by Lan Chan
“What?”
I wasn’t sure why, but I couldn’t get the notion out of my head. For some reason, I wanted the humans with me. The word human kept rattling around in my mind. “The Sisterhood. Can somebody bring them?”
Max frowned. “I’ll have Noah send them word.”
Settling for that, I stepped through the portal into the beautiful Nephilim city. The place was positively heaving with guards. A layer of magic so thick surrounded each portal that I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly until we were all the way across the courtyard.
Astrid touched down not far away from us. She waved but didn’t approach, her stance alert. I figured that she was on guard duty.
“This way,” Durin said, leading us into one of the ballrooms that I saw had been turned into a huge conference room.
We were waiting to find seats behind Orin when a bored voice spoke beside my left ear. “You better have a good reason for dragging us into this place again,” Giselle said. I gulped and turned to find her making death eyes at everything that moved. “The last time I was here, these monsters tried to have us wiped.”
Max’s arm came to rest on my hip. It provided a barrier between Giselle and me. Even though I could tell he was scanning the front of the room, it seemed he had instinctively moved to protect me. Shrugging out of his arms, I stepped forward. I saw now why Lex always jumped a mile when Kai was around.
Exerting your independence when there were Neanderthal supernaturals around was going to take some getting used to.
“I’m not going to lie,” I said, “I’m actually not quite sure why we need you to be here. I just have this feeling.”
“That’s just great. Exactly what we need. More feelings.”
We got plenty of those when the meeting began. It was the largest gathering of supernatural leaders I’d ever seen. It wasn’t just the Council and the elite guard who were present but the most powerful factions in supernatural society, including Ravenhall. Eugenia winked at me from across the room. Max and I had taken seats beside Durin.
The Council were discussing this latest bad omen in the skies around them. “We all know what it is,” Angus said. “No point beating around the bush. The Abyss is about to spill into our world. When Alessia released Lucifer, she levelled the playing field and handicapped Azrael. Once the Abyss goes to war with us, our souls will be up for the taking and it’s anyone’s guess whether Azrael or Apollyon will get us first.”
The murmurs around the room were full of fear. “What does the malachim that the girl exorcised from Professor McKenna say?” Ivan asked.
“The girl has a name!” Max snapped. Ivan folded his arms in front of him, looking decidedly bored. “And the malachim isn’t saying anything. He’s gone very quiet.”
“Well, that’s a lot of help.”
Max shrugged. “As long as there’s one less malachim, I don’t care.”
He was only annoyed because Ivan had dismissed me. In truth, if we could have interrogated Haniel, things would be a lot easier. The problem was, what more could Haniel provide us that we didn’t already know? Apollyon’s motives weren’t that difficult to discern. He wanted to obliterate us. If he couldn’t do it through stealth, then he would do it through a full-frontal attack.
“How are our defences?” Victoria asked the elite guard.
“They’re as good as they’re going to be. We’ve fortified the barriers between us and the human world.”
“What are we doing to protect our young?” Megan wanted to know.
“They’re being integrated into the human world,” Dorian said. “It might not be much, but Alessia’s bargain with Lucifer will stop the demons from destroying them. If our civilians can pass as human, then they might stand a chance.”
Giselle’s teeth grated together so loudly it was almost a shout to supernatural hearing. Her preference to sit with the Ravenhall citizens rather than Basil and the Reserve was deliberate. Even though it had been Max who has rescued her, she was miffed at everyone and found Ravenhall less objectionable. “So first you cut us off,” she said, “and now you’re cowering behind us.”
“We are doing no such thing,” Orin objected.
Matilda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. We’re nothing but flesh shields to you.”
“Why are they even here?” Orin shouted.
“Why indeed,” Giselle said. She skewered me with her assassin’s glare. That in turn made everybody else look at me too. Max’s hand rested on the small of my back.
“I don’t know why I wanted them here,” I said. “I just had a feeling.”
“The last time a human had a feeling, Lucifer was unleashed,” Scott Brandis said.
“If you think you could do a better job,” Giselle said, “be my guest.” She pretended to look around her. “Oh wait, it appears as though you’ve stuffed everything up already. If the maniac you appointed to the Dominion prison and that Nephilim bastard hadn’t tried to kill Alessia in the first place, she wouldn’t have had to harness the Angelical and things would be stable.”
The worst part of their pained silence was that they knew Giselle was right. Lex had only started messing with the Angelical because Tiberius and Jonah had branded her as forsaken.
So that they didn’t descend into a full-on brawl, I raised my voice. “The Sisterhood is better equipped to deal with the malachim than the rest of you.”
“There are only five of them!” Orin scoffed.
“Come over here and let me show you what five of us can do,” Giselle said. The side of her head became transparent. Honestly, it was like wrangling children.
“How are we going to even stand a chance?” Megan asked.
Beside me, Max crossed his arms over his chest. “We take them by surprise,” he said. “We bring the fight to them for once. No more playing the defensive game. If they want a war, we’ll give them one.”
