The Rise of Babylon (Harem of Babylon Book 2)

by G. A. Rael

  Samael nodded up at the full moon. "You sure you're alright?"

  "Fine," Darren said, looking up at the building to recognize the rental company's logo on the door. "Work your magic."

  Samael walked up to the door and considered the lock for a moment before putting his fist through the glass.

  "I could have done that!" Darren snapped. "You just tripped the silent alarm."

  Samael stuck his hand through the broken glass and clamped down on something inside. Electricity hummed and crackled around the door before the angel reached in to unlock the door and pulled it open. "Ladies first."

  Darren rolled his eyes and strode into the dark office. It was lit well enough from the outside lights to see around the front desk, queue ropes and sparse plastic seating. He glanced at the shorted out security pad and shook his head before going over to the computer.

  "You're gonna have to teach me to use one of these things," Samael said from behind, watching as Darren searched the desktop.

  "Why learn to use them when you can just fry them?" Darren half-joked. "Alright, I got the plate numbers for the car he checked out a few hours ago. I'm tracking it now," he said, drumming his knuckles on the plastic desk while the GPS loaded. A moment later, a blinking green dot in the middle of the screen popped up.

  "What's that?" Samael asked.

  "It's where they are," Darren said, frowning as he wrote down the address. "Or at least where he left the car. Ealdun Castle."

  "A Castle? So he did just take her on some dumbass romantic getaway."

  "We'll see," said Darren, tucking the address into his pocket as a backup. "You saw the coordinates. Do your thing, flyboy."

  Samael reached out again, but this time when Darren opened his eyes, they were still inside the rental office.

  "This is hardly what I imagined an Irish castle would be like."

  "It didn't work," Samael said, staring at his hand like it wasn't a part of him anymore. "That's never happened before."

  "Maybe you're out of juice," said Darren.

  "Or maybe someone wants to keep me out of that castle."

  Darren sat back down at the computer and entered a fake alias into the system. "Looks like we're traveling by more conventional means."

  "You rentin' us a car?"

  "Sure am, Mr. Odbody," Darren said, tossing him a set of keys. "I hope you can drive stick."

  Samael caught them. "'Course I can. I'm an angel, not a choir boy."

  They piled themselves into the sleek black sports car, a feat that was only possible for Samael when the top was down. It was flashy, but it was the fastest thing the shoddy rental office had to offer. Darren looked down at his hands and flexed them stiffly. His fine motor coordination and response time were definitely not up to par, but his newly discovered way of coping with his hunger kept his instincts in check and his mind clear enough.

  "Why are you fine, anyway?" Samael asked. "No more dead bodies turned up in town and I’ve been keeping a close eye on Hermes, so I know he hasn't been slipping you the good stuff."

  “Obviously not close enough," Darren said gruffly. “And I’m handling it.”

  "Don't get snippy with me, it's a matter or professional and personal curiosity. Either you're getting better at covering your tracks, or —”

  "I sneak bodies from the hospital," Darren muttered. "There's a small window of time when an organ donor's tissue is still alive. I have access to the OR because I'm cleared to use their facilities."

  Samael was dead silent for a moment. Darren wished he would stay that way. "Gotta hand it to you, that's kinda brilliant."

  "It's risky and unreliable," he corrected. "It doesn't have the same effect as a fresh kill, but I can make it last longer and it takes the edge off."

  "Whatever keeps you from crackin' coconuts in back alleys," Sam said, turning on the radio. The screeching rock ballad blared at full volume and Darren cringed.

  "You're a better copilot than Hermes," the angel said after the city road had turned rural.

  "You could probably say that about a lot of people."

  "True."

  "Look, if it's all the same, I'm not really in the mood for casual banter," Darren said, staring out the window. Jordan had undoubtedly traveled the very same road, but wondering whether she had done so alive was driving him crazy. Darren could only hope the fact that he was still roaming the earth was a good sign for her vitality.

  "No problem," Samael said, turning up the volume. A moment later, he turned it down again and Darren braced himself. "Maybe I wasn't really giving you the utmost of my attention when you told me what you saw at the engagement party. You sure that mothman was Chase?”

