The man shook his head. “I runed them. They’ll be asleep until morning.”
“Oh. Well. Good. So… what do I have to do to show you guys I’m not on the dark side?”
“I’m not sure. End the threat, I guess.” I blinked at him.
“You want me to cast a whole army of Demons back to hell to prove I didn’t bring them here? I’ve been fighting them alongside you ever since I discovered them. They directly threatened me. And branded me with this mark against my will.”
He nodded stoically, seeming to slowly regain his confidence. “Yet your parents are the reason they have come. With them dead, it is now your issue. You cannot accept the gift of the Armory yet ignore the consequences of ownership. It’s on you. Now, give me back the Grace.”
His form visibly rippled with power. “Cool it, feathers. I’m not giving you anything until I understand the whole picture, and your promise that Eae and your brothers will also stay off my jock.”
The scent of burnt sulfur abruptly filled my nostrils, my only warning of a Demon’s presence. Before I could react, a form suddenly materialized behind the Nephilim. “Sweet dreams, little Nephilim.” The boy began to react, but without his Grace he was too slow. Inky black Demonic claws decapitated him right before my eyes, showering me in his half-holy blood, which I somehow had time to realize didn’t look or feel any different than regular blood, which was slightly disappointing. Othello grabbed my shirt and yanked me backwards just as a second claw swiped at me, raking my torso. Her grab saved my chest from becoming sliced lunchmeat, but it still did a fair amount of damage, causing me to gasp in only near fatal pain. The Demon frowned at his misfortune. “Lucky you have her to save your pathetic hide. Such a lovely hide. It will look splendid as a throw rug.”
I ignored his threat, clutching the Grace against my lacerated chest, scared that I might feel something that was supposed to stay on the inside. Feathers covered his frame like a raven, and beady black eyes assessed me hungrily. He even sported a vibrant beak that was stained with blood from a recent meal. Or permanently stained from a life of feasting on blood. “You lied. There was no vampire. It was a trap to lure me into a confrontation with the Nephilim. Why? If he had killed me, how would you get your precious key?” I asked, confused.
The Demon blinked at me, a look of utter confusion painting his features for half a second. Then he shrugged it off and began to stalk closer, speaking very clearly out of his beak. “I grow tired of talking. I didn’t spend eons in Hell to waste my parole on earth.”
I had time to think, Huh… he doesn’t know about the Key, before another party guest arrived.
The room abruptly pulsed with a bluish glow and every single window blew out as a vacuum of power filled the room. The scent of sulfur was obliterated in a blink, replaced with the smell of burnt gravel and frost. Oh, shit.
Eae, the Demon-thwarting Angel.
The bird Demon’s black eyes went wide as a sword pierced his heart from behind, a much too wide blade pointing in my direction through the feathers on the Demon’s chest.
“Wait!” I began, then the sword gave a sickening twist, shattering the Demon’s sternum, and the monster disintegrated to ash. As he fell, I saw the Angel from the bar, Eae, standing behind him, crackling with power. He gave one contemptuous flick of his sword, disbursing the Demon blood onto my floor where it sizzled.
“You killed my son, stole my Grace, and allowed it to be fractured.” He was quivering with fury, his voice a series of rasps, totally unlike our first talk. “If it breaks entirely, Armageddon will officially ignite, which you no doubt desire. I see the truth now. Now that your Demon is dead, there is no one here to save you.” The Angel spoke through ground teeth. I glanced down at the feather in my hand, which also gave me a great view of my wounded chest from the Demon’s claws. The feather was indeed broken, the two halves connected by only a thin thread of cartilage.
“My Demon? I had nothing to do with him. When will you people get the hint? I was having a peaceful chat with your son before the Demon attacked us and cut your stupid feather! I was trying to keep it safe! He had information I could have used. Information that could have guided me to the summoner! The real problem starter. What the hell is wrong with you guys?”
