“No story here,” he grumbled, his face reddening. “You should leave. There is nothing here to find for you children.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to upset you. We’re only interested in—”
“No,” he said, his tone firm and harsh, and he leaned over the counter and got right in my face. “You will find nothing here.”
Will launched himself to his feet and he slammed his hand on the counter, warning the man to back off. “That’s close enough,” he growled.
“Thanks, anyway,” I said to the bartender and dropped off my chair. “Let’s go.”
As we hurried out the door and down the street, Will leaned close to my ear, and said, “We’re being followed.”
I turned to see that one of the men from inside the pub now stood in the narrow street, head bowed and hands stuffed into his pockets. I felt no threat from this man, but he was clearly nervous and that made the reapers nervous in return.
“American girl,” he called in a hushed voice also thick with a Flemish accent. “You look for legends?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you know of any creatures like the one we’re looking for?”
“I do.” His eyes were huge in the dark. “But you will think I’m crazy. They all think I’m crazy.”
I smiled. “Try me.”
“You know Kasteel van Mesen?” he asked, low and guarded. He glanced over his shoulder once.
It took him mentioning the abandoned castle for me to remember it. “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”
“The devil of Kasteel van Mesen,” the man continued. “Black wings and glowing eyes…. The others think I’m crazy, but I’m not. They think the story is bad for business.”
Will had a knowing gleam in his gaze. What this man described sounded like it could be a reaper. “And you’ve seen this creature with your own eyes?”
He nodded. “I worked as a security guard for years, but I am the only one to see the devil.”
No wonder the poor guy’s friends thought he was nuts. Fortunately for him, I believed in winged beasts. “That’s a pretty good story,” I told him. “Thank you. We will have to pay a visit and see if we can find this devil.”
The man started back down the street, but just before he disappeared into the pub once more, he paused. “Be careful, fire girl. The devil will steal your soul.”
I stared at him until he was gone and tried to shake off his final words. A terrible worry, that the reaper hidden in the crumbling castle might be demonic, crossed my mind.
We continued our trek back to the car and I pulled out my cell to call Ava. “How’s the search going?” I asked when she answered.
“I’ll let you know,” she replied. “Evolet called. You made quite an impression.”
“As did she,” I grumbled. “Did she say anything useful?”
Ava laughed softly on the other line. “Just a lead where we might find the guardian. She was surprised we were in Belgium. Have you found anything yet?”
“We’re checking out Kasteel van Mesen right now,” I said.
“Good idea. In fact, we’re on our way to an abandoned factory.”
“We’ll regroup afterward. I can call you again after we’ve investigated the castle.”
“One step at a time,” she replied. “Luck to you.”
“Right back at you.” I put the phone away, resolved against meeting the others empty-handed. Evolet seemed certain that the guardian of the Pentalpha hid within Aalst, and a villager claimed to have seen a winged devil at the same location. I felt that we were close at last, and I wouldn’t rest until I had the relic in my hand.
Will opened the car door, but Cadan put a hand on my shoulder and stopped me before I could climb in.
“I think I’ll sit this one out,” he said.
I stared at him in confusion. “What?”
“The relic guardians really don’t like me and I don’t want to cause any more trouble,” he said. “I want you to go on. I’ll sit tight until you find the guardian.”
I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to leave him behind, even for a few hours.
He appeared to notice my hesitation and he smiled. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Go with Will and get this ring. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes and ears alert in case anyone follows us. I’ve got your back.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. There was a chance that Sammael had ordered someone to tail us, or that Sammael and Lilith themselves could be hunting us at this very moment. Before he died, Merodach had made it clear that Sammael had regained his strength and was ready to take my soul and take this war to the next level.
Will cleared his throat. “I agree with you. The relic guardians have been defensive and potentially hostile. Hopefully this will be the last we’ll deal with. We’ll rejoin you when we’re ready to summon Azrael.”
“Then I will see you both very soon,” Cadan said. He spread his wings, silver feathers flashing gold in the lamplight, and he leaped into the night.
Kasteel van Mesen was dark, crippled, and yet still imposing. It had been built for a royal family in the early seventeenth century, but a couple hundred years later, it became a factory and was then renovated into a boarding school for the daughters of elite victorian families. A magnificent neo-gothic chapel had been built adjacent to it, but the fortress was eventually abandoned and left to decay. Though it had been overtaken by the elements and by wild vegetation, I’d seen few things that were more beautiful. The roof had collapsed over many wings, but the columns, arches, and inlay of brick and stone still held their shape. The fallen castle had a very forgotten-fairy-tale feel to it.
We explored the perimeter until we found an entrance clear enough to get through, as most of the doors and windows on the ground level were blocked by debris and thick vines. We crossed through a tall double door with one side barely clinging to its hinge and entered a once-grand hall. The ceiling had collapsed long ago, and now patches of green and small, young trees grew from the floor, peeking out between chunks of the roof and heavy wooden beams.
“It’s too dangerous to cross through here,” Will said. “Let’s find another corridor.”
