“Well, you succeeded. I hope you’re happy.”
“Not in the slightest,” he said. “I’d have preferred to keep you away from here at all, but we don’t always get to choose these things.”
“Maybe I’ll choose my own path instead,” I said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I glanced at him. He was serious. He was actually frightened of what was coming—for both of us. Maybe not in this realm, but the netherworld in general had its eyes on me. And for all his power, demigods didn’t hold any cards in the battle between the Divinities and the arch-demons.
“The angel who blessed you was in the midst of a fall. It echoes your own dilemma, Devi,” whispered a voice from the shadows beside my ear.
I jumped back into Nikolas, my heart pounding. He reached out to steady me. “What is it?”
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
The resounding crash of a wooden door slamming echoed through the hall, and someone screamed.
“Fallen!” screeched a voice.
The sounds of celebrating turned to outraged shrieks. What with the warlocks trampling around, treading on one another’s tails, it was impossible to see what might be attacking.
Nikolas shot me an alarmed look. “Sometimes things escape the catacombs. There’s a reason we never went that route into the celestials’ morgue.”
“It’s not Zadok?” I asked.
“No,” he said grimly. “It’s not Zadok. It’s best for us to leave.”
“But—”
He was already moving, beckoning me to follow. Not keen on getting trampled, I made my way after him into the corridor. From what I remembered, we were still on top of the celestial guild, so Nikolas couldn’t cross over here without materialising in the middle of their headquarters.
At the corridor’s end, Nikolas halted as a bald, naked man-shaped figure crawled across the stone floor in front of us. His face was pale as bone and just as skeletal, like he’d been left in the dark for a very long time. Except his hands were clawed, and his aura… I nearly threw up at the sight of it. Pus yellow and oozing, like an infected wound.
Lightning shot from Nikolas’s hands. The person-shaped… thing recoiled, hissing like a snake, and shrank away into shadows.
“What the hell was that?” I gasped.
“Fallen,” he said grimly.
“Not fallen angels?”
“No. We need to cross back to Earth.” He ran, and I hurried to catch up, trying to push that awful image out of my mind. As we veered around a corner, the shadows split. Dust blew in, scented of decay and brimstone. Damian Greenwood had opened a portal on top of the guild’s west tower, and it looked like we were right beside it. Far too close to the enemy. But I’d rather risk the guild than see another of those awful, broken creatures.
“It’s safe.”
Shadows folded over us. The cold air of the castle was replaced by the milder temperature of Haven City, though the scent of brimstone remained in the ruins of the collapsed tower. Though there was too much debris in the way for anyone to spot us, I felt exposed. Vulnerable. And I couldn’t get the image of that creature out of my head.
I didn’t stop running until I reached Nikolas’s car, where I threw up at the road’s side, my whole body shaking. My demon mark itched, insistently, and the fallen’s aura swam before my eyes.
“Devi!” Nikolas held my hair back, though it was a little late for that.
“What was up with that thing’s aura?” I coughed. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, and that includes those infected vampires.”
“If you’re okay to drive back, I’ll tell you. We shouldn’t stay too close to the guild.”
I climbed into the car, my hands shaking so much, it took several attempts to fasten my seat belt. Nikolas didn’t touch me. After all, I still wore the anti-warlock trap… though come to think of it, it hadn’t reacted when he’d touched my wrist to transfer me his magic. Maybe because the demon mark wasn’t exactly part of me. Oh, who the fuck cares. I wrenched off the anti-warlock trap with my left hand, glancing behind me at the guild as Nikolas put the car in reverse. Auras. Why did it look so familiar—?
Cold horror racked my body. If I’d been driving, I’d have crashed.
“No,” I said. “Celestials. They weren’t—they can’t be.”
Nikolas took in a breath, his hands gripping the steering wheel. “I didn’t want to tell you back then, but the fallen… they weren’t human in the usual sense.”
“Not—not celestials?”
