Celestial light circled my wrist. “I didn’t want to do this,” I said. “Sorry. This might hurt a little.”
The pentagram hummed, and a large furred shape leaped out of the air. Light spun from my fingers, catching the demon across the neck. As it died, its body vanished, back into the pentagram. I’d broken the barrier when I’d come out—but it was still tuned into the dimension I’d originally opened.
Nikolas turned to me with narrowed eyes. “That,” he growled, “was what I was dealing with when you dragged me into this dimension. Now they have your scent, too. If I were you, I’d put that pentagram away.”
Three more jumped through. Each biter demon was dog-sized and covered in fur, but the three sets of serrated teeth sort of took away their initial cute-and-cuddly appearance. I dived, grabbing for the pentagram to switch it off, but a demon’s furry body collided with mine from the side. I landed on my feet, conjuring light to my hand. Light speared the demon between the eyes, and its body collapsed.
The warlock faced two more demons. Black lightning crackled from his fingertips, making the air tingle with static. I pushed my wristband down, exposing the gleaming celestial mark. He wasn’t the only one with fancy tricks. Light spilled from my hand, forcing another of the demons to back away and giving me an opening to search out the switch that turned off the pentagram. That’d teach me to borrow a prop without looking up the instructions for shutting it down.
I found the switch. As one of the lights of the pentagram died, two fiends leaped out. Lightning shot from the warlock’s hands, spearing one of the fiends through its spine and catching the second in the face. As their lives winked out, their bodies disappeared. Damn, he was fast. I hadn’t known warlock magic worked so effectively against other demons.
The second light disappeared, and a larger beast leaped out of the remaining shadows. The size of a boar, it bristled all over with sharp spines. Light wasn’t enough to take it down, which meant accessing my celestial weapon for the first time in almost two years. I hoped it remembered me.
With my left hand, I reached through the invisible film connecting all the dimensions of this realm. A gleaming white sword with gold trimming appeared in my hand. I grinned. Now this was more like it.
I brought the sword down in an arc, decapitating the beast in one stroke. When the light hit, its skin melted from its bones, its body slumping and folding in on itself as death pulled it back through the rift into its home world. Dropping to my knees, I turned off the pentagram’s remaining lights. The warlock watched me, his dark aura etching his body in shadow.
I stood, raising my sword, light shimmering up to the hilt. “Still don’t believe what I am? No demon could wield this.”
Nikolas carried no weapons, but then, he was one. A force of nature. A fallen angel with a human’s face, looking at me as coldly as he had the demons. I had no means of containing him if he turned on me.
“I admire your courage, celestial, but it’s too late for you now,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, keep spewing your cryptic demon nonsense. I don’t suppose you want to save me the effort and tell me how you trapped me in my own pentagram?”
“I’m delighted you asked.” He moved closer, his warm breath caressing my cheek. “I told you already, if you remember. The pentagram is designed for demons. You are one, as far as your angelic trap is concerned.”
You liar. I opened my mouth to tell him as much, and he brushed his lips down my neck, hitting me with another blast of dizzying power. I swayed on my feet, and by the time I’d caught my balance, he was gone.
I swore loudly. The demonic residue would remain, but the creatures themselves had disappeared back to their own dimension. So did my sword, which spent most of its time in a pocket dimension of sorts whenever I wasn’t using it. The closest the celestials got to real magic. What the warlock had done was something else entirely. Not the lightning, but the fact that he’d pushed the pentagram on top of me. I picked it up, shaking loose brimstone out of the corners. He was the offspring of a fallen angel. Of course he’d lied to me.
And now I had to sneak the pentagram back into the guild without getting caught. Awesome. In fairness, the trap would have worked on any demon other than him. I should have looked up the shadow dimension in the celestial files first, but I had the sneaking suspicion that it was hidden behind a big red FORBIDDEN sign. Even Grade Threes weren’t permitted to deal with full on arch-demon territory. And most people wouldn’t run into one in their lifetime.
Sighing, I took out my phone and called Gav’s number.
“Devi,” he said. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me where you are?”
“On my way back to the guild,” I said. “Thought I had a lead, but it turned out to be false. Anyway, is there a chance I can access part of the archives? It’s not something I can get hold of on my phone.”
“It depends what it is,” he said, sounding a little wary.
“I’m looking for everything you have about fallen angels.”
“What are you scheming this time?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’d rather speak to you in person, but yeah… any info would be great.”
“I’ll need to get permission from the Inspector, and he’s in a rage because someone broke into the office and removed the guild’s ceremonial pentagram. You wouldn’t happen to know about that, would you?”
“Not at all. Er, by the way, can they work on anything other than demons? Like humans?”
“What?” He sighed. “You know the basics, Devi. Of course they don’t. They’re designed to react to demons only.”
Then the warlock did it. He must have.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up. It was a mistake. Definitely a mistake. There was no sense getting worked up over warlock mind games. Maybe he was the killer, maybe not. But he certainly knew something. He hadn’t ended up at the murder scene by coincidence. Add in his comments about me, and there was no way I was letting him go without making an effort to get hold of him again.
