Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (9 page)

"Not good," Elyssa said. "It looks like this woman is their new leader."

I angled for a peek under the woman's hood, but the crowd of eager students blocked my view. "Daelissa must have finally killed Montjoy." Considering the way she'd smacked the pompous ass around when he'd captured me and Dad, it was amazing he'd survived as long as he had.

Jeremiah put a hand under his chin and frowned. "This is deeply troubling. Montjoy was, at best, inept. This person seems not only capable, but likeable, if the delighted expressions of her students are any indication."

"After we kicked their antiquated asses back to the Stone Age, I guess Daelissa figured it was time to upgrade the Exorcists." I tried for another glimpse of the woman's face as she stepped between the students and demonstrated something with an aether pod control panel. One of the battle mages, a young man, said something he obviously found hilarious. The female Exorcists gave him a dirty look. One of them pointed a finger at the man and proceeded to give him a tongue lashing while he held up his hands in a defensive posture and smirked.

"I think we've spent enough time here," Elyssa said. "We have a way inside, and we know where the aether pods are. Where does Daelissa keep the maturing cupids?"

"There is a nursery down a hall through the door the Exorcists used." Jeremiah pointed to the door on the opposite side of the aether pod room.

Elyssa took some pictures of the observation room with her phone. "We can use the omniarch to open a portal here. That should allow us to enter in force and destroy this place." Her gaze locked onto the Exorcists as they made their way back across the room toward the door. She aimed her phone camera and zoomed the lens. One of the men in the group opened the door wide enough so the group could pass through. "Got a picture of the hall." She showed me the images. "I'll text a picture of this room to Shelton so he can open the portal, then we'll use these pictures to open a portal closer to the nursery."

She tapped the message on her phone and waited. A few minutes later, her phone beeped with a text message. Elyssa looked at it and frowned. "Shelton said he can't open a portal. He said every time it starts to activate, the omniarch shut down."

Jeremiah's eyes closed. He sighed. "Once Maulin Kassus realized you were using an omniarch, he knew you could open portals anywhere and tasked his people to find a way to block them. I thought Thomas Borathen had taken all the research when he took down Kassus and Darkwater. It appears I was wrong."

"You have no idea how bad that is for us," I said in an accusing voice. "How much more of this 'oops I forgot to tell you' crap are you going to pull on us, Jeremiah? In your one-man quest for revenge, you helped Daelissa counter one of our biggest advantages."

His eyes went rock hard. "She would have come up with the countermeasures even without me, boy. Kassus took the initiative on the portal prevention technology and only informed me when it was close to completion. I simply didn't have time to deal with the day-to-day operations of Darkwater."

I narrowed my eyes. "Because you were too busy plotting revenge and brainwashing my sister."

Elyssa gripped us both by the fronts of our shirts. "Shut up and act like grown men," she snarled. "We're in enemy territory with battle mages one room away from us. If it wasn't for the noise coming from those aether pods, they'd probably have heard you two by now."

I clamped my mouth shut and looked away, feeling absolutely stupid for airing my disagreements with Jeremiah at the worst possible time. I decided to be more like a woman and create a mental list of transgressions I could blindside him with at a time of my choosing.

Fear the power of estrogen, old man.

Nightliss looked uneasily at the three of us, green eyes full of worry. "Should we try to reach the nursery by another route?"

Elyssa let go of me and Jeremiah, turning to the window. "Do these hallways connect somewhere else, Jeremiah?" She didn't look back at him when she asked.

"I don't know, but the hallways are in a grid pattern, so it's likely there is more than one way to reach the nursery." He straightened his rumpled shirt and cast me a venomous look.

"Let's do it," I said.

Elyssa eased open the door to the hallway, looked around, and left the room. Jeremiah came through last, locking and closing the door behind us. We went back the way we'd come until we reached the maintenance room. From there, we took a perpendicular hallway and followed it down a similar corridor toward the west. Several other passages intersected this one, each leading in the general direction of the aether pod room.

"Still no guards." Elyssa's tone was heavy with disdain. "I don't care how badass you think your perimeter is, you always have at least a few patrols."

