Empyrean witch demigodde.., p.17
Empyrean Witch: Demigoddess Chronicles Book 1, page 17
“Aw, I just want to play a little bit,” the vampire crooned. “Don’t you like to play rough sometimes?”
The girl stumbled back, trying to escape. “No, I don’t. Just let me go. Please!”
The vampire threw the girl against the wall. Her eyes started to adjust, and Cassie saw that the victim looked to be in her twenties. She was small and thin, her eyes wide with terror. Blood ran down the side of her throat, a dark stain spreading at her shirtfront.
The vampire closed in, her voice teasing. “Oh, come on. Haven’t you ever been curious?”
Nora’s voice rang out clipped and harsh. “Hey, not cool! You’re going to cut that shit out right now!”
Both figures turned at the sound of her voice, one with pleading eyes and the other grinning. The vampire strode toward Nora, emerging from the shadows to reveal long blonde hair framing a familiar face. Cassie’s pulse escalated as she recognized Tammy.
“Or what?” Tammy advanced toward Nora, her eyes glowing and her grin stained with blood. “Because I’m thinking there’s not a lot you can do.”
Her victim seized that moment to dart from the alley, but Tammy didn’t seem to care. Nor did she notice Cassie, where she stood in the gloom. Tammy thrust out her hands, both glowing with crimson light, and Nora was launched into the air where she was held pinned and dangling.
Tammy laughed. “You’re looking at the future, bitch. I’m not just a vampire, I’m a vampire witch.” Her malevolent grin widened even more. “See what I did there?”
She curled her hands like claws and Nora stiffened, reaching for her throat as she struggled to breathe.
“Now you’re getting the picture,” Tammy said.
Cassie stepped forward into the moonlight. “Hey, Tammy. You want to talk about the future? Because I’m predicting you’re not in it.”
Tammy’s eyes widened and she stumbled back, her concentration broken. Nora dropped to the ground like a cat.
“Hey, I think you might know my friend,” Nora said. “She’s not just a witch, she’s a veil witch, bitch. Like what I did there?”
Tammy took another step back, her eyes showing that she got it. She was a vampire now, and Cassie was the one supernatural predator designed just for her. “Listen, Cassie,” she said. “I know that looked bad, but cut me some slack, okay? I’m still new at this.”
Cassie strode forward, that pent up magic now crackling to life in her hands. It took the form of an orb, bluish-white and shimmering. She backed Tammy into the same wall where, just moments before, she’d held her own prey trapped and begging.
“Here’s the deal,” Cassie said. “The way I see it, there are just two kinds of people in this world. Good people and bad people. Vampires aren’t any different. And guess what?”
Tammy shook her head, her eyes pleading. “What?”
“You weren’t going to be one of the good ones. Sorry, Tammy.”
At the last moment, Tammy sprang straight at Cassie. Whether she meant to run or attack would remain a mystery. All she achieved was colliding with the orb Cassie sent streaking forward. Tammy stopped dead in her tracks, her back arched and her arms thrown wide as that light engulfed her. Then she dropped to the ground.
Cassie waited, at first expecting her to start crumbling to dust. Then she realized. Tammy had just become a vampire. She wouldn’t instantly decompose.
Fine, well fuck it.
Cassie blew out a breath, turned on her heel and started walking as Nora fell in beside her. The way Cassie figured it, the police were going to find a body in that alley tonight either way. At least now they’d find the body of the one who’d deserved to die.
Chapter 21 - Cassie
Cassie woke with a start, knowing she wasn't alone. In the split second before she opened her eyes, she imagined doing so to see Baphomet’s melting face before her. Or possibly even Tammy’s angry ghost. Instead, two hazel eyes stared back at her, set within a boyish face topped with curly brown hair.
Wait, Cade? Was she in Faerie?
A quick check confirmed that she remained on the same sofa she'd collapsed onto after getting home last night. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, just to be sure she wasn't dreaming.
Cade smiled pleasantly. “Still here.”
