I left the estate just after noon. It was a little after Sera arrived, I knew, but I had also planned it like that. She would be safer on the estate while I investigated the tattoo parlour. Magic and demons both had difficulty getting into the estate, and Michael would get Sera to safety if something happened.
That was why I had waited until she had arrived, and I was sure that she and Michael were wrapped up with one another. That way, there was less of a chance of her leaving or running off.
It had nothing to do with hoping she would ask for me when she arrived or hoping that we’d run into one another on my way out. Nothing like that at all.
Maybe if I keep repeating that, it’ll come true.
I drove downtown, went to the cafe, and then went around the corner to where she had said the parlour was. I parked across the street from where the shop was supposed to be and turned off my car. Finding the Wiccan shop was simple.
It may have been three years since I had gone looking for that shop, but it seemed just the same. Just as clean as the day it had opened, the signs in its windows untouched from the fading that the sun could cause.
Witches liked to use magic to upkeep their shops, but it gave them a certain quality. Like the air around them had been scrubbed clean of everything dirty.
There it was, still as evident as ever.
Sitting across from the shop, I stared into it, wondering if they knew what happened downstairs. Humans didn’t always lease a whole building for their shops. Sometimes it was just the top or the bottom that was rented out. Just because the witches upstairs were registered, didn’t mean that the witches downstairs were, or even that the witches upstairs knew that the downstairs was rented to witches.
That was the thing with witches. They were like a massive extended family. If they grew up together or were introduced one another, they would recognize they were both witches. Otherwise, it took witnessing the other witch using their magic or noticing the side effects of spells.
By setting up under a Wiccan shop, the ones in the basement may have used the top shop’s runoff of magic to cover whatever they did.
Playing with my keys, I watched the building upstairs.
Can’t just…
“Yeah, I know,” I said to no one in particular.
I slipped out of the car and headed across the street, dodging a car as I went. In the wiccan shop, I stepped up the counter and looked at the woman behind it, who stared at me with wide eyes.
“Are you a dark witch?” I asked.
I already knew the answer, because I had seen her before the witch council. I knew it was possible to fake the tests the witch council put everyone through, but it was very complicated.
And, let’s face it, I had spied on her on more than one occasion.
“No,” she said, giving her head a little shake.
It sent her curls, tips died in a bright blue, bouncing as her face almost seemed to scrunch up. Others might have thought she was being weak, but I knew that the stillness of her hands on the counter were signs of her readiness to attack. Her voice was soft, and she was definitely an adorable little creature.
She manned the counter because no one looked at her and thought she was a powerful witch.
“I suggest you report to the council,” I whispered, in case of spying spells. “And close your shop as you go.”
I then left the shop and lit up a smoke on the sidewalk. It was a little self-destructive, true, but it also gave the witch the time she needed. She knew how long a smoke took, approximately, and knew that once I was done with said smoke, I was going to do something destructive. Smokes made great timers.
While there were no no-smoking signs around, I did have several people pass me, casting me scowls as they went. I was not blowing the smoke into their path, however. When I saw someone coming, I turned my head and blew into the wind in such a way that it did not hit the pedestrian.
As I finished the smoke, the woman who had been manning the till of the Wiccan shop walked out and locked the door. She left, headed up the road, away from me as she pulled out her phone. Possibly making a call, maybe to the owner of the shop.
Who could very well be downstairs.
I glanced around. Grimacing halfway through the motion of flicking my cigarette away from myself, I lifted my foot and put it out on the bottom of my shoe instead. Then I dropped the butt into a nearby trash receptacle rather than flicking it into the road and looking cool.
With another glance around, this time to look to see if anything was trying to creep up on me, I went down the steps to the bottom level of the shop. I glanced at the random branding on the door that protested it was a tattoo parlour. It didn’t just exist, it complained, spelled from inside the paint on the window.
Stepping into the parlour, I felt the change.
Magic saturated the air. That saturation slowed down time and movement of mortals without magic. In the moments of stepping inside the door, I reacted as a regular human would. I stood there and shifted my attention ever so slowly as the creatures of the night bolted, leaving trails of smoke behind them as they ran.
Dark witches worked with demons sometimes. Parts of their magic involved demons, but the only way to bring that into the real world was to use the grace of an angel. It was my understanding that demons participated in the hopes that demons could one day be pulled into the physical plane without ripping a hole in existence that would be noticed by myself and the others.
