Chapter 1
The apocalypse was nigh.
Even so, I felt sickeningly optimistic as I walked to the mailbox and couldn't help but grin.
All was right in my universe—impending Seraphim invasion aside. I'd passed my fall semester classes. Nightliss was slowly recovering from the curse Daelissa tried to kill her with. My sister, Ivy, had cured me of the vampling virus. Life was wonderful. Now all I had to do was mail the invitations to my Christmas party and hope the world didn't end first.
Jeremiah Conroy had the Cyrinthian Rune. At any moment, he could use it to repair the Grand Nexus allowing Daelissa and her fellow angels to storm through it and enslave every last one of us in the mortal realm.
I, for one, wasn't about to let the apocalypse ruin the holidays.
Despite the hefty stack of invitations, I couldn't stop thinking about three missing names—Ivy, Mom, and Dad. Ivy still lived with the Conroys. Daelissa had locked Mom away in an astral prison to prevent her from interfering in the mad angel's plans for world domination. And Dad? He'd abandoned us to marry Kassallandra, a princess of House Assad, in the hopes of reuniting the Daemos for the war that would erupt the moment Daelissa repaired the Grand Nexus and led through a Seraphim army. I didn't buy his excuses for a minute.
I would bring Mom and Ivy home one way or the other. In fact, I planned to deliver their Christmas party invitations in person when I rescued them.
A flicker of movement drew my eye to the thicket of woods surrounding the mansion and separating it from the other houses on Greek Row. Most students had gone home for the holidays, so I doubted a stray frat boy had wandered over from a neighboring house. Most people kept far away from this place anyway thanks to its haunted reputation.
The crackle of dry leaves and limbs came from all sides at once. I looked into the woods and saw flashes of gray passing between the skeletal trees. Before I could turn to run back to the house, something slammed into my back. Invitations scattered to the winds, fluttering everywhere as they burst from my grasp. My face slammed into the dirt. Despite the strength in the arms pinning mine to my sides, I roared, and broke free.
Another flash of gray came from my left. I dodged left, grabbed the man by his arm, and flung him into a tree so hard, I heard it crack. The man's head broke open, and a ball of sparkling energy floated out, miniature bolts of lightning erupting from it for a moment before it imploded with a little pop and vanished.
More men appeared from all sides. They wore gray business suits. Their skin looked pallid and gray. They each wore silvery hair slicked straight back. Oh, and they looked identical. In fact, they looked exactly like my friend, Cinder. They weren't the result of a crazy experiment with infertility drugs. No, I'd faced these things before. Technically, they weren't even alive. I called them gray men. Most people in the know referred to them as golems.
And they encircled me.
Each gray man was a killing machine. It had been a while since I'd seen them, but I should've known Mr. Gray would eventually come back for me. The worst part—I didn't even know why he wanted me dead.
"Can't we talk about this?" I asked.
The golems didn't so much as blink, but closed in from all sides, some of them pulling guns from inside their jackets. I'd faced a gaggle of these dudes before, but this time Mr. Gray had gone all out. I counted nearly a dozen. "This isn't exactly what I was hoping to get for the twelve days of Christmas," I said. I juked right, reversed course, and plowed through two golems blocking the path back to the mansion. Something whistled past my head and buried itself in the ground. Those weren't guns, I realized, but Lancers which fired darts used to incapacitate supernaturals. "Show some holiday spirit, you jackasses!"
A gray man grabbed my shirt as I passed. I ducked, raised my arms, and let the shirt slide off my torso, freeing me. As I blurred toward the mansion, another group of golems appeared from the sides of the building and converged on my spot. I'd never make it to the door in time, I realized. Since I couldn't run left or right, I made straight for the manor, planning to dive through a window, and make a run for the basement. The tunnels down there connected with the school. If I was fast enough, I could make it to safety.
Having unwillingly played football in high school, I knew my path would connect with at least two golems before I reached my destination. I blinked my eyes to activate my incubus sight, and reached for the magical energy, or aether, floating in the air around me, and pulsing like blood through the ground beneath me.
Swirling gray mist, streaking white comets, and pulsating black holes of ultraviolet energy appeared. I extended my senses, and drew in a breath—my way of absorbing aether. Ever since Ivy had healed me, something inside me had changed. Before, I couldn't sense how much aether I'd drawn inside me. When I drew it in now, I felt it coursing through my veins and filling my internal reservoir to the stretching point.
"I'm gonna use your heads for tree ornaments," I growled at the gray men rushing to block my path.
