Gods and Monsters
“Hope I’m interrupting,” drawled the Dark Mage.
I scrambled up to my feet, brushing invisible lint of myself as to not look too flustered.
Yeah, that ship had long sailed.
I thought Blaine and I were the only people allowed in the house. How was he even here?
I wasn’t sure if Blaine could still read my thoughts or if my look of unbridled confusion and horror spoke for itself.
“I invited him inside back when we were still on good terms,” Blaine muttered. “A decision I deeply regret.”
His brother pinned a hand against his chest and staggered back in mock offense. “Oh, how cruel you can be.”
“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t come in here,” Blaine snarled, rising to his feet.
Val merely rolled his eyes. “Cool your jets, okay. I got tired of ringing the bell, so yes, I let myself in. It’s not my fault you wouldn’t answer the door. And it’s no wonder. You probably couldn’t even hear me over…whatever the hell this is,” he said, waving a dismissive hand in the air to indicate the music. Despite the slick product keeping his hair intact, the rest of Val glistened in the warm glow. It seemed those storms headed north after all.
The strum of violins settled, silencing the room enough to hear the low rumble of thunder.
“What do you want?” demanded Blaine.
“I’d try to show a little more appreciation if I were you,” said Val, “considering I come bearing important news.”
His brother still didn’t appear impressed. “You’ve got twenty seconds to become interesting.”
Val laughed. “Well, it appears you and your sweetie here are the Underworld’s new Bonnie & Clyde. The good ol’ Angel of Death has just issued a bounty on your heads, and Mr. Holier-Than-Thou himself appears to be pretty desperate. Despite the fact Death despises all things Hell-bound, he’s resorted to commissioning demons to do his bidding. By the sounds of it, there’s one hell of a reward for whoever brings the pair of you in.”
The creature at the shopping district. The demon at my aunt’s house. They weren’t sent by a rival noble. They’d been sent by the very man destined to kill me. Blaine and I both paled, only making Val’s grin grow.
“Have I earned your attention yet?” he crooned.
“What’s the reward?” I asked.
Val shrugged. “Not sure. Anyone who actually knows isn’t saying anything, which only means the payday has to be something pretty special if they don’t want to risk tipping off any of their colleagues, even under means of torture.”
Blaine’s eyes narrowed. “The ‘incident’ at the Hideaway?”
“After the whole Reaper attack, Raelynd had planned for you to stay there, but the reported timetable had been skewed. A group of demons ambushed the joint, believing you two would be there. Hence, the hush-hush plans to ship you off here, instead. Gotta give it to your old man though,” Val said, gesturing to me.
Blaine’s eyes were suddenly the size of saucers as he shook his head as discreetly as he could, commanding a silent, “SHUT UP!” to his brother. But it was too late.
“It is a clever idea,” Val went on. “What better demographic to target to do your dirty work than a bunch of immoral pests who are only out to save their own skins?”
“My old man?” I blurted. What the hell was he talking about?
My shock apparently registered to Val, because he winced. Though, he didn’t seem the least bit sorry as he smiled back at his brother. “Whoops, guess you hadn’t told her yet, had ya’?”
“You mean…?” The Angel of Death was my… I whirled on Blaine. “You knew?”
The bastard couldn’t even look me in the eyes.
I’d asked him before who my parents were.
“You’re better off not knowing,” he had said.
I pushed Val out of the way and raced upstairs.
***
Blaine tapped on the bedroom door, slowly easing it open when he didn’t get a response. I’d left him in the training room about an hour ago, and hadn’t heard a peep from him till now. His eyebrows shot up in surprise at the sight of me. He’d probably been anticipating that he’d walk in on me crying or tearing the room apart in a fit of fury, but certainly not this. Fresh out of the shower and in a new set of clothes, I pulled on my jacket and calmly shoved my feet into my shoes.
“Going somewhere?” He apparently wasn’t a fan of being ignored, because when I failed to answer him yet again, he appeared at my side, plucking Reese’s burner phone right out of my hands. “I know you’re upset,” he said, taking note of my inexplicably unruffled expression. “Or…at least, I suspect you are, but running out of here isn’t the answer.”
“I’m not running,” I simply said, snatching the cell back. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
He sighed, clearly trying his best not to lose patience with me. “It’s not safe for you to go out, not by yourself.”
“Fine,” I shrugged. “Then come with.”
***
We were on the road for about twenty minutes when I directed Blaine to pull off a stretch of back roads into the parking lot of an old dive bar. A tacky neon sign greeted us as we headed inside, where we were then ambushed by a buoyant redhead in a tight white t-shirt and short-shorts. The mass of people made the small space a bit stuffy, but it certainly wasn’t warm enough to warrant that kind of outfit. Though, I didn’t think she had much say in it. I noticed her nametag and gave the room another onceover, spotting several other girls in the exact same uniform.
“Hey, handsome,” declared the waitress, practically skipping over to us, her attention totally focused on Blaine. The name ROXY was printed in big bold letters on the left side of her chest. “Can I interest you in a booth? Perhaps start you off with a pitcher of our finest?”
