Celestial Shadows, page 4
part #4 of Celestial Marked Series
“That’s the closest you’ve come to admitting you care for my well-being, but it’s not helpful. I have to be there. Nikolas—”
“—can handle the arch-demon himself.”
“I’m aware of that. The fallen—”
“Will die, as they should have. You did this, Devina. Now you reap the rewards of bargaining with hell.”
His words rang somewhere deep inside me, with a pain buried but never entirely forgotten.
Bargaining with hell.
“You know who you sound like?” I said. “A celestial who wants to terrify the living daylights out of someone. I’m not a novice anymore, Javos. I didn’t bargain with hell alone.”
“I heard you talking to the angel. She’s nothing, too.”
“Look, I know the bare minimum about this situation and even I know that the fallen were created as part of a bargain between heaven and hell. If you can’t conjure up any sympathy for their lives, you know what their deaths will mean for the war. It’ll mean the conflict parks itself in this dimension again.”
“Then you’d better trust Casthus and his son to work out an arrangement.”
He turned and walked away.
My hand flared to life, white light igniting at my fingertips.
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt, but don’t mistake me for someone who will happily sit by and let you stride in and out of the demon realms when there are negotiations with hell going on. Last time you were the target. This time it’s none of your business.”
“The hell it isn’t. You think he won’t notice the holes between that realm and earth? If you’re going to place the blame on me, then you have to accept that gives me the right to take responsibility for the decisions that led us here. So it’s my job to do everything I can to fix the damage.”
He didn’t answer. Just kept walking. My celestial light died out. He was immune to it anyway, and I wasn’t yet desperate enough to try pissing off the warlocks’ leader.
I took in a calming breath and marched back to the lab. “No luck?” said Rachel.
“Nope. Javos stole the demonglass.”
“It could be worse,” said Rachel. “Niko can deal with it. I’m not welcome over there either. We should have a sleepover party.”
“Rachel, you’re not five.”
She pouted. “I didn’t get to have a normal childhood.”
She hadn’t talked much about her early years, but her life had not been a happy one before Javos had taken her in. Nikolas had rescued her from enslavement to a monstrous demon known as the Mother in the palace of Pandemonium, and brought her to earth. That ought to be proof Javos was less of a dick than I’d thought, but he was indifferent at best to most humans and he’d never lay his life down for the fallen. Or me. I could hardly believe he’d taken away my props. Babylon meant nothing to him, but I’d thought he and Nikolas were allies.
“I’m not caving,” I said to Rachel. “Any ideas where he might have hidden the demonglass? Or do you have any more samples?”
She sighed. “I can’t say I didn’t see this coming.”
“You know why this is important,” I told her. “He just killed three warlocks in the space of a second. I can’t let him do it to Nikolas or the fallen.”
She pursed her lips. “I think he has at least some of the old superstitions about the fallen. Enough not to kill them on the spot, anyway. There must be a reason the other warlocks think killing them is a bad omen.”
“I thought they couldn’t permanently die. Anyway, I’m earth’s representative. I need to talk to him, to make sure he’s not plotting an attack on this realm.”
“I think he just unambiguously told you he has no interest in making an alliance with you.”
“No shit. Doesn’t mean I have nothing to say myself.”
Rachel sighed. “I’m not going to stand in your way, but I’ll toss you a friendly reminder that he nearly killed you just then.”
I shrugged, dislodging more broken demonglass from my coat. “Every arch-demon I’ve met has tried to do the same. I had a contingency plan. What do you know of him? Have you ever met?”
“Nope,” said Rachel. “Come on. You know I can’t even go near Zadok without him trying to throw me out of windows and generally act like a dick. His father is worse. Niko wanted to keep me safe. It took him long enough to actually tell me about him.”
“So how old were you when you came to earth?”
“Eight. Niko was eighteen.”
“Holy crap. I didn’t realise he was that young when Themedes summoned him…” Not to mention being left in charge of the castle at fifteen. No wonder he seemed infinitely more adult than I was.
