by J. R. Ward
Now, an electrical shock went through Ad's nervous system, the kind of thing that he imagined happened when humans saw what they thought were ghosts, or maybe when you were driving down the highway and an SUV swerved into your lane.
It was the response of an adrenal gland that had just up and wakey-wakey'd.
"Jim also has a halo." She tossed the newspaper down onto the table. "So I have to be right about this."
With a curse, Ad closed his eyes and prayed that Eddie jumped in and came up with the ironclad reason this was not true. Eddie would know. He knew everything--
"Let me make sure I understand you," the other angel murmured. "You see these things?"
"As soon as I got out of Hell, I noticed that Jim had one, and I asked why you two didn't. He didn't see it. Doesn't see mine."
"Well, I have to tell you, I don't see anything over your head."
She shrugged. "Fine, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Is there anyone else who was a soul? Let me see a picture of them, and I'll tell you. Come on--let me prove this to you."
"Okay, okay . . . lemme see what I can find," Ad muttered, taking out his phone. "How the fuck do you spell DelVecchio--never mind. His father was that serial killer, both of them are all over the Net."
When he'd found what he was looking for, he turned his phone around and flashed the screen at Sissy. As she bent down and her brows came together, he measured every nuance of her face, from the clarity of her eyes to the tightness of her mouth.
She exhaled with frustration. "Well, I guess I'm wrong. He doesn't have--"
"That was his father," Ad said, taking his phone back. Another touch or two and he flashed her a second picture. "How about him."
But he knew what she was going to say.
"Yes," she breathed, pointing down. "Right here. It's right here."
Ad glanced across at his best buddy. "I thought Jim was supposed to be the fucking savior."
Eddie's shell-shocked peepers were not good news. "I, ah, I would not have seen this coming. But I guess . . . it's the Creator's game, right? He made all the rules, and there's certainly nothing in them that suggests Jim couldn't also be in play."
"Mother . . . fucker." As Ad leaned back, his bad leg ached so badly he had to sit forward again. "You know, just when I thought things couldn't get worse."
"He went after Devina," Sissy said in a dead tone. "Because of what that demon did to me. Is that his crossroads?"
Eddie whistled under his breath. "Yeah. If he tries to destroy her--"
"Even if it's for the right reasons," Ad chimed in as he got to his feet. "Shit."
"--then, yeah, I could see how it could be a loss for us. Even though Devina is evil and has done a lot of shit, the target isn't the point. It's the soul's decision at the time, it's the intent that is the measure."
"We have to stop him," Sissy said in a small voice.
"Assuming we can."
Ad rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, regardless of whether or not he's in play, we gotta go get him. We can't let him try to take her out on his own. He's powerful, but Devina? That bitch is capable of things even he can't make happen."
"Can she be killed?" Sissy asked.
Eddie shrugged. "Only under the most extreme circumstances. But again, it wouldn't matter in terms of the war because it's about his intent."
Sissy kicked up her chin and glared at the both of them. "I'm coming, too. I don't care what you say, I'm not--"
"Of course you're coming," Ad gritted out. "You're probably the only one who can get through to him. More to the point, you're going to find him for us. He could be anywhere in this city."
Jim landed in a park down by the river, the one close to the boathouse that he'd been in during Matthias's second round. He stayed away from the lights on the walking lanes out of habit, not necessity: He was deep invisi, undetectable not only by the human eye, but the demon one.
The bene of a little spell he'd been working on in his spare time.
Putting his hand forward, he stared at the knife he'd managed to lift from the penthouse. It was the one Sissy had almost used against Devina, the one that had come from the demon's precious collection of kitchen cutters. And how did he know its origins? The instant he'd snagged it off the bar while they'd been talking, a vibration had traveled up his arm and nailed him in the chest.
It was her. It was Devina's very essence.
Getting the thing out of there had also been easier than he'd expected--all he'd had to do was slip it into his waistband and make sure his T-shirt stayed down.
Turning the weight over in his palms, he pictured Devina not just from memory, but as if he were creating a 3-D sculpture of her out of thin air. Every nuance, from the arch of her eyebrows to the curve of her breasts, from the length of her torso and dip of her waist to those long legs and the narrow feet, became totally front and center. And even when he figured he'd gone far enough, he made sure he added the black gleam of her evil eyes and those cherry-red lips . . . as well as the glow that was always above her and the vicious aura that surrounded her--
The knife began to vibrate.
Like the point of a compass fighting to find true north.
He put one hand over the other and squeezed hard to make sure the thing didn't get stripped away from him . . . and then he followed where it took him. Traveling at a jog, he followed the pull sure as if there were a rope around the metal parts and someone was drawing them home.
Passing out of the park, he went by skyscrapers, jogged down streets that paralleled the warehouse district, continued onward to the seedy part of downtown with its clubs and strip joints. And then the knife started to veer to the right, leading him by the apartment building complexes and toward the suburban strip malls and the--
The building it eventually brought him to was low-slung and gray, a nondescript box of functionality with a sign that read, INTEGRATED HUMAN RESOURCES, on the front facade.
