Chapter Nine
A sliver of moon hung in the southern night sky. So peaceful here, standing in Jude’s courtyard. Honking horns, lilting laughter, a drift of saxophone—all joyful sounds of life in the Quarter. I tried to remember what it was like to live oblivious to the world of demons hunting humans, of angels watching from afar, of hunters casting out evil, of humankind slipping toward a violent end. Two months? Felt like I’d known this all my life and was only now coming to the startling realization my role was vital in the coming war. The growing darkness threatened to swallow me whole. Before my thoughts could fall too far, Jude sifted in front of me.
He had the sword from earlier strapped to his back. I knew because my underlight instantly glowed to life. My VS pulsed with the object so near, always warning me when Flamma or something with their essence was nearby. I had a close call the other night when I was packing my textbooks away. I had picked up my copy of
The Captain’s Captive
, which held the feather Dommiel had given me for summoning him. Unprepared, I was shocked when my skin instantly started to glow with Mindy popping us popcorn for our movie in the kitchen. I had to chuck my backpack in my closet and cast illusion to hide the fact I was beaming like Tinkerbelle.
Glowing like a firefly in Jude’s courtyard, I knew there was something special about this sword to make my aura burn bright.
“Tell me about your sword.”
He stepped closer, half in shadow, a distinctly devilish grin creasing his face. I felt a flush of heat crawl up my neck, knowing full well the direction his thoughts had taken.
“Mind out of the gutter, Delacroix. The sword on your
back
.”
Ignoring my presumptuous comment, he unsheathed one of my daggers, examining the blade. For sharpness, of course. I’d learned to ready my weapons for every excursion. Unless I wanted to withstand the wrath of Jude.
“It was a gift from Uriel.”
“The Archangel.” The one I’d met only once, but could never forget, the impact beyond powerful.
“Yes.”
“Why would he give you such a gift?”
He unbuckled my harness at the shoulder, moving it up a notch to tighten, smoothing the leather straps into place.
“Imbued with his power, it gives me more strength to fulfill a particular request he had for me.”
“Which was?”
Checking the other strap but finding it well adjusted, he dropped his arms, finally meeting my gaze.
“To join the Crusades. Not to defeat infidels in the Holy Land, mind you, but to destroy a horde of demons that’d set up camp there, feeding on the weakness of vulnerable humans.” Jude’s face remained in shadow, peering down. “Uriel joined me in the battle. As did George and a host of other hunters.”
I considered, musing over my knowledge of angels, knowing much less of them than I did demons.
“So Uriel does get involved when he sees fit.”
“Yes. Sometimes. Angels have their own objectives and rarely share them with any of us.”
Angels weren’t always aloof. A fact I knew with Thomas making sudden appearances.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Jude lifted my hand, turning it palm up, trailing his finger over my wrist and along the lines creasing the skin.
My underlight burned brighter. This was not an erogenous zone, so I stared stupidly, wondering how the hell he’d made desire spike in a millisecond from simply caressing my hand.
“This means you’re attuned more to the Light.”
Drawn away from his hypnotic ministrations on my palm and wrist, I met his dark gaze. His slanted smile made everything inside do a backflip.
“You can stop worrying so much.” He tucked a loose lock of hair behind my ear. “What happened at the ball hasn’t dampened your Vessel power.”
“I don’t understand why others haven’t been able to take me.” No need to mention Danté’s name or his brothers. Or the line of demon dukes and earls wanting to use me for their wicked deeds. While Gorham was able to sift me out, he couldn’t take me into Bamal’s lair in hell. Otherwise, he would’ve done so the second he latched on to me in his raunchy nightclub. My Vessel power was obviously overwhelming any harm I’d done to taint my soul by killing Nathaniel.
Jude dropped my wrist and wrapped his fingers around my nape, his thumb brushing my pulse point.
“With Vessels of the past, sin has begotten sin. Once any of them took a step down the path of darkness, it was so easy to take another. And another. Until she ran toward the open arms of her possessor.” His thumb moved up the column of my throat. “Or she ended the inevitable before it began.” Suicide. “Not you, my heart.” He’d moved within inches, tilting my head at an angle. “You took one step, looked into the eyes of that fucking demon prince, fought him like hell, then fled from the dark.” And into the arms of the haunted man before me with dark secrets of his own. By now his lips were against mine. My heart raced for him. “My lovely moon in the darkness.”
