by Brian Fuller
“Yee-haw!” the hick said, then hit him again. Helo played the part, groaning.
“Knock it off,” the driver Dread said. “Arms up, Trash Angel.”
As they had with Aclima, they scanned him first, did a very thorough frisking, and then they broke him down. He had a hard time screaming convincingly during training, so he settled on agonized grunts, the hick sniggering the whole time as if this were some kind of junior high prank.
After aging him, they dragged him off, his expensive shoes no doubt scuffing on the floor. One of them crushed his throat, lifted him up, and stuffed him in next to Aclima, a tight squeeze made easier by his completely unhinged limbs.
“Hearts. Now,” the driver Dread demanded. At first Helo thought they were going to extract his and Aclima’s hearts, but after a short wait, there were two squishy plops in the trunk right next to his head. Two of the Dreads were coming with them—after a fashion.
The trunk lid shut, but Helo heard the driver say, “You two know your routes?”
Mumbled assent. The other Dreads were the decoys. They would drive around to confuse anyone trying to follow them and then appear at the real destination when dusk came around again.
Car doors opened and closed. Engines purred to life. The Ash Angels had guessed completely wrong. Cain had foiled them again. He wasn’t going to take their hearts and their clothes. He wasn’t taking them out on the water where the Gabriel Division had their boats ready for surveillance. To top it all off, they hadn’t had a chance to activate Aclima’s pendant. No matter how much they schemed, Cain always seemed to have the upper hand.
As the engine accelerated, he tried to focus on Avadan’s information, to focus on anticipating Cain’s plan. But Aclima’s body trembled with silent sobbing, so he used his Inspire Bestowal to provide a comfort and peace he wished he could feel.
They were on their way to face Cain.
And they would do it alone.
Chapter 35
Dinner Party
Wherever they were going, Helo guessed it was in the nearby Cascade Mountains. With a bag over his head, all he had was his hearing and the momentum pushing and pulling his body back and forth as the car took a winding road to wherever Cain waited. From time to time the engine would rev high, struggling up some unseen incline. He and Terissa had honeymooned along the Northwest coast, and he wondered if Cain had chosen this area on purpose to dredge up those memories.
With crushed throats and mangled bodies, there wasn’t any conversation or consolation to be had. His application of the Inspire Bestowal had settled Aclima. While he had promised not to force her to stay behind or protect her from danger anymore, if he could have moved and used his arms, he thought he might just have ripped her heart out, used the trunk escape lever, and chucked it outside.
That thought brought him back to Avadan’s information. He had insinuated that an angel born could acquire Bestowals at will, but how? Did you just have to want it bad enough? Pray for it? Throw salt over your shoulder and incant some fancy rhyme? He needed to figure it out before Cain put the hurt on them.
How long the Dread drove them around he could only estimate, but he figured about three hours of twisty-turvy, uphill-downhill driving until the car stopped and the engine cut out. The driver got out and slammed the door shut, footsteps fading.
And then nothing. For hours. To distract himself, he turned his mind inward to the familiar scene, the meditative puzzle he had solved, focusing on the light, letting his concentration float free of the confining trunk and into the protective world of light. He hoped Aclima was doing the same.
The trunk popping open broke his trance.
“Grab the hearts,” the familiar voice of the Dread driver said. “Take these two inside.”
“We might need another guy for her,” someone joked.
“Just do it,” the driver ordered in a no-nonsense tone. “Get him out first and take him upstairs. I’ll show you where to take her.”
Helo tried to whisper to Aclima as they hauled him out of the car, but his crushed throat only let out a raspy, broken breath. She was on her own now, just how Cain wanted it, he was sure. Helo focused his senses, trying to gather any clues as to where they were. The bag over his head kept him from seeing anything, but when he wasn’t distracted by the military-grade profanity of his captors, he could hear the soft chirp of birds, the rustle of wind in trees, and what sounded like water lapping on a nearby shore. Then in a door, up some stairs, and into another room. They deposited his broken body on a bed and left.
And there was a Sheid. He could feel it off to his left, like a fan blowing darkness in his direction. He waited for it to do something, torch him, perhaps. But it did nothing, not even take a step, for hours upon hours. Helo again retreated inside his mind, meditating on the fiery sun, waiting for Rapture. And when it did come, it burned into his soul with sweet power, sweeping away every other sensation.
When he came to himself, his limbs had been restored, and he pulled the bag off his head. There was the Sheid standing sober sentry at the door with its hands behind its back, Vexus swirling around it. It had desecrated the floor. Helo smirked to himself. So Avadan hadn’t told Cain about him being angel born, after all. The Sheid was morphed into a male he didn’t recognize and was dressed nicely, like a waiter at a high-end restaurant.
Helo stood and straightened his tux. There were wrinkles that weren’t going to come out without help. The room where the Dreads had deposited him matched the finery he was wearing. It was a bedroom, one for someone wealthy or Cain’s guests. An oiled bronze light fixture with twisting spindles cast light on mahogany furniture, pristine beige carpet, and an earthy, stone-accented fireplace. An arched window with gauzy red curtains let in the weak morning light, birds chirruping happily at the rising sun.
