“Yeah,” I said. “Also, our little vampire friend ran away. All of them, in fact.” What with our brush with the arch-demon, not to mention Zadok, I’d totally forgotten my renewed suspicions about the celestial vampire and his involvement in what was going on. And Alec still hadn’t replied to my message. That’s a bad sign.
“They all ran away?” he asked. “No traces or anything?”
“None,” I said. “The other bite victim ran away from the guild, too. She might have joined them, might not. Point is, one of the two celestials knows something, for sure. The book Damian was reading—about demon venom—was checked out by Gav, two weeks before he died.”
His brow furrowed. “So Gavin knew… what, exactly?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.” I walked down the corridor, listening out for any signs of warlock presence. Hearing nothing, I loaded up the celestials’ old files on my phone, the ones I’d temporarily regained access to when I’d returned to the guild. Then I ran a search on saphor demons. “I think we’ve been looking in the wrong place.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nikolas.
I skimmed through the file list. “I think we were wrong to assume it’s a powerful demon doing the energy transfer. And I had that information in my files—the celestials did, anyway. Rory died after we crawled through a nest of saphor demons.”
He frowned. “You never mentioned that before.”
“That’s because we never actually ran into any,” I said. “There were a few nastier demons in there instead. We killed them with no problems, but then the big guy showed up…”
“There you are,” said Rachel from the other side of the office door. “All right, Devi, do you want the good news or the bad news?”
I looked up from my phone. “Isn’t it all bad news?”
She cracked a smile. “Nope. The good news is that we have a sample of the vampire cure.”
“What?” I glanced at Nikolas. “Seriously?”
“We isolated the cure from that vamp’s blood,” she said. “Or I did anyway. Since you two were off gallivanting around Babylon.”
“Damn. Nice work.”
She grinned and darted back into the office, and Nikolas and I followed her.
“So how did you manage it?” I asked, settling into the desk chair.
“Well, that’s the bad news,” she said. “The reason we had so much trouble is because the cure’s the same as the demon venom. It’s the same blood. We had it right in front of us the whole time.”
A horrified rush of understanding passed over me. In order to fully turn into a vampire, the fledgling had to consume the blood of their sire. Otherwise they remained human, and addicted to the intoxicating presence of the venom in their veins. But… that meant Fiona was a fledgling, if not in the usual vampire sense, and so were the other bite victims. And the ones who’d taken the cure had fully turned into demonic vampires.
It was no cure at all, but the next step in the transformation sequence.
“Shit,” I said, glancing down at my phone. I’d pulled up the files on saphor demons—and the picture of their eggs looked awfully familiar. “Oh—fuck.”
“What?” asked Rachel and Nikolas at the same time.
“Has anyone ever got a close look at the infected bloodstones?” I asked. “Really close up? Can you know for sure it’s the same material as the regular bloodstones?”
“No…” Rachel gave Nikolas a quizzical look.
“It’s the saphor demons’ eggs.” I flipped my phone around and showed them the picture. “They’re the exact same size and shape as bloodstones. And they’re demonic parasites. I’m almost certain that’s what Rory handled right before he died. It got inside him somehow—we both got injured during the fight, and if it got in his bloodstream, it might have had the same effect as being bitten.”
Guilt swirled inside me, and I lowered the phone, swallowing back the rush of emotion. I hadn’t known—but of course I hadn’t. Nobody had, and no one at the guild had even guessed.
“And that’s the deal with the vampires?” said Rachel. “Really? They’re playing host to demonic parasites?”
“And it alters their blood,” Nikolas said, nodding slowly. “So much that when they bite someone else, the virus passes on, too. And as celestials’ powers are the antithesis to demonic ones—”
“It reacts, killing them.” I swallowed. “So Gav knew, for sure. He was reading that book. I’m almost certain that’s what’s on the pages that went missing. But why did he suddenly get the impulse to check the book out before the first murder even happened?”
“Hang on,” said Rachel. “What book?”
