I swallowed hard and then nodded. I’d wanted to learn how to store the weapons as tattoos since I’d first seen her pull one off of her arm on the subway.
“Activate your angel marks,” she said.
With only a thought, the white swirls and arcs appeared on my arms. She pointed to a swirl with three dots on my wrist and then an identical mark on my elbow. “Transfiguration magic. You touch the tip of the weapon to the mark.” She pressed the sword to a matching mark on her forearm and it slowly sucked into her arm, turning into an inky tattoo of the sword.
“So cool.” I stared in awe.
Jacob slid up next to me and bent down, attaching something to my ankles.
“Whoa, okay,” I said as two bracelets clicked and a buzz of power shot up my legs.
“Sorry, no time to train you, but all Lumens with wings wear these. Basically, if your wings are out, then the second your feet leave the ground you will become invisible to humans. Watchers and demons can still see you though.”
Holy crap, did he just sayinvisible?
“Have you been wearing these the entire time?” I looked down at the thin silver anklets and he grinned. No wonder humans didn’t point and stare when Jacob was flying over the city. They couldn’t even see him!
“Yep.” He popped the “p.”
Invisible. Okay. At this point not much could surprise me.
“Avalon tech,” Marlow said with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
“We gotta roll! A horde of lower level demons has been reported.” The urgency in Drea’s voice spurred me into action.
I reached out and yanked a cool weapon from the wall. The curved blade shone in the overhead lighting and reminded me of a single sharp claw. The handle had indents for an easy grip, and even a round hole at the end to slide my index finger through.
“Karambit, nice choice,” a male said as he passed by and looked down at the weapon in my hand.
“Err, thanks?” I didn’t know the name of the small blade before now, but it did look pretty lethal. I tapped the base of the dagger to the tattoo that Marlow had instructed me to, and it sucked into my arm, sending a thrill through my system.
“Tatum! You need a light sword. Heads up,” Drea called, and I looked up just in time to reach out and catch the long Excalibur-type sword she’d just thrown my way. It was heavy in my grip, strong steel with gold inlay. The blade looked sharp enough to cut glass.
“What makes it a light weap—” I started to ask, then the blade glowed at my touch.
Drea just grinned.
Okay, I might have been a newbie, but I was totally getting the hang of this demon hunter thing. Tapping the sword to my elbow tattoo, it sucked into my arm like the karambit, and I was ready.
My first demon call. It was a big deal. I just hoped I didn’t do or say anything stupid.
As we left the armory, more hunters filed in. Even Aurelia was there with her husband, Theo. I’d gathered that like Arthur was in charge of Shade Academy, Aurelia was the leader of Lumen Academy. I had yet to hear anyone call her a principal or headmistress, but she certainly called the shots here.
Her mouth was pulled into a frown as her phone beeped incessantly on her hip. Walking over to Drea and me, she lowered her voice. “Be careful out there. All of these calls so close together remind me of the relic heist.”
Drea’s eyes went wide, and she nodded before stepping away.
Relic heist?
“Tatum, I’m clearing you to hunt. You up for that?” Aurelia’s gaze pierced into mine and I nodded. Hunt meantkill, and boy was I ready to kill some baddies.
I turned and left the armory with the rest of my team.
It wasn’t until we were on the subway heading for Central Park that I had time to ask Drea what the relic heist was.
Drea shared a look with Jacob. “Last spring we got demon call after demon call. We quickly realized the Shades had emptied out the entire compound of hunters to go after demons that were either really low levels and less harmful to humans, or in much smaller numbers than we’d been led to believe. It was bad. We lost three Lumens that night.”
Marlow growled. “Yeah, all so that the Shades could bring down the wards of Lumen Academy and steal one of our Avalon relics.”
