That left the two Watchers and me.
I narrowed my eyes at Shadow. “What did you do to my daughter?”
“I stopped the god from coming,” he said. “It’s temporary. I don’t know how long it will hold.”
“Side effects?”
“None,” he said, then amended. “That I’m aware of. I don’t do that very often.”
“Oh? When was the last time?”
“A thousand years, give or take.”
I’m sure he had a good story about that, but I wasn’t interested in hearing it right now. I looked him over more carefully than I had when he’d walked through the door. I didn’t see much in the way of weakness. Faith’s blow hadn’t moved him an inch, whether because I’d only trained her in the basics or because he couldn’t be moved against his will remained to be seen.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’m not here to fight.”
“Just to stir up more trouble?”
“Trouble is already here,” he said.
I’d thought earlier about the way it always showed up in threes. Damn it all.
He titled his head toward the vacated table, aiming to take a seat there. I took a step back, giving him room to move. He picked up the chair Faith had abandoned, righted it, and straddled the seat. “Addie, would it be all right to get a cup of coffee?”
She took so much time answering, I turned to look at her. She kept her expression blank, but her body tensed like a live wire as she set about plugging in the drip coffeemaker on the counter and raiding the freezer for beans.
Her reaction didn’t have a damn thing to do with coffee. She was pissed at Shadow. More than that, she was afraid of him.
Shadow gestured to the empty chair across from him. “Night?”
I walked that way, but instead of sitting, wrapped my hands around the top of the chair. I repeated Faith’s question. I wouldn’t take existential bullshit for an answer. “Why are you here?”
“Because the chameleon is here, and so are you. This is very dangerous. You can’t be in the same proximity,” he said.
Were we talking about the prospect of Miguel killing me, or the prospect of something much worse? Harm to Faith? To Red? Or was this about the Angel of Death?
Addie finished her setup, pouring water into the coffee maker and flipping on the power. The machine burbled.
She moved along the counter, edging from out of sight to visible from the corner of my eye. She tucked her fingers behind the handle to a drawer. For ease and speed of opening, or from nerves?
I focused again on Shadow. “Go on.”
“The Angel of Death,” Shadow said.
Door number three. “What about him?”
“With the chameleon so close, you and the Angel are in a precarious position.”
“Can Miguel free him?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Shadow said, then hedged. “Maybe.”
“Which is it?”
He scooted his chair forward so that he could fold his hands together and rest them on the table. “The Angel was…kept…at the Order, in the In-Between. You know what I’m talking about?”
Kept? Interesting choice of words. “Miguel talked about the In-Between.”
Shadow took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “The chameleons were created to serve the Angel. To protect him.”
To serve and protect. An interesting choice of words. “They’re his own personal police force?”
“Try his own personal—what do you call it—elite troops.”
“Like magical special forces?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
Miguel’s mind had been a trap for me. In human armies, Special Forces went on recon missions. Miguel had reconned me right away. He continued to try, with every word that fell out of his mouth. Playing on the time we’d been terrified, lonely, and friendless except for each other. Playing on whatever young romantic feelings I’d had for him, and the way I’d mourned him when I thought he’d died.
Everything he’d done so far pointed to an assassination—or suicide—mission.
“Is Miguel here to rescue the Angel?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Not the way you think. I—we—believe that the chameleon is here to break your hold on the Angel, and to take your place as the Angel’s vessel.”
“You think Miguel has the power to do that?” I asked.
“We think he was made for no other reason. He needs to die, the sooner the better.”
I blinked at Shadow. “When you say ‘we,’ you mean the Watchers as a whole?”
He nodded.
The Watchers had been raised in their tradition as much as the Order had raised me. They tracked the magical goings-on in their locales, reporting back in their own mysterious hierarchy. It had to be vast, that organization. They served the Angels—or did what they believed might serve them, since to my knowledge they had no real contact with them. Angels didn’t spend their time hanging around in the world of mortals.
When I’d first met Addie, she’d told me that her aim, and therefore the aim of all Watchers, was to locate the Angel of Death and pledge her loyalty. Getting on board with the Angel meant making herself useful in ways no one of her kind had been in a very, very long time.
“Where are you in all of this?” I asked. “The Watchers?”
“We’re here to see the Angel safe. Right now, that means seeing you safe.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. If it were true, the Watchers and the chameleons would be on the same side, not at odds. No, the chameleons wanted control of the Angel for their own reasons, and the Watchers wanted control for theirs. They didn’t give a crap about me or mine. We were either in the way, or to be manipulated into doing Shadow’s bidding.
Even though I kept those thoughts off my face, he had to know he stood on shaky ground with me. I needed to get my people out of here now. In order to do that, I had to play along a little longer.
“And Jess?” I asked. “What’s up with her?”
Shadow sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “That’s our business.”
I glanced at Addie. I didn’t expect her to show anything but solidarity and loyalty to Shadow.
Sure enough, she raised her chin and kept her mouth shut. But her grip on the drawer handle tightened. Jess didn’t want what Shadow had in store, and Addie didn’t want it either.
