Aidan looks down at me where I wilted once the spell left my fingers, black sludge covering his beanie and half his face. “Don’t help anymore, okay?”
“Fine. Next time you can take on three Corax Demons at once by yourself,” I huff, trying to ignore the pulsing torment also known as my back.
I try to stand, the ground shifting beneath my feet, and at first, I think it’s just me. Just the blood loss making my legs shaky, but Aidan throws a hand out for balance too. A rumble from inside the ward grows, spilling out through the hex lines so much the light of them bends with the strain.
Then the world goes white, the blast of the ward breaking sending us flying, careening into the stream. The water hitting my face is a shock, and I try to claw my way to the surface, but there is a weight on my back holding me down. Pushing as hard as I can, I claw my way to the surface, breathing fresh air in what feels like too long. I discover the weight on me isn’t something I can just throw off. It’s Aidan’s limp body that must have taken the brunt of the blast. I feel him breathing, feel his heartbeat through the fabric of my shirt.
Thank the Fates.
Letting him rest on my back, I pull my knees under me, dragging him along with me as I yank us both out of the water. Once the sand sifts through my fingers, I shrug him off, letting him hit the ground as I catch my breath for a second before checking him over. Other than the goose egg that he will definitely feel later, he seems fine.
I search for Striker, finding him on the bank of the stream, his head still in the water. I manage to pull his heavy ass to the bank and make sure he’s actually breathing. Luckily, only his hair was in the water. One thing I can say for our impromptu bath, at least it washed some of the Demon guts off me.
Turning, I look back at my grandmother’s cabin, the ward now a gaping hole of dissipating magic, and grasp just why the ward blew in the first place. Souls swarm the cabin, gray and black trails of smoke and darkness. Their screams are piercing even from this far away.
Aidan said they were drawn to the blade. That means Andras is here.
Samael’s here.
Grandma’s here.
Might as well make it a family reunion.
Walking through the spirits, I marvel at how they don’t even look at me. Since I don’t have the blade, they aren’t even remotely interested in me – just the way I like it. Ghost problems are bullshit.
My entry into Bernadette’s cabin goes mostly unnoticed. Spirits swirl inside the walls, the bulk of them inside rather than out. Bernadette is on the ground, the bone blade protruding from the meat of her shoulder. My father and uncle clash in the kitchen, the pair of them with bone swords that had to come from a giant or a Dragon or something. I’ve never seen either up close, but nothing human sized could produce a bone that big. My uncle looks similar to my father. The same dark hair, same nose, same glowing gold eyes.
But that’s where the similarities end. Samael is dressed in a dark suit, fighting with precision and class like a champion fencer. Andras is in jeans and a flannel, fighting like a bare-knuckles back room brawler. Either way, neither one is winning.
The specters hover over Bernadette, slashing at her with hands I know are so cold they burn. Her skin is black in some places where the cold is so bad it’s decayed the flesh, and for the first time I see her other form. She fades in and out of her cultured but aging lady to a beautiful raven-haired young woman, her face so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her.
Sliding next to her, I reach for the blade, ready to pull it from her shoulder, but she stops me.
“No, Maxima.” Her breaths are fast and labored as if it’s taking everything she has in her to stay conscious, to stay sane. “Do-don’t take it. The spirits, the-they’ll kill you. They’re dr-drawn to the blade.”
Meeting her eyes, her pain brims from her every pore. “I know. Samael put that there?” I ask, drawing the blade from her flesh.
She nods, her eyes filling. “Andras saved me. I never should have doubted him.”
I can only nod. She might be able to trust my father, but I sure as fuck can’t. “I’ll take care of it.”
As soon as the blade is free, the spirits swarm me, their hands cutting into my flesh, the cold stealing my breath. But I’ve thought of the only way to stop them.
They have to go back where they came from.
“Veni in domum suam, vacui hoc imple. Reperio tenebrae tuae in hoc loco.” The spell is simple, the words flowing from my tongue as if someone planted them there. Come home, fill this void. Find your place in this darkness.
The souls howl, blowing apart before swirling faster, harder, tighter against me, ripping into my flesh with cold fingers. They draw blood, they burn me.
Veni in domum suam, vacui hoc imple. Reperio tenebrae tuae in hoc loco.
A soul solidifies in front of me – a young woman cut down too soon. She screams in my face, wrapping a freezing hand around my throat, squeezing, stealing all my air. They don’t want to go, but there is nowhere else. Stuck between planes, stuck between worlds, left to rot in a cage they were never meant for but can’t escape.
Bernadette grabs my hand, repeating my words, lending me her voice when mine is gone, lending me eons worth of power to draw from.
Veni in domum suam, vacui hoc imple. Reperio tenebrae tuae in hoc loco.
Then the hand at my throat is gone, the soul tugged back by an invisible thread, they swirl closer to the blade, the power in the blade growing as souls start to fill it.
“Now, Maxima. Give me the blade!” Andras screams, his arms wrapped around Samael’s chest and neck, holding my struggling uncle in place.
I don’t need to even consider it to know Andras can’t be trusted, so I don’t give the blade to him. Instead, I let the dagger fly, throwing it with all my strength and pray that my mother’s blessing holds steadfast.
