Nightfall (Nightfall Book 1)

Denise couldn’t stop thinking about it. Sam had not only somehow broken away from Aegis, no, she had also betrayed them and joined these people, angels, whatever. Denise knew that she was lucky. She wasn’t nearly as bothered by vampire problems as most of the other people working for Aegis, but she never understood the logic behind the complaints.

Practically all the vampires with Aegis had killed people, at the very least, so the forced servitude wasn’t exactly a harsh punishment. Sure, vampires had little control over their actions, but they also did at the same time. It was more like having no inhibitions keeping them from all the bad shit they did. At least that was how Denise understood it because she’d never experienced the hunger some of her coworkers had described.

Maybe she was being unsympathetic, but right now she was just too resentful to care. It was bad enough that they had to fight vampires led by freaking angels, and now their own people were turning against them. At least there hadn’t been too many of them, but the fact that these people had been poaching Aegis’ employees was worrying. They clearly knew a whole lot about them.

Adley didn’t seem to care much, but it was hard to tell what was going on in that guy’s head in general. At least Black seemed appropriately concerned when Denise had told him about this new problem.

“This might be even worse than we thought, in that case,” his voice said from Denise’s phone, which was now propped up on the dashboard of the car and on speakerphone. “But you do have the weapon?”

“Yep,” James nonchalantly confirmed from the passenger seat, playing with the sword. Denise wouldn’t be too concerned about that, but who knew if the thing was dangerous to them or not? It was made out of something they had no clue about because surely, if it was something mundane, they wouldn’t have had to go meet a dragon to get it.

“Well, good, at least there’s that.”

“Yeah, about that—Firith needs a new disguise for her cave.”

Black sighed. “Yes, thank you. I’ll see to it that someone is sent over.” Then he dropped his voice to a soft mutter. “After we deal with the current catastrophe.”

Denise wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him sound this annoyed or tired. Not that she was surprised. Even when she’d gotten the order to get the sword, Black had looked much less calm and collected, and she would imagine it couldn’t have gotten better now that she was reporting on how much worse the situation was.

“The few teams who have already gotten back to me are saying they found nothing.”

Denise frowned. That didn’t sound good at all.

“I mean, it’s entirely possible that the locations we have are outdated, but….”

Right, of course it wasn’t going to be that. Denise wanted to ask how they even got those locations in the first place, but Aegis knew a lot of weird stuff for seemingly no reason, so it was easy to disregard. And it didn’t even matter right now, anyway.

“Just, erm, please get here as soon as possible,” Black continued, clearing his throat. He was clearly trying to sound just the same as ever, but it wasn’t really working. “And by here I mean the Northern Headquarters. Azralis wants to inspect the weapons herself.”

From the corner of her eye, Denise could see the way James froze up at that. To be fair, she wouldn’t say that Azralis unnerved her, but the woman was definitely intimidating. Denise had thought it was just a demon thing, but when Ark wasn’t killing vampires, he wasn’t exactly instilling fear in anyone, so clearly this was all Azralis.

“Sure. We’re on our way.”

“Great.” Black ended the call then, and Denise sighed. This was going to be a long trip, but they couldn’t take any breaks. If these people wanted to get these weapons out of the way so much, it was entirely possible they might get attacked, or that they were being tracked. But the main headquarters were huge, and there were plenty of people there at all times, so the chances of the enemy vampires getting the sword there would be minimal.

“What’s up, Arkie?” James asked the demon, looking back at him. Arkemoz didn’t look up, though, preferring to scowl at his hands in his lap.

“I’m just trying to think of a reason why angels would be trying to capture demons,” Arkemoz replied, narrowing his eyes in thought. He actually looked really angry, though Denise couldn’t say she was surprised. She’d be pissed too if she were him.

She was still a bit shocked that angels were not only a real thing but also here on Earth, but with everything else that had happened, she wasn’t having much trouble accepting it. Though thinking about it, Ark’s question seemed a bit obvious. Weren’t demons and angels natural enemies? She knew that he was mostly trying to figure out what the reasoning there was because the angels had to be doing all of this for some reason, but still.

