by Ella Summers
“You gave it to us,” I reminded him.
“Yes, I believe it was meant to be,” he replied. “But not everyone here shares my belief that the guardian spirits chose you to wield the immortal daggers. I fear you aren’t universally popular here at the moment. Some people claim that you chased away the Hive, only to steal the daggers for yourselves. Others are suspicious of you just because your magic is different.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said.
The priest shrugged. “Since when have paranoia and prejudice ever made sense?”
He had a point there.
“Enough small talk. It’s time to get to the point,” Damiel told him gruffly. “We are here because you claimed the Earth is in danger, not to reminisce about shared unpleasant experiences.”
“I used Colonel Spellstorm and his plot to get your attention. Because I must speak to you. This is too important. The fate of both our worlds depends on it. I had to get you away, where neither gods nor demons could overhear us. I don’t trust the Legion or the gods with this information. Or the demons, for that matter.”
“But you trust us?” I asked him.
“You might serve the Legion, but you are, above all, the Heirs to the Immortal Legacy. Yes, I trust you. The gods and demons would want these powers for themselves, but you are different. The guardian spirits have deemed you worthy. You have proven your worth to them—and to me as well.”
Illias showed us into a house, then he shut the doors behind us.
Damiel’s gaze swept the open room, obviously looking for anything that could be used as a weapon against us, then his eyes honed in on the priest. “What is this big secret? How will the Hive escape the spell we used to trap them on their world?”
“I thought the spell I wove with the Diamond Tear, the one trapping the Hive army on their world, was too powerful to be undone by anything but the same immortal dagger,” I added.
“Undoing it is difficult, yes,” replied Illias. “But it’s not impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible,” I declared.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “The Hive cannot undo the spell without the Diamond Tear. And they can’t break it. Not without the Sapphire Tear.”
I thought it through. “Even if they had the Diamond Tear and Sapphire Tear daggers, they might not be able to undo what I’ve done, not unless they have someone with enough Immortal blood to wield them well.”
“Perhaps.” Illias’s face was as cryptic as that single word.
“The Hive has people with Immortal blood?” I asked.
“There is a danger of that. As you know, to tap into an immortal dagger’s full power, its wielder must have the right mix of Immortal blood. It’s unlikely anyone in the Hive has that. It’s very rare. But, as you know, the Hive works by combining its members’ magic.”
“So if they bring together enough people with enough magic, they could potentially collectively wield the dagger to great devastation,” said Damiel.
“Yes.”
“But we have the daggers,” I pointed out. “So how will the Hive break the spell?”
Illias glanced at our daggers. “Those aren’t the only two immortal daggers. There are more. Many more. One, in fact, for every Immortal ability. Eight active and eight passive magic abilities. Sixteen in all. And the person who controls them all becomes a true master of magic.”
“The Hive has another one of these immortal daggers,” Damiel realized.
“They have several,” Illias told him. “We know they have the Ruby Tear, which embodies the power of vampires. They stole that one from a temple in another Nightingale city last year. We’ve also seen the Hive using the Amethyst Tear, which has the power of telepathy, of magic sight. They surely looted it from another world. And we just learned that, right before our battle with them last week, Hive soldiers pillaged a Nightingale temple and stole the Emerald Tear.”
“What does the Emerald Tear do?” I asked.
“It has the power of the genie. The Emerald Tear refolds the power of a wish. If the desire is strong enough, the wish is granted. The Hive can combine hundreds of magic users, even thousands. If enough of these linked people wish for something, it might just happen.”
“Such as wishing for the spell on their world, the one keeping them trapped, to be broken,” I suggested.
Illias nodded glumly. “Yes, just like that. If the Hive soldiers break free, they will take their revenge on my world—and on yours. They are very capable soldiers, soldiers free from the burden of morality. And they are cunning. They have planted hidden bombs in the past in many of our towns, using the explosions to distract us while they looted our sacred temples. I have no doubt they would do the same again. By the time we realized that they’ve escaped their world, it would already be too late. Your cities could be leveled in a matter of moments. The Earth is in grave danger.”
“The Hive would take out the Magitech generators on the wall that keep out the monsters on Earth,” Damiel decided. “That’s the way to hit us hardest. Then they would let the monsters finish us off. We can’t fight off all the wild beasts at once. The Legion isn’t large enough.”
“The Hive is our common enemy, a common threat,” Illias declared. “And so we are asking you to help us once more. Go to the Hive’s world and take back our daggers. Because the Hive won’t just come here. They will come to Earth. They will take revenge on the people who exiled and trapped them. And with their combined magic, backed by the power of at least three immortal daggers, no one will be able to stand against them. In short, if you don’t act now to stop them, we are all doomed.”
11
Enemy
“You want us to confront the Hive on their own world, where they are at a distinct advantage. This is hardly a two-person job. You must send soldiers with us to the Hive’s world,” Damiel told Illias.
“We are not warriors,” the priest protested. “We’re not fighters.”
