He handed me a fistful of notes. Score. Now I could replace my shoes. “Thanks. I’d watch out in future. Carrying bloodstones… well, carrying anything that might be used as a demonic prop can only lead to trouble.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Devina.”
I turned to make sure the demonic pentagram had thoroughly disappeared. By that point, I ought to have known the job had been too easy. And the netherworld wasn’t finished with me yet.
Sidestepping the puddles, I was halfway out the alley when the mark on my wrist lit up again, a tingling sensation running from my palm to my elbow. Then a scream drifted over the rooftops.
That was a human scream.
I spun around and ran down the alley, which intersected with a narrow passage between the high fences of the neighbouring shops’ back yards. This area attracted more preternaturally inclined people than most and my celestial mark reacted to anyone who wasn’t human or celestial, but the brightness of the light indicated a demon of a high level. The sort that wasn’t supposed to appear in this realm.
I exited the back alley and crossed the road as a second scream tore through the night. The smell of brimstone stung my nostrils, coating the back of my throat like ash.
A man lay huddled at an alleyway’s end, writhing and screaming. White light flared up around his wrist, which bore the same mark as mine. A celestial. No demon showed itself. Just him, screaming as though tormented by terrible pain. I froze, grabbed his hand to stop him hurting himself, then dropped it as searing pain burned my palm.
He threw his head back, revealing burning holes where his eyes had been. White light filled the gaps, brighter than the light on his hand.
I couldn’t move. Not even when movement came from behind me, and a number of figures appeared, white light shining from their wrists, pinning me under a spotlight. “Devina Lawson,” said a male voice. “You’re under arrest for attempted murder.”
Chapter 2
Did I mention I wasn’t an example of a perfect celestial soldier? Maybe if I’d actually volunteered for the job, it’d be a different story. Ten years on, I didn’t remember much of the crash that’d killed my parents, just waking up in a morgue with my fatal injuries miraculously cured and scaring the hell out of the hospital staff.
I’d spent the next year cursing the Divinities for sparing me and not my family. Not an auspicious way to begin my training. At sixteen, I’d hit the peak of my rebellious phase and had zero patience for following the rules of an organisation I’d never signed up for. What’d swayed me was that higher level celestials got to travel all over the world on assignments. So I’d stayed the course, and won my mentors’ grudging admiration because I was damned good at killing demons. Half of them still cheered behind closed doors when I left. I’d bet they did, anyway.
But for all the trouble I’d caused, a murder accusation was a step too far. I returned the celestial soldiers’ wary looks and accusing stares with the most intense fuck off expression I could conjure. They honestly thought I’d attacked one of them. At least they didn’t point their weapons at me, though I spotted knives and stakes strapped to the legs of my captors, and doubtless more weapons inside their identical grey jackets. I’d bet the guild would have ordered everyone to dress in white if they could get away with it, but getting demon blood out of light-coloured fabric was a bloody nuisance.
Two soldiers flanked me on the walk back to the guild and into the office of Mr Gavin Spencer, my former supervisor. His long-suffering frown hadn’t changed, though the wrinkles on his face had deepened. The celestial soldiers who survived to old age tended to end up in admin positions. He’d retired early after a demon had torn his leg clean off. His prosthetic leg tapped against the back of his oak desk as it always did when he was agitated. So, generally every time I wound up in his office. Like the others, he wore the celestials’ official badge—a silver arrowhead—pinned to the front of his smart suit. He didn’t wear their battle gear anymore, but his celestial mark still worked as well as it had before.
I planted myself in the seat opposite him. “Hi,” I said. “It’s been a while, Gav.”
He didn’t smile back. “Celestial Devina Lawson, we have substantial evidence that you were involved in a demonic attack on one of our soldiers.”
“Since when did you call me by my full name? I thought we were friendlier than that, Gav.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I didn’t attack the guy. You seriously think I’m capable of that?”
“Capable? Certainly. You reached a high rank, and you might have been promoted to Grade Four if you’d stayed.”
“Ouch,” I said. “You must really think I’ve gone off the rails. Why would I kill one of you? I don’t even know his name.”
“That would be because Celestial Caleb Rogers signed up a year after you left. He’s unlikely to survive the night.”
I fidgeted, goose bumps prickling my arms. The kid’s screams would haunt me for a long time. The fact that the attacker hadn’t finished the job spoke of a brutality that went beyond most regular demons. And considering regular demons were evil little shits, I definitely wanted nothing to do with whatever the guild’s new recruit had managed to get himself mixed up in.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said to Gav. “You know perfectly well I can’t have attacked him. I don’t even know any demons who can kill someone like that.”
“No, but you’re well known to have been consorting with the netherworld in the last two years.”
“Consorting?” I raised an eyebrow. “You mean making use of my skills to help people? Same as I did here, except on my own.”
He cleared his throat. He’d known my last partner, Rory, almost as well as I had. He might have been our supervisor, but even he didn’t know the truth of what’d gone down on my last mission two years ago. Not because I hadn’t told the guild, but because they didn’t believe my report. Perfectly obedient celestial soldiers didn’t drop dead of their own accord, eyes burning as though imbued with the fires of hell.
