The dark was not silent. It was breathing.
Ren drifted in a shallow, boiling sea of consciousness. His blood felt like battery acid. The freezing rain was gone. The air around him was stagnant. It smelled of rotting wood. Old incense. Damp dust.
He tried to open his eyes. His eyelashes were crusted with sweat and dirt.
Pain woke him up completely.
It was not a dull ache. It was a vicious, screaming fire centered in his left leg. The fractured tibia was swelling against the torn fabric of his trousers. The fever had set in. His body was fighting a war it was fundamentally unequipped to win.
He forced his eyelids apart.
A vaulted ceiling loomed high above him. Shattered stained-glass windows let in the weak, gray light of a violent storm. It was an abandoned church. The pews were smashed into jagged wooden splinters.
He was lying flat on the cold stone altar.
He moved his jaw. It was stiff. He tasted dried blood and copper.
He was not alone.
She was sitting on a broken pew ten feet away.
Raynare.
She had shed the heavy leather jacket. She wore only a thin, dark tank top that clung to her damp skin. Her massive black wings were tucked tightly against her back. They shivered occasionally in the cold draft.
She was staring at her own hands.
Ren tried to sit up.
His abdominal muscles spasmed violently. His left leg shifted just a fraction of an inch. The broken bone ground against itself.
A raw, wet gasp tore its way out of his throat. He collapsed back onto the stone altar. His vision exploded into white static.
The sound of his pain echoed in the empty church.
Raynare's head snapped up. Her violet eyes locked onto him. The vulnerability in her posture vanished instantly. The mask slammed back into place.
She stood up. A weapon materialized in her right hand.
It was a spear made of pure, blinding yellow light. The hum of the magic vibrated in Ren's teeth. The ambient temperature in the room spiked. It was the heat of a localized star.
She walked toward the altar. Her footsteps were completely silent on the stone.
"You are awake." Her voice was hard. Flat. It was a terrible imitation of authority.
Ren turned his head slowly. The stone of the altar was freezing against his burning cheek. He focused on drawing a single breath. His lungs rattled.
He did not answer.
She stopped right beside the altar. She raised the spear. She pointed the glowing, lethal tip directly at the hollow of his throat.
The heat radiating from the weapon was agonizing. It immediately blistered the sensitive skin of his neck.
"Azazel wants anomalies brought in alive." She leaned over him. The proximity was deliberate. "But he also accepts ashes. If you do not tell me what you are right now. I will burn you down to the marrow."
Ren looked at the spear. Then he looked at her eyes.
She was waiting for him to beg. She was waiting for the terrifying power he used against Rias Gremory to manifest and blow the roof off the church.
He did nothing.
He looked at his right hand. It was resting on the stone beside his hip. It was empty. The ghost of Sarah's fingers still ached in his palm. He closed his fist slowly. He trapped the empty air inside.
He looked back up at Raynare.
"You." He stopped. He swallowed hard. The fever made his throat feel like dry sand. He tried again. "You are hiding."
The spear trembled. Just a fraction of a millimeter.
"I am securing a prisoner." She hissed. She leaned closer. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder. It brushed against his collarbone.
The physical intimacy of the threat was suffocating. She was using her body and her weapon to trap him in a cage of heat and terror. He could smell the rain on her skin. He could smell the ozone from the spear.
Ren closed his eyes.
"You did not take me to your leaders." His voice was a ruined whisper. Every word cost him oxygen he desperately needed. "You brought me here. Because you are afraid."
"I am an assassin of the Grigori." Her voice rose. It bordered on panic. She pressed the tip of the light spear closer. A thin line of fresh blood welled up on Ren's neck. The heat instantly cauterized the small cut. "I fear nothing in this miserable town."
Ren opened his eyes. The fever was pulling him under again. The hypoxia was starving his brain.
He looked at her face. The shadows cast by the light spear made her look entirely demonic. But her eyes were wide. Frantic.
His brain misfired.
He did not see Raynare. He saw the blinding headlights of the truck. He heard the screaming crunch of yielding steel.
