A Lost Light (The Bestiary #4)

2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Elijah

O nce upon a time, I was a blind young man who fully believed all the rhetoric and lies my people told about our race. Even the lies that we told each other. The ones propagated by the high chorus of elders.

I had only started to become aware of the deception shortly before my untimely death in the Planus realm. I grew up like any angel, thinking we were the superior creatures in all the realms. That we were the shining example that others should strive to emulate. That we were pure, and just, and always right, divinely guided, though the divine in this case was not the robed man in the sky as many Planus religions believed.

I had barely reached adulthood before I started to see the cracks in our society's lies. While the majority of angels truly believed, on some level, that they had a duty to uphold the ideals we strove to enforce in other realms, to continue the glamor that clouded judgement and made others think our heavenly judgement was something to follow without question… there were many who knew better.

I saw the hypocrisy. The signs of our impurity. The double standards in what we said others should do, and what we did ourselves here in our own realm, behind closed doors or within the safety of our choir. I stumbled upon sensuality and lust by accident, then shamed myself for feeling the feelings those states invoked. I heard impure words, and no one was struck down. I saw how not everyone in the angelic realm followed their own tenants… and once I was dead, I saw and understood even more, sent on spying missions for the Lovell witches who owned my specter.

It was all a grand scheme to place angels above the humans of Planus, and even some sects on in Magea, so the angels could draw energy and power from them. It was about power, influence, and ego. And those things, my people had in excess.

They employed all sorts of measures to maintain their mystery and allure, and one of the most effective tools was to remain aloof and cut off from those they controlled. Access to the realm was strictly controlled, portals were only available in certain locations, and permission to visit the angelic realm was doled out with extreme rarity and caution. Though of course, our higher choir members could access Planus and Magea any time they wished, in order to continue to inspire and awe the lesser beings there.

The last time we all set foot in the angelic realm, Andy had been given permission to enter because she was working for the Supernatural Alliance on a mission that the angels deemed at least somewhat important. Now, we had no invitation, and no guarantee that we would even be able to make it to our destination, let alone obtain the nullifier and make our way back home.

My people could be… well, stubborn was only half of it. They could be pricks . In fact, the members of the high chorus enjoyed being pricks, just for the sake of being pricks. It was quite likely that we were all going to end up blasted back to the pocket world, or sent through a portal into the void between worlds. And yet, here was Andy, her shoulders thrown back, spine straight, and lips pressed together in concentration as she tore a portal open and broke into angelus using nothing but raw power and determination.

When the spitting, hissing, barely stable portal sprang to life, she turned to the rest of us with a manic gleam in her dove gray eyes. She was wearing faded jeans with herb stains on them, along with a t-shirt that had seen better days and had the words hag mother take the wheel scrawled across it in direct challenge to the patriarchal religious ideology that the angels liked to encourage. Bis clung to her shoulder with his tiny backpack in place, and he nodded as she spoke, as if he seconded her words.

“Alright folks,” she said with a no-nonsense tone that made it sound like she wasn't the least bit concerned, “Let's go jump into the questionable hole between realms!”

There were a few long glances, but no one voiced any objection as they approached the portal. When the others hesitated, Aahil rolled his golden eyes and threw himself through the opening to another world without a backward glance.

Andy sucked in a deep breath and her smile wobbled for an instant before she grinned even wider, as if by pretending to be happy, she could convince everyone else that there was no cause for alarm.

We all knew she was terrified. And yet, no one was going to call her out for her bravado. I floated over to her and brushed my ghostly fingers through the warmth of her cheek before sending myself home to my anchoring charm. It would be safer here until we got through the portal. The last thing I wanted was for the unstable magic of the space between realms to sever my connection to my charm, and leave me floating in darkness of nowhere.

If I had a body, I'd shiver at the thought.

I watched and listened from my cozy home, fighting the urge to sleep in the warm darkness so I could make sure things went well on the outside.

The others followed Aahil through the portal. Andy went last, giving the swirling, wavery oval another look and a little surge of extra magic to sustain it before wrapping her hand around my charm, sheltering me at her bosom. Then she stepped through as well.

It wasn't the smooth transition that one would expect from a portal in any other realm. The pocket world interfered and reacted with Andy's magic in different ways. Magic crackled in the darkness around us like looming lightning searching for a place to strike, in the brief moment before we stepped out onto solid ground once more.

Andy's heartbeat skipped and jittered a little before settling back down. It wasn't just hard on their magic. It was hard on their bodies. But I was relieved to see that everyone had made it intact.

