by Jenny McKane
This was a perfect spot for him, anyway. To jump portals and consciousness, he’d need to be somewhere safe—where nobody would try to communicate with the empty husk he left behind in the physical form. Gideon’s body would remain leaning against the marble pillar when he made the jump, but his consciousness would be gone.
Camael said nothing further as they got further inside the lobby. He was speaking to a man in a dark suit who had joined them from the far side—obviously waiting on their arrival.
Victor, however, stayed back and just when Camael and the newcomer were out of earshot, he turned to Gideon.
“Give your girlfriend a friendly hello from me, too, won’t you?”
How the demon had managed to get a Russian accent while living sheltered in the Shadow Realm his entire life was beyond Gideon, but it drove him insane. He wanted to pull the bastard’s head from his body every time he opened his mouth.
“You know me,” Gideon said easily, a fake smile plastered to his face. “I love to play with my food before I eat it.”
He was referring to the nox and their penchant for eating the life force of a creature as it died. Gideon hadn’t personally done it—yet. But when the death eater took over fully, as it was scheduled to do soon, that was how it would stay alive.
Victor leveled a hard stare at him, as though he were measuring Gideon’s words and found them lacking something. The moment passed quickly, however, and he gave Gideon an unfriendly slap on the back.
“Happy hunting, brother,” he said before spinning on his heel and joining Camael in the elevator.
Gideon noticed the swing of a blonde ponytail he hadn’t noticed before, just as the elevator closed shut.
Claws bit into the flesh of Gideon’s hands as he restrained himself for the third time that night. He wondered if Victor understood just how much danger he was in each time he tested Gideon and the nox living inside him.
The demon prince was a stupid bastard, that much was clear as soon as he signed his fate along with Camael’s. And the fact that he’d somehow noticed that Gideon had been watching Sunshine? It just meant that the asshole was going to have to die sooner rather than later. He didn’t need the spoiled asshole ruining his plans for her out of some sort of misplaced jealousy or any noble notions that he was going to save Camael from his fate, either.
They were all going to meet their makers in the end, the nox in him was going to make sure of that—but Gideon was going to ensure that he got his revenge before they did. He’d promised himself that years ago when the sick bastard left him chained to a demented succubus’ bed and murdered his mother, the woman who’d tried to keep Gideon protected from the masochistic bastard.
He’d been a dead man walking hundreds of years ago and hadn’t even realized it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Gabriel was grey the next morning as they made their way south toward a town called Ramah.
“I’m serious, Gabriel,” Sunny pressed the archangel at a rest stop. He’d leaned against the car with dark sunglasses on and a miserable look on his face. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me?”
It was Metatron, wearing a baseball cap backwards and looking much younger than his thousands of years, who finally told her.
“Hangover,” he said.
She frowned at the answer, obviously missing the significance in it.
“What does that explain—” she began when it hit her.
Oh.
Shit.
Her head snapped back in Gabriel’s direction. She remembered him drinking last night, but Gabriel often drank.
And never got a hangover. He never got drunk and he never got hangovers because human alcohol had very little effect on him.
“Are you serious?” She was searching his expression for any sort of panic on his end, but the archangel mostly looked annoyed and seriously put upon that he had to be outside at this hour.
“Serious.”
Gabriel’s answer was clipped and grumpy and instead of pushing him for more information she turned to Asmodeus.
“You?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t drink,” the archdemon explained. “I think the archangel partakes in more human activities than I, and therefore is tumbling into human-hood much faster than I am.”
“Human-hood? Did you just make that word up?”
He gave an uninterested shrug.
“Whatever gaes or curse on us is trying to drain our identities completely, and I believe the end goal is to make us as squishy and human as possible when the war begins,” Asmodeus said. “It’s a hypothesis, of course, but it’s a really good one.”
It was, actually. It made sense that however they’d gotten themselves cursed, it was trying to level the playing field as quickly as possible by taking away their weapons.
Was it because Death still hadn’t arrived?
That was a good omen to Sunny—it meant they still had time to undo the gaes and get both Gabriel and Asmodeus their powers back.
They arrived in Ramah just after noon and inside the gates to the monument and the surrounding park lands, there was a convoy of three pickups waiting.
A man in a flannel shirt jumped out of the first one and went to Jericho’s truck, speaking to her through the open driver’s side window. Their conversation didn’t take long and when it was obviously over, he got back into his truck and drove out, the other two vehicles following behind.
Odd.
Wouldn’t they stay and offer help if it was their lands under attack from the ferals?
Nobody mentioned it and Sunny pushed the unease aside. It was no big deal, and besides—they had bigger issues to deal with now that they were down two superheroes at the moment. Metatron had his powers, which were considerably less than Gabriel’s. Eli was a badass. Sin was a tricky bastard and smart on his feet. Sunny was incredibly lucky, and Nino, when he showed up, was a force to be reckoned with, too.
They were fine. It was fine. It was all going to be fine.
