by Tamsin Baker
Then it hit me. Like an ice shovel in the face. The Law of Targets. The Demons had used our own rules to get under our guard. It had to be. It was so clear now that I recognised it.
The Law of Targets is that we, the Fallen Angels, are only assigned to those who will make a huge difference in the world. Pure souls of great importance and intelligence.
These Witches were so young, barely old enough to come up on the elders’ radar. And even if they were old enough, they obviously weren’t going to change the future of the planet. Not enough to warrant being on The List.
Until Kadie.
I thought back to my first conclusions of Kadie. That she was ordinary. Un-remarkable in the huge scheme of things. I’d questioned why I’d been sent to protect one like her.
And here was the answer. She had been destined to birth my son. A future man that would rid the Earth of the Demons seeking to destroy it. If the predictions I’d been listening to lately were true.
I looked at the girl lying on the table and regret pulled through my heart. I hated leaving her here. Once we knew more, and I knew this place was safe, I would bring Margaret and the others here to bury the Witches. Assuming there was more than just this one on the grounds.
I’m sorry.
I stepped into the hallway once more and took a deep breath of clean air. I couldn’t breathe properly in a room with the dead. Death always made the air cloying and heavy.
The next room was empty, save for tubs of grease and lard. I assumed they were left over from a time when this castle was a functional home.
The third room stunk of death and decay, and yet held only pools of blood and nothing more.
How many women had they brought here?
And had any, except Kadie, survived?
That question had my hands tightening into fists and my skin tingling with a hot anger I could barely control. I’d seen a lot of death in my time. Senseless war and suffering. But I’d always been distanced from it. Never taking on the personalridiculousness of man.
But this was personal. And I knew it was going to get a hell of a lot more personal before this was over.
The final room at the end of the hall was the one Kadie had been held in, and as I put a hand to the door handle, heat seared up my spine.
Demons.
They were here, in this room, when they weren’t anywhere else in the house. Perhaps the other torture rooms were run by humans?
What a sickening thought.
There was something unique about this end room that I remembered from last time. There had been a presence of Hell itself in this room. A feeling of magic and evil, darkness and power.
I pushed open the door and held the sword in front of me as I stepped inside.
The blackness was unnatural, and as I looked around for even a glimmer of light, I found none.
I flung the door open wide and pushed it against the wall, using what little light there was to cast my eyes around the room.
I needed fire, and a torch. There had to be something in this castle.
When I turned to leave this eerie blackness, a flicker of light caught my eye. It glowed from the inside of the room and I grinned.
Good. They’re back.
A single Demon grew right in front of me. From the tiniest flicker of flame, to a huge, glowing beast that lit up the room.
Once it was as big as I was, I addressed it.
“I have a few questions for you,” I shouted at the Demon, who, if it’s possible for a Demon to look it - seemed surprised to see me.
He didn’t move. Instead, just stood still glowing in the darkened room. Giving me the much needed light that I required.
My gaze skittered around the room. Looking for clues or information I could take home with me.
The room seemed to be in the same state as it had been when I’d taken Kadie, which was good news. Hopefully they hadn’t taken any more girls hostage.
Full of instruments, and needles, and bags of fluid.
Dark bags of fluid.
Blood they’d taken out of her? Poison they’d put into her? I didn’t know.
I raised my sword and surged forward, the heaviness of the air making me want to choke on my own tongue.
The Demon began to glow a fiery red and as I lifted my blade higher to slice at his head, he disappeared into thin air.
Like he’d never been.
The room went pitch black once more.
I spun around, sweat coating my skin as I waited for the attack.
Nothing came and I was left waiting.
I stalked back towards the door, then thought better of leaving with nothing. I grabbed one of the dark bags of fluid from the medical table and one of the used syringes.
Better for Margaret or Tabitha to look at these and tell me what was going on here.
I scanned the room with eyes that struggled to see anything in the gloominess, then marched back to the open door.
Walking back through the empty, eerily quiet castle reminded me of a battle field. When the dead lay quiet and the living had taken themselves home.
I moved along the terrace where I’d taken Kadie when we’d been running away from the Demons. It seemed so long ago, and yet it was only two days day since I’d picked her up in my arms. My wings barely able to carry us home.
I glanced down at my wings, battered and burnt. They’d still carry me, but they’d never look the same.
With the blood bag and the syringe in my hand I took flight, flying harder while the sun danced on my skin.
I had to go back to Tabitha’s and hopefully when I got there, Kadie would be awake, and able to tell us what happened to her.
Chapter 4.
When I walked into Tabitha’s place, it was too quiet for a house with three women in it.
I kept moving until I found one of them. Margaret. In the kitchen, sitting by herself.
“What’s happening around here?” I asked, worry squeezing at my chest like a vice.
“Nice to see you too, Angel.” She replied dryly, sitting up straighter, but otherwise not changing her tone or facial expression.
