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  As I try to absorb that the afterlife has a come-and-go-as-you-please policy for certain beings, I suddenly realize it changes everything I’ve ever thought about death. It’s no longer an end. MJ, his team, and even Justin have merely continued their lives in new ways. And it’s the same for everyone else who has died.

  Ben.

  “Before you leave,” I begin, my voice unsure, “I’d like to ask you something first. If—if that’s okay.”

  Relief flashes in his eyes, and I get the feeling he doesn’t want to leave.

  “You are my priority. Ask me whatever you’d like.”

  I swallow the lump of fear and nerves in my throat. “I don’t want to take advantage of your work . . . or the position you have there . . . or get us into more trou—”

  “Maddy. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “While you’re up there, I’d like you to find Ben.”

  When he doesn’t answer, I open my eyes. His mouth is pressed together in a thin line.

  I stroke his cheek, trying to make him understand. “I just . . . I feel like if I knew he was in Heaven, safe and happy, that it wouldn’t hurt as much.”

  He places a hand over mine. “I can’t promise he’ll be there. Everyone’s journey is different, and sometimes it takes longer to cross over, but I will look for him.”

  “Thank you. When you find him, could you ask him to forgive me?”

  “For what?”

  “For getting him killed.”

  In a move so fast it makes my head spin, MJ shifts us around so we’re kneeling on the bed facing each other. His hands are on the sides of my face while my arms dangle at my sides.

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” he says. “Justin killed him. Not you. Please don’t think like that. It pains me to hear you say that.”

  MJ’s eyes intensify, as if he could will me to agree with him. But he can’t will me, and I can’t agree. I’m not going to lie about this.

  “Just ask him. Please.”

  He pulls me into him and kisses my forehead—sending more of his essence pulsing through me. I become a tangled mess of butterflies, tightened muscles, and a racing heart. After a few seconds, I wrap my arms around him.

  “Just hurry back to me. We still have a lot of things to discuss.”

  His lips leave my forehead, and he rests his chin in my hair. “Get some rest. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  I want more than a kiss on my head. I want a kiss with flames bursting and an uncontrollable sense of raw passion and emotions that sends my head spinning. So what if it might start my room on fire? Damn the consequences.

  I lift my hands away from his back to run my fingers through his smooth hair. My hands find only air.

  I open my eyes.

  He’s gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  MJ

  She’s fine, Tamitha’s voice sounds in my head as we communicate via Cerebrallink. She turned the lights off, and she’s going to sleep.we

  I halt on the busy mist-covered pathway made of clouds in Immortal City. A few Protectors and Guardians mutter as they have to move to avoid hitting me.

  My body tightens and twists with fear. Maddy is sleeping. I forgot to warn Tamitha and Alexander about Maddy’s dreams.

  I’m coming back, I say. I was stupid to think I could leave her.

  Seriously, MJ? You just got there. You must see the Council. You can’t ignore a summons.

  I know, I reply, but there’s something I forgot to tell you about her.

  MJ, Alexander says, joining in on the conversation. You left us a seven-page list of dos and don’ts, even though you’ll only be separated for a few hours. Maddy’s nearly an adult, and she has some pretty kick-ass abilities. Relax. We got this.

  Alexander doesn’t get it. Maddy doesn’t get it. It’s true she handled herself remarkably well against the demons yesterday and today, but she shouldn’t have had to face them. She’s not supposed to.

  I’ve battled demons for over eight hundred years. I’m not perfect, even though many think I am. They don’t know about the women I’ve tried to protect in secret—and failed. But Maddy means more to me than Lifa and her descendants. If I lost Maddy . . . I can’t even fathom what that would be like.

  Just do me a favor and monitor her dreams, I say. They’re . . . unusual.

  Unusual how? Tamitha asks.

  I rub the back of my neck and stare up at the pristine blue sky, letting out a long exhale.

  She’s psychic.

  Dude! Alexander yells. I’m pretty sure the “she’s psychic”card should have been revealed sooner.

