Dark Angel Box Set

by Hanna Peach

  Jordan peered over the edge of the roof just as one of the guards looked up. Jordan pointed his open palms towards them both. The other guard collapsed to the ground but the one that had seen Jordan started to resist. Alyx could see DreamWalker running off the guard’s defensive shield.

  Alyx saw the swirl of red mist beginning to collect in his palm. It was FireTwirler magic. She launched from her hiding place towards the guard, drawing some of the WaterBearer bloodink from her ribs.

  “Jordan, look out!” she cried.

  The guard turned his head. Seeing Alyx coming for him, he launched his Fireball at her. Alyx threw her Water as she twisted in the air. Fire and Water collided in a loud hiss.

  Jordan leaped off the building and tackled the guard to the ground. Jordan hit him once, then twice before his shield failed. DreamWalker flowed into him and he was finally still. Jordan struggled to his feet, his face pale, his breathing heavy.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Pushing two Seraphim guards to sleep takes it out of me, especially as they know how to resist DreamWalker. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

  “Who’s there? What’s going on?” Mayrekk’s face appeared from his doorway. His jaw dropped when he saw them. “Alyx? Jordan? What are you two doing here?”

  Alyx stared at Mayrekk, then Jordan. “You two know each other?”

  Jordan ignored her question and spoke instead to Mayrekk. “Thank God you’re okay. I was worried when I stopped hearing from you.”

  “I couldn’t get any messages out. They’re watching me so closely, guarding me. I’m glad you found her.”

  “Wait, you are Jordan’s source?” Alyx stared at Mayrekk as if she had never seen him before. Mayrekk was the one feeding Jordan information. Mayrekk has more secrets than I know.

  “Come inside before somebody sees you.” Mayrekk looked down at the two guards lying at the foot of his door. “And drag them in here and tie them up.”

  Inside his hut, Mayrekk found several pieces of rope, which Alyx and Jordan used to bind the sleeping guards. Mayrekk’s happiness to see them turned to worry at the sight of Alyx’s bandages. “What happened to your shoulder and your leg?”

  “The Darkened,” said Alyx.

  “Black Stone,” said Jordan.

  Mayrekk sat down abruptly, the color draining from his face.

  “They’ve discovered Black Stone. The balance of powers is shifting. The prophecy…” he mumbled as he mopped his brow with his sleeve. Alyx saw the flash of silver again at his wrist.

  Alyx stepped forward to Mayrekk. “You know what’s going on.”

  Mayrekk turned his gaze to Alyx. “You’re the Guardian that Raphael prophesized about.”

  Jordan spoke up. “I hate to interrupt, but we don’t have time to waste. We have to get the mortal out of here before the guards wake and find a way to contact the others.”

  “Israel is here?” Mayrekk asked, eyes widening.

  “Michael is holding him in Hollows,” said Alyx. “I need to get him out but I− we,” Alyx looked at Jordan, “we need your help.”

  “What do you need?” asked Mayrekk.

  “Bloodink. Alchemist and EarthSifter at the least. And anything else you can spare.”

  “I don’t have much of anything left, but what I have is yours.” Mayrekk moved towards the bloodink room and retracted the shield. There were three vials of bloodink: one green, one orange, one bronze lying lonely at the bottom of the baskets.

  “What happened to all the bloodink?”

  “The Elders have stopped trusting me with them. They send someone to collect any new bloodink at the end of every day to be kept somewhere else. I only have these few that I distilled today.”

  Alyx felt her heart skip a beat. “Mayrekk, you didn’t tell the Elders that you helped me, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But they didn’t believe you.”

  “It’s not your fault, child. Michael never liked me because of my friendship with Raphael. He would have used any excuse...”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Oh Mayrekk, what did he do to you?”

  “Now is not the time,” Mayrekk said, stepping into the room and pulling out the bloodink vials from their wire baskets. “You have Israel to save and a destiny to fulfill.”

  “I thought Israel was the one with the destiny?”

  The air grew thick with untold secrets. Mayrekk looked at Jordan and something unspoken seemed to pass between them. Jordan cleared his throat and stepped towards the front door. “I’ll wait for you outside. Be quick.”

