Celestial Shadows, page 3
part #4 of Celestial Marked Series
The fork-tailed warlock I’d met a few times approached us. His chest was bare and covered in tattoos. He’d be a catch amongst humans, in spite of his tail. “I told them it’s their own fault if the Great One smites their sorry arses, but they refuse to listen to reason. Leave them for the demons, I’d say.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Nikolas growled. “If you’d like to live, get back inside,” he added to the others.
He didn’t wait to see if any of them listened. We passed through the open doors of the castle, where dark flagstones formed an austere entrance hall and staircases and corridors branched off in all directions. I never had figured out where they all led, though Nikolas had finally kept his word and showed me his quarters here. The castle was nice—modern, by demon standards, but said standards weren’t high, and I preferred working showers and central heating to bathing in the river and shivering next to a fireplace too much to give up earth for here.
I looked around the entrance hall, not seeing many of the other warlocks about. “Let’s hope the others had more sense.”
“I’ll address them,” Nikolas said. “Are you okay talking to Zadok on your own? We need to clear this up fast.”
I nodded. “Yeah, sure. The fallen should understand why they need to hide, and I can deal with Zadok.”
I hope. The path across to the tower was bare and scorched, even more so than before, since the battle for the realms had taken place directly here. The river raged past, its waters free of blood, but I could still smell it on the air along with the stench of brimstone. The tower door was closed, probably locked. I rapped on it with my knuckles, my nerves spiking a little. Zadok and I weren’t on great terms. He’d tried to kill me the first time we’d met. He’d also helped me—saved my life, even, not to mention loaning his magic. And then he’d betrayed us, so Nikolas had ordered him to take care of the fallen as penance. I hadn’t heard too many updates on how he was coping with that position, but if he blamed me, things would get ugly fast.
The door opened, and one of the fallen looked at me. Pale and skeletal, man-shaped and naked, with clawed hands, they walked at a crawl, spoke the demonic language haltingly, and their auras glowed as brightly yellow as a demon-infected wound. Thanks to my Grade Four abilities, I couldn’t switch off the second sight, much as I tried to quell the instinctive reaction of revulsion and fear. Maybe it was the celestial side of me, the half-buried part of me that had almost believed the guild’s lies about damnation. I’d walked through hellfire itself and come out unscathed, but having had propaganda thrown at me for years, sometimes it stuck despite my best efforts.
“What is it this time?” said a voice from the shadowy corner.
“Hiding again.” I stepped into the room, past the fallen. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to the fallen alone. You’ll only distress them.”
“Distress them?” Zadok repeated. “You were singing a different song when you put me in charge of looking after them.”
They certainly looked much more alert than before, though they still cringed away from the light and seemed to have no intention of putting clothes on.
“Fine, you can listen in. It’s not like you didn’t know it anyway.”
“Know what?” he said, the shadows lightening to reveal his tall frame standing in a corner of the room. “That my brother has no intention of relieving me of this indignity? Or does he plan on handing these abominations to someone else?”
“You’re all best friends now, then?” I asked. “I suppose you’ve heard the arch-demon is coming back.”
Shadows blasted outwards, knocking several fallen off their feet. Zadok swore in a voice like thunder, and I stepped aside in case he decided to blast me, next. “Excuse me?” he growled. “What are you talking about?”
“You seriously didn’t know?”
He stepped out of the shadows, his golden eyes aglow. “Now, why would my dear brother do anything that might spare me a great deal of pain?”
It was disturbing how much like Nikolas he looked. They were both tall and broad with dark red-tinted hair and golden eyes. Zadok was a little paler than his brother and his features were sharper, as though he’d lost weight recently. But the shadowy aura at his back was as dark and menacing as ever.
“The other warlocks know,” I said to him. “If you weren’t a dick to them, they’d probably have told you.”
“Some of them would have gladly sided with me over my brother if he hadn’t blackmailed them,” he said. “They fear the fallen, and won’t come near.”
