Welcome to the Kali Sweet Chronicles. Sweet Malice is the fifth book in the Kali Sweet Urban Fantasy series. I release a chapter a week here in my Magic Bites Membership, and I look forward to reading your comments! Enjoy!
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Sweet Malice, Kali Sweet Urban Fantasy Series
©2025 Misty Evans
She wrenched the sword from my hand. Thank goodness Azaria was playing her part, lowering her shield enough for the angel to do so. I wanted to kiss the top of the girl’s head but didn’t want to give away our next play.
Tabriss stepped back, pointing the tip at my heart—right where Azaria clung to me. A collective gasp went up from those gathered. Even the most hardened member of the Kali squad would never point Michael’s sword at the Chosen Child.
Of course, we were surrounded by low-level demons who would like nothing better than to watch an angel skewer the girl. They’d be happy to join in, taking me out with her.
Lilith had a firm leash on all of them. She chuckled at the shock-filled faces of Tabriss’s followers. Most of them hadn’t realized the extremes their leader would go to to get her way.
Which side would they choose now? Would they continue to follow her, or would they reconsider their stand?
“Michael told me you would do this,” Tabriss hissed, her grip tightening on the handle. “That you would lie and scheme and say anything you could to make me doubt him.”
“He’s the one keeping you out of Heaven,” I told her. “It’s not God. I’ve seen Michael at the gates, guarding them.” I turned Azaria and held her up. Her feet kicked in the air, and she gurgled with happy anticipation. The shield she’d kept around us was totally gone. “This child is a siphon and an amplifier. She has no innate power but can draw it from Michael to unlock those gates.” I lowered her and handed her to her mother. Amy hugged her tight, giving a small whimper of relief.
“None of that matters,” I continued. “Each and every one of you has been tainted by sin and cannot cross that threshold. You can stay here on Earth and live on, though. You can do good and help humans turn their lives around.”
The Fallen turned to each other, murmuring. Some shook their heads, while others nodded. It took several heartbeats before Lilith caught on to my plan. “Help humans? You promised my demons would have freedom here to feast on them.”
I lowered my voice so only she could hear. “This is all a ploy, remember? Your demons will get first crack at the angels, then the humans.”
Skepticism colored her features, but she nodded.
I’d left Vicky out of this part of the plan so she didn’t contradict me. She still didn’t trust me, however, and wasn’t as gullible as Lilith. She stayed close to her evil mentor. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t double-cross you,” she told Lilith.
So many deceptions. They were beginning to overlap too much. I needed to wrap this up quickly before I had a massacre on my hands.
“No,” Tabriss called out. Her hand shook from the sword’s weight and what she was about to do. “We are going home, but before we do, we are obliterating you.”
“I came from you,” I reminded her. “I took on your pride when Jesus cast the vices out of you. I was the one to find you and save you from Big Mo. I brought you here to remind you of who you are and what you can do. This is how you repay me?”
The memories flickered behind her eyes, but she squashed them. “Regardless, you’re evil. It’s my duty to exterminate you.”
Like I was a bug.
I spread my arms wide, leaving my chest vulnerable. “Give it the old college try, then.”
She lunged. The tip of the sword tore through my clothes and nipped my skin before Lilith was there, knocking the weapon from Tabriss’s hand. As if a flag had been thrown, the hoard of demons descended on the angels, the battle breaking out around us.
Vicky shoved me aside to get to Tabriss as Lilith swiped her claws at the angel’s face. Tabriss fled back several steps, dropping the sword.
A surge from behind her shoved her into me, and the two of us went down, her on top. She scrambled away on all fours, snatching up the sword, and dematerialized.
“Kali!”
I gained my feet to see Cole racing toward me with the true sword of Michael’s in hand. He tossed it through the air, and I caught it as the melee around us intensified. Angelic magic lit the space with a nearly blinding light. Demonic magic rushed up from beneath my feet, fiery and hungry, as screams echoed in the high-ceilinged room.
“Where did she go?” I yelled to Lucifer. He was hustling Amy and the baby toward an exit. He threw a glance back at me and pointed up.
I caught Damon’s eye. “The roof!”
He nodded, blocking one of the angels. “Go.”
I started for the same exit Lucifer and Amy were disappearing through, but the sword flared a bright blue, and the world went upside down.
