Protect Her: Part 11 (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE –
PAIGE

So that was that. Somehow, Riley had raised Bruno from the dead. Why would remain a mystery, but the images were burned into my brain. Riley was amassing an army of demons. That was another mystery. No wonder he hadn’t gone straight to Calamata Island. He had been too busy recruiting.

I had the van going as fast as I dared. Getting to Alice as quickly as possible seemed to be imperative. She was in danger, and although I hated admitting it, the rest of us were as well. It wasn’t just Riley’s loved ones. It was the whole world. If he set those demons loose on innocent people, it would be a genocide of epic proportions.

“I still can’t believe it.” The words were whispered, but I saw Viho turn toward me once again.

“He’s not himself. You know that. If he was looking for allies, this kind of thing shouldn’t surprise us,” Viho said.

“Allies with Bruno Proctor? Talk about making a deal with the devil,” I said.

“If he conjured him from the dead, then he has complete control over him,” Viho said. “And Bruno was well-connected and had a legion loyal to him alone. That would make him valuable for whatever Riley is planning.”

“What exactly do we think that is again?” Klein asked. He had taken a break from the computer. He looked green, and I knew that despite his big talk, looking at endless blood and gore wasn’t something he was used to. He was hanging in there nonetheless.

“He said that he was going after Adam,” Viho said. “But it could be that he has decided to take on Lucifer for Hell. Or even something as mad as trying to take over Heaven.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked. “If he wanted revenge, he’d go after Adam.”

“Power corrupts,” Viho said as if that was the explanation for everything. “I have little doubt that is how it all started. How the darkness whispered to him and seduced him to begin with, but now that it’s taking hold inside of him, he would turn to much bigger plans.”

“This isn’t Riley at all,” I said shaking my head. “He’s had the vengeance bloodlust. But to do this is insanity.”

“I didn’t think to check missing persons reports at the places we know he’s been in the last week,” Klein said. “But the number has spiked exponentially after each of the inciting events. I think it’s safe to say that he’s been collecting recruits practically since he started.”

The idea that Riley was intentionally putting demons in human hosts was revolting. “He knows there is a mystery plague going around affecting demons. Implanting them in human hosts would ensure that they lived longer.”

“What do we know of that?” Viho asked. He had been intrigued by the whole thing since the first time I had off-handedly mentioned it. He had me combing through every moment I had spent with Riley looking for clues as to where he had gone.

The lights of Kansas City burned brightly ahead of us. We were only twenty minutes from Alice’s doorstep. It was a place where Alice had taken in lost and damaged souls and tried to help them over the years. I wondered if it would be safe for anyone there anymore.

The change of topic was welcome. I didn’t want to focus on all of the bad things that Riley had been up to any more than I had to. “Not a lot. When Bruno captured me and was holding me prisoner, he said that I had special healing abilities. He had two of his best soldiers implanted in Gabrielle and Joanna. He was going to have me try to heal them.”

“Let’s hold that thought for a bit. Focus on the virus.”

“He didn’t call it a virus,” I said. “He said it was a plague that affected demons only. The first case was a few years ago. An otherwise healthy and normal demon dropped dead. It was in its natural form. They figured out pretty quickly that if they put their essence in a human host after the symptoms developed, the impact was significantly slowed. It’s not like there are doctors for demons, ya know. Bruno seemed as mystified as anyone else.”

“So a disease that strikes demons was something that he thought an instrument of the light could heal. Intriguing,” Viho said.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I said.

“Instrument of the light. That makes you sound like some kind of superhero,” Klein said. “I think I might write a book about all of this. I’d probably make a million dollars.”

I knew that humor was Klein’s defense mechanism when he was scared or overwhelmed. I understood the feeling. But I couldn’t just escape into sarcasm and stand idly by as the world seemed to be collapsing around me. I needed to do something.

“It’s time to examine everything we think we know and build it back up again,” Viho said. “The rules as we know them don’t seem to apply anymore. By all indications, you should have been dead forever, Paige. Riley banished Bruno Proctor to the ether, and yet apparently has been able to call him back into his service. Demons, a hearty and difficult foe to kill, are dying through a mysterious means that no one understands.”

“If we don’t know the rules, it’s going to be pretty damn hard to play the game,” Klein said, stating the obvious.

“We’re going to have to figure them out and fast,” I said. Now that we were in the city proper, it felt as if there were a thousand eyes on us. I didn’t see anyone in the streets. It was four o’clock in the morning, but there should have been some signs of life in the streets. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

“No doubt we are,” Viho said. “Klein, perhaps you’d be good enough to select some of the more impactful weapons at our disposal.”