“They don’t do that usually?” James asked, looking about the most empathetic she’d ever seen him. Denise looked back at the road, smirking to herself. Just a few days ago, James had had no problem with the idea of demon disappearances, and look at him now.

“No, they tend to just kill us,” Arkemoz replied in a completely matter-of-fact tone of voice, apparently not bothered by this fact. “They don’t take prisoners. The only thing they want is to kill all of us. And they don’t just go to a planet and make an alliance with other species. It makes no sense.”

Hearing that put Denise on edge. She’d been under the assumption that this wasn’t that out of ordinary. She’d just thought that angels weren’t on Earth a lot, and the reason that warlock guy kept going on about how worrying this was simply because of the fact that angels were working with vampires for reasons they didn’t know.

This was just getting better and better, wasn’t it?

“Well, Nathan said that they need to get another demon, right?” James put on a gentle, comforting tone that Denise had definitely never heard him use. This would be so fascinating to watch if they didn’t have such a huge problem on their hands. “Maybe they need more than one, too, for whatever they wanna do. And Aegis has a lot of records. Maybe your sister knows where the other demons living here are, and we can find them before these angels do.”

That…actually wasn’t a terrible idea. Assuming that Aegis actually had records on all demons living on Earth, or at least in the United States. Was this a problem only for this country, or for the rest of the world, too? Either way it was a start.

Denise had gotten the impression that there weren’t many demons living on Earth in general, so that was both good and bad. Maybe Qironin, or one of the other magic-savvy people who worked for Aegis could help with this. Denise knew there were tracking spells, though she had zero idea how they worked. She didn’t even really know how magic worked in general, but that wasn’t her problem to deal with.

“Think this sword will work?” Denise asked the demon as the silence became stifling. His head sprung up as soon as she said it, his eyes narrowing with laser focus at the weapon James was still playing with.

“It looks like genuine celestial gold, yes,” he confirmed, though Denise really had no idea what that confirmed. Was she supposed to know what that was? Thankfully, Ark continued. “It’s a material from the angels’ dimension. That’s what they call it.”

Listening to Arkemoz so casually talk about angelic dimensions really brought up a lot of questions in Denise’s mind. But she wasn’t going to ask them. She didn’t need that kind of stuff bouncing around in her brain right now. She could only focus on one thing at a time.

“And it can kill angels?”

“It can kill a lot of things,” Ark replied. “But yes, celestial gold is one of the few things that can hurt angels. Demons managed to find more materials to use, and they do use them, but none of them are as effective. But getting inside of the angels’ dimension is practically impossible, so these are rare.”

It was weird how he talked about demons as a people separate from himself. But who was Denise to judge? She didn’t understand the intricacies of demon society. The important thing was that they had a weapon they could use.

“Would it kill a vampire?”

Arkemoz shrugged. “I never heard or read about anyone trying.”

James looked at the sword with a raised eyebrow, clearly already thinking of trying it out. If nothing else, the sword looked sharp enough to easily cut off a vamp’s head, so it would definitely work that way at the very least.

Still, they could just use a lot of other things to do that, and not a fancy angel sword. Not to mention that Aegis would definitely not let them just carry this thing around if they were rare, and especially not if most of the ones they knew about were gone.

James seemed to have no problem chatting with Arkemoz throughout the whole trip, but Denise knew he was as uneasy as she did. She kept expecting someone to attack them, be it with magic, by crashing into them, or whatever else those vamps could come up with. And while she was glad that it hadn’t happened yet, the longer they traveled without any problems the more on edge she was.

It almost felt weird as they finally approached the headquarters hours later, the sun having already set. It felt almost easy, despite what they’d had to do to get the sword, but Denise wasn’t going to complain about that. Despite their success, and despite the headquarters’ defenses, she couldn’t force herself to relax, however.

She watched the building as they got closer and closer to it. It looked bigger than when they’d been here the last time, but it had been a few years. And besides, it was basically just a metal box, so it still looked the same for the most part. At first Denise had thought it odd that Aegis had bothered making the base she worked at so relatively pretty when even a warehouse would call these headquarters basic. But her confusion had existed only because Black found it amusing not to divulge all the necessary information ahead of time in situations like these.

