by A. Q. Owen
That life, he believed, had led his wife to find what she needed with another man. And in the end, to the death of his child.
Not directly. It wasn’t like one of the terrorist cells he’d hit came to his home and took out his kid. But the choices he made in life, the things he’d done, all seemed to come crashing down on him in one tragic accident.
Some might have considered it karma if they knew the truth about his life, about all the other lives he’d ended, about the things he’d done to get information out of evil men. But that was the thing: He didn’t consider what he’d done horrific or terrible. He’d done what was necessary to keep people, innocent people like his daughter, safe from the wicked people of the world.
He felt as much regret about killing those men as he did the fallen angel he’d cut in half just an hour before. Or however long ago it was in this new, messed-up world.
Orion considered the encounter in the Realm. What a strange place it had been, yet oddly familiar, probably because it looked exactly like this world save for the lack of blue hues in the sunlight, a fact that caused the entire place to appear as though bathed in a constant reddish darkness.
Ashgog, he thought. I killed a demon. Is that right? Did I really do that? He had to admit, there was something coursing through him. It was an old feeling he hadn’t sensed in a long time. What was it? Righteousness? No, that wasn’t it. He was anything but a righteous man. Justice? Perhaps. He’d killed an evil being on his own turf. No, this wasn’t justice. This was exactly what Steve promised, what Leonardo alluded to. This was revenge. And if felt good.
“When can I go back in?” He blurted the words faster than he intended.
“What?” Steve asked, confused.
“The Realm,” Orion clarified. “I want to go back in.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, sure. I mean, that’s what all this is about. You probably need to take a night to sleep, which brings me back to my question.” He stopped at the intersection and looked both ways. “What’s going on back at your house? Were those people looking for you?”
Orion shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
He reached for the door latch and pulled it. Steve grabbed him by the shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Going to my place,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
Orion set the weapon back in the car, laying it carefully against the front edge of the seat. “Take care of it for me. I’ll come back tomorrow morning. We have work to do.”
“You mean you have work to do. I pretty much just watch over the portal.”
“Watch over?” Orion looked surprised.
Steve nodded. “You’re not the only one who’s good with weapons.”
Orion arched an eyebrow. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“For a priest? Yes. For a guy with nothing to lose in life? Not really. I’ll see you in the morning. Be careful. I don’t know who those people were, but they looked like bad business.”
“I can handle myself.”
Steve nodded. “I know you can. See you tomorrow…Orion.”
The door closed, and Steve sped away to the left, driving his old car down Main Street.
Orion watched until he’d disappeared around the next corner and then turned back toward his home. He took a deep breath and exhaled. It wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with these types. He had hoped he had done it for the last time long ago.
“Okay, whoever you are. Time to find out what you want.”
13
Orion strode to the back corner of his building where it was separated from the next building by a narrow alley. Old, rusty fire-escape ladders and platforms adorned the wall going all the way to the top. His floor wasn’t that far up, not that the climb to the top worried him. He was still in peak physical condition despite the wear and tear he’d put on his liver in the last year. His muscles were still ripped from constant workouts—not to keep healthy but to fight off the emotional tsunamis that hit him from time to time. A quick thirty minutes on the punching bag, the pull-up bar, and doing push-ups did wonders for grief. At least for thirty minutes.
He stared up at the fire-escape ladder over his head. Even with his leg strength, he wouldn’t be able to jump up to the lowest rung. He looked to the left and found an old metal garbage can. A quick flick of the wrist, and the can was on its top. Orion climbed onto it and with both hands up to the sky hopped a few inches up. His palms slapped the lowest rung, and instinctively his fingers clasped around the metal bar. Then his forearms and biceps tightened, the lats pulled, and his feet shot upward.
Orion reached to the next rung with his left hand, grabbed it, swung his legs up, and grabbed the rung above that. He repeated the process four times until he felt his toes kick the lowest bar on the ladder. With his boots firmly on the rickety contraption, he climbed faster, taking the rungs in quick succession until he reached the first platform. He swung his legs over the metal grate, grabbed the next ladder, and started upward again.
By the time he reached his floor, his forearms, back, and legs were burning, but he didn’t care. He stayed quiet, moving slowly onto the platform connected to his unit. The window was still closed so that was a positive, but as he crouched he peeked over the bottom edge of the window and saw inside. Several of the men and women in black suits were standing around inside. One woman in particular seemed to be the one directing the rest. She pointed toward Orion’s bedroom, and one younger man with short, blondish hair sped away in that direction. Then she waved her other hand and ordered the others to head out.
They obeyed, carrying plastic evidence bags with some of his personal belongings. Nothing important, but it was still his stuff these people were stealing. The man who went to his bedroom returned empty handed, shook his head, and then followed the rest of the group out the front door.
