“What’s there to get? It’s a silver bullet,” Solar said. “I’ve seen Twilight like…two times. I know what a silver bullet does.”
“I don’t remember any silver bullets in Twilight,” Sheeda said, her brow furrowed.
“Not the point! The point is,” Solar paused. “What was my point, again?”
“It’s not a silver bullet,” Durham intoned, reaching for it. “This is what I call “Triple 6 or T6.”
“The name of your bullet is “666,” Sheeda said slowly. “That’s…” she laughed. “That’s…”
“The angelic symbolism behind 666 is a call for balance, a call for attaining a higher power…a power that already should belong to us.” Durham placed the bullet down in front of everyone on the long table. “This is a three-part weapon. One, a bullet, as you can see, meant to harm the body. Mutare are half human after all and our bodies are susceptible to bodily harm. Yet we heal on an angelic level. That is why the war was so prolonged. Qeres poisoning is not an automatic death sentence. Through MATE, the body is made to withstand the effects of the poison. That changes with T6. The bullet is coated with a Qeres laced pathogen I’ve been developing for the last decade.”
“You…made a virus.” Dalia blinked. “Like…an actual virus? That’s possible?”
Durham nodded. “To produce a biological weapon? Yes. It does two things. It raises the Qeres poisoning susceptibility rate in those with angelic heritage. We’ve all seen what happens when a body succumbs to an extremely high dose of Qeres.”
“Yeah, I would like an order of fricassee angel with a lot of pain and agony on the side,” Solar murmured.
Durham nodded again. “The Qeres literally ignites the cells of the body, heating them to a temperature that can be fatal. Can be. Like I said, there is no guarantee because of how our bodies heal. So the second thing it does is pause regenerative healing.”
There was silence in the room in the wake of the news.
“That’s…that’s not possible,” Dalia said. “If you stop an angel’s regenerative healing powers– ”
“They temporarily become mortal.”
“Holy shit,” Feilong whispered. “So if you add that to the mafdet…we’re unstoppable.”
Lucan raised his chin, feeling empowered and tall as a titan. “Now we must move as tactically and efficiently as possible to eliminate as many enemies as possible. The first being Team Fox. Sheeda,” he said, looking at the redhead. “Do you have a location on them yet?”
She tapped her watch. “Soon.”
Kevin huffed. “I appreciate the fact that you’re revealing the plans we’ve only been asking about for years, I truly do, but all of these plans don’t equal to an ounce of dog shit if we aren’t able to breach the Blood Barrier. Which, we can’t. We wouldn’t be stuck here if we could.”
Lucan eyed Kevin and held it, forcing his annoyance down. But what Kevin said held some merit of truth. Neither he nor Pythia Del had been very forthcoming with the complete details of their plans. There were agents of Caeli living on Earth and he couldn’t have his plans getting back to the realm.
“Shen.” The sound echoed in the cold meeting room deep in the Tunnels.
The guard opened the door to the underground room hidden at the end of the Tong Tunnel and Shen, Lucan’s weapon, his top priority, walked through the door. He was shirtless and his feet were bare. Pythia Del escorted him into the room, her hand keeping a thin, ratty robe secure across his shoulders as he hobbled in. He looked like he was in incredible pain–he winced with every step and his chest heaved as if walking upright was a monumentally hard. It would be okay. Pythia Del would help with the pain and discomfort after the reveal.
Shen walked to the opposite side of the room and stood in the light of a hundred candles, their flames reflecting off his tanned skin.
“You want to know how we on plan breaching the Blood Barrier?” Lucan said as he walked across the floor, the water on the ground reflecting each of his steps. “There is your answer,” he finished, pointing to Shen.
Pythia Del slid the threadbare robe off Shen’s shoulders. He winced and hissed when she did so, so she moved slower, careful not to cause him any more pain.
“Show them.”
