Celestial Storm Read online

  “Wait, that was you, too?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. We used to have links with someone on Purgatory, before they blew the place up.”

  “So it’s true?” I asked quietly. “Purgatory—the freaking inspector was there before it blew up. The celestials weren’t happy at all, last I heard.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Faye said.

  “Yes. You were framed for summoning a demon, weren’t you?”

  “I set up the site before then,” she said. “It was a hobby of mine when I was a guild employee. Maybe that’s why the enemy framed me, maybe not, but they needed a scapegoat.”

  “So they made it look like you opened a portal to hell on top of the guild.” It wasn’t until the former Inspector Angler, who was supposed to have died in the attack, showed up working for Lythocrax that I’d known for certain there was more to the incident than it’d seemed. He might be dead, but who knew how many others had been marked and paid with their lives?

  Faye nodded. “Yeah. I was temporarily at the guild between missions at the time. It wasn’t until later that I figured out the attack was an inside job, but I—”

  “Stopped it,” I finished. “You stopped it, and got framed in the process.”

  Her jaw clenched, and so did her fists. “Yes, I did. I never saw who opened the portal, but I can guess.”

  There was a long pause. I looked between her and Clover. “Rebel angels,” I said softly. “Rebel angels and their spies inside the guild itself. You know about them.”

  “Right.” Clover dipped her head. “The Divine Agents are mobilising.”

  2

  Fiona leaned forward, frowning. “Is nobody going to tell me who the Divine Agents are?”

  “Nobody knows exactly who they are,” said Faye. “I only heard the name when one of their spies let it slip after I caught him.”

  “You caught a spy?” I asked. “In the guild?”

  “No, on a demon realm,” she said. “I spend half my time in the nether realms these days, and let’s just say Earth isn’t the only realm the rebels are interested in. But we never knew the identities of any of the Divinities who betrayed their brethren. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that one or more of them might have already fallen.”

  “Lythocrax,” I said, turning to Clover. “You knew?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. I only had your report to go by, and until today, nobody else I know had ever heard his name. Did he tell you he was a spy when you confronted him?”

  “I ripped the information out of his head when I used Abyss’s ability to transform into him.” My skin prickled again, and the echo of his anger passed through me. “It would have been nice if someone had told me it was the Divine Agents who pushed him out of heaven and sent him after me.”

  “You’re saying the Divine Agents are—angels?” asked Fiona.

  “Aside from Lythocrax? Yes,” said Faye. “Clover and I have been trying to intercept their spies for years. They’re as active in the nether realms as they are in this one, so we should have figured out Lythocrax was one of them sooner, but he must have gone by a different name when he was divine. What did he tell you, Devi?”

  “A bunch of lies, mostly,” I said, not wanting to tell her about the fallen—children of the Divinities, now safely hidden on Lythocrax’s old realm. “The real info, I dragged out of his mind. He fell from heaven into hell on purpose, which is how I got this.” I held up my right wrist and its arrowhead mark.

  “Let me see that.” Faye approached me, leaning in to look at the mark. “It really is the inverse of your divine mark.”

  “I know,” I muttered, not at all in the mood to discuss what’d led it to manifest. “It’s all mine, and so is my soul, since he’s dead.”

  “But you weren’t the only one who might have developed a similar mark,” Faye said, taking her seat again. “This has been going on for at least four years. The incidents never seem to be linked, but there have been a lot more. A lot of the deaths in the field over the last decade could be traced back to him if any witnesses had survived.”

  A chill raced down my back. “How do you know?” You shouldn’t know. I’d thought I was alone, when the guild had let me walk away after my partner had died on that mission. Faye shouldn’t know that—but she shouldn’t know about the Divine Agents, either.

  “Clover and I have spent years searching for discrepancies in the guild’s mission records,” she said. “Unexplained deaths on missions, generally with no witnesses. I assume that because the blatant attack on the guild four years ago got a little too much publicity, they decided to use a subtler approach.”

