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Chapter Seven
Roldon
Being an angel had its perks.
Or, being almost-an-angel had some perks. Anthony explored the city of Tarramor, taking advantage of one of the first ‘tricks’ new angels got: inconspicuousness. Real—or full-fledged—angels could go anywhere in the mortal world and not be seen, touched, or affected by anyone or anything. He thought of it like a video game, the way the ‘gamemasters’ could walk around invisible to the players.
Unfortunately, whatever angelic abilities he called upon didn’t quite work as well in this alternate universe. He could not, for example, know the motivations of anyone he looked at here. Granted, he couldn’t exactly do that back home either… yet. He’d been given a limited ability in that regard. Specifically, if someone near him meant to harm Tammy (and now Paxton as well), he’d know it before they could act. He could probably tell if a person meant to attack his mother, too. However, she didn’t need as much protection.
Even Tammy no longer counted as helpless. Not that she’d ever been the sort of girl to scream and faint at the first sign of trouble, but compared to demons, dragons, and paranormal monsters, any plain, ordinary human counted as pretty much helpless.
It made him smile to think about her having the chance to enjoy a second childhood free from the mess they’d gone through as kids. Divorce was never a fun experience for the children involved, far less so when your mother’s a vampire and your father lost his mind with grief, then turned to dark magical arts to destroy his former wife.
Anthony didn’t really know why his father did that. Maybe he hadn’t been trying to kill mom as much as ‘save’ her from being a vampire. Whatever his motivations for starting, the darkness twisted his goals and ran away with him. He considered his father a victim of the dark masters more than anything. His shattered mind—unable to cope with ‘losing’ Mom—cracked like an egg under the pressure of temptation.
Few who start down the path that ultimately led to becoming a dark master survived it. His father emerged not exactly as a dark master but a weaker shadow of one. That the man hadn’t been entirely devoured by the process spoke to his having more willpower than most despite his broken heart.
Of course, after his physical death, his father’s soul had spent some time hiding inside Anthony himself... but that was another story. One that ended with his father leaving him for another version of Anthony. Weird as it was, it had been hard letting his father go.
Hope you’re okay, Pops. Wherever you are...
A quote Anthony saw somewhere a while ago said something to the effect of how a person cannot truly hate something without having loved it first. Despite the apparent animosity his father showed his mother for those years right after she turned into a vampire, he believed the man never really stopped loving her. He simply regarded Mom as not being Mom anymore, but rather a monster impersonating her.
Much the same way as Nesanth impersonated one of the nobles here.
His gut told him the dark master did not, in fact, cloud the mind of someone but had instead manifested physically. Demetria referred to her rival as a woman. Of the nobles, only two women stood in any sort of prominent positions: Sansha Galahir and Meritha Teredwyn. Meritha wasn’t the head of house Teredwyn, rather the cousin of Nielf. People around here—including Lindsey and Tammy—knew little of her.
Nothing gave any clues as to whether or not Nesanth had any qualms about taking on a male form. Since she knew Demetria had arrived in this realm trying to interfere with her plans, impersonating a man would complicate finding her. Of the two prominent women, only one—Sansha—had a direct path of access to the crown. Meritha, being a distant cousin to Nielf, had a much longer mountain of bodies to climb to the throne. It made her a less likely option due to the increased amount of work involved. Then again, a degree of separation served to reduce suspicion, so it might be exactly what Nesanth did.
Still, Anthony didn’t think it too likely the dark master they were chasing would take on a female form here and narrow down the potential suspect list to only two. Doing so would make the job of finding her significantly easier.
One thing working in his favor: he had a reasonably good feeling about Demetria.
Not that he considered her a wonderfully good person or anything. Rather, he had a strong degree of confidence she posed no threat to his family. The woman didn’t appear to extend the same concern to random citizens, alas. If killing a dozen innocent bystanders who happened to be in the way at the wrong time allowed her to beat Nesanth, she’d not hesitate.
