Angelfire (Dark Angel) Read online

  Dark Angel 1

  Angelfire

  By Hanna Peach

  Text copyright © 2012 Hanna Peach.

  First Digital Edition: November 2012.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Peach, Hanna, 1984-.

  Angelfire (Dark Angel 1): a novel / by Hanna Peach. – 1st Ed.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art © 2012 Adara Rosalie. All Rights Reserved Hanna Peach.

  Stock images:

  slavcic/shutterstock

  Oleg Gekman/shutterstock

  To Bryce (R.I.P.) – for writing and for believing in me when I didn’t

  To Dad – for everything else

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 1

  The devil walks into a bar.

  Purgatory is a bar reminiscent of old lower Manhattan, long and skinny like an alleyway, exposed brick, faded booths and low hanging lights amidst the soft racket of a dirty jazz. Purgatory is located in that slip of space and time between earth, heaven and hell. Nowhere and everywhere.

  From earth you can get to it from number 13 of any street if you know how to look. Mortals have long forgotten the reason that thirteen is unlucky yet street numbers all over the world still read 9, 11, 15.

  Inside, Balthazar is leaning against one of the gritty walls, partly hidden by the soft haze of smoke that seems to just hang at eye level, partly hidden by the glamour-magic that he has wrapped himself in. Anyone looking at him would see the pale green skin and scarlet eyes of a lesser demon.

  As Samyara steps in through the door from earth, Balthazar’s body remains slouched and uninterested but his eyes become alert. He watches as Samyara weaves his way to the far end of the bar and slips onto a stool next to a lone seraph wearing a crimson cloak, playing with the rim of a glass of untouched golden liquid. Balthazar’s skin prickles. Usually Samyara won’t go near the Seraphim.

  To anyone else watching it may not have appeared unusual, an angel and a demon sitting side by side, at least not in Purgatory. But Balthazar had come here with suspicions.

  He has to get closer. Not too close or he may be noticed. Balthazar moves towards them. He curses under his breath as a lustful couple, all hands and teeth, fall out of one of the booths, blocking his path.

  “Move it,” he growls.

  He wants to shove them out of the way, but he can’t touch them or his true self will be revealed to them. Eventually the couple moves on enough to let him slip pass. They grope each other all the way to the door to hell.

  Balthazar falls against the bar, swaying, just along from Samyara and the seraph. Just another drunken demon.

  “…disrupt the Seraphim healing powers,” the seraph was saying, his voice low and husky.

  It takes a moment for Samyara to speak. “If your information is good we shall have a deal.”

  “It’s good.”

  “We’ll see. I shall be in touch.”

  The seraph nods, once, and made to get up from his seat.

  “Just one more thing,” Samyara says.

  The seraph pauses.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “The Elders grow arrogant and self-indulgent. I am sick of their war. It’s time to end it.”

  The seraph leaves first, back through to earth. Balthazar remains slumped over the bar while Samyara orders a shot of absinthe, then another. Finally Samyara strides from the bar, through the door he came in, whistling.

  Balthazar can’t follow him back through to earth. It’s one of the rules of the enchantment over Purgatory; you could only leave through the same door you came in. As Balthazar came in through the door from hell he could not get through to earth this way. The Seraphim coming in from the door from earth could not get back to heaven this way. No one had come through the door from heaven in over two thousand years.

  Balthazar presses his lips together. He will have to seduce a mortal host. It is beginning to look like Lucifer’s suspicions are correct.

  Chapter 2

  You would think that Alyx shouldn’t be so troubled after witnessing the murder of a young Darkened girl. She has killed so many Darkened herself. But this one troubles her.

  She tries not to think about her most recent vision but again it starts to replay in her mind.

  The demon-girl holds her sword awkwardly away from her thin body. Her face, her demon face flickers under mortal skin - burning red eyes, scarred lime skin, horns protruding from her forehead and cheekbones.

  Rage ignites like fire, curling through his blood, licking across his skin. Crying for revenge.

  Alyx shakes her head, cutting off the mind of the killer, cutting off the memory. She tries instead to focus on where she is leading Symon as she flies alongside him, cloaked by night, over the mortal city of Saint Joseph.

  Symon is her flock leader and the closest thing Alyx has to a father. But it has still taken half a moon-cycle, half a moon-cycle and three flashes into this killer’s mind, before she confessed to him. This time Alyx can’t ignore the vision. This time the killer succeeded.

  “We don’t have long until we have to meet back with the others,” he says.

  “We’re close.”

  Alyx can sense Symon looking at her from out of the corner of his eye. “I hope you understand why it’s so hard for me to believe you.”

