Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (35 page)

"Very clear," he said.

"Jenkins, how is the affinity sphere working?"

The stock boy spoke. "Very well, Luna. I've only found one anomaly."

"An anomaly? Show me."

The two delivery men closed up the back of their truck as the clay golems finished unloading it, and exited by the same door they'd used to enter. Elyssa and I followed Luna and Jenkins until the two stopped at solitary cube at the front of the stacks.

Jenkins tapped the cube to clear the glass. The cherub within responded immediately, shrieking and grasping, its mouth orifice gaping. The man put the affinity sphere next to the cube. The color shifted toward white and then faded back to ultraviolet before settling back to the gray. He frosted the cube glass again. "You see? Out of all the ones I've tested, this is the only one that stays gray."

"Notify me if you find more." She lowered her hood and knelt next to the cube.

Elyssa gasped. Luna's head snapped toward us, gaze searching. I almost gasped myself when I saw her violet eyes and the shape of her face. She looked like a perfect combination of Elyssa and her mother, Leia. Luna was, no doubt, the Exorcist ninja and Elyssa's sister, Phoebe.

Luna's eyes narrowed as she peered our way for several more seconds. She shook it off. I hoped she thought it was a restless cherub.

"Would you like me to put this one in the next batch?" Jenkins asked.

The woman paused. "We will use only Brightlings for now. Daelissa will be returning to Seraphina very soon and I want her to have a large entourage for protection."

Elyssa gripped me at the same time my heart froze solid.
Seraphina? What's she talking about?

Despite its stunned state, my brain drew a conclusion and presented it to me. Daelissa's people were sparing no expense or life clearing the Grand Nexus. That meant Daelissa was in a big hurry to have it cleared for some reason.

She has the Chalon.

Why else would she throw everything at the nexus?

Even though Elyssa's Templar armor concealed her face, I could tell she was still staring at Luna. Her sister had resumed talking to Jenkins.

"They gave the Darklings to Qualan and Qualas," she said.

Jenkins shuddered.

"Does this trouble you?" Luna asked.

"Those two are like kids pulling wings off flies," he said. "They keep torturing the poor bastards. I don't think it's right."

Luna looked at him but said nothing.

"I know Darklings are supposed to be evil and twisted, but they're just kids right now," Jenkins said. "Doesn't this kind of torture make us as evil as them?"

"There is one thing you will learn," Luna said, a bitter tone in her voice. "In a world where even your own parents would abandon their children to die, there is no good. All I have found is falsehood after falsehood. Daelissa may be cruel. She may be brutal. But she does what she says and has never lied to me. I always know where I stand with her, even during her episodes. She has never been so cruel as to say she loves me when I know she would sacrifice me like any other."

Jenkins blinked a few times, obviously unsure how to respond to such a bizarre response. Finally, he nodded. "As you say, Luna."

She touched his shoulder. "Daelissa brings the light of truth to the world. The truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. It often hurts. But the truth is far preferable to the dark lies our enemies hide behind." Luna turned and walked toward the exit. "Continue your work, Jenkins, and let me know the instant you encounter other anomalies."

"Yes, Luna." Jenkins watched her until she left the loading bay. His knees suddenly gave out and he dropped to the floor, his face pale. He stared at the affinity sphere for a few moments. Shook his head as if clearing out cobwebs, and stood up. After a brief break, he resumed his work. Judging from the sheer number of new arrivals, Jenkins would be working for quite a while.

Elyssa and I rose and made our way back to the portal. My knees felt as weak as Jenkins's. Acid rose in my stomach and my heart felt like lead. We stepped through the portal and back into the mansion cellar. I deactivated the portal, turned off my camouflage, and touched the neck seam of my armor so it would uncover my face.

Shelton's forehead wrinkled and concern lit his eyes when he saw my face. "Oh, boy. We're in trouble, aren't we?"

I looked at Elyssa and saw my expression reflected in hers. "Daelissa is only hours away from opening the Grand Nexus."

And we couldn't do a thing to stop her.

Chapter 32

"The saints are about to come marching in," Shelton said to a full audience in the war room. "Better get plenty of lube, because it ain't gonna be pleasant when they march right up our asses."

