AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I scowled at him. “News flash. Those featherheads were planning to rip our faces off. We had to do something to defend ourselves. Plus they’re going to regenerate themselves anyhow. No big deal.”
Sterling scowled back at me. “No big deal. Sure. Just like that huge, flaming sword in your hands is no big deal.”
I stared dumbly down at the thing, frowning. “I don’t know how to turn it off.”
“Well, figure it out. It’s like a torch, it is. Bad enough for you to attract human attention with it, I’m sure this whole city will be crawling with angels who want it back. Oh, and to take revenge for that bigger angel you beheaded.”
I waved the sword around uselessly. “You took out four of them! I just killed the one.”
I knew from experience that slain angel vessels stuck around just long enough to hopefully inflict their killers with a sense of remorse, being so realistically close to human, at least closer than the husks that the demons liked to use. And it worked, too. That pang of guilt that washed over me when I deactivated Raguel’s husk had been almost overwhelming.
Still, just like the demons, the husks would eventually break down and return to their home dimensions. That was the one good thing about fighting angels instead of demons. Their corpses didn’t recede into stinking sludge as they decayed, instead turning into wisps of glitter and motes of light as they ascended and returned to the celestial realm.
Sterling’s eyes burned the same hot orange as the ember on his cigarette, the flame and the motes of angel dust reflecting in them as he took a long, thoughtful puff. “I don’t know how many more times I’m supposed to explain this to you. I killed some entry-level grunts. You killed a supervisor. The board isn’t going to be very happy.”
He was right about that. I tried not to make it too obvious when I gulped. Great. Just another problem to add to this whole mess of Florian going missing.
“Forget about that for now,” I said. “We still have to find Florian, and I don’t know where to start. Why the hell is it so easy for demon princes to find you, and now that I want to find Belphegor, it’s so – what is it? What the hell are you staring at?”
Sterling was gazing just past my head, his eyes huge, his cigarette still burning, but mostly forgotten. In a distant voice, he spoke. “I don’t think we have to look very far.”
Slowly, I turned on my feet to check out what exactly had Sterling at a rare loss for words. I looked up, and up, and up, and my heart fell into my stomach.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I heard myself mutter.
Forget the arcane underground, and forget the Veil that every magical person and supernatural being quietly agreed to uphold, despite all our differences and brittle allegiances. Belphegor obviously had no intention of keeping things subtle on his end.
Growing up along the side of every visible building in Valero, creeping across the streets like a carpet were flowers as blood-red as every plant in Belphegor’s Crimson Gardens. They wavered slo
wly, as if in a gentle breeze, their petals glistening like they’d only just fed on blood. Even as Sterling and I watched, more and more of the flowers grew, sprouting from bare earth, from cracks in the street, blossoming from vines and tendrils that curled up and around lampposts.
There was once a druid by the name of Deirdre Calloway, a mad cult leader whose dream was to choke the planet with an overgrowth of nature so violent that it would bring buildings crumbling down, rip out modern infrastructure, and revert the earth to a low-tech state, the perfect scenario for her and her crazed nature-worshipping servants. Lucky for Valero and the rest of the world, Deirdre never came even close to succeeding, because the boys of the Boneyard abducted the magical battery she was hoping to abuse to accomplish her insane task. That battery was codenamed the Genesis Codex. Sterling and the others discovered that night that the Codex was not, in fact, an artifact, but a boy named Asher Mayhew, a necromancer, one of my closest and only friends in the entire world.
This thing Belphegor was trying looked far too much like the overgrowth the druid was planning to pull off, but it all felt so much more sinister. It was clear that the flowers weren’t moving in some silent breeze. I knew from the start that they were doing that on their own, made mobile and carnivorous just like all the other horrible, corrupt creations of Belphegor’s witches and their – ugh – their hagriculture. So that had been the plan all along, to groom Florian to the height of his power, then use him for this. But what was this, exactly? What were the flowers for?
“We need backup,” Sterling grunted. “Fast. I’ll alert the Boneyard. This isn’t a job for two people. You work with your contacts, anyone you can muster. This has to be stopped.”
I nodded at Sterling, my heart thumping as he stepped closer and clamped a strong, reassuring hand on my shoulder. “We might not see each other again tonight. This clusterfuck looks like it’s growing all over the city, and we have to tackle it on a large scale. But wherever you end up, know that I’m fighting with you. We all are.”
I nodded again. “Thanks,” I breathed.
“Always.” Sterling’s fingers dug into my clavicles, this time with more harshness than reassurance. “And Mason? Give Asher a fucking call, will you?”
Again I nodded, just in time to watch Sterling turn into a blur of silver and black, his vampire speed taking over as he sprinted off to summon the boys of the Boneyard.
For a scant few moments more, I stood there watching in horror as the grotesque carpet of bloody flowers continued to infest the city. In the distance, sirens and the panicked cries of the normals, of Valero’s civilian population, pierced the bizarre tranquility of the night.
The flames from the archangel’s sword had finally died down, receding enough to leave just its gleaming golden blade. At least I didn’t have to worry about being accosted for carrying around a weapon anymore. The authorities obviously had way bigger problems just then.
I searched through my pockets, my free hand shaking as it found the one thing that could possibly be more useful than a cellphone in my situation. My chest flooded with relief when my fingers brushed against the arrowhead that Artemis had once given me, what she’d explained was the best way for me to get in touch. I squeezed it, relishing how its sharp edges dug into my skin. The pain meant it was working.
Artemis’s voice echoed from a pale distance, tumbling around the inside of my head. “Hello? Mason? Is that you? I gave you this number in case of emergency. This had better be good.”
I answered her with my thoughts, hoping my tone would relay the gravity of our predicament.
“Oh, this is an emergency, all right. Florian’s in trouble. Demon prince levels of trouble.”
I heard a click in my head, just like Artemis had hung up, and a shaft of moonlight pierced the night sky, touching down on the asphalt not one foot away from me. She materialized in its spotlight, her forehead already furrowed, bow in one hand, arrow in the other.
