The strain of not blinking had my cheek twitching. In my periphery, Chanelle inched behind him, taking shelter. So help me, Lucifer, if she so much as opened her mouth, I would give her a black eye.
There they were again. Memories I’d shut away so I could function. I’d run away from them once. I’d chosen a life on the streets to one cowering under the bed waiting for the yelling to stop. My mother was dead. My nanna was in a psychiatric hospital, and my father…I’d hated him with a blinding fury for never being there. Lesson learned: All the people you care about eventually leave.
Screw that.
“Astrid.” She knew exactly what I wanted. She dropped her hand to my hip and the teleport began to dematerialise us.
“No you don’t!” Chanelle protested. “We need to settle this now!” She appeared in front of us in our semi-teleported state. Her arm whipped out and latched on to my wrist.
“Nelle!” Kai snapped.
The two female Nephilim became caught in a tug of war. The world became a mishmash of colour and sound. Every cell in my body sparked as though they were being ripped apart. And then, in the murky aether between dimensions, a shadow coalesced. It formed itself into a humanoid silhouette. While Astrid and Chanelle’s focus was diverted, the thing glided towards me. I tried to duck but the teleport held me frozen. A darkened limb extended to my chest. It took a swipe at me as though trying to remove me from the grip of the Nephilim.
Something inside me cracked. It felt like the slightest tap on a fragile surface. The same way a small fissure in an eggshell causes a cascade. The trapdoor in my mind opened at the same time my mouth did. All I could do was scream.
2
A chill spiralled through me and extended to where the Nephilim had hold of me. Hellfire. Both Nephilim paused their tugging for a moment.
Green light lashed around Chanelle and yanked her from me. The last thing I saw before the world disintegrated was Kai’s hooded expression.
I expected us to materialise in Basil’s mansion. I snapped my mouth shut as we landed in what looked like a serial killer’s lair. I’m talking meat hooks and severed limbs floating in jars. It had been noon in Seraphina, but this place was shrouded in darkness. Thin moonlight streamed through the thick iron bars of two huge rectangular windows. On one wall was a portrait of a man in a morbid Goth outfit. The pallid hue of his skin made me think he must be a vampire. That might explain all the jars of red liquid on the shelf of horrors behind us.
I didn’t have sufficient time to digest the wrongness of our surroundings because Astrid dropped to the wooden floor. She gasped for breath and then heaved.
Seconds later, I followed her. One palm splayed on the grey wood. It was damp to the touch and smelled like there were spores growing between the slats. My other hand clutched my chest. I rubbed at the clammy skin over my breastplate where the shadow thing had touched me. The cold and throbbing pain it manifested was beginning to subside.
Beside me, Astrid retched. I swiped at my face to try and clear the fog. Outside, I could hear droplets of rain over a tin roof and the scratching of tree branches against a window. When I no longer felt like my guts were going to drop out if I moved, I pushed myself into a crouching position. Making sure to keep away from the puddle of bile beside Astrid, I placed my hand on her shoulder as she scraped her hair away from the up-chuck.
“You okay?” I asked.
She shook her head. Taking in a laboured breath, she wrapped her hand around my ankle. I felt her trying to compress my skin. She was attempting to teleport us once more.
“Why isn’t it working?” Astrid said. “I feel....I feel...” She trailed off into a series of hacking coughs. Over her shuddering back, I spotted another picture on the wall. This one was of two golden-haired children. One of them was a spitting image of Astrid at about Cassie’s age. The other child tugged at my heart even as rage filled it.
In the picture, Kai had his arm around her shoulders, as though a second before it was taken, he had hauled her into view. They didn’t have cameras because of the magic factor, but in Rivia there were mirror mages who could take a telepathic picture and reproduce an image through their art. Nora and Mani had a picture of Sophie and me in their apartment that had been produced the same way. They were not impressed when I said a camera phone was faster.
In the picture, Astrid’s expression was bland. She must have been annoyed with him at the time. It was completely out of place in this room of death.
“Where are we?” My head was beginning to pound.
“Ward,” Astrid heaved.
“Come again?”
She sat heavily and dropped her head into her hands. Her arms failed. She ended up slumping back on the ground again. I pressed my palm to her forehead. It came away slick with sweat. At the same time her skin was burning up.
“Ward,” she pressed. She jerked her head in the direction of the window. When I got to my feet, the room turned upside down. I cast out frantically and managed to catch hold of what I thought was a hat rack. It turned out to be a fully formed skeleton nailed to the wall. There were still bits of muscle and sinew dried on
