by Diem, J. C.
“Aspirin is a godsend,” Reynolds said absently as he walked over to a billboard that blocked our view of the street. “It’s saved countless lives.”
I didn’t know much about the drug. I only had a vague notion that it thinned the blood and helped to prevent heart attacks. The two angels took him at his word, which saved me from trying to pretend that it was the cause of my miraculous recovery. Brie was far from being my friend, but I didn’t want Leo to end up despising her just because I’d asked her to push back the toxin for a while. It wouldn’t be wise to alienate her when there was a good chance that I’d need her help again in the future.
Joining the detective, I took the binoculars that he handed to me. He lifted a second pair to his eyes and put them against two holes that had been poked in the billboard. He’d already set this surveillance point up in anticipation of our assistance. He’d made several pairs of holes at various heights. I found a set that was roughly my eye height and placed the binoculars against them.
Angling the lens downwards, I peered at the building where I’d been incarcerated for a short, yet harrowing time. The ugly gray edifice was within sight of Times Square and was too close to our base for my liking. Plain clothed and uniformed officers were walking in and out of the main doors. The underground parking lot where I’d been taken must have been on the side street. It wasn’t visible from here.
Nathan and Leo moved to either side of us and peered through more holes. We began to point out the demons that we could see. The angels could see the red auras of our enemies even from across the street. I had to watch the men and women closely to see if their faces flickered before I could identify what they really were.
Reynolds took note, storing the information away in a mental file. “Hundreds of people work in the building,” he said after an hour or so. “You’re not going to be able to point them all out to me in one day. Will I be able to ask for your help again?”
“Of course,” Nathan said on behalf of all of us. “We will be happy to assist you.”
We still didn’t know what part the cop would play in our war against demonkind, but he’d been put in our path for a reason. I’d learned to trust my gut and it was telling me to do whatever we could to help him.
Another couple of hours passed with us peering through the holes and pointing out anyone who’d been possessed. Eventually, Reynolds checked his watch. “Gomez will be back soon. I want to be at my desk before she arrives.”
“Allow me to return you to your vehicle,” Nathan said. Before the detective could protest, he was teleported along with the rest of us back to his car.
Staggering back a step, he looked around in confusion. “What just happened?” he asked in bewilderment.
“Nathan used angelic magic to teleport us here,” I explained. I held the binoculars out to him and he took it with a shaky hand.
“A little warning would be appreciated next time,” he said and shook his head. “Thanks for giving me so much of your time today. I’ll call you when it’s safe for us to spy again.”
“We’ll be waiting,” I replied.
Climbing into his car, he took off and merged into the never ending stream of traffic.
₪₪₪
Chapter Sixteen
A woman rounded the corner across the street, catching my eye as she strutted down the sidewalk. Six people hurried after her, followed by two more groups of the same number. A mixture of men and women as well as ethnicities, the groups kept a short distance from each other. Seeing their faces flicker, I put my hand up to stop Nathan from zapping us back to our base. “Wait,” I said and he halted in the act of reaching for me.
“What is wrong?” Leo asked. He turned to see what I was staring at so intently.
“Call me crazy, but I think that might be Vepar,” I said. The woman had short black hair and pale skin. She was too distant for me to be able to make out her eye color, but menace emanated from her. Then her face flickered and I saw her true form of a Demon Lord. “Yep. That’s her alright,” I confirmed. Three of the demons were captains and the rest were soldiers. She was clearly in charge of them all.
“How can you be so sure?” Nathan asked. We were in no danger of being recognized, but he drew me against his side protectively as the hell spawn stalked past us across the street.
“I saw her in Hannah’s memories. She was the newly promoted Demon Lord that Dantanian convinced to take Hannah back to Earth.” All demons were hideous, but they weren’t identical. It was easy enough to tell them apart.
“They must be searching for another pack to take down,” Leo surmised. “Vepar is the only one who is wearing a leather brace. It is marked with the same symbol that the Collectors are using to identify their kind. She did not notice us, so it would appear that our bracelets nullify the rune’s ability to allow her to detect our blue auras.” The rune could detect any type of celestial being. It was good to know that my friends would be safe if they continued to wear the bracelets that Brie had created for them.
Leo’s eyesight was far sharper than mine. I hadn’t noticed the brace the lord was wearing on her wrist. All I’d seen was her tight black jeans and an even tighter black t-shirt. We watched them turn the corner and I started after them. Both angels fell into step behind me without protest. We knew we’d been led here. It was important for us to follow Vepar and her minions even if we didn’t know why.
We followed them for several blocks until they found a pack of their own kind to prey on. With a nod, Vepar sent her minions out to capture them. Feeling the urge to stay where I was and to keep her in sight, I watched as eighteen demons surrounded the much smaller pack of six. They disappeared and presumably slaughtered their rivals somewhere more private than in the middle of the street.
“Something tells me you will shortly be receiving a new influx of souls,” Leo murmured when Vepar’s lackeys returned.
