Free Wicked War of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 9) by John Corwin Page B

horrors and leave their screeches behind.
    Joss and Otaleon emerged from between the scaly coils of the dragons and approached us.
    "How's the training?" I asked them.
    Joss looked rather pale. "It proceeds." He gagged, swallowed with effort.
    "He just fed," Otaleon explained.
    Nightliss told me Darklings could feed from humans, but unlike their Brightling counterparts, it was repulsive to them. Disgusting or not, feeding from humans definitely accelerated the return of the cupids back to maturity. These two had only been boys a week ago. As the angels physically aged, their old memories returned as well.
    "As I explained, we have very few human volunteers," Cinder said.
    Otaleon nodded. "We can't feed from a person more than once a day or we risk damage to their soul."
    "Do you feel more powerful now?" I asked.
    Joss's cheeks puffed out like he'd just barfed in his mouth. His face went absolutely green before he rushed a few feet away and lost his lunch—or whatever meal he'd last eaten.
    Otaleon ignored the episode as if he'd seen it a dozen times before. "We're definitely feeling stronger, at least once we get past the initial nausea."
    "We have several new cupids." Cinder watched Joss with a neutral face. "I am worried we will be unable to bring them to maturity quickly enough to counter those Daelissa revives."
    Daelissa had been reviving husks at her own facility in Kobol Prison. We'd destroyed half the prison, but not the part housing her facility. Even so, we'd stolen the majority of the husks she'd stored in the loading bay. Unless the U.S. military had taken over the building, it was possible her aether pods were pumping out more cupids every day.
    "Have you found Maulin Kassus?" I asked. The man had tried to kill me in the past, but thanks to Altash, I'd captured him. Unfortunately, I'd had to make a deal with the scoundrel since he knew how to make the aether pods, and also had a lot of other useful information. I'd last seen him when Daelissa attacked the mansion, but nobody had seen him since.
    "I saw Kassus enter the portal back to the mansion when we were evacuating the cubes," Cinder said. "He returned, but disappeared sometime thereafter."
    Either he'd chosen the confusion as a convenient time to make a run for the hills, or someone else who had a gripe with the former leader of the Black Robe Brotherhood had done away with the man.
    Kassus wasn't the immediate problem anyway. I paced up and down a few times trying to figure out where we could find noms who not only knew the Overworld existed, but would be willing to allow supernatural beings to feed from them. Felicia Nosti's boyfriend, Larry, came to mind, but he was only one person. He'd been accidentally exposed to supernatural elements and had to take something Elyssa jokingly referred to as Overworld rehab, where noms were told in no uncertain terms that they couldn't reveal the existence of the supernatural to others.
    A light bulb blinked on in my head.
    My fingers snapped a second later. "What about the people the Templars put through Overworld initiation classes?"
    Cinder touched his chin. "That is an interesting proposal. From what Katie told me, many of those exposed were rather willing to have vampires drink their blood."
    "Vamp groupies," I said with a grimace. "Who knows, maybe having Seraphim feed from them will sound more glamorous." I looked at our environs and wondered how difficult it would be to convince anyone to come to a strange place like this so otherworldly beings could feed on their soul essence. Then I remembered the strange places I'd gone during my Kings and Castles LARP—live-action role-playing—days. Lovers of the supernatural were a hell of a lot harder to scare off than typical noms.
    I looked at Cinder. "Do you have access to the list of exposed noms?"
    "No," he replied. "The list would reside in the Custodian archives."
    The Custodians were an independent department of the Templars assigned to clean up supernatural