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Sentinel drags a hand over his face. “Grace isn’t supposed to fuse with anything from Hell. It sure as shit isn’t supposed to survive it, come back stronger, and stay fused afterward.”
That low hum beneath my ribs takes on a whole new-fucking-meaning.
His Grace.
It’s still here.
“They felt it?”
“Every fucking bit of it.” Sentinel looks down at the glowing symbol again. “And they’re not coming to ask whether I meant for it to happen.”
“Then what are they coming for?”
His wings pull tighter behind him. “To decide what to do with me.”
The light above us buckles, and it isn’t gradual. One second the garage holds its usual dull hum of overhead bulbs and rust-stained shadows, and the next, white fire punches through the ceiling like the sky itself reached down and grabbed him by the throat. I throw an arm up against the brightness, and through the gaps between my fingers I watch six shapes descend, wings folded tight against columns of light too clean to belong anywhere near this world, their faces blank as carved marble, and not one of the bastards looks like they came here to talk.
“Bennett Caelum.” The voice hits from everywhere at once, vibrating through the walls and up through the floor until I feel the words vibrating everywhere. I turn toward the sound on instinct, but there’s nowhere to fucking look.
No mouth moving.
No one speaking.
The next word lands directly inside my skull. “You stand accused of harboring corruption. Infernal fire moved through your Grace and was not purged.”
“I closed a rift that would’ve killed innocent people,” Sentinel says, his voice steady even as his wings tremble at the edges.
“Intention is not innocence.” The tribunal doesn’t react. Six smooth, eyeless faces remain turned our way, and somehow, I can feel every fucking one of them staring. “You have been touched by Hell’s fire, angel. That touch does not wash clean.”
My hellfire slams against my ribs, hard enough that I taste smoke at the back of my throat. “Take it up with me, then. I’m the one who—”
“SILENCE, HELLHOUND.” The word cracks through the garage like a whip, and every tool on the bench rattles against the metal. “This judgment does not concern you!”
“The fuck it doesn’t!” I step forward.
Sentinel’s hand closes around my forearm before I can get farther, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Don’t,” he breathes. “Please, Carnage. Don’t give them a reason to decide you’re a part of this too.”
The light above him brightens until I can’t look at it directly anymore, and the tribunal’s voice drops into something almost gentle, which somehow makes it worse. “The verdict has already been reached, Bennett Caelum. There is no appeal for what you have become.”
The six figures lift their hands, and every light in the garage blows out.
Grace slams down from above, and Sentinel’s body jerks so violently his boots leave the concrete.
“SENTINEL!” I scream.
His wings explode open. Gold floods every feather, bright enough that I throw an arm across my eyes, and for one second, I think he’s fighting them, that his Grace is pushing back against whatever the tribunal is trying to do to him.
Then the first feather turns black, right at the base of his left wing. A dark stain spreads through the white, crawling along the shaft before bleeding into every barb. Another feather follows. Then three more.
Sentinel looks over his shoulder, and his face changes. “What the—”
Black races outward, and his entire body bows. The scream that tears out of him rips straight through me. I’ve heard this bastard injured, heard him grunt through broken bones and laugh with blood in his teeth. I watched him stand beside an open doorway to Hell and pour every ounce of Grace he had into me without knowing whether either of us would survive it.
I have NEVER heard him make a sound like this.
He drops to his knees. His hands slam against the concrete as black keeps eating through his wings, spreading from the roots now, faster and faster, swallowing white beneath something that looks burned into every feather from the inside.
“STOP!” My roar shakes the garage.
