by Ella Summers
“I am.”
“How’d you get here?”
“A djinn brought me.”
His chuckle was as rough as a machine that hadn’t been oiled in years. “You want to know how I had so many children.”
“How did you know?” Ava asked in surprise.
“Why else go through all the trouble to come all the way out here? I’ve been here for a very long time, so I don’t know anything about the gods’ war plan, and they’d rather see me die than pay a ransom to get me back. But I am the only deity who has ever had ten children. That’s valuable information.”
So his mind was in much better shape than his body. And his house.
“Tell you what, I’ll explain to you exactly how I did it.” He smacked his lips. “If you get me off this cursed moon and back to civilization.”
“I have another offer.” Ava pulled a slender vial out of her jacket. A bright liquid sparkled and swirled inside it, moving almost like it was alive.
He gaped at it. “Nectar.”
“How long as it been since you’ve had some?”
Regin watched the Nectar move in the vial, transfixed. “No.” He shook himself. “I want my freedom. That is my offer.”
“How disappointing.” Ava moved to tuck the vial away again.
He caught her hand. “Wait.”
“There’s enough magic in this Nectar to return you to your former glory.” She used her other hand to retrieve a second vial of Nectar from her jacket. “And I’m offering two doses.”
“I want the first one before I tell you anything.”
“Very well. But be warned. If you cross me, I am more than powerful enough to deal with the likes of you.”
Ava set the first vial of Nectar into his hand. With eager, shaky fingers, Regin popped the vial’s top and poured the entire contents into his mouth.
The effects were immediate. An ethereal glow washed across his skin, smoothing the wrinkles. The glow spread across his hair, turning it from white to black. His clothes not only mended; they completely transformed into a glorious gold-and-purple robe befitting a king. His eyes grew sharper, and it wasn’t only thanks to the dramatic dash of dark eyeshadow on his lids. His lips became fuller and smoother; they were no longer broken by dry cracks.
Ava smiled. “Now, that’s better. You actually look alive. And you don’t smell like garbage anymore.”
Regin leaned back in his chair and braided his fingers together in a thoughtful pose. “Yes.”
“Now it’s your turn.”
“Very well.” Like his face, his voice wasn’t rough anymore either. It was as smooth as rose petals. “You wish to know how I beat the odds? It’s quite simple. I changed the rules of the game.”
“How?”
“By changing the flow of magic in my favor. You see, the universe has a kind of balance sheet. In order to have life, you need death. It’s the so-called balance of the universe. But you can cheat that balance. To create a powerful life, you merely need to compensate with powerful death. The more death, the better. That puts the balance sheet in your favor.”
Ava leaned forward. She was very, very intrigued. “There are often battles that result in a lot of death. That doesn’t mean more people are born.”
“No,” he said. “You need to channel that death. You need to transform it into life. After all, we’re cheating our way out of our own infertility by paying for it with death. It’s not an easy procedure. Nor is it appreciated by certain closed-minded individuals who claim to speak for all the gods.”
“The gods’ council exiled you because you did this,” Ava realized. “Ten times.”
“They exiled me because of the massacres I created in order to achieve the necessary balance to make my children. They labeled me ‘mad’ and sent me into exile here. And they dropped off my children on ten nearby moons. We’re all orbiting the same world, all so close, and yet so far away. It wasn’t enough to exile me. They had to torture me too.”
“The other gods cut you off from your private little army,” Ava said. “Would you have used that army against them?”
“Of course not. Ten soldiers isn’t enough of an army to do anything. I’d need at least a few hundred. Unfortunately, I never got that far.”
“You didn’t need a few hundred soldiers,” Ava said to herself under her breath. “You only needed one. The right one.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind,” Ava said hurriedly. “How did you redirect all those deaths into the life that created your children?”
“By employing the services of a very powerful phoenix.”
“A phoenix…”
“A very powerful phoenix,” he said with emphasis. “Only the strongest phoenixes can perform this kind of magic. In fact, there’s only one phoenix I know of who’s skilled enough to do it.”
“Who?”
Regin smiled at her.
Ava tossed him the second vial of Nectar.
He popped the lid and inhaled deeply. A dreamy look washed over his face, but he didn’t drink the Nectar just yet. Instead, he closed the vial again.
“Indira,” he told Ava. “Her name is Indira.”
“This isn’t what we agreed to.” Ava shot the phoenix Indira an aggravated look.
“You hired me to channel the death you orchestrated into life,” Indira replied. “That’s what made your sister’s pregnancy possible.”
“I hired you to channel that death into life in my sister,” Ava said with unfiltered venom. “I did not pay you to also create life in all of those angels and wives of angels.”
Indira looked unbothered by the demon’s bad mood. “The universe has to achieve a balance somehow. You made a lot of death. A lot. You were more discreet than Regin, true, but it was still a lot of death.”
“I had to make sure it was enough to make Grace’s baby.”
“It was,” said Indira. “And there was leftover magical energy that had to go somewhere. Just be happy there weren’t a dozen gods conceived because that would have made your war against the gods harder.”