I quickly explained. Her eyes widened with each word. “So you’re saying this celestial is possibly complicit with demons? And the others know?”
“No clue,” I said. “I’m not getting a response from our vampire friend, anyway. And I’m at a loss as to whether Gav’s researching the demon eggs was a coincidence, or…” Or if he had a hunch, and someone wanted him out of the way.
And where did that leave Rory? I thought back to the grief-fogged weeks following his death… to the last time I’d been to the guild, when nobody had believed my report about how he’d died. They hadn’t known. But someone might have read the report and put two and two together anyway.
And now a demonic parasite lay in Fiona’s head, waiting to tear her to pieces, too.
I took a step back. “I need to check on Fiona. If she takes that cure—it’s all over for her.”
Once I was outside the room, I called her. Fiona picked up right away.
“How do you feel?” I asked her, gripping the phone tightly.
“Fine. I think. You don’t sound fine, though. What’s up?”
“Too much to tell you over the phone,” I said. “Just—if anyone offers you the cure, anyone at all, please don’t take it. The cure’s fake, and… it’s a lot worse than we thought. It’ll kill you. It’s the real reason people are turning into murderers.”
“Wait, really? This cure? So… so what will happen to me?”
“Hopefully nothing,” I said. “You haven’t taken the cure, and as far as I know, the killers all had. Otherwise… just make sure you don’t go near anyone who has taken it, even if they claim to be fine. Sorry to go all parental on you,” I added, “but keep the defences on the flat and text me every few hours. If you need me to get anything for you, let me know. And if things go downhill, you might have to come back to the warlocks’ place again. Unfortunately, all our other potential safe houses aren’t so safe.”
“If you say so,” she said. “How long will this crap take? Because honestly, I don’t think my boss will take ‘possessed by a demon’ as an excuse not to show up next week. I took today off, but I don’t want to get fired on top of everything else.”
“You’re not possessed,” I said. “I’ll do my best to sort this, okay? Just hang tight.”
“Will do,” she said.
After I’d hung up, I rang Clover. To my intense surprise, she picked up.
“You shouldn’t have called.”
“It’s saphor demons, Clover,” I said. “Demon eggs. The venom’s in there. They look exactly like bloodstones, and the people who take the cure fully turn, like vampires. The guild needs to know.”
There was a long pause. “Are you certain?”
“Positive.” I briefly ran through what I’d learned. “And that means Gav knew, but I’ve no idea how he came to that conclusion. They’re pretty common demons. And even he—even he dismissed the reports of mine and Rory’s last mission.”
“He didn’t,” she said quietly. “The report was removed from office before I had the chance to read it. I always wondered—but you never brought up the subject.”
“Because I didn’t know what I’d missed,” I said quietly. “And I didn’t. If I hadn’t seen a picture of what those demon eggs looked like—I’m positive Rory and I crawled through a bunch of them in the caves while we wer
e hunting the demons. They look exactly like the contraband bloodstones.”
“I believe you, but the guild might not. They’re preoccupied trying to find their runaways—unless you’ve seen any signs of them?”
So she’d guessed I’d been looking. “Nope,” I said. “Believe me, I wish I had. One of the so-called victims is involved with demons. Maybe all of them.”
She exhaled. “Devi, I’d advise you to avoid the guild at the present moment. They’ve ceased sending out communications, which can’t be good. This time, they haven’t called me in again, which suggests they really are going ahead with their plan to bring in an outside army.”
Crap. “Okay. Tell Mr Roth, at least. Someone higher up needs to know, and not the inspector.” I wouldn’t shed a tear if he got infected, but the guild needed to act before the demons did. Because hell was a hundred steps ahead of them.
“If he finds out, heaven help us all.”
I looked at my phone screen after she’d hung up, unable to get the image of those demon eggs out of my head. I’d left the guild so soon after Rory’s death, I hadn’t considered that they’d wiped the mission reports off the database before anyone else had even had the chance to read them. It seemed a weird overreaction at the time, but now I had to wonder who else had got hold of the information.
