Celestial Storm

by Emma L. Adams

  She’s the insider. That, or she was playing both sides as a spy. Maybe not all the rogues were the Divine Agents’ tools after all.

  I addressed Mrs Barrow. “I came here, like you asked.”

  Mrs Barrow lowered her spectacles to give me an impressive glare. “I think you made your views quite clear over the phone, Devi.”

  “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t already arrest anyone,” I said. “The warlocks are already handling the matter, anyway. The guild isn’t qualified to—”

  “The guild is certainly qualified to handle demons, Devi.”

  “Is that why you let them take you over?”

  She scanned my face. “I’m not your enemy, Devi.”

  “Yet.”

  Let’s face it, Divine Agents or none, I’d end up on the wrong side of the guild in the end. It was inevitable. They wanted to do everything by the book, while the demons were on another page and the Divine Agents wanted to burn the whole system down.

  Mrs Barrow sighed. “We have issued an invitation to all the affected humans to come here to the guild for testing. They won’t be harmed.”

  “The last time people were brought to the guild for testing, they were turned into a monstrous demon-infected army.” Bile rose in my throat at the memory, and my nails bit into my palms. Admittedly, Mrs Barrow herself hadn’t even been in the city, but the guild as a whole had let it happen. “Besides, these humans have no training, no knowledge—anything. The warlocks are in a better position to offer them guidance.”

  “Last I heard, the warlocks were having leadership issues of their own,” she said.

  Dammit. I’d suspect the guild of spying on the warlocks, but Javos was such a loudmouth anyway, he’d probably yelled at anyone who came near that he was the warlocks’ true leader. The last thing Nikolas needed was a bunch of terrified humans to handle, but if he didn’t, who knew what the guild would do to them?

  “That’s none of your business,” I said to her. “And it has no effect on the warlocks’ ability to help the affected humans. If anything, the warlocks are more used to dealing with demon magic. They’ll be able to identify the type and work out whether it’s a permanent issue.”

  “Devi, you seem to have forgotten that we did the exact same for you and the other novices when you first developed your celestial powers.”

  “Yeah, with one slight difference: you believe demons are evil,” I said. “You wouldn’t treat them like people. And even if you did, some of the other guild branches wouldn’t. Is it affecting people outside the city?”

  “To my knowledge, it seems to be restricted to Haven City alone. However, the battle has caused numerous side effects across the globe.”

  So it’s just in this city? Maybe it was an aftereffect of the battle. But while I wore a demon mark of my own, I was far from an expert on their magic.

  “The victims’ auras are grey,” I told her. “They’re unmistakably human. You’d never be able to legally allow them to register as demons. Or celestials.”

  Her brows rose. “You have aura vision.”

  “Yes, I am Grade Four, under this.” I waved my demon marked hand.

  “Because you tricked your way to heaven’s gate, according to what I’ve heard.”

  I glanced at Lydia, who shifted guiltily. Thanks a bunch. Whose side was she really on? Admittedly, I had manipulated an angel into upgrading my celestial powers, but it was in order to stop the end of the world. It wasn’t like I’d been blindly following the orders of the Divine Agents like a certain group of rogues.

  “I assume you mean Purgatory,” I said. “I’m not the one who locked you out. For the record, the inspector’s disappearance isn’t my fault either. He chose to work with demons—don’t deny it, you know he wasn’t working in the guild’s favour. If he left, maybe he was running away.”

  Mrs Barrow gave me a long look. “None of us can figure out why he went there, but the realm has entirely locked us out.”

  Except the person standing next to you. Lydia must be able to hop back and forth between the worlds whenever she liked. She was also likely working under a cover story, but I wasn’t about to wait for an explanation when the Divine Agents might arrive on the doorstep any day now.

  “Look, fine,” I said. “The rogue celestials you didn’t believe me about? Purgatory is their new hideout. Lythocrax killed all the angels and tried to set that realm up as his base, but now he’s dead, they’re planning to come here. Harvey, their leader, told me they’ll be paying you a visit in exactly one week. I’ll remind you that their long-term goal is to take your place. So you might want to focus on them, not the humans.”

