by Lan Chan
“You’re going to be in such deep shit,” I told Isla.
“I’m already in deep shit,” she said. “My sister was part of a patrol squad around Terran.” The barbed look she shot Rachel said it all.
“Why are you helping me then?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “How dumb would we be to get into a war with the species we’re trying to protect? There are bloody demons colonising parts of the dimension. We don’t have time for this petty shit.”
She tossed a backpack at me that I caught out of sheer luck. “Demons?”
“Yes!” she said. “My dad is part of the glamour recovery team and the number of demon attacks he’s witnessed is ridiculous. But the Council are too thick-headed to listen. Let’s get their deity back. We’re going to need help soon.”
I rummaged through the backpack. She’d brought me a change of clothes but no shoes. I tried not to think about how she’d gone to my room when my hand touched on something cool and smooth. I pulled out the pendant the kids had bought me. There was a note attached to the clasp. It was from Sophie:
Don’t get yourself killed. I wanted to come but Max has barricaded the door. Idiot.
I couldn’t help smiling as I changed. In all honesty, I was glad she was somewhere safe. Snapping the choker around my neck, I turned to Basil. “I’m going to assume the mermaids found something close by?”
He nodded. “They checked the worst possible places for her,” he said. He shook his head. “It made some of them very sick. In the end, they sought help from the other marine mammals.” He pointed out towards Bass Strait. “Apparently there is a spot out there where the water becomes opaque. Nothing exists except a convergence that has no other side. Funny thing is, it wasn’t always there. It only appeared a few months ago. Best I can tell is that it’s been shielded all this time. But something happened recently to make it visible again.”
Sounds about right. Why couldn’t Hilary have stashed Gaia somewhere tropical? Hawaii would have been nice.
“What’s the plan?” Isla said. I grinned sheepishly at her. “You’re the worst!”
“I don’t know what’s going on half the time. I have an idea how to unbind Gaia. The rest…” I waved my hand about.
Basil rolled his eyes. “We need to secure the site,” he said. “Isla, when I open the portal directly over the convergence, how long will you be able to hold back the water?”
Isla’s lips puckered while she thought. “Probably no more than five minutes.”
Basil turned to me. “You’ll have five minutes to work your spell. Make it count.”
Basil began to chant a spell that would conceal us from passersby. I was going to draw an invisibility circle when my hedge magic sputtered. Dammit! I was running too low. Who knew what I’d be up against if we found Gaia. I needed to conserve that energy.
Rachel was slumped over in the dunes. “Can you draw an invisibility circle around this place?” I asked her.
“I need to get back to Terran,” she said.
I was so tired of having this conversation. “Look. I get that you’re pissed. But you dragged me all the way here to find Gaia. I’m trying to do what you asked. Work with me here. You can run off and die as soon as we find her.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Why in hell did I do anything? “Because somebody has to do it, and the rest of you are all too stubborn to admit when you’re wrong. At least I know I’m stupid.”
I left her to it. Basil had started to cast the spell that would open the portal and I needed to be ready at a moment’s notice. I did smile a little when I heard her swiping sand off her pants. A second later, the familiar tingle of hedge magic settled over the area. Something in my gut clenched. I missed that tingle.
Balling my fists, I allowed myself to face the waves. Ever since we landed on the beach, I’d been trying to block it out. There was no more time to be a chicken. That was all well and good except my legs stopped working about two metres from the water.
“Do you want me to drag you in when the time comes?” Isla asked.
Ridiculous as that was, I seriously contemplated it. “I’ll do everything I can to shorten the distance between the portal and the convergence,” Basil said. “But there’s still going to be some overlap.”
I bit my lip. “It’s okay. Just do what you need to do.” If it came down to it, I would force myself into the water through sheer recklessness.
As the first orange glow of dawn appeared over the waves, a rushing sound filled my ears. I thought it was Basil until something tugged at the pit of my stomach. Rachel crouched where she’d been standing, her head dropping between her knees.