  "I know what I saw," Darren snapped. "It was Chase, but he was pale, almost gray. His hair was a lot longer and his teeth were pointed like knives. When I spotted him, he started coming apart, like a puzzle made of moths losing all its pieces."

  "Huh."

  "'Huh?'" Darren mocked. "Jordan could be dead and that's all you have to say? 'Huh?'"

  "She ain't dead."

  "How do you know that?"

  Samael cast him a pointed look. "For one thing, you'd be a sack of rotten flesh on the ground if she was. For another, does she feel dead to you?"

  Darren hesitated. He wasn't the type to think much on his feelings, but he decided that it was as good of a time as any to start. "No," he admitted, "she doesn't. But I can feel that she's in trouble."

  "So can I," Samael said, pressing his foot down harder onto the gas pedal. It wasn't long before the pair arrived in front of a castle that was large but not nearly what Darren had pictured. The old stone architecture looked like it had come straight out of a Grimm fairytale.

  "The lights are on. Let's hope somebody's home," said Darren, taking the first step toward the castle. The driveway was empty but a small puddle of oil said it hadn't been that way until recently. When Darren realized Samael wasn't following him, he looked back. "What are you waiting for? This is it."

  "There's a lot of energy in there," Samael said, staring straight up ahead at the warm light in the upstairs windows. Darren noticed for the first time that the light was flickering, which meant it was natural. He didn't even want to venture a guess as to why someone might need to light that many candles.

  "Save the New Age shit for after we find Jordan, I'm going in," Darren said, making a dash for the heavy wooden door. Samael made it to the step before he did. The door was locked, of course, but the angel soon took care of that.

  The entryway was empty, but Darren caught Jordan's scent immediately. She’d been there recently. The smell of human flesh and her soft fragrance were the only two cases in which his olfactory cells seemed to be more efficient than those of the average human, and he didn't at all care to know why. For the moment, it served a purpose. He followed her scent up the stairs and into an empty bedroom.

  The blankets were rumpled but only slightly. An overturned bottle of wine had spilled out a small puddle on the floor. Darren picked it up and read the label, frowning. "What is this stuff?"

  Samael took the bottle from him and took a long swig. The angel's face screwed up in a way that Darren might have found comical if not for the situation at hand. "Whoa, that's some strong shit."

  "Alcohol?"

  "Not exactly. Let's just say if I were a human, I'd be on my ass right now."

  Or less than a giant, thought Darren. "So he drugged her," he growled, stalking out of the room. Her scent was getting harder to follow, since it was mingled with so many other fainter scents. He was beginning to pick up notes of floral. In any case, while Jordan's scent was fading, he could feel the strange, low hum in his chest that only occurred when he was in close proximity to his soul.

  To her.

  "Looks that way," said Samael, following close at his heels. Darren wasted no time before running up the stairs to the top floor.

  "There," Samael said, pointing up ahead to the same room Darren's sights had settled on a moment before. "
Whatever's through that door, I ain't seen an energy field the likes of it since — Well, let's just say that much energy in one place on this plane is rarely a good sign."

  "Got it," said Darren, stalking toward the room. The wooden door held fast, as if it was bolted by a solid rod from the inside. All the pounding that would have worked on a normal door just left a few scratches on it. He was close enough now to hear slow, indecipherable chanting from the other side.

  "Let me give it a shot," Samael offered. Darren put his ego aside and stepped back. Rather than kicking it in like he expected, the angel held out his hand and the sound of metal scraping against the wood made the hushed voices inside come to a halt. Before long, a loud click sounded as the latch fell into place on the other side. Samael barely tapped the door with the toe of a dusty red cowboy boot, but it toppled into the room with an unceremonious thud.

  "What the hell?" Samael demanded, stalking into the room. He ripped off his hat and threw it to the ground with enough force to bend the crown out of shape. A moment later, Darren understood the source of his consternation.

