Celestial Storm

by Emma L. Adams

  Without waiting for an answer, I took flight. My wings beat, carrying me towards the portal, and the oncoming battle.

  22

  I caught up to Nikolas mid-flight. The portal was easy to spot from above, a mass of glowing light spread over the ruined warehouse, dark energies swirling above it.

  “There’s no way I can shut that thing down from here,” I said to Nikolas.

  I already knew what awaited on the other side. Flames rose from the portal as we flew directly into the swirling gulf, and Pandemonium’s stone-coloured buildings replaced Haven City.

  I expected to see Lythocrax fully manifested on the battlefield, but while armies of demons raged and fought in the street, there was not an arch-demon within sight. The portal swirled with light, but the city of Pandemonium was doing its damned best to put up a fight against the invaders. Stone-coloured demons shaped like houses reared up and snapped at the flying demons’ heels or created huge fissures in the Earth that swallowed up anyone unlucky enough to get near. Lythocrax had seriously underestimated how pissed off Pandemonium’s demons would be at having their home invaded again.

  “He’ll be in the palace,” I said to Nikolas as we flew above the battle, occasionally blasting a demon with lightning. It was difficult to tell whose side anyone was on from here, but on the ground, it’d be all but impossible. “If he’s planning to be reborn on this world, he’ll do it there. His weakened form will have come here from Purgatory with the rest of his army.”

  He was using this world as a stepping stone to bring his army to Earth.

  I turned back to the portal, my wings beating. I’d switched a similar portal off by transferring its power into the vampire king, whose demon mark had been Grade Three at the time. The overload of power had killed him. But maybe my Grade Four mark would be enough to contain this portal. It was worth a try.

  A winged figure ascended, colliding with me in a crash that nearly knocked both of us into the portal. Fingers gouged at my neck, and Harvey’s livid face swam above mine as I kicked out at him in mid-air.

  “It’s your fault,” he screamed. “Devi, it’s your fault I’m falling. You corrupted me.”

  I wrenched myself free of his grip, massaging my throat with one hand. His aura was no longer snowy white, and neither were his wings. Grey splotches had begun to intervene, along with bright red patches.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Guess the Divinities finally caught up with you.”

  “I serve the Divinities!” he screamed, blasting me with a bolt of energy. Immediately, my demon mark lit up, drawing his magic in. Demon magic? He was falling, all right. But I’d thought only the Divinities had the authority to push angels out of the heavens.

  “Wait—did heaven finally take Purgatory back?” I said. “Is that why you left?”

  “You ruined my life!” he screamed, his hands igniting. I dodged his attack, my wings beating. Fallen or not, he was still an angel—outclassing me on both my celestial and demon sides.

  “Why the hell are you blaming me for the fact that you got duped?” I said. “I tried to tell you.”

  Celestial light blazed from my left hand, mingling with the remaining shadowy magic in my right. He hurled another attack, and I deflected it. My demon magic looked entirely like living shadows. I’d chosen my demon name well.

  Shadowy magic turned to dark flames as it joined the divine fire in my left hand, forming a blade. I grabbed it, and slashed at Harvey in mid-air, dealing a vicious cut to his shoulder. Golden blood tinted with black flowed from the wound.

  With a roar, he flew at me, his aura shimmering between dark and light. Nikolas blasted him with lightning, knocking him into the path of my blade. The rippling edge sank into the angel’s neck. Harvey screamed, blood spurting.

  “I doubt Lythocrax will bother reviving you this time, Harvey,” I said, and sliced off his head.

  The angel’s body dropped out of the sky, and I held the blade upright, marvelling at its rippling shadowy surface.

  “That’s new,” Nikolas said, flying up to me. “Is it from your demon magic?”

  “Both,” I said. Light and dark are both divine. Or both demonic. Either worked. “Where in hell is Lythocrax hiding? I have to finish him off.”

  There was a blast of light from the palace. I wheeled to face that way, my wings beating frantically. A cold breeze swept in, and the palace trembled. Shards of demonglass hung suspended in the air, as though it’d imploded from the inside.

