by Harley James
She left his quarters and hurried down the stairs. Thankfully none of Spencer’s team were in the back hallway to notice her sneaking down to the main club level.
Pulse tripping, she ran through the safe room until she stood outside the reliquary room door. She’d never been inside the small room that housed the Holy Robe that the Roman soldiers had cast lots over.
Spencer had warned her it was best kept locked up. He’d also explained about the heavy warding he’d woven to keep the relic safe behind the fire-proof walls. There was also a panic button that released an escape door that emptied two blocks north of the nightclub where Spencer kept a car in a parking ramp in case any of his inner circle ever found themselves in a life or death situation, and they needed to protect the relic.
Life or death.
Yeah. Heavy stuff. She should totally leave the relic alone.
She probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about the magic protecting the room’s closed door anyway.
That would be the test then. If she could get through the warding without setting off whatever alarm Spencer had rigged—or she didn’t fry herself, jeez—that was a sign that she was doing the right thing to assist the extra Guardians who’d arrived this week.
Jinx had brought Katherine’s swashbuckling mate Ari, whom she’d heard so much about. If anything, the stories didn’t do justice to the man. Everywhere he went, the tall, muscular, golden-haired Viking left a bevy of breathless, giggling females in his wake. Not even laid-back Shadow was immune to his good-natured cockiness, much to Neo’s endless annoyance. The young Jamaican Guardian had been in bad temper all week.
When Sydney had asked Spencer if they should worry that Neo might challenge Ari, Spencer had had a good laugh. Never fear, my darling, he’d said. Ari is an outrageous flirt, but he’s entirely out of the market.
Sydney couldn’t imagine what kind of woman could corral the likes of Ari. Spencer had rejoined that voluntarily meeting Katherine took a combination of guts, grit, and a side of stupidity.
These Guardians were fascinating in a macabre sort of way.
Okay, so do something to help them.
If only she could ask Spencer. In the last few days, Baal had somehow orchestrated a dead zone outside Inferno. That meant no communication beyond these walls—telepathic, cellular, or otherwise.
Even Air Guardians Jinx and Ari, with their ability to manipulate atmospheric electrical spikes which transmitted the synaptic brain waves responsible for telepathy, couldn’t budge the interference Baal had laid down.
She glanced over at the painting on the wall which Spencer had told her hid the reliquary’s door key.
She deliberated for ninety excruciating seconds.
The key slid smoothly into the lock, and as she slowly turned her wrist, she opened her mind to possibilities. Reached for a pure state of awareness and let everything that Spencer had poured into this space flow through her.
A thousand words in a language she didn’t understand. Beautiful and filled with purpose. She closed her eyes, breathed them in, felt them touching her inside, petal-soft—each touchpoint a mini-consciousness. Power in the words. Alive with the heartbeats of many ages.
She shivered, goosebumps lighting up and down her arms, and exhaled long and deep as the door swung inward.
She froze, instantly suffused with a keen sense of sorrow. It poured though her limbs, heavy and liquid with the tears of disciples, the purposeful humiliation and grievous wounding of a great man.
Sydney sank to the floor, her head bowed, shoulders sagging, tears falling unchecked as she accepted the echoes of the Greatest Passion the world had ever known. All the Guardians were fighting to end the sort of evil that had rent the fabric of this relic nearly two thousand years ago.
Sydney lifted her head to look upon the glowing glass reliquary, whispered chants filling her mind as she pushed to her feet and stepped into the otherwise dark room. Her hands slid along the reliquary’s smooth, transparent surface, marveling that something so humbly made could be so important.
The garment inside the glass box was tree-bark brown, brittle-looking with a slight waxy coating. Spencer said the Archangel Gabriel had folded the seamless garment carefully so it would never crease, and so that it would fit into a much smaller container for transporting as needed.
In all, the glass container was about eighteen inches on every side. The robe’s simplicity was beautiful, and standing before it, she felt the sadness wane, her spirits lighten, her fear ebb.
