And then she found Sian on the ground, up against a wall by a bookshelf. She was dead, Remy knew with a pang, but what was more alarming was the message written above her head. It would seem, in Sian’s own blood, though certainly not written by the witch.
We warned you not to help them. Now you pay the price.
The writing dripped, painted only minutes ago. The angels were gone now, Remy thought. She peered out into the garden, destroyed and burned beyond recognition. Remy spent the next agonisingly long ten minutes in the garden, checking for survivors. There were none. Remy picked up her spellbook they had been working with and tucked it into a pocket, along with the potion they had made so far. She did notice, however, that Lola and Hunter were not there. They had escaped.
Or been taken alive.
In a daze, Remy called in The Force, then wandered back to her shop numbly and in shock. She got to the store and was sitting in her armchair, warm fire ablaze in the hearth, having no recollection of having arrived there, or starting the fire.
I have to tell Hella, Remy thought miserably. My coven is dead.
She also knew she had to inform both Houses of the events of the attack, and the Faerie House would be heartbroken for Hunter if she were taken. Although, Remy thought with a start, if they were not abducted, Hunter may well have taken Lola to her House for safekeeping. A touch of hope crept into her chest as Remy hurriedly picked up the phone to call them.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Hella
Hella’s training session was cut short by a surprise visit. Harrow Nympha strode into the war room, hands on his hips. ‘Where was my invitation?’ he asked with a friendly smirk.
‘I haven’t seen you back here in years,’ Tommy said pensively, surprise clear in his voice.
Harrow shrugged it off. ‘How’re you going with your magic, little witch?’
‘I have telekinesis,’ Hella said, though she didn’t know how to feel about that yet. And she didn’t get a chance to elaborate at Harrow’s raised brows when someone burst into the room.
‘Mr Terra, Ms Corvime, you’ve been summoned in urgency by the witch, Remy Stealthing. She requests your presence immediately.’ The female warlock bowed and exited dramatically.
Harrow insisted upon accompanying them as Tommy and Hella made their way, with all haste, to Remy’s store. Harrow looked her up and down. ‘I was hoping to see you again,’ he smiled, undoubtedly remembering their kiss in the park. It felt like months ago to Hella, but it had only been about two days.
She put a hand on his arm. ‘Me too, but I don’t think now’s the time for that.’ He chuckled with a nod.
They barely arrived on Remy’s doorstep when she ushered them all inside and into the adjoining lounge room. Their trousers had scarcely grazed the couch when Remy began, without preamble. ‘Sian and the coven had been working on a potion, at my behest, from my instructions.’
‘That’s your big emergency?’ Harrow asked dryly.
‘And now they’re dead,’ Remy added heavily. ‘We were all attacked by the angels a few hours ago. I believe Hunter and Lola may have escaped. I called the Faerie House earlier and they say the girls did visit there, but left soon afterwards.’
Hella and the warlocks stared, slack jawed.
‘Why would they leave?’ Tommy asked.
Remy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. But it’s Hunter’s sister the angels have; Tessa. Hunter said something about needing to find her sister before it was too late, so they took off. The stars only know where, since we can’t track them.’
‘What if Hella astralled?’ Tommy suggested. ‘To where the angels are?’
‘She would need something to connect her to one of them,’ Remy mused.
‘Well, Hella is the product of Meele’s prophecy, right? That’s a connection,’ Harrow reasoned.
Remy looked as if she wanted to hug him. ‘Of course! You brilliant child!’
‘Not a child,’ he muttered. ‘But brilliant, yes, obviously.’ Arms folded over his chest, he sat up a little straighter, clearly pleased with himself.
‘Hella, can you focus on Meele?’ Remy asked softly, an unusual register for her.
Hella closed her eyes. ‘I’m not sure. Let me try.’ She felt for her chakras, the almost-familiar burning sensation flowed through her body. She tried to picture the faerie, all golden beauty and shining wings. ‘I don’t know.’ She opened her eyes.
