“If Mat finds Micheal, what will he have to do?”
Aaliyah shrugged.
“Could be anything.” I watched her as she gracefully moved across the living room and sat down in the armchair. “Could be nothing. Lucifer knew how much I despised you, and used it. He would give me my wings and I all I had to do was torment you. Turns out, it’s not you I have a problem with.” She ran her tongue over her teeth and examined her nails, which were painted a shade of green so dark, they could have passed for black, and they weren’t the only thing that had darkened.
Her once golden hair was now an iridescent green blue, almost like a magpie’s tail feather, and her eyes had gone from their pale grey to a dark slate.
She was plotting something, it was swirling in those eyes, but I didn’t dare ask what it was, it could only lead to trouble.
“I know what it is you’re looking for.” A sly smirk appeared in her face. “I followed you. I saw what you did to Miss Lopez, the French witch?” Her smile turned sadistic. “Marvellous work I must say, but you took the wrong grimoire.” She reached down to a bag I hadn’t noticed until then. “This one hold a background on your… guest.” She pulled out an ancient looking, leather bound grimoire, and extended it to me, but as I reached to take it she pulled back. “Ah ah ah, Little Red, not so fast.” She used Mathias’s nickname with just a hint of disgust. “I want something in return.”
“And what would that be?” What could I possibly have to offer her? She had outlived me by more than a million years.
“Do you really have to ask?” Aaliyah creased her brow, looking genuinely perplexed. “All I want is the soul. So, when you have… disposed of her, give her to me. All I need is your word, and the book is your.”
“I can only promise to try.”
“Hmm, good enough.” Aaliyah threw the book onto the sofa, grabbed her bag and stood. “Until next time, Nina.” With that, she turned and left.
I didn’t move, didn’t reach for book, now lying open on the sofa. Did I really want to know?
Part of me was nauseated by the thought of touching the book, let alone reading it.
‘Do not trust her. She comes from the pits of hell to torment you. She wishes to raise your hopes, only to watch them fall.’ I could hear the Huntress’ voice like a whisper, almost like she stood beside me.
The part of me that had felt nauseous, settled at her words, so I realised it was her that felt queasy. Logic stated that this grimoire caused her such unrest because it held the secret to her demise, or something that would lead me to that answer at the very least.
I glanced at the open book, trying to work out the language it had been written in, but was quickly distracted by the buzzing of the intercom system. I closed the grimoire and tucked it under the cushions before heading to the retriever.
“Y’ello?”
“Nina, are you serious?! I send you to Amia for help and you obliterated her entirely! Let me in right now!”
By the time Arabella had climbed all the stairs and reached my door, I had safely tucked the ancient grimoire away in my room.
Arabella didn’t even knock. Rather she threw the door open with such force it ricocheted off the wall.
“Ary, to what do I owe the pleasure.” I smiled, knowing full well the barrage of abuse I was about to receive.
“Oh don’t you ‘Ary’ me!” A fire burned in her golden eyes and her complexion has gone red with the built up anger. “Amia Lopez was one of the oldest witches still living! She guided all covens, and now we have no one!” She slammed the door shut behind her, keeping her eyes locked on me. “Just tell me why? Why did you not only kill but why did you have to burn down the entire street in the process?”
Ah. I should have know that that would cone back to bite me.
“See, the thing is-”
“Don’t! Don’t you dare give me the bullshit ‘it wasn’t really me’!” She cut me off, pointing a single, delicate index finger at me. “This ‘huntress’ you keep talking about? She doesn’t exist, there no proof of her existence, she’s in your head, something you made up to feel better about your immortality! So, please, do me a favour and tell me the truth. Why?”
Arabella has aged since I last saw her; her chestnut hair was now peppered with silvers and her skin was showing the first signs of wrinkles.
My feet itched to go into my room, to take her to the grimoire hiding there. I had proof, but I couldn’t share it, not without admitting I had been followed.
“I have anger issues?” I shrugged. Was that really the best lie I could come up with? Anger issues?
I couldn’t let myself dwell. All I had to do was rile her up enough to make her leave.
Her face said it all, not only was she angry but she was disappointed. She had done so much for me, and I had killed kin in return.
“I’m sorry, Ary. I really am.”
Arabella huffed and shook her head in disbelief. She looked close to tears.
“Sort yourself out, Nina, or you’ll hurt everyone you love.” She turned her back on me. “Again.”
Without another word, she left.
For a while I stood in my living room, shell shocked. I had never seen Arabella so angry, she’d been calm and collected; even in defeat.
Still shaken, I headed for my room and the false bottomed drawer in the wardrobe. I pried it up and instantly felt the tickle of unease at the sight of the ancient book hidden there.
I ran my hand over the old leather, trying to work out what it was about this grimoire that had the huntress so on edge.
“What is it you’re so scared of?” I whispered, realising she would never willing tell me.
Carefully, I picked the book up and opened it to the front page, studying the text on the page. It was Greek, and in the top right hand corner was a name; Corrina. I had once known a girl with that name, she had told me it meant ‘maiden’, though I had doubted it in her case.
Corrina must have been the name of the witch who’d written this particular grimoire, although it seemed to start with some sort of history…
In the beginning, before the war, before a third of the host were removed, all angels lived in harmony. They had dominion over earth and saw that all was just.
Three angels in particular kept the world pure; they were known as heaven’s warriors. Their names were Malachi, Ezekiel and Dahlia.
