He turned and stalked away.
“Huh,” I muttered. “Can’t make any promises there, but at least he said yes. Guess we get to spend this afternoon raiding a demon nest. Did you expect him to say no?”
“I did.” Nikolas’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Now, that’s a pity. I can think of several other things I’d much rather be doing.”
“Nikolas.” I pressed a firm hand to his chest. “Same here, but if we find out we could have stopped the apocalypse sooner but we didn’t because we were too busy making out, I’ll be pissed.”
He grinned. “Then I’d better make the wait worthwhile.”
“You’d better.” I stepped back. “I’m going to find my weapons.”
Firstly, I ducked back into the lab to fetch the potion which enabled me to see auras, even when it wasn’t easy at first glance to tell if demonic influence was present. Unfortunately, it didn’t do too much to distinguish the demon-infected vampires, but it did help me identify different species of demons. Then I loaded up on weapons. Stakes and knives were a safe bet. Anything heavier was liable to slow me down.
I met Nikolas in the warlocks’ spare room, which contained little except a few boxes and a sheet of clear, shimmering glass. My blurred reflection showed my aura—half light, half dark. To warlocks, celestials’ auras looked blue. According to Nikolas, most warlocks couldn’t see auras, like most celestials couldn’t. His own aura, to me at least, was dark and shadowy, and when he was using his magic to its full extent, it extended like a pair of wings. A shiver traced down my spine, intensifying when he took hold of my right hand. My demon mark reached towards him, insistent.
“Nikolas…”
Shadowy power burned into the mark on my wrist, flooding my body. I gasped, gripping his wrist, his power feeding into my demon mark. The dizzying sensation must be close to what humans felt when they were bitten by a vampire. Power sizzled between us, and if he held onto me a moment longer, I might well orgasm on the spot.
He dropped his hand. Energy coursed through me, and from the way his chest heaved, you’d think I was the one who’d transferred my power over to him, not the other way around.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, when I’d caught my breath. “You won’t be able to recharge if we aren’t in your realm. Or does it work anywhere?”
“All of the nether realms boost my power to some degree,” he said. “I only gave you a small amount.”
“Damn.” I shook my head. “Better wait until we’re alone together before you try it again.”
Nikolas grinned. “That good?”
“Who needs a lure when you have a partner who gets high on demonic magic?”
He stilled, jerking his head towards the glass. “Come on. Rachel, I know you’re there.”
“Didn’t want to interrupt.” She sauntered into view, knives strapped to her arms and legs, and her bright pink hair tied back.
Huh. Was he bothered by my allusion to my demon mark having a mind of its own, or the word ‘partner’? Maybe I’d been too forward, but I doubted it. If not for the constant interruptions, we’d have consummated our relationship sooner.
“Bye, Devi.” Fiona joined Rachel in the doorway. “Don’t die.”
“I’ll try not to.”
With Rachel and Nikolas directly behind me, I pressed my right palm to the glass. Then I thought clearly—take me to the place where the demon eggs came from.
Babylon’s corridor floated before my eyes. Wrong world. At least it wasn’t projecting Zadok’s tower at me. I pictured Pandemonium’s palace as clearly as possible, but no matter how intently I focused on the image, it refused to appear in the glass.
“I can’t find them,” I said.
“I thought not,” said Nikolas. “There are chambers underneath the palace which aren’t made of demonglass. I think that’s where the remaining vampires must be hiding, and it makes sense that they kept their store of demon eggs there, too. Saphor demons like tunnels and caves.”
“And it explains how they got in without using the gate,” I said, recalling when we’d followed them once. “But obviously, they used a regular portal to do that. And we can’t, because we don’t have contacts on the other side. I mean, aside from that little prick Dienes.”
I’d only left the horned demon alive because he was a source of information. Not a reliable one, but demons in general weren’t given to confiding netherworld secrets.
“Okay, we’ll go into the main palace,” I said. “Ready?”