Shen straightened to the command, his facial muscles twitching with an effort to not show his pain. He turned around in slow steady steps and allowed the light to illuminate his back. The muscles in his back flexed under the strain. His skin was raw, pulled tight and looked painful to the touch. But it wasn’t the ragged, red canvas of skin that was of concern. It was what had been done to it.
There were no symbols, no talismans, no sigils. Just words. Thousands and thousands of words. Lucan thought back months ago when he’d thrown a book down and tried to make a more unreasonable and less trusting Shen read the words. Those words….
He glanced at Shen’s back. Those words pacted Shen to a goal, to a set of rules. If Shen broke those rules…
Lucan grinned.
Clara gasped and JiJi started to cry. “They were actually able to do it? The pacting is complete?” JiJi said through her sobs. “We can go home?”
Lucan, for the first time in weeks, smiled. “Yes.” He looked at everyone in the room, the Mutare who had pledged their time and lives to him, their trust. Loyalty. “We can go home.”
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
When people spoke of Anais Dantò they tended to say the same things: Anais Dantò is brilliant, Anais Dantò is beautiful, Anais Dantò is powerful.
Anais knew this and she wasn’t shy about agreeing with anyone when they repeated it. She was brilliant, she was beautiful and she was very powerful. People said that her green eyes flashed a rare color of gold, her mother’s doing, which was false. The green eyes were a gift from Umoya, yes, but the gold–a vibrant, faceted, auric quartz–was a trait from her father, Alloyon. It was a trait of his entire clan, among other great and worthy things.
Thinking of her father, she frowned. A damn waste. His life had been turned from one of promise into some abortive feckless parade, where scholarship was reduced to nothing but a trophy for her mother to show off. The spoils a pretty face will get you, huh, Daddy?
She didn’t see her father much. He often secluded himself to the Bull
District deep in the mountains to focus on his studies. He often said the absence of everything made him appreciate everything. Anais didn’t agree but she wanted her Father happy so she…missed him instead of bartering for his time.
Alloyon was who she got her intelligence from. Although his love life was nothing to brag about, before he became the mate to the highest noble angel in The Glory Beyond, he’d been a brilliant scholar, not just in their clan but the entire realm. It was a talent that was well respected because most noble angels were lazy and couldn’t be bothered with things like…thinking.
With her father’s intelligence guiding her and her mother’s power running through her veins, Anais was a being to be feared. She indulged in the fear she caused like a succulent treat. It was the only way she could hold on to the little bit of authoritative power she had. It was funny; she was possibly one of the most powerful angels in all of time and what was she rewarded for such a supreme existence?
To be the holy benefactor to Be’er Sheeba. A temple to pray for angels, how ridiculous. Her mother should have given her The Temple! Instead, because her half-sisters were all touchy-feely with spirits, they got the Temple, one after the other. She was even looked over for Elle. A child!
Anais stared into her vanity mirror, wiping the makeup from her face. She stared at her reflection long enough to get annoyed with it. She knew, in the back of her mind, that even the Temple would not have been enough. She knew exactly what she wanted. She also knew she would never get it.
“The title of Divine Matriarch of The Glory Beyond does not and will never pass through familial succession,” she recited as she wiped her lipstick off using the back of her hand, smearing it. She wished she had been born
into another family, another clan, one where her powers and talents would be respected and her opportunities would not be limited by something as stupid as familial succession, damn the Creator! She pulled the pin from her hair and watched as her long, pale hair tumbled across her shoulders. “You’re a useless shit, Anais. Just like your father,” she seethed as she threw the pin at the vanity mirror.
The door to their guest suite opened and her mate, Balladan, leaned against the door frame like it was the only thing holding him up. Balladan was a handsome man. Extremely. He had a rugged, manly quality to him, one that most angels, being beautiful, didn’t have. If she ever felt like sleeping with him again, they would have exquisite children.
He gave her a passing glance before stumbling in. Anais stared at him in the reflection of her mirror.
