Darkest Knight (20 page)

Most everyone wore armor. Cloaked figures trudged in and out of stalls that appeared to sell a variety of handmade goods from clothing to tools, herbs, potions and what I guess could be food, though I wasn’t sure. Demons walked out in the open, as did fallen angels and gargoyles. This was a city of miscreants.

“Is this hell?” I asked Barachiel.

“In a matter of speaking, though its citizens are very much alive,” he said. “You can see why I don’t come here.”

“It’s quite…medieval,” I said.

“Some things never change.” He turned around slowly and made a wide sweep with his hand. “As you can see, we fit right in.”

I zeroed in on a display in one of the stalls, but my eyesight wasn’t cooperating. What was happening to me?

I blinked and refocused. It didn’t help. I sniffed the air. Hay, animal droppings, dirt, but nothing out of the ordinary. My senses weren’t working.

“Barachiel,” I whispered. “My abilities. They…they’re not working.”

He scowled. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s like my senses are muffled. My eyes, my sense of smell, they’re…normal.”

He nodded slowly. “I believe I know why.”

“What?”

“Humans are powerless here. They serve the dark ones. Your abilities have been stripped from you so that you may be a better slave.”

“Slave?” Panic gripped me. “I’m no one’s slave, not now and not ever.”

“Of course you’re not,” Barachiel soothed. “I’m just explaining how it works here. Humans do not normally have supernatural powers. The knights may be different in that respect, but you’re still human.”

I glanced at Aydin and he shook his head. He held up his claws to look at them, front and back. I think he was trying to tell me his abilities weren’t working, either.

“Look at Aydin,” I said. “He’s not human, yet he can’t become invisible.”

“Ah, but he
is
human at his core. That’s the difference.”

Damn it. Now what? Without our abilities, we were helpless as kittens. At least Aydin still had his strength. All I had was my knife and a few charms that wouldn’t work for me.

He flattened his palms against his chest. “I’m unaffected and can watch out for you both.”

I appreciated his reassurance, but it was a struggle to smile. My abilities were gone and I felt…exposed. I’d have to rely solely on my smarts and my knife skills. Aydin’s brute strength and wing power would have to be enough. And there was something else: he and I now had no way to communicate.

“Though I’m mostly a stranger here, I know my way around.” Barachiel held my hand gently between his. “I’ll guide you.”

I wanted to ask where he’d been for the past twenty-six years. Who knew what can of worms that question would open, so I shelved it for now. I hoped we’d have time to catch up later.

“This is one village among dozens,” he said. “It is the largest and is called Yngvar.”

I knew of Yngvar, at least in human terms. It was the Scandinavian name for a fertility war god. A fitting village for Pharzuph, considering the type of fallen angel he was.

The three of us left the road to gather behind a village structure that reminded me of the old chapel in the Lebanese monastery where I grew up. This village, and possibly the entire realm, was a conglomeration of cultures with one thing in common: destitution.

I clung to Aydin and he draped a furry arm protectively around my shoulders. He pulled me close, letting me know in his own way that he loved me. I so needed that right now.

Though my eyesight wasn’t nearly as good as I was used to, my power of observation hadn’t wavered. I studied the people moving about their daily chores, buying and trading goods, cooking over open fires, haggling over purchases and arguing. Lots of arguing. No one appeared content and they all seemed to have issues with one another. Perhaps that’s what made
their
world go round. The three of us may blend with the populace in appearance, but our congenial attitudes had us sticking out like flowers in the weeds. We’d have to get out of here before we drew attention to ourselves.

I was about to say just that when my practiced eye spotted a familiar vagrant in one of the food stalls. She wasn’t dressed in the typical peasant attire, though she appeared as dirty as the rest of them. Her razor-cut white hair was what tipped me off. Xenia.

I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from shouting her name.

Barachiel spun me around to look at him. “What is it? What did you see?”

“The kidnapped girl we’re looking for,” I whispered. “She’s in that stall buying bread or something. It’s Xenia.”