Zagg crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "You're still a master of hyperbole."

"I wish it was exaggeration," I said, happy that Bella had beaten me with the word "hyperbole" in Scrabble. Not believing it was a real word, I'd looked it up in the dictionary, and now my newfound knowledge was paying serious dividends.

The minute Elyssa and I had returned from Kobol, I'd sounded a red alert. Everyone had shown up at the mansion. Nightliss, a worried expression on her face, sat smack dab in the middle of the Templar entourage. Thomas Borathen, Michael Borathen, and Christian Salazar sat to her right while Commander Taylor and Lieutenant Mogo were situated to her left.

Several of my personal friends who were in training with the Templars had tagged along. Katie Johnson, my former high school crush turned Templar, regarded me with concern. Ash and Nyte stood next to her, expressions neutral. The two of them looked more muscular and rugged than the last time I'd seen them. Even Nyte, a grade-G certified ginger looked like a badass.

To the right side of the room I spotted Lina and Alejandro Romero with a contingent of Arcanes from Ciudad De Los Angeles, a small town near El Dorado, Colombia. They were supposed to be the guardians of the dead city, but since we'd cleared it of shadow people and husks, they hadn't had much to do. Lina and her brother had convinced them to join Team Good. Even Curtis, a Gandalf wannabe, had come. The last time I'd seen him had been after fighting horde of husks and running from giant dragons in our quest to apprehend Vadaemos.

Despite the dire circumstances bringing us together, I took comfort in the familiar faces. Adam and Meghan greeted me with confident smiles, while Stacey gave me her trademark seductive smirk. Ryland, now here as an official envoy for the lycans, regarded me with a wolfish grin.

In my short tenure as possible savior of the world, I'd touched a lot of lives and met a lot of good people. I just hoped we were enough to save civilization as we knew it.

"I know we're all stretched to the breaking point thanks to constant attacks from enemy forces," I said. "Ever since Luna assumed the mantle of Exorcist-in-Chief, she's apparently taken over as head strategist for the forces of doom. These attacks were designed to keep us busy so we wouldn't pay attention to the Grand Nexus."

Commander Taylor spoke. "If Daelissa's forces are as extensive as you say, how are we supposed to fight them? This prison sounds impenetrable, even if we tried to march our entire army through a portal and into the center."

I nodded. "Jeremiah will explain."

A low murmur rose in the room as the ancient Arcane stood. By now, everyone knew who he really was. Shelton and Bella had put his identity to good use in recruiting Arcanes, though most of them were hardly what I'd call battle ready.

Using his wand, Jeremiah projected the holographic image of a glass sphere sparkling with malevolent magical energy. "This is a malaether crucible. For those who are unfamiliar with the device, it has the destructive power equivalent to that of a small thermonuclear device."

The murmurs grew louder at this.

Jeremiah cleared his throat, and the room went silent. "I will have one of these devices ready by this evening. In the meantime, we will to expend every effort to evacuate Darkling cubes from the prison."

"Can we save them all?" Nightliss asked, eyes large with concern.

"We're limited by the size of the portal," I said.

"We have two more working omniarches in La Casona," Commander Salazar said. "That means we can triple our efforts."

"Even so," I said, "Daelissa's people are bringing hundreds of husks from the Grand Nexus. There's no way they'll be sorted by the time we have to detonate the bombs." I gave Nightliss a sympathetic look. "We'll save as many husks as possible."

Jeremiah seemed to realize I was done talking and continued. He shifted his hologram to show a layout of the prison and rotated it to display a network of tunnels beneath it. "My friends, the trolls, began digging more tunnels around the prison the minute we decided to go forward with this plan." He rotated to an overhead view and highlighted two points on the prison, one on the roof of each wing. "We have determined the best bomb locations will be next to the interdictors located on each roof. Since the vast majority of Daelissa's forces are outside the prison, this will inflict maximum casualties."

"So much death," Katie said. She put a hand over her mouth as if just realizing she'd said that aloud.

"Aye, it's bloody war," MacLean replied. "The bastards are killing our people every day in their raids. If we can end it this way, we should." He looked around as if expecting cries of dissent, but everyone seemed too focused on the diagram floating in the air.

