by Karen Duvall
“I’m here to take you home, Xenia.” I studied her from head to toe. There were bruises on her bare arms, a cut on her cheekbone and her scraped knees showed through her torn jeans. She’d been beaten. “Who did this to you?”
Xenia clamped her mouth shut as she scorched me with a hateful glare.
“The only side I’m on is the Hatchet knights’,” I told her. “All of us are. This fallen angel is my father, Barachiel. He came to help, and so did Aydin.”
Xenia spit on the ground by Barachiel’s feet. “The Fallen. I know what you are.”
I grabbed her away from my father and clamped my hands roughly to her shoulders. “You know nothing.” I’d had all I was going to take from this girl and gave her a firm shake. “You’re a thief and a liar. Don’t presume anything! Mistakes like that can get you killed.”
Aydin laid a paw on my shoulder and I slid him a sideways glance. He slowly shook his head and I lightened my grip.
Her eyes filled and a tear dripped off the lashes of one lower eyelid. She snuffled loudly, but whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” But I caught a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. Was she that confused?
My heart reached out to her. How could I stay angry with this girl? She had screwed up and suffered consequences I wouldn’t wish on anyone, least of all a sister knight. Now we had to get her home. But first I needed to know what she’d done with Shojin’s heart. “Where is it, Xenia?”
She lowered her eyes to stare at the clumps of dry mud around her feet. “I sold it.”
My heart dived to the pit of my stomach. “All of it? Even the heart?”
She gazed into my eyes and scowled. “Heart? What heart?”
I huffed in exasperation. “The bright purple stone I buried under the tree. You took it, remember? Whom did you sell it to?”
Xenia shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I growled and lunged at her, but Aydin curled a furry arm around my waist and hauled me off my feet. My fingers tore at the air inches away from Xenia’s face. I could have scratched her eyes out right then. She ducked away from me and Barachiel got hold of her again.
At least now we blended in with the rest of the snarling riffraff fighting in the streets. No one gave us a second glance.
“Stop lying!” I screamed at Xenia.
“I swear I’m telling the truth!”
I relaxed, but only for a minute. “Then who took it? And where is it now?”
“I don’t know.”
The heart was gone. My final hope for a future with Aydin was gone.
“Do you wish to cross back now that you have the girl?” Barachiel asked me.
I gritted my teeth as I stared at Xenia. I had to redirect my rage at who was really responsible for the hell we were going through right now. Perhaps it was Maria who’d stolen the heart. After all, she was there the night I reburied it. She could have been watching me before I ventured beyond the safety of Halo Home’s wards. She could have unburied the heart and taken it while I was mind-linked with Aydin, just before she nearly suffocated me to death.
“Maria has the heart,” I told Barachiel, and explained my reason for thinking so. “I have to get it back. And she’s going down when I do.”
My father’s mouth softened slightly with the beginning of a smile. I think he approved of my plan.
“Xenia,” I said. “Take us to Maria’s lair.”
Xenia swallowed and her pleading gaze jumped between the three of us. “Don’t make me go back there. The dark ones. They’ll hurt me again.”
“We won’t let them touch you,” I told her.
“You don’t understand,” Xenia said. “There are at least a dozen fallen angels with her and one of them is her father.” She flicked a frightened look at Barachiel. “And there are women there, too.”
I frowned. “Human women?”
She nodded. “They’re very chummy with the Fallen. Paired up. They, um…” Looking embarrassed, she said, “They make out a lot.”
None of this sounded right. Fallen angels paired up with human women? It couldn’t get more wrong than that.
“Who are they?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve never been introduced. But you know what’s really scary?”
I waited for her to answer her own question.
“They’re pregnant.”
twenty-one
I FELT SUDDENLY NUMB. THE SPAWN OF THESE fallen angels would have powers like the Hatchet knights.
Barachiel shook his head. “This can’t be. The Fallen are unable to father children.”
“Which means they hadn’t yet fallen when they took their mates,” I said.
“So they were Arelim as I had been.” Barachiel’s eyebrows tilted in a worried frown. “No ordinary human woman can bear the child of an angel. They must either be a Hatchet knight, or one who can speak with the Arelim.”
“Angel whisperers,” I said. Just like our squires. And more to the point, just like Xenia. That must be why Maria had kidnapped her. But why her and not the others?
“Xenia,” I said, smoothing away the steel edge from my voice, or at least trying to. “I remember you telling me you were special, better than the other squires. Where did that come from?”
She blinked and darted her gaze left to right. “It’s what I was told.”
“By whom?” I asked.
She bit her bottom lip and winced. “An angel. He didn’t tell me his name and I thought he was my chosen guardian, the one I’d be introduced to on my birthday. He said I was destined for something better than the Hatchet knights.”
Damn. He couldn’t have been one of our Arelim angels and he obviously acted on Maria’s behalf. She could be gearing up to start a new order of knights on her own.
Xenia’s eyes filled with tears again. “He acted like he understood what I was going through. He knew I was motherless, that I’d had a tough life growing up, and he sympathized with my fears. He made me feel like I mattered.”
“How did Maria get you to go with her?” Barachiel asked.
