by Noree Cosper
“After using an ice wall to block us,” Adrian said.
“Power over weather?” Jonah stroked his beard. “That is dangerous.”
“Irae is a pyrokinetic,” I said. “And Viktor is a telekinetic.”
“All dangerous powers.” Adrian cut his gaze to me. “As I have always said.”
“So are our weapons, when we had them,” I said. “But we choose to use them against demons instead of humans.”
“Sariel’s ire is against the same thing we fight,” Adrian said. “Demons.”
“Except he appears to want to take the whole city down to kill them,” I said.
“Exactly,” Adrian said. “Which makes him no different from demons. Just like the nephilim beside him.”
“So, what? You plan to kill your own brother to stop him?” I asked.
“No.” His voice softened with a quiet fury. “I plan on ripping that thing from my brother and destroying it.”
Jonah paled. “To kill an angel...”
“May not be possible, especially the Archangel of Death.” I paced across the room. “However, there may be a way to get it out of Esais.”
“You’re the expert on emissaries,” Adrian said. “You don’t know?”
“Nothing I have ever heard of,” I said. “Esais’s library is gone. I’ll have to check other sources. Maybe Marge will have something. In the meantime, were you able to find out any information on Irae?”
Jonah cleared his throat. “Yes. One of my contacts got back to me. Dean Murray, he runs a group of hunters in Kentucky.”
“What did he have to say?” I asked.
“A year ago, the St. Mary’s Holy Convent outside of Covington, Kentucky had an incident with a fire. Several buildings were destroyed and there were a few deaths.”
“And Irae was behind it?” I asked.
“I believe so,” Jonah said. “Dean investigated and learned from several of the students about a girl who’d joined the convent three years ago. She and her parents believed she’d been gifted by God.”
Adrian snorted. “If it is Irae, I doubt the other girls thought that.”
“Indeed,” Jonah said. “Irene, that was the girl’s name, was considered a witch or demon spawn.”
“Hmm, and she’s not one to react calmly,” I said. “What happened to her afterward?”
“She disappeared the night of the fire,” Jonah said.
“Probably with the help of Sariel,” I said. “And now he brought her to New York.”
“The girl is unhinged and needs to be dealt with,” Adrian said.
“She needs help,” Jonah said.
“It’s beyond that,” Adrian said. “She’s already killed humans. And she’s involved in Sariel’s plans. At this point, she’s like any other monster we hunt.”
I crossed my arms with a sigh. “I agree with you. You said you were working on a weapon against the nephilim. How far did you get?”
“Not very far,” he said. “However, I backed up my plans to my computer at home. I can continue working on it there.”
I raised a brow. “You have a home in the city? I rarely see you leave the office.”
“Sometimes, even I like to get away from the madhouse.”
“Great,” I said. “You can work on that and Jonah and I can work on trying to locate them more.”
Jonah stifled a yawn. “Forgive me. It has been a trying day. Perhaps we can rest and reconvene in the morning?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Jonah pulled me into a hug and patted me on the back. Then, he stepped back and cleared his throat. Adrian gave me a nod as he exited the hospital. Of course, he was not the hugging type.
I returned to my apartment and leaned against the closed door, breathing in the familiar scent myrrh from the incense I’d burned a few days ago. An emptiness filled the living room. The couch still looked brand new. I was barely home to enjoy it, not that I would be using it now. I trudged into the bedroom and collapsed onto the mattress. My body ached with exhaustion after everything I’d been through, but my mind was racing. After tossing and turning for hours, I finally managed to sleep. I awoke to a text from Lucy the next morning.
Meet me at the hospital ASAP, it read. I have a lead.
Chapter 23
I entered Tres’s room to find Jonah and Adrian already waiting. “She contacted you, as well?”
Jonah nodded. “She wouldn’t say what she found. Perhaps she has divined something about this Sariel.”
“I’m not so sure.” I glanced at Tres, lying still in the hospital bed. “She was more concerned about finding a way to help Tres.”
“Well, I hope she has.” Jonah’s voice took on a rough edge. “We need the boy back.”
I nodded, then glanced over at Adrian who moved to stare out the window. “How is the nephilim weapon coming?”
“Slowly,” he said.
Before he could elaborate, the door swung open and crashed into the wall, revealing Lucy, panting with her cheeks red. She gazed at us with an excited grin plastered to her face.
“I know how to save Tres,” she said.
Hope fluttered in my stomach as I stepped closer to her with my arms crossed. Jonah sat up straighter while Adrian leaned forward in his seat.
“That’s excellent,” Jonah said. “What do we have to do?”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Lucy said. “It took me forever to figure out what was holding him.”
“And?” I prompted after a few seconds of silence.
“The spirits that granted Tres’s power, the Fates, are holding him hostage as a sort of punishment,” Lucy said. “They are angry they didn’t get to claim a death.”
I bit my lip. “Me.”
Lucy nodded.
“So, how do we get rid of them?” Adrian asked.
“We can’t.” Lucy laughed as if his question was preposterous. “They are attached to Tres.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened and his eye narrowed. He turned to stare out the window.
