Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (4 page)

"Holy Moses," Shelton said, jumping back from the body.

"You don't know how right you are," Elyssa said, leaning over and panting.

I touched Jeremiah's neck. He felt warm. "I think he's still alive."

"Who the hell is that?" Shelton said.

"Jeremiah Conroy," I replied.

His forehead scrunched. "But he looks so young. His skin and hair are darker, his face looks different—"

"Because the old man look was all an act," I said.

Reality seemed to slap Shelton upside the head. He staggered back. "You kidnapped old man Conroy? You two are out of your ever-loving minds. How the hell did you pull it off?"

"We didn't kidnap him," I said, struggling to my feet. "We rescued him from Daelissa."

"You what?" Shelton's mouth hung open. "Why didn't you let them finish each other off?"

"Because," Elyssa said, through deep breaths. "His real name isn't Jeremiah Conroy. It's Moses."

For once in his life, Harry Shelton didn't seem to have a response. His mouth moved a couple of times. Instead of speaking, he simply turned around and walked up the stairs. Elyssa and I exchanged confused looks. I slung Jeremiah over my shoulder and climbed up the stairs after Shelton with Elyssa close behind me.

Once upstairs, I laid Jeremiah on the couch in the den.

"Maybe we should call Meghan," Shelton said.

I shook my head. "I don't think he's seriously injured."

Shelton leaned over the man. "I still don't see the resemblance to Jeremiah. You sure this is him?"

"We saw him change before our eyes," Elyssa said. "And it's not the first time."

"Impossible." Shelton shook his head. "Arcanes can't reshape their faces or change the color of their skin. They can use illusion, but it's not solid."

"Elyssa and I saw him change." I knelt next to Jeremiah and pressed fingers against his neck. The pulse felt strong. "Maybe it was all illusion."

"Well, he is the first Arcane," Shelton said. "For all I know he can whistle Dixie out of his butthole." He released a long breath. "Wow. I'm in the presence of Moses, the original gangster."

I stood. "He was also apparently Ezzek Moore, the founder of the Arcane Council. I guess that makes him the double O.G." Despite the man's multiple identities, I couldn't help but think of him as Jeremiah Conroy—the man who'd stolen my sister when she was an infant, the man who'd let Daelissa shape Ivy's impressionable mind, the man who'd tried to kill me on one occasion and told Ivy to let me die on another. He might have once been a great man, but in my eyes, he had a lot to prove. I repressed the building anger.

We need him.

Shelton poked Jeremiah's still form with a finger. "He can't be human. Arcanes live longer than noms, but not by thousands of years." He backed away. "Is he Seraphim?"

Elyssa shook her head. "I don't think so."

"That ain't good enough." Shelton chewed his lip. "We need to know."

"We might need backup when he wakes up," I said, took out my phone, and called Mom.

"What's wrong?" she asked without even saying hello.

I sighed. "What makes you think something is wrong just because I'm calling you?"

"So, everything is fine?" A note of cautious relief crept into her voice.

I paused. "Well, not exactly. Jeremiah Conroy is unconscious on the couch right now."

"He's what?" Mom groaned. "I was hoping for a solid week of calm so I could finish negotiations with the Australian Templars."

"I think it might be best if you're here when he wakes up. If we use the omniarch, you can be back to Australia in a jiffy."

"Did Justin blast someone?" I heard Ivy ask in the background. "He always does the fun stuff when I'm not around."

"No, dear." She paused. "Justin, open the portal. I'll see you in a few minutes."

I ran back downstairs to the omniarch. Using the image of a domed room the Australian Templars had provided, I opened the portal. Within ten minutes, Mom and Ivy stepped into the room. It was hard to believe they were actually all the way on the opposite side of the planet. Thankfully, the omniarch could open a portal to anywhere within the mortal realm, as long as we had a clear image of it.

Ivy ran through the portal and gave me a hug. "Hey, bro."

"Hey, sis." It still felt strange to have my sister around. I'd grown up not knowing she existed. Jeremiah had taken her away from my parents as an infant so he could teach her how to use her powers. They'd thought she was the Cataclyst mentioned in Foreseeance four three one one, but apparently I'd been the lucky winner.

Mom kissed me on the cheek and looked me over. "You're not getting enough sleep, Justin."

"Are you able to sleep knowing Daelissa might have the rune from the Gloom nexus in her grubby paws right this minute?"