“That won’t be necessary. They won’t be here long.” Two simple sentences, and yet that Texas drawl was unmistakable.
Blaine and I both turned around, finding Nick seated at an otherwise empty table.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Blaine demanded to my thoughts.
It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, when I had changed out of my lingerie outfit after coming to the manor, that I paid closer mind to the business card I had shoved into my thigh-high boots. The number scribbled on the back may have been for the Sagax, but Nick had also circled the bottom of the front, writing “me” beside the business’s listed phone number.
I gave Blaine the sweetest smile I could find. “Well, since you’ve proven to be stingy in the information department, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands.” I sauntered past him and joined the Texan at his table.
Blaine seemed less inclined to follow suit, but after surveying the room, he finally planted himself beside me.
“You two know how to piss off some serious bigwigs, I’ll give you that much,” Nick sighed, downing the last of his beer. Roxy came back to the table, all too eager and sweet, insisting we order something. Given Nick’s rather ruffled state, it came as no surprise that he ordered another beer, while Blaine just shook his head.
Knowing she wouldn’t leave until at least one of us relented, I asked for a coke, happy to see her skip away to the bar. “What have you heard?”
“Reynolds has rallied at least five large Reaper packs to join him in your manhunt,” Nick said lowly. “And if word-of-mouth is correct, then he’s also teamed up with someone rather influential Upstairs.”
“Let me guess, the Angel of Death?” I remarked flatly, more annoyed than anything.
Nick tried not to chuckle. “That name puts the fear of God in most people, but…ooookay. Yeah, Samael.”
I looked to Blaine for clarification.
“Samael is Death’s real name. It means ‘Venom of God’.”
“Oh, that sounds…lovely.” I wasn’t aware of how odd it must have seemed as an outsider, witnessing the silent exchanges between Blaine and me, until I realized I’d said that last bit out loud, seeing Nick’s eyebrows crooked in confusion. “Sorry.”
This at least earned Blaine a small smile.
Nick just shook his head. “Anyway, the guy’s pretty pissed that you’re trying to break the Anastasis Seal.”
“Anastasis?” I turned to Blaine again, but he looked equally confused.
The Texan leaned back in his seat, half-laughing. “You two have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”
“Apparently not,” I muttered.
“You know how God flooded the Earth way back when to wipe out all the Mages and fallen angels?”
We both nodded.
“Well, the only reason people like you even exist anymore is because a 17th century coven of witches managed to resurrect the demon Azazeal back to Earth in bodily form, allowing him to repopulate the world with Mages. Heaven counteracted the movement with a group of angels who willingly fell from Paradise so they could create Reapers, hoping to wipe out all you guys again, along with the coven. Only problem, the seal that was used to bring the demon back was still open for anyone powerful enough to perform the ritual. To prevent more demons from being resurrected, Samael had to build another seal around it to block its power. The ward was bound by the blood of those angels who fell to protect us. Each one of them made an offering at seven different locations around the perimeter of the area in question to form an invisible wall that no demon can cross.” Nick pulled out an old leather-bound journal from the manila envelope beside him, unfolding an equally old map from within the pages. He laid it flat on the table, showing seven distinct markers placed around the outside of the drawing.
Nothing about the map looked familiar, except the name inscribed along the river at the top of the page. “West Fork?” Holy crap! “This is Mystic Harbor.”
“South of it, actually. But yeah. Jameson Battlefield, where Azazeal was originally summoned, has more supernatural energy there than anywhere else you’re gonna find in this hemisphere,” said Nick. “The only problem: demons can’t get to it so long as the protection ward is up. Whatever your bosses wish to do there is going to require summoning some serious amount of energy. That’s where you and the others come in.” Nick flipped through the journal, cutting to a specific page, and slid it over to us. “To terminate a spell such as this, you have to offer the equivalent of the same magical properties used to enact it. The blood sacrificed was entirely angelic. Considering there’s been three-hundred years of humans mudding the angelic gene pool, far more blood would have to be sacrificed from a descendant to match the properties the original angels provided.”
A pit formed at the bottom of my stomach. “How much?”
“Based on the number of girls your kind has killed and drained over the past two months, all of it.”
My stomach hollowed out. All I could think about was my vision eight weeks ago of that poor girl whose throat had been slit by Hellhounds.
Nick proceeded to lay out a modern map of Mystic Harbor and placed it beside the old one. He circled a number of positions on the bottom of the current map with a red marker. “These are where each of the bodies were found.” He overlaid the two maps, and sure enough, the location of where that girl had been killed coincided with one of the seven blood offering sites. She’d been killed to help break the ward. And there had been a murder at each of the marked locations, except one. “If you think your bosses are pains in the ass now, imagine every last one of them in their true bodily forms. Each of them used to be a powerful Mage or a fallen angel, either killed in the flood or taken out by Reapers following the coven’s uprising. As soon as your bosses find that last candidate, all Hell’s gonna break loose. They’ve been holding onto centuries, if not millenniums, of aggression. War would be inevitable. Hence, Samael’s desperation to take you two out.”