Relics couldn’t be directly touched by demons because of their holy origins, but if they came into the possession of demons, their massive powers for good could be perverted into evil. Not to mention they held the secret to unlocking Lucifer’s cage.
She absolutely couldn’t let Baal get this relic.
“Rather underwhelming, isn’t it?”
Sydney spun around with a gasp, heart pounding. “Pepper! I didn’t hear you come in!”
Spencer’s security specialist pulled back her platinum and black hair into a high ponytail that swayed as she walked into the room. “I heard a noise and thought I’d better check it out. Why don’t you get back upstairs? Spencer will wring my neck if anything happens to you.” As she passed by the fire it flared briefly and belched a dark puff of smoke before extinguishing like it had never even been lit.
Not cool. Sydney frowned at the fireplace, but tried to fix her face before turning back to Pepper. “I’m okay. Spencer told me everything about this room. Have you heard from any of the Guardians yet?” Her gaze involuntarily cut back to the fireplace.
Pepper’s eyes widened slightly, making Sydney’s stomach plummet to her feet. She knows I know something’s off. There was no way out of the room besides the door behind Pepper.
Pepper smiled, then waved a hand dismissively in the air. “I can see you’re getting worked up, but you don’t have to fret about the fireplace. We’ve had problems with the air exchange down here lately. I can light it again before I leave.”
If there were oxygen deficiencies to the extent that it extinguished a raging fire, it would definitely affect their respiration as well. Sydney squinted at Pepper, watching the trim woman closely and moving in front of the relic, fingering the crucifix necklace Spencer had fastened around her neck before he’d left the building. Demons can’t touch a crucifix without burning. It’s one way you can be sure who you’re really dealing with. He’d punctuated his words with kisses down her belly...lower…to where she’d burned for him as well.
She swallowed, running her fingers up the warm chain to the clasp resting at the back of her neck. How long would it incapacitate Pepper if she was possessed?
She should’ve asked Spencer way more questions than she had.
Sydney unclasped the necklace, and kept her hands behind her neck. “Oh crap! This darn necklace is twisted in my hair again. Can you give me a hand?”
Pepper’s eyes narrowed, then flared, turning red the instant Sydney flung the crucifix at her. Pepper threw her hands up to block the jewelry, letting loose a demonic shriek. The possessed woman deflected and lunged, but flew back with a terrible cry when fire shot from Sydney’s hand.
Sydney screamed and pulled her hands to her chest, looking down at them like they were alien. What the hell?
Pepper used her hands to smother the flames on her melting flesh and then jumped to her feet. Sydney gasped and struck the reliquary’s panic button, opening a trap door to a slide that glided her and the glass box down into a chamber with an escape route.
Sydney scooped up the box and ran down the narrow, metal underground tunnel lit every ten feet or so by wall torches layered with dust and spider webs. The Earth shook, and her nose hairs began to stick together as the warmth from her body couldn’t keep up with the artificial cold Baal was forcing on the city.
A growing rumble sounded from the direction of the safe room. Louder and louder, the metal tube she ran through continuing to shiver, making the detritus in th
e tunnel rattle like dice in a copper cup.
The emergency lighting went out.
A scuttle behind her. A cry escaped her when she ran through cobwebs, tripping over a deep rivet in the pipe. The reliquary flew from her hands, landing with a crunch and shattering of glass the moment after she landed face-first in something slimy and putrid. Sydney flipped around and crab-walked backwards until the scuttling seemed to be inches away. She screamed and panned out with her hands in the darkness, her breath strangling in her throat when an orb of fire grew from her palms.
Oh my God, I have Spencer’s fire.
It illuminated huge, mangy rats, the light scaring them back into the shadows.
Deep breaths, Syd.
She was doing this fire-thing—like the blast that had bitch-slapped possessed-Pepper. She cupped her hands around the ball of blue-orange flames and slowly got to her feet. She raised her arms, then pushed the fire ball forward. It floated, going any direction she sent it with her thoughts.