I found myself drawn to the direction of Terran. “They’ve closed the soul gate,” Rachel informed me. “It means there’s an immediate threat in the area.”
My heart leaped into my throat. “Reinforce the invisibility circle,” I told her. “Keep it going as long as you can. We can’t be interrupted.”
Basil glanced at me. He nodded. My eyes followed the orange spark that began in the sand. It widened in circumference until it turned into a portal twice my height. It was disconcerting to hear the waves in the water not far from me and the waves inside the portal which were such a long way off.
Isla hissed. “This is insane.” I followed her line of sight to see dozens of golden-armoured Nephilim appearing in the sky above Terran. None of them were armed with angel blades. That very fact should have given them pause. The weapons they had been bestowed weren’t made to kill humans. How could they not see that?
Turning away quickly, I focused on the task in front of me. Mostly so I couldn’t scan the horizon for any signs of Kai. I didn’t want to believe that he would be part of an invading force with the intention of wiping out the Terrans.
Isla’s face settled into a mask of grim determination. When Basil was done with the portal, she stepped forward and raised her hands. Her wings materialised at her back. I didn’t think she noticed when they fluttered and she began to levitate.
I tucked my hands behind my back and gripped my wrists. Isla’s golden magic caught the waves in their eternal dance and forced them to spin counter-clockwise. I was mesmerised by the hypnotic turning of the water at the same time it sent shivers down my spine. With each second, the whirlpool Isla spun grew wider. It dragged the undulating waves in its grip and forced them into an unnatural cycle. Inch by agonising inch, a hole began to form. It never occurred to me how much power she had. To hold back an element like that for so long would take considerable effort. Basil turned the sphere of orange in his hands and the portal shifted to give us a bird’s eyes view of the centre of the whirlpool.
I almost lost the contents of my stomach. A shroud of gold-speckled darkness enclosed over a mound on the seabed. It was solid so that we couldn’t see through it, but there was a bed of multicoloured coral and seaweed growing around it. This wasn’t the right environment for that sort of tropical coral. The water was slick and shimmering like it was intermixed with oil. It was polluted to the max. The magic around the entity matched mine almost identically. My gut dipped out and I took a step back. Every hair on my body stood on end. Despite the gravity of the situation, my head turned so I didn’t have to look into the swirling water.
“Suck it up,” Rachel said. She was still crouched on my left, her attention fixed to Terran. We could both feel the sweep of supernatural magic that passed over the wards created by the soul gate. It felt like someone running their nails down my back. The supernaturals were obviously trying to find a weak spot.
“I’m nearing the convergence,” Isla bit out.
“Heaven’s above!” Basil swore.
I could feel the heat leaving my body. Phoenix leaned against my thigh. Even his reassurance didn’t make this easier. “Lex!” Basil said. “We need to do this now.”
“Have your breakdown later!” Isla snapped. “I can’t hold this for much longer!”
Their arguments were convin
cing, but they bounced off the bubble of my fear. It was Rachel’s sharp inhale that got my attention. “They’re all going to die,” she said. I whipped my head around and my eyes popped out. The Fae had lit up the fields around Terran Academy. There were enough of them that I had no doubt they’re be able to contain the fire and direct it where it needed to go. They were going to use it to flush the Terrans out. The stupid arrogance of it had fury blossoming in my chest. We were a desert country and they were playing with fire.
I took a single step towards the water. That was when Lucifer locked me down. You will not enter the water, he commanded in my mind.
I froze. “Lex!” Basil called.
I blocked out his voice to focus on the one inside my mind. Get out! There was no budging. His command was absolute. The well of death magic mirrored the undulating waves. It had always been held back by the gentler hedge magic. For once, I was comforted by the stark violence of it. I remembered what had happened the last time I had lost control of the power on a beach nearby. I needed that violence now.
