Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

roofed with white tile. On the opposite hill she could see the coliseum where the ethereal coalition met while angels moved through the streets far below. They were calm, unaware that Leliel was about to save all of their lives.
    How? Nash wondered. He had heard of no impending battles or negotiations.
    But Leliel was confident that the war was approaching its end.
    “Where are you?” Leliel murmured. Her breath fogged the window and blurred her view of the canals.
    For a moment Nash thought that she was addressing him, but Leliel’s memory was unaware of its passenger. She was speaking to someone else that hadn’t yet arrived.
    A whisper sighed through the room, and Leliel turned to see if someone had joined her. But even though she thought that she had heard cloth slithering across the floor, she was alone. All that she found behind her was a mural of Eve in her early days: the most beautiful of all angels, with her arms extended in the eternal offer of an embrace. Sapphire blue curtains framed her, held back by gold cord.
    Eve’s pale eyes were knowing, as if she realized what Leliel was doing and was saddened.
    Leliel decided that her perception was nothing more than a sentimental hallucination. She tugged the knot on the cord and let the curtains fall closed over Eve, shielding her painted face.
    She lifted her dress at the knees and moved into the hallway. Long windows allowed the starlight to splash on the floor as she searched for the person she expected to meet.
    As she walked, she extinguished the last of the lamps in the temple and drew more curtains, allowing relative darkness to fall over the hallway—as dark as anything could ever become in Heaven. The twilit blue that remained was dim enough that Leliel needed to allow her eyes to adjust to it.
    The center floors of Eve’s temple were occupied by the heart of a massive clock. Its gears grinded softly against each other, metal rubbing on metal as a pendulum kept the seconds. Each gear was as tall as Leliel when her wings were lifted, and she could feel the vibrations in her hollow bones.
    She rested her hands on the railing and leaned over to look down through the rotating gears.
    There was someone standing in the center of the floor below.
    This individual did not glow with the light of angels. In fact, he or she seemed to suck the light out of the temple, darkening the bottom floor as though it were filled with a black fog. Nash felt sick to see it.
    That thing , whatever it was, did not belong in Shamain.
    “Up here,” Leliel called softly, as though afraid someone would hear.
    The darkness on the first floor vanished. She heard slithering behind her.
    Leliel spun to find that the creature had reappeared at her back. An uncomfortable chill sank over her flesh. Ordinarily, demons shouldn’t have been able to phase through the glow of the ethereal city. But the curtained windows and extinguished lamps were enough to allow the demon to jump floors as easily as she would have on Earth.
    This woman was of average height and unremarkable in appearance, interchangeable with any number of demons with her black hair and pallid flesh. She wore a leather bustier that was the ruddy color of an Irishman’s cheeks. Her head lolled to the side as though her neck were broken. Her hair fell over her eyes, obscuring them.
    For an instant, Leliel believed that it was the current ruler of the Palace of Dis: Elise Kavanagh, murderer of Adam. But this was not the Godslayer. There was nothing human in this creature, breasts and hips and pouting red lips aside.
    This was Atropos, a megaira. Leliel had met her once before when dealing with Belphegor. He had at least two of these…things.
    The knowledge that Leliel had seen Belphegor recently came as a shock to Nash, though no more shocking than the realization that she had orchestrated this meeting. She had invited a demon into Shamain deliberately. She had darkened the temple to make it hospitable. And she must have told