Chapter 3
Chapter three
Archer
“Sorry I’m late, boys,” Asmodeus said, as though he had barely been gone a day instead of two decades. “Had to go see about a girl.”
“Are you...quoting a movie right now?” Vine asked, incredulous.
Asmodeus merely shrugged, a sly smile on his face.
He looked so different. The last time I’d seen him, his body of choice had been that of a large man. Muscled and covered with dark, wiry hair, he’d resembled a bear more often than not.
Now, he had chosen a young vessel, with bright blue eyes and golden blond hair that hung over his eyes. Perfect teeth and a swimmer’s build, he looked like a fucking rock star, and I huffed in confusion.
What in the Holy Hell was happening?
“I owe you answers,” he said, his gaze on the packed club around us. “And you’ll get them. But we need to leave. Now.”
As more and more eyes turned our way, I could understand his insistence. The demon king may look night and day different from any of the previous human visages he’d worn during his time on earth, but that didn’t stop those around us from sensing his presence.
The kind of power he emanated wasn’t easily disguised, no matter how much he may have changed his look.
I nodded, standing and sweeping my arm wide, preparing a shadow gate large enough to accommodate the five of us.
Asmodeus kept his back to the wall, his shrewd gaze sweeping the room continuously, as he waited for the others to enter the gate.
Once they were all through, I stepped up, placing my hand on his shoulder, letting him know the way was clear, and he stepped backward, allowing my touch to guide him.
It was the kind of trust that could only be earned through battle and sacrifice. He and I had fought side by side in more wars than the human histories could possibly record, and I had no doubt we’d fight in countless more.
A never-ending cycle of wins and losses that sometimes seemed so pointless I wanted to scream.
And yet, the wheel turned on.
Shaking off my dismal thoughts, I pulled Asmodeus out of the loud, boisterous club and through the shadow gate into the quiet living room of the home I kept in Pittsburgh, letting the gate snap shut behind us.
“Place looks nice,” he said, draping himself casually across one of the over-sized leather chairs as he stared around. “Very modern.”
“As much as I’d love to discuss interior decorating with you,” I deadpanned, moving over to take a seat of my own, my body perched right on the edge, unable to relax until I got some answers. “I believe we have more important things to focus on.”
“Yeah,” said Vine, tossing himself onto the couch and stretching across its length as though he was ready for a nap. “Like where you got that killer jacket.”
Asmodeus grinned, his new face creasing as he stroked one hand down the front of the jacket in question.
“Isn’t it sick? I’m loving this drip.”
I blinked, confused.
“Excuse me?”
“Come on, Archer,” Asmodeus went on, rolling his eyes and I nearly choked.
Who was this person with the face of a young model and an attitude like a new-age mall rat?
“Don’t be hatin’ because you don’t have my style.”
“Do you need help?” I asked, worried that our time apart had rattled his brain.
“He needs an exorcist,” Corson grumbled, and Asmodeus frowned.
“I’m just trying out some of the latest slang,” he said, shaking off the care-free persona, his face settling into something more serious.
“Just because we’ve lived through the fifteen hundreds doesn’t mean we have to hold on to their speech patterns.
And I’ve been...spending time with someone who wouldn’t exactly appreciate it if I spoke like a Shakespearian player. ”
“Spending time? With who?” I blew out a breath, feeling frustrated.
I stared at him, my eyes narrowed suspiciously.
The mention of spending time with someone made me wary.
Asmodeus had always been a pillar of control, his focus solely on our cause and the never-ending war we were embroiled in.
For him to have changed everything about himself—from his looks to his speech patterns—meant that whoever it was had to be very important.
Or incredibly dangerous.
“Asmodeus, where have you been?”
“Modi,” he corrected, and I thought I detected a hint of embarrassment in his tone. “I go by Modi now.”
“Okay. Modi. Will you please tell us what the fuck is going on?”
He sighed, his expression falling into some semblance of the man I remembered.
“The Order of the Broken Veil has risen.”
