Blood of Time: Book 18 of the Witch Fairy Series

by Bonnie Lamer

  “Thanks, Cuz!” Keelan calls from across the yard. Xavion gives him a thumbs up.

  Dumbfounded, I ask, “How?” They didn’t have time to run upstairs to get the baby.

  “We popped upstairs and grabbed him before coming out,” Xavion explains.

  Oh, no. A sinking feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. “You can teleport?” I squeak. The relief I felt earlier about them not being able to time travel on their own is gone. This is almost as bad. How are we going to keep tabs on kids who can teleport?

  My son’s grin is so much like his father’s. “Yes, we can.”

  His sister, seeing the horror that I’m having a difficult time hiding on my face, adds, “Only together because we need to be holding hands. We can’t teleport alone.” When I don’t seem properly relieved by those words, she adds, “Plus, we didn’t learn how to do it until last year.”

  I suppose that’s a little better. I was imagining my babies randomly disappearing from their cribs. I’m glad to hear they don’t get the ability until they’re older. Knowing that they can only teleport together is nice, too. That means they need to be getting along and cooperating with each other. I doubt that happens a lot throughout their childhood. Plus, if we need to go looking for them, at least they’ll be in the same place. Still, teleporting children at any age is a scary prospect. I think of all the things I would have done if I could have teleported as a child. All those lonely hours in the mountains would have been broken up by spur of the moment trips to the mall, or the zoo, or wherever else a young me wanted to go. Mom and Dad never would have been able to keep track of me. I place a worried hand on my lower belly and shake my head. Life is about to get so much harder.

  Beside me, Kallen wraps an arm around my shoulder in comfort. “We can handle it,” he assures me. If only he sounded more confident when he said it.

  “My baby!” Alita cries as she skids to a halt and takes baby Keelan from Xavion. She checks him over carefully before handing the baby to Kegan and pulling Xavion into a bear hug. “Thank you,” she sighs.

  “No problem, Aunt Alita,” Xavion says a bit awkwardly. “Um, Keelan would have killed us if we didn’t save him.”

  “True!” big Keelan calls from where he’s now busy trying to separate Tabitha and the Demon so one doesn’t kill the other.

  From where I’m standing, it’s more about protecting the Demon from Tabitha than the other way around. She is a feisty old Fairy and is getting in just as many licks with punches and kicks as she is with magic. I’m going to have to include her in my next hand-to-hand combat lesson. Lucky for Keelan, who he plants himself between the two, Tabitha would never hurt any of the kids. She is trying to get around him, but the young Fairy is quick and moves much faster than she can.

  A loud voice wrenches my attention back to my children. “Let us out of here!” it demands. There is no mistaking that whiny voice.

  “Fine,” Zyla grumbles. She removes a backpack and plops it to the ground. The zipper opens all the way, and my two Familiars roll out in different directions. Felix is on his feet and alert for danger in an instant, but Taz’s more rotund form needs a few extra seconds to get its bearings. Muttered curses fill the air as he struggles.

  I raise a brow in Zyla’s direction. “While I appreciate you rescuing them, was it really necessary to shove them into a backpack?”

  Zyla shrugs. “We were in a hurry. It seemed the fastest way to get them both out since Taz weighs a ton. Carrying him under my arm, I probably would have dropped him.”

  “It was expedient,” Felix agrees as he shakes out his fur and stretches his cramped legs. He eyes his doppelganger in disgust. “If a bit crowded. Perhaps you should decrease your bacon intake to one or two slabs a day.” Taz, who is busy licking a bruised paw, just ignores him.

  “How did you get to all three of them so quickly?” I ask the kids.

  “The Familiars were in Keelan’s room,” Xavion explains.

  “We were watching the kid since everyone else decided to go off and play with Demons,” Taz snarks.

  While I appreciate their vigilance and protective instincts, I don’t appreciate Taz’s tone. I open my mouth to snark back, but a loud crack gets my attention. The left side of the house begins to list like a sinking ship. Taking the magic I already have pulled, thinking I would need it to save the kids, I fling it forward and use it to prop up the house. “Can someone with the ability to put things right please start the process?” I grit out. This house is heavy. Felix and Taz scramble to move closer to me, and their close proximity bolsters my magic. The house is still heavy, but I believe I can hold it in place while reconstructive magic is performed.

  “Right,” Kallen says, shaking off the shock of the last few minutes and getting to work.

  I feel Isla’s magic joining his, and it doesn’t take long to feel the effects. The house becomes lighter and lighter as they reconstruct first the weightbearing walls and then the others. The kids offer to help, but a resounding ‘no’ from the entire group keeps that from happening. After about half an hour, an exhausted Kallen finally announces that it’s finished.

  During this time, Keelan managed to get Tabitha away from the Demon. He has the latter contained in a cage of magic with Tabitha just glaring at the creature from afar now. The Demon is sitting dejectedly on the ground watching us all with wary eyes. The still fuming Tabitha stalks away, deciding to put her frustrated magic to work cleaning up the dust and debris around the house before moving inside to clean whatever mess is there.

