by Liz Meldon
So much of Cordelia’s blood coated the dining table that one might have thought tonight’s battles had taken place inside this very home. Over their many centuries together, Malachi had seen his cousin perform incredible spells, awful and beautiful feats of magic other hell-born witches wouldn’t dream of—but never so many spells at once. She had attempted freezing the chains, burning them off. All manner of light and color had erupted as she threw everything she had at it, until finally, on a whim, she had made the chains larger.
Larger, heavier, the links wide enough to fit Ella’s dainty hand through. So large, heavy, and wide that unless he rested his bound hands on the table, the unbreakable chains would have torn his arms from their sockets.
But the rapid increase in size had given him wiggle room.
And at long last, the accursed metal slipped right off.
“Oh my god,” Moira muttered, plopping down in the chair next to Severus and exhaling wearily. “Finally.”
“Yes, what a burden this must have been for you,” Malachi drawled back, fixing her with a narrowed look and a smirk as he massaged his raw wrists. Ella crept in close to examine his wounds, fangs poking out from beneath her lip, no doubt enticed by the blood, but she made no move to lap it up.
Not like he would have minded.
“Cordelia?” Alaric propped her up, cradling her head lest it flop back, her eyelids opening and closing in uneven beats. “Say something.”
“For the wounds,” she hummed, her smile downright delirious as she lifted a trembling arm and pointed to Malachi’s wrists. “I’ve a salve. In the loo. Our loo.”
The chaos demon sniffed, noting how his flesh had already started to weave itself back together. “That’s not necessary.”
“I’ll get it,” Ella insisted. He drew a breath to argue, but her expression brooked no room for that. So, he settled at the head of the table—not in defeat, of course, but because he knew better than to argue after the night everyone had just endured. Much to his annoyance, those fucking unbreakable chains had unlinked themselves in his absence, one long chain with two distinct ends again. Open. Waiting for its next victim.
Giggling, Cordelia reached for the shimmering titanium, but Alaric snatched her hand away before the tip of her delicate finger could so much as graze the metal.
“I’ll come too,” Moira said, standing with a wince and trailing after a dawdling Ella. “Cordelia might bleed out if we don’t get her wrapped up.”
His cousin responded with an old demon’s nursery rhyme, her eyes black, high on her own magic as she trailed off into a cackle. Well then. Perhaps the witch would need something more than her usual rest to recover from this much spellwork. From the wary look he exchanged with Severus, Malachi wasn’t the only one thinking it.
All thoughts of Cordelia’s recovery vanished, however, when Ella shrieked. Inner demon snarling, Malachi shot up and darted around the table, eyes wide, alert to the danger, eager to tear the unseen enemy asunder.
“Uh, guys.” Ella turned on the spot, hesitating in front of the first-floor window. “There’s an angel looking at us.”
Chair legs groaned across the floor, followed swiftly by four pairs of footfalls hurrying to her side. Cordelia stayed behind, picking the dried blood out from under her nails, still humming that children’s lullaby softly under her breath.
Sure enough, an angel had discovered them—possibly. Outside the window stood Moira’s enormous angelic mentor, his dowdy suit crinkled beneath that dreadfully boring beige trench. While his pale blue eyes stared intently inside, there was a distance to them, a distinct lack of focus, that gave Malachi hope.
“I don’t think he can see us,” Moira insisted, padding closer to the window and pressing a hand to glass. “He just knows this is where I live. Hold on. Let me check what he wants.”
Severus caught his beloved’s hand as she strode by. “Moira…”
Scowling, Malachi crossed his arms, then grimaced when his raw wrists met his shirt. But the pain was nothing, nothing, compared to what that angel could do to them.
“He’s on our side,” Moira said, her gaze imploring as it jumped around the room. She then planted a kiss on Severus’s cheek before gently twisting out of his grasp. “I promise… It’s fine.”
“He could just call you,” Alaric muttered, phone in hand, its bright screen illuminating the exhaustion painted across the hybrid’s face. “All the bars are back.”