I didn’t even see him move. I merely felt a fist strike me in the stomach like a moving truck, and I was suddenly slammed into the wooden staircase on the other side of the building. I heard Othello scream, but I was too shaken to get my bearings. The Angel was suddenly towering over me, wings snapping out with a whoosh of air, quadrupling his size. “I don’t believe you. Jonathan was no novice. No Demon could have killed him so easily. You killed him after he let his guard down.” I began to stammer an argument, but the look in his eyes stalled me. I knew that look. The look of someone with nothing to lose. When a rage so dark and overpowering controlled your every thought. The kind of look one got after their family had been murdered. I had lived with that look for a few months now.
“No one kills one of my sons, or causes them to be killed without retribution. I have skirted the line by striking you, but since Armageddon is practically imminent, I hold no long-term responsibility for my actions. Just know this. If that Grace breaks entirely, my brethren will hunt you down. If it doesn’t, my sons will. Regardless, your death will be slow and painful for your sins. Heaven will not assist you, and will now actively seek your demise. I will not forget this.” The last was a whisper that rang with such a deadly finality that I actually kept my mouth shut.
The building gave an ominous crack, and Eae was abruptly gone. Othello sprinted over to me only a second after the Angel had disappeared, looking angry that he had already left. “Nate! Are you okay?”
“I just got my ass smited. What do you think?” I wheezed.
“I think it’s smote, but I wasn’t much of a bible school kind of girl. I will say that I bet no one in history has been struck by a Demon and then less than a minute later been smote by a freaking Angel.” She glanced down at my wound, eyes growing concerned. “Shit.” She averted her gaze to my face and I saw her eyes widen at my broken nose. “Um. You look like a badass?” She offered encouragingly.
I managed to feebly throw a brick at her. She dodged it. Then she pulled me to my feet, causing me to hiss in pain. My torso was lacerated, bleeding freely, and I had an Angelic fist shape indented into my stomach. “I think he bruised my stomach. The actual organ.” It took me a few moments to gather my breath, and Othello continued to dab at my wounds with a shirt from the bag I had packed. I winced when her hands gripped my ribs.
“Sorry.” Her eyes dampened with fear at the number of wounds painting my body.
“Yeah, those bookshelves were sturdy. And the glass dividers. I don’t think any ribs are broken though. To be safe, I should probably take some aspirin. Not Extra Strength though. No need to take risks.” The store groaned again, more alarmingly, and the stairs leading to my loft suddenly collapsed with a crash, filling the room with dust and debris. Othello began to cough lightly through the haze. I heard another deep crack that sent more dust into the air. I needed to call this one in. The building might collapse any minute. I grabbed a new shirt and Othello helped me put it on, wrapping up another clean tee into a makeshift bandage to wrap over my wounds. Several small fires still dotted the floor, burning through my priceless inventory.
I sighed as she finished, grunting in pain when she pulled the knot tight. “Let’s go.” We exited the same door from earlier and headed towards her car. Gavin’s car was nowhere to be seen. Othello merely scowled at that.
A low, vibrating hum suddenly split the night, a keening wail.
A Horn of War. I glanced up and spotted Eae on a nearby rooftop, glaring at us.
At me, specifically.
His voice boomed through the night. “The wizard has proven his crimes, consorting with Demons to kill Jonathan, your brother, who attempted to trust him. He has broken my grace, but not destroyed it, no doubt to use me as his
pawn. Which will not happen. I would rather die in His name. Let Armageddon be on the wizard’s shoulders. Permission to decimate at will.” With a giant flap of his wings, he was off, and I heard hundreds of answering horns fill the night. I shivered. Armageddon? I hadn’t broken the feather, it was the damned Demon! I would do whatever it took to keep that feather safe. My life, and the world, now literally depended on it.
