Chapter 17 #2
“There’s no reason for us all to go.” When they all looked at me with scowls, I shrugged. “I’m the Angel of Tides. My mother is Angel of the Sea . . . Did you not see what just happened?”
Henley giggled. “She has a point.”
Tim nodded. “I agree. But I don’t like the idea of anyone going anywhere alone. Angel or not.”
“Yeah, you did die once already.”
I scoffed. “Twice. I died twice, and the first time was self-inflicted, kind of.”
They all wore matching expressions of horror.
“Too soon?”
Tenn grimaced. “You gotta give us a trigger warning, Cousin.”
Cooper rolled his eyes. “This isn’t a book.”
“Well, maybe Tegan has a point.” Tenn threw his hands up. “Wait, how’d you die the second time?”
Lennox raised her hand. “That’s what I wanted to know.”
“OH.” I frowned. “Right, you weren’t there.”
They all stared at me.
“Okay, so Mammon was chasing me through Salem, but Aunt Val had sent me a prophecy telling me to go to Leyka’s old house by the water—”
Tegan, Tenn, Cooper, Henley, and Royce all flinched.
“Right, so there was this door that at the time I thought led to like the basement or something—just given typical architecture of colonial homes . . . Turned out it was a doorway into the Garden of Eden. A back door, if you will. Just jump in and get a one-way express pass to the afterlife.”
Royce gagged. Henley shuddered. Cooper cringed. Tegan and Tenn grabbed on to to each other. I definitely missed something.
I nodded. “Y’all almost fell down there, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Tegan whispered. “We barely got out.”
Henley patted Royce’s back. “Just for shits and giggles . . . What would’ve happened if we had fallen all the way?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it with a grimace. “Death, instantaneous but painless death. Well, unless you’re a fallen angel like Mammon. I’m pretty sure he felt every second of being torn apart. I hope Gabriel left his bones there. I’d like more time to celebrate.”
There was a moment of silence.
Then it was Hunter of all people who groaned. “Fucking hell, Frankie.”
“So we all almost died. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” Then I frowned and pointed to the power couple Coven Leaders. “Except them. I feel you two were given an entry token.”
They held their left hands up and I smiled. The others wouldn’t have seen it, but as an angel, I did. On the backs of their hands were the marks of lotus flowers.
“Dad gave you those?”
They nodded.
“He’s a helpful pain in the ass, isn’t he?”
They all laughed.
“Right, so with haste Aunt Val said, we need to go. I think for the sake of ease and comfort, the rest of you should return to Eden. I’ll take Tegan and Tenn with me since they can breathe under water, and I’ll be able to focus more on any outside attacks rather than air bubbles.”
Cooper shuddered. “Yeah, don’t love the sound of that.”
Tim was already nodding. “But she’s right. We’re officially at war, so we have to assume we can and will be attacked at every chance.”
Tenn let out a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. Tegan and I will go with Frankie. Tim and Constance, you’re in charge until we get back.”
Tegan flicked her wrist and the white light of her portal flashed behind them. “Go on. Git.”
The moment the rest of them were gone and it was just the three of us on the beach, Tenn looked at me with pinched brows. “Are we to find them where we usually do? I’ve only been to their one den.”
“That’s their main den.” I turned and walked to the water, letting it sweep over my bare feet. “If Jackson’s story was true and you killed a few of them, then I would expect the rest of them to return to the den. So we should start there.”
“Shall I portal us closer?”
“Tegan, I thought you’d never ask.” I spun to face them and winked, then held my hand out to her. “You know where to go, right?”
She grinned and then white light flashed all around us. When it faded, I found we were standing on the surface of the water out in the middle of the ocean without land in sight in any direction. I took a deep breath to soak in all that salty air, then held it in my lungs for a minute.
“Can you portal directly into water, babe?”
Tegan frowned. White light flashed and vanished before I could blink. One second we were on the surface, the next my feet were sinking in the sand on the ocean floor. Tenn nodded in approval. Seaflies floated toward us in the current, then immediately scooped me up and twirled me around.
“Saffie with her fairyflies and you with your seaflies.” Tenn chuckled and held his hand up to watch the seaflies swimming around his fingers. “Are there fireflies and earthflies too?”
“Yes and yes.” I frowned. “Or at least there used to be. I died eight hundred years ago and a lot has changed. Perhaps they did not survive. I definitely haven’t seen them while being human.”
Tenn narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to the side. “What about fireflies? You never saw them growing up in northern Florida? We used to see them in Tampa—”
“Oh those.” I shook my head. “Sorry, the mixing of two sets of memories is still a little bumpy. So those used to be called lightning bugs, right? Because their light flashed like lightning? But those are actually spiritflies. I wasn’t alive when it happened, but I’m going to assume that some humans somewhere heard arcana talking about fireflies and . . . voila, semantics.”
Tegan frowned. “Saffie calls them fairyflies.”
“Well yeah, she’s a Seelie princess. She would call them that.” I chuckled and waved my arms through the current the way I always did when playing with my seaflies. “Everest is a Seelie prince, too, remember? Spiritflies are golden. Fairyflies in Seelie are blue—”
“Just like these?”
