Celestial Storm

by Emma L. Adams

  Zadok tossed Dienes into the light of the pentagram. The little demon’s body fell, crumbling into ashes.

  “What was that for?” I said.

  “I would have thought you would know better than to hesitate, Devi,” he said.

  “I was that close to learning how to get a demon name, idiot,” I retaliated. “How many other demons would give that information away for free?”

  “Any demon, given the right pressure.” He eyed my uncovered hand.

  “Zadok,” Nikolas said warningly. “The demon deserved to die. That doesn’t mean you have the right to manipulate Devi.”

  “Oh, this is standard,” I said, rolling my eyes. “All right, genius. You tell me how I’d go about getting a demon name.” I moved my celestial hand to point directly at him.

  Zadok narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t kill me.”

  “I would if it turned out you were allied with the rebels, Zadok.”

  “I have no need for rebellion, Devi,” he said, his burgundy eyes glowing. “I have everything I need.”

  “Don’t speak too soon,” Nikolas said.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’d like to know where they hid the rest of that demonglass, but since Pandemonium’s esteemed ruler is as unobservant as the last two—”

  “It sounds like Abyss is the one who let the demon trade with Earth without her knowledge,” Zadok said. “Nobody has traded behind my back, and I executed Abyss’s former advisers personally.”

  “Of course you bloody well did.” I groaned. “Great. I don’t suppose you’ve seen any celestials in the palace?”

  “None aside from you, Devi, and my offer is still open.” He smiled. “Was that all you wanted? I thought you’d seen sense and decided to ally with me to take on the guild. You can hunt all the little demonic traitors you like, but someday you’ll realise that nothing will satisfy you other than the sweet taste of revenge.”

  “Nothing would satisfy me more than hearing you shut the fuck up. You can stay right there in infernal hell, Zadok.”

  “But I’m right.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” I said. “You should probably check nobody else is trading behind your back. The demonglass is being booby-trapped with explosive magic, so you’d better hope the people responsible aren’t on your side of this pentagram. Because you’re standing in a palace completely made out of the stuff.”

  The moment the colour drained from his face, I killed the pentagram.

  “What a waste of time.”

  “Devi…”

  I turned to Nikolas. “What is it?”

  “You don’t think the person who booby-trapped the demonglass is in the palace, do you?” he asked.

  “For his sake, I hope not. But I want to find out where they hid the stuff. A source that big… how have I not found it yet? I thought I gathered every source in the city, except Javos’s old demonglass stash.”

  “Maybe we should have questioned Talon more carefully,” Nikolas said. “I might not know about Pandemonium, or the guild’s back doors, much less the rebels—but when it comes to the warlocks living legally in this city, there is little I don’t know. I can certainly find where he and his allies live.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m getting tired of the Divine Agents’ allies being one step ahead. Anyone would think they wanted to me to perish in a fit of frustration before I ever laid eyes on them.”

  “I’ll send someone to ‘invite’ those warlocks back in for questioning,” he said. “It’s a pity that current warlock law forbids me from executing anyone on the spot for betrayal, but I’ll see how they like the inside of a jail cell. In the meantime, we’ll go and investigate Talon’s house.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Maybe Rachel will be up for hunting down some traitors with us.”

  13

  “You bet,” said Rachel, when I asked her. “I’d like to smack around some of the idiots who tried to take leadership from Niko. Did they ever think they’d get any votes?”

  “They tried,’ I said, walking to the lab in Nikolas’s living room to grab some props. “Instead, three of them are on their way to jail. Turns out they helped the rogue celestials when they lived in this realm. They traded with Pandemonium, and they have a load of illegal demonglass hidden somewhere. Problem is, only Harvey and his friends know where it is, and they’re not exactly accessible at the moment, so it looks like we’re going to have to search all their houses.”

  “Can’t you just use your ability to jump around between pieces of glass until you find it?” she asked.