"I'll be sure to put that in Daelissa's suggestion box on the way out," I said.

Elyssa stuck out her tongue, turned away, and headed down the hall.

I followed after her, sniffing the air every so often just in case another crawler lurked nearby. A cell door at the next intersection hung open. A barred window with broken glass offered a narrow view of the outside. Through it I saw the main gated entrance in the center of the complex and the mirror dimensions of the west wing.

Just before we reached the next corner, I heard a faint
click, click, click
against the stone floor. I grabbed Elyssa and pulled her back. My other arm barred Nightliss and Jeremiah from taking another step.

Click, click, click.

We pressed our backs to the wall as the sound grew closer and closer.

I sniffed the air, but sensed nothing. My heart pounded against my ribcage. A bead of sweat tickled my nose as it dripped from the tip.

A tiny wooden figure the size of my hand appeared at the corner. It appeared to be made of popsicle sticks and wore thimbles as shoes. It didn't seem to sense us and passed us by as it continued on its way toward the east.

"Was that a guard?" I asked.

"Someone is experimenting with golems," Jeremiah said. "It was basic, without even a memory space in its spark."

Elyssa took a deep breath. "So it's not on the way to report us."

"Still want guards patrolling?" I asked her with a grin.

She gave me a dirty look. "Let's move out."

We crept down the west hallway. Faint cries echoed down the long corridor. I exchanged glances with Elyssa and hurried on, thankful the Nightingale armor muffled my footsteps. A scream of pain echoed and just as quickly stopped as we reached a set of heavy metal doors. Through the wire-glass windows, I saw a large room with a cinderblock divider a few yards from the door. Pressing down gently on the handle I managed to open the door without any squeaks giving us away.

I poked my head inside and looked around. Old metal beds topped by worn mattresses lined one wall like something from an orphanage. Another scream of agony erupted from the other side of the wall. I took a quick glance around to be sure this part of the room was empty, and raced to the corner of the wall. A pretty, young woman with chestnut hair and honey-colored skin smiled wickedly at a boy secured with diamond fiber to a metal beam.

Another young man with almost identical features to the girl laughed with glee. "Darklings are so amusing."

"Oh, yes," the girl said, clapping her hands. "I love to hear him scream."

The young man spat on the prisoner's face. "Filthy creature. I wonder how many of the others will be reborn as one of these things." He looked at his companion. "Qualas, do you think Daelissa will allow us to torture them all to death?"

A side door opened and a battle mage entered pushing another terrified boy in front of him. "We have another Darkling for you."

Qualan grabbed the boy and threw him skidding across the polished concrete. He turned back to the mage. "Have you found any more Brightlings?"

The man shook his head. "We are working on a way to sort the husks before resurrection. There are only two more in your group. The next batch will be ready in a few more days."

Qualas walked over to the man and circled him, her bright hazel eyes looking him up and down. "You are human, and yet you help us?"

The mage shrugged. "It pays the bills."

The girl didn't seem to know what to make of that statement.

"If we find any more, I'll bring them to you," the mage said.

"Very well," Qualas said, waving him away and turning her gaze toward their new prey. The young Darkling boy had bright blonde hair and fair skin. I'd once thought all Darklings looked something like Nightliss, with olive skin and dark hair. It didn't take a genius to realize color didn't matter a bit.

"Please don't hurt me," the boy said. "I don't remember anything. I don't even know what a Darkling is."

Qualas laughed, her voice lovely and musical, despite the source. "You are garbage."

"You are beneath us," Qualan added.

The two Brightlings looked at the boy and simultaneously said, "You are our new toy."

They joined hands. A white nimbus surrounded the connection. As one, they raised their other hands, globes of deadly white light glowing in their palms.

Chapter 8

"He is no one's toy!" Nightliss blurred past me. Twin ultraviolet beams from each of her hands slammed into the Brightling twins, hurling them into the hard concrete divider. She swung her hands together and the evil wonder twins whizzed through the air and crashed into each other so hard, the sound of their skulls cracking into one another echoed.