“How do we get Tres back, then?” Jonah asked.
“I can perform a ritual to send someone into the Eclipse to retrieve Tres,” Lucy said.
“Won’t the Fates require a life to free him?” I asked.
“No. They are weakened from their battle for you. Whoever goes in should be able to wrest Tres away.” Lucy patted a small bag hanging across her chest. “I have a few talismans that should help. I stocked up before I came back. The only question is, who is going to go?”
“He’s trapped because of me,” I said before Adrian could speak up. “I’ll go.”
Lucy set her bag in one of the chairs, unzipped it, and pulled out a small bottle with a yellowish oil and a palm sized black drawstring bag.
“The ritual is going to expand on your natural ability and allow you to travel into the Eclipse,” she said as she continued to dig around in her bag.
I rested my hands on my hips and raised an eyebrow. “You knew it would be me this whole time?”
Lucy shrugged. “It pays to be a fortune teller.”
I glanced at the door to Tres’s room. “How long is this going to take?”
“Not sure,” she said. “A few minutes, a few hours.”
Jonah cleared his throat. “Please, let’s make it a few minutes. I will go into the hall and try to distract any nurses or doctors who want to come in.”
“I’ll stay the near the door and keep an eye for when things go wrong,” Adrian said.
I tilted my head and asked in a soft voice, “Do you really believe that things will go wrong?”
He stared at me hard for a moment before looking away. “Just bring Tres back.”
Lucy held out the small black bag. “Here, this should protect you from things in the Eclipse.”
“Including the Fates?” I asked.
She placed a large diamond in my left hand. “That’s what this if for. The symbol on it should ward you against them… Maybe you could eve
n use it as a weapon, if you need to.”
The diamond had three upright triangles. Two were side-by-side resting on the point of the third.
“This had to be expensive. How did you come across this so quickly?” I asked.
She glanced at Adrian and leaned in closer to me, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Was my wedding ring from way back when. I just etched the symbol in it.”
I raised a brow. Lucy had been around for almost a century as was Jonah, not that the Van Helsing brothers knew. “Still, it’s only been a few hours.”
“I did it a few days ago,” she said. “I thought we might need it for something.”
“You thought we might need a talisman against the Fates? Couldn’t you have been a little more specific as to why?”
“The dice didn’t tell me much,” she said.
I sighed. “All right. So, what do I need to do?”
Lucy scooted the chairs to the walls so there was a clear space. “I’m going to need you to lay down.”
I wrinkled my nose. “On the floor?”
She glanced at it and then waved at me. “Oh, it’s clean enough.”
“Ugh, I’m not so sure,” I said, but I did what she asked.
She took the bottle and poured it around me in a circle. A pungent smell filled the air.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Just a little jojoba, bog myrtle, sandalwood, jasmines, and wormwood… a good little mix for traveling into the Eclipse,” she said.
“Did you have this waiting too?”
“Nope. I had to go home and whip this up. Didn’t take long though.” She finished the circle with her inside. “There.”
She sat down near the top of me and lifted my head to rest on her lap. She dipped her index finger in the bottle and inscribed a symbol onto my forehead. What it was, I couldn’t tell. It felt like a series of diagonal slashes followed by a figure eight. The oil, warmed by her finger, tingled against my skin.
“You have your shields?” she asked.
I held up my hands, one with the bag and one with the diamond. An emptiness had filled the pit of my stomach. I’d never traveled through the Eclipse before. What if something did go wrong, like Adrian was expecting? I was immortal, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be trapped in the Eclipse. I had to do this. For Tres.
“Good.” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice to chant. “O glorious name of the great living God, all times and all things are ever present to you. O eternal father, I beg you send you servant Gabriella beyond the veil and into the Eclipse. Let her journey show her what she seeks. So be it.”
A pressure built up just behind my eyes and released with an inaudible pop as if I had activated my spirit sight. I hadn’t done anything though. I opened my eyes and found myself standing in the hospital room, only it was different. Tres, Lucy, and Adrian were gone. The colors had leaked away, leaving only gray. The bed looked like it was something out of the forties and a middle-aged man lay in it, his mouth opening and closing in final gasps. His eyes stared vacantly as he slumped back in the bed.
The man had died in the room long ago. It had stained this area of the Eclipse ever since. This had better not be an omen.
I turned to where Lucy should have been. Her words, the repeated incantation, drifted to my ears, growing louder, as if focusing on her pulled her here.
The room shattered and dissipated, and the gray grew into a thick mist.
Ahead of me, a black orb hung in the sky with a white glow surrounding its outer edge. No wonder people called this place the Eclipse. I turned back and blinked in surprise. That same orb hung in the air. No matter which way I turned, it was always in front of me.
“That’s not helpful at all,” I muttered. “I suppose I should just pick a direction.”
I closed my eyes, turned slowly in a circle, and stopped. I opened my eyes and began walking in the way I faced. The ground had a spongy feel though it looked like gray porous rock. I seemed alone in the mist as I continued my trek.
