Whiskey and Angelfire

by A. A. Chamberlynn

  “What is this place?” Quinn asked, sounding breathless.

  “One of the leprechauns likes to garden,” Vlad said with a shrug. Apparently he was jaded. “We use it as a meeting place.”

  I wrinkled my nose. I detested leprechauns. Smarmy little fuckfaces that liked to screw with people.

  “And the person we’re looking for?” Riley asked.

  “She should be here at this time,” Vlad responded. He waved a hand toward the garden and bowed deeply for Quinn to precede him. She giggled and walked down into the strange landscape.

  We picked a path and began to wind through the maze of flora and fauna. There were lots of nooks and crannies in the garden that could hide people. Cascades of vines hung down from arbors and trellises, and some of the mushrooms were so large someone could take a nap underneath. Some of the plants had an aura of menace like they wouldn’t think twice about munching on things our size. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. But I tightened my hand on my katana.

  Up ahead the path split, and in the V stood a small gazebo covered in dark ivy that gave off a glow as if under a black light.

  “There,” Vlad said, pointing.

  But I’d already seen the figure standing there, and she’d seen me. One of Lucifer’s most trusted employees. My sister.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Anna tensed as if to bolt, but then apparently thought better of it. Instead she pasted a fake smile on her face. “Dearest sister. What brings you to Dublin?” she called as we approached. “I thought you didn’t like it here—all those bad memories.”

  I returned the smile with a sharp one of my own. “Yeah, I bet that’s why you’re lurking around here, thinking I wouldn’t show up and kick your ass back to Hell. Well, surprise! Here I am.”

  “For me? Please, we’ve been through this.” She flicked a strand of her long black hair behind one shoulder and pinned me with her espresso eyes, eyes just like mine.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not here for you.” I paused and appraised her. “Or at least, I didn’t think I was. But something tells me you’re at the root of the problem once again.”

  I’d been heartbroken when I’d first learned my sister was still alive… well, alive not being the best choice of words for an undead vamp. And further stabbed in the gut to learn that Alexander wasn’t somehow keeping her against her will—she stayed with him willingly. I’d tried to reason with her repeatedly, and sometimes it seemed there’d been a flicker of hope, even though she was fully demon-bonded to Lucifer. But then the last time I’d seen her, she’d stabbed Eli and almost killed him. I wasn’t sure anymore if she was redeemable. And seeing her now made me realize that I’d been avoiding hunting her and Alexander the last two months for exactly that reason. Because what would I have to do if she wasn’t?

  Anna cocked her head. “And what problem might that be?” she asked, her tone mockingly sweet.

  “Oh, just the usual. Demons springing up in places they don’t belong.” I watched her face carefully. “Except they didn’t actually open a portal. And there’s something weird about the mix of demons in these little parties.”

  There, a slight twitch in the muscles of her left cheek.

  “Sounds dreadful,” she responded with a smirk. “Good luck on that one.”

  “Don’t worry, I always bag my prey. As you know from personal experience.” I winked.

  We stared each other down for a moment, and I was about to open my mouth for another question when a blur of movement flickered on my left side. Half a heartbeat later, Riley had Anna by the throat up against one of the pillars of the gazebo. She hissed and clawed at him. “Enough with the games!” he growled. “It’s time you answered our questions.”

  She responded with a shimmer of magic which changed her into demon form. Purple skin, red eyes, two leathery wings, claws and a spiked tail. Her tail whipped through the air and caught Riley across the side of the face. His grip loosened for a half second and she wrestled free and vanished onto the interdimensional pathways, a little trick Alexander had taught her.

  “What the hell, Riley?” I snapped.

  He glared at me from his one good eye, the other swelling shut from the gash on his cheekbone. “You don’t see clearly when it comes to her.”

  Quinn rushed up to Riley and started weaving healing spells into the air.

  “We weren’t exactly being chummy,” I snarled.