Amazing. If the scar hadn’t been proof enough that she was Spencer’s soul mate, this certainly sealed the deal.
She exhaled heavily and ran to the broken reliquary, its wicked shards of glass glinting in the flickering light. Shit! A thread from the robe was pulled on a shard of glass. Would that lessen its power?
The Earth rumbled again, raining down two-inch-long steel rivets from the top of the pipe like micro torpedoes. Hands shaking, she extracted the robe from the shattered glass box, shook it off, wrapped it around her shoulders, and ran behind her fireball. The pipe soon opened into another chamber with stone steps ascending to a very old, round metal door covered in symbols and Latin words like the ones carved onto the base of the reliquary box and on Spencer’s wooden ceiling beams.
She tried the exit door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. She put her shoulder against the door and, as the Holy Robe made contact, its hem began to glow. The glow spread in a counter-clockwise fashion until the garment was completely lit up.
With a high-pitched ring, the door blasted open onto a San Francisco street.
Sydney climbed out of the chamber and came face to face with Pepper. The possessed woman opened her mouth, releasing a horde of beetles. As Pepper’s body fell to the ground, Baal’s form knit together out of the insects.
The edges of Sydney’s vision grayed. She fought the lightheadedness, pulling the Holy Robe tighter about her shoulders. Spencer! “You’ll have to kill me to get it, Baal.”
The archdemon shook his head as though disappointed. “Okay, champ.”
Chapter 36
Winter Solstice. Baal’s ultimatum had come due.
Spencer snapped the neck of a rephaim and staked it through the heart with a chrism oil-soaked dagger. It wouldn’t completely kill the sod, but it would render him immobile for several hours, allowing the police and military units to make some headway into controlling another middle-of-the-night riot. The rephaim and lower order demons were more crazed than usual.
Spencer threw a flare high amid the skyscrapers and turned to survey the devastation to the city where he’d finally begun to feel like he had a purpose.
Because of Sydney.
He shot waves of heat up and down the side streets as he streamed toward the financial building where three nephilim had Jinx cornered. One on one, a nephilim’s mind tricks would rarely work on a Guardian as old as Jinx, but her glazed eyes and unguarded body stance indicated they’d nearly taken control of her thoughts, which they’d exploit to make her commit self-harm.
He streamed toward the hideous creatures, hoping Jinx would be aware enough to remember the little trick they’d used a hundred years ago in Brazil with a particularly vicious group of nephilim. He clapped his hands to turn the demons his direction. Their surprise was enough of a jolt to release Jinx from their mind-invasion. She staggered back against the gray concrete building, her eyes clearing.
“Jinx, tornado!” he yelled, waiting, waiting, clamping down on his leg and arm muscles to remain immobile until the first nephilim was almost on top of him.
Now. Spencer flung his hands up to whip fire in a curtain between him and the bald, hump-backed demons. As soon as Jinx took control of the air around them, he sent his flames into her spiraling tornado to encircle the three power demons.
Sweat slid down his temples, his arms shaking with the force of his element as it met the power demons’ malevolent energies. Darkness. Moving imagery. Blurry at first. Then…
Apple blossoms. The scent tickled his senses as the image sharpened.
Red hair. Blue eyes filled with fear and defiance. The Holy Robe draped around her shoulders.
Sydney. And the Robe?
With Baal. No!
His flames faltered in Jinx’s cyclone. “Get your shit together, Jameson! They always play mind tricks. You know this!” she yelled above the din of the firestorm they’d created. But it was too late.
One of the nephilim surged out of the eye of the tempest. Spencer watched, rooted to the spot, as Jinx beheaded the fallen angel with her xiphos.
“Shake out of it, Spencer, come on!” she yelled again.
She had to be right. It was a mind trick. There was no way Sydney would have taken the Holy Robe from the reliquary.
Too bad he couldn’t check in with all the telepathy channels down.
Goddamn nephilim.