  “The demon eggs.” My demon mark had first awakened—though it’d been invisible at the time—during a routine mission in which my partner Rory had died after handling saphor demon eggs had caused him to take in a rare and little-known magical parasite. Everyone knew about the virus now, but what they didn’t know was that Lythocrax had set both of us up with the help of an insider within the guild itself.

  “There could only be one champion of heaven, Devi. Your friend failed the test. One had to die so that the other could live… such are the rules of divine magic. It was nothing personal, Devi.”

  I shivered, raw hate curdling inside me. It wasn’t just me they’d tricked, but damn, did I wish I’d drawn out Lythocrax’s death.

  “I don’t get it,” Fiona said. “So Lythocrax activated your demon mark on purpose, but never showed his face? How were you supposed to know what to do with it?”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “The whole point was that I was never meant to find him, or know he existed. No one was.”

  “Exactly,” said Faye. “Until you confronted Lythocrax, we didn’t know any of the Divine Agents’ identities. Since he slaughtered everyone on Purgatory, we’re having to redo our whole strategy.”

  I frowned. “How the hell does Purgatory fit into this?”

  “Purgatory lies between this realm and heaven,” Faye said. “By killing heaven’s gate’s guards, the Divine Agents can slip in and out of heaven undetected.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “I thought you had spies there. How did you not guess the Divine Agents might try that?”

  “Devi, our attention was on the shadow realm at the time,” said Clover. “Until mere days ago, I assumed Lythocrax’s aim was to take the nether realms, not Earth.”

  “He wanted revenge more than anything.” My skin crawled at the memory of his twisted thoughts intertwining with mine. “I humiliated him badly when I sneaked up on him and forced him to hand me my magic back.” And I found out his true name. Not that it mattered. I’d killed him, and now his allies might show up on the doorstep any day now in the guise of angels. “He—he did all of it, though. The vampires’ king. Damian Greenwood—I bet he was the spy who set you up, Faye, if he was at the guild at the time. He’s dead, though. Might the guild still be compromised?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But my spies outnumber theirs, I guarantee it. Why do you think so many guild members jumped at the chance to help the vampires a few months ago? They took direction from me, as planned, via DivinityWatch.”

  “But do you have insiders in heaven?”

  “No. We get our info on heaven through Purgatory, and the guild. Now Purgatory is lost, though—we’re going to have to find a new strategy.”

  “I don’t get what you want me to do,” I said. “I’ve pretty much established I’m a free agent and don’t take direction from anyone. So you want, what, an alliance?”

  I was done making deals with demons, and I had enough on my hands with Nikolas wanting to take leadership of the warlocks. And then there were the fallen, who I’d saved from the shadow arch-demon, with the help of—

  I swore loudly and jumped to my feet. “Oh, damnation.”

  “What?” said Fiona.

  “The rogue Grade Four celestials.” I pointed at Faye. “You knew—you knew about them, too, right? They were upgraded on Purgatory…”

&nb
sp; “Yes,” she said, her mouth pinching. “They were.”

  “They’re following the Divine Agents,” I said. “That’s the real reason you asked to see me, isn’t it? You’re the only one—aside from Clover and whoever else you’re working with—who knows who upgraded the rogues’ celestial powers and sent them back to Earth.”

  “They don’t know a thing,” Faye said. “To my knowledge. They thought they were dealing with real angels. I think it’s possible to bring them back over to our side.”

  “They’re batshit insane,” I said. “Their leader is, anyway. You have way too much faith in me, considering you’ve never met me before.”

  “I told her you can do it,” said Clover.

  I tugged a hand through my tangled hair. “I’m one person. And every demon in the nether realms will be gunning for me when they find out what I did to Lythocrax.”

  “They won’t,” said Faye. “Lythocrax had few allies and even fewer friends—on the demons’ side at least. He spent most of the last few years isolated on his own realm, and the other demons never met him.”

