Ronnie grabbed the next name from the list, and they all agreed they’d be back in four hours. She phased into a remote corner of Chicago. It was five in the morning, so it was easy to avoid eye witnesses. If she was lucky, the cameras would miss her too. Irdu had tried to pinpoint the least likely places they’d be spotted phasing, but there was no guarantee. She pulled up the hood on her sweatshirt, kept her head ducked low, and strolled onto the street.
Daniel had a public face for a long time, serving as a campaign manager for several locals running for public office in less publicized positions. Michael had heard he was working on a campaign for the head of city council. Daniel always kept ridiculously early hours, so Ronnie hoped to find him in the office with no one else around.
A chill blew down the street, and she hunched her shoulders against the wind. She didn’t like covering her wings, but at least she didn’t have to wear the bulky clothing in the middle of summer. A cat darted across her path, bolting between her legs and almost tripping her before it vanished into the pre-dawn. Ronnie kept her attention focused on the building across the street. A storefront in the middle of a block of faded awnings and worn signs had a poster in the window, requesting that people Vote Zeke.
The lights were on, but she didn’t see any movement through the expanse of glass. If Daniel was in there, he was in a back office. She’d wanted to phase inside the building, but suspected it had security cameras.
Another blast of wind bore down on her, and something in the air sparked over her skin. It vanished in a flash, but not before she identified the sensation. Excitement and nausea surged in her gut, and she extended her senses for the source. Finally, something other than a dead-end lead.
“It’s true, then.” Daniel stepped in her path. He looked like the same as the picture on his website. Brown hair cut short. A sharp suit without a flake of dust or hair on it. He radiated wealth and affluence. Literally. The uncomfortable aura slid around Ronnie, clashing with hers and making her want to go home and take a shower. But he didn’t share the glow with a second source of power. He wasn’t hosting a cherub.
“Lots of things are true.” She kept her tone casual. “Caramel lattes are one of the best inventions of the modern day.”
He smiled, uncrossed his arms, and approached her, hand extended. “That’s an opinion, not a fact. I’m glad to see the rumors of your demise were exaggerated.”
“Me too. Possibly more than you are.” She laughed and shook his hand. The slimy power radiating from him set her nerves on edge, but she could keep her outward appearance friendly.
“Wow. Three thousand years. A lot of us missed you. It’s really great to see you’re back.”
She wanted to fall into the pleasantries. It was nice to run into an old colleague who didn’t call her names like impostor on sight. Her ego didn’t need that reassurance, though. The realization felt good. Something foreign danced across her, muted in the midst of his slippery power, but distinct. Did she misread him? Did he have a cherub after all?
“I’m loving it. Whoever figured out roasting and crushing coffee beans, and filtering hot water through them is a genius. I hope one of you inspired that,” she said.
“Maybe.”
The crackle burrowed deeper, making the hairs on her arm stand on end. Instinct flashed through her before she named the source, and she shifted to quasi-mortal milliseconds before a ball of fire hit the sidewalk beneath her feet. Concrete shattered, shrapnel flying up to strike the buildings and nearby cars.
Fuck. Ronnie whirled and stepped to the side at the same time so she could see whoever was behind her. Maalik. Like Vine, one of hell’s oldest.
“You’ve still got it. Seeing you move never fails to impress.” Daniel’s smile vanished into a sneer. The crater in the ground grew, rocks and gravel continuing to pelt their surroundings, leaving dents, smashing windows, and breaking streetlights. It was Daniel who shattered the sidewalk.
Maalik sent another ball of flame hurtling at her, but she was only half there. As the fire flew through her and exploded against a food truck behind her, she realized she wasn’t the target. Discretion didn’t matter anymore. The world knew she was out here, and these two were about to destroy the landscape and who knew what else. She blinked out of sight, appeared next to Maalik, and whispered the command needed to send him back to hell. She whirled on Daniel and grasped his wrist. As she met his gaze, knowledge snaked through her. How to do what Michael did. The information she needed to destroy.
“Gabriel read you ever step of the way,” Daniel said.
The command hovered on her lips, fueled by anger and the conformation they’d been manipulated this entire time. She tried to force out the words. To rip Daniel’s essence from him, destroy what he was or ever could be, and then incinerate his empty shell. When she met his gaze, fear stared back, as if he knew what was about to happen.
She couldn’t do it. Instead she issued the command to send him back to heaven, then vanished from the city street as sirens sang in the early morning.
Doubt and a million questions assaulted her as she appeared in Michael’s condo.
Why did she hesitate?
Because I’m not an executioner.
But he was blowing things up.
I didn’t know his motivation.
The arguments raged back and forth in her head until she wanted to scream.
When Michael appeared in the room seconds later, she grasped the excuse to ignore her mind. If he was back early, he found more than nothing. “Well?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask.
“He was waiting.” Anger and frustration filled Michael’s voice. “Flooded downtown Santa Fe in a flash. I nailed him, but the damage is done.”
“Anonymous tips and uploaded footage are spilling into our website—supposedly just taken—of the terrorists at it again.”
Why did they leave the news on?
“Irdu and Tia.” Concern clawed through Ronnie’s chest.