She was exhausted, that was obvious.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Simone’s with Kadie, and Tabitha had to go off to some meeting, or something,” she said, waving her hand and then using it to cover her mouth while she yawned.
“Thanks.”
I strode off into the room where Kadie was, and was confronted by the sight of her still unconscious form. My sleeping beauty.
“Is she doing any better?” I asked in the quiet room.
Simone jumped up from the chair where she rested and placed her hand over her heart.
“You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Simone had a cloth in her hand, muddied with green and black smudges.
“I’ve just been cleaning her. Her body is doing so much better since the cleansing.”
Simone went back to rubbing the poultice grime off Kadie’s skin and I walked around to her other side, not to get in the way.
I bent down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. The scent of her wasn’t right. And it definitely wasn’t Kadie’s.
“Why does she smell so different?” I asked the young Witch.
Simone sighed heavily. “Her soul is not as it was.”
“Did you know her before?”
Simone shook her head. “No. I’ve never met any other Witch before, other than my aunt Margaret. She’s kept me pretty much in the dark.”
“So how do you know?” I asked again, struggling to maintain an even tone.
I didn’t want to hear from some baby Witch that Kadie’s soul was different now. I couldn’t stand that. Our son needed to know her true self.
Simone didn’t answer, she simply pulled the blanket down and continued to wash Kadie’s body, which was looking so much healthier and stronger now.
The sores were healed, her skin was a normal colour. She even had a soft glow in h
er cheeks.
“Then how do you know something is wrong with her soul?” I repeated.
Pain was burning in my gut from my attempt to stay calm. I didn’t want to know that Kadie had changed. That she may wake up different. Soul-less.
Had the Demons really changed her that much?
Simone shrugged. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” came the admonishment from the door.
I ignored Margaret.
“Yes, Simone, you should say something. If you two know something that I don’t. And speaking of which, these are for you to analyse.”
I pulled the bag and the syringe from my shirt and placed them on the empty table next to Kadie.
“What do you have there?” Margaret asked, walking forward to examine them.
“I took them from the room inside the castle where they held Kadie.”
Margaret picked up the bag of blood and weighed it in her hands.
“This isn’t blood. This is the poison they infected her with.” She moved out of the room and came back with a huge bowl and a knife.
“You aren’t going to open that are you?”
I didn’t want that stuff anywhere near Kadie again.
“Only one way to find out what she was actually poisoned with.” Margaret sliced open the bag with a quick flick of the knife along the plastic and black gunk oozed into the bowel like a vomiting swamp.
An awful stench rose into the air like a burning cloud. I held my breath while the two Witches gagged.
“Take it outside!” Simone screamed as she fell to the ground in a fit of coughing.
Margaret grabbed the bowl and hurried outside.
I followed her and watched as she spilled it onto the grass in the backyard.
The green grass hissed and burned, slowly dying before my very eyes.
“What the hell was in that?” I asked Margaret.
“Cyanide, among other things,” the Witch panted, staggering back to the house.
I put an arm around her waist and helped her back to the room, sliding shut the back door as quickly as possible. Simone was busy opening the front door and all the windows in the house.
“I hope that helped you work out what she was poisoned with,” I said, although the women looked deathly pale and quite distressed.
Margaret should never have opened that inside, but no point in laying blame now.
“Yes, and I’m afraid we’re going to need more than a few herbs to bring her back,” Simone said, her mouth drawing into a painful grimace.
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning at the young Witch.
Simone coughed a few times and then drew in a few deep breaths near an open window.
“I mean, that concoction is designed to slowly, and surely, kill a Witch. And make sure she can never come back.”
“What do you mean, never come back?” Wasn’t death always definite?
Since when could Witches come back from the dead?
Margaret stepped forward and sat down on the chair next to the empty bed, her skin still the colour of ash. “She doesn’t mean in the flesh, not technically anyway. But we have some religious nights where our communication abilities with our elders and relatives are enhanced. This poison they’ve mixed up would make sure that Kadie could never come back for any of that. She would be shut off from this world once she left it. And all of her magic with it.”
I struggled to comprehend the information the Witches were giving me. So, they were telling me that this poison was designed to not only kill the Witch who took it, but destroy her very soul as well?
“Do you think this poison has been used on all those other girls?” I swallowed hard as I remembered the girl that they’d left to rot on the table. Guilt gnawed at my gut for leaving her.
I should tell Margaret and Simone about her, but later. Once Kadie was better. I would take them there myself.
“What do you mean?” They asked me.
“They’re trying to steal these Witches power. Their magic.”
Margaret nodded slowly, her eyebrows drawing down into a thoughtful frown. “I’m afraid so, but for what purpose?”
A hardness fell over my body as the anger set in.
“The only purpose there ever is with beings of evil. Power.”
