by Sam Cheever
But my mind was working at a frenetic pace, trying to make sense of this new development. Obviously the Coltrans were not ordinary human types who got pulled into a vigilante group without realizing what they were getting into. They were members of a coven. A rival coven to Angel City. And they had misrepresented themselves to me.
If they were witches, why had they sent Margaret into the demon’s lair and why had they needed me to get her out? None of it made sense. Some part if not all of it had to be lies.
Which was why I suddenly realized Raoul was right.
These were not the carefree, harmless people they appeared to be, at least not all of them. Some of them had secrets. And I couldn’t help wondering if some of those secrets weren’t destined to give me a serious bite in the ass.
Raoul confirmed that his information had been right about the Devil’s Glenn Coven. The group of men he’d been talking to had admitted they were trying to pull Angel City into their coven. And, while they hadn’t come right out and admitted they were planning on doing it through nefarious means, they had told Raoul the coven members would be taken by surprise when it happened and that some of them probably wouldn’t survive the takeover.
Raoul had, of course questioned them about the use of the word “survive” but they had just clapped him on the back and told him he had nothing to worry about. He was about to join a coven that would be larger than any coven in the country. And, by extension, one that would have more power than any other.
Knowing what I did about the coven’s plans, this did not give me the warm and fuzzies.
* * * * *
The first dead demon was found on the street outside Demonica the next morning. She had been one of my targets. Meaning I’d been hired to vanquish her for one of my clients.
Now she was a fairly large green puddle on the sidewalk.
I learned of her unscheduled demise when my client called to thank me for vanquishing her.
While I was surprised to learn that the dead demon had been on my target list, I was even more surprised when I figured out she’d been vanquished through black magic. I could still feel the magic on the air when I arrived at the scene.
It was extremely rare for a witch to have enough power to vanquish demons so thoroughly. They could, of course, kill dark world types with black magic but it would take a very powerful witch to turn a demon into a puddle.
I’d only heard of it happening once, a long time ago and that had been considered a giant fluke.
A witch of some power had been temporarily inhabited by a very pissed off demon spirit who had vowed revenge on his unfaithful demon girlfriend.
He and his host had found the errant girlfriend in the arms of her new beau and the Paranormal Police had found them both…or what was left of them…a couple of days later when the landlord called in to report a strange green haze in the seemingly abandoned apartment.
When condensed, both demons had fitted into a small glass jar.
I called Raoul on the televisual when I got back to the office. He didn’t know about any coven activity the previous night and had no information that they had targeted any demons.
I hung up feeling like there was something I should know about the whole situation but was unable to put my finger on it.
As I struggled to catch the elusive thought that was banging around in the unreachable depths of my brain, I felt the air around me change and looked up into a pair of beautiful blue eyes, over scored by lustrous, black lashes.
My Dialle looked at me from the other side of my desk. Appearing every inch the great unifier, except for the angry light in his vacillating eyes.
Two thousand years ago a prophecy had been spawned, proclaiming that one day, a great unifier would come to the dark world. This highly anticipated individual was destined to join forces with the side of good to bring the dark and light worlds together. That unifier, the prophecy said, “Would gaze upon the world with eyes that vacillate as the heavens, blue as the day and black as the night.”
It went on to say, “This unifier of the dark and light will touch upon the good to save humankind, while preserving his heritage to ensure the continued existence of his own.”
According to this prophecy the great unifier would show himself through a selfless act that would endanger his own people while saving humankind. All signs pointed to Prince Dialle being the unifier. Even the celestial army thought he was probably the prophesied one. He had recently worked with us to protect the human world from a huge plot by King Nerul, of a rival devil court, to gain unprecedented power that would have made humankind expendable.
But the prophecy also spoke of a false unifier. And the selfless deed still hadn’t been performed.
I did a mental shrug and asked the first thing that came into my mind. “Hey. Did you get the hostages wiped and de-swiped?”
He reached for my hand. “The human cattle are of no consequence. You must come with me.”
I opened my mouth to speak but found myself locked in time and space with my mouth hanging open.
Shit! Why was dignity such an elusive thing in my life?
We landed in King Dialle the First’s chambers. As soon as I could move I closed my mouth and prepared for battle.
I looked for the king in his usual spot in front of the wall of windows but he wasn’t there. My Dialle paced away from me, moving quickly to his father’s desk.
I watched him with narrowed eyes. He seemed extremely agitated.
He turned back to me when he reached the huge, onyx desk. His eyes were black as night and filled with anger. “He’s gone.”
I frowned and rubbed at my arms, which had risen in bumps as I stood there. “What do you mean he’s gone?”
Dialle swept an arm around the room. “Do you see the king? He is gone. He has disappeared.”
I swept my gaze around the room and shrugged. “Are you sure he just didn’t go out for a jumbo cup of espresso, extra dark like his soul?”
His response was to glare at me. “Don’t you feel it?”
