Bound in Black Read Online Free PDF Page B

spend their wrath upon.
    “So I don’t need to find Lethe?”
    “I still think it best to take her as your portal. Erebus is so vast that it’s believed souls linger near their portal entrance. We can follow the logic that Jude would be nearby. But there is another matter.”
    George leaned forward beside me, listening intently.
    “The Veil of Lethe.” Uriel leaned one arm along the back of the pew in front of us, bracing himself as he spoke. “That’s what you must worry about.”
    “Something tells me I don’t want to know about her veil.”
    “You already do,” he said with a sad smile. “The Veil of Lethe is what a soul passes through to get to the other side. It is what erases all memory from anyone crossing over.”
    “And is there a way around it?”
    He shook his head. “If you are seeking Jude, you must take the same path he did. There is no other way into Erebus through the portal of Lethe except to pass through the Veil.”
    I sighed and sat back in the pew, watching the choirboys disperse from the stage area. A grandmother led her grandson down the aisle. And though he looked around eleven years old, he held her hand openly with pride. A mother spoke with the priest, both of them smiling as the mother gestured toward her son. I wondered if he was a sentinel like Father Clementine, who’d married Jude and me in Sussex. Was this smiling priest a protector of this place? These people?
    “There must be a way,” I mumbled, more to myself.
    “There is.”
    My attention snapped back to Uriel. “Tell me.”
    “There is an elixir. One that is precious and not of this world,” he continued, “but I will have to do some desperate bargaining to acquire even a drop.”
    “Do it. Beg, borrow, steal. Oh, wait… That might not be your style. But I’ll offer eternal favors to whoever to get that stuff.”
    Uriel glanced toward the altar, where the crowd had dissipated and the priest was gathering sheet music from the stands. “Let’s stretch our legs into the vestibule, shall we?” he suggested with a wave toward the door.
    We strolled out of the sanctuary. The grandmother and grandson lit a candle together for a lost loved one before scooting into the cold evening. I’d refused to light a candle for Jude over the past three weeks of stricken grief. He was not gone . Lost, but not gone.
    Uriel stood strong and tall. The candles flickered behind him, playing on the edges of his wings, which I could see as if through a gossamer web. His golden underlight shimmered by candlelight.
    “I will do everything I can for you, Genevieve,” he said with heartfelt conviction, offering his hand for me to shake.
    When I took it, his power rippled through me like a flame, not so dissimilar from what I sensed from Jude. But then again, Uriel was his maker. He was the maker of all the Dominus Daemonum. The one who gave the hunters a second chance at redemption.
    I sandwiched his hand between both of mine. This man, this archangel, had given Jude a second chance at life when he’d saved him from hell at his making. And now, he offered to save him a third time.
    “You have no idea how much this means to me,” I whispered. “Please. Please do everything you can to get that elixir.”
    The room lit with golden radiance as he lifted his cast of illusion. I let go and stepped back in complete awe as he spread wide his white, golden-tipped wings.
    “I promise, Vessel of Light. I will do everything in my power.”
    With a whipping crack, he sifted away, leaving George and me alone in the dark and cold corridor. For a full minute, we said nothing in the wake of Uriel’s magnificent exit.
    “So you have a way in. But what about a way out?” asked George.
    When George, Jude and I had battled a horde of demons at Glastonbury Abbey, I’d been able to summon a human’s soul that had been buried deep in his own body for almost two centuries. The demon who’d taken possession of him in the early 1800s was expelled from the