by Jenny McKane
She knew as much, but maybe part of her had been hoping that Asmodeus had a few tricks up his sleeves that he was working on all these times that he disappeared. To see him worried about their lack of strength when it came to fighting the upper echelon of angelic choirs made her worry, too.
“I’ll see if I can get a meeting with a couple Thrones in the next few days,” she joked, knowing full well most of the angels she’d encounter would rather barbecue her alive for dealing with demons and archdemons.
“You do that,” he said as he blew out a puff of smoke. “Pray for a few miracles while you’re at it, yeah? We’re a few short down here.”
He was smiling as she made her way up the stairs, but she noticed how his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Something had the archdemon nervous and that made it impossible for Sunny to get any sleep that night.
Chapter Nine
Eli
The old lady was fit to be tied.
“What do you mean you have a couple ideas, archangel?”
She used Gabriel’s title more like an insult.
“Just what I said, Kitty,” Gabriel said, clearly exasperated at the older woman’s anger. “We have a couple ideas of where to find northern summoning stones. We’re going to bring Sunny over from Japan and check them out.”
The woman was seething—Eli could feel her anger from where he stood. It was radiating off her.
“You’re just going to drag her along, without checking them out first? She’s like a lamb to the slaughter with you idiots!”
Earlier, she’d thrown a coffee cup at Metatron when he said their plan out loud. Kitty hadn’t heard it yet, and despite not being in active service (for the past 30 years, almost), the plan had royally pissed her off.
“You fools don’t think she’s been through enough right now? You think she’s practically unbreakable like your concrete heads?”
Eli couldn’t help but laugh at that. He tried to cover it with a cough, but Gabriel’s sharp look over his shoulder let him know that the archangel had heard him just fine.
“He’s the only one with any sense.” Kitty was now pointing at Eli. “He’s right to keep her hidden away as long as possible. They’re going to destroy Sunny once they get their claws into her. She’s not fit for any of this.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly what Eli meant—he knew Sunny could be the right person for the job. He just didn’t think she was ready yet. Kitty seemed to want Sunny sequestered away for all eternity and for the beings with the supernatural abilities to save the human world. But Eli and Kitty, and even Sunny, knew that wouldn’t happen. There were a few really good supernatural creatures they could count as allies and they were already on the team.
No, the team needed Sunny and sooner rather than later—but it still didn’t sit well with Eli.
He was, however, happy to hear that he’d get to see Sunny’s face again. It’d been almost two weeks now and he worried about her every day. And night.
“You’re lucky I’m old and tired,” Kitty snapped at Gabriel, bringing Eli back to the present moment.
“I know,” Gabriel said with a sigh. He was tired, too. He never admitted it, but he had trouble sleeping at night because his visions were getting worse and no matter how much Eli tried to pry, he couldn’t get Gabriel to share much. “I know, Kitty. I wish there was another way, but she’s strong and she’s a quick study and she’s already proven to us that she’s much more capable than anyone else to handle her heritage and what it comes with.”
Eli hated the Solomon heritage. The more he learned about it, the more unfair it seemed for all parties involved—and that was saying something, as Eli was never one to be overly sympathetic to demons. Maybe it was Sunny rubbing off on him—each time he’d try to make a quip about demons being demons, she shoot him a look and remind him that most of the trouble they were facing was because of angels.
She was right, too. This paradigm shift that he felt happening within him wasn’t easy and it was painful at times, but little by little, Sunshine Bonnard’s world view was rubbing off on him. Begrudgingly, but it was still happening.
“Maybe, but you’re setting her up to fail just like Michael did,” the older woman said.
Sunny’s relationship with the archangel Michael was something Eli didn’t know a lot about and something Sunny had very little to speak on. It didn’t sound like much of a relationship, truth be told, and Michael sounded like a real bastard the way he treated his Hunters.
Eli had been very lucky working for Metatron during those crucial years, even if it’d all ended in disaster like it had. The world had dumped itself on its head the day Lacey died in his arms. The rage never left, either, it just shifted into different parts of his soul that leaked out in certain situations. He’d had a hard time controlling his anger at Gideon a time or two with the way he was treating Sunny. And then, when he started acting funny, it was all Eli could do not to break the man’s neck when he wasn’t looking.
He still had a hard time falling asleep on nights when images of Sunny’s battered face and bloody body tortured him. He’d been helpless to get to her as he watched Gideon trying to murder her against the rocks. He’d sworn vengeance against Gideon Lafayette that day and he was going to have it one way or another. Sunny, too, if he could convince her that he was the man for her.
“I’m not Michael,” Gabriel snapped, quickly looking sorry for his tone. He bowed his head a little. “You know I’m not him, Kitty. Don’t say things like that.”
The older woman softened just a bit at that.
“I know,” she muttered. “I know. But someone at some point needs to put her first. I don’t think she’s had someone looking out for her above all others her entire life.”
Eli’s hands clenched. He’d be that person for Sunny. It was basically ingrained in his code and even though he’d failed Lacey, he knew he could make it right and keep Sunny alive during this mission and beyond.
