by Ella Summers
But I would find out what had happened. Somehow. I had to understand his history if I was going to help him get past it. If I was going to heal his broken soul.
Later. Right now, I had to focus on the mission.
“Yes, I am familiar with this area,” I said, pointing at the turquoise sea below. “This is one of the places my father conducted wilderness training with me. He said it was the perfect environment for training water elemental resistance. The monsters can be upon you before you know it.”
“As I understand it, the Sea of Monsters contains, in fact, only two monsters.”
“Kind of,” I replied. “There are two main monsters. The West Monster is formed from the same sand and mud that makes up the western shore, whereas the East Monster is solid rock, just like the east coast’s rocky cliffs.
“With every passing year, the two monsters grow larger and larger, as they eat away at the coastlines. Sometimes, they chew off chunks of land. Other times, they nibble away in dainty little bites. When they need to sharpen their teeth, they grind them against the land like a wedge of cheese against a grater; the resulting tiny, rocky particles stream into the sea. The monsters swallow up these particles, and so the land becomes part of the growing beasts’ bodies.
“The monsters can rearrange the material that makes up their bodies, creating smaller monsters out of them.
“I have long wondered what will happen when the two monsters grow too big for this sea. Will they turn their hunger on the rest of the world? Will they one day be large enough to consume the Earth?”
“It would be advisable to develop a way to destroy them before that happens,” Damiel said practically.
“Any ideas?”
He frowned. “Monster extermination is not my area of expertise.”
“I suppose if it were that simple, we would have thought of the solution already.”
“Or perhaps the solution is so simple that we haven’t thought of it,” he said.
I chewed on his words. There was always a certain cleanness to Damiel’s logic.
“My research on the Sea of Monsters tells me that there are a number of islands that only appear when the tide is low,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“I believe Colonel Spellstorm is hiding on one of these islands, likely in an underground cave. With his magic, he could breathe underwater and stay there almost indefinitely.”
“Giving him time to do whatever he is planning with the demons,” I added.
“It’s the sort of plan that would fit Colonel Spellstorm’s past actions. He is quite adept at stealth work and subterfuge. He’s always been particularly effective at sneaking up on his opponents.” For a moment, Damiel’s eyes drifted upward, as though he were recalling a memory—then his gaze snapped back to me. “Colonel Spellstorm has all the necessary skills to excel at treachery.”
He said it with all the dispassionate flatness of someone going through a job candidate’s qualifications. This was the Damiel Dragonsire everyone feared—the cold and emotionless Master Interrogator. The Fury of the Legion, Spirit of Punishment. The Angel of Death. There were many names for Damiel Dragonsire and even more stories. He was the star of every soldier’s nightmares.
But it wasn’t who he truly was. It wasn’t who he had to be.
I looked out at the sea of islands. “Which island is Colonel Spellstorm hiding on? There are hundreds that appear at low tide.”
Damiel’s eyes swept across the newly-revealed islands. He pointed at a very rocky chunk no larger or more noteworthy than any of the other tiny islands. “That one.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a unicorn, remember?”
The picture of the mythical creature with Damiel’s face popped into my head. I laughed at the idea of Damiel as a unicorn, even though I knew the name didn’t refer to the horned horse.
Unicorn. That was the term for the passive-magic ability to track magic, to hunt it down to its source. It wasn’t a power the Legion knew about. In fact, the Legion didn’t know anything about passive magic, including that it existed.
Over time, all angels gained one or two unique abilities outside the magic spectrum that we knew, powers behind the gods’ typical gifts of magic. Things such as tracking magic or teleportation. We’d never understood where these powers came from, nor why one angel might gain different powers than another.
Until Damiel and I had discovered the existence of passive magic. The original Immortals had possessed both active magic—those abilities we knew from the gods and demons—and passive magic. Passive magic was part of our Immortal heritage, a heritage shared by gods, demons, and humans alike. When an angel’s magic grew powerful enough, sometimes one or two of these passive powers seeped through.
In Damiel’s case, he’d acquired the ability to track magic. That certainly served him well when he needed to hunt down traitors.
“From a distance, I couldn’t track Colonel Spellstorm,” Damiel said. “But now that we are here at the Sea of Monsters, I sense that he’s on that island.”
“Well, then, what are we waiting for?” I said, my magic spurring my wings to appear.
I launched into the air.
Damiel was soon flying beside me. “Your flying has improved,” he commented over the steady thump of our beating wings—his dark, mine light.
“Improved from not being able to kick off the ground?” I chuckled. “Nice to know.”
“But you’re wavering slightly side-to-side in your flight path.”
“I’ll get right on that. After we’re done saving the world.”
“I can help,” he told me. “I’ve developed a series of exercises aimed at optimizing flight technique. They have been very effective at improving my own performance.”
My eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you offering to be my flight coach? Trying to collect more favors from me?”
“No,” he chuckled. “In the grand scheme of things, one more favor won’t matter. Not when you already owe me so many.”
