Wicked War of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 9) (8 page)

I flicked to the next email, this one from Cinder, a lifelike golem created by a Seraphim named Fjoeruss, aka Mr. Gray.

The aether pods have processed ten more Darklings. Joss and Otaleon are doing an excellent job of tutoring them, but we do not have enough nom volunteers to feed them all. Please meet with me at your earliest convenience to discuss options. –C

I looked at my calendar. It was already stuffed with items. Ryland and Stacey had arranged a meeting with the lycan Alpha, Colin McCloud for tomorrow. I was also supposed to meet with Captain Takei to discuss options for dealing with Cyphanis Rax and installing a new Arcane Council.

Scrolling down, I realized every day was filled with one operation or another. We'd prioritized the Obsidian Arch way stations we needed to control for more effective logistics and scheduled the days for our military actions. It felt strange to make an appointment for fighting battles.
Killing enemies on a schedule.
All of our military actions led toward securing the Grand Nexus. As the primary Alabaster Arch in this realm, Eden, it was the only way Daelissa could open a gateway to Seraphina. Since she now had the Chalon, the key to activate the nexus, there was almost nothing standing in her way.

Thankfully, the nexus was blocked for the time being. I'd sent my friends—now Templar soldiers—to put portal-blocking statues in the way station, thus keeping Daelissa from utilizing it. Even so, it was only a matter of time before she and her minions discovered how to open the gateway. We had to secure all the way stations with Alabaster Arches before that happened.

I scanned the subjects of the other emails. Adam's sister, Felicia, had sent me a request to rescue vampires from the enemy army. Most of them were just kids who thought being a supernatural creature was the coolest thing in the world until their sires used compulsion to make them fight battles as cannon fodder.

Rescuing vampires was low on my list, so I skipped her email and tried not to feel terrible about it. Saving them meant killing the vampire brood sires, and they were just too hard to get at, especially during the heat of battle. So far, our spies were having little luck finding the lairs where the Red Syndicate leaders were hiding, and we didn't have the manpower to widen our search.

Training Darklings, however, was at the top of my list. They'd be our only hope against Daelissa and her Brightling army.

"Nookli, reschedule my ten A.M. appointment for tomorrow," I told my phone.

My phone responded at once. "Justin, there are three Indian restaurants nearby. Would you like a reservation?"

Sometimes I had to wonder if my phone was just messing with me. I repeated my request. This time, it got it right.

I looked around the gray-walled concrete room. The underground Templar barracks weren't much to look at. I remembered the mornings of waking up at the mansion. Elyssa and I would head downstairs to find a fresh batch of Shelton's pancakes and Bella's famous Colombian omelets waiting on the table. Shelton would make some smartass comment while Bella would read a tragic news story aloud and make sympathetic noises.

Cutsauce, the first hellhound I'd summoned, would run around our ankles, yipping like crazy and begging for a bite of our breakfast. Now he was hanging out with Cinder in El Dorado.

When Mom and Ivy had started living in the mansion, the place had livened up even more. I really missed having my extended family around.

I took a shower in the communal bathroom. The place was already empty by eight in the morning since the Templars didn't mess around when it came to waking up at ungodly hours. After dressing, I took the levitator—a magical elevator—up to the mess hall and grabbed some grub. Shelton and Bella were already eating there.

"Good morning, sunshine," Shelton said. "You realize you missed the morning reveille by about two hours, don't you?"

"Oh, hush, Harry," Bella said, looking at me over the morning paper.

"Is that the local newspaper?" I asked, looking at the headlines.

She nodded. "The noms are up in arms about Kobol Prison."

I read the front page.
Military Won't Say What Destroyed Choppers
. I whistled.

"Idiot battle mages," Shelton said. "The blast from the malaether crucible was enough to attract the nom military, but they still could've tossed up some interdiction spells to keep the choppers away. Instead, they blew 'em up and brought the full attention of the United States military on Kobol."

"There's an Obsidian Arch at Kobol," I said. "There was all sorts of paranormal activity, and god knows how many null cubes with cherubs left out there."