“Close enough,” he said, taking a sharp turn. Apparently I wasn’t the only one whose focus was scattered. “They were once the offspring of humans and angels—the children of Divinities.”
My jaw hit the floor. “What?”
He veered down a side road, heading away from the celestial guild. “They’re sad, dangerous creatures. What magic they inherited keeps them alive, but their power became corrupted when their divine parents fell. They can’t be reasoned with, and they attempt to kill anyone who goes near them. Babylon is their home because it’s a dead end. A realm where, until recently, nothing could be summoned, and nothing could leave.”
“Except you,” I said quietly. “And now Zadok. Does he know? He hinted—he said something about the celestials’ fate on your realm. Was that it?”
“They’re the closest to celestials in our realm, inasmuch as they once bore the powers of the gods. Perhaps they fell as their parents did, perhaps of their own accord. Nobody knows. They’re powerful, and can’t die—not that easily, anyway. The warlocks have a superstition about killing them. Because they’re all that remains of the angels in that realm.”
“And you keep them underground?”
“Demons inhabit the rest of the realm. Besides—it was my father’s single request of me when he left. Keep them contained.”
“Zadok set them loose,” I said. “It was his voice I heard from the shadows right before the attack. He—I think he wanted me to see them.”
“I suspected as much,” he said. “He’s not bound the way he was before. Now he’s won support from amongst my own people… and worse, he knows how to weaken the boundaries of that realm to other nether dimensions.”
“But you—you’re not surprised at what he did. You knew he had free rein to come after me? What does that mean?”
His jaw set. “It means the next time I see my brother, I have to kill him.”
Chapter 8
Despite the upheaval of the day before, I crashed hard that night. Roused from muddled dreams by a knock on my bedroom door, I rolled to the side and grimaced with pain. My whole body ached. I tugged a hand through my tangled hair and glanced at my reflection in the mirror opposite the bed to check I didn’t look as bad as I felt. Nope, I looked even worse. Bruises had formed in places I couldn’t remember being hit. Apparently Nikolas’s regenerative power only worked on life-threatening injuries.
“Devi,” Nikolas said from behind the door. “Javos is asking for you.”
“Oh, shit. Tell me it’s not about the demonglass.” I opened the door to find Nikolas standing outside, arms crossed over his chest.
“I did warn you,” he said, with barely a hint of an apology in his tone.
I groaned. “Tell me I’m at least allowed to eat and shower first.”
He gave me a once-over. “Better make it quick. He’s not in a good mood.”
“In other words, a day ending in ‘y’,” I said to his retreating back.
Nikolas was apparently in a mood, too, though I didn’t blame him considering what’d happened yesterday. I trudged to the en-suite shower, deliberately taking my time. You made a promise. Javos had let me stay here on sufferance, and while I hadn’t moved most of my possessions into this room from my flat, it’d slowly taken on the appearance of ‘home’. My clothes filled the drawers, my weapons were strewn about the floor, and Nikolas had moved the Northern Lights poster to the
wall, the one he knew I liked. Before it’d turned out he knew I’d summoned his brother behind his back. And to top it all, I hadn’t got to see his room yesterday. What a let-down.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t Nikolas who waited for me at the foot of the stairs, but Javos. He wore an oversized check shirt that barely fitted his huge body, and even without my aura-vision potion, his whole being exuded menace.
“I wondered where you were,” Javos said. “Devi, I need your demonglass ability. Come and meet me in the storeroom in twenty minutes.”
Bloody Javos. I had literally asked for it, though. Rolling my eyes after him, I went into the kitchen to scrounge for some food. I’d planned on spending the day working on potential vampire cures. Sure, I’d wanted to test the limits of my powers for weeks, but not as Javos’s lapdog.
“You really offered to help him?” asked Rachel, who sat at the table eating cereal.
“Yep,” I said, helping myself to a bowl. “In exchange for letting the vamps stay here. Can you take over at the lab while I’m gone? I wanted to make some headway today.”