*****
They left Kitty and a couple other strays that Metatron brought up from the south and headed back toward Arizona. This time, they were headed toward the red rocks of Sedona, a veritable cornucopia of summoning stones, if Metatron was to be believed. His sources were a little unscrupulous, but Sin had been doing his best to verify any information and rumors that he could. Of course, it was a social media group and Eli had a hard time trusting that sort of thing, but it still made Sin and Metatron more inclined to give Arizona a shot. It’d worked for them when summoning Agares, so maybe it would work again for Beleth?
Each time he had to watch Sunny standing in that triangle of power and summon an ancient demon, his heart felt like it was freezing inside his chest. For the man that supposedly loved her, he couldn’t fathom how Gideon could allow her to put herself at risk like that. He’d just stood there. Eli would never have allowed that.
“Sedona is north when orienting a map of Arizona and its indigenous people,” Gabriel explained when Eli had argued that Arizona was west no matter what map one was looking at. “It’s not a global north we’re learning. When dealing with a small geographic area that was once used by demons, the four directional summoning stones can be quite close together sometimes.”
Metatron had also thought that the fact that this site was so close to the last ones might throw off both the Powers and the nox. Maybe they’d be out searching more traditional north sites and let them get Beleth out of the ground before they realized it.
All wishful thinking as nothing had quite happened how they wanted it to yet—sure, it’d worked out eventually so far, but it was never according to plan. Eli was a man who needed a plan to follow—a map that would tell him what to expect next and how he could react in case things went off plan. This seat-of-the-pants method that Metatron and Gabriel seemed to be okay with was going to give him more gray hairs on his head than he deserved at just 28-years-old.
“Why didn’t we try restacking stones?” The thought jolted Eli out of his sleep as they rumbled do
wn the road on their way toward Sedona. “If the nox dumped them over, why couldn’t we just use the Guardians and rebuild them? Stack them back up and try again?”
“Asmodeus would know more about this, but there’s something about the original magic breaking when it’s willfully destroyed—it’s an intention thing that the nox are able to do,” Sin answered from the back seat. “Supposedly anyone with a bad intention can break the stone’s magic if they’re powerful enough, but it seems to come easily to the nox—like they have a special ability that demons and angels are missing.”
Because the nox, the death eaters, weren’t quite angels and they weren’t quite demons—they were something else entirely that defied all traditional definitions.
“Can they travel to the different realms?”
Nobody in the car knew the answer to that.
“They’re not supposed to be able to do most of the things they’re doing now,” Metatron said. “But they’re somehow doing them. The rules are different. The parameters are different. Part of the fight now is in learning the new playing field.”
They weren’t doing a very good job of it, in Eli’s estimation. Sunny was relying way too much on intuition and dumb luck—both of which were bound to fail her eventually if they kept up at this rate.
Arizona was different than the last time they were there. It was colder, with bigger vistas. Northern Arizona had mountains and trees and was entirely different than the Phoenix neighborhood they’d stayed in a month ago.
“Not bad,” Gabriel said appreciatively.
They were headed to a place he’d secured on the cusp of the Coconino National Forest, a home owned by a wealthy friend that Gabriel had helped out over the years. Metatron said the summoning stones were a few miles into the forest, a little off the beaten path. Just hidden enough that Camael and Gideon might not necessarily be searching for them but easy enough to find that it wasn’t going to require a trek into the middle of the Amazon. Eli wanted this spot to work—he wasn’t up for much more travel.
Sooner or later, they were going to have to dig in and fight. They were going to have to stop chasing leads all over the world and do the actual work of saving the world. He’d feel much better once the sides were chosen, the lines were drawn and the fighting was established. That was the world Eli knew.
The house was an expansive single-story structure made out of adobe and decorated in rustic, desert style. Eli appreciated the bright details and the low ceiling as he made his way to his assigned room and got settled in. There was no telling how long they were staying—Metatron said it could be a day, a week, a month. It depended on what happened at the summoning stones and thereafter.
Looking around the place, with its tiled hallways, large rounded windows and miles-long vistas outside, Eli wouldn’t exactly be mad if this was where they dug in and got to work. He wouldn’t be mad at all.
They had a few hours to wait until Sunny was expected and Eli hadn’t anticipated the anxiety and nerves that he felt as they waited for her to arrive.
What the hell was wrong with him? He knew he had feelings for the girl—and he’d had them for a painfully long year now—but he wasn’t some school kid with butterflies in his stomach. Was he?
He shook the thoughts from his head as headlights bounced along the road in the distance. She was here. She’d made it.
All of the fear that Eli felt when he’d left her behind to heal was dissipating. The pressure on his chest that he’d been living with these past weeks was lightening.
Soon, he’d be able to see with his own eyes that she was healthy and whole and recovering. Then, Eli promised himself, he’d relax a little and take deeper breaths once in a while.
The SUV stopped in the driveway behind Gabriel’s car and it seemed like time stood still as he waited for the passenger side door to open. When it did, he couldn’t help but press forward against the window, hoping for a view of Sunny in the fading light.
