by John Corwin
"Good idea," I said. We'd discovered the statues in an artifact warehouse in the depths of Thunder Rock. There were a variety of the statues, each one designed to block a different kind of portal. Some blocked Obsidian Arches while others blocked portals from the different realms accessible through an Alabaster Arch.
Shelton jabbed a thumb toward the tragon. "What about that? We can't just leave it roaming free."
"I'll take him back to the forest," I said. Trago crunched down on a vampire, made a rumble of disgust, and spat out the body.
A female Blue Cloak approached Captain Takei and saluted. "I have the casualty numbers, sir."
He raised an eyebrow. "How bad, lieutenant?"
"Three Templars, one Blue Cloak dead; Eleven Templars, six Blue Cloaks injured." Her eyes looked uneasily at the tragon. "I suppose the tragon is injured as well."
Takei chuckled. He motioned toward the Obsidian Arch in the middle of the arena. "See about making the arch operational, lieutenant. We'll use it to travel back to La Casona."
She snapped a salute and walked away.
I leaned against Elyssa as my knees went weak. I was almost too tired to stand, despite having fed off the vampire. I had no idea how to get Trago back to the forest in this condition. The beast snuffled in the dirt as he searched for more bodies. One of his eyes focused on me and blinked. "We might have to leave Trago loose until I get some rest," I said.
Shelton cast a wistful look in the direction of Greek Row. "I kinda wanted to see the mansion while we were here. Guess that'll have to wait."
A pang of regret hit my stomach. Elyssa and I had been living at Big Creek Ranch, aka the Templar Compound for the Atlanta area. We'd decided to take a room in the underground complex instead of living in the house aboveground. Even though I got along with her parents these days, it would feel really weird sleeping in the same house as them. "I miss the mansion too," I said.
The Obsidian Arch hummed to life. Captain Takei waved his staff and shot up a blue flare. The Blue Cloaks lined up. Michael pressed the pendant at his collar. "Form up, Templars. We're leaving."
A Templar approached Michael and saluted. "We set up a shield across the exit to the stadium. It should contain the tragon."
Shelton snorted. "If Daelissa's people use this arch, they're in for a big surprise."
I took look at Trago as he munched on another body. "We should go before he runs out of corpses."
The troops evacuated the stadium through the portal in the Obsidian Arch. Elyssa and I lagged behind. I was tired and moving slow.
Trago lifted his bloody muzzle and looked at me as I headed toward the arch. He emitted a querulous sounding roar. I waved goodbye. "Clean your plate!" I said.
We reached the arch and Trago tromped toward us. He stopped, cocked his head to the side and regarded us as we entered the portal. We were the last through. Adam, already back at La Casona, scanned the portal with his arctablet. His eyes went huge when he saw the tragon. "What in the hell is that doing there?"
Trago, meanwhile, butted his head against an uncompleted leviathan golem. He bit the thing's leg and roared like a giant reptilian dog that had just found a chew toy. Adam made a slashing motion across his neck and the Obsidian Arch powered down with a long low hum.
"We recruited some extra help," I said as a yawn cracked my jaw. It was almost midnight in this part of the world.
Adam wrinkled his nose. "You look awful. Head into the control room and take an omniarch portal home for some shuteye."
I wanted to give a jaunty salute, but my arm refused to rise. Elyssa practically carried me into the control room. I vaguely remembered seeing the portal open before passing out.
Elyssa was already out of bed and probably going through her morning exercises when I woke up the next morning. I found a small scroll tied with a purple ribbon on her pillow. A grin stretched my mouth. I opened the scroll and read it.
Every day with you is a gift. I love you, Justin.
Elyssa and I had taken to leaving each other little notes like this. We were both so busy it seemed we hardly had any alone time anymore. We were both so tired at night, we hadn't even had a decent make-out session in a while. It was almost as if we had nine-to-five jobs and three kids.