“Sure. The vamps are dead to the world, upstairs. Totally out cold. I’m surprised they didn’t bring coffins in.”
“I’m surprised Javos didn’t toss them out the window.” I munched on my cereal.
“Nikolas managed to distract him by explaining what went down on Babylon. Nice going beating that warlock, by the way.”
“Thanks. Where is Nikolas?”
“Probably trying to talk Javos out of this.”
“They’re both pissed off this morning. To be honest, I’m not thrilled with either of them either.” I put my cereal bowl aside, hearing the thud of Javos’s footsteps in the hall, returning to the storeroom. Glancing at the clock on the oven, I sighed. “Best get this over with.”
Sure enough, I found Javos waiting expectantly beside the demonglass.
“Devi,” he said. “Since you claim to be an expert in travelling via demonglass, I took the liberty of placing some of our remaining demonglass fragments throughout the city. I want you to find them.”
I stared at him. “What? You want me to… you do realise those are demon summoning ingredients, don’t you? You left them lying around town?”
“In strategic locations. Go on.” He jerked his horned head towards the glass. My heart dropped as its surface shimmered, showing me the side of Zadok’s tower again. Nope. Not now. Definitely not now. If Javos found out… oh, who cared. He’d actually left bits of demonglass lying around town as part of some twisted test for me? Had he lost his mind?
One glance at his serious expression told me there was no point in arguing. You asked for this. Holding up my demon-marked hand, I thought as carefully as possible about the demonglass fragments I’d seen Nikolas use in a spell. Then I touched the glass.
And fell. My legs flailed without a surface to land on, my hands grabbing for anything to slow my fall. I managed to grip the edge of a rooftop, digging my fingernails into the gutter. Holy shit. He put it on a roof?
Cursing Javos, I pulled myself over the gutter and onto the solidness of the roof tiles. My body felt like all my cells had been rearranged backwards. I crawled towards the scattered pieces of demonglass, pictured the store room, and pressed my hands to them.
Once again, I fell, this time landing on the carpet of the storeroom besides an impassive-looking Javos.
“You bastard,” I said. “Did you just try to have me killed?”
“You’re wearing Rachel’s shoes, aren’t you? They’d have stopped you injuring yourself.”
He was right. I’d totally forgotten in the shock of falling out of the air. Glaring at him, I brushed dirt from my knees. “I’m supposed to thank you for that?”
“I suspected you’d be able to travel through small fragments of the glass,” he said. “Think about what it means.”
Oh. I can carry it in my pockets. That’s… really handy, actually.
“If you can find all the demonglass I left around the city, you can keep it.”
Seriously? There was bound to be a catch, but getting my own demonglass was too good an opportunity to miss. Gritting my teeth, I pressed my hand to the glass.
By the time I crashed back into the office for the fifth time, my head rung with pain and I wanted to wrap my hands around Javos’s neck and strangle him.
“There,” I said. “Happy?”
“One more stop,” Javos said, with an amused undercurrent to his voice. I’d never seen him in such a good mood. You complete arsehole. “This time, I’d like you to visit a fellow warlock of mine. I’ve entrusted him with one of the few other samples of demonglass in the city, so I’d like to ensure that he isn’t using it to summon anything. Picture a room covered in landscape paintings.”
“And if he’s there?” I rubbed the back of my neck, grimacing.
“You can deal with him. No warlock in this city is more powerful than the ones you’ve faced already.”
That’s promising. “I swear, if this isn’t the last mission—”
“The missions will end when I say so. Unless you’d prefer to hand over your vampire friends to the celestial guild.”
“I’d prefer to kick your teeth in.”
Javos’s aura flared bright orange, and he took a step towards me. Okay, maybe I’d pushed too far this time. I pressed my hands to the demonglass once more, visualising a room of paintings.
I melted out of the wall, into what appeared to be an artist’s studio. A fur-covered man dropped a paintbrush on the floor, rising to his feet. “Get back, demon,” he growled.
