by Vicki Keire
Other Fallen angels, their abyss-wings unfurled, in jackets of different textures and fabrics rushed in. They were all fully armored, then. Nephilim, also in house colors, hovered just beyond the threshold. Some I’d seen before. I even recognized tiny Caroline Bedford, looking miserable beside a scar-faced Nephilim who held her roughly by her upper arm. A familiar deep snarl erupted and I backed up even further until I was all the way out on the balcony with nothing but the gut-wrenching sky above my head. Hellhounds. Caroline must be controlling them again. At least, I hoped she was, and they weren’t running wild. The room filled up even more as Belial’s forces followed him in.
I didn’t stop backing up until the stone railing bit into my back. I fumbled for one of my daggers, still clutching the jacket to my chest like the armor it was.
“That’s close enough,” I said, and my voice shook more than I liked. I wanted to sound strong, sure of myself, but inside I was quaking. I stabbed at air. Belial laughed.
“Come inside before you damage yourself, little one,” he purred. “If you behave, I won’t hurt you.”
I shot a quick glance sideways to the other balcony. Still no Asheroth. Still no Jack. I began to panic even more when I realized enough time had passed that they should be back by now. Unless something unexpected had happened. I could only hope that it wasn’t bad, and that they were having better luck than me.
A strong stone hand, so exactly like my Ethan’s had been once, shot straight out and grabbed my wrist. Belial moved so fast I could barely see him; one minute I was holding up my dagger in a shaky hand, and the next I was pinned, pulled right up against the demon. His body pressed against mine. If he wasn’t taller than me, we would have been nose to nose.
Long pale fingers tightened around my wrist, and squeezed. Slight at first, so it was just uncomfortable, but when I began to pull against him, Belial tightened his hold. My hand convulsed, and almost dropped the dagger, but I held on. My bones ground together, and it brought tears to my eyes. I bit down so hard on my lip that it bled, determined not to cry out.
“Let it go,” Belial said through clenched teeth. “It will do you no good here.” Behind him, one of the Fallen angels grinned. I recognized his snakeskin jacket. He was the one who had grabbed me in the forest, the night I first came here to the Twilight Kingdom. Beside him, the Hellhounds paced, flicking their tails. I wondered how long Caroline could hold them, and what they would do to me if she couldn’t.
A blur of white and red leather shot past my left ear. A loud crack boomed like huge rocks grinding against each other as if the very earth was crying out. Belial jerked backward, pulling me with him. I started to fall forward when a leather-clad arm shot out.
“You don’t want to do that,” Asheroth said in an almost conversational tone. I watched as he clenched his fist tightly around Belial’s arm. “Trust me. You really don’t.”
And then he turned to me and winked. He was actually grinning. I don’t think I had ever seen him look quite so insane.
Belial only increased his hold. My skin turned white, then deep red. My bones cracked. I couldn’t help it; I screamed.
“I warned you,” my mad Fallen angel said, still grinning like a maniac. The dagger at my back moved, slipping free from its sheath. I was screaming; my hand was breaking; the world was whiting out at the edges, its center a darkening mass of pain.
Then Asheroth drove my dagger straight into Belial’s eye, all the way up to the hilt.
The demon roared, shouting a long string of syllables in a language I didn’t understand. He let go off my wrist and stumbled backward, clutching at his eye. Asheroth stood there, panting, grinning, holding my blade that now had black ichor dripping from its tip. As Hellhounds and Fallen angels crowded forward to fill the gap left by their leader, he turned and threw the dagger over my head. I watched it spin, end over end, expecting it to fly right over me and off the balcony.
But it didn’t. A tattooed human hand shot out at the last second, somehow managing to grab it by the hilt. A Hellhound leapt at Asheroth; he punched it in the face.
“That’s our cue to leave, Cas,” Jack said, slipping an arm around my waist.
I barely looked at him. Belial’s forces were closing in around my mad guardian angel. More Hellhounds prowled the edges of the group, and Fallen ones flexed their dark wings, adjusting their leather jackets as they swarmed around him. Asheroth stood in a closing circle, surrounded on all sides by Belial’s army. With a cry, he launched himself at the closest Fallen angel, going down in a flurry of kicks and punches.