"We can't win a direct confrontation," Thomas said. "This might even the odds."

"Do we have a count of her other assets?" Commander Taylor asked.

Thomas shook his head. "Not a complete count. Luna has done an excellent job hiding their true numbers despite Daelissa's clumsy logistics." Though his eyes betrayed no emotion, Elyssa had told him Luna's true identity. For all I knew, Thomas might be feeling some sense of fatherly pride at how well his eldest daughter was maneuvering her forces, or deep shame at the events which had led to her leading the enemy.

I felt a little sick about what we had to do. I had a feeling many of the Arcanes on Daelissa's side had been duped into fighting for her by Cyphanis Rax and his propaganda. If only we had more time, we might win hundreds of them to our side. Even the Exorcist, Jenkins, had expressed doubts about the treatment of the Darklings. From his discussion with Luna, he'd obviously been convinced the Darklings were evil simply because of their affiliation with the Murk.

Events had spiraled beyond our control. The other side had taken the advantage and snowballed.
Daelissa has forced us to this.
It was the only rationalization I could cling to. What else could we do? Heartache at the thought of so many deaths formed a wedge of doubt in my resolve.
Is this really the only way?

Jeremiah's hologram populated the area around the prison with what looked like over a thousand dots, each one representing a member of Daelissa's forces. A hush fell over the assembly as he demonstrated the blast pattern of the malaether crucibles. The inferno consumed the dots in a rush of white-hot fury.

I caught a look from Shelton. He looked horrified. Next to him, Bella gripped his arm as sadness filled her eyes. I remembered the amorous Arcane couple and the duo who'd nearly sounded the alarm before lambasting them for shirking guard duty.

They are people. Not all of them are evil.

My mother interrupted the silence. "I should be the last person to voice this, but I feel I must." She cleared her throat. "Daelissa's core forces—the ones who absolutely know and revel in what she wants, are few. The number of those who know little and are only following orders thanks to misinformation, are many. Perhaps we could minimize the bloodshed and try to reason with the Arcane forces before we resort to such final measures." She turned to Jeremiah. "You personally know some of the Blue Cloak leaders. If we reveal who you really are, I think we could win them over."

Jeremiah nodded. "Perhaps it would be worth the effort."

"I also have friends in the Blue Cloaks," Zagg said. "They're good people who would never fight for Daelissa if they knew the truth." He made an irritated noise. "They were told the Darklings joined with demon spawn to attack Eden."

"Winning the war of information would be ideal," Thomas said, "But we have no time. Cyphanis Rax and the Synod started painting us as rebels and traitors months ago. Turning the tide would require an infrastructure we simply don't have. A decisive strike inflicting as many casualties on Daelissa's war machine as possible is the only path left to us."

Elyssa bolted from her seat. "My sister—your daughter—will be one of those casualties."

People looked at each other with surprise. Most of those present had no idea Luna was actually Phoebe Borathen.

"She has chosen her side," Thomas said. "I cannot help her now."

A young voice spoke. "If my brother had given up on me, I might be one of the people dying."

All eyes turned to the girl—to Ivy.

Her little chin tightened. "Jeremiah told me to give up on Justin. He did really bad things to my brother." A tear trickled down her cheek. "I did bad things too." She wiped away the tear and took a deep breath. "My brother never gave up on me. He didn't try to kill me. He saved me. If there's anything I learned from him, it's that you never give up on the one thing that brought all these people together."

The room was absolutely silent as everyone hung on her next word.

Ivy looked at me and smiled. "Hope."

My resolve shattered. By killing people whose only offense might be believing the lies spewed by their leaders, we would be committing an atrocity and giving up on the one thing that just might get us through this crisis.

I took a deep breath to keep my own tears at bay and smiled at my little sister.

She spoke again. "Justin didn't give up on Mom. He saved her when it looked impossible. He didn't give up on"—she stumbled over the next word—"Dad. I mean, he's a huge liar and all, but my brother just knew he could win him back even if that home-wrecker demon woman twisted his arm into marriage." She made a sour face.