by Maya Nicole
He groaned and closed the distance between us, wrapping his arms around me. "That would make me the happiest panther in the world."
I laid my head against his chest and let him carry me out of the pool. Whatever tomorrow had in store for us, it didn't matter.
Chapter 5
Samara
I strapped Nico in a sling across my chest. I would have preferred not to take him with us on a flying expedition, but he insisted. Now I had a squirrel nuzzling my boobs in a sling meant for an infant.
"We should just take Tony and Miles and finish this for good." Amari crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes relaying the message that he wasn't happy he wasn't going.
"It's too risky to chance being seen. They could have hostages." I secured Nico's waist pouch to me, in case he needed his nuts. Raphael stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around me. I grabbed onto his forearms in a death-grip. "Let's go before I chicken out."
"I'm not going to drop you. In all my years of flying, I've only dropped three people." I pulled at his arms to let me go, and he laughed. "All right, all right. Only two and they deserved it."
"That's not funny." Kage was standing back, Picard on his shoulder. "Be careful."
Raphael tightened his arms around me again. I could practically feel him vibrating behind me with anticipation. “We will. No one will see us.” Raphael’s wings snapped out of his back, and with one fluid jump, we were airborne.
I never enjoyed flying. The times I had been on a hell serpent I had felt like I was going to fall out of the basket seat. I much preferred horses, but riding a hell horse into a war zone was like waving a red flag at a charging bull. Buttercup would not be able to stop himself from engaging with the enemy.
We flew in the direction of the last camp Nico and I had stayed in. Taylor had to be somewhere in that direction, because how else would he have gotten ahold of Henry? I really hoped that Taylor had just come across the hunting party and not gotten to the whole camp.
The pit in my stomach told me it was wishful thinking.
As if sensing my fear, Nico put his hand over my heart. Even in his squirrel form, he had his wits about him.
I spotted the small stream that had attracted us to that campsite in the first place. We always camped near a water source, but after encountering hippos, we had stuck to streams and narrow channels of water. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than coming into contact with the crazy shifters.
“I see something over there.” Raphael moved one of his hands off me and pointed where he was looking. I clung to his arm and he chuckled in my ear. “I was kidding about dropping people.”
“I knew that.” I didn't.
In the distance I saw tents, but not much else. As we got closer, it became clear that something was wrong. “No one’s here.”
“Do you want me to land?” He sounded unsure, even though we had talked about his capabilities of keeping us from being seen before we left.
I sucked in a shaky breath and nodded.
He landed behind a row of tents and let go of me, but quickly took my hand in his. As long as we were close I would stay covered. The best way to ensure that was to hold hands. At least, that's what Raphael said.
Just like the other abandoned village we had found, this one looked like all of a sudden everyone just dropped what they were doing and left. I seriously doubted Taylor was making vacants unless he could do it all at once.
All we knew from the time Nico had been a vacant was that there had been some kind of hard shell over his light source. He didn’t remember much, but Kage had said my brother had done something to his nuts and shoved them down Nico’s throat.
But how could he do that to so many people? Unless he was making them do it to themselves. A dream demon could push visions and make people go crazy, but to have them all conform?
The only one that had ever been able to command someone to do something was Lilith, and she was dead, burnt to a pile of ashes.
There was probably only one person who knew the answer besides Taylor, and he had dropped Picard off and went back into hiding. If he was my real father, why didn’t he just come and talk to me?
He owed me that much.
We searched each tent but found nothing. Even the horses and animals were missing.
I stopped in front of the tent Nico and I stayed in and looked down at him. He chattered as if I could understand him, and I walked inside. While the rest of the camp looked undisturbed, my tent had been ransacked.
"What was he looking for?" I let go of Raphael's hand, since we were in the tent, and picked up an overturned trunk. "I don't understand what he wants."
"Is it possible he knows about the lightning? Maybe he thinks you have something that's helping you." Raphael picked up one of Nico's old journals that had been taken out of his locked trunk. "Today, I almost lost control and kissed her. It's only been six months since Becca. I shouldn't already be having feelings about another woman. I'm a fucking horrible mate. I should have been the one that died."
I snatched the journal from him and closed it. "That's personal."
Nico had buried himself down in the sling and I threw the journal back in the trunk. Raphael held his hands up in defense and helped me put the other journals back in.
"I have another lock somewhere." I dug through my own trunk, finding one and locking Nico's trunk once everything was inside. There was a reason he kept those things locked away.
As much as I wanted to read what he had written, it was his own private thoughts. I patted Nico through the fabric of the sling and he made a sad noise.
"I didn't mean to-" Raphael frowned at the lump against my chest.
"I know." I rubbed the back of my neck. "It was really rough there for a few years. I thought I was going to lose him."
Raphael took my hand, leading me back outside. We flew back into the sky and continued on.
After several minutes of awkward silence, we crossed a river that everyone knew was the boundary from civilized to uncivilized. “This is the part of Inferna that starts to get a little sketchy.”
“And here I thought all of Inferna was sketchy. How sketchy are we talking?” Raphael might have found it funny, but the outer edges of Inferna near the mountains were no joke.