Rachel nodded, her expression unusually solemn. “Yeah. You might say he wants to stop me from ending up in the same position. I’m the one he locked out. Not you.”
“He specifically locked the demonglass.” I squashed my rage down and prodded the remaining fragments with my foot. “Might have told me how he did that, so I can try it myself.”
My left hand lit up so suddenly that Rachel yelped and jumped sideways. “Seven hells, Devi. You singed my hair.”
“Crap. Sorry. It keeps doing that without my permission.” I shook my wrist to switch off the light, and shadows appeared at my right hand, like my demon mark wanted to join in the fun, too.
One light on each hand. Demon and celestial. One for each of heaven and hell. I might not be demon or angel in the usual sense. I might have been shoved into this fight through no choice of my own. But earth was my home, and I’d protect it with everything I had.
I crouched down, seeing something flash into the discarded glass fragments. A building I knew well. The guild… the celestial guild. Huh? That’s not right. There’s no demonglass there.
“Devi?” said Rachel.
“There’s—” I brushed the glass with my fingertips, and without warning, light enveloped me.
I fell out of the glass onto crumpled brick and other debris. Grimacing as the impact bruised my knees, I crawled upright, staring around at the ruins of the former celestial guild. Beneath me were a handful of demonglass fragments. So there had been some left behind after all, probably from one of my own ill-advised spying attempts.
Why bring me here?
I glanced around, and my gaze caught on a body half-buried under the ruins. A fresh body—he’d smell worse if he wasn’t.
Oh, boy.
Gritting my teeth, I shifted the debris, revealing the body as a warlock’s. His mouth was half open, his eyes wide and terrified, and handprints marked his skin. Handprints the colour of blood. No other visible injury.
The handprints had burned right through his clothes. I released a breath, slowly, pushing aside a familiar panic. I didn’t know the man—or warlock. But who’d buried him in the ruins of the old guild?
I climbed over him, breaking into to a run, then skidded to a halt. The portal inside the former tower was long gone, the bridge to earth long-since collapsed. He wore modern clothing, so he couldn’t have come from Babylon. Calm it, Devi. You know he can’t have. But who—or what—killed with lethal handprints?
“Anyone lost a dead warlock?” I asked of thin air. Nobody responded.
Oh, come on. I thought I was done with being found next to dead bodies on celestial property. Calling the police wasn’t an option in this case, not with a potentially magical cause of death. This wasn’t the demon realm. People asked questions. And I could think of several unwelcome questions that would arise when someone got wind of a dead warlock on celestial territory, abandoned or not.
Why me?
I called the warlocks’ guild. There wasn’t anyone else to report the murder to.
“Hey, Javos,” I said.
“What?” he growled.
“I just found a dead warlock.”
“Of course you did. Where?”
“The celestials’ old headquarters.”
“Those bastards.”
“Wait, there aren’t any celestials here. They haven’t come back since before the battle.” Since the inspector’s traitorous demon replacement had doomed them. “I already looked, but I’m pretty sure I’d sense if there was a portal nearby.”
The building had been the site of the bridge between the realms, but no warlock had ever set foot in the place when it’d been up and running. The body was fresh, too. Is someone setting me up? It wasn’t like even I had known I was coming here. Unless someone had seen me park my car before crossing to Babylon.
“What was the murder weapon?” Javos demanded.
“Burning handprints, apparently.” Could a celestial do that? Theoretically, our celestial light burned anything demonic, but I’d never known a celestial to get close to a warlock for long enough to touch his skin. Most of us applied our weapons from a distance, and when the light came on, the whole demon disintegrated. I’d never seen a wound like this inflicted by a celestial, but I hadn’t seen it from a demon, either. And there was no denying that our weapons were designed to burn out evil and sin. The odds of us explaining away this one without a viable alternative were slim to none.