"It was only a matter of time before this war caught the noms' attention," Bella said. "Dealing with it will be difficult."

"Something should be done. What if they release a cherub?" My stomach clenched. "The last thing we need is a world full of shadow people."

Shelton took a drink of coffee and shrugged. "Ain't nothing we can do about it now. Either Daelissa or the U.S. military controls Kobol now. We'd have to invade."

The notification for a new email chimed. I flicked on the screen. It was from Christian Salazar, commander of the Colombian Templars and addressed to me, Elyssa, and the others on our command staff.

Several captured prisoners from our latest operations stated Daelissa has not made an appearance for several days as she usually does. One prisoner revealed under questioning that Daelissa may have already activated the Grand Nexus. Will keep everyone apprised of information as it unfolds.

Chapter 7

The tight feeling in my stomach went even tighter.

"What is it?" Shelton asked.

Daelissa could be in Seraphina right this moment!
I turned my phone to him so he could read the email.

Bella's eyes went wide. "I thought opening a portal to Seraphina with the Grand Nexus was blocked by those statues."

"Bah." Shelton backhanded the air. "It's just a rumor. If Daelissa really went back to the motherland, we'd be ass-deep in angel feathers."

I took a few deep breaths to quell the fear rising in me. "I hope so." I took a bite of a sausage and chewed on it while my mind ran in circles. "Bella, would you get together a small group of people to monitor nom news? I need to know how aware the humans are of current paranormal events." I turned to Shelton. "Get ahold of MacLean. Ask him if his Illuminati contacts can find out how much the nom government knows."

"You should also ask Kassallandra and David," Shelton said. "From what he told me, the Daemos have a small army of informants in governments across the world."

My father, David, had once told me the same thing. A supernatural race with a master's degree in seduction could get just about any kind of information they wanted. I finished my breakfast, said goodbye to my friends, and headed for the underground hangar in the Templar compound.

The levitator deposited me in what looked like a massive underground garage. Plain boxes called sliders were parked in neat rows. Each one was equipped with flying spells much like the ones used by flying carpets, and illusion spells to make them look like nom aircraft such as helicopters or small planes. In a remote corner of the garage were two large square outlines of painted yellow dashes.

A pedestal with an arctablet fastened to it stood in front of the square.

"Justin Slade," I said to the tablet.

The screen blinked on and traced me with an array of lights. Adam, a former conspiracy theorist and master magic hacker, had written a special authentication program for the device.

"Wait time for a portal is four minutes and thirty seconds," the tablet said. A timer appeared on the screen and counted down.

I sighed, took out Nookli, and browsed the Overnet, aka the aethernet—the Overworld version of the internet—while I waited. "Man, it sucks not having my own omniarch anymore." I sent a text to Elyssa and told her I was going to El Dorado to visit Cinder. She didn't respond right away since she was probably leading some of our newer troops through training exercises right about now.

A portal flickered into being a few seconds before the countdown ended. I stepped through and into the control room at La Casona.

"Destination?" a young male Templar asked me.

"I got it," I said. Before he could protest, I touched the silver circle around the omniarch and willed it to close. The static rush of aether filled the air. I filled my mind with an image of the control room in El Dorado. The air between the arch slashed open to the exact area I'd imagined. I stepped through and willed the portal to close. It narrowed to a thin scar in the air and vanished. The control room was located deep underground beneath the dead city of El Dorado. Located in the southern jungles of Colombia, the ancient civilization had once been ground zero for the Seraphim invasion, as evidenced by giant jeweled murals slaves had built for their otherworldly masters.

I looked at the Alabaster Arch dominating the control room and wondered what would happen if I tried to open a gateway to Seraphina right this minute. If Daelissa had attuned the Grand Nexus with the Chalon, it should mean the rest of the Alabaster Arches would be attuned to the same realm.

"Hello, Justin."

I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned and saw Cinder standing behind me. He wore his standard gray suit—the same one favored by the gray men, the golems created by Mr. Gray.

He tilted his head slightly. "Ah, I surprised you. I am sorry if, as you sometimes say, I made you poop your pants."