  “I know.” She almost doesn’t believe it either. “If I’m wrong, I’m just going crazy. If I’m right…” She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. It has been close to two thousand years since the Seraphim have seen an Oracle.

  They fly over Remembrance Park, taking up four blocks of Saint Joseph, outlined by an iron fence, sections missing, edges of metal curling away like dried leaves. The air here always smells bitter. Like the ghost of smoke.

  “There,” Alyx points at a body below, cru
mpled on the grass. They begin their descent.

  The girl is barely more than a girl. Sixteen winters at most, only two winters less than Alyx has survived herself. She might have been asleep, asleep among the wild flowers, if it wasn’t for her eyes, frosty and pallid like fish bellies, and the unnatural way she had collapsed on her right leg.

  As Alyx touches down she feels a pang of pity for the girl. She shouldn’t. After all, the girl had said yes. What had she been promised in return?

  Symon lands on the ground beside Alyx. He makes a small noise deep in his throat. “Just as you said.”

  Alyx ignores this comment. “You need to see what he did to her stomach.”

  Symon frowns before maneuvering his feet closer to the girl, careful not to disturb the blood drops that have collected on the blades of grass like fallen rubies. Alyx looks over to a line of trees to give the girl some privacy. A glint of something in the moonlight catches her eye. A quick glance at Symon. He is crouched over the girl, his back to Alyx.

  Under Symon’s patient guidance, Alyx has learnt how to move without sound. She can hold her face like polished marble, all cool lips and guarded cheekbones, framed on either side by two long blades of otherwise short choppy hair. But her eyes still betray her spirit, green like a wild sea.

  Two silent steps. Two silent steps and Alyx is picking up the object. A ring. On a chain, now broken.

  Alyx tries to remember. Had the girl been wearing this? No. It isn’t hers. It belongs to the killer.

  Her eyes dart again to Symon, now pulling at the girl’s shirt, sticky with drying blood. She slips the ring into a pocket of her jacket.

  Alyx hears Symon swear.

  “He did it after he killed her,” Alyx says, a little surprised at how steady her voice is. She moves back to Symon’s side.

  “Adere?” says Symon, reading the scarlet letters.

  “It means burn in the original language.”

  “Burn? Why would he write burn across her stomach?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “I’ll report it to our Elders. They’ll cross-check with Gabriela and Urielos, but...” his voice trails off.

  He won’t say it, but Alyx knows they are both thinking it. This body, this execution, will not be claimed by either of their brother cities. No Seraphim would be this messy in their execution of the Darkened nor would they have left the body out in the open like this for a mortal to discover. Especially not in the middle of a mortal city. It is against the Code.

  “But…” the wind chooses that moment to shift directions. It flicks up one of her long dark strands of hair across her lips. “…why would any of the Rogues leave a body out like this? They don’t want to risk exposure any more than we do. If we report this… you know what will happen.”

  “Alyx, I have to report this.”

  “But the Elders will use it as an excuse to initiate another culling. You know they will.”

  She had not been alive when the last Rogue-culling occurred but Symon had. When she had been able to coerce him into speaking of it, his stories, told in hoarse whispers, had chilled her. The thought of being ordered to take part in a culling causes the hairs on her neck to stand on end.

  “Alyxandria.” Her full name is sharp from Symon’s lips, his azure eyes darkening. “It is not safe to say such things. It is not our place. We might not like it but this is the way things are, for now.”

  Alyx bites back another protest, and is silent.

  Minutes later, two lightwarriors fly from Remembrance Park. They disappear into the night leaving behind a girl’s body consumed by white flames. She collapses into blue dust and is blown apart by the wind.

  Chapter 3

  Saint Joseph is a city afflicted by its memories, cobbled stones worn smooth by yesterday’s armies, buildings scarred by fire and spitting metal. Marking the sky with their pointed spires are the city’s twenty-three cathedrals, all now standing in various forms of disrepair. The citizens jokingly call them ‘demon’s teeth’. The religious culture here now blurs with superstition; not a single street has a number 13, black kittens are bundled into unmarked sacks, mothers snatch their children away from deformed street wretches while marking crosses in the air with their fingers, hissing, “Devil, devil.”

  If only they knew that the devils wear prettier faces.

  Alyx’s blade strikes against the Darkened’s sword, inches from her face. For a few moments, their weapons shake with the strain of fighting against the other. The demon growls. His red eyes, showing from beneath his mortal façade, narrows. Sweat collects in the base of her spine.

  “Pretty lightwarrior,” he hisses, his breath like sour milk. “You’d make a lasting supper I think.”

  The blades start to move towards Alyx’s brow.

  “Behind you Alyx,” Symon yells as he fights off his own pair of hungry Darkened.

