by Karen Mead
Sam looked at the girl, mind reeling. Was it possible? When he looked at her, standing there in muddy boots and a worn down coat, it seemed absurd. And yet, wasn’t it she who had insisted on saving Ethan, no matter what bedlam it would unleash in all of their lives? Because it was ‘right,’ because of that overpowering, yet strangely arbitrary sense of morality that even at that time, he’d felt was a part of her she couldn’t help?
He moved his gaze to Aeka, and swallowed. With her beautiful features, flowing golden hair and multi-colored eyes, she looked every inch an angel, even in a beat-up looking pair of denim overalls. She looked like an angel out of a child’s storybook, minus the feathery wings. Looking at her, he felt in his gut that his mother was telling the truth.
While they all stood there, shellshocked, Helen continued. “You wondered why, when the blond one was wearing her armor, magic did not appear to work on her. That’s because to her, there is no black or white magic, only Magic,” she said, turning to rummage through her pocket. “Point a black curse at her, and it passes her by; she doesn’t even recognize it as magic. It’s a perversion, an over-engineered, degenerative copy of the kind of natural magic that makes her function, that she understands. Real, primal magic only responds to like. Speaking of which,” she said, then threw something from her pocket into the dark pool.
Sam walked forward to approach her slowly, a sense of creeping dread making him feel ill. “Helen, what did you just do?” he asked.
She didn’t turn to him, only continued looking at the smooth surface of the water.
“Mother….” he said, almost pleading.
“Here it comes,” she said. “Brace yourselves, although it won’t help much.”
All at once, the surface of the water broke, and then Sam couldn’t see; it was like the pond had exploded, and his vision was so full of water that all that was visible was a kind of white blur. When he recovered, now soaked to the skin as water continued to pummel him, he could just barely make out the shape of a large creature before him. A snakelike creature, perhaps three times as tall as he was, sticking half out of the water, calling out in a deep, pulsating wail that was like nothing he had ever heard before. Whether the creature was screaming in agony or joy, he had no way of knowing.
The creature bucked violently, sending sheets of water cascading. “Helen, you’ve made your point!” Serenus yelled over the roar of the creature. “Send that thing back!”
Helen turned and looked at Serenus over her shoulder. Even soaking wet, she looked unperturbed. “Oh? Sorry, I can’t control it, only summon it.”
Sam took an involuntary step back before he stopped himself, afraid to move and attract the thing’s attention. He could see it better now; it wasn’t so much a snake as a large dun-colored fish, only with ragged, uneven scales and teeth that must have been nearly the size of his forearm. In its huge black eyes there was no recognition, only chaos. It thrashed like it was in terrible pain.
“If you won’t get rid of it, I will!” he yelled, then threw his arms out, performing a killing curse. There was that blissful moment of release, of inner calm, that always made the world seem to slow down around him for a few moments, and then nothing. He could see the curse hit the creature, a beam of shadow imperceptible to the human eye that shattered at the creature’s chest, but there was no effect.
“Weren’t you listening, my little lamb?” said Helen, raising her voice to be heard over the screeching wind and the creature’s ceaseless screaming. “Your magic is too dirty; like responds to like. Leviathan doesn’t know your curses from a hole in the wall.”
“Leviathan?!” Serenus yelled. “Helen, you didn’t—!”
“I always wondered if this is really what Hobbes had in mind,” she responded in a thoughtful tone. She looked over her shoulder again to take in the sight of Serenus. “You have the most wonderful look right now. Terror wipes all that unbearable smugness right off of your face. I was wrong; I have missed you,” she said, smiling for the first time that day.
Sam began to have trouble catching his breath. How could he possibly protect Cassie, protect any of them, when his magic didn’t work on this thing?
He saw a red blur out of the corner of his eye, and realized Miri was running up to attack the creature an instant before it happened.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. You’re an abomination, my dear. He doesn’t like that,” said Helen.