Denise liked Black, but he really was annoying at times.

She could see Arkemoz frowning at the metal walls of the headquarters as Denise stopped the car in front of the front gate, looking puzzled. He really was kinda cute in a way. Denise definitely didn’t mean that in the way James had meant when he’d called Ark that, but she could see it.

“Just wait, Arkie. This place isn’t all it seems to be,” James told the demon, grinning at him. Nice to know there was actually a thing about Aegis Adley found neat. And to be fair, Denise didn’t know a lot of people who had come here and had anything scornful to say about it.

As a red light ran over the car, scanning, Denise saw Arkemoz flinch in surprise and resisted the urge to laugh. She did feel a bit bad about forgetting to tell him they’d get scanned, but not enough to apologize.

Right after, the gate slowly opened, splitting into two parts and moving aside for them to drive inside. Denise drove in as soon as she was sure she wouldn’t break off the side-view mirrors on the wings of the large metal door, parking the car in the first empty spot in the hall she could find.

The place was actually really full, she noted as she climbed out of the car and looked around. There was still plenty of space for more cars in the huge, stark white hall of a parking lot, but it was definitely much more than when she’d been here last time.

She almost snorted out a laugh when she saw the look Ark was giving Adley. It looked both confused and unimpressed, which was fair given what James had told him.

“Just, um, wait a bit longer, all right?” James scratched the back of his neck as he looked around. The whole place was eerily quiet, their footsteps echoing as James took the lead, walking to the end of the hall where a door should be if Denise’s memory served. And it turned out she remembered it right when finally, she spotted the black door from behind the line of cars, now super visible against the white wall.

James gave Arkemoz a look, raising his eyebrows and his index finger before almost dramatically grabbing the door handle and turning it. The room on the other side was just as brightly lit as the one they were standing in, but it wasn’t because of overhanging lights. There was a portal in the middle of it, filling the room with a bright yellow light.

It was still a weird yet awe-inspiring sight, even though Denise had seen it before. There was something really unsettling yet beautiful about the golden, shimmering doorway in front of them. Denise had no idea how it worked, but she was assuming the symbols written in a circle on the floor under it were holding in place somehow.

“A portal?” Arkemoz didn’t sound happy about this at all. Nor did he sound impressed in any way. He mostly looked distrustful. Denise wasn’t sure what reaction she’d expected from him, but this wasn’t it. Though maybe it made sense now that she thought about it—Ark had probably gotten to Earth with a portal in the first place, right?

Though that didn’t explain why he’d have a problem with them.

“You again?”

Denise frowned at James, only then noticing that Qironin was also in the room, staring at the portal through some contraptions attached to his glasses. It looked like small, circular pieces of glass, but Denise was sure they were at least enchanted, or something like that.

“Are you surprised, Mr. Adley?” the warlock asked, turning to look at them with a smile. It was probably supposed to look relaxed, but honestly it seemed a bit tense. Though that might have been the lighting paired with the face tattoos.

Why did he have those, again?

“Well, kinda,” James replied as he entered the room. “Shouldn’t you be up there with all the other wizards?”

Qironin laughed, grinning. “Ah, but this portal leads to a pocket dimension. Not up.”

Denise snorted when she saw James roll his eyes. It was always funny to see him annoyed like this. She gave Arkemoz a look, noting that he was still watching the portal through narrowed eyes.

“Well, Azralis wanted someone to bring you to her. I volunteered because it would give me an opportunity to figure out how exactly this portal is being maintained,” Qironin continued, looking back at the glowing circle with fascination. “The warlocks don’t want to tell me, you see. But now that you are here, I suppose I’ll have to go back.”

“I mean, I think we can find our way around,” Denise offered, not all that sure she actually remembered where Azralis’ office was, but before she could even try to remember Qironin shook his head.

“No, that’s unlikely. I hear they remodeled recently. Besides, I should be involved.”

He didn’t bother explaining what he meant by that, but Denise didn’t need to know. She had long ago given up on trying to understand magic, but at least most people didn’t seem to get it either, so she didn’t have to feel bad about it.

