Mortal Secrets, page 1
MORTAL SECRETS
REALMS UNLEASHED: RED ANGEL BOOK ONE
ISA MEDINA
Copyright © 2021 by Isa Medina
Cover by Moorbooks Design
Edited by Rare Bird Editing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.isa-medina.com
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Also By Isa Medina
About the Author
ONE
The demon slunk along the deep shadows of the alleyway, and I, the great Ana Calliope Holt, Demon Hunter and part-angel, was about to send it back to the realm of demons, where it belonged.
“It’s almost as big as a cat. Are you going to be okay?” Helen whispered behind me.
“Sure am,” I said with confidence, adjusting the clip keeping my unruly brown hair away from my face. “Go back inside.”
She sent me a look of concern but retreated behind the corner and, hopefully, into her small coffee shop. My focus returned to the demon in the alleyway. Because I, the great—fine, the vermin hunter—had a job to do.
Shadows elongated, the air stung with a bit of a chill, the sky took on that delicious mix of blue and violet hues belonging to the edge of twilight. The best time of the day, when the world was magical and alive, and you could pass unnoticed, slinking in the shadows like this demon.
Of course, it wasn’t an actual demon in the religious or spiritual sense. That was simply what humans called the beings from the Realm of Earth—the element, not the planet—just as the ones from the Realm of Air were called angels. Air, Earth, and Mortality—three different dimensions sharing the same space like the three sides of a coin: Air and Earth held apart by little, old, squished humanity.
The Realm of Chaos, we preferred not to think about.
But what about the realm of the sea? I had once asked Cooper when I was a kid. He’d looked at me like I had three heads and said, “The sea got fish.”
All right, I’d thought then and thought now, walking carefully between the dumpster and some crates and boxes stacked opposite. Getting the demon vermin back to the Realm of Earth shouldn’t be too difficult. Only the weakest of creatures or the strongest of demons could come into the mortal realm, and this one was obviously not an example of overpowering strength.
Most times I could simply scare them back to Earth, but the little critters could be devious, so just in case, I took out my butter knife.
But Ana, you may think, a butter knife? No fancy dagger, no cool sword? Not even a rusty steak knife? Someday, I told myself as I flipped the knife and held it by the dull blade. Someday when I wasn’t blacklisted from every paying job in the magical community except for this one, and only because the Hunters had better things to do than chase cats in alleyways.
Let’s just say that chasing demon cats wasn’t exactly a high-paying job.
“Demon,” I called in a stern voice, brandishing the heavy metal handle of the knife like a club, “begone thyself to thy realm or suffer the consequences.”
A pair of bright red eyes blinked from around another stack of boxes. A couple of lit windows upstairs allowed me to see the moss-like texture of its skin, the flexing branches knotting and spiraling to form its front legs, the drooping tiny vines falling around its eyes and covering its mouth. If it had a mouth—it was hard to tell sometimes.
Unlike normal demons and angels, who looked mostly human and could glamour away the differences, these catlike creatures looked exactly like they came straight from under a tree. It’d be bad if the general public, unaware of the other realms’ existence, got a peek at them.
“C’mon,” I cooed, inching closer. “Be a good demon and return home. There’s nothing here for you.”
The demon hissed, showing a row of sharp triangular stones embedded in its mouth.
“Fine,” I said and threw the knife.
The heavy handle bounced against its forehead. It yelped, scurrying away and giving me a look of such betrayal I had to stifle a laugh.
Bending to retrieve the knife, I eyed the demon speculatively. They usually jumped back to Earth when they saw the butter knife of doom flying at them. They didn’t often sit there and get hit in the head.
“You’re either obstinate,” I said, tapping the knife against my thigh, “or dumb. Don’t be dumb, please. Shoo, shoo. Go back.”
The cat—the demon—grinned as a scuffling noise rose behind me. Before I could turn, something launched itself at my back. Needle-like claws dug through my hoodie into my skin.
“Son of a—” I reached over my shoulder and grabbed a mass of moss. It was wet and slippery and yuck.
So I clubbed it with the knife. Yes, it’s not something to be proud of, but the little imp was digging in with true relish, and while I had extra hoodies, I only had one back. The demon dropped to the ground and ran between my legs to join the first one. They looked alike—most of these kinds of demons tended to—and hissed at me in unison.
There were two ways of getting a demon out of the mortal realm: either they choose to go, or you killed them and they were reborn back in Earth.
Most of the human demon hunters were into the kill option. Like, really, really.
