by Jenny McKane
A LEGION OF HER OWN
Sunny With A Chance of Demons
Book Three
JENNY MCKANE
Copyright © 2018
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
CHAPTER TEN
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Epilogue
Chapter One
“No luck,” Eli said as he jogged down the metal stairs that led up to the second floor of the shady motel they were searching. He’d just knocked on one of the wooden doors and even peeked in the window and hadn’t been able to see anything through the tightly drawn shades.
Sunny let out a curse and, beside her, Gideon ran his hand through his hair and kicked the tire of the pickup truck they’d arrived in.
Sunny, Gideon, Eli, and a couple newcomers named Tesah and Eron, had arrived in New Orleans the night before and hadn’t slept yet. Sunny swore the insides of her eyes were lined with sandpaper by that point and she stifled another yawn and another wave of massive disappointment.
It’d been two months since Gideon, Selah, and Sunny had walked across the portal from the demon realm and back into humanity. Since then, they’d gone headlong into a deep search in all the reaches of the country looking for Gabriel.
The archangel had been attacked while Sunny was in Hell and they needed him badly--Camael had killed off Azrael and assumed his role as leader of Hell. On top of that, he was creating a legion of science projects. Near-dead angels or demons that he had stitched back together with new DNA and abilities along with zero brain power beyond what Camael says.
The perfect foot soldiers for the coup he was planning on both the human realm and the angel realm. Camael was planning to march forward through both, killing any and all who stood against him, and rule from some golden throne in the sky.
They needed Gabriel to help lead the fight. He was the only one who knew the ins and outs of Camael and how the fallen archangel operated--what he was after, how he thought, his methods, allies, and tactics. Gabriel had all of that locked in his head.
And beyond that? Sunny counted Gabriel as her friend and he was in danger. She was going to help him as much as she could, along with Eli and the archangel Metatron.
They’d landed in Austin originally when they crossed the portal and Eli was there within a day to scoop them up--Sunny, Gideon, and a nearly-dead Selah, who had an angel arm attached at her shoulder joint--and taken them to Metatron’s ranch in Montana. Now, as luck would have it, their base was back in Austin because Metatron and Eli both owned property out there.
It was their new base of operations and from the capital of the Lone Star State, they ventured out around the south in search of any traces of Gabriel.
“What now?” Sunny asked Eli as he walked past her, the frustration in him obvious.
“I have no idea,” he barked back at her and Sunny just blinked.
Eli was brusque to begin with, but lately the pressure of trying (and failing) to find Gabriel was eating at them all.
The newcomers weren’t helping, either.
Tesah and Eron were both Powers, a powerful rank of angel tasked with keeping the balance between good and evil on Earth perfectly matched. With the obvious uptick in demonic activity, Powers were showing up left and right these days, helping Metatron and his meager alliance in helping maintain the rapidly declining balance.
Tesah spoke, her voice both melodic and void of emotion at the same time. The female Power creeped Sunny out big time and Gideon all but avoided being anywhere near the two angels as much as he could.
“We continue until we find the archangel,” she said. Tesah was tall and lithe, cutting a perfectly angelic figure at over six feet tall with her silver white/blonde hair and ice blue eyes. Everything about Tesah was sharp--her words, her motivations, and her features.
According to Eli, she was one hell of a warrior, too.
“Like nothing you’ve ever seen,” he said reverently one night. “Metatron and I hunted with her a few years back when there was a rise of demon activity in Portland. Crazy.”
“Crazy is right,” Sunny had muttered in response.
Sunny didn’t doubt it and she would have had more than a begrudging respect for Tesah if the angel hadn’t had a giant stick shoved right up her ass. Black was black, and white was white with her and her counterpart, Eron, and it didn’t matter if there might have been some shades of gray thrown in there. You were either for or against, angelic, demon, or human. Neither of the Powers had known what to make of Gideon and were nearly outright hostile to him for the first month.
It’d almost ended badly the first couple times until Eli had convinced them that not only did Metatron vouch for Gideon, but that he did, too. Neither angel looked exactly swayed, but the in-your-face hostilities had stopped in the last few weeks.
Eron was the opposite of Tesah in coloring at least, but most definitely not in temperament. He was dark where she was fair. He had close cropped black hair and dark blue eyes. He was taller than Tesah, but only by a few inches and just a bit broader than she was. From what Sunny could gather so far, Powers were all built similarly.
Where there had been hostilities toward Gideon, Sunny was basically a non-issue to the two new angels. She was a nothing. A peon. It drove her nuts and she found herself purposely goading Tesah, especially, into conversation just to make her acknowledge a lowly human. Demons, at least, had made their dislike of humans personal and interesting. Angels of certain classes, it seemed, just seemed to forget that humans shared an entire realm with them sometimes. It irked Sunny something fierce when the Powers acted like she wasn’t there. Or answered her in their condescending “I’m speaking to an imbecile” manner--which was often.