  When they were alone, Alyx turned to Mayrekk. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Mayrekk had fixed up three bloodink tattoo quills. He held the first one up. She lifted up the side of her shirt and Mayrekk began to tattoo along the side of her ribs under the remaining WaterBearer, AirWhisperer and DreamWalker tattoos.

  “Before he died Raphael announced the final prophecies. The Blood Prophecies. It spoke about the end of a world, the end of an era. It says that if you can unite the three bloods, then it will create a keye. The keye that can unlock the celestial gates. This means between Earth and Heaven, but it also means between Earth and Hell.”

  If someone was able to create the keye and collect all of the pieces of the Amulet... Alyx felt a chill go through her as she imagined the gates to Hell opening and Lucifer’s army being unleashed upon the Earth.

  Mayrekk continued, “The prophecies talk about a Seraphim and a demon-mortal that fall in love. If they are to have a child, their child will have the three bloods united in his or her body.” Mayrekk looked at Alyx pointedly.

  Alyx shook her head. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I don’t believe that your friend Israel is fully mortal.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You think Israel is the prophesized demon-mortal?” And I’m the Seraphim. Alyx felt her stomach cramp.

  Mayrekk looked up suddenly. “You haven’t...with him, have you?”

  “No,” Alyx lied. “Of course not.” She fought to keep her hands from touching her stomach. Could she be…pregnant? It had only been once. She was struggling to keep herself together. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I needed to be sure you were the Guardian before I went and opened my mouth. I made the mistake before.” In that moment it seemed that the shadow of a ghost fell across his face. “She paid dearly for it.”

  Alyx’s mind was still awhirl when Mayrekk finished the tattoos: EarthSifter, Animale and Alchemist.

  “Raphael left me something for you,” Mayrekk said. “Wait here.”

  He moved through the shelves of his hut and stopped at a shelf halfway across the room, crouching to the bottom shelf. Alyx could hear a tinkering of objects being shuffled and moved in a jar. Mayrekk returned with a small circular object in his fingers.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “On its own it doesn’t make sense, but with its partner...” Mayrekk pulled out another charm from under his shirt, then slotted the circular object into it. It clicked perfectly into place. Mayrekk then removed the necklace from around his neck and held it out to her. “This is for you.”

  “It doesn’t look like anything,” Alyx said, picking up the chain from his palm. A chain with a circle of metal hung off the end. “What does it do?”

  “Touch it,” Mayrekk said.

  Alyx frowned and put the fingers of her other hand to the metal. At her touch it began to shimmer. She gasped. MirageWeaver magic had been weaved into the charm. The glamour fell away, revealing a silver charm, an eight-pointed star within a circle. Engraved around the outer and front edges of the circle were letters that shone as if they had been written in pearl-ink.

  Alyx turned the charm as she read the words out, “‘Look within your soul to find the path to the truth.’ Mayrekk...what does this mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Alyx cried out in frustration. “Why won’t you tell me anythin
g? You were Raphael’s friend. Don’t tell me you don’t know what it means.”

  Mayrekk looked woeful. “Raphael didn’t tell me much. He said that it was for my own safety. He said the less I knew, the less danger I would be in. He just told me to give this to the Guardian of the Blood Prophecies. He said that only the Guardian could understand it. He told me he wouldn’t be around to give it to her himself. He gave it to me the day before Michael killed him, as if he knew it was going to happen.”

  “Killed him?” Alyx said as the story of the First Betrayal flashed through her mind. Elder Raphael became more and more insane from his visions until he took his own life. “But Raphael wasn’t killed, he took his own−”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She realized the truth. The Elders’ story of Raphael’s Betrayal was exactly that − a story. A lie to keep the Seraphim ignorant. Raphael hadn’t taken his own life. He had been killed. Silenced.

  Raphael had known that this was coming.

  Alyx suddenly realized the danger they were all in. Michael killed for this prophecy. He killed one of their own, one of his own Brothers...and now he had Israel...