But it wasn’t Sunny. Asmodeus got out of the passenger’s side and for a moment Eli was confused—where was she? Seconds later, Sunny answered his question by popping out of the driver’s side, her cheeks flushed and her smile radiant. The beautiful surroundings had her giddy and the drive hadn’t been a hard one, obviously.
That was the thing Eli realized he was going to need to learn with Sunny—the girl wasn’t satisfied sitting in the passenger’s seat letting others curry her around. She was a leader in her own right, it seemed—the driver of her own vehicle and Eli was going to have to accept that she wasn’t just a target to protect.
And he could learn to accept that. Couldn’t he?
Chapter Ten
To say the Sonoran Desert was amazing was an incredible understatement. Just like in Japan and Norway, a little voice in Sunny’s head wished she was a tourist and not an apocalypse stopper. The formations grew more intensely red and larger as they ventured north from Phoenix, with views going out hundreds of miles in every direction, rewarding her with buttes, mesas, and rock formations everywhere she looked.
They’d left Phoenix around an hour before sunset, so by the time they were approaching their destination, the landscape had been ablaze in purples, reds, and orange. It was stunning and Sunny had demanded to drive the closer they got.
“Why?” Asmodeus had asked, clearly mystified by her behavior. “You can’t stare off into space nearly as easily if you have to concentrate on the road.”
Sunny buckled her seat belt and hit the gas.
“In case I want to pull over and take a few pictures,” she said. “I don’t trust you to stop fast enough.”
She’d swerved off the road to catch a few spectacular sunset photos, too, causing Asmodeus to drop whatever “technology” he’d been fiddling with.
“Warn a demon, Sunshine,” he sputtered as his iPad danced around his feet and away from his grasping hands.
“Sorry,” she muttered as she flew out the door once the SUV was in park. She wasn’t really sorry—she’d do it at least two more times before they reached the edge of the national forest they were headed to.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” she said as her phone snapped a panoramic picture. The air up there was different, too. She could taste sunshine, sage, and earth. It was heady and intoxicating. Sunny was in love.
“I’m buying a house up here when this is all done,” she announced as she clicked herself back into the seatbelt and pulled back onto the road.
“Better have plenty of cash,” Asmodeus said quietly, as if he’d just looked up real estate values in the area.
More than likely, she mused, he had. Nobody got around the Internet as expertly and quickly as Asmodeus. He’d likely seen everything the world wide web had to offer once and had doubled back for a few bonus laps already. He absorbed information that quickly.
The large adobe homestead they were headed to made quite the statement as they neared it. It was nestled into a foothill of a large rock outcropping and surrounded by thin, hardy-looking pine trees. It was immaculate sandstone adobe and blended perfectly into its surroundings.
“I want this house,” she said as they pulled into the long driveway and pulled to a stop behind Gabriel’s car. She recognized it from the garage full of expensive cars he’d kept at his chateau in Canada. She wondered if Kitty was somewhere inside. She asked Asmodeus about it.
“Any new team members added in our absence?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he replied. “No new volunteers or otherwise. More’s the pity, eh?”
Sure was. Wherever she was, Sunny hoped Kitty was well. She’d have to ask Gabriel about her when she remembered. She’d also have to try to call her Aunt Lottie now that she was stateside. She had no doubt her aunt was safe, but it would do Sunny good to hear her voice just the same.
It was also a little less than heartening to hear that there’d been no ground gained in either figuring out Death’s identity or in securing any additional allies. It was part of w
hat Gabriel and Metatron were going to work on while they were gone.
She smirked at the thought that she was the one who’d been able to find potential allies in the tengu. She still hadn’t told the team yet, a little worried about how the archangels and the human might take the fact that a race of ancient Asian demons were weighing their worth from afar, judging them all.
It sort of made Sunny chuckle, but she wasn’t certain Eli and the angels would enjoy being weighed and measured.
Metatron came out to greet them and Sin was close on his heels, scooping Sunny up in a big, brotherly hug. He nearly squeezed the breath out of her until Eli came out and calmed his enthusiasm a little.
“Let her breathe,” he chided Sin, pulling the cambion away from Sunny.
Eli’s hug was a little stilted and awkward, nothing like the warm, enveloping experiences they used to be. It was almost as if he was trying to keep a little distance between their bodies. Why?
She shot him a curious glance but Eli wouldn’t meet her eye.
What was that all about?
“Was your trip okay?” he asked as he pulled his arms away from her and broke all physical contact. He was looking over at Asmodeus as he spoke.
“Fine,” she said quietly, a little confused at her reception. Was he angry at her for something? She didn’t remember doing anything to upset him, but he was definitely acting strange.
“What about you guys? Anything exciting on your big road trip?”
Sunny had been just a little jealous that she wasn’t getting to drive all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond. It was her favorite part of the country—or at least it had been until she’d driven in the red rocks of Sedona. She was pretty certain that this zip code in particular was her new favorite place in the world. It sang to her.
“Let’s get you inside and settled and we can unpack your gear,” Eli said as he pulled the bag from Sunny’s arms and led her in.
She hadn’t seen Gabriel yet and he wasn’t in the common rooms of the house as she walked through, despite his car being parked outside.