The lord spoke before I could respond. I had to strain to hear her and only a short lull in traffic made it possible. “Keep your eyes open,” she instructed her lackeys. “We know Hellscourge’s lair is somewhere nearby. Try not to lose the souls this time. It should not be that difficult to follow them.” Her minions shifted uneasily and exchanged glances as if they wanted to argue with her, but were too afraid to.
My back stiffened in alarm just as six black souls came boiling out of a nearby building. Nathan and Leo exchanged a look when the evil essence came straight towards us. Nathan whisked us to a side street several blocks away before they could pour into me and give us away.
“At least we know why Vepar is evicting demons from their vessels now,” I said bleakly.
“They are dangerously close to finding our base,” Leo agreed. “It is only a matter of time before they narrow down our location.”
“Sy’s runes will keep them out,” I said without much conviction. Vepar was using the Collector’s runes, which meant she had to be in league with them. She might have access to runes that I didn’t even know about. The Collectors were all former hellscribes. They’d been handpicked to form a new unit that had been sent out to harvest angel souls. I was pretty sure the Hellmaster was behind whatever their plan for the grace was. Or maybe it was Dantanian, the leader of the scribes. I didn’t really care who was responsible. They were both eventually going to die by my hand.
“I hope you are right,” Nathan said as the souls that I’d momentarily avoided found me.
Now that I was stronger, I wasn’t driven to my knees beneath the onslaught of six new demons. Their memories flashed before my eyes, divulging nothing that could help me with my missions. “Let’s head back to the store,” I said when the images faded.
Nathan and Leo slipped their hands into mine and one of them whisked us back to our base.
Sophia noticed us a few moments later. Her smile died before it could form when she saw our expressions. “What has happened?”
“We know why the demons have been evicting each other from their vessels,” I said and sa
t down. I explained the situation to her and her face paled slightly.
“Do you think they will be able to breach our defenses?” she asked me when I was finished. Sam came thumping down the stairs and joined us at the table.
“I hope not,” I replied.
“Can you speak to Sy the next time you visit the legion in your dreams?” Sam asked.
“I don’t have any control over when I see them, but I’ll make it a priority when I end up in the shadowlands in my head next.”
“I saw Lord Vepar speaking to the Prince of the ninth realm once,” he said and shivered.
“Really? When and where did this happen?”
“It was a week or so before I made my escape,” he replied. “We were in the town that lies closest to the hellgate that leads to Earth. I was cowering in the shadows of a building when the Prince took Vepar aside to speak to her. I was curious and moved closer so I could listen to their conversation.”
Leo’s eyes were wide. “That was very brave of you.”
“They could not see me,” Sam said with a shrug. “Even if I had not been invisible, they would most likely have simply ignored me. Imps are far too insignificant to come to their notice.”
“What did you hear them say?” I asked.
“I only heard the last part of their conversation. The Prince told Lord Vepar to take her quarry to the dungeon beneath his palace rather than to the first realm as she had been ordered.”
“What did Vepar have to say about that?” Nathan asked. We all knew I was the quarry the prince was talking about.
“She was reluctant to comply with him to begin with,” Sam said. “The Prince told her that he would reward her well if she obeyed him. All demons are aware that the leaders of the realms would begin to fall once Hellscourge rose. He told her that he would see to it that she would ascend to be the first Princess of one of the realms. With that bait dangled in front of her, she agreed.”
“She actually fell for that?” I said incredulously. “They have to fight their way to the top. He can’t just hand her a palace and name her as a Princess.”
“Who is to say what will be possible?” he shrugged. “You are decimating the Princes and no one has been brave enough to step up and take their places as yet.”
I had to concede that point. “Okay, so I’ll have to make sure Vepar doesn’t get her hands on me. Although, I will have to defeat the Prince of the ninth realm eventually.” He’d been absent the first time I’d been to his domain, but he wouldn’t escape me a second time. I was tempted to re-enter the ninth realm through the master gate and to hunt him down, yet something told me it wasn’t time for that particular confrontation. I was confident that I’d know when it was time for me to challenge him.
“I think Violet should learn as many angelic spells as possible,” Sophia said.
“Why?” I asked. “Have you seen something about this in a vision?”
“No. It is just a feeling that I have,” she said evasively.
“We will teach her what we know,” Nathan agreed. We all trusted her hunches. She’d never been wrong so far.
Leo nodded to back him up. “It is only fitting that she learns our spells, since she already knows so many demonic runes.”
“Are you trying to balance things out?” I asked dryly.
“It cannot hurt,” he replied philosophically.
“I’m game. Show me what you know, oh wise and venerable ones.”
Nathan’s lips curved upwards at my cheeky tone. “Finally, you are showing us the respect that we deserve.”
It was rare for him to make a joke and I grinned before turning to Sam. “Can you stick around for this? You never know when I might need to call on your perfect memory.” He only needed to see or hear something once and he could remember it forever.
“Can you hurry?” he said to Nathan and Leo. “One of my favorite programs will be starting soon.”
“I suggest you take your training session up to the living room,” Sophia said. “The boys can teach Violet what they know during the ad breaks.”