We stood on angelic soil, looking out across the rolling blueish grasses that grew in the fields at the outskirts of the capitol city. In seconds, angelic guards materialized out of nowhere, probably summoned here by the swell of unauthorized portal magic.

“It's her,” one of the angelic guards said in a commanding voice as they all leveled swords and spears coated in “holy” magic at our group. “The dark witch the alliance in Magea is searching for.”

I flowed out of my charm and materialized between Andy and the guards, my form just a bit stronger here in my home realm, enough to let the glowing branches of light that made up my wings unfurl behind me, marking me as one of them. Magic rose around us in a wave—earth magic, elemental magic, fae magic, and the swirling darkness of nightmares and death—as all of Andy's people prepared to defend her. But our witch just pushed her wavy green hair back from her face and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Oh, so I'm a 'dark witch' now, am I?” She glanced around at the others. “Sounds edgy. But you'd think the lying assholes at the supernatural alliance would come up with something better, wouldn't you?”

Her absolute lack of reaction to the threat the guards posed seemed to break up some of the tension. She cocked a hip and reached up to pat Biz on the head as she spoke, like this was just any other day for us. “Well? Take us to your stuck-up high chorus. We need to talk, and I'm kind of in a hurry here.”

The angels encircling our group seemed to engage in some silent communication, probably trying to decide whether they should just kill Andy and her followers on the spot like they would any uninvited, potentially hostile intruder. I pulled on what limited magic I had to make myself even more visible in the soft afternoon light.

“As a citizen of this realm, I have the right to request a meeting with the high chorus. Even if you see us all as criminals, I am still warranted a trial before my people.”

The head guard scoffed. “You're dead, Elijah. The rules don't apply to you.”

It took me a moment to realize why he called me by name. At first, I thought it was simply because they knew me as the evil Lovell witch's companion. But no… I knew this male. Slowly, the memory came back to me. I had known him as a child, several years younger than me when I was alive. We were from the same small town outside the capitol, and we attended schooling and training together.

His name escaped me. But I recalled him all the same. He had once looked up to me like a big brother. Now I was dead, had been for a very long time. And the little boy had become an adult, gone through the decades of training that it took to become a guardian of the realm, and looked at me like a tired elder, though the long angelic lifespan meant his face was still young and unlined. It was… unsettling.

“This is important,” I said, my voice softening with the weight of the memories of the life I'd lost. The years and the people that were taken from me. “Please take us to the High Chorus. We come in peace. But this is a matter that affects all the realms.”

I felt Andy's warm magic as she brushed her fingers through where my own fingers should be, as if she would take my hand. No doubt she could feel the sadness that threatened to overwhelm me. But I wouldn't let myself wallow. I wasn't the only person here who had lost decades— centuries, even—to the Lovells and their bestiary.

“I don't know if you all buy into the utter nonsense about angelic superiority and good versus evil,” I said to the angels around me, knowing my voice was haunting and hollow to the living, but speaking my truth anyway. “But I've seen evil, and Oleander Lovell isn't that. If anything, she is the only person who seems willing to stand up to the dark forces that threaten to subjugate the whole of Magea, and Planus after that.”

Andy stepped up beside me and spoke, her voice firm and her posture clearly stating that she was done wasting time. “The Supernatural Alliance and a cult of genocidal magic users are trying to take over the world. We're the resistance, I guess. And the angels can join the resistance, or you can all sit here on your asses, so assured of your superiority that darkness overtakes the other realms, and you lose any and all influence you ever held there.”

Her gray eyes were steely as she stared down the head guard. It was difficult to guess whether these guards with their flowing locks, and their glowing wings, and their holy swords truly believed all of the propaganda our society filled our minds with, or if they knew on some level that it was all about keeping power and control over the other realms.

The head guard's eyes flicked to the side, sliding away from Andy's angry gaze. “We will take you to the High Chorus,” he said tiredly. “But there's no guarantee they won't kill you on sight.”

So, he knew—or at least suspected—the games our rulers played. And that maybe everything wasn't as simple as good or evil.

Andy nodded once, curt and impatient. “Finally. For fuck's sake you all like to keep those sticks firmly inserted in your asses, don't you?” She gestured at the nearby road. “Well? Lead on, oh, Holy Stick Carriers.”

The guard looked like he was regretting his decision. But with a head shake and a look of resignation, he gestured for the others to round us up and march us into town.