Chapter Nine #4
Angie moved steadily into the house, her eyes sweeping left and right, her cloak swinging heavily, her injured hand clutching an amulet that contained a hedge of thorns protective shield, and the other hand gripping her staff.
She moved like a warrior. She moved the way Aunt Jane did when she was taking over a room. What the hell?
As a child witch, Angie had been utterly self-confident, able to work with raw magic the way Mozart worked with music. But something happened the night of the Change. After that, Angie’s magic changed too.
EJ vaguely remembered that, for a time, Angie was aloof, sad, and refused to use her magic at all.
Eventually, she had adapted, her magic had adapted, and her self-confidence had returned, but even then she hadn’t walked, hadn’t moved, like the Angie that paced in front of him with the slow, cautious gait of a soldier in a minefield. She had been quiet, studious.
“Half bath clear,” she murmured.
“Copy,” Villetti said from the garage entrance door.
Until she went off to university. Angie had come home from her first semester a colder, harder person.
Lonely and defiant, closed in and angry, resentful of everything and everyone.
She had suffered because she was a powerful Everhart witch.
Because she was part of the queen’s family. Because she was a princess.
Not that she had been picked on or bullied. She’d had no idea how to make friends among humans. She had been ignored and probably feared. People had whispered about her. Stepped aside from her when she walked from building to building…with her entourage.
Right. She’d had full-time bodyguards…She had escaped from the nighttime vamp several times and the last time Angie slipped away, she’d been attacked. She’d wounded two men and tied them up in magic for the police. It had created a sensation on campus.
He had been in school in Asheville, part of a huge social group, busy with sports, and doing teenaged shit with his friends. But that attack he remembered. Their parents had been mad and worried. He recalled a huge fight around the dinner table.
Ahead of him, Angie whispered, “Hallway clear. Bypassing stairway to clear first floor.”
“Copy that, hallway clear,” Villetti said over their unicoms.
“Laundry clear,” she said.
Villetti didn’t respond this time, and silence settled over them, broken by breath sounds and the soft rasp of fabric. No magic sounded, anywhere.
After the humans’ injuries, Mama had called Aunt Jane, and not told Angie. He knew this because he had snuck in and listened to part of the call. After the call to Aunt Jane, things suddenly, somehow, changed for the better.
Back at university, Angie had met Corry, a wild and free human, a girl with no restraints, no witch-fear, who adored his sister.
Suddenly, Angie had a girlfriend, one who lived in a kind of tempestuous, untamed mania of joy.
Through Corry, Angie met Lissa and KeeKee.
And Villetti. She had blossomed overnight.
Her loneliness and the fights about the bodyguard had ended.
Angie brought both Corry and Villetti home on spring break and introduced them to the family.
She had been blissfully happy, a one-eighty change from Christmas break.
Aunt Jane had…what? Arranged for Corry? Arranged for Villetti?
He had never asked. His sister had been happy, and that was the only thing that mattered to his young teenage self.
Once again she had adapted. She had grown up. Fallen in love with Villetti.
And then the war had shredded everything.
The Rus, an all-male witch-vampire coven, had opened a portal into an interdimensional space and brought out noncorporeal energy beings, what humans immediately called demons, trapping them and releasing them as weapons, first against Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Moldova, and Poland.
From there, they had swept east across Russia and south across Germany and into France.
On the day they entered Germany, they also bombarded China.
Humans had no chance.
China had killed off all their witch covens decades before. The PRC had fallen six days after a dozen демон в коробке had been delivered to the underground bunker where the ruling elite had taken shelter.
Russia fell except for Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
The witches of Europe fought back. The vampires fought.
The U.S., the Emperor of Europe, NATO, and the Dark Queen had sent soldiers and magic users and had fought.
The whole world changed.
Villetti had vanished into the military as a covert operative.
EJ had quit high school and joined Section Seven, one of the magical research and development units, to design, construct, and produce antidemon weapons that witches could use.
When things turned sour in the last years of the war, before he turned eighteen, he had gone into active combat situations.
In the middle of all that, the vampire Karson Marrazzo had come to Lincoln Shaddock’s court to apply for blood-family status, and had seduced Angie.
By the time the war ended, and EJ came home, Angie had walked in on her husband indulging in group sex and feeding.
She had left the bastard.
When he saw her again, she had looked like this. Cold and hard.
EJ needed to find out what she had seen and done when she walked out of the vamp lair of the nutjob Marrazzo.
There was a soft, very distant sound of chimes, clean and unbroken. “Magic in the distance,” EJ said.
“No lights,” Angie said. “So it’s behind walls. Upstairs. Something.” She glanced back, took him in and then Walter. Her eyes settled on something in the dark. “Walter—” Angie came to a halt. Her mouth closed on whatever she had been about to say. Instead she said, “Which way did you go?”
“No further than the bottom of the stairs,” Walter said.
“Fine. Wait here. Cover the stairs and the exit. I’ll clear the rest of the ground floor then we’ll take the second story.
While I’m working, Walter, please check with Alex and see if the alarm control center you sent pics of indicates some sort of camera access inside the house.
Hidden cameras. Ask if Alex has identified evidence of a safe room.
EJ, we need lights. If any are safe, turn some on. ”
Her tone was different. Commanding.
EJ almost said, “Yes, ma’am,” but changed it to “Sure.”
Walter tilted his head down, like a half bow of agreement. It was subtle, but even Walter had caught her change in tone. “Of course, Angelina,” he said. He turned his back and contacted Alex. Angie melted into the darkness.
What the hell?