The three warriors held power no other angel possessed. They were skilled fighters, killers down to their core.
When the third of the host was cast out, they were among them. Their power had grown too strong and unpredictable. Malachi and Ezekiel readily accepted their fates, gave up their wings and their weapons, leaving everything they knew to start over, banished from their home in high.
Dahlia, however, sought vengeance, feeling cheated of her glory. She had fought so diligently, that the Almighty deemed her too powerful to ever be given a body of her own.
‘Dahlia’, I thought to myself, must be her name. If this is what I had been led to, or what I had been seeking at the very least, then it had to be.
Beneath the brief history of the three warriors of heaven was the description of a spell. A spell that would release one warrior into the body of another, imbuing them with their strength and agility, their desire to rid the world of that caused harm.
There seemed to be no way of knowing which warrior would be freed, though if the spell were performed on three separate beings, all three warriors would be released.
From what Corrina had written, no one knew how many of the warriors had been released, if any at all.
I flipped through page after page, hoping that she had written something, anything, about how to reverse it.
“Did you really think she was stupid enough to write down the reversal somewhere I could get my hands on? Silly little girl, Corrina was a child witch, not much older than you were when you’re father passed in the mantel. She summoned me out of anger and grief, and in doing so, gave me the overall power in this situation. She wanted to avenge her daddy, who’d been killed by a bloodsucker.” And just like that, I was back in that white, windowless room, with monster within me. “She had hoped for one of my compatriots. Oh, how different things would have turned out.” Her lips thinned into an unsettling smirk. “Ezekiel would have followed her to the ends of the earth, doing everything she asked. Poor boy, always was a lost little puppy. Then, of course, there’s Malachi. He would questioned her every order. Such a stickler for the rules. Had she done the spell with right frame of mind and for the correct reasons, she might just have gotten one of them.
“Alas, she cast it in fear and hatred, so she got me instead.” She paused for a moment, watching me intently. “Was there something else you wanted, little girl?”
Before I could even shake my head in response, I was back in my own living room, alone with old tome. My mind was reeling with the new information. I read the pages again, hoping Dahlia had been wrong, that Corrina had left the reversal.
Dahlia growled with annoyance and impatience, and then it was almost as though she’d grabbed my head with her hands and I was no longer stood in my living room, nor was I in Dahlia’s white room.
I wasn’t even sure I was in my own mind or body.
The sun had set hours ago, the stars had risen. It had been nightfall when the words rang through the gates of despair. A tone of pure anger and vengeance, the spell that would open that gate for just one of us. I had asked the boys who should go, of course they both declined. No one who summons them in anger is worthy of their time and talent. I only the other hand, craved chaos and pain.
All I had to do was blink, and here I was, looking out at the world through someone else’s eyes.
“Orion? Sweetheart?” Her voice was sweet if somewhat shaky. Her golden curls fell into her face.
There was a laugh; deep and melodic. Ha, Orion, after Zeus’ favourite hunter, how ironic.
“Poor child, he’s not here right now.”
The witch’s face lit up. True joy glistened in her pretty hazel eyes. Her petite figure seemed to float with glee.
“Ezekiel.” A second melodic laugh. Some of that glee and joy diminished. “Malachi?”
“Wrong again, little witch.”
All colour drained from her perfectly porcelain face. Her breathing became quicker, more panicked. She hadn’t expected me; no one ever does.
“Tell me, little witch, why have you brought me here.”
“They killed him. In cold blood, they killed my father. He was all I had left. Except my Orion. I gave him this blessing so that we rid the world of these evils together, to live forever, just me and him. Always. “
She had just made the gravest mistake she could ever have made.
I felt my very being, root itself to the boy’s soul, claiming it, and its descendants, as my own. I threw my head back and laughed; Orion’s voice sweet on my own ears.
“Silly little witch. Did your coven leader teach you nothing? To cast a spell, as powerful as the one you just did, out of anger is the worst thing you can do. You still haven’t told me what you want of me.”
“Kill them. Kill all of them. Monsters that lurk in the dark, that hide with skins of men. Rid the world of them, with me, and I will send you home. You have my word.”
Home. The word made my blood boil. I was cast from my home, banished to the pits with the fallen and the demon scum. I didn’t want to go back.
I wanted to make this my home.
I would make this my home.
“You’re foolish, little witch, to think you have can control me.” I stepped closer, feeling my power entwine with the boy’s strength. “You forgot to say my name.” I whispered the words into her ear and I thrust my hand between her third and fourth ribs and crushed her heart in my hand, like an ant beneath my feet. I watched with delight as the light left her eyes, as her dying breath whispered my name into the night.
Dahlia.
I came round with a gasp, in a heap on the floor. Dahlia had been the first, and she would be the last. She had killed the witch Corrina out of spite.
I photographed the relevant pages and sent them to Arabella with the words, here’s your proof, before lighting the log burning and throwing the grimoire in to burn with it. I could hear Dahlia’s scream of fury ricocheting around my skull, but in the quiet of heart I heard a voice, Corrina’s, thanking me.
I had destroyed anyone’s hope of releasing all three warriors upon the world. Heaven only knows the chaos and destruction that would have caused. One was quite enough.
“Silly little girl, the gates will always open for us, one way or another. Even so, I’m still here Little Red, and I’m not going anywhere.”
The witch Corrina may have been a vengeful, resentful, young witch, but some mistakes should never be made. Releasing Dahlia was one of those mistakes.