“Here.” Irdu sank to the couch the moment he appeared, looking battered, scorches marring his face and arms. “Where is she?”
“Alive.” Tia dropped in next to him, looking just as bad.
They should have both recovered and healed when they phased. That they didn’t meant they were too distracted to make it happen.
“The station urges everyone submitting information to us to please contact law enforcement instead. What we can tell you now is that we’re getting early reports of explosions in Santa Fe, Chicago, Detroit, and Evanston. Death tolls are unknown at this time. However, the terrorists have been identified at all places, and a new name has been added to the list. A former Ubiquity developer.”
Irdu’s picture flashed on the screen, and Ronnie clenched her jaw. “How did they get his name so fast?”
“They had it. They just needed an excuse to use it.” Michael raked his fingers through his hair. “Even when we think we’re a step ahead, they’re stomping us. What are we supposed to do? We’re the only ones who don’t know what’s actually happening.”
Ronnie didn’t have an answer or even a witty comeback. They were so fucked and out of their element, she was drowning in deception and conspiracy.
Chapter Thirty
“That’s Asmodeus.” Tia’s soft exclamation forced Ronnie’s attention back to the TV. That was why the bastard on the news looked familiar. He was a demon.
Ronnie scrolled through her memory. “Fuck me. Half of the reporters attached to this story are from heaven or hell.”
“It’s you. You’re doing this.” Tia sounded exhausted.
“Excuse me?” She struggled to keep the edge from her voice, but the accusation was ill timed at best. “I’m framing myself? Making my life and everyone else’s miserable? What would possibly be the point in that?”
Irdu closed his eyes, flickered to transparent and then back, and his injuries vanished. “She’s right, but it’s all of us. How did we pick every single name we’ve investigated so far?”
<
br /> “They’re some of the oldest and most powerful,” Michael said. “The most dangerous if they’re really a threat and continue to roam free.”
Realization spread over Ronnie. “Which makes them the most obvious names on the list. Those who have been around for centuries? Everyone knows their names. Everyone knows we’d know them. Of course we’d go after them first.” Which didn’t help as much as she hoped. It meant Gabe was a step ahead of them.
“The names aren’t a plant. Abaddon didn’t set us up.” Michael sounded certain.
Ronnie would argue his logic later. “At least some are probably real.”
“So we need to go after the people none of us know.” Tia sat up a little straighter.
“Unless that’s what they’re expecting us to do,” Irdu said.
“No. It’s a list of hundreds.” Ronnie sifted the information around, trying to merge and link it with what they knew. “It’s easy for them to identify the powerful from the list, and watch and wait to discover our patterns for going after them, so they can ambush us. It’s a lot harder to guess how we’ll pick the lesser known. He can’t cover every single base. He doesn’t trust them all that much.” She hoped. The logic felt sound, but she’d been wrong too much lately to believe it completely.
“Despite toppling Ubiquity stock value, the information giant continues to be the best source of information for law enforcement to hunt down these criminals.”
“It’s funny.” Irdu’s chuckle sounded anything but amused. “They’re getting the majority of their information from anonymous tips and Ubiquity software. I never realized before how much we drive the world.”
Michael’s eyes grew wide. “We have to shut down the flow of information. They’re using it to track us. To spread evidence of our existence, which is what Gabriel wants. We need to bring it to a halt.”
“Now you sound as bad-movie as him. Dude, you can’t stop the flow of information.” Tia pursed her lips.
“No. But we can bring it to a halt. Shut down Ubiquity. Take them offline.” Determination shone in Michael’s eyes.
On another day, Ronnie might ask if this was a dream come true for him. She’d save that argument for later, though. “It’s not that simple. You’re talking about a site that can never be down. That’s how many fingers they have in the world’s pie. They have redundancies everywhere.”
“No they don’t,” Irdu said. There was no hesitation in his counter.
She stared at him in disbelief. “Of course they do. They control the majority of the world’s data. There’s the hive-mind project they implemented with other companies. The underwater data centers. The open-source hardwa—”
“None of it exists.” Irdu perched on the edge of the couch, concern and excitement warring in his expression. “Projects on paper that never happened.”
Had Ronnie really missed that much? She couldn’t have. “That’s not possible. People would have noticed. That puts everything Ubiquity’s built at risk. Just because you don’t know where the centers are doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”
“People did notice. The SEC is filing charges, and it’s not only because of forged employee records. Money was allocated that never got spent. And I do have that information.” Irdu gave her a dry smile. “I spent months scrubbing your activity from the public record. I couldn’t have done that unless I had access to every mirror and backup. I made an efficient worm, but it wouldn’t work without network permissions.”
“This can’t be true,” Michael said. “That would make the entire thing, all of Ubiquity, too easy to physically destroy.”
Ronnie’s gut performed a somersault. “Shit.”
Michael met her gaze. “That’s what they want. Isn’t it?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’re pointing us toward destroying Ubiquity. They use it to propagate the information they want and then cut off the main source.” Everything he said lined up with her thoughts. “Gabriel has a team of developers who wrote large amounts of that code. If Ubiquity doesn’t own those things Ronnie mentioned, he might. He shuts down the news feeds, and he’s the only one who has a replacement.”
