by Jenny McKane
Sunny held up the hand that held the ring.
“This has a way of convincing demons, I guess,” she said quietly. “That and 3,000 years of imprisonment.”
Plaxo considered the ring a moment.
“So, the Lady Hunter will rouse the generals, or the final one, and build an army to face Death?”
It sounded like a good summation of what they were doing.
“You forgot the part where we have to kill Gideon’s father and restore the balance in Hell he upset, too,” Eli added between bites of cantaloupe.
“Plaxo sees,” the dream demon said, nodding. “And which generals have risen?”
“Agares, Zepar and Baal,” Sunny answered. “In that order.”
Plaxo sucked in a sharp breath.
“Plaxo was hoping for better news,” he said to himself and Sunny set down her coffee cup.
“What does that mean?”
Plaxo was looking out the window and brought his attention back to Sunny.
“Beleth is a nightmare,” he said.
Sunny nodded, she’d heard much of the same about the Guardian of the north.
“No, Lady Hunter,” Plaxo interrupted her thoughts. “A true nightmare. A demon that works much like Plaxo and his kind do—only much more sinister and evil, if Plaxo can be truly honest.”
Sunny’s face fell. Asmodeus hadn’t exactly mentioned that part.
“But there’s still that chance of freedom to convince her,” Sunny offered, probably not helping much.
“Plaxo isn’t sure that the world wants Beleth free—at any point,” he said quietly. “This is a bad plan—doomed to fail.”
Sunny sat back in her chair and looked to Eli to see how he was taking the news. Before he could reply, Asmodeus walked into the room.
“Nightmare or not, she is crucial to the success of the mission,” he said, his rich, cultured voice cutting through their silence.
Twisting in her chair to get a look at the archdemon, she watched Asmodeus enter the dining room and take in Plaxo.
“A dream demon,” he said quietly, cocking his head at Plaxo. “And bound to a Hunter? Interesting.”
Plaxo met Asmodeus’ eyes and simply nodded, as though daring him to ask more questions. Instead, Asmodeus looked at Sunny and gave her a disarming smile.
“What an interesting character you are, Solomon,” he said as he took a seat next to Eli. “So layered and full of secrets. I can’t wait to watch this unfold.”
As Asmodeus was getting his breakfast, Sunny heard Gideon and Sin talking together as they came into the room. Sunny turned and took Gideon in—looking for any sign of anything at this point. Was he in a good mood? Was he his usual self? He’d been different the last few days—since Phoenix, really—but not in a substantial enough way that she’d felt it necessary to bring it up.
Beside her, Plaxo stiffened, and she swore she heard a growl emanating from the gentle dream demon. Her eyes flicked to Plaxo, who was watching Gideon like a guard dog, Plaxo’s own eyes glowing red from a rage that appeared out of nowhere.
“What the hell, Plaxo?” Sunny hissed and she caught Eli watching the entire thing, too. Eyes wide, Sunny looked to Eli for help, but now her friend was watching Gideon with more suspicion than ever.
What was happening?
Plaxo pulled himself together and shook the glowing eyes from himself just as Gideon and Sin reached them.
But the damage had been done—not only had Sunny seen the peaceful demon’s reaction to Gideon, but so had Eli and Asmodeus.
The fabric of their entire mission began to unravel at that exact moment, and when Sunny looked back on the entire episode a few days later, she would recognize that moment right there as the pivotal one that changed the course of everything.
Before anything could fall apart any further, Metatron came crashing into the dining room, his expression wild and his breathing labored.
“With me, all of you, now!”
Without a word, the group was on their feet and running to the waiting SUV as Metatron tore through the Norwegian countryside, nobody daring to ask what was going on and everyone trusting that Metatron would speak to them and enlighten them when it was time.
*****
When they arrived at their destination, Metatron threw the car into park and ran across a giant field of snow.
“What the hell is going on, Metatron?” Eli was yelling now.
Something was off. Way, way off.
It took them getting across the entire clearing for Sunny to see anything other than blinding, white snow. They were at the foot of a mountain and the trees grew thicker as they edged away from the field.
Metatron was walking now, and the group caught up to him.
“Gabriel called me,” he said, breathing heavily. “He said there was something wrong with the summoning stones.”
Pressing through the thickening forest, they arrived at a small clearing and saw what Metatron was looking for.
Having never really been to a war zone, Sunny could only imagine what one looked like. And in her imagination, it would look a lot like what was in front of her.
A small hut, who held who knows what, had been burned nearly to the ground, only the bottom third of it still standing and smoldering. Figurines and statues had been toppled and strewn about in a mess, but that wasn’t the half of it.
She found Gabriel standing off the side and followed where his eyes were. She’d seen three sets of summoning stones, so she had an idea of what they were supposed to be—tall, magical structures made of earth and rock.
What she saw, instead, was debris. Shrapnel. Shards of stone spread in a forty-foot blast radius and sticking out of the side of the rock mountain the summoning stones had been jutted up against.
Gabriel was examining a rock shard the size of a baseball bat that was sticking out of the mountain as Sunny walked to him.
“This wasn’t like this yesterday, was it?”