I needed to stop them before they worked out how to harness these girls magic. Especially Kadie’s. She seemed to be unusually powerful.
“What are you going to do about it, Angel?” Margaret asked me suddenly, her eyes glittering with an anger I felt also.
“I’m going to find whoever it is that is doing this, and stop them. And if that means tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time, and diving into Hell. Then I will.”
I needed to get to the source, before they found a way to us.
The younger Witch stepped closer to me, reaching a hand out as though seeking a connection. “You need to be careful, Gabriel. Your son is very important, and he will need you,” Simone whispered, her eyes glowing that strange silver they did sometimes.
“What are you?” I asked and she dropped her gaze from mine as though embarrassed.
“She’s a Witch who hasn’t even come into her powers yet,” Margaret said, though it didn’t really answer my question.
It was no matter. Mage, magician, powerful Witch or fortune teller. As long as Simone fought on our side, her true calling was not my concern.
“Shall I take either of you back to your homes now?” I asked, as my restlessness began to shiver through me once again.
There was a war coming and I needed to be prepared for it.
“I’m staying with Kadie,” Simone declared, grabbing for the blanket that covered Kadie’s body as though I would tear her away from her patient.
I had been bred to read humans well, and Simone had no ill intent towards Kadie. Quite the opposite. She was fiercely protective of the fallen Witch.
I turned towards Margaret who nodded her head.
“I will come with you. I need to make some more medicines for Kadie if she has any hope of returning to us.”
There was one more question that had been tickling the back of my mind, and I had to ask it, despite my fear of the answer.
“Will my son be alright? After all, he was inside his mother when she was poisoned.”
Margaret chewed on her lips in worry for a moment.
“I believe so, although I have not seen him. You child is half immortal, and as human women, our bodies are designed to protect our babes while taking the brunt of any abuse to ourselves. He got the best of both worlds, I would hope.”
The babe had looked well when I’d seen him with Jasmine, so for the moment, I needed to focus on that.
“All right. I will drop you back at your home, and I will gather whatever information you think I need. Because the next step, I’m afraid, is to go back to the room where Kadie was held and force my way into their dimension.”
Margaret’s shocked gasp filled the room. “You won’t survive that, Gabriel.”
“Maybe. But I can’t think of any other way.”
And I couldn’t. I needed to confront whatever force was trying to steal the Witch’s power. Or already had.
Margaret waved her hands at me. “I will call a council meeting. I’m sure we can find someone who will fight with you. Help you. It can’t possibly end this way.”
Maybe it shouldn’t. And I wasn’t into suicide missions. I was very willing to give my life for the protection of this world, but I wanted to know that my sacrifice would make a difference.
“Perhaps I could continue to fight Demons as I have been. Kill as many as I can. Protect my son and let him grow.”
To be the warrior we have been waiting for.
Tabitha’s voice sounded in my head and I turned to watch her rush into the room.
Something was wrong. “What’s news, my Agent?” I asked.
She looked so much better than she had earlier in the day.
&n
bsp; “Gabriel! You need to get to your son. I sense Demons closing in on him.”
She didn’t need to tell me twice.
I took off at a run and blasted through the front door and into the sky.
Tabitha had always had an annoying way of telling me bad news with a smile on her face.
I flew through the air, heat tingling on my spine even at this height. Damn it.
I pushed harder and wove through the sky. Over New York city and down into Jasmine’s street.
My feet hit the pavement and an eerie quiet descended. It was still early evening, darkness had not yet fallen, and yet I could feel the Demons in the darkness. Waiting.
I ran to the front door and banged on the wood.
Nobody came. I banged again.
My spine tingled with a Demon’s approach. I turned around to find nobody there.
Fuck this.
I slammed my body against the door and cracked it right down the middle. I needed to get to my son.
“Jasmine!” I yelled out as I raced through each of the rooms of her house. It was empty. Where were they?
There was food sitting on the table uneaten. Toys scattered across the floor, as though children had been playing only recently.
Then there was a woman’s terrified scream from below.
“No!”
They had to be downstairs in the cellar.
I ran to the entrance of the house. There was a wooden door beneath the stairs and I ripped it off its hinges.
I flew down the stairs. There before me was a horrible sight. My baby was surrounded by fiery Demons.
“No!” I screamed again as I charged forward, drawing my sword and swinging it in sharp arcs, mowing down the Demons closest to me.
Jasmine clung to my baby and her own daughter, tears streaming down her face.
I sliced straight into the fiery circle. I shoved Jasmine behind me pushed her back to the stairs as I faced off against the Demons.
“Run. Go!” I yelled at Jasmine and she took off. Her ragged breathing and her fast footsteps up the stairs sounding in the room.
“You will never touch him.” I yelled at the remaining Demons, swinging my sword as they converged together.
I ran forward and they all disappeared into thin air.