Harrow pressed Remy’s earlier comment. ‘What kind of potion were they working on for you?’
‘One that would get rid of the angels,’ Remy said. ‘There’s going to be a battle, Hella, and we need you. Your strength. The angels have plagued this world for too long, and now they’re upping their game. Attacking a whole witches’ coven? I’ve never even heard of something like that. This potion would send them all into Heaven, where they would be banished, for good.’ Her blue eyes were dark as a storm. Tommy and Harrow’s faces were equally shocked. ‘And,’ Remy added, ‘we need to get Meele back to finish the potion, too. She’s being held, no doubt, at one of the places angels hoard their abductees, a Captor’s Point, and there are many of them. Like your Houses.’
‘There’s more than the two Houses?’ Hella asked.
‘Of course. All over the world. Hella, try again. We need to help them,’ Remy pressed.
Hella closed her eyes once more, remembering the brief moment in this room she had astralled, accidentally. She conjured up Meele in her mind again, focusing as hard as she could until she felt a strange and pulling displacement that made her want to vomit. She opened her eyes, expecting to see the warlock boys and Remy.
Instead she was standing in a courtyard paved with cobblestones, out in the open fresh air of late afternoon under the low-hanging sun. She had no idea where she was, but Hella ran and hid behind one of the trees shading the courtyard. If she was indeed at the Captor’s Point, why wasn’t she standing in front of Meele? And could others see her in astral form? Remy and the boys had, but what about angels?
Hella closed her eyes tightly, trying again, but something was off. As she tried to move into the building, to Meele, something blocked her. She wondered if the angels had some kind of protection on the building. But what she found most unusual was that if this was their hideout, why weren’t any angels standing guard by the doors or on a perimeter watch?
For a secret headquarters, there were no angels in sight.
Hella closed her eyes and found that she could still hear Harrow, Tommy and Remy speaking, back where her body was at Witches’ Wares, like she was in two places at once. Of course, it was only her conscious mind that was here, looking for Meele; her unconscious was with her friends. Harrow asked Remy if she thought Hella was okay—how sweet, she thought—and then pressed the old witch about her grand plan to rid the planet of age-old heavenly creatures.
Their voices came in and out of focus, depending on how much Hella paid attention to them. She split her focus between their conversation, and Hella’s current position, looking out for angel sentries who may or may not be able to see or hear her astral-self.
Remy spoke softly, as if holding onto a well-kept secret she was afraid to share. ‘We have an angel as an ally. He will soon need to give me a feather, from his own wings, for the potion. It’s a key ingredient. His name is Nerretti. He is Malachai’s partner,’ she added, and Hella felt a jolt.
The angel who had stabbed her. His partner was on her side? Then she remembered the blond one who had dragged Malachai away from hurting Harrow. He had taken the halo off him by snapping it. That must be him, she thought. Hella felt a weight lift from her chest. Maybe they could win after all. As Hella crept around the building, still starkly aware of the lack of angels patrolling their building, she heard Remy continue in the store.
‘First we have to get Meele back. Hopefully Hella is with her now. She can show us the future. And we need her blood, the blood of a Scire, for the potion to work. Additionally, we
need the final ingredient.’
‘And what’s that?’ Harrow asked. Hella pictured his pale face, all angles and resentment of Remy.
The old witch replied, ‘Simple, we need the heart of an angel.’
Tommy’s voice rose in surprise. ‘Your friend? You would sacrifice him?’ There was indignation there, for an angel—though, an ally now.
Hella found a stairway and started climbing the steps, wondering if anyone could hear or see her. She also wondered how long she could hold her astral-self. Last time it was only for a few seconds.
Remy replied, ‘No. When the time is right, Net will work with us, and he will surprise his brethren. He will rip the heart out of his brother. Malachai.’