We raced to the car and jumped in, eager to be away from the answering calls of the dozens of Nephilim. Othello started the car and we took off in a peel of burning tires. After we turned the corner, I heard an earth-shattering thump behind me, and then a crash like the earth had cracked open with a dying groan. Othello swerved, shouting as the car was shoved ahead on screeching tires. Several fire hydrants exploded beside us, showering the street with fountains of icy water that quickly began to turn to ice. I turned to look behind us, fearing some sort of Angelic attack, and saw a black cloud of smoke rising from my shop. My shoulders sagged. “First my money’s frozen, then I’m arrested, then framed a murderer, and then my shop is blown to smithereens by a gaggle of geese. Someone is going to pay for this.” Othello merely nodded. The thing was, I didn’t really have anyone to take out my pain on. The Demon was dead, the Nephilim, Jonathan, was dead, and I was on Heaven’s Most Wanted list. My parole officer, Gavin, had abandoned me when I needed him the most, and the only one I had on my side was Othello, a Regular.
“Let’s head to the apartment. I feel like resting my eyes. Not sleeping, but resting my eyelids. Either that or we need to find some caffeine to pour directly into my eyeballs. One hundred percent caffeine. Not that diluted coffee swill. The real stuff.”
Othello sniffed beside me and I could tell she was crying. I didn’t have anything to say to her though. I just wanted it all to be over with. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes.
I grew silent as we drove to the apartment. The facts.
This was all about the Demons and their summoner. He had brought a Greater Demon up from Hell in order to kill my parents and take the Armory. As if that hadn’t been enough, he had either summoned more Demons for back up or the Greater Demon had brought a gang of his friends up for company — some of which were privy to details on the Armory, and some that weren’t. Which was curious. Maybe they thought a little additional chaos would help. It sure hadn’t hurt their cause. I was beginning to think that this summoner was either supremely powerful, extremely clever, or that there was more than one summoner… I shivered at that.
The Angel, Eae, had warned me to back off in the bar. And then the first Demon had commanded me to give up the Armory shortly after. Something had happened to bring both parties out into the open, but I didn’t know what that could have been. It had been months since the break in, but now everyone was suddenly moving like they were on a time frame. I had since pissed off both Biblical parties and was now actively being hunted or framed by both.
Othello had turned out to be quite the sidekick. Still, things were about to get a whole hell of a lot worse, and I was running out of juice. And I was still a fugitive from the police, meaning I couldn’t even tap into my money or assets.
Then there was the greedy Academy, who considered it a simple to-do item for me to banish all the Demons without my magic, extorting me in a moment of drunken stupor to curse me into giving them the Armory. No matter what I chose to do I was going to piss off someone I really probably shouldn’t be pissing off.
I leaned my head back into the worn headrest, barely surviving the dull throbbing agony that was my face. I would need to set my nose before I went to sleep. I could taste the fresh blood draining into the back of my throat from my broken nose, and my chest felt hot from the deep cuts of the Demons claws. My entire torso felt like a giant bruise, and I was getting kind of sleepy, enjoying the heat blasting from the vents as Othello continued to drive in silence, taking the turns carefully so as not lose control of the car on the snowy streets.
I fueled my pain into anger. It wasn’t hard. I had plenty of each already. I decided that I would find that Greater Demon again and ask him a few pointed questions. It felt good to finally have a direction for my anger. I was in a race to kill the Greater Demon before my power failed me entirely. Or before the Nephilim hunters found me. Perhaps I could get the Demon’s attention by killing one of his brothers. It had worked last time.
Othello murmured softly and I realized that I had been dozing lightly. I agreed with her. We opted to go get sleep rather than pouring caffeine into my eyes.
Probably a good choice.
Chapter 25
R adio commercials from the car stereo droned on in the background as we drove through town. A beam of sunlight abruptly struck my eyeball like a spear, causing me to wince, which caused my broken nose to flare with pain. I hissed instinctively. Even my pain was causing me pain. I felt Othello glance at me, fighting a smile. “We still haven’t found the murdered vampire.” I grumbled to her as she made a right turn. “Let’s swing by Temple Industries while we wait for news of the murder since we struck out twice last night. I don’t feel like running all around town to be framed for yet another death I’m trying to prevent. I don’t see the Demons passing up an opportunity to kill when their boss gave them free rein to do so.” She nodded in agreement, navigating towards my company. My ribs ached from the fight last night, and my face was a landscape of tenderness. Resetting my nose had felt less good than me sticking my fingers in a live electrical outlet.