I pressed my right hand to the demonglass again. My demon mark hummed, and the glass reflected a wide hall. Empty, thank the Divinities. Nikolas rested a hand on my shoulder, Rachel grabbed my other arm, and we passed through the glass surface like stepping through a door.
Pillars supported a high ceiling, all made of demonglass. The reflections made the hall seem twice the size it actually was, while balconies in the back looked out over the rolling rooftops of the city below. A slate grey sky topped the undulating sand-coloured houses, as far as the eye could see.
Rachel hesitated behind me. “You know, maybe this isn’t a good plan. We don’t know what might have moved in here since they left.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But the vampires’ leader and Azurial are both dead. And it’s been a while since the battle. If there’s anyone new in their place, they won’t have the vamps’ loyalty. The survivors, that is.”
“Hmm.” She hung back, biting her lip in an uncharacteristically nervous manner.
Rachel came from this dimension originally, but had never been forthcoming with information about her history, and how she’d ended up coming to Earth. Much less how Nikolas had ended up in contact with Themedes in the first place. Maybe I’d get answers today… assuming nothing waited to kill us here.
In the hall’s centre sat an empty golden throne, made for an arch-demon. Gleaming demonglass pillars flanked it, and faint traces of blood on the floor were the sole indication of the battles which had ravaged this city. Endless reflections pursued us, my aura following me like a second shadow. For some reason, demonglass reflected what regular glass couldn’t—an aura half light, half dark. A split soul—according to Zadok, anyway. In the demon realms, souls were currency. And mine was divided between heaven and hell. I’d planted myself on hell’s side out of necessity, and because there was no place for me amongst the celestials any longer. Didn’t mean I’d forgotten demons were as conniving with each other as they were with everyone else, and their cut-throat world might easily take my life.
“It’s all empty,” Nikolas said. “I’d be able to sense any demonic presence.”
“Let’s head downstairs,” I said. “Damn place is a maze… it’s not like I was observant when we were here last. Since, you know, we were either fighting or running for our lives.”
“The palace is confusing even to those who lived here,” said Nikolas. “But most of it is uninhabited.”
We stepped through one pillar and out of another, into another wide hall decorated opulently. Golden chandeliers dominated the ceiling, while elaborately carved chairs surrounded a table set for a king. Dust covered every surface, and the smell of decay permeated the air.
“How pretentious,” I said. “This place really belonged to one person?”
“His family,” said Nikolas. “There were no other demigods, however. Themedes knew he was dying and had no interest in expending energy seeking out his other offspring.”
“There are others? Might they come here?” I asked warily. It’d solve the leadership issue, but the person who took over would also have to deal with the aftermath of the palace’s previous inhabitants opening a gigantic portal in the courtyard. Not to mention the vampires.
“No more than any other demigod,” he said. “Demons don’t always see ownership in the same way we do. This palace might have belonged to Themedes, but he’d have cast it aside in a heartbeat if a better opportunity presented itself. It also wasn’t originally his, nor was he f
rom this dimension. The hellish dimensions intermingle. Some of them do, anyway.”
But not Babylon. From Nikolas’s own admission, it didn’t used to be possible to summon anything in that realm. Whether that would change after I’d used Zadok’s pentagram to draw the vampire king there remained to be seen.
“So you just stride from one dimension to another? How? Not all demons have your ability.”
“Most lesser demons stay put,” he said. “The more adventurous will leap through any available portal. Your own realm proves that.”
“True.” I continued to walk, my footsteps echoing against the polished floor. “Where’d they get the demonglass to build this, anyway?”
“I never thought to ask,” Nikolas said. “As I said—Themedes wasn’t originally from this dimension. It’s possible the palace was constructed before his time. Demigods might possess some of the powers of our demon parents, but not their longevity. Much of history remains shrouded to us, as it does to other mortals. The arch-demons don’t make a habit of telling us their history unless it comes to boasting about their victories in battle.”