Helo assessed his options. He could kill the Sheid outright and then search for Aclima and Scarlet, but if he didn’t play Cain’s game the way Cain wanted to play it, he would endanger both women. He had no idea where Cain had imprisoned them, no idea where Cain or the other Dreads might be stationed. Worst of all, he had no doubt Cain had thought of everything.
Still, Cain would never expect his Sheid to be killed, and if he and his minions had no idea what an angel born could do, then maybe he stood a chance. Then again, he risked revealing advantages that might be critical later.
Then the Sheid spoke. “Take off your jacket, shirt, and pants to be pressed. Devon Qyn wishes me to inform you that you are invited to a dinner party this evening at nine. You are to remain here until that time. Lack of compliance will bring harsh consequences to people in this house that you care about.”
Typical. Tossing the bow tie on the bed, Helo removed his fitted shirt, pants, and jacket. The Sheid wordlessly took the clothing, and Helo wondered if it would do the ironing itself. But after a gentle knock on the door, the Sheid opened it and handed the clothes to someone outside.
“Have these cleaned and pressed and returned before six this evening,” the Sheid instructed.
“Yes, of course,” an unseen man with a British accent said.
For the remainder of the day, Helo paced around in his underwear feeling twitchy, the watchful Sheid a stoic, quiet companion. Cain and his stupid games. Helo half wished the old Dread would be more like the rest of Dread kind and just come out shooting. But Cain savored his little victories, liked to take his time and exact his revenge in the most excruciating ways.
Antsy and bored, he tried to keep his mind from useless speculation about what had happened to Scarlet and Aclima. Most of all, he wanted something to shoot, punch, or destroy. But he bided his time, dimly aware of the sun sinking outside his window. The murmur of voices outside grew, along with clinking and clanking and doors opening and shutting. The sound of cars arriving filtered through the walls.
Not long after the sun had retired, his door opened. The Sheid retrieved a garment bag from an unseen hand, nudged the door shut with its leg, and laid the bag out on t
he bed.
“Change. Now.”
Helo unzipped the bag under the Sheid’s gaze, finding his shirt, jacket, and pants freshly pressed, creases sharp. He dressed, finishing with a tug to put his black bow tie exactly straight.
“Follow me,” the Sheid said tonelessly.
Helo kept two paces behind the swirling Vexus of the Sheid, fighting the urge to punch a hole in its back and end it right there in the middle of the tiled hallway. At the end of the hall, a curved staircase done in darkly stained walnut led down to a brightly lit gallery filled with guests—all normals—dressed as nicely as he was and carrying fluted champagne glasses. A few spared him a glance as he descended.
The house was gorgeous, its glass windows soaring up to reveal the shadowy lines of tree covered hills standing sentry in front of the dying light of day. The tiles of the white marble entry had been polished until they had the quality of a sheet of ice. The Sheid led him across the gallery tiles. Helo nodded to a slender woman in a deep-blue dress who threw him a speculative look. The tux was doing its job.
But the Sheid kept him away from the mass of gathered guests and the hum of conversation, taking him deeper into the house. They passed under an arch trimmed in the same dark wood as the stairs, and then the Sheid pushed open a set of arched double doors. The room beyond was a master suite, gaudy and king-like, with walls the color of beaten gold and an enormous canopy bed on a raised platform. The wine-red drapes were pulled aside, the bed covered in puffy pillows with golden tassels.
It almost looked like a room at the theme motel he and Terissa had stayed at on their first anniversary. The thought stabbed him, and he forced it down. He had to focus now. Cain wanted him to feel vulnerable, and Helo wouldn’t let him use Terissa against him again.
The Sheid led him into a secluded sitting room. Behind a glass door on the other side, Helo spotted his enemy. Cain sat on a private balcony overlooking a lake. He gazed out at the still waters, absentmindedly swirling the wine in his glass. The table had service for four, another Sheid standing nearby in the attitude of a waiter with white gloves, a dark jacket, and a towel draped over his forearm. As expected, the Sheid Desecrated the deck the moment Helo got close.
The Sheid he had been following opened the door and stepped back to let Helo through. Helo faked a shiver as he stepped onto the desecrated deck.
Cain turned. “Ah, at last. Have a seat opposite me, won’t you?” Then he turned to the Sheid. “Fetch the rest of our party if they are ready.”
The Sheid turned, closed the door, and left. Helo took the seat Cain had indicated, wondering if the rest of the party was who he thought it was. The balcony appeared to be on the side of the house and was so close to the water Helo could hear it lapping lazily on the shore below. The air had turned cold with twilight’s descent into full dark. The sounds of the party stole around from the front and back of the house but were little more than a murmur.
Cain set his wine on the table, dark eyes finally regarding his guest fully. “You know, many consider me a man of rash passion—though I suppose most only know my name because I smashed my brother’s head with a rock. But over the years I have learned the joys of restraint—when in the service of greater fulfillment.” He leaned forward, and his eyes flashed with an angry heat. “And I have exercised a great deal of restraint with you.”
Helo wasn’t feeling quite so restrained. “Where are they?”
“Who?” Cain asked with a smirk.