  Her eyes searched my expression for any evidence of a lie. “You must know that I can’t take your word for it without proof, Devi. Unless you’d like to open the way into Purgatory yourself?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. This building is full of novices. The rogues are all Grade Four. They skipped to the top level.”

  She was sceptical, but she’d given me a chance—and more to the point, I’d successfully diverted her attention from the humans and their demon magic. For now. Besides, I’d had a stroke of inspiration.

  “I don’t care what you think is hiding there, Devi,” said Mrs Barrow. “One of our own is missing. If you’re capable of opening a way through, then I’d advise you to do so.”

  “Right, right.” I felt Lydia’s gaze burning a hole in me, but I ignored it. “Where did the inspector cross over? It’ll be easier for me to follow him that way.”

  “In his office, of course,” she said, moving aside to beckon me through into the hallway.

  Lydia tried to catch my arm, but I shook my head imperceptibly and walked on, past staring novices and seniors alike. Despite the academy’s layout being unfamiliar to me—I’d completed my training at the old academy-turned-headquarters which had burned down a few months ago—I knew the way to the former inspector’s office. If he’d left any secrets behind, they’d be hidden in that room. Since he’d been replaced by a demon a few months ago while the real him rotted in a prison on Pandemonium, I’d been having trouble telling the difference between his own decisions and those he’d made while under hell’s influence. Let’s face it, there wasn’t a huge gap there. He was evil through and through, celestial mark or none.

  The door to his office opened when I pushed it inwards. Burn marks covered the walls of the small office, and the points of a pentagram were etched into the floor. This must be the spot where he’d vanished, pulled into Purgatory.

  Mrs Barrow halted behind me in the doorway. “None of us knew he was gone until we saw the light of the pentagram from the window.”

  I stepped around the desk, which was mildly singed. “If you really want me to do this here, I’ll need to set up a boundary. The people on the other side aren’t demons. They could just stride right in.” And had done so, if Lydia was any indication. I could take down one Grade Four, but not all twenty-odd of them at once. Mrs Barrow ought to know that, but she still didn’t believe me.

  I’d have to put on a convincing show, then.

  Mrs Barrow wisely stood back as I burned five points of a pentagram into the floor. She knew the words to gain entry, so I wouldn’t be able to fake them, but I wasn’t out of tricks yet.

  I turned up the light and said, “I, Devi Lawson, request passage to—”

  At the last second, I tapped into my demon mark, allowing shadowy magic to spill out into the pentagram.

  Darkness sizzled up the walls, and every alarm in the building came to life in a high-pitched wail. I let the lights die out, and as chaos erupted in the corridors, I threw more shadows to the room’s edges to block Mrs Barrow from sight, hoping she’d think it was a side effect of the pentagram exploding.

  I dove under the inspector’s abandoned desk, opening drawers, searching for anything incriminating. His laptop was gone, so I assumed it’d been removed from the office along with all other potential evidence. Worth a try.
>
  I gripped the demonglass in my right pocket, then vanished. The shadowy magic would hide my absence, and if Mrs Barrow noticed I’d gone, she’d think I was on Purgatory. Not ideal, but there were no ideal conditions for robbing the guild.

  I landed in the bushes outside the main building, where I’d hidden some demonglass the last time I’d been here. Using Nikolas’s attention-diverting ability on a few of the passing novices, I slipped into the building through the side entrance. Then I made for the place where the guild stored all their records. To my immense disappointment, I didn’t run into anyone on the way. They might have at least made it a challenge. Throw in some booby traps, maybe an alarm or tripwire or two. Instead they were running around like headless chickens while their former best demon hunter robbed the place.