Moira waved him off, decision made, and slipped outside. Moments later, she appeared next to the hulking angel, his bald head collecting fluffy snowflakes as they descended upon the city. The pair spoke for a moment, then, to Malachi’s horror, Moira took the creature by the hand and led him through the fucking front door.
“Have you lost your mind?” Malachi snarled, his incredulity spiking alongside his temper. From the stiff posturing of Severus and Alaric, none were pleased to find an angel in their front entryway, standing at the base of the stairs, expression mild-mannered as always, save for the faintest hint of interest as he took in the space.
Before he could sneer anything further, quite ready—though perhaps not entirely able—to shove the angel back out into the snow, Ella placed a firm hand on his chest. Their eyes met; hers asked for patience, his for blood.
He conceded to her—for now.
“I come with heavy tidings,” the angel announced, his impossibly deep pitch only coaxing Malachi closer to physical violence. His hands balled to powerful fists, and Alaric snorted at his side.
“Not here to investigate the one bit of magic in this city you angels can’t crack?”
“No,” Zachariah rumbled, his gaze settling on Ella. “I come with a warning.”
His inner demon bristled, and Malachi shouldered his way in front of her, blocking her from sight. Not that it did him any good: seconds later she had sidestepped around him, brow furrowed, her little curvaceous body tense.
“An edict has been declared,” the angel told them, huge hands limp at his side, tie askew, bags under his bright, calculating eyes, “sent forth from Heaven to the garrisons of Earth. A ban on all vampires across this world, for two hundred years, has been issued.”
The room erupted in protest, Malachi’s rage peaking as he gripped the back of Ella’s neck and dragged her to him protectively. All the rising voices nearly drowned out the last of the angel’s words, but Malachi heard them falling like stones around him.
“No vampires may live on Earth. None.”
“But…” Ella reached back to clutch at Malachi’s hand, though she made no move to remove it from her neck. Instead, she clung to him as she looked helplessly from Moira to Zachariah. “But the colony is gone. Serafino is dead. Malachi and I killed him. There’s no more threat—”
“Heaven will take no chances. The transgressions of the One have been extended to the Many. All must suffer for the crimes of Serafino Lutum and his colony.” Zachariah raised a hand when Moira, Ella, and Alaric argued back at him, their voices swelling incoherently as one. Just as quickly, they fell silent. To his credit, the angel had the fucking courtesy to look somewhat displeased with the news. “All vampires have until midnight tonight across their respective time zones to retreat to a hell-gate… or they will be hunted down and eliminated.”
“This is bullshit,” Moira snapped, the ire of her words matching the one growing hot and fiery in his chest. “Demons attacked Seraphim Securities earlier this year and nobody is banned—”
“Tonight we were all exposed to humanity,” Zachariah remarked, his tone calm in the face of such fury. Malachi gripped Ella tighter, drawing her rigid little frame into his chest. “There is a steep price to pay for such an offense. I come to you now as a courtesy.” The angel paused when Malachi scoffed, those ethereal blue eyes darting his way. “I will be recalled to Heaven tonight… Humans have seen me.” His gaze dropped to Ella. “I cannot protect you, Ella Thomas.”
Fuming, Malachi battled the urge to tuck her under his arm and whisk h
er away. But she wasn’t a wounded baby bird, in need of shelter beneath his wing. She could stand on her own two feet—but for how much longer?
“Surely Ella is exempt,” he sneered. “She killed her maker for this city, for the people in it. Do you know how difficult that is for a human turned vampire?”
Zachariah stared back at him, deadpan, and Severus stepped between them when Malachi lurched forward, hands on a quest to ring that fucking angel’s neck.
“The act of killing one’s master is nearly impossible,” his brother insisted, pinning him with a look that both demanded and begged him to behave. Malachi squared his shoulders, scowling, his inner demon ripping him apart to get at Zachariah—for how dare that angel fuck threaten what belonged to him.
How dare he threaten the woman, the queen, the warrior, Malachi so loved.
“It’s fucking unheard of, yet you seek to punish her—”
“I do not make the laws,” Zachariah stated, his baritone amplifying to fill the room, as if that would cow him. Dishes rattled in the cupboards, jars in the pantry. A shudder of nerves skittered down his spine, but Malachi merely stood taller, straighter, glaring down his nose at the angel as he added, “I only see that they are carried out. You may return in two hundred earthbound years… no less.”