  Maybe she was right. The celestial rogues, though… they were fanatics, too dangerous to allow to run around unsupervised. “You really think I can convince them? If the Divine Agents already have them, they’re lost.”

  “They aren’t lost,” she insisted. “Don’t forget you were meant to be the Divine Agents’ tool, too.”

  “They killed Rory.” Oops. I probably shouldn’t have shouted that part. Quieter, I said, “I wouldn’t go near the Divine Agents if they offered me a million pounds. They killed my best friend.”

  “I’m sorry, Devi.”

  I swallowed hard. My anger about Rory’s death had mostly been directed at the celestial guild, who’d dismissed my mission report, but I’d known rationally that the guild couldn’t have prevented his death. We hunted demons, people died. But now I knew the celestials had been partly responsible after all? Someone had to pay.

  I turned to Faye. “I’m going home. I’ll think about your offer, but I’m not making any promises. Are you in contact with the celestial rogues yourself?”

  “No,” said Faye. “But I hoped you might be able to introduce me.”

  Only if you take them off my hands.

  “First thing tomorrow,” I found myself saying. “I have zero confidence that they’ll listen to a word I say. I just want to clean this demon crap out of my hair and sleep. Deal?”

  The following morning, I cracked my eyes open to see Nikolas Castor lounging on the bed beside me. His dark red-tinted hair was damp as though he’d recently washed it, and he was fully clothed. “I was beginning to think you’d sleep the day away.”

  “Mmf,” I said into the pillow, and he smiled and tucked my hair over my shoulder, kissing the spot between my neck and my ear. I squirmed and rolled onto my back. “Divinities. How long was I out for?”

  “Fourteen hours at last count. You were dead to the world.”

  “Fiona’s probably sent a squad of vampires to check up on me.” I groaned when I remembered what I’d promised Faye yesterday, flinging an arm over my head to block out the sunlight streaming through the curtains.

  “Relax, I told everyone to leave you alone,” he said.

  “Good.” I ran a hand through my tangled curls, relieved that I’d at least washed off the demon blood before I’d crashed. Yesterday had exhausted me to my very bones, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk to a bunch of fanatics, even if they had helped me steal the fallen out from under the shadow arch-demon’s nose. “Any fatalities, declarations of war, or other demon shenanigans?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he said holding out a glass of clear liquid. “I think you need to recharge, though. You pushed yourself to your limits yesterday.”

  I sipped the foul-tasting demonic power restorative. “Can’t have people thinking slaying arch-demons is easy.”

  “No.” He paused for a moment. “You were—”

  “Lucky? Yeah, I got that,” I said. “It’s Lythocrax’s own damn fault for getting cocky and choosing my weapon of choice as his weakness.” Most demons didn’t choose their weakness. That included Nikolas himself, since he was a demigod—half human, half arch-demon. I didn’t actually know his weakness, though he’d confided his true name to me as a show of trust. “I just don’t want the other arch-demons to think I’m issuing a challenge. Has Casthus said anything since we stole the fallen?”

  “No,” said Nikolas. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he was more preoccupied with Zadok.”

  “That’s not good news either.” Nikolas’s younger brother had pretty much been responsible for Abyss’s death when he’d thrown her out of her own palace. Since her weakness was sunlight, she was as good as dead even before she’d fled to Lythocrax’s dimension and died right in front of me. I swear I don’t ask for these things to happen.

  “No, but Zadok brought this on himself.” He got to his feet. “As for what you told me about the Divine Agents—I’m fairly confident my father has no idea who they are. Or Zadok, for that matter.”

  “No, but they’re being spied on. Maybe right now.” Worry squirmed inside me. I’d known for a while that the Divinities had wanted to set the demons against one another for their own entertainment, but Lythocrax’s actions had been designed to bring Earth to the forefront of the war. And now I’d made it into even more of a target.