“He knew your name, though,” I said. “When he used to summon you. Right? What was the deal with that?”
“My father settled here, for a time, before I was born. For whatever reason, Themedes once felt it amusing to summon him. He used the name—my family’s true name—and somehow, I was summoned in his place. He never would tell me why.”
“Did you say, true name? You mean Nikolas Castor—”
“It is my name. Demigods have another, one we don’t tell to anyone. Trust has nothing to do with it. It gives one absolute power over the person they summoned.”
“I summoned you,” I pointed out.
“You did,” he acknowledged, “but part of me is tied to my own dimension, and you used an extremely powerful summoning device.”
“Hmm.” I’d also summoned Zadok, but his magic had been bound at the time. “Are you sure you aren’t making excuses to disguise the fact that I might be more powerful than you?”
“I wouldn’t assume anything.”
I suppressed a grin. Okay, I didn’t have the regenerative powers most demigods seemed to have… but who knew, maybe I could steal them, too. Sure, I was borrowing my magic from an arch-demon who didn’t care for my well-being, but I might as well use it to my advantage.
Several empty corridors later and the novelty of the demon realm had thoroughly worn off.
“I suppose being able to fly helped when Themedes or Azurial wanted to go from one side of the palace to the other without taking a car,” I said. “Honestly. We’ll be here all day at this rate. Would you object if I summoned someone from this dimension to ask for directions?”
“Your demon contact?” asked Nikolas, arching a brow.
I shrugged. “He’s a dick, but he also knows stuff and can’t keep his mouth shut. Plus, he was their messenger. He must have had some access to wherever they concocted their plans.”
“Which messenger?” asked Rachel. Her hair had turned dark brown and she’d lost some of the shine she normally wore. The vast corridors made her look smaller than usual, and younger.
“Dienes,” I said. “Lesser demon… he knows all the lower fiends, but also acted as a messenger for the vamps here. If anyone might know where they hid their stash of demon eggs, it’s him.”
“Go on,” Nikolas said. “Summoning a lesser demon won’t cause any harm.”
I searched for a blank spot of wall, and used my celestial light to sketch out a pentagram. Using demonglass as the base made the spell ten times as potent, but the pentagram would keep the little demon caged.
“I summon you, Dienes.”
He appeared with a yelp, jerking away from the pentagram’s edges. Horns topped his small pointed face, while his goblin-like body crouched within the confines of the summoning device I’d conjured.
“Devi,” he said in lower Chthonic, the language most inhabitants of the city spoke. “It’s an honour to serve—”
“Spare me the bullshit. I’d like you to tell me whereabouts Azurial kept his store of pet vampires. It wasn’t inside the palace.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t allowed to hear.”
“You were their messenger. You mean to say they didn’t summon you directly here?”
I turned up the light.
“Ahh!” he yelled. “I—they summoned me into a tunnel. A big one.”
“Told you,” I said to the others. “So it’s underground, huh.”
“Maybe.”
I looked at the others, than back at Dienes. “I doubt anyone would come to clean up if we left you for dead here. It’ll be an unpleasant few hours unless you answer my question. Tell me where the entrance to the underground is.”
He winced. “It’s on the west side of the courtyard.”
“Good enough.”
I snapped my fingers and the pentagram and demon vanished. “He’s probably right,” I told the others. “The portal was set up right there.”
Neither of them argued. This time when I led them through the demonglass, I pictured the palace’s exterior where the courtyard began. I’d entered from the air last time and nearly fallen to my death, so I made sure to clearly imagine walking out of the palace on ground level, not up on the balconies.
No signs of the whirling portal remained. Scorched earth marked the place where the five-pointed pentagram had been. And beyond it, a set of stone stairs led right into the earth. That explained where their army had come from, too. My demon mark tingled. Here we go.
“I know it looks like a trap,” I said. “I think we can expect to find full-grown saphor demons down there at the very least, but they’re oversized maggots. It’s who was in charge of breeding them we want to watch out for.”
