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Her reaction didn't help ease their watchfulness. As she opened the door to his mind, intending to use that connection to steady herself, she found a chamber engulfed in flames. The blast knocked her mind over, scattering her thoughts. Mina's hands closed over her arms, steadying her, but there was no escape from the raging, murderous fury Lex experienced. It was a bestial hatred, mindless destruction like the Christian version of end of days, Armageddon, the coming of the Beast.
She knew there was no devil, at least not that kind. However, the soul could accept evil and become what others feared, the stuff of nightmares. She fought to lock down her filters against it, even suspecting that his third mark made her far more vulnerable to his emotions than anyone else's.
"Let him go," she gasped. "Release him, please. You're making it worse."
Instead, Seneth turned his sharp gaze to Jonah. "He can torment the innocent with his mind?"
"He's not . . . tormenting me." She snarled through the maelstrom, though she could hardly blame them since it looked exactly like what they thought. Even the angels, knowing, looked unsettled. "I'm . . . an empath. I can feel what . . . he's feeling."
She'd inherited the ability of angels to understand and speak in any language, but did Dante know what they were saying? Or had lack of comprehension only added to his mindless rage? As she struggled for control, a movement to the right took her attention from the terrible display. Unlike humans, who lived in doubt of angel existence, the Fen apparently knew their protectors. A small group of them watched impassively from a grove of trees. All males, they carried spears, and had their hair adorned with more beads and long leaves twisted into ornamentation. They looked like wood spirits. Long blue and red streaks marked their faces and bare chests. From their ordered phalanx, it was obviously a tribal council of some kind.
Closing her eyes, she used force of will alone to slam down her filters. Getting torn open from the inside wasn't going to help Dante. With tremendous effort, she managed the magic and gradually the filters shut out the worst of it. Not wanting to do so, but testing herself, she looked toward him again. This time she noticed the beads embellishing Dante's torment were more delicately carved. Her gaze roved over the items, compared them to what was on the Fen males, and the terrible significance came to her. What hung on Dante belonged to females. Or had belonged to them. He'd said female blood was best for his magic. The Fen had turned him into a shrine to their murdered wives, sisters, daughters and mothers. Oh, Goddess. How many? And did she want to know?
Getting a nod from Mina, indicating Alexis was back in control, Jonah stepped forward. "Thank you for hearing our petition. We are angels," he said formally. "We protect the Earth, and other parts of our Lady's universe."
"We are the Bentigo. We protect the Fen." Seneth pulled his attention from Lex, nodded. "We know you as beings of worth and truth. Your presence is welcome here." His gaze shifted to Mina. "The witch's power is not as clear, but as she is your ally, we accept her presence."
On a normal day, Alexis knew Mina would have a retort to that, but underscoring the seriousness of the situation, she remained still and silent. Seneth looked at Alexis again, more closely.
"The innocent is your daughter."
"She is." Jonah inclined his head, acknowledging the Bentigo's intuition.
"She is lucky to be alive after exposure to this creature. He has taken sixty-two females of the Fen tribe over the past ten years."
Holy Goddess. Alexis fought to keep her face impassive, but her hands closed into tight balls at her side. A muscle flexed in Jonah's jaw, but he said nothing as Seneth continued.
"After we caught one of his foul minions, we determined it was this creature"--Seneth jerked his head toward Dante--"sending his slaves here to take the females. We could not find the rift in order to guard it, for it seemed to move each time it was opened. We also do not know what he was doing with them. But when their life essences disappeared, we knew they were dead to us."
"Did you ask him what became of them?"
Seneth looked over his shoulder briefly, his lip curling back in distaste. "We cast a Translation Spell that forces him to hear the accusations of the Fen and ourselves in language he understands. But he has not been conscious until now. When we brought him to this world, he escaped our netting. He killed several of us, and there would have been more if we'd not caught him from behind, flown him off a cliff. The drop knocked him insensible, and the deep waters below held him. He could not float, so we kept him there, below the water, bound until now. But he is a magical, dangerous creature, and we do not know his weaknesses. He is bound physically and by what magic we know. So we have not yet asked him anything."