He possessed my mouth with ravenous speed, plundering, taking my breath away. Before my knees buckled, he wrapped my waist. He always knew the power he had over me. At the moment, I was quite thrilled with the power I had over him, feeling the hard ridge of his arousal pressed against my stomach. I clenched my hands into his hair, willing him to kiss me deeper. He did. For a long time. Invisible flames licked around us both, caging us in a shell of heat.
Releasing my mouth, he nipped down my neck—hard—scraping his stubble along the sensitive skin of my throat. I wondered how delicious his rough jaw would feel against other sensitive areas.
“You will be the death of me.”
I grinned, neck arched, head back, glimpsing the starry sky through slitted eyes.
“You’ve said that before.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Beginning to get a little redundant, aren’t you?” I teased.
He bit my earlobe.
“Ouch!”
Dragging in a serrated breath, he loosened his hold, keeping me in a gentler embrace, though his fingers curled against my hips, the tension taut and palpable.
“Ready?”
My one-track mind went straight to the bedroom. Eyes widening, I croaked, “For what?”
He laughed, chest rumbling against mine. He checked his watch. “For the sift. George will be there by now, waiting for us.”
“Oh. Right.”
Damn it.
“This is a long one. Hang on.”
“Great.”
Tumbling down the rabbit hole of the Void, I squeezed my eyes shut, but it did no good. These long sifts made me queasy. When we snapped onto steady ground, the temperature was markedly cooler, the sky cloudy gray, the air thick with fog. The night waned here, edging toward dawn, an ethereal blue haze promising morning would be here soon though dark still reigned.
Jude gripped my hand, leading me into the mist-shrouded ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. We both knew to keep silent. I felt a presence the second we zapped into this place.
Flamma
.
Lots of them. Yet all was silent and still.
A broken arch towered above us, remnants of this ruined beauty. Jude led me through the shattered stone entrance, what must have been magnificent beyond belief before Henry VIII destroyed it in his cruel rage against a faith that defied him.
Like dragon’s breath, the mist parted and swirled as we moved into the fractured Cathedral. No ceiling above us. Only the wide, vast night. We crossed through what would have been the nave toward the altar.
My VS dimmed, as if the Flamma retreated. I squeezed Jude’s hand, giving him a questioning look.
“Sacred ground,” he whispered.
I glanced down at my feet, though the dark and mist kept me from seeing the grassy, earthen floor.
“Still?”
I couldn’t see his shadowed features, but I sensed his smile all the same.
“Always.”
What a beautiful thought. No manner of fire and brimstone could erase the hallowed splendor of this place. Not a king’s tyrannical will or mighty decree, not the evil that besmirched these grounds, destroying the artistry of divine inspiration. Nothing could strip away the light. Still, after all the centuries, the damned could not walk here.
As we neared the broken wall, a shadow moved. I jumped. George materialized from the gloom, charming smile in place as if he’d walked into a cocktail party.
“I didn’t sense you there,” I said, clutching my chest.
“Sorry to frighten you, darling.” He winked. “Stealth is one of my many gifts.”
“I’m sure.” I bet Kat knew quite a few others.
Unlike Kat and Jude, whose accents mingled and morphed over the ages, George sounded as if he’d stepped from the set of
Downton Abbey
. He dripped with British charm, even on a demon hunt at midnight in the ruins of an old abbey.
Jude unsheathed his sword. A slow zing of steel sliding free made my underlight shine anew. “If you two are finished flirting, I’d say we make our grand entrance.”
“You’re right.” George slid his own sword from its scabbard. “It’s rude to keep our guests waiting, though I do enjoy flirting with Genevieve.”
Shaking my head with a smile, I withdrew my dagger and followed them out of the cathedral’s walls to open ground. George froze, turning his head as if listening for something off to the left. He pointed. We both nodded, then he walked in the other direction, melding with the shadows.