“Oh.” Crap. Now I knew where those warlocks had been running to. Zadok himself clearly hadn’t known, though, and unless he was messing with me again, he didn’t plan a mutiny. What a mess. I didn’t fault Nikolas for taking his eyes off this realm for a moment—mostly because I’d been the one who’d distracted him in the first place. “Look, you must know he’ll be unhappy with all of us for letting the fallen out of the dungeon. In the interests of safety—”
“Is my brother still treating you like a fragile human?” He laughed. “Dear Devi, if our father wants anything, no dungeon walls are going to get in his way. And if he wants the truth, he’ll tear me open to get it.”
“I have no idea if you meant that in a literal sense or not, but your attitude isn’t helping.” I stepped back. “Help me get the fallen into the dungeon before your father shows up, or you’ll be the one he smites.”
“How thoughtful you are to give me such a tempting choice.” His voice was flat. “Clear the path. You’ll have to forgive me if I retaliate should any of them strike me. I defend myself. Force of habit.”
“Except when Abyss is involved,” I muttered.
He stiffened. Then the tower trembled, the remaining light fading out. Tell me it isn’t—
Zadok’s aura surged jet black. “Now you’ve done it.”
Warning the fallen to stay back, I opened the door and ran outside the tower. A shadow blotted out the moon and stars entirely, rendering the castle almost invisible. Icy air blasted me in the spine and my demon mark snapped to attention. Nope. You can’t feed on an arch-demon.
Then he appeared, a darker shape etched against the shadows… almost human-like, with a pair of huge, spiked wings.
My mouth went dry. The earth trembled. Blades of shadow punched down at the warlocks who’d been fleeing. Severed warlock limbs flew left and right, leaving a trail of dark blood, and I was suddenly very glad it hadn’t been Zadok who’d staged the mutiny. And too stunned by the sudden explosion of violence to wonder when I’d begun to care in the slightest about the fate of Nikolas’s brother.
I stood in front of the door, blocking the fallen from view and hoping to hell that the demonglass was sturdy enough to stand up to an arch-demon. Abyss hadn’t needed to knock the door down when Zadok had invited her in. If he did the same now, at the expense of the fallen—
The shadow descended directly in front of me.
Oh… seven hells.
The being inside the darkness was huge enough to defy comprehension, a winged creature with no pity or remorse in his gaze. His furnace-like eyes surged with fury. His aura… was oblivion. There was no other word for the raging darkness beyond him. The sky had disappeared entirely, and the whole world might as well be blanketed in unforgiving darkness.
“DEVI LAWSON.”
How… how did he know my name?
“I guess you spoke to Lythocrax,” I said. My voice sounded steady enough to my own ears. I nearly called Lythocrax ‘Altheare’, his true name, but handing that name over to another arch-demon would ignite a war. If his presence didn’t mean the exact same. “Just a hello would do, not that yelling thing. If you’re wondering.”
Casthus raised a hand. Shadows burst to life around me, and my demon mark ignited. The demonglass in my pocket fell free, and an inferno rose to blot out the midnight sky.
3
The flames disappeared, and within a few seconds, I became aware that I lay on my back in the lab at the warlocks’ headquarters. The world swam around above my head, and the uncomfortable sensation of sharp objects digging into my spine told me I’d landed in the lab’s store of demonglass.
“Did he just bitch-slap me into another world?” I asked of the ceiling.
“I’m guessing yes,” said Rachel, looking down at me.
“Ow.” I shook my head, dislodging shards of glass. “Dick. That was unnecessary.”
“The good news is that he let you live,” said Rachel. “And Nikolas, too, I’m guessing.”
“I’m not leaving him to handle that maniac alone.” I lurched to my feet, my body shaking. I was fairly certain the demonglass had just saved my life. Nikolas. The fallen. Seven hells. That power—there was no comparing. Apparently, Casthus didn’t want me as an ally after all.
“Whoa.” She stared at me. “You’re… what’s the opposite of glowing? Shadowing?”
