by Lan Chan
I butchered the angelical word for death. The language was never meant for mortal minds. But I was so desperate that it seemed plausible to try.
The necromancer staggered backwards, taking me with him. My eardrums burst. His body convulsed so hard he let go of me. His hands clamped around his throat as though he was having difficulty breathing. I dropped to the floor like a stone, inhaling sharply. The ghouls stopped ravening in confusion. His hold on then slipped.
I shuddered as I hit the ground. A thousand spines lanced through my mind. Blood poured from my nose and ears. I saw the ghouls fall to their knees.
I took advantage of their momentary distraction and dragged myself back to the mirror. It was a slow, agonising crawl. With more blood seeping from my wound, connecting to Basil wasn’t a problem.
“Lex!” he shouted. “Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” I squeaked.
The ghouls rallied. Basil’s eyes narrowed. He nicked his own palm with a knife until it bled and placed it against mine. “There’s something causing a barrier,” Basil said. “Look at me.”
I peeled my gaze away from the horror of the room in front of me. My mind was trying to block out the sound of the ghouls crunching on Astrid.
“We’ve done this before,” he said. “It’s a simple spell. Just find an anchor and I’ll pull you out.”
I was just fine and dandy compared to Astrid. So I did find an anchor. I reached my foot out until I made contact with hers. As the necromancer heaved and the ghouls snarled, I shoved all of the magic I could into her. The glass warmed beneath my palm.
“That’s it!” Basil said. Bright orange light flared on the other side of the mirror. There was a loud pop. Tendrils of Basil’s orange magic whipped out and latched on to Astrid.
“Blue!” I heard Kai scream from somewhere in the room. But the portal Basil created was already closing. When it winked out, they were both gone. And I was in a room alone with the monsters.
3
I rolled onto my back. The necromancer smashed his fist into his chest. It dispelled whatever I’d done to take hold of him. He took a menacing step forward. I smiled at him. That’s right. I might be dying soon, but I had taken away the prize he had probably promised his ghouls. Human flesh wasn’t nearly as powerful. In my delusion, I chose to ignore the fact that I had seraphim blood inside me.
The necromancer made a grabbing motion. An invisible fist latched around my throat. I was lifted into the air. My feet dangled uselessly. I made a choking sound as I struggled to breathe. At some point, my nerve endings must have become overloaded. The necromancer retracted his hand and I went sailing across the room towards him.
The second before his fingers would have gripped my throat for real, green light sizzled in my periphery. The necromancer’s head snapped in that direction, seconds before one pissed-off Nephilim appeared out of thin air.
Kai grabbed the necromancer where his neck would have been and slammed his fist right into the necromancer’s cowled head. I hit the floor again, but this time, the ghouls left me alone. Most of the supernaturals had an “attack the biggest threat” mentality.
Instead of the green of his angelfire, swirls of darkened mist hung around Kai’s body. It reminded me of the wards that the Sisterhood had used to stop the supernaturals from manifesting their powers. Kai brought his hands together over the necromancer’s head. He tugged it sideways.
A disturbing crunch speared through the room. I turned away as Kai literally ripped the necromancer’s head off. In death, the shroud around the necromancer disappeared. He was just a man again. The mist dissipated. Tossing the body aside like it was a tin can, Kai turned towards the ghouls. The expression on his face was thunderous. Even in their frenzied state, the ghouls cowered slightly. He didn’t care that they were masterless, or that they had been controlled.
Creatures I had thought were indestructible had their arms ripped right off. My stomach turned. I was losing steam. It was the only thing that finally stopped that Nephilim jackass from his rage frenzy. He allowed the last three ghouls to flee as he crouched down and lifted me into his arms.
In my head, I swatted at him. In reality, I think I just squirmed a bit.
“Let go of me you stupid bastard,” I said.
“Shhh,” he said.
