by Sam Cheever
Dialle stared hard at me for a moment but I crossed my arms and glared at him, letting him know with every rock solid line of my body that I wasn’t budging. He must have decided arguing with me would be fruitless because he finally nodded.
Score a point for my side.
“I guess the old man can stay in his little glass cage for a while longer. Maybe it will cool his temper a bit.”
I shook my head. “Don’t count on it. I’ll probably need to take a vacation in another part of the galaxy when he gets out.”
Dialle smiled. “I meant to ask you about that but I had other things on my mind at the time.”
I smiled too.
“What did you say to him?”
My grin turned mischievous, after all, he wasn’t the only one in the room with devil blood. “Not telling. It’s my little secret.”
He grabbed my butt with both hands and yanked me up against his, shall we say, firmer regions, grinding against me gently. “You’ll tell me. Eventually.” Then he gave my butt a tentative squeeze and said, “I never knew granny panties could be such a turn on.”
I laughed. “Dream on, bud. Me and my granny panties are hittin’ the road.”
I headed for my office door and opened it. I turned back to him and cocked an eyebrow. “Is it safe to use the elevator?”
His beautiful eyes narrowed on me and his head tilted in question. “Why would it not be safe?”
He was either a damned good actor or he knew nothing about my passionate elevator experience.
Holy shit!
That damnable pearl dropped back into my stomach and started growing. My temper flared unreasonably at the perplexed-looking devil standing in my office.
I turned and stomped out. My life was just Hell!
* * * * *
Ignoring posted speed laws as usual, I had the Viper up to about three hundred m.p.h. and was shooting aimlessly around with my mind roiling. I needed to reach the Big Guy but Myra had been ignoring my calls. I really hated to do it but I decided I would need to use the very special, only to be used in extreme emergencies, function of my cross. I’d never used it before and was really struggling with using it now. If I misjudged, or if I was wrong about any of the things I was about to report, there could be dire consequences, not just to me but to everyone I knew and cared about and for the world in general.
Requesting a direct audience with the Big Guy was a catastrophic decision. I’d had that drilled into my head from the moment the cross was laid upon my palm by one James S Phelps. And I did not take my decision to use the cross for this purpose lightly.
But my father was in extreme danger from those he trusted and loved. I saw no way around it.
I took a deep breath and held the cross to my forehead.
The televisual in the Viper bleeped and told me DD Raoul was on the line.
“Accept transmission.”
Raoul’s face came online and he looked grim. I noticed right away that he seemed pale and tired. “Hey DD, you look like hell.”
He gave me a halfhearted smile. “Thanks, Astra. That means a lot coming from you.”
I snickered. “No really, what’s wrong?”
He swiped a large, dusky brown hand over his face. “I’ve been poking around the coven…”
“Which reminds me…why didn’t you tell me my mother was the Supreme High Witch?”
He flipped a hand impatiently. “That’s not important now, Astra.”
“It is to me.”
“Dammit, Astra!”
I held up a placating hand and swerved to avoid a very large, very pissed off looking bird. I think I might have winged it…pardon the pun…because a long, striped gray feather had thwucked onto the view port on my side. “Okay, okay, we’ll talk about that later. What did you learn?”
“I’ve gone as deep into the coven as I can and I’ve had to do some things I’m not proud of but I think I’ve discovered some things you need to know.”
“Okay, spill.”
He shook his dark head. “I can’t talk to you on the televisual. I need to meet you now.”
Since he really did look like hell and my instincts still told me to trust him, I pushed back a very strong desire to argue with him. Sighing in frustration I asked, “Where?”
He looked over his shoulder and his face paled. “Where we left Deaver hanging. I have to go.” The screen blacked out and I sat staring at it with my mouth open.
I felt my face pucker in confusion. “Where we left Deaver hanging?” What the hell did that mean? I thought about it for a minute and then realized he had to mean the Church of the Twined Hands, where one of my clients had been killed a few weeks earlier.
And hung from his antique ceiling fan to drip dry.
Raoul had been the DD officer who’d been called to the scene of what I’d suspected at the time had been an attack by gargoyles. I had since learned that a royal she-bitch from Dialle’s court had been holding the ’goyles’ leash at the time.
I programmed in the church location and sat back thinking. I had a pretty good idea what Raoul was going to tell me. But I was concerned for his safety. He’d looked pretty scared when I’d spoken to him. And something else. He looked…ill.
The Church of the Twined Hands was in an upscale part of town that had been an abandoned hellhole until the city decided to orchestrate a comeback for the beaten down area and the mayor had created encouragement, in the form of tax breaks and low-interest loans, for people to purchase and rehabilitate the battered-down buildings.
The renovated area now sported the latest in modern architecture. The stainless steel and glass structures that predominated on Bridge Street looked cold and sterile in the bright light of day. At night, with no sunlight to burnish their sterile faces, they were downright dingy-looking.
