Celestial Ashes: The Celestial Marked Series: Book Three

by Adams, Emma L.

  Inspector Angler approached from the direction of the portal. “Devi Lawson,” he said. “This is your end.”

  He raised a hand, and my demon mark ignited. Power rushed from me to him—all the magic I’d taken from the warlocks in the castle. His aura was bright with power. He’d been feeding on the portal. Even my celestial flame seemed dim by comparison. Dammit. I was so close.

  Shadows slammed into him on either side, abruptly cutting off his attack. Zadok appeared in front of the tower, wings spread wide like his brother’s. They might have been twins—angels of destruction, cloaked in shadows. Bat demons flew in Zadok’s wake, dive-bombing the battlefield.

  Raging light tore strips in the universe, the roaring wind threatening to rip me out of this world with every step, but I took my chance to run for the tower, press my hands to the demonglass and vividly pictured the room inside.

  A barrier slammed into me, launching me into the air. I landed on my feet and tried again. Same result. She’d sealed the place, and it wasn’t like I could ask Zadok. I glanced behind me and saw the vampire king holding his limp body, his neck snapped. Oh hell.

  Skirting the tower, I searched for the place Zadok had opened the door last time. My vision had been blurred due to my injury, but his shadow power concealed things. Wait. I switched on my celestial light, willing it to dispel the shadows.

  Aha. A door lay hidden in shadow. Had Zadok left it for me?

  The handle turned beneath my grip. I think he did.

  I didn’t know if he was still alive back there. But I wouldn’t get another chance. Quickly, I slipped into the tower. A spiralling staircase was all that awaited. I’d never been in this part before. Shadows filled most of the space, and above all—a pulsating dark aura that wasn’t entirely masked by the portal outside.

  The door slammed behind me.

  “Hello, Devi,” snarled Abyss. “It’s time for you to die.”

  Chapter 24

  I climbed the stairs, towards the voice. She stood in the demonglass room, or lab, I’d been in before. Her wings were bat-like, but the real surprise was her face. She looked hardly a day over twenty, her tanned features glowing with youth. Her golden eyes glittered, while her slim body was cloaked in golden armour. But for all that, here she was, hiding from the battlefield.

  “You can’t hide forever,” I told her. “Sooner or later, your weakness will make it into this room. I guarantee it.”

  “Who said anything about weakness? This world is mine, and yours will soon join it.”

  “Scary words from someone too afraid to claim her prize.” I tilted my head, using my celestial vision to see her aura. Dark, edged in red… no hints at her power, aside from shapeshifting. As an arch-demon, she’d have more than one. She’d also be near-impossible to kill, unlike Themedes. And taking her life wouldn’t save my world. It was too late for that.

  I hadn’t come here to take her life, but to bargain.

  “I spoke to Lythocrax,” I said. “I assume you did, once. Guess he’s hiding for his own reasons.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you want from me or do I have to start making you scream?” she enquired.

  “You know what I want. This war needs to stop. It’s not achieving anything. I know the gods find it amusing, but frankly I think they’re arrogant shits who deserved to fall. You probably agree with me on that, right?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You presume to speak of gods as though they exist on the same sphere as us.”

  “You’d know,” I said. “You were one. And honestly, this is all a sham. I don’t particularly want to kill you. I will if I have to, but I think they probably want that. They’d like to watch you smite me, too. Because they obviously have nothing better to do with their time.”

  She rose to her feet, her aura surging. “You might be able to burn out any other demon, but I’m of a race beyond yours, and beyond the pitiful creatures that carry the divine power. They will all expire, and become fallen like the others in time.”

  “The celestials? I don’t know, you don’t really give humans enough credit. I can do this.” I raised my left hand and conjured a light. “And they can’t stop me. Gods can make mistakes without falling.”

  “You don’t know a thing,” she said. “You’re nothing more than a pathetic human messing with forces far beyond her station. This battle will end, and you will die.”

