Chapter 19

19

The barking woke Vance, but he had a hard time opening his eyes. He groaned and rolled in the bed, nudging into Cain who growled, "Hands to yourself."

"Something's wrong," Vance slurred as he fought his eyelids to open them.

"Where's Sadie?" Cain's stark query had Vance pushing past the fatigue to sit up and see Clover losing his mind at the bedroom door. The closed door.

He rolled from the bed, the hard impact of knees on stone doing much to shake his lethargy. He stumbled to his feet and staggered to the door. The moment it opened, Clover flew out, snarling. Vance followed more slowly but gaining in strength with every step.

Only to lose it all at the sight of the blood on the floor and the dais emitting an orange light. Clover stood planted in front of a disheveled Nova who shimmered from the shield she'd set to protect herself.

Her wide-eyed gaze met his and she snapped, "Do something about the dog."

Vance ignored her to look around before asking, "Where's Sadie?"

"Gone." A short reply that had him sharply turning to look at her again.

"Gone where? And whose blood is this?" He couldn't help being terse as dread knotted his stomach.

Nova's lips pinched.

Cain emerged from the bedroom, looking tousled. "What's going on?"

"Trying to find out," Vance replied. "There's blood on the floor and Sadie is gone."

A glowering Cain took in the scene before he roared, "What did you do? Where the fuck is Sadie?"

"I was trying to lock the doors between our worlds, but something went wrong," Nova whispered.

"Wrong how?" Vance tried to not yell as he took in the blood. So much blood and no Sadie. But there was a knife lying on the floor, the regular kind found in a kitchen. Vance pointed. "Is that your knife?"

"Not technically. It's from the castle's kitchen."

"But you brought it," Vance asked to clarify.

At Nova's nod, Cain bellowed, "You killed Sadie!"

"I didn't kill her. She was alive last time I saw her."

"But you did cut her." Vance pushed for the truth even as he struggled with his shock.

"Yes, it was necessary for the ritual, but she would have survived. The spell only required her blood, not death. Devika would have healed her," Nova stated. "Only the spell didn't work. I don't understand. I followed the instructions."

Cain advanced on Nova, bristling with rage. "I should kill you. A life for a life."

"I told you, she's not dead."

"Oh really, then where is Sadie?" Cain spat, fists clenched.

A good question because the blood, while mostly pooled on the glowing dais, only extended a short distance from it. Vance's throat tightened as he noted the bloody handprints on the floor, and the smear of red dragging behind as if she'd crawled. Trying to escape. Trying to live…

"He took her." Nova's statement emerged so softly they barely heard it.

"Who took her?" Cain stood in front of Nova, held back only by her shield.

By his side, Clover kept up a steady, discontented rumble, and glared at Nova, finally appearing as the dog she'd accused him of being. A killer, but with reason. This woman had done something to Sadie. Even Vance, the usually calm and collected guy, found himself taut with tension.

At their intractable anger, Nova shriveled. "I think it was a demon prince. When the ritual finished, instead of severing all access to Inferis, it opened this locked portal. He came through and thanked me before taking Sadie."

Vance didn't even know he'd moved until he felt the vibration of Nova's shield against his face as he said very coldly, "You need to start from the beginning, and this better be good or the sisterhood will be looking for a new Regina." Actually, as far as he was concerned, Nova had crossed a line. She'd acted on her own, without any kind of quorum, without any regard for anyone. And Sadie paid the price.

"I found the ritual to close the portals to Inferis in a book I found hidden in a secret vault in the castle. For months I've been trying to decipher it but didn't succeed until Mizuki began working on the ones from the library." Nova bit her lip, the first sign of uncertainty. "Once the computer decoded those, I was able to use it to read the hidden tome."

"And it told you to murder Sadie?" Cain's sarcastic rejoinder.

"No, of course not. I told you, the ritual didn't need her death, just her blood. See, it turned out what I found was a diary left behind by someone close to the last messovenata. It went into detail about who she was, and what she'd done. It even explained how someone with sangual blood could block entry to our world."

"And so you thought, hey, I'm going to believe this random book and slice up someone who trusts me," Cain growled sarcastically. "What do you know, it backfired."

"It should have worked!" Nova cried out.

"Assuming the book told the truth." Vance cocked his head. "You said you found it in the castle?"

"Yes."

"Before or after the demons inhabited it?" Vance further queried. For a short time, Moloch had been using it as a lair for him and his minions until the witches and reapers won it back in battle.

Nova's mouth opened and closed before she quietly said, "After. When I was doing the clean-up of my quarters, I found a cubby hole behind some cracked masonry with the book inside."

"Meaning it could have been there for centuries or days," Vance pointed out.

The statement led to Nova looking uncertain. "Why would Moloch put it there? He'd already escaped his prison and established himself in our world. He didn't need to fool us to set him free."

"Who says Moloch planted it?" Vance's detective brain whirred with possibilities. "What if this demon prince who stole Sadie had one of the drones put it there? Hell, for all we know, we had another traitor in the guild who did his bidding. And you found it, and assumed?—"

"No. Impossible," Nova interjected. "The demons are not that smart."