I kicked damp mud over the alley floor, and used my celestial light to burn the parts of the wall and earth where the demon blood had landed. Our light burned out everything demonic, even blood. Nothing remained but brimstone. And…
The warlock’s coat lay at the alley’s side.
I stared for a second. Did he do that on purpose? Was he goading me? As if I’d miss the chance to pick up a prop. I wouldn’t take it home with me, but he couldn’t enter the guild without a celestial mark anyway. Plus, I could hide the pentagram under there rather than walk with it poking me in the spine.
Thanks for that, Nikolas.
A loud beeping issued from my own coat pocket. “You’re a bit late,” I told the demon detector. “Also, you’re supposed to be broken.” The detector must be sturdier than I’d realised. But maybe it’d zeroed in on the warlock again. If nothing else, my sword would work on him. He might not be able to die—and I wasn’t the biggest fan of torture—but I needed answers.
Rory’s tormented face flashed before my eyes and my hands clenched on the warlock’s coat. It didn’t smell of brimstone or smoke as I might have expected of a demon. It smelled sort of like his lure—an unidentifiable pleasant scent. I held it at arm’s length in case it carried any residual effects. After the morning I’d had, the last thing I needed was to end up a drooling idiot under a warlock’s thrall.
My pocket beeped again. Loudly. It couldn’t be reacting to the warlock’s coat. Maybe he’d come back after all.
I half-ran down the street, following the beeping noise. Of all the times for the device to start doing what it was supposed to—it had to work after the warlock had got away. The way it was vibrating, I ought to be standing on top of the target. But nothing appeared. I ducked into an alley and checked the compass. It pointed straight ahead.
Then came a scream, high and loud. Human screaming.
Shit. Not again.
Chapter 7
I picked up spee
d. The beeping continued in tandem with my quick footsteps, and the screaming didn’t stop. I didn’t know this neighbourhood well enough to take note of the route, but all I cared about was finding the person screaming. Even though part of me knew it was too late.
I saw the aura first. Blinding white, specked with dark spots amongst the blank auras of the crowd surrounding the screaming girl. She lay on the pavement, her cries already dying out. I moved closer, trying to see properly over the crowd. Human witnesses. Not good.
“She’s on fire!” said one of the onlookers.
Burning. Like the first victim. And her aura was—wrong. Not a true demon’s, or even a warlock’s, but tainted.
The girl screamed again. “All… will… fall.”
Her words died out, and her head hit the pavement as her body gave one final convulsion, then went still. Too still.
I stood, cold sweat gathering on my forehead. Just like that… she was dead. As though an impossibly powerful being had reached out a recriminating hand and touched her, burning the life out of her. The crowd shifted, revealing the victim’s face. Louise.
What? She was at the guild. Her vampire boyfriend hadn’t been involved, had he? Maybe he’d dissolved into ashes somewhere nearby. She must have been with him. It hadn’t been long since I’d caught them in the lab…
“Move aside,” said a quiet, authoritative voice.
My mouth dropped open as the warlock strode casually towards the crowd, sweeping a hand. Their expressions glazed over one at a time and they traipsed away. In seconds, we were alone.
“What the hell?” I stepped aside, away from him.
“I believe that’s mine.” He yanked the jacket from my hands.
“Didn’t you leave it on purpose?” I wanted to check he hadn’t mesmerised the crowd into doing anything stupid, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off my adversary. “You did this.”
“You know that I was with you up until a minute ago.”
I waved a hand at the humans. “Look at what you did to them. You might have sent anyone else to kill on your behalf.”
“I know nobody weak enough to be controlled who might have done this.”
“Then you did it yourself, through a proxy, or—something.” The timing was skewed, but this was the second murder scene he’d shown up at. “Even if not, how did you know she was here?”
“I felt it. I can sense a strong demonic presence.”
“Like a walking demon detector.”
He tilted his head. “I suppose I am. Does that explain how you got here so fast? One would almost think you’re deflecting blame onto me to avoid admitting your own crimes.”
“You think I’m the killer?” The bastard was screwing with my head on purpose. I had an alibi—and more to the point, I wasn’t a demon.
He stepped close behind me. “I know what you did.”
Those five words chilled my blood more than the sight of Louise’s sprawling body did. No. He can’t know. He reached out to touch me, and I threw the demonic detector in his face.
On reflection, it wasn’t my smoothest move. The device bounced off his forehead, and its beeping intensified to a piercing noise too much like screaming. He caught it in his hand, brow furrowed. “This is your demon detector?”
“It’s going to explode, idiot.” I lunged at him, snatching the device from his hand, and yanked out the battery, swearing when liquefied brimstone melted all over my hand.
“What did you do that for?” His tone carried a touch of both puzzlement and amusement.
“So it wouldn’t explode on the crime scene,” I pocketed the remains, sticking my battery-soaked hand into my pocket. Smooth, Devi. “You were saying?”
“I was saying that if that detector is anything to go by, you can’t have had the subtlety to commit the crime.”