Through the mating link, I could feel the undercurrent of his pack link and the eagerness of the shifters in the room to do just that. They would never forget the attacks on the Reserve, and they were sick of being backed into a corner.
“You’re out of your mind,” Orin said.
Angus seemed to think otherwise. Or maybe he was just sick of listening to Orin whine. I knew I was. “Have you got something in mind?” He was looking at me when he asked it. The voice that answered came from the direction of the door.
“I believe I have exactly what you’re looking for,” Professor McKenna said. My heart fluttered to life as Professor McKenna marched into the room with Jacqueline by her side.
The professor scanned the room until she found me. Her smile made me want to leap up and run towards her. Instead, I squeezed Max’s hand and he leaned over and kissed my temple, feeling my elation through the mating link.
As she drew closer to the middle of the room, I noticed that she wore a vial of red blood around her neck. She’d had something similar on the night of Kai and Chanelle’s bonding ceremony too.
As she reached the centre, Professor McKenna held it up. “Malachi’s blood. Even while he was incapacitated by the Angelical, he had the foresight to give me this.”
She found me again in the crowd and my heart started beating again. Kai’s blood. Professor McKenna nodded at me. For six months I had been trying everything I possibly could to summon Kai. Now that I knew Apollyon had his body, the blood would at least give us a chance of bringing that part of him home.
All of a sudden, it had made absolute sense why the malachim had attacked Professor McKenna and why Haniel had possessed her. Another malachim might have killed her and then we wouldn’t have this key to bringing him back.
An ominous feeling slid over me. Like the first gut instinct of a prey animal that something was wrong, even though its senses weren’t picking up danger. When I glanced up, Giselle had me deadlocked in her eyes.
So, you brought us back to catch a Nephilim monster, she said in my head.
I winced. I didn’t know why but her speaki
ng directly in my mind made me feel exposed. In the mating link, Max’s lion snarled.
I gritted my teeth and thought back, I brought you back to do your duty.
And what duty is that?
To save the monsters from themselves.
It did not bode well that she smiled at me with all her teeth showing.
48
Despite Giselle’s disdain of all things supernatural, there was something to be said about their efficiency. Once the meeting was disbanded, all the factions got to work right away making preparations. Max hung back at the door. He grabbed me around the nape of my neck in a hold that was infuriatingly possessive.
“Stick to Giselle like glue,” he ordered me. “Don’t you dare run off and do something stupid.”
I slapped at his hand. “I’ll be inside Seraphina until you see me again! What do you imagine happening?”
When he kissed me, all of the things he imagined came floating up between us. Nightmarish scenarios in which I would be snatched away from him. It was a wonder he even had the presence of mind to leave with Durin to make preparations for the safety of the Reserve. Walter had suggested that Max should stay behind to take the briefing with the Nephilim and almost got his face ripped off by Durin, Dorian, and Max.
“I’ll be careful,” I said when he pulled away.
He didn’t say a word, because we both knew if he thought on it too hard, he’d never leave. When I turned around, the Evil Three and Basil were giving me strange looks. Theirs ranged from disgusted to almost wishful. His was thoroughly unimpressed.
“I spent all my time trying to keep one boy off Lex, and now you turn around and get yourself mated to another,” Basil snarked at me.
I stepped up to join him and he slung an arm around my shoulders. “He’s not so bad,” I said.
Basil made a very undignified sound. “We’ll see.”
We were being rounded up into the team that would perform the summoning spell. All of the high- and low-magic users were in the room, along with some of the elemental Fae. The Evil Three made a beeline for Isla.
“Go,” Basil said. He pushed me at them, both of us suddenly a bit sad that Lex wasn’t here.
Unsurprisingly, Professor Mortimer was in charge. “You all understand the objective, don’t you?”
Eugenia opened her mouth, but Cordelia elbowed her. It gave the professor enough time to move on without Eugenia’s smart comment derailing the conversation. She pouted like a child whose toy had been taken away.
“Professor McKenna will perform the actual summoning spell with Malachi’s blood. The rest of us will produce our own summonings to disperse and distract from the flow of magic. We’ll split into groups. Those of us who are better versed in words of light will be prepared should Apollyon be possessing Kai at the time.
“The Sisterhood will be ready with a soul circle to contain Kai’s physical body as soon as he emerges. Possessed or not, he will be in a murderous rage.”
Giselle clicked her tongue. “And what do we do with Prince Charming after we’ve caught him? We can’t hold the soul gate forever.”
“If we survive this,” Eugenia muttered. It said a lot that nobody actually contradicted her.
“The Council will make a decision about that once we’ve secured him.”
“We’re going to have to assume that Apollyon isn’t going to go easy,” Basil piped up. “He’s a lesser order of angel, but he was still a celestial being once upon a time. What do we do if the combined strength of our words of light won’t remove him?”
Professor Mortimer looked towards me. He swallowed as though finding it difficult to come up with the words. “I can try transmuting Lex’s blood to give us a power boost,” I said. “But it’s probably going to be a one-time deal.”
“And a very last resort,” Basil said. “Very last.”