Cassie swept her hair back from her face, hoping she hadn't been drooling. “I can see that. How the hell did you get in here?”
“Seriously?”
Right, Cassie thought. Master burglar. A guy who used to scale castle walls to steal from the Seelie fae.
Then she remembered something else. “But this place has wards.”
Cade waggled an eyebrow. “Against what?”
Right, Cassie thought again. The Cauldron was warded against vampires, werewolves and demons. Now possibly whatever it was they were dealing with. The one supernatural being for which they didn’t need wards were the fae. Because, technically, they couldn't enter the human realm. Which also meant they had no wards set to detect the half-fae. A good thing too, or Cassie would have been tripping alarms every time she came home.
She sat up and swung her legs off the sofa. “Okay, let's try why this time.”
“What was I supposed to do, sit on the front steps?”
“Um, maybe try waiting at Starbucks?”
Cade shrugged. “For one thing, I’m fresh out of Earth cash. Also, they're not open yet.”
Cassie’s eyes went to the dark windows. “Hang on. What time is it?”
“Time to get moving,” Cade said. “Something happened and Esras figured you'd want to know about it.”
Cassie sighed, not ready to ask yet what that something might be. Obviously, it wasn't going to be good. Weary to the bone, she rose to her feet. “Great. Do I have time to change my clothes?”
“I was going to suggest it. You don't exactly smell fresh.”
Cassie shot him a look. “Thanks for noticing.”
Still, she was tempted to laugh. She'd never had a brother, but she figured Cade for the next best thing. If nothing else, he never failed to be honest.
She went into the bathroom and washed up, thinking about another weird aspect of her current relationship. Cade, being half human, could travel between Faerie and Earth by crossing through Silvermist, the realm of the half-fae. Esras, on the other hand, couldn’t leave Faerie. It had been that way since the fae were banished centuries ago. Shouldn’t this be a problem in their relationship? Esras literally had no idea what she was doing half the time—actually, way more than half the time—and it didn’t seem to faze him. Apparently, she had the most trusting boyfriend on, well, not Earth. Lucky girl or what? So why this constant restlessness? This inability to let herself feel content?
Cassie made a mental note to add this to her therapy agenda. Then she got changed and went back into the living room.
Cade watched her from where he'd taken her place on the sofa. “Damn, you look tired.”
Cassie frowned at him. “Yeah, well, there's not much to be done about that. Like you said, Starbucks is closed. So, portal. I suppose you want me to open one.”
Cade rose to his feet. “We could go through Silvermist, if you’d rather.”
Sure, let’s make this night longer. Oh, wait, it was morning now. Technically. “No, please. Allow me. Are we going to the palace?”
“Actually, the Temple of Euphelos.”
Cassie checked to make sure she'd heard right. “The phone plan?”
Cade grinned. “Not nTelos. Euphelos, the fae sun god.”
Cassie tried to ignore the chill that ran down her back. “Right, they don't have phones in Faerie. So this Euphelos is some sort of god? I’ve heard of Oberon and Titania, but never...”
“Euphelos.”
“Okay, sure. Whatever you say.”
Cade chuckled. “First of all, Oberon and Titania aren’t gods. He was a king and she was a queen. On top of that—and this is the biggie—they weren’t real. They’re from Shakespeare. Don’t worry. People mess that up all the time. But, right now, we’re talking about a fae god.”
Cassie searched her memory, just to be sure. “I’ve been to Faerie like ninety-five times, and no one has mentioned any gods.”
Cassie felt pretty sure Cade was heading toward one of his pedantic modes, and he proved her right a moment later.
“The fae aren’t big on religion these days. And by these days, I mean the last thousand years or so. But back before they invaded the human realm and became known as the Tuatha Dé Danann—who our forebears considered to be gods—the fae had their own pantheon.”
“So what happened?” Cassie asked, although she wouldn’t have been able to stop Cade if she wanted to. He’d gone full-on nerd by now.