He scowled and nodded. “Do not be alarmed with what I’m about to do.”

Which of course made me anxious. “What
are
you going to do?”

“Bring her to you.” He turned and went over to the stall, where Xenia was having a heated debate with the cook. His forceful strides made him appear menacing and Xenia’s head jerked up at his approach. Her eyes widened and she stiffened as if recognizing who he was. Or what he was. Fallen angels were obviously not new to her, at least not anymore.

Thanks to my lousy human hearing, I couldn’t hear what was said, but I saw her cower when Barachiel grabbed her arm and jerked her away from the cook. The man she’d been talking to acted like nothing had happened. He went right back to flinging globs of dough onto a hot iron and verbally sparring with the next person in line.

When Xenia spotted me, her face contorted in a mix of shock and relief. She struggled to free herself, then halted the second her gaze landed on Aydin. She looked between the three of us and her face fell, her brows tilted with worry, and she turned to pull away in the opposite direction. Barachiel grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and pushed her toward me.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Xenia asked, voice shaking. “And with them? I thought you’d come to rescue me, but now I see you’re on her side.”

“I’m here to take you home, Xenia.” I studied her from head to toe. There were bruises on her bare arms, a cut on her cheekbone and her scraped knees showed through her torn jeans. She’d been beaten. “Who did this to you?”

Xenia clamped her mouth shut as she scorched me with a hateful glare.

“The only side I’m on is the Hatchet knights’,” I told her. “All of us are. This fallen angel is my father, Barachiel. He came to help, and so did Aydin.”

Xenia spit on the ground by Barachiel’s feet. “The Fallen. I know what
you
are.”

I grabbed her away from my father and clamped my hands roughly to her shoulders. “You know nothing.” I’d had all I was going to take from this girl and gave her a firm shake. “You’re a thief and a liar. Don’t presume anything! Mistakes like that can get you killed.”

Aydin laid a paw on my shoulder and I slid him a sideways glance. He slowly shook his head and I lightened my grip.

Her eyes filled and a tear dripped off the lashes of one lower eyelid. She snuffled loudly, but whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” But I caught a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. Was she that confused?

My heart reached out to her. How could I stay angry with this girl? She had screwed up and suffered consequences I wouldn’t wish on anyone, least of all a sister knight. Now we had to get her home. But first I needed to know what she’d done with Shojin’s heart. “Where is it, Xenia?”

She lowered her eyes to stare at the clumps of dry mud around her feet. “I sold it.”

My heart dived to the pit of my stomach. “All of it? Even the heart?”

She gazed into my eyes and scowled. “Heart? What heart?”

I huffed in exasperation. “The bright purple stone I buried under the tree. You took it, remember? Whom did you sell it to?”

Xenia shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I growled and lunged at her, but Aydin curled a furry arm around my waist and hauled me off my feet. My fingers tore at the air inches away from Xenia’s face. I could have scratched her eyes out right then. She ducked away from me and Barachiel got hold of her again.

At least now we blended in with the rest of the snarling riffraff fighting in the streets. No one gave us a second glance.

“Stop lying!” I screamed at Xenia.

“I swear I’m telling the truth!”

I relaxed, but only for a minute. “Then who took it? And where is it now?”

“I don’t know.”

The heart was gone. My final hope for a future with Aydin was gone.

“Do you wish to cross back now that you have the girl?” Barachiel asked me.

I gritted my teeth as I stared at Xenia. I had to redirect my rage at who was really responsible for the hell we were going through right now. Perhaps it was Maria who’d stolen the heart. After all, she was there the night I reburied it. She could have been watching me before I ventured beyond the safety of Halo Home’s wards. She could have unburied the heart and taken it while I was mind-linked with Aydin, just before she nearly suffocated me to death.

“Maria has the heart,” I told Barachiel, and explained my reason for thinking so. “I have to get it back. And she’s going down when I do.”

My father’s mouth softened slightly with the beginning of a smile. I think he approved of my plan.

“Xenia,” I said. “Take us to Maria’s lair.”

