Heir of Night by Emily Goodwin
Chapter 21
Magic sizzles around my fingers, and without a second thought, I take off, crossing the street as fast as I can.
“Hey!” I yell, but the horse keeps going, directed by its rider. A few people nearby stop and look at me, wondering who I’m yelling at. A car drives by, illuminating the large sword War is holding at his side. “Stop!” I call, and somehow, I know I spoke the word in Enochian. War pulls back on the reins and slowly turns.
I come to a stop on the edge of the sidewalk, heart in my throat. He’s wearing tarnished armor, stained with blood. I can barely make out two dark eyes glowing beneath a medieval knight’s helmet. He’s staring right into my soul, and I can feel the grip he’s trying to take on the world.
“Do you want to get hit by a fucking car?” Eliza pulls me onto the curb, eyes wide and face pulled back with worry and anger. “What the fuck, Callie?”
I shake away her hold on my arm, lips parting and my breath coming out ragged. “You don’t see him?”
“Who?” She follows my gaze and shakes her head.
“It’s War.”
Still looking right into my eyes, War pulls the large sword from its sheath and raises it into the air. I throw my hands out, hitting him with a blast of energy. It goes right through him and shatters the window of a store behind him. I can’t see his face, but somehow, I know he’s laughing. People scream, and the security alarm blares.
“Oh, fuck.”
“Callie,” Eliza whisper-yells and grabs my wrist again. I have no idea if there are cameras out here or not. All I did was throw my hands out. No one can say it was anything other than a coincidence. “What did you do?”
“He’s still there.” I hold up my right hand, summoning a blue energy ball, ready to throw it at him. I have to kill him. Take him out now before he can infect anyone else. Eliza pushes my hand down, burning herself on the energy ball. She jerks back, charred flesh starting to heal already.
A pair of women with their phones out walk over to the broken window, oblivious to one of the freaking Horsemen of the Apocalypse standing only feet from them. The energy ball in my hand starts to fade, and my eyes widen in horror when War swings his sword right through one of the women.
I gasp, and War disappears. The woman shivers like a chill just ran down her spine but doesn’t waver. She keeps rolling the video she’s taking with her phone, flipping it around to show her face. Her friend is doing the same and accidentally bumps into her.
I’m too shaken up to know exactly what happens next, and I can’t stop staring at the spot were War was standing. He was there, right? I know what I saw. What I felt. It was him. Eliza shakes me, and the next thing I know, the two women are on the ground. The one War stabbed with his sword has a piece of broken glass in her hand, trying to stab the other.
“You’ve always been jealous of me!” she shouts and slashes the glass through the air. Her friend screams and holds up her hand, blocking her face but getting cut clean across her palm.
“Tina, please!” The friend wrestles against her. “Stop!”
“War got her,” I tell Eliza and step forward, throwing out my hand. I send Tina flying off her friend, and she scrambles up, clutching the glass so hard her own hand is dripping with blood. Abby and Melinda make it across the street. Abby grabs my arm, and Melinda rushes forward, hands held out and ready for a fight. A few others have gathered around, keeping their distance and sneaking their phones out.
“What the heck is going on?” Abby asks. “Did you blow up that window?”
“Not on purpose,” I tell her, keeping one hand extended.
“Oh my god.” Abby snaps into doctor-mode and goes to the bleeding girl on the sidewalk.
“She’s jealous!” Tina yells, still clutching the broken piece of glass. “She’s going to kill me and become me! I have to kill her before she kills me!”
“Is she possessed?” Melinda asks, looking over her shoulder for half a second.
“Infected, I think,” I tell her, becoming more and more aware of everyone watching. I can’t keep a telekinetic hold on Tina much longer without someone noticing she’s being held back by an invisible force.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” I was able to shake the hold the demon had on me by using my angel powers, but I can’t hit this lady with a blast of energy and, first of all, expect her to live, and second, not completely expose my powers to the whole freaking world. A crowd starts to gather, and I lower my hand. “Somnum,” I whisper, and Tina’s head lolls back. I flick my wrist, pulling the glass out of her hand before she can fall and impale herself with it. Then she slumps to the ground.
“Holy shit!” A guy with his phone out jogs over. “That chick went totally psycho! She’s probably the one who busted the wind—” He stops short when he sees me.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I grumble, seeing Mr. Social Media from earlier tonight at the bar.
He lowers his phone—and his gaze, realizing I’m pregnant. The shock on his face affirms what Melinda said about me not looking pregnant when I was sitting in the booth.
“You again,” he stammers, and I’ve had just about enough of him tonight. Resisting the urge to grab his phone and throw it down a storm drain, I look back at the woman on the ground. It’s not her fault she got infected by War, and she shouldn’t have to take the blame for shattering the storefront window. She’ll get charged criminally and may be liable to cover the damages.
“Someone needs to call 911,” Abby says, voice coming out strong. She took a pad from her purse and has it pressed against the other woman’s hand and is slowly helping her to her feet.
“On it,” Melinda says, phone already against her ear.
“You need to leave,” Eliza insists. “Your uncle isn’t going to swoop in and save the day this time.”
“I don’t need saving,” I immediately retort.
“Not in the sense you’re thinking about, but in a keep the world from accusing you of witchcraft way, yes, you do.” She doesn’t attempt to hide the worry in her eyes with a snide comment or rude remark. “The last thing we need is you on the national news or going viral on social media, broadcasting your location to all the angels and bloody demons!”
Dammit, she’s right, but I can’t leave. Not when I know this woman is infected by War. We need to cure her, and if we can learn anything about how War works, it could give us the upper hand. He was here but wasn’t at the same time. Is he projecting like Paimon and Bael did? Or traveling across an astral plane only I could see into?
