Celestial Ashes: The Celestial Marked Series: Book Three

by Adams, Emma L.

  “You were…”

  “Azurial.” Rachel backed up, holding a knife. “Don’t move.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “It’s really her this time. Did that happen when she lost control before?”

  “No,” Rachel said. “Well, yeah, but she didn’t speak like him.”

  “I lost control again?” asked Fiona.

  “Worse,” I said. “You spoke like—” I cut off my words. Telling her the demigod from her nightmares might be living in her head… damn. I hadn’t the fortitude for this conversation, not after the day I’d had already.

  Rachel didn’t move. “Prove it’s actually you.”

  “What…?” Fiona looked between us in confusion. “You’re all wet, Devi. And freezing. Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head. “No. We were lucky. But Babylon’s a mess, and… Rachel, put down the knife. It’s her.” I gave her a look telling her to pick up the subject later when Fiona was out of the room. She’d gone into hysterics at the mention of Azurial’s name for a while after her kidnapping.

  And it was clear he’d done worse than kidnap her. From beyond the grave, apparently. Impossible.

  Rachel gave me a suspicious look. “I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, Devi, but you can’t keep someone like her here and not expect to draw attention. Even more than the vampires.”

  And she left the room, presumably to change out of her bloodstained clothes. I needed to do the same, but Fiona’s dilemma was paramount.

  “I’m okay,” Fiona said. “Except I’m missing a few memories.”

  “Shit.” I walked around the living room, looking for anything out of place. I doubted Nikolas would have left anything lying around which could backfire, but I still checked. All the bottles containing ingredients were sealed, and so were the books.

  “Okay.” I breathed out a little. “How many memories are you missing?” I asked Fiona.

  “A couple of minutes. Nothing else.”

  “Then how did he know I was coming back?”

  “How did who know?”

  I’d sworn not to lie to her again, but given the trauma of her experience with Azurial… I needed to check it was even possible for deceased demigods to take up residence in someone’s head before I sent her into a panic.

  Nikolas chose that moment to materialise behind me, bringing a freezing-cold breeze from Babylon along with him.

  “That was fast,” I said. “You flew, didn’t you?”

  His wings disappeared. “Your ability would have made it easier.” He frowned, his gaze immediately going to the burn marks on the walls. “Did Fiona—”

  “Yeah. Again. We’re okay now.”

  “No, we’re not,” Fiona snapped. “Devi’s not telling me something. What did I do, start speaking in tongues? I know I attacked you.”

  “She—you weren’t you, Fiona,” I said to her. “You were…” Seven hells, how was it even possible? “Azurial.”

  “No.” She sank back, pressing her palms into her eyes. “No. No…”

  “You’re certain?” Nikolas asked.

  “It sure sounded like him.”

  Fiona sank to the floor. “No. I’m not possessed by that. I can’t be. You said demons can’t do that!”

  “They can’t,” I said. “And that’s why I didn’t tell you. I know those TV shows have people being possessed by demons, but it’s not—the most they can do is put ideas into your head. Even incubi and that type of demon can’t pass on their powers to a human. Unless you can remember Azurial doing anything else to you when he captured you? Aside from the vampire bite?”

  She shook her head and moaned into her hands. “No. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have a demon mark,” Nikolas added. “If it’s more than the vampire virus… I need to look into this.”

  Fiona whimpered. “He’s going to kill me. He has my soul.”

  “Soul.” Nikolas’s gaze snapped onto her. “That must be—but it’s incredibly rare, and not at all stable.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “His soul’s attached to hers,” he said. “Demigods… the reason we’re hard to kill is because our souls are half-arch-demon. Arch-demon souls keep regenerating if they’re killed. So we have the same ability, to some extent. Attaching part of one’s soul to a person… I’d say it isn’t possible, but Azurial was working with the former inspector, who bore a demon mark. He could steal abilities from others, including those parasite demons.”

  “But they’re less than Grade One,” I said.