Reaching for all of the magic I could contend with, I threw it at Lucifer in a bid to eject him from my mind. He met me with the force of his will. The sum of our powers clashed in a spark of dark versus light. It was ironic that his was the white light. For a single solitary moment, I held my breath as the two opposing forces balanced in their pressure. And then the power of the Morning Star prevailed.
I fell to my knees. Phoenix’s body buffered me, but I couldn’t see anything besides the rolling of bright light over the well of my magic. Lucifer laughed. Something wet dripped down my nose. I tried to swipe it away, but I couldn’t move.
All of the power you have is mine, he said to me. You’re mine, Alessia. I will not allow you to free her. Your life depends on it.
I felt a single tear slide down my left cheek. At the moment, I understood Kai perfectly. To have so much power and yet be unable to protect the people you cared about was worse than any physical pain I had ever experienced. Helplessness caused my chest to ache. How could I even dream of one day meeting Lucifer on a field of battle when I couldn’t even oppose his simple commands?
Phoenix whined in my ear. The pitch of it shocked me back into the present. The air around us rumbled. The First Order were throwing fireballs at the soul gate. Smoke turned the startling sunset into an orange haze. I frowned as one of the Nephilim jerked where he had been flying in the air. His balance wavered. He flew in a distorted circular fashion like he was having trouble with one of his wings. Another jerk and he winked out altogether. As I watched, other Nephilim went down the same way. It took me a second to catch on. The Terrans were firing on the Nephilim with their modified poison guns. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had rigged those mechanical catapults with the same concoction. I thought I saw a trail of green, but as soon as it appeared, I averted my eyes. “How did we ever think we could beat them?” Rachel asked me. “We’re just…human.”
Human. Such a simple concept bound in so many complications. But was it really all that complicated?
The dingo nudged my chin with his nose. I looked into his dark eyes and saw something flare behind them. He had been just a dingo once. A victim who had come back to the world stronger. I was human. No matter whether Azrael or Lucifer claimed me, the soul gate allowed me admittance. And like every human, I had free will.
That tiny thought settled something inside me.
Lucifer sensed the sudden change in my thought pattern. He tried to lock on to me once more. Instead of throwing more magic at him, I curtailed it. I hid it away in a compartment in my mind. Without it, I no longer felt the urgent tugging of his commands. He was still there, but I was able to stand. Alessia!
Shut up! Get the hell out of my head and take your stupid commands with you!
Something popped in my ears. The sound of wind howling in a vacuum overwhelmed me for a second and then…silence. I got to my feet. The waves were just waves. The water was just salty liquid. I wasn’t scared anymore.
38
I bit down on my tongue to stop from crying out. All this time it had been him. I was afraid of the water because Lucifer had commanded me to be. Insufferable bastard. When I did meet him in battle, I was going to enjoy kicking his ass.
At the moment, I had other things to attend to. Racing closer to the portal, I used the darker magic to draw a summoning circle. At the same time, I drew one in the sand with my toes. After so much practice, I could draw a circle with my eyes closed. The pattern appeared quickly. By the time I bit into the skin of my palm to draw the blood, Isla was crouching. Her breathing was laboured. Sweat clung to the collar of her top. We didn’t have long.
I hopped out of the circle and slammed my bleeding palm down onto the point of the star. Rachel chanted the words of the summoning spell with me. I thought of Hilary and asked her to appear. The outer edge of the circle imbued with Rachel’s magic. Phoenix let out a short bark.
At first not much happened. I faltered for a second, wondering if I’d done something wrong. I was about to slip into the Ley dimension to check whether a portal had opened up when a figure materialised within the perimeter of the circle. This time, Hilary’s form was more solid. I could see the laugh lines around her glowing blue eyes that she’d passed down to me. I almost had a heart attack when her mouth opened.
“Are you sure?” Hilary said. She made a sweeping gesture towards the open mouth of the whirlpool. “The consequences will be dire.”
Rachel inhaled sharply. “What the hell?” she said. “Since when are they so…coherent?”