Things lived in the mountains. Bad, bad things.
“Well, widows live here and that’s not good for you or Nico. They eat men for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then there are demons that favor different body parts. Including the one that pries off your fingernails. Then you have dulcis fiends, and if you kill one, it gets you high and then they attack you in a horde.” I heard him suck in a breath of air through his teeth. “This is where all the uncivilized demons live.”
We flew along the edge of the mountain, searching for anything that would give us a clue of where Taylor had gone.
I was just about to tell Raphael we might be headed in the wrong direction when a giant roar and what sounded like thunder came from the other side of the trees. He turned in that direction and I dug my nails into his arms.
As we got closer, the sounds got louder and louder. It was a cacophonous chorus of growls and screams. A shiver ran down my spine and Nico put his paws on my hand.
I swallowed hard to keep from making a sound. There was a clearing in the trees and it was filled with demons. The roars we had heard were from two hell serpents battling it out. Demons surrounded them, egging them on.
They definitely weren’t vacants, but they certainly weren't friendly.
Raphael started to move a little lower and I shook my head. We couldn’t risk them smelling us. We circled overhead, and in the trees, I spotted a group of figures standing absolutely still.
I pointed and Raphael flew a little closer. I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat. A man walked in between the rows of neatly lined up vacants. It was all my fault. If I had just stayed and faced Taylor, none of them would be vacants.
I couldn’t see his face from where we were because th
e leaves from the trees obscured the top part of his body, but I knew exactly who it was.
Taylor stepped into a small gap in the trees, and the second he came fully into view, he looked up at the sky, straight at us.
Raphael gasped and dropped closer to the ground.
“What are you doing?” I turned my head to look at him, and his eyes were pinched shut.
“Trying. To. Fight. It.” He gritted his teeth and flew us back up several feet. As soon as it seemed like we were making ground, we dropped double that.
Nico held onto the side of the sling he was in and threw his little body halfway out to reach the pouch at my hip. I was frozen in place, not really understanding what he was doing as his head disappeared into the bag.
“He’s trying to control me.” Raphael flew back up again and then let out a pained cry as we started spiraling toward the ground.
At that same moment, Nico’s head popped out of the bag, his cheeks bulging. He raised his little hand to his head and gave me a salute and then jumped.
“Nico!” I reached for him but he was already halfway to the ground, headed straight in Taylor’s direction.
Raphael made a sharp turn back up to the sky, and I clenched my eyes shut.
He was breathing hard as we leveled out. “Bloody hell! What the fuck?”
My eyes opened just in time to see Nico finish morphing into the size of a giant, landing on the ground and causing dirt to fly.
“Are you seeing this, Sammy? It’s like he’s the Incredible Hulk, but a fucking squirrel!” Raphael laughed, despite the situation we were in. "Where's Donkey Kong when you need him?"
For a second, I couldn’t see Nico with all the dust in the air, but then spotted Taylor running off toward the fighting hell serpents, with Nico hot on his heels.
“They’ll kill him!”
I was starting to panic. What the hell had he been thinking? He might have been as big as a giant, but that didn't make him impenetrable.
Raphael flew after them as they got closer and closer to the demons. The demons hadn't noticed the giant squirrel running through the trees with all the noise of their fighting.
Just as Taylor was about to the clearing, Nico, in a maneuver I didn’t even know possible, spun and whacked Taylor with his tail, sending him back into the trees. Demons were taking notice now, but they didn’t seem to see that Taylor had just been sent flying.
“Go, go, go!” I urged Raphael, who banked to the right and headed in the direction Taylor had gone. He landed, and before he could stop me, I took off running in the direction I had seen Taylor fly.
“Sammy, no!”
Where the fuck was he? I stopped and turned around in a circle, but didn’t see him anywhere. Raphael came to a stop beside me and grabbed my arm.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t just-” He didn’t get a chance to finish admonishing me because an arm wrapped around his neck and pulled him back.
“Hello, sister.” Taylor laughed and pressed a knife against Raphael’s throat. A small drop of blood traveled down his neck.
“Taylor. What’s going on here?” I had my hand on the hilt of my knife and he looked down at it and then back at me with a smirk.
The man in front of me wasn't my brother. He might have looked like him, but the malice in his eyes was far from the caring brother I once knew. What had happened to him?
“It seems you’re putting your nose where it doesn’t belong. Just like always, the nosy little brat.” His words were hateful, which I didn’t understand. We weren’t the closest siblings growing up, but definitely not enough to warrant being called a brat.
“I’m just looking for my people.” My heart was beating in my ears.
His knife pressed harder into Raphael, sending another bead of blood down his neck. I was sure the only thing that was keeping Raphael from bleeding more was the fact that he was healing himself. Would he be able to if Taylor cut his throat open?
“Your people? I don't see a crown on your head." He smirked. "Father always did think you were the weak link in the family. You came here with a squirrel and an angel. How stupid."
His words stung, but I set my jaw. I took a step forward and Raphael's eyes widened in warning.