“We both have very different ideas of what constitutes the best use of your skills, Devi,” he said. “However, I think in this case, you have some knowledge which might be useful.”
“Wait,” I said. “You don’t think I did it, then?”
“Mr Roth doesn’t,” he said, “and he has an offer to make you. Since you seem to make a living by summoning demons for questionable clients lately…”
Great. They had been watching me.
“…we thought you might be able to track the attacker.”
“Not if I don’t know where it was summoned, and how,” I said. “There were no marks in the alley where he was found. No signs of a summoning. The actual attack might have happened anywhere, right? I didn’t get a close look before your people hauled me in for questioning.”
“We do have people surveying the crime scene,” he said. “However, we’ve never had a death quite like this before. Your area of expertise—”
“Usually, I know what I’m looking for,” I told him. “Besides, I haven’t worked for you in two years. The only demon I’ve seen lately is one of those magpies, and they aren’t smart enough to have links with anything strong enough to attack a celestial.”
He sighed. “Please consider it.”
“I don’t see what I can do that you can’t,” I said. “I’m not a detective. You’re the experts here.”
“And you were one of our best. From the moment you signed up as a novice, you were leagues ahead of the others.”
“Excuse me?” I spluttered. “What about the time I used a homemade adhesive spell to glue your furniture to the ceiling? Or set off fireworks in the quadrangle?”
“You still killed more demons than half our novices. And this is a demon unlike any we’ve seen in this city before.”
“But nobody’s actually seen it,” I said. “That’s suspicious in itself. Stronger demons tend to draw attention.” By slaughtering the locals and tearing buildings down, for ins
tance. This case was a little too specific. Nobody targeted a celestial soldier by accident. But usually if a demon did so, they didn’t live to tell the tale.
“Maybe it will,” said Gav, “but I’d prefer not to have any more victims before we get to that stage.”
“I don’t have enough to work with here,” I said. “If there was one clue, I might be able to figure out what we’re dealing with. Possibly. You’re the ones with the encyclopaedia of demons.” I indicated the book on his desk with that exact title.
“You still have access to our archives.”
I know. I use them more often than you’d think.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but I prefer to work alone now. The guild’s better off without me. And I think you can handle this case without my help.”
“It’s a shame you’ve taken that stance, Devi. I hope you’ll reconsider—”
An earth-shattering scream drowned out his words, guttural and almost inhuman.
I was on my feet before my brain quite caught up with my body’s fight-or-flight response, ignoring Gavin’s shout behind me as I collided with the door on the way out of the office. Further down the corridor, the nurse’s office was open. Several others had gathered there, too, and all wore varying expressions of fear and disgust.
The injured celestial screamed again, writhing on the floor where he must have fallen from the bed. Two others tried to hold him down, but he kept screaming, and they let go as though burned.
“His skin’s on fire!” one of them shouted, waving his hands. Smoke poured from his palms, like he’d pressed them to a red-hot surface. My stomach turned over.
The celestial sobbed, and guttural words came out of his mouth between screams—
“The netherworld will rise. You will burn, celestials.”
His head fell to his chest. Smoke poured off his skin, which had turned red-raw. The pits where his eyes had been glowed, intensely bright as the light of heaven—or hell. Then the lights winked out, and he fell onto his back. The smoke dissipated. One of the celestials who’d tried to hold him down took a wary step forward.
“He’s dead,” said the celestial quietly.
Everyone looked at one another, and then pretended not to look at one another. A shocked hush permeated the building.
I swallowed bile, backing away, and hurried down the corridor to the exit.
Nobody stopped me.
The journey home was a blur. I hated taking the train at this time of night, and the smooth motion of tower blocks gliding past the windows did nothing to calm my nerves. My head rang with the sounds of screaming and guttural words, and a chillingly awful familiarity which usually revisited me only in my darkest nightmares. The fact that Gav—and Mr Roth, at that—had called on me for this case was like a twisted joke. After all, I was the only person at the guild who’d witnessed someone else die in the same way.
Death was a constant companion as a celestial soldier. The first lesson drilled into every new recruit was that demons would stop at nothing to bring our world to the same state of ruin as their netherworld dimensions, in which they’d killed every celestial in existence. In this particular dimension, the first celestials had gathered in the Middle East thousands of years ago, then spread worldwide as the demons did. Almost every culture had some kind of demon, and most had someone who fought against them, even if we didn’t always agree on methods. Like other cities built by the celestials, Haven City boasted the lowest percentage of demon attacks in the UK, despite the high population of vampires and warlocks drawn to the magical energy present in the city. So what’d happened tonight was unusual at best. Small crimes like the magpie demon’s robbery could slip by the guild’s notice. Not turning someone into a human torch.
That’s enough, Devi. I’d already backed out of the case. Even though I’d dealt with more demons than most celestials at my level, if they knew the truth—that I was likely the only person at the guild who’d actually been into a demon realm—I was more likely to end up with a ticket to jail than my old job back.
Some things weren’t worth the risk.
