Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Shadow Rune didn't work.
    He nodded. "For now, yes."
    The knot of tension in my stomach eased, but not by much. "She could find the Shadow Rune any day now." I'd been thinking long and hard about our options. Only one solution seemed likely to make possession of the runes moot.
    "What's going through your head?" Shelton asked, a cautious tone in his voice.
    "It seems like there's only one way to stop Daelissa for good." I looked at Mom. "We have to destroy the Alabaster Arches."
    A troubled look flashed over her face before firming into resolve. "I believe you're right, son."
    "I can request Hutchins and his special forces team to ready explosives," Elyssa said. "The only Alabaster Arch we don't have immediate access to is the Grand Nexus."
    "It's in Chernobyl, Ukraine," I said. "I only glimpsed the place, but it was infested with cherubs." Those little creeps were the husked remains of Seraphim drained of light by the shockwave caused by the forced removal of the Cyrinthian Rune from the Grand Nexus. It had ended the Seraphim War, but left the world with a cancerous legacy. Cherubs looked like the creepiest toddlers a person could imagine, faceless with skin the color of oil and a round orifice where a mouth should be. A simple touch from one burned with the cold of absolute zero and drained the light from living creatures, turning them into shadow beings.
    Jeremiah laughed, though his tone held no humor. "Don't you think we tried that during the Seraphim War?" He backhanded the air. "So long as one Alabaster Arch remains standing, using the Cyrinthian Rune on it will repair them all at once."
    Shelton narrowed his eyes. "You're saying we could blow up the Grand Nexus, but Daelissa could use the rune on any of the other arches to repair it?"
    "That is precisely what I am saying," Jeremiah said, rising to his feet, his dark eyes commanding. "Destroying the arches is no easy task. During the war, our forces took over the El Dorado way station." His eyes lost focus, as if looking to the past. "Our strategy was to remove their ability to traverse realms, one arch at a time." His eyes flicked to me. "It took the combined might of twenty Arcanes, myself included, to destroy one Alabaster Arch." His lips curled in disgust. "We were so tired afterward we could hardly move. Do you know how infuriating it was to see the arch rebuild itself less than three hours later?"
    "We have access to modern explosives," Shelton said. "Enough plastic explosives ought to take them out."
    "Wait a minute," I said, thinking back to the Battle of Bellwood Quarry. "Does this mean the Shadow Nexus wasn't destroyed?"
    "Perhaps it would be better if you told me exactly what you're referring to," Jeremiah said. "I'm well aware the Gloom Initiative is still ongoing, though it was my impression Serena had long ago hit a dead end in her quest to use the Gloom as a method for traveling from one realm to another."
    "Daelissa never told you Serena found arch cubes in Thunder Rock?" I said. "How she took one into the Gloom and made it grow into an Alabaster Arch?"
    He shook his head. "I do know about the cubes, but I had yet to discover what they did." His lips pressed together. "Then again, Serena hated me. She knew Daelissa trusted me above all others and was jealous. I'm certain she did her best to keep certain developments secret from me."
    I found it hard to believe Daelissa would have kept her right-hand man in the dark about such a thing, but the angel probably had so many irons in the fire it was conceivable she never told anyone everything. "Just as Mom—Alysea—has to sing to the Cyrinthian Rune to attune it to other dimensions, the cubes respond to specific musical frequencies, according to what Serena told me." The short Arcane had tried to convince me to help her attune the Shadow Nexus to Seraphina, the angel home world. She'd hoped I'd inherited my Mom's voice. Unfortunately for her, my voice and a megaphone would be a weapon of mass destruction.