  The room was empty. It was a large, circular chamber in the uppermost portion of the eastern pillar of the castle with stone walls and a marble floor. A single stone table sat in the middle of the room, directly underneath the glass ceiling above, etched with a boundary that perfectly accommodated the full moon in that exact moment. There were candles everywhere in thick silver holders, more than Darren had ever imagined. A ring of white pillars surrounded the stone slab while rose petals of every hue adorned the stone itself, but there was no sign of Jordan or the group that had been making those soft sounds of ritual.

  "So we found the sacrificial altar," Samael said, crushing a handful of rose petals as he looked back at Darren. “Now, where's our virgin?"

  Chapter 34

  Jordan

  Jordan opened her eyes to the pale light of the moon and the feeling of cold stone on her back. She could only lift her head enough to see that she was wearing an almost sheer white gown. There were no restraints binding her to the stone table, but her limbs were too heavy to move.

  She could hear people whispering urgently and a low, electrical hum was coming from somewhere else in the room. Jordan's eyes fluttered shut as she listened. She could make out three distinct whispers. One was unmistakably Chase’s voice, while the other two voices, both female, were familiar in a way that Jordan's poisoned brain was incapable of understanding.

  "It's too soon," one of the women whispered. "We were supposed to have more time with him. I haven't even gotten to hold the child."

  The child?

  "You speak as if this was our doing," the other woman hissed. "He wasn't supposed to return until Corval was dead, but let that be a lesson to you when it comes to making deals with demons."

  "Mother, please. We've talked about this." Chase's voice was as soft and patient as ever, but it bore notes of exhaustion. A vision of him standing over her, his lips dripping with betrayal, flashed violently behind Jordan's eyes. "It's not safe for them on earth, even less so if he finds out about the child. You mustn't let him see you so upset."

  Lilian?

  "I see you call her mother while I'm still just Lyhel," the other woman said bitterly.

  "You're the mother who gave me life and raised me, Lilian is the mother who sheltered me from your husband," Chase said, his tone growing short.

  "He's your father, Luthais,” Lyhel snapped. "Lest you forget, our kingdom's belief in that fact, however tentative, is the only reason you and your human bride are being granted asylum in the Glen."

  "I haven't forgotten," he said somberly. Luthais? Why was he answering to that name? “A barren tree can't afford to question a miracle when fruit appears on its vine."

  "Don't think his need of an heir will save either of you if you arouse his anger," Lyhel said, her smooth voice growing strained. The sense of familiarity was growing, but Jordan's mind was racing with too many other thoughts and questions to figure out where it came from. "He would happily buy some bastard child off the streets to call his own before letting you bring shame to him or challenge his throne."

  "I don't intend to do either," said Chase.

  "Your mere presence in this realm does both," Lyhel argued.

  "Chase is right," Lilian interrupted. "This isn't the time for bickering. Corval and the others will be here soon, won't they?"

  "Yes," said Lyhel. "The moon will be past its peak, soon. If we don't send you back before then, you'll be trapped in the Glen."

  Lilian was silent, but Jordan got the strange feeling that she wouldn't be nearly as broken up about it as Lyhel would.

  "When is he coming?" Lyhel spat the pronoun like a curse.

  "I don't know," Chase replied. Jordan could hear him pacing. "He tells me little more than I need to know and half the time, not even that."

  "I have half a mind to speak to him myself and ask how sending you here is any safer than leaving you on earth," Lilian muttered.

  "Don't do that," Lyhel warned. "He's not to be trifled with. My skin still crawls from shaking his hand sixteen years ago."

  "She's right, mother," Chase said softly. "Besides, an old man's grudge against his halfblood son and a death warrant signed by Michael himself are hardly in the same league. Heaven’s army can't touch her here and neither can Lucifer."

  "I just don't understand why you can't come home and find someone else," Lilian said, her voice cloying. "It's her they want."

  "Enough." Chase's harsh whisper echoed in the open space. It was the first time Jordan had heard him raise his voice toward Lilian—or anyone else, for that matter. "I may have lived among your kind for all these years, but I am not one of you.”