He looked like he’d stepped out of an illustration of the word ‘werewolf’, except for the paint all over the edges of his grey fur. A were-warlock who painted landscapes? That was new.
I raised my hands. “I’m not here to harm you—”
He threw the paintbrush. Immediately, it transformed into a sharp instrument. Because of course. Warlocks.
I sidestepped, and the paintbrush hit the wall instead. “What are you?” he roared.
“Nobody of your concern.” I’m going to kill you, Javos.
I grabbed a knife, but he tackled me. The back of my head slammed into the wall, narrowly missing the paintbrush. My demon mark itched insistently, drawing his power into it. He grabbed the scruff of my neck in his furred hand, and I freed my hand, hitting out wildly. My fist connected with his jaw, but there was probably too much fur in the way for him to feel my punch.
I kicked him in the groin instead. He snarled but didn’t collapse like I’d hoped. Twisting my knife hand, he slammed my head against the wall. I saw stars—and the brief control on my demon mark snapped.
The warlock’s power rushed out of the mark, flooding my body. His grip slackened and he stepped back, confusion flashing across his features. Struggling for breath, I looked down. My body had vanished.
He can turn invisible? Apparently so.
Raising my hand, I struck him on the temple with my knife hilt. He went down, hard. Then I ran back to the demonglass. Or rather, tripped over my own invisible shoelace and fell through the glass. The warlocks’ storeroom and Javos appeared. My body didn’t. Oh hell. How much power had I accidentally borrowed?
Javos looked in my direction, no surprise evident on his face. “Just draw the power back into your mark. You’ll need it later.”
I did as he said, willing the demonic power to leave my body and withdraw into the mark. My body flickered back into view. “You did that on purpose.”
“It worked. You pass.”
I bit down furious words, running a hand over the back of my head where I’d hit the wall. I’d have a hell of a bruise, but I didn’t think I had a concussion. Demons above and below. He couldn’t let me take the warlock’s power in an honest and fair way. Nope, he’d had to make a song and dance of it.
“What exactly would you have done if I’d had to kill the guy?” I asked. “This isn’t Babylon. I might get arrested here.”
“I assumed
you’d handle it in the appropriate way. Now for our errand.”
“What?” I paused, inches from the demonglass. “That wasn’t it?”
“No, it wasn’t.” He gave me an assessing look. “I think you’re ready. I want you to spy on someone for me.”
“Who?” I asked warily.
“The celestial guild.” He gave me a truly demonic grin. “I took the liberty of setting up a link while they were preoccupied with the aftermath of the attack.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
His eyes gleamed like lava. Oh hell. He was very definitely not kidding. I’d get worse than a were-warlock with a deadly paintbrush on my tail if I sneaked in there.
“Just how did you get it into the guild without being detected?”
“Because the guild is distracted,” he said. “Their inspector is, anyway. You’ve been close to him before, correct?”
“If you’re asking me to assassinate him, just say it. And remember the celestials will trace it right back to you.”
Sure, I wanted him gone, but Inspector Deacon was merely a symptom of the madness infecting the celestial guild. Their crusade against vampires wouldn’t end with his death.
“No,” he said. “I heard a rumour I’d like confirmed.”
“You know they’ll kill me on sight,” I said. “And if I use my demon power, I’m contributing towards the arch-demons winning the war.”
“It looks like events are heading that way regardless.” He moved to the sheet of glass and tapped it with his hand. “Take a look and see if you change your mind.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t. I didn’t bargain with you to put my life, and the safety of everyone into this city at risk. I don’t care if you think you’ll survive the fallout if they declare war—I won’t.”
“Devina, you stubborn human, I’m not asking you to risk anything more than a few minutes of your time. You forget which power you now wield.”
“Invisibility,” I said. “You know it’s not permanent, right? I can’t accurately measure how much I took.” I closed my mouth as the demonglass flickered, showing a desk… a very familiar desk. “You booby-trapped the inspector’s office?”
Celestial Ashes: The Celestial Marked Series: Book Three Page 7