  “The time for talking to her is over,” he said. “She’s not going to share anything willingly. It’s going to have to be forced out of her.”

  “You’re talking about torturing my sister?”

  “Not necessarily. There are many other forms of coercion. We need to find hers, and we need to exploit it.”

  I threw my arms into the air. “Seriously?”

  “That was your sister?” Scorch asked.

  I had forgotten he was there, standing off to the side with Vlad. They wore matching looks of confusion.

  “Yeah, unfortunately. Family sucks.”

  “She—she tried to get me to sell some drug for her,” he said, nervously moving the toe of his combat boot through the soil at our feet.

  “What?!” Quinn gasped.

  Riley’s expression grew even more livid. The swelling in his face was already going down, and he looked me dead on. “See what I mean? She’s bad news all around. You can’t make this personal.”

  “Now you sound like Eli.”

  “Probably because he’s right in this case.”

  My temper flared and I realized I was about to do something regrettable. Without conscious thought, I stepped through the interdimensional pathways. First, the endless black void dotted with lacy white shimmery things, the space between spaces. Then, a squeeze in my abdomen as if being slammed through a trash compressor, and I popped back into reality again.

  I had no idea where I was, though I felt a wave of relief that I’d popped out somewhere. I’d gotten stuck once in the pathways and it was no fun. Night sky hung above me, dotted with heavy rain clouds. No stars, no moon. A chill wind shot down the collar of my leather jacket, setting goosebumps along my spine. And then I saw it, in the distance, and I knew where I was. It made sense, I suppose. Being back in Ireland, where I was born, where I turned immortal, where everything changed. Of course my subconscious would bring me back to the scene of the crime. My family home in Wicklow.

  The house still stood, though as I walked closer, I could see it was crumbling and abandoned. The old McClellan manor home. A smile touched the corners of my lips to see its former glory so tarnished. It seemed fitting. After all, this was the house where my parents had completely failed to notice Alexander’s advances on two of their daughters, under the guise of being a visiting business partner. The house where my father beat me when he found out I was in love with that same person. And the house where I ended his life rather violently after Olga imbued me with an insane amount of power. I’d made sure Anna and my mother weren’t at home. The servants just thought he’d fallen down the stairs. I shivered again, this time from the memory, not the wind.

  Morbid curiosity drew me closer to the abandoned structure. I walked through the old doorway at the front of the house, one side of it leaning like a drunken Dubliner. As I stepped into the great room, sky peeked down through a big hole in the roof where it had caved it, an eye watching me. My boots made scuffing sounds as I tripped over debris on the floor. I wandered back to my old room, next to Anna’s. For a moment I imagined us playing there as little girls, but then the child that was Anna sprouted monstrous wings and red eyes. I growled in irritation, startling an owl where it roosted in the fireplace.

  I turned around and stomped toward the front door. If my sister wanted to hang out with Lucifer and Alexander, why should I care? She wasn’t the same person that grew up with me. She wasn’t even human anymore, and neither was I. The lack of my sister hadn’t bothered me all this time, until just a couple months ago when Alexander so kindly shoved her under my nose
as part of his sick game. Thinking she was dead hadn’t affected me deeply, and knowing she still existed shouldn’t, either. Her humanity was dead. And she certainly couldn’t give a fuck less about me.

  As I stepped back over the threshold of the manor house into the night sky, icy fingers of dread crawled up my back. Olga.

  I could feel her presence off to my right, a few hundred yards away, before I turned to see her shadowy form standing in the old, overgrown garden. She was much closer than she’d been at Aisling House. This time I could make out details, not that I needed to see to know what she looked like: fiery hair, seal grey eyes. Skin like the moon. Pink lips and clever fingers that called souls and wrought magic from a time long before this land had become inhabited. From a time when humanity was still young, before cities, before Christianity even. Alexander was old, but Olga was ancient.

