what you are, falls under my domain. I can't help your brother. He's dying, but he's not sick or broken. Broken, I can mitigate, but I can't draw the power from him. I'm made to constrain evil, and this is—"

  "An act of grace." Arioch spoke softly, crouching at Chris's side. His wings were out again, open, trailing light. There were eyes, dozens, maybe hundreds, of eyes along the big bones of the wings, visible now that he wasn't in the midst of a fight. Many of them were open, though a few blinked slowly, their lashes like feathers, and all of them were clouded, whatever color they might claim rendered pale and indistinguishable. "Do you know what angels of the Thrones do, Exalted? We serve God directly, that we might speak Their will to the angels of the second and third Spheres, who are more closely bound to Man."

  "You see God," Elemiah said with a strange hard note, and all of Arioch's eyes turned toward him, and his mouth turned bitter. Elemiah's gaze stayed hard, and after a moment, Arioch returned his attention to Chris, a hand spread over his chest now.

  "We know grace, because we have bathed in it since the dawn of creation," Arioch said, less gently than before. Nick had the impulse to kick Elemiah, or throw something at him, because Arioch hadn't been pissy before, and the last thing Chris needed was a bitchy fallen angel towering over him. "This was grace," Arioch went on, "and grace is something even I may be able to channel."

  "Arioch." The note in Elemiah's voice was warning, this time, but the fallen angel didn't so much as lift his gaze. He did curl his lip, and Nick echoed the expression, although he tried to smooth it off his own face, and Arioch made no such effort.

  "Call it healing," Arioch said, and Elemiah shook his head.

  "Thrones don't heal."

  "And Powers don't give Exalted second chances, but yet here we are." Arioch's eyes closed, all of them, with a soft rush of sound that raised the hairs on Nick's arms. His wings curled inward, layers upon layers of light folded over itself, intangible but almost opaque, until his form, until Chris's body, were all but hidden in the mantle of light. Nick lifted a hand, blocking some of the brilliance, then scowled and tried to step inside the curve of wings.

  The radiance stung his skin, deeper than his skin, sizzling through the power that had settled in him, but it let him pass. Arioch, inside the temple of his own wings, made a sound, maybe a hiss, but didn't cast Nick out again, only bent his head over Chris, who looked illuminated from within, not just absorbing the luminosity of Arioch's wings, but as if he was burning up from the inside. "Tell me," Arioch said, his voice low and unusually harsh. "Tell me how you draw the essence out. Is it a syringe, a flood, a wall?"

  "A mist," Nick said without thinking about it. "It's like it's coming through a screen, like I can pull it through with my will and it's broken up so finely I can pull it all the way under my skin and it settles there."

  "Pull it with your will," Arioch repeated. "As you might long for a toy as a child? As if you could lift it from its bedside shelf and bring it to your arms without your hands, if only you believed hard enough?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, exactly, except I actually can." Nick hesitated, recognizing that this wasn't exactly the time to ask questions, and ending up saying, "I thought angels didn't want anything."

  "We are not meant to," Arioch said, more harshly again. "And still, I've tasted of desire."

  Nick, utterly unable to stop himself, looked toward Elemiah, and said, "And hold with those who favor fire?"

  A hundred eyes opened and turned toward him with the weight of a clouded, filthy look, although Arioch's own gaze remained fixed on Chris. "Shut up, if you want me to save your brother's life."

  "Sorry." Nick knelt in the circle of light, not knowing what he could do besides be there. Arioch's clouded eyes closed again with the same soft rush, like barnacles whispering shut on a beach rock, and Nick's breath sharpened as he felt a flex of power, very like calling his own grendel magic to life. External, though, and not, in the end, all that much like what he had felt when the bounty had used her art to corrupt his emotions.

  That, he'd been able to follow, almost all the way back to its source. With a little effort, he could have unwound the bounty's mind, bent her and her magic to his own will. This—

  —this was celestial, the music of the stars. It hissed and surged, burning too brightly to even come close to, much less conquer or comprehend. He could almost, almost, feel the strictures of his own explanation shaping the castaway angel's power, could almost sense how that power sought and desired and drew through a mesh like the one he had envisioned for himself. But the strength of the angel himself went back beyond the hot birth of the universe, much too powerful to follow.

  And even so, it was constrained, uncoupled from the actual source of its glory. That was the fall, that was having been cast away, that was, and Arioch's own fury blazed here, that was the choice made, to turn his back on an unworthy god. That was a price paid, a price so vast, that cut so deep, that Nick flinched away from looking at it.