Hella blinked in surprise. He would do that? she wondered. She crept around a hallway, marvelling at the size of the building. It could take her hours to search this place. The building seemed to be large and square with a lot of choices on which way to go, and where to look first. She climbed the stairs at random, hurrying a little in case her powers faltered. She came across long hallways and began to peer down one of them when sunlight bounced off a metal bar. Hella turned down and into the hall and froze when she realised the hallway was made entirely of rooms whose fourth wall was the metal bars of a cage. She paused, taking in a breath she wasn’t sure she physically needed.
Harrow’s voice bubbled through her ears, bringing part of her attention back to their conversation. ‘If we have an angel on the inside, can’t he help us break out Meele, Amara and Tessa?’
It was a good thought, Hella agreed, but there was only one of him, and this place was huge. Though the lack of angels here was beginning to unnerve her.
‘I don’t think so,’ Remy said. ‘He would have to get them all out of an entire Captor’s Point. There’s no way he wouldn’t be caught. Then we would be down an important player.’ Remy sulked, and they fell silent.
Hella glanced around quickly, then she heard a snarling growl come from somewhere and she flinched. Though she didn’t think someone could actually hurt her in her astral form, it was reflex. She peered down the stairs, over the railing by the stairway, into a large courtyard in the centre of the building below. There had been dug a pit of sorts and now, as the sun began to drop in the sky, she could see vampires and werewolves—the first she had seen of the other, more vagrant Cambions—being led toward the mushed up dirt of the courtyard. They were being led by angels in full protective gear, dressed head to toe in blinding white uniforms, more heavily clad than she had seen them before. As if they were afraid of being hurt? By a vampire or werewolf?
There were about a dozen angels in total, marching out one vampire and one werewolf who appeared to be restrained at the wrists, their arms clasped behind their backs. They snarled and spat at each other. She watched a few angels stare up into the sky, as if admiring the sunset.
Hella ducked out of sight, deciding that, however strange and mysterious the proceedings happening downstairs, it was not her reason for ‘being’ here. She had to find Meele, Amara and Tessa.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Azazel
Australia, 1915
Azazel smiled as they landed ashore under the cover of darkness. They had waited a while on a smaller island close by and watched on in mild fascination as all the soldiers boarded their ships and sailed away, dressed in matching dark green uniforms, rifles and bayonets slung across their shoulders.
Azazel had watched on as their families bid their fighters goodbye, the soldiers unaware that they would not be returning to their loved ones. When those soldiers returned from battle, they would step onto their home island to find it soaked with blood. Azazel had invaded many lands before. They were much easier to take without their human armies present. Otherwise they ran the risk of surviving. And there could not be survivors. Or witnesses.
As Azazel’s feet touched the ground off the Coral Sea, onto the soft sands, his kin followed him. They all squirmed and writhed with hunger. Azazel knew there were almost five million people on the island, a lot of food, surrounded by sea, unprotected. Surging past the bay, inland, he coalesced into a town filled with humans about to rise out of bed to meet the last day of their lives. With a forked, blackened tongue, he licked his lips. Azazel drove his kin forward, into the town, as he passed a faded sign: Welcome to Mill Valley.
Azazel smiled, his teeth pointed and sharp, ready to chew the first person he saw. As the stars blinked away, a red and rosy dawn spilled over the town, as if the sky itself anticipated the red of the blood bath.
Azazel watched as human men dressed in vests and dark trousers, complete with top hats, headed out to work. Women in bright petticoats, with clicking pointed heels began to filter out of their homes to head to the early-morning markets, with babes tucked by their sides in swaths of soft silk. The humans believed they were at the very top of the food chain, Azazel mused, leading the hoard of demonic black mist onto the chilled streets. They are wrong, he thought hungrily.
A man far along in his life, deeply tanned with wrinkles and grey hair, stepped out of his home, and began to set up a stall by the pavement outside. He carried baskets of fresh bread, and carefully set it out for buyers to view. The smell was strong, Azazel thought, wondering if humans really liked it. The man was long past his youth, but he moved without wobbling, and he looked up at Azazel’s approach and gave a start. The demon looked the man over. For a bread merchant, he was slim. He obviously never had the chance to eat his wares. Azazel smiled toothily at the human, who smiled back, unsure. ‘Some bread, sir?’
