'Wait!' she warned, pulling him closer. 'Be wise, Azazel. Whatever has been done can be undone.''How, Juliette? The Gospel is useless to us without the witch's words.' The muscles in Blake's arm tensed as he wrenched it from her grasp, clearly exerting a great deal of self-control to stop himself from beating Ethan senseless. He thrust his fists into his sides.Juliette flicked through the pages herself, her eyes shrewd as she looked at each page in turn, running her fingers over the now-wordless paper. Pursing her lips, she raised her head to look in Oscar's direction. The rogue Demon, I noticed, had gone very red in the face, which had never been a good sign if you'd had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of his Vesuvius-like temper.'Did you have a hand in this, Berith?' Juliette accused.Oscar's eyes hardened. 'You fucking what? I brought that book to you myself. Do you honestly think I'd hand it over if I knew it had been tampered with?''Then h

Ethan wrinkled his nose, as if the memory had conjured up a bitter taste on his tongue. 'Money. She wanted money. She came from a dirt-poor family and grew up in a rural town in Romania. They had nothing. Literally nothing. She claimed she wanted the money to send to them, you know, help them escape the shit-stinking poverty they lived in.'I frowned. 'But, that's a good thing, surely? I mean, I'm not excusing her for betraying you like that, but if she wanted to help them...'He laughed, the grin widening. 'It was a lie. She had no intention of helping them. They freaked out when they found out she was a maledicti and accused her of being in league with the Devil. Old Romania was steeped in a superstitious fear of witchcraft and spirits back then, it still is in a lot of places. She couldn't actually do all the things they thought a witch could do, but she still burnt her family home down anyway before running away. She killed her grandmother, her aunt and her baby brothe

I stopped just in front of him, raising my bound hands to his face and gently wiping at his mouth.'Baby-girl,' he croaked. He looked sickly-pale, his skin peppered with sweat. Pressing his lips together, he swallowed, closing his eyes for a second. 'You best not be looking down south, you know,' he said, when he opened them again. There he was. My Addison .I rested my forehead against his, doing my best to stifle the sob that was building with a weak-as-fuck smile. 'Like I haven't seen that before,' I said, rolling my eyes when his own widened. 'Skinny-dipping at Aguas Blancas, remember? You, me, Davey, that weird girl you picked up in the club. Emma?'Addi chuckled hoarsely. ' Emily ,' he corrected. 'And she wasn't weird. She just wasn't wasted like us.''Oh, well in Ibiza, that is weird.''True,' he said, sniffing as he glanced over my shoulder. 'Not as weird as this though.''I'm not sure weird is the word for it, Ads,' I said, my voice cracking as

I was dying.I don't know what I'd expected to happen. I mean, it had looked just like an ordinary vial of liquid. Blood, yes, but I'd tried not to think about that as I'd swallowed it down. Tried not to think about the strange coppery taste on my tongue. Tried not to think about how it was warm, when it shouldn't have been, because the First had been slain thousands of years before my time. I'd tried not to gag as it hit the back of my throat, because that's what you did when that voice inside you insists you shouldn't be consuming something alien. I even half-expected Oscar to start laughing and call me a stupid cow for falling for it, because of course, this had to be a joke, right? I wasn't drinking the blood of some fabled First creature to have ever existed. I wasn't drinking the blood of the First Angel. I couldn't be, because even just the thought of that was total bloody insanity.I was dying. I had to be.Maybe this was the joke. Maybe this was what Oscar ha

'You are sure?' Blake said.The sound of his voice popped in my ears, like a bubble of pressure bursting, pain stabbing in my eardrums and down into my throat.My throat .Something was in my throat.I gagged and coughed up water. I watched, dazed, my eyes barely half-open as it trickled away of its own accord, sliding over the monochrome tiles until it reached an ever-shifting stream of water that I could see stretching round behind Ethan.My cheek was damp, pressed against the floor and a lock of wet hair hung over my eyes. A tiny drop of water slid down the lock and grew fat, hanging there, before finally dropping to the floor and that tiny droplet moved of its own volition and joined the moving stream, like an ant, seeking the protection of its colony.My clothes felt heavy and stuck to my skin. I shivered and tried to focus. Ethan was positioned just as I'd remembered, before the water had come, only now his bound hands were in his lap again and hi