  But the channels remained. Fallen was not desanctified, not cut off from the holy, only rejecting it. The price for that rejection was immense, yes, but Arioch could do what Saboac only longed for: he could carry that power again, would even be granted its grace by God if he were to repent of his sins. Clearly, he would prefer to bide in Hell itself than do that, but he could.

  The fire lifted from Chris, though. Angel fire, stained with strains of demon desolation, neither meant for human bodies. Not even Nick's, despite the inhuman capacity he'd been born with Some of the burning inner light faded from Chris's skin, like his bones were no longer filled with searing embers, as particles of fire sank into Arioch's hands, his arms, his face, his wings.

  His wings flared, violently bright, and for a heartbeat, a moment, the thousand eyes opened and were clear, brown and blue and gold and silver, green and grey and violet and red, all gazing beyond the walls that Nick could see.

  Nearly all. A handful looked at him, a few others at Chris, and some at Elemiah, whose sigh could be heard even through the hiss of celestial song. Or maybe because it was part of that song, Nick thought, since nothing else seemed audible. Arioch's wings visibly solidified as the power coursed through them, even casting the outline of a fainter secondary, and fainter-still, tertiary set that Nick hadn't seen even during the battle.

  "You are Seen," Arioch breathed. "Exalted, you are Seen, and so too is the Bonded, and that bond extends to grace, and that Grace, to—" A twist marred his mouth and the obvious ritual of the words, so he ended with, "To me," in a sardonic tone more like the one Nick had gotten used to in the time he'd known the fallen angel.

  All forty minutes of it, or so. Maybe a little longer. Time had gone a little funny during the fight, but in the end, it wasn't long at all. He started, "What—" and Eli's hand closed on his shoulder, warning him to silence. Nick startled, not even having realized the other angel had come within the shelter of Arioch's wings, but he pressed his mouth shut and let the castaway finish his work.

  'Grace' clearly meant something more to the angels than Nick fully understood, even beyond the vague understanding he had on the concept of divine grace and forgiveness. Grace was a kind of quantifiable strength or reality to them, something to draw on like Nick might draw a deep breath.

  A rough laugh shook his shoulders. That tracked, because God knew—Nick suddenly wasn't sure he should throw that phrase around lightly, so he changed the track of his thought: Nick knew he'd drawn on Chris's strength about a million times in his life. If that was grace, then yeah, hell yeah, it was a real power, and if anybody could rely on it, he guessed angels in God's grace should be able to.

  And even angels out of God's grace, it looked like, because that too-bright power that had burned inside Chris was settling in Arioch now. The strands of demon power ignited, though whether they were subsumed or eradicated, Nick couldn't tell. They didn't seem to sink into Arioch's bones the way the fire did, but everything was too bright to see clearly anyway, and his head hurt.

  Chris, for the first time in what felt like forever, took a breath, and the rest of the fire smoldering inside him went out. Nick fell forward, grabbing Chris's shoulders and trying not to yell at him to wake up. Around him, above him, Arioch's wing-eyes closed with another soft buzz of sound. The brilliance of the light faded with the sound and Nick looked up to see his wings lurch, losing physicality toward the shadows of light again.

  Arioch himself, though, nearly vibrated with substance, as if he'd taken on extra mass and could barely contain it within himself now. He stood and stepped back, one smooth motion, and his wings flickered away entirely, somehow adding to his own substantiality. His shirt was in tatters now, and maybe had been for a while. Nick couldn't remember.

  Chris's voice rode a low, rough chuckle. "There's my baby brother."

  "Chris." Nick twisted back toward his brother, hauling him into a hug as Chris tried to sit up. Chris's arms closed around him, weaker than he should be, but still solid, still whole, still there. The world vanished into that frail embrace, with all the reasons they were even there disappearing. None of it was real anymore, how they'd gotten there, what the hell Nick even was, none of it mattered, as long as Chris wasn't dead. Everything else could be figured out, somehow.

  "Aight," Chris finally muttered into his shoulder, loosening his grip without quite letting him go. "Aight, Nicky. 'm okay. We're good. Jesus," he said, audibly reconsidering that last part. "Did you get the number of that bus? What the hell."

  "Quite the opposite," Elemiah murmured, and Arioch, a few steps farther away, gave a disdainful snort.

  "Quite the quite. The divine reign in Hell too, you know, little Power."

  "I told you to watch your epithets, Throne."

  Arioch's voice went dangerously soft. "Do you really wish to test me now, Elemiah?"

  "Will you two get a fucking room?" Nick snapped. "I'm trying to say hi to my brother who's back from the brink of death, if you don't fucking mind!"