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

have stayed there forever with her, alone in the cottage, just the two of them.
    But they weren’t alone, not really. The ghost of his brother loomed above that damn cliff. Dead, but still watchful.
    When he finally, reluctantly checked the clock, it was midnight. The final day was over.
    Abel kissed Rylie on the shoulder. She didn’t stir.
    He got out of bed, got dressed, and went for a walk.
    Abel stood at the entrance of the greenhouses with his thumbs hooked in his pockets, gazing down at the sanctuary under heavy snowfall. The canopy had been disassembled, dinner cleared out. A couple of werewolves were still wandering around, laughing loudly, voices echoing off the trees. They were probably drinking. It was the only thing to do in the sanctuary on a Friday night, especially since they couldn’t go visit other towns to party anymore.
    It didn’t take long for the drinking werewolves to disappear into their homes. The lights in the cottages blinked out one by one, darkening the snow. In a few long minutes, everything was silent and peaceful, like a fucking Christmas card.
    He guessed Rylie would think it looked pretty. To him, it looked an awful lot like a cemetery, even if it only had one grave in it.
    He’d had a good day in that cemetery. As good a day as he could manage, ongoing fuckups with Abram aside. He had gotten down and did the hard work an Alpha didn’t have to do. He had spent time with Rylie. And that was about all the goodness a man like him could hope for.
    Every second of it had hurt.
    “Hello, Abel.”
    A man was suddenly standing beyond the edge of the greenhouses. The fact that he had gotten so close without alerting Abel’s werewolf senses made the back of his neck prickle.
    They were almost at eye-level with each other, though Abel’s boots gave him an inch of height advantage. This other man was olive-skinned and dark-haired with pale blue eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness. He wore a cable knit sweater and hiking boots that were damp with melting snow, which meant that he had walked into the sanctuary from Northgate, entering through the hole in the wards.
    In a way, he kind of looked like Nash. Smelled a little like him too. That weird, unearthly scent of forest fires hung around both of them, even when neither had been anywhere near anything burning.
    Abel knew instantly what this man wanted, and a hard knot of dread clenched in his throat. A sense of inevitability.
    James Faulkner had come for Abel.

Two

    When Michael awoke naturally rather than by the chime of the bells, he immediately knew something was wrong.
    Eve’s temple contained a clock that could be heard from anywhere in Shamain, the ethereal metropolis. It ran on the vibrations of ancient, flawless crystals that would never skip the smallest fraction of a second, and it hadn’t required adjustment—not once—since the foundation of the city.
    He dropped from his roost in downtown Shamain and landed on a bridge arching over the canal. There was already another angel waiting there: Azrael, the bookkeeper that worked in the building across the street from Michael. Azrael was a severe man who usually looked like he had been carved from particularly emotionless marble. Today, though, there was the faint crease of a line between his eyebrows.
    “The clock,” Michael said, lifting his eyes to the temple on the hill where the Tree had once been rooted. The temple was a tall column of white stone with its highest corridors built in the shape of stylized branches.
    “The clock,” Azrael agreed.
    They whipped their wings wide and lifted into the air. The city below glowed with cool blue light—illumination that was partially fueled by its few remaining inhabitants, and gradually dimming as the centuries passed. No new angels had been born since Eve’s death, and many others had moved to Earth or other ethereal dimensions rather than live on as curators of a dead city.
    Even so, Michael and Azrael weren’t the only