“I… I have to go to Hell?” Ella’s voice had never sounded so small. Wide-eyed and frightened, she looked to Malachi, then to Moira, her chin quivering. “For two hundred years?”
“No, no, we’ll fight this.” Moira hurried to her side, but much to his surprise, didn’t worm between them as she might have done in the past. Instead, she looped an arm around her darling sister, keeping her safe from all sides, a chaos demon to the left, an angel hybrid to the right. “I’ll argue for her. I—”
“You will argue before the courts of Heaven, Moira Aurelia,” Zachariah interjected, “and you will do so now.” He took a step toward her, toward them, but Severus soon stood nose-to-nose with him, signing his own death warrant without a care. Had this been any other angel, Malachi suspected they all would have been ash and bone scattered across the hardwood by now. Instead, Zachariah merely peered around Severus, aloof expression unchanged. “You have been summoned, Nephilim, to stand trial.”
A sob tore from Ella’s lips. “Now?”
“Now,” the angel echoed. Severus whirled around, the first inklings of panic creeping into his features. Eyes black, he stared at Moira, mouth opening and closing soundlessly—uselessly, helplessly. The hybrid shook her head, smoothing her white hair from her face.
“I can’t… I can’t go now,” she insisted. “Not with the decree—”
“You have no other choice, Moira Aurelia.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ella told her, voice cracking, words wobbling, bloody tears cutting down her cheeks. Moira brushed them away just as tears of her own spilled, the air around them cooling rapidly.
“That is impossible, vampire, and I am sorry for that,” Zachariah said, retreating to his position near the door, as if to give them all a moment without him, or—Malachi ground his teeth together—as if to hurry Moira along. The angel cleared his throat, hands clasped in front of him. “I know the depth of your love for each other, but you would not survive the journey to the white gates.”
Everything was falling to pieces. Moira and Ella wept in earnest now, clinging to one another, Malachi forgotten. Alaric started in with threats of involving his father, but that got him nowhere with Zachariah. Severus… Well, Severus looked much as he had when they were children, lost and alone, fumbling about, searching for something to cling to as the ground crumbled at his feet. He so despised to see his brother faltering like that; back then, Malachi had relished the fear, the desperation, the loneliness. Now, he would do anything to make it better. To fix it.
But he couldn’t. All his scheming, his plotting, his planning—none of it mattered here. Their cozy little bubble inside this house had been punctured. The threads were coming undone, fraying at the seams, the world fracturing apart in slow motion, and he was fucking powerless to stop it.
All Malachi knew was rage. He knew the brutality of his fists, the savagery of his teeth, the barb of his tongue—he knew how to rip a problem to shreds, stomp it into the ground and walk away unscathed. This… How the fuck was he supposed to fix this? How could he battle the might of Heaven for Ella and spare his brother the loss of his beloved?
So, he walked away. Stalked away, striding toward the kitchen, fists swinging at his side lest they embed themselves in Zachariah’s skull. Seated at the dining table, his cousin appeared more alert now, the pleasurable hum of all her magic-casting replaced with a stern quiet as she studied the proceedings from a distance. He stopped before her, palms to the bloody tabletop, his whole body on fire.
“Can we hide her in this house?” It was a grim possibility to keep Ella away from all this, protect her from the world. Cordelia tipped her head to the side, reopening a sealed wound on her neck, and sighed.
“The risk, should she be discovered… Are you willing to take it?” she rasped, her voice hoarse, like she had been stripped raw inside. “Are you willing to bind her inside these walls for two hundred years?”
He straightened. The answer came without hesitation. Ella had only just reacquired her freedom, and his solution was to tear it away? No. He couldn’t do that to her. She deserved to soar, not waste away inside as the only world she had ever known carried on spinning for two bloody centuries without her.
