They were all looking at Vincent.
"You," gasped Joel.
He didn't hesitate. He strode toward the nephilim, and I saw Joel's body start to shimmer with light. He was about to transform into his true form, a form of terrible beauty and power.
But Yasmine was faster.
The slim, dark-haired woman became pure light. She was all the colors of the rainbow and none of them. A sword of flame appeared in her hands. She stepped in front of Vincent - who was screaming at her to stop - and swung toward Joel. The blade hit him, and he screamed.
An awful, burning sensation was starting to flood me. Hastily, I shielded my eyes and looked away, realizing what I'd almost done. An angel's true form was an indescribable thing, requiring senses a human - or a human-turned-succubus - didn't possess. Staring at her could cause me major damage. Even being in the same room with her hurt.
But I'd seen what I'd needed to before looking away. I'd seen the sword fall. Yasmine had attacked Joel. Nyx had pegged her as the weakest of the four, but Yasmine and Joel must have been incredibly close in power. Catching him by surprise like that tipped the scales.
The air in the room swirled, reaching hurricane levels. Power exploded around me, like a sun going supernova. Everything was fire and wind. And screaming. Twin screams: Yasmine's and Joel's. I wrapped my arms around me, burying my face, certain I was going to die. The energy exploding toward me reached a point in which it would surely blow up the building, blow up the world. Stronger and stronger it grew.
Suddenly, it all reversed. Power rushed away from my side of the room, back toward the angels. It was like a black hole had formed, sucking everything toward it. Of course, it was only pulling energy, not physical objects, but I nonetheless felt like it was dragging me in too. I clutched the bed's comforter, using it like an anchor to hold me down. Time ceased to have meaning. Ten seconds or ten hours could have passed for all I knew.
Finally, the rushing stopped, and everything went still. The atmosphere returned to normal. No more insane power levels. There was only what you would normally expect in a room with three angels, a nephilim, a succubus, and a primordial entity of chaos. The latter had suddenly moved to the backburner of everyone's attention.
Yasmine had returned to her "human" form. It was safe for me. I looked up, expecting Carter and Whitney to swoop in and attack her. But they stood frozen. No trace of Joel remained. He was gone, destroyed. The typhoon of power had marked his death.
Yasmine was on her knees, fingers digging into the sides of her face. She sobbed, murmuring words that sounded like frantic prayers. Vincent, like the angels, kept his distance from her. She had just killed Joel. I didn't understand why no one was acting. Why were they just standing there? Everyone seemed to be waiting for something.
Suddenly, a voice hissed beside me, more in my mind than spoken aloud.
"Succubus."
I looked into Nyx's cavernous eyes. Like Vincent and the angels, I'd forgotten about her. She extended her hand toward me, and I cringed. Fortunately, the invisible binds kept her from getting any closer.
"Succubus," she repeated. "Touch the walls. Use the last of your power to set me free."
"What? No!" I was dividing my attention between her and the others. The angelic group still stood motionless.
"Free me, and I'll help you exact your revenge."
"Revenge? Who are you talking about?"
"The one who sent me to you when I escaped," she rasped. "The one who promised you to me."
I had no clue what she meant.
"Like...who freed you?"
She cast an uneasy look behind her. Time was ticking down on her distraction.
"No, you were promised to me! But I can help you. Help you punish - "
"No," I said. She was too dangerous. Whatever insane revenge she was talking about wasn't worth what she could do to mortals if she was freed.
Her desperation grew. The angels were eventually going to remember her, and we both knew it.
"I will show you the end of the dream!" she cried. "I'll show you the man. The man in the dream."
My heart stopped.
"He isn't real," I whispered. "It was all a lie. You used it to trick me."
"No! Everything I show is true. Always true."
"It can't be...it's impossible." I swallowed and felt tears starting to fill my eyes. I wanted it to be true. More than anything. "That can't ever happen to me."
Nyx beat her hands on her unseen prison walls. "It's real! It's the future! I've seen it. Touch the walls, and I will show you. I will show you the man in the dream!"
I wanted to. I wanted to see him. I needed to see him. The man in the dream. The man who could maybe truly make this future happen....
My hand moved forward, like it was being controlled by an outside force. Nyx's eyes widened, eager and hungry.
All of a sudden, a scream split the air.
No, it was more than a scream. When Yasmine had destroyed Joel, that had involved screaming. This was more than that. It was the most horrible noise in the universe, a phenomenon that went beyond mere sound. Much as my eyes couldn't exactly perceive an angel's appearance, my ears couldn't fully comprehend this.
My hand dropped from Nyx, and I jerked my gaze to the angels. Yasmine was still on her knees, and flames were starting to consume her. It was no ordinary fire, though. It reminded me of the light of her true form: all colors and none. Carter and Whitney watched, faces unreadable.
Vincent also watched. He'd taken a few steps toward me, backing away from the fire. The look on his face was filled with a jumble of emotions, none of them good. I didn't understand what was happening to Yasmine yet, but I knew what would happen to him.
"Get out," I told him in a low voice.
His face was pale, as pale as Nyx's. He looked like he'd aged a hundred years. "I can't...I can't leave her..."
"You have to. They'll destroy you. Or if they don't, someone else will. Someone else in the city will have noticed this. You know I'm right."
His eyes were still on Yasmine. I could no longer see her, though. She was all flame - flame that had turned black.
"Go!" I exclaimed. "It's what she'd want. She did this for you!"
Vincent flinched at those words and finally looked at me. The full force of his grief made the held-back tears spill down my cheeks.
"Go. Please," I begged. Joel had been destroyed. Yasmine looked like she was about to be. I couldn't stand anymore death.
He said nothing, but after several seconds, he turned invisible. I felt his aura go.
Across the room, the flames were starting to fade. Yasmine was slowly reappearing, completely unscathed. She looked no different, but something about her signature had changed. I felt the same golden light, the impression of saffron and frankincense. But it was edged in something else. It no longer had the sharp, crystalline quality of angelic auras. That was gone, replaced by a dark and smoky feel - a smokiness that had nothing to do with the fire.
The flames finally disappeared altogether, and Yasmine still knelt on the floor. Seconds later, another signature joined us, one I knew well. Jerome stood in the room, apparently back from whatever clandestine matters he'd needed to oversee.
He looked from face to face, finally focusing on mine. "Jesus Christ. What have you done now?"
I ignored him, unable to tear my gaze from Yasmine. She looked the same, exactly the same. And yet, she wasn't...
She'd noticed the change too. She held her arms out in front of her, studying them as though she'd never seen herself before. Horror flooded her features.
"No," she moaned. "No..." She began sobbing again.
Carter finally looked away from her and met Jerome's eyes. "This is yours now, Charon."
Jerome nodded and stepped toward Yasmine. "Time to go."
She looked up at him, face glistening with tears. She said nothing, but she didn't need to. Her expression said everything. It was a plea, a plea that none of this was real, that maybe - just maybe - Jerome could make it all go away. He shook his head and touched her shoulder. They vanished.
The room was quiet, an unnatural quiet that felt almost oppressive. My voice seemed strange and out of place.
"Wh-what happened?" I asked Carter. I noticed now that Whitney was crying.
"Yasmine has fallen," he said softly. "She's a demon now."
CHAPTER 23
I couldn't stay in my bedroom after that, not after seeing two angels die - one physically and one spiritually. I had to get out of there, out of the apartment. None of the others seemed to notice or care that I fled. With Nyx captured, there were bigger things to worry about in the universe than one distraught succubus.