  The area around us warped as she transformed. Wings unfurled behind her back, spanning the width of the room, while her body turned from human to fallen angel—huge, devastating, and cloaked in deadly power.

  I raised my hands, summoning divine and celestial fire. It was like holding a candle in front of an inferno. But I stared her out, willing her power to rush over to me. It didn’t… but a surge of energy gripped my right hand. The demons outside. I can reach them. And…

  I could absorb strength from the portal, too.

  Earth was my realm, the source of my power. Light and dark shimmered between my hands, forming a blade of light and darkness both.

  “What—?” She glared. “You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

  “You don’t know what hell I walked through to get these powers,” I said. “You don’t know who I am—and what this world is capable of being. And I will not stand by and let my realm die.”

  The ceiling above cracked under the power pulsating from my blade. She hissed, her wings pulling in, and it hit me that she’d been holding back, keeping her power contained in this room. I hadn’t.

  “STOP THAT.”

  Her voice boomed and my body left the ground, slammed into the wall. A wall that was cracking, light seeping in from outside. Not from this realm or even the portal, but from all three worlds at once. She hissed and stepped back, her gaze turned away. Babylon flickered to Pandemonium and then to Earth, and she roared in fury, turning to human size. Her aura shrank as light from our sky skimmed across her.

  Her weakness… she couldn’t look at the sunlight.

  “Seriously?” I raised an eyebrow. I held the blade but didn’t use it. “That’s your—wait. The vampires. You wanted their powers. But Inspector Angler could absorb them… you wanted to become him.”

  That was why she’d worked with him. And with Lythocrax.

  “I almost did.” Her lip curled. “But I can’t take on another’s power when I transform. Not yet.” She stared at me. “Kill me, and let me be reborn as what I truly am.”

  “Oh, no.” I lowered the blade. “You really think the Divinities will gift you with a body which can walk in the sunlight? They don’t give a shit. Besides, you can regenerate without their help, right?”

  “No,” she said. “We can regenerate, but we’re reborn as we were before. Only Divinities can truly raise someone as a new being, when the world is reset and reborn as what it may truly be. Except for him.”

  “The end of days,” I said. “That’s what this is all about? Lythocrax is using you, Abyss. He, and the Divinities, won’t give you what you want.”

  “They will,” she said. “They might reign in their heavens and cast me down, but I remember them, and they will face retribution.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you, it won’t work.” The blade vanished from my hands. “You killed and hurt a lot of people, and permanently damaged my home. I won’t give you what you want, Abyss. If you want someone to come and finish you off, you’re welcome to it. It’s not like there’s any shortage of demon realms to take over.”

  She shook her head, her face pinching. “Even if I did—it’s too late. Lythocrax’s puppet has gained too much of the gods’ powers.”

  “It’s his own fault,” I said, though my heart sank. I’d hoped that closing the portal would shut off Inspector Angler’s power, like it would the false Emarial.

  She gave me a grim smile. “Now you know how it feels to be set against the will of the gods.”

  “It’s not the gods, it’s a sad, lonely arch-demon who knows I can finish him off if
I put my mind to it.”

  Power continued to spiral through me, while the demonglass tower cracked, bits of the wall fragmenting. She made no move to stop it. The portal shrank as the tower fell, even as my body trembled under the onslaught of power. I wasn’t supposed to take in so much. Light blurred my vision, a familiar light. Death…

  Wait.

  I took a step back, scanning the portal for Inspector Angler. He could absorb the portal’s magic, too, and if it was half as overwhelming to him as it was to me… I know how to kill him.

  I pushed my magic outwards, aiming at him. I might not be able to see him from here, but I knew he’d be standing right in the middle of the portal, feeding on its power. But not all of it. Too much power and he’d burn out, even with the arch-demon raising him from death every time he fell.

  I pushed all my power, all the raging magic in my demon mark into him.

  He couldn’t stop it. The mark would absorb it all, whether he liked it or not. Power spiralled outwards, threads of lightning and fireballs rising to the sky. The portal shrank further, and the blurred shape of Pandemonium’s palace and Haven City’s streets disappeared, turning to Babylon’s wasteland. The former inspector staggered towards me with murder in his eyes, but he’d taken in too much. Far too much.