“Why don’t you go and see if Chanelle needs her –”
A ripple of pleasure and pain splintered through my body as he teleported us. We hung in suspension much longer than we normally would have. In the space between dimensions, I felt Kai’s angelfire wrap around me and drag me closer to his chest. He held me there as awareness washed over me. There was something wrong with this place that stopped supernaturals from teleporting. He was trying to fuse his power to me, keeping me with him so I wouldn’t be stolen again.
When we finally reached the other side, I was just about ready to pass out. I almost did when I opened my eyes and saw Astrid standing in Basil’s living room. Her clothes were different to the ones she’d had on in the shack.
I tried to wriggle out of Kai’s hold, but his arms became metal.
“Let go of me!” I screeched. He refused to comply. The room was filled to the brim. What caused my already-faltering brain to go into meltdown was the presence of the salt-and-pepper-haired Nephilim.
“If you don’t let go of me this instant,” I told Kai, “you’re going to be sorry.” It would have been really threatening if I wasn’t wheezing.
If anything, he pressed me closer.
“Kai,” Jacqueline’s voice said. I couldn’t see her because she was behind me.
“Stop moving,” Kai barked. I wasn’t sure who he was addressing but there were lots of supernaturals in the room. Most of them moved soundlessly. Over his shoulder, I caught sight of Max coming to a halt. Behind him, Durin and Yolanda lingered.
“Are you deaf or something?” I whisper-screamed. “I said get away from me.” My voice became wet as I continued to lock onto the salt-and-pepper Nephilim. Where did he get off acting like I was his prize when all this time he was meant to be with somebody else?
“Blue,” he said, his tone soothing.
I scratched at his arm. “Shut up! Just shut up and get out!”
I bit my tongue this time to stop the tears of frustration from coming. There was just no way in hell I was going to cry about this. No bloody way.
“Let go of her,” Basil said. Orange light flared.
“Why don’t we all calm down,” Jacqueline said.
“Get out!” I screamed.
“Not until we get this sorted.”
He had rocks in his head. I was so done with this. I turned and looked at Durin right in the eyes. If I had been a shifter, it would have been a direct challenge to his dominance. It could be grounds to put me flat on my ass. But I was human and I was desperate. Besides, Durin owed me a favour after I’d saved his life.
“Please make him leave.”
Kai tensed around me. He turned so that he was facing Durin. Behind him, Jacqueline, Nanna, and Nora were all perched beside the door. Sophie and Diana were on the couch. Their mouths hung open in shock.
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Kai said.
“Screw you,” I shot back. Every shifter in the room got to their feet. I twisted around to watch Durin and Yolanda. Max flanked them. Trey fell in behind Max. Even Charles, who was holding his baby sister on his hip, fell into line.
Durin’s gaze lowered to mine. “Are you sure, lass?” he asked. Kai made a strangled sound. I couldn’t breathe he was squishing me so hard.
“Yes.”
“No,” Kai barked.
Something sizzled in the air around us. I had to shield my eyes as Kai’s angelfire saturated my skin. Durin seemed to grow to twice his natural size. The room began to vibrate with a primal energy that I assumed was the pack mentality fusing into a physical manifestation of their power.
“Anyone who isn’t pack or under pack protection has ten seconds to depa
rt the Reserve,” Durin said. He started counting down. At the five-second mark, Kai still hadn’t moved.
“Blue,” he whispered. If he continued to stay, he would risk starting a war with the shifters.
“Kai!” Max bellowed. They shared a tense exchange. If Kai didn’t leave, Max would have no choice but to attack his best friend.
“Two seconds,” Durin called.
“This isn’t over,” Kai snapped at me before he set me down. I heaved a sigh of relief when he teleported away. I wasn’t the only one. Salt-and-Pepper Nephilim disappeared with him. I saw flashes of golden light outside. There had been more Nephilim guards outside the door. One of them turned to look at me. I shook my head at Curtis who smiled and then rolled his eyes. I would have been okay if he stayed. But when yours truly did this crazy stuff, it wasn’t the best idea to hang around. When all the Nephilim besides Astrid were gone, I rolled over onto my back and passed out.