Xenia swallowed and her pleading gaze jumped between the three of us. “Don’t make me go back there. The dark ones. They’ll hurt me again.”

“We won’t let them touch you,” I told her.

“You don’t understand,” Xenia said. “There are at least a dozen fallen angels with her and one of them is her father.” She flicked a frightened look at Barachiel. “And there are women there, too.”

I frowned. “Human women?”

She nodded. “They’re very chummy with the Fallen. Paired up. They, um…” Looking embarrassed, she said, “They make out a lot.”

None of this sounded right. Fallen angels paired up with human women? It couldn’t get more wrong than that.

“Who are they?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve never been introduced. But you know what’s really scary?”

I waited for her to answer her own question.

“They’re pregnant.”

twenty-one

I FELT SUDDENLY NUMB. THE SPAWN OF
THESE
fallen angels would have powers like the Hatchet knights.

Barachiel shook his head. “This can’t be. The Fallen are unable to father children.”

“Which means they hadn’t yet fallen when they took their mates,” I said.

“So they were Arelim as I had been.” Barachiel’s eyebrows tilted in a worried frown. “No ordinary human woman can bear the child of an angel. They must either be a Hatchet knight, or one who can speak with the Arelim.”

“Angel whisperers,” I said. Just like our squires. And more to the point, just like Xenia. That must be why Maria had kidnapped her. But why her and not the others?

“Xenia,” I said, smoothing away the steel edge from my voice, or at least trying to. “I remember you telling me you were special, better than the other squires. Where did that come from?”

She blinked and darted her gaze left to right. “It’s what I was told.”

“By whom?” I asked.

She bit her bottom lip and winced. “An angel. He didn’t tell me his name and I thought he was my chosen guardian, the one I’d be introduced to on my birthday. He said I was destined for something better than the Hatchet knights.”

Damn. He couldn’t have been one of
our
Arelim angels and he obviously acted on Maria’s behalf. She could be gearing up to start a new order of knights on her own.

Xenia’s eyes filled with tears again. “He acted like he understood what I was going through. He knew I was motherless, that I’d had a tough life growing up, and he sympathized with my fears. He made me feel like I mattered.”

“How did Maria get you to go with her?” Barachiel asked.

“She promised me a better life and a husband who wouldn’t leave me or my baby. She said I’d be treated like a queen.”

Brilliant. Maria had used the guardian-as-mate card to play Xenia. Girls groomed to be squires knew they’d lose their guardian the minute they conceived. He would either become human or fall. The Fallen were forced apart from their knights, but this new order apparently allowed them to stay together.

“Maria found me after I’d sold all the charms I’d stolen from you. She brought me through the veil,” Xenia said. “I hate it here and I’m treated like anything but a queen. She’s made me her slave.”

To say I was furious at this point would be an understatement. My ears burned and the pulse in my neck beat hard enough to make my entire body shake.

“Calm yourself,” Barachiel told me.

I clenched my jaw and heaved in deep breaths. Maria wouldn’t get away with this. I’d die before letting her use and abuse more girls like she had Xenia.

“I take it you’re in the village running errands for Maria?” I asked.

Xenia nodded. “I was sent for supplies.”

I focused on regaining control of my temper so that I could think more clearly. Maria knew I’d come here. She had taunted me to get my attention and as soon as we arrived, I conveniently ran into Xenia on the street. Convenience, my ass. I’d been set up.

I wasn’t about to change my plan. We would still go to Maria’s lair, but we’d be more prepared than she expected. She didn’t know I had a fallen angel on my side, too.

“Xenia, did you get a chance to talk to the other women?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “They were off-limits to me, but I caught a glimpse of them when I walked by the big room where they’d all get together and, um…you know.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “You mean an orgy?”

She nodded.

I hated to ask this next question, but I had to know if these women were being held against their will. “Did they act like they enjoyed it?”

“Chalice!” Barachiel’s widened eyes made him look like a shocked dad.

“We have to know if they’re prisoners or willing participants,” I said. “It’s not for my own interest. Sheesh. I’m not a pervert.”