Amid my internal panic at the thought of a holy war, Blaine didn’t look the least bit impressed. “Can you really blame them? Some of those demons you’re talking about were ‘Light’ Mages when they were alive. Angelic. Your kind still hunted them down without cause, apart from your own fear, and damned them to eternal suffering, forcing them to live as parasites on unsuspecting victims just so they can feel something. If every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a new face staring back at me, I’d be pretty pissed too.”
I had never thought of possession that way.
“I’m not saying our ancestors never made mistakes—”
“Yet you guys are fast to pass judgment on us,” Blaine countered. “The whole ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ thing is pretty hilarious. Mages inherit either Nephilim runes or Enochian runes, and you are all too eager to throw the ‘evil’ label on the one that gives the slightest bit of trouble. Multiple Reapers have tried to kill my mate, one of your kind did in fact kill me, and a group performed such unspeakable atrocities on my brother that you made him into the monster you claimed him to already be. We never did anything to provoke these attacks, and yet you’ve affectionately labeled yourselves as the ‘good’ guys.”
“So what? You think you’re the hero in all this?” Nick scoffed.
“Me?” Blaine laughed. “Hardly.”
“Because your kind killed my family, kidnapped the person I love, and brutally butchered a number of my friends and colleagues. I’ve never done anything to ever hurt you, just as you haven’t to me, but that doesn’t change hundreds of years worth of bad blood. One side kills someone, the other hunts them down, the original side retaliates, and the cycle just goes on and on. Your kind will continue to hunt me till the day I die, and nothing I do is going to change that.”
“If we’re your mortal enemies, then why are you talking with us?” Blaine asked.
“Your mate is the only hope I have right now.” Nick slipped the information back into the journal. “If your session with the Sagax has taught me anything, it’s that you’re not like the rest of them. And I’m putting faith in you that you’ll do the right thing, when the moment comes.”
“What do you mean? Where do we fit into this?” I asked. “I mean, specifically?”
“Royal blood goes a long way, and the fact that you two are mates only makes your potential energy that much stronger. A few drops of blood from you guys are all your bosses will need. I’m asking you to not let that happen.” The Reaper placed everything back into the manila envelope and sealed it. “Samael has informants on Earth that he sends word to, but it’s not like he can just pop down here whenever he feels like it. So it’s a pretty big deal that he’s scheduled to arrive in the next day or so, and Reynolds is planning a full-frontal assault to take place when that happens. Both of them are desperate enough that they will do just about anything to draw you out. My advice: get as far away from here as you can, and hide anyone who could be used as leverage against you.”
“And you’re telling us this out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Not entirely, no.” Nick slid the envelope to us. “Someone I love was taken by your kind. I need someone with an ear close to the ground, someone who can ask questions about her and not raise suspicion. I suspect, being who you are, it wouldn’t be that much trouble to at least ask around.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” I assured, taking the packet.
The Reaper nodded, but it couldn’t mask the grim expression, and it broke my heart. I’d seen that look before. In the mirror. In my hands rested the only glimmer of hope he had of finding whoever it was that he cared so much about. I tried to think of something else to say, but Blaine hauled me up, clearly wanting to get the hell out of here.
“What happened to Val?” I asked the moment he pulled me into the parking lot.
“What happened to me when?”
Blaine and I both stopped, finding his brother leaning against the Benz we had stolen borrowed for our little excursion.
“Mind telling me what you’re both doing out and about, in my car no less?” Val inquired flatly.
“Well, you guys didn’t let me drive my Cutlass up here, so I have limited means of transport,” said Blaine, rounding the vehicle to the driver’s door.
Val pinned a hand to his chest and forced him away. “Yeah, and you crashed my brand new Cadi, so there’s no way in hell I’m letting you get behind the wheel again. Besides, Maddox should have your precious Cutlass up at the manor in a few hours. Back seat, now.”
We were on the road for only a few minutes when we came to a red light.
“Shit!” I grabbed Blaine by the collar and hurled him down across the seat into my lap as I threw my hood over my head.
Val angled the rearview mirror at us. “Should I even ask?”
Blaine tried lifting his head, but I immediately pushed him back down. “It’s Syringe,” I sneered, motioning to the SUV pulled up beside us.
“What?” Both brothers tried to steal a look over at the vehicle, but only Val managed as I struggled to keep Blaine down.
“That’s the bastard that drugged me in my room,” I clarified, nodding to the familiar face across the way. I’d thought for sure those Hellhounds had ripped him to pieces on the road. Pity.
“You want me to take care of him?” asked Val, opening his glove box where a revolver rested amid some paperwork.
The idea sounded fantastic, but alas I shook my head. “No, we can’t afford to draw any unwanted attention. And with Angel Face over here,” I said, gesturing to Blaine, “his hair hardly makes him inconspicuous.”
That mischievous grin greeted me as the Prince peered up from my lap. “Did you just call me Angel Face?”
“It’s from Fight Club,” I clarified, giving him a light swat on the head.
“I know. I just like hearing you say that.”
Syringe got a green arrow. As soon as the SUV began rolling through the intersection, that inexplicable tug in my chest beckoned me. Blaine must have felt it too, because he shot up and looked out the window. “Follow him,” we both ordered.