Qironin was watching the sword in James’ hand now. Denise would expect he’d be fascinated by it, but he definitely didn’t look like he was. Denise wasn’t sure what to call the expression on his face, but it didn’t look very happy. Almost immediately Qironin’s eyes snapped back to them, though, as he put on a pleasant expression again.

“So, shall we?”

Denise shrugged, watching him disappear inside of the portal. Going through these things always made her feel a little weird, but it was nothing that would stop her from actually going. Taking in a deep breath, she walked towards the portal, not giving herself the time to pause and think about it before stepping through it.

Immediately she came out on the other side, feeling a little dazed. She wondered if this was a thing that always happened or if it would go away if she used these portals more often. Looking at Qironin, he seemed to have no problems with it. Lucky bastard.

Denise looked around. The room containing the portal on this end was basically a copy of the one on Earth, but that didn’t say much about the rest of the place. Though so far, it was pretty damn similar.

There was a short, buzzing hum as Arkemoz and Adley joined them too. The demon still looked really distrustful, and also a little annoyed. The fact that James was keeping a hand on his shoulder implied to Denise that he’d been pushed inside, which would explain the scowling thrown James’ way.

“Good. Let’s go.”

As soon as Qironin opened the door, Denise’s eyebrows flew up. When he’d said that Aegis had remodeled, she’d imagined some of the place being remade, some walls knocked down, maybe a few rooms being moved. She hadn’t been expecting a freaking glass ceiling with a galaxy above them.

She stared at it as she walked out of the room, trying to figure out if it was even real. It looked real, but it couldn’t be, right? She wasn’t sure how this pocket dimension stuff worked exactly, but she remembered being told that there was nothing outside the headquarters. Denise had no idea how to imagine that, but she was pretty damn sure that this place hadn’t grown a galaxy in the meantime.

“What the hell?” James said next to her, sounding very weirded out by this. Which was fair.

“It’s not real,” Qironin confirmed, looking oddly nostalgic as he watched the galaxy as well. “It’s nice to look at, though, I suppose.”

He was clearly trying to imply that he didn’t care, but it sure didn’t sound that way.

“Come on, we need to keep going.”

Right, of course they did. It just wasn’t every day Denise had the opportunity to see space, even if it were fake. How did that even work? Was it a projection of some kind? It looked very real, but now that that had been pointed out, the galaxy looked maybe a little too colorful. Denise wouldn’t know, though—she wasn’t exactly an astronomer.

Denise turned her attention to the rest of the room as Qironin began leading them to Azralis. They seemed to be in a wide, white corridor with many doors, which wasn’t that different from when they’d been here last time. However, the room was noticeably more dimly lit, presumably so the magic ceiling could be seen, but also maybe to save on the power bills.

There were only a few people here, but that was still more than when she’d been here last time. Most of them were sitting on the black benches along the sides of the corridor, either talking or staring into their phones, and all of them were vampires. Denise supposed they must have been waiting for orders.

As they walked around them, she could see some of the other vampires staring at the sword, but she ignored it. If she were one of them, she’d probably stare too. If nothing else, the sword was bling-y as hell.

Qironin led them through door after door, and corridor after corridor, as if he were trying to prove that it really had been dumb of Denise to assume they’d manage to find Azralis’ office without his help.

Denise couldn’t help but notice that the farther they got the more people there were. Some of the corridors were crowded. Had the management called for everyone nearby to get here? Denise knew that Aegis had thousands of employees, even just in this part of the country, so this definitely wasn’t everyone, but she was getting the feeling that it was way more than what would be average under normal circumstances.

Once they finally got to Azralis’ office door, Qironin stopped, turning around to face them. He had put on a sympathetic smile, which told Denise immediately that she wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to say.

“She’s not in a good mood. Just a word of warning.”

“When is she ever in a good mood,” James muttered behind Denise, and she had to fight with herself not to find that funny. She couldn’t help but laugh quietly when she saw Qironin shrug and nod, clearly not willing to argue otherwise.

He turned around again, knocking on the door and opening it before anyone gave him the go ahead. That itself immediately made her worry that Azralis would yell at them, but nothing like that happened.