When the vehicles were all parked and they’d gone through the visitor’s center toward the trailheads, Sunny adjusted the backpack she was carrying and put her sunglasses on. It was a mild afternoon for the middle of winter in the desert, she was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, but the sun was bright and directly overhead.
“Why does this job require a lot of desert hiking lately?” she mumbled to Asmodeus as they were on the move, following Ronnie and Jericho like they had been back in Shooting Star. Ronnie had blessed and saged them all, even the demon and the half-demon, before they left the parking lot and was now at the front of the group chatting to his daughter.
“You’d rather be in the middle of a crowded city?”
Asmodeus didn’t carry a backpack. He had Sin carry his water and electronics and had ignored Sunny’s protest at the fact. Sin said he didn’t mind, but Sunny thought he was probably fanboying again, always trying to get on the archdemon’s good side.
“No, I’d rather be in the middle of a luxury spa with free back massages,” she snipped back at him. “But I’d settle for some nice even territory that didn’t boast a thorny cactus every two feet for me to fall into.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he clucked at her. “You’re whining again. Stop.”
Asmodeus wasn’t a fan of whining, that was for sure.
Knowing she wasn’t going to get much of a sympathetic ear from him, she moved ahead and decided to march next to Sin, who was doing everything he could to be near Jericho.
It was clear their cambion was smitten with the militia leader and was doing everything he could to be noticed by her. Jericho was a woman on a mission, however, and her focus never wavered. She never seemed to notice the moon eyes he would follow her around with, poor thing.
“Another day, another portal to destroy,” he joked when she joined him.
“Truth,” she said.
“Do you ever think about what our lives will be like when it’s all over?” he asked after a few
moments of silence.
“All the time,” she replied honestly. It was true. She was thinking about it more and more these days.
“Well, up until the past couple days, I never did,” he said, his face serious. “I lived in the moment because when you’re a cambion, nothing’s promised except for the fact that you’re hated equally across the races. But lately, Sunny, I keep thinking I want to live for just more than making money and drunken good times when this is done.”
She smiled as he continued to watch Jericho and Ronnie talking as they walked up ahead.
“Picket fences, Sin?” She was half-joking, but when he turned to face her, he was serious.
“If that’s what she wants,” he said. “Then yes.”
Well, damn.
“She’s not your typical woman,” Sunny began carefully. Didn’t Sin notice she wasn’t normal? And Sunny meant that in the best of ways, honest. It was just that Jericho looked like she could gut a man as soon as she could flirt with him and she looked like she belonged at the business end of a shotgun more than the business end of a screaming toddler and a dirty diaper.
“I know that,” Sin said. “And that’s why I’m so serious. Something’s changed in me, Rosie. I can’t explain it yet, but hopefully someday I can.”
Sunny didn’t press any further, simply letting Sin have his moment. She was glad for him—clarifying moments were rare in their line of work lately and she wished more for her friends. Especially the big lug at the back of the line who was still staring daggers into her back everywhere she went. She’d tried to pick a fight with him in the morning, but he was ignoring her completely now and Metatron had to call her off.
“He’s going through a lot right now, Sunshine,” the peaceful archangel had said. “You should be kind to him.”
She snorted.
“He called me dumb,” she retorted, not entirely un-childishly.
“Bigger issues at hand than your hurt feelings,” the archangel counseled her sagely, making her feel small and petty.
“Fine,” she blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. “But if he starts shit with me again, I’m not going to hold back.”
Metatron had moved on and didn’t respond to her remark.
Now, Eli had kept his distance from Sunny but she still felt his burning stare in her back each step she took.
After about an hour of walking, they came to a trail head and took a water break.
It was getting warmer out and the sun was killer. She couldn’t imagine how hot the place was in the middle of summer. They’d climbed elevation a bit during their hike, so there were a few scraggly pines and evergreens dotting the landscape and fewer cactuses than when they’d started.
Sunny had a bad habit of backing into prickly pear cactuses when she wasn’t paying attention and accidently breaking off their spikes before completely getting them out of her skin. She’d done it twice since arriving in Arizona moving on into Utah and now New Mexico. It hurt like a bitch and took forever to heal when she finally did get the thorn out.
Jericho was sitting on a giant boulder underneath the trailhead markers, a group of seven white arrows pointing in various directions and in various states of readability. Most of them were weather- and time-worn and hard to discern.
She tried not to stare at Ronnie as he performed another blessing over both Gabriel and Asmodeus, but she was curious as to what he was attempting to achieve—and how they’d gotten Asmodeus to go along with it. He was a bit of an elitist and allowing a human to “work” on him alongside Gabriel probably hadn’t been the most welcome of suggestions.
Ronnie had a large eagle feather out again and was burning a bundle of dark green stems. Cedar, she’d heard him explain. Cleansing. Purifying. Releaser of spirits.
Sunny watched, transfixed, as he worked over both men and when he was done, he turned and put his supplies back in his bag.
Gabriel and Asmodeus exchanged brief looks, likely sizing the other one up for any noticeable changes, and upon seeing none, went back to ignoring each other.