They just wouldn’t let me rest. I groaned as bright light pierced my eyelids. Cold wind kissed my cheeks. I opened my eyes and found myself standing outside the cavern where the seraphim had Lucifer in stasis. Raphael stood to my left. Michael was on my right.
“Umm,” I said. “Is this a dream or a nightmare?”
“Neither,” Michael said. I zipped my lips.
In front of me, Lucifer lay comatose. Sleeping Beauty. I really didn’t want this fairy tale to end in a happily ever after for him.
“He remains contained,” Raphael observed.
They grew quiet, their expressions grave. Like a child, my reactions mimicked theirs. I had no words for the apprehension that fisted my heart. “What’s wrong?”
Raphael sighed. The world around us shimmered and we were inside the garden in Seraphina. “You spoke Angelical,” he said.
Michael cleared his throat. “That’s not necessarily true. You tried to speak Angelical.”
“Either way, it caused a ripple,” Raphael said. “Your pronunciation was quite…interesting.”
I snorted. Raphael cupped my chin. He lifted my head up to meet his eyes. I immediately lowered mine. I felt a light pressure in my mind. “It seems intact.”
“You cannot do that again,” Michael warned me. “You were very lucky this time. Those words were not meant for mortal ears.”
“I’m not entirely mortal though, am I?”
Their silence said it all. “I cannot press how important it is,” Michael said.
“Okay, okay. I won’t use any more Angelical words.”
As Raphael put me back under, a thought drifted through to me. It was laced with foreboding. I wasn’t sure which of the two of them it came from but the gist of it was blaring. I was human. I had free will. If I did use another Angelical word, there was no way they could stop me. And that, more than anything, was the reason why they had taken me to check that Lucifer was still contained. They thought that the Angelical word was the key to releasing him.
There was shrieking all around me. Thankfully the shrieking was of the small-child variety and not the demon variety. The only problem was that it was a lot of shrieking. From many different children. Why?
I was in my bed at Basil’s. After a couple of minutes, my disorientation subsided. My stomach growled. It was a relief. After the visual of the ghouls tearing into Astrid and then Kai ripping them apart, I thought my gag reflex was here to stay.
The bed was vastly more expensive than the one I had at the Academy. Yet somehow, this didn’t feel like home. Thirty minutes or so passed before I heard footsteps coming up the staircase. The doorknob turned. Sophie’s dark curls preceded her.
I sighed and tried to push myself up to sitting. We smiled at each other as she walked fully into the room, followed by Diana and Astrid. You would never be able to tell she had been set upon by ghouls.
“How?” I asked. The bed compressed as Sophie sprang on to it.
Diana segued the conversation. “I know the answer, but I suppose I better ask if you’re hungry,” she said. My nod was emphatic. She disappeared out the door.
Sophie lay down beside me over the covers. She patted my arm as though making sure I was really there.
“What?” I had regressed into monosyllabic speech. My eyes roamed over Astrid. She sat down on the armchair facing the bed. Her posture was ramrod straight.
“How are you feeling?” Sophie asked.
I rubbed my temple. “Okay, I guess.” My eyes flicked to Astrid again. “I’m not entirely sure what happened.”
“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,” Sophie muttered.
“Well, you better start talking because the way you two keep sneaking looks at each other is freaking me out.”
Diana cleared her throat as she came back into the room. Nanna was with her. The door slammed shut for a second before it opened again. A butt-naked six-year-old came running in. He was covered in splotches of paint.
“Goodness me,” Nanna said. She tried to take a swipe at Edward, but he dodged and came straight at me. As leopard cub, his reflexes were phenomenal. He managed to evade both Nanna and Diana before hopping onto the bed and dropping onto my lap.
“Less,” he grinned. That’s how he said my name. His tongue stuck out between two non-existent front teeth. “Save me!” He pronounced save as “thave.”
I needed someone to save me. He’d struck me in the chest with his big, round head when he’d torpedoed into me. I was having a hard time breathing again. He did his level best to squirm under the covers. They became tangled around us.