As soon as he said the words it hit me. What I’d been feeling since I’d been shifted into that room. My skin had prickled with the oily evil residue in the air and I’d been too busy watching Dialle to notice.
“Black magic.”
He nodded.
“But not simple black magic, this is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It seems to be laced with something…more…”
“Something not of this realm perhaps?” Dialle said with an impatient look in his eye.
I got the distinct impression he was waiting for me to complete a mental journey that he’d already completed.
And I was obviously not getting there fast enough.
“It feels like.” I stopped because I didn’t want to say what it felt like. “It can’t be.”
He slanted a dark eye at me and his face turned deep red with anger. “Can it not, Tweener?”
My heart started beating fast in my chest and I took a step back. The temperature in the room had risen several degrees with Dialle’s anger.
I didn’t think he’d hurt me. But I wasn’t really sure. And I’d have been stupid to ignore the warning gong in my head.
“How is it possible?”
“You tell me.”
I shook my head, wondering if I could manage the shift out of there and get to the Viper before he could follow me. Then he took an angry step forward and I stopped wondering.
My magic surged forward and took thought right out of the picture.
I left the plane of awareness and prayed I’d land where I wanted to land.
I came to awareness again somewhere above the Viper and landed hard on the shiny red metal of my air vehicle, splayed like roadkill across its glossy hood. Embarrassment heated my face but I had no time to indulge it. I slid quickly off the Viper, screaming an urgent command, “Open.” I threw myself into the cool, black leather interior and shouted, “Secure and climb, optimum speed.”
We shot out of
the vehicle docking garage at breakneck speed, narrowly missing a sleek, silver air sedan as it slid silently and regally into the underground space, its unsuspecting owner glancing around for a suitable space to dock the expensive vehicle. The poor woman shrieked inaudibly when the Viper swung onto its side with its bottom facing the spotless sedan and squeezed through a too narrow space on a roar of repulsed air that blew the sedan sideways into the other vehicles hovering there. As the Viper cleared the garage I punched in the directional setting for my father’s house and coded the car for masking so my angry devil prince couldn’t find us.
Then I sat back and let my thoughts roil in my head. It was impossible. It just couldn’t be true.
But deep inside I knew it was. Magic left a signature behind that could be tied to its user. Some signatures were vague or common, hard to assign to a user. But some were more easily recognized.
His signature was too unique too special. And hers was unmatched in power and complexity among her kind. I knew it was true. What I couldn’t possibly imagine was why.
They could barely stand to be in the same room together. And they had never joined forces on anything that I knew of. They certainly wouldn’t do it to kidnap King Dialle.
My father’s house loomed ahead of the Viper like an ancient, hillside fortress. It was built to resemble the home my father had been born into in the 1300s. High above the Angel City River, the walls rose straight and unadorned to the sky, broken only occasionally by windows of leaded glass.
Just under the roofline, on the river side, a wide catwalk cut the expanse of the stark wall along the entire width of the home. The catwalk widened out on one end, standing out from the roofline in a wide arc that overlooked the raging waters below. This is where I settled the Viper down.
As I exited I saw him.
He stood several feet away from me, in full Seraphim regalia. His gold and silver robes rustled gently in the ever present wind above the river and tangled softly around his legs, which were wrapped to the knees in delicate golden cord.
His red-blond hair curled at his neck and flecks of gold sparked from it as the sun caressed the beautiful strands, making it look, as it always had, like his halo rode above his golden head.
He stood completely still, his arms hanging straight down his sides. He watched me walk to him with an impassive face. I had seen this face often growing up and I called it his omnipotent angel face. It was both awe-inspiring and extremely unnerving. Especially in the face of a guilty conscience, which I fortunately didn’t have at the moment.
I didn’t think.
I stopped before him and looked up into his angelic face. “Father, what hast thou done?”
He stared back at me, the only emotion he allowed me to see was in his eyes. They were filled with the usual pain and touched with something that looked like worry. “Bless thou, Astra.”
I shook my head. “Nay. Do not bless me, Father. Thou hast forsaken me on this.”
He stared at me for a long moment, unwilling and unable to lie to me. “You do not understand, child.”
“Then explain it to me.”
He looked skyward briefly, something like fear touching his face and then turned toward the house and held a hand out to me. “Come.”
We entered the cool, dim interior of the fortress-like home in a stiff, uncomfortable silence.
I could feel magic in the air as soon as I stepped inside.
Looking around I noted the same clean lines and sparse furnishings I remembered from my earliest childhood. It was a décor not created for comfort as much as for basic need.
The hard stone floors held few rugs, located in strategic areas such as before doors and under clusters of sleek, clean-lined furniture. One wall was dominated almost entirely by an enormous, open-mouthed stone fireplace, which had always burned, night and day, for as long as I could remember.
Memories flooded me of sitting on a soft rug in front of that huge fireplace, practicing small magics with my father and talking, for hours at a time. It made my heart soften toward him now, remembering how close we’d been then.
