Celestial Shadows, page 23
part #4 of Celestial Marked Series
Maybe both. His thoughts continued to burn at the back of my mind, though now disconnected and indecipherable. It’d be a long time before I was rid of their taint.
The nearby houses were a wreck, several missing windows and garden walls, and the street had taken a hell of a beating from the two arch-demons pummelling each other into the road. Abyss’s magic… I didn’t know if I had any left. But I’d done it.
I’d killed the demon who’d ordered Rory’s death.
So why did I feel so empty?
Nikolas landed beside me, and rested his hand on my shoulder. “Devi?”
I took a step backwards, my celestial hand lighting up. “I’m going to burn him to ashes. And then we’ll clean this up.”
The fallen stared ahead blankly, no longer bound to Lythocrax. I needed to figure out what in hell to do with them, but exhaustion masked my thoughts, and weird disconnected emotions kept jolting through me. Lythocrax was thoroughly dead, so it must be a side effect of Abyss’s magic.
“He killed… Rory,” I said quietly to Nikolas. “Not directly. Someone at the guild did. There was an agent there. When I read his mind—he was taking direct orders from heaven. From a Divine Agent. I think there’s a faction of angels trying to infiltrate hell, and he got himself kicked out of heaven on their orders. I don’t know how far he got into infiltrating the demon realms. I didn’t read enough of his memories to be sure. But he was definitely sent here for that reason. And he marked me, with the help of someone at the guild.”
Nikolas didn’t say anything for a moment. “Devi… I don’t want to push you, but you killed an arch-demon. It’s only a matter of time before the others find out. Casthus will find out. He… might see you as a direct threat.”
He was right. Worse, Zadok would tell me to hunt down those guild bastards without a second’s thought. Revenge was his thing. He and his brother were like… okay, not like the angel and devil. More like the devil and the slightly more evil devil.
“Your brother,” I said. “He’s… he’s acting seriously weird. He took over that tower and drove out Abyss. I know he knew her weakness, but he caved to her once before and I didn’t think he had that much power even before Casthus tried to have him killed. Why is he so confident he’ll get to keep it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I seem to have missed a few things where my brother is concerned. I certainly underestimated his tenacity.”
“He did grow up on a demon realm,” I pointed out. “And he’s spent the last few days stewing in his own drive for revenge while secretly gaining power, apparently.”
“No.” He looked irritated. “The reason I felt secure leaving him on Babylon in the first place was because I knew I could overpower him easily, if it came down to it. If he’s done anything, it’s recent.”
“You mean, made a deal with another arch-demon. Because that’s what we really need right now.”
Never mind the war between heaven and hell. Shadow demons against shadow demons, on a realm that was still linked to earth? What else had he been plotting?
“We’ll deal with that later. What about the fallen?”
He stiffened. “There’s a portal.”
I turned around to where he was looking. Shards of demonglass lay where we’d been fighting—the same portals the fallen had originally come from. Several of them had begun to move in that direction. “There’s nothing on that realm left. Hang on.”
I pointed my celestial hand at the rippling portal. The lights expanded, showing a wasteland—and a distant city. Not a city I knew. Lythocrax’s last creation.
The fallen moved forwards, eyeing the portal. Inspiration struck.
“I don’t know what there is on that realm,” I said to them. “It has no leader. It might be dangerous, but it’s probably the safest demon realm there is.”
An offshoot of heaven, if I believed Lythocrax. Despite his demons, the fallen would be able to survive in a place like that. And it looked like he’d been busy creating more new life, too.
“You want to go through?” I asked.
Several of the fallen nodded, while others moved slowly in that direction.
“I sense them,” one of them said slowly. “The Divinities.”
My heart sank. “That might not be a good thing. Have you ever heard of the Divine Agents?”
The fallen shook his head. Worth a try. Maybe the guild knew. These rogues had taken over Purgatory, for one. And I never did find out if the inspector had survived. I’ll have to check later.
I nodded to the fallen. “If you’re sure, you’re welcome to go through. The shadow demon will never find you there.” That much, I could count on.
The fallen moved towards the portal with jerky movements, murmuring thanks. It took all my energy to stay on my feet, to stop my thoughts from spinning back to Lythocrax’s—to the information I hadn’t had the chance to process yet.
