“Why?” Layla asked as she swung her legs over the bed, facing Heathren as she clutched his silk sheets to her chest.
“Because you need to know how to escape the etheric state if Hunter traps you in it again.” Heathren spoke quietly now. “And in order to do that, you must understand who you are – which includes finding your father and understanding the bloodlines you come from, so you can make use of your full potential. Rise and make ready to travel. I shall prepare an evening meal and then we shall be leaving.”
“Where are we going?” Layla asked, deeply curious now. Heathren’s words were a strange echo of Hunter’s from her dream, and it wasn’t lost on Layla that both said she needed to understand her origins in order to master etheric magic.
“We are traveling to a place only angelics are permitted.” Heathren spoke back, his silver eyes glinting like stars, or knives. Layla found herself shocked at the intensity in his eyes – almost like the searing gold of her Dragon when her blood was up.
“How can I go to a place only angelics are permitted if I’m a Dragon?” Layla asked.
“You are not just a Dragon, Layla, you are an angelic also.” Heathren spoke softly, his voice still sharp like blades in the waning day, along with his silver eyes. “For once upon a time, your ancestor mated with an Ascendant to produce a child, which gives you Ascendant bloodlines in addition to your Dragon ones. Thus, you are permitted in places angelics may go – where we must also go to push your development of etheric magic as quickly as it must now be pushed. Come, make ready. And we will depart.”
With that, Heathren turned, moving out from his bedroom through the tall silver doors.
Leaving Layla wondering what in all hells she was in for now as she stared after him.
CHAPTER 16 – HUNT
Heathren made himself and Layla a quick dinner of steak with brussels sprouts, and Layla wondered yet again at the strangely carnivorous appetite of the Fallen Ephilohim as they ate at his glass dinner table. In their haste, Layla was showered and changed into the same outfit she’d worn yesterday, though with sneakers tonight – practical shoes for their unknown sojourn. Heathren still hadn’t told her where they were going, and hadn’t called a car, so Layla assumed they were traveling by more obscure means.
To their angelics-only destination.
Dressed in an elegant grey waistcoat and trousers with a modern white shirt, Heathren was still barefoot as they ate. As the sky beyond the windows darkened to a clear summer night, he finished his plate and pushed it away. Moving to his bedroom, he was gone a long moment as Layla finished her meal.
But as he returned, alarm shot all the way through her. Buckling on an arcane rig of blades, Heathren wore his intimidating black Intercessoria leathers now, adjusting the wrapped pommels of two enormous silver swords behind his right shoulder as he came. The entire ensemble was black-on-black leather, even the buckles blackened so they reflected no light. Plates of armor were cleverly fashioned in overlapping joints, the design beautifully elven but ferocious; as if someone had thrust The Witcher into J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels. Layla had seen Heathren’s black Intercessoria gear before, but hadn’t thought he’d dress like an on-duty agent wherever they were headed. As he glanced up, adjusting one last buckle in a row of silver knives up his front, he stowed a pair of black leather gloves in a pouch behind his right hip.
“Are you ready to depart?” He asked briskly.
“Are you expecting battle wherever we’re going?” Layla blinked at his getup – the Archangel-at-home entirely replaced by an intimidating Intercessoria agent now.
“I have been wearing battle-leathers for thousands of years, Layla, whenever I leave a place I am certain is safe.” Heathren smiled at her now, his smile kind though his intensely ready demeanor was far from it. “Battle is in my blood, and I will not leave you unprotected as we travel. Adrian has asked me to see to your well-being while you are with me; indeed, I find myself willingly doing so since our… bonding. Do not fear my armor. It is for your welfare that I prepare myself for any eventuality where we’re headed. Come.”
Moving to a large swath of unadorned floor between the dining area and fireplace, Heathren suddenly knelt. As he placed a palm to the floor, Layla felt him take a deep inhalation like he devoured the entire world upon his breath. In a flash of opal-dark light, Heathren’s enormous seven-layer wings surged out around him in a wind of ether. Layla saw how his leather armor had two rows of reinforced slits up the back to permit the egress of his massive filamentous wings. Like the breath of the cosmos itself, a universal sensation flowed all through Layla as she stood near Heathren while he unleashed his magic. His wings were so enormous she was actually standing in them as he rose from his kneeling posture.
