Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
LAYDEN
“No!” My voice comes out strangled as I stagger away from my father. “We sent you back to the realm of the angels!”
Phoenix runs to my side immediately. She doesn’t hesitate or question. She just positions herself between me and him as if she’s done it a thousand times before. The sight of her standing ready to fight my battles makes something in my chest crack open.
My father laughs in my face. The sound echoes off the glass walls of the atrium, multiplying until it seems to come from everywhere at once. “Which I must thank you for, actually. The angelic hosts were not happy to see my thieving face. They did not welcome me back with open arms.”
He takes a step closer to the invisible barrier of the circle between us. I can feel Phoenix tense beside me. Her hand finds mine almost unconsciously, our fingers lacing together.
“But I pretended repentance,” my father continues, his smile widening.
“I ate of their manna and drank of their heavenly ambrosia, refilling my angelic powers to their fullest. They had never been so strong since I was first spawned many ages ago. I pretended atonement and I planned, oh how I planned.”
My stomach sinks with every word. Phoenix’s grip tightens on my hand. I squeeze back, trying to let her know I’m here. I’m with her. Whatever comes next, we face it together.
“It was easy to jump back to this world using the same well of realms I came through the first time,” my father says. “They thought the wells had been sealed off. But our research together during your PhD studies have been correct all along, Phoenix darling.”
Phoenix flinches at the endearment. I step slightly in front of her before I can think about it. The movement is protective. Instinctive.
She notices. Her eyes flick to me, and something softens in her expression for just a moment before her face hardens again. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“Something has changed since all the spirits were first ejected from this plane two thousand years ago.” My father’s gaze locks onto Phoenix with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.
“You. You, Phoenix, got yourself incarnated into this world. You put a crack in the spiritual barrier erected during the Great Exodus.”
Phoenix’s breath catches. I hear it and feel it in the way her whole body goes still beside me.
“Not that the angels knew it,” my father continues cheerfully.
“Once they turned their back on this world, they saw no reason to turn their eyes towards it any longer. So I just had to wait for them to let down their guard and turn their eyes away from me as well. Then, once I jumped through the well back here, I sought to take over this world and become its ruler as I did in the ages of old. Except this time, I would rule it fully. Not by just puppeting some foolish human empire for an age or a century, but by ruling the entire world. With myself as it’s one true god. Forever.”
I scoff at his pride as Phoenix makes the connection: “It was you behind the angelic runes that took over government systems last month and launched those nukes,” Phoenix says. Her voice comes out breathless, shocked. “You weren’t going to rule the world. You were going to destroy it.”
“And remake it in my image,” my father says with a grin that makes him look truly mad. “With every being left bowing down in worship to me. For all time.”
Of course it was him. I should have known at the time. I just hoped that when we sent him home through the rune circle I created at my brother’s castle last year, it meant we would be done with him once and for all.
But Phoenix is right. The only way to deal with a rogue spirit is to kill it.
I don’t care if my brothers tried once before by burning my father’s body to ash.
Unbeknownst to them, he regrew from an ember.
But it took him years to regain his shape and strength.
We will have to just keep burning him eternally, if that’s what it takes.
I don’t care how. But he cannot be allowed to live. He is a creature of destruction.
“But when you so creatively foiled that plot by creating a crack in the continuum of spirit realms,” my father chuckles, eyes on Phoenix, “I realized I had been thinking too small. Why rule one world when I could rule many? This world will be a nexus point to draw in more powerful spirits than I could dream of. I no longer have to create an army. The army will come to me.”
He holds out a hand toward Ammit, who has been silent this whole time.
“I won’t be part of your army, you bastard!” she shouts. “I never wanted any part of this.”
I’d forgotten she was even here. I look toward the woman we thought was a murderer, and her face is twisted with genuine horror.
My father’s expression shifts to something crueler. “Oh, come, my dear. Don’t be dramatic. You hungered for this realm just like the others do.”
“I was happy where I was,” Ammit cries out.
“You were an outcast.” My father’s voice bites out the words.