  Seeing as it’s impossible to keep my emotions in check while discussing Maddy, I move away from the main street so I don’t draw more attention to myself. I duck between buildings shaped to resemble Buckingham Palace and the White House.

  Look, I only found out about her being a psychic yesterday morning. She and I haven’t had a chance to discuss exactly what it all entails, but I do know she communicates with a dead woman while she sleeps. She also moves around and talks during them, so monitor what she says and does. I need to uncover who this woman is so I can track her down and see what she knows.

  How can she have all these abilities? Tamitha asks.

  I lean against the White House, letting it support me. Maybe the woman from her dreams can answer your question, Tamitha, because I sure can’t.

  Well, I guess that explains why she accepted our existence so easily, Alexander says. She’s no stranger to the paranormal. And for the record, I’m adding “she dreams about a dead chick” into the WTF pile.

  I shake my head. He might be right about this being why Maddy has handled things so well in the last few weeks. Learning about angels and demons—part of me still worries her mind could snap like a typical mortal’s would. But Maddy is not typical. Still, I’d never forgive myself if she ended up in a mental institution.

  I’ll be back as soon as I can.

  MJ, Tamitha says, try to relax.

  Our conversation ends, but it did little to reduce my angst. Here I am, feeling as if a chunk of my soul is missing, and she’s simply falling asleep. I’m an immortal, yet somehow, she’s the stronger one of us.

  In order to face the Archangels, I must remove all traces of Maddy from my thoughts. Their abilities are stronger than ours. Whenever we are near them, they don’t just hear our thoughts, they can access whatever they want in our minds. Because of this, they stay in their home, located high above the city. They’ve rarely left it since I agreed to be the first Protector in 1185, one year after my death.

  During the first year of my afterlife, I watched over Lifa. I tried to keep her safe not just for myself, but for Nikolas too.

  The Acquisitioner was behind it all—my death, Nikolas’s death, my family’s, and eventually Lifa’s. Demons were creating wars, using religion as the driving force behind it. The Acquisitioner convinced Sverre Sigurdsson that it was God’s will he rule Norway.

  During the civil war, he made Sigurdsson believe he was the long-lost son of King Sigurd Munn, which gave Sverre claim to the throne. He told Sigurdsson that marrying Lifa would help him gain support from the people. I don’t see how—Sigurdsson’s supporters murdered most of the kingdom and her whole village.

  Lifa gave birth to twins before dying—a boy with Sigurdsson’s red hair and brown eyes and a girl with Lifa’s blond hair and green eyes.

  When she died, Nikolas blamed me for it. He chose to be reborn rather than stay in Immortal City with me. Her death was what made me see that even in the afterlife, I would forever be a warrior.

  In secret, I watched over the daughter. I thought if I could protect her, it would be as if I’d saved Lifa. She grew up, married, and had children of her own. I thought she was safe, but one day while I was on an assignment, she was killed. The Acquisitioner was behind it as well.

  A vicious cycle began, and it lasted eight centuries. Through
the line of Lifa’s descendants, somehow one daughter always matched Lifa’s traits. That was who I focused on, and that was who the Acquisitioner killed whenever I was away protecting some other mortal.

  He never did the killing himself, so he wouldn’t get caught breaking the rules. Still, I knew it was him. In all, thirty descendants died by his hands. Thirty chances to get it right and have vindication for failing Lifa and Nikolas—only to fail all thirty times.

  The line is now broken. He killed the last descendant and her mother, along with 319 others, on the girl’s wedding night. She’d just graduated high school. She hadn’t had a child yet. The bastard even kept her soul, not allowing her to join Lifa and find peace in Immortal City.

  Now, he’s after Maddy.

  What does he want her for? It must be something substantial if he’s violating so many rules and drafting a Binding Agreement for an Influencer. Does the Acquisitioner know what Maddy is capable of? For my own sanity, I have to hope Justin was smart enough not to reveal everything she can do.