I brandished the practice wand Shelton had given me, focused my will, and a fireball coalesced around the end. I veered left so I'd intersect one of the golems before the other. "Hadouken!" I shouted, and flicked the wand. An orb of flame the size of my head streaked toward the gray man in my path. The golem dodged, but wasn't fast enough. The fireball blasted into him and hurled him in a lopsided spin to the side, charring his suit to ash.
The golem on my right altered trajectory. I focused on his legs. With another effort of will, I cried, "Shoryuken!" Web-like ropes of aetherial energy jetted from my hands like a bolo and wrapped around the golem's legs. The target crashed to earth in a heap. Rather than give up, it began crawling forward with its hands, eyes locked on me like some kind of terminator robot from the future.
The window lay ten feet ahead of me. I dove.
I hit the window hard enough to break through bricks. But it didn't break. It bent inward, stretching like rubber, and I suddenly remembered Shelton telling me how the windows on this place were enchanted to preserve them for centuries. I also suddenly realized why none of the windows in the place had been broken despite it sitting derelict for several years before my gang and I assumed control.
The rubbery glass pressed tight against my face. I saw the inside of the house. I saw a group of golems emerge from the kitchen in the back of the first floor. I realized they must have come in through the back door an instant before my forward momentum ran out. The enchanted glass made like a slingshot and hurled me backward at terrifying speed. I flew over the front yard, down the driveway, and finally met a tree.
Twisting to the side, I took the brunt of the blow on my side. The air exploded from my lungs, and I dropped to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath. My vision flickered back to normal. Fighting the oxygen deprivation, I scrambled to my feet, desperate to get my bearings. But the blow to my body left me off balance. I saw the mansion to one side through a blurry haze. Using it as a reference point of extreme danger, I ran the opposite way.
The driveway intersected the road just ahead. A cramp stabbed into my side. I sucked desperately for air, and finally managed to gulp a breath. I looked behind me. An army of gray men raced down the driveway toward me. Silver darts whistled past. I reached for my wand, and realized I'd dropped it somewhere between the window and the tree.
"Go bother Santa Claus!" I wheezed.
My absent wand left me only one alternative—my arcphone. I grabbed it and took a right where the road passed through Greek Row and looped back down toward the dormitories. As I ran, I flicked through defensive spells Shelton had given me in case of an emergency. They were ready made, kind of like scrolls, and all I had to do was activate them. I twisted my torso to look behind me as I ran, aimed my hand at the ground, and tapped the "run" command.
A glowing circular pattern flashed onto the ground and vanished. I activated the spell several more times before my phone flashed a battery warning. Even though it ran on magical energy, it had to recharge like every other gadget. I ran the spell once more, and Nookli—the name of my phone—desperately said, "Justin, please feed me," and promptly turned off.
A gray man hit the first trap.
Blue light burst from the ground, instantly gluing the golem in place like a fly trap. The other golems flowed around their trapped comrade without so much as a second glance. The ensnare spells flickered like flash bulbs as my pursuers triggered more traps. The traps snagged more and more golems, slowing them, and giving me a greater lead over my pursuers.
I saw the curve in the end of the road. Saw the last two houses on Greek Row. I've got this. The gray men were fast, but I was faster. Even if they dared follow me onto campus, I could run straight to security and let them deal with the golem menace.
Two platoons of gray men rushed out from behind the houses on either side of the road. They numbered far more than a dozen. I looked behind me and saw my pursuers fanned out across the road to prevent me from cutting left or right.
"What the hell do you want?" I said, my eyes desperately scanning the area for any method of escape. I saw no way out. It left me no choice but to fight dirty.
Reaching inside myself like my Aunt Vallaena had taught me, I opened the cage where the demon side of me stalked, always trying to break loose. Eager to consume, destroy, and basically do whatever the hell it wanted if I didn't control it. It flowed into me. I felt muscles coiling along my arms, my legs, and my back like snakes. Felt my skin press tight against my clothing as my body grew larger and taller. Felt a tail spring from my backside.
Sunlight glinted on silver in the air before me. I heard a whistling noise followed shortly by the sting of multiple projectiles piercing my skin. I looked down at tiny silver darts sprouting from my chest. One hit me in the nose with a painful doing. I heard more of them glance off the horns growing from my forehead.
I thought my demon form would protect me. Unfortunately, nothing could protect me from so many darts. I tried to walk. Tried to move forward. Intense pain coupled with lethargy crippled my muscles. All I could do was watch helplessly as the ground closed in on my face.