  “Yes, but the way the saphor demon virus works is by attaching a piece of their consciousness to a person. It’s the only ability that matches. If someone gets bitten, part of the demon’s soul is transferred over that way.”

  “So the vampire king bit Fiona, and transferred… Azurial’s soul over?” My head swum. Fiona’s face was chalk white and she looked ready to pass out.

  “A small piece of his soul,” Nikolas said. “Otherwise there’d be nothing of Fiona left.”

  “The fucker,” I said quietly. “How do you get a soul out of a person?”

  “You don’t,” said Fiona. “I don’t know why he did it. Maybe he knew you’d kill him.”

  “No, he wanted to screw with us,” I said. “Unless he was being influenced… unless the arch-demon behind all this planned it that way. The same side has a new demigod. I’m starting to get the impression someone wants to stack the playing field against us.”

  “That’s how arch-demons work,” Nikolas said. “But you forget… any of them could reset the playing field any time they wanted to. They can kill as easily as they revive, take powers away as swiftly as they are granted. The humans who foolishly serve them will meet a terrible end one way or another.”

  Including the celestials. Didn’t I know it. One battle won, and yet it felt more like a defeat than a victory. All I’d accomplished was a near-drowning and giving Zadok another opportunity to get under my skin. And now Fiona… dammit.

  I scrubbed a hand through my hair, grimacing when my fingers snagged on matted curls. “I need to change, get a shower, and figure out how the hell to resolve this one.”

  And we hadn’t even started to tackle the vampire problem yet. At this point, if the vampire queen showed up, I’d shove her through a portal into Pandemonium and let her fight it out with Emarial.

  With the vamps blissfully napping upstairs, no lab to speak of and the knowledge that nobody had a cure, we had very little to go by. Fiona didn’t remember any more of what’d transpired since we’d left, not to mention her ordeal in Pandemonium. Which meant our next logical step was to go back there, not knowing what might be on the other side.

  Being one step behind the enemy was wearing very thin. I was on the brink of marching right to the arch-demons myself and demanding answers. Pity I didn’t know the name of the realm I’d been in when the arch-demon had first marked me, and it might not be the fallen Divinity’s original realm either. The generic wasteland description matched a hundred desolate realms ravaged by demons. Even if I wanted to meet the arch-demon who’d ‘made’ me, I didn’t even know where to start.

  After showering and changing, I returned downstairs to find someone had ordered takeout and the others had gathered in the living room around the demonglass I’d scattered on the carpet. I joined Nikolas on the sofa and helped myself to a plate of takeaway pizza, thanking the Divinities for small mercies. Nikolas himself held a book in one hand, one of the demonic tomes he kept on the shelves. It was in a language I couldn’t read. I never did get the hang of demonic languages, even if I knew how to speak a few.

  I recognised one word though… soul.

  Fiona sat on the floor, her back to the sofa, typing on her phone. Possibly telling her family she was possessed by a demon. Or not. They didn’t even know how deep in the netherworld we were involved, let alone the most recent shit show.

  “You okay?” I said, leaning closer to her.

  “I’m on DivinityWatch,”
she mumbled. “I know you think it’s stupid, but it helps. There are other humans out there… people who think this is crazy, but are coming up with ways of coping.”

  “No, it’s good.”

  “You might want to check it out.” She held up her screen. My own face covered it… on a wanted poster, photographed at the guild. Wanted for colluding with demons.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “The inspector’s walking around with an arch-demon’s mark completely unchallenged, and I’m the one they put an arrest warrant out for?”

  “He must have worked out you went into the guild,” Nikolas said.

  “Damian told him.” I groaned. “Obviously. I don’t regret telling him to fuck off, but even DivinityWatch is against me?”

  “Actually, they’re calling you a hero,” Fiona said. “They’re saying the guild are corrupt.”

  “Wait—they believe you?”

  “Some do. They’ve started to respond,” she said. “The celestials—I don’t know what he did with the Grade Fours, but the others have started questioning his orders. He keeps sending them to round up vampires. I put out the message that they’re sentencing innocent people to death, and I think the celestials might have helped the vamps escape.”