  Then the light blasted outwards, fracturing along with the demonglass.

  Glass flew wide. A roaring sounded in my ears. Air currents caught my wings, whirling me out of control, my limbs flailing. Screaming, horrible screaming, came from below.

  My vision went white.

  No. It can’t end like this.

  I beat my wings, fighting the roaring wind, and whiteness resolved into colour. The demonglass palace lay in shards, scattered, burned out. Within the ruin was a hunched figure, winged and slick with blood.

  Lythocrax lifted his head and his gaze locked with mine. Terror rippled through me. His wings were ashy grey, his form humanoid and lava-coloured, and… bleeding. His own glass had cut him. Serve him right.

  Nikolas flew to my side, also bleeding. Relief flooded me. He was alive, but the armies had stopped fighting, demons and angels alike speared with wounds from the shards of deadly demonglass. The portal remained open, a torrent of swirling light, but nobody paid it any attention. All eyes were on the wrecked palace, and the newly reborn arch-demon inside it.

  Lythocrax’s wings unfurled, his eyes stormy and wrathful. My mouth went dry.

  “This is the last time you thwart me, Devi,” he whispered. His voice seemed to echo from each and every shard of shattered demonglass. “This is for stealing my power, stealing my true name, and mocking me at every turn.”

  The shards of the palace’s ruins rose into the air as he raised a hand, pointing directly at Nikolas and me. “I will kill him before you land.”

  Damn him. My sword had vanished, and even if it hadn’t, I’d never reach him in time.

  The demonglass ignited in mid-air, and a shadowy form appeared above Lythocrax, wings unfolding, a dark aura blotting out the sky.

  Casthus flew down to land before Lythocrax. “You’re disrupting all the infernal realms, you arrogant piece of demon slime. What did you do?”

  “You,” said Lythocrax. “You don’t belong here. We made our arrangement.”

  “I don’t remember conquering this realm being part of any arrangement, Remiel.”

  “I don’t use that name any longer,” said Lythocrax coldly.

  I beat my wings, flying towards the arch-demons. “He also goes by—”

  “Speak that name and die,” he said, guessing I was about to call him by his true name.

  Casthus laughed. “You’re as insecure as you were as a divine one, Remiel.”

  “What do you want?” said Lythocrax. “This realm is mine. Soon, Earth will be, too.”

  “Actually, I think you’ll find it’s mine,” said Casthus. “A huge fraction of your new so-called army is loyal to the shadows.”

  “That’s Zadok, not you,” I said, unable to help myself. Casthus wasn’t on my side. Both of them would be happy to make Earth collateral damage, and they were too fucking strong for me to take out single-handed. Even with Lythocrax’s demon name at my disposal.

  Casthus briefly glanced my way. “I’d advise you to see to your own business, celestial. We’ll finish this ourselves.”

  No. I have to kill him… I have to finish him off.

  Nikolas touched my arm. “Let’s leave them to their games,” he murmured. “The other angels are still on Earth.”

  “The angels…” He was right. As Clover had told me, Earth was about to be visited by the Divinities. They alone could truly end the war.

  23

  The instant Nikolas and I flew close to the portal, its light swallowed us up. The whirling mass was vas
t enough to suck every other source into a blazing inferno. My wings beat frantically, and Nikolas took my hand, steadying both of us. We held onto one another as we flew out above Haven City.

  Chaos reigned below, demons battling warlocks in the wrecked street where the demonglass had exploded. Zadok flew above the street, leading a group of bat demons. To my utter astonishment, Rachel and Fiona rode two of them—and Faye, too, who used her celestial blade to cut demons out of the air from the winged beast’s back.

  Zadok flew up to our level, clad in battle armour. “I suppose you’re here to deal with the angels?”

  “They’re already here?” I asked. “The Divinities?”

  “Not the divine ones,” he said. “I believe they’re your rogues.”

