3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Andy
V isiting the angelic realm was giving me a serious sense of déjà vu. Same pompous glowing, god-like guards walking around with sticks up their asses, same too-perfect city with too-pale walls and no sense of fun, same boring council chambers with the Head Asshole and his brethren sitting up there on their dais while we stood down on a lowered floor meant to make us feel like insects.
And the argument was the same too.
We needed the nullifying artifact to fuck shit up back in Magea, and they refused to share their shiny toys.
“Do we really need to go through this all again ?” I ground out when I was asked to repeat myself. I crossed my arms and glared up at the head honcho on his elevated stage, not the least bit impressed with his flowing locks, his frat-boy toga, or his glowing, branch-like wings.
He stared back, his sculpted face expressionless. But I could tell he was enjoying this. He was getting a rise out of making life difficult for the puny mortal witch and her posse of weirdos. In any other situation it might be amusing. But today, I failed to see the humor.
“The Supernatural Alliance of Magea has made it quite clear that any surviving Lovell witch is a threat to the order of things, and should be killed or captured on sight. You should be honored you still draw breath, Oleander Lovell, given your lineage and your family's penchant for attempted genocide and war mongering.”
I huffed. “Oh, come off it. If you believed the smoke the SA has been blowing up your ass, they'd still have the artifact and I'd already be dead. You know they're full of shit, don't pretend otherwise.”
Was that…? Yes, it was. For one second there, just for an instant, the pompous asshole's lips twitched, and his eyes narrowed. So, he wasn't quite as indifferent as he pretended to be. If nothing else, the SA had irritated the angels enough that they had taken back the artifact the SA previously “borrowed.”
“Chorus Master,” Elijah interjected, floating forward to address his leader. He was a pale, ghostly version of the others on the dais. But the hollow, echoing quality of his otherworldly voice brought a hush to the room. “We are all aware of the elaborate deception this realm thrives on. And we are not asking you to deviate from that. I could spout tenets at you all day, from holy books I know mean nothing to you. All we are asking is that you support the winning side in this conflict. For the best interests of everyone involved, including yourselves.”
One of the other angels opened their mouth, probably primed to deny Elijah's insinuations about their ruse with the humans. But Elijah didn't give him a chance to interject. “The Supernatural Alliance or the cult of witch supremacists… no matter which faction comes out on top—if they even are different factions at their dark hearts, which remains to be seen—the angelic realm stands to lose credence with half the population of Magea. And you'll lose your even greater source of power in the Planus realm, once the disease of this corruption spreads to the mortals there. They'll be too busy worshipping their new witch overlords to care what the angels have to say. But you can prevent this if you help us stop the civil war that is brewing. All you have to do is give us the artifact. We will do all the work and take on all the risks ourselves.”
“Ghost,” the leader of the chorus said, distaste lacing his words. “We are not so weak as to be beholden to this ragtag band of would-be… heroes.”
He did crack a smile then, but it was not the sweet, beneficent thing you'd expect from the humans' storybook angels. No, this smile was cruel, blooming across his face like poison. “Are you really that naive? Do you not realize how much power we draw from people of faith in times of war and upheaval? The dying prayer of a true believer is one of our strongest sources of power.” He spread his hands as if presenting us with some great, exciting revelation. “Why else would godlike beings such as ourselves allow such suffering to persist in the mortal realms?” He narrowed his eyes at our dead angel. “Pity you did not live long enough to fully understand our greatness, child.”
I just blinked at him, unable to form words. While I wasn't exactly surprised at his take on things, I was more than a little taken aback that he would just flat out admit that they were benefitting from the death and suffering of the delusional mortals who had fallen prey to their lies.
Something prodded me in the brain. A little tug at the deepest of my bonds to the others. With a mental eye roll, I opened myself up to Dyre and Sunny. We couldn't really carry on a conversation in our minds. But they could send me enough thoughts, emotions, and faint pictures for me to get the message. And what a message it was. The necromancer was all for killing everyone in this room and simply taking the nullifier. There was a chance we'd all die. But he was fairly confident he could reanimate enough powerful angels to even the odds.
I gave him a subtle head shake.
At my other side, Aahil watched me with narrowed eyes, clearly aware I was communicating with someone. He glanced at Dyre. My bond to Aahil tingled with warmth, and he arched a dark brow at me, one corner of his lips curling up in an evil, hungry little smirk.
No. Nope. There had to be a better way.
Goddess, my new family was every bit as bloodthirsty as my old one.
The head douchebag angel interrupted our silent conversation, drawing my attention back to wondering how the hell we were going to take the artifact if we weren't willing to straight-up murder these jackasses. “The squabbles of the lesser beings occupying other realms are no concern of ours. They will work things out themselves. And whatever the outcome, it will not affect our ability to maintain our power and authority here in our own realm.”
Basically, not his problem.