“The celestial rogues?” I asked Nikolas. “Did you reach them in time?”
“The demons came through into this realm before the warlocks mounted their attack. But we’re going to have to make sure to deal with them, and fast.”
Before Javos took matters into his own hands. “I killed the Devi clone,” I told him. “The murderer is dead.”
Not that those rogue celestials were exactly a stable element, either. And I doubted Javos would give up so easily.
The last of the fallen passed through the portal. I hoped they’d find peace in that realm, or as close as possible on a newly formed demon realm. They’d made their choice, and I’d respect it. That realm was far from perfect, but with no arch-demon raining hell down on them, they should be able to survive.
Nothing was certain. Evil created, good destroyed. And the enemy was still unknown.
I turned to Nikolas. “I take it Javos is deposed now? Does that mean you’re stepping in?”
“Since nobody else will? Yes. It’s going to be difficult, but I think I can get the warlocks to rally around me. We’ll need unity, with what’s coming.”
“The war between heaven and hell?”
“The war between father and son.” He paused. “I checked in on Babylon, and apparently my father received a gift from his son. The skin of his former fire demon servant.”
“Zadok did that?”
“I think he believed it would be sufficient enough to prove his intentions.”
I grimaced. “He’s going to get killed for real this time.”
And yet he wasn’t the worst of it. I’d stolen the fallen out from under the shadow demon’s nose, and while he’d let me do so, I suspected he was planning to retaliate. Especially now I’d permanently moved them out of his way.
Yet he wasn’t foremost on my mind. The people who’d killed Rory were still out there—still at the celestial guild, for all I knew. Maybe revenge shouldn’t be my first priority, but it was definitely high on the list. Underneath ‘stop the demons from destroying the earth and declaring war on everyone I care about’.
I watched the portal’s lights die out. “Let’s find the others. Fiona… crap, she’s probably at home, if she didn’t join in the fighting.”
I began to walk away, with Nikolas right behind me. My energy levels were utterly depleted, and I’d feel like crap when the adrenaline wore off. I hadn’t seen Fiona’s fire magic in the battle, but I doubted she’d stayed out of the fighting.
My celestial hand glowed, burning every dead demon I came across, as I walked. Demon battles left one hell of a mess. Spotting a tangle of venos demon corpses, I made to blast them to ashes—but another celestial light flared past my face, close enough to make my skin tingle.
I spun around. “Who—?”
“Devi!” Fiona shouted at me from the roadside. She wasn’t alone. A person—female, I guessed—stood beside a motorcycle parked nearby, a helmet covering her face.
“Fiona!” I gasped out. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
She grinned at me. “You’re going to have to fill me in, but there’s someone here who really wants to meet you.”
“Oh?” I said warily.
“I made a friend.”
The girl standing against the motorcycle removed her helmet, her dark hair streaming loose, her ripped jeans stained with demon blood. And her wrists bore familiar cuffs to mine.
She looked up at me. “Hey, Devi. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“This is Faye Carruthers,” said Fiona. “The creator of DivinityWatch.”
***
Thank you for reading!
The story continues in Celestial Storm, the final Celestial Marked book, coming soon.
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Other books by Emma L. Adams
If you’re interested in meeting another kickass urban fantasy heroine, you might like Faerie Blood, the first book in the Changeling Chronicles series.
When faerie-killer Ivy is hired to find a missing child, replaced with a changeling, she’s forced to team up with the seductively dangerous Mage Lord, at the risk of exposing her own dark history with the faeries—and this time, running won’t save her.
Find out more!
If dragon shifters sound like your thing, try Alight, Book 1 in the Legacy of Flames series. Dragon shifter Ember must risk it all to rescue her sister from the supernatural-hunting Orion League, even if it means kidnapping a lethal ex-hunter who'd like nothing better than to add her name to his kill list.
Find out more!
About the Author
Emma is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Changeling Chronicles urban fantasy series.
Emma spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing fantasy novels. When she's not immersed in her own fictional universes, Emma can be found with her head in a book or wandering around the world in search of adventure.
Find out more about Emma’s books at www.emmaladams.com.
Emma L. Adams, Celestial Shadows