  Crap. Some of them must have survived. “Harvey’s dead,” I said to him. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Nodding to Nikolas, I flew on, glancing up at the clouds in search of more winged shapes. In the streets below, the vampires had joined in the fight. I spotted Madame White, the vampires’ leader, directing her army to tear into any demons which landed in one piece. She was even leading teams of the vamps who’d formerly been shunned by the high society vampires for getting infected with demon venom via the saphor demon eggs.

  A dazzlingly bright low-hanging cloud drew my attention. There they are.

  I flew toward the cloud, which resolved itself into a group of winged shapes. They weren’t fighting, but watching the chaos below, as though it was simple entertainment to them.

  That alone told me they belonged to the Divinities.

  “Hey!” I shouted at the nearest angel. “Do you have contact with the Divinities? Because there’s a massive clusterfuck happening here which they might want to look into.”

  The angel turned to me. He definitely wasn’t one of the rebels. His aura and wings were snowy white, his hair was pale as snow, and his eyes gleamed with divine light. Real divine light.

  Oh, boy. I probably shouldn’t have shouted the word ‘clusterfuck’ at him. Wait, did they even speak English? My grasp of the heavenly language was rusty, to say the least, though it’d been part of the celestials’ curriculum. None of us had ever reckoned on meeting the Divinities in the flesh. Least of all me.

  “Are you Devina Lawson?” He spoke the heavenly tongue, and to my relief, I found I understood him.

  “Uh. Yes.” My celestial hand glowed, as though to remind me I was in the presence of one of heaven’s foot soldiers. “Yes, I am. I need to speak to the Divinities. One of their own is making trouble in the netherworld.”

  I hadn’t the faintest idea of the angelic word for ‘Pandemonium’, but ‘the netherworld’ spoke for itself.

  “She’s right,” said Clover. In typical Clover fashion, she’d managed to conceal herself from view in plain sight among the other angels. “Is he there, Devi? Lythocrax?”

  “He and Casthus are reminiscing about old times,” I said to her. “I can kill him again, but he’ll probably use his creation power to come back. The Divinities need to take care of him. It’s long overdue.” I gave the angels a pointed look, but aside from the one who’d spoken to me, the others seemed more interested in watching Earth than speaking to me.

  “Yes, they do,” Clover said. “However, the heavenly realms cannot send anyone directly into the demon realms. They haven’t been able to since—”

  “Babylon,” I said, inspiration striking. “There’s a pentagram there which can contain an arch-demon. Would I be able to take it into Purgatory and summon Lythocrax there? I take it that’s where the Divinities are hanging out?”

  Clover flew to the angel’s side, who still watched me with narrowed eyes. They exchanged a few words, and the angel turned back to me.

  “Bring the arch-demon before the Divinities, celestial,” said the angel. “And justice will be served.”

  “You’d better keep your word.”

  I turned away from the angels and flew back the way I’d come, where Nikolas and his warlock allies continued to fight from the sky.

  “Hey—Nikolas,” I said, catching up to him.

  “Devi.” He disposed of another demon in a shower of lightning. “Those angels—are they heaven’s?”

  “You’ve got it. They’ll handle Lythocrax, but I need to summon him to Purgatory myself. Do you think Casthus will have left the pentagram behind or taken it with him?”

  “I’ll take us to Babylon and we’ll find out,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the still-glowing portal. “We still need to close that thing.”

  “When Lythocrax is gone, it won’t matter.”

  As long as the angels kept their word.

  Nikolas took my hand, and shadows folded around us in mid-air. Babylon appeared seconds later. From the sky, the moon looked even larger, while the castle appeared oddly small.

  “He took his demons with him,” Nikolas explained, keeping a firm grip on my hand as we descended together. My stomach swooped, and I wished we had more time to enjoy this. Flying with him, without limits… without the war… I wanted this. More than anything.

  “Zadok said you took your warlock army back,” I said breathlessly.

  “They escaped the instant he left this realm.” Nikolas flew on, his grip on my hand sure and strong. “I doubt Casthus knew or cared.”