I shook my head at him. “You seem so sure of that, dude. But how do you know they aren't planning on coming for you once they're done with the other realms?” I put my hands on my hips and looked up at him with all the awful confidence a Lovell witch could muster. “If I got here all on my own, you'd better believe the SA and the cultists have ways of breaking into your realm. And trust me, they don't have the inconvenient moral compass that I follow. Much like you dumbasses, all they'll care about is power and how to steal it.”
Someone in the group up on the dais scoffed at me. They were just so sure of their own superiority. And so damned unwilling to give a single shit about the wellbeing of anyone other than their own people.
“Fuck this,” Aahil said from my side. Then he formed a fireball in his hand and lobbed it at the high chorus.
I sighed. I had really hoped to work this out diplomatically. But, sadly, diplomacy didn't seem to be our strong point.
The flames bounced off some sort of magical barrier and rained down around us. I had to give it to Aahil; he really had regained impressive control of his fire powers. The flames that fell around us didn't burn anyone in our group, but they rapidly destroyed the arcing rows of intricately carved wooden benches behind us, and the gaudy woven tapestries that adorned the walls. Ha. So there, angels.
Aahil's distraction allowed Ambrose to travel through the otherworld and slip through the choir's barrier, where he materialized behind the choir master and placed his ebony hands on the either side of the douche bag's head. The guy's mouth opened, his face scrunched in fury as he prepared to shout orders, but then his eyes rolled back in his head as nightmares swamped him.
Dark tendrils of terror leaked from Ambrose, affecting everyone on the dais. Unable to maintain their concentration, their magical barrier dropped.
Niamh and Zhong moved in to make sure the remaining chorus members didn't try anything. I stayed where I was, Biz on my shoulder making the flow of my magic even stronger, in the way only a bonded familiar could. I kept an eye on the situation, my earth magic ready to split the earth if things went south. Hasumi stood beside me, calm and placid as usual, their magic also waiting, at the ready.
Dyre paced forward, climbing the dais and looming over the head angel as a menacing black aura wreathed his tall, gaunt frame. The sharp angles of his face were cast in shadows, and his violet and black eyes burned as he held out his arms, hands spread wide. “Tell us where the artifact is and how to obtain it, or I will drain the soul from every angel in this room,” he said softly, his deep voice eerie and full of dark promise. He wanted this. The ancient darkness that lived inside my necromancer was always hungry. It wanted to feast on their souls and reanimate their corpses. Some part of Dyre wanted to lose himself to the dark power that he and the wraith shared.
I couldn't really blame the angels if they wet themselves.
Ambrose let up on the choir master long enough for Dyre's request to penetrate. The angel clamped his mouth shut, but Dyre slowly reached toward him, a death grin on his gaunt face. “I will start with you.”
The guy talked so fast it was hard to follow. He tried to squirm away from Dyre, but couldn't go anywhere with Ambrose behind his chair and Zhong and Niamh flanking him. Aahil paced a circle around the dais, his body dripping jinn flames, creating a barrier that none of the angels could pass. With the height of the flames, they couldn't simply fly over the ring of all-consuming fire. They were trapped and utterly at our mercy in a matter of seconds.
“Behind us,” the head jackass gasped. “The alcove behind us will open at my touch and the words 'god is good.' The artifact is in a case below.”
Aahil dropped the flames enough to allow access to the back wall.
I snorted at their stupid password. “And—”
I had been about to ask about booby traps. But I didn't get the words out before a massive explosion rocked the room.
The doors to the council chambers were blown off their hinges as people swarmed through. Witches. And they exuded that subtle sense of wrongness that said they practiced questionable magic. Magic that drew power from the suffering of others.
“Cultists,” I breathed.
At the same time, the choir master pushed to his feet, finding his courage as Ambrose sank back into the shadows and Dyre turned his attention to the problem behind him. “What is this? A trap!” He growled, his gaze landing on me with righteous fury. “You're working for the supremacists? You brought them here!”
“Like fuck I did!” I shouted back, dodging the lightning bolt of pure energy the enraged angel chucked my way. It bounced off the edge of my hastily erected shield and sizzled out of existence.
But we didn't have time to argue, because the room had descended into chaos.
Zhong's hand was around the angel's throat in an instant, and he slammed him back into a bookcase that lined one side of the back wall, his stone skin immune to the angel's electric bolts. I watched in horror as the cultists fell on the angels, striking to kill. One of the witches grinned at me, then vaulted onto the dais. Zipping to Zhong's side with magically enhanced speed, he grasped the choir master's hand and pulled a glowing short sword from his belt. The blade cut through the angel's wrist like a warm knife through butter, proving that it was enhanced with some kind of nasty spell.
As the angel screamed and folded in around his newly cauterized amputation, Zhong reached for the witch. But the smaller guy was too quick, dancing away and leaping over to the alcove, where he pressed the severed hand to the stone and muttered the stupid fucking password.
“Thanks for helping us out,” a woman said from behind me as the cultists fell on the angels, and my own people fell to defending the holy assholes.
How had this gone so bad, so fast?
