“Are you able to see what I see?” I asked Kobal.
“Not normally, but you might be able to pull me into your vision.”
I grasped his hand on my shoulder and pulled it down to envelope it within both of mine. I focused on his large hand until the cavern and the scene in the oracle faded away. All I saw now was Angela, and all I felt was the formidable flow of Kobal’s life washing over me.
A pathway opened between us and I pulled Kobal into my vision. The three of us stood together in a world of misty, gray fog. The oracle didn’t fuel this anymore, I did.
“Can you see her?” I whispered.
Angela’s eyes shifted to where Kobal stood. Her face hardened in a way I’d never seen a child’s face harden before. Kobal snarled and stepped toward Angela.
“Kobal!” I tried to pull him back as defiance radiated from Angela, but he refused to budge.
Angela turned toward me. Her hand stretched out as desperation blazed from her eyes, and I sensed her need to communicate something to me. I stretched my hand toward her, but Kobal seized my wrist and jerked it down. He pushed me back and planted himself in front of me.
“No!” I cried when the fog faded away to reveal the rolling tide of the oracle once more. “Why did you do that?” I demanded, poking him in his shoulder blade. “She was trying to tell me something!”
Kobal’s head swiveled toward me. His golden eyes blazed and the corded muscles in his biceps bulged as the veins in his arms stood out. I’d seen him enraged more than a few times, but this was something more than rage. If I hadn’t known he would never hurt me, I would have bolted from him and straight out of this cavern. Instead, I held my ground while all the others backed steadily away.
“Is that who you’ve been seeing?” he demanded. “Is she why you took the angel figurine and refused to part with it? Is that the child, Angela?”
I released his hand. “Yes.”
“Fuck!” The bellowed word bounced endlessly off the cavern walls.
“Kobal—” He lifted me and carried me away from the oracle. “What are you doing?” I demanded. “She’s not bad!”
“She’s not good,” he growled.
“You can’t know that!”
He set me on my feet so abruptly that I staggered back before catching my balance.
“Ican know it.” I opened my mouth to protest his words, but he continued speaking. “She is an angel, River, or at least the angels are using her to get to you.”
“Holy shit!” Corson blurted and edged further away when Kobal glowered at him.
My mouth closed before falling open and closing again. Questions tumbled so rapidly through my mind that I couldn’t grasp one to ask it. I opened my mouth again, but all that came out was, “Huh?”
“The dead child, Angela, is an angel or a tool the angels are using to manipulate you,” Kobal said.
“She can’t possibly be an angel!” I protested.
“You are correct, dear niece. She is not an angel,” a voice purred from the shadows on the far side of the cavern. “However, my long lost, and not at all missed, brothers and sistersaretrying to communicate with you. They just don’t know how.”
I didn’t have time to process the words before Kobal pushed me behind him. The sound he emitted caused the hair on my body to rise, and I knew that whoever stood in those shadows would not make it out of here alive.
***
Kobal
I focused on the area where the voice had come from, but whoever stood there remained concealed by the darkness. Scenting the air, I detected a new aroma, but it was so faint that the hounds hadn’t caught it. Whoever it was hadn’t been there long and must have slipped in while I was immersed in River’s vision.
I recognized the odor the intruder emitted as one of the fallen angels. It brought to mind water, but whereas River made me think of fresh rain, this was more like a lake with the minerally tang of brimstone mixed into it. Hell had corrupted the angel’s natural scent.
I bared my fangs at a shifting in the shadows and gestured for the hounds to come forward.
“I have not come here to fight, Kobal,” the voice murmured. “I would not have revealed my presence to you if I meant to attack. I would have simply struck while the two of you were focused on the oracle.”