Balladan was another way she was just like her father–mated to someone who didn’t give a fuck about her. She could see his affection for her in the way he came back, smelling like four different spirit essences and sobhe, the only wine fullblooded angels were allowed to drink outside of The Glory Beyond. Her mate was drunk and smelled like others. That was how it was and how it had been for a very long time. Anais focused back on her reflection in the mirror, ignoring Balladan as he sluggishly made his way through their suite, discarding clothes as he went. She almost returned to her thoughts, but when he tripped over his own feet and crashed into a wall, she couldn’t hold back.
“You know it’s one thing to make a fool of me back home, everyone there is shiftless and unnecessary but here, of all places, in front of people who actually respect me, you go and do this?”
Balladan grinned and the sight made Anais want to vomit. “You know there is a human folk tale about a Greek God named Zeus? Have you heard of him, Anais?”
She turned from him instead, getting up from her vanity, slipping her robe off and getting into their bed. It was large and cold, even under the thick sheets. Maybe that would keep him far, far away from her. They didn’t live together back home, but she could imagine the scandal it would cause if she requested separate suites here.
“This Greek God, he comes down to Earth every so often, and he mates with humans; men, women, and in the case of Ganymede, child…”
“You fancy yourself a God, Balladan?” Anais chuckled before rolling over to her side. “You are no God. You’re a whore.” She closed her eyes and tried to imagine a world where her mate was…a billy goat, where she could lock him up, maybe sell him to a neighbor or chop him up into little pieces and throw him into a strew. Then she would make his lovers eat it. That was interrupted when he grabbed her from across the bed and dragged her to the edge, his grip tight around her wrist. “Let go of me, you animal!”
“No, I’m not a God,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am not an animal, nor am I a whore. I am your…better half,” he smirked but it was nasty and cold, “and you should treat me as such. You have duties, wife, duties you abstain from.” He reached up, grabbed the strap of her nightgown and ripped it off her shoulder. Anais used her free hand to stop herself from spilling from the bodice as the strap fell limply to the side. It didn’t stop him from groping her through the thin silk.
Balladan had large hands but they were impatient, a symptom of him always getting what he wanted. She felt his mouth on her and tried to drum up some feelings for him so that when he swung until she faced him and pressed against her, his movements harsh and unforgiving, positioning himself between her legs, she could do it without throwing up. He mouthed at her neck, leaving large wet kisses over her skin.
She thought about it for a moment, the temptation to use Balladan as a form of stress relief, to distract her from her thoughts. Then he said something, maybe in the height of his anger, maybe in the candor of his drunkenness as his hand left a heavy breast and began to travel south, that made her want to never give him another thing again, not even his next breath.
“Your niece, Elle…how old is she–”
Anais had a dagger at his neck before he could even finish. “If you ever mention or touch Elle, I will have your head on a spit and roasting before the sun comes up.” She bared her teeth and pressed the knife closer to his neck, the scent of Qeres so strong it stung her nostrils.
To her surprise, Balladan only laughed. “That’s brave,” he hissed. “Want to know a secret, Anais?”
“I don’t want to hear anything from you. I want your eternal silence and if I have to disconnect your head from your shoulders to get it, I will.”
“How righteous you are…”
Anais narrowed her eyes.
“You should have Petzi killed,” Balladan continued on, confusing her. Petzi was her handmaiden. “While cleaning today she left something out of order. Do you want to check for it yourself? No, not you…the temptation to kill is too sweet, isn’t it? It’s okay, love. I’ll tell you… Ose.”
Anais jumped in surprise so hard that the edge of the knife nicked his skin.
“Ah, careful, my pet. You know the penalty for killing me. I am the Son of the Hakimu, their only male offspring this century. Killing me is a crime against The Twelve, and a crime against the Twelve is a crime against The Glory Beyond. You can kill me, but whatever world exists for us after this life, you’ll be joining me soon after. Remember, we’re tied for eternity. I’d hate to see you die at the end of the E’phor’s sword.”
“Shut your filth-ridden tongue.”