“That’s terrifying,” Ronnie muttered.
“Of course it is.”
She gave him a weak smile. “I didn’t just mean that, though it’s horrific and—Tia’s right—a bit evil-villainy. What scares me is that you figured all that out. We’ll make a liar out of you yet.” She tried to keep the teasing in her voice.
“Don’t count on it.”
“So we have a solution, right?” Tia asked. “We stop them from bringing it all down. Except, there’s no way we can save every single data center.”
“We don’t have to.” Irdu looked more alert than he had in days. “As long as some of the mirrors and backups survive, a couple of losses don’t matter. That’s the point of the system redundancy.”
Michael frowned. “But how do we guarantee that?”
Ronnie dug through everything she ever learned, in either incarnation, clipping and rearranging data, discarding first thoughts, questioning second and third ones. Looking for something none of them ever did. “We put up wards on every location we know about. It will be tedious; they’ll need to be reinforced regularly.”
“We can’t all do that for the rest of eternity,” Irdu said.
“No. The two of you need to do that.” Ronnie pointed and Irdu and Tia. “Keep on a rotation. If Gabe’s plan is to have us destroy them, you’re watching and waiting. If he’s got something else planned, in case we don’t act as expected, you’ll find agents at those locations and banish them before it’s too late. You’ll need Raphael’s help too. You won’t split up. We don’t know who Gabe’s assigned this to, but the three of you are powerful, especially together.”
“And you’ll be doing?” Tia let the question hang in the air.
“We’re going to the source. Samael. If someone is pulling the metaphorical trigger, it’s him or Gabe, and we don’t know where Gabe is.”
Irdu hopped to his feet. “Right. So when do we get started?”
“As soon as Tia gets Raphael here and I teach the three of you how to cast the wards. No reason to wait.” Ronnie didn’t want to throw them into this, but didn’t see another option. Besides, if she hesitated any longer, she’d second-guess herself out of any action at all. And for all she knew, that was Gabe’s back-up plan.
RONNIE’S BRAVADO VANISHED the moment she and Michael appeared in Samael’s office. She stashed her doubt and apprehension behind the mask of a timid smile she needed for this to work.
“Ronnie.” Samael was on his feet in an instant, and came around the desk to give her a hug. “I’ve been so worried about you. Not the kind of famous most people want, right?”
She squeezed back, forcing everything friendly to the surface, despite wanting to choke on the pleasantries. “I just want it to be over.”
“I don’t blame you. The media is shredding all of you. I wish there was some way to stop it.”
If she could keep him chatting, it’d buy her time to figure out what to do next. She was playing this more loose-and-improv than she’d like. “You’re so sweet. Thank you. I swear it feels like everyone else is against us.”
Through the exchange, Michael was quiet. She was grateful for that.
Samael stepped back, to look her in the eye. “Did you stop Abaddon before she made things worse?”
“Who?” Ronnie wanted to yell gotcha.
He frowned. “We talked about it before you left. The conversation I overheard.”
“Oh. Oh. I didn’t know that’s who they were talking about. I thought you didn’t either.”
Samael rolled his eyes and leaned his weight against the desk. “How much longer do you want to do this?”
“Until you get tired of it.” She’d rather not do it at all.
“That was eons ago, Ronnie. I’ve been tired of this for centuries. Lucifer promised change, but that wasn’t supposed to include idleness. Letting peo
ple destroy themselves.”
“Excuse me.” Michael stepped forward. “I’m wondering how you envision this going. Could we skip the bullshit and cut to the point?”
The chuckle that rolled from Samael’s chest sent shivers down Ronnie’s spine. “I hate to bore you, but we can’t do that,” Samael said. “There’s protocol to follow, and your darling demon is all about appearances. She worries about whether others think she’s strong enough. An original. Keeping her shit together while her world crumbles... You’re a little harder to read, keeping private and such, but she tends to draw you out. Twice now. Being able to watch the two of you— I’m getting ahead of myself. You wanted a fight, right?”
“We were hoping you’d stop all of this, whatever it is, if we asked nicely.” Ronnie didn’t know if Samael was trying to provoke her into acting out of hand, or hoping she’d hesitate. Either way, she’d missed her window of opportunity. Frustration built inside, fueled by indecision.
“No can do. Sorry. For me, this ends with a big flash bang that destroys the building and causes enough destruction it makes news around the world.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Michael vanish, then reappear next to Samael before she could blink. Sammy had already phased to the other side of the room. As Samael reappeared, a loud roar and a gust tore through the room and echoed from the hallway. The windows shattered, and pebble-sized shards of glass flew through the air, impacting with walls, furniture, and bodies.
The tiny slices cut into her skin, and Ronnie devoted enough attention to the tens of thousands of wounds to heal them. Her feet froze to the floor, despite the voice in her head chanting for her to do something. Was she supposed to fight? Walk away? Try to keep Samael talking? What was he expecting, so she could do something else?
“Ronnie. I need you here.” Michael’s quiet but firm voice cut through the cloud of indecision but didn’t disperse it.
Soul Betrayer (Ubiquity, #2) Page 26