I followed him back through the door and down another dark hall. This one was lined with large windows, their frames intricate and lovely, but the glass was mostly broken and sprinkled across the floor. Chunks of plaster in the walls had been torn away to reveal ancient brick beneath.
“You should not be here.” A young English woman’s voice echoed from somewhere down the black hallway and my heart lurched into my throat. The sound frightened unseen birds and they scattered in the debris and vegetation.
“Hello?” I called, searching the darkness for signs of movement. “Are you the relic guardian? We are here for the Pentalpha.”
Silence. I squinted, but still I could see nothing. I looked at Will, whose right hand was open, ready to call his sword. And then a shadow moved within the shadows and neither of us could draw our swords before a cloaked figure lunged at us from the blackness, dark wings spreading as wide as they could, filling up the corridor. A hand appeared from beneath the cloak’s sleeve and a palm slammed into Will’s chest, smashing him into the wall. Dust and chips of paint exploded in the thick air as he hit with a thud and a grunt. Most of the reaper’s face was hidden beneath the hood, but full lips and a feminine build under her cloak gave away that she was female. The reaper threw a fist at me, but I blocked her. She threw a flurry of additional strikes that I managed to deflect off the hard bones of my forearms. She was fast—and strong. Every time I tried to draw breath and tell her who I was, I had to concentrate on blocking another attack.
I was forced to back away from her assault, all the way until my heel found the edge of the staircase we’d just ascended. I gasped as my momentum dragged me off my feet. The reaper leaped into the air above me to strike me down hard, but I kicked a foot into her chest as I fell down the flight of stairs, launching her over my head. My hands grappled for th
e wrought iron railing and my body swung to a stop, crumpling against the hard steps. The reaper’s wings beat once in the high ceiling of the stairwell, taking control of her flight as she faced me from above, and her feet touched the far wall. Her knees bent and her power erupted; the folds of her cloak billowed in the smoky flares of energy and clouds of dust and debris. Then she launched herself at me. I twisted, hoping to dodge her fists again and afraid that if I called my swords, the guardian would feel even more threatened.
Before I could meet the reaper’s attack, Will appeared above me. He grabbed the guardian’s throat and threw her over the railing with a roar. I jumped up only to watch her land on her feet and bound out of sight. Will hopped the rail to dart after her and I followed him. As we rounded the corner of the stairwell to dash into the dark corridor, the reaper’s black cloak swung into the space between us from a room on our right.
“Will!” I called to his back.
He whirled just in time to meet her blow, blocking her fist before it connected with his head. Clearly this reaper preferred to ambush. I grabbed her shoulder and yanked her around to get her away from him, but she deflected my fist and managed to block everything Will and I threw at her together. She was precise, moving as if she anticipated our moves, and I could sense some uncanny familiarity in her style. I jumped out of reach and she focused her attention on Will.
The relic guardian stopped suddenly, and as Will swung a fist, she stepped aside. Her face was full of recognition, but she also appeared puzzled and disbelieving. Was she surprised that the Preliator and her Guardian would try to take what she protected? However, it didn’t seem like both of us surprised her—only Will. He was all she could stare at, and instead of striking her again, Will slowed to a pause and gaped back at the other reaper.
She pulled the hood from over her head and at last I could see how astonishingly beautiful she was. Long, wavy hair the color of dark walnut framed a lovely face with large, almond-shaped eyes as extraordinarily green as Will’s.
“William?” the relic guardian asked. “Is that you?”
He stared at her, disbelieving, as though he thought she was a phantom. At last he spoke.
“Mother?”
22
I GAPED AT BOTH OF THEM, BACK AND FORTH between their faces, their identical eyes—even the way they carried themselves was the same. I replayed their movements in my head, how graceful and calculated they both were, and I had no doubt that this reaper was Will’s mother, Madeleine.
She rushed into Will, cupping his face in her hands, touching his cheeks. He stared down at her and his body was stiff in her arms, still in a state of shock. I couldn’t imagine what he felt as his mother, whom he believed had been dead for most of his life, embraced him.
Will was breathless, frozen by astonishment. “You’re alive.”
“Yes,” she answered, and tears rolled over her cheeks. “Yes, my son. I’m alive.”
“How is this possible?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Where have you been? I thought you were dead.”
Madeleine smiled, a gesture so like Will’s that it threw me off for an instant. “I became a guardian of a most powerful relic.”
He swallowed and gasped for air. “You have the Pentalpha?”
“For many years.” She released him and peered around him at me. “Who are you? You’re not a reaper—that much I can sense—but your strength is incredible. I don’t know what you are.”
“She is the Preliator,” Will said.
Madeleine exhaled sharply and stared at me. “You…” She trailed off and turned her gaze back to Will. “That means you’re…”
He gave a single nod, his expression hard. “For five hundred years, I have been her Guardian.”
“You are the Guardian,” she said, blinking in shock for a few moments before smiling at him. “I’m so very proud of you.” Her green eyes returned to mine. “It is a boundless honor to stand in your presence, Preliator.”
“I’m just Ellie,” I said with a warm smile. “It’s an honor to meet you too. Will has told me about you.”