He saw me, though, that’s for fucking sure.
“She’s going to go crazy once she wakes up,” I say, looking at Tina on the ground. She’s going to need stitches for sure on at least one hand.
“Good thing the cops are on their way.” Eliza tips her head, able to hear the sirens before I do, though with the high-pitched beeping of the security alarm still going off, it’s hard to hear anything else around us.
The girl Abby is helping inches toward her friend on the ground. Tears are running down her face, and she looks confused as hell. Rightly so, of course.
“Tina?” the friend asks timidly, shaking her head. “I don’t know what happened.” She looks back at Abby and wipes tears off her cheek, smearing blood across her skin in the process.
“You should stay back before your friend wakes up and gets all stabby again,” Eliza says bluntly, and I elbow her.
“I…I don’t understand.” She looks from Eliza to me. “Did you see what happened?” Wincing, she cradles her hand against her chest.
“No,” I lie. “I heard the glass break and came across the street to see if anyone was hurt.” Please don’t have a security camera, I silently plead, looking at the store. I still don’t think anyone would come to the conclusion that I used magic to blast away the glass…right?
“She didn’t want to go out tonight,” she whimpers. “But I begged her.”
“It’s not your fault.” Red and blue flashing lights illuminate the sidewalk. “Fuck,” I grumble. I wasn’t expecting the police so soon. I mean, it’s great they responded this fast, but I needed more time to try and figure out how the hell I can save this girl from War’s grip.
“Go,” Melinda mouths. “I got this.”
Nodding, I let Eliza drag me back across the street and stop on the corner, blending in with the rest of the annoying spectators. The fire department is the first to arrive, and I lose sight of Abby when the truck pulls up along the storefront.
“How long is that sleep-spell going to hold?” Eliza asks.
“Hours, unless I wake her up.”
“Can you do that from across the street? If you want to try and help this woman, wake her up before they think she overdosed and give her something for it.”
“That’s, um, that’s really logical.” We walk a few paces down the street so I can get a good view of Tina on the ground. I wait until a burly fireman is almost to her before I wake her up. She gets to her feet, looking confused, and then screams when she realizes her hand is bleeding. She starts screaming that someone did it to her and that the fireman who’s trying to help is going to kill her. More emergency response vehicles show up, obscuring my view and making it impossible to hear what she’s saying.
“I can’t see my sister.”
“Stay here,” Eliza tells me. “I’ll check on her. Stay. Here.”
“I will,” I promise, nodding my head. Eliza looks me in the eye for half a beat and then zooms across the street, going around an ambulance and out of sight.
Taking a step back, I blend into my surroundings and wait, each second ticking by slow as ever. A familiar feeling tugs at my heart, and I turn just in time to see Lucas coming to a stop after running with vampire speed to me.
“Tell me you’re okay,” he says, both hands landing on my arms. He looks me up and down and inhales, smelling for my blood.
“I’m perfectly okay. Though I did kind of blow up that window.”
“There’s a good explanation for that, I’m sure.”
“I’m going to say so.” I step in close to him. “How did you know I was here?”
“I followed the sirens.” Lucas looks at the police cars. “There’s always a chance you’re wherever the trouble is.”
I give him a look but don’t disagree. “I saw War.”
“The Horseman War?” He holds onto me tighter, as if that will keep me safe. It makes me feel safe, at the very least.
“Yes. I think he was on some sort of astral plane because no one else could see him, and I think he was almost surprised I could see him. He only responded when I yelled at him in Enochian.”
Lucas looks at me, dark blue eyes zeroing in on mine. “You yelled at one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”
I shrug. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Told you…that’s my motto.”
“And then what happened?”
“I tried to hit him with magic, but it went through him and broke the window. Oh, and I think Paimon sent a demon after me, and there’s a chance I trapped it in the mirror in the ladies’ room at The Taproom.”
Lucas opens his mouth only to shut it again. Brows slowly furrowing, he pulls me to him. “I’m never letting you out of the house again.” He hugs me but quickly lets go, running his hands down my arms and then resting them on my stomach. “You seem—”
“Cal!” Abby and Melinda cross the street. Abby has blood on her cream-colored peacoat. “Eliza told us to meet you over here. Oh, Lucas. Hi.”
“How is she?” I ask, letting my hands run down Lucas’s chest. He keeps a hold of my hand, interlocking our fingers.
“Which one?” Melinda slides a dagger back into a hidden sheath inside her knee-high leather boots. “The EMTs are trying to get the infected chick onto a stretcher. She’s getting more and more agitated by the minute.”
“Infected?” Lucas questions, tightening his grip on my hand.
“By Wa—” I stop short, remembering my sister has no idea the Four Horsemen are real, let alone on earth. She doesn’t need to know the truth, and right now, with her being drunk, this is not how she needs to find out. “By that thing we were talking about before. The one that rides a horse. He stabbed her with his sword, but since he was on an astral plane, it didn’t physically hurt her, just made her go crazy. Like really psycho crazy, and she went all stabby on her friend who—” I turn just in time to see Tina break the restraints and almost fall off the stretcher. Several firefighters rush over and help hold her down. The woman is petite and nowhere near that strong. What the fuck is going on?
Eliza zooms back over, running through oncoming traffic. She pushes her hair back into place and raises her eyebrows at Lucas in a silent greeting.
“When a demon possesses someone, their eyes turn black, right?” she asks me.
“Yeah, why do you ask?”
“Then I think crazy-pants over there is possessed.”