By the time I looked at the counter, a woman with almost white foundation and seriously too much eyeliner was standing behind the counter, chewing gum like a cow chewing cud.
“Yeah?” she asked between chews.
That was the point where I played the ‘mortal or witch’ game. Only for a few seconds, however, then I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. If she was in the parlour, she was probably involved and thought that she was training to be a dark witch and being a familiar was just as bad as being a dark witch.
I turned, grabbed one of the dark creatures and slammed it into the wall. The shadow and smoke struggled but was stuck as I pulled my halberd from the astral plane and gutted the creature before allowing him to drop to the floor.
The palm of my hand lit up almost like it had been asleep and was suddenly waking up. It was almost painful.
“Hm,” I grunted as I turned to the woman behind the counter. “That was oddly tingly.”
She was staring at the weapon with wide eyes and an open mouth. Her gum fell out of her mouth and bounced over the counter.
I looked down at my weapon, lifted it, and then looked up at her.
“This is my pointy friend,” I said.
Samael had a spear, and Michael had a sword. They at least had weapons mortals recognized by name alone. Humans would see my weapon and recognize it on an instinctual level, but tell them the name and they’d frown in confusion. Or they’d hear it in reference to my name and think it was a crop or something.
It was, in unkind terms, an axe on the end of a spear with the point of the spear still attached to it. My weapon was just as well cared for as Samael and Michael’s, but used so little that it still carried its original edge to it. It could cut through anything, causing agony in the highest of demons, and rending apart lower creatures.
I swung the weapon upward, pointing it at the cashier.
“Are you a dark witch?” I demanded.
“No,” she said, “I just make minimum wage, man, I have nothing to do with anything.”
“You’d best leave then.”
She bolted for the door, headed around me. Likely she would be too afraid to say or do anything. If she did tell someone, what would she do? Give my description and claim I went all murderous rage in a tattoo parlour in the downtown area after pulling a magical blade from thin air?
Who would believe her?
I do love humans being so stupid.
As she bolted, a woman came out of the back. She had a cloth in her hands and was wiping them on the fabric. Wiping something off of them, though I was uncertain what.
She didn’t seem surprised to see me in the least, though her eyebrows raised slightly as she bent around me, looking after the cashier. With an annoyed sound, she focused her attention on me.
“Raphael,” she said. “Must be with that weapon in your hands. What does the weakest son of God want with us? We are but humble servants.”
“Who have demigorgons manning the front?” I asked.
The woman shrugged as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
“They work for cheaper than demons do,” she said, setting a hand on the counter.
There must have been a spell on the counter, just as there was a spell or sixteen in the back, slowly lighting up as I stood in the front, my eyes on the woman.
Her primary goal would be to try to capture me. Preferably, to pluck my wings and steal my grace. It was the same thing every dark witch in the past had tried to do, and every one of them had failed.
Yet still, they repeated the futile gesture.
“And what would you like?” she asked.
She moved around the counter and began flipping through an appointment book as if I were nothing more than a client who had asked about an opening. I watched her flipping through the pages and wondered if dark witches were not as dangerous as Michael had made them seem.
Maybe they just got stupid.
Then I dismissed the thought and focused entirely on her because I would not allow her to take advantage of me.
“A woman showed up to my brother’s marriage with a tattoo on her back.”
“Of?”
Her tone was dripping with acid. She did not look up as she asked the question, though I noticed the hesitance of the pages moving. She knew what I meant even before I said it, but she wanted me to say it before she reacted.
“You know what they were,” I said. “Wings. Angel wings.”
“We’ve done many wings. Angel wings are quite popular, much like the dandelion and birds. Angel wings are popular, which pair are you speaking of?”
“The pair of actual, real angel wings that you bound to the soul of a mortal woman with magic ink,” I said.
She finally looked up at me. There was a burning hatred in her eyes as she continued to stare and I merely watched her in response. She seemed to squint as if trying to judge my motives from that alone.
I think it should have been obvious, what my motive was. They had stolen a pair of wings and done something devious with them. It didn’t take much thought at all.
“What of those wings?” she asked.
“Well, the more important question would be how you managed to get your hands on the wings of an angel.”