“They sure didn’t waste time fighting us when we first arrived on this world,” I commented to Damiel. “In fact, they tied us up and fully intended to burn us alive.”
“Fear drives desperate people to do terrible things.” Illias’s lips quivered. “The Hive has sent raiding parties to our world for years.”
Damiel looked upon him without pity. “And in all those years, you might have considered building up your own army.”
“We learned to defend ourselves, to protect what was ours, as best we could.”
“Clearly, that strategy failed you, and you lost powerful immortal weapons to the Hive because of your refusal to adapt,” said Damiel. “You must go on the offensive. You must take the initiative and strike first, before they do.”
“I know, but we are ill-prepared to do that. We have no experience. You do. That is why I am asking for your help. Go to the Hive. Take the daggers they have stolen from us. Stop them. Before it’s too late.”
“The Legion is not in the habit of fighting other people’s wars,” Damiel replied coolly.
“That’s true, but as Illias pointed out, if the Hive escapes, they will come to Earth. That makes it very much our problem,” I told him.
Damiel looked at me. “I don’t like it. They dragged us into their war, and now we have to clean up their mess.”
“It seems we have little choice.”
“Yes, and I hate that even more.”
“Why did you need to bring us all the way here to tell us this?” I asked Illias.
“He didn’t want the gods or demons to know about the immortal daggers, that there is a whole set of sixteen of them,” Damiel told me. “A master of magic. Both gods and demons would destroy everything in their quest to acquire that set.”
“Yes, both gods and demons would destroy everything, including my world.” Illias looked around, as though afraid we were being spied on.
“The gods and demons have no influence here. They cannot hear us,” I told him.
“It’s not them I’m worried about righ
t now.”
“You don’t even trust your own people,” Damiel laughed.
“As I told you, some of my people are unhappy that you now possess the Diamond Tear and the Sapphire Tear. They don’t trust you with the daggers. They don’t understand that this is your destiny, that the Immortals meant for you to wield those daggers. And my people certainly wouldn’t want you to have more of the daggers. I wouldn’t be surprised if, even now, some of them are plotting a way to take the two daggers from you.”
We’d saved the Magic Eaters from the Hive, and they still hated us. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t about helping the Magic Eaters so much as it was about stopping the Hive.
“What is your history with the Hive?” I asked Illias.
“For years, they have been raiding our world and any other world they could get to, looking for the immortal daggers. They will stop at nothing to possess them. Everything they have—every soldier, every resource, every bit of magic they possess—they have put into fulfilling this goal. That’s why it’s so difficult to defeat them. They have the power to destroy your world, and if you don’t stop them, they will do just that. And then they will add the immortal daggers you carry to their collection as spoils of war.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” I told Damiel. “We must go to the Hive world. We must stop their army from reaching our world. We cannot allow them to burn and pillage and take their revenge. To destroy everything.”
“And we cannot allow the Hive to grow their power by collecting more immortal daggers,” Damiel agreed.
Drawing the Diamond Tear, I glanced at Illias. “Do you know where on the Hive’s world we will find the immortal daggers they currently possess?”
“I believe so.”
“You believe so? You don’t know it?” Damiel demanded.
“If you reopen the magic mirror between our world and the Hive’s, the trail will bring you to a massive fortress just outside a city. When the magic mirror was still functional, our scouts sometimes used it for reconnaissance. After a raid, the Hive soldiers always marched to that fortress. The stolen daggers should be inside.”
I used the dagger to reopen the passage to the Hive world.
Damiel looked at the swirl of magic before us. “We have entirely too little information to successfully complete this mission.”
“Then we’ll just have to do some reconnaissance of our own.”
“So it would seem.” He didn’t look very happy about traveling to a hostile enemy world without any backup or any idea of what to expect.
But we angels didn’t allow personal feelings to get in the way of doing our job. Damiel stepped into the magic passage and I followed.
On the other side, I took a sudden, unexpected plunge into a very cold body of water.
I pushed up above the water’s surface, drenched from head to toe. I hadn’t put up my water elemental defenses in time. There had been precious little time. I sure hadn’t expected to land in water.
I began swimming toward land, cursing whoever had made this passage. Who created an interworld portal over the water?
The shore wasn’t far away. Damiel was already standing on the beach, watching my progress.
“Do you require assistance?” he asked me.
“I am quite capable of getting myself out of here. I can swim, you know.”
“I was just trying to be chivalrous.”
That was not a quality many people would have expected to see in the Master Interrogator, the angel feared by any and all in the Legion. But I had long since realized that when it came to Damiel Dragonsire, there was more than met the eye.
Damiel watched me tread out of the water, onto the shore. I could have sworn he looked amused.
But the humor I thought I’d seen flicker in his eyes was not there when I got closer. Maybe it had just been my imagination.
Damiel apparently had expected the drop into water, or at least he’d expected something would go wrong.
And I should have expected something too. We had entered enemy territory. We were lucky to have only fallen into water, not fallen into the middle of a firing squad.