I glared at him.
But my fiery stare had no effect. He continued on, undeterred, “No, Cadence. I’m simply going to help you, no strings attached.”
“This is another trick.”
“No tricks, I assure you. I simply need to confirm that my exercises work on all angels, not merely on myself.”
“Why haven’t you already tried them out on another angel?”
“I asked around. Oddly, no angel was eager to optimize their flight performance.”
“Or maybe they simply weren’t eager for the Master Interrogator to test out ‘new techniques’ on them.”
“I have considered the possibility,” he admitted.
“And I have considered your proposal.”
I paused, waiting for him to ask what I’d decided. But he didn’t take the bait. He met my eyes and waited, a patient smile on his face.
“I’ll help you test your flying exercises,” I said. “But I won’t do anything I don’t consider safe.”
“I can assure you that all my exercises are perfectly safe.”
“When it comes to my wings, I’ll be the judge of what is safe.” I arched my brows. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
We shook on it, which was considerably harder to do while flying through the air than it was while standing on the ground. It was a good thing we were both highly-qualified angels in the gods’ army.
“How many angels did you try to convince to try out your techniques?” I asked him.
“All of them.”
“And they all turned you down?”
“As you have no doubt realized by now, Cadence, I don’t have the most savory reputation at the Legion.”
“It bothers the other angels that you can simply flash your Master Interrogator badge, and then they are at your mercy, regardless of their position—and of whether they outrank you.”
“To an angel, the mere possibility of being at another person’s mercy is
met with suspicion and anger.”
“The other angels shun you,” I realized.
“None of us get along all that well with one another, but, yes, they are particularly adverse to my presence.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s just how it has to be. If they liked me—if they didn’t fear me—I wouldn’t be a very effective Master Interrogator. Interrogators must keep themselves apart from the rest of the Legion. Our job demands it.”
“That sounds so lonely.”
He glanced my way, considering me closely. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for me, Cadence.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He frowned. “I do not deserve your sympathy. You give it too freely, too easily. An enemy could use that against you.”
“I think I know the difference between friend and enemy, Damiel. You are not my enemy. You are my friend.”
“Friends.” He looked reflective. “This friendship could become problematic if I ever need to interrogate you.”
I smiled brightly at him. “Then I’d better take extra care to behave myself and not do anything that might land me in your interrogation chair.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you, Princess. You’ve always been perfect.”
“Is that what my record says?”
“In many more words, but yes, basically.”
A wicked thought occurred to me. “I wonder what your record says.”
“You’d have to ask Nyx. She’s the only one who’s seen it in a very long time.”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“No.”
“Haven’t you ever been tempted to sneak a little peek at it?” I asked him.
“Resisting temptation builds character.”
I laughed. “You and my father have more in common than either of you would care to admit. Did you know that he used to make a habit of placing me close to whatever I most wanted at that given moment? It was water during a hard workout. A jacket during sub-zero training, which I had to endure in a t-shirt and running tights. And then he’d see how long I could resist taking what I needed.”
“How did you do?”
“All right, all things considered,” I replied. “I resisted the water and the jacket. But he knew my greatest weakness. There were these strawberry tarts that our housekeeper made. Each one was like a tiny bite of heaven. I was terribly in love with those strawberry tarts, and my father knew it. He often put them on the table during dinner. It was understood that I was not to eat them; they were forbidden. He only put them there to torture me. Then, at the end of every dinner, he tossed them in the trash. Well, one night—I think I was about eight years old at the time—I discovered that he had left a few strawberry tart crumbs on the serving plate.”
“You licked the plate,” Damiel said.
“Of course I licked the plate. It tasted so good that I then reached into the trash and fished out the strawberry tarts. And that’s how my father discovered me, my hands in the trash bin, my face streaked with strawberries and cream.”
Damiel laughed.
“My punishment was a week of the hardest training I’d experienced yet, but it was completely worth those few blissful bites.” I sighed.
“It appears you neglected to learn the lesson General Silverstar had set out to teach you,” Damiel observed.
“What can I say? We all have mortal weaknesses, even angels, and mine is strawberry tarts.”
Damiel gave me a brisk nod. “Duly noted. The next time we go into battle together, I’ll make sure the enemy is not in possession of strawberry tarts, or you might betray me in exchange for a single bite.”
“I’d like to think my ability to resist temptation has improved since I was eight. I’d never sell you out for a single bite of strawberry tart.”
“Good to know.”
I flashed him a wide grin. “The enemy soldiers would need to offer me at least two or three whole tarts to make it truly worth my while.”
“You’re joking,” he said, watching me.
“Am I? Are you so sure?”
“Yes. But, just in case, I promise you that no matter how many strawberry tarts the enemy offers you, I am prepared to double their offer.”
“Nice to know,” I laughed.
And he laughed too. Though his laugh was more of a grunt.
“See?” I said. “This isn’t so hard.”