  She blinked and I realized we’d both been standing, eyes locked, in the chill night air. Fog had crept in behind her, crooked fingers of it curling toward the house. Her eyes narrowed and a flare of magic swept out from her. She wanted me. I was the one she’d given the most power to, her prize pony, her crown jewel. The one who got away, who turned her back on it all. And she wasn’t happy about it. Olga took a step toward me, her magic crackling about her like a lightning storm.

  A wave of panic washed over me. I stepped onto the pathways again. This time I held something firmly in mind. It was the first thing that popped into my head, but it would work. At least, I thought it would work.

  “Zy!” Eli exclaimed as I stepped out of space and appeared right next to him. Seeing the look on my face, he tensed as if ready for an attack. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s her again. Olga,” I gasped. “She wants me back… or wants to punish me for leaving all those years ago. I’m not sure, but whatever she intends, it’s not good.”

  “Is she coming now?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think she can jump the pathways like we can.”

  Now that my panic had abated, I wondered if anyone else had ever jumped through the pathways focusing on a person instead of a place. Well, I was keeping it to myself. I certainly wasn’t going to admit to Eli what I’d just done. I took in my surroundings. We stood outside Gus’s place. Voices came from within, but the street was quiet. The rain clouds I’d seen at the old manor house hung heavier here. A flash of lightning appeared in the distance.

  “Where were you?” Eli asked. “When she came?”

  “Um, I went out to visit my old house.” He raised his eyebrows. “Kind of by accident. Riley and I got in a fight.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Anna’s here.”

  “What?!” Eli’s brows knit together, his eyes darkening.

  “Yeah, unfortunately. It’s been one of those days.” I sighed. “After you and I got in a fight, I went out for drinks with Quinn and Ri. The demon breach seemed weird to me—all the different levels of demons together? We got a tip from the bartender that someone new down in the vamp district was involved in something suspicious. I should have known.”

  “Well, there are a ton of other vamps around the world up to no good. It’s not just your sister and Alexander, unfortunately.”

  “Yeah, but this time it was. What are the chances, right?” I groaned and leaned up against the mossy stones of the nearest building. “I come back to Ireland for the first time in a hundred years and they’re here.”

  Eli shrugged. “Maybe it’s because they know it’s the one place you hate to come. We did kind kick their butts to the curb last time.” A smile played at the edges of his lips. “Maybe they were trying to avoid you.”

  I mirrored his smile. “It had occurred to me, too.”

  “The bigger question is, what are they up to? Because where they are, Lucifer is one step behind them.” Eli’s fists tightened at his sides.

  “You’re definitely right about that,” I said with a frown. We’d bummed up Lucifer’s plans to invade the earth realm a couple months ago, but what was he up to now? He wasn’t exactly the type to give up.

  “So is that what you and Riley fought about—Anna?”

  It wasn’t hard to guess. Eli and I had fought about Anna many times, too. She just had that way of stirring shit up. “Yeah, it was about Anna. He thinks we need to take a harder approach to getting answers out of her.”

  I expected Eli to side with Riley, because he’d told me the same thing months ago. But instead of his smug angelic smile, he shook his head. “Actually, after having time to think about it, I think you’re right, Zy.”

  “Say what?”

  “I think Anna could be swayed to turn on Alexander and Lucifer. She’d be a stronger ally that way.”

  I blinked. “But a couple months ago—”

  “I was desperate to find out who was trying to assassinate the HR and not seeing everything clearly.”

  “Hmm. Well, I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  “I can be reasonable from time to time.” The smile was back on his perfect pink lips. He leaned up against the wall next to me and we watched the storm roll in for a few moments. The wind tossed Eli’s silky blonde locks in his eyes and my fingers itched to move them out of the way.

  I didn’t want to ruin our moment of non-argument, but I had to bring up what had happened at Loch. “So, there’s something else.”

  “Yes?” His eyes flared slightly.

  “Earlier, right after Riley, Quinn and I had drinks, the NHTF raided the bar we’d been at.”