I looked at my demon mark, which had turned jet black, streaming trails of smoke. “Oops. I think I took some of his power. In fairness, he kind of threw it at me.”
“Damn.” Rachel shook her head. “Don’t go using that against the other warlocks.”
“Wasn’t planning to. I’m going after Nikolas.”
“He’s a demigod,” she said. “He’s built more resilient than a tank.”
“I can absorb the same power,” I said, folding my arms to stop the shadowy magic leaking any further into the room. “Besides, arch-demons are stronger than demigods. They destroy whole worlds on a whim and slaughter armies.” Of celestials. Damn. If he came here…
I’d done that. I’d caused it, directly or not. Never mind that the gods had manipulated events so it’d turn out this way: I’d played along because I’d had no choice, and now yet another bloody arch-demon had decided to start breaking things.
And to think I’d once thought Themedes was the most terrifying being I’d ever meet.
I grabbed a handful of demonglass and fiercely concentrated on the fragments, picturing the dark castle of Babylon reflected within. But no castle nor tower appeared.
“Oh no you don’t,” I muttered. “I don’t care if he thinks I’m scum—I need to know if he’s planning to go after the fallen.”
Casthus wanted me dead. But I needed to make sure he didn’t also want a war on earth. I swore at the glass, which continued to look maddeningly blank, reflecting my own pissed-off stare at me several times over.
“Great.” I threw down the handful of glass. “Either he’s locked me out or my powers have run away from the angry arch-demon.”
Probably the former. He’d known my name, which, if Zadok hadn’t been lying, must have come from Abyss or Lythocrax. Or even the Divinities. I didn’t know how the shadow arch-demon spent his time, aside from waging war.
The Divinities… they’d done this. And I had contact with one of their representatives.
Clover, retired celestial soldier and my only ally at the guild, was an actual angel, reincarnated into a human body. As far as celestials went, she was ranked on Grade Three level and weakened after a long life as an active celestial in human form, especially after she’d given a portion of her life force to remove the demonic influence from Fiona. I hadn’t asked her to do it, but being an angel gave her some perks. I didn’t know how far those perks extended, but I was willing to try anything at this point.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialled her number. After a couple of rings, she picked up.
“Hey,” I said. “Have you heard?”
I had zero clue how her channels of communication worked, to be honest. Whether she had Heaven’s number saved in her phone contacts or friends in high—ha—places. Whatever the reason, she seemed to be on top of all things Divinity-related, so I figured the latest on Babylon surely couldn’t have escaped her attention.
“Have I heard the arch-demon is back?” she said, in her brittle voice. “Yes.”
“A warning might have been nice,” I told her.
“I found out at the same time Nikolas did.”
He wasn’t even on this realm when he found out. I really needed to ask how her divine magic worked, but my priority was getting back to Babylon.
“He didn’t want to stick around for a chat. He would have killed me if I hadn’t absorbed some of his magic and used my demonglass power to escape. If he’s aiming to attack earth, I have to know.”
“He wouldn’t have warned you if he was. He’d have struck, fast and brutal.”
“Figures.” I rolled my eyes, my hands still shaking. “Might he have run into Lythocrax at all? He found my name out somehow.”
“Possibly, but it’s unlikely that the two would have reached a mutual understanding. What Lythocrax did—putting his mark on a human—is not an action the other arch-demons would accept. They would demand answers, and wouldn’t brush the matter aside.”
“He literally did brush me aside. Or slapped me. Whichever. If he wants to underestimate me, he can feel free to.”
“You’re not wrong there, but I doubt the mark went unnoticed. He’ll have doubtless heard about it via the netherworld routes before his return.”
I frowned, recalling our last conversation. “You said you died and were reborn on Babylon. Did the shadow demon have something to do with it?”
