Dreams of Gods & Monsters(78)
Author: Laini Taylor

“I would never joke about chocolate,” he said, hand to heart. “Look. You’re missing a page.”

And she was. And there it was, in black and white on Mik’s menu, spelled out, as every item was, in five languages, as if chocolate were not universally understood:

gateau au chocolat

torta di cioccolato

pastel de chocolate

schokoladenkuchen

chocolate cake

But then the waiter came to take their order, and when she said, “First we’ll have the chocolate cake, and we’ll just eat it while you’re making the rest, so bring that first, okay?” he told them—with what struck Zuzana as an entirely inadequate display of regret—that they’d run out.

… white noise…

But this was when Zuzana felt the nature of the change within herself for a certainty, because it wasn’t a big deal. Her lines of context had been redrawn, and the one for “Big Deal” had been scooted way the hell back. “Well, that’s a bummer,” she said. “But I guess I’ll survive.”

Mik’s eyebrows lifted.

They ordered and asked that the food be brought straight to their room—and the waiter triple-checked the quantity of kebabs and tagine, flat bread and omelettes, fruit and yogurt. “But it is enough for… twenty people,” he pointed out several times.

Zuzana regarded him levelly. “I’m very hungry.”

Eliza wasn’t laughing anymore. She was… speaking. Sort of.

The driver was on his phone, shouting over the sound of her voice even as he sped down the long, straight highway. “Something’s wrong with her!” he yelled. “I don’t know! Can’t you hear her?” Twisting his arm around to hold the phone nearer to her raving, he lost his grip on the steering wheel momentarily, swerving onto the shoulder and back with a squeal of rubber.

The girl in the backseat was sitting ramrod straight, eyes glazed and staring, speaking without cease. The driver didn’t recognize the language. It wasn’t Arabic or French or English, and he would have known German or Spanish or Italian to hear them, too. This was something other, and unutterably alien. It was fluting and susurrous and wind-borne, and this young woman, held rigid in the grip of some… fit… was spouting it like she was possessed, her hands moving back and forth in dreamlike underwater motions.

“Do you hear that?” the driver shouted. “What should I do with her?”

He was glancing manically back and forth between the road and the sight of her in his rearview mirror, and it took… three, four, five of these quick back-and-forths before he finally craned his head around in disbelief to confirm that he was really seeing what the rearview mirror was telling him.

Eliza’s hands sculled lightly back and forth in the air as though she were floating.

Because she was.

He slammed on the brake.

Eliza slammed into the seat backs in front of her and crumpled to the floor. Her voice cut off and the car fishtailed, humping up onto the shoulder with a violent jouncing that ricocheted Eliza’s inert body between the seats for a long, angry moment as the driver tried to wrest the vehicle back onto the road. He did, at last, and screamed to a halt, jumping out into the cloud of dust he’d made to wrench open her door.

She was unconscious. He shook her leg, panicking. “Miss! Miss!” He was just a driver. He didn’t know what to do with madwomen, it was far beyond him, and now maybe he’d killed her—

She stirred.

“Alhamdulillah,” he breathed. Praise God.

But his praise was short-lived. No sooner did Eliza push herself upright—blood was streaming from her nose, garish and slick, over her mouth and down her chin—than she lapsed straight back into that otherworldly raving, the sound of which, the driver would later claim, tore at his very soul.

“Rome,” said Karou, as soon as Zuzana and Mik came back into the room. “The angels are in Vatican City.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Zuzana replied, choosing not to give voice to her first thought, which had to do with the happy prevalence of chocolate in Italy. “And have they gotten hold of any weapons yet?”

“No,” said Karou, but she looked worried. Well. Worried was one of the things she looked. Add to the list: overwhelmed, exhausted, demoralized, and… lonely. She had that “lost” posture again, her shoulders curled forward, head lowered, and Zuzana did not fail to note that she was turned away from Akiva.

“The ambassadors and secretaries of state and whatever have all been talking each other to death,” Karou elaborated. “Some in favor of arming the angels, some opposed. Apparently he hasn’t made the greatest impression. Still, private groups are lining up to pledge their support, and their arsenals. They’re trying to get access to make offers, but have so far been denied—at least, officially. Who knows who might have bribed a Vatican insider to get word to Jael. One of the groups is this angel cult in Florida that apparently has a stockpile of weapons at the ready.” She paused, considering her words. “Which doesn’t sound scary at all.”

“How did you find all this out?” Mik marveled.

“My fake grandmother,” Karou answered, indicating her phone, plugged into the wall. “She’s very well connected.” Zuzana knew about Karou’s fake grandmother, a grand Belgian dame who’d had Brimstone’s trust for many years, and who was the only one of his associates with whom Karou had a real relationship. She was stupendously rich, and though Zuzana had never met her, she felt no warmth for her. She’d seen the Christmas cards she sent Karou, and they were about as personal as the ones from the bank—which was fine, whatever, except that Zuzana knew that her friend craved more, and so she wanted to neck-punch anyone who disappointed her.

She only half listened while Karou told Mik about Esther. She watched Akiva instead. He was sitting up on the deep ledge of the window, the shutters drawn behind him, his wings visible, drooping and dim.

He met her eyes, briefly, and after she got past the first jolt she always got from looking at Akiva—you had to battle your brain to convince it he was real; seriously, that’s what it was like, looking at Akiva; her brain wanted to be all Pshaw, he’s obviously Photoshopped, even when he was right in front of her—a dragging sadness seized her.

Nothing could ever be easy for these two. Their courtship, if you could even call it that, was like trying to dance through a rain of bullets. Now that they’d finally come to the brink of an understanding, grief dragged a new curtain between them.