“Or what, Anais? Here’s what I’ll do because I adore you so much. You give me your niece or I go to every member of The Above, every member of The Fallen, and your mother with the news I have. And trust me, I have witnesses.”
“Name them.”
“You may fancy yourself the smartest woman in all of creation but you can’t possibly think you’re that smart…or that I am that stupid.”
Anais didn’t understand. She’d taken provisions; she’d been careful, extremely careful.
Taking her silence as acceptance of his terms, he shoved the dagger away, wrapped a hand around her neck, using it to push her back into the bed, crushing and smothering her with his body. He hiked a smooth, brown thigh up high, taking a moment to kiss along the back of her knee. “You have until after the Aria’s feast to give me an answer, darling wife.”
Anais stared at the ceiling until he was done. He rolled over, pulled the covers over his body and went to sleep. She heard his soft snore.
Her hand still ached from clenching the dagger so tight.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
Jin looked around, bewildered, her hands still raised to block Shen’s bullet, the scream still caught in her throat, the pain still reverberating in her leg. She looked at her hands. She was shaking and she couldn’t get them to stop. Fear gnawed at her neck, raked hot, sharp nails down her back, and clawed at her feet.
“It’s okay, Jin,” a voice said, soft. It was Aria’s voice but it wasn’t inside of her head. She turned to look for it, her head swinging wildly, back and forth. Benja’in-su was behind Jin, humming a song, with a hand placed between her shoulder blades. She rubbed soothingly, emitting a warm pulsing feeling that drew away the fear that immobilized her.
Onyu stood to her right, her face drawn in thought. No. It wasn’t Onyu’s voice she was looking for.
A person stepped out from behind the spiritualist. A person who looked
like Aria. Somewhat. Half of her face was behind a metallic and black mask that was in the shape of a lion’s snout. Her skin was the color of crushed black tourmaline and when she moved, it glinted in the sunlight. Her ever-present locks were caked with red clay, similar to Ashanti warriors. The only similarity was their outfits. She wore the same clothing she’d seen Aria wear on the bridge–tunic, loose-fitting harem pants and tall leather boots–except in all black.
“What just happened,” Jin tried, her voice shaking as she spoke. She lowered her hands to her side to try and quell the tremors.
“We miscalculated a few more things,” Onyu offered.
“Your willingness to survive,” the spiritualist returned.
Highly offended by that, Jin opened her mouth to tear the know-it-all to shreds when the woman who looked like Aria held her hand up. “Let us explain?”
“Who are you?” Jin asked instead, her face hard.
“I’m the last remaining fragment of Aria’s soul left within you. It’s how can hear my voice in your head. It’s why people will still try to hurt you.” She looked down at her hands. “This isn’t my real form of course. Souls don’t have forms but this projection of me is accurate. Uhm…you can call me AJ.”
Jin’s brows bunched together. Nothing in this place made sense. She looked heavenward for strength. “What do you mean a fragment of Aria’s soul? How are you a fragmentt of a fragment?” She abruptly looked over her shoulder when another calming pulse trickled down her back, suffusing it in warmth. “And what is she doing back there?”
“You suffered spiritual poisoning the last time we tested your limits,” Onyu reminded, her eyes jutting to Jin’s now white hair. “Benja’in-su is keeping you in balance. AJ will help you find it and keep it.”
Instead of cooperating, and Jin wasn’t sure what level of cooperation they were requesting with this cockamamie plan, she crossed her arms like a petulant child and sat down with a hmph. “I don’t need to find balance. I don’t want to find balance. This isn’t The Karate Kid, I am not your Daniel-san. I am not your summer makeover project.”
“You need training,” AJ said, her face stern. Or, what Jin could see of it.
“For what?” she yelled. “I’m never leaving this place because I used to be a Ziploc bag for a psychopath with a sword!”
“That’s a bit much,” AJ murmured, frowning.
Onyu pulled up short. “I never said you couldn’t leave.”
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 30
