Partially submerged columns surrounded me, and intricately carved, vaulted ceilings rose high overhead.
Irony of ironies, I’d found myself in the middle of a church, one that had been lost to time by the looks of it. The entire floor was underwater. I toed the ground, and tiny bits of ceramic brushed against my bare feet.
Whoops. In addition to all the really bad laws I’d broken in the past few days, apparently I got to add desecrating a sacred space to the list.
Only, I wasn’t burning up like I’d assumed an unholy thing would. The disrepair of the place probably had a lot to do with it.
A growl had my gaze darting up. Gargoyles lined the bannisters and the exposed bars bracing the columns of this place, and their beady, red eyes tracked me.
Hold up. Beady red eyes?
Not gargoyles. Demons.
I spun in a circle; they’d fully surrounded me. And they eyed me like I was their next tasty meal.
Aww, hell.
A splash broke the silence. “Aaaaeeeei!” a familiar voice squealed. “Bloody fucking hell, Leanne. You couldn’t have at least warned me we were landing in a moat?”
Not twenty feet away from me, Leanne, Oliver, and Andre appeared in the same pool of water I stood in.
My heart spasmed. Today Andre looked worse than he had yesterday, his skin tighter and paler than it usually was. Our broken connection was taking a toll on him.
He caught sight of me, and I could read the relief plain on his face. I wondered what he saw on mine.
“You need to shut up. Now,” Leanne hissed, looking blindly around her. Neither she nor Oliver would be able to see much.
I began edging towards them, my dress plastered to my skin. My eyes darted up to the demons whose attention now moved between all of us with interest. Andre followed my gaze up to the rafters, and his entire body tensed.
The devil had been concerned about my safety here on earth. Perhaps he’d ordered these demons to watch me. Perhaps not. Either way, my friends were still fair game to them.
“When’s Gabrielle getting here, Leanne?” Oliver asked, completely oblivious. “Because I can tell you right now, I can only take about ten minutes of this before I’m tapping out—eww, Leanne did you fart?” He scrunched his nose. “It smells rank in here.”
Low growls echoed throughout the church.
Perhaps it was a bit optimistic to assume the demons were here to protect me.
Water splashed and shifted, and then strong arms wrapped around my waist. Even over the scent of sulfur, I could smell Andre’s pheromones. He brushed a kiss along my temple and dragged me back to my friends.
One of the demons screeched, and it sounded an awful lot like a battle cry.
“Oliver,” he said, placing my hand against the fairy’s arm, “we need to leave, now.”
All around us demons jumped from their perches, their leathery wings snapping as they stretched open. Dozens of them descended on us, the beat of their wings blowing gusts of air against my face.
“But Gabrielle—”
“Is right next to you,” Andre said. “Now, Oliver!”
The last thing I saw was the bared teeth of several of them as their claws reached for us, so close that I smelled their acrid breath.
The basilica dissolved away. In its place were stone monuments and sand. My hands and knees hit the dry soil, and I stared up at giant columns and a wall of incised hieroglyphs.
That was all the time I had to appreciate the scenery. Someone yanked me back, and my surroundings were brutally ripped from me. If traversing ley lines with Oliver felt effortless, this felt savage, like I was torn through the fabric of space.
The Braaid appeared around me, and a cluster of men and women in uniform stood outside the circle watching. A knee dug into my back and magic flooded my senses.
Under attack.
My power built in response, but before I had a chance to release it, a spell slammed into me and the world went dark.
When I woke, my hands were bound with spelled cuffs. My head leaned against a window and my body rocked gently.
In a car. On the road.
“It’s just as Lila told us.” The voice sounded far away. “She comes back every night. She can walk both realms.”
I blinked as the last of the spell dissolved. My blurry surroundings came into focus. I sat in the back of a patrol car. I recognized the feminine voice that spoke. Maggie Comfry, my former boss.
I’d been ambushed. The Politia must’ve foreseen this. Even with Leanne strategizing our next moves, she hadn’t been able to catch everything. No seer’s abilities were foolproof.
I yanked on my cuffs, the jangling sound catching the officers’ attention.
“Shit, she’s already awake,” Maggie said.
The familiar smell of shapeshifter coming from the driver’s seat triggered my memory from last night. Byron Jennings grabbing my hair and slitting my throat. He’d found me again.
My anger rose like a whip, and with it, my power. He and the rest the Politia thought they could control me, hurt me, tame me.