As she spoke, the Leviathan hit Miri in the chest with its snout, sending her flying backwards. Her back hit a tree with a sickening crack, and she fell in a heap of skinny limbs. The whole thing had taken less than a second.
Serenus and Sam exchanged sickened, terrified glances. They had always known Helen was crazy, joked about it even, but this crazy? Was she really going to let this thing kill all of them? And for what?
“Aeka!” Cassie called out suddenly. “Don’t!”
The small girl had moved, and was standing directly in front of the Leviathan, knee-deep in the water. Sam began to move toward her, then stopped, a million questions paralyzing him. If she really was an angel, was she even in danger? If she was, did he have a prayer of saving her? And if so, should he? She wasn’t his familiar—what was she to him, exactly?
But the change in the creature’s behavior brought his inner torment to a halt. That deep braying, a sound with vibrations that Sam could feel painfully in his jaw, quieted down, then stopped altogether. Its thrashing changed to a simple side-to-side swaying, as it fixed its empty eyes on the strange girl in front of it. Aeka tilted her head to the side, and it mimicked her, studying her.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Everyone was transfixed by the meeting of girl and serpent. Sam didn’t know how long they all stood there, motionless, but by the time the creature gently lowered its snout toward her, it had changed from twilight to full dark.
As they all watched in disbelief, the creature began to gently nuzzle Aeka’s stomach with its long snout, making a low thrumming sound reminiscent of a kitten’s purr. She laughed, an intoxicating sound, like a babbling brook made up of tiny crystal bells. Far above her, there was a circular clearing in the clouds, the black of the night sky poking through the gray, as though she had a halo of moonlight.
The sky was full of stars.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
It was mostly silent on the way back to the house, with everyone too shocked to speak. When they went inside, depositing their dirty shoes and coats in Helen’s washroom, Sam finally spoke up. “If you want to mess with me, that’s fine,” he said, throwing his coat into a corner filled with wrinkled clothes and, surprise, more books. “But why them?” he said, indicating Cassie, Aeka and the others. “Why did you have to put them in danger?”
“I didn’t,” said Helen, shrugging. She stepped out of her high heels carefully. “I knew we would all be fine.”
“How could you possibly know that? You summoned a giant monster!” said Sam, slamming his fist into the wall.
Helen narrowed her eyes. “This is my home. Watch yourself.”
Miri, who’d had to be carried home on Serenus’ back after being swatted into a tree, suddenly woke with a start. “What happened? Did we beat it?”
“It’s fine, Miriam,” said Serenus, letting her down gently. “The Leviathan is gone.”
“Gone?” Miri asked. “Gone as in dead, or gone as in we don’t know where it is?”
“Just gone,” Serenus responded.
Clearly livid, Sam kicked off his shoes and entered the house, turning his back to his mother: Cassie wondered if he was afraid that he might hurt her if he stayed in the same room any longer. Serenus and Helen exchanged a look that Cassie couldn’t interpret.
She felt exhausted, but more importantly, she was filthy. “Hey, can I take a shower?” she asked. “I still feel like I have mud all over me.”
“I got next,” said Miri immediately.
“Fine,” said Helen. “Bathroom is on the left at the top of the stairs. After you shower, p
ick any hair out of the drain and throw it out, please.” She wrung some water out from the bottom of her soaking wet skirt, and followed her son into the house. “I’m going to order some pizza. I don’t order any toppings on it, so don’t ask.”
Cassie moved to go to the bathroom, when the now familiar tug on her arm stopped her. “Aeka, I’m just going to go get clean. You can shower after Miri if you want.”
The girl, who somehow only looked more beautiful with her face framed by windblown, wet hair, nodded and let go of her. Cassie raced into the house and up the stairs; she hadn’t realized until just then how badly she’d needed to get away from Aeka.
Like everything else in the house, the bathroom was small, but at least it looked very clean. Cassie started the water and quickly stripped down to her underwear, waiting for the shower to heat up. She looked at the worn, blue-striped shower curtain and wondered; if this was the house Sam had grown up in, was this where he had showered thousands of times?
