Chapter 12 Archer
Chapter twelve
Archer
Unbelievable.
My pulse thrummed in my veins, adrenaline and something that felt a hell of a lot like jealousy racing through me.
Phips wrote her a letter?
He’d been my friend for three hundred years, and this is what I got?
We’d fought side by side, been through wars—human and celestial and everything in between.
We’d shared drinks the night the Liberty Bell was first hung in Independence Hall, watched in shocked amusement as chests of tea were unceremoniously tossed into Boston Harbor, and stood side by side as the RMS Carpathia docked in New York on that cold April morning in 1912.
Centuries of trust, and this is what I got?
Fuck all.
We had been through so much together, he and I, and still, he’d written her a letter.
A letter that should have been meant for me.
Watching her read it, seeing the emotions play out on her face as she greedily devoured the contents, had me chewing my cheek impatiently.
What did it say? Was he telling her where the pieces of the Fallen Key were?
Why the fuck did she look so horrified?
“Give me that,” I snarled, yanking the page out of her hands. Ignoring her protests, I spun away, pacing across the kitchen as I scanned the letter.
“No choice in the matter?” I muttered with indignation.
In reality, I didn’t even know if Phips was referring to me, but I was still affronted on principle.
Returning to the letter, I continued to read, frowning when Phips mentioned me.
Trust The Archer?
So he was referring to me? But how could he have even known I’d find her?
And if Phips knew that there was a leak in the Umbra Fratrum, why the hell wouldn’t he have told me?
Reading it a second time, I realized that I was just as confused as before—and twice as angry.
At the bottom of the letter, just below the signature, was the same symbol I’d just seen tattooed on my dead friend’s body. A tree within a circle.
The symbol of the Everwood family.
The family that had supposedly died out that day in Salem.
“You need to tell me the truth,” I snarled, stomping back toward Delilah. “What is your real connection to Phips and this symbol?” Holding the letter out, I indicated the bottom of the page. “Why am I suddenly seeing it everywhere?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Delilah stared at me, looking like she was considering how much to tell me.
If she thought she could hold back, she was mistaken.
The letter had instructed her to trust me, but that didn’t mean that I was going to trust her.
“I’ve already told you the truth,” she insisted, meeting my stare. “I have never met Father Phips. I was sent to find him after—” she faltered, her face filling with grief. “He was supposed to protect me.”
“And this?” I pressed on, ignoring the way my heart clenched at her pain. Holding the letter up once more, I shook it in her direction. “What do you know about this symbol?”
For a moment, she didn’t move, and I wondered if I’d have to resort to more aggressive means of questioning, but thankfully able to toss that idea aside when Delilah reached inside the neckline of her gray dress and withdrew a necklace.
As she held it up, I could see that the simple clay piece was etched with the symbol of the Umbra Fratrum, which was surprising enough in itself.
She wasn’t a member, so why would she have it?
But when she turned the pendant over to show me the other side, I nearly gasped out loud.
Because there, pressed into the roughly formed piece of clay, was the Everwood coven crest.
“How?” I grit out impatiently. “How did you come to have this?”
“Heidi said that it was my mother’s,” Delilah whispered, her words sad. “My real mother, I mean. Apparently, it was her mother’s before her, and hers before that.” She shrugged, as though it was inconsequential, when in fact, those words were everything.
Because if what she was saying was true, then Delilah just might be the missing Everwood witch.
“It’s the symbol of my coven. Or at least the coven I would have belonged to if my mother hadn’t been killed right after I was born.”
“If they’re a coven, why was Phips involved with them? He wasn’t a witch.” I asked the question mostly to test her, to see just how deep her knowledge of her own heritage ran.
“Mother Heidi told me that he was a friend of the family,” she offered, and I detected no hit of falsehood. Her words were true, she just didn’t know how true they actually were.
In fact, Phips had known the Everwood coven quite well, he and had been devastated when he’d told us the trials had ended their family line.
Looking back at things with this new perspective, I wondered if Phips had truly mourned the coven, or if it had all been an act. Had he helped to hide the last of the Everwood witches, even from the Umbra Fratrum? From me?
These were questions I’d likely never have answers to, and that grated on my nerves.
I was getting very fucking tired of always being in the dark.
“And what else did your Heidi tell you about Father Phips?” I went on, meeting Corson’s eyes over her head. He was scowling, but at me, not her. Ignoring his scrutiny, I moved my gaze back to Delilah.
She sighed, squeezing the pendant in her fist before she replaced it back inside her dress.
“She told me that he was a protector, someone who had worked his entire existence to complete his mission, and that if I was ever in trouble, I was to go to him.”
“Mission? And what mission was that?” It seemed crazy to me, Phips working with witches and having some sort of goal that was unknown to the rest of the Brotherhood.
Even if witches and demons had once been allies, they weren’t now.
The likelihood of them working together again seemed infinitesimally small.
Even if Phips wasn’t a true demon, he’d been a member of our organization, which meant his loyalty should have lain with us.
And yet, hadn’t I just seen for myself? A man I had thought I’d known, a Guardian, had apparently been working for centuries to preserve a bloodline we’d all been told had been exterminated. If the letter didn’t prove that, his tattoo certainly did.
Not to mention very existence of the beguiling little witch standing before me.
Delilah sighed, looking weary. Staring at her, her shoulders rounded and her eyes sunken, I could see that the woman was exhausted, dead on her feet.
But I didn’t waver; she had the answers I needed, so rest would have to wait.
“Protect the Fallen Key.”
“Please,” I scoffed, shaking my head. “Of course that was his mission. That’s what Guardians do. Protect infernal artifacts. They have for centuries.”