But my love for him had never been the issue.
I walked over to the fireplace, welcoming the warmth as the chill in my heart spread through my body. I heard my father’s robes rustling softly as he moved toward me.
“Astra, what I’ve done is against all that I believe in.”
I looked up at him, fighting the urge to cry. My father had always been the best of everything that was in me. If he fell into decadence I would have nothing left.
He must have seen my thoughts in my eyes. He reached a gentle hand to my face and touched my cheek, sending warmth into me along with peace. I leaned into that hand and willed myself not to cry.
Then he lowered the hand and turned away from me, staring into the fire. “Many on the celestial side will see what I’ve done as treason. They’ll condemn and curse me. I can live with that.” His voice broke on the last word. But he turned to me and a strange light shone in his beautiful blue eyes. “However, I couldn’t live if you lost faith in me, daughter.”
“Tell me, Father. What hast thou done…and why?”
He shook his head. “I cannot, Astra.”
I lost my temper…in a galactic way. “Frunk me to Hades and back again! Why won’t you tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into so I can help? This affects me too you know!”
He just shook his head and stood there. A single tear ran down his cheek.
Angel’s tears, shed for only the most catastrophic of events.
Shit!
“Where is Mother?”
He turned finally to me. “She has returned to her coven.”
I felt my eyes widening. “Her…her coven?”
He nodded. “Yes. She is being carefully watched. We…we decided it was best if she returned to her normal activities.”
“What coven? What are you telling me, Father?”
His pretty blue eyes widened slightly. “You do not know?”
I could feel the blood rushing to my face as anger and frustration built to the breaking point. It was all I could do to keep from stamping my foot. “Know what?”
“Your mother is the Supreme High Witch of the Angel City coven. She has been thus for decades.”
All the blood that had gathered in my face plunked to my feet along with my stomach. Suddenly everything made sense. This was the special ingredient in fairy pudding. It was what everyone had been keeping from me. Why everyone thought I should sit this one out.
“Holy shit!” I said on an expelled breath.
I turned to walk out of my father’s house.
On some level I could hear him calling my name but my mind was in another place.
I climbed into the Viper and coded the coven headquarters into the directional system. I was so distraught I almost forgot to refresh masking. It wouldn’t do to have Prince Dialle find me until after I’d had the next ugly conversation.
Maybe I’d never be able to face him again.
Without worrying that he would kill me.
Chapter Seventeen
Heavenly Intervention
The angel o’ God did flap his wings and make our lady quake,
But if he thought he’d cowed our girl, he’s made a big mistake.
The viper entered the long, tree-lined tunnel leading to coven headquarters. I took a deep breath and wiped sweaty palms on my knees. It was one thing to deal with James Phelps, ex-Seraphim and truly nice guy and quite another dealing with Danika Phelps, ex-royal devil, arch Wiccan high priestess and main contributor of my, shall we say, less socially acceptable genes.
I shook my head in self-derision. I’d kicked the asses of some of the most disgusting and terrifying critters the dark world could ever think to puke at me but this woman, my mother, terrified me much more than any of those critters ever could.
As I traveled more deeply into the dense wood, the light was steadily sucked from the day, leaving me in a softening dusk as I
took the last curve in my approach to the coven’s headquarters.
I was readying myself and the Viper for landing when we suddenly jerked to a stop and, with a groan of the Viper’s internal guts, jerked nose up and took off at about three hundred miles per hour toward the tree line above us. Just before we hit the first huge overarching branch, the Viper dropped into a stomach-dropping backflip and continued at the same terrifying speed, upside down, back the way we’d come.
I struggled to hold onto my seat, praying the chest strap would hold and clasping the bottom of the seat with my ankles as best I could. I clung there for a few minutes, my hair hanging in my face and praying, until suddenly the Viper stopped and flipped upright, then continued onward at a much more sedate pace.
I realized as I looked out the window that we were above the tree line and heading for an open area in the distance.
After checking to make sure I hadn’t peed myself, I pushed my hair off my face, where it had landed like an unruly blanket when the Viper flipped over the second time and started punching buttons on the directional panel.
Nothing.
The Viper shuddered and groaned beneath me as if in disgust at the indignity of being vehicle-napped and then settled in to quietly ignore my commands, both verbal and instrumental.
Sitting back in my seat I decided there was no point panicking—yet—and instead worked on gathering my scattered wits back about me so I could face whatever was coming next.
The Viper started reducing both speed and altitude and I looked out the window to the clearing where I’d zinged the pee pee of the really disgusting fire demon just a few days previously.
There was no demon in that clearing. But a lone figure stood there, waiting for me to land. I recognized him immediately and let myself relax.
Unless the world was truly ending, Enoch, one of His favorite Cherubim and my father’s best friend, wasn’t going to eat me when I stepped out to greet him.
His method of inviting me to have a word sucked big-time though.