“I assume you found that Babylon has locked you out,” he said. “So you decided to stir up more trouble.”
“I don’t go around looking for dead bodies, Javos. Want me to bring it back to headquarters, or would you rather look at the crime scene yourself?”
There were no bloodstains on the ground. Either he’d been killed on the spot, or someone had transported him here by other means, with the intention of catching the eye of, say, a hot-headed warlock who hated the celestials. Seven hells.
“I’ll send some of my people… in a bit. But I think I’ll let you stay there and stew in your mistakes for a while, Devi,” he said.
“If you weren’t already hell-bound, Javos, I’d send you there myself.”
And with that, I hung up the phone.
4
After two minutes of scouring the crime scene for clues, I stopped when a car pulled up outside and two warlocks who worked for Javos got out. Nice of him to make an effort, considering it’s one of his own people. I was certain the celestials hadn’t done it, but both warlocks gave me suspicious looks as they removed the body. Arguing that celestials didn’t have the ability to burn bloody handprints into people would be ineffective, so once they’d taken the body away, I found my car where I’d parked it before Babylon and drove straight to the celestials’ new guild.
With Nikolas occupied and Javos unreliable, it was up to me to deal with the latest imminent shitstorm. I didn’t even know who might have been responsible for the murder, but the positioning of the body carried a clear message. Someone wanted to inflame tensions between the celestials and the warlocks. I needed to forewarn the celestials first, then worry about the specifics later. At least driving distracted me from worrying about what might be going down on Babylon.
I parked outside the celestial guild, which was now housed in their academy for celestials-in-training. With the school still running as usual, the place was twice as crowded as before. Most celestials developed their gift in their teens, and it was compulsory to complete several levels of education before qualifying as a full-fledged celestial soldier. I’d spent the bare minimum of time in education and got out into the field as soon as humanly possible, so I’d never been able to relate to people like, say, Lydia, who’d ranked at the top of every class and seemed genuinely disappointed to graduate.
I faltered, my hand on the buzzer. Lydia was one of the celestials listed as missing after the battle, presumed dead thanks to the vampires’ venom. The celestials were used to dealing with loss, but it’d take months to come to terms with a battle on this scale. They didn’t need to deal with paranoid warlocks on top of that.
The door slid open and a novice shyly peeked out. “You’re Devi, right?”
“Yep.” They’d probably known it was me before opening the door. The foliage on the wall didn’t quite disguise the new addition of a security camera. The celestials’ anti-demon defences used to be enough to deter threats. Me included, since my demonic magic prevented me from walking inside unless someone let me in. “I’m just paying a friendly visit. Who’s in charge here now?”
“That would be me,” said a female voice with a Welsh accent. A woman stepped out into the corridor, her dark hair falling over her shoulder and a pair of spectacles perched on her nose. She was tall and tanned and had definitely come from outside the city, because I’d met every authority figure in Haven City’s guild at some point or other. “You’re Devi Lawson.”
“That’s me.”
“Your reputation precedes you.”
“It usually does. Are you working with demons?” I didn’t expect her to admit it if she did, but after Inspector Deacon, I’d take no chances.
“No. Are you?”
I raised an eyebrow. “If the warlocks fit that definition, yes. Otherwise, no. You’re…” Think, Devi. “Mrs Battle-Axe. I mean, Mrs Barrow.”
“Did you come up with that nickname?”
“Me? Nope. We’ve never met. I’m not the only one with a reputation.” ‘Mrs Battle-Axe’ was one of the leaders of Swansea’s celestial guild, and had been known to terrorise scores of novices. Some of my more long-suffering teachers had used her as a warning and threatened to pack me off to Wales if I didn’t stop misbehaving, to which I’d responded that I’d have liked the challenge. Those were the days.
I’d take Battle-Axe over Inspector Deacon, but only if she wasn’t a demon in disguise, and let’s face it, I’d had less than encouraging experiences in that department lately.