I just found out I’m an angel, and what am I thinking about? Sam naked. Yaay, priorities!
The thing was, she couldn’t think about being an angel, even if she tried— her mind just wouldn’t accept it. That Aeka was an angel, she could believe; she had probably half-believed it before she even knew it was possible. But as far as she herself was concerned, she didn’t know if she believed it, if she rejected it, or what; she just couldn’t feel anything about it. It was like an abstract concept that didn’t seem to apply to her.
She moved to the shower and pulled the curtain back, feeling the water temperature with her hand. She sighed softly as the steam began to envelop her skin. She had already begun slipping her bra off when she sensed something.
She froze, heart skipping a beat: someone was in this room with her. Right behind her.
“Hey!” she yelped, whipping around quickly, covering herself protectively with her arms. Then her jaw dropped. “You?! What are you doing here?”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Sam was pacing in his old room, which Helen had left mostly untouched from when he’d lived there. The only difference was that his mother’s books were slowly taking over, just as they had the rest of the house.
He could hear Cassie in the bathroom across the hall and tried to ignore the sound of rustling fabric, which he could make out even over the sound of the shower. His hearing had gotten more sensitive lately, and it was distracting. He didn’t want to think about her getting undressed—well, that wasn’t strictly true, but he didn’t want to think about it while he was at his mother’s house, least of all right now.
Besides, apparently she’s an angel. Do I go to hell for even thinking about it? Although I’ve already been to hell, so I guess it would have to be a different hell?
He gritted his teeth and punched his palm while he paced back and forth in the small room. In retrospect it seemed stupidly obvious; if she wasn’t exactly human, and she wasn’t a demon, wasn’t “angel” the next obvious guess? It had never occurred to him because, by this point in his life, he had assumed that if any angels existed in the human world, he would have heard something about it by now. Still, he of all people should have realized it was a possibility….
He stopped short when he heard Cassie gasp. When he heard a male voice say her name, he was through the door to the bathroom before he even realized he had moved.
“You!” he yelled as he took in the sight of their visitor.
“Don’t, I’m on your side!” said Bennet Marcus, standing in front of an underwear-clad Cassie. “I came to warn you!”
“You came to warn me in the shower?” said Cassie, quickly moving to put her clothes back on. Sam tried not to look.
“No! I—” Bennet took a deep breath, then turned to face Sam, his hands safely at his sides. His position made it impossible for him to try to curse Sam without Sam cursing him first. An act of trust. “I scryed for Cassie’s location, and this is where it brought me, alright?” he said, motioning to the diamond-amulet around his neck. “I didn’t mean to walk in on anyone.”
Sam considered the smartly dressed man for a moment while Cassie clumsily hopped into her jeans one leg at a time. “Fair enough, but what’s going on?”
“It’s Quentin,” said Bennet, turning back and forth from Cassie to Sam as he spoke. “He’s made a deal with a bunch of the others and they’re coming here to take you out.”
Sam felt cold. “Take me out?”
“They’re going to kill you and take your territory and your familiars, they’ve found some kind of loophole so they can get away with it in court,” Bennet stammered out, breathless. “I only know because I was offered a piece of it, but I turned them down.”
“Why?” asked Sam. This all felt bizarre. “Why are you telling me this? I nearly killed you.”
“Listen, I don’t know when they’re coming, it could be any minute—you all have to get away from here.”
Just then, the bathroom door swung open and Miri stuck her head in. “Why are you guys having a private conference in the bathroom? And who’s the hottie?” she said, indicating Bennet.
Sam took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “He’s come to warn us of an attack. Miri, take Cassie and get as far away from here as you can.”
“How does that help anything?” Cassie exclaimed, now fully dressed again. “If they kill you, they’ll get me anyway!”
“She’s right,” said Bennet.
“I don’t…I can’t even…” Sam stuttered. He knew he needed to think, and fast, but this was all so unexpected, he just felt paralyzed. “Let’s get out of the bathroom, at least.”