“It’s time,” Jericho announced as she packed up and looked at a small map in her hands, comparing it to the arrows above her.
Sunny was ready to go before the others, so she joined Jericho at the front and waited.
“Which one are we on?” Sunny asked, motioning to the arrows.
Jericho looked over her shoulder and squinted before pointing to the third one from the top on the left.
Sunny stepped up and squinted herself.
“Lazuli Bunting,” she read after a second.
The group was on the move by the time she picked the words apart, so she jogged past Eli, taking special care not only to not touch him but to also not bump into any wayward cacti that might be alongside the newer, smaller trail.
They were headed uphill now, toward a giant rock formation she’d heard Ronnie call “The Twins.” She’d have to ask him about the significance of the name when they were done, as the formation was a good four stories tall ahead of them—twin columns of white rocks held up by nothing more than nature and magic, most likely. The gravity of the rock formation was death defying—as in, there was no possible explanation as to why the two columns hadn’t fallen over without any support yet.
“The portal is supposed to be between them,” Ronnie explained, pointing to The Twins again. Sunny squinted into the distance, wondering if maybe she could see the portal’s magic from here, but it was no use. Not only was she not a portal reader, she was too damned far from it to see anything.
Sin had managed to get himself a spot next to Jericho, so Sunny thought it was her duty to keep Ronnie occupied for a little bit so they could get some conversation time in. She was nothing if not a good wingman, she thought with a laugh.
“The name of this trail,” she asked Ronnie, “what were the words? I’ve already forgotten them. Padding? Blanket something?”
“Lazuli Bunting,” Ronnie said with a laugh. “Migratory bird that passes through here twice a year to its wintering and breeding grounds.”
He searched around the growing pine trees, obviously looking for one.
“Might be too late in the season to spot one,” he said, a little disappointed. “But you’ll know when you see one—brightest blue feathers you’d ever see.”
Sunny smiled a moment before the realization struck her like a blow to the chest.
Bright. Blue. Feathers.
A blue bird.
Gideon’s warning.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Sunny wasn’t ashamed to admit the fact that she was throwing an epic tantrum at the moment and everybody in their group—her two archangel friends, the archdemon, the cambion, the grumpy human, the shaman, the militia leader and her four volunteers—was watching her like she’d lost her ever-loving mind.
“You’re not listening to me,” she was nearly shouting now, probably not the best way to win anyone over to her side, but they were refusing to listen to her now. They were treating her like she was crazy to be putting any sort of credence into Gideon’s warning to her.
“We heard you, Sunshine,” Gabriel said, his voice making obvious how little patience he had left. “But we’re ignoring you now because you’re being ridiculous.”
“Don’t take your hangover out on me,” she fired back, rising to the fight.
She hated being brushed off and treated like she didn’t know what she was talking about. Her hands were itching for a fight with all the frustration she was feeling at the moment.
“Sunshine, please,” Metatron was doing his thing again—talking her out of her crazy. But she wasn’t crazy.
“Don’t,” she put a hand out to Metatron. “You know this is something we should think really hard about before proceeding. What if the warning is right? What if it’s a trap?”
Eli was moving toward her now and she braced—the tight line of his lips told her he was pissed. Why? Because she was considering listening to something from Gideon?
Mos
t likely.
“If you think any of us are going to take a single word that snake said to you seriously, you’ve lost your damn mind,” he said, his voice raised.
Jericho and her team had at least tried to give them a little space to work this out, but their volumes were rising higher and higher with each word that was said.
“What if it’s a trap? What if we’re walking right into an execution set up by the Powers? Just consider for a moment what if,” she pleaded, knowing everything was falling on deaf ears. “We don’t have to finish the hike out there and we can double back to the cars and just investigate the whole thing a little more. Was I the only one who noticed her friend Felipe high tailed it out of here as soon as he gave her directions?”
Jericho’s gaze snapped over to her, but Sunny couldn’t read the expression very well.
“Weren’t you at all shocked that he wouldn’t come with us? These things have been attacking his town and hurting his people? And he’s just going to draw you a map on a napkin?”
Couldn’t anyone else see this? She was going crazy trying to break through to these people.
She looked to Sin—the smartest, wiliest of them all. A half-demon who had made his life’s mission not to get caught in a trap set for him.
“What do you think, Sin? Should we at least consider this might be a trap?”
She knew his answer the moment he looked from Metatron to Gabriel to Eli for support. He didn’t trust her instinct to back off the blue bird trail and head back.
“Go back if you want, Sunny,” Eli snapped at her, his voice cold. “But we’re not letting your double-crossing creature of a boyfriend manipulate our actions. We’re here to help and that’s what we’re going to do.”
With that, they started walking down the trail again after Eli gave Ronnie and Jericho the signal.
Sunny had a hard time drawing a full breath as the anger and hurt that swirled within her threatened to cause a hurricane inside her body. She was half-glad she didn’t have any magical abilities, because right now, she would have razed the entire party to the ground for brushing her off so easily.
