Fallen Reign

by Nazri Noor

  I struggled and stretched to look over my shoulder, my eyes flitting across the gardens. I grimaced when I found Quilliam peering through the slats in the trellised fences, the fingers of his leather gloves poking through. You couldn’t tell his expression through his pointless sunglasses, but he looked very much like a peeping Tom who’d been caught in the act. Had he been watching the whole time?

  Monica shook her head and sighed. She snapped her fingers, and the bones clamped around my ankles released me. The soil parted, allowing the skeletal hands to sink back into the earth. Then the grass clumped together over the same spot, leaving the lawn perfect and unmarked, as if nothing had passed through.

  “You two are probably the most inept trespassers I’ve seen on these grounds yet,” Monica barked. “Bring your stupid friend. Come on in and let’s talk. I’ll fix you some hot chocolate.”

  22

  The hot chocolate came ladled out of a little pot sitting on Monica’s stovetop, smelling faintly of cinnamon. I accepted my mug gratefully, something about being held captive by skeletal fingers and the cold of the night making the hot chocolate especially appealing. Quilliam accepted his own mug, peering into it out of one eye like it was poisoned, or like it was about to explode.

  “I figured I’d be up all night waiting for someone to come and kill me,” Monica said after taking a cursory sip from her own cup. “So I made up a batch. Go on, try it. It’s not poisoned, I promise you. I could have killed both of you if I wanted. I’m not going to do it with some hot chocolate.”

  It was the good, thick stuff, too, the Mexican kind, made out of tablets of chocolate melted with milk on a hot stove, whipped to give it more body. I couldn’t help sighing with pleasure after just one taste. It did my bones plenty of good, sapping the cold right out. Quill watched me as I sipped, only partaking when he saw that I hadn’t dropped dead or puked my guts out. He pressed his lips together as he swallowed, then nodded at Monica.

  “It’s delicious,” he said grudgingly.

  “Thank you. It’s a family recipe. A little extra sugar, a little spice.” Monica set her mug down with a thud, glancing across her low coffee table to where the two of us were lounging on some alarmingly comfortable sofas. I had to admit, that wasn’t how I’d expected the night to go. “Now. Speaking of family. I’m going to guess that my abuela sent you to murder me.”

  I scratched the outer rim of my ear. “Well, murder is a strong word, really. She just wanted me to retrieve the Obsidian Rose, bring it back to her at the retirement home.”

  Monica rolled her eyes, then shook her head. “Ay, there’s really no stopping her, that woman. And I suppose she told you that I’m torturing her by keeping her alive through some cockamamie deal with the Lady of the Dead.”

  Quill perked up, his back straightening even as his forehead wrinkled with a frown. “And how could you possibly know that?”

  “Because this isn’t the first time she’s tried to have me killed. Isn’t it obvious? Grandma played you. The both of you.”

  Quill and I exchange cautious glances. Just who the hell were we supposed to believe now?

  Monica stretched out her hand, studying her fingernails and licking the rim of her teeth. “Let me guess. Did she offer you a large sum of money to do the job?”

  My mouth quivered as it struggled to form words, but I stopped myself in time. There wasn’t any point telling her how much Leonora had offered us, was there? “Yes.” That was all I said. Quilliam filled her in on the rest of the details, including the bit about the familial curse keeping Leonora alive.

  “Gentlemen, the only truth to this story is that the Obsidian Rose is indeed a family heirloom, an artifact passed down among the women. But everything else is a lie. The greatest one is how I’m unfairly keeping Grandma alive. As if the old bat hasn’t lived long enough. I have to pay to keep her there, you know? She can die any time she wants. I’m not joking. She’s choosing to keep herself alive.”

  I slumped into the couch, studying my thumbs as I struggled to figure out the situation. “So the whole thing about the Obsidian Rose and stealing it for her. That wasn’t about her ending her life, then?”