“This is not how I imagined being in bed with a naked shifter,” I gritted out. Diana burst out laughing. She set the tray of food onto my desk just as a royally annoyed nine-year-old lynx shifter stomped into the room.
“Where is he?” Kate snarled. I wrapped my arms around Edward instinctively. He was giggling. Kate spotted him.
“You little ruffian!” she screamed. Nanna had to catch her before she came charging at us with her fists raised. Edward had the decency to duck his head.
“Katelyn!” Nanna said. “Inside voice, please.”
“You’re not allowed to make noise,” Edward piped up. “Less is sick.” He patted my cheek and made such a forlorn face that Sophie couldn’t stifle her own giggle.
“As if you know what being sick is like!” Kate shot back. But she quieted her tone. She grimaced when she glanced at me. “Sorry, Lex. You!” She pointed at Edward. “If I so much as sniff you near my art supplies again, I’m going to make sure you never reach puberty.”
With that inappropriate threat, she stomped out.
“What’s a puberty?” Edward asked. Sophie coughed.
Nanna grabbed Edward. “Sorry, love,” she said. “They’ve been a bit chaotic this morning. I’ll take him out and come back.”
“Bye, Less,” Edward waved at me. I waved back, a smile pulling at my lips as I heard Nanna asking him where his clothes had gone. The cubs were like that. I’d overheard Shayla telling Sophie once that she gave up putting clothes on Max at all between the ages of five and nine. I’d never seen Sophie go so red before.
“What gives?” I said. Diana handed over the tray of food. My insides turned to jelly at the scrumptious scent of roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy.
“Nanna has a new job,” Sophie informed me.
“A new job?” Their perplexed expressions confused me for a moment until I realised I’d spoken with my mouth full of food. I chewed as quickly as I could, swallowed, and repeated the question. “How did she manage to get a job so quickly?”
There were those glances again. “Somebody make with an explanation,” I warned.
Astrid shook her head. Diana glanced up at the ceiling as though there was something extremely interesting about it. When Sophie took my hand, I prepared myself for the worst.
Sophie’s big, brown eyes were soft. “It’s been almost three weeks since you were teleported away. School starts in a few days.”
The fork clattered onto the tra
y. I looked from one of them to the other. The truth of it was right there in Astrid’s unblemished skin. I covered my face with my hands and groaned.
4
I let fly with the worst curses I’d learned from the Zambian wolves. Nanna came running into the room again, followed by Basil. “What in the world?” she barked. “I could hear you all the way outside. There are children present with very sensitive, shifter hearing.”
“How am I the one in trouble?” I yelled back. “I didn’t ask you to get a job looking after every bloody cub on the Reserve.”
She pulled herself up to her full height. Not that impressive a feat considering she was five foot seven at most. “It’s not all of the Reserve,” she said. “Just the ones in this sector.”
I was being a smart ass. But my jaw dropped. “Why are you looking after kids? Are you even qualified to do that?”
She stuck her nose in the air. “I raised you, didn’t I?”
Oh the snappy comeback was there. I wasn’t fast enough. “I don’t know if that’s a ringing endorsement,” Diana slid in. “Most of the supernatural community is convinced you raised demon-spawn.”
Nanna waved away her comment. “She’s got all of her limbs still attached. That’s success.”
“That’s probably good enough for most shifters,” Sophie added. She smiled at Nanna. “Actually, Betty had to instigate a waiting list. Her services are in very high demand.”
“Ha!” Nanna slapped her knee. “There you go. Appreciation at last. No more cursing!” She turned back to the door. “Or at least do it quietly.”
When she was gone, Basil leaned against the closed door. “I can certainly see how you’ve acquired a taste for bending the rules,” he said. “That wasn’t exactly a solid reprimand.”
“Maybe not but she’s right, I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
My sense of humour was way off at the moment. Nobody even cracked a smile. I made a motion for Sophie to give me back the food. She hesitated.
“It goes in your mouth,” she said. “Not on the walls.”