The woman looked around one last time. She had that familiar expression on her face, like she knew she was forgetting something but couldn’t recall what it was or where she placed it. She rested her index finger against her chin for a moment then turned her head to the door and left, her tight ponytail bobbing behind her as she strode out of the room.
The second the door slammed shut, Orion emerged from his hiding place and crept over to the window. He purposely kept it unlatched in case he needed to get in like this. While he never really expected to use it, he was glad he had left it unlocked. Whoever those people in the suits were, they didn’t seem friendly. They were taking his stuff and searching his house. That usually meant government agents or some kind of police investigation.
To his knowledge, he hadn’t broken any laws. What was it they wanted?
He frowned and looked down at the ring on his finger. It was pulsing like crazy with a reddish hue. It also felt looser than before, which was strange. The exertion from climbing the ladder had swelled his fingers. If anything, the ring should have been tighter.
“What are you trying to tell me?” He muttered the words, not expecting an answer. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with the sense that he should put the ring into his right pocket, so he pulled it off and stuffed it in his pants. He didn’t know why, exactly, but he couldn’t deny the feeling in his head, almost like a voice telling him to do it.
Orion bent down and grabbed the bottom of the window. He lifted it up and slid one leg through and then the other, easing the glass and frame back down so it wouldn’t make a noise. He left it unlocked just in case he needed to get out again quickly.
He let out a sigh and took inventory of his place. From the outside, he’d expected it to be trashed. In his experience, when someone searched a home they left it a total wreck. Clothes would be strewn all over the place, drawers left on the floor, televisions broken, and computers stolen. Nothing of the sort had occurred. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure his home wasn’t cleaner now than when he left.
“Who are these people?”
He wandered over
to his computer station in the corner and clicked the mouse. His fingers raced across the keyboard, entering the password. Then the screen flickered and brought up the picture of the mountains he’d taken on a family camping trip two years before.
Everything on the main desktop screen was as he’d left it. He checked the other two screens and found nothing missing.
A scowl stretched across his face. He clicked on a file in the bottom right corner of his main monitor that was labeled junk. He named it that just in case anyone ever broke into his house and started looking through his computer. If anyone had messed with his desktop, they would have had to know the password or been one hell of a hacker. It didn’t appear anything had been tampered with, but he needed to be sure.
The file opened, and he clicked the run button on one labeled System Scan.
The computer started running its check while he put his hands on his hips and watched.
“We didn’t mess with anything on your computer.”
The woman’s voice startled him. A lesser person would have jumped out of their skin. Not Orion. While surprised, he had a plan for every possible contingency. His right hand snapped under the desk as he ducked down onto one knee. The pistol he always kept strapped under the workstation was exactly where he had left it, and within a second the weapon was in his hand and aimed at the woman in the black business suit standing in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest.
“We didn’t touch your gun, either.”
“Maybe you should have.”
She stared him down as if her deathly gaze could somehow disarm him.
He kept the sights aimed squarely at the top of her chest.
“I would appreciate it if you’d lower the weapon, Mr. Cunningham.”
He wasn’t surprised she knew his name. If they’d managed to track down his residence, knowing his name was a foregone conclusion. The question in his mind wasn’t whether or not she knew who he was, but why she did—and who she worked for.
“Who do you work for?” Orion asked, his tone as sharp as he knew his aim would be if it came down to firing the weapon.
She arched her eyebrows and rolled her shoulders up for a moment, then let them fall again. “I figured your first question would be who am I.”
“That was going to be my second one.”
“You wouldn’t know the name of my agency if I told you.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“I’m well aware of that, Mr. Cunningham. We know all about you and your past. You’ve been through a great deal over the last few years.”
“Somehow I get the feeling you didn’t drop by to give me a sympathy card.”
She cracked a fiendish grin on one side of her lips. “That is correct, Mr….may I call you Blake?”
“I don’t care what you call me so long as you get out of my home. Unless you’re here to arrest me, in which case I’m going to need to see a warrant.”
The woman allowed a chuckle to escape her lips. “I’m not here to arrest you, Blake. I’m here to help you.”
“Help me? I didn’t know I needed helping.”
“Most people we help don’t know it until it’s too late.” She gave a nod to the gun. “Would you mind lowering that thing? If I was going to attack you, I would have done so by now. And I have over a dozen highly trained agents surrounding this building, so if I wanted you dead, you would be already.”
He frowned. She’d called his bluff.
“Have a look outside, across the street, rooftop. Next to the ventilation shaft and air-conditioning units.”
Orion hesitated.
“It’s okay, he’s not going to kill you.” She pressed a button on the earpiece stuck in her right ear. “Johnson, stand down.”