I looked at Shadow again. “You talk to Sunday?”
He didn’t answer the question. He pushed to his feet. “I have another call to make. If you’ll excuse me? I’ll just be a few minutes.”
I watched him walk right out the back door. He let in a patch of chilled air as he did. The cold set the skin on my arms to gooseflesh.
Addie spoke quickly, as if she had too many words and not enough time to say them. “You have to go. All of you. I was wrong to bring you here.”
I pushed away from the table, bristling.
She rushed me, waving her hands to shoo me out of the kitchen, as if I were a kid with her hand caught in the cookie jar. When I didn’t move fast enough, she laid hands on me and moved me where she wanted me to go—out of the room and to the right, down a short hall and around a corner, to the door that led to her basement.
I could’ve stopped her, but I chose not to. Her fast words and her hands on my body were stone-cold fear. I hadn’t known her that long, but I’d seen her handle situations that would give another woman heart failure. She hadn’t shown fear before. That she did now spoke volumes. It screamed them, even.
“There’s a door down there that leads to the outside,” she said. “Comes out around the side of the house. I don’t think Shadow has seen it yet, but expect trouble just in case. You take all the kids with you.”
“Even Jess?” I asked.
“All of them,” she said.
I dug my heels in. “What going on here, Addie?”
She put her hands on my shoulders and shook me. “He’s calling in the cavalry. He’s got you
right where he wants you. He’ll kill the chameleon and he’ll kill Sunday just for existing. And he’ll take Jess, because that’s what he came to do. That’s what they always do—take the young ones and train them into model goddamn Watchers. If you don’t bring her with you, he’ll take her to ensure my cooperation in getting you close again. Understand?”
I didn’t. But I could piece together that Addie had called us all here to get us where Shadow wanted us—under one roof, trusting her, believing she needed our help, and vulnerable because of that. Maybe she’d had second thoughts along the way, but she’d still done it. And now she’d changed her mind.
“You betrayed us,” I said.
She nodded.
I didn’t need the details. There’d be time for those later, along with retribution. I didn’t cage my thoughts. She read them on my face, loud and clear.
“That’ll be then,” she said. “This is now.”
“You come with us,” I said.
She shook her head. “If he’s got me to deal with, that gives you a head start. I’ll be in touch when I can.”
Or if she could. What would Shadow do to her once he understood she’d double-crossed him?
I didn’t know how powerful Shadow was, exactly, or what he could sense magically. I didn’t want to yell and risk drawing Shadow’s attention. I didn’t want to reach out with my magic, sending a thread to find Red, for the same reason. I looked over my shoulder toward the staircase to the second floor.
“Red—”
“They’re not up there,” she said. She cocked her head toward the basement.
When I didn’t open the door, she did. The staircase was dark. A faint glow shone down on the landing, illuminating a patch of gray carpet. No sound wafted to us. No voices. No footsteps. Nothing. The air felt colder, the chill of winter seeping from the soil through the basement walls. I tasted ice on the back of my tongue.
“Red wouldn’t have taken them down there,” I said.
“He sees into the heart of people,” Addie said, meaning Red’s magic. “He saw Shadow and me.”
Who they were. Their intentions. Red would’ve nailed the betrayal in a heartbeat. He hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t so much as given me a sign. But I hadn’t been looking his way. And he couldn’t very well have opened his mouth without giving the game away.
I gave Addie a hard look, face and body language and halo, searching for any lie in her. I saw none, but what I did see felt like a fist closing around my heart.
“Your halo,” I said. “The stars are winking out.”
“Shadow knows what’s up. Go now.”
Shit. “He can alter your magic?”
“He can remove me from the chain,” she said. “Excommunicate me. So much of our power comes from that connection. Without it, we’re defenseless.”
I stared at her. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” she said. “Now, get. I need whatever juice I’ve got left to hold him off."
She opened the basement door and pushed me in—not hard enough to shove me down the stairs, but with enough force to move me out of the way. She shut the door in my face, sealing me in with the dark and cold.
Before I could draw another breath, the edges lit up with blue fire that burst through seams in flaming rays.
Instinct moved my feet. I backpedaled to the very edge of the top step, reaching for the handrails on either side to catch my balance.
She’d thrown magic at the door to hide it or lock it or both. Her footfalls sounded on the hardwood as she walked back to the kitchen to face Shadow.
Could I break through her magic? Break down the door? If I did it fast enough, could I get to her and drag her out of here with us? Or would I only be running into Shadow’s arms? Why would I even consider helping her after she’d set a snare for us?
Addie was fully prepared to sacrifice herself to keep the rest of us safe—or maybe just Jess. The girl was everything to Addie. Addie wanted us out of here. She wanted her niece safe.
Addie could’ve drawn me in closer instead of sending me away. She could’ve laid a trap in her own house for me and let Red and the rest get away, giving her boss most of what he wanted. She could’ve saved her own ass.
She’d made a different choice.
Whatever I could do for her, I didn’t think I could save her—not without making her sacrifice meaningless.