“What are you doing?” Nikolas asked.
“Talking to Clover,” I said. “She knows—for what it’s worth. But the guild’s gone off grid. I told her about the demon eggs anyway… I can’t believe nobody guessed.”
“Maybe they did,” he said. “The guild hides information, don’t they?”
“Sure, but that’s just… odd. Even Rory’s death—I didn’t witness it, so my report wasn’t good enough for them. They dismissed it.” My throat closed up. “Apparently they removed all the reports. Or someone did. But word must have got out somehow. And now one traitor celestial vampire—maybe two—is at large with inside information on the guild itself, including how to bring them down from the inside.”
I didn’t know how to feel at all, knowing how it had all gone down, and how we’d all made mistakes in the end. Gav included. Even Clover hadn’t seen this coming. Part of me, like it or not, was still connected to the celestials. I’d be bound to them as long as I lived… unless my demon mark took over entirely. And I hadn’t had space in my head to worry about what demonic power Themedes might have passed onto me with his death, and if that would affect my celestial mark.
“It’s the guild’s problem, not yours,” Nikolas said. “You did the right thing even if they didn’t.”
“But—Fiona,” I mumbled. “She… she’s halfway through turning into one of those vamps. At best she’ll be a day-walking vampire who has to keep drinking the cure to survive. At worst, she’ll lose her mind like the others.”
“It might be that the process can reversed,” said Nikolas, a gentle undercurrent to his voice. “If the demonic parasite is a separate entity… this isn’t something I’ve had reason to look into before. Maybe one of the vampires would volunteer to help us investigate.”
“Sure would help if we could find our runaways,” I said. “I think now’s the time to report them to the vampire queen. Maybe she’s seen them.”
“No need.” Rachel looked up from her phone, her expression unusually sombre. “I think I know where our rogue celestial vamp is.”
The phone screen showed DivinityWatch, of all things. And headlines filled the page—Breaking News: Attack at Haven City Shopping Centre. Along with a picture of Alyson.
“Oh, seven hells.”
Chapter 18
I clung to the side of the car as Nikolas drove at breakneck pace. At the same time, Rachel shouted down the phone at Javos, who’d never get there fast enough. Which left it up to us to take care of this shit show. Dammit, DivinityWatch. They just had to panic everyone—though admittedly, from what I saw as I skimmed the newsfeed on my phone, the local media hadn’t got hold of the story yet, and the more people stayed away from the crime scene, the better. An attack on a public place—on humans—wasn’t something even the guild could sweep under the carpet.
As we careened around a corner, a blurred figure ran in front of the car. Nikolas hit the brakes, and the car tilted sideways then slammed down, damn near flipping over.
“Did we hit a vamp?” Rachel pushed her door open, while I did the same, my heart still thumping from our hair-raising ride.
“No human moves that fast.” I jumped out onto the road.
The guy we’d hit was already on his feet. A male vamp with flat black eyes. Dark blood ran from the corner of his mouth, but his glazed expression didn’t change.
A scream echoed from the shopping centre.
“I’ll take him,” Rachel said.
I ran for the stone steps leading to the glass-fronted building, which were smeared with blood. Nikolas was one step behind me. Inside, people ran every which way, a chaotic blur of activity which made it impossible to tell at a distance who was attacking whom. I grabbed a stake with my right hand and my gaze fell on an elderly human man trying to beat off a vampire with the same dark eyes as the other, and no apparent aversion to the glaring shopping centre lights at all.
“Hey!” I ran up to him, brandishing the stake. The vampire turned his back on his human prey, and my heart lurched. I knew him. He was the vampire who’d tried to chat me up in a pub not so long ago. No life remained in his gaze now. He was entirely a demon’s host.
I staked him in the heart and ran further into the crowd.