  “I should be able to,” I said. “But I’ve hopped around the city all week looking for fragments and haven’t found a giant piece of it anywhere. Besides, we need to see if the warlocks were keeping anything else illegal at their base.”

  Considering how many hours I’d spent demonglass-hopping, it bothered me that I hadn’t picked up on such an obvious source, but unless the celestial rogues had taken it with them, it must still be in this realm somewhere. Not knowing how they’d infused it with demon magic bothered me, too. At least the humans didn’t seem to have suffered any adverse side effects from the magic they’d gained, but it was a glaring reminder that the Divine Agents were still several steps ahead of the rest of us.

  I hesitated before picking up the last of the demonglass pieces I’d kept in the lab, locked up in a container where they couldn’t be used as a portal. I was shooting myself in the foot if I carried none at all, and the pieces I’d gathered were direct from the warlocks’ stores, uncontaminated. Wouldn’t stop Harvey from materialising on top of me again if he felt like it, but I refused to run scared from my own power source.

  I drove to Talon’s house, following Nikolas’s directions until the houses thinned out and the roads became bumpier. Like a lot of the celestial cities, Haven City had been built on top of another, older city, which wasn’t obvious until you got to the outskirts and found abandoned buildings and pothole-ridden roads. The sinking sun followed us across the darkening sky, melting over the rooftops like liquid demonglass. Maybe I had the stuff on the brain, but I was positive I’d missed a clue somewhere. A piece of demonglass as big as the one I’d seen in the vision didn’t vanish into thin air.

  I winced as we hit another pothole. “I don’t think my tyres can take much more of this.”

  “We’re almost there.” Nikolas indicated a turning on the left. “Talon’s house is just around that corner.”

  “About time.” I parked at the road’s side, next to a convenience store that’d seen better days.

  “What a dump.” Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Smells foul. Like dead demons.”

  “Better hope he hasn’t left anything nasty behind.” I opened the door and got out of the car.

  “Be on your guard,” Nikolas said from behind me. “There’s a chance he might have alerted his friends before being jailed.”

  “Bring it,” I said. “Maybe they’ll give me a clue where the rogues stashed that demonglass.”

  A tingling in my left hand warned me my celestial mark sensed something demonic. Movement behind the curtains in the window of the brick house confirmed Talon hadn’t left it unattended.

  Rachel kicked the door in, and the three of us moved into the hall to face down the two warlocks inside. One was a horned half-demon with hooves who might have been Talon’s sibling. The other was a big brutish green-skinned menace with gaps in his teeth when he bared them at me. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “You know who I am.” Nikolas gave them a humourless smile. “I’m assuming your associate told you to leave town?”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about, mate,” said the horned warlock.

  “Sure you don’t.” I folded my arms, eyeing the bag slung over his shoulder. “So if I don’t search you, I won’t find any illegal demonic props… right?”

  “What do you want with us? Why are you breaking into my brother’s house?”

  Nikolas’s aura turned jet black. �
�Your brother is in jail for conspiring against the leader of the warlocks. Hand over everything you have or spend the night in the shadow realm. I can’t promise you’d survive it.”

  “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

  I’d heard that before.

  “Smuggling from the demon realms puts the safety of everyone in this city at risk,” Nikolas said, shadows folding around him into the form of huge wings.

  Swearing, the horned warlock threw the bag at me. I caught it one-handed and pulled it open. “There’s no demonglass in here.”

  I thought not. The giant piece I’d seen in the vision had been way too big to be carried by hand, except perhaps for the massive green demon, and he wasn’t carrying anything.

  “Demonglass?” The warlock blinked in unconvincing confusion.

  “Ring a bell?” I said. “Talon had some of that, too. What did you do with it?”

  “Nothing!” he said. “We handed it over to the trader and left.”

  “Uh-huh.” I drew on some of Nikolas’s shadow magic to join with his, and the room filled with darkness.

  The green-skinned demon paled and stumbled back. Scared of the dark, huh. As for the horned demon, he edged towards the window.