“She promised me a better life and a husband who wouldn’t leave me or my baby. She said I’d be treated like a queen.”
Brilliant. Maria had used the guardian-as-mate card to play Xenia. Girls groomed to be squires knew they’d lose their guardian the minute they conceived. He would either become human or fall. The Fallen were forced apart from their knights, but this new order apparently allowed them to stay together.
“Maria found me after I’d sold all the charms I’d stolen from you. She brought me through the veil,” Xenia said. “I hate it here and I’m treated like anything but a queen. She’s made me her slave.”
To say I was furious at this point would be an understatement. My ears burned and the pulse in my neck beat hard enough to make my entire body shake.
“Calm yourself,” Barachiel told me.
I clenched my jaw and heaved in deep breaths. Maria wouldn’t get away with this. I’d die before letting her use and abuse more girls like she had Xenia.
“I take it you’re in the village running errands for Maria?” I asked.
Xenia nodded. “I was sent for supplies.”
I focused on regaining control of my temper so that I could think more clearly. Maria knew I’d come here. She had taunted me to get my attention and as soon as we arrived, I conveniently ran into Xenia on the street. Convenience, my ass. I’d been set up.
I wasn’t about to change my plan. We would still go to Maria’s lair, but we’d be more prepared than she expected. She didn’t know I had a fallen angel on my side, too.
“Xenia, did you get a chance to talk to the other women?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “They were off-limits to me, but I caught a glimpse of them when I walked by the big room where they’d all get together and, um…you know.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “You mean an orgy?”
She nodded.
I h
ated to ask this next question, but I had to know if these women were being held against their will. “Did they act like they enjoyed it?”
“Chalice!” Barachiel’s widened eyes made him look like a shocked dad.
“We have to know if they’re prisoners or willing participants,” I said. “It’s not for my own interest. Sheesh. I’m not a pervert.”
“I didn’t watch, so I wouldn’t know. Besides, what difference does it make?” Xenia asked.
“Because we need to get them out of there.” These women were carrying the children of Arelim angels. Those babies were related to the Hatchet knights, and that made them our family. “I want to take them home. With us.”
Aydin threw up his paws and began to pace. I guessed he wasn’t too keen on that idea.
“It’s not like we can click our heels together and chant, ‘There’s no place like home,’” Xenia said. “We’re stuck here. There’s no way back.”
Of course there was a way back. I pulled Maria’s fallen angel feathers from my knapsack. “If Maria can cross back and forth, so can we.”
“You only have three feathers,” Xenia said.
Barachiel spread his wings. “I have plenty more.”
“How many fallen angels are with her?” I asked.
She squinted, appearing to mentally calculate her answer. “Ten. Maybe eleven. I know Maria’s father is one of them, but he hasn’t been around.”
There’s no way we could stand up to a small army of immortal fallen angels. We would have to return with reinforcements to take the women away. It was time to scope out Maria’s crystal cave and see what we were up against. And then I would find where she had stashed Shojin’s heart.
After Xenia collected her supplies, she led us out of the village. The four of us looked like the little troupe from Wizard of Oz, minus Toto. The road wasn’t paved with yellow bricks, but made of dirt, and it took us through a maze of towering rock formations and a forest of creepy trees. The trees moved and it wasn’t the wind that thrashed their branches. Their bark rippled and they seemed to strain against the roots holding them in place.
“Don’t get too close,” Barachiel warned. “The trees are carnivorous.”
“No one has to tell me twice,” Xenia said, shoving herself closer to me. “Maria warned me not to touch them. Now I know why.”
A leafless branch shot up to snag a bird that looked like a crow, but it had no beak. In fact, it appeared to have a human face, though I couldn’t be sure. I was starting to miss my super senses. I felt blind without them.
Aydin took the lead as we walked, with Xenia a pace or two behind him and well out of earshot. I thought it a good opportunity to chat with my long-lost father. “Where have you been all this time?”
Barachiel shrugged and hesitated too long before answering, “Not a place you’d know.”
I realized the human realm wasn’t the only world that supported life. If there were three veils, why not four? Or five? “Another veil?” I asked.
“No.” He heaved in a breath and let it slowly out his mouth. “Another dimension.”
I nodded, remembering what Gus had told me. “I know of the fourth dimension, but I’ve never been there.”
He raised his eyebrows as he turned his head to look at me. “You never cease to amaze me.”
Now it was my turn to shrug. “I haven’t been a knight for long, but I was involved with charms and curses for over a decade. So I’ve been around the supernatural block a few times.”
He nodded. “Indeed you have.”
“What were you doing in the fourth dimension?”
“Perfecting my magic.”
It wasn’t that long ago that I detested anything having to do with magic. But with Aydin’s help I’d come to finally accept it as a natural part of my life. There was good magic and bad. I’d seen plenty of bad, but good? Not so much.
“What kind of magic?” I asked, worried how he would answer. I couldn’t handle it if he practiced the dark stuff like Gavin, who was all about greed and power. Barachiel didn’t seem the type, but I didn’t really know him yet.