It was an obvious question, and Gabriel shook his head.
“It’s another sacred space,” he said. “The caretaker and his family were murdered in their house over there.”
Glancing back to the structure, she saw Metatron kneeling down in the smoldering wood over something. She realized too late that it was a body and Sunny put her hand over her mouth.
“His wife is over there,” Gabriel pointed in the opposite direction to a copse of trees. It was then that Sunny saw the blood trail leading deeper into the trees. “Her head was ripped from her body. I still haven’t found it.”
Sunny drew in a shuddering breath, her mind racing to take it all in.
They’d been sabotaged. People had been murdered.
What had happened? How had they been beaten to such a reclusive spot?
Sunny felt a ripple of power in the air that got Gabriel’s attention, too, and the archangel swore, his body going rigid.
“I should have known,” he said as he started running toward the direction they had come, toward the open field. “We need to leave! It’s a trap!”
The words were out of his mouth and seconds later, Sunny was running behind him, trying to look over his shoulder when he stopped up short. Instead of seeing what was lying up ahead, she crashed into his back and fell into the snow.
Small hands were helping her up and she saw Plaxo pulling her to her feet.
“Be ready, Lady Hunter,” he said in a tight voice. “The nox are here and they’re ready for a fight.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Their second battle in two days, Sunny realized with a grim sense of irony. She stepped around Gabriel to see just what they were up against and her stomach sank.
She counted no less than ten nox moving toward them in some grim, lethal formation that looked like an inverted V. And them? They had eight now with Plaxo among them, Sunny thought as she turned to see her team readying themselves for a battle they weren’t prepared for.
Eight.
No, that was wrong. Sunny counted ev
erybody behind her once more…and Gabriel ahead of her, who made seven.
She looked from face to face as her stomach began to drop lower and lower at the truth that was dawning on her. On the truth that’d been dawning on her since Phoenix. On the truth that she’d kept from everyone that now had them in this precarious position.
Gideon was not among them.
What was slowly unravelling over the past few days suddenly went up in flames around Sunny. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the specifics yet, but she knew the truth—Gideon was not with them, physically, spiritually or any other way.
And it seemed he hadn’t been for some time.
Her mind raced back to that conversation they’d had when he was massaging her calves. Where he’d promised her that some day he was going to “marry a girl named Sunshine.”
As foolish of a time as it was to obsess over it, she couldn’t help but wonder if that was her Gideon speaking to her, or the betrayer she was about to meet. How much of Gideon was left, and could she save him?
Would the others even let her try once they realized what Plaxo had known from the moment he laid eyes on Gideon?
“Fuck,” she spat, the tears burning her eyes.
Asmodeus was taking in the battle as it drew closer, and Sunny didn’t wait for his instructions.
“Aperio. Aperio. Appareo. Asgarei. Zeparei. Baalei.”
The three generals appeared in a cloud of black magic, all three looking surprised and searching for the source of their summons.
When their eyes found Sunny, each demon had a different reaction—none of which Sunny was interested in.
“Nox,” she said simply, as she assumed her role as the keeper of a legion of demons. It was now or never and if she was going to balance keeping her friends alive and getting to the bottom of what was happening with Gideon, she had no time for second guessing herself.
Sunny was no longer waiting for permission from angel or demon as she moved forward with this quest they were on.
She was the last Solomon and it was high time she acted like it.
Eli and Sin readied their weapons without a second thought, easily falling in line as Sunny took command. Plaxo went invisible, as did Baal, and Sunny knew they were both assuming tactical locations.
“Don’t kill Gideon,” she said loud enough for her friends to hear her. “I repeat myself, no matter what he says or does, we need him alive to get vital information from him about what the fuck has being going on.”
Metatron gave a weary nod and Gabriel had turned to look over his shoulder at her, gauging the seriousness and authority in what she was saying.
She met his eye with a hardness that she was certain had never been in her eyes before. True, her heart was being ripped for a third time by Gideon and she was grieving whatever the hell was happening, but there was more to it now. Now, knowing that for at least some of their time together, she’d been played by Camael, Gideon or a combination of the two that she’d sort out as soon as she could, Sunny was royally pissed off.
“Well, now the fun begins,” Asmodeus said, giving her a slow clap. “I was wondering what it would take to awaken the lioness in you, Solomon. Turns out it was a lover’s betrayal. Interesting.”
“Stay alive,” Metatron said as they spread wide, moving out of the trees to avoid being pinned down in the forest.
“Don’t let them bite you, either,” Asmodeus said. “Their venom can’t be cured and you’ll be feeding Death as you succumb slow and painfully.”
Good to know.
Sunny appreciated the fact that the three generals hadn’t necessarily disagreed with her summoning them and had sprung into quick action. Maybe she’d pay for it later, but she knew she needed the back up, even without Beleth completing their pact.
Out in the opening, the nox stopped short of reaching them and Sunny searched for a reason why. It didn’t take her long to see the reason, either, as Gideon moved toward the front, wearing that half—nox skin, like in Phoenix.
“Greetings, Solomon,” Gideon called cheerfully, as if it were another day and they were passing on the street, not standing apart from one another ready to clash swords.