He blew past Miri and went down the stairs to the living room, trying to ignore the gnawing fear in his gut, an unfamiliar sensation. When Serenus saw the expression on his face (not to mention Bennet coming down the stairs behind him), he tossed the book he was flipping through aside and stood up from the couch.
“What’s going on?” asked Serenus.
“We’re going to be attacked,” Sam said.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
Serenus squinted and scratched the back of his head. “Can you go lay a protection spell around the house?”
“No point; apparently it’s a whole group of them. If they’re actually working together, they can override it,” said Sam, pacing once again. He was trying to fight the urge to panic.
I should have known, he thought. I was prepared to fight, but not like this. I never thought a group of them would band together against me, why was it so hard for me to believe? Just because it’s impossible for me to work with anyone else, did I assume all of the others were the same?
“I’m telling you, you need to leave!” said Bennet. Sam spun around to face him, raising his arms.
“And go where? They can scry for me, just like you scryed for Cassie.”
“Maybe, but at least you won’t be waiting here like sitting—“
“What’s all the commotion?” asked Helen, entering the room from the kitchen.
“Helen, demons are coming,” said Serenus. “You, at the very least, should get out of here while you can. They won’t chase you, they have no interest in you.”
“How do you know that?” asked Helen. If she was at all worried about incoming demons, there was no indication from her body language. She leaned against a ceiling-high a stack of textbooks and crossed her arms. “Besides, this is my home. You really expect me to leave?”
“Helen—” Serenus pleaded, but the sound of the front door buckling in drowned out whatever the rest of what he was going to say.
Sam sprinted across the room to Cassie and grabbed her arm, forcing a magic exchange. Normally he asked her permission first, but there was no time. She met his gaze for a moment, her dark blue eyes looking fear-filled and impossibly large to him, but as soon as he had enough magic to make a hasty barrier, he let go of her and moved towards the doorway. He motioned for everyone else to stay behind him.
He was expecting an
y number of men, but there were actually only three: a short but fine-featured blond he assumed was Quentin, and two taller, dark-haired men behind him. All were wearing suits like they all had come straight from the boardroom. The smoke curling off of Quentin’s right fist made it likely that he was the one who had blasted their way in.
Quentin stopped where the remains of the door were still smoldering, a few feet away from Sam. “So, son of Sammael. You seem a little less calm than the last time we spoke,” he said. The obvious glee in his blue eyes was infuriating. “And Bennet, you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”
“What do I have to do to make you go away?” Sam said. He had no interest in negotiating with Quentin, not that it would likely do any good, but he was trying to buy time so he could decide what to do. If there were only three of them, he might be able to kill them all himself. It was questionable, but if Quentin thought that the three of them were enough to have any reasonable margin of safety, he was an idiot.
Quentin grinned and spread his arms out congenially. “I guess you’d have to kill me.”
Well, if you insist.
“Lavos!” Sam said, slinging three killing curses at the three men before they could change position. For the first time, he was very, very happy that he had gotten faster since contracting with the Buckley vampires. The trio had no chance to react before the curses hit.
The curses were strong; they should have punched through any normal barrier like paper and killed the target instantly. Only, that didn’t happen; instead, there was a kind of vague shimmer, and the barriers around all three men seemed to absorb the curses into themselves. Quentin looked worried for perhaps a fraction of a second, then began to laugh.
“Fantastic!” he exclaimed. “This is what a barrier created with the help of 12 familiars looks like.”
“12?” said Serenus. “How is that possible?”
“You lot are even less popular than you thought,” said Quentin, still with that insufferable grin. “It wasn’t difficult at all to get a bunch of folks together who didn’t want you traipsing around like you own everything anymore. And now, you’re defenseless,” he continued, looking past Sam to leer at Cassie. Sam had to stifle a powerful urge to rip the man’s head off, which he would have tried if it weren’t for the barrier. “Now—”