I left the train at the closest station to my flat and walked the rest of the way. My flat wasn’t too bad, considering my chronic lack of cash, but I missed having a car. The light in the ground floor room next to mine told me that my neighbour, Fiona, was still awake.
“You look like hell,” she said through her open window.
“Not the first time I’ve heard that tonight.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “Early night for me, I think.”
“Your phone’s been ringing for the last hour,” she called to me in her crisp Irish accent, as I used my fob to open the door to the block.
I groaned. The guild had my old number. Figures. “Never mind. I’ll deal with it.”
“Want to talk?”
“Maybe tomorrow. It’s just work stuff, not really what you’d be interested in.” I didn’t need to offload my problems on Fiona, who was thankfully a long way from preternaturally gifted. She was the ordinary friend I didn’t deserve, and I planned to keep it that way.
“I’m interested.” When I walked into the hallway, she pushed open her flat door. “There’s another picture of you on DivinityWatch. Looks like it was taken tonight. I thought you were going to the pub, not a vampire bar.”
She waved her phone in my face. Judging by the lighting and angle, a certain vampire had been responsible for the picture. The one who’d thought screwing me would save his immortal soul.
“Great,” I said. “Just what I need—a vampire admirer. Or stalker.”
“Need me to hit someone?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Fiona was a brown belt in karate, but vampires could move faster than even celestials and were capable of snapping a man’s neck with their hands. Also, this was hardly the first time someone had focused their attention on me. Most of us have a few hundred unflattering pictures floating around the Internet somewhere, thanks to the weird celebrity status some people bestowed on us. A picture was easier to ignore than a brutal murder. I handed Fiona her phone back, hoping photos of that didn’t show up online.
“Why were you on that site, anyway?” I asked.
“Someone claimed to have seen a Divinity again.”
I snorted. “Happens every other week.” I should have guessed. Sites like DivinityWatch had been set up for people to upload pictures they claimed to be of true Divinities. Mostly they were celestials who’d gone out drinking and decided to create their own light displays in inappropriate places.
“You never know,” said Fiona. “Not sure they’d want to read the comments on this photo, though…”
I sighed. “Let’s see.”
She turned the phone around to display the screen. “See? Looks pretty shiny.”
“That,” I said, “is a naked man covered in neon glow paint photographed through a filter. Amateur job.”
“Dammit,” said Fiona. “Oh well. Maybe I’ll be the first to see one.”
I’d already told her that I hadn’t seen the Divinity who’d given me the mark, but she wouldn’t drop the subject. It was a relatively harmless obsession, all things considered, so I left her to it. From what I’d heard from the celestials, everyone had a different description of receiving their mark. Considering I was agnostic, they’d probably thrown up their hands and said, “Let’s just give her the Generic Strobe Light Experience.” The Divinities didn’t show themselves here, not when they had hundreds of celestial soldiers fighting their battles for them, which as far as I was concerned, meant they weren’t here at all.
Fiona said, “By the way, one of the vampires commenting on that photo claims you dated one another.”
I grimaced. “It was one date. I didn’t know.” Apparently my entire past wanted to revisit me tonight. “I’ll get that photo removed. I’ve no idea why these people are so interested in my life.”
If I’d been sensible, I’d have washed my hands of the celestials forever and taken on an
ordinary mundane job when I’d left. But there’s a reason demon hunters find it hard to retire, and after eight years as a celestial soldier, I’d had no training in anything else. Underage teenagers were better than me at serving cocktails, and I was pretty sure a toddler could operate a cash register better than I could. So I’d spent the last two years doing what I did best—wading deep into preternatural nonsense and ending up with vampires creeping on me.
“Because they know you’re a badass,” Fiona said. “You look like you could use some sleep, though.”
“I get that a lot.” I faked a yawn. “I’ll go deal with whoever’s calling me. See you tomorrow.”
Once I was inside my flat, I tracked down my old phone and deleted every one of the messages. To add salt to the wounds, I’d forgotten I’d used a picture of Rory and me as the background image. The photo was from one of our last cases, where we’d managed to wrangle a couple of days on the beach out of the guild’s budget to make up for the trouble the demon had caused us. Rory lay sprawled on the sand, sunburned in pink stripes. I remembered teasing him about it. Old Me grinned at the camera, looking startlingly young, skin tanned deeply from the beach. I looked more like my mum than I remembered, with the same curly hair flowing down my back. Pity I hadn’t inherited her amazing cooking skills, though.
I’d lost touch with my other relatives after I’d joined the guild. Most higher-ranked celestials are ‘gently’ advised to break off contact, because of our high mortality rate and our penchant for attracting every demon within ten miles. Most of Mum’s family lived in Greece, while Dad’s were all the way over in Yorkshire. So I’d stuck around in Haven City, the closest to a home I’d had since that car accident. The guild was the centre of the universe for me, as it was for all of us. Cutting myself off from them had hurt more than I’d admitted to anyone, least of all myself.
I left the picture but deleted the rest of the voicemail messages, then sent a message to the administrator of DivinityWatch asking them to remove the photo of me. Then I switched my old phone off and shoved it into a pair of old socks at the bottom of my drawer.
Celestial Magic (Celestial Marked Book 1) Page 2