I turned and launched myself down the stairs, planting my forearms on the rails and sliding down in seconds, landing with a soft whump in the glow at the bottom, the carpet absorbing a bit of shock and sound. Strong arms wrapped around my midsection and dragged me into the dark.
My arms were pinned. I had no reach to the floor and little space to move my legs. I threw my head back, drawing a tight breath, preparing to head butt whoever had grabbed me. My next breath tasted of amber and vanilla.
Sunday.
A wave of magic assaulted my senses: a silence that swallowed every other sound, a flash of white light that blinded. Then as quickly as the attack had come on, it subsided.
Sunday set me down in a patch of low light—the shine from a flashlight whose batteries had seen better days, which provided the glow at the foot of the stairs. The floor underfoot felt hard and slick. No longer carpet, but concrete.
I whispered through gritted teeth. “What the fuck, Sunday?”
“Landing’s not magically shielded,” she said. “Needed you over here and I didn’t want to take the time to explain.”
“Red and the kids?”
“Gone already. They took his truck and my car.”
Which left my car out front. An obvious ambush point. “We should leave on foot.”
“Agreed,” she said. “Only one problem with that.”
Miguel.
We couldn’t carry an unconscious, full-grown man around in public. We also couldn’t wake him up and walk around with him handcuffed. That left only one choice—one I wasn’t ready to make. Sunday might already have made it, though.
I couldn’t see Miguel from my vantage. I could only see Sunday’s face.
“Did you kill him?” I held my breath.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
Relief that Miguel still lived surged through me. I liked it even less than my instinctive desire to help Addie.
“We’re gonna need him,” I said. “The Watcher was adamant that he ought to die.”
She followed my train of thought seamlessly. “That makes him a potential key to what the Watcher is up to.”
She let go of me and led the way to the lawn chair that sat just outside the wan circle of light the flashlight provided. Easy-to-rip, green-and-white woven strips in the back and seat. Flimsy aluminum arms and legs. She’d zip-tied Miguel’s wrists and ankles to this one, just like the last.
His head lolled to the left, his face difficult to see in the low light. Even so, the discoloration around his eyes and mouth from punches Sunday had thrown showed up loud and clear. The front of his shirt was still damp from the water she’d used on him. Dried blood stained the tips of his nails.
His breathing came long and steady. He seemed unconscious. His purple bruise of a halo held a vibrancy that told me Sunday’s knock-out had worn off, though.
I squatted low, resting my forearms on my thighs. “Cut out the act and listen.”
At that, he lifted his head and met my gaze. I laid out the situation.
He took in every word. “So either you slit my throat right here, or we’re in this together for now.”
I nodded.
“The enemy of my enemy,” he said.
Sunday pulled her knife and exposed the blade. “Smart man.”
He turned his gaze toward the stairs while we cut his bonds. “Your friend? She’s down. Knocked out.”
“How can you possibly know that?” I asked.
“They’ve got angel blood,” he said. “I can’t feel everything that’s happening, but I can get a general read.”
“Where�
�s the other Watcher?” I asked.
“Upstairs, outside the basement door, breaking your friend’s magic. He’s good and he’s fast.”
I sliced through the last zip tie and hauled him to his feet. He flexed his wrists, giving me a quick glimpse of his palms and the scabbed half-moons his nails had made during the worst that Sunday had done to him.
I turned him around and pushed him toward the side door. “Move.”
His ankles gave out a couple of times on our way across the basement, his wool hiking socks slipping on the concrete floor. Sunday caught him both times. I turned my gaze toward the staircase to watch for Shadow, backpedaling behind Sunday and Miguel as quickly as I could.
We streamed through the side door and out onto a narrow stone path between the house and the chain-link fence. The water on the path soaked through our socks. The drizzle falling from the sky had become hard-core rain.
“Hurry,” I hissed.
Sunday dug in and turned on the speed, leading us down the stone path between the house and the chain-link fence. She hopped the front gate in one fluid movement that Miguel couldn’t duplicate, though he did his best. I vaulted the fence last, checking over my shoulder for Shadow and surprised as hell he hadn’t followed. The steep slope of the yard with the rosemary and lavender taking the place of grass should’ve acted as a hazard, especially since we’d left our shoes behind. Instead, the plants seemed to steer us around roots and rocks.
No one waited by my car, so whatever ambush Shadow had planned, it wouldn’t be physical, only magical.
We hit the sidewalk at speed and kept moving.
“We can only travel on foot for so long in this weather,” Sunday said. “No coats. No shoes. Soaked to the skin. Hypothermia waiting to happen.”
“We’re not taking any of the cars around here,” Miguel said. “There’s Enochian words etched into the hoods—all of them.”
Enochian. Angelic language.
Sunday led us south at the first opportunity, toward Hawthorne, where there would be more people and we might blend in—or at least find a doorway to duck into without drawing a ton of suspicion.
I glanced over my shoulder every few seconds, but no one followed.
Night Rises: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 2) Page 8