  “No way.”

  “Apparently.”

  I blinked. “That… sounds too good to be true. I know not everyone blindly follows his orders, but the Grade Fours do, and they can execute any of us in a heartbeat. But I don’t know whereabouts they are.”

  “Good question,” Fiona said.

  And not one I wanted the answer to. If the arch-demon turned them, they’ll be more deadly even than the infected vampires.

  “How many Grade Fours are there?” asked Nikolas.

  “Maybe a dozen,” I said. “Enough to kill a hundred vamps, anyway. Why?”

  “I’m trying to work out how big the enemy’s forces are,” he said. “All the enemies, not necessarily the ones on the same side. Pandemonium lost a lot of their vampires in the fighting. Even when they attacked Babylon, they sent mostly demons. I didn’t see any vampires at all.”

  “Hmm.” I frowned. “I don’t know. Does DivinityWatch have any clues about whether the inspector’s gathering any more vamps, aside from the celestial ones?”

  “No, they’re mostly repeating what Rachel and I told them,” Fiona said. “The celestials are compromised. Every vampire or human who was bitten is in danger.” Her voice wobbled. “And the inspector’s the villain. But as I said—there are actual pictures of people helping vampires. They’re not all evil.”

  “Good.” I closed my eyes. “Okay. So assuming some of the celestials will stand against the others… I don’t know what they’ll do when the truth comes out. It depends how deep under the influence the inspector is. If he realises he’s creating an army of celestial vampires on the orders of a Divinity, or if the mark is actually controlling him. Like… like the virus.”

  “Most likely, he believes he’s doing the right thing,” Nikolas said. “If he’s like the vampire queen, following the enemy’s orders without realising they’re intended to wipe his own people out… they’ll start a war without needing to lift a finger. If the celestials destroy one another, the demons need not be involved at all.”

  “Then we need to get a warning to the Grade Fours,” I said. “That’s what we should have done from the start, but they have an arrest warrant out for me, and heaven knows what’ll happen if they’re actually fully complicit in this. If they are, we’re outnumbered.”

  “I don’t think they are,” Rachel said. “But I’d hold off on going near them until we have the full picture.”

  “Damian’s definitely complicit,” I said. “He set up the portal. Which I need to close, but you know, there’s a sleeping army of celestial vampires on top of it. And Pandemonium on the other side. If Emarial has the same ability to use fire to travel between realms as her brother did…”

  “Strange how he never used it,” said Rachel. “I mean, he tried to, but once the vampire king dude stepped in, he stopped his whole conquering Earth plan.”

  “Because he didn’t need it any longer,” I said. “None of them is acting under their own power. They’ve all signed over their souls to hell.”

  “Is it possible to repair the damage to a soul?” Fiona asked tentatively.

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking of the celestials. Divine magic didn’t repair. It only destroyed. “But really, the Divinities alone care about the state of your soul, and from what I hear, they’re not exactly reliable anyway.”

  They’re just as likely to fall as anyone. They were scared not for their souls but for their lives. And in the end, coming out of this with my soul intact was meaningless if everyone was killed. A pure soul was also a dead soul.

  Nikolas pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Javos is calling me,” he said.

  He left the room. Fiona looked up at me. “I’ll share the truth on DivinityWatch, for what it’s worth. They’re on your side, Devi.”

  “Good, because all we have are the four of us and six sleepy vampires. Wonder what Javos wants.”

  Nikolas came back into the room, his expression incandescent with rage. “The celestial Grade Fours have made a list of warlocks suspected of bargaining with hell. They’re planning to arrest us all—or declare war.”

  Chapter 15

  “What—they’re going to Javos’s place?” I asked. “Do they have a death wish?”

  “Apparently,” he said. “Javos said that according to our back channels, they’re planning a raid on the Harpy’s Nest tonight. This will end in bloodshed, make no mistake.”