The notification light on my arcphone blinked at me. My phone, Nookli, had been fried from a malaether explosion, but Adam and Shelton had managed to fix it. I ignored the notification indicator and wrote a note for Elyssa on a fresh sheet of parchment.
You, me, dinner and a movie. I miss having you all to myself. I love you, babe.
I rolled the note, bound it with the purple ribbon she'd used, and left it on her pillow.
With a loud groan, I flicked the screen on my phone and saw a message from Dad.
Remember the ball tonight. Dress nice and pretend you're not an ass.
I ran a hand down my face and sighed. Despite the full night of sleep, I still felt drained. It was hardly surprising considering how much I'd been through. A yawn caught me off guard. I let it ride its course and opened my email to read through a slew of reports.
Elyssa's father, Thomas Borathen, had taken troops to Australia to help Commander Taylor of the Southern Australian Legion deal with the former Northern Australian Legion, which was now in cahoots with the Synod. His liaison's email to me reported that they'd captured or killed most of the NAL leadership and were putting their troops through a truth-saying process to weed out the Synod loyalists. Their next step would be securing the Three Sisters way station, the only one in Australia with an Alabaster Arch.
I flicked to the next email, this one from Cinder, a lifelike golem created by a Seraphim named Fjoeruss, aka Mr. Gray.
The aether pods have processed ten more Darklings. Joss and Otaleon are doing an excellent job of tutoring them, but we do not have enough nom volunteers to feed them all. Please meet with me at your earliest convenience to discuss options. –C
I looked at my calendar. It was already stuffed with items. Ryland and Stacey had arranged a meeting with the lycan Alpha, Colin McCloud for tomorrow. I was also supposed to meet with Captain Takei to discuss options for dealing with Cyphanis Rax and installing a new Arcane Council.
Scrolling down, I realized every day was filled with one operation or another. We'd prioritized the Obsidian Arch way stations we needed to control for more effective logistics and scheduled the days for our military actions. It felt strange to make an appointment for fighting battles. Killing enemies on a schedule. All of our military actions led toward securing the Grand Nexus. As the primary Alabaster Arch in this realm, Eden, it was the only way Daelissa could open a gateway to Seraphina. Since she now had the Chalon, the key to activate the nexus, there was almost nothing standing in her way.
Thankfully, the nexus was blocked for the time being. I'd sent my friends—now Templar soldiers—to put portal-blocking statues in the way station, thus keeping Daelissa from utilizing it. Even so, it was only a matter of time before she and her minions discovered how to open the gateway. We had to secure all the way stations with Alabaster Arches before that happened.
I scanned the subjects of the other emails. Adam's sister, Felicia, had sent me a request to rescue vampires from the enemy army. Most of them were just kids who thought being a supernatural creature was the coolest thing in the world until their sires used compulsion to make them fight battles as cannon fodder.
Rescuing vampires was low on my list, so I skipped her email and tried not to feel terrible about it. Saving them meant killing the vampire brood sires, and they were just too hard to get at, especially during the heat of battle. So far, our spies were having little luck finding the lairs where the Red Syndicate leaders were hiding, and we didn't have the manpower to widen our search.
Training Darklings, however, was at the top of my list. They'd be our only hope against Daelissa and her Brightling army.
"Nookli, reschedule my ten A.M. appointment for tomorrow," I told my phone.
My phone respond
ed at once. "Justin, there are three Indian restaurants nearby. Would you like a reservation?"
Sometimes I had to wonder if my phone was just messing with me. I repeated my request. This time, it got it right.
I looked around the gray-walled concrete room. The underground Templar barracks weren't much to look at. I remembered the mornings of waking up at the mansion. Elyssa and I would head downstairs to find a fresh batch of Shelton's pancakes and Bella's famous Colombian omelets waiting on the table. Shelton would make some smartass comment while Bella would read a tragic news story aloud and make sympathetic noises.
Cutsauce, the first hellhound I'd summoned, would run around our ankles, yipping like crazy and begging for a bite of our breakfast. Now he was hanging out with Cinder in El Dorado.
