by Jenny McKane
When her crying was done, Sunny allowed herself to feel the muscular weakness that she’d been denying. She collapsed to her butt and rubbed her eyes, having nothing left to offer.
Plaxo stood silently like a sentinel. He looked shell-shocked himself.
“Was my brother always an imposter?” she asked, willing her voice not to break.
Plaxo drew in a shuddering breath.
“There is no way to tell,” he said. “But if Plaxo had to hazard a guess, he would say yes. The imposter found his way into your family a long time before that day.”
It wasn’t much of a consolation, but in the back of her mind, she was somewhat glad to hear that there hadn’t been a real boy named Sam Bonnard who’d been snatched so that this creature could take his place. Sam Bonnard had been invented and it was going to make it easy to destroy him now that she understood he’d never been her brother in the first place.
“Do you recognize him?”
She meant the angelic version of Sam.
Plaxo swallowed hard. He closed his eyes and raised his head, looking up. He was struggling with something—perhaps the curse on him that forbade him to speak the name until Sunny had watched all the way to the end?
He cleared his throat and blinked.
“The angel that killed your parents is a Seraphim,” Plaxo said. “His name is Samyaza.”
Plaxo nearly spat the words from his mouth, as though the name was bitter in his mouth.
Sunny could relate—the name Samyaza was forever etched into her psyche now and she was going to carry it with her until the very end. Where either she’d get her revenge for her parents or die trying.
Chapter Thirty-five
“And then I watched them die.”
She released the final words with a choked breath, but Sunny didn’t cry. The tears were gone by that point and her eyes were puffy and swollen after another round of crying as soon as she had woken up. The grief returned like a tidal wave that threatened to pull her into the depths if she wasn’t careful, so she let herself cry a second time in her pillow before composing herself and gathering the team.
The faces in front of her were leached of color for the most part. All except Asmodeus, who looked nothing short of pissed off. His eyes were hard and his mouth pulled tight.
“I should have known Samyaza would be behind all of this,” he muttered.
Metatron looked shaken. Gabriel looked exhausted—more exhausted than he had on the ride home from the last fight.
“What is it?” she asked them, taking in their expressions.
“We can’t win this fight,” Eli said for them instead. “That’s what’s on their minds right now—they’re thinking we are absolutely screwed.”
Sunny took a deep breath and sat down, pulling her hands through her hair and yawning—she was exhausted from the last few days and the trauma she’d been pulled into the night before hadn’t helped any.
“Why can’t we win this fight?”
It was probably a painfully obvious question to them, but Sunny felt like they’d face a few insurmountable odds over the past year. What was this one? They had an identity, they could form a plan. Right?
“Not so easy,” Metatron said, his eyes bleary with a lack of sleep.
Was he slowly draining of his powers, too? Sunny couldn’t be certain, but he was looking more and more human as the days went by.
He continued. “He’s the original Seraphim. Second only in power to the creator—you might as well try to mount a resistance to God himself at this point,” he bit out.
“But his disobedience comes with a price, doesn’t it? This rebellion he’s putting together, doesn’t that negate some of his heavenly powers?”
That was the theory they’d had all along. The fallen were terrifying, yes, but their powers diminished once they left the angelic realm and moved among the humans and demons. Wasn’t the same true for Death?
“Taking on the yoke of Death changes him, yes,” Metatron said. “He won’t have the same powers or capabilities that he did as a Seraph, but now he’s got the powers of Death.”
“But they’re not the Seraphim powers that outrank everyone of us combined, right? It’s a different rule set?”
“Again, yes,” Metatron said. “But even though he won’t have all of his duty-related powers, his natural abilities, which are many, and his newly acquired abilities will make him nearly impossible to defeat.”
Sunny pressed on, not ready to give up her need to defeat the creature responsible for taking her parents from her.
“Nearly impossible, but not totally impossible,” she said stubbornly.
It was too early in the game to give up so easily, and she was having a hard time believing the archangels were being such pessimists already.
“We also need to remember he’s got an all-star cast in his ensemble playing the roles of the Horsemen, it seems,” Gabriel added. “You’re talking power-hungry beings with plenty of power and rank over the soldiers below them, too.” He was leaning forward on his elbows, hands clasped in front of him. “We’re outgunned in the worst way, Rosie,” he said quietly. “One of them alone—Malach, for example—would be one hell of an enemy that we’d have a hard time handling. But four of them combined? Working in unison on the backs of what they’ve already got in the works. Overwhelming at best. Impossible at worst.”
She knew what they were feeling because she felt it, too.
“But having a legion of 72 guardian demons,” she said. “That’s got to count, right? And the Skinwalkers and the tengu. And the militia—they’re already talking about helping to fight to get Jericho back.”
Metatron opened his mouth to speak before closing it again, obviously reconsidering what he was about to say. An awkward silence stretched between them and Gabriel even shifted in his seat.
“Say it,” Sunny pushed.
Metatron sighed and leaned forward, closer to Sunny.
“It’s just that you’re too new to this and the legion is going to be too hard for you to control,” he said. “We don’t think it’s the best idea to count on them as part of our capabilities.”
