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“She’s a growing little menace,” Abaddon says, but I can hear the pride in his surly voice.
“Anyway, I just wanted to let you in on the situation.”
“That’s new,” he mutters.
I ignore him, only half rolling my eyes. “It seems like we might have torn a little hole in the continuum between the planes when we let the Devourer through last month.”
“What?” he barks.
Here it comes. The blame and then telling me how terrible I am at everything I do. I sigh. “Look, we only know of one spirit who made it through right now. Ammit, a succubus goddess who kills men after she seduces them. We’ve got leads on her and are tracking her as we speak. But there might be more who slipped through.”
Abaddon rubs his lion-like chin with his clawed hand. “But you’ve got the one under control. This Am—whatever her name is?”
“Ammit. Yes. Phoenix and I have it under control. We’re tracking her and will take her down.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You have a plan?”
“Of course we have a plan,” I lie. We’ll make a plan when it comes to it.
“One that won’t open up a rip in more realms?”
“Yes,” I snap. There’s no one like my big brother to make me feel like a dunce. “You don’t have to worry. I hope you and the family are settling in. I just wanted to keep you in the loop.”
He nods, the line still in his forehead as if he’s not sure if he has faith in me. But finally, he says, “All right, then. I’ll trust you with this.”
It’s stupid how his words make something clench and then unfurl in my chest. Not having a father worth the name, my oldest brother has always been… well, I always stupidly looked up to him. It was one of the reasons it hurt so badly when he stood there and watched our father slice off my wings without doing a damn thing.
I only learned after I reunited with my brothers that when they thought my father murdered me, Abaddon then killed our father in a rage. Or thought he did.
We all learned a hard lesson that our kind can’t be killed when both I and our Creator-Father returned, very much not dead. I sent dear old Dad back to the Great Hall, where I hope the angels have shackled him in a deep, dark dungeon somewhere.
On-screen, Raven flies down and lands on her father’s shoulders, grabbing his horns as if to ride him. Except she’s much bigger now than she was only a month ago, so Abaddon is thrown forward by her weight and momentum, tipping into the phone as Raven’s black wings flutter, and she giggles wildly as if he’s a bucking bronco.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I say, smiling into the mass of wings blocking out the screen.
“You need any help, just let us know, baby brother,” is the last thing I hear him say before the line cuts off.
Wow. Kids. A month ago, I would have balked even at the idea. Way too much responsibility for me, I would’ve said.
And I get why Phoenix isn’t eager to give Vlad what he wants, but if this marriage were real and she was at all open… The thought of Raven, growing bigger by the day and my other brother Kharon’s daughter Luna… They’re both a handful, especially given their angel-monster heritage.
The weeks before the wedding, Kharon and his wife did everything they could to keep baby Luna calm. Kharon is the Horseman of Death who carries humans to the deathly plane after they die, but it turns out that’s not the only realm he can travel to. Not that he knew about it until the Devourer visited on the day Luna was born, and we learned she’d inherited his ability. Now Kharon’s practicing his own jumps to different realms so he knows he can and is ready to chase her in case she disappears someday.
Crazy to think that what Sabra always spent so much energy and mage-work trying to do with her circles, my baby niece can do as easily as breathing.
I step out of my room to head toward the computer lab. I didn’t get any pings on my phone saying the bots found anything, but I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing anymore. Speaking of Sabra… I told Abaddon we had Ammit handled, but what exactly do Phoenix and I plan to do even if we catch her? We need Sabra if we’re going to send her back to where she came from. My baby niece isn’t exactly up to the job, and Kharon still can’t control where he jumps to.
But Sabra. Back in the day, Sabra and I finally learned how to connect spirit energy back to the plane a spirit came from. It took a lot of trial and error, but we discovered a system that involved all three of us: Phoenix, Sabra, and me. Together, we provide the fuel, framework, and fine-tuning, respectively. Without one of us, it all falls apart.
We need Sabra.
I pull open the door to the lab, only to find Phoenix already sitting at the console.
Which, really, shouldn’t surprise me.
“Find anything?” I ask.
“No,” she says, not looking away from the screen. “Ammit’s not in Sectors One, Two, Six, or Five, so she’s not headed north or east. That leaves just Three and Four.”