I shook off my injuries. They weren’t going to get better any time soon. So I needed to quit whining about them. In fact, I was almost certain that they would increase exponentially before this was all said and done.
Which wasn’t too motivating.
Nothing to do about it though, so I searched inwardly for a plan. I wanted to speak with Hope again so I could maybe get a second opinion on what the hell was going on. The spirit seemed to know quite a bit, and she had caused us to waste our last visit when she showed me the vision of Achilles’ hollow vengeance, which I still didn’t understand. I wasn’t acting like him.
Was I?
I was doing the right thing. I angrily stepped out of the imaginary psychiatrist chair in my mind. Later.
Perhaps Hope would know if the summoner and his Demons were hunting for something specific. And she had called me a Maker. I hadn’t had much time to think about that, and still didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded like something I should know. After all, my parents had made me into one. With all the fighting and running around, I had apparently bottled that one away deep inside my mind. I didn’t know how to feel about it — angry, curious, frustrated? Apparently, I was an experiment. One of the feared items from the Armory. Should I lock myself away? Did it even matter now that my power was practically gone?
The commercials on the radio ceased and the news returned. I turned it up and listened acutely as we drove. It was all about the random attacks in town. The Mayor was even considering declaring Martial Law until Mardi Gras was over. “Detective Kosage allegedly came out of the closet at a big affair downtown, complete with a float and music. A real boon to the LGBT movement.” The reported declared, managing to sound both amused and politically correct at the same time. I chuckled, shooting a smile at Othello as I shook my head. She grinned absently. Silver lining. “Master Temple is still at large after his apparent kidnapping from the Police station where he had been detained for questioning regarding the attacks from a few months ago. He was only a person of interest, but now he’s been kidnapped. This happened while a large contingent of officers was absent in support of their fellow officer coming out of the closet. The resulting lack of security will no doubt be investigated shortly.” The radio grew silent for a moment. “Newsflash. Apparently, Master Temple’s arcane bookstore, Plato’s Cave, was destroyed in an explosion last night. And, wait, a ransom has been declared on Master Temple! Imagine that. Who could afford to ransom one of the richest men in the country? One-hundred-million dollars f
rom Temple Industries CEO, Ashley Belmont. No word from her at present, as it appears she is on vacation. Too bad for Master Temple.”
The artifact Hope had given me began to vibrate in my pocket, and I groaned. When it vibrated on it’s own it meant a Demon was practically on top of us. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet!” I grumbled, scanning our surroundings anxiously.
“What are you whining about now?” Othello asked, seeming distracted by a swarm of activity at a nearby warehouse. We were between the city proper and Temple Industries. The area was occupied by numerous warehouses, reminding me of the area where Gunnar and I had fought the gargoyles and silver dragon a few months ago. I began to pull out the map, not noticing any impending attack in our immediate proximity. Before I could situate myself, Othello slammed on the brakes. “Nate…” Her tone and the flash of pain from my tightening seat belt against my wounded chest made me look up with wide eyes. She was pointing at the same warehouse she had been studying. I leaned back as far as possible, breathing hard as I tried to loosen the seat belt a bit. I spotted a gaggle of parents hanging outside the warehouse, drinking a hot liquid of some kind from Styrofoam cups. The flash of pain beginning to subside, I began to turn back to the map when I saw the vilest of evil scramble out of the building. Followed by another, and another of the beasts, each moving very swiftly. The kind of evil that cannot be vanquished. These creatures had mind powers to an exponential degree.
“Must not give in…” I whispered with great determination, clutching my seat tightly.
Othello turned to me. “They’re just Girl Scouts. They must be building a float.”
I nodded with a serious face. Girl Scouts were anathema to every grown man in existence who innocently decided to answer the front door in his sweats and a dirty undershirt after a long day of work, only to discover a pig-tailed, buck-toothed princess who so sweetly asked if you would like to buy some cookies. See, they knew when to catch you at your weakest moment, for they were tiny, vicious predators. You had just started a diet, but that didn’t matter. Their power was too strong for you to survive.
Blood Debts (The Temple Chronicles Book 2) Page 24