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And she thought the brilliance of his burning wings dimmed just a little He said in a hollow voice, still faced away froh"

Liraz drew her sword, and Hazael followed suit The police responded by falling back, raising their guns, shouting in Czech for the angels to drop their weapons The onlookers cried out in a kind of ecstatic terror Zuzana, jostled a them, kept her eyes on Karou

Akiva, whose swords were less obvious in their crossed sheaths between his wings, reached double-handed over his shoulders and drew theed, "Karou Go"

She gathered herself into a crouch, and just before she sprang skyward to vanish into the ether in a streak of blue and black she said, both choked and pleading, "Coone, and he was left alone to face the fallout of his shattering choice

Once upon a ti in the mist

And a devil knelt over him and smiled

37

DREAM-LOST

Akiva was helpless to keep his blood in his body It pulsed up under his fingers and escaped, riding the tide of his heartbeat out in hot spurts He couldn’t stop the bleeding The wound was aa fistful ofto die

Around him, the world had lost its horizons Seabut could see only as far as the nearest corpses: gray huht have been chimaera or seraphim--except for the nearest one, he couldn’t tell That one lay only a few yards aith his oord embedded in it The beast had been part hyena, part lizard, a monstrosity, and it had raked hi histo hih the flesh of his shoulder, even after he’d skewered it through its barrel chest He’d twisted his blade, thrust deeper, twisted again The beast had screao until it died

Now, as Akiva lay waiting to die, the post-battle silence was split by a roar He stiffened and clasped his wound tighter Later, he would wonder why he’d done that He should have let go, tried to die before they could reach hi the wounded They had taken the day, driven the seraphim back to the fortifications at Morwen Bay, and they had no interest in prisoners Akiva should have hurried his dying, slipped away in the cal asleep The enemy would be far less kind

Whatonehi his wound, living those extra few minutes for no reason that he could fathom

And then he saw her

She was just a silhouette at first Vast bat wings, long ridged gazelle horns as sharp as pikes--the bestial parts of the ene filled Akiva and he watched her pause beside first one corpse and then the next She ca ? Death rites?

She turned and prowled toward Akiva

She ca--lean huave way, below the knee, to the sleek taper of gazelle’s legs, the fine cloven hooves s were folded, her gait both graceful and tense with suppressed power In one hand she held a crescent-h With the other hand she raised a long staff that was not a weapon It was curved like a shepherd’s crook, with so silver--a lantern?--suspended froht, but s into the sand, then the mist revealed her face to him, and his to her She stopped abruptly when she saas alive He braced for a snarl, a sudden lunge, and new pain as he was gutted by her blade, but the chi moment they just looked at each other She cocked her head to one side, a quizzical, birdlike gesture that spoke not of savagery, but curiosity There was no snarl on her lips Her face was solemn

Unaccountably, she was beautiful

She took a step closer He watched her face as she drew nearer His gaze slipped down her long neck to the ridges of her collarbones She was finely ant and spare Her hair was short as swan’s down, soft and dark and close as a cap, so the architecture of her face was unobscured; perfect Black greasepaint e--brown and bright, vivid and sorrowful

He knew the sorroas for her fallen comrades and not for him, but he still found hiaze It made him think that perhaps he had never really looked at a chih, but they kept their eyes on the ground, and warriors like this he only everone, half-blind with the blood rage of battle If he ignored the fact of her bloodied blade and her closely fitted black ars and horns, if he focused just on her face--so unexpectedly lovely--she looked like a girl, a girl who had found a youngon the beach

For a moment, that’s what he was Not a soldier, not anyone’s eneless That they lived as they did, angels andand killing, seeht just as well choose not to kill and die

But no That was all there was between theirl was here for the same reason he was: to slay the enemy And that meant him

Why, then, didn’t she do it?

She knelt at his side, doing nothing to protect herself froht make He re like her own fantastical double-crescent, but it could kill her In one motion he could embed it in the soft curve of her throat Her perfect throat

Heup at the face above hi whether this was real It could be a dying dream, or she could be a reaper sent fro on its crook, exhaling a fume of smoke that was both herbal and sulfurous, and as its scent wafted down to hiht he wouldn’t ined her guiding hie cradled in his ht them in his, which were slippery with blood

Her eyes ide and she snatched her hand away

He’d startled her; he hadn’tin Chiive orders to slaves It was a rough tongue, a cobbling together of ht under one roof, and which had been e He could scarcely hear his own voice, but she h