“Well, it’s an interesting cultural phenomenon. One worth studying, although we humans can’t study the fae. Because, you know, they’re not supposed to exist. But I suspect we don’t have a parallel in our own history. I suppose there might be some rough equivalents to be found in certain prominent historical individuals. For example, such monarchs and emperors as—”
“The quick version,” Cassie snapped, pulling Cade’s nerd plug out of the wall.
“Right, the quick version. I guess, in short, once you become gods, the whole religion thing just sort of fizzles. I mean, it must be kind of hard to take it seriously after that. But, to be clear, some fae still carry on with their old traditions. And some of the old temples still exist. The Temple of Euphelos being one of them. Which is where we’re going now. Well, specifically, the monastery archive.”
That term rang a bell. “Wait, is that where you stole the Book of Temporal Projections?”
It was through that book that she’d first learned why the high mage, Vintain, had been stalking her. An ancient fae prophecy had predicted that a veil witch would hold within her the magical key that could undo the spell keeping the fae banished from the human realm. That story existed in an old book that Cade had “liberated” from a fae archive and brought back to Silvermist. He'd made a gift of it to a woman named Kezia, who'd kept it in her voluminous collection since.
“Different monastery,” Cade said. “That was the Seelie Royal Monastery Archive. I wouldn’t pick on a bunch of poor monks minding their own business. Besides, this wasn’t a simple burglary. This was more like a full-on attack. At least that’s what we heard.”
While she’d tried to ignore that sudden chill she’d felt, Cassie couldn’t exactly ignore the connection. Temples and gods. Something called the Triplex Dea. Her own impression of Nepheras being some sort of demon goddess. Andastra, who called herself a war goddess. And now Baphomet, who some claimed was the name of an evil deity. This just couldn’t be happening.
Cassie forced herself to focus. “Okay, fine. Where’s this temple?”
“Right by the palace. So, I guess just head there.”
Cassie stared at him for a moment, but decided not to pursue it. Instead she dredged up some magic and opened a portal. “After you,” she said.
For one brief moment, after Cade stepped through, Cassie thought about closing it again. She could go back to bed. Or at least the sofa. But she was awake now anyway.
“Fuck it,” she said, and then stepped through into Faerie.
*
As it turned out, Cassie had walked past the Temple of Euphelos many times as she'd come and gone from the palace. It was just that, to her way of thinking, temples were grand structures with sweeping staircases and soaring columns. This temple, on the other hand, lay behind a simple stone wall. Before today, that wall had been covered in flowering vines. Now those vines were twisted and blackened, the wall itself scorched, and the door within it pulverized.
They entered a courtyard lit by flickering torches, where Cassie saw that the place lay in ruins. Statues had been toppled and broken, stone benches upturned, and what must have been a meditative garden incinerated. The courtyard gave way to the temple itself, a building that reminded her of a Buddhist temple, with a roof that swept up in a curved arc to meet in a graceful point at its apex.
Halfway across the courtyard, Esras and Revlen stood talking with a woman wearing golden robes. Her head was shaved, drawing Cassie’s eyes to the delicate curves of her pointed ears. Beyond those three, other robed figures moved about, their heads bent as they softly chanted. Each of them swung a vessel suspended by a chain, the containers releasing a twisting haze of sweet smelling incense.
Cassie spoke softly. “I guess those must be the monks.”
“Yep, those are the Euphelean monks,” Cade said. “They're burning jan root to clear the energy.”
The fae equivalent to burning sage, Cassie assumed. The difference in this realm being that Cassie could actually see the energy being cleansed, tiny motes of light swirling skyward and winking out in orange flashes. She also couldn't help but wonder if that energy being expunged might explain the edginess creeping through her body. No doubt about it. She felt that same strange magical signature she’d picked up on at Lapidarius. A signature that Cassie felt sure she would have felt last night if she hadn’t been rendered magically paralyzed.