So the collar was inert. Despite her chagrin at their losses, Alexis realized that fact with some sense of relief. Mina had said she'd only set up the protection for humans and one merangel, so the Fen and Bentigo were not included in its scope. And perhaps it only worked on Earth. The magic must have been complex for it to have such a narrow scope. Or, as Mina had implied, her intent was not to make him defenseless, but to give innocents protection.
Seneth returned his attention to Jonah. "The population on the Fen world is small. The attacks were concentrated on this particular tribe. Its female population has been depleted significantly."
The Dark Ones had likely focused on this area because the rift he'd created was here, and they would not want to linger long. Forcing herself to think it through, Lex realized the Bentigo must have the same challenge the angels did. Because of their abundance of Light energy, they couldn't enter the Dark One world in pure angel form. An angel like her father would be consumed within minutes, like a person in a vat of acid. She had survived only because of the protections Dante had put upon her. Using the blood of these females.
Her heart sank further, but she refused to accept defeat. Managing Dante's internal inferno, she opened up another thread toward the Fen, and found a different form of burning hell in the chief who headed up the council. He'd lost two daughters and their mother to Dante. The rage and grief boiling inside of him made her falter, drop closer to the ground. She realized David had moved in to support her on her opposite side, since her flagging energy was making her more difficult for Mina to hold up.
It wasn't just her energy weighing her down, though. She was going to lose here.
"My daughter saw what happened to one of the Fen." Jonah turned, then met her gaze. "Alexis."
Oh, Goddess. Don't do this, Pyel. But his gaze was relentless, demanding she speak. He loved her, yes. But he would never hide truth, or let her do it, either.
The Fen's fury and despair, Dante's barely leashed madness and the Bentigo's piercing regard and heavy weight of expectations nearly overwhelmed her anew. Goddess, this was why her gift could be difficult. To outward appearances she often looked like a drooling, weak idiot, because the battle she fought was in her head. She couldn't afford to be drowned like a tree standing before a cracked dam.
It is your gift. Your weapon. Yours to wield, given to you by those who understand you were the proper one to have it. It is yours.
Startled, she glanced into
the unusual bicolored eyes of the witch. She'd not realized the witch could speak directly to her mind. Mina made an impatient face. If you love him, prove to us why he is worth saving. Or have you changed your mind? Do you think it might be best to let him go, seeing all of these arrayed against him, including those you love? He killed sixty-two females. Do they not deserve justice?
Lex looked at David and Marcellus, as well as Jonah, then came back to Mina. The witch cocked her head. They are who they are for a reason. They know the difference between good and evil, and they are not often wrong, because the understanding of it is part of their blood. But it is also part of yours.
She knew Mina was right. Her angel blood had supported and strengthened her gift, eventually helped her learn which souls were beyond her gift, condemned to the consequences of their actions, nothing else capable of changing their dark course. Her gaze turned unwillingly to Dante.
He wasn't speaking. While he knew she was there, he'd immolated himself in his rage. Feeling its breadth and scope, she now feared she'd only seen it on a small scale.
She'd never had to stretch her gift as she had with Dante, reach past his actions and thought to find what was redeemable in his soul. But justice and redemption were closely linked, she knew. Her father's closest friend was the Lord of Hell, after all.
Dante had walked his dark path in isolation for decades, and he'd gone farther down it than anyone she'd ever encountered. Her father and the others wanted her to believe the spark she sensed in him was the effect of her own light wrapping around the weak flicker of his. But in the Dark One world, surrounded by hopeless desolation, violence and fear, he'd protected her in the end.
Not just because she was his key to escape. Not just because he considered her a possession, and in his world every possession required violence to keep, though in his mind he would likely think of it that way. He didn't yet have the internal lens to see anything different about himself. That was why he had her. She had seen and felt something different from him, in the very first dream they'd shared.
No, the angels were not often wrong. Looking at Mina, she remembered many of the angels had once felt she should be destroyed for her Dark One blood. Later, Mina herself had said they weren't entirely wrong, for the Dark One blood had been very strong in her, and all that held her from a decision to embrace it was her own will. A choice, made against all other forces in the world, and there'd been a point where it could easily have gone the other way. If it hadn't been for David's belief in her.