“Motherfucker.” Mal didn’t speak much, but when he did, he was concise, and almost always accurate.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I am. Father Phips’s death wasn’t the first. Guardians are falling all over the planet. Even the most secure vaults are being raided.”
Over the millennia, Lucifer had taken to placing the most powerful relics of Hell in places that his enemies would be least likely to look for them; consecrated ground.
He’d assigned Guardians—some of his most loyal followers—to watch over them, protecting them from those who would use them for their own means.
William Phips had been one of the first.
“What has been taken?” Corson asked, his brow furrowed in thought.
“Trinkets, mostly,” Modi answered, sitting forward, his pose matching mine.
“Some minor summoning items, useless as those are these days. There were a few of the lesser-known scrolls from the Dead Sea, a few journals from some pompous old men who thought they knew better than everyone else, and several moderately powerful infernal relics and artifacts. Things like that.”
“They’re trying to open the gates,” Corson surmised, and Modi nodded.
“But the pathways have been barred for years,” Vine cut in. “The Dark Lord is the only one who can reopen them. Do they really believe they can find a way when no one else could? Is the Order really that arrogant?”
“So it would seem.”
“It explains all the attempted summonings we’ve been coming across,” Corson continued, his face thoughtful. “Although none have been successful. Yet.”
“Is that all they took?” Vine asked. “Just dusty old nicknacks?”
“Nothing of any real value was lost...until Trinity Church.”
“No,” Mal hissed, his coal-black eyes widening. “They didn’t. Asmodeus, if they took it—”
“They did,” he confirmed, and the weight of that revelation sat heavily on us all. “They stole a piece of the Fallen Key. And I suspect they will already be searching for the other two pieces, as well.”
Of course, they would be.
Lucifer hadn’t separated the amulet into three pieces for nothing. As an item of supreme magical strength, the Key had been infused with the essence of Hell itself. All the vices that gave Lucifer his power, squeezed into an amulet that could fit into the palm of your hand.
Each piece was more than just a relic—they were conduits of pure sin made manifest. The first piece contained Wrath, Greed, and Envy.
The second held Lust, Pride, and Gluttony.
The third—Sloth—served as the binding clasp.
Together, they formed an amulet of such dark power that Lucifer himself had feared what it might do in the wrong hands.
And it had several uses, as well, including the ability to sever a demonic binding. That meant voiding a soul contract with a crossroads demon as well as freeing a human from demonic possession—whether the demon agreed to being removed or not.
It was easily one of the most dangerous relics in existence, and it was apparently now in the hands of a group devoted to destroying humanity and tearing open the veil between the living and the dead.
“You’ll just have to find the pieces before they do,” Modi continued, as though it were really that simple.
“It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?” Corson rumbled, his head tilted in question. “I mean, without an Everwood witch, it’s useless anyway.”
He was right; part of the magic of the key was that it needed the blood of an Everwood witch to bind the pieces back together. Without that, the Key was useless.
“And,” Corson went on, “there hasn’t been an Everwood witch for over three hundred years.”
Modi pursed his lips, but didn’t speak.
That in itself told us all we needed to know.
“It has been over three hundred years since the birth of the last Everwood witch, right Asmodeus?” Corson asked, accusation in his tone.
“That may not be entirely true.”
“Holy Hell,” Vine breathed, running one hand through his hair. “Talk about dropping a bomb, Modi.”
“How long have you known about this?” I snapped.
“I don’t know anything for certain,” he assured us, his blue eyes pleading for understanding. “But there have been some rumors. Whispers I’ve collected over the last couple centuries that have led me to believe that the Everwood line wasn’t wiped out like we all thought.”
“We were there,” I insisted, the memory rising in my mind. “We were in Salem, there at the end. We didn’t hear about the trials in time to save them all but we saved who we could. The Everwood witch was not among them.”
The memory of Salem still haunted me. We'd arrived too late to save them all—women and men who'd trusted us to protect them, hanging lifeless from those cursed gallows.
The accusation in their vacant eyes had burned itself into my soul.
We'd failed them then, and the guilt of that failure had shaped everything we'd done since.
“I know that,” Modi replied, the sorrow in his voice echoing my own.