  His body ignited. A scream shook the heavens, and the portal shrank around him, swallowing him up. One crack, and all was silent.

  The wasteland was all that remained. The other realms, cut off. Earth. I only hoped I hadn’t been too late to stop the demons from destroying the city. Emarial and Nikolas had disappeared, too, forced back from the explosion as the tower had cracked and the portal had shrunk around it.

  But part of it remained. I sensed it, glowing at the foot of the tower.

  “Come on,” I told the arch-demon. “If you want a realm to rule over, get in that portal. Pandemonium seems your kind of place. I’ll let you have it. It makes no difference to me.”

  “You have no authority to order me around.” She stood back beneath a heap of debris, as though she expected Earth’s sun to reappear and scorch her.

  “Tough,” I said. “Don’t think you can overturn the will of the gods, Abyss. It’s hopeless. They’re not coming to help you.”

  “You did it,” she snarled.

  I shrugged. “Just come with me and see. You never know. It’s that or get torn apart by the fallen.” I hadn’t seen them on the battlefield, but they’d be free now. If Zadok or the shadow arch-demon had a problem with that, they’d have to take it up with me.

  “Fallen,” she hissed. “Abominations.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  I approached the portal. It’d shrunk to pentagram-sized, small enough for me to close. But first, I waited until Abyss was right behind me, her warlock disguise surprisingly fragile-looking. The instant we reappeared on Pandemonium, she backed into the shadows, hissing in fury. Even the high walls of the palace didn’t keep out the sun. The demonglass reflected beams across the palace ruins, but the tunnels remained as dark as ever.

  “See?” I indicated the tunnels. “There’s a whole world down there. Go right ahead and claim it.”

  She tilted her head. “You’re not going to kill me.”

  “We both know I don’t get to pick when you finally die, and I have places to be,” I told her. “The gods won’t get their great performance from me. They’ve lost.”

  “This realm,” she said. “I’ve seen worse. The sun can be taken care of.” She indicated the high walls.

  “Good,” I said. “If you need to speak to me… find the demon called Dienes. He’s learnt a lesson or two about loyalty. But I swear to you, if you come after Earth again, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

  “That seems a fair deal,” she said.

  “One last thing,” I added. “Fiona. Azurial’s bound to her. His soul is, anyway. I want his soul ripped away from hers and banished to hell.”

  “The Divinities alone have the power to do that,” she said. “A soul cannot be removed.”

  Dammit. I’d left Fiona on the battlefield, with no guarantee she’d even make it out alive. But there was no way this arch-demon could help me.

  I backed towards the portal, panic kicking in. Jumping through, I landed on Babylon—then Earth. Unlike the other two realms, it had no demonglass, so the portal had burned to nothing more than the outline of a pentagram beside the guild’s ruins. A celestial pentagram.

  Oh shit. Farrell. He’d believed he was following someone’s orders. I’d bet my celestial blade he’d done it. He deserved what he got.

  Even without the portal’s presence, the war raged on. Bodies of warlocks, celestials, vampires, humans, littered the street. Instinctively, I tapped into my demon mark for guidance, searching for Azurial’s presence. Nothing answered.

  Worry brewed in my chest. I’d seen Nikolas fighting Emarial—the false demigod—and I’d seen the vampire king kill Zadok. Maybe permanently. But there was no sign of any of them. I followed the sounds of battle, my feet pounding against the tarmac.

  Around the corner from the guild, vampires warred with warlocks. Power rushed into my mark, so suddenly I skidded to a halt. What…?

  They’d advanced to Grade Three. The virus had upgraded, and was now the same level as demigod magic—demon magic. The same magic my mark fed on.

  I raised a hand and absorbed the vampire’s magic, redirecting it into the air.

  “Stop!” I yelled at the warlocks. “Stop—I can take the vampires’ power from them. I can stop this!”