May your aim always be true.
Watching as the tang turns over and over in the air, I feel the souls drawing away from me. Feel them follow the blade, feel them fill it with the power of hundreds, thousands of deaths. The point of the dagger pierces Samael’s heart, the weight of the power driving the blade home.
He stops struggling, his body wilting in Andras’ hold. Andras lets his brother slide to the floor, and I stagger to my kill, yanking the dagger free once the last of Samael’s breath leaves him.
I stare at the bone. That’s all it is. Just a bone from some creature filed down into the most basic of weapons. What once held something full of life, now takes it without compunction.
This doesn’t need to be here.
“No one needs this blade. No one needs this kind of power,” I croak, my voice a bitter husk of breath.
The power I shied away from fills my hand, as I stare at my grandmother, her form once again the aging beauty. “I know you wanted it for a rainy day, but you’ll just have to keep on living a while longer.”
A ghost of a smile flits across her lips, and she gives me a subtle nod. I don’t bother looking at my father as he stands staring at me as if he’s never seen me before. I suppose he hasn’t.
The old Max wouldn’t have to step between two family members.
The old Max didn’t have a family.
But I suppose he never knew the old Max either.
I draw some of the magic into me – just enough to do what I need to. Then using that little bit, I grip the bone, tossing the magics back into it, overloading it, cracking it, crushing the blade until it’s nothing more than bone shards and dust in my hand.
Then, and only then, do I look at my father. I hold my hand out to him, but he doesn’t take the bait.
“Here’s your blade, Father,” I tell him as I sprinkle the floor with the bone dust.
I hope you choke on it, I think, walking out of the cabin into the sunshine.
Chapter Twenty-Three
MAX
Barrett stares me down as I sit right back where I started in a velvet green armchair in the middle of the high court
room. At least this time when I was escorted to the Witch club, Aether, by an Ethereal Guard, Ruby wasn’t the one to have her mitts on me. No, that was reserved for the twenty or so Witches, Angels, Shifters, and even a few no shit Dragons waiting for me when I strolled – okay hobbled – out of Bernadette’s cabin. The cavalry had arrived, even if they were about an hour too late and lost Ruby in the shuffle.
At least mother actually listened to me.
“You’re telling me you killed Samael, didn’t kill Andras like you were supposed to, put a freezing spell on an Angel, and destroyed the bone blade,” he clarifies, checking the facts of my story, making sure he has them all.
“Yep.” I cross my feet on the matching ottoman I conjured for my own personal comfort. Hell, I was bleeding, covered in Corax guts – still – and I was pretty sure I was half delirious. Barrett could ask me if I killed the Queen of England, and I’d probably answer the same, but at least he’s keeping to relevant topics.
Aidan and Striker were whisked in and out of here with a pat on the head and a good job, but not me.
Nooooooo…
I was stuck getting the evil eye from a man who might like me, might respect me, but also might kill me if the need arose. I was too tired to give him any more details. Personally, I was hoping Bernadette would swoop in and save me from the interrogation brewing behind his eyes.
I needed a medic.
And a bottle of bourbon.
Preferably not in that order.
“Do you care that Samael wasn’t actually murdered by Andras, Ruby was a spy for Samael, and the bone blade was going to cause the Apocalypse? Because I feel those are all important facts to remember here.”
“And we should believe you, why exactly?” he asks, the snideness slipping heavily in his tone.
“Knock it off. Can’t you see she’s bleeding all over the place?” Marcus comes to my rescue, and I kinda want to hug the Shifter. I also kinda want to sleep for a week, so hugging is probably out.
Barrett smiles at his mate, “Fine. Ruin my payback for the door incident why don’t you.”
“What door incident?” Caim asks, leaning around Cinder and Gorgon, the gaping hole of the Demon seat only highlighting my grandmother’s absence. If Caim was surprised Ruby was working for the other side, he didn’t show it. But then again, he was one of the few who sent Striker off on his mission, so he might have already known how treacherous she could be.
“Max blew up that door,” Barrett says almost proudly pointing to the entrance to the high court room, “like it was nothing, and then poof put the damn thing back together again like she never blew it to smithereens in the first bloody place. We need to talk to your Fae builder. If that thing can be blown apart by a bloody child we’re all in trouble.”
“Oh give it a rest. I’m fucking bleeding over here. I know I’m not in trouble. You know I’m not in trouble. Just give me my damn cookie for saving the world as we know it again and let me get stitched up,” I gripe, ready to blow that stupid door again.
And this time I won’t put it back together either.
“As you wish,” Barrett murmurs, breathing on his fingers before rubbing them together.
Heat washes over me, stealing the bitter cold still lingering on my skin from the spirits who attacked so mercilessly. It steals away the ache in my back, the burning agony of the open wounds. I feel it knit my flesh back together, feel the power of Barrett’s magic heal me, finally breathing easy for the first time in what feels like a week.
“Thank you,” I breathe, wilting into the chair.