The devastation we had all felt, standing at the bottom of Gallows Hill on that cold September day, staring at the swaying corpses of eight faithful servants, our failure evident in their vacant, accusing eyes.
“And yet, what other reason could there be for the Order of the Broken Veil to be hunting the pieces of the Fallen Key if they didn’t have the blood of an Everwood witch to bind it with?”
The idea was impossible; if a bloodline that powerful was still in existence, there was no way I wouldn’t have known about it.
Was there?
“How did they even discover that the Key was there?” I asked, changing the subject. Modi turned to me, a familiar look in his unfamiliar eyes, and I feared that I already knew the answer.
“We have a leak,” Modi replied simply, as though a member of the Umbra Fratrum breaking their vows was a simple matter.
“Are you telling me that a member of the Shadow Brotherhood is the reason Phips is dead?” Vine asked, a dangerous glint in his eyes as he pulled his blade out of his Rip, almost unconsciously.
“It would appear that way, yes.”
“Who?” Mal snarled, the word coming out with a little hint of a squawk. “Who would fucking dare?”
“That is something I am not certain of. Not yet, anyway.”
The thought of betrayal within our ranks made my stomach turn.
The Umbra Fratrum wasn't just an organization—we were blood brothers, our bond forged by centuries of shared battles and sacrifice.
For one of us to sell out a Guardian of the Brotherhood, to get Phips killed.
..it went against everything we stood for.
When we found the bastard, death would be too kind.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, needing to know what he had planned.
Modi sat back, his youthful face breaking out in a smirk. “I’m not going to do anything.”
“You can’t mean to allow this to go unpunished.
” If Asmodeus failed to retaliate, swiftly and with an inordinate amount of force, he’d paint the entire Brotherhood as weak.
A great portion of our control came from the fact that people were simply too scared to risk our wrath by stepping out of line.
“I’m sure you’ll come up with something creative when you catch the bastard who’s doing this,” he replied casually.
“Me?” I asked, my eyebrows rising in surprise.
“Are you not my chosen representative here on earth?”
“I—yes.”
“And have you not been running things on your own for the last twenty or so years?”
Reluctantly, I nodded, feeling Corson and Mal approach the back of the couch, taking up positions on my flank as Modi took us in. Even Vine, the perpetual slacker, sat up straighter, his knife spinning between his twitchy fingers as he stared at Modi, rapt.
“Then I have full faith that you’ll find the source of the leak and stem it in your very impressive way.” He looked to Vine as he said it, and I watched as Vine’s shoulders straightened, appreciating the praise. “A good soul eater is hard to find these days.”
“Asmodeus,” I said, exasperated. “Be serious. This isn’t some back-alley conjurer or traveling hag we’re talking about. If they’re taking down Guardians then the Order is a real threat.”
“Of course, they’re a real threat,” he snarled, standing. In his rage, his handsome face morphed into something else entirely. There and gone, the crack in his mask revealed his true form beneath, and it both terrified me and comforted me.
Perhaps the Asmodeus I knew was still there, buried under whatever the hell he was now, waiting to be released once more.
“But you are a threat too, brother,” he continued, pacing the room. “You are more than capable of facing whoever this is head on. Do not, for one second, forget who you are. Who the Umbra Fratrum are.”
“Born of Grace, forged in Darkness,” Mal intoned, the first line of the Creed of Shadows sending a shiver up my spine.
“We alone stand between chaos and corruption,” Corson continued, picking up the next line.
“We walk in shadow to preserve the light,” Vine said, his face serious.
They looked to me, four sets of eyes that looked both human and not at the same time.
I knew what came next; I’d said the Creed of Shadows more times than I could possibly count. I had the words tattooed on my body for fuck’s sake.
But it wasn’t enough to simply know the words. I had to believe them. I had to believe that what Modi said was true.
That the Order of the Broken Veil was going to rue the day they thought they could go against my crew and win.
That their souls would scream in Hell for eternity.
“We are the Umbra Fratrum,” I said, feeling those words down to my very core. “And we don’t fucking lose.”