I fell to my hands and knees, gasping, the blade clinking on the floor. The room around me morphed into a black nothingness, and I was floating in it, staring toward a central, darker point in the far distance.
Having lived in Chicago for decades, I knew the sensation of winter—freezing temperatures, stinging ice, numbing snow. The cold that hit me was much more brutal than anything I’d ever experienced. It froze my lungs. My heart stalled out. My organs turned to ice cubes, my bones to icicles.
Everywhere I looked, there was nothing but darkness.
The Unknowing
A thought, there and then gone.
I was blind, naked, exposed to that encroaching darkness. To that void.
Not a void. Devoid.
Barren. Vacant. Bereft.
Something powerful existed beyond it, but I couldn’t see it or reach it.
Was it…God?
The point in the distance began to shimmer. I could only watch as it became a portal, yawning open like a giant mouth that would consume everything, including me. Instead, it began spitting things out, like the ground at the carnival vomiting out beetles.
Galaxies, stars, and a cosmos were expelled from the gaping maw. I was caught in the maelstrom, seized by unseen forces, and then blown apart.
My vision whited out. All sensation ceased.
I ceased.
I became the darkness. The cold. The nothingness.
I was undone. Unknown.
As if I’d never existed.
The silence and oblivion called to my soul, offering peace.
A false promise, a trick to tempt me into giving up.
There was something still there—a spark. A twinge.
My magic and something else.
Knowingness.
I would not go into that unknown, become nothing. Not without a fight.
I clawed for that spark and snagged it with a talon of magic. Ripping into the darkness, I rent it apart. I screamed, even though there was no sound.
Grabbing hold, I twisted and jerked, mutilated the piece I’d snagged. I took it into my body and absorbed it with my magic.
I spit it back out.
Planets, quasars, meteorites… I devoured them, feeding myself and giving myself form and structure again.
I heaved a breath.
I stared at the all-consuming darkness that loomed.
The darkness—the Unknowing—stared back.
I won’t give up, I told it.
The Unknowing blinked.
A child’s giggle filtered through the devoid, barren thing that watched me. I felt that twinge again.
That spark.
Michael’s essence.
My vision whited out like before, and I was dumped—expelled—onto the roof of the Institute. I somersaulted ass over tea cart.
Tabriss stared up at the heavens, her voice pleading as she cried, “Where are you? Why have you forsaken me?”
The fake sword that Lucifer and Vicky had bespelled to act like Michael’s lay tossed aside. The sky frowned down on her with violent, boiling clouds. Thunder boomed, shaking the building. Flashes of lightning lit the lake, where the water climbed in savage waves. Waterspouts formed.
“He hasn’t forsaken you,” I shouted over the noise. The knowingness circled through my system, revealing a truth I couldn’t doubt. “Michael did all of this to save you.”
Her head whirled in my direction. “What?”
“He never intended to let you die.”
Her chest heaved. “But I want to go to Heaven. I hate it here.”
“You can’t, Tabriss. None of the Fallen can, and I think, deep down, you know that. Trying to restore Paradise is a pipe dream and will only lead to the destruction of everything. Build a new world here. With me. With us.”
She shook her head, frantic. Wind whipped her hair into a halo. “I hate you as much as I hate this place! You’ve ruined everything.”
“Michael wanted me to sabotage Lucifer and the Fallen to save you. Do you get that? If I failed, he had you primed to be the one to do it. Or Lilith. Or… Anyone, really. As long as he could stop the prophecy from coming true. He played us all, not because of a desire for power but because he still loves you, Tabriss. He knew that allowing the prophecy to be fulfilled would obliterate you.”
She stomped toward me, furious. Her hands were fists, and she was ready to swing. “You’re lying!”
I came to my feet and balled my fists, also ready for a showdown. “I’m telling you that the love of your life, your soulmate, is trying to save you, and you accuse me of lying?”
It seemed so ingrained in her—not trusting me—that she couldn’t wrap her head around the fact. “This is a trick. You’re trying to stop me from reuniting with him.”
“It’s no trick. Trust me, if I could get rid of you, I would.” The storm intensified, rain sheeting down on us in such a torrential wave that it nearly drove me backward. I had to raise my voice even louder. “You may not be able to enter Heaven, but he can visit Earth and be with you. Like Lucifer and Amy. Keisha and Gabriel.”
“You said he wanted to create a New Earth with his children. That he picked you to be his mate.”