Against his palms, the Henckels grew hot, as if it were excited at being so close to their mutual goal.
"Let's get inside," he hissed, walking around to the back.
Chapter
Forty-six
Sissy walked out of the old mansion's front door, following Ad and Eddie into the night. As she zipped up Jim's leather jacket, she breathed in the scent he'd left behind on it . . . and wondered how in the hell she was going to find him. The two angels seemed convinced she'd be able to, but damned if she knew how.
"Did you know that Devina is a hoarder?" Eddie asked as he held up the necklace Jim had left behind.
She struggled to track what he was saying. "Ah, no."
Ad sheathed a crystal knife at his hip. "Yeah, she puts the 'demon' in OCD."
"The reason she collects things," Eddie said, handing the chain with its dangling dove over, "is because ownership is transmitted and collected in metal. The purer the metal, the stronger the tie, but that's not the only determinant. Strong emotion, physical pain, bloodshed--these strengthen the bond between the animate and the inanimate."
"It's why he left that necklace behind," Ad muttered. "He didn't want any tie to you to fall into Devina's hands. Too dangerous."
"But it's also going to be how we find her." Eddie nodded. "That's gold, for one thing. Very powerful. Add to that the fact that your mother gave it to him and it was yours? And he wore it during times when he was searching for you? Lot of emotion. He's bonded to that thing as much as you are."
She stared at the fragile links, the sweet charm. "Okay, so what do I do?"
"Close your eyes. Picture Jim standing in front of you, and recall every detail of him that you can think of. Imagine him in three-D, feel his presence, the weight of him--make eye contact with him. The stronger and more clearly you see him, the better the direction will be. Then when you get the link and it begins to guide you, we'll drive to wherever he is."
Sissy nodded, thinking that of all the things she'd done in the last couple of days, this made the most sense and was the lea
st scary. Shutting her lids, she thought about Jim and visualized him before her, noting everything from his dark blond hair to the shadow of beard on his jaw, from the cigarette in his hand to his combat boots, from the jeans and the perennial white T-shirt to the muscular chest. And then she even imagined the necklace itself was on him . . .
He became so clear to her, her eyes started to water.
"Do you have him with you?" Eddie asked softly.
"Yes . . ."
"Okay."
In the silence that followed, she waited for the little gold dove on the thin gold chain to talk to her in some way.
And waited.
Waited some more.
"What is it supposed to do?" she murmured.
"Concentrate harder," Eddie replied.
Frowning, she went into even greater detail, seeing things like the blue flecks in his eyes, and the way his front teeth were slightly off center, and the scars from old wounds on his body. She imagined that horrible tattoo under the clothes she'd put on him. She pictured him talking to her, hearing the sound of his voice and his rare laugh. She saw him smiling. Then not.
In her hands, the gold of the necklace warmed . . . except it seemed to be only from her own palms, not anything supernatural or paranormal.
Come on, she thought. Come on.
Anxiety threatened the clarity of what she was visualizing. And the longer she went without any kind of response from the necklace, the more she worried about him locking heads with Devina and bad, bad things happening.
"I don't think this is working," she whispered.
"Goddamn it," Ad said. "What the hell are we going to do now?"
"Give it a little more time." Eddie cleared his throat. "Let's just relax."
Except no amount of relaxing helped. Eventually, she opened her lids and shook her head. "I'm so sorry. I can't . . . oh, God, I can't feel anything."
"He's gotta be really fucking invisi." Ad cursed again. "I mean, for Sis not to get a fucking thing?"
"There has to be another way, right?" Sissy grabbed Eddie's arm. "There's got to be something else we can do."
The angel's eyes narrowed, like he was playing file-cabinet with every single piece of information that he'd ever learned about anything, going through the headings and subheadings, searching, searching.
"Did he take his phone?" Ad asked.
Sissy shook her head. "It's upstairs."
"So much for GPS. Man, too bad they didn't chip him when he was in XOps. Unless they did?"
Eddie slowly turned and looked toward the plywood-covered windows over on the house's left flank. "Where's her book," he said in a grim voice.
"Devina's? In the parlor." Sissy put her necklace on, stretching her arms behind her head to work the clasp. "But I can't read it anymore."
And to think she'd assumed that was good news.
"Follow me," Eddie said before striding back into the house. "I've got an idea."
As Jim picked the lock on the back door of the nondescript office building, he wasn't sure how much time he had once he infiltrated the interior. Assuming Devina had bought his bullshit, there was a good chance she'd go to the Creator right away--he just didn't know how long that convo was going to last. He was also banking that her protective virgin-sacrifice signal system wasn't going to work when she was talking to God Himself. This was based on nothing but a hunch, however--although when he'd been in the Big Guy's presence himself, the experience had been so completely overwhelming, he'd nearly lost consciousness. With any luck, Devina would have a similar response.
If he was wrong about all of that, though?
Then he had only a matter of seconds to find the bitch's mirror and steal it--
Click. The stainless-steel locking mechanism retracted on cue, and he quickly put his pick kit away before grabbing the handle. He was doing this B and E the old-fashioned way on the theory that the more magic he used, the more he was going to compromise his invisi. Again, he didn't know that for sure, but it didn't cost him shit to be conservative.