Mostly in human form, Azazel approached the man, trailing black mist, a whole hoard of his hungry family behind him, rolling into the town like a deadly storm. ‘I don’t eat bread,’ he told the man honestly.
The man nodded in understanding. ‘I don’t either, too much for my stomach. But I promise you it’s fresh. Take some home to your family?’
Azazel’s grin widened. ‘My family don’t eat bread either, but thank you.’
‘What do you eat, sir?’ The man bent down to his other baskets. ‘I have pastries here, just out of the oven. My wife baked them this morning, the good woman.’
Azazel towered over the man. ‘I’m afraid we don’t eat pastry either, old man.’
‘Oh?’ he asked feebly. ‘What do you eat, then?’
Azazel’s eyes shone black. He turned to the dark mass of his kin and bowed. ‘Bonum tenebris,’ he said, and they made a noise like an approving roar. The mass of demons surged upon the town as Azazel turned back to the man. ‘We eat you,’ he growled, then pinned the man to the side of the stall, his pointed teeth sinking into soft flesh. The human screamed, his voice feeble and broken.
The rest of Azazel’s kin flew loose, into the town as humans flowed from their homes, willingly into the welcome embrace of the hungry demons. Within seconds, thousands of people were screaming, crying and shrieking. Babies wailed. Pets fled, without bothering to snatch the old man’s abandoned, fresh food. It took no more than an hour for the streaming blood flowing in the streets of Mill Valley to match the growing red of the rising sun, painting the entire town in shades of bloody rose.
Azazel smiled with darkened teeth. ‘I like this town,’ he declared. ‘The people are so good.’
Chapter Fifty-Six
Harrow
Harrow thought that lifting Hella up onto the couch would be enough to wake her, but as he lay her gently down, she remained unconscious, astralled somewhere else. Lifting her up like that, watching her head slip to the side, it made him nauseated. He prayed to the stars that she was okay. ‘Why hasn’t she come back?’ he demanded.
Tommy had taken to annoyingly pacing the small room, wearing down the deep green carpet between the tall bookshelves. He shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea.’
Harrow sat on the table by Hella’s side, ready in case she needed him. He pried one of her eyes open, then let it fall closed again, unresponsive. ‘What if she’s stuc
k?’
Tommy stopped pacing. ‘What do you mean, stuck?’ Alarm flared in his voice.
‘I mean, astral projection is an out-of-body thing, right? So, what if she did it, but she can’t get back in her body?’ Harrow looked down at her, the girl who had saved his life, the one who had called him ‘wonderful’ in his sharp warlock form, with all his scales. The beautiful girl he didn’t have a chance with, who had kissed him. ‘Come on, Hella,’ he whispered to her. ‘Come back.’
Tommy seemed to have given up pacing, and instead came to collapse in one of the armchairs, next to Remy by the fireplace. ‘What do we do?’ he asked the old bat.
‘You said she would be able to do it,’ Harrow snapped at Tommy.
Tommy shook his head. ‘I thought she could. You should have seen her telekinesis, it was incredible. Can you bring her back?’ he asked the witch, who frowned, watching her student. Red and purple sparks danced through Hella’s hair and along her nails.
Remy closely examined Hella. ‘I’m afraid not. She’s astralled, I can tell you that, but she’s still gone. She’ll have to find her way back on her own, and soon.’
‘Why soon?’ Harrow asked, his tone clipped.
‘Well, like a warlock, if she uses her powers too much for too long, she’ll burn up,’ Remy said.
‘Are you saying that if she doesn’t come back, she’ll die?’ Harrow asked.
Remy nodded.
‘Does she know that?’ Harrow whispered.
They all stared at each other.
‘I don’t think she does,’ Tommy answered.
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