AZAZEL (DEMONOLOGY II)

VI

FINN

Days passed, and there was still no word from my mother. I had asked Marc if he knew anything, but he didn't know either. I was beginning to suspect that she was up to something, but part of me thought otherwise. She wouldn't have betrayed us. She was the entire reason I had taken part in this war. There was no way she'd turn on me.

"It's time to face facts," Marc said, slumping down onto a chair. "She's taken off. I don't know why, but I'm almost positive she's gone into hiding or something. But what I don't understand is the artifacts. She's an angel, so she can fly to Heaven. Why would she need artifacts?"

"She doesn't need them." I said. "But we do. I don't want to admit it, but I think she's turned on us. She seemed pretty discouraged when we found out that Lucifer was using that Eloy guy to revive Azazel and Abaddon. I guess she's given up." I was on the verge of tears, but I didn't let it show. Not now, when we needed to be strong.

"You know we need to find her, right?" Eva said to me. She spoke to me as if I were a child, meaning she knew how hard this would be for me to do. "We might even have to take her on. We can't just abandon our plans because of her." I agreed. We had been suspicious, so we decided to relocate to a small house in Nashville.

"I know," I said as stern as possible. I swallowed any compassion I had for my mother. At the moment, she wasn't an ally. She wasn't necessarily an enemy, but she could have been. "We should search now. Let's get a move on."

"How are we going to find her? She could be anywhere." Marc crossed his arms and sat up straight.

"This is how we'll find her." I held up my chain, which my mother had given to me. She had told me that if I ever needed to find her, I could use it. The charm on it was the mother goddess symbol, which represented motherhood. If she was still wearing it, I would be able to find her. I wasn't sure how it worked, but I was sure I could figure it out. Just like when I had fallen from Heaven, and I had opened a gate for the first time. A little bit of holy fire could do the trick.

With a deep breath, I squeezed down on the pendant. It grew warm and I could feel my fire growing in my hands. I shut my eyes and a vision came to me. It showed my mother standing in my house in North Carolina, looking around. She searched the house up and down, supposedly for us, but found nothing.

"Ah," I said. "She's looking for us. She's in Cameron right now. Did she really think that we would stay put?" I opened my eyes and grabbed my necessities; a backpack, a bronze knife, and a can of spray paint, which I had used to paint the perimeter of the house with sigils.

"Should we go to get her?" Eva asked. She began to pack her bag, and Marc did the same.

"No," I said, a plan formulating in my head. "If we try to find her, we'll end up meeting her halfway. Since she knows that we're not in Cameron anymore, she'll use the pendant to locate me. And when she does, we'll be ready."

"How?" Marc asked.

"Eva, do you remember when we used the Parthenon in Greece to open a gate to Hell?" I thought back seven months, when we had embarked on a dangerous journey to Elysium. Marc had been there, too, but he was a ghoul - a soulless human body.

"Yes . . ." She said. I could see the gears turning in her head. "Oh, I see. There's a Parthenon right here in Nashville."

"Exactly. Well, let's do a little bit of sightseeing."

I sat on the lawn around the Parthenon, trying to look like an average tourist. Marc and Eva stood next to the statue of Athena, waiting for my signal. We needed to seem nonchalant. That way, when my mother arrive, we could lure her in and spring the trap.