The panic was absolute. It was not a calculated move. It was the raw, uncontrolled chaos of a failing human body.
Ren violently threw his upper body forward.
He reached out with his left hand. He grabbed the front of her shirt. He pulled her down with the desperate, terrifying strength of a drowning man.
Raynare gasped.
She completely lost her balance. The spear of light dissipated into a shower of harmless golden sparks. She crashed down on top of him.
Her knees hit the stone altar on either side of his hips. Her chest slammed directly into his. Her hands instinctively flew out and braced against the stone next to his head to stop herself from crushing him entirely.
The impact knocked the breath from Ren's lungs.
They were perfectly still.
The silence in the church was deafening.
Ren's vision cleared slowly. The headlights faded. The smell of motor oil was replaced by the overwhelming scent of her skin.
He was lying flat on his back. Raynare was straddling him.
Her face was exactly two inches from his.
The tension was a physical, crushing weight. It was unbearable. He could feel the rapid, violent pounding of her heart against his own ribs. He could feel the feverish heat of her thighs pressed tightly against his sides. Every breath she took brushed hotly across his lips.
She was a Fallen Angel. She could rip his head from his shoulders with a flick of her wrist.
But she was completely frozen.
Her violet eyes were wide with shock. She looked down at his face. She felt the searing heat of his fever burning through his clothes. She felt his broken, erratic heartbeat struggling to keep him alive.
She was waiting for him to try and exploit this position. To grope her. To try and dominate her.
Ren did none of those things.
His grip on her shirt slowly loosened. His fingers uncurled. His hand fell heavily back onto the stone altar.
He was completely exposed. He offered no defense.
"You." Ren whispered. His lips barely moved. "You caught me. In the courtyard."
Raynare stopped breathing.
"You caught me." He repeated. The words were heavy with exhaustion. "Because you are tired of watching things break."
The armor shattered.
It did not crack. It completely disintegrated.
Raynare's violent, predatory gaze crumbled. The terrifying assassin vanished. She was suddenly just a girl kneeling over a dying man in a ruined church.
A violent shudder ran through her entire body. She squeezed her eyes shut. She bit her lower lip so hard it bled.
She did not pull away.
She stayed exactly where she was. She rested her weight entirely on her hands. She let the silence stretch. She let the suffocating proximity burn them both. It was a punishment. It was a confession.
She opened her eyes. They were shining with unshed, furious tears.
"Your leg is rotting." She whispered. Her voice was completely broken. It lacked all the silk and all the razor blades. "The bone is grinding against the muscle. If the fever does not kill you tonight. The infection will kill you tomorrow."
Ren looked up at her. He felt the terrifying, agonizing pain in his tibia.
"I know." He said simply.
"I cannot use healing magic." She stated. A single tear escaped and tracked down her pale cheek. It fell and hit Ren's collarbone. It was scalding hot. "Light magic will burn a human to ashes. I can only kill."
Ren looked at the tear on his skin.
He thought of the glowing green magic Akeno had used. The magic that erased the grooves in his palm. The magic that tried to steal his memory of Sarah.
He looked back up into Raynare's violet eyes.
"Good." Ren whispered.
He reached up slowly with his empty right hand. His knuckles were white. His hand was shaking violently from the fever.
He did not touch her face. He did not touch her body.
He grabbed the edge of her dark shirt. He held onto the fabric tightly. It was the exact same way Sarah used to hold his sleeve when she was terrified.
It was a request. It was an anchor.
"Set the bone." He ordered quietly.
Raynare stared at his trembling hand holding her shirt.
She understood exactly what he was asking. He was asking her to break him further so he could heal as a human. He was refusing the supernatural cheat. He was choosing the maximum cost.
She slowly lowered her body. She shifted off him.
She moved down to the edge of the stone altar. She grabbed his ruined left boot with both hands.
She looked up at his face one last time.
"Bite down on something." She whispered.
Ren closed his eyes. He tightened his grip on the fabric of her shirt.
"Do it."
She pulled.
The bone snapped into place.
The scream never left Ren's throat. His vision exploded into pure, absolute black.
He paid the toll. And the gods remained silent.