I took the drying nose spray he handed me and snorted up a couple of good shots of the stuff, wishing he had something to spray into my eyes to sop up the tide of salt water there and return them to their normal size and color.
Handing the spray back to him I tried a weak smile. “You’re all soggy.”
He looked down at his shirt and grinned. “The neighbors probably called the Death Detectives. I haven’t heard sounds that tortured since the last time you interrogated a target demon.”
I smacked him on the arm and grinned back at him. I felt our relationship regaining its sea legs. “It wasn’t as bad as the last time I whooped your ass in training. You wailed like a baby for hours afterward.”
“Yeah, right, Astra. In your dreams. You barely scratched me.”
We sat grinning at each other for a few beats and then he dropped his arm from my shoulder and squeezed my hand. “So tell me. What’s wrong?”
I told him everything, realizing as I told him about Danika Phelps that he’d already known about my mother’s career as Supreme High Witch. I tried not to let that make me mad and I almost succeeded.
When I finished I asked, “So how long have you known about my mother?”
He shrugged and sat back on the divan, dropping my hand. “I’ve always known. But your sister made me promise not to tell you.”
I frowned. “Darma knew?”
Emo nodded.
I stared at my hands and thought about this for a minute and then looked back up at him. “How long?”
“As long as I’ve known you. It was one of the reasons she was never around. Your father did everything he could to make up for her being gone. Darma too.”
“I know that, Emo. That’s what makes this so hard now. I just refuse to believe James Phelps is a dark angel. It’s not possible!” I stood up and started pacing, unable to sit there and calmly discuss the ridiculous accusations Enoch had made.
Emo watched me pace for a few minutes and then said. “There’s only one thing we can do.”
I stopped pacing and looked at him. “What?”
He gave me a long, slow smile and I felt my nose and other parts tingle in response. “We need to go stealth.”
I stared at him for a few beats and then my lips started to curl upward. “You in?”
“I’m in.”
I nodded once and sat down on the divan to start planning.
* * * * *
The quarter moon threw a stingy light into the night as the Viper glided in silence toward the hulking shadow of my father’s house. After much deliberation we’d decided to start there so we could rule it out as the place where the king was being held first.
The Viper dropped into silent hover in a wide, sandy beach at the bottom of the cliff under the Phelps fortress. Darma and I had climbed the rocks and played on that beach when we were kids. We’d reached it through a series of tunnels that ran from the lowest level of the fortress down to the river.
It was the perfect hiding spot for the Viper and the ideal way into the house.
I stepped out of the Viper and looked over it to Emo. Like me, he was dressed entirely in black and had black powder smeared on his face to help him blend into the night. The sliver of moon pulled a soft gleam off his silky black hair, which he’d pulled back into a tight ponytail at the back of his neck. A telltale spark in his eyes told me he was looking forward to the adventure.
I smiled at him and watched white teeth slide into view, Cheshire Cat-like. “Are you clear on the plan?”
He nodded. “We enter through the river tunnels and search the dungeon first.”
I nodded. I figured if my father was hiding anyone in the house it would be there. When the original house was copied, the dungeon had been recreated in all its glory. Complete with rings on the wall and chains bolted to the floor.
Much to Danika’s delight and James’ disgust.
Although this type of constraint would certainly not be enough to hold a royal devil king, I had to figure if he was going to be held that would be the place it would be done.
At least it was a good place to start.
The recipient of tributaries from at least three other rivers, the Angel City River was its usual frantic, angry self. Lined on both sides by tall jagged rocks, the river had always been a crashing, spraying entity that was soothing from high above but a bit nerve jangling in close proximity to its violence.
As Emo and I started off toward the tunnels, a cold spray continually pummeled us. We were drenched and dripping by the time we reached the mouth of the tunnel.
We stopped just inside the wide, slimy tunnel opening and used our power to dry off. Then we created balls of light in our hands and headed into the dank darkness toward the house.
The tunnels narrowed some as we ventured more deeply into the earth but stayed fairly consistently head height and wide enough for two people to walk comfortably side by side.
I knew from childhood stories that the tunnels had been magically enhanced and supported so that they would last indefinitely in their current form.
The ground beneath our feet was spongy with moisture at first but gradually dried to rock as we got closer to the fortress.
Something skittered past my feet and I jumped, plowing into Emo. He grunted as my elbow hit him in the soft underbelly and he wrapped his arms around me chuckling.
“I think there are rats in here, Astra,” he whispered into my ear. I shivered but I wasn’t sure if it was from the idea of rats or from the teasing heat of his breath against my ear.
He chuckled again. “You want me to carry you?”
I scowled at him but the effect was pretty much lost in the dark. “Bite me!”
He shrugged, “If you insist.”
I smacked him on the chest and started off again.
Bats swung by our heads with chirping sounds but those didn’t bother me. I simply ducked and let them fly on by while keeping a close eye out for those damnable rats.
Finally my light ball illuminated the thick, wooden door that led into the dungeon.
I turned a rusted handle and shoved but the door was swollen and wedged pretty tightly into the door frame.
I looked at Emo. “We can’t blast it because that would make too much noise.”
He nodded. “Let’s apply heat. Maybe it will shrink enough to open.”
I grinned at him. “And I thought you were just another pretty face.”
He grinned and we turned back to the door. It took about ten minutes of power-induced heat to get the door open. Together we shoved it open enough to squeeze through one at a time.
The basement was cool and damp and empty. We moved quietly up the stone stairs to the main floor and I cast my sensing power around the rooms there but found no life force of any kind.
I climbed the stairs that led to the upper levels of the house. Like the other floors, the upper floors were uninhabited. Even my father was gone.
We returned to the Viper the way we’d come in and headed toward the Angel City Coven headquarters.
