She could hear the woman shouting and feel her trying to push the door open. Karou swore and held it shut. If it was open, the magic of the portal couldn’t connect. In Arabic she hollered, “Get away from the door!”
She looked over her shoulder. There was a commotion in the street, arms waving, people shouting. The donkey stood unimpressed. No angel. Had she killed him? No. Whatever had happened, she knew he wasn’t dead. He would come.
She pounded on the door again. “Issa, Brimstone, please!”
Nothing but irate Arabic. Karou held the door closed with her foot and kept pounding. “Issa! He’s going to kill me! Issa! Let me in!”
What was taking so long? Seconds hung like scuppies on a string, vanishing one after another. The door was jumping against her foot, someone trying to force it open—could it be Issa?—and then she felt a draft of heat at her back. She didn’t hesitate this time but turned, jamming her back up against the door to hold it closed, and raised her hands as if to let her tattoos see. There was no detonation this time, only a crackling of energy that raised her hair like Medusa’s serpents.
The angel was stalking toward her, head lowered so he was looking at her from the tops of his burning eyes. He didn’t move with ease, but as if against a wind. Whatever power in Karou’s tattoos had hurled him against that wall, it hindered him now but didn’t stop him. His hands were fists at his sides, and his face was ferocious, set to endure pain.
He stopped a few paces away and looked at her, really looked at her, his eyes no longer dead but roving over her face and neck, drawn back to her hamsas, and again to her face. Back and forth, as if something didn’t add up.
“Who are you?” he asked, and she almost didn’t recognize the language he spoke as Chimaera, it sounded so soft on his tongue.
Who was she? “Don’t you usually find that out before you try to kill someone?”
At her back, a renewed pressure at the door. If it wasn’t Issa, she was finished.
The angel came a step closer, and Karou moved aside so the door burst open.
“Karou!” Issa’s voice, sharp.
And she spun and leapt through the portal, pulling it shut behind her.
Akiva lunged after her and yanked it back open, only to come face-to-face with a hollering woman who blanched and dropped her broom at his feet.
The girl was already gone.
He stood there a moment, all but unaware of the madness around him. His thoughts were spinning. The girl would warn Brimstone. He should have stopped her, could easily have killed her. Instead he’d struck slowly, giving her time to spin clear, dance free. Why?
It was simple. He’d wanted to look at her.
Fool.
And what had he seen, or thought he’d seen? Some glimpse of a past that could never come again—the phantom of the girl who had taught him mercy, long ago, only to have her own fate undo all her gentle teaching? He’d thought every spark of mercy was dead in him now, but he hadn’t been able to kill the girl. And then, the unexpected: the hamsas.
A human marked with the devil’s eyes! Why?
There was only one possible answer, as plain as it was disturbing.
That she was not, in fact, human.
15
THE OTHER DOOR
In the vestibule, Karou fell to her knees. Breathing hard, she leaned into the coil of Issa’s serpent body.
“Karou!” Issa gathered her into an embrace that left them both sticky with blood. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
“You didn’t see him?” Karou was dazed.
“See who?”
“The angel…”
Issa’s reaction was profound. She reared back like a serpent ready to strike and hissed, “Angel?”All her snakes—in her hair, around her waist and shoulders—writhed along with her, hissing. Karou cried out, her wounds wrenched by the violent motion.
“Oh, my dear, my sweet girl. Forgive me.” Issa softened again, cradling Karou like a child. “What do you mean, angel? Surely not—”
Karou blinked up at her. Shadows were closing in. “Why did he want to kill me?”
“Darling, darling,” Issa fretted. She pulled away Karou’s sword-slashed coat and scarf to see her wounds, but the blood was heavy and still flowing, and the light in the vestibule was dim. “So much blood!”
Karou felt as if the walls were swinging in a slow arc around her. She was waiting for the inner door to unseal, but it didn’t. “Can’t we go in?” Her voice was faint. “I want Brimstone.” She remembered how he’d picked her up and held her when she came in bleeding from St. Petersburg. How she’d felt perfect trust and calm, knowing he would fix her. And he had, and would again….
Issa bunched up Karou’s blood-soaked scarf and tried to stanch her wounds. “He’s not here right now, sweet girl.”
“Where is he?”
“He… he can’t be disturbed.”
Karou whimpered. She wanted Brimstone. Needed him. She said, “Disturb him,” and then she was losing herself, drifting.
Falling.
Issa’s voice, far away.
And then nothing.
By and by, flickering images like badly spliced film: Issa’s eyes and Yasri’s, close, anxious. Soft hands, cool water. Dreams: Izîl and the thing on his back, its bloated face the brown-purple of bruised fruit, and the angel staring straight at Karou like he could ignite her with his eyes.
Issa’s voice, hushed and secretive. “What can it mean, that they are in the human world?”
Yasri. “They must have found a way back in. It took them long enough, for all their high opinion of themselves.”
This was not part of the dream. Karou had come back into consciousness like swimming to a distant shore—effortfully—and she lay silent, listening. She was on her childhood cot in the back of the shop; she knew that without opening her eyes. Her wounds stung, and the smell of healing salve was pungent in the air. The two chimaera stood at the end of the aisle of bookcases, whispering.
“But why attack Karou?” Issa hissed.
Yasri. “You don’t think…? They couldn’t know about her.”
Issa. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, no, of course not.” Yasri sighed. “Oh, I wish Brimstone would come back. Do you think we should go and get him?”
“You know he can’t be interrupted. But it shouldn’t be long now.”