The Brightlings staggered, trying to regain their feet. Several silver darts sprouted from their necks and they went down for the count. Elyssa ran to the prone Seraphim and pressed her fingers to their necks, apparently checking their vitals. "This should keep them unconscious for a while." Her violet eyes locked onto Nightliss. "You've compromised this mission."

"I could not let them hurt these boys," Nightliss said.

"W-who are you?" asked the blond boy. "Why did they want to hurt us?"

Elyssa growled in frustration but swiped her finger across the diamond fiber binding the other boy. The fiber wasn't bound by blood and separated at her touch.

"I'm sorry, Elyssa," Nightliss said. "I was so angry I couldn't stop myself."

"The game isn't done yet," Jeremiah said. "We might as well do some damage while we're here."

I knelt next to the siblings on the floor. "If these two are in the same batch as these other kids, why do they look so much older?"

The boy who'd been tied up by diamond fiber spoke. "Once they realized they were Brightlings, someone brought them humans to feed from." He shuddered. "Those two are monsters. I haven't regained all my memories, but I know who they are."

Nightliss's lip curled into a snarl. "Seeing them revived painful memories. In Seraphina, Qualan and Qualas headed the Ministry of Order for Daelissa after she took over. During the Darkling uprising, they murdered countless numbers of my kind." Her eyes glowed with anger. "We should end them now."

"Someone's coming," Elyssa said. "Quick, everyone out the way we came in."

She and I grabbed the unconscious Brightlings and raced around the divider just as the door opened. I set Qualan on the ground and pressed my back to the wall, peered into the other side of the room. Two Black Robe Brotherhood members entered, each one carrying unconscious people, a male and female.

"They aren't here," said the taller of the two.

"Thank god," said the other. "Those twins freak me out. They make Maulin Kassus look like a saint."

The tall man laughed. "I hear ya." He placed his load next to the metal beam the Darkling boy had been secured to. "Let's tie up the noms and get the hell out of here."

Jeremiah looked at Elyssa and made a slashing motion across his throat. Her forehead pinched and she shook her head. The Arcane's eyes flashed. He mouthed, "Two less to deal with."

My girlfriend took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for the sudden change in plans, and nodded. Jeremiah nodded, and without further hesitation, stepped around the corner. His staff blazed and a solid beam of light sliced the heads from the two men as they stood, still looking at the bound noms. The heat cauterized the steaming wounds immediately.

"Holy laser beams," I said. "You are one cold son of a bitch."

His narrowed gazed turned to me. "Would you prefer to give them a fair chance? Perhaps give them a chance to alert the others?"

I threw up my hands in a surrendering gesture. "Just saying, dude."

"Hide the bodies," Elyssa said.

The two boys we'd rescued stared with wide horrified eyes as we dragged the headless corpses out into the dusty hallway and deposited them in one of the prison cells. Nightliss appeared a moment later, carrying the unconscious noms under each arm.

"What are your names?" she asked the boys.

"I am Joss," the blond boy said, his voice betraying a strange accent.

"Otaleon," the other replied in a similar accent, eyes never leaving the ground as his shoulders trembled.

"Are you strong enough to carry these noms?"

"These are humans?" Joss asked.

Nightliss nodded. "We call them normals or noms."

"I have a really dumb question," I said. "But Nightliss couldn't speak English when I first met her. How is it you and the terror twins already know it?"

Joss shrugged. "This is English we are speaking?" His eyes narrowed and his forehead wrinkled, as if he was concentrating hard on something. "I do not remember learning it, but now that you mention it, I see it is a different language than Cyrinthian."

Otaleon mumbled something and nodded.

"They must incorporate some kind of educational spell in the aether pods," Jeremiah said.

"So all that trouble I put into learning Cyrinthian was a waste of time?" I said. "Shelton could have just cast a learning spell on me?"

"Doesn't work like that, boy." Jeremiah heaved Qualan into a neighboring cell and reemerged. "Trying to magic information into someone's skull while they're an adult is a quick way to mess up their mind for good. The reason it works on the cupids is because their minds are already blank slates."