Eli, Sunny, and Gideon piled into one vehicle while the Powers drove separately. Getting onto the interstate, Eli stifled a yawn.
“Hotel?” Sunny asked. They hadn’t slept, and Austin was one hell of a ride.
Eli just shook his head. “We’ll take shifts driving for the next eight or so hours,” Eli said miserably.
Sunny had a feeling that if
it’d been up to Eli, they probably would have grabbed a hotel and gotten some sleep before heading out first thing in the morning. But the angels required a lot less human comforts and were decidedly against sitting around for eight hours while the humans and the half-human slept.
“I don’t like them,” Sunny grumbled from the backseat as she leaned her head against the window. She was salty that she didn’t call one of the first shifts in the drive--she was terrible at night and the road always lulled her into a hard-blinking grogginess. Driving at night when she was tired was torturous and even the meager sleep she might get in the backseat wasn’t nearly good enough.
It was a soul-deep tired she was dealing with. They all were. But the constant motion and activity kept them all from thinking about the things they didn’t want to think about.
“It’s not about liking them,” Eli said in his best big-brother voice. “It’s about having two weapons on your team that can fight like they can and can track like they can.”
She knew he was right, but they were still a miserable pair to be around.
“Are they all like that?”
She meant the Powers.
“All of the ones I’ve met,” Eli said.
“Why are some archangels different?”
Eli considered her question a moment before answering.
“The short answer, I think, is time around humans--plain and simple,” he said. “But it’s also mission based. Humans don’t figure into a Power’s mission for the most part unless you’re dealing with an insanely evil human being. They mostly monitor the all-star cast from the angel and demon realm.”
Eli was quick to forgive the Powers’ lack of social graces because they were simply a means to an end--a method for him to complete his mission.
For Eli, losing Gabriel from right under his nose in Seattle weighed heavy on his mind. Technically, Eli had been assigned to Metatron all this time, but had formed a bond and a friendship with Gabriel. They’d been together seeking out Camael in Seattle when they’d been attacked. Eli had been badly injured and unable to help Gabriel
He was on a mission to get his friend back--something Sunny could relate to. She’d gone through Hell to get Gideon back.
A fat lot of good it had done her, it turned out. The reunion had been awkward, then a few moments of sweet, and then awkward again. Gideon had been tortured. And then altered. He’d been given wings. Angel wings. And while he could control them and hide them (thanks to the archangel blood in his veins from Camael), he was now one of the altered. It didn’t mean a thing to Sunny, but as the weeks went on since they escaped, it still mattered greatly to Gideon. To the point that he was slowly shutting her out.
But Sunny shut down that line of thinking for the moment and closed her eyes. She needed to sleep.
Her body ached. Her mind was a constant loop of what they had possibly missed or signs they hadn’t paid attention to. Where was Gabriel? Was he on the run or was he a prisoner? If he was captive, why hadn’t the demons who’d taken him already handed him over to Camael to be killed?
Sunny sucked in a breath and steadied her breathing, trying not to think of the sight of Michael’s lifeless, headless corpse strewn on the floor in Azrael’s keep in the demon shadow realm. He’d been slaughtered at the hands of Camael’s legion of fallen and Sunny and her friends were doing everything they could to get Gabriel back before he met a similar fate.
It was personal between Gabriel and Camael, so there was no room for error when it came to keeping the archangel from the fallen archangel’s clutches.
Prior to their escape from Hell, Gideon and Eli didn’t know each other. And while Sunny wouldn’t exactly call them besties, they’d formed an understand and a partnership within a few days. She listened to the two of them making small talk in the front seat as they drove out of New Orleans and found their way onto Interstate 10 heading west to Texas.
“Damn Powers don’t understand a thing called driving laws,” she heard Eli mutter as he pressed the accelerator down, likely to try to keep up with the car ahead of them. Laws, physical needs like sleep and hunger, and basic human emotions were lost on them.
In the front seat, she heard Metatron’s name mentioned.
“He sent a text earlier,” Eli was saying. “Nothing in Boulder or Denver.”
Gideon said something she couldn’t quite make out before Eli replied.
“He’s heading to Austin tonight by plane,” Eli said. “Reports are bad from the major cities on the west coast he said. Hopefully, he’ll have more news when we meet up tomorrow.”
Sunny’s head bounced on the window as they drove along, and it wasn’t long before she fell into a fitful, painful sleep, given the odd angle her head was resting on the glass.