  “Of course not. Grandma wants the Rose to negotiate a new bargain with Mictēcacihuātl. That would remove me from the position of power, possibly even kill me if she plays her cards right. But I’m the next in line. I don’t care if she wants to live forever, as long as I get the respect and role I deserve as a priestess of the Lady of the Dead. This whole thing is a trick. Leonora is trying to usurp the power that she was supposed to have passed on to my mother, and then to me, long, long ago. Her time is up, and she refuses to accept that.”

  Quill leaned back, folding his arms. “And how do we know that you’re telling us the truth yourself?”

  “You don’t. I have no expectation that you’ll trust either me or my abuela at this point. You’ll just have to decide for yourself. But as for her attempt to oust me – I think I might have an idea.” The corner of her lips quirked into a smile. “And a counteroffer.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay. I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

  “It’s either that or I fill this house with poison gas,” Monica purred. “That I’m immune to, by the way. Both of you will take a dirt nap. I won’t. Death magic.”

  I quirked an eyebrow at her. “Is that true?”

  She shrugged. “Sure. Why not. My point is, at least hear me out. I need to get Leonora to stop scheming, and I’m sick of finding strange men digging around my bush.” Quilliam snorted. Monica glared at him. Then she glanced at me, giving me a quick once-over. “At least this time the strange man was kind of cute.”

  I lifted my hot chocolate to my mouth and took a huge gulp, fighting to hide the fact that I was blushing.

  “So here’s my deal. I need you to retrieve some of Grandma’s hair.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” I said.

  “Too simple,” Quill growled.

  “And you would be correct to assume that. I’d warn you not to go plucking it right off her head.” Monica ran her fingers through her hair, retrieving a tiny, ornate comb from somewhere within the forest of its curls. “Look for one of these. It’s called a peineta. She likes to keep her hair up with it.”

  I tilted my head. “Couldn’t we just as well bring you a hairbrush?”

  She scoffed impatiently. “Of course you could. Or a bobby pin, or a barrette, hell, even a scrunchie, if she somehow uses those. The point is, I need at least one strand of her hair.”

  “And what do you plan to do with it, exactly?” Quill said. “Pretty common ingredient for curses, isn’t it?”

  Monica raised her head with a touch of smug triumph. “Then you’re already one step ahead of me. As for what curse I’m planning to put on her, that’s none of your business. Leave that between me and my abuela.” She sat forward suddenly, the humor draining from her face, her eyes gone hard. “I will warn you, though. No matter how you acquire this hair, Leonora will know. She will find out. And she will come find you, hound you to the ends of the earth. So I strongly recommend that you come directly to me, just as soon as you acquire a sample.”

  I tutted, chewing on my bottom lip as I considered. “She’s going to be super pissed, isn’t she? Probably going to be firing spells at us while we run.”

  “Oh, for sure. She’s very sprightly for her age. But I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “How much?” I asked, keeping my wits about me, especially glad that I hadn’t mentioned any numbers at the beginning of our conversation.

  “Hmm.” Monica pursed her lips, her eyes scanning the ceiling as she counted off the reward in her head. “How does twenty thousand sound?”

  23

  Florian’s eyes were huge when he heard the news. “Twenty thousand whole dollars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Twenty thousand American dollars?”

  “Oh my God, yes. What other kind would they be?” I threw myself onto my mat
tress, the bedsprings squeaking as I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “That would be enough to cover living expenses for a long time, plus get me the cloaking enchantment I need from Beatrice.” Florian didn’t answer. When I lifted my head to check, he was leaning against the wall, picking at his fingernails. I frowned. “What?”

  He shrugged, his lip turned up. “I just thought that you would have asked me to come and help out, you know? Kind of weird that you didn’t tell me about all this.”

  I stretched myself out along the bed and sighed. “I didn’t want to get you involved, okay? It’s bad enough that I keep getting people into trouble. You don’t need to be roped into all that, too.”

