“So neither won?” Luke gasped, staring at Layla. “But what does that mean for our plan?”
“Inconclusive.” Heathren sighed as he rose from his chair. “It means we still have no idea if your magic can block a nulled Bind from reforming, Mr. Murphy.” Smiling wryly, he gestured to them both. “Come, get untangled and shake the magics off. We have places to be and battles to plan.”
“What about ournullaxshield? Should we still try it?” Luke asked Heathren now as he gave Layla a slightly embarrassed smile and released her hand, shaking his out before offering to help her up off the couch. As she took his hand again, a surge of both their powers rushed through them once more, making them gasp. Layla felt it like a whirlpool inside her – as if their powers roared around and through each other endlessly, and might until the end of time. As Luke released her hand, he blew out softly through his pursed lips.
His green eyes flooding with white mists now as he shook his head to clear it.
“I still believe our plan is worth trying, yes,” Heathren spoke to Luke and Layla as he watched them intently, “regardless of whether we have confirmation on Hunter being able to re-Bind his Dragons. If we nullify part of his army and he cannot take them back, we have won a major victory. If he can reclaim them… well, even a small lapse in Hunter’s forces may provide opportunity. Come. Let us get going to the Paris Hotel. Our work here is finished.”
As Layla and Luke followed Heathren to the enormous Archangelic sigil on his ashwood floors, which began to glow white and flow with golden script as they approached, Layla glanced to Luke. He glanced at her back, something intense in his eyes as their gazes connected. Layla could still feel his drake seething around her drakaina in the ether; she shivered as she felt her drakaina coil around him back, that endless dance whirling through them again. As Layla’s knees buckled from it, Heathren spun fast to catch her. Holding her close to his firm, strong chest, he turned to Luke; spreading the fingers of one hand wide and writing a sigil in the air that glowed with white-gold Archangelic magic, scrolling through with tiny script.
“Enough.” Heathren spoke softly but firmly as he held Layla away from Luke’s wild energy. “Your powers are formidable, but we need to focus. If I left the two of you alone, your counterpart magics would chase each other until the end of time, and I cannot allow that right now. Later, the two of you can figure out what you want to do about this synergy; but right now, we have a mission. I ask that you both focus on the task at hand, please. Or you will be unavailable for the fight ahead, and we lose two of our most formidable assets against Hunter. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Luke breathed unsteadily, though the barrier Heathren had erected between them in the ether was holding, and Layla could barely feel any of Luke’s magic now.
“Agreed.” Layla answered also, though she had no clue how she and Luke were going to solve this later.
With a nod, Heathren turned back to the sigil on the floor, not worrying about any of that just now. As he stepped in through the barrier, Layla felt his enormous wings of silver-edged etheric light stir all around her, awakened by the sigil on the floor. But as if he was still exhausted from whatever trials he had been through recently, Heathren’s wings did not rise in the real world. Lifting his chin as he held Layla close, Heathren beckoned for Luke to join them and Luke stepped across the sigil’s boundary. As he did, hisnullaxtried to swamp both Layla and Heathren, but with a swift in-breath, Heathren flicked his fingers and held it in check.
As Luke came to stand close, touching Heathren’s shoulder so they could travel, Layla shuddered at Luke’s massive magic – and at the Fallen Ephilohim’s even more massive power holding Luke’s at bay. But Heathren did not say anything more, and with a deep in-breath and a flare of his Archangelic energy, his skin and eyes suddenly blazed star-white. With a flowing sensation and a whoosh they were through the Ephilohim’s portal, arriving back in Layla’s own Dragon-themed rooms inside the Paris Hotel.
As Layla arrived, she saw her men had vacated her rooms, and could feel Adrian’s signature up in Reginald’s apartments on the fourth floor where Reginald, Adrian, and Fury continued their battle-planning over a real dinner. Vaguely, she could feel Rhennic somewhere in the second floor conference rooms with his top generals, though he was still blocking a lot of his tense energy from running through the Bind, while Dusk was somewhere on the third floor.
But as Luke stepped away from Heathren and Layla did also, she found she was unsteady from traveling via Archangel portal twice in such a short space of time. The portals she created with her own magic never disoriented her, but traveling via other people’s magic through time and space did. As Layla reeled, setting a hand to her temple and shaking her head to clear it, Luke reached out to steady her. But Heathren blocked him with one hand, raising a dark eyebrow and shaking his head warningly as he stepped close to Layla instead. His sigil between Luke and Layla brightened like a barrier as Heathren gathered Layla in his arms, breathing sweet and slow for a long minute. Layla felt his angelic energies ease into her, giving her steadiness until she felt recovered.