  Finally.

  Power surged through me, and the vampires dropped back as they realised what I’d done. I’d drained the demonic influence—Abyss’s influence—right out of them. Whatever remained—free will or not—compelled them to stop fighting. Some of them. Others continued, driven into a frenzy by the smell of blood in the air—but their eyes had lost that flat blackness of the demon’s spell.

  Fiona.

  I didn’t want to kill my best friend. There must be another way.

  “Stop!” I yelled again. The warlocks gradually began to realise their enemies weren’t fighting back any longer. Javos stopped, abruptly, and yelled at them to halt. Thanks for that.

  At his side, I saw Rachel, covered in blood but alive. But no sign of the others.

  Except…

  Apart from the fighters, Clover stood glowing with angelic light. In her arms was Fiona.

  I ran to her, heedless of the others, and skidded to a halt in front of her.

  “Clover,” I said. “What happened to her?”

  “I temporarily shut down the demigod’s influence,” she said. “My magic—isn’t what it was.”

  “You’re not… human.” I’d known… somehow, on some level, but seeing her etched in light made the distinction unmistakable. But she didn’t look like the illusion of the angel I’d seen.

  “I was reborn into this body,” she explained. “And I did the best with what I had, but I’m not—I’m no true angel. In celestial terms, I’d be Grade Three or lower.”

  “You have angelic power,” I said. “Can you—can you use it to help Fiona? She has Azurial’s soul bound to hers, and he wants me dead. The celestials, too.”

  Maybe this was how he’d planned to infiltrate our realm after all.

  “I’ll see what I can do. I can’t take away someone’s magic, but it’s possible for me to neutralise it.” Her face was set. “This would shorten my own lifespan, but I’ve lingered here long enough. I believe… I don’t remember my life before this one, but I feel that I knew… I knew that this realm would soon be targeted, and I came here in order to prevent exactly this.”

  “Wait—what?” I gaped at her. “Since when could angels be reborn as humans?”

  “Since when could Divinities bring humans back from death?” she answered. “We make the most of the powers we have, whether we chose them or not. And I choose this.”

  Fiona gasped. Fire poured from her hands, and a s
cream rang in my head. The magic rushed into my demon mark immediately, and I gritted my teeth, staggering backwards. Azurial’s magic dissipated, and there was another flash of light.

  Golden light enveloped Fiona’s body, and her aura… changed. Light replaced the dark, whiteness smothered the burning orange of Azurial’s presence, and her eyes flew open.

  “Am I in heaven?” she asked.

  I smothered a laugh. “Nope. You’re not dead.” I looked questioningly at Clover. “Where—where did he go?”

  “The Divinities alone know where,” she said matter-of-factly. “Fiona, you’re freed from the demon, but you’re likely to have side effects. You wear his mark, though he lives no longer.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I always wanted to be a badass like Devi. Can I breathe fire?”

  “If you can, let’s hope you can keep it under control this time,” I said. “Also, half of what I did was sheer luck.”

  “You saved three worlds from Armageddon,” she said. “I mean—I assume that’s what happened.”

  “More or less.” I turned to Clover. “You must have really wanted to come and save Earth to sit through decades of working that close to the inspector.”

  “Why do you think I retired early?”

  Fiona laughed. “You really are an angel, aren’t you? I actually got to meet one.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled at her. “You did. And we won. It’s over.”

  A shadow passed over Clover’s face. “It’s not going to stay this way,” she said quietly. “On the surface it looks the same, but the cracks between realms are weakening. Babylon… used to be the buffer, between Earth and the nether realms. That realm is where I died, and was reborn. The celestials made a deal with the angels to protect any other realms from falling. So the Divinities left, their offspring were trapped, and their world fell into ruin. But yours survived.”

  “And you came back.”

  “I came back to fight with my comrades against the netherworld again. The Divinities aren’t what they used to be. I fear for what it means for the future… now that the link with the nether realms is no longer secure. That realm might be benign in comparison to some of the terrible dangers that lurk on the other side.”