When Mom and Ivy had started living in the mansion, the place had livened up even more. I really missed having my extended family around.
I took a shower in the communal bathroom. The place was already empty by eight in the morning since the Templars didn't mess around when it came to waking up at ungodly hours. After dressing, I took the levitator—a magical elevator—up to the mess hall and grabbed some grub. Shelton and Bella were already eating there.
"Good morning, sunshine," Shelton said. "You realize you missed the morning reveille by about two hours, don't you?"
"Oh, hush, Harry," Bella said, looking at me over the morning paper.
"Is that the local newspaper?" I asked, looking at the headlines.
She nodded. "The noms are up in arms about Kobol Prison."
I read the front page. Military Won't Say What Destroyed Choppers. I whistled.
"Idiot battle mages," Shelton said. "The blast from the malaether crucible was enough to attract the nom military, but they still could've tossed up some interdiction spells to keep the choppers away. Instead, they blew 'em up and brought the full attention of the United States military on Kobol."
"There's an Obsidian Arch at Kobol," I said. "There was all sorts of paranormal activity, and god knows how many null cubes with cherubs left out there."
"It was only a matter of time before this war caught the noms' attention," Bella said. "Dealing with it will be difficult."
"Something should be done. What if they release a cherub?" My stomach clenched. "The last thing we need is a world full of shadow people."
Shelton took a drink of coffee and shrugged. "Ain't nothing we can do about it now. Either Daelissa or the U.S. military controls Kobol now. We'd have to invade."
The notification for a new email chimed. I flicked on the screen. It was from Christian Salazar, commander of the Colombian Templars and addressed to me, Elyssa, and the others on our command staff.
Several captured prisoners from our latest operations stated Daelissa has not made an appearance for several days as she usually does. One prisoner revealed under questioning that Daelissa may have already activated the Grand Nexus. Will keep everyone apprised of information as it unfolds.
Chapter 7
The tight feeling in my stomach went even tighter.
"What is it?" Shelton asked.
Daelissa could be in Seraphina right this moment! I turned my phone to him so he could read the email.
Bella's eyes went wide. "I thought opening a portal to Seraphina with the Grand Nexus was blocked by those statues."
"Bah." Shelton backhanded the air. "It's just a rumor. If Daelissa really went back to the motherland, we'd be ass-deep in angel feathers."
I took a few deep breaths to quell the fear rising in me. "I hope so." I took a bite of a sausage and chewed on it while my mind ran in circles. "Bella, would you get together a small group of people to monitor nom news? I need to know how aware the humans are of current paranormal events." I turned to Shelton. "Get ahold of MacLean. Ask him if his Illuminati contacts can find out how much the nom government knows."
"You should also ask Kassallandra and David," Shelton said. "From what he told me, the Daemos have a small army of informants in governments across the world."
My father, David, had once told me the same thing. A supernatural race with a master's degree in seduction could get just about any kind of information they wanted. I finished my breakfast, said goodbye to my friends, and headed for the underground hangar in the Templar compound.
The levitator deposited me in what looked like a massive underground garage. Plain boxes called sliders were parked in neat rows. Each one was equipped with flying spells much like the ones used by flying carpets, and illusion spells to make them look like nom aircraft such as helicopters or small planes. In a remote corner of the garage were two large square outlines of painted yellow dashes.
A pedestal with an arctablet fastened to it stood in front of the square.
"Justin Slade," I said to the tablet.
The screen blinked on and traced me with an array of lights. Adam, a former conspiracy theorist and master magic hacker, had written a special authentication program for the device.
"Wait time for a portal is four minutes and thirty seconds," the tablet said. A timer appeared on the screen and counted down.
I sighed, took out Nookli, and browsed the Overnet, aka the aethernet—the Overworld version of the internet—while I waited. "Man, it sucks not having my own omniarch anymore." I sent a text to Elyssa and told her I was going to El Dorado to visit Cinder. She didn't respond right away since she was probably leading some of our newer troops through training exercises right about now.