The main reason he’d opted to separate from the others was to keep tabs on Demetria and protect the citizens of this place from her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use her desire to beat Nesanth as any sort of leverage to stop her from causing damage to the innocent. It’s not like Mom would follow through with any threat to pick up and leave without finding Nesanth if Demetria misbehaved. Nor could Anthony in good conscience leave Quentin to whatever fate awaited him if they moved too slowly.
Rather than leave her to her own devices, he’d convinced her to go with him. Since she had positioned herself as a wealthy noble—merely one without political influence—in the minds of the people here, her presence served as something of an ‘access card.’ A random citizen could not simply walk up and talk to the nobility, much the same way the average citizen back home couldn’t show up unannounced on a celebrity’s doorstep and expect a cordial invitation inside to chat over tea.
Another little trick angels have under their sleeves allows them to rapidly go from place to place, similar to teleportation The guardians used it most often, blipping instantly from home to workplace rather than riding in cars with their charge. While Anthony didn’t fully have such abilities yet, he found he could greatly speed up going places by thinking about being there already. It felt less like his mother’s teleportation where the scenery around them changed in an instant. For him, he’d start walking somewhere and a trip of two miles would feel more like he’d only gone two blocks, the intermediate distance lost in a blur.
Using this little trick, they visited the estates of all the noble houses, though didn’t go inside. The nature of his power, in fact his very presence, appeared to put Demetria on edge. Each time he ‘shortcut’ the distance to a new destination, she made faces as if carsick. The woman knew, or at least suspected, his true nature. That a physically manifested dark master tolerated working side-by-side with a boy infused with angelic energy spoke volumes. Exactly what it spoke volumes about remained something of a grey area. This woman either really, really loved spiting Nesanth, or she put up with extreme discomfort in order to save however many million people lived in this world from ceasing to exist.
It reminded him of how his mother used to deal with gallons of sunscreen to brave the daytime and bring him and Tammy to school when they were little. He had no way to know exactly how painful sunlight had been for her at the time, but it couldn’t have been pleasant. Demetria’s desire to stop Nesanth had to come close to how much his mother loved her children. Granted, bringing kids to school didn’t carry the same cataclysmic weight as the potential destruction of an entire reality. A woman like Demetria might be willing to put up with a bit of discomfort to stop a world from imploding.
As expected, none of the places felt evil. Back home, he’d likely have been able to ferret out a dark master by sensing their presence. Here, when the dark master happened to be attached like a parasite to the mind of the world’s creator, the rules didn’t work the same way. If the world he considered ‘real’ and normal back home happened to be the creation of some screenwriter from another dimension, the same thing would likely hold true. Granted, dark masters originated in his world, so if his reality was the product of a mortal creator, none of their creations—meaning dark masters—could affect the creators of that world.
It would be like a character in this world summoning an undead monster and sending it to attack Quentin in the other world. The same energies that prevented the creator of a world from physically traveling to it would get in the way.
Once Anthony determined he wouldn’t be able to find Nesanth like an angelic metal detector at the beach, he decided to pay a visit to House Barathor. A short walk down a side street led to the main thoroughfare cutting through the center of the city. They’d covered a little over a mile in what amounted to just a 100-foot alley.
Demetria stumbled slightly as she stepped out onto the large street. It took her mere seconds to regain her ‘I am queen of this realm’ demeanor. No one reacted to their sudden appearance, which didn’t surprise Anthony. After all, he chose not to be present in the thoughts of those around him. It probably worked, but even if it didn’t, Demetria appeared to possess similar powers. To Anthony, she was like a vampire of old Hollywood lore, the sort of being who could mesmerize an entire town full of peasants and bend them to her will. Forcing mortals around her to not notice her presence was likely a triviality.
“Would it be better for me to speak with him?” asked Anthony as they approached the gate.
Demetria snapped a fan open and waved it at her face. “I do not think so. He wouldn’t know who you are. Let me do the talking.”
Anthony smiled, having expected—and hoped for—that answer. Much better he observed without having to think too much about pretending to be part of this world. Effort needed to blend in would distract him from picking up any subtle cues he might be looking for.