The Church of the Twined Hands squatted in the shadow of the two ten or twelve-story buildings of stark stainless steel on either side of it. It was built of timeworn golden rock and was only about three stories high, with a tower that rose above the church, extending another three stories. Its windows were round, in the architectural style of churches from the early nineteenth century and filled with golden glass. Like lace on a hemline, gargoyles of various shapes and sizes banded the entire roofline.
Unlike the last time I’d visited the church, all of the ugly, little creatures appeared to be sleeping. The last time I’d visited the church, some of them had had roving eyes of red fire, which told me they were a little too mobile for comfort. Most of them had claws the length of my hand and teeth that could rip the Viper apart with little effort. I was glad they appeared to be sleeping soundly on their assigned perches and prayed they’d stay that way.
As I pulled open the heavy, iron-studded front door of the church I wondered if Raoul would be in Deaver’s office. The thought of climbing the dark staircase to the empty second floor didn’t appeal.
The church had been built on a spiritual pathway that led into the Shadows, a murky, formless place where those with dark magic felt comfortable and their magic was at its strongest. But to me and anyone with light magic as part of their makeup, the Shadows were a place of fear and uncertainty. A place that sucked at your powers and threatened to engulf you in shifting nothingness.
I shivered as I remembered the one time I’d visited the Shadows, supposedly with Prince Dialle at my side. But inexplicably, when we’d arrived, I’d been all alone. It hadn’t taken me long to find trouble there either.
Go figure.
The only light in the musty-smelling foyer of the empty church came from the street lights outside. I ordered lights on full and nothing happened, so I left the doors open and picked my way carefully up the stairs. The floor was littered with discarded trash and the smell of urine assailed my nostrils.
Something crashed to the floor above and a dark figure flew down the stairs toward me. I gasped and reached a hand out but something in the way the figure moved stopped me before I blasted it.
It
shoved me hard in the chest as it passed me on the stairs and my head hit the wall behind me with a jarring thud.
The figure continued on down the steps and ran out of the building through the door I’d so thoughtfully left open. The odor of unwashed flesh and despair made me curl my nose.
Just a human bum.
I rubbed my head as I continued on up the stairs. Praying there were no more surprises waiting for me in the dark.
The smell was much worse upstairs. The hallway floor was almost totally obscured by scraps of cloth and bags of refuse. It looked like the bum had been going through trash bags looking for treasures. The pile of cloth was probably his bed.
A small halogen flash spun on the floor as if it had just been dropped, the thin beam of strong light blinking against the walls as it spun.
I picked it up and pointed it down the hallway. Nothing seemed to be moving.
I stepped through the garbage to Deaver’s office.
Other than a strong aura of violent death that clung to the room, it was surprisingly clean.
I guessed the foul aura kept even the most desperate human refuse from bunking down there.
I set the small light on the desk and dropped into Deaver’s chair. It wasn’t long before I heard footsteps on the stairs and Raoul calling my name.
I met him in the hallway, shining the light for him so he could pick his way through the trash.
“What a frunkin’ mess,” he said as he approached me.
I nodded. “Bums have taken up residence.”
He cracked a tired smile at me. “Better than what was here before I guess.”
I smiled back, remembering the evil Rayanne and her slavering gargoyle pets. “No contest.”
He stopped in front of me and stared at me through eyes that looked sick, tired and a little haunted. “I feel like everything I ever believed in has been a lie, Astra.”
I waited.
He sighed and ran a hand over his face tiredly. “I was wrong about the Devil’s Glenn Coven. They weren’t trying to take over the Angel City Coven. Danika reported that they were to the Council but that was a lie.” He narrowed his eyes at me, looking on the verge of tears. “Your mother is pulling the scam of a lifetime, Astra.” He turned away and I glanced at my shoes to give him time to collect himself. “And God help me, I don’t know how to stop her.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Powerful Magic
The devil’s cage is hard to breach, of special magics made,
But magic light and dark will mix and cause the walls to fade.
I felt that damned pearl in my gut again. Placing a hand on his arm I bent toward him. “Talk to me, Raoul. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
His eyes when they met mine were haunted and very frightened. He shook his dark head. “You can’t help me. That’s not why I came. I came to help you. Your mother needs to be stopped or the world will never be the same.”
He trailed off but then his dark eyes sharpened and he grabbed me with both hands, clutching me so that I wanted to pull away. I knew I’d have bruises on both arms.
“I can help you release King Dialle. We’ll need his help to defeat them.”
I nodded, thinking fast. “Okay. I’ll take all the help I can get, Raoul but you need to tell me everything you know. I can’t work in the dark like this.”
He flung his hands up in frustration. “We don’t have much time. But I’ll give you the highlights. Your mother’s working with a very powerful angel…”
“I know who it is. It’s not my father,” I hastened to add. It was really important to me to protect my father’s rep at that moment.
“I know, I know. I’ve felt your father’s magic and this is…I don’t know…darker, oilier somehow. It’s definitely still light magic but only just.” He cocked his head at me. “Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
He blew out a breath. “Anyway, they have an agreement that they’ll get rid of the king and the angel will step in and take over running the Dark Council.”