I struggled to get free of Jack. “We can’t leave him!” I shouted, starting forward to the group with my single remaining blade. “They’ll kill him!”
“We have to,” Jack insisted. “He’s doing this for you.” He spun me so that I faced him.
I couldn’t see the fighting anymore, but the howls and screams coming from behind me told me all I needed to know. There was no way Asheroth could win against that crowd. He’d just stabbed their leader, and they were after his blood.
Jack shook me by the shoulders. “You have to, Cas,” he insisted, dragging me further out on the balcony.
I started to protest again, to point out that neither one of us had the power to transport ourselves out of the Dark Realms, when I saw the gaping dark hole hanging in the air just over the edge of the balcony.
“Oh no,” I said, looking at the hole cutting through space. “Oh, hell no.”
“We have to. He made it for us. He’s sacrificing himself for us,” Jack implored, his hold on my waist still strong. “You have to jump.”
“No. Way.” The sounds of fighting rose to a crescendo behind us.
Jack jerked me forward and lifted me, depositing me on his bare inked shoulder. For the second time in a day, I found myself being carried like a sack of potatoes. But I had no way to protest as Jack wrestled me up onto the railing. There was a moment when we were airborne, and I knew we were going to fall to our deaths. But then the familiar feeling of portal sickness took me, turning everything black and cold.
I landed flat on my back with Jack’s weight crushing down on me. The world spun as I tried not to be sick. I kicked and pushed, but my fellow Azalene was a dead weight on top of me.
Then, suddenly, Jack was gone, snatched away as if he was as light as a leaf. The ground felt rough underneath my cheek, and the sun was high in the sky above me. I was free to breathe, so I took quick desperate gulps of fresh air.
Only to look up and see Ethan’s long shadow cast in the grass right beside me. He looked like murder itself. Fury etched his otherwise gentle features. He threw Jack backward like he didn’t care if he lived or died, and squatted down beside me so that I could see the fire buried in his blue-green eyes.
“What the hell have you done?”
stared into Ethan’s angry eyes, shocked to my core. He had never looked that furious with me―never in the whole history of our relationship. I was still sick from portal travel. My arm throbbed where Belial had grabbed it; I was half afraid it was broken.
Worst of all, I’d lost Asheroth. I could see it all again without having to close my eyes: my mad guardian angel going down in a crowd of the Fallen, rogue Nephilim, and Hellhounds while Jack dragged me away.
He’d done it for me. A half-strangled sob escaped my throat. He’d sacrificed himself for me. I tried to communicate this to Ethan, but words failed me. Instead, I propelled myself backward and away from him using my elbows, feeling the sharp pricks of newly mown grass as I went.
Something else crept into his eyes as I struggled to get away from him, something I unfortunately recognized. Fear. And hurt.
He paled. “Caspia, wait. I… I’m sorry. It’s just that you disappeared when I had just gotten you back, and things have happened so quickly…”
A strong shove sent him sprawling sideways before he could complete his sentence. A dark form blocked out the sun, standing over me with clenched fists. Jack. Muscles flexed along hi
s back and upper arm. He had fresh scars. They resembled claw marks. I winced.
“Don’t. Do. That. Again,” he growled, looking more than ready to pounce on Ethan.
I wondered if he meant himself, or me. It didn’t matter, though; Ethan sprang to his feet, body angled forward toward Jack, already poised for a fight.
The back of my neck prickled, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that we were being watched. Sure enough, when I jerked my head around, I saw that the front porch of Blackwood Lodge had filled up with people. Their expressions ranged from mild curiosity to shock to outright horror.
Great. Now we were a spectacle.
They circled each other, fists raised, their eyes fixed. I sprang up and stood between them, feet planted and arms outstretched like a referee at a boxing match.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “There’s been too much fighting already.” I blinked back tears as I thought, again, of Asheroth. “And there’s still more to come. We don’t need to do this to ourselves.”