  To give myself some time to bury my thoughts, I return to the streets and head to the Supplementum for weapons. All buildings are pearly white, and the interior walls absorb the continuous sunlight to illuminate the inside. The only way to tell them apart is by the shape. The Supplementum is currently the Tower of Pisa.

  Hundreds of Protectors come and go from here to pick up various supplies to handle demons. Fire is the obvious first choice. But convincing demons to hold still long enough to set them on fire and send them back to Hell proves difficult.

  As I head for the back workshop, I pass an angel stationed at the front counter. His feathers rustle as he looks up to tell me not to go back there, but upon seeing it’s me, he nods and allows me to pass. Even though my wings are concealed, I outrank him, and he knows it. He’s a standard angel—an angel who never leaves Heaven until the day he’s reborn.

  With millions of angels coming and going, the Council wanted an easy way to differentiate between the different types. There’s a dress code. All angels who do not appear on Mortal Ground wear white robes. Standard angels have plain white rope bands at the waist, Guardians’ bands are bronze, and the Archangels’ are gold. Protectors wear whatever fits our assignment, though we do wear robes with silver accents when we’re here for longer periods of time.

  The Archangels took it another step further in the late thirteenth century when they began dipping our wings. Archangels’ wings have gold tips. Protectors’ are silver tipped. The Guardians’ are bronze. The wings of standard angels have not been enhanced, so they are plain white. The colors of our wings and robe accents were chosen to match the Mark we place on the souls of mortals under Immortal City’s care.

  Demons and the Fallen, the five Archangels of Hell, have blackened wings. Hell’s Archangels did manage to maintain the heavenly sheen on their wings. All other demons’ wings are matte with color-coated tips to signify which of the twelve Castes they belong to.

  The wings of a Perfugae, however, match their traitorous souls. They’re limp, gray, full of holes, missing all their feathers, and overall useless—a rather fitting resemblance to their owners. They cannot be hidden, so they wear gray cloaks when they are on Mortal Ground to shield themselves.

  At the end of the hall is a set of swinging glass doors. All the tools we use to defend mortals from demons are created on the other side of those doors. I pass through them into Immortal City’s workshop.

  Several angels with plain wings glance up from their workstations, while others remain focused on their tasks. I ignore them all. They’re the grunts. Only one angel here can create. He’s whom I must speak with.

  The clang of metal on metal comes from the far corner of the room. I follow it, nearly tripping over a silver-tipped axe, then I stop beside a long table near a large kiln. The table is filled with nearly twenty items, ranging from a scythe to a pen.

  John stands at the table with his back to me. His massive arms hammer on a blaze-orange sword, and his slick black hair flops in the aftershocks of the movement. It’s been a while since we used such archaic weapons.

  I clear my throat, and his hammer hesitates in the air for a moment, then he continues banging.

  “Give me a second,” he says. “I need to finish this.”

  He bangs the blade twice more with his hammer, then drops it in a vat of pure light. A ring of light bursts through the space, hitting me right in the gut.

  All at once, everything is calm. My fears and worries are gone. Everything will turn out as it should, for that is Father’s will, and I am but an extension of him.

  John pulls the blade out of the vat. The ring of light retracts, yet the sensations it stirred inside me remain. I don’t need to ask what that was. I know it well. It’s the essence of Immortal City. New Protectors carry some in a vial around their necks to help battle darkness. It’s where the term “liquid courage” began.

  He moves his goggles into his hair, then smiles as he wipes his hands on his leather apron. “MJ! Great to see you, sir.”

  He hands the sword to me—it’s now polished silver. I grip the hilt. I’m used to one-handed blades, but this has space to accommodate both hands.

  “Take a swing,” he says.

  I back up, and as I slice through the air, the edges of the blade become emblazed in fire.

  “Whoa.”

  “I call it Gladius Mulciber.”

  “The Sword of Fire,” I mutter in astonishment, staring at the flames radiating off the sword. He’s finally done it. For four hundred years, he’s wanted to control fire, like his predecessor Hephaestus. Control over an element is not something that can be taught; it has to be earned.