Azralis just nodded at them from her huge, mahogany desk, folding her arms in front of her. The office was still just as large as it had been back in the original layout of the headquarters, but it looked completely different. For one, the walls weren’t blue anymore, but a dark purple, which paired with the light from the ceiling galaxy made the whole place feel a bit ominous, yet somehow cozy at the same time.

Azralis herself still looked the same though—the black suit, the huge horns, the pixie cut, yep. It did beg the question as to why her horns were so much bigger than Ark’s, though. Or why Azralis was so much taller than him, but Denise wasn’t going to say any of this. Someone would definitely get offended and they currently didn’t have time to deal with hurt feelings.

“Arkemoz,” Azralis addressed the other demon coldly, looking almost like a mother scolding her child. Which Arkemoz of course reacted to by glaring fiercely. Denise rubbed her eyes. She could already tell this was going to be unpleasant as hell.

“Azralis,” Ark replied, somehow finding a way to glare even harder.

“You have the sword,” Azralis said, looking at Denise and James with a much more pleasant expression. Which still meant that she looked fairly cold and serious, but at least she wasn’t glaring.

Denise couldn’t help but stare at Azralis’ horns as she nodded. They were always so intimidating yet captivating. It was entirely unnatural for someone having thick, ram horns growing out of their head, but demons seemed to somehow pull it off.

“Yeah, we do,” James replied, flipping the sword over and offering it by its handle to Azralis. The demon took it, scanning her eyes over it with mild disgust. Which was fair, Denise supposed. Azralis probably didn’t like angels much on accounts of them apparently trying to kill her whole species.

“Good work.” Azralis didn’t sound happy at all, but somehow Denise could tell she was at least pleased. “Of course, we have no way of testing this, but it seems genuine.”

“Actually, I might know of a spell or two to confirm if the sword is genuine,” Qironin said, clasping his behind his back. What didn’t this guy know? Why didn’t he always work with them if he was this useful?

“Good. Then if you could….” Azralis gave the sword to Qironin, keeping her eyes on the blade for a moment before looking back at Denise. “We need to find these angels and put an end to this before they can finish whatever they are planning. By delivering this weapon your involvement is done until we do find them. Feel free to do as you please but don’t leave this base.”

Denise nodded, as did James. She wouldn’t mind a little downtime, even though she knew she would be tense and on edge anyway. She just hoped they could actually find a place here to relax without too many people being there.

“We’ll talk after this, Arkemoz,” Azralis continued, narrowing her eyes at the other demon, who glared again.

And with that they left the office without anything else being said. Arkemoz was sulking, though, which meant that James looked like a kicked puppy. He rubbed the demon’s back as soon as the door clicked shut behind them and started walking away from the door.

“Hey, you all right?”

The demon just shook his head in irritation, though he didn’t make any attempts to stop James from all the physical comfort.

Qironin had disappeared in the meantime, presumably taking the sword somewhere he could do whatever spell he wanted to verify the sword was the real deal. Denise would think that they were being paranoid, but maybe not. It would be really awkward to stab an angel with a sword and not have them die. That happened to her with a vampire once, and it had been really unpleasant.

They left the corridor, finding themselves in a half-full lounge area with red and purple, alien-looking plants. They almost looked like sculptures, and the only reason Denise thought they were plants and not something else due to their lack of leaves was the fact that they grew out of planters.

“What was that about?” James asked as they slowed the pace, receiving an annoyed look from Arkemoz. Denise wouldn’t have asked, but now that he had, she was interested in the answer.

Arkemoz scoffed, folding his arms as his tail began to swish from side to side. “Azralis probably doesn’t seem me as worthy of working with you.”

“What? That’s ridiculous,” Denise argued. She’d seen what the guy could do. Just because Azralis was much bigger, and presumably much stronger than Ark didn’t mean that he was useless. Hell, he could probably fight off three vamps at a time by himself. Denise sure as hell wouldn’t be able to do that.

Arkemoz shrugged, scowling at his shoes. After a moment he raised his head again, the scowl still on his face, and opened his mouth to probably complain about Azralis some more. But he never got to say whatever he wanted to because the next moment, the lights went out. And that was when Denise realized—the starfield above them was gone.