Time passed. Seconds, hours, days, centuries, I didn’t know. Nothing changed in the gray mist as I continued to walk. I’d lost count of my steps in the high hundreds.
I stopped and glanced around. Only the eclipse in the sky greeted me. This wasn’t working.
Maybe the Eclipse went off intent. It would make sense for a spiritual place with no physical trappings. All right, then. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, focusing my thoughts on Tres and the Fates. I began to walk again.
The gurgling of a flowing river traveled to my ears. It surrounded me, always sounding just as loud not matter what direction I turned. As I continued forward, the mist began to recede and shapes took form. At first, the shapes had no definition other than a square or a triangle. The more I walked, the more they took on the form of large boulders.
With my next step, I found myself walking through a tunnel. Roughly hewn stone surrounded me, and women’s voices echoed from ahead. One was cold with clipped phrases while another was more drawn out and soft. The last was high pitched, with a quick cadence. Beside Lucy, these were the first voices I’d heard since coming to the Eclipse. Could these be the Fates?
I sped to a jog and broke through the tunnel, coming into a large cavern filled with white marble pillars attached to the ceiling. Spider webs draped across the spaces between the pillars.
“He has offered us much more than we have tasted in centuries,” the cold voice said. “Many deaths.”
“Not all of us are interested in death, sister,” the high-pitched voice said.
“He is your brother, Tres,” the calm voice said. “You’re favorite. Why would you not join him?”
I ducked down to avoid getting caught up in webs as I rushed farther into the cavern. The pillars grew closer together the further in I moved. I stopped short as I came to the center. Tres hung attached to the largest web, with his body wrapped in spider silk. Three women sat adjacent to him on a thick strand. He stared up at them with an expression of fear and reverence.
“He’s not your brother,” I said. “It’s an angel possessing your brother.”
The women turned in my direction. I couldn’t quite comprehend their faces, a mix of beauty and age together. Their features shifted from one instant to the next. Behind them, their shadows combined, forming into the shape of half woman, half spider. I wanted to dip behind the pillars and run, to hide from the weight of their gaze, but there was no escape from them.
“The one that escaped us,” the woman in the middle, who spoke with the calm voice, said.
“With the help of Lust,” the woman on the right said with her cold voice. “She has fallen into our web a second time. She will not escape now.”
“Wait, sister,” the third said in her light tone. “If we attempt to take her, we must face Lust again.”
“That’s right.” I kept my voice steady. “Naamah isn’t willing to let me go so easily. Even though I wish she would.”
“Why have you come?” the middle woman asked. “We cannot free you from your devil.”
I pointed to Tres with the hand that held the protection bag. “I came to take him back.”
“No,” the cold voiced woman said with a shake of her head. “He is ours.”
“This is his punishment for disturbing the balance,” the middle woman said.
“We can’t allow it,” the third said. “Not without some sort of recompense.”
“It sounded like you wanted to side with Sariel,” I said. “The deaths of many in this city would upset the balance more.”
“Sariel is the great balancer,” the one on the right said.
I looked to the woman on the left. “Do you believe he will bring balance or upset it?”
Her lips, full at that moment, lifted in a smile. “I see you have heard our disagreement.”
“Let Tres make the choice,” I said. “He is your emissary, after all. But you should give him time to weigh his options. And he can’t do so here.”
“He needs to experience what is happening in the physical world.”
“No,” the one on the right said. “He owes us a death still.”
“And he can’t restore that balance here either,” I said.
The middle one crossed her arms. “Very well. We will release him to you, but you must find us a death to replace your own within three days.”
“Otherwise, we will take Tres’s death and find a new vessel,” the one on the right said.
I looked to the woman on the left, but she only shrugged. “It’s a fair judgement.”
“Fine.” I could find a demon in that time.
“Heard and Witnessed,” the three said at once.
The cavern faded away and the gray mist rushed in to surround me. It thickened until I was almost choking on it. I sucked in a deep breath and found myself lying on the floor of Tres’s hospital room.
There was an authoritative knock on the door follow by Dr. Harrison’s voice. “Why is this door closed?”
Chapter 24
I hopped to my feet and grabbed the pitcher of water on the small table beside Tres’s bed. With a nod to Adrian at the door, I dumped the water on the floor near the oil. Lucy rushed to the bathroom as Adrian opened the door a crack.
“Sorry, doctor,” Adrian said. “We wanted some private time, but it seems we have a little bit of a mess.”
“What sort of mess?” the doctor tried to push her way inside. “If it’s hazardous, you shouldn’t be anywhere near it.”
Adrian kept his ground. “Nothing like that. Gabby just accidently knocked over the pitcher of water.
Lucy came out with an armful of towels and flung them on the floor. I got on my hands and knees and started wiping up the oily watery mess. Lucy joined me, scooting the piles of towels around.
“Is there a reason you are blocking me from coming in?” Dr. Harrison asked.
“Ah, Doctor,” Jonah’s voice echoed from the hallway. “I was looking for you. I have a few more questions about Tres’s current state.”
“I came to check on him, but it seems your nephew doesn’t want me here.”