“You knew this would happen.” Ava’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You did this just to annoy me.”
“I’m a professional,” Indira said stiffly. “I don’t make a habit of annoying my clients.”
“I’m considering killing you for your impudence.”
“I’m a phoenix,” Indira reminded her.
“There are ways to kill a phoenix.”
“You don’t want to kill her, Ava,” Grace declared as she entered the room.
“Actually, I really do,” Ava told her sister.
“It’s really hard to kill a phoenix.”
Ava yawned.
“Besides, we will need Indira again for the next step, for Leda to have a child of her own.”
Ava sighed. “You’re right.” She looked at Indira and gave her wrist a dismissive flick. “You may go. We’ll be in need of your services again in the near future.”
Soon after Grace found out that she was pregnant, she traveled to the far edge of the demons’ territory. But Ava found her.
“You’ve been avoiding me, Grace,” Ava said. “Why? The LEDA project is going entirely to plan.”
“I’ve changed the plan,” replied Grace. “The gods have control over Earth. We can’t send the child there. Faris will surely find her.”
“The child must grow up on Earth,” Ava told her. “Because of that world’s magical potential. It’s just the environment the child requires to become what we need her to be.”
Grace shook her head. “She won’t be what we need her to be if Faris controls her. I will train her myself, and I’ll do it somewhere that Faris can’t find her.”
“For our plan to work at all, the child must grow up on the world of magical potential,” Ava pointed out. “You knew this from the beginning, Grace.”
Grace looked away from her meditation candles—and into her sister’s eyes. “It’s too dangerous. If we release the chi
ld from our care, how do we keep her away from Faris? Or away from Sonja, for that matter? You know of the experiments our sister has been running these many years.”
“I do,” Ava replied. “And I know Sonja isn’t even close. She’s taken her experiments in entirely the wrong direction. She hasn’t even considered the possibility of doing what we’ve done.”
Grace held up a warning finger. “Yet.”
“True, not yet. If we keep to the plan, it will work. Remember why we’re doing this. There is no room in our plan to hesitate, Grace. The Guardians are growing bolder by the day. They’re putting their pieces into play.”
“I’m not hesitating. I’m being smart.”
“And this?” Ava indicated the meditation candles.
“These rituals will ensure the child gains powerful telepathic powers,” said Grace. “She will need to have a lot of all the powers to pass them on to her child.”
“With those telepathic powers, the child will also be able to receive the visions we send her to guide her path, even from Earth,” Ava countered.
“I’ve made up my mind, Ava. The child stays with me. It is the only way to ensure she becomes what we made her to be.”
“Trust me, sister.” Ava extended her hand to her.
Grace took it. “I trust you will find a way to help me keep the child safe. Here. With me. It’s too risky to release her out there.”
Ava stood in a room with black walls and purple fire.
“Grace has given birth to the child, but that child has become more than a child to her,” she said.
Sonja stood opposite her. “She’s grown attached to it.”
“Yes.”
“You were right to come to me,” Sonja told her.
“I had little choice,” Ava grumbled. “You found out what we were doing.”
Sonja’s smile could have melted metal. “Yes, I did. Let that be a lesson to you, dear sister. I always find out. Where is Grace keeping the child?”
“On Avalon.”
Sonja nodded, her smile growing wider, then she left the room.
Ava watched her leave. When Sonja was gone, Ava muttered, “Yes, my devious sister, you did find me out this time. That will not happen again. You will steal the child from Grace, but your victory shall be short-lived. The child will slip through your fingers. She will not be your weapon.”
“I have a job for you, Inali.”
Ava was speaking to one of the octuplets. The changeling Inali was the one who’d taken the form of Gaius Knight, the man who’d led Calli to her children. That must have been what I was witnessing now, the day Inali had set off down that path. So Ava had been behind that. That was the ‘job’ she was referring to.
Ava handed Inali a photograph. “That is the man I want you to impersonate. He has contacts that will prove useful to you.”
Inali glanced down at the picture. “I take it this man is still alive?”
“He is,” Ava confirmed. “But that shouldn’t be a problem. You and your sisters have no qualms about getting your hands dirty.”
Inali glared at her. “It’s not like you’ve given us a choice.”
Ava took one of the charms on her bracelet between her fingers. She smiled. “His name is Gaius Knight. Kill him and take his place.” She handed Inali a second photograph. “This is Callista Pierce. You—or should I say Gaius—will make friends with her.”
Inali’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why?”
“Because I need to put some pieces into place.”
The third photograph Ava handed her was of Aradia Redwood, the woman who’d kidnapped me. And then raised me.
“You’ll start with her,” Ava told the changeling.
“They took her. They took Leda.” Grace’s voice trembled. She looked decidedly rattled.
“You’re emotional,” Ava commented with disapproval.
“Of course I’m emotional. Years of planning—centuries of planning—all down the drain! I’m not sad. Oh, no. I’m furious.”
Ava watched her closely. “You’ve grown attached to the child.”
“No. I’ve grown attached to my plan. And now it’s ruined.”
“Do you know who took the child?” Ava asked her.