  Turning to Keelan, I ask, “What should we do with him?” I have my own thoughts, but I want to respect the work that Keelan will do in the future with the Demons. As much as that idea pains me at the moment. The fight with them is still too fresh in my mind for me to want to actively participate in their rehabilitation. I’m going to need a few years to get used to the idea.

  Keelan shrugs. “I think the only thing we can do is send him back. He doesn’t seem to know anything. He was in the pit one minute, then here the next. He has no idea who pulled him out and put the spell on him.”

  I quirk a brow. “You believe him?”

  Keelan nods. “Like I said, Sam is the first Demon to prove he’s ready to be rehabilitated. I don’t think he’d try to mislead us.”

  I want to have the same level of confidence as Keelan has, but I’m just not there yet. “Mind if I ask him a few questions?” Honestly, I’m asking out of courtesy only. I have every intention of speaking to the Demon.

  With a knowing nod, Keelan says, “I knew you’d want to talk to him. I already told him.” Smart boy.

  Turning to Kallen, I give him an appraising look. He’s obviously spent from all the magic he and Isla needed to put into saving the house. “I can do this alone if you’d like to go inside and start working on a plan.”

  He’s not going to budge. “I am fine,” he assures me. I’m not going to argue. If I were him, I wouldn’t go inside, either.

  Moving next to the magical cage holding the Demon, I study him for a long moment. On the outside, he is just as scary looking as every other Demon I’ve come across. But when I look closer, I can see something in his eyes and in the way he holds himself. Almost like he’s trying to shrink away from the world, hide himself in his thoughts to escape whatever is happening to him. Nothing about him screams aggression like the other Demons I’ve met.

  To my surprise, he is the one who speaks first. “I know who you are,” he rasps. When I don’t say anything, he continues. “You are the one who saved us.”

  That is not what I expected him to say. “Saved you?” I ask in disbelief. Because of me, and baby Keelan, the Demons were damned to live out their existence in the pit.

  Sam the Demon lifts his head and looks me in the eye for the first time. “You freed us from the bonds forced upon us by the Seven, then kept the Angels from slaughtering us.”

  I guess in the barest sense of the phrase, yes, I saved them. It doesn’t feel that way to me, thoug
h. “Yet, you’re supposed to live out your eternal existence in the pit. Did I really save you? Or did I curse you to a fate worse than death?”

  Honestly, I’m not sure how I would answer that. In the moment, keeping the Angels from killing all the Demons seemed the merciful thing to do. Since then, I’ve felt the occasional pang of guilt over trapping any creature, however horrible, and forcing them to live forever in that pit. Is any life better than no life at all? Or are some lives just too difficult to bear?

  Sam’s response is immediate. “There is no afterlife for us. When we perish, we are simply wiped from existence. We fade into nothingness. Any life is better than that.”

  I’m not sure I agree, but I’m not here to argue that point. So, I move on. “How did you get here?”

  “I do not know.”

  Rephrasing my question, I try again. “Who could bring you here? Who has that power?”

  Puzzled, Sam takes a moment to think about my question. I see the spark of knowledge come to life in his eyes when he finally figures it out. “The one who keeps us in the pit could deliver us from it.”

  Which is what I knew he was going to say. I was just hoping a miracle would happen, and he’d come up with a different answer. I never get lucky like that. “Who is that?” I ask, still hoping I’m wrong. After all, the Angels could have given the responsibility to someone else.

  Hatred spews out between Sam’s words as he says, “We are guarded by the Angel of War, Gadriel, and his minions.”

  I don’t think the Angels who serve under Gadriel would appreciate being called minions, but I’m going to let it go. I suspect from the way Sam’s face contorts into an expression of anguish that the Angels haven’t been treating the Demons very well. There’s a lot of history there, many years of war. Honestly, if I had to take sides, I would likely fall on the side of the Angels even if there are a few Demons like Sam who don’t want to follow the example of their leaders. But I also recognize that this interaction we’re having may be the first building block toward peace and rehabilitation. We need to tread carefully.

  “No one else has made their presence known to you?” Kallen asks.

  Sam’s head moves slowly from side to side. “No one.”

  “What about the magic?” I ask. “The spell you were under. What was the origin of the magic?”

  A forked, black tongue snakes out of Sam’s mouth and moves around his lips like he’s trying to taste the residue left behind from the spell. Who knows? Maybe he can. After a moment, he replies. “Angel.” He licks his lips again, and I think he frowns. With his fairly grotesque facial features, it’s hard to tell. “Not Angel,” he amends.

  Kallen scowls down at him. “What do you mean? Is it Angel or not Angel?”

  Sam swings his silver eyes toward my husband. “More than Angel.”

  I open my mouth to demand a better explanation than that, but Sam is suddenly gone. Keelan’s magical cage now holds only blades of grass and air. I whirl around in a circle searching for him. He is nowhere to be found.

  Chapter 24

  “Where did he go?” Keelan calls as he races toward us. His parents insisted that he hang back with them while Kallen and I talked to the Demon.

  Dumbfounded, I admit, “I don’t know.”