A troubled look flickered across her eyes. "Not very well, I must admit."

The Battle of Bellwood Quarry had gone mostly in our favor until I'd thwarted an attempt to bring down the roof on our heads, and accidentally blown up the chamber housing the Shadow Nexus—a version of the Grand Nexus in the Gloom. The explosion also had the unfortunate side effect of caving in the quarry and taking the arch with it. Like the Grand Nexus, the Shadow Nexus could be used to cross the veil between realms, but both needed a key. A tiny sphere called the Cyrinthian Rune had been the key in the Grand Nexus. The Shadow Nexus also had one, though instead of it being white with black lines, it had been the opposite in color.

After our army’s retreat from the Gloom and back into Eden, aka the mortal realm, the Shadow Nexus had collapsed into the quarry with everything else around it. Whether it had been destroyed or merely deactivated, we didn't know. We also didn't know if the shadow version of the Cyrinthian Rune could be used in the Grand Nexus.

"I need you to see something," I said, deciding to let her witness Jeremiah in his current state instead of simply telling her. Mom still didn't have all her memories back after the Desecration had nearly killed her in the first war with the Seraphim. Maybe this would jog something loose.

"I got to pet kangaroos," Ivy said, eyes bright as we walked up the stairs to the den.

"In a zoo?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I chased them down. It was so much fun!"

I imagined my sister streaking after the poor animals and repressed a snort. Daelissa had tried to turn Ivy into a killing machine, and Jeremiah Conroy had used her in his quest for vengeance. Despite all the brainwashing, my sister was still just a young girl who loved the simple things most of us took for granted.

Cutsauce, my pint-sized hellhound, rushed up to us the instant we reached ground level, wagging his tail so hard, his entire body shook. He yipped at Ivy.

"Cutsauce told me he loved it when you dressed him up like a princess," I told Ivy.

She giggled. "Oh, I loved it too." She picked up the hellhound and let him lick her face, then cuddled him like a baby.

His paws hung daintily and his tail wagged furiously. He was in doggie heaven.

Most hellhounds were huge, vicious, and would tear out a person's throat. Cutsauce just liked to be coddled.

Elyssa and Shelton stood in front of Jeremiah's still form.

"Hello, dear," Mom said to Elyssa. "I'm so sorry my son keeps getting you into trouble."

My girlfriend laughed. "I'm used to it."

Shelton pshawed. "Yeah, after saving the world a few times, nearly getting killed every few days becomes old hat."

I waved off their comments. "Yeah, yeah. Can you move so she can see him?"

Elyssa and Shelton stepped apart, revealing Jeremiah. Mom's eyes went wide, and her face blanched. "Moses." Pressing a hand to her chest, she stepped back. "Who—where—"

"That's Jeremiah," I said.

"I knew something about him felt so familiar," she said. "Moses looks nothing like Jeremiah, but the mannerisms gave me such a sense of déjà vu at times."

"Who the heck is Moses?" Ivy asked. She puckered her lips. "Oh, wait, I think I remember Daelissa saying how much she hated him and wanted to boil his intestines into blood pudding."

A horrified look flashed across Elyssa's face.

I hastily jumped back into the conversation and told Mom about what Jeremiah had said, and my battle with Daelissa.

"Justin Slade!" Mom said, mouth dropping open. "What were you thinking trying to fight her?"

I held up my hands in a surrendering gesture. "I know it wasn't the smartest thing, but, as much as I hate to say it, we need Jeremiah."

"Are we gonna keep calling him that even though it was a pseudonym?" Shelton said.

"The name will suffice," said a deep voice. Jeremiah sat up and regarded Mom, his eyes sad. "I am truly sorry for the deception, Alysea, but I couldn't afford to take any chances lest Daelissa discover my true identity." He rubbed his temple as if warding off a headache.

Mom nodded her head. "I understand." She leaned close, eyes narrowed. "However, do not expect me to be so understanding about the way you used Ivy in your vengeful game of chess."

"Things make a lot more sense now," Ivy said, mimicking Mom's angry expression. "Like when you wanted to kill all those vampires even though they were Daelissa's allies, or when you took the Cyrinthian Rune and didn't tell her even though she needed it. And then bunches of times when Daelissa told us to do something and you made me help you do the opposite."