I sluiced water off my face. “A clever misdirection to plant his essence inside of me, causing me to believe he had impregnated me with a child. That wasn’t it.” The Unknowing—be it God or something else—had come for me. Had tried to delete my existence. Why, I wasn’t sure, but I must have posed a threat to it. Still posed a threat.
Michael had saved me.
Would wonders never cease?
How had he known I would need his essence to survive?
I wasn’t sure it mattered. I was different now. I’d taken a piece of the Unknowing into myself. I knew things I shouldn’t.
And I would never unknow them.
Damon, Lucifer, Rad, and Frank crashed through the roof door, spilling onto the flat expanse. “Stand down,” Damon ordered Tabriss in his archdemon voice.
Rad’s glare turned shocked when he looked at me. “What happened to you?”
I glanced down at myself, but all I saw were wet clothes and dirty boots. “Weird story. I’ll catch you up later.”
Tabriss’s wild eyes darted from me to them and back. “I will never stop fighting for what’s mine!”
Lucifer waved the rea flaming sword of Michael. “What’s yours? None of this is yours, Tabriss. None of it. I offered you what you’ve been missing since Jesus left Mary Magdalene and turned you into a walking disaster. You’ve thrown it all back at me.”
Her pleading gaze turned skyward once more. “Please, Michael. Help me!”
Lightning flashed in the distance. She moved toward the edge of the roof. I skirted past one of the HVAC systems, glancing at Rad, his face grim. The wind roared past my head, lifting my drenched hair.
“He’s already helped you,” I insisted to Tabriss. “He’s done exactly what he could to keep you from extinction.”
“Stay away from me,” she screamed. “You’ll say anything to make me believe you’re his chosen mate.”
“Aren’t you listening? I don’t want to be his mate, and believe me, he has no designs on me.” I glanced at Rad again, my true soulmate. “Michael planted a seed of his essence inside me to keep me from being blotted out by a force greater than all of us. The Unknowing tried to claim me. Tried to remove me from this world.” The archangel’s reason for saving me was unclear, but it seemed that if The Unknowing had succeeded, it must have presented a dire outcome. One Michael wanted to avoid. “There’s no baby, Tabriss. No connection or relationship between me and him other than a very healthy dislike.”
She struck out with her angel magic. After my trip through the darkness, I hadn’t restored my protective shields. Her power flared as bright as the blue flames licking the blade and knocked me on my ass.
I skidded across the wet asphalt roof, and before I could stand, she snatched up the discarded sword and bore down on me with a speed I hadn’t anticipated.
The others shouted my name, and I felt the impact of all of their magics lash out at her, but she had fully come into her divine mojo and managed to get close enough to drive the blade into my chest.
The world slowed to a crawl, and my demon revolted against the cleaving of my heart. Shock rendered me immobile.
She thrust it deeper, letting out a cry of rage and triumph.
“I tried,” I yelled at Michael. He was listening, that much I knew. “I’m done saving your precious pet.”
She saw the demon take over when my eyes turned black and jumped back, releasing her grip on the sword. “Why won’t you die?”
Sacrifice yourself. Damon’s words rang in my head, even as my heart clanged hard against the steel. Still unsure of the meaning, everything in me rebelled against the idea.
My hand shot out, grabbing her by the throat and squeezing. “Do you know what the most destructive force on Earth is?” She couldn’t answer, her nails scratching at my arm frantically, her fingers trying to pry mine from her windpipe. “Vengeance,” I spit. “The motivation for revenge is anger, but it’s ultimately powered by satisfaction and enjoyment. Let me be clear,”—I applied even more pressure—“I’m going to enjoy this.”
Knowing I was about to end what she believed to be her immortal life, she hit me with her angelic power again, but my demon was in full force. It bounced back on her. She grabbed the sword’s handle and tried to wrench it free, then drive it deeper. Our close proximity stopped her. The sawing action created immense pressure inside me, but I didn’t release my hold.
Her wings, which I’d never seen, unfolded with a snap. Enormous, with an expanse that covered ten feet or more, they rose like a hawk preparing to dive. To kill.
From out of the clouds, Michael descended, his wings on full display. The storm ceased. “Release her,” he commanded of me.
“Fat chance.” I curled my lips back and growled.
Then I snapped her neck.
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Is she really dead? Find out in the next episode!