Sam left his chair and hugged her. “You are as intelligent as you are kind,” he declared. “I feel like coffee. Would you like me to make you some tea?”
She accepted his offer and he made tea for me as well. I stopped in the kitchen to grab some cookies out of the jar on the counter then we trooped upstairs.
₪₪₪
Chapter Seventeen
I spent the next few days alternating between identifying the possessed cops for Reynolds and learning angelic spells. An idea came to me during the first day of training, but I had to be patient and wait to be taught a specific spell.
On the third day, Leo finally told me the incantation that I needed. I’d heard Brie create this spell before, but I hadn’t been able to understand her back then. I made sure to practice it a few times to make sure I had it right.
It wasn’t easy to wait until I went to bed before I could finally attempt my plan. Activating the silence spell on the back of my door, I chanted the spell Leo had taught me and blue light blazed to life on the wall. Once activated, a simple chant was enough to dispel any angelic spell.
Crossing to my nightstand, I took out a glass vial that was hidden inside it. I’d found it stashed in a drawer behind the counter downstairs a few days ago. Sophia didn’t realize that I’d appropriated it yet.
Narrow and several inches long, it was marked with demonic runes. It looked too small to contain an angel’s soul, but it was magic and normal rules didn’t seem to apply. I wasn’t sure who had created the glass bottle, but I was hoping one of the Collectors was responsible. It was high time that I captured one of them and ingested their soul.
Holding the vial in my left hand and my dagger in my right, I concentrated on the scarred vessel of the Collector I’d stolen it from. Seconds later, he appeared before me, which confirmed that he’d crafted the bottle himself. He didn’t even have time to register that he’d been teleported against his will before the angelic spell hit him. Screeching in pain, he went down to his knees. Only Morax had been strong enough to overcome the agony of this particular spell. As a former scribe, this demon was far too weak to fight it.
It was pointless to try to question my victim. He’d never willingly tell me what I wanted to know and I wasn’t strong enough to torture him for information while I was in this realm. Kicking him over onto his back, I knocked his hands away from his chest and plunged my dagger into his heart. I then chanted to break the spell that had caused him so much agony.
His screams petered out and recognition warred with resignation as he realized who I was and what I’d just done. His eyes went to the dagger that was sticking out of his chest. “You will not prevail against our might, Hellscourge,” he sneered feebly. “Our master is too powerful to be stopped. You have no idea what he is capable of.”
“He has no idea what I’m capable of,” I responded and yanked my dagger out. To be fair, no one knew what I could do yet. Not even me.
Gasping in fresh pain, his eyes bulged as his black soul oozed out of the tear in his chest. His vessel expired and stared at the ceiling in horror as I drew his essence inside me. Since there was just one soul to ingest this time, I didn’t have to sort through a confusing jumble of memories. I witnessed his fall from heaven and his descent into hell. I caught flashes of his rise through the ranks of hellscribes until he was one of the top scribes.
Then I saw a massive figure drawing him and twelve other scribes aside. The creepy figure wore a black cloak that covered him from head to toe and put his face in shadow. Only his horrible scarlet eyes were visible. I’d seen those awful glaring orbs chasing after me the first time I’d ventured to hell. His carriage had been drawn by four nightmares rather than two. It had been larger and more ostentatious than any other carriage I’d seen so far.
Their new master ordered them to begin hunting down angels and to harvest their grace. None of them ever saw his face. He was like no other demon they�
��d ever seen before. He towered over even the princes. The newly formed unit of Collectors were too afraid to even look in his direction. They bowed their heads and stared at the ground instead.
As per his order, they were taken through the gate in the ninth realm by several lords and captains and were unleashed on Earth. This had happened a year before my birth and they’d been hunting angels down ever since. Together, they’d harvested hundreds of angels so far. To my frustration, he didn’t know what happened to the vials. They handed them over to a lord and she delivered them to their master.
I saw the lord’s face and was utterly unsurprised to see that it was Vepar. They’d been meeting with her once a month to deliver the grace to her, but they were finding it harder to locate angels in Manhattan now. Vepar had urged them to search more diligently. The wards were triggered each time one of the holy warriors entered the city and she knew there were dozens of them here. Far more than the fifty that Hagith and Orifiel had gathered together.
Coming out of my daze, I found myself kneeling next to the dead Collector’s vessel. He just looked like a normal man now. No one would ever believe he’d been inhabited by evil.
While I could bring angels and demons to me if I had something that belonged to them, I couldn’t teleport them away. Luckily, I knew someone who might be willing to help me. First, I used the dead demon’s blood to reactivate two more of the demonic runes on my door. The only one I didn’t activate was the one that caused angels pain. Concentrating, I used my bracelet to bring Brie to me again.
Scowling when she realized she’d been summoned to me, she put her hands on her slim hips. “What do you want this time?”
I pointed at the corpse. “I need you to get rid of him.”
Glancing at the body, she rolled her eyes. “What makes you think I am willing to become your personal body disposal service?”