  The guild had lost some of their records when their old headquarters burned down, but from the sheer number of folders spilling from the shelves of the record room, they must have moved a lot of them here a while ago. The old mission reports were arranged chronologically, and it was easy enough to find the ones from two years ago. I paced down the row of shelves, then stopped, frowning at the dusty files. What was I thinking? Any regular demon mission might have been the work of the Divine Agents. The whole point was that it was impossible to tell. Wasting hours poring over poorly-written mission reports cobbled together by barely-literate novices like Sammy would not satisfy my drive for revenge.

  The wail of the demon-proof alarms continued to echo through the building. It really didn’t take much to send the guild into a panic, and while Mrs Barrow might be a halfway decent leader compared to the inspector, even she’d have trouble handling twenty highly motivated rogues who believed it was their divine mission to wipe the place out.

  Damn. I don’t have time for this.

  I grabbed a whole wad of files and shoved them into the inside of my jacket. Might as well have something to show for my efforts. After grabbing every likely mission report for the last four years, I approached the dustier shelves at the back of the room. There were extensive records of trade with other realms, another thing I’d wanted to look into. The celestial rogues had traded with the warlocks behind the guild’s back, so there wouldn’t be any evidence of that here, but maybe…

  Footsteps sounded from behind the shelf. I stiffened, then saw a familiar blond head pop up.

  “Devi,” Lydia murmured, her voice barely audible beneath the echoing alarms. “Don’t worry. I’m not with—them. Or the guild.”

  “You’d better not be lying,” I said, shoving another wad of folders into my jacket. “I take it you’re not going to let them walk in here in a week’s time?”

  “Clover has helped me set up defences around the whole building,” she said in a low voice. “It should keep them out. Trust me, I’m not one of their lackeys. Faye asked me to spy on the rogues because I’ve spent time with them before.”

  And you have a better reputation than I do. She’d been the model celestial before all this had gone horribly wrong.

  “All right, I’ll hold you to that,” I said, lowering my voice as the wailing alarms finally quietened down. “Time to make my dramatic reappearance.”

  Her forehead scrunched up. “You know, you could have just used that hypnosis ability of yours to rob the place. You didn’t need to set the alarms off, too.”

  “It’s a deterrent. To stop Mrs Barrow getting any ideas about going after the inspector.”

  I stuck my right hand in my pocket and used the demonglass to transport myself back into the inspector’s office. Then I pulled the shadowy magic back into my demon mark and let it fade out.

  Mrs Barrow jumped when the shadows cleared, revealing me standing in the middle of the room like I’d never left. “I thought the demons had taken you!”

  “It’d have been your fault if they had!” I yelled, mostly to draw her attention away from my bulging jacket. “Look at the state of the place. It’s bloody pandemonium.”

  I couldn’t resist the pun, but the normally unflappable boss was on the verge of panic. I nearly felt bad for her, but she wouldn’t have listened to me if I hadn’t scared her out of attempting a rescue mission. Let’s face it, the inspector wasn’t coming back. And if Lydia was telling the truth, neither were the rogues.

  “You’ve made your point, Devi,” she said wearily. “You can go, but if you learn anything new about those humans with demon magic, I must ask you to tell me. When the other guild branches find out, they might take action themselves.”

  “Tell them not to do anything rash. And if I were you, I’d retest your demon detectors.”

  I strode out with as much dignity as I could muster with half the guild’s files stuffed into my coat.

  Nikolas waited outside the academy’s gates, unobtrusive and casual. He raised an eyebrow at my jacket, which had several papers sticking out of the top. “Thought you might need a hand.”

  “I had it covered. Don’t worry, the guild will leave the humans alone, and Lydia’s helping set defences against the rogues. Are the humans okay?”

  “I sent them all home with a copy of the manual given to new warlocks when their powers manifest.”

  “When do they manifest?”

  “At the age of ten or so.”