Chapter Two
The Powers had begrudgingly agreed to pull over at a truck stop outside of Beaumont, Texas and let the humans stretch their legs and grab a bite to eat at the greasy spoon diner. Key word being begrudgingly.
“Evil gets a stronger foothold each second and you feel the need to get a short stack of pancakes,” Eron complained loudly as Eli poured a large drizzle of syrup over said pancakes.
Sunny bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. The Powers were really hard to get used to and were almost always saying something cutting or negative. It was strange--not at all how she’d pictured angelic beings behaving.
“This short stack of pancakes is going to keep me awake all the way into Austin, friend,” Eli replied good naturedly. He didn’t let the Powers get to him--he saw them as a means to an end and a method to achieve his goals, so he let them say whatever they wanted.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if they don’t like me because I’m a human,” Eli had said. “As long as they get me to Gabriel and help us defeat Camael, insult away.”
Something told Sunny that he probably wouldn’t just let them insult away, but he was definitely Teflon-coated for the most part. She wished she could be the same. Sunny had been just as bad at letting insults go when it was demons (namely Azrael’s daughter Selah) picking on her and she sure as hell didn’t like the angels doing it either. To Sunny, it was just another illustration proving her hypothesis that angels and demons (the most polarized ones, that is) weren’t really all that different in the end. Sure, they might have different objectives, but they were both haughty, rude, judgmental, and cared little for others.
Funny how that worked.
Sunny was slowly picking the skill up herself, but it took a lot of time and practice. Good thing for her, their sarcasm and annoyance provided plenty of opportunity for her to flex her skills.
She’d eaten a quick bite, paid, and washed up in the restroom while Eli ordered himself a second round. This was going to take a few more minutes and she didn’t feel like watching the two angels steam and stew at Eli over each bite. Bidding him a see you in the parking lot, Sunny bought a few extra road snacks and headed back to the car.
It was dark now and the only light out there was from an anemic-looking light pole in the far corner. Sunny was always careful, but lately she found herself avoiding the edge of darkness more and more. She’d had a few dreams about a lesser-known species of demon called nox. In her dream, she’d watched a tall, bony demon with shadow skin (there was no other way to describe it), snatch a woman from behind her car while she put groceries into the trunk. The creature had gotten her ankles and yanked the woman to her stomach before dragging her backwards into the darkness behind the parking lot.
For a dream, it had been incredibly realistic and bone-chilling. She’d related what she saw to both Gideon and Eli. Eli thought the demon sounded familiar and checked with Metatron (who was in the Northwest at the time) and it was the archangel who identified what Sunny saw.
“A nox is rare,” Metatron said over speakerphone that night. “They were hunted nearly to extinction because, even in the demon world, they pose significant threats. It’s odd that you would dream of one unprovoked, too. It’s a shame
we can’t reach your dream demon--he’d be able to see if any sort of presence was attached to your dream.”
Plaxo hadn’t been heard from in three months now--not after pushing Sunny, Eli, and Selah across the portal and sealing it up behind them by staying in the demon realm. He’d refused to come, no matter how upset Sunny became or how hard she insisted.
He had work to do, he’d told her.
Outside, she put her snacks into the backseat and closed the door, leaning back against the car and looking up into the stars.
She didn't hear Gideon approach until he was right beside her.
“It’s not safe out here for you alone,” he said without any sort of preamble.
Sunny just nodded and closed her eyes. Things between them were so strained, it was almost unbearable for her. She wanted nothing more than to jump into his arms and get carried away, but Gideon had left Hell with walls securely around him and his feelings, and he hadn’t given her any access to himself. They’d had a tiny flash of a happy reunion when he’d nearly kissed her senseless in their hotel room when they first arrived in Austin after leaving Hell. She’d told him that the things about him that had changed didn’t bother her--that he was still Gideon and she was still Sunny. And it had worked--for a few hours at least.
As soon as Eli arrived, the walls had snapped back into place and no amount of Sunny trying to rip them down was helping. If anything, it made him more skittish around her.
It was breaking her heart in tiny increments, but just when she thought she should give up and save herself any more torture, he’d be raw and vulnerable with her. He’d open up just enough to show her the Gideon she’d fallen for back in Seattle--the man she’d risked her own life for (gladly) in the demon realm to rescue.
On the worst days, Sunny didn’t regret going to Hell for Gideon. He’d sacrificed his entire life’s mission to save her hide from Michael and his threat of what would happen if she failed again. He also knew that Seumat wouldn’t have stopped trying to kill Sunny unless she was killed herself, so he’d struck a bargain with Azrael to make Seumat vulnerable enough to kill.