“Are they your wings?” she asked. “If they aren’t your wings, please leave. You have no proof that we stole anything. Send the owner of the wings with a complaint, and we might return them to the angel, though I doubt you will find one to complain because no theft happened.”
She said it like she was quoting their return policy to an irritated customer. Short and blunt, with an edge to her voice.
“How did you come by the wings if not theft?” I asked. “Who do they belong to?”
“None of your concern, angel.”
We scowled at one another. I glanced back at the door, then took a step deeper into the parlour. I felt the spells winding around me, begging me to make that move and I did it to give the appearance of being under their power. I wanted them lulled into a sense of security before I put my blade into their throats.
“There is only one pair of free-floating wings in Heaven,” I said. “Which means there’s only one way to get an angel’s wings without technically stealing them. No angel parts with their wings willingly. Surely you know that the wings will not get you into Heaven.”
“We know,” she said. “What’s it matter to a fallen angel such as yourself?”
“Let’s say you ‘borrowed’ the set of wings that are free floating. Why would you do that? Whatever could you hope to accomplish with them?”
“To put them to use,” the witch. “They have simply been hanging around Heaven all this time.”
“Put them to use, how?”
“They are angry with their angel.”
She talked like the wings had a mind of their own, and I didn’t appreciate it in the least. If wings took on a form like Samael’s heart had, we would have known about it before we had left Heaven.
“That’s not true. The wings of an angel are the one part that can be cut off or removed without them becoming something else. They simply exist as wings that continue as wings until they attach back to the angel. Therefore, the wings could not be angry with their angel.”
“We will bring them into the real world, calling the angel down to the Earth and capturing his grace to use as we see fit. Put it to use making the world a better place, fixing the mistakes that God has made on the Earth. Starting with all men, and you four.”
“Us four?” I asked.
“The so-called arc angels who have done nothing but leave destruction in their wake.”
I took another step forward, feeling that pull strengthen. As it did, I reached into the astral plane just enough to look around us. Dark witches were standing in the astral plane, waiting to jump. For them to get there without being absorbed into the plane, they had to use grace to do so.
It was my understanding that dark witches didn’t do that unless they were certain they could win.
I then dropped back into the physical realm and focused on the woman behind the counter.
They were planning on jumping me. They wanted to overwhelm me and take me down, probably to pluck my wings the way they had Michael’s so many years before. To use in their bitter, dark magic.
I would never allow that to happen.
“What about the host?” I asked. “Angel wings are not meant to mesh with a human soul. She’ll explode before the process is complete. Quite literally.”
“No, we shopped all across the world, we followed her for years. She is the one. She was born for this, to be this thing for us. To carry the wings into our world. She will do.”
“You mean she’ll live just long enough to make it happen,” I said. “And then what? Bring the wings into the real world and rip them from her back?”
“What’s it matter to you? Even if they were your wings, them being brought into the real world would not matter. If your wings were brought here, they would be useless to us, no grace inside of them. They would be as devoid of the Heavens as you are.”
“True,” I said with a little nod. “An angel’s wings carry their grace within, that is one of the ways the guardians know whose wings belong to who, and which grace exists or does not exist.”
The wings were dangerous.
The witches were also dangerous because they knew they had the wings of an angel whose grace was still intact. They would have all the power Michael had accidentally given them, and more.
That feather they had taken from Michael had all the grace of a feather. The rest of Michael’s grace had been taken from him when he had been banished from Heaven. All the witches had done had been a feather’s worth of grace. If they took on the full grace of a set of wings, the world would surely end.
“Well, I’m here to stop you,” I said.
“You cannot stop us.”
I waved my blade around as if motioning around us. That blade would push off the witches waiting in the astral plane, who were all holding just a little of Michael’s grace to be able to exist in the astral plane without exploding or being consumed by it. If I was fortunate, I would startle them into releasing the grace and end them while taking just a little more grace from the dark witches.
An angel weapon did not need to have an intended target for it to kill or harm. Anything on the astral plane as the weapon moved was damaged. For that reason, the angel blades let out a ringing sound that tended to scare off all creatures. Only the most stubborn demons dared to stay near an angel blade.
“Guess I’m just going to fail then,” I said with a shrug as I dropped the blade.