But I didn’t feel like clubbing these two to death with the handle of my butter knife. It was messy, it was gross, it made me feel like the lowest of lowlifes, even if I knew the little critters were basically immortal.
A small thrill ran through my spine at the idea of killing. I quashed it down fast. Grimly, I checked behind me to make sure the alleyway was still empty and Helen nowhere to be seen.
I hated doing this. I hated the itching that rose under my skin, the yearning to let my angel side free, the feel of her hunger. Hunger to sink my hand into flesh, to feel a beating heart, to taste blood. To judge.
I usually kept all those urges controlled—or liked to think I could—but in moments like this, when instinct thought it could take over… Ah, that was the worst.
And the instinct rose swiftly as I crouched by the wary demons and allowed a tiny bit of my inner angel to come forward. A drop in the bucket. Because if anyone found out my bucket was different, being blacklisted from jobs and chasing demon cats for a living would be the least of my problems.
A path of warmth spread from my chest down my left arm to my index finger. Flesh and nail fused, bone lengthened; my fingertip transformed into the beginnings of a red claw. There. I slammed the power surge down, my body crying to be allowed to expand, my shoulder blades squirming against the pressure of wings crimson as blood and desperate to unfurl. But I would not allow it free.
I would not judge again.
The demons gave an unholy screech and leaped three feet backward into an explosion of gray dust and small twigs.
I stood, my finger returning to normal. “Yeah,” I told the empty space, hands on hips, “you better run.”
Smug satisfaction filled me. Another vermin banished to its realm. Another job well done. Helen would probably even give me free dinner on top of the fee. Helen herself had some magic in her veins, and her coffee shop was frequented by other magical humans. Concentrations of magic attracted smaller demon creatures like these and made it easier for them to inadvertently cross into the mortal realm.
Still, more than one vermin demon was a rare occurrence. My gaze fell on the only door in the alleyway aside from the coffee shop’s back door.
It wasn’t fully closed. I should probably check it out, in case there was another demon.
Or, I told myself, spinning on my heels, a grin on my face, I could leave. And if there was indeed a third demon, collect an extra fee when Helen had to get someone to come remove it.
I made it to the entrance of the alleyway before turning and stalking back to the door.
It produced a low whine when I opened it wide enough to peer inside. No sound followed, my form blocking the weak light from the alleyway. I was loath to use my phone as a flashlight, so I waited until my eyes had adjusted before venturing farther in. My steps thudded softly, my grip on the knife a tight vise. I really should upgrade. Carry a screwdriver or something. Except that I had no screwdrivers. But they sold those at the dollar store, right?
Swallowing, I examined the room. Vague dark shapes inside slightly less dark shapes. For the thousandth time in my life, I wished I were more like Sol, my best friend and able to sense any demon or angel nearby, no matter how weak they were.
A couple of door-shaped pools of dark gray stood on the far wall. One resisted my pull and push, the other opened easily. It gave me access to a metal staircase going down. Dammit. Demons loved being close to the ground. There was a reason their realm was called Earth, as confusing as that could get at times.
You can guess what part of the planet the beings of Air preferred.
While the realms were called Earth and Air, they were not literally our physical ground and air, but parallel dimensions bearing striking similarities. Full humans—magical or not—couldn’t step on either, angels could not touch Earth, and demons could not cross into Air, so all I had of Earth were depictions given through the ages by those who could.
The Realm of Earth seemed to be pretty much a copy of our world, except full of forests and lush greenery, where demons built their own buildings and the occasional replica appeared from our side. In contrast to the apparent peaceful nature of their world, demons enjoyed nothing more than to go to war with each other to see who could conquer the realm.
Most part-demon humans avoided stepping in there unless absolutely necessary.
If this staircase had gone up, I could’ve dusted off my hands and called it a night.
Alas, the dark maw of doom went down, and the pesky need to see the job well done refused to disappear. The metal railing wobbled under my hand as I descended; the steps felt thin and rickety. I might be half-angel, but unlike full angels, I was not immortal. If I fell and broke my neck, I would not return to Air to be rebirthed. No, I would just die, my body lying forgotten and rotting for weeks—or eaten by actual cats—and my soul gone, maybe to be reborn at some point as someone completely different.
This made me bring out my phone and turn on its flashlight. I sped down the staircase and tried the door at the bottom. It opened as easily as the other ones, and this time it came with a light behind it. Returning the phone to my pocket, I peeked in, feeling uncomfortably warm. Curling tendrils of my hair stuck to my temples and the back of my neck. I wiped my palms on my jeans. Magic called to magic. What if there was an actual grown demon in here? A frenzied demon?