“Do you think he’s here already?” I said tightly. This wasn’t even close to the kind of reunion that I had planned with Riley. I thought that we would find him alone and confused, not leading an army from Hell with Bruno Proctor at his side.

“Even if he is not, I am certain that he has eyes and ears on the convent,” Viho said. “Which was another reason that I was reluctant to come here. On the off chance that he wasn’t headed here already, our presence will draw him out. That’s what your archangel is counting on.”

“He’s not my archangel,” I said heatedly. “We should have called ahead.”

“Hi, Alice. Remember me? You might have heard that I died, but I didn’t. And oh, by the way, your son’s a fully fledged dark angel, and your dead husband is also alive. Any thoughts on how to fix this mess?” Klein mimicked in a high-pitched voice.

“Okay, so maybe not a conversation for the telephone,” I said. I stopped the van as soon as I saw we were only a few blocks away. My skin felt prickly. There was something afoot, but I couldn’t see anything around us that was amiss. “I don’t feel so great about this plan anymore.”

“You are still sensitive despite your lack of magic,” Viho said studying me. “That is interesting, as well.”

“Something to explore another day,” I said as I stood up and made my way back past Klein. I looked over the myriad of options of weapons available to me. I grabbed several knives that I knew were made out of Plythen steel and stuck them into my belt. It had been a few years since I’d used a crossbow, but I decided that stealth would be a better option than a gun.

“So you still have magic?” The question was for Viho. Although he didn’t speak of it, I knew that he had some kind of abilities that he’d be able to use if push came to shove. He and Alice were both imbued with supernatural abilities. That was where Riley had gotten his, after all.

“I do, but I prefer not to use any of it unless necessary,” Viho said. “My strength isn’t what it used to be, and I have always been more comfortable with a sword at my side anyway.”

He was being modest. His tribe had sent him out into the world to kill demons when he was only eighteen. He was given a quota to fill before he could return, if he didn’t die first. Even though Viho was now in his fifties, he carried himself with a dangerous edge that couldn’t be missed.

Klein started to load himself up with several different kinds of guns. It didn’t surprise me. Klein preferred to keep the action at a distance, not that I necessarily blamed him. I looked over our meager army of three and shrugged. It was the best we were going to do.

“I think we should leave the van here,” I said. “If we can get to the convent on foot, then we might be able to stay out of sight of anyone who’s watching.”

“Walking up to the front door is still going to be pretty conspicuous,” Klein said.

I pointed at the GPS. There was a large gray area that covered the block in front of us directly between where we were and the convent. “So let’s hope they aren’t keeping an eye on the back door. We’ll go through the cemetery.”

Klein’s eyes widened. “That seems like a really bad idea.”

I knew what he was thinking. Cemeteries were Riley’s domain. If he was anywhere close by, he might seek refuge there. I wanted to see him so badly, but I was terrified of what I would find when I did. Benjamin and Viho had done quite a number on me, taking away my confidence that I could turn back the tide of Riley’s darkness. Knowing that Bruno was back in the mix was another thing that gave me great pause.

“It’s a chance we have to take,” I said to his unspoken question. “We can’t announce our arrival, and it is the butt crack of dawn. Let’s try to keep things on the down low.”

I heard Klein mumbling under his breath as I slid the door to the van open. It was time for us to get on with doing what we had come to do. I just hoped that I knew what I was doing.

I jumped gently down the ground and winced at the crunch of my boots as they hit the asphalt of the street. It felt good to stand up straight, though. It felt as if I had been in the van for years. It was quickly becoming my second home, and there wasn’t a thing that I liked about that idea.

I moved out of the way as Viho and Klein climbed down. I turned to them, and it struck me that despite the fact that Viho had been the leader of his tribe and had thirty years on me, even he was looking at me expectantly. Somewhere along the way, I had become the ringleader. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. When I was on my own, I was barely able to take care of myself much less consider looking after anyone else. But now they expected me to lead them out into the night and possibly into a confrontation with the man I loved.

Gulping in a deep breath, I tried to calm my nerves. I could do this. It was simple strategy. “So we’re going to stay close together. Keep your eyes open for anything suspicious. We’ll go straight through the gate and up over the hill. The church is on the other side. If anything happens, run like hell for the convent. Don’t wait for anyone else. Keep yourself safe.”

“We’re sticking together,” Viho said gruffly. “If one of us is attacked, we will stand together.”

“One of us has to reach Alice and tell her what’s happening,” I said. “Let’s go.” I hoped to God that we weren’t walking into a trap.

