by Jenny McKane
Eron was making a noise that Sunny had never heard before, either. A battle cry, perhaps? It was a terrifyingly melodic sound that reminded her of a war cry, only more achingly beautiful and distracting. Was it a weapon of the Powers?
She didn’t have time to consider the answer, as Eron was upon them with blazing speed that she hadn’t accounted for (but certainly should have) with a blazing sword above his head, aiming straight for Sunny.
She had her own small blade in her hand and despite the chaos of the situation, Sunny had plenty of clarity. There was a high likelihood that she was about to receive a killing blow, but all she could focus on was returning the favor. Her mind was two steps ahead of Eron now, and she knew that when the blow came, he’d be off balance enough that she could thrust her blade up and likely kill him as well.
Holding her breath for the nanosecond before the blade began its arc, Sunny hadn’t counted on one thing—her team.
With her other blade in his hand, Sin held the weapon parallel to the ground and slashed across the entire length of Eron’s abdomen, from left to right, rolling away as he did.
The shock of the attack, evident on the Power’s face, caused him to misstep and instead of slicing the blade down on her, he stuttered and lurched forward, off balance. Sunny went with her plan as he came down and jammed her blade into his throat, gagging at the sounds he made as he fell to the side.
Eron clutched at his throat as blood streamed around the blade and he gurgled, sounding like he was drowning. The wound was fatal, that much was obvious, and it looked like a painful way to die. Sunny felt horrible for killing the angel, any creature, but it was self-defense. He was going to kill her and Gideon and Sin. She had to.
“Eron,” Tesah screamed his name and a burst of power sent Metatron and Eli stumbling back. Her eyes fixated solely on her counterpart, Sin and Sunny scurried away from the now-still Eron, dragging Gideon with them until they had Eli and Metatron in between themselves and a now grief-mad Tesah.
“You’ve killed him.” She was screaming, running her hands, slick with Eron’s blood, down her face, smearing it everywhere. “You’ve murdered my brother!”
She screamed and, similar to Eron’s, the noise was both melodic and destructive. The earth was shaking and glass windows in the Buddhist temple behind them began to shatter. Tesah staggered to her feet, her breathing ragged, her face bloody, and her eyes wild.
“I will smite you all where you stand,” she raged, picking up the sword she had dropped. “The ground will be soaked with your blood for the sin you’ve committed this day. He was perfect, and you are corrupt!”
She was talking nonsense now, but still walked slowly toward them. It looked like they were up for another fight when Asmodeus suddenly appeared between their group and Tesah. Beside the archdemon stood Baal and Agares, and on the other side was Zepar.
“I shall offer this to you one time, Power,” Asmodeus said, his voice smooth and steady. “Leave with your dead and mourn him properly. If not, we shall burn his body to the bones and rob you of a proper, angelic sendoff.”
Tesah looked feral and even tipped her head back slightly so that she was looking down her nose at the demon Guardians assembled.
“I need no bargain with—” she began but Asmodeus cut her off.
“I am not bargaining, angel,” he snapped as the demons beside him started to move out wide to the side, looking like they were taking up a battle formation. “Take the offer now and leave to fight another day. Stay, and we’ll likely take your wings as trophies before making you watch us desecrate the body of your beloved.”
Tesah’s eyes were blazing angel and power rippled off her—surely, she knew that one blast of power from her emotions along with her loaded energy would topple the temple and nearby buildings, as well as quite possibly take out Sunny, Gideon and Sin.
But for some reason, when she looked down at Eron’s corpse, she hesitated. Her eyes blazed fire as she studied Asmodeus for a few moments.
Then, without saying a word, she bent and scooped Eron’s body and vanished.
Chapter Thirty-six
If their quest was a board game, Sunny likened the two days that followed the incident in Japan to the “do not pass GO/do not collect $200” part of the old Monopoly game. They retreated from Japan with a haste that surprised her, given that two of their members were seriously injured.
On the jet, the pilot wasted little time in getting them pointed toward their next destination—Norway.
Beleth, the Guardian of the North, had summoning stones located in the northern part of the Scandinavian country and Asmodeus told them that their ability to move through the rural countryside and tiny villages would come in handy, as it seemed that large cities were now landing spots for demons of all kinds coming through the portals.
They arrived in a tiny village called Lakshol that had one inn—a place for hard core backcountry ski enthusiasts and, because they were about six weeks ahead of any projected snowfall, there were no other guests.
It’d taken a while to get to the town as the nearest airport they could utilize was still three hours away, but as they were pulling into the small parking lot of the inn and the sun was going down, Sunny was welcoming the thought that she might finally get a bit of sleep.
There’d been none on the flight from Japan. First, they had to see to Gabriel’s stab wound and Gideon’s head injury. Asmodeus had made sure that they had a first aid kit with a few magical upgrades (something they’d given him at the Buddhist temple, it seemed) and after two hours of cleaning and stitching, Metatron declared both patients on the road to recovery.
The next step was to unpack what the hell they’d just lived through.
“There’s no need to even wonder how they found us,” Metatron said a little dismissively when Asmodeus brought it up. “It’s what they do—I told you. We’re not safe here very long, either, but we might have a few more days given the state she was in and the fact that she’s going to want to properly send Eron off.”