  “Hey. We’re roommates. And we’re friends, aren’t we? You shouldn’t be afraid to ask. And what’s with all this crap about getting people into trouble, anyway? You talk about this stuff like it’s the end of the world. I don’t get it.”

  The bedsprings squeaked again as I pushed myself up to sit, poking through the flimsy mattress into my butt and thighs. “I had friends, back then. They live in this place called the Boneyard, right here in Valero. They were there for me when I couldn’t understand what I’d become, when I couldn’t figure out what the sigils on my skin even meant.”

  “It’s something to do with your father, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Right. They helped me piece things together. My father sacrificed himself to save one of the Boneyard’s boys, this guy named Dustin Graves. Samyaza – Dad – he used his actual blood to heal Dustin, to bring him back from the brink of death. And when my father died, all the divine power locked in his body came rushing to me.” I waved a hand around myself. “That’s how this all started. Samyaza died, Dustin came back to life, and I came to Valero, following the scent of fallen angel blood.”

  Florian had parked himself in the one rickety chair I kept in the bedroom, dragging it closer to the edge of my bed, his brows furrowed as he listened intently. “And this Dustin guy. Where is he now?”

  I shook my head. “That’s the thing. He was the key to stopping the apocalypse, and to acquire enough magical power to do that, he needed to perform a ritual, one that would remove him from our reality for – God, I don’t know how long. And that ritual needed five enchanted swords to happen. And you know what? It worked. Dust saved the world. The apocalypse came and went, and no one even noticed.”

  Florian stared at me for a few more silent seconds, like he was waiting for me to continue. “So what’s the problem, then? We’re all alive. The world is well.”

  I bit my bottom lip, sighing. “Dustin vanished. The price of the ritual was for him to be erased from reality. He’s supposed to come back, but when that’s going to be is anyone’s guess. The problem is that those five swords vanished, too. Scattered to the winds, basically. And, well, I’m sort of responsible for at least two of them. The things that own them are going to come looking for the swords, and they’re not going to be very happy. I had to leave the Boneyard to keep everyone safe.”

  Florian’s eyes flitted to either side of him, like he was scanning the inside of his mind for the right words to say. “Is that why you owe Belphegor a favor, then?”

  “That’s part of it. He stole the sword from another demon prince, which is its own can of infernal worms. Sooner or later, Mammon is going to come knocking. The Prince of Greed is very, very possessive.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask about the other sword.”

  My breath rushed into me with a long hiss, like my body was already wincing from the pain it hadn’t yet experienced. “The whole point of the ritual was to use swords from different spheres of the supernatural. One from the gods of earth, one from the demons, that sort of thing. And they needed one from the angels, too.”

  I held out my hand, watching as the tip, then the entire blade of a golden sword emerged from my palm, summoned from the Vestments. My fingers clasped around its hilt as it fully materialized. “I knew that just any plain old sword from the Vestments wasn’t going to cut it. We needed something powerful for the ritual, so that was what I asked for. And the thing that showed up in my hands, it was bigger than what I’m used to receiving from the Vestments. Also, it was on fire.”

  Florian’s mouth was shaped like a huge, open circle. So were his eyes. You could have heard a pin drop.

  I released the sword, watching it dissipate into puffs of glitter as it returned to heaven. “The sword I borrowed – it belonged to an archangel.”

  Florian slapped his forehead.

  “It checks out with all the lore,” I said. “Flaming swords aren’t common up there. And I knew just by having it in my hands that the sword was different, you know? But yeah. It went missing, just like the others, when Dustin completed his ritual. But that doesn’t matter to the entities who owned those blades. They’re going to come looking. And that archangel – well, it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Well, shit.” Florian looked around the room, settling on gazing out of the window, like he was looking for signs of an archangel attack.