“What isn’t hard?”
“Having friends,” I told him. “Getting along with other angels.”
“You aren’t like other angels.”
“That’s why I’m helping you.”
He looked perplexed.
“Helping you by testing out your flight techniques,” I clarified.
“Ah.”
“In fact, you could say my help is invaluable, considering that no other angel will agree to do it.”
His eyebrows drew together. “What are you getting at?”
“Without me, your experiments are impossible,” I said with a smile. “I think that’s at least worth your undying gratitude, don’t you?”
“You tricked me.”
“I will enjoy your continued, eternal gratitude. After all, why win a single unspecified favor, when you can have them all?” I quoted his own words back at him. Then I winked.
He looked at me for several long seconds—then he chuckled. “You definitely aren’t like any other angel. No, you are far more devious—perhaps even more cunning than all the rest of the angels put together.”
“Hello, pot. Meet kettle.”
“What if I want to be the kettle this time?” he said smoothly.
“I’m sure that can be arranged.” I cleared my dry throat. “The way you reacted last time, when I said those words to you during our first mission, I wasn’t sure you knew what the idiom means.”
“Oh, I know what it means. I was merely baffled by the casual way it slipped off your tongue when speaking to the big, bad Master Interrogator.”
“Maybe I didn’t find you so big and bad?” I teased my lower lip coyly between my teeth.
I was out of my mind. I was flirting with the Master Interrogator. Again.
“You did find me big and bad,” he declared. “But that changed by the end of our first mission. And now you’re living under the delusion that I’m an actual, honest-to-goodness real person. Not a monster like them.” He waved at the sea.
As if in response, a rocky tentacle shot out of the water, a hundred feet into the air. Damiel and I swerved to avoid it.
“It appears the monster is trying to absorb us, as well as the land,” Damiel observed. “It wants to add our matter to its growing body.”
“The sea monsters’ appetite isn’t solely for rock and sand,” I said. “They’ll eat anything that’s foolish enough to get too close.”
Damiel looked down. “And here comes the next one.”
A muddy tentacle shot at us. The other beast.
“I’ll take care of them,” I told him.
I flew between the beasts, darting around their tentacles. There were eight of them now, four from each monster. They snapped and cracked, trying to grab me. I was faster—and the two monsters ended up tangled in each other’s tentacles.
I darted around the tangled double monster mess and continued flying toward the island. Damiel flew up beside me.
“That was clever,” he told me.
“Not really. The monsters are just really dumb. They’ve been falling for that same trick for years, ever since I started coming here. The beasts might be growing larger, but they certainly aren’t growing any smarter. They don’t learn.”
“Yes, they are as dumb as rocks,” he said solemnly.
I chuckled at his silly joke. And so did he.
I liked to see this part of him. It was the part he let out around me, when other people weren’t around. It was the person he was when he didn’t have to pretend to be a humorless hardass, just to maintain his reputation or ward off other angels. Ange
ls interpreted humor and kindness as signs of weakness. When they sensed it, they moved in without mercy, like a shark who’d smelled blood in the water.
When I saw Damiel like this, funny and even a little flirtatious, it gave me hope that he could hold on to the person he was. I dared to believe that the Master Interrogator persona would not totally consume the true Damiel.
I knew the tangled monsters wouldn’t be out for long. They might have been dumb, but they were also resilient. Eventually, they’d pull at each other so hard that their tentacles would snap off and then get absorbed back into the beasts’ larger masses. Then the angry beasts would come after us, aiming for some payback, to deal a lot of pain.
Damiel and I set down on the island he’d identified. Very little life lived on the rocky lump, and all of it came from the sea. There were a few sea plants and flowers. Some sea muscle shells were glued to the rock face. They provided some grip on the slimy, slippery ground.
“We need to search the island for the way down into an underground cavern,” Damiel said.
I sneezed. The sharp scent of sea salt in the air burned my nose. Damiel didn’t comment on my transgression, and I was glad. My father would have. He’d often told me that sneezes, hiccups, and snores were beneath an angel—and the child of an angel, for that matter. According to his mantra, any and all bodily functions could be silenced at will. It required only a disciplined mind.
“What could Colonel Spellstorm be planning?” I wondered aloud as we searched the island. “Why did he come here? And how will he break the curse on the demons that keeps them away from the Earth?”
“We’ll ask him when we find him.”
Damiel leaned over and grabbed on to the ground—no, it was a hard stone hatch in the ground. He pulled it open. He’d found the way down into an underground area—and that hatch definitely didn’t look like a natural formation. Someone had used this island to hide at some point. Was Damiel right? Was it Colonel Spellstorm? And was he still here?
There was only one way to find out.
I looked down at the hole in the ground. “There’s no ladder, no steps, no grips of any kind. It’s just a straight, sheer drop.”
“It’s too narrow for us to fly down,” said Damiel.
“Ok.” I stretched out my legs. “Then we’ll just have to go back to basics.”