“I didn’t watch, so I wouldn’t know. Besides, what difference does it make?” Xenia asked.

“Because we need to get them out of there.” These women were carrying the children of Arelim angels. Those babies were related to the Hatchet knights, and that made them our family. “I want to take them home. With us.”

Aydin threw up his paws and began to pace. I guessed he wasn’t too keen on that idea.

“It’s not like we can click our heels together and chant, ‘There’s no place like home,’” Xenia said. “We’re stuck here. There’s no way back.”

Of course there was a way back. I pulled Maria’s fallen angel feathers from my knapsack. “If Maria can cross back and forth, so can we.”

“You only have three feathers,” Xenia said.

Barachiel spread his wings. “I have plenty more.”

“How many fallen angels are with her?” I asked.

She squinted, appearing to mentally calculate her answer. “Ten. Maybe eleven. I know Maria’s father is one of them, but he hasn’t been around.”

There’s no way we could stand up to a small army of immortal fallen angels. We would have to return with reinforcements to take the women away. It was time to scope out Maria’s crystal cave and see what we were up against. And then I would find where she had stashed Shojin’s heart.

After Xenia collected her supplies, she led us out of the village. The four of us looked like the little troupe from
Wizard of Oz,
minus Toto. The road wasn’t paved with yellow bricks, but made of dirt, and it took us through a maze of towering rock formations and a forest of creepy trees. The trees moved and it wasn’t the wind that thrashed their branches. Their bark rippled and they seemed to strain against the roots holding them in place.

“Don’t get too close,” Barachiel warned. “The trees are carnivorous.”

“No one has to tell me twice,” Xenia said, shoving herself closer to me. “Maria warned me not to touch them. Now I know why.”

A leafless branch shot up to snag a bird that looked like a crow, but it had no beak. In fact, it appeared to have a human face, though I couldn’t be sure. I was starting to miss my super senses. I felt blind without them.

Aydin took the lead as we walked, with Xenia a pace or two behind him and well out of earshot. I thought it a good opportunity to chat with my long-lost father. “Where have you been all this time?”

Barachiel shrugged and hesitated too long before answering, “Not a place you’d know.”

I realized the human realm wasn’t the only world that supported life. If there were three veils, why not four? Or five? “Another veil?” I asked.

“No.” He heaved in a breath and let it slowly out his mouth. “Another dimension.”

I nodded, remembering what Gus had told me. “I know of the fourth dimension, but I’ve never been there.”

He raised his eyebrows as he turned his head to look at me. “You never cease to amaze me.”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “I haven’t been a knight for long, but I was involved with charms and curses for over a decade. So I’ve been around the supernatural block a few times.”

He nodded. “Indeed you have.”

“What were you doing in the fourth dimension?”

“Perfecting my magic.”

It wasn’t that long ago that I detested anything having to do with magic. But with Aydin’s help I’d come to finally accept it as a natural part of my life. There was good magic and bad. I’d seen plenty of bad, but good? Not so much.

“What kind of magic?” I asked, worried how he would answer. I couldn’t handle it if he practiced the dark stuff like Gavin, who was all about greed and power. Barachiel didn’t seem the type, but I didn’t really know him yet.

“It’s nothing evil, Chalice. Not much different from what the Arelim practice. But some of my defensive magic can be lethal, which is why I’m perfecting it. Putting my own spin on it, so to speak.”

“Why?”

“Magic has always been a part of who I am.”

I could see where this was going. “And that’s why you didn’t want to stay with my mother. You didn’t want to become human and lose your powers.”

“Partly, yes. But Chalice, even though your mother and I respected each other and I cared very much for her, we were never in love.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated as if searching for the right words. “I didn’t abandon her. She and I both agreed that my leaving would be best for all of us, including you.”

I sighed. I supposed he was right, but I couldn’t help remembering back to how badly I’d wanted the American dream. A mom and dad, brothers and sisters, a house with a garden, a real school with friends… But that life was never meant for me. I’d been forced to make the most of what I had.