“In a realm of spirits in constant consummation and orgasmic bliss, you were alone. You cried out, and I answered. I gave you a body. I paid for your passage into this world in blood.” He gestures and she winces back in horror.
“You should be the first bowing at my feet in worship of your god.”
“Never!” she shouts.
“Wait,” Phoenix says, her mind clearly working through something. “Are you even Ammit? Was it you who killed those people?” She gestures at the sliced-up body in the atrium.
“What?” The woman looks horrified as she glances around. “No! I’m not a murderer. They did that to the student in the dormitory—to bring me into this world.” She points to my father and then to Sabra and Vlad.
They?
Phoenix swings around, and I see the devastation on her face.
“Please,” Vlad sneers from outside the circle.
“You think I was fooled by that little performance you pulled on your wedding night? I need you to produce me heirs. That was the deal he and I made.” He gestures toward my father.
“He came to me after the stunt with the Devourers and offered me a partnership. We were about to become in-laws, after all.”
Vlad’s eyes gleam with avarice and greed. “So first we pulled through a spirit to force you two to fulfill your part of the bargain.”
Ammit. Or whatever spirit from a realm of lust Sabra could reach through the blood ritual. I’d be horrified if I didn’t know my father’s playbook so well. Win at all costs.
“You’re a fool if you think he considers you a partner.” Contempt drips from my voice. “You’re nothing more than a pawn to him. An insect.”
I know my father better than anyone. He “partnered” with many powerful emperors over the years, only to crush and betray them the moment it amused him.
Vlad looks pissed, but Phoenix interrupts before he can say anything.
“Fine, you’re both big and bad and evil; I get it.
” She holds up her arms, and I notice her hands are shaking slightly.
Rage or fear, I’m not sure which. Probably both.
“You’re going to raise a great, evil army together.
What does any of this have to do with why you’ve trapped us in this circle here with these dead bodies and the spirit of lust you already pulled over? ”
“Oh, my dear,” my father says, his voice dripping with false sympathy. “You really haven’t figured it out yet? The circle isn’t just to trap you. It’s to use you.”
He walks right up to the edge of the invisible barrier. Phoenix’s hand tightens in mine again.
“You see, I’ve learned from my mistakes,” my father continues.
“Pulling spirits through one at a time with witch magic, angel runes and blood sacrifices is terribly inefficient. As is waiting for the two of you to fuck and my son’s seed to take root in your belly.
Because what if I could create a permanent conduit to the offspring I desire?
A living gateway between the realms? Every spirit I call over and craft in my image shall be my children! ”
My blood runs cold. And I’m clearly not the only one disconcerted by what he’s describing.
“That’s not what we agreed on,” Vlad objects furiously, stepping forward and grabbing my father’s shoulder.
But Vlad yanks his hand back almost as soon as he makes contact with Father’s coat, grimacing in what looks like pain and deep confusion as he shakes it out.
But the confusion is only a flash before it’s replaced by fury.
“You dare attack me! Do you know who I am? I am Vlad Dracul, inheritor of immortality and the Divine Right of Dracula, Voivode of Wallachia, defender of Europe against the Ottoman Empire and the great Mehmed II. You dare burn me with the heat of your touch? I will send my sons and my son’s sons to smite—”
But Vlad’s great speech is cut off when my father flicks a few fingers in his direction with a roll of his eyes.
And Vlad is immediately engulfed in a head-to-toe column of blue flame.
His screams echo off the atrium walls and Phoenix shudders and moves closer to me.
Vlad writhes and tries to run. But he’s caught in place by the flame that’s already burned through his clothes as if made of paper and started on his immortal flesh. The shock on his melting face is as clear as the anguish of what looks like extreme pain at being burned alive.
Phoenix turns her face away. Even though he was her tormentor. She can’t watch him burn for his sins.
My father was always known as the Avenging Angel.
In paintings of old, they depicted him dressed in white and drawing a flaming blue sword as he decimated ancient cities all on his own.
He only pawned out the task to us, his sons, because it began to bore him.
Plus, he always wanted destruction on a grander scale than one measly town at a time.