We walked on the sidewalk down the silent street. I was going to remark how quiet it was, but I didn’t want to be the one to disturb the silence. It was eerie and unnatural. There was something wrong. As we approached the cemetery gates, I thought about how much it reminded me of one of the cemeteries on Calamata Island. I had spent hours exploring every one of them. I knew more about cemeteries than I’d ever care to admit. They weren’t just Riley’s domain.

As we approached the gates, I could see they were open. I stopped in my tracks.

“What is it?” Klein asked.

“We need to go around,” I said, pivoting on my heel. I was calculating like mad in my head wondering if we’d be able to make it back to the van in time. “Hurry up.”

“Why do we need to go around?” Klein asked.

“It’s a trap,” I said under my breath as I quickly crossed to the other side of the street. “The gates should be closed and under lock and key at this time of night. They were standing wide open.”

“Maybe they forgot to lock them,” Klein said.

That was just before a shadow detached itself from the wall in front of us and blocked our path. I had the knife up and heard Viho draw his sword. The figure’s eyes blazed a blood red, but it was impossible to make out any of the rest of its features.

“Typhon demon,” Viho said in a low voice.

“I’m aware of that,” I said. This wasn’t the first Typhon demon I had ever encountered. Plythen steel would do the trick, and I held up my knife, so it shone in the moonlight. “Let us pass.” It brought back a vivid memory of Riley doing the same thing the night that we met. He had used his knife to send the demon that bit me packing.

“Uh, Paige?” Klein said. His voice carried a note of fear.

“Yeah, Klein,” I said. I didn’t take my eyes off the demon in front of me.

“Over there. To your right.”

I didn’t need to look to know that there was a circle of demons closing around us. “We can’t let them take us,” I said tersely. “Are you ready?” I felt the bands of fear tightening around my chest.

“Always.” Viho didn’t sound concerned. I needed some of the old man’s confidence.

I let the knife in my hand fling free and heard the roar of the demon as it struck true between its eyes. Then everything seemed to go silent in my mind as the world around me exploded.

CHAPTER FOUR –
PAIGE

I don’t know how I made it. Somewhere along the way, I had lost track of Viho and Klein. I hoped they were okay. I did the only thing I could think of, and that was move forward. The crossbow’s aim stayed true as I fought for my life through the bodies of more demons that I could count.

Magic would have come in handy. Viho had unleashed several balls of fire that cleared the path in front of me when it seemed certain that I was about to be overwhelmed. The fire had been balefire. It was forbidden magic. But it was useful, and I had no idea that a human being would be able to wield it. It was supposed to be reserved only for the archangels, and I assumed that was where he had learned it.

At one point, Klein fell under a mass of demons, and Viho had gone to his aid. I had turned to help, but he yelled at me to go on. Although he had said to stay together, his haggard look brokered no argument. With the demons distracted, I did what he said. I ran.

When I saw the familiar gate ahead of me, I felt as if my lungs were on fire. Although I hadn’t crossed more than several blocks between the van and the convent, it felt as if I had run a marathon in Hell. I scrambled through the gate and up the concrete steps. I didn’t bother knocking but slammed my shoulder into the door. I tried the knob and found it locked.

“Let me in!” I screamed. I scanned the area behind me and saw the shadows making their way in my direction. But none of them crossed the threshold onto the front lawn of the convent. I said a silent thanks of relief that Alice must have found a way to re-consecrate the ground.

I threw my shoulder back to ram the door again when it flew open. I saw Alice’s face and pushed past her inside. “Shut the door!” I stood in front of her gasping for breath, and I had a sense of what I must look like as her gaze traveled up and down my form.

“What has happened?” she asked. Her voice was calm but held a note of tension that I recognized. Alice wasn’t the type of woman who randomly lost her shit.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” I said as I ran a hand down my clothes. I was self-conscious of the fact that I was standing in a convent dirty, sweaty, and covered in demon blood. But surely Alice had seen worse. “Has anyone else shown up other than me?”

I didn’t want to bring up Viho’s name yet. “Klein?” Then I realized with a start that I had no idea if Alice even knew who Klein was. On my previous visits, I had been with Riley. Klein hadn’t joined the posse yet.

“No one,” she said. “Where’s Riley?”

I mentally cringed. Of course, I should have mentioned his name first. I wasn’t sure why I was trying to hide the danger of the situation.

“He’s probably on his way,” I said truthfully. “We were separated.” That was also the truth. I wasn’t ready to give her the whole download until I was sure that we had time to go through it.