  “Nice try.” Rachel appeared from the shadows, wearing her demonic form. “You’re not getting away until we confirm you didn’t steal what we think you did.”

  “I’m sure you two won’t mind if we search your property and then torch it to the ground?” I said.

  They did mind, but one look at Rachel’s unhinged jaw and three sets of teeth shut them up. While she kept an eye on them, Nikolas and I searched every room, picking up every demonic prop we saw. Unfortunately, there did seem to be no sign of the demonglass, even in the attic and the basement.

  “I wonder if I can probe your memory about where your fellow warlocks took that demonglass?” I said to the horned warlock when we returned to the living room. “Did they by any chance have weapons that looked like this?” My left hand ignited with celestial power.

  “You’re no demon!” said the green-skinned warlock, who seemed a little slow on the uptake.

  “I’m worse than a demon,” I said. “And if you don’t tell me what you did with that demonglass, I might change my mind about not burning this house down with you already inside it.”

  “The celestials had it!” yelped the horned demon. “They took it. I dunno where it is.”

  Well, then. Bolt Street it was.

  Five minutes later, we left the two of them tied up with their own rope in the alley beside the burning house. Nikolas called on some of his warlock allies to come and pick them up, while I drove us out of the dead-end of town and back in the direction of Bolt Street.

  “Didn’t the celestials burn down their hideout?” Rachel asked from the back seat.

  “Yeah, but maybe they left a clue about where they relocated their props. I don’t think they took it to Purgatory.” Though I might be wrong. “The demonglass I saw in the vision was huge, but maybe they’re breaking it into pieces and hiding it that way. The pieces that made the portals… even the glass that caused the explosion at Mather’s wasn’t that big.”

  I parked the car down the road from Bolt Street.

  “The weird thing is, I’m sure I left some demonglass of my own here,” I said. “When I tried hopping here with Faye and Clover, though—it didn’t work.”

  “Does your power have a limit?” asked Nikolas. “A geographical one?”

  “Huh,” I said. “Maybe. I haven’t tried using it to get outside the city before.” But now I thought about it, I could only travel to places in demon realms which were close to the city itself.

  “Maybe if the demonglass source is somewhere out here, you can’t reach it from within the city,” Nikolas said.

  “You can cross realms, though,” said Rachel.

  “Only places that directly overlap with the city,” I said. “I’ve tested it. Pretty extensively. Shit, maybe you’re right. It could have been out here the whole time, beyond the limits of my reach.”

  But that meant—the glass might be anywhere out here, and I would never have known it.

  “When exactly did Talon smuggle the demonglass into this realm?” asked Nikolas.

  “Before Lythocrax died,” I said. “I bet he knew my limits and planned for it. Lythocrax is the one who gave me that magic. If you took a piece of demonglass out into the countryside, I wouldn’t be able to reach it.”

  “You can’t drive around the whole country, Devi,” said Rachel.

  “I won’t need to.” I looked up and down the street. The house on Bolt Street was a burned husk, nothing more. “It’s a massive piece of demonglass, they won’t have taken it far.”

  “The building’s completely gutted,” Nikolas commented. “I don’t think the glass is in there.”

  “Thought not.” I gripped the demonglass fragments in my pocket in my right hand. “I’m going to find it. If it’s anywhere within my limits, I’ll land on top of it.”

  “You sure?” asked Rachel.

  I nodded. “I have to know what they did with it. If I land in a nest of demons, I’ll send up a smoke signal.”

  “Use your celestial mark,” Nikolas said. “I can fly in and find you.”

  “Flying in this realm? Whatever next?”

  “Warlock leader’s privilege,” he said, with a smile.

  Rachel pulled a face as he briefly hugged me. Then I stepped back, gripped the demonglass, and disappeared in a flash.

  My feet hit the ground, my knees buckled, but the glaring white light didn’t go away. A whistling sounded in my ears, and my blazing hand showed me the walls of a warehouse.