A portal flickered into being a few seconds before the countdown ended. I stepped through and into the control room at La Casona.
"Destination?" a young male Templar asked me.
"I got it," I said. Before he could protest, I touched the silver circle around the omniarch and willed it to close. The static rush of aether filled the air. I filled my mind with an image of the control room in El Dorado. The air between the arch slashed open to the exact area I'd imagined. I stepped through and willed the portal to close. It narrowed to a thin scar in the air and vanished. The control room was located deep underground beneath the dead city of El Dorado. Located in the southern jungles of Colombia, the ancient civilization had once been ground zero for the Seraphim invasion, as evidenced by giant jeweled murals slaves had built for their otherworldly masters.
I looked at the Alabaster Arch dominating the control room and wondered what would happen if I tried to open a gateway to Seraphina right this minute. If Daelissa had attuned the Grand Nexus with the Chalon, it should mean the rest of the Alabaster Arches would be attuned to the same realm.
"Hello, Justin."
I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned and saw Cinder standing behind me. He wore his standard gray suit—the same one favored by the gray men, the golems created by Mr. Gray.
He tilted his head slightly. "Ah, I surprised you. I am sorry if, as you sometimes say, I made you poop your pants."
I snorted. "I've nearly crapped myself so much lately, what's another squirt in the pants?"
"I had not realized you were being literal," Cinder said, his face attempting to mimic a concerned expression. Instead, he looked like someone who'd just bitten into a lemon. "The cupids go through an alarming number of diapers, but I'm certain I could find a pair that fit you."
It took me a few seconds to respond, because I wasn't sure if Cinder was attempting humor or actually trying to be helpful. It made me realize how hard it had to be for him in his attempts to act more human. An act of mad-scientist magic had given him sentience and emotion, but it hadn't given him an instruction booklet on using it and fitting in.
"I'll be okay," I assured him and motioned toward the control room door. "I came to talk to you about the cupids."
"Of course." He motioned toward several massive stacks of null cubes near the front of the control room. They looked as if they were made of frosted glass, but the material was designed to turn transparent or opaque to keep the horrific prisoners inside from seeing outside.
I shivered at the
thought of the creatures within. The husks—I'd nicknamed them cherubs—were all that remained of Seraphim caught in the blast when someone forcibly removed the Chalon from the Grand Nexus during the Seraphim War. The Seraphim called it the Desecration for good reason, since it had wiped out everyone regardless of supernatural or mortal affiliation and turned them into shadow creatures that craved the light from any living creature they could lay their nubby little mitts on.
Cinder led me to the cubes. "We have finished sorting the cubes taken from Kobol Prison."
"Excellent." I stopped in front of the stacks. The Darkling cherub cubes were stacked to the left, the Brightlings to the right. Only one cube stood apart. A device called an affinity sphere allowed us to gauge the alignment of the cherubs inside the cubes to either Murk or Brilliance and thus determine if they were Darklings or Brightlings. The cherub in the lone cube, however, had registered right in the middle—the gray—and none of us knew what to make of it. "Any idea how many cherubs we have?"
"Indeed." Cinder paused as if accessing something. "We have seven-hundred and twenty-three Darklings, five-hundred and eighty-one Brightlings, and one anomaly. Shall we go to the cupids?"
"Sure."
We exited the room and entered the large cavern. An Obsidian Arch should have towered in the center. Instead, there were two massive leyworms—earth dragons. The red-scaled monster was Altash. I didn't know his purple girlfriend's name, so I referred to her as Lulu. We passed a trench carved in the rock by their smaller compadres. The cupids—infantile creatures with oil-black skin—grasped at us with nubby hands. Round, tooth-lined orifices in their otherwise faceless heads screeched with agony. "Dah-nah! Dah-nah!"
The hairs on the back of my neck felt like they were trying to uproot themselves and run away. I was happy to get past the little horrors and leave their screeches behind.
Joss and Otaleon emerged from between the scaly coils of the dragons and approached us.
"How's the training?" I asked them.