Not to mention some vampires would have survived, since the main part of the battle hadn’t taken place in this realm. And they would have gone knowingly along with their master’s plan. This realm’s vampires weren’t innocent, and would be out for blood.
Then I’d spill theirs in turn.
“Let’s get this done,” Nikolas said, and we walked down into the dark.
Chapter 4
My demon mark glowed faintly red in the darkness. That’s new. Was it reacting to a demonic presence, the same way my celestial mark lit up when I was near a powerful demon? Nikolas seemed to know where the demons were, using a similar sort of compass.
Step by step, I was turning into a warlock, or demigod. The one thing that separated me from the others was that my power was on loan, and I had my celestial magic to contend with as well. When it came down to it, I didn’t understand the mechanics of either of them—but then again, neither did the celestials. And the Grade Fours, the ones who were supposedly closest to the divine, were the least careful about the magic they wielded in their hands.
Dark steps descended, seemingly into the depths of the earth. My celestial blade worked as a handy torch, as well as a beacon that pointed me in the likely direction of any nearby demons. I paused, realising Rachel had fallen behind. She shrank away into the darkness, having shapeshifted into a little girl of around four years old.
“Rachel,” I said. “You can stay outside if you like.”
She shuddered. “I was hoping one of you would come to your senses. This is a terrible idea.”
“We knew that when we came here,” I said. “We take out the maggots, we stop any more false bloodstones being planted on Earth.”
She shook her head. “Or we die down here in the dark. Like they did.”
A cold feeling took root inside me, but I squashed it down. “It’ll be fine,” I said. My voice echoed back at me, and my heart began to race faster. This was the first time I’d been in a cave since Rory’s death.
“Wait outside,” Nikolas said to her, in the closest to a comforting tone I’d ever heard from him. “We won’t be long.”
“Damn right we won’t be.” My heart continued to thump against
my ribs. “Give us half an hour, tops.”
I took the lead before I changed my mind. The ceiling scraped the top of my head, indicating the tunnel had narrowed. My throat dried, my pulse pounding in my wrist. I clenched my hands to stop them shaking and carried on walking, trying to shut out the images.
Rory had picked up those demon eggs without knowing what they did. If I’d known… but even the guild hadn’t. Lesser demons wouldn’t have registered on their radar. He never should have died. Didn’t mean it was in any way my fault, but hindsight—
Nikolas put a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped, my head colliding with the ceiling. Ow.
“Are you okay?” asked Nikolas. Even in the pitch dark, he’d picked up that something wasn’t quite right. But anyone would feel edgy in a place like this.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I—”
A deafening boom shook the wall, and pieces of dirt fell onto my head. “Tell me it isn’t caving in.”
“It isn’t,” he said, “but there’s something moving ahead.”
“Something like a giant worm?”
“I would guess so.”
More bits of earth fell, and I moved out of range, as a huge shadow passed along the tunnel in front of us. If I hadn’t known what was coming, I wouldn’t have had a clue what the giant pinkish shape was. But when its head came into view—all mouth, with sharp teeth bared—I unfroze, summoning my celestial blade.
Its shimmering white edges glowed bright in the dim cave, angelic runes etched along its edge. The beast hissed and shrank away, while Nikolas wielded palms of demonic lightning. This was a full-grown saphor demon—bigger than I’d thought they grew. The ancestor of the parasite that lived in the vampires’ heads.
The beast’s teeth snapped, and I danced out of reach, using every inch of space. My blade sliced through its jaw like paper, and then through its thick body, severing it in two. The two halves fell… and began to move again. Twin mouths appeared, one on either end, baring sharp teeth.
“Oh, lovely.”
Nikolas moved forwards, lightning sparking from his hands. Blades of dark-edged demonic energy pierced through the worms, which emitted a high-pitched shrieking noise. This time when they fell, they didn’t get up.
Celestial Ashes: The Celestial Marked Series: Book Three Page 3