Madeleine reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled out a gold ring strung on a leather cord around her neck. Even in the low light, caught between her fingers, the ring seemed to glow. “You must want this.”
There were no words for the relief and excitement that made my blood sing when I saw the Pentalpha at last. I recognized it immediately, but couldn’t remember forging it since I could recall nothing of my time in Heaven. But this ring…This was what we came here for. “Please,” I said. “We need to summon an angel.”
She lifted the ring, pulling the cord over her head and free of her hair, and held it for a moment, gazing at it. “I’ve had this for a long time. It will feel strange not to be its protector anymore.”
“That should be an enormous weight off your shoulders,” I said.
She eased toward me and placed the ring in my palm. I felt its power on contact, the jolt of electricity and heat searing right up my arm and into my chest so fast I gasped. I knew I would be able to summon an angel with this ring that had, until now, controlled demons alone. I knew that I was the only one who could wield absolute power over it, that it was a part of me and of my own angelic magic.
“I have heard,” Madeleine said, “from the tongue of the one who is my eyes and ears to the outside world, that the Preliator is truly the archangel Gabriel in human form.”
“It’s true,” Will confirmed. “We intend to summon Azrael so he can fight on our side against Sammael and Lilith.”
“So the beast is unbound.” Madeleine wore a thoughtful, intense look. “Please, come to my rooms. I’m sure you have questions for me, as I do for you.”
Madeleine led us back up the stairwell we’d destroyed, down a hallway bright with moonlight, and into a room that had a few candles lit. There was a small round table in the center of the room with a lit candle and a single chair pushed in against it. on the far wall, there was a narrow bed with a worn quilt folded neatly across it. A generator hummed gently beside a dresser topped with another candle and a radio that was turned off. A stove and sink sat on another wall, and I wondered if this room may have been a tiny private apartment during the period the fortress was used as a school. From the cabinet above the stove, Madeleine collected a teakettle and filled it with water. The stove crackled until a small flame lit and she placed the kettle over it.
“Why did you leave without saying good-bye?” Will asked suddenly, blurting it out like he’d been trying to hold the question in for a while.
Madeleine gestured for us to sit on the bed while she took the chair at the little table. The mattress springs groaned beneath us. “I couldn’t let anyone know that I’d become the guardian of this relic,” she said, her voice sad. “Even you. I loved you so much and it broke my heart to leave, but I couldn’t refuse Michael. When the relic’s previous guardian died, he chose me for a reason. He placed something important into the most capable hands he could find. You, of all people, would understand.”
“You could’ve said something,” Will said. “Anything. You didn’t have to tell me why you had to leave, but at least told me you were leaving. I thought you were dead.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she murmured. “I never meant to cause you pain. I only wanted to protect you in case our enemies learned that I was the Pentalpha guardian. I feared that, if you knew anything, they would harm you to get to me.”
He shook his head. “They would try. It would get them nowhere.”
She smiled. “You’ve always been strong, William, and here you are, the Guardian of the Preliator.”
“You never knew?” he asked.
Madeleine seemed sad. “No. I’ve been in seclusion for a long time in order to protect this relic. I’ve trusted Evolet to keep me informed of what was happening in the world every few months. I assume she’s the one who led you to me. Where is Nathaniel?”
“He’s dead,” Will replied. “It’s bee
n a few months now.”
Madeleine closed her eyes for several long moments. “I would have liked to see him again. I owe him everything. This war has given and taken so much from us all.”
“How much do you know?” I asked. “About the war.”
“Very little,” she confessed. “I did not know until tonight that Sammael and Lilith are in our world. I’ve heard whisperings that Bastian had been searching for Sammael’s sarcophagus.”
Will’s jaw hardened at the mention of Bastian’s name. I studied him, knowing he had a million questions for his mother, and I wouldn’t speak until he had said what he needed to.
“Did you always know Bastian was my father?” Will asked at last.
Her gaze faltered, but I wasn’t sure that his question surprised her. “Yes, but I didn’t tell him.”
“Did you love him?”
“Yes,” she said faintly. “I did.”
“Why?” he asked, barely able to keep the disbelief from his voice. “How?”
She held her chin up defensively, as if she felt no shame. “Some things that are supposed to be wrong don’t feel that way. He showed me more than once that he wasn’t heartless. I’d hoped he would turn his back on Hell for me, but the pull was too strong.” There was a crack in her defenses, just a hairline fracture, but sorrow showed there.
Will did not miss Madeleine’s weakness and his own expression hardened. “Would it grieve you to know that he is dead?”
She drew a deep breath, pausing before she spoke. “Would it anger you if I said yes?”
“No,” Will said. “If you once loved him, then I expect you would.”
“How did he die?” she asked, her voice quiet. “By your hand?”
“By another’s.”
She was silent for a few moments before rising to tend to the kettle. She brought us each a cup of tea and I let mine sit in my hands to cool off before taking a sip. I tried not to feel awkward sitting here, meeting Will’s mother for the first time, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps if things weren’t so tense between them, then this would have been easier to endure.
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