“What is this, Gideon?” she called back as she moved in front of Gabriel. Eli was on the right of her and she knew that Plaxo was nearby.
“What…this?” He motioned to the gathering death eaters before running a hand down the front of himself. “Or this?”
“Why are you doing it?” was all Sunny could manage between the rising emotions and the rage she was feeling.
Zepar, nearby was shivering with delight and made a weird little sing-songy cooing noise.
“A lover’s quarrel makes it so much more interesting, doesn’t it, Baal?”
The lust demon was probably trying to feed off the emotions that Sunny was putting out—but she certainly wasn’t turned on. She was mad.
Baal didn’t answer, but Agares did.
“Focus, Solomon,” the bearded old demon said. “He’s trying to distract you. I can read him from here—he’s not fully turned yet and he’s scared of making a mistake.”
The “not fully turned” part gave Sunny a little bit of hope.
“Remember,” she said aloud. “He’s not as strong as the rest of them and we need him alive to figure this out.”
Gideon chuckled at that, a deep, throaty laugh that didn’t belong to him. Or at least the version of him she thought she knew.
“You want to know so badly how much of what I did to you was the old me versus the new me, don’t you? Are you hoping the honeyed words I fed you were from the lover you knew?”
He was moving closer to them, all of the death eaters were, and Sunny gripped her obsidian blade in her dominant hand, her right, and a runed blade in the other hand. She wasn’t going to use the obsidian on Gideon, but she’d destroy as many of the other nox as she could.
“Let me just say this, Sunshine,” he continued, and the sound of her name on his lips made her stomach upset. It was like an insult, the way he said it. “I am not the same man who came out of Hell as who went in. Consider that.”
Her mind was racing again—had he been changed that day they’d crossed the portal? Gideon had mentioned what happened with him and Selah—the slow takeover and change into nox that had begun, but had Sunny already been losing Gideon as she was trying to save him?
The irony was not lost on her.
“What do you want? Why are you here?”
“I’m here to sabotage your quest, of course,” he said, spinning a blade in his hand as some of the shadow skin spread over his eyes, obscuring them from Sunny and giving him a chilling visage. “And I’m here to bring your heart back to my master. Literally, not figuratively.”
“And your master is…?” Sunny knew the odds were slim that he’d own up to who it was, but she had no reason not to try.
“Nope,” Gideon grinned, looking like the joker, lost in his madness. “Not gonna tell.”
“Your father wasn’t lying, was he, when he said he offered you as a sacrifice for the power to overrun hell?” she called back, the truth clicking into place. “Camael got hell, and whoever Death turns out to be was going to get the other two realms—and Gideon, of course, as his ultimate weapon. But what about Selah? Was she supposed to be a weapon, too?”
Sunny wondered if Selah ever made it to the healer she was seeking.
But Gideon didn’t answer.
“It’s time to die, Sunshine,” he said, all the warning he gave her before he charged at her with inhuman speed taking her and everyone with her by surprise as he grasped her around the neck and ran with her all the way back into the woods, not stopping until her back slammed against the smooth rock of the mountain that had once sheltered the summoning stones.
Sunny gave up trying to breathe against the squeeze around her neck and instead got her runed blade between them, pushing it under Gideon’s chin. She was hoping one of her friends would come help her subdue Gideon, but from
what little she could see, they had their hands full with the nine death eaters that had accompanied Gideon.
“No one to save you, Solomon,” Gideon was back to mocking her as tears slid down her face. She watched in horror as Gideon opened his mouth and his canines, both upper and lower, grew longer and sharper—like giant, razorsharp needles. “I’m going to rip your throat out and love every second of tasting the way you die beneath me.”
The words squeezed her heart and from somewhere in her mind, Sunny reminded herself that this wasn’t Gideon. This was a creature that had been created and implanted somehow into Gideon, was taking over Gideon. But was not Gideon.
Sunny pushed the runed blade between their bodies and angled it so that as the nox went to bite on her neck, it got a mouth full of runed titanium instead. The sound of slicing through flesh and the hiss of pain gave Sunny enough distraction to bring her knees between them and to push Gideon away with as much force as she could muster.
Landing hard on her side when he dropped her, Sunny scrambled to her feet only to be knocked back into the stone again as he grabbed a handful of her hair and slammed her head into the rock behind her. Once. Twice.
On the third hit, just as darkness was seeping around her and she knew she was losing consciousness, Sunny made a terrible decision—one born out of desperation, out of a will to live, and one that she swore she’d never make.
She took the obsidian dagger in her right hand and plunged it into Gideon’s thigh just before the world went black and she slumped to the snowy ground.
Her vision went first, but her hearing lingered as she took in the sounds around her. Most clearly, she heard the sounds of Gideon beside her screaming as the obsidian worked through him, poisoning him—killing him. In his growls and screams, she heard shards of Gideon’s own voice, knowing she had caused the soul-deep pain he was fighting off.
Beyond that, Sunny was aware the sounds of battle had changed, that there were no more yells, curses, or clanging blades. There was heavy breathing, the sounds of exhaustion—but the battle was gone. In the near distance, she heard Eli shout her name, his voice breaking as he did.