  “Yes, I’m not sure meeting with the celestial rogues is the best idea,” he said. “They’re lucky I managed to stop Javos’s people from attacking them.”

  “I have no idea what I’m going to say to them,” I admitted. “Faye seems convinced I might be able to sway them back onto our side, but they’re convinced it’s the real angels giving them orders. What are you doing today?”

  “Meeting with Javos.”

  I winced. “Yeah, I’ll take the fanatics, thanks. Are you taking leadership of the warlocks? For sure?”

  “I’ll need to get voted in first, and the warlocks are still recovering from the battle. That the arch-demon died here, on Earth, will cause issues, too.”

  “Shit, really?” I said. “Should I have killed him in his own realm instead?” I hadn’t considered that the location where I’d dealt the killing blow might be an issue. After all, I’d never have believed I could do it until I was pushed into a corner. I was just so freaking tired of the demons trying to destroy everyone I cared about.

  Earth would not fall to the demons. I wouldn’t let it.

  “I think most of the demons care little that he died,” said Nikolas. “Especially if they learn he was a spy for heaven’s rebels.”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t do it for the demons. I did it to stop him from killing my friends. And what about Abyss? She was an actual arch-demon, not a rebel or spy. Hell’s army is one short however you look at it.”

  “She was also on the run, without a real army of her own,” Nikolas said. “And she worked with Lythocrax willingly. The others would say she deserved what she got.”

  “Because she thought he could help her overcome her weakness,” I said. “And Lythocrax picked his own weakness and still managed to get himself killed. Idiot. Did he not think one of his own people might turn against him?”

  A slither of doubt remained. He was dead, and yet… dealing the killing blow had almost been too simple.

  Had the Divinities wanted me to kill him? Surely not. Now I knew there was a rebel faction behind this and not the major players, the fact that the Divinities had seemed to get some perverse entertainment from watching Earth fall made more sense. But how would I ever know for sure if I made decisions of my own free will, and not because some divine being wanted to watch me struggle like a fish caught in a net?

  I laid the glass back on the bedside table and put my head in my hands. “We never catch a break, do we?”

  Nikolas drew his arms around me. “No, we don’t, but we’re made to survive.”

  “Think that applies to you more than me.” He might loo
k human—mostly—but as a demigod, he was a force of nature incarnate. And yet, for all that, I loved him. Every day that passed made it harder to deny it. “I wish we could run away from all this.”

  “Someday.” He lifted my chin and brushed his lips against mine.

  My phone buzzed. I sighed and drew away from Nikolas, finding a new number calling me.

  “Hello?” I said warily.

  “I had an inkling you might be having cold feet,” Faye said.

  “I can’t imagine why I’d think meeting with a bunch of cultists sent here to cause the end of the world would be a bad idea,” I said dryly. “When do you want me to pick you up?”

  “Give me an hour,” she said.

  “Sure.” I hung up and climbed to my feet. “I might as well go ahead and meet with the rogues. Deranged or not, they’re working for the Divine Agents. They also have a bunch of their own resources.”

  Including mission reports from the guild itself. Maybe even the ones I’d never found. Not that I had any real reason to hunt them down except for closure on what’d happened on that last fatal mission with Rory.

  Not closure. Revenge.

  I pushed the thought away and headed for the shower. The celestial rogues might have listened to me when I’d asked them to help rescue the fallen, but that was because the fallen were the offspring of the Divinities, and rescuing them didn’t contradict whatever mission they’d been given. Now the Divine Agents had lost one of their spies at my hands, though? Armageddon might be next on the menu after all.

  After I’d showered, I scraped together a meal from the leftovers on the table and went outside, where I found Rachel and Fiona facing off in the yard. Fiona’s hands blazed with flames, devouring every tennis ball Rachel threw at her.

  “Might want to practise with something less flammable,” I called to them.

  “What would be the fun in that?” Rachel leapt up, threw a tennis ball, and Fiona jumped up to meet it.