Glancing to her, Heathren offered his hand; where his wing-filaments flowed around his leather pants and buckled boots, Layla saw a bright sigil glowing upon the ash wood floor now. Silver, gold, white, and every color all at once, it gleamed with opal-dark edges, the sigil written in an intricate script with diacritical marks in a five-by-five-foot area, a tiny script flowing through the larger mark. Light flooded through it in waves, and like the gold writing Layla had once seen in an Intercessoria interrogation room, the movement in the sigil was created by the script writing and re-writing itself over and over like an endless sea.
“It is time for us to journey, Layla.” Heathren waited, still extending his hand as he watched her, his pale silver eyes more luminous than before. “Are you ready to go?”
“Don’t I need a bag or something?” Layla spoke, though she was strangely fascinated by Heathren and the flowing sigil beneath his feet as she stepped in over its boundary. Taking his hand, she felt the sensation of etheric magic sweep her. Rising all the way up through her body, it was inside her and outside all at once, and the feel of it suddenly reminded Layla that she was made of the ether just as much as everything else in the world.
It shivered her all the way to the crown of her head as Heathren drew her close. Watching her, he curled his massive seven-layer wings around her. Moving in the wind of their magic, his wings enfolded her with the softest touch; yet as they brushed Layla’s skin she knew they were stronger than graphene. Heathren’s armor and swords were not the strongest part of him, she realized. It was these wings; and as she brushed them with her fingertips, admiring their silken, ephemeral touch, she knew they were weapons far more than anything the Fallen Ephilohim had put on. Each filament could become a blade, Layla knew as Heathren curled her close, gazing down at her.
A blade of wrath that Fallen Archangels had warred with for millennia – sparking stories of awe and woe in the human race.
“Ephilohim are a tremendous people,” Heathren spoke as he held her, his austere face softening as he read her mind. “Fallen Archangels are more devastating when they war than just about anything else you could comprehend, Layla Price. Dragon-magics are brutal and can cause great maleficence, but Ephilohim magics are terrible… because we can wreck ruin upon a level far more elemental than even Dragons. Atom-bombs approach the power a strong Archangel can wield when enraged. It is a devastating thing. But come, we may speak of such things later. We need to travel.”
Curling his wings close around Layla, Heathren made a cocoon from his filaments with both of them enveloped. Layla could see nothing as he held her close; except for his beautiful face, his black leathers, and those layered filaments curled all around her now. As Heathren inhaled, she felt a breath of etheric wind flow through her. This wasn’t the gentle melding they’d shared the evening before, but a quick push of Heathren’s aura through Layla, as if priming her energy to his so they could travel. As Layla caught her breath, Heathren suddenly blazed with light all through his body – every filament, wing, and pore. He was suddenly blinding and Layla had to tuck her face in close to his black leathers and shut her eyes tight to not be dazed.
And in a flash of light, they went.
Layla had a brief sensation of flowing fast through the universe with stars streaming by all around, when they suddenly arrived somewhere. Traveling with Heathren was a very different sensation than passing through realms; at once smoother and far more disorienting. Layla was glad he held her close as they arrived upon a flat expanse of stone, for she staggered from the force of it after being hurtled through the cosmos. As she breathed hard, Heathren’s wings came gently unwound from them both. But suddenly, those wings sharpened into thousands of ultra-keen knives, snapping out in a wide arc around himself and Layla.
As a silver blade was thrust right to Heathren’s throat.
“Shove that blade home and see how much faster I am than you, Eregion.” Heathren spoke in the coldest, most cutting tone Layla had ever heard. “Even with someone guarded in my arms.”
“Heathren. Arrogant as always.” An equally cold basso voice matched him, viperous to its core. “Though perhaps with someone in your arms this time, you’ll do less damage.”
Still held tight to Heathren, Layla glanced around to see the owner of that cold, unforgiving voice. She saw they had arrived in a side-alcove of an immense, seatless coliseum of vaulted porticos, something like the Roman Colosseum though far more elegant and sylvan. Made from white stone, the coliseum’s soaring vaults were scrawled through in every direction with the same minuscule white-gold script as Heathren’s sigil in his apartment. Boggling Layla’s mind, the histories of entire worlds seemed etched upon that vast space; moving and flowing as they wrote and re-wrote their stories. That repetitive movement instantly devoured Layla, trying to fling her mind into a deeply dreaming state – when she felt Heathren’s power steady her. But it was only an effect of the flowing writing that devoured the vaults.