“Yes, the Guardians protect the physical pieces of the key, sure. But Phips was doing so much more than that.”
“You’re talking in circles, witch,” I said, my voice low. “And my patience is wearing thin. Either you speak plainly and tell me what you know or I’ll cut out your tongue. You’ll struggle to spew your lies and half truths then, won’t you.”
If I expected her to cower, I was mistaken. If anything, Delilah faced my threats with more determination, her chin lifting and her eyes locked on mine.
Her defiance I expected; she was a stubborn witch, after all.
But what I really didn’t expect was the way my men would move to stand between us.
The shift in the energy of the room was palpable, like a calm before a storm.
Vine ceased his rummaging through the refrigerator, stepping away from the kitchen and moving toward Delilah in a way that pissed me off.
Corson faced me, his large body squaring up as if to take me on, arms uncrossed and hands loose by his sides, a mountain ready for an avalanche.
Even Mal, who I had assumed was ignoring all of us as he stood on the patio, was suddenly back inside, bringing with him the chill of the autumn air and the weight of judgment in his coal-black eyes.
I clenched my teeth, my body tensing as I once again fought against the change, the thin veneer that kept my demon form at bay feeling as fragile as an eggshell in the face of my men siding with a witch over me.
“Archer,” Corson rumbled, palms raised to show me he was no threat as he eyed my gathering shadows.
But he was a threat. They all were.
“Speak, witch! The Order of the Broken Veil is hunting the pieces of the Fallen Key. The Everwood line has apparently survived all this time, and Phips was keeping it from us? Samhain approaches. The Veil thins. You must tell me what you know!”
Delilah sighed, bone-deep fatigue etched in every line of her body. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, shoulders slumping like a wilting flower; even the shadow collar at her throat appeared crestfallen, seeming to droop against her skin even as it kept up its loving strokes and touches.
But beneath that exhaustion I could see her steel-like resolve. The determination within her to meet my challenges head on evident in the set of her jaw and stubborn lift of her chin.
“He was protecting mortal access to Hell.”
No one spoke. No one even breathed.
Because what she said was next to fucking impossible.
“You’re mistaken. Access to hell is not something that can be achieved by mere mortals, so why would it need to be protected?” I spat, my ire rising with every beat of my heart. “That power is limited to the—”
“The seventy-two noble demons of the Ars Goetia. Yeah. I know.”
I snarled, enraged. “Fucking Solomon and his Hells damned book.”
“The point is, the power to open a passage into—or out of—Hell itself was supposed to have been limited to the demonic nobility, but someone found a way.”
“The Fallen Key?” I asked doubtfully. That wasn’t anything I had ever heard about the Key, but after the letter from Phips and the vague as Hell information from Asmodeus, I was starting to think that I truly knew nothing.
“I’m only telling you what I’ve been told,” Delilah said, her eyes blinking closed for an extended beat. “Apparently, neither of us have been given the whole picture.”
I couldn’t even disagree with her.
As I watched her, taking in her earnest expression, the collar continued to move, seeming to offer her solace whenever she got agitated.
How interesting.
I wanted to ask her more, to find out what gaps in my knowledge she could possibly fill, but before I could, Delilah’s jaw cracked wide with a yawn.
“That’s enough for now,” Corson cut in, stepping toward me and resting a heavy palm on my shoulder. The look he gave me was scathing, intended to shame me, and once again, my hackles rose.
Why were they all so bloody interested in the witch’s wellbeing?
Why the fuck was I?
“Vine, why don’t you show Delilah to her room? I’m sure she could use some rest.” Throwing me a significant look, Corson continued, “We could all use some rest. We’ll regroup later when we have a plan.”
“Sure thing,” Vine agreed readily, lifting a tray he’d been preparing from the counter. He’d filled it with small bowls of water, fruit, and what looked like tiny squares of deli meat. “Come this way, bestie. I’ll show you to your chambers.” He gave a ridiculous bow then led her away.
I watched them go until Delilah had disappeared up the stairs, then turned away with a resigned sigh.
Not wanting to speak to anyone yet, I moved back to the coffee machine and began making a second double espresso. The kitchen felt smaller with every passing second, the scent of coffee not enough to erase the delicate notes of sage and lavender that she’d left behind.
Taking a sip, I savored the bitter brew, knowing that no matter how good it tasted, it was no substitute for the answers I needed.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Corson finally barked, not bothering to sugar coat anything.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I deflected, shrugging as I took another sip.
“What was that shit you just pulled? Threatening to cut out her tongue? What the hell is wrong with you, Archer?”
“Me? I was interrogating a suspect. A slippery little grave robber full of secrets. What were you doing, hey Corson? Mal?” I asked, not wanting to allow him to think his disloyalty had gone unnoticed.
His black eyes blinked at me, filled with disappointment, then he turned away from me and went back outside and began removing his clothes.
As I watched, Mal shifted, glossy black feathers replacing the pale skin of his human body.
His raven’s mournful caw was all he offered before taking flight and disappearing into the gray New York sky.
Fine. Let him pout. I didn’t need his or anyone else’s approval.
Turning back to Corson, I pressed, “Since when do you side with witches?”
“Since that witch has clearly done nothing wrong.” Corson’s voice rumbled like distant thunder, his fists planted on his hips as he continued to rage at me.
“I thought you understood the Creed, man. Stand between chaos and corruption. That woman up there? She’s fucking drowning in chaos right now.
” His eyes met mine, centuries of brotherhood and trust in his gaze.
“It’s time to decide where you’re gonna stand. ”