  “Wonderful. Humans reading ‘Demon Magic for Dummies’ and the celestials thinking I brought hell on Earth into their guild. It’s the inspector’s fault, though. The other celestials will have to live without Purgatory for a bit.” Which meant no new Grade Fours. Since the last lot I’d dealt with had ended up dead, maybe it was for the best. And after all that, I did understand Mrs Barrow’s concern. It wasn’t just that the inspector had disappeared and the rogues planned to invade the place, assuming she believed me. The guild’s reliance on Purgatory had only become apparent to me after I’d found out it was where celestials at Grade Four or higher completed their training. Without it, heaven’s army would be severely hampered.

  Maybe this is the end of the guild as we know it.

  The guild had ended for me a long time ago, and yet without them… who would keep the Divine Agents off Earth? Maybe Clover had a plan, maybe not. As for Lydia, she was the least rebellious person I knew, and I wasn’t a hundred percent certain she wasn’t just trying to stay alive at any cost.

  The streets were quiet as I drove us home. Nikolas appeared lost in thought, and I felt bad that he had to handle the humans on top of the tantrum-throwing warlocks.

  “Fiona offered to help teach the humans,” he said. “She’d likely do a better job of it than I would.”

  “You taught me magic.”

  “You were at an advanced level from the start,” he said. “Besides, I need to start amassing my resources among the warlocks if I want to make a serious bid for leadership. The others might not trust Javos’s judgement after the incident at the old headquarters, but it’s too soon after the battle for them to accept a major change. The presence of those humans with demon magic isn’t helping.”

  “Ah, shit,” I said. “I told the guild to leave them alone. I didn’t want to dump the problem on you, but—you know how things ended up the last time the guild decided to try experimenting on people with new magic.”

  His mouth tightened. “I know. The humans are more of a danger to themselves than anyone, but if the netherworld tries to claim them, I’m unlikely to be able to stop it.”

  “I wish I knew how it happened.” I shook my head. “It’s okay. We can only do so much. The warlocks will come around, anyway. You led the warlocks on Babylon for ages.”

  “That didn’t have the outcome I hoped for,” he said. “Besides, they were trained as Babylon’s army from birth. Warlocks who grew up in this realm have more freedom and are harder to win over as a result. After all, they aren’t dependent on me for their survival.”

  I turned this over in my mind. “What did Zadok do to win them to his side, then? Bribe them?”

  His hands clenched at the mention of his brother’s name. “
More or less. He had his own army, which I didn’t keep in check as much as I should have. I’ve always lived in two worlds, and now… now it looks like I have to choose one.”

  My heart sank. Both of us had hoped Casthus would bugger off back to his own realm, but what had started as a quick visit had gone on for too long now. I hoped he didn’t find out about the humans.

  We pulled up outside Nikolas’s house. Rachel had made several plates of sandwiches, so we had a sort of picnic in the living room while I sifted through the files I’d swiped from the guild.

  Ten minutes into scanning old mission reports and my eyes glazed over. “Bloody paperwork,” I muttered. “Why the inspector decided to open a door to Purgatory in his office—you know, I shouldn’t be surprised, he and the council haven’t half a brain cell between them, but maybe he ran to heaven’s gates to get away from all this bullshit.” I tossed the wad of papers aside.

  Rachel raised an eyebrow. “What are you even looking for in there?”

  “Evidence that the Divine Agents interfered in guild missions. Let’s face it, the inspector might have known, but he’d sooner do the can-can on the roof than admit to making any kind of mistake.”

  “Let me see that.” Nikolas picked up the files. “What sort of discrepancies are you looking for?”

  “Faye said any mission where there were fatalities and no witnesses is suspicious. But let’s face it, I walked back alive from the mission that killed Rory and nobody believed me anyway.” I heaved out a breath. “I think the trading records are more likely to have actual useful information. Let’s see which nether realms they got their props from.”

  The guild had to log every single item they bought from the warlocks, including which realm it’d originally come from. They’d at least have to admit where they’d got their demonglass—not that they had any left, that I knew of.

  “They’re so pedantic.” I moved a new stack of papers from the floor to the sofa arm next to me. “They log everything the warlocks give them. The inspector wouldn’t have filled out all these himself—I’m guessing he had some poor novice do it.”