That pricked at Sunny’s ego a bit.
“That’s crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m learning as fast as I can and it’d be insane not to use the legion for our fight. It’s the biggest weapon we have.”
“It’s too powerful for you to control, Sunny,” Metatron replied, speaking louder to match her rising voice. “You can’t handle it.”
Boom.
There it was. The sentence and the truth on how they felt about her hit her square in the chest and it stung like a son of a bitch.
“All of you feel like that?” She cast her eyes from face to face and each of them had a hard time holding her eyes. Except Asmodeus.
“I have no problem with you using the legion,” he said simply. “You’re the final Solomon. It’s your legacy and your birthright.”
Gabriel gave a derisive snort.
“You’re only saying that because you’ve got a serious stake in her winning,” he said. “You’d be willing to sacrifice all of us if it meant your freedom.”
Asmodeus didn’t deny it.
“I beg to differ on a key point, though,” he said, still calm. “The stakes for the entire population of the human and demon realms are survival. It’d be foolish not to use what we’ve been given.”
“Even if they turn against us and cannibalize?”
“Like the Powers did?” Sunny shot back at Eli. “Betrayals don’t just belong to demons, Eli. Don’t forget that. I know you have your reasons to not trust them, but don’t bring your baggage into this fight. We’ve been betrayed by angel, demon, and human alike so far.”
Eli looked like he was ready to combust—the anger in his eyes and the pinched look he gave Sunny pause. Maybe she went too far to bring up his “baggage.”
She opened her mouth to apologize but he’d pushed from his seat and stormed away.
“Shit,” she cursed and put her face in her hands. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”
Gabriel and Metatron exchanged looks before getting up.
“We’ll meet again with the militia this afternoon, Sunshine,” Metatron said. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
They walked out, leaving just Asmodeus and Sunny behind.
She let out a sigh.
“They have a serious prejudice against demons, don’t they?” she asked, knowing it was true.
“Some more than others,” Asmodeus agreed. “The Peacemaker will go along with the Warriors to ensure solidarity in the group.”
He meant Metatron. Metatron was the most accepting of everyone in the group—angel, human, half-angel, demon, half-demon—but she knew Gabriel and Eli had serious issues trusting their lives in the hands of demons.
They were also blind to the fact that most of their biggest blows so far had come from the angels themselves. Hell, Death was a damn Seraphim, for crying out loud.
But it didn’t seem to matter—to them, demons were untrustworthy and a 21-year-old young woman was not in a position to handle a legion of 72 powerful demons in the upcoming apocalypse. There was no way around their opinion, it seemed.
Sunny closed her eyes and held her breath, the image of watching her parents’ car burst into flames still fresh in her mind. An angel had done that—didn’t Gabriel and Eli realize that?
She knew better than to blame an entire race and she was just a human. How could a being as advanced as Gabriel hold such limited beliefs? Something in their conversation had caused a shift, Sunny realized.
Both Metatron and Gabriel seemed different, but Sunny knew she was different. That she and the archangels and Eli weren’t necessarily on the same page anymore, and that for once, she knew they were wrong.
Sunny spent so much time assuming she was wrong or lacking the right information or not the right person to make a decision so heavy or just plain not enough and today, something in her shifted.
She was enough. She was fine. She was learning as quickly as she could and trying to keep everyone and everything safe with the least amount of collateral damage as possible.
But them? They were wrong. They were holding old grudges that didn’t serve anyone anymore and there was nothing she could say to convince them otherwise.
And the best part? After everything she’d seen today through Plaxo’s visions—after everything that had been said between the archangels, Eli, and herself—Sunny realized that she was finished trying to convince anybody else of her worth.
It was a terrifying and freeing thought at the same time, but it was there just the same.
She took in a deep breath and let it out. The world didn’t crumble. Heralds didn’t break forth from the sky and shoot angel nukes at her just because she’d decided that she wasn’t going to chase approval from people not ready to give it yet.
The world, and the pending war, were going on just as they always had.
Sunny wasn’t going to spontaneously combust just because she’d decided to stop bowing down to the wishes and opinions of the very same people who didn’t trust her enough to listen to her opinions.
Looking around, the world shifted a bit. Colors were brighter, the world was in focus, and she felt like she was in charge for the first time in a long time.
She was so lost in thought that Sunny might not have heard Asmodeus standing behind her, if he hadn’t cleared his throat. Turning, she saw a look on the archdemon’s face that she couldn’t quite place. His eyes danced around the encampment, as though making sure they wouldn’t be overheard.
“You have visitors,” he said and she frowned.
If they were dangerous visitors, he wouldn’t play this information-withholding game with her.
“Okay,” she said slowly, while raising an eyebrow at him. “Why the riddles.”
“Just follow me,” he said and without second guessing herself, she did.
They made it out past the parked vehicles to a small copse of trees to a shaded area.
And that’s where Sunny saw Plaxo standing, and it was all she could do not to fall over. Except it wasn’t Plaxo that caused her jaw to go slack—it was Selah.