“I told you my memories of my previous life were erased. It’d have been before Nikolas was born. Maybe before his father settled on that realm…”
“He got bored and abandoned the place. I know that much. But that was only fifteen years ago. I guess he could have conquered half a dozen dimensions in that time…”
Maybe he and Clover had even met before. Clover had already told me she didn’t remember her previous life, but she’d said that the celestials had made a deal with the Divinities to protect earth by sealing Babylon off from the rest of the netherworld. So the Divinities must have been on that realm before Casthus arrived. Babylon hadn’t always been a dead zone between this realm and the rest of the netherworld.
“Clover,” I said, when she didn’t respond to my comment. “I’m not a celestial anymore. If he is a threat to earth, I need to know.”
“He isn’t. That is, he wasn’t, the last I heard. I’m not privy to the whims of the netherworld’s rulers.”
“Dammit.” I got it, though. Even the angels didn’t know the impulses of arch-demons, and certainly weren’t as omniscient as the stories said. Or impartial, come to that.
Unless they’d sent him themselves.
I might have spoken to heaven’s representative in Purgatory, but I’d never actually been to the heavenly realms. I wasn’t particularly keen on being smacked down by the gods for coercing their angel into giving me Grade Four celestial powers. But I’d take the case to them if it helped me defend earth.
“Devi,” Clover said. “I said before that I felt the events of the other week were the start of something bigger.”
I dragged my free hand through my hair, feeling shards of demonglass bite into my fingers. The sharp pain brought my focus back. “Yeah, got it. Doesn’t mean I like running around in the dark. Or being bitch-slapped by an arch-demon. You can’t go to heaven and ask? Can the heavenly beings only interact with humans if they fall or get reincarnated as human?”
“If I knew, I’d know what had led me to come back here in the first place,” Clover said. “Do you really think I’d have suffered the indignities of low-level celestial training if I remembered my previous life?”
“If the inspector was in charge, then he could probably bully even an angel into training gormless buffoons like Sammy. Wait, the inspector is younger than you are. So you were reincarnated how many years ago?”
“That’s a polite way to ask my age, Devi.”
“That’s not why I’m asking. I wanted to know how long Babylon has been cut off.”
“I’m seventy, give or take a couple of years. I never had a family in this realm, and I don’t recall much of my earlier life. As far as I knew for a long time, the guild was all I had.”
That sounded familiar. Too much so. I’d assumed, since she was an angel, that she’d always been immune to the guild’s brainwashing. She’d certainly hung around long enough to subtly push me into my continued rebellion against the guild’s rules, anyway. But maybe even she’d fostered a lingering connection to the guild as it was—or more accurately, the guild as they wanted to be. Her comrades in heaven, not a collection of terrified humans led by other humans who were far from infallible.
Clover said, “The heavenly beings remain out of reach. I’d suggest looking closer to home, Devi. Your home, not Babylon. The realm of your power.”
“What—earth?”
“Perhaps.”
“I need definite answers, Clover. Not more of your cryptic nonsense.” It’d been less difficult than I’d expected to reconcile the image of Clover the retired celestial with Clover the angel when I considered all the times she’d said things that made a weird kind of sense in hindsight.
“I wish I had definite answers. My memory isn’t as reliable as it once was, and I’m no longer in contact with heaven.”
“Then if you hear anything from Babylon, tell me,” I said. Then I hung up before she told me not to go back to Babylon. If the fallen died, it’d mean bad news for heaven and the nether realms.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and it came out empty. The demonglass I’d used must have burned out. All right, then. I headed down the corridor to the storeroom, pushed the door open, and stared at the box-filled but otherwise empty room in disbelief. “Where’s the demonglass?”
Nobody answered.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Where’s the bloody demonglass?”
Javos entered the room, wearing a barely concealed smirk. “Gone.”
“That’s not funny, Javos. I need that demonglass.”
“Let me elaborate.” He bared his teeth. “I was instructed to prevent you from returning in the event that you were forcibly ejected from Babylon, on the grounds that in those circumstances, the arch-demon has indicated that he’d prefer not to have you there. And I’d prefer not to have to deal with the consequences if Nikolas is forced to witness your demise.”