Black lightning streaked through the air, hitting two vamps at once. With his magic, Nikolas could fight from a distance, but my stakes were designed for close-quarters combat. Also, I couldn’t tell which people were vampires and which were humans panicking and trying to fight their way out. Nikolas must be able to see their auras, of course, and I wished I’d had the foresight to use a potion to let myself do the same. Not that I’d had anywhere near enough warning.
Celestial light sprang to my palm, reflecting off the shattered fragments of glass from a shop window. Dismantled mannequins lay amongst the wreckage, along with the bloody remains of several shoppers. I ran into the fray again, spotting a vamp chewing on the neck of a woman who’d tried to hide behind a shop display.
“Hey!” I yelled to grab his attention, though it looked like it was already too late for his victim.
Running to meet the vamp, I beat him over the head with a stake, and shone the celestial rays directly into his eyes. He choked, but didn’t burn like he should have done. The demons’ magic stopped them burning in any light. It might be a parasite, but they were far more powerful than vampires had the right to be. Staking him in the chest, I let the vampire’s body crumble. At least staking, stabbing and my celestial blade worked on the bastards. But for how much longer?
Nikolas’s lightning struck down two more vamps. Using his magic, he isolated the vampires and knocked them away from their human prey, and I leapt in to finish them off. But there were too many of them. Far too many. This was a coordinated attack. Some vamps appeared to move on autopilot, as though not particularly bothered what they did as long as it involved hurting someone. They’d been given orders—but who was the mastermind?
As the last vamp fell, I turned to Nikolas. “The report said they appeared out of nowhere. You know what that means.”
He nodded. “There’s a portal here somewhere.”
“Not this floor. It’s too quiet.” Not to mention one of us would have sensed it.
I skirted around the shell-shocked-looking surviving shoppers and began to run for the escalators, Nikolas at my side.
Two vamps jumped down from the balconies of the floor above, landing in front of us. Nikolas blasted them flat onto their backs without breaking stride, and I ran and staked both of them.
We’d cleared this floor, but faint screaming from above. Bodies littered the floor—not killed by vamps, but people who’d obviously jumped off the balconies to
get away from them. Rage ignited in my chest. One glance at the lift told me the vamps had ambushed anyone who’d tried to get out that way, while the way up the escalators was blocked with bodies.
You’re going to burn for this.
“The celestials will mete out justice for this crime, vampires!” boomed a voice. I stopped, momentarily convinced I’d somehow imagined it, but Nikolas stiffened, looking up.
A line of grey-clad figures in armoured gear ran alongside the balconies above, celestial lights blazing from their hands.
Shit. The guild really did bring in an army.
With innocent people still at risk, I didn’t dare hesitate. I continued my path up the escalator to the first floor, where the vampires stopped their attack, swivelling to face the soldiers. I staked two of them while their attention was on the new arrivals. As another vamp swung to face me, I grabbed his face in my left hand. The celestial light burned his skin, but he grinned even in death.
“Your time’s coming, celestial… all will burn…”
“Nice try.” I let him fall, and a light shone across my own face. I jumped to my feet, freezing when the coldness of a celestial blade pressed to my neck. “Hey! I’m one of you, idiot.”
The celestial soldier didn’t lower his sword. “Who are you?”
“Celestial Devina Lawson.” I backed up, my hand still glowing. “What the hell is the matter with you? There’s a dozen vampires for you to kill.”
“What’s wrong with your aura?”
Oh no. Grade Four soldiers had many gifts, but the one that had totally slipped my mind was aura vision. Every one of them could see the demonic taint covering half my aura. Seven hells.
“I ran into demon blood,” I improvised. “Someone summoned one on this floor, using a portal. If you don’t mind, I was on my way to close it.”
A vampire leapt at the celestial from behind, but he moved faster. His blade whipped out, decapitating the vampire in a second, and he turned back to me. “Stay where you are, Devina Lawson. You’ll come for questioning later.”
Not bloody likely.
Celestial Fire (Celestial Marked Book 2) Page 16