  Eli blinked. “Do you know why?”

  “They said they were bringing in all the supes for questioning. They let the humans go.”

  His brow furrowed. “That doesn’t seem very…”

  “Ethical? Civilized?”

  “There has to be some sort of explanation.” He shook his head back and forth. “I can’t imagine they’d just bring in supernaturals like that. Maybe that bar has been involved in shady dealings or something.”

  “Well, you can ask Commander Hunter. She was there.”

  “Marissa?” Now Eli looked downright flabbergasted. “She participated in the raid?”

  “She led it.” I tried to keep my tone completely neutral, and mostly succeeded. If he thought I had an axe to grind, he’d dismiss me instantly.

  His face got stormy. “I had no idea. Yeah, I’ll ask her about it.”

  I rocked back on my heels. “Kind of an interesting coincidence that I leave you two at the scene of the demon invasion and she happens to raid the bar I go to.”

  Eli caught my eyes. “A coincidence, surely. You’re my partner. Marissa couldn’t have known.”

  I looked down at my feet and decided not to push it. Just this once. “Sooo, speaking of Hunter, any luck with her supe tracking device?”

  Eli’s mouth tightened. “No luck.”

  “Really?” I felt happy that Hunter hadn’t ridden in on her white horse and saved the day. Especially since she was a bigoted bitch. “That’s terrible. What did Hunter think the problem was?”

  “She wasn’t sure. It just kept failing when we tried to find Ambriel. We tried it on some other supes and it worked fine. Looks like Quinn’s theory of a blocking spell is definitely solid.”

  Yeah, I bet she’d tried it on some other supes… like me. “Man. One hell of a spell. Tomorrow we’ll have to hit the library again.”

  Eli’s shoulders slumped, just slightly.

  “I saw that!”

  He cringed. “It’s terrible, I know. But looking for spells…it’s not my favorite thing to do. Of course, I’m happy to do anything to find Ambriel.”

  “I know what you mean.” I glanced over at him. A flash of lightning, closer this time, lit up his lavender eyes. “It feels like a million years are passing, when we could be doing something more productive to find him.”

  “Yes, that’s it exactly.” He sighed. “Zy, about earlier—”

  At that moment the clouds opened up and icy raindrop
s bulleted down on us. I gasped from the cold. Eli spun away from the wall, his wings flaring out. He turned to face me, blocking the rain with his wings. Our bodies were inches apart, and suddenly I wasn’t the least bit cold anymore.

  I hardly noticed Eli’s wings most of the time, I’d gotten so used to them. He usually kept them tightly closed behind his body, and concealed them with a glamour sometimes when he was in public. I marveled at them now. Their color matched the thunderclouds.

  “You know, a little rain isn’t going to hurt me,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

  Eli blushed. “Sorry. I know you don’t care for all that chivalry stuff. Habit.”

  “It’s okay, thanks. Let’s go inside and get a drink.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I opened the door for Eli and we stepped into the warmth of Gus’s bar. Donovan was there, chatting with Gus, along with a few other shifters scattered about the room.

  “There’s my beautiful woman,” Donovan called. “Where’ve you been?” His eyes wandered over to Eli.

  “Oh, here, there and everywhere.” I smiled. “I definitely need a drink.”

  Gus lifted a bottle. “Coming right up.”

  We all sat down to shots of whiskey. Naturally, after only a couple sips Eli brought the focus back to business. “We need a new game plan.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Because other than Quinn’s tracking spells, it seems we’re at a dead end.”

  “So, let’s summarize what we know so far,” Donovan said. “There are three supes missing. All without any evidence to their whereabouts.”

  “Someone has placed a spell on them to block our attempts at using magic to find them,” Eli added.

  I said, “The NHTF thinks the supe community is responsible, and within the supe community, the shifters are at odds over it.” I would keep the theory of the angels staging the whole thing to myself. At least for now.