He lunged at one of the power demons still entrapped within the tornado. He grabbed it by the neck and shook it as the nephilim seized on his most horrific childhood memories, bringing them forward with a clarity he hadn’t experienced in three hundred years.
Hiding in the butler’s pantry, crying, his back bleeding from his father’s whipping after he’d come home empty-handed from a hunt.
For reading too long.
For not being manlier. Forced to watch his father lift the skirts of one house servant after another. The women by turns sobbing—or worse, silent, as they endured his degradation. His mother smiling, settling into a chair in his bedroom as she paraded a dozen women to strip before him. Then her startling transformation—fury and screaming castigation at his refusal to rape them. It surprised him every time.
His mother’s rage.
Her disgust.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Everywhere. Coating everything he’d ever loved.
“Hate!” he bellowed, holding his fire against the nephilim until its skin melted, and he ripped its waxy, white skull off with his bare hands.
Panting, he turned on the last one, finding Jinx engaged with it. “You’d better check on Sydney—in case!” she yelled across the bloody sidewalk. She was struggling, it was all over her face. The same rage and fear and how-dare-you look he was sure must have been smeared on his own features mere moments ago. He stepped over the two dead Nephilim and shot a new stream of liquid fire at the third demon until Jinx finally dispatched it with a quick, powerful strike of her sword.
“Thanks. He was especially nasty.” She wrinkled her nose, minimizing the encounter, but he could tell it had unnerved her. Her hands were trembling when she held out her xiphos. “Here, take this. I’ll catch up to you later. I’m going to go find Kat and Ari. If you break my sword, I’ll break your face. Just so you know.”
He was sure of it. “Thanks,” he said, then streamed back to Inferno faster than he’d ever teleported.
His entire body tensed as he crossed the doorway into the building.
Something was wrong.
Two steps, three steps in, he could feel it. Evil.
His fists clenched and unclenched, his breath climbing higher as he built up the rage to drown out the fear. Five steps in, he found the first body. Atamu, his face split open from forehead to chin.
“No! Ah, God!” Spencer leaned down to touch his old friend. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. More bodies everywhere: kitchen staff, servers, bartenders, members of his security team. No, no, no! “Sydney! Pepper! Shadow!” Spencer gasped, fighting for a f
ull breath as he streamed from room to room.
How? How had Baal gotten past his wards? Past the holy weapons he’d taught his team to use?
He kicked the safe room door open, Jinx’s xiphos in his fist and murder on his mind.
No Sydney. No Pepper or Shadow.
And no bloody relic.
Chapter 37
Sydney awoke with a start and attempted to lift her head, her upper cheek stretching painfully—stuck?—until her eyes watered. She was laying on her right side. Fog all around. She panned upwards with her hands, finding her cheek frozen to a hard surface. Her frigid fingertips scanned the rest of her face.
Ice had solidified in one of her nostrils and on her eyelashes. Frozen tears. Her teeth clacked together in the chill. Had she been drugged? What had happened? And where am I?
She pushed at the cobwebs in her memory, closing her eyes to listen and smell. Her heart pounded and her teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue and tasted blood. A gust of icy wind pushed at the fog and brought the scent of the sea. Okay, a pier? A loading dock in the marina?
She angled her head, casting her gaze down to the surface she was laying on.
Orange-red metal.
Oh my God!
She gasped, ripping a piece of her cheek as she jerked up, then sank back down with a rush of vertigo.
The mist spun around her. Her stomach pitched and bile rushed up her throat as it all came back in a dizzying rush. Trapped! Seven hundred forty-six feet above the water on one of the Golden Gate Bridge’s Art Deco towers. Memory recall, you cold-hearted bitch. Why couldn’t she have stayed unconscious? She started to hyperventilate. Don’t like heightsdontlikeheightsdontdontdont.
Breathe.
An image flared through her mind. Laura running around Torque’s reception desk to help a young, single mother calm down when she learned what it was going to cost to fix her ‘84 Civic. Sydney closed her eyes and held her breath.