Jeremiah regarded her with a sad expression, but offered no defense.

"The rune." Elyssa's eyes widened with worry. "Where is it?"

"It is in the vault." Jeremiah folded his arms. "I am the only one who can retrieve it since the gateway in my house is destroyed."

"The vault?" Shelton asked.

"A pocket dimension," Elyssa said. "He had a door that operated like the ones leading into the Grotto."

"Pocket dimension is something of a misnomer, in this case." Jeremiah clasped his hands. "The vault exists on Eden, though the portal magic used to access it is much like the doorway to the Grotto."

"Is the rune safe?" I asked. Daelissa could use it to reactivate the Grand Nexus if the Shadow Rune didn't work.

He nodded. "For now, yes."

The knot of tension in my stomach eased, but not by much. "She could find the Shadow Rune any day now." I'd been thinking long and hard about our options. Only one solution seemed likely to make possession of the runes moot.

"What's going through your head?" Shelton asked, a cautious tone in his voice.

"It seems like there's only one way to stop Daelissa for good." I looked at Mom. "We have to destroy the Alabaster Arches."

A troubled look flashed over her face before firming into resolve. "I believe you're right, son."

"I can request Hutchins and his special forces team to ready explosives," Elyssa said. "The only Alabaster Arch we don't have immediate access to is the Grand Nexus."

"It's in Chernobyl, Ukraine," I said. "I only glimpsed the place, but it was infested with cherubs." Those little creeps were the husked remains of Seraphim drained of light by the shockwave caused by the forced removal of the Cyrinthian Rune from the Grand Nexus. It had ended the Seraphim War, but left the world with a cancerous legacy. Cherubs looked like the creepiest toddlers a person could imagine, faceless with skin the color of oil and a round orifice where a mouth should be. A simple touch from one burned with the cold of absolute zero and drained the light from living creatures, turning them into shadow beings.

Jeremiah laughed, though his tone held no humor. "Don't you think we tried that during the Seraphim War?" He backhanded the air. "So long as one Alabaster Arch remains standing, using the Cyrinthian Rune on it will repair them all at once."

Shelton narrowed his eyes. "You're saying we could blow up the Grand Nexus, but Daelissa could use the rune on any of the other arches to repair it?"

"That is precisely what I am saying," Jeremiah said, rising to his feet, his dark eyes commanding. "Destroying the arches is no easy task. During the war, our forces took over the El Dorado way station." His eyes lost focus, as if looking to the past. "Our strategy was to remove their ability to traverse realms, one arch at a time." His eyes flicked to me. "It took the combined might of twenty Arcanes, myself included, to destroy one Alabaster Arch." His lips curled in disgust. "We were so tired afterward we could hardly move. Do you know how infuriating it was to see the arch rebuild itself less than three hours later?"

"We have access to modern explosives," Shelton said. "Enough plastic explosives ought to take them out."

"Wait a minute," I said, thinking back to the Battle of Bellwood Quarry. "Does this mean the Shadow Nexus wasn't destroyed?"

"Perhaps it would be better if you told me exactly what you're referring to," Jeremiah said. "I'm well aware the Gloom Initiative is still ongoing, though it was my impression Serena had long ago hit a dead end in her quest to use the Gloom as a method for traveling from one realm to another."

"Daelissa never told you Serena found arch cubes in Thunder Rock?" I said. "How she took one into the Gloom and made it grow into an Alabaster Arch?"

He shook his head. "I do know about the cubes, but I had yet to discover what they did." His lips pressed together. "Then again, Serena hated me. She knew Daelissa trusted me above all others and was jealous. I'm certain she did her best to keep certain developments secret from me."

I found it hard to believe Daelissa would have kept her right-hand man in the dark about such a thing, but the angel probably had so many irons in the fire it was conceivable she never told anyone everything. "Just as Mom—Alysea—has to sing to the Cyrinthian Rune to attune it to other dimensions, the cubes respond to specific musical frequencies, according to what Serena told me." The short Arcane had tried to convince me to help her attune the Shadow Nexus to Seraphina, the angel home world. She'd hoped I'd inherited my Mom's voice. Unfortunately for her, my voice and a megaphone would be a weapon of mass destruction. "In the Gloom, the arch was white with black veins instead of black with white."

"If that's the case, why in the hell do we call them alabaster?" Shelton asked.