On purpose, but I looked the fool. My weapon clattered to the floor, and for some time, I glared down at it, my hands clenched at my sides. I gave the blade the exasperated look of someone who had just made a claim and then fumbled in public.
Then I reached down and grabbed the handle. I felt the weight of someone standing on it in the astral plane, and I shifted a thought into the blade.
The head flooded down the shaft and turned, arching upward as an inhuman scream seemed to echo in my ears.
I pulled the blade upward, sliding it over the floor and behind me as I glared at the woman behind the counter.
“How do you intend to stop us? You are only the weakest of the Lord’s children. Even among the cherubs, there are stronger than you.”
“I imagine that’s true,” I said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that this needs to be done and you need to be stopped.”
“Where are the other three, then?”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
“The other three,” the woman said. “Surely they did not send baby brother in to do the deed. They must be nearby, readying themselves for an attack even as you attempt to distract me. It will not work. None of you pose a threat to us.”
I shrugged. “They’re around, you’re right, we’re all ready to attack, and I’m just a distraction.”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered me. I practically saw the steam coming from her ears as she tried to figure out if I was lying, or if I had been distracting them from the fact that the other three were sneaking up on the shop.
Maybe I should have gone to the shop with the others, but tangling with dark witches wasn’t a smart thing. Only those with graces, who were well versed in magic, should have tangled with them. They were just as dangerous as the Knights of Hell, if not more dangerous because their entire magic was based on the grace of an angel.
Once they were in battle with an angel, a dark witch only had to tap into the grace of that angel to use bigger and more explosive magic.
Thankfully, I was well versed in magic.
“You haven’t the balls or the grace to back you, boy, why don’t you run home to your pimp?”
I reached up and scratched the tip of my nose, keeping my eyes on the woman as she scowled at me. We stood there, in that standoff as her face seemed to crinkle in a rage.
“How do I remove the wings?” I asked.
“Once the inking has begun, it must be complete. There is no way to remove them. They are bound to her very soul. Removing them would kill her and open a portal to another dimension, something that you angels are not allowed to do.”
“Right, so she’d have to die,” I said. “And the processes of Heaven would separate the two of them.”
And, technically, I’d have to flay the skin off her back to remove the magic ink. I was pretty certain it was not the type that one could use a laser on and have it eventually work out of the body.
There was no possible outcome of those events that did not result in me being either beaten on or rejected entirely.
I could tell Sam what to do, because he’d do it and he didn’t need to be near her. With his skill he could flay the skin off her back from a distance away, probably kill her too.
That might work. It might also start a war between Michael and Samael, but I think the world could survive such an explosion.
I did not think I could survive in a world where I had been the one to cause Sera pain on purpose, even if it was to save the world.
Or…
Hadn’t Gabe said something like that once? How did it go?
Kill a witch, end her magic.
All I had to do was kill every dark witch there was. There might have only been one specific witch I had to kill to end the magic that wound through the ink in Sera’s back, but I wanted to make sure.
Somehow that was a better option than all the others.
“What are you going to do? Go on, boy, run home to daddy.”
I turned for the door. Walking to it, I set my hand on the doorknob and stood there a moment as I weighed my decisions.
I already knew what I was going to do in that shop, but I wondered how many dark witches I had to kill before Sera would be safe. Heaven wanted them all gone, and I could understand why, but I wasn’t certain I could find them all before Sera exploded.
My hand drifted up to the lock, and I slipped it into place as I made my decision. Turning from the door, I looked at the woman behind the counter. She scowled back at me as if I could be scared off so quickly.
“See,” I said as I raised the tip of my blade slightly, “there’s one thing you keep repeating, yet somehow keep forgetting.”
“What’s that?” she demanded.
“I am an angel of the Lord,” I said.
“Pfft.”
That was her response, a sound as if I was telling a tall tale.
“I am Raphael. I am a fucking arc angel of God. I am patron of healing, marriage, sanity, physicians, the sick, guardians, and nightmares.”
“Is this where you threaten me with my worst nightmare?” the witch demanded.
I was going to, but then as she sneered at me, I realized how stupid it had sounded. I wanted a clever last word, damn it, was it that difficult for someone to give me something?
“No,” I said with a slow shake of my head. “This is where I show you what an arc is capable of and send you to Hell. Where you will relive your worst nightmare over and over.”