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They’d find him. Until then, I had to sit tight. He’d let me know the minute he heard back.
I paced the edge of the room, my hands clasped behind my back. My father had confiscated Psyche's Urn to resume his studies. Without the powerful object in my arms, I felt weak and insignificant. As if it would’ve allowed me to rescue Gabe. My partner. My love.
But Luke was right. We didn’t know why the ferals were after the box. It could’ve been a fluke. After all, he had dozens of ancient artifacts scattered throughout his office. Maybe, they went after the wrong thing. It could be just a useless wooden box. No hidden powers, no secret meaning.
Still, my gut said otherwise. There was something fishy about that box. From the moment we’d plucked it off the priest, I’d had a strange feeling about it. And if it had been the true target of the ferals, they obviously didn’t want us to have it. But instead of carting off the magical item, they’d carted off my angel warrior. My stomach clenched at the thought. I hoped that wherever he was, he was safe.
“People, please,” Luke called out from the other side of the room, raising his hands for silence. “We’ve had an update.”
I raced forward to hear. A forbidden hope welled up inside me, wishing for Gabe’s immediate rescue. But that hope was soon squashed as Luke gave me a somber frown and shook his head slightly.
“We’ve had word from our scouts,” he said to the crowd. A dozen or so heads bobbed in anticipation. “A feral army has amassed in the East. At least five hundred, from what they could see. They’re five miles out from our borders.”
Chaos broke out among the Nephilim. Children cried and angry shouts pierced the air. Luke waved his hand again as the mass of people pushed forward, their questions peppering him with expectations.
“What are we doing to protect ourselves?”
“Are they moving to strike?”
“How did they cross the protections of the manor?”
“How could you have let this happen?”
“People, please.” Luke stretched to his highest height.
He wasn’t a man used to bellowing across the room, so the noise of the crowd swallowed him whole. With a defeated shake of his head, he turned to Esther, who stood beside him, and grimaced.
“This isn’t his fault!” Heads began to turn in my direction before I even realized it had been me who’d yelled.
Swallowing down the bile that had risen to my throat, I coughed and ran a tongue over my dry lips. It wasn’t fair that Luke was getting all the grief. He couldn’t have stopped the ferals from gathering. None of us could. There were more powerful forces at work here.
“This was an attack from a Prince of Hell,” I said as the room went silent. “He was in those woods today, coordinating this ambush. He’s here. I saw him with my own eyes.”
A murmur passed through the crowd as a hundred pairs of eyes stared at me in disbelief. I cleared my throat and pressed forward. If I didn’t speak soon, I’d lose them.
“The Prince wants nothing more than to defeat the Nephilim and to take control of this Earth and the humans who live here. He’s been planning this for thousands of years. We should’ve known he wouldn’t stop. I should’ve known. We were warned.”
“Yes, you were warned.” A woman with stunningly beautiful dark skin and a closely shaved head raised her voice.
If I remembered right, her name was Jada. We hadn’t had the chance to do much more than nod hello when we passed in the halls.
“You were warned when the demons used you to open the gates to Hell,” she went on to say. “What is to keep them from using you again?”
Clenching my jaw, I hissed through my teeth. “They’ll never use me like that again. I didn’t know then that I could close the gate. But I know that now. And so do they. They won’t make that mistake again.”
She regarded me down the bridge of her nose for a full ten seconds before tilting her
head in approval.
“How did a Prince of Hell even get here?” another yelled out.
A quiver of anger shot through me. It was the same question that I had. “He must’ve slipped through when it was opened last year. He’s been biding his time over the months, building his army.”
It made sense the moment I said it aloud. Without his armies in Hell, the Prince had to be resourceful with the demons on Earth. He must’ve been hunting demons right alongside us, adding to his armies while we executed the stragglers.
I wanted to kick and scream my frustration. All that work we’d done this summer, all the senseless death, was like a drop in the bucket compared to the five hundred or so demons he had at his beck and call. No doubt, all of them had inhabited a human host, making them much stronger than the normal shell of a feral we fought in the woods. This fight would be brutal for all involved—including Gabe, if we didn’t find him soon.
Georgia and Ben weaved their way through the crowd toward us. Stricken frowns marred both of their faces. Gone was the regal stiffness I’d first seen in Gabe’s mom. The woman standing before me was hunched with worry, her eyes darting around the room.