Ethan was the first to lower his fists. Jack followed, but I could tell he didn’t like it. I let my arms drop, exhausted. The events of the last few hours caught up to me all at once, and I wanted nothing more than to sink back down into the grass and cry.
Ethan was at my elbow in seconds, all traces of anger gone. His arms, when they reached for me, were firm and supportive, and I leaned into him. He pulled me tight against him as I inhaled the scent of clean cotton and juniper aftershave, the kind I had gotten him for Christmas. I let him support most of my weight; warm fingers, so different from his once angelic heat, stroked my hair.
His gentleness undid me. I fisted his t-shirt in my hands and sobbed into his chest. Fingers moved from my hair to the small of my back, rubbing small, soothing circles into my aching flesh. I don’t know how long I clung to him, crying it all out, but he didn’t once question me. He just stood there and held me while tears soaked the front of his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m so, so sorry. For all of it.”
My fists became claws that twisted and pulled. “He’s gone,” I managed to choke out. “He stayed behind… he fought them off so we could make it out.” I rubbed at my tired eyes and flesh raw from weeping. “I don’t think he made it, Ethan. I don’t see how he could. There were so many, and we couldn’t do anything… he sacrificed himself. For us. For me.” I sobbed harder.
Ethan held me, rocking me gently. “He would want you to be okay,” he tried to assure me. “It’s all he wanted, Cas.”
I knew that, and I hated myself for it.
Jack cleared his throat behind us. Loud.
“I hate to break up this reunion,” he said, in a voice that made me think he didn’t mind at all. “But we can’t have much time before one side or the other, or both, decide to attack.”
“About that.” Ethan held me at arm’s length and wiped the tears from under my eyes with his thumb.
I blinked against the brightness of the sun.
I blinked again. It had been late afternoon when we left; now the sun blazed as if it were high noon. “Ethan,” I said uneasily, interrupting him. “How long have we been gone?”
“A day and a half, give or take a few hours.”
I swallowed hard. No wonder he’d been so upset. I hadn’t given him any warning. To be fair, I hadn’t had any warning to give; Asheroth had swooped down and stolen me away before I could formulate a proper plan. It explained some of his anger.
“This is important,” he insisted, pulling me with him toward the Lodge. He didn’t look to see if Jack was following. Half the crowd had dispersed, leaving just a few familiar faces waiting for us in the shade. “While you were gone, Whitfield was attacked.”
My mind froze, refusing to process his words. “But that’s impossible. Time runs at a different pace in the Dark Realms, I know, but Belial was there with us. He couldn’t have attacked. Unless he sent separate forces…”
Ethan shook his head. “Belial didn’t do it, Caspia. This time, it was Hunters. And it’s bad.”
We left Blackwood Lodge in Logan’s car. Cassandra sat in the front seat with my brother while I stayed squashed between Ethan and Jack. I longed for a window seat, but there was no way I was forcing those two to sit next to each other. Jack hadn’t stopped glowering at Ethan since we left, and Ethan was doing his best to ignore the situation, a sure sign that he was pissed off. Tall trees lined both sides of the poorly kept road, casting shadows across the cracked asphalt. Although I wasn’t sure of the exact location of Blackwood Lodge, I knew all the Gates were on the very fringes of the town. As greenery passed by us in a blur, I hoped it wouldn’t be a very long ride.
Sick of the tense silence that gripped the car, I blurted out, “How could they have done it? Gotten through, I mean. I thought the whole town had protection against that sort of thing. Isn’t that why Belial had to use an agent to get to me?” I thought of Dr. Christian and shuddered. I hoped he was having fun in the Dark Realms, the last place I’d seen him. He deserved it.
Logan’s knuckles were white on the gear shift. I watched in fascination as Cassandra slipped her hand over his. That small gesture from her was enough to make my brother’s whole body relax. Interesting. “They had to have help from someone in town. Someone powerful enough to let them through.” I saw his grimace in the rear view mirror.
“But why couldn’t Belial have done that?” I asked. “He had help from an insider.”