  “Demons won’t stand a chance against her,” John says. “One hit, and their soul is vanquished permanently. There are no more free rides to the basement with this puppy.”

  We’ve created many weapons over the years to battle demons. When we win, they’re sent back to Hell. When they win, we return here. It’s pointless, but that’s how it’s always been. But this sword blazing in my hands changes everything.

  “Why would we create something that’s sole purpose is to destroy?” I ask, staring at the blade in a new light. “That’s not who we are.”

  “You have to fight fire with fire.”

  I stare at him, not understanding. Then a sick suspicion grows.

  “Do you mean they possess a weapon capable of destroying us?”

  “Yes.”

  The flat tone of his voice is at odds with the seriousness of his message. I hand him back the sword, wanting to rid myself of such darkness. At the changing of hands, the flames extinguish.

  I’ve always liked John. We lose most of ourselves when we cross over, but some things remain. John has maintained his fascination with creations. I’ve always thought his inventions were brilliant. But this—

  “Maximus!” he suddenly shouts.

  I look up only to find him focused behind me.

  “It’s up, down, left, then right,” he shouts to an angel holding a cross we use for exorcisms.

  The angel nods, then properly blesses the cross.

  John raises a brow and shakes his head. “Can you believe what they send me? How can an angel not know how to make the Sign of the Cross? Can you imagine what would have happened had that cross gone out to the shop?”

  “It would—”

  “It would have been a catastrophe!” he shouts, throwing his arms in the air. “Not to mention the damage it would have done to my reputation.”

  He glares once more at the offending angel, then his eyes fall on the table beside me. He smiles, warmth filling his brown eyes again.

  “Look at this.” He grabs a multi-tool pocketknife and holds it out for me. “Careful,” he says as I reach for it. “Take a step back and brace yourself. Make sure none of your fingers are over the top.”

  My stomach flutters and I grin as I carefully take the two-inch gadget, holding it by the base.

 
“Okay. Now pull them out—one at a time.”

  I do as he says, opening each full-sized component. Out come a broadsword, a battle-ax, a mace, a katana, a scythe, a set of five daggers, a set of six throwing stars, a rifle, a crossbow with an integrated magazine—and a pen. They’re all the items I had seen laying on the table when I walked up.

  “How did you do this?” I ask.

  “I used the same concept as the Veil of Shadows to conceal the weapons so they can be easily transported and readily available whenever a Protector needs them.”

  “But a pen?” I ask, not understanding how that could be a weapon.

  “Very useful.” He nods. “Excellent for note-taking, and in a pinch, you can stab someone with it. A jab in the eye tends to do the most damage, but with enough force, any area of the body would be affected.”

  “As great as this is, we don’t fight mortals, so we have no use for their weapons.”

  “Look at the markings on each weapon.”

  “The markings?” As soon as I ask, I notice the etching in the blade of the scythe: a simple equilateral triangle. Taking care not to cut John or myself, I twist the arsenal of weapons and notice the same symbol on all of them, as well as on the handle of the pocketknife. The symbol means fire.

  “You mean to tell me all of these weapons are infused with the power of fire?”

  “Yes. Once they are detached and held by a Protector, the weapons will harness the Immortal Flames, just as the sword had earlier.”

  I inhale sharply. This is worse than I feared.

  He holds out his hand, and after a moment, I hand back the travel-friendly arsenal. He tucks each weapon back inside its protective case, then sets it back on the table.

  “It’s a prototype,” he begins, “but I think it’ll be effective once it goes into production.”

  “Production? You’re making more? Why?”

  “The Council asked me to increase weapon production as well as to come up with new weapons. It’s no secret there has been a rise in demonic activity over the past seventeen years. Demons are grouping together, expanding beyond the twelve Castes. Aside from Lucifer, all members of the Fallen are making more frequent trips to Mortal Ground. They’re organizing and planning.”