“Come in,” she said. I could tell that she was hesitant about the idea, though. The one time I had visited Alice on my own, I had stolen something valuable from her. She didn’t approve of my relationship with Riley. I didn’t approve of what she and Viho had done all those years ago when they essentially abandoned Riley. I didn’t care how they tried to spin it.

I was torn between turning back to find Viho and Klein or going into the sitting room and having some of Alice’s Dragon Jasmine tea. It was a lovely thought that we could ignore what was going on outside the walls of the convent, but I knew that would be nothing but a ruse. If the demons wanted in, they’d find a way in. Unfortunately, I knew how they’d do it too. Sometimes Klein was too efficient in being able to find information that I really didn’t want to know.

“We need to find somewhere safe,” I sputtered as I grabbed her arm. “There are demons out there. A lot of them. It’s a miracle that I was able to get through to you.”

“There are very few places in the world that are truly safe,” Alice said as she gently untangled my fingers from her arm. “You must know that better than anyone.” As my fingers fell away, she gave a start. Then she peered closely at me. “You are different.”

“Yes,” I said. There was no point in hiding the truth on that one. Alice had known what I was before I knew it myself. She was a sensitive and seemed to have the ability to see things in people. She had known that Riley was a dark angel. She sensed the darkness and the light swirling in the people she met, and she was entirely too perceptive.

She pushed me away from the door and toward the sitting room. “You must tell me what’s happening. Quickly now. Spit it out.”

I stood in the middle of the sitting room and stared at her. “Um. The angels tried to kill me. Bruno tried to kill me. Riley killed Bruno. An original angel named Adam showed up and killed Eva after she convinced me to let her possess me. Riley resurrected my spirit, but Benjamin kidnapped it before I could go to him. Riley crushed the relic and sucked all the bad mojo into himself, and Adam killed Eva in retaliation. Riley thought I was dead, and he gave over to the darkness to go after Adam. When Eva died, I was made corporeal again.”

I paused to take a breath. When I rattled off everything that had happened since I last saw Alice, it sounded crazy. My only relief was that I knew she’d believe me. I had carefully kept the Viho threads out of my story. “I think that about brings us up to present.”

Alice crossed her hands in front of her. There had been no reaction on her face during my tirade of a recap. “I see. So you are here because you think Riley will come here after me.”

“I’m trying to find Riley to let him know that I am alive,” I said.

“You think that this knowledge will change the outcome of his destiny?”

I felt something snap inside of me. I was tired of everyone questioning what Riley and I meant to each other. “Surely the one thing that could turn anyone away from darkness is the opposite emotion. Love. That’s what we have. It’s something that is bigger than both of us. It’s something that I don’t think either one of us ever expected to find, but we did. And so yes, I believe that if I find him I can convince him that there’s another way. He’s not alone. He never was.”

There was a swirl of cloudy smoke behind Alice, and I reached out to pull her away as it materialized into a shape of a man. I felt my throat clench.

“Hello.” Riley stood behind his mother with a smile on his face. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “What a surprise.”

“Riley.” I suddenly realized that we hadn’t beaten him there at all. He had been here waiting. I wondered if he had known before this moment that I was alive. If he had, and he hadn’t come for me, then it would be proof of what Viho and Benjamin had been telling me all along.

Now that we were here staring at each other, I didn’t know what to say. My eyes drank him in, noting the similarities and the stark differences between this man and the man I knew. He was dressed in a long black trench coat that fell almost to his knees. His normal faded jeans had been traded for a pair of dress slacks. His hair, which normally fell in dark waves across his forehead, was neatly coiffed on top of his head. He looked every inch a proper gentleman, far from the rough rider necromancer that I knew him to be.

“Did you know?” It was the question buzzing in my mind.

“That you were alive?”

I don’t know why he had to say it out loud. Riley and I were practically able to read each other’s thoughts at one time. He knew me better than I knew myself. I gave a short nod.

“For a few days now,” he said with a smirk. “My network of spies were keeping tabs on anyone that might come sniffing after me. I expected archangels, not a ragtag group of humans.”

My stomach dropped. He had known, and he hadn’t come to find me. Had I misjudged what there was between us so badly? It was as if my worst fear was coming true. “Maybe we could go somewhere and talk,” I said weakly. “A lot has happened.”

Riley snapped his fingers, and I watched as Alice slid away from him toward the kitchen. “Don’t forget to bring sugar cubes this time,” he called at her back. Then he turned back to me with a slight eye roll. “Mothers. Always trying to keep their kids away from the sweets.”