I snorted. "I've nearly crapped myself so much lately, what's another squirt in the pants?"

"I had not realized you were being literal," Cinder said, his face attempting to mimic a concerned expression. Instead, he looked like someone who'd just bitten into a lemon. "The cupids go through an alarming number of diapers, but I'm certain I could find a pair that fit you."

It took me a few seconds to respond, because I wasn't sure if Cinder was attempting humor or actually trying to be helpful. It made me realize how hard it had to be for him in his attempts to act more human. An act of mad-scientist magic had given him sentience and emotion, but it hadn't given him an instruction booklet on using it and fitting in.

"I'll be okay," I assured him and motioned toward the control room door. "I came to talk to you about the cupids."

"Of course." He motioned toward several massive stacks of null cubes near the front of the control room. They looked as if they were made of frosted glass, but the material was designed to turn transparent or opaque to keep the horrific prisoners inside from seeing outside.

I shivered at the thought of the creatures within. The husks—I'd nicknamed them cherubs—were all that remained of Seraphim caught in the blast when someone forcibly removed the Chalon from the Grand Nexus during the Seraphim War. The Seraphim called it the Desecration for good reason, since it had wiped out everyone regardless of supernatural or mortal affiliation and turned them into shadow creatures that craved the light from any living creature they could lay their nubby little mitts on.

Cinder led me to the cubes. "We have finished sorting the cubes taken from Kobol Prison."

"Excellent." I stopped in front of the stacks. The Darkling cherub cubes were stacked to the left, the Brightlings to the right. Only one cube stood apart. A device called an affinity sphere allowed us to gauge the alignment of the cherubs inside the cubes to either Murk or Brilliance and thus determine if they were Darklings or Brightlings. The cherub in the lone cube, however, had registered right in the middle—the gray—and none of us knew what to make of it. "Any idea how many cherubs we have?"

"Indeed." Cinder paused as if accessing something. "We have seven-hundred and twenty-three Darklings, five-hundred and eighty-one Brightlings, and one anomaly. Shall we go to the cupids?"

"Sure."

We exited the room and entered the large cavern. An Obsidian Arch should have towered in the center. Instead, there were two massive leyworms—earth dragons. The red-scaled monster was Altash. I didn't know his purple girlfriend's name, so I referred to her as Lulu. We passed a trench carved in the rock by their smaller
compadres
. The cupids—infantile creatures with oil-black skin—grasped at us with nubby hands. Round, tooth-lined orifices in their otherwise faceless heads screeched with agony. "Dah-nah! Dah-nah!"

The hairs on the back of my neck felt like they were trying to uproot themselves and run away. I was happy to get past the little horrors and leave their screeches behind.

Joss and Otaleon emerged from between the scaly coils of the dragons and approached us.

"How's the training?" I asked them.

Joss looked rather pale. "It proceeds." He gagged, swallowed with effort.

"He just fed," Otaleon explained.

Nightliss told me Darklings could feed from humans, but unlike their Brightling counterparts, it was repulsive to them. Disgusting or not, feeding from humans definitely accelerated the return of the cupids back to maturity. These two had only been boys a week ago. As the angels physically aged, their old memories returned as well.

"As I explained, we have very few human volunteers," Cinder said.

Otaleon nodded. "We can't feed from a person more than once a day or we risk damage to their soul."

"Do you feel more powerful now?" I asked.

Joss's cheeks puffed out like he'd just barfed in his mouth. His face went absolutely green before he rushed a few feet away and lost his lunch—or whatever meal he'd last eaten.

Otaleon ignored the episode as if he'd seen it a dozen times before. "We're definitely feeling stronger, at least once we get past the initial nausea."

"We have several new cupids." Cinder watched Joss with a neutral face. "I am worried we will be unable to bring them to maturity quickly enough to counter those Daelissa revives."

Daelissa had been reviving husks at her own facility in Kobol Prison. We'd destroyed half the prison, but not the part housing her facility. Even so, we'd stolen the majority of the husks she'd stored in the loading bay. Unless the U.S. military had taken over the building, it was possible her aether pods were pumping out more cupids every day.