“Well, fuck you too.” I crouched down. I couldn’t touch the body with either hand, demonic battery acid or not, but I didn’t need to touch her to know that she’d been burned with some kind of demonic fire. Her eyes had melted in their sockets, and heaven only knew what the guild would find if they cut her open. I swallowed hard, trying to focus on the facts rather than the awfulness of her death—and the forbidding presence of the warlock behind me. There was no covering this up. People would start talking, speculating on what could bring the mighty celestials down so low.
“White-hot,” Nikolas said. “Like the pits of hell itself.”
“Is that where you took her?” I asked. “The first victim was found miles from where he was supposed to be. You can use one dimension to move around the city, right?”
“Ah.” He looked at me with piercing golden eyes. “I can’t fault your reasoning, but you’re wrong. If I step into the shadow realm from here, I appear in the same place geographically that overlaps with this city. It’s not possible for me to move someone from one side of town to another in the space of a few seconds, even if I were to go in and out through the other realm. And as you might have guessed from those beasts which attacked us earlier, the shadow realm isn’t the safest place to wander into without a plan.”
Well, crap. Didn’t mean he wasn’t involved, but it still left the question of how the victims had ended up in completely the wrong place. The only possibility was that someone else was the killer, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t orchestrated it.
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
His gaze went to the body. “Why else? I’m here because these killings have the potential to affect a great deal more than a couple of celestials. And I find it interesting that you’re here, because your file tells me you haven’t been an active celestial in over two years.”
I straightened up, still holding the pentagram in my right hand. “You read my files?”
“The celestial guild needs to keep its security under wraps.”
“Nice try. That information’s easily available to anyone with the tendency to poke their nose into someone else’s business.” Prick. I knew for a fact he couldn’t know the guild’s secrets, because the top-secret files were kept sealed even to most of us.
He stepped over the body so I was between him and the wall. “Doesn’t it bother you, having to obey their rules? Wouldn’t you rather act on your own account?”
I leaned away from him, even as the magnetic tug of his lure threatened to hit me again.
“Don’t touch me,” I spat, pulling my demonic battery acid-soaked hand out of my pocket. It’d turned an interesting shade of green. Hope that isn’t permanent.
He didn’t move. “I’m not the one you should be afraid of, celestial. By my estimate, the first celestial soldiers should be here shortly. And if you’re found at the crime scene holding a demonic summoning pentagram…”
“Then they’ll know I was here on business,” I spoke loudly to cover the sound of my heart thundering in my ears. “Unlike you. If you were acting as a detective, you’d actually be looking around the crime scene. I think you’re feeding on the energy here.”
“I’m no lesser demon,” said Nikolas, his tone somewhat disdainful. “I don’t feed on human energy to live. This death was caused by someone who enjoys causing pain and has the powers to back it up. That person is not me, celestial, but I can guarantee I’ll find answers sooner than the guild will. I’m afraid I’m going to have to offer you a choice. If you mention me to the inspector, they will not find me, but they will find their records scrubbed of every trace of their investigations into these killings. You don’t want that, do you?”
“You can’t threaten the celestials,” I said. “They’ll—”
“I already said I cannot be killed. Being arrested would be inconvenient, however, and I’d rather avoid that if at all possible.”
“You have got to be kidding me. I can’t lie to protect a warlock.”
He took a step back. “You are one of us,” he said. “Whether you believe it or not.”
“Don’t you dare run off—”
Bolts of light struck the ground on
either side of me. Shadows wrapped around my hand, and the pentagram disappeared. “Hey, you prick—”
“Celestial Devina Lawson,” said a robotic voice. “Might I ask why you’re shouting at nobody?”
Damn. The warlock was gone. Not only that, he’d snatched my pentagram. Though considering the look on Inspector Deacon’s face already, his head would probably have exploded if he’d seen me standing here with a warlock, holding the guild’s most valuable demonic summoning device.
“I’m looking into the crime scene.” I indicated the body, which, unfortunately, was about ten metres away from me. Instead, it’d looked as though I’d been yelling at the wall.
“There was a warlock!” yelped a voice. Oh great. Why bring Bad Haircut Sammy to the crime scene? “I knew one of those preternaturals was involved. They all are.”
“Way to leap to conclusions,” I said. Typical. The inspector would pick the loudmouth who hated vamps and warlocks almost as much as they hated each other as his assistant. And something told me Nikolas wasn’t the killer. He was a glaring obstacle in solving the crime—no denying that—but also a potential source of useful information.
If he didn’t do as he’d promised and erase all the celestials’ evidence.
Once again, I was frog-marched back to the guild. The celestials commandeered an entire train carriage to themselves, pushing every other passenger out of the way by sheer intimidation. Heaven knew what pictures of me would end up floating around DivinityWatch now.
Everyone stared even more when we actually reached the guild. Worse, my hand was still covered in battery acid which smelled of brimstone, and the pentagram’s absence was even more glaringly obvious when I sat down in front of the desk in the main office. Nikolas had taken a powerful summoning device into a demonic dimension. I couldn’t have screwed this up more thoroughly if I’d tried.
“What in seven hells were you playing at?” Inspector Deacon bellowed at me across the desk.
I fastened a glare on my face. “Your bunch of incompetent novices nearly skewered me.”
Celestial Magic (Celestial Marked Book 1) Page 6