In the distance, I could hear loud shouts and the ground shook. Fear welled up inside me, but I pushed it down. I just hoped Nico was okay. Maybe they would be so shocked by seeing a giant squirrel, they would run.
“What are you doing? What do you think is yours?” It was doubtful he was going to tell me, but if he could give me any clue of what he actually wanted, then maybe I’d understand why everything was happening. “You would hurt me or somebody I cared about? That’s not like you.”
“Stay out of my way. If you stay out of my way, I’ll leave them alone.”
"Stay out of your way for-"
Nico came crashing through the trees. He was bloody and his teeth were bared. That was all it took for Taylor to be distracted for a brief second, and for Raphael to grab his arm and send him flying onto the ground. Nico was on him in a heartbeat, but then he stiffened and shrieked.
It was the worst sound I’d ever heard. The second worst sound had been the sound Nico had made when I told him Becca and his baby had died.
Nico fell onto his side and began to shake. Raphael rushed to him, his hands already glowing, but just before he touched Nico, who was shrinking down to his normal size before my eyes, he fell to his knees. His hands went to the ground and he clutched at the dirt, trying to hold on.
“Run, Samara.” His teeth were gritted, and when he turned his head to look at me, his eyes flashed black. “Run.”
Like hell I was going to run. I rushed forward with my knife and Taylor barely dodged my advances. His laugh made me want to curl up in a ball and never leave the castle again. He wasn't my brother. My brother would never do the things he was.
"Run, Samara. Run," he mocked as he dodged me again.
He stilled for a moment and focused on me. I felt a slight pressure in my head and stopped in my tracks. I gritted my teeth, a yell ripping from my lungs.
He was trying to control me, but I wasn't going to let him.
I surged forward, but before I was able to stab him, an arm wrapped around my waist and I was pulled backward. My ears popped and my lungs protested the change of air in what had been the middle of a breath.
A deafening sound hit my ears and a sharp pain made me fall to my knees.
Where the hell had Raphael taken us?
Chapter 6
Raphael
Fuuuuuck.
There was a reason angels had particular places on Earth to get to Inferna. Case in point, we were currently standing right smack dab in the middle of an airport runway.
Sammy fell to her knees and put her hands over her ears as a plane took off from the next runway over. I grabbed her again, careful not to squeeze Nico too hard, and yanked her up. She had her eyes closed tight.
I flew us to a field on the other side of the chain-link fence and lowered her and Nico to the ground. Nico was out cold, his mouth agape and his feet sticking up all over the place. His chest was still moving, otherwise I would have thought he was dead.
I wasn't sure what Taylor was exactly, but he was powerful. It took a powerful demon to get into an archangel's brain, which were virtually impenetrable.
"Sammy." I knelt down next to her and put my hands on her back. "Let me see your ears."
I could handle every decibel imaginable, but demons' ears didn't seem that much different from human ears. They were sensitive as fuck.
She moved her hands, and I put my hand over her ear, sending a wave of healing into it. Her shoulders sagged, and I did the same to the other ear.
"What was that?" She rubbed at her eyes and looked through the fence as a plane took off. "Is that like a hell serpent?"
I guessed in a way it was our version of a hell serpent. The airline companies certainly did make us feel like we were being flown by a giant m
onster with the lack of leg space and extra baggage fees.
"It's called an airplane. You can fit hundreds of humans in it and fly for long distances." I put my hands on Nico's head. "He better not bite me when he wakes up."
Sammy stroked his belly as my light poured into him. I still couldn't believe he had morphed into a giant squirrel. Some things you could never unsee, and that was one of them.
He let out the saddest-sounding squirrel sound imaginable and his eyes opened, immediately landing on Sammy.
"Why aren't you shifting back?" Sammy continued to rub his belly and he stared back at her and shook his head. "You can't or you're just enjoying your belly rub too much?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake." I stood and shoved my hands in my pockets. "I think we're in Northern California if I'm calculating distance correctly."
She scooped up Nico, putting him back in the sling that was still around her. "Before we go back, can we get some pizza?"
I threw my head back and laughed. God, I loved her. My laugh faltered and I cleared my throat. I loved her more than I should have. "We'll order some and take it back."
She carefully put Nico back in his sling. I pulled her into my arms and took off.
We landed in my backyard a few minutes later and I felt a wave of comfort wash over me. As much as I enjoyed Sammy and the others, there was no place like home. There were no evil brothers after us, no demons walking around trying to eat our flesh, and certainly no constant darkness.
The sun was high in the sky and Sammy tilted her head back, exposing more of her face to its rays. I watched her in fascination as she spun with her arms outstretched and eyes shut.
Nico leapt from the sling and headed for the bushes around the perimeter of the yard.
"Don't go far, squirrel! There are things that will eat you!" Luckily, it was daytime, or he might have ended up a tasty dinner.
I pulled out my phone, surprised it was still even in one piece, charged it with my magic, and put in an order for pizza. Thirty minutes. I could take care of a demon queen goddess and her trusty squirrel sidekick for that long.