“It’s nothing evil, Chalice. Not much different from what the Arelim practice. But some of my defensive magic can be lethal, which is why I’m perfecting it. Putting my own spin on it, so to speak.”
“Why?”
“Magic has always been a part of who I am.”
I could see where this was going. “And that’s why you didn’t want to stay with my mother. You didn’t want to become human and lose your powers.”
“Partly, yes. But Chalice, even though your mother and I respected each other and I cared very much for her, we were never in love.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated as if searching for the right words. “I didn’t abandon her. She and I both agreed that my leaving would be best for all of us, including you.”
I sighed. I supposed he was right, but I couldn’t help remembering back to how badly I’d wanted the American dream. A mom and dad, brothers and sisters, a house with a garden, a real school with friends… But that life was never meant for me. I’d been forced to make the most of what I had.
“There’s another reason, too,” he said. “I do not ever want to die.”
I hadn’t thought about the immortality angle. “Does death bother you that much?”
“I may be an angel, but we don’t know everything. The Arelim are the lowest order of angel, just above the Fallen, so I was never privileged with the knowledge of such a divine mystery as death.”
My mind still tried to wrap itself around the whole immortality thing. “If angels can’t die, how will we get rid of Maria’s horde or coven or whatever the hell they are?”
Barachiel twitched his eyebrows. “Angels can be banished.”
That was an unfamiliar concept for me. “Really?”
“It rarely happens and very few know how to do it.”
“Have you ever banished anyone?”
“Never had a reason to, but I know how it’s done. The spell for banishment is linked to what I did at the fatherhouse the night you summoned me.”
That was the night he stopped time so that I could escape. I’d never forget the image of Shui frozen in midflight about two feet off the ground.
“The spell connected to that one will banish an angel to an area of the fourth dimension that does not move.”
“Doesn’t move?” That made no sense.
“It’s difficult to explain.” Barachiel narrowed his eyes and used his hands to form a cocoon like the one he had made around the horn. “It’s a pocket of time that goes neither forward nor backward. It acts as a prison of sorts.”
“Inertia.” Though my knowledge of quantum physics was a bit fuzzy, I knew the fourth dimension had something to do with time and space. So what he just said did make sense, but from a magic point of view.
“Is it permanent?” I asked.
“I believe so, but I’m not certain.”
I wondered how many angels had been banished there and what crimes had caused their punishment. It was comforting to know that if bad angels couldn’t be killed, at least they could be contained.
Xenia stopped and pointed to a large hill up ahead. “The crystal cave is in there.”
The four of us huddled behind an outcropping of rocks on the opposite side of the road. I watched Aydin, whose nostrils flared as he sought out a scent. I knew what he was looking for.
“Is it here?” I asked him.
He hung his head and wagged it from side to side.
My shoulders slumped in defeat. Maria could have hidden the heart anywhere, including the human realm. We might end up searching right back where we started.
I wished I could see through the thick rocks that encompassed the cave. I also wished I could have a conversation with Aydin to discuss my plan. The only option left at this point was to scope out the cave and spy on the women being kept there. I could take that information home to share with the Arelim. They would know what to do.
“I’m going in,” I told the others as I slid my balisong from the sheath on my back. “This won’t take long.”
“No!” Xenia grabbed my arm. “Let me go first. They’re expecting me. Maybe I can distract Maria while you find a way to sneak inside.”
“Maria expects her back anyway,” Barachiel said. “It makes sense.”
Aydin slapped a hand against his chest.
“You want to go with me?” I asked him.
He nodded and, after a minute’s hesitation, Barachiel nodded, too. I appreciated how protective they were, but I’d been in far worse situations than this. They shouldn’t worry so much.
“You’ll stand watch for us then?” I asked my father, and he nodded again.
Xenia stepped away from us and strode with confidence toward the cave entrance. She didn’t look one bit worried, her back straight and head held high. It contradicted the frightened girl we’d confronted only an hour ago. I gave a mental headshake. Xenia was an oddity that I doubted I would ever figure out.
Aydin and I crossed the road to get closer to the cave, using the tall rock formations to shield us from view. I guessed about a hundred yards lay between us and the front entrance, where Xenia had already disappeared. I searched for a back entry and found a small opening on the side of the hill. Peering inside, I was shocked at how dark it was. I never imagined I could be so visually impaired.
“Can you see?” I whispered to Aydin.
He nodded. I wasn’t surprised. Gargoyles had excellent night vision.
I held on to his tail as he stealthily moved up ahead. I stumbled over a rock in my path and Aydin reached back to steady me. We wound through a narrow tunnel that led deep into the hill and I hoped it ended inside the cave. Anxiety seeped through my skin and crawled around the pit of my stomach. Was this how it felt to be claustrophobic? A faint light shone ahead and I wheezed out a relieved breath.
I tugged Aydin’s tail to get him to stop, then stooped down to crawl between his legs so I could get ahead of him. Even with his wings folded close to his body, he was a very tight fit.
The knapsack strapped to my back was impeding my efforts so I shrugged it off and dragged it along behind me as I crawled over shards of sharp rock and clumps of dirt. It was hell on my knees, which would be bloody by the time I could stand up again.