“I was wondering when you’d snap. You lasted far longer than I thought you would,” Barrett says, a laugh not quite breaking free. “Maxima Alcado, born Maxima Christina Arcadios, former member of the now defunct Arcadios coven, daughter of the Demon Andras and Pacific Northwest coven leader, Teresa Alcado, sole heir to the royal seat, your Rogue status is hereby rescinded. Any action against you is now considered a direct threat to the Council and will be dealt with as such.”
Barrett pauses, likely letting me digest this new information. Your Rogue status is hereby rescinded. How long had I wanted to hear those words? Forever, maybe? And yet, they don’t feel real. Like this is some sort of trick, some sort of treachery just winding up for the pitch. Shaking, I can barely blink, barely breathe.
“We offer you the vacant Demon seat, child. We offer you what should have always been yours.” My eyes stray from Barrett to Gorgon, the Warlock’s kind pronouncement hitting me square in the chest.
If this is a trick, Gorgon isn’t part of it, but I know what too good to be true looks like. I’ve seen it more than once.
Too good to be true is me getting sent to kill one man, when another is responsible. It’s me being turned Rogue in the first place. It’s the maneuvering and politicking. It’s the vagueness, the half-told truths and the bold-faced lies.
“Will anyone be offended if I say I’ll think about it? While I appreciate my status as Rogue being rescinded, the Council seat is a very important job – one I’m not sure I’m ready for,” I say as diplomatically as I possibly can. Actually, I’m quite proud of myself.
“Don’t tarry too long,” Barrett advises, “And keep a watchful eye on your assistant. Vampires are nearly extinct, you know.”
Barrett drops that bomb and then just like that I’m dismissed to digest the mythical fucking creature on my payroll.
Thanks, Gramma.
Walking out the high court room into Aether proper, I spot Striker at a seat on the outskirts of the club. Even in the middle of the day, the place is packed, and I can’t quite figure out if these people have jobs or lives. It all feels artificial and weird like most clubs do once the shine wears off.
“Let me guess, you’re here for the food.”
Striker startles and then turns his head, looking away from the naked acrobats and topless bartenders, away from the nakedness and fun. “Just enjoying the entertainment, boss.”
Everything from the slope of his shoulders to his voice to the way his eyes seem a little lost tell me his grief at Melody’s death isn’t gone – not by a long shot. But I don’t know what to do for my friend. Being in the human world didn’t help, and even here – in this fake, superficial place – filled with glamours and flesh and magic and sex, he seems better than he was. Even if it’s only a little bit.
Maybe he needs the superficial right now.
“Yeah, well, I’m going home. Don’t stay too long. Too much of this place will rot your brain,” I warn. As if it will do any good, as if he’ll even listen to me.
I leave him behind me, finding the door and getting the hell out of this place. Leaning against the glamoured warehouse wall Aidan lounges, his feet crossed at the ankle, his face turned up to the sun. I’m half tempted to leave him there he looks so peaceful.
“You waiting on me?”
One of Aidan’s eyes slowly opens, giving me perfect side eye for a man who probably has a concussion. “No, I’m waiting on some other chick. Tell me when you see her, she’s hard to miss. She’s about yay high, blue hair, covered in Demon guts,” he says with a crooked little smile. “They throw the book at you?”
“Nah. Just got my Rogue status revoked is all,” I say smiling as I turn and start walking towards the right side of town – where people and coffee reside – leaving Aidan to trail after me.
I showered until all the hot water ran out. Then I called Della for the first time since my shop burned down. Turns out that while Bernadette was a little lax on who she sent to watch out for me, Della’s benefits far outweighed any downsides.
Della was a little vague on the details, but the human side of my building being burned down was taken care of. I don’t know how, but every single customer thinks they weren’t there that day, or in Della-speak, “I handled it, boss.”
And the building? Well, the repairs were already under way. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask questions, so I didn’t.
Some things I just didn’t
need to know. So I had a vampire on staff who could walk in the sun? I was a Demon-Witch hybrid who seemed to be the only one of my kind.
Who was I to judge?
In fact, the only person I was fit to judge was Ruby, and I was going to find her feathery ass if it was the last thing I did.
Apocalypse be damned.
Max’s story will continue with
LADY OF MADNESS & MOONLIGHT
Rogue Ethereal Book Three
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LADY OF MADNESS & MOONLIGHT
Rogue Ethereal Book Three
A former Rogue being presented to the Fates. What could go wrong?
When I was offered a seat on the Ethereal Council, no one said anything about meeting the actual Fates. But on the day of my presentation, not only do I offend the three women who control every single thread of life, but an Angel’s thread is cut short, and no one knows how.
Now it’s my job to find out who did it before the death gets pinned on me and starts a war.
Maybe being a Rogue was the least of my problems.
Preorder Lady of Madness & Moonlight Today!
THE ASHES TO ASHES SERIES
an adult paranormal romance series by Annie Anderson
Heaven, Hell, and everything in between. Fall into the realm of Phoenixes and Wraiths who guard the gates of the beyond. That is, if they can survive that long…
Living forever isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Check out the Ashes to Ashes Series today!
THE SHELTER ME SERIES
Daughter of Souls & Silence Page 15
