Page 6 of A Lost Light

Ambrose let up on the choir master long enough for Dyre's request to penetrate. The angel clamped his mouth shut, but Dyre slowly reached toward him, a death grin on his gaunt face. “I will start with you.”

The guy talked so fast it was hard to follow. He tried to squirm away from Dyre, but couldn't go anywhere with Ambrose behind his chair and Zhong and Niamh flanking him. Aahil paced a circle around the dais, his body dripping jinn flames, creating a barrier that none of the angels could pass. With the height of the flames, they couldn't simply fly over the ring of all-consuming fire. They were trapped and utterly at our mercy in a matter of seconds.

“Behind us,” the head jackass gasped. “The alcove behind us will open at my touch and the words 'god is good.' The artifact is in a case below.”

Aahil dropped the flames enough to allow access to the back wall.

I snorted at their stupid password. “And—”

I had been about to ask about booby traps. But I didn't get the words out before a massive explosion rocked the room.

The doors to the council chambers were blown off their hinges as people swarmed through. Witches. And they exuded that subtle sense ofwrongnessthat said they practiced questionable magic. Magic that drew power from the suffering of others.

“Cultists,” I breathed.

At the same time, the choir master pushed to his feet, finding his courage as Ambrose sank back into the shadows and Dyre turned his attention to the problem behind him. “What is this? A trap!” He growled, his gaze landing on me with righteous fury. “You're working for the supremacists? You brought them here!”

“Like fuck I did!” I shouted back, dodging the lightning bolt of pure energy the enraged angel chucked my way. It bounced off the edge of my hastily erected shield and sizzled out of existence.

But we didn't have time to argue, because the room had descended into chaos.

Zhong's hand was around the angel's throat in an instant, and he slammed him back into a bookcase that lined one side of the back wall, his stone skin immune to the angel's electric bolts. I watched in horror as the cultists fell on the angels, striking to kill. One of the witches grinned at me, then vaulted onto the dais. Zipping to Zhong's side with magically enhanced speed, he grasped the choir master's hand and pulled a glowing short sword from his belt. The blade cut through the angel's wrist like a warm knife through butter, proving that it was enhanced with some kind of nasty spell.

As the angel screamed and folded in around his newly cauterized amputation, Zhong reached for the witch. But the smaller guy was too quick, dancing away and leaping over to the alcove, where he pressed the severed hand to the stone and muttered the stupid fucking password.

“Thanks for helping us out,” a woman said from behind me as the cultists fell on the angels, and my own people fell to defending the holy assholes.

How had this gone so bad, so fast?

I spun to face the laughing witch. I recognized her. The memory was distant, but I managed to put things together. “You work at the SA,” I said slowly, rotating to keep her in my line of vision as she paced around me. I wasn't very well trained. If Iwent up against a government trained witch, I was either going to lose… or I'd win by pulling on my deep magical well and doing something new and dangerous—either option was potentially deadly. But I had Hasumi at my back. The water weaver could drop her in an instant.

They were just waiting for her to tell us what the hell was going on here.

“You followed us into the realm,” I guessed. But how? We had come from the pocket world, not from the Magea or Planus realms. If they had latched onto our portal that would mean they knew where the pocket world was… and if that was the case, we no longer had a place to hide.

She scoffed. “Why would we follow a traitor and her dirty-blooded slaves? We were already here when you got here and interrupted our raid. But real witches are clever. We felt you coming, Lovell. And all we had to do was hide. To watch and wait and let you do the boring work for us.” She winked. “Thanks for locating the artifact for us. You saved us some tedium there.” A grin spread across her lips. “And now, we have a perfect scapegoat for the murder of the high chorus. Tsk, tsk, you reallyarean evil Lovell, aren't you?”

I growled. For fuck's sake, they were going to blame this whole fucking mess on meagain. Just like the damned SA.

But wait…. “You were there. The night the SA tried to capture us after they took out the O'Leary coven. What are you doing with the cult?”

She rolled her eyes at me like I was slow and stupid. “Half the SA ismade upof our order, nitwit. Why do you think they are failing at their mission so badly?” Giving me a sarcastic bow, she said, “Christine O'Leary, at your… well, not atyourservice, traitor. But at the service of our people and all of witch kind.”

I could see her weighing options as the fight raged around us. Kill me, or leave me here so she had someone to take theblame. Of course she chose to leave me alive to suffer in the aftermath. More misery that way. She turned away. And that's when Hasumi finally unleased their magic.

A blanket of calm settled over the entire room. I could think and move through it, and the others in our room seemed to be able to as well. But the cultists swayed where they stood, lost in some kind of euphoria. We hadplannedto use Hasumi's magic as a last resort, so the angels couldn't say we had used mind manipulation to get them to agree to giving us the artifact. Well, that had gone just stellar, now hadn't it?

Ambrose materialized beside Hasumi, his head cocked as he watched the water weaver work. “Not nearly as fun as sending them all into an eternal nightmare. But I suppose it will work.”

I stepped around a cultist and took in the scene around me. People were in various stages of fighting. A few bodies littered the floor, angels and witches alike. The doorway the cultists had opened behind the dais stood open, but smoke roiled out of it. I shook my head as Aahil emerged carrying a gilded box covered in wards. His grin was maniacal, and his body was wreathed in flames. Also not part of the plan. Apparently, we were terrible at plans.

His gold eyes met mine and he shrugged. “Booby trapped, of course. But they didn't account for teleportation and jinn fire.”

“Okay, let's… let's just get the fuck out of here,” I said, at a loss.

The angels thought I was in league with the cult. The cult was going to blame this all on me no matter what I did. I could stay and try to help, but honestly… they didn't deserve our help. The angels had chosen to ignore the problem and let the witch supremacists and the corrupt SA run amok on the planes they were supposedly watching over in all their holy glory. They could deal with the consequences of their inaction.

“Put them to sleep,” I told Hasumi. That was the only help they would get from me.

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