He hadn’t elaborated into what an angelic death sendoff was, so nobody asked.
“Why did you offer her the chance to leave?” Sunny asked when there was a lull in the conversation. It’s not that she was second-guessing, it’s just that it seemed so out of the blue coming from the four Guardians standing there. “Couldn’t you four have taken her?”
Asmodeus snorted a laugh.
“Did you see how much magic she was creating?” he asked. Sunny remembered, it’d been choking the air around them. “Had she been in her right mind, she could have leveled the entire island with an outburst and, because we’re missing the final general, we were incomplete. She obviously didn’t know that, and it was what I was counting on.”
The gambler had bluffed, Sunny thought. Thank goodness he had.
“It was a close call,” Eli said quietly. He had bruises forming all over his body and one of his eyes had swelled shut but he didn’t allow Asmodeus or Metatron to fuss over him, simply batting their attentions away and back to Gabriel and Gideon.
“We need the fourth and we need her quickly,” Asmodeus agreed. “There’s no doubt about that.”
They offloaded their bags into their small, furnished rooms and agreed to meet for breakfast the following day, after everyone had slept soundly. The elderly couple that ran the inn would send up a hearty dinner of soup, rolls, and sweetbreads once the team had settled in. It sounded like bliss to Sunny, who took advantage of having the closest room and jumped in the shower quickly, in case the water pressure was affected by too many showers at once.
Gideon and Gabriel had both walked into their own rooms on the power of their own two feet, thankfully, but both had sallow, sickly coloring and looked like they could probably sleep for the next week and a half, if given the choice. Gideon gave her a weak smile as he and Sunny parted ways and she shut her door.
Red, bloody water swirled the drain as the last reminders of the day’s battle washed off her body and out of her hair. She
wasn’t sure whose blood she watched go down the drain—Gideon, Sin, or Eron? It didn’t matter, sadly, she thought. It’d been an awful day and she could go another 100 years without seeing another Power or having her life threatened and she’d be just fine.
She settled into her pajamas, ate the dinner that had been waiting outside her door for her, and pulled out a book—as the room didn’t come with electronics of any sort, not even a digital alarm clock.
Her eyes heavy with a need for a deep, restful slumber, Sunny didn’t fight the sensation and let herself be pulled into sleep’s inky darkness.
*****
She was sitting up in her bed with a bright slice of moonlight shining in through the open curtains over her window as she realized she was dreaming.
Patting the pillow behind her, she marveled at how real it felt—how the softness of the pillowcase and the warmth from her head weren’t imaginary.
She was lucid dreaming, it seemed, and more likely than not, she was in a dreamscape thanks to someone else.
Sunny stood and moved to the window, but when she saw the same parking lot outside and nothing new standing out, she went with the gut feeling the dreamscape was giving her to explore the inn further.
It was the middle of the night and dark, so Sunny couldn’t discern whether or not this dream had bright colors or not—only the strongest of dreamworkers could build layered colors and other sensory details.
The short hallway was empty, just as she figured, so she allowed her dream instinct to push her to the door she knew was Gideon’s.
The brass knob was brighter than any detail in the scene in front of her and she took the hint offered, wrapping her hand around it and turning it, half expecting the door to be locked.
It wasn’t.
Sunny knew she was in deep waters now, as it was very clear she was being led around this dreamscape through well-placed clues and feelings. It wasn’t a free-range sort of dream and she could only hope the one pulling the strings wasn’t trying to get her killed.
Pushing the door open, she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust and marveled at how well she could see in the dark once they did.
Moving silently into the room, she quickly went over what she would possibly say to Gideon if he awoke and found her. She paused a moment and considered the thought—she was in a dream, wasn’t she? Gideon waking would mean he was in the dream with her, more likely.
Sunny shook her head to clear her thoughts.
“I need to do a lot less dreamwalking,” she muttered and pushed forward again.
All of Gideon’s belongings were scattered on the floor and she could smell his soap and his shampoo lightly on the air, another clue that whoever was leading her was a master at the craft and had her maneuvering through Gideon’s real room somehow.
Stepping toward the bed, she paused.
It was empty. There was a pillow on the indentation and the sheets and blanket had been drawn back, but the bed was empty.
Sunny reached down and felt the body-shaped indent on the sheets—it was still warm.
Scanning the room, she was surprised to see Gideon’s boots against the wall along with the navy blue puffy down jacket he owned. Wherever he’d gone, he had done so without shoes and a jacket.
His window, which faced the same direction as hers, also had the curtains drawn open and she glanced outside. Nothing.
Nothing, and yet something, she thought as she paused, giving the area where the vehicle was parked a second glance.
No, she was imagining things.
With whatever she was supposed to witness clearly missing her notice, she moved around Gideon’s bed and toward the door, where she slipped noiselessly back into the hallway and pulled the door closed as quietly as she could.
Where had Gideon gone at this hour?
She’d just turned around to head back to her own room when she saw it at the end of the hallway—straight out of some horror flick. When she first came out into the hallway, it wasn’t there. When she turned back after closing the door, it was.