  “He just disappeared? But I didn’t feel anything.” The magical cage disappears as Keelan retracts his magic.

  Kallen’s brows knit together. “You did not feel any magic touch yours?”

  Keelan shakes his head. “Nothing.”

  “How can that be?” Kegan asks. He and Alita have joined us now.

  I think I know. “More than Angels,” I mutter. When the others stare at me in confusion, I say louder, “What beings could be considered more than Angels?”

  It takes them a minute. Kallen is the first to realize who I’m talking about. “You believe that the Seraphim are behind sending a Demon to attack us? That seems a little below their, as you would say, pay grade.”

  Aw, my husband is picking up some of my Cowan expressions. How cute. And he’s not wrong. In theory, anyway. “Normally, I would agree with you. But who else could grab an Archangel without us sensing their presence, pull a Demon from the pit, and then pull that demon out of a magical cage without the owner of the magic feeling it?”

  “I believe you may be on to something,” someone declares behind me.

  I nearly jump out of my skin when Dagda’s voice rings in my ear. I didn’t realize he was so close. I really need to get better at sensing when someone is approaching. I just get caught up in my thoughts and ignore the sensations that alert me to familiar magic. My hand pressed against my chest, I mutter, “Way to give me a heart attack.”

  Dagda ignores me and focuses on the discussion at hand. “The Seraphim seems the mostly likely of all beings to have such capability.”

  “While I agree they have the power, I believe Kallen was right in believing such interference in mortal lives is beneath the Seraphim,” Isla says.

  Garren, who finally climbed down from the tree, is with her. He refrains from offering his opinion on the matter, but I can see the wheels in his mind turning behind his furrowed brow. Whatever he believes, he is going to keep it to himself. My guess is that he disagrees with his wife. That never goes well for him, so I guess I can’t blame him for staying quiet. At least, in this type of theoretical discussion where his opinion will only fuel the argument, not help us reach a conclusion.

  “When carrying out the will of the Council, do they have assigned roles? Roles that may be beneath any of them?” Alita asks.

  Good question. “I don’t know,” I admit. Turning to Dagda, I ask, “Can you have the Scribe try to find as much information on the Council as she can?” I may have blown up the Royal Archives once or twice, but there’s still plenty of information to be found down there. There must be something about the Council and how it works. I hope.

  So, it’s not just me who passed on the ‘duh’ gene to Zyla. “Do you really believe I did not already send that message to the Palace?” Dagda drawls in annoyance.

  “Well, I did until just now,” I mutter. Geez, no need to take it so personally. Louder, I say in saccharine tones, “Glad you’re on top of things then.”

  “Unfortunately, our last search on them came up with little of value,” Kallen reminds me.

  With a sigh, I nod. We looked for information after our last run in with them. “I know, but I can hope, can’t I?”

  “If you are done yammering out there, I would appreciate some help in here,” Tabitha calls sourly from the kitchen door. Wow, tangling with Demons makes her crabby.

  “Coming,” Xavion calls, his voice tinged with a hint of embarrassment for causing the mess with his sister. He knows that it’s never a good thing to be on Tabitha’s bad side.

  Zyla, on the other hand, is less distressed about being the cause of the mess. “Fine,” she grumbles. But when Tabitha gives her ‘the look,’ she moves her feet a bit quicker toward the house.

  The rest of us follow along. We’re not going to figure out the Council’s plan out here, and maybe doing a bit of cleaning will clear our minds so we can think better. Inside, Tabitha assigns us areas of the house to check for signs of anything out of place and areas that still need a bit of tidying up. Since Kallen and Isla’s reconstruction magic basically puts everything back the way it was, I doubt anything is going to be amiss. I don’t argue, though. I just give Kallen a quick kiss and head off to my assigned area.

  Several minutes later, I find myself back in the library. A quick scan of the room shows me exactly what I expected. Not a thing is out of place. Not even a speck of dirt flying through the air. Not even a cobweb hiding in a corner that may have been missed during a prior cleaning. The room is immaculate. Nothing to do here.

  I turn to go when something catches my eye. I was wrong. There is something out of place. But it was out of place before the kids accidently blew up the kitchen, so the reconstruction magic simply put it back whe
re it was before the explosion.

  Crossing the room, I take a closer look. This yields nothing since the book has no writing on its spine. Reaching up, I grab the leather-bound book and pull it off the shelf. The exact same book Rashnu had played with earlier. Was she just fiddling with the books so she had something to do with her hands while we talked? Or is there a clue here for us to find. Only one way to find out, so I open it. Flipping through the pages, I curse out loud.

  I really, really need to learn to read Enochian.

  Chapter 25

  “Working hard, I see,” my charming husband smirks from the doorway. He’s leaning against the door jamb with his arms crossed over his muscular chest. He’s changed out of his dusty clothes and is wearing his normal tight black t-shirt and jeans that hug his hips and legs. He looks so sexy and relaxed despite everything that’s going on. Flashes of the picnic and lovemaking I originally had planned for the day come back to me, and I want him desperately. I’m tempted to throw the book down and tackle him.