  “That’s why I left the Boneyard,” I said. “Some of my friends there were undead. Angels don’t play well with the undead. They’re really, really good at killing them, too. And I realize you don’t fit the bill, but if you want to move out because of this, I’m not going to blame you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Florian said, folding his arms and planting both feet squarely on the floor. “I’m staying right here.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “That’s everything, honestly told this time. It’s why I want to scrounge up the money for Beatrice so badly. She can craft me an enchantment that’ll make me invisible to all of these entities that keep coming after my blood.” I leaned back into the bed, folding my hands behind my head as a pillow. “Just imagine. No more demons hounding me at every turn. No more demon princes, either.” I made sure to meet Florian’s eyes as I said the next thing. “Also, it doesn’t have to be a jockstrap. Beatrice just likes to give me a hard time about that part.”

  “So I guess I just have one question left. Why are you staying in Valero?”

  I sighed. Florian really was asking all the tough questions. “Because I wouldn’t know where else to go. Because no matter where I go, the things that want to find me will always find me.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re staying because you still want to see them, these friends of yours from the Boneyard. Because there’s a chance you might run into them at the supermarket or something. You might not admit it, but you still care.”

  “Of course I do,” I said irritably, rubbing my temples and sighing. “There’s no denying that. You’re smarter than you look, Florian.”

  He perked up, sticking his chest out and smiling. “Thank you.”

  I sat up again. “So now I have to decide whether it’s worth risking my hide to get involved with the Rodriguez witches, or to avoid that whole scene entirely.”

  Florian beat a fist against his chest. “I’ve got your back, no matter what you pick.”

  He was never the brightest grape in the bunch, but I could never say that Florian was a bad friend. “Thanks, man. But right now, the best I can do to protect us is put up more of these sigils I learned from the Boneyard. A little warding magic is better than none at all, I suppose.”

  I pulled a notebook out from under my bed, where I kept the scant few notes and little bits of magic I’d retained from Carver, my old boss. He was a lich, and a wildly talented sorcerer. When I first moved in, I’d hidden some pretty simple wards around the place, just folded up squares of paper with very basic symbols scrawled into them. It couldn’t hurt to try and replicate the bigger, stronger wards that Carver used to keep the Boneyard’s dimensional walls secure.

  Flipping through the pages, I finally came across a symbol I recognized. I stabbed at it with my finger. “This one.”

  Florian leaned on the front two legs of his chair as he peered into my notebook.

  “We can probably just
copy it out on some paper and paste these against the window,” I said. “Just plaster them everywhere. Landlord’s gonna kill us if we vandalize the place.”

  “On it,” Florian said. “We should have a couple for the windows in the living area, and one right here for your bedroo – ”

  Florian happened to be looking at the window just then, and he fell off his chair, crashing to the ground at the sight of what was lingering there. My heart was pounding, too, seeing the tremendous pair of wings and the flutter of feathers that almost certainly did not belong to a pigeon, unless that pigeon was six feet tall and vaguely glowing with golden light.

  “Archangel,” Florian hissed at me from the floor as he tried to push his huge bulk under my bed frame.

  I called for the Vestments, wishing I could summon more than one armament at a time. A weapon and a shield would come in real handy for fighting off an entity that liked to kill things with a flaming sword. But the face that peered into the window didn’t belong to an archangel at all. I frowned, dismissing the link to the Vestments, then pressing my fingers into my temples.

  “Florian,” I grumbled. “It’s okay. Get up. It’s just Raziel.”

  24

  Raziel clambered in through the window, his wings disengaging and disappearing into nothing as he stepped lightly onto the ground, first one foot, then the other. Tap, tap, delicate as anything. I wondered if other angels were as graceful. I wondered if archangels made such elegant entrances.

  “Oh, thank God,” Florian said, crawling out from under my bed, brushing the dust off the front of his pants as he clambered to his feet.

  Raziel blinked at us questioningly. “What’s with you two? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Never mind that,” I snapped. “Why can’t you use the front door like everybody else, Raziel?”