“Seaflies change color depending on which sea they’re in.” I let out a happy sigh. “It’s complicated ocean logic.”
“Had you ever been to Seelie as Celina?”
“No, Tegan, I had not.” My face fell. “I wish I could have gone there the first time with Everest. I think embracing his other side would fill some of the void Lilith created. I want to help him heal this time around.”
“We’ll help you,” Tegan said softly.
I nodded. Then I remembered what we were supposed to be doing and cursed. I shook myself. “Memory lane and history lessons were not on the agenda today. C’mon, let’s go steal siren tears.”
I flicked my wrists and the current scooped all three of us up and sped us away. A grin spread across my face, and centuries of memories flooded my thoughts. I missed this more than I could have imagined, so I closed my eyes and focused on the feel of the warm water sliding through my long hair.
“So, uh, Franks?” Tegan cleared her throat, bringing my attention back to her. “How do you propose we handle this mission?”
“Don’t we need to cover our ears?”
“So long as you’re within my current, their magic song won’t work.” I shrugged. “And I’m thinking the sheer fear and intimidation of us three arriving on their doorstep will do wonders for getting them to cooperate peacefully. I have no need to kill them, unless they give me one.”
“And if they give you a reason, are you allowed to help?”
I grinned at Tegan. “The ocean is my family’s domain.”
“What are they, anyways?” Tenn had his mismatched eyes narrowed on the ocean as we sped by. “They’re not demons, nor fae, nor vampire—”
“They’re monsters from another realm, brought here by Lilith several millennia ago in one of her earlier attempts to destroy Heaven and claim Earth for herself.”
“What happened to their realm?”
I glanced to Tenn with a grimace. “The same thing that will happen to ours if we lose the war.”
Their faces fell, but before they could respond, the current stopped and set us back on our feet. I turned around—and choked on a gasp. For a moment, all I could do was stare. I didn’t understand what I was looking at or how it could’ve happened.
The siren den was nothing but rubble. Their caves had been crushed in and turned to dust. The coral they’d used as part of their living space had been torn apart.
The sand looked almost like it’d been burnt.
It made no sense at all. Then we saw it.
Giant metal beams were anchored deep into the ocean floor and ran all the way up to above the surface.
With the sirens stacked up the middle like kebabs.
My stomach rolled. I raced over, though I knew there was nothing I could do.
Each and every one of them had been speared through the middle by these metal beams. Rage rushed through my veins.
I knew by their coloring and the way their scales had torn that they’d been alive when struck, not lined up after death. Who would do something like this?
Everest would never have allowed for something so heinous.
My stomach tightened into knots. We’d always worried, Everest and I, that his presence as Lilith’s right hand was the only thing keeping the world from total carnage.
Even without being here physically, Lilith had the ability to destroy.
We’d worried the day he left her was the day Earth would see just how brutal she was.
“We do not tell Everest the details of their deaths. Do you understand?” I glanced over my shoulder to the power couple. “He will blame himself. This will haunt him.”
Tenn pressed his hand to his chest. “No one needs to know the details. They are dead. That is what we’ll tell them.”
Tegan cursed. “It’s the what and how part I need to know.”
I bit my bottom lip and turned back to the stacks of sirens to take a closer look. Their usual candy-apple red hair was ashy and gray in places. Their black eyes held no shimmer to them anymore. Their bodies looked sucked dry, like something had taken their fill and left the bones for—NO.
“Unseelies,” I heard myself whisper. “Check for . . . for bites . . . behind the ears.”
Tegan and Tenn exchanged nervous glances, then shrugged and began looking at the ears of the corpses. I just stood there with my hands on my stomach trying to not be sick. The sirens had been slaughtered, brutally and slowly.
I closed my eyes. I will make them suffer for this.
“This is barbaric,” Tegan said softly. “Even for them.”
“No.” I shook my head and opened my eyes. “This is nothing compared to what they’re capable of.”
She blanched. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a reason that my father and I had to sacrifice our lives to end the war.” I gestured to the horrific scene. “This is nothing.”
Tenn cringed. “What do we do?”
“Move on to the next task—”
They both flinched. “What?”
Tegan shook her head. “But we need the siren tears—”
“They’ve been sucked dry, Tegan. There are no tears left. We need to return to Eden.”
“We can’t just . . . we can’t just leave them here like this .
. .” Tenn looked physically ill, which wasn’t a surprise from a mortal grandchild of an angel.
The first two generations after an angel’s line is created are always the most sensitive to brutality and suffering.
It literally hurt their souls. “We have to . . . I don’t know, like a . . . a . . . ritual or something?”
That made me smile. I reached out and pressed my hand to his shoulder. “There is nothing you can do for them now except glorious vengeance.”
They both turned wide eyes on me.
I shrugged, then pointed to the shells positioned intricately on the sand beneath the sirens.
“Mother was already here to honor their stolen souls and see they made it to the afterlife. But the ocean feeds itself. They live here, die here, and then provide sustenance for their fellow sealife. To move them now would dishonor the sea and their souls.”