Orion risked a quick glance out the window and saw a man in black tactical gear wave one hand. The other was holding a sniper rifle, the barrel pointed at the window.
She wasn’t lying. Even a novice could take out a human target from that range with that particular weapon.
“Okay,” he said. “You got me on that one.” He lowered the pistol but kept a firm grip on it with his right hand. “Now talk. I’ll listen. You have three minutes.”
The woman uncrossed her arms. She wore an amused look on her face as if his threat carried no weight with her. She strode over to a couch situated against the opposite wall and eased into it, slowly crossing one leg over the other.
“My name is Myra Koch. I work for an agency that monitors unauthorized use of magic.”
“Unauthorized? Magic isn’t illegal. Lots of people use that hocus-pocus stuff nowadays. I’m not one of them.”
“You’re correct, of course. Magic isn’t illegal. What we monitor is abnormal power spikes. There are certain levels, Blake, that can become dangerous for ordinary citizens. We have an array in place that watches for those kinds of spikes. When one pops up, we investigate.”
“What does any of this have to do with me?”
“I thought it would be obvious, but I can see you’re going to play coy.”
“I’m not playing anything. I told you, I’m not a magic user.”
She gave a nod as if she didn’t believe a thing he said. “Well, that may be, but we were alerted to a very powerful spike that happened here earlier today. It was one of the more dangerous spikes we’ve seen in a while.”
His face scrunched. “Is there a mage in my building?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. We’ve interviewed everyone on the premises. Everyone but you.”
“Two minutes,” he said, reminding her she was on a timer.
“No one in this building had a trace of any kind of magic use over the ordinary, allowed levels.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“We try to keep our business as quiet as possible, Blake. Can’t have people running around in a panic, spreading wild conspiracy theories. We simply try to keep the general population safe. If there’s an unauthorized power spike, we deal with it.”
“You mean you kill the person responsible.”
She cracked a dismissive smile. “We typically try to avoid confrontations of that nature.”
“Try?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes that is…unavoidable.”
“Thus the sniper in my backyard.” He flicked his head toward the window.
“I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Cunningham.”
“That would be nice.”
Myra stood up from the couch, and as she did so he noticed her long, smooth legs for a second as the skirt hiked up a few inches before falling back toward her knees again.
“Blake, I don’t believe you’re a magic user. You don’t strike me as that type.”
“Thank you?”
She took a step toward him. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we traced the spike here, to this apartment.” She pointed to the floor with a bony finger. “And we found traces of that magic still here.”
That last part sent a frown stretching across his face. “That’s not possible.” As he said the words, the ring in his pocket felt like a ship anchor, dragging him down. Was that what set off this spike she was talking about? It was the only explanation.
“I’m sorry, Blake, but I’m afraid it is. She stopped a few feet short of him. Her expensive perfume wafted into his nostrils. There was something…hypnotic about it. He felt his vision blurring, the world around him wavering.
He snapped his head to the side to shake off whatever was causing the sudden dizziness.
“You see,” she continued, “magic is everywhere. We track tens of thousands of users every day. And while you haven’t been on our radar, you certainly are now.” She reached out her left hand and seductively ran her fingers through his hair.
His balance wavered, and he felt himself wobbling under her touch.
“Something happened here. We know that much. What we don’t know is what you were doing and how you were doing it. While the traces we’ve found here are
below our legal thresholds, the spike we detected this morning was not. You be sure to keep out of trouble, Mr. Cunningham. If I come back here again, I won’t be so forgiving.”
She pulled her hand back from his head, spun on her heels, and strolled out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
For nearly a minute, Orion stood there in a daze. Then as suddenly as the haze had appeared, it vanished. He blinked his eyes rapidly and looked around. He could still detect a hint of her perfume lingering in the air. Her voice still hung in the room as well, the words spinning around him like hummingbirds circling a patch of flowers.
Orion wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what had just happened. That woman had put some kind of spell on him. She was either a witch or some other kind of magic user. That much he knew. What he didn’t know was who she worked for and what she wanted. She’d spoken about a magic spike that happened earlier that day. He felt confident about how well he’d blown off the accusation, but something told him this wasn’t over.
People like Myra didn’t just show up, throw a warning at a person, and then walk out.
No, there was zero chance he was done with Myra Koch.
14
Lucifer’s displeasure cut through the room like a scythe. Every single demon within the grand chamber lowered their heads, unwilling to take on his piercing, judgmental gaze.
His head turned one direction and then the other in slow, dramatic sweeps.
Blond locks of hair dangled down around his cheeks and ears, framing the ashen, chiseled face. Of all the angels in the Realm, he was the most beautiful. While the others had aged more over the millennia and showed the signs of it, he remained almost as he was before the Fall, before the Creator betrayed him.