  Alyx hears the movement, feels the shift of air against her neck. She kicks out at the Darkened in front, managing to push him off her long enough to duck under the sword that swipes at her from behind. She lashes back at the second demon.

  Lutando and Xavier, two other lightwarriors in her flock, are back to back on the other side of the basement of this abandoned building, fighting a circle of Darkened.

  The air smells of sweat and urine.

  Alyx leaps over a prone mortal body and strikes the first Darkened with her sword. It pierces him through the heart.

  Alyx hears Symon cry out. She glances over at him. He is clutching at his side, cowering as a demonsword aims for his head. She whips out a dagger from her boot and hurls it towards Symon’s attacker. It hits the target. The demonsword drops to the concrete floor with a clatter. Symon nods briefly to her.

  Alyx turns her attention back to the second Darkened, who is running up the creaky wooden stairs two at a time. She launches herself across the room and lands on the top step, sword bared.

  “You’re not thinking of leaving now are you?” she says in mock disappointment. “Not when we’re just getting acquainted?”

  The Darkened growls and lunges for her. Their swords clash. He swipes low, trying to take out her feet. She jumps to the air somersaulting over him, her sword whistling as she swipes at his throat. A line of red appears. He makes a gurgling noise then drops.

  Alyx flies down from the stairs to help the others.

  After the last Darkened has fallen Alyx hurries to Symon. He is bent over his injured side.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” He grimaces.

  She frowns. “Did he hit bone?”

  Symon nods briefly and leans against the wall looking pale.

  “That hurts the most to heal,” she says placing her hand on his shoulder. Touching him won’t take the pain away, but just having someone there while you are healing can make it easier to bear.

  Not two nights ago Alyx sustained a major injury to her upper leg, all the way to the bone. It took a lot of energy for her to heal it. She lost so much blood it had almost killed her. Symon had stayed with her the whole time.

  “We have a live one,” calls Xavier from the other side of the basement.

  “You go,” Symon says through clenched teeth.

  Alyx shakes her head. “I’m staying here till you’re ready.”

  Soon Symon is looking better, the skin showing through the tear in his blacks is almost closed. Alyx and Symon fly to Xavier’s side. Xavier is standing over a young man, maybe twenty-five winters, lying curled on a urine-soaked mattress. Probably his own urine. He also smells like excrement.

  There is life left in him. Barely. His chest moves ever so slightly, breath in, breath out. Symon bends down and places his palms on the man’s head. With MemorySong, Symon destroys the memory of this mortal’s last twenty-four hours.

  They will leave the mortal outside in the gutter. He will wake the next day with a throbbing headache but with no memory of the night before. Alcohol or drugs will inevitably be blamed. The
memory strands that do remain may filter out into his consciousness but only as an occasional nightmare or the rare flash of panic that somehow his life is fading before his eyes. The mortal will never connect these things to what has happened to him tonight.

  The rest of the mortals are dead. Nine in total. Life drained completely from them. Alyx and the others walk around setting the dead bodies alight with FireTwirler, as per protocol.

  “This was a large den,” says Lutando to Alyx as they work side by side. “A lot of mortal casualties.”

  We were lucky tonight. None of us died.

  “Does it seem to you that there are more of them lately?” asks Alyx in a near whisper.

  Lutando nods. Then they work in silence. The Darkened bodies disintegrate to ashes within seconds. The mortal bodies take longer.

  The warriors slip from the building into the night, Symon at the front of their formation, tails of their warrior blacks flaring behind them. Their jackets are sleeveless, showing off their bloodink marks, black feathers capping their shoulders to hide the metal barbs underneath. Thin, flat ribs of an Alchemist metal-blend sown across the chest create a flexible shield. More metal ribs are sown into the fabric of their high collars, full forearm cuffs and the shins of their dark pants. Their jackets open at the belt and sweep down to their ankles to hide the various weapons sheathed to their hips.

  Alyx favors the soris, a sword with a blade like a long thin flame, the kris, a wavy knife that tapers to an unforgiving point, and the dijis, a simple but effective boot-dagger.

  Alyx follows the others down a small alley. Her skin prickles. The smell of more Darkened is in the air.

  The MemorySong

  Fourth level magic.

  The MemorySong is able to access memories and past events.

  Only flock leaders are awarded with this mark.

  Any mortal witnesses to any Darkened or Seraphim activity should have their memory of events removed.

  MemorySong is the most delicate of all bloodink to control. Consider memories like the taut strings of a harp. The model lightwarrior must play the memory prior to removal to ensure the correct and full memory has been selected. Ensure that the full memory is destroyed after removal otherwise the memory strands will leech with the user’s own memory.