“I wasn’t misinformed on your honesty,” she said.
“Glad someone filled you in.” It sounded like her reputation wasn’t unfounded, but the last thing the guild needed was someone indecisive or inept when they’d suffered enough from poor leadership already. “I don’t want to cause any alarm, but the body of a warlock was just discovered beside your old headquarters. I’m assuming nobody on your side has been back there since, but I just wanted to forewarn you.”
“A body? No one has been into that place since the battle.”
“I thought not,” I said. “I don’t expect the warlocks to show up on the doorstep just yet, but in case you’re asked for a statement, it might be an idea to come up with one. Has anyone left the guild in the last twelve hours?” I’d guessed the body was that fresh, at least.
“Yes. Two patrols.” She frowned at me. “None of my people would murder a warlock.”
“Er… where is the former inspector? In jail?”
“Not in jail, but he’s stayed here since the battle.”
Figures. They should have locked him up. The celestials had run from one extreme to the other. Instead of executing everyone who might be a traitor without asking questions, they’d pardoned everyone instead, including him, since he’d been rescued from his prison on Pandemonium. He was disgraced in the eyes of the guild, but they’d also ruled that he had never betrayed them. He had, technically, but I didn’t have enough clout to argue the point. What if he’d killed the warlock, or ordered someone else to? I might be having trouble disentangling his actions from those of his demonic impersonator, but the fact that I hadn’t the faintest idea when the switch had taken place pretty much said it all.
“I’d like to speak with him,” I said, thought I’d rather pull off my own toenails. “Are any of the patrolling celestials from today Grade Four?”
“No, of course not. There aren’t currently any Grade Fours known to be stationed within the city.”
Meaning: if there were any survivors, they worked outside of the guild’s laws.
“And has anyone here had contact with the Grade Fours?”
She eyed me over the top of her glasses. “The only active Grade Four celestials are spread worldwide dealing with the ongoing demonic crisis.”
That figured. “Grade Three? What about them?”
“They’re spread thin, too. We only sent out smaller patrols.”
That warlock hadn’t looked like a pushover, but if a group had ganged up on him, they might have been able to overpower him. Still, those handprints on the body were plain weird. Not like a regular celestial kill. We rarely had to kill warlocks—they took care of their own crimes—but the guild didn’t hesitate to take action on the rare occasion that one of them went rogue.
“Right. Can I speak to the inspector?”
If I had to pick the potential culprit, I’d pin the blame on one of his allies—specifically, the Grade Fours, if any of them had survived. Maybe one of them had turned vigilante, or maybe they blamed the battle on the warlocks. With no other clues, my best bet was starting with the most evil person in the building and working my way down from there.
Inspector Deacon, disgraced former guild leader, had betrayed his former hunting partner, Inspector Kenneth Angler, kicking him out of the guild after the headquarters was destroyed in a demonic attack four years ago. The official story said that ex-celestial Faye Carruthers had summoned a demon that started the attack, but since few had survived to tell the story, accounts were murky. And if the former inspector Angler had actually been alive, it was possible others had survived, too, and that Faye was innocent. Inspector Deacon, despite being jailed and disgraced, refused to tell me what had really gone on, and I’d been out of the country on a mission at the time. He himself hadn’t been working with the netherworld, but the whole thing stank of a demon’s manipulation. After all, the guild’s rejection had sent ex-Inspector Angler running straight to the netherworld. At least he was dead, permanently so.
The one person who might give me the answers looked up and glared at me as I entered the office Mrs Barrow had pointed me to. Inspector Deacon was fifty-something, as athletic as a man twenty years younger, and looked as though he’d never smiled in his life. The room itself was small and bare—and, thank the Divinities, did not contain the guild’s valuable old pentagram. Probably because said pentagram had been destroyed. However, the sight of the guild’s resources so close to the man who’d been impersonated by a demonic clone for days before anyone had noticed didn’t serve to fill me with confidence.