A nox.
She drew in a deep breath and stared the thing down from where she stood, about 10 yards from the death eater.
“What do you want?” she called to it, receiving only a low, threatening growl in response.
Too human to be animal, yet too demonic to be human, the nox was pulsating where it stood—growing larger and shrinking in some strange rhythm as Sunny weighed her options.
Should she run to one of the other rooms close by? Would she make it more than a few steps if it decided to attack?
Even more—would the thing even attack her in a dream?
Sunny moved slowly to the center of the hall and watched the thing as it pulsed in size and seemed to vibrate where it stood. It wasn’t necessarily threatening her—but it definitely had her in its sights and growled anytime she moved.
Mind racing, Sunny had just decided to make a run for it to Eli’s room, the closest besides her own, when she heard a voice behind her.
“Don’t move until the magic word,” it said and when she made move to look over her shoulder, it spoke again. “Not even to look back here, yes?”
She understood quickly, though the excitement as she recognized the speaker reverberated through her body.
“You’re going to sleep as soon as you get back to your room and you will be safe,” the voice continued. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
The nox shifted then, starting to move toward them.
“Now run, Lady Hunter,” Plaxo said from somewhere behind her. “And lock your door.”
She did as she was told and ran as fast as her bare feet could take her. She didn’t have a chance to look down at her dream demon as she moved, her eyes were focused solely on returning to her room.
Once inside, she kicked the door shut and bolted it for good measure.
Waiting on the other side of the closed door, Sunny listened but heard no sign of struggle outside. When it was silent and still after a minute, Sunny did as Plaxo had told her and went to her bed—as though her body was listening to a silent command the dream demon had laid down.
And, true to Plaxo’s command, as soon as she laid down in bed, she was asleep. And she didn’t wake up until Metatron knocked on her door for her to join them for breakfast the next morning.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Plaxo.
Plaxo?
Sunny shot up in her bed, tangling her legs in the sheets and falling to the floor beside the bed in a heap of limbs.
Plaxo had been in her dreams last night. He was here, wasn’t he?
Sunny hit the ground with an oof but ignored the jarring pain in her tailbone and scrambled to her feet.
“Plaxo?” she called out, a little cautiously in case she’d been truly dreaming. “Are you here?”
Nothing.
Still not losing her enthusiasm, Sunny dressed as quickly as she could and raced downstairs, her eyes searching the quaint dining room with the large fire in the hearth, roaring already and spreading a comforting heat throughout the space.
Eli was the only one there, tucking into a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of fruit.
“What is it?” he asked, setting his spoon down.
Sunny stopped, not seeing Plaxo.
“What do you mean?” she asked turning towards him.
“You have that look, Sunny,” he said as he stood, too.
“What look?” She wasn’t being obtuse on purpose, but Sunny was curious as to what exactly Eli was picking up on.
“That look like you’ve seen some shit overnight,” he said. “The same look you had in Phoenix when you waited for Gideon to give you some sort of reaction he never gave you.”
Busted. Eli read her like a book.
She let out a breath and pulled up a chair to join him before telling Eli about her dream last night.
“I’m pretty sure Plaxo is here,” she said. “I know I wasn’t imagining him or the nox.”
Eli did
n’t argue with her, but went back to eating.
“And what you saw in Phoenix?” He pressed, but Sunny shook her head. She wasn’t quite ready to share that just yet.
“Nothing,” she muttered, knowing she probably wasn’t fooling him, but she didn’t care at this point.
“Nothing yet,” Eli said, holding her gaze. “But you’re going to tell me soon enough, Sunshine. I’m a patient man.”
There was a different sort of heat behind his gaze as he said it and it put Sunny off kilter. What was that about? And why was her core reacting to the promise in that look when she should be more worried about Plaxo. About Gideon. About an avenging Power who wanted her head on a spike at this point?
Luckily, the innkeeper’s wife wandered over and put a bowl in front of Sunny with a kind smile before wandering off.
The air shifted suddenly and before Sunny could move in her chair, she knew Plaxo was there. And sure enough, he materialized in the chair next to her.
Despite knowing that dream demons weren’t the most tactile of creatures, Sunny threw her arms around Plaxo and did everything she could to not blubber and snot all over him. She had missed him so much, and told him so.
“It always does Plaxo’s heart good to reunite with Lady Hunter,” he said, awkwardly patting her arm with his small, stone claw. “But I’m afraid this isn’t the happiest reunion, as Lady Hunter has probably guessed.”
The portals. Hell. All of it.
“What’s happened on your side of the realms?” Eli asked, and Plaxo gave him a small bow in greeting.
“Dream demons are losing the fight to keep the portals up and we’re losing more every day,” he said. “We completely lost the Shadow Realm and that’s how the imposter and the heir broke through with part of their army. We simply could not stop them—we’d lost too many of our own kind to put up any resistance.”
“It spilled out over here,” Sunny said. “A few of the major cities have fallen. And we have a potential apocalypse on our hands, too.”
Sunny and Eli alternated between finishing their food and filling the dream demon in on everything that was going on—the ring, the rise of the nox and, likely, Death itself, the Guardian demons, and Asmodeus.