In his mind, he counted it down, three . . . two . . .
No intel on the layout of the facility. Nothing but the knife to guide him. Probable ambush at any moment.
No backup.
...one.
Jim slipped inside and let the door close on its own. The hall beyond was lit dimly by after-hours energy-savers, and the fact that nothing motion-activated came on proved he was rocking the not-there. But he had to assume that the penetration had triggered her protective spell, and he got a move on, jogging down the brushed-nap wall-to-wall carpet with the knife once again out in front of himself. He passed by empty offices and low-level debris like pieces of paper scattered on the floor, an office phone or two, electrical cords. He was pretty sure that Devina had created an illusion over the "business" to hide herself and her things from prying eyes, but the shit was clearly not working on him.
Either that or the lie rolled out only when she cued it to.
The good news? At least the knife in his hands was talking to him big-time, growing hotter and hotter, vibrating so much it was in danger of slipping out of his hold.
The elevators. It took him to the elevators in the front lobby.
And that was a big no. He was not going to get trapped in one of them if she came back in the middle of him going wherever he had to in the building--
Oh, God, there was the sacrifice.
Even though there was no time, he still approached the naked body that was strung upside down over a tin tub by the main entrance.
He couldn't leave the young man there.
Moving fast, he got the body down while still hanging onto the knife, and then he dragged the poor battered soul over to the first office he came to and hid it in case Devina came back. After he was done with her? He was going to take care of the guy somehow.
It was just too much like his Sissy to walk away from.
Refocusing, he looked over at the glowing red exit sign in the far corner of the lobby. Racing over, he found that the door had a passcode pad installed by its jamb, but he'd anticipated that. Reaching for his back pocket, he took out a leather sheath and opened the wallet-like fold-up. Inside, there were all kinds of goodies that he'd used in his old XOps trade, and he took out a square piece of plastic that was the size and shape of a credit card--just with added tricks: A set of wires came off one end and he plugged them into a tiny CPU that was no bigger than a driver's license. Drawing the card through, he froze it in the middle of the reader, initiated a sequence, and watched the red numbers on the readout scan so fast his eye couldn't track the discrete numerals.
Bingo. The door unlocked itself.
He put his kit back together, popped the door, and entered a concrete-and-steel stairwell that had mood lighting and smelled like clay--
With a sudden burst of enthusiasm, the knife leaped away from him and clattered down the steps, making the turns around the landings in a sloppy way, banging into the walls, rattling over the straightaways. He followed at a dead run, keeping up the pace.
They didn't have far to go.
The basement.
Of course.
Chapter
Forty-seven
As Sissy led the angels into the parlor, her heart was going a mile a minute. The idea that Jim was out there and maybe fighting with Devina already was enough to give her palpitations. That they didn't know where he was?
It was enough to make her nauseous.
"The book's over there," she said, pointing to the mantel.
Eddie crossed the bare floor and took the book into his hands, flipping through the pages. For some reason, he apparently could read it and not be evil--at least, she assumed that was the case.
"These words," he said, "were written using the semen of her minions. And if I remember--yeah, there we are. The list from Hell, literally."
"What does this have to do with finding Jim?" Sissy asked.
"He's going to go after her mirror first before he attack
s her. If he takes the mirror, Devina won't be able to escape down to Hell and hide. He'll have a better chance of killing her without it. Ad, gimme your knife?"
Ad was front and center with the crystal weapon, and Eddie took it and put the book down on the floor. Closing the cover, he dug the sharp tip into the old leather, making a circular hole that went into the pages themselves; then with a quick slice and a hiss, he cut his own palm. Making a fist, he held the thing over the hole that he'd made, the silver blood dripping down into the pages, but not pooling.
Each drop was absorbed into the ancient tome, disappearing.
In a soft voice, the angel began to speak words that ran together, the language nothing that Sissy understood.
"What's he doing?" she whispered as she crouched down.
Ad nodded in approval. "He's using his will to turn the book into a locator."
"The inventory list," she breathed.
"That's right. Devina keeps her collection and her mirror together. This goes right, we'll find the latter because the book will help us find the former. I'll be right back."
It was a powerful sight, she thought as she was left alone with Eddie. And something she'd like to paint: the fallen angel with his thick braid hanging over his shoulder and his massive body curled above the ancient book, his fist extended with a shimmering path flowing down, linking the two together.
Ad had just returned as Eddie stopped and seemed to need a moment to reconnect with reality.
Eddie cleared his throat. Shook his head. "Do we have a--"
"Right here," Ad said, holding something out.
"You read my mind."
It was a compass, one of those old-fashioned Swiss Army jobs, and Eddie took the green and silver dial and fit it into the circle he'd dug in the book. Then all three of them leaned in. The red arrow went haywire, spinning all around before falling into a series of seizures, flipping this way and that.
Until it finally settled on a northeast direction.
"Looks like we got it," Ad muttered. "Assuming the damn thing doesn't just want to go to a Barnes and Noble."
Sissy jumped up. "Let's go."