As we neared the wildlife preserve I felt myself losing nerve. The last two times I’d gone there had turned out badly to say the least. I was
so
not happy about returning to the coven.
Sensing my unease, Emo took my hand and squeezed it. “Raoul said the coven would be holding a rite in the clearing tonight. Headquarters should be empty.”
“I know.” I frowned as I spoke. Something was eating at me that I couldn’t explain. I felt like I had a doom boogey riding around on my shoulder and nothing I did seemed to shake it off.
I thought again about Enoch and his accusations and felt my stomach tighten in dread. “Where the Hades is my father?”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Emo responded. “He’s doing his job.”
My head jerked around and he looked quickly away, almost guiltily. Our arrival at the coven building kept me from questioning him further but I made a mental note to grill him later that night when we got back to the office.
I dropped the Viper about a half mile from the building and Emo and I hoofed it. I wish I could say coven headquarters was empty but it wasn’t. What I can say, however, is that it was filled with the wrong witches.
As we approached the darkened building we started noticing dancing lights behind the windows and realized that someone was inside and they were using palm-sized canister lights to search the place.
It seemed someone else shared our desire to visit while the witches were busy elsewhere.
Chapter Eighteen
Altar-ed Reality
With sleepy eyes our heroine, awakens to her fate,
Awash in lust she calls for aid and prays he’s not too late.
I turned to Emo. “What do you want to bet this is the Devil’s Glenn crew?”
He nudged me with his elbow and grinned. “Wanna have some fun?”
I nodded. “Oh yeah.”
Keeping a low profile, we scurried toward the building. Crouching under the closest window we peered carefully inside, being careful to stay out of sight. Inside the room a small but powerful beam played itself over the files and pages that were piled high on a very messy desk.
“I got this one,” I said. Then I pulled my power forward, concentrated it into a slender thread and sent it on silent feet through the slightly open window into the room. The power thread reached the desk and burrowed under the mound of paperwork, causing it to jerk and bounce and then shoot straight up into the air, where it separated in a whoosh and flew around the room. The person on the other end of the beam of light shrieked, leaped straight into the air and flew out of the room.
Emo and I snickered and moved to the next window.
We were just in time to see the intruder in that room heading for the door to see what the commotion was all about. Emo raised a hand and the door inside the room slammed shut in the intruder’s face.
The larger form, apparently a man, jumped back from the door and stood staring at it as if waiting for it to move again.
Emo wiggled his fingers and the door flew open again but when the intruder headed for it Emo shut it again before he could get through. The man jumped back just in time to keep from getting a hand slammed in the door.
This time the man grabbed the doorknob and tried to open it, then started yelling when it wouldn’t open. When he turned to look at the window as a possible escape route Emo wiggled his fingers again and opened the door.
In the next room I shot a stream of power into a chair and it exploded into fire. The three searchers ran shrieking from the room and seconds later the front door shot open and half a dozen forms in long, dark robes ran from the building as if all the spirits of Hell were hot on their heels.
I couldn’t see any faces until they climbed into their air vehicle, which had been tucked into the shadows not too far from the building and then I recognized a couple of the witches from Raoul’s and my visit to Devil’s Glenn.
When they were safely gone Emo and I stood up and headed for the door.
“I don’t suppose there’s much point searching the building after that. If he’d been in there I figure they would have found him.”
Emo nodded. “We’re here though so we might as well look.”
Sighing in frustration, I preceded him into the abandoned headquarters building.
I threw out my sensing power as soon as I came through the door. My immediate sense was that the building was empty. As we moved toward the garden room where Dialle and I had been just a few days previous I started getting a sense of something that made my pulse pick up. It was a magic signature. One that I hadn’t expected to find in that place. I’d hoped to find its owner but I didn’t expect him to be using magic.
I turned to Emo. “He’s been here.”
Emo frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Don’t you feel the magic residue? That’s his signature.”
Emo shook his dark head. “I haven’t experienced his signature.”
I moved further into the room but the residue started receding the closer to the greenhouse area I moved so I turned and headed back toward the other end of the room. There, in the shadows where we’d first encountered Commander Astis, I saw a door in the wall.
So that was how she’d snuck up on us that day.
I approached the door and reached for the handle. As I touched it I was assaulted by a vision so strong it brought me to my knees.
It was King Dialle, held by magic chains to the wall in my father’s dungeon room, screaming as a stream of power drilled a hole in his beautiful golden chest.
Every scream, every jerk, every melting inch of flesh flooded through me as if it were me chained to that wall rather than him. I screamed and tried to pull my hand off the door handle but it wouldn’t come loose.
The power drill finally stopped and the king’s silky black head drooped forward. His muscular body was covered in a sheen of sweat and blood and his chest heaved with his frantic breathing.
I watched my father approach the gravely wounded royal.
Placing a hand over the bleeding hole in Dialle the First’s chest, my father emitted a warm, white power that I knew would burn like acid on a dark worlder. Even as I had the thought King Dialle threw back his dark head and screamed in apparent agony, his strong throat jerking with the frantic pulse of his heart.
I joined him in his agony.
Amazingly the hole started to heal. After a moment it was entirely gone and King Dialle seemed to have passed out. My father stepped back from the unconscious royal and disappeared from sight.
Almost immediately the power drill started up again, this time invading King Dialle’s flat, hard stomach.
Slumped against the door, my stomach ripping invisibly beneath a mystical onslaught, I wasn’t sure how much longer the king or I would last.
Suddenly strong arms wrapped around me and a jolt of heated power saturated my hand on the knob. I came loose in a shower of sparks and my knees buckled. I sagged to the floor, dragging Emo with me.
I lay there panting and shivering with Emo hanging over me, his golden face dark with concern. “Astra, what the hell just happened? Are you okay?”