The clouds shifted, breaking open for the crescent moon to beam its pale light. Remnants of stone structures stood humped and silent, rising out of the cold mist, like malformed beasts frozen in time. The stillness of the night didn’t deceive me. My VS pulsed with the sharp, prickling sensation of lower demons prowling nearer. But we weren’t easy prey.
“Stay at my back, Genevieve.”
No need to tell me twice.
The attack fell upon us the moment he spoke my name. Two demons flung themselves toward Jude. Jumping clear out of the way, I pushed back against the outside wall of the fallen abbey, dagger ready.
Swinging his sword, Jude missed his target. The demons lunged, then dodged, evading every maneuver. They seemed to be playing with Jude more than fighting him, jabbing with knives and slipping away, one of them cackling like a hyena.
Somewhere on our left, a monstrous roar echoed into the fog-filled air. I jumped in my skin, arching my neck to see what had made that ghastly sound. A sinister beast loomed large in a clearing behind rocky ruins. George swung his sword high, bellowing a war cry as he launched himself at the creature. From the beast’s roar and size, it could only be one of the fabled titans. George’s sword glowed silver in the dark. The multi-limbed titan, darker than shadow, towered two stories high and huffed smoke into the air. The hellish beast evaded George’s thrusts, hauling up one of its long limbs and smashing directly on top of George, vibrating the earth with its force. I screamed, thinking George had been crushed, but he reappeared a few yards away, safe and sound. He bellowed an incantation into the air, his steel shining silver-white as he slashed the creature with vehement thrusts. A high-pitched cry echoed from the titan, inching back away from George where I could see them no more.
Jude still fought within a circle of lower demons. They backed away as he stalked closer, his sword arm swinging and ready for blood. They slunk farther back the moment another hulking demon, easily six and a half feet tall, emerged from the fog.
No. Not a demon I’d ever encountered before. He was something other.
Eyes black as pitch, no spark of light glinting under the moon. Skin ashen gray, dark veins snaking along bare arms, his neck and face. His bulging frame moved with surprising stealth and sinuous grace, like a great cat stalking his prey in an open field, like one who’s hunted and slain a thousand victims before, like…Jude.
But he was no Dominus Daemonum. And he was no demon. What was he? A soul collector? No, he couldn’t be. In the presence of soul collectors, sound sucked into a vacuum, and an aura of hatred or sorrow or whatever the lost souls festering in the collector’s bowels felt rippled out in a crippling wave. This creature emanated dark power, but he wasn’t one of the soul eaters.
My VS stuttered, rippling through my frame. A pulse of aching emptiness billowed around us, snaking through the air, sucking out all life and light. It was the monster’s signature—the essence of darkness itself—wiping all that is clean and good from the vicinity. While my breathing labored and pulse quickened, Jude’s gaze never wavered from his mark. The two circled one another. Lower demons appeared out of the shadows, red eyes glowing, watching the two center stage.
Jude froze, facing his opponent, feet wide, sword gripped in both hands, tip pointing down. “Finding quarry scarce, Bellock?”
The gray humanlike Flamma stood his ground, stance fixed and ready. “Yes, Jude. But now I’ve found you.” His ebony gaze flicked to me. “And her.”
That was enough. Jude swung into action, and the clang of steel on steel echoed into the night. More demons slunk out of the shadows toward the circle, three of them straying toward me.
I called to my VS, willing it to burn. Instantly, a pearlescent glow beamed from my body, preparing for strike. Dagger aloft, I watched the three approach. Typical lower demons—jaunty gait, sneer in place, dumb-ass expression. One thing I’d learned to do was differentiate between lower demons, the newly possessed and the ones fused with their hosts. Fused demons had a certain directness in their gaze and purpose in their walk, having fully taken control of their foreign body and host’s mind. Just like the three forming a semicircle around me.
Jude cursed. More steel on steel. His opponent roared. Neither of them seemed to be gaining ground. But their battle was lost to me. I had to focus on my own stalking closer.
I scooted along the wall, venturing toward the Gothic window opening into the cathedral ruins, thinking it might be best to sit this one out. If I could make it within the cathedral walls, they couldn’t follow. My underlight shined bright white as Flamma after Flamma descended on the clearing. This wasn’t normal. It was like they knew we were coming. I’d never seen so many of them at one time. Another roar in the near distance from the beast George fought.