“There’s another reason, too,” he said. “I do not ever want to die.”

I hadn’t thought about the immortality angle. “Does death bother you that much?”

“I may be an angel, but we don’t know everything. The Arelim are the lowest order of angel, just above the Fallen, so I was never privileged with the knowledge of such a divine mystery as death.”

My mind still tried to wrap itself around the whole immortality thing. “If angels can’t die, how will we get rid of Maria’s horde or coven or whatever the hell they are?”

Barachiel twitched his eyebrows. “Angels can be banished.”

That was an unfamiliar concept for me. “Really?”

“It rarely happens and very few know how to do it.”

“Have you ever banished anyone?”

“Never had a reason to, but I know how it’s done. The spell for banishment is linked to what I did at the fatherhouse the night you summoned me.”

That was the night he stopped time so that I could escape. I’d never forget the image of Shui frozen in midflight about two feet off the ground.

“The spell connected to that one will banish an angel to an area of the fourth dimension that does not move.”

“Doesn’t
move?
” That made no sense.

“It’s difficult to explain.” Barachiel narrowed his eyes and used his hands to form a cocoon like the one he had made around the horn. “It’s a pocket of time that goes neither forward nor backward. It acts as a prison of sorts.”

“Inertia.” Though my knowledge of quantum physics was a bit fuzzy, I knew the fourth dimension had something to do with time and space. So what he just said
did
make sense, but from a magic point of view.

“Is it permanent?” I asked.

“I believe so, but I’m not certain.”

I wondered how many angels had been banished there and what crimes had caused their punishment. It was comforting to know that if bad angels couldn’t be killed, at least they could be contained.

Xenia stopped and pointed to a large hill up ahead. “The crystal cave is in there.”

The four of us huddled behind an outcropping of rocks on the opposite side of the road. I watched Aydin, whose nostrils flared as he sought out a scent. I knew what he was looking for.

“Is it here?” I asked him.

He hung his head and wagged it from side to side.

My shoulders slumped in defeat. Maria could have hidden the heart anywhere, including the human realm. We might end up searching right back where we started.

I wished I could see through the thick rocks that encompassed the cave. I also wished I could have a conversation with Aydin to discuss my plan. The only option left at this point was to scope out the cave and spy on the women being kept there. I could take that information home to share with the Arelim. They would know what to do.

“I’m going in,” I told the others as I slid my balisong from the sheath on my back. “This won’t take long.”

“No!” Xenia grabbed my arm. “Let me go first. They’re expecting me. Maybe I can distract Maria while you find a way to sneak inside.”

“Maria expects her back anyway,” Barachiel said. “It makes sense.”

Aydin slapped a hand against his chest.

“You want to go with me?” I asked him.

He nodded and, after a minute’s hesitation, Barachiel nodded, too. I appreciated how protective they were, but I’d been in far worse situations than this. They shouldn’t worry so much.

“You’ll stand watch for us then?” I asked my father, and he nodded again.

Xenia stepped away from us and strode with confidence toward the cave entrance. She didn’t look one bit worried, her back straight and head held high. It contradicted the frightened girl we’d confronted only an hour ago. I gave a mental headshake. Xenia was an oddity that I doubted I would ever figure out.

Aydin and I crossed the road to get closer to the cave, using the tall rock formations to shield us from view. I guessed about a hundred yards lay between us and the front entrance, where Xenia had already disappeared. I searched for a back entry and found a small opening on the side of the hill. Peering inside, I was shocked at how dark it was. I never imagined I could be so visually impaired.

“Can you see?” I whispered to Aydin.

He nodded. I wasn’t surprised. Gargoyles had excellent night vision.

I held on to his tail as he stealthily moved up ahead. I stumbled over a rock in my path and Aydin reached back to steady me. We wound through a narrow tunnel that led deep into the hill and I hoped it ended inside the cave. Anxiety seeped through my skin and crawled around the pit of my stomach. Was this how it felt to be claustrophobic? A faint light shone ahead and I wheezed out a relieved breath.