“You mean the Royal Court?”
He shook his head. “No. The entire Council. Think about it Astra. They’ll have the devils, the demons and the witches behind them. Through those main factions they’ll control all the lesser dark worlders. They’ll have it all.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly. But it gets worse. Your mother has planted the seed with the Witches’ Council that Devil’s Glenn is trying to take over her coven but she’s actually setting it up to look that way so she can merge the two. The council would never allow the two covens to merge because their power would be too much for the council to control. And that’s smart of them because the power the two covens have managed to cobble together with this angel’s help is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”
He stopped and looked at me, the terror of what he was about to say riding high in his eyes. “Your mother plans to chain the angel who’s helping her, Astra. She plans to take over everything herself. And with a pet of that kind of power at her beck and call, nothing could stop her. Nothing, Astra. And she has very ugly plans for the human race.” He shivered as if to underscore this frightening revelation.
My mouth opened but no words would come out of it. In my worst nightmares I would never have thought my mother would try to enslave Enoch. The thought of that enormously powerful and arrogant creature as a chained angel nearly broke my heart. Despite his current plans.
“You’re right, we have to stop her.”
He nodded. “Unfortunately I think your mother knows that I’ve discovered her plans. They hunt me even now. I’ll most likely be killed.”
I shook my head. “No! That’s not going to happen. We need to release King Dialle the First and kick some serious ass.”
I reached under my sweater and pulled out my cross, placing it on my forehead I called Myra and my father to me. They appeared with twin pops and I ran into my father’s arms gratefully. “I don’t have time to tell you everything but we need to take this human with us to release the king. Then we need to sit down and have a really long talk.”
My father returned my hug and kissed me on the forehead. “It’s okay, Astra. We know about Enoch.”
I searched his face carefully, shocked that he appeared ready to accept his friend’s duplicity. But there was no time for that discussion at the moment. I shook my head. “No, you only know half of it. But right now we need to release King Dialle and get Raoul to safety.”
The three of us turned to Raoul and I almost smiled at the look on his face. The fear that had swamped his features just moments earlier had fled to make room for a new and stronger emotion.
His mouth hung open and his features were locked in a look of what could only be described as awe. Except for the fish lips, it was the look you’d expect to see on those who were being ushered through the pearly gates for the first time.
“Raoul?”
His gaze flew to me and he forced his lips shut. Then he bent slightly in what I assumed was meant to be a bow. “I’m honored, Seraphim James, Archangel Myra.”
My father smiled at Raoul and placed a hand on his shoulder. I watched as Raoul’s face softened into a peaceful expression. Then my father turned to me. “Where are they holding King Dialle?”
“Castle Gregg, the dungeon.”
He nodded and offered me his other hand. I held up a finger for him to wait and shuffled my mental drawers.
Dialle?
I waited for a second and finally got a crackly response, as if he were trying to talk on satellite and had a weak signal.
Astra.
I have backup. It’s time to free your father. Meet us there.
Are you sure we cannot leave him just a bit longer, my love? I find my butt fits rather nicely in his throne.
I wanted to chuckle but figured it wasn’t the time. Har. I need you to meet us there as soon as possible.
A sigh drifted through
my mind, followed by a very sexy thought that caused parts of my body which were located in the restricted territories to tingle.
Hold that thought, I told him.
I found myself smiling as I took my father’s still outstretched hand.
Raoul looked a little pale when we returned to the physical plane. I clapped him on the back. “Welcome to my world, pal.”
He surprised me with a wide grin that transformed his face. “That was frunkin’ cool, Astra.”
I chuckled and took his arm.
King Dialle was looking a little squashed. Apparently his lessons in anger management hadn’t been particularly successful.
“It’s about time you came back you little bitch. Let me out of here so I can melt you.”
My father frowned at him. “King Dialle, you touch one hair on this girl’s head and you will be sent back to the fiery pits so fast you won’t have time to take a breath first. Do we understand each other?” He gave the king his best superior being look and Dialle the First, though hardly looking mollified, finally gave a slight nod of acknowledgement.
“You have my sincerest apologies Seraphim James. I’m sure you can understand that my temper has been strained by my current circumstances.”
My father turned and winked at me. “I think you have it backward, King Dialle. It looks to me like your temper has done much to strain your current circumstances.”
King Dialle’s face darkened in anger again but he forced himself to give a tight nod in agreement.
My father looked to Myra, who had been busy assessing the king’s magical prison.
She met his gaze with her usual poker face. But I could see the concern in her clear blue gaze. “It is a unique structure, James. I’ve not seen its like.”
My father nodded and glanced at me.
“It’s made up of exactly the same amounts of dark and light magic, Father. Forged under two powers of exactly the same strength. I’ll admit I don’t know how we’ll break it.”
Raoul stepped forward and placed his hands on the cage tentatively. King Dialle, being a devil, took advantage of Raoul’s obvious fear and jumped toward him, as much as he could in the womblike prison, growling menacingly. Raoul jumped back with a less than manly yelp and then scowled.