  We dropped lower over the castle. “Did he leave the defences up?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t have had reason to, unless he expected to come back.”

  The castle grew larger as we descended. “Maybe he did,” I said. “But now he knows it was Lythocrax screwing with all of us all along. Pity we can’t leave them to finish one another off.”

  “I think divine justice is more appropriate.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  I spotted the pentagram lying in the space outside the castle where Casthus had once tried to make a bridge to link the demon realms. I landed beside it, finally letting go of Nikolas’s hand.

  “It’s still tuned into Lythocrax’s old realm, I guess,” I said, moving closer to its gleaming edges. “He didn’t need that world. He just wanted to piss him off—”

  A snarling figure leapt from the pentagram, tackling me to the ground. My celestial hand ignited, and I gasped, breaking the fallen’s grip with my other hand. “It’s me!” I said. “Not him. He’s gone.”

  “Devina.” The fallen hunched back, his eyes wide and gleaming under the luminous moon.

  “Casthus left you behind, huh,” I said. “I’m going to the Divinities, but if you want to get back into heaven…” Recklessness seized me. “Get your people, move them to whatever source you just came through. I’m taking this pentagram straight to the Divinities.”

  The fallen stared at me. “Heaven?”

  I nodded. “I’m taking this pentagram with me, but I’ll need to use it for something else first. I’ll give you the signal when it’s time. If you bring your people through, you can get back to heaven.”

  I hope.

  “I have lived my life to see the Divinities again, Devi. I will fetch my brethren.”

  He stepped through the pentagram and vanished.

  “I hope I’m right,” I murmured to Nikolas. “I’ll have to open another portal if I want to carry this thing with me.”

  “I thought so,” said Nikolas, “I’m going back to help Earth. I don’t think the Divinities will want to do business with a warlock.”

  “For all I know, they don’t want a celestial demon there either.” I hugged him. “I want to fly with you again. When this is over.”

  “Done,” he said, tracing his lips over my cheek. “I’ll be waiting for you on Earth.”

  Nikolas disappeared into shadows, while I burned a pentagram onto the ground, picking up the handmade device. Then I stepped into the pentagram I’d created and spoke clearly: “I request entry to Purgatory. In the name of divine justice.”

  The handmade pentagram vibrated alarmingly as the light swallowed me up, and I toppled on
to the ground of Purgatory.

  The light didn’t fade. If anything, it grew brighter. I scrambled upright, squinting at the sky. The red taint had gone, replaced with brightness.

  Within, a winged being looked down on me.

  My heart crept into my throat. Like an arch-demon, the Divinity defied description. The force before me was nature incarnate, wild and terrifying and blinding white. I blinked frantically, my mouth dry, my thoughts spinning.

  Calm down, Devi. You’ve faced arch-demons, for the Divinities’ sakes.

  “State your name and business,” said the winged beast, in the angelic tongue.

  “I’m here to bring the arch-demon Lythocrax for a trial.” I put down the pentagram with shaking hands. “Or Remiel, as you might have known him.”

  “Remiel betrayed heaven,” the Divinity rumbled.

  “We could talk all day about the people he betrayed,” I said. “But there are others in heaven who worked with him. Started him off on his criminal career, even. If I summon him, he can probably tell you who they are.”

  The Divinity continued to watch me, as though I was some fascinating insect. That’s all I was to him, really. And I had no patience for it.

  “Remiel killed a number of us,” he said. “As punishment, he fell.”

  “He killed you—killed Divinities?”

  Images entered my mind, stirred by the divine being’s presence. I’d seen flashes of Lythocrax’s memories, but now certainty seized me… he’d killed the angels. Including the one who’d sent him to mark me.

  Maybe he’d killed the other Divine Agents before he’d even left heaven behind.

  “He has creation magic,” I said. “Will you take that from him? Because when he dies, he just comes back. He already did it once.”

  “That power should never have been his,” said the Divinity. “Nor should our weapons exist in the hands of demons. Summon the traitor.”