“Screw that!” Giselle said. “If the girl can take a power shot at the demon, then she should do it upfront. I thought we were going to try and be smart about this. What’s the use in waiting until we’re in a corner before breaking out the canons?”
There was momentary silence. Basil’s face twitched.
“I hate to say it,” Eugenia said, even though her wide grin suggested otherwise, “but the assassin has a point.”
Finally able to come up with an excuse, Basil said, “The alchemy is too unreliable. And Lex’s blood is too strong. Sophie could be seriously hurt.”
“And the risk to the rest of us is tiny, is it?” Matilda asked.
Professor Suleiman weighed in, “The risk is smaller for us because there will be more of us to take the brunt of any backlash. Sophie is the only one who can access this source of power. All the risk is on her. It’s not a fair thing to ask.”
Professor McKenna spoke up. “Why don’t we ask her then?” She turned to me. “What would you like to do, Sophie?”
I gulped and looked at my hands. For six months I had been searching for Kai. Now that I had a chance of finding at least one half of him, I didn’t want to give that up because I was afraid. On the other hand, there was every possibility that the discharge of power might kill me. I was now mated, and any decision I made that put me in danger had strings attached to it. “Can I discuss it with Max?”
Giselle looked like she was going to puke. But Professor McKenna beamed at me. “There’s a mirror in the powder room.”
It was a misnomer to call it a powder room. It was more like a small penthouse attached to the back of the ballroom. The link told me that Max was out of mirror range. I had to patch a call through to Noah who was on office duty, and he had to get one of the others to grab Max.
His face when he appeared before me from Durin’s office was full of shadows.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “We’re making arrangements for the little ones to hide in the human world. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
I gnawed on my bottom lip. “What?” he asked.
I relayed Giselle’s suggestion. “I’m going to snap her neck the next time I see her,” he spat. He got up and started pacing. “What do you think are the chances that this might work?”
I knew where he was leading. He wanted reassurances. But any answer I gave him would be a guess and I didn’t want to mislead him with it.
“I don’t know. It’s always a risk. Her blood is so strong. If I get it a tiny bit wrong...it’s just hard to say.”
“But there’s a better chance of you being able to exorcise Apollyon than one of the others?”
I nodded, knowing he was weighing up my safety with the chance of getting Kai back.
“We would attempt a combined assault,” I added. “But we stand a better chance trying it all at once than waiting until they’ve all failed.” In that, I agreed wholeheartedly with Giselle.
Max slapped his hand on the mirror. It cut out for a second. In the mating link, I heard a tremor and knew that he was roaring on the other side of the mirror. When the picture returned, he was deceptively calm.
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you think is best.”
I had never heard a more reluctant agreement, but I knew just how much he was giving up by agreeing at all.
“Do you need to change your guard position to be here?” I asked.
“No.”
“Okay.”
We sat there for a quiet moment. I took in his strained expression and wished that I could be there with him while he ferried off the pack’s most vulnerable once more. It must have felt like another failure on his part. “One last time,” I lied.
He chuckled. “You really are pretty good at that,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
I glanced down at my hands, suddenly wary that keeping secrets might no longer be possible. “Sophie.” I looked into grey eyes that suddenly made me want to not have any secrets. “Thanks for checking with me.”
His head turned as though he heard some
thing close by. “I’ve gotta go. See you tonight.”
Every eye in the room followed me as I made my way back to my seat. “I can do it,” I informed them.
“Well, hallelujah,” Giselle sniped. “I guess not all the beasts have mush for brains.”
Her statement made me bristle. “That beast is the one who kept you from being a vegetable,” I said. “So stop making snide comments.”
Isla and the Evil Three whooped at me. It was followed by Eugenia and Cordelia’s catcalls.
The fact that Giselle’s expression remained bland wasn’t as disturbing as the protectiveness that kept egging me to lash out at her. Where in the world had that come from?
Professor Mortimer cleared his throat. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
We discussed what would happen on the off chance that Kai somehow managed to break out of the soul circle. “It’s a small possibility,” Giselle said. “But if it does happen, the only option is elimination.”
“That seems to be your only option for everything!” Isla said.
“What would you suggest instead? He’s a Nephilim and he’ll have no soul to put the brakes on his killing spree. Which one of you wants to go up against that?”
“Is there no chance of him being contained inside the cells?” Cordelia asked.
“He’s too strong,” Professor Mortimer said. “He’s been too strong since he was fourteen. They’re mostly ceremonial for him now.”
“What about a portal to somewhere he won’t be a danger to anyone?” Alison asked.
“And where would that be?” Eugenia wanted to know.
Alison shrugged. “How should I know? It’s your world.”
“Also,” Eugenia added, “he teleports, remember?”
“I’m leaning more and more towards extermination,” Matilda added. She was playing with her knives again. She just kept throwing them in the air and catching them like it was nothing at all. Every time I waited for the pointed end to come down on her, but it never did.
Sighing, I made another suggestion. “If Kai somehow manages to break out of the soul gate before we can exorcise Apollyon, I might be able to contain him with Lex’s blood. From what I could tell, that’s how Apollyon is trapping him at the moment.”