“I will go as far as I can,” he heard Severus state from the front door. Malachi whipped around to find his brother facing off with Zachariah again, standing proud, refusing to wilt under the angel’s stare. Their parents would have been so proud of him; greater demons, both in heritage and age, would have cowered and fled before conversing with an angel. Severus met the bastard’s eye without fear. “I will go with her—as far as you’ll take me.”
And that strength could very well be his downfall. Malachi bristled once more as he marched back into the fray, unable to accept his brother’s ascent into the angel’s domain.
“To the gates of the Silver City, demon,” Zachariah told him, “and no further.”
Malachi stopped abruptly, as though the floorboards had grown spikes and embedded themselves deep into his soles. So, it was decided, then. Without him. Not only did his newfound sister risk perishing today should the heavenly courts deem her unworthy, but his brother too, simply for daring to tread the path of angels. How could they permit a demon to walk among them? How could Zachariah make such promises?
This could not be happening.
It was all slipping away from him, like sand through his fingers. Ella and Moira, sobbing, hugging one another, their words jumbled and squeaky. Alaric seated helplessly on the window ledge with no other cards to play. Severus ready to waltz into the land of their greatest enemy, possibly never to return.
With Ella in Moira’s arms, Malachi saw to Severus, dragging him into a rough embrace.
“Be safe,” he whispered, swallowing thickly when his little brother nodded against him. He then fixed his scowl on Zachariah, knowing his threats would fall on deaf ears, that he had no real chance against an angel, but fuck it, the bastard had better know he would try—that Malachi Saevitia would burn this world and the next for his family. “He is not on trial… He is not to be harmed.”
“There are rules, son of chaos,” the angel replied. Nothing about Zachariah suggested that Malachi’s unspoken threats had landed, but he did appear a touch impatient as he checked his old digital wristwatch. “Come now, Moira Aurelia. We haven’t the time for this.”
“For Lucifer’s sake,” Malachi growled. “Give them a fucking moment.”
“I would give them eternity.” Zachariah’s jaw clenched briefly before a sharp exhale smoothed his features flat. “Heaven will not.”
The girls stifled their tears as they peeled apart, fixing each other’s hair, wiping each other’s cheeks, whispering and noddi
ng through forced laughter and murmured promises that Malachi suspected neither thought they could keep.
And then Moira was stumbling toward her angel mentor, casting him a glance in passing. Look after her. Malachi stopped her for a brief embrace, squeezing her tighter than he had ever dared before, and when they separated, she knew. He saw it in her tear-filled eyes, her solemn expression. Malachi would tend to Ella—he would give her his life. She knew.
As soon as Moira was within reach, Zachariah clapped a hand on her shoulder, then Severus’s…
And then it was over.
The trio vanished, a flutter of wings tickling the nape of his neck.
Silence stretched thin after them, broken by Ella coming undone. She collapsed to the floor, sobbing, and Malachi looked to the front door, to the world beyond. He would rip it all down. Burn it and spit on its ashes. He longed to let his inner demon free—to show them what a chaos demon could unleash when challenged, when the ones he loved were threatened.
Instead, he marched over to Ella and knelt beside her, his hand smoothing over her back. Moments later she was in his lap, clutching at him, wailing into his chest.
And even though this solved nothing, changed nothing, holding her in the fallout felt better than unbridled chaos ever could.
Chapter Nineteen
The hell-gate smelled like nothing.
It was the first thing Ella noticed when she stepped out of Severus and Moira’s SUV—without Severus and Moira, of course. The filthy bog ahead had once been ripe with the clashing scents of vomit, sewage, and sulfur. When she had first encountered the passage to Hell, Ella had gagged, her stomach roiling instantly, every sense assaulted by the putrid aroma. She hadn’t been able to get within twenty feet of it without upchucking everything she had eaten that day—all over Malachi’s shoes. Now, it was nothing.
Nothing but the crisp, sharp smell of winter, the snow up to her thighs outside of the well-worn paths of tire treads and footprints. That was it. Snow and exhaust. That would be her last scent memory of Earth for two hundred years—four hundred in Hell, Malachi had informed her, as time moved quicker below than it did above. She hadn’t wanted to cry at the news, but she did. In fact, she’d been a mess all day.