  Alyx placed the necklace around her neck and rubbed the charm. “Mayrekk, what if I fail? What if I can’t stop him? What if I’m too late? What if−?”

  Mayrekk placed his hands on her shoulders, silencing her. “Have faith. Raphael had faith in you. So do I.” He smiled. “Now go. You don’t have much time.”

  “You’re coming with us.”

  Mayrekk shook his head. “I can’t leave this place, Alyx.”

  “Why not?”

  Mayrekk lifted his right hand and pulled up the sleeve of his shirt. The flashes of silver Alyx kept seeing...it was a thick silver cuff with symbols etched on it.

  “It’s a prisoner’s bracelet. A more powerful version of an Animale bracelet. It physically stops me from moving too far away from the cuff’s apex. The apex is the tether and is also the key to unlock the bracelet.”

  Alyx remembered how Mayrekk halted suddenly in the woods once when they had been walking, as if he couldn’t move any farther forward. She understood now, he had reached the end of his magical-tether.

  “You can’t get it off?”

  “It’s designed to inject a poison in through the skin if anyone tries to break or remove it.”

  Mayrekk was a prisoner. Had always been a prisoner.

  Alyx felt her body grow hot. “Why would they do this to you?”

  “I was Raphael’s confidant, his supporter and his closest friend. I did things and continue to do things for him in defiance of the Elders. The Elders have never had any real proof, although they have always suspected me. The only reason they haven’t killed me is because they need my gift.”

  “Where’s the apex now?”

  “I’m sure that Michael has it somewhere, hidden and shielded.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s another silver cuff that fits over this one, inlaid with the same markings.”

  A silver cuff inlaid with markings. She had seen it before. The cuff in the secret drawer of Michael’s chambers was the apex. The key to Mayrekk’s freedom. A curse fell from her lips. She had her fingers on the damn thing. If only she had known how important it was. If only...

  “Why don’t you fight your way out? Use the bloodink you distill against the Elders?”

  Mayrekk smiled wearily. “I can’t use bloodink. It doesn’t work for me. My gift draws power away from the other magics. That’s how I can distill magic from blood.”

  “So your bloodink disrupts other bloodink?”

  Mayrekk nodded. “It’s powerful and very dangerous.”

  “Do you have any of your own bloodink spare?”

  “No. The Elders use all of it.”

  “For what?”

  “They paint the inside walls of the cells of the Hollows with it. You can’t use magic inside the cells. It becomes like a magical black hole. So don’t step inside one if you don’t have to.”

  “But why can I still contact Israel in the cells?”

  “Your bond with him isn’t magic. It’s beyond magic.”

  Beyond magic.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she said. “I promise.”

  He shook his head. “Focus on stopping the prophecy, Alyx. Do it for all of us.”

  “But those guards...they’ll know you’ve helped me. Mayrekk, I can’t just leave you here.”

  “They can’t kill me. They need my gift. Without me there is no more bloodink.”

  “But they can punish you.”

  “I’m prepared to take it,” he said, though his face was grim. “You are more than worth it.”

  The weight of his sacrifice settled on her. Alyx threw herself against his body, burying her face in his chest to hide her tears. His arms closed around her shoulders as he returned her hug. Then he pulled away. “Time to go.”

  “Thank you. For everything,” Alyx said in a whisper.

  “I would do it all again, in a heartbeat.”

  Chapter 40

  Alyx eyed the entrance to the Hollows, a dark gaping mouth in the base of the mountain. There were no guards at the entrance. She wasn’t sure what awaited her. When she touched upon Israel’s mind earlier, she saw only darkness.

  “I can come with you, you know,” Jordan said.

  For a moment Alyx was tempted to say yes. But she shook her head. “It’s better if there is only one of us sneaking around in there. Plus, if I’m caught, you are my lifeline.”

  Jordan nodded but he didn’t look happy. “I’ll meet you at our meeting point in half an hour. Hopefully you won’t need that long. I’ll keep connected to the DreamPlain just in case.”

  “See you soon.”

  “Don’t get caught.”