  "He's right," Lyhel purred, clearly delighted that Lilian was the one who had fallen out of favor. "The Fae mate with only one person our entire lives. To separate a bonded pair is a death sentence to the soul if not the body. If you ask him to choose between you and the woman he loves, it's not even going to be a contest, as you say. That and she is the mother of his child."

  Jordan's breath caught in her throat and she almost gasped. She couldn't even process the fact that Lyhel had just put a name to the thing Chase was. And they thought she was carrying his baby?

  The room grew silent. Jordan willed her body to stay still and found herself wishing that the poison's paralysis wasn't wearing off. Someone was approaching her, and judging from the footsteps, it was Chase.

  "Jordan?" His voice was gentle, but daring her to continue the lie. He stroked her hair softly and her eyes fluttered. His fingers trailed down and dragged along the sides of her neck. His touch was impossible not to respond to. The flush that spread across her cheeks and the small gasp that caught in her throat were as automatic as taking in air before plunging into the ocean, or putting your hands up to shield your face from a fall.

  "I didn't realize you were awake, my love.”

  Jordan looked around the room. It was made of stone and the full moon shone overhead, reflecting in the rippling black surface of a perfectly circular pond carved into the middle of the marble floor. Deciding that her best option was to pretend innocence, she struggled to sit up and only slightly exaggerated her confusion. "Where are we?"

  Chase watched her for a moment, as if deciding whether he was going to buy her act. "We're in my home," he said finally. Lilian and another woman who had to be Lyhel walked over to the stone table Jordan found herself displayed on. Rose petals were sprinkled around her, giving her the unfortunate impression of a garnish. At that moment, she realized why Lyhel's voice sounded so familiar.

  It was the stewardess. Her hair had been taken down from its high ponytail to cascade over the flowing blue robes that draped over her lean but athletic frame, but those high cheekbones were unmistakable. She couldn't have been a day over thirty and yet she was undoubtedly the same woman who’d claimed to be his birth mother.

  "Why are you here?" Jordan asked, sitting up with Chase's assis
tance. She turned to Lilian. "Why are either of you here? Where is this place?"

  "I'll answer your questions soon, my love," Chase promised, drawing Jordan closer. "You already know my surrogate mother, Lilian. Allow me to introduce you to my birth mother, Lyhel."

  "It's an honor to officially meet you, Jordan," Lyhel said, leaning in to place a kiss on Jordan's lips. Before she could even process what had happened, the ethereal creature pulled away, a mischievous smile on her full lips. "It isn't every day that one of the Fae is mated to a human."

  "Fae?" Jordan looked between Lyhel and Chase in shock. "You're fairies?"

  Lyhel cringed. "We don't like that term. Fae is both singular and plural."

  "It's all a bit hard to get used to at first," Lilian said dryly, "Especially the odd greetings, but I’m sure you'll adjust. After all, you are a witch."

  "How did you—?”

  The tall wooden door flew open and a silver-haired man nearly as tall as he was broad stormed into the room. His robe was the same soft blue as Lyhel's and he wore a crown not unlike the one in the strange painting Jordan had seen in Chase's castle. It was made of a strange bluish metal twisted into the shape of thick barbed vines that disappeared into each other and sometimes jutted out into sharp points.

  Jordan had the unsettling feeling that he was the king they had been talking about in such hushed tones, and the way Lyhel slinked to be at his side confirmed it. "Darling, I'm so glad you came."

  The one who had to be Corval ignored his wife and walked directly toward Jordan. Chase moved in front of her before the king could reach them.

  "This must be her," Corval said, looking at Jordan with eyes the hue and temperature of ice. "The Whore from the Biblical apocalypse that I'm expected to provide shelter for."

  "She's my mate, father," Chase said, more agitated than Jordan had ever seen him.

  "So I've heard. A fitting bride for the changeling child."

  There were a thousand questions Jordan wanted to ask, but she also knew it was not the time to ask them. She had only ever seen someone look at another person with the disgust that burned in Corval’s eyes once before, and it was as the recipient of her own father's gaze.