Of course she herself knew, but she had to see if Grace suspected.
“I thought it was Sonja, but my soldiers searched her estates and found nothing,” Grace replied. “It must have been Faris.”
“Then we shall search his worlds as well,” Ava told her sister, happy to mislead her. “We shall leave no stone unturned.”
“I already did that. And I found nothing.” A sound of pent-up frustration broke her lips. “Still, I’m sure it was Faris. He threatened to take the child for himself. He has her locked away somewhere, out of my reach, grooming her for the day he will use her as a weapon to serve his own purposes.”
Ava set her hand on Grace’s arm. “We will find the child. There is no hiding her magic. Eventually, we will find her.”
Ava didn’t tell Grace that, even now, the child was on Earth, under Aradia’s care. And Ava didn’t tell her sister that she’d already made plans to safeguard her investment. The child would one day give birth to the ultimate weapon. Ava would see to it.
She’d already figured it all out. The child would need other protectors. Ava would use one from each of the four magical quadrants. The symmetry of the idea appealed to her. Four protectors, joined by bonds of family—that was the way to go. Leda needed protectors who would do anything for her, anything to keep her and her child safe.
But the four protectors were not enough. They needed a mother, someone who would create an environment in which the siblings could grow very close. Ava had already selected the perfect candidate: Callista Pierce. The bounty hunter had thwarted Ava’s efforts to gain a foothold on Earth. In doing so, she’d demonstrated her inconvenient morality, yes, but also her ability to unite people. And that ability was just what Ava needed.
Besides, wouldn’t it be poetic justice indeed for Callista Pierce to unknowingly help Ava, the demon she’d thwarted, to gain a foothold on Earth, in this grandest of schemes?
Through her gazing ball, Ava watched the injured telepath run down the street. He was the most powerful telepath in all of the known realms, and that’s why Faris’s soldiers had hunted him across all of the known realms. Faris wanted to make him part of his ‘Orchestra’ of powerful supernaturals.
Even now, a team of gods from Heaven’s Army was closing in on the telepath’s position. His mind tricks would only keep them at bay for so long. They would capture him.
Of course Ava couldn’t possibly allow that. She had far more important plans for the telepath, plans that superseded those from the God of Heaven’s Army.
A powerful spell repelled all demons from Earth, keeping them out. Ava could not go there, nor could her demonic soldiers in Hell’s Army. But she had other means to make her will be done.
Faris’s soldiers were almost upon the telepath.
Then they just stopped. The soldiers were frozen, their eyes locked on to the dozen bewitching men and women who’d just slunk out of the shadows and planted themselves in front of them. Ava’s dark sirens.
Faris’s soldiers didn’t move. They didn’t even lift a hand to defend themselves as the dark sirens killed them with their own swords.
Further down the street, just the person Ava knew would be here was kneeling down beside the injured telepath, who’d collapsed against a building.
“You’re injured,” the woman said. Her name was Cora.
The telepath could barely keep his eyes open.
“I’m going to heal you now. Just hold on.” She opened up a kit of premixed potions.
Cora was a good friend of Callista Pierce. And the telepath, well, he was the one Ava had chosen to father one of Leda’s protectors.
Faris would eventually find the telepath, but it was of no consequence. Ava would have already gotten what she needed from him. She just had to make
sure that when Faris’s soldiers did come again, that they didn’t take the telepath alive. She was not about to allow Faris to add the most powerful telepath in the known universe to his Orchestra. She would, however, soon be adding the telepath’s child to her own collection.
Ava could already see her dark sirens closing in on the two unsuspecting lovers. They had no idea that magic would make them fall in love—or at least think they were in love long enough for them to conceive a child. One day, the child’s mother, pursued by relentless enemies, would have no choice but to leave him with her friend Callista Pierce.
Ava waved her hand over her gazing ball to turn it off. “Yes.” She fingered the tiny magical charms attached to her bracelet. “This will all work out perfectly.”
“I’ve done as you asked,” Inali said to Ava. “Callista Pierce has found the five children.”
Ava nodded. “Indeed. Your work, like your sisters’, is stellar.”
Inali reached toward her. “Now let us go.”
The demon sidestepped her. “No.”
“We know what you’ve done.” Anger took root in Inali’s voice. “You took samples from Indira and Rosette. You combined those samples with other samples taken from two human males in your custody. And with those, you made two babies: a phoenix and a djinn.”
“Of course I used human males as fathers,” Ava said. “I didn’t want another kind of magic to get in the way of the girls expressing their mother’s powerful magic.”
“In each case, you managed to isolate and magnify phoenix or djinn magic, so it was as though both parents had either phoenix or djinn magic.” Magic rippled across Inali’s body, like a flag caught in the wind; she was very angry, and she was doing a very terrible job of hiding it. “The fathers were used merely for physical traits, not magic.”
“One of my more brilliant ideas, I must say,” Ava said smugly. She stopped short of literally patting herself on the back—but only barely. “The girls would be of no use to me with diluted magic. I don’t need a weak phoenix and a weak djinn. I need a phoenix and a djinn as powerful as their mothers.”