“What’s happened to you?” I whispered. This was far from the reunion I had pictured in my mind. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

Riley moved into the room, and I took a step backward. His eyes narrowed, and he smirked at the movement. “What’s happened to me? I had an epiphany. A revelation. When I saw Adam slit Eva’s neck, suddenly everything was so clear.”

“What was so clear?” I knew that I was talking to Riley, but this was a version of him I had never seen before. Everything about him felt cold, from his eyes to the way he carried himself.

“I was free,” he whispered, but the words carried across the distance between us and seemed to explode in my ear drums causing me to wince. “Free from distraction. Free from the idea that I was the one who needed to protect Paige. Free to live my life unfettered by expectations of who I should be. I could finally be who I was always meant to be.”

I keyed into the fact that when he said my name, he was referencing me as if I wasn’t there. It didn’t stop me from bristling at his words. “I never forced you to help me, Riley. You did that on your own, but I was always grateful for it. I’m alive because of you.”

His eyes had a faraway look, and it was as if he was staring right through me. “I haven’t been free in my decision making since the day I was born. It was the same for Paige. Fate. Destiny. Whatever you want to call it, it has been dictating my actions. I was never free until I finally took control.”

“I might have had a destiny prescribed for me, but I beat it,” I said. I took a small step toward him. “You helped me do that. Eva is gone from my life now. I can start over, and so can you.”

His focus lasered in on me. “Paige died. Eva is dead. All the reasons that I was wedded to a world where I thought the underdog could win were shown to be a sham. This new world belongs to me.”

Even though I was standing there in front of him, he still believed I was dead. There was something off in his mind, and I knew it had to be the darkness eating away at him and whispering secrets that weren’t real.

“I’m not dead, Riley.” I took another step toward him. I held up my hands palms facing toward him so that he could see I wasn’t threatening him in any way. My heart ached for him. Wherever he was in his mind, he was trapped as surely as I had been when I consented to be Eva’s vessel once and for all. I just had to find him or that part of him that remembered who he truly was. “I’m standing right here in front of you. Can’t you see me?”

“I see a vessel,” he said flatly. “An empty thing that is probably searching for Eva even though I watched Adam rip her life force away and bury it forever. Eva is no more, Vessel. You can wear Paige’s face and speak lies, but I know the truth.”

If I pushed him, would he break? Would he come apart in front of me? What could I say or do to show him that I was real? I had to keep those thoughts at the forefront of my mind and not give into feeling hurt over words he didn’t mean. This explained why he hadn’t come for me. He thought I was some sort of imposter.

“Riley, please,” I said softly. “It’s me. I’m right here.” I reached toward his face, but he knocked my hand away. I hissed as I cradled it against my chest. I saw an angry red mark where his palm had touched my skin. It burned as if he had set alight a dozen nerve endings. The pain was intense, but I forced my gaze back to his as I saw him watching my expression with a smirk.

“Go back where you came from, demon,” he sneered. “I have no use for those who try to trick me with glamour. A hundred of you have tried the same trick, and each one has suffered the same fate. Go back to your master, and let him know that when I figure out who is doing this, I will rip out his heart and feed it to his servants.”

My mind processed his words. He had been exposed to others wearing my face. Of course, he wouldn’t trust me. Of course, he would think that I was just like them. How could I prove to him that it was me and not some other demon set on a mission to harm him?

“I wanted to be an actress,” I said as the tears welled in the corners of my eyes. The mark on my hand had started to expand across my skin. “I had my first starring role when I was twelve. It was Annie Get Your Gun.” I desperately needed him to see that it was me. The only thing I could dredge out were the memories of what I had showed him in my past life. Things he had seen when he had been with me inside my mind.

“Paige Matthews was tracked and hunted by demon officials for years,” he said. “Don’t you think they knew more about her than she probably knew about herself? A minor detail in her life, and an odd one to choose. But that could easily have been discovered with a little digging.”

The pain was growing more intense by the moment. Now the entire length of my arm was covered in angry, red splotches. I thought about the stories I had heard about the necromancer’s skills at torture. It was a creative choice. But I couldn’t be deterred.

“My parents died when I was fourteen,” I said. It was starting to get harder to form words in my mind and speak them out loud. “Pollball demons took them. That’s what you told me.”

“Easy enough to discover. Again,” Riley said. His eyes narrowed. “Who do you work for? Who wants to get close to me so badly that they were willing to send you to me?”

My teeth started to chatter because behind the pain was a cold chill that traveled up and down the length of my arm. I wondered if I was about to die. The irony that Riley would be the one who had saved me so many times, only to be the one who killed me in the end, wasn’t lost on me.