“Two possibilities,” Ethan said. “His agent might not have been strong enough. And he might not have been interested, Cas. He wanted you, and your abilities. Not the town itself.” He squeezed my hand. “Of course, that will probably change now that he knows the forces of the Light are using Whitfield as a staging ground.”
I was silent for the rest of the ride, my insides in a knot. I didn’t want to ask how bad the damage was yet; I knew I was about to find out first hand. I wanted to just lean my head against Ethan’s shoulder and pretend none of this was happening.
My denial couldn’t last, however. Soon enough we hit the outskirts of town, familiar houses and places of business looking the same as ever. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least the Hunters hadn’t decimated everything.
But as we weaved through ever narrower streets, approaching the heart of Whitfield, I began to see some of the damage. Trees had fallen down on top of cars, smashing them. Windows were shattered, their glass splattered like ice chips across the road.
“The innocents think it was a powerful storm,” Cassandra explained. “In a way, I suppose it was. It helped that it happened in the middle of the night. Everyone else… let’s just say they’re laying low.”
I said nothing at all as I surveyed the damage. I just kept squeezing Ethan’s hand tighter and tighter. To his credit, he didn’t complain, although I must have been close to breaking the bones in his hand. But when we pulled up to Old Town Square, nothing could keep me from crying out.
Six of the huge, graceful Live Oaks had been uprooted and flung several feet away. The fairy lights that usually hung from their branches were smashed, lines frayed or snapped. They lay on the ground like dead snakes. Streetlights had been snapped off at the base like broken Tinker Toys. The destruction was horrible, but what really caught my breath was the fountain. Several of the strange, but beautiful statues that lit up at night had been pulverized. I couldn’t even tell what they had once looked like. Colored glass and chunks of marble floated in the still, brackish water.
I was out of the car the second it rolled to a stop. I ran to the fountain, horrified. It had been my favorite thing about the square for as long as I’d been alive. I couldn’t believe someone―anyone―had been able to destroy it.
I let my gaze wander past the square itself to the four streets that lined it. The businesses that were usually so busy, no matter what time of day or night, were all shuttered or closed. Some had clearly been attacked: one of my favorite restaurants looked like it had a brick thrown throug
h its window. Pepper’s Bakery was boarded up. I noticed Cassandra’s pinched white face and reluctantly turned in the direction of her gaze. Sure enough, the New Age herb and crystal shop she ran with Mrs. Alice had been ransacked. The beautiful, bright glass shelves that had once displayed crystals and gemstones of all kinds were jagged and shattered. Strings of dried herbs lay ground into the carpet. The tea lights that had once lined the windowsill were nowhere to be seen. Cassandra had tears in her eyes as she held my brother’s hand.
“I can’t believe this happened,” I said, my voice tight and strained. I kicked at a loose chunk of cement. “Was anyone hurt?”
Silence. Alarms began going off in my head.
I stepped away from Ethan and whirled on them all. “Who?” I demanded through clenched teeth. “What aren’t you telling me?”
After a long moment, Logan finally spoke. “There were several minor injuries. Scrapes and bruises, even some broken bones.” His eyes were hooded.
“And?” I prompted. I just knew there was an “and.” Something they weren’t telling me. Something they were afraid to tell me.
Ethan came for me once again. I was rigid in his arms, terrified of what he wasn’t saying. He tried to hold my hand, to rub my arms and make me relax, but I shook him off.
“Markov,” he said at last. All the air left my lungs in a rush. I thought I’d misheard him, but he repeated the grim news. “They got to Mr. Markov, Caspia. He’s in intensive care. They’re not sure he’s going to make it.”
I gaped at him. I seemed to have lost the ability to understand plain English. “Mr. Markov is… hurt?” I repeated dully. “But… he’s powerful. And kind. And good. Why would they hurt him?” I wrapped my arms around myself, at a sudden chill. The square was so dead, so silent. There was no rush of water from the fountain, and few leaves to rustle in the wind. “He’s just an old man.” I heard the beginnings of a wail buried in my voice.