  I rotated on the spot, facing the giant piece of demonglass from the vision. Its edges were fixed to the wall with bolts that shimmered with light.

  How was I supposed to move the thing when it was locked down with magic? The sheet of glass was a good ten centimetres thick and as wide as two Devis put together. It would require a crap-ton of power to turn it into a proper portal, at least, but a source that size was dangerous enough on its own. And if Harvey came out of it…

  I pressed my right hand to the glass, wondering if it was possible to sense if it had any magic stored inside it. A humming sensation rippled under the skin of my palm, and my heart jumped in my chest. My demon mark vibrated, my pulse fluttering against the glass. A similar fluttering came from within the glass itself, like something living beat within it.

  I jerked back, an inexplicable rush of terror chasing down my spine. The blinding white light on my left-hand side wasn’t from the glass. My left cuff had slipped, and my celestial mark was ablaze, as though I stood on top of an arch-demon.

  “What did they leave you in here for?” I muttered to the glass, my voice quiet, scared. Really, Devi. It was only a chunk of glass. There was no reason for me to be so freaked out. I gave my left hand a vigorous shake, willing the celestial light to die down, but if anything, it grew brighter.

  I stepped back, looking around the warehouse into the darkness. My Grade Four celestial light didn’t appear for no reason. It was a warning, etched into our skin along with the celestial mark, to react to any dangerous netherworld presence. No demons were in here. It was warning me about the glass. There must be demon magic inside it… but how could I get it out?

  I rested the knuckles of my right hand on the glass and pushed some shadowy power at it. Nothing happened. So I couldn’t get it to absorb power that way. Or take the demonic magic out of it. Maybe the handmade mechanism holding it against the wall stopped me from doing that.

  I drew demonic power into my right hand, and zapped the contraption with Nikolas’s lightning.

  Sparks flew from the glass, and my body left the ground as a vicious current slammed into me, lifting me off my feet. Somehow, I landed upright, gasping, my hair standing on end. Laughter spiralled around me, echoing off the walls. Holy Divinities, that’s creepy.

  “Who the hell a
re you?” I gasped. “Show yourself.”

  “I’m right here, Devi,” whispered a voice.

  I stiffened, my blood turning to water. That was Lythocrax’s voice.

  “He’s dead,” I said, the warehouse’s high ceiling catching my voice and throwing echoes back at me. “Whoever you are, show yourself.”

  “I’m here, Devi… I never left.”

  His voice came from the glass.

  I jerked back, my heart free-falling. The voice… it’d come from inside the glass. But it wasn’t an active portal. It couldn’t be. And besides, Lythocrax was dead. His body had disintegrated into ashes right there in Haven City’s street.

  Was I losing my mind? Quite possibly.

  The demonglass lit up, showing my reflection. Half light, half dark. From this view, the light side gleamed brighter, but that only served to make the darkness more potent.

  I scowled. So did my reflection. Okay, not a Devi clone this time. That voice I’d heard… it was some kind of demon trick. Or an illusion spell, another demon hiding out of sight trying to freak me out.

  Nikolas’s lightning magic shot from my hand, hitting the glass. Not so much as a dent appeared.

  “No demigod’s magic can destroy demonglass,” whispered the voice. “You know that, Devi.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded of the disembodied voice. “If you really are Lythocrax, you picked a hell of a weird place to haunt.”

  Not that I believed in ghosts. They didn’t exist, demonic or otherwise. And I couldn’t move the glass, let alone destroy it. I reared back, slammed my foot into the glass, and yelped with pain. Well, that was confirmation I wasn’t dreaming. Either I was hallucinating, or a demon was playing a shitty practical joke on me. Based on past experience, I’d bet on the latter.

  Celestial light rose to my left hand, and I burned a point of light into the ground. I couldn’t move the glass, and any type of magic involving a source was incredibly dangerous, but if the enemy planned to use it to open a portal, I could at least make their lives difficult.