Get a grip, Cadence, I mentally chided myself. Get your head in the game.
Damiel clearly had his head in the game. He was dry and standing firmly on land. He’d probably walked on water to get here too.
He’d spent years as an angel. His powers were pretty much second nature by now.
I’d always been destined to be an angel; my father had raised and trained me to one day ascend. Still, I felt out of sorts. Damiel knew more about being an angel than I did—a lot more. Why was that? What was his story? I knew very little about the person he’d been before joining the Legion. Maybe he had been raised to be an angel too.
He offered me his hand.
“Chivalry,” I asked with lifted brows.
“Well, you are my wife.”
It sounded so weird to hear the words. Here we were, married to each other, and we hardly even knew each other. I had to remedy that.
“Tell me of your life before the Legion,” I asked him.
“It was nothing special. My beginnings were very humble, certainly nothing close to your pedigree.”
Many Legion soldiers were resentful of me because of who my father was. They saw only the glitz and glamor of being an archangel’s daughter. They didn’t understand the enormous pressure to live up to everyone’s expectations.
But Damiel wasn’t like those soldiers. He knew exactly what it took to become an angel—and the sacrifices you had to make to get there. And like me, his heritage was Immortal. I was no more special than he was.
“We are—both of us—something more than we’ve ever realized,” I said. “The daggers see something in us, something uncommon. Something special.”
“Something Immortal,” he added.
“Yes.”
As he lifted his hand, casting a wind spell to dry me off, I saw that one of his sleeve cuffs was wet. And that’s the moment I realized he had in fact fallen into the water just as I had. He’d merely dried himself off and hurried to land before I’d noticed.
And that realization made me laugh.
“Missed a spot,” I teased him, tapping his wet sleeve with my finger.
He glanced at the wet spot. “Indeed I have,” he replied without shame.
Then he quickly dried himself with magic. As he did it, he watched me. His expression was amused, almost flirtatious.
No, surely I was reading into things, reading what I wanted to see. Damiel was indeed handsome. And honorable. Back in the Magic Eaters’ temple last week, he’d been willing to take the fall for me, to save me, and that meant a lot to me. I would never forget it. I could not forget it. No one had ever made such a sacrifice for me.
Damiel turned away before I could try to read into his expression further. His eyes swept our surroundings, surveying the lay of the land. It was the only reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. We were alone in unfamiliar, enemy territory.
And yet, even knowing all this, I was struck by an intense burst of disappointment. He was looking away. I didn’t want him to look away.
Beware of Dragonsire, my father’s words echoed in my head. I couldn’t shake them. The Master Interrogator has hunted down, interrogated, and killed many Legion soldiers. He sows distrust. He sees bad everywhere. It’s in his nature.
At Colonel Spellstorm’s office, I had seen firsthand the way Damiel interrogated prisoners. I had seen the darkest corner of the Master Interrogator’s psyche—and it had scared me. Because I did care about Damiel. I didn’t want him to lose who he was, to surrender himself to the enemy within.
All of my father’s warnings and all my fears about what Damiel might become—they clashed against how I felt about him. He was a good person. If I worked at it, I knew I could draw out that goodness in him. And I knew I could help him realize he was a good person.
Damiel had protected me. My father had protected me. Cou
ld both of them each be trying to protect me, and yet be pulling me in completely different directions?
“Look.” Damiel pointed up at the sky. It was thick with magic, like a sea of vanilla pudding speckled with chocolate sprinkles. It buzzed and twinkled and quite honestly made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end.
“Some magic is brewing up there,” I said. “We should get to higher ground and try to figure out what it is.”
“Someone’s coming.”
I followed his gaze to a squad of eight soldiers. They were dressed like the Hive soldiers we’d fought on Nightingale: in red uniforms. Each soldier wore two pins on their jacket.
The first pin represented a magical ability—from Vampire’s Kiss to Ghost’s Whisper, eight symbols in all, a different one worn by each soldier.
The second pin was a symbol I didn’t recognize, but it was obvious what it meant. All eight soldiers bore it. This shared symbol clearly meant they all belonged to the same squad. Eight Hive soldiers combined magic to form a group. And those groups combined with other groups to grow even more powerful. We’d seen that cumulative power at work during our last battle with the Hive.
Damiel pointed at a nearby cave along the shore, and we ran into it. Angels abhorred the very idea of hiding, but right now, we couldn’t afford to draw attention to ourselves. We couldn’t let the Hive know that we were coming. For this to work, for our mission to succeed, the Hive had to be complacent and sloppy, not expecting an attack. After all, we were heavily outnumbered. We needed to get a sense of the situation before we attacked. And when we did make our move, surprise would be our best weapon.
As soon as we were inside the cave, I used my earth magic to grow a curtain of hanging vines over the entrance. The fit was tight and not the least bit comfortable. Damiel and I were so closely squeezed together that our faces nearly touched. I could feel his breath on my face.