Page 73 of The Morning Star
I stood, sword in my hand and looked around the battlefield where we were still losing. I felt every demon here, but couldn’t send them back home to Hel. This power was too new to me, too unfamiliar. I couldn’t channel it properly. I needed something to help me focus.
I needed more pennies.
“You okay?”
I turned to see Raphael coming up behind me. He was covered in blood with a nasty slash across his chest that would have put a human in the hospital for a week. Bone showed through the torn flesh.
“Me? What the fuck dude? Fix that wound before Ahia sees it and has a heart attack.” Which made me wonder where the other angel was. Raphael had been glued to her side from the moment we’d begun fighting.
“She and your Lows went to get reinforcements.” Raphael pointed over to the north where a winged woman was fighting surrounded by Lows, wolves, and some giant prehistoric-looking bear. She was in good hands, which was fortuitous since I needed Rafi right now.
“Can you hold this position for a few minutes?” I grimaced as I saw ten demons powering up the hill toward us. “Hate to stick you with these dudes, but I need to pop back to my house real quick.”
“What, you left the stove on or something?” Raphael’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t it wait? We’re in the middle of a battle, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Right back. I promise.” Then before he could protest, I was back in my house. Hopefully he could hold off those guys coming up the hill until I got back.
I’d appeared in front of the sofa. Lux and Nyalla were there watching some cartoon with flying pink unicorns and an alien princess cat. Nyalla shrieked when she saw me and clutched her chest.
“Sam! I swear you’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”
“Not now. I’m in a rush.” I ran around the sofa and skidded to a stop in front of my dining room table. Where the fuck had I put that bag of coins? Hadn’t I left it here? Dropping to my knees I crawled under the table to look for it, and came face-to-face with Lux.
He was a golden-haired toddler right now, naked as always with his wings held tightly to his back his mismatched eyes looking solemnly at me.
“Not now, Lux. I need something.”
A stream of angel-speech raced through my brain at twice the speed of light, making me feel as if I’d shoved my head into a vice and a live wire into my ear.
“Lux! I can’t…don’t do that. I don’t understand you. And I’m busy. Later.” I scooted out from under the table and raced into the kitchen. Where the fuck was that damned bag? I spun around and nearly trampled on Lux.
“Wat-r.”
“Ask Nyalla,” I told him as I reached down to disengage his chubby hands from my tattered pants. Damn. Maybe the kid shouldn’t be seeing me like this, sliced up and still bleeding with my clothes half off my body. Did infant angels get traumatized? Too late.
“Wish-pool,” Lux insisted. “Lows wish.”
I froze as Lux’s words penetrated my mind, and all the jumble of super-speed angel-speech suddenly made sense. I scooped him up and planted a big kiss on his cheek, hugging him tight before setting him on the floor and running toward the back door and the pool.
“Go Ma!” I heard Lux squeal as I threw open the door. The bag was beside the pool, open, contents mostly still inside. I barely had time to contemplate the sparkling bits of copper on the bottom of my pool before I heaved the heavy thing into my arms and teleported back.
I knew the moment I’d picked the bag up that there weren’t thirty thousand pennies inside. Those injured Lows I’d left behind to “guard” Lux and Nyalla must have done a whole lot of wishing, because the bag was about half empty.
Fuck. I did a quick calculation and judged fake-Samael had…twenty-eight thousand two hundred and…something.
Close enough. I upended the bag and dumped the pennies on the ground, pulling my sword, even though Raphael had some angelic backup and seemed to be holding his own. Then I closed my eyes and reached out, touching every single demon in Samael’s army.
“Go to Hel.”
The earth shook under my feet. I opened my eyes to find the pennies shaking and glowing. I felt my teeth sharpen to points, my eyes darken to black, my wings spread to their full expanse.
“Go to Hel.”
The demons paused. Everything fell silent, slowed and stopped as if all life was attentive to my words and will. I raised my sword and brought it down upon the pile of pennies.
“Go to Hel!” I screamed.
The pennies exploded into a fiery blast, waves of distorted light radiating out from them, bending trees and pulverizing their leaves like I’d just set off a nuclear blast. Raphael turned, his eyes wide with shock. The angels and werewolves were frozen in place.