Because not all demons came into Mortality the same way. Some lost all thought, turned into mindless destroying machines—hence the need for the Hunters. And though I had trained some as a teen before my brief stint with the Hunters at eighteen, my skills hadn’t exactly improved in the five years since.
The room was used as some sort of storage facility, with racks on the walls and shelves crossing the space, full of packages and metal barrels. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, no fallen boxes or trail of destruction, so I abandoned the door and inched toward the light.
Filing cabinets lined the far wall, and two desks and a couple of chairs had been pushed to the corners to make a small clearing at the end of the room. Someone sat on the floor there, their back to me, a phone’s light turned toward the ceiling making every shadow long and sharp and part of some kind of nightmare zone.
In front of the person—an eleven or twelve-year-old kid, judging by their size—a series of circles and symbols had been written on the cement floor with a piece of chalk, now lying discarded by the kid’s side.
And in the middle of it stood a tiny demon sprite—the most basic of demon forms, the one any demon took when they were reborn—its tiny body stiff as a board, its big, triangular, bulbous head shivering, its huge red eyes fixed ahead, wet with moisture.
The kid was a summoner.
The scum of the mortal realm.
I took three steps and smacked the kid on the back of their head. Hard.
TWO
“Ow!” The kid held the back of their head and turned to glare at me. A boy of about twelve. “What the hell?”
The demon sprite jumped and disappeared.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, smearing the chalk drawings with my sneaker. “Are you out of your mind?”
The boy rushed to his feet, his cheeks reddening. “Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmare.”
He gave me a look-over and snorted. “Yeah, right.” He picked his phone and shone the light right into my eyes.
I wrenched the phone from him and leaned down, hoping to look intimidating and ignoring his cursing. “What’s your name?”
His frown transformed into a smirk. “Too Good For You.”
“Bet it is,” I muttered. Taking a hold of his T-shirt, I began dragging him toward the staircase. “All right, Too Good, time to go.”
He dug in his heels. “Go where?”
To the Hunters’ headquarters, where they’d make sure he forgot how to summon and trap demons and angels, and focused his talents on something else. “To see a friend.”
“I don’t want to!”
“Do you want your phone back?”
“Yes!”
“Then you’re coming.”
His kick was expected but still hurt like the devil. “It’ll be okay,” I told him, changing my hold to his wrist and pulling him up the stairs. “He’ll even lie to your parents about what you were doing.”
“I have no parents,” Too Good muttered, giving up and ungraciously stomping behind me.
“Of course you don’t.”
“It’s true!”
We went through the room at the top of the steps and into the alleyway. Night had fully fallen, taking away the magic of twilight.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” I told him as we walked toward the street. I hoped Helen wasn’t waiting for me at the shop and I sent her a text after I called for a lift. On Cooper’s tab. “I mean, look at you: special kid with special power. You’re a walking trope.”
“You’re a jerk.”
I grinned. “At least I don’t trap people against their will.”
“They’re not people,” he protested. “They’re demons!”
“Yeah, well, you know that being a summoner means you have demon blood, right? What if someone summons you?”
His expression of utter horror made me laugh. I was talking out of my ass. He had no demon blood. Or maybe he did, but his summoning power had nothing to do with it. Summoners were gifted—tainted, blessed, cursed, depending on who you asked—with magic from the Realm Outside of Time. It was a realm only full angels and demons could access, and only temporarily—small bubbles outside of our timeline, where deals were soul-bound upon penalty of eternal agony.
Since demons and angels were immortal, it wasn’t used much.
But its magic seeped into the human world, like the magic from Air and Earth did, and those who were able to harvest it had the power to summon and trap demons and angels, rob them of free will. Sometimes forever. Because a summoner could tie their longevity to their summon, so as long as the demon or angel didn’t die, neither would they.
“Who taught you to summon?” I asked.
He crossed his arms and glared. “I read it in a book.”
“Written by whom?”
He gave me a leer. “Your mom.”
“Joke’s on you, I don’t have a mom,” I told him with relish.
“Whatever.”
The car arrived and I nudged Too Good inside. To my surprise, he went in without a fight. Maybe my superior wit had won him over.
Then all hell broke loose when I gave the driver the address.
“Dude! That’s the Hunters’ headquarters!” Too Good screeched, then began to thrash.
“What the—oomph.” I made a grab for his legs, but then he smacked me right on the nose. Tears stung my eyes as I parried another slap and took a hold of his wrists. Hunter training—put to good use right here. “Stop,” I hissed.