Since my great-grandmother was a bone witch, I suppose. I was given to believe that most shades existed in a state of confusion. I looked into Hilary’s face. There was nothing but conviction there. “I think so,” I told her.
“Be sure,” she said. “Or we will have died for nothing.”
Despite her ominous statement, she cast her arms out. Her eyes closed. I felt something twist until snapping point in my chest, and then it unravelled so quickly I couldn’t keep up. Wind swept my hair into a halo around my head. I was assaulted by images and memories that didn’t belong to me. In them, I saw Nanna as a much younger woman. Hilary imparted the sum of her wisdom to me in the blink of an eye.
I gasped just as the magical shell around Gaia cracked. It splintered into millions of pieces to reveal the physical embodiment of the deity. The release of a decades-old magic had Isla wincing. Her control slipped and the water began rushing back. I saw her try to hang on to it, but Basil patted her shoulder. She slumped back onto the sand, her wings withdrawn.
Hilary bowed low. She reached out as though wanting to touch me, but then her appearance turned transparent and she disappeared. I sat back heavily. Phoenix licked my face as I struggled to take a breath and make sense of all that Hilary had bestowed on me just now. Too many memories to process at once.
It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. I heard Basil swearing. I glanced up to find the sky had filled with ominous storm clouds.
“Not this again,” Rachel said. Her attention was glued to the whirlpool. Isla no longer had control of it, but it hadn’t stopped spinning. Inside the protection of Basil and Rachel’s circles, we were somewhat protected from the elements. Outside, the wind had picked up enough speed that the tree branches were swaying crazily.
While Isla had control of the water, Basil had been able to shield it from being seen. Now that it was spinning from the phantom force, it didn’t take long for the supernaturals to feel the effects.
“This isn’t good,” Basil said. “We’re going to have to find cover if we don’t want to land in the middle of a fight.”
Too late. A half-dozen golden-armoured Nephilim touched down in the sand to our right. Smaller portals opened around us. Supernaturals streamed out of them. Basil made a frantic hand motion at me. But I couldn’t move. Behind him the water was beginning to rise in a conical swirl that hung suspended in the air. Higher and higher it rose until it was
a towering cone that could be spotted from miles away.
I could tell Basil wanted to open a portal to get away, but he couldn’t risk it now with so many other mages present. Phoenix huddled beside me. For some reason he bit down on the hem of my T-shirt and wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I tried to push him off.
The first lightning strike hit the sand not three metres away from me. It rocked the ground and tore a hole in the dunes. Phoenix knocked me over in an attempt to protect me from the aftershock. Supernaturals scattered all over the place. Those who could fly or teleport grabbed their grounded companions as the sky was lit up by tendrils of lightning. They struck the earth in a shattering of destructive force. The sky opened up around the spot where Terran sat. Rain fell in a heavy flood that began to put the fires out.
Basil appeared by my side with Isla and Rachel. “We need to get out of here now!”
I couldn’t agree more. Except when I tried to move with them, something caught hold of my foot. I slipped and twisted around to find my foot snagged on something in the sand. Phoenix growled as the others managed to run a few metres up the edge of the embankment concealed by Basil’s magic. I kicked my leg thinking that I’d just snagged it on a protruding root. That was until the root turned into a vine that sprouted leaves and more vines. Without thinking, I drew circles around the vines. I thought of death and the magic cooperated. The vine stopped growing. It sizzled at its tip. But every tendril I managed to kill just sprouted two new shoots. Was this some kind of Medusa plant or something? It gained ground and snaked up my thigh. The sand bulged and slithered as though there were a snake gliding through it. The vine became so thick it burst through the sand.
Everywhere around us, shifters and goblins scrambled to get away from the lightning. The mages and Fae attempted to gain control of the atmosphere, but they might as well have been waving their arms around aimlessly. The cloud density became so thick it could have been night time. Rain shot at me like icy bullets. Even though I was soaked through, the vines managed to continue to hold me.