  I swore. “Do they not know they’re taking the orders of a demon? Has any one of them actually set foot in the guild to check the person giving them orders is actually who they think he is?”

  Of course they wouldn’t. Because any excuse to make trouble for the preternaturals was acceptable, and they’d never believe the truth.

  I looked at him. “There’s no chance of negotiation. We’re in an open conflict with a demonic dimension and the Grade Four celestial soldiers are on the wrong side. I need to take them proof that the person they’re working for is on the enemy’s side.”

  “You want to talk to them?” Scepticism tinged his voice. “Has that ever worked before? They can see your aura, can’t they?”

  “Yes, they can. But they can also see the inspector’s, which means they can’t have actually spoken to him in person recently. Unless the enemy got them, too. And to be honest, I wouldn’t notice if they did.”

  I wouldn’t forget what Farrell had done to the celestial vampires. They were unrepentant murderers without a conscience, believing they were carrying out the divine will of the Divinities.

  “Then what do we do? Kill them?” asked Rachel.

  Warlocks. “I don’t think that’s the answer,” I said. “They’re the strongest celestials here. If this realm is invaded, they’re the last line of defence. If they and the warlocks destroy one another, the demons will have an open shot at the city.”

  “They also want you dead, Devi.” Nikolas scowled.

  “There is that. But if we prove the inspector’s evil…” I trailed off. No camera could capture a person’s aura. We’d need a face-to-face confrontation to stand a chance of convincing them that they followed the orders of a traitor.

  “They’re not the type who’d take your word for it,” Rachel said.

  I bit my lip. “Let me think… Rachel, can I borrow your power again?”

  “Oh, here we go.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I go in there as a regular celestial. Better—I find some of the ones who helped the vampires, and go in there as a team to talk to them. We work out a way of avoiding violence, gently break it to them that their boss is a murderer, and march on the celestial guild. If we take out the inspector, it’ll slow the demons down, if nothing else.”

  “But what if they’re under the arch-demon’s control, t
oo?”

  “I don’t think they are,” I said. “They haven’t taken the so-called cure. If they did, there’s a good chance they’ll die. Most don’t survive, do they? So maybe… maybe the arch-demon wanted to keep them alive on purpose, with their magic intact.”

  “But the inspector isn’t,” Rachel said. “He’s marked.”

  “That’s the point I was making,” I said. “Grade Four celestials can see auras. We need to show them, by taking them to the guild in person.”

  “They’ll see you coming,” Nikolas said. “Certainly with this arrest warrant out. And their portal might bring any manner of demons over to fight on their side.”

  “True.” I paused. “Hang on a second. Do you still have that pentagram?”

  “You mean, Zadok’s?” Wariness flitted across his face. “Why?”

  “The inspector is a demon by definition now,” I said. “Might we theoretically use the pentagram to summon him? I know his name. That’s all you need, right? We summon him directly to the celestials, and there’s no way they’ll be able to deny what he is.”

  Nikolas’s mouth tightened. “Bringing that pentagram out risks the enemy getting hold of it again.”

  “The celestials already have their own active pentagram,” I said. “The Grade Fours don’t know what they’re up against, and I doubt they’ll agree to follow me over to the guild without a fuss. I could use demonglass to take them there myself, but I doubt I can carry all of them at once. Besides, they’re likely to attack the second I show up, and if I leave a trail of bodies behind me, they won’t care what I have to say. We need to back them into a corner the same way they did to me. Give them proof. If the inspector breaks out of the pentagram, well, there are a dozen Grade Four celestials whose powers are made to take out demons. Not to mention me.”

  Nikolas listened to my words in silence. Then he nodded slowly. “I may be able to doctor the pentagram so that it can only be used once,” he said. “But it’ll take several minutes, and it’s risky using it either way.”

  “What—seriously? You can do that?”

  “You forget my brother and myself came from the same place, as much as he’d like to believe he knows more than I do about the netherworld’s workings.” He smiled grimly. “I’m just a little more restrained in how I go about using that knowledge.”