Azrael’s daughter stood there as Sunny’s brain tried to keep up with her eyes—tried to take into account that she was seeing someone who been on the brink of becoming a nox the last time they had seen her in Chicago, when they’d basically smuggled her out beneath the noses of the Powers and let her return to Hell to find her mother’s den in search of a healer.
Selah had definitely changed since Sunny first met her at Gabriel’s lodge in Canada and there was mostly that Selah, and none of the last version that Sunny had seen, standing before her now. Even the arm that had been attached after her father cut hers from her body had been changed and looked more natural. She was no longer a science experiment of Alder’s.
“You’re healed,” Sunny blurted out by way of greeting.
She couldn’t fathom it. And no matter how much she didn’t want her thoughts to immediately rush to a certain half-archangel, quarter-demon fighting his own nox battle, she couldn’t help herself from thinking about Gideon and the possible implications.
She didn’t want to think that maybe there might be hope for him, too, despite everything he’d done in the past weeks. She didn’t want to, but she did anyway.
Chapter Thirty-six
After listening to Selah explain the healing process—which involved a lot of bleeding, infusions, sweat lodges, and magic—Sunny wasn’t convinced the treatment wasn’t worse than the ailment.
“I was sure I was dead a number of times,” Selah said, her voice showing a bit of emotion, which was more than Sunny had ever seen from the ice princess. “But Magda knew what she was doing and I had no other option—I was turning.”
She meant into a nox.
Selah hadn’t expressly told them why she was there yet. Plaxo had never been her biggest fan (he’d actually disliked her a great deal) so it was still difficult to put together how these two had found themselves in Bright Valley after everything had happened in the past day.
Plaxo had a hard time meeting Sunny’s eyes and she knew instantly that he was feeling guilty at what he was forced to show her. She was going to have to sit with him when they had a moment alone and after she’d been able to process exactly what she had seen and let him know that she harbored no ill will toward him. That he’d had no choice whatsoever.
Gabriel managed to get to the point, however.
“Aside from giving us inside information about the nox themselves, why are you here?”
He wasn’t being cruel and he wasn’t angry. But the question was a good one and she hadn’t let them know anything at this point. She certainly wasn’t a warrior looking for a battle. Sunny also didn’t miss the fact that Plaxo got a lot more uncomfortable. He was not happy with what Selah was about to say and she didn’t miss the apologetic look he gave Sunny before Selah spoke.
“I’m going to take Gideon with me to Magda and have him healed,” she said. “The dream demon had told me he hasn’t completely turned yet and there’s still time. I owe him my life and I will repay him by doing everything I can to save his.”
“Bullshit,” Eli swore and kicked over a can near his foot. “Bullshit, Selah. Don’t you dare try to rescue that son of a bitch after what he did to Sunny. Don’t even think it.”
Selah and Eli had a long history working together under Gabriel, despite the fact that both Gabriel and Eli didn’t necessarily like demons. They liked being successful on missions, even if it meant working with creatures they considered unsavory.
“I’m not asking for permission, though I think it would be a lot easier with your help,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve what is happening to him. Believe me—it’s a fate worse than death.”
“Then we’ll kill him,” Eli blurted out and Sunny snapped her eyes to him, opening her mouth to speak.
Selah beat her
to it. “No,” she said. “You’re going to need him if you want any sort of chance at defeating Camael—especially after his transformation.”
Transformation? That was a new one.
“What is he transforming to?”
Selah gave a little chuckle, obviously pleased that she had a nugget of information that they didn’t.
“You really should hang out in the demon realm more often, Gabriel, given you’re such a fan of intel,” she said. “Camael has been promised the role of the White Rider in the unleashing.”
White Rider. White Rider. White Rider. Sunny racked her brain for the Horseman called the White Rider.
“Pestilence,” she breathed as soon as she remembered. She also recalled her vision she shared from Plaxo. The reanimated corpses. Her eyes shot to Eli and then to Gabriel.
“Fucking zombies,” she whispered, horrified. “He’s going to unleash a disease that will turn the population into zombies.”
Nobody spoke for a few moments, and while Selah looked smug and very much like her old self, she wasn’t gloating. That was an improvement.
“You need Camael’s intelligence and you need his son to get it,” she pressed. “Gideon deserves to be free of the creature inside him. It’s that simple.”
Neither Gabriel, Metatron or Eli looked particularly pleased. No, they looked down right pissed off, really. But the tactical side—the side of them that swore Sunny didn’t have what it took to lead a legion of demons couldn’t argue with the fact that they would benefit from knowing what Camael knew.
“He tried to kill her,” Eli ground out, repeating himself. “Think about that, Selah. He bashed her head again and again against a rock.”
Selah sucked in a breath and pursed her lips, as though what she were about to say left a bad taste in her mouth.
“That is the nox,” she said. “As much as I hate to admit it, Gideon loved her so much that the last thing he’d ever do willingly would be to hurt Sunshine. You have to understand what the voice of the thing is like, how persuasive it is. How it will not share space with your own soul—how you can feel it eating away at who you are and what you loved—your memories, your emotions.”