He’d used some of his precious time to ensure Jade was all right. He’d taken the time he’d had and gifted that child with her life. He’d been every bit the guardian angel he’d once been.
He’d given up that life, fallen in love, and then simply fallen. He’d had everything he’d ever wanted. A family. Friends. Love. A human life, and now he would have to know human tragedy.
“Why should I stay away from a witch with such potential?” Myrddin asked the question casually, as though he wasn’t threatening to take a daughter from her father. “I can feel her strength. She will far outreach her mother. She has her mother’s dark power but also her father’s light. I can kill that light for her and then she can own the darkness. She can be a queen.” He stared for a moment. “She can be my queen one day.”
“She’s eleven. You stay away from my daughter,” Felix said with ferocity.
“I can be reasonable.” Myrddin pressed closer, and I had the deepest desire to get in between them, to defend these people I cared about.
But they were ghosts who moved right through me.
The hallway was filling up with witches and one… At first I thought he was a child. He stood at the end of the hallway, roughly four feet tall, wearing what looked like almost medieval armor, though I quickly realized it was only a breastplate. Was that an axe in his hand? The weapon was almost as tall as the…he wasn’t a child at all.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. Like we weren’t supposed to be here.
“Felix!” Sarah Day rounded the corner. She completely ignored the what had to be a Fae creature with the axe at his side. But she didn’t ignore the witches in front of her.
“She has mom’s bag of holding,” Evan said on a gasp.
And she had her own rage to guide her. Sarah held up her free hand and I saw her lips move a bare second before the witches who’d been behind her husband disintegrated, turning to ash and falling to the floor. Sarah’s eyes had gone black, and I noticed she was bleeding heavily from her right side. She’d been in a fight, and she hadn’t come out untouched.
“Get behind me, Felix,” she ordered, moving around him.
“You’re hurt.” The words were said with a gasp.
Myrddin’s eyes had gone dark, too. His face had lost the smooth lines of the politician he usually employed. The ferocious look on his face was exactly why his last name was Satanspawn. “You have my grimoire, bitch. You think I don’t know what’s in that bag? The queen stole it from me. Give it to me and I might let your child live.”
Sarah forced herself in front of Felix, her hand coming up. “I will never let you take my child. I will die first.”
“You’re going to die either way.” Myrddin’s shoulders went back, and the air cracked around us.
Sarah muttered a spell under her breath, and Myrddin seemed to go stiff for a moment. He snarled and suddenly I felt a gush of wind blow past me as he started to move again.
“You’re weak,” he snarled and held a hand out.
Sarah dropped the bag and her hands went to her throat as though trying to touch the invisible fingers choking the life out of her. Her feet left the floor.
“Oh, goddess,” Evan breathed. “How do I tell my mother Sarah’s dead? They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“Oh, Princess, you should have a little faith.”
I gasped as I realized the small dude who’d been at the end of the hall was suddenly beside us. I’d thought he was Fae. Wondered if he might be a gnome. Yes, I was looking at an axe-wielding gnome. I frowned and stared down at him, giving him my most ferocious glare. “Are you here to fuck me over like your friends in the Under did? What the hell is this?”
If he was offended, he didn’t show it. His lips quirked up, and he had a strong Scottish-sounding accent that told me he was likely Unseelie. “It was only Elrin who fucked you over, Hunter. The others of my kind remain true to the Under. They’ll be quite devastated when they realize one of their own killed Alvis and Relda. They’re doing all right, by the way. You should let Jade know Relda is fine and wants her to know she loved her like a daughter and blames her for nothing.”
I realized the visions around us had stopped. Like someone had hit pause. No one moved except the three of us.
Gladys hadn’t done that. It wasn’t the way she worked.
And that was the moment I realized I wasn’t truly dealing with a gnome. The hair on the back of my neck stood up because there was only one creature I truly feared. “You’re an angel.”
“One of the newest,” he agreed.
Evan frowned. “Seriously? I thought they were all blonde and looked like Felix.”
The gnome angel snorted. “You humans like to think all the planes of the universe were built for you. Or maybe you think we’re all separate, but you, Hunter, should have learned that the planes with all their vast species are connected. We might look different, but we come from the same place.”
I had learned that. I’d learned it when Summer took her throne as the queen of the outer planes. Her magic powered them, but her magic was fueled by something too. By the Goddess. By what some humans called God. Of course an angel was incredibly powerful. “You can look like anything you want, can’t you? The Days came to Zoey and the others in a form they would feel most comfortable with.”