Cain snapped, "Smarter than you, apparently. You sacrificed Sadie over a stupid book you found in a wall without talking to anyone, without researching its background, and I'll bet you never even gave Sadie a choice."

"I was trying to end the conflict once and for all," Nova yelled back.

"And instead, you made it worse." Cain's flat assessment.

"Not only that, you handed over Sadie—whose blood the demons have been slavering for—to our worst enemy." Vance shook his head, disgusted and disappointed in a woman he'd once admired.

"I didn't know," Nova whispered.

"More like you were jealous," Cain retorted. "You couldn't stand the fact Sadie had more power in her pinkie than you have in your whole body."

"That's not true." Nova's voice shrank even further.

"No, I agree with Cain. It can't have been easy to see someone with no training able to do incredible things with magic." Vance shook his head.

Cain paced away from Nova, bristling. "Unfucking believable." Crunch.

The noise drew Vance's attention, and he looked over as Cain bent down to pick up a crushed syringe.

"What's this?" Cain's quiet question.

Nova said nothing. She didn't have to.

Vance replied in a monotone, "I think that's how she convinced Sadie. Or should I say coerced. Let me guess, you asked, and she said wait a minute, but you didn't want to wait so you drugged her, then bled her to conduct that bullshit ritual. Holy fuck, Nova. Do you even see how fucking crazy that is?"

"I just wanted to save the world." Nova's head hung, but Vance had no pity.

"Instead, you fucked it." Cain's abrupt but accurate statement.

Vance glanced at him. "What should we do with her?"

At that, Nova straightened her spine. "You will do nothing. As Regina, I am the one in charge of making magical decisions."

"As a reaper, we're tasked with protecting Earth from demon sympathizers."

"I am not?—"

"You gave Sadie to the enemy!" Cain shook with rage. "You helped the demons. You are a traitor to the guild."

"I…"

Vance shook his head. "There is nothing you can say to change what you did."

"I can fix this." She took on a pleading tone.

"How? You going to Hell to bring her back?" Cain's sardonic reply.

Nova bit her lip.

Clover suddenly started whining at the door to the cave.

"I think someone's there." Cain hefted his scythe before heading for the door. While they couldn't open it from the outside—it only unlocked for Sadie—once inside they could enter all the rooms except for the library.

Cain palmed the door and it slid to the side to reveal Mizuki looking worried. "Where's Sadie? I need to talk to her."

"Inferis, where Nova sent her," Cain drawled.

Mizuki's face fell but only for a moment before it tightened with anger. A rarity in the usually happy witch. She stalked in, pointing a finger at Nova. "What did you do?" Her gaze slipped from Nova to the blood on the floor and she moaned as her knees buckled. "Oh, Sadie. No. No."

Vance knelt beside her. "Sadie's not dead. Not yet. A demon took her, according to Nova."

"You fool. I can't believe you fell for that lie." Mizuki turned an accusing glare on the Regina.

"Explain." Cain leaned against the wall, scythe in his grip, bristling with tension.

Mizuki rose and turned from the blood. "I was peeved Nova confiscated all my work on the book translations, so when she left the castle, I snuck into her office to make copies of my stuff which is when I found the project she was working on. A secondhand account of someone who knew the last messoventa and wrote down her history and a blood spell."

"I was trying to stop the demons," Nova murmured. "I did everything it said."

"I'm sure you did, except you neglected one crucial thing." Mizuki fixed Nova with a cold stare. "The last part of it, the instructions on how to close a doorway, was added well after the original story."

"No, it wasn't," huffed Nova.

"Oh, yes it was. Not only was the style of writing slightly different, the ink was much fresher." Mizuki crossed her arms. "I can't believe you actually attempted it."

"How was I to know they were fake?"

"By not shutting us out!" Mizuki shouted. "Had you trusted us, me, you would have known. Poor Sadie, she put her faith in you, and this is how you repay her?"

"She wasn't supposed to suffer permanent harm." Nova shrank in on herself.

"Whatever." Mizuki turned her back on Nova to address Vance and Cain. "What's the plan to get her back?"

While it pained Vance to admit defeat, he shrugged. "I don't know that we can. If she's in Inferis, then we're fucked."

"We have to do something," Cain insisted.

Clover barked in agreement.

But before they could decide, Isadora emerged from the kitchen, toting the hand mirror they'd been using to keep in touch with the castle. The Princep's face appeared in the surface, and the usually stoic man had an ashen pallor.

"You need to return to the castle at once," Asher commanded.

"What's wrong? What's happened?"

"Demons! They're popping up all over the place," Asher exclaimed. "They're pouring out of Lake Texoma and from under the Vatican."

"This is my fault," Nova whispered.

It was, she'd unlocked the doors to Inferis, and the enemy wasted no time.

Despite their worry over Sadie, Cain and Vance left Clover with Isadora to return to the castle. The reapers were going to war.