A moment later, Revlen broke off from the other two and walked toward them. While Revlen was a woman of medium stature, she gave off a sense of power without even having to try. She had honey blonde hair, high cheekbones and full lips, her black eyepatch only enhancing her mysterious beauty. If Cassie didn’t know better, she’d feel jealous of Revlen, who not only served as Faerie’s co-regent, but had her own suite at the palace. But Revlen and Esras had fought side by side for years, their relationship forged through battle rather than romance.
“Esras will join us in a moment,” Revlen said. “Based on what he told me, we thought you should see this.”
Cassie kept her voice down. “What happened?”.
Revlen sighed as she looked around at the wreckage. “We're still trying to piece it together. But it appears that six people died last night, all of them monks here at the temple. We learned of their deaths just now.”
Cassie shuddered, thinking about the coven meeting. If Beatrice and the others hadn’t shown up when they did, Autumn would have certainly died. And, after her, who could say how many others?
She focused on Revlen again. “What else do you know?”
“From what we've gathered, there were three aggressors. Based on the descriptions, we feel sure that one of them had to be Nepheras.”
So, there it is, Cassie thought. “And the other two?”
“Two more women, one fair and one dark. Both possessing immense powers, evidently.”
Interesting. Just to be sure, Cassie asked, “Anything about masks or melting faces?”
Revlen frowned as she shook her head. “I gather something like that must have happened in your realm?”
“A few times now. So far, none of us have actually seen who we're dealing with.” Cassie almost added, “Except at a club, where we saw one playing in a band,” but that would just sound crazy.
It was crazy. There just wasn’t any other word for it. For some reason, Andastra wanted to build a public following. The more the merrier, apparently. Humans, witches, vampires—all seemed welcome. But what could she possibly gain from it?
Cassie looked up as Esras joined them, the monk he'd been talking to walking in the opposite direction. He too spoke softly. “Tharnel went to let the others know we'll be entering the temple. She'll meet us at the archive.” He turned to Cassie. “It looks like your suspicions may have been right. At least, based on what we know so far.”
Cassie would have given anything to be wrong. This deal was building fast, and so far they weren't even close to keeping up. “Revlen told me. Whatever this is, it sounds like you're in it too now.”
She saw the resolve in Esras’s eyes, the same conviction she'd seen each time they'd faced danger. “Then I guess we should go see what we can learn.”
He turned and started walking, Cade falling in beside him. As they crossed the courtyard, Cassie watched the monks as they kept to their ritual. She turned to Revlen. “Cade said the fae aren’t very religious anymore.”
Revlen nodded, glancing at the monks as well. “For the most part, we’re not. Most believe that our gods and goddesses are but a remnant of a nearly forgotten past. However, some think they once walked among us. That it was through them that we first learned magic. There are even those who believe they still return from time to time.”
“What’s your view?” Cassie was curious, but half-kidding. She’d only known Revlen to be a pragmatist, a woman focused solely on winning the next fight.
“Let’s just say that, after everything I’ve seen, I’ve learned to keep an open mind.”
She didn’t say more, leaving Cassie to wonder. Could Revlen possibly believe that there’d once been gods active in Faerie? If so, where did she think they’d gone? Or, was she among those who believed they’d never quite left?
They soon entered the temple’s vast chamber, its ceiling curved upward from two sides as Cassie had observed from outside. Within that space, another group of monks knelt over bodies laid out on ornate bronze platforms. They too chanted softly from within a haze of burning incense. A few glanced up as Cassie’s group walked past.
“The six who perished tried to stop the intruders,” Esras said. “The rest said they were rendered helpless, unable to move.”
“Sounds about right,” Cassie muttered, wondering which attack had happened first. Presumably, the attack on the coven but, either way, it sure seemed like their new friends were keeping busy. But if they thought Julia had something they wanted, why the hell had they come hunting here?
Tharnel stood waiting at the back, beside what used to be a doorway. The walls around it were scorched. She swept violet eyes over their group. “The archive is at your disposal. Please let me know if I can answer any questions.”
She turned and started walking down a torchlit corridor as Cassie’s group fell in behind her. For a few moments, no one spoke, then Cassie turned to Esras. “Cade said you think the archive might have been the target.”
