Queen of Angels: The Fallen Book Two

Chapter Eighteen

Some of the guys thought it would be easiest just to head around to the mall since it will be opened up in around about an hour or two anyway. But with me in hot on my tail, I do have Oliver, Seth, Nolan and Echo. Kane didn't want to leave Seth, but I told him that I needed him with the rest of the group to protect them. What we were about to do wasn't as dangerous, but Hugh and Valentine did need Kane's help to protect the rest of the group. When aggravated, he is one of the strongest, after all.

Although my feet are aching, we eventually stop in front of the sorority house where I first arrived when I came to San Francisco. Every day, I thank the fact that I left here out of pure instinct.

"So are you going to tell us why we're here?" Nolan questions.

"She's here because she recognized the smell." Seth responds to him. "Last year, when Amanda locked her in a room, she used a subtler version of the smell to try and knock her out, but she wasn't in there long enough. Normally it just makes a person dazed, but in a high concentration it makes them black out completely."

"I knew she was psychotic."

I roll my eyes. "She is nothing compared to her sister. I don't know where she's been for the last six months, but apparently with her father. He must be locked up somewhere nice." It's probably rude of me to say such a thing, but the way that she behaves sometimes makes me wonder where she grew up. In one of their randomly few lectures we have together, she was asked how she resolves conflict. Her answer was murder. A lot of the other students laughed, but she didn't seem to think it was funny, and her answer was completely serious. I walk out towards the front steps, but I already see a couple of the girls out in the porch area. "Hey there, are Amanda and back home?" The girls take an outward giggle towards Oliver and Nolan's direction before turning to each other and whispering.

Eventually one of them answers, "Normally we say no. But they're out in the woods. Honestly, not that far. It's actually just the park area. You know, the one down the end of the street where you go down the bike path and then you cross the little creek."

"I know where you mean." Echo nods, looking to the rest of us. Acknowledging him, we turn around and head back towards the end of the street.

The path that was mentioned wasn't one that I expected. It wasn't particularly easy to go into the park and across a creek. The branches creak against our skin and our feet shuffling through the dirt makes squirrels chatter. As we come closer to where we're meant to be, the birds suddenly stopped singing and all we can hear is the wind blowing around the leaves.

It's not until we come close to a clearing that I see both the twins sitting around what appears to be a small fire with a cauldron on top. Their eyes are closed and they are muttering some kind of strange enchantment.

"Witches?" I whisper out loud. Oliver turns to look at me and answers,

"Yeah, we've had a hunch about them for a little while, but we haven't looked into it. I don't think they know about us either." One creaky step after another, we walk towards them. The closer I get, I can see that their eyes aren't in fact closed, but are completely covered over in a white pasty glow. They're still chanting away and haven't noticed our presence.

"Anyone home in there?" Nolan says out loud, referring to their minds, I would assume. There are, as has come back in full color and they look around them and see us standing there above them.

"The hell do you want?" One of the twins asks.

"Don't even tolerate their presence Bec. It's not worth it." The one I can now identify as Amanda says.

"I absolutely think you should tolerate our presence." I respond. "Whatever it was you dosed me with last year was the same thing that dosed us not too long ago. Did you make it for Mr. Pierce?" They look between each other, contemplating whether or not they should answer.

"And we should tell you why?"

"Call it an equal trade. You tell me what I need to know, and I won't get angry and hurt you." Finally, Bec stands up to this threat. She takes a step towards me and looks me dead in the eye.

"If someone came out to us and said that they were willing to do something to get you out of our way, of course we would have said yes. They told us you were the one that was stopping us claiming our part of the land. We want an area just as much as every other coven. Getting you out of the way was just a perk."

"Have you even got that part of your land yet?" I somewhat understand what she's referring to. As far as I'm aware, there are a few fractions around all of San Francisco where demons have a certain area of coverage that's completely theirs. Mr. Pierce is currently in charge of quite a large section. If he offered a piece of that land to them, I'm sure they would have accepted it without a second thought. Since moving here with the demons that I have under my wing, I also own a rather unusually large section as well. It's not something I expected and it's certainly not something we need. Technically, any demons within that area are up to my discretion of whether or not they are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. But truthfully, I don't need any more responsibility. Bec and Amanda's silence says everything that I need. "He promised you the land that's actually ours. If you want a piece of it, you can have it, but only if you cooperate." Amanda also stands up by her sister.

"Why the hell should we expect anything from you?" She sneers. But before she has a chance to open her mouth again, Echo grabs her by the wrist. And unusual glowing flow appears throughout her skin, as if a purple stream of glow in the dark paint highlighted all of her veins. But as quickly as it appeared, it went away. "Okay, fine." Her demeanor suddenly seems to have changed. Is this what Echo meant by adjusting people's emotions? "We accept."

"We do?" Bec snaps. "What the hell did you do to my sister?"

"Made her temporarily more compliant." Echo grins.

"It's okay, Bec." Amanda sighs, "Yes, we were asked to make a potion that would render all of you unable to oppose. So we simply remade the same position a little bit more potent this time so they would knock all of you out. However, as far as we were aware, she was only getting rid of Amelia." She?

"Who approached you?"

"Some Morticia wannabe." Clarice. It had to be. "She had us drop it off at the penthouse that she is staying at." Mr. Pierce might not be there, but it's certainly somewhere we can try.

"Can you give us the address?" Amanda looks at Bec, and they end up agreeing. After checking her phone, she relays the address to us, although we don't have a way to write it down. Either way, I don't think I'll forget where to go. "So what do you want the land for anyway? There aren't that many demons within this area."

"That's our concern." Bec snaps. "And the next time you come and try to mess with us, I won't be tolerant. What are you, like another shifter or a vampire or something? We're not scared of you."

"She's an Angel." The voices of Echo, Nolan and Oliver all say in unison. It almost as creepy to hear. Upon the word being spoken, both Bec and Amanda take a step back from me. It's like they weren't expecting to hear that at all. I still don't really understand the significance of what I am in comparison to other demons. But they don't know that I'm still human. They probably think I have all the powers of an Angel. If only they knew. Thankfully, they don't have to. I give the twins a good old glare and stare them up and down before turning on my heel and away from them. Whatever their reasoning, they aren't worth my time. They might not like me, and they clearly wanted me out of the way, but whatever the case, they wanted something for themselves. I'm pretty sure Mr. Pierce just wanted us all dead.

Without hesitation, the boys follow me as we reach the edge of the clearing and back into the woods. Now that we know where to go, we need to find the others and let them know what's happening.