I spun to face the laughing witch. I recognized her. The memory was distant, but I managed to put things together. “You work at the SA,” I said slowly, rotating to keep her in my line of vision as she paced around me. I wasn't very well trained. If I went up against a government trained witch, I was either going to lose… or I'd win by pulling on my deep magical well and doing something new and dangerous—either option was potentially deadly. But I had Hasumi at my back. The water weaver could drop her in an instant.
They were just waiting for her to tell us what the hell was going on here.
“You followed us into the realm,” I guessed. But how? We had come from the pocket world, not from the Magea or Planus realms. If they had latched onto our portal that would mean they knew where the pocket world was… and if that was the case, we no longer had a place to hide.
She scoffed. “Why would we follow a traitor and her dirty-blooded slaves? We were already here when you got here and interrupted our raid. But real witches are clever. We felt you coming, Lovell. And all we had to do was hide. To watch and wait and let you do the boring work for us.” She winked. “Thanks for locating the artifact for us. You saved us some tedium there.” A grin spread across her lips. “And now, we have a perfect scapegoat for the murder of the high chorus. Tsk, tsk, you really are an evil Lovell, aren't you?”
I growled. For fuck's sake, they were going to blame this whole fucking mess on me again . Just like the damned SA.
But wait…. “You were there. The night the SA tried to capture us after they took out the O'Leary coven. What are you doing with the cult?”
She rolled her eyes at me like I was slow and stupid. “Half the SA is made up of our order, nitwit. Why do you think they are failing at their mission so badly?” Giving me a sarcastic bow, she said, “Christine O'Leary, at your… well, not at your service, traitor. But at the service of our people and all of witch kind.”
I could see her weighing options as the fight raged around us. Kill me, or leave me here so she had someone to take the blame. Of course she chose to leave me alive to suffer in the aftermath. More misery that way. She turned away. And that's when Hasumi finally unleased their magic.
A blanket of calm settled over the entire room. I could think and move through it, and the others in our room seemed to be able to as well. But the cultists swayed where they stood, lost in some kind of euphoria. We had planned to use Hasumi's magic as a last resort, so the angels couldn't say we had used mind manipulation to get them to agree to giving us the artifact. Well, that had gone just stellar, now hadn't it?
Ambrose materialized beside Hasumi, his head cocked as he watched the water weaver work. “Not nearly as fun as sending them all into an eternal nightmare. But I suppose it will work.”
I stepped around a cultist and took in the scene around me. People were in various stages of fighting. A few bodies littered the floor, angels and witches alike. The doorway the cultists had opened behind the dais stood open, but smoke roiled out of it. I shook my head as Aahil emerged carrying a gilded box covered in wards. His grin was maniacal, and his body was wreathed in flames. Also not part of the plan. Apparently, we were terrible at plans.
His gold eyes met mine and he shrugged. “Booby trapped, of course. But they didn't account for teleportation and jinn fire.”
“Okay, let's… let's just get the fuck out of here,” I said, at a loss.
The angels thought I was in league with the cult. The cult was going to blame this all on me no matter what I did. I could stay and try to help, but honestly… they didn't deserve our help. The angels had chosen to ignore the problem and let the witch supremacists and the corrupt SA run amok on the planes they were supposedly watching over in all their holy glory. They could deal with the consequences of their inaction.
“Put them to sleep,” I told Hasumi. That was the only help they would get from me.
It would be best to try to get back to the original portal I had created, but that would mean traveling through the capitol building and the length of the city without being caught. We would definitely get caught now that an alarm had probably been raised. And being caught would mean needing to flex our power in a way that really would paint us as villains.
So, I let go of the power that was sustaining that portal, and concentrated on slowly, painfully ripping a new tear in the fabric of the realm from right here. I had to get through more magic and protections here. But the chorus members who fed the wards were currently downed, I was a Lovell with a link to several powerful beings, and I had rage on my side. I managed.
Aahil stepped through first, his precious cargo clutched in his hands, quickly followed by Niamh as she guarded his rear. The others followed rapidly after them, but I hung back, making sure everyone got out.
Elijah took refuge inside his anchoring charm once more. Dyre approached slowly, the black fading from his eyes until only violet remained. He glanced back over his shoulder, drawing my attention to an angel. One who had been stabbed by a cultist, and was lying off to the side in a puddle of blood.
He arched a red brow at me, and I hesitated, my mind in turmoil.
“We could help him,” I said, like a good person should. Even though I really didn't feel it.
Dyre shook his head. “No. We couldn't. He died exactly twenty-three seconds ago. And counting. Your first aid would be too late. It's only a corpse now. An… empty vessel.”
I swallowed hard. Dyre's ability to perceive life and death was apparently very accurate. I reached up and clasped the charm that hung around my neck, felt the surge of Elijah's power. He could hear us. Could see or at least sense some of what went on around him if he tried.
“Elijah,” I whispered. “Speak up now, or we're doing this.”
The charm remained silent and inert.
“Good enough for me,” I muttered, surging into action.
Dyre and I each grabbed an ankle, and we dragged the angel's corpse through the portal behind us.