  Jordan touched her shoulder as if he had more to say, but without another word he turned and disappeared through the bushes. Alyx eyed the mouth of the Hollows and took a deep breath.

  Inside the entrance Alyx found herself in a dark tunnel. It smelled damp and old, like stepping into a long-sunken ship that had just been pulled from the sea.

  Alyx placed one hand on the ground. From within her, she reached for the EarthSifter ink. A comforting warmth spread through her chest. She could smell the fresh scent of rich, wet earth. The magic poured out from her palm like sand and her consciousness expanded into the earth around her. She could sense the thickness and texture of the dirt, clay and rock of the surrounding mountain, the wetness of underground water, and the swelling of roots. Most importantly, she could now feel the voids carved out of the earth, the tunnel and the cells, which made up the Hollows.

  The tunnel traveled along deep into the mountain. At the end of the tunnel were thirteen cells, six on each side and one at the very end. The EarthSifter magic stopped at the edge of the cells. She couldn’t feel anything or anyone inside the cells. No pressure of feet. The cells felt empty. Not just voids of earth, but black voids. Nothingness.

  Israel was in one of those cells.

  She couldn’t sense any pressure of feet along the tunnel either. No guards? But she needed to make sure. Alyx pulled her hand off the floor, crumbs of EarthSifter falling from her fingers.

  She drew in her hidden AirWhisperer bloodink. It felt like a cool winter breeze through her body, smelled like salty air. Before it could dissipate, she gathered a tiny hurricane of it in her palm. She wiped the Air with her fingers, spreading the magic into a curtain that stretched to the widths of the tunnel. She slowly pushed the wall of Air down the tunnel until it couldn’t go any farther, then she drew it back. There had not been any disturbance in the Air. There was no one in the tunnel. Why were there no guards?

  Alyx drew the demonsword that she brought with her. She pulled out a small halolight that Mayrekk had given her and hung it around her neck. She began to make her way down the tunnel.

  Deep in the Hollows, Alyx approached the first set of cells. Her halolight made long-limbed shadows that fel
l off the bars into the bleak holes. The cells were like the gaping mouths of beasts with rows of iron teeth. Sets of iron clamps protruded from the dark shimmering cell walls. Dark shimmering bloodink. It was Mayrekk’s bloodink. God, there was so much of his blood.

  Her ears pricked. She could hear a soft voice like a child’s singing a lullaby. But it didn’t sound right. There was a harshness to the voice, a strange eerie timbre that made the hairs on her neck stand up. She moved to the next set of cells and the singing cut off. There was a gasp. Alyx looked into the cell to her right. A huddle of rags darted into a corner and the thing made itself as small as it could.

  “Don’t be scared,” Alyx said, moving closer to the cell and lifting her halolight so she could see. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Two eyes, doe-like, appeared in the huddle.

  It was a girl, a young mortal girl, maybe fourteen winters, cheeks still with a sliver of puppy fat. Who was she? Why was Michael keeping her down here? How long had she been in here?

  “I’ll be back for you, okay?” Alyx said. “I promise.”

  The girl said nothing, her eyes fixed on Alyx as she moved past.

  As Alyx neared the end of the tunnels, her halolight reflected off an irregular mound in the far cell.

  It was Israel, lying on the ground bound with rope, a rag tied around his mouth. Alyx felt a release of the pressure that had been around her heart since Israel went missing. The relief was so intense it was almost painful.

  His eyes widened when he saw her in the halolight. He began to wriggle wildly in his ties, moaning through the rag.

  “It’s okay. I’m coming.” Sheathing her demonsword, Alyx placed her hands on two neighboring bars of his cell. This time she reached within herself for the Alchemist ink. It shifted and warped through her body, tasting like the sharp tang of metal. Her consciousness pushed out into the bars. She could feel the individual elements within the iron bars, the molecules linking hands like lines of dancers. As if directing an orchestra, a sort of music flowed through her and the molecules started to move in a strange choreography. They let go of their partner’s hands and they spun and danced and turned until they found their new partners and made new links. This silent song came to an end and each molecule was realigned exactly where she wanted them to be.