And with a kiss to her brow with his soft lips, Heathren stepped away.
“Come, we should rendezvous with the others. We have much to do.” Heathren spoke as he looked at them both now. But before he could say anything else, Luke held up a hand.
“Heathren, I want to get this show on the road as much as you do, but I have to do something first. Since my house and all my belongings just blew up today.” Luke spoke as his eyes flashed with storms. With a shock, Layla suddenly remembered he’d lost his home today, just like Rhennic.
“My god, Luke, I’m so sorry.” Layla spoke as she re-entered reality with a hard smack.
“Thanks.” He spoke wryly back. “I sort of knew something like this might happen with me entering Dragon-world, but I really had no idea it would happen so soon. Thankfully, the hospital pays me well, and the rest of the housemates and I have ample savings from what Adrian did for us a few months back, and your Hotel paychecks, Layla. I called my parents from Heathren’s to let them know I’m okay and no one was hurt in the explosion – they believe the cover story, that it was a gas line that blew up the house. But I’ve got another phone call to make. And this one’s not going to be pretty.”
Layla knew who he was calling as she stood by, and Heathren did also as he gave Luke a nod to go ahead. Lifting his new magically-encrypted cell phone to his ear, Luke heaved a sigh as he waited for the person on the other end of the line to pick up.
“Yeah, hi Arron. Well, you’ll never guess what happened today…”
Layla waited as Luke launched into a brief account of the attack on the Seattle hospital by Hunter, then into the bombing of the house up on Capitol Hill. Layla’s stomach twisted as she listened to the gory details, of how a blazing fireball from the sky had essentially wiped their house completely off the map. No one had seen where it had come from, but Layla was pretty damn sure a cadre of Desert Dragons had heaved the fucker as she listened to Luke explain it to Arron. After assuring Arron at least a billion times that he was okay, Luke nodded, then extended the phone to Layla. “Layloo. Arron wants to talk to you.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Receiving the phone, Layla drew a deep breath, then spoke. “Hey Arron. How are you and the others holding up?”
“Well, other than getting tired of seeing white walls scrawl through with gold script over and over, we’re doing just peachy.” Her gay bestie from Seattle, Arron Jacobs, was a spitfire and Layla smiled, tucking her wrist beneath her elbow in her lace cocktail dress as she unwound in relief. Arron had been distant after his abduction by the White Chalice, his first foray into the magical world, and so had Layla’s old housemates Celia Carron and Charlie Avondale. But eventually, they had come around once Luke joined magical society and nothing bad had happened. Still, some part of Layla felt like Arron blamed her for his first taste of magic and the hell it could weave.
Though he sounded merely relieved on the phone today as he continued.
“I swear, I’m going to have to live inside padded walls if this keeps up, chica! I’m just so terrified for you and Luke, still out there in all this mess. Charlie, Celia, and I are bored; the Intercessoria are prats but have been reasonable with our cubicle-arrest, providing human-world video games, television, and such… but I’m going mad with worry about you two! I mean, what happened to our house is terrible, but I was meaning to replace a lot of things anyway with the new money we’ve got coming in. But, honey! You and Luke’s asses areon the line!And I don’t like it.”
“Hi to you too, mom.” Layla joked now as a smile lit her to hear her best human friend worry for her. “But seriously, this is war with Hunter and we all knew it was coming, Arron, just like you and I have discussed. Thanks for convincing Charlie and Celia to go into Intercessoria protection, by the way. It really helps me to know you three are safe.”
“Butyouaren’t.” Arron huffed back, and Layla could almost see through the ether how he propped one hand on his lean hip to sass her with a lift of his ash-blond eyebrows, assessing her with those grey eyes of his. “You need to watch your back, girlfriend. And watch Luke’s too, while you’re at it. He’s become cavalier since becoming a big-shot doc at the Seattle monster hospital. Taking risks that sometimes he shouldn’t.”
“Has he?” Layla raised her eyebrows at Luke, who frowned back at her and mouthed,what’s he saying about me?before Arron spoke again.
“Look, I know you two need to get going to do battle-plans or whatnot, but I just want to say that I miss you, chica. Once all this is over, you’re coming back to Seattle to house-hunt with all of us, right? And just be normal for a while?”
“I promise.” Layla laughed gently, her heart brightening so much at the idea of normalcy. “Actually, one of my Bound beaus Fury has decided he wants to make Seattle his second home. So I may be around even more than you think, once all this shit with Hunter is done.”