Helo leveled a glare at his companion.
Cain laughed. “The ladies will join us shortly. I promised a double date, and a double date we shall have. I’ll admit that getting to know Terissa has been fascinating. It’s kind of ironic, you know? The fact is she is much more my type than yours. I know it when girls like the rich things in life, and Terissa is one of them. Nice cars. Nice houses. Expensive trips. Important people. That’s the life she dreamed of, really. I think you know that. That’s the reason your marriage was doomed from the start. You simply couldn’t satisfy an essential part of her.”
Helo unclenched his jaw. “Is there a point to this?”
Cain shrugged. “Just conversation, really. It’s amusing that Mr. Semper Fi Marine married Miss Never Fi, a woman who slept around in high school and in college and at work—as you so disastrously found out. Just like every bride, Terissa promised herself on her wedding day that all her sexual adventures were over. Hilarious, isn’t it, that people who speak the language of promiscuity their entire lives think they can be fluent in fidelity after a day? It’s like they think ‘I do’ is some magical incantation that will make every member of the opposite sex suddenly unappealing. Well, if fidelity were a language, Terissa didn’t learn much more of it than, ‘How are you?’ and ‘Where’s the bathroom?’”
Cain chuckled, a sound with more steel than mirth in it. Helo swallowed to settle himself. Cain was trying to get under his skin and he knew it, but he couldn’t help but wonder what Terissa had revealed and what Cain had done to her to get her to reveal it.
Helo folded his arms, his jacket a little tight at the shoulders. “Like you have any right to talk about fidelity.”
Cain extended his arms. “No, no, no! You mistake me. I was only making an observation, not judgment. I like Terissa the way she was! Certainly much more fun than you ever were or will be. It’s a shame she felt so bad about your death. It kind of ripped the spirit right out of her, I think. Guilt always tends to take the bounce out of your step, doesn’t it?”
Helo shook his head. “Guilt. Now there’s something I know you know nothing about.”
“Conceded,” Cain agreed. “But what surprised me was that Aclima did know something about it. I had no idea how terribly she felt about some of the things she’d done. She’s always been so hard—well, maybe not before I killed Abel. She was a girl then, carefree and even a little silly at times. I think I improved her a great deal. I understand the two of you have worked together. How do you find her?”
An undercurrent of poison colored the question, turning it into something bitter. This was an opportunity. Helo put his elbows on the table and propped his chin thoughtfully on the intertwined fingers of his hands.
“She’s gorgeous, really. Much more my type than yours. She doesn’t need all of your fancy BS. I mean, she won’t even wear earrings. Doesn’t seem to care much for the silver-spoon life like you do, either. She hates you, which is something we have in common. But I gotta tell you, she’s delicious. There can’t possibly be another woman as beautiful as she is. You’re with me on that, right? We both love her dark eyes and dark hair and her soft olive skin. That’s why you killed Abel, because Aclima was the best and always will be. Too bad she can’t stand you.”
Cain’s left eye twitched ever so slightly, his body tense. Aclima was right. Cain really was wound up about her. This was the mother of all bad divorces.
After a brief silence, Cain reached out and took another sip of his wine and relaxed his posture. “Perhaps you are right. But one of the blessings of a long life is that when you lose a woman, you have a chance at getting her back. Won’t be an option for you, of course.”
The crowd noise on the other side of the house rose for a moment, cheering and clapping surging and then falling. Trace pinched his eyebrows. A grin—one of the Dastardly Dan types—slid up Cain’s face. In a few moments, Helo knew why—the golden voice of one Tela Mirren rose into the night, filling the empty spaces of the wilderness with the amplified strumming of her guitar.
“You know,” Cain said while Helo reeled, “all this time I thought you were trying to hide Terissa from me when it was Tela! Of course, an artist needs work, and here she is!”
Helo slowly rose from his chair. How had they found her? What had become of her protection? He had to get to her, get her out before something awful happened.
Cain’s hand slapped the table. “Sit down! I’ll kill her. You know I will. If you don’t sit down, I’ll order it done right now.”
Helo sank into his chair, almost missing it on the way down. Protecting normals was top priority, so he had to comply. Cain wouldn’t flinch at murder and mayhem, and Helo couldn’t have Tela on his conscience.
“That’s a good little Trash Angel,” Cain cooed, face sinister. “You may wonder why I’ve gone to so much trouble to hurt you, and it’s only natural that you would wonder. You see, it’s no mystery I am hell bound. Whenever I choose to end my life, I am in for an eternity of suffering. That pendant and my deal with King were the way out. You see, by providing a body for the Prince of Darkness, I would have been spared an eternity of torment. But now that the pendant is destroyed, my fate is sealed. And since you are the one who took the pendant from me, you can understand my anger, can’t you?”
Pendant destroyed? Helo leaned back in his chair. Why did Cain think the pendant was destroyed? It was missing, along with Archus Ramis. Did Cain know something he didn’t, or was this some kind of bluff? He would play along.
“You’re surprised we destroyed it?” Helo said. “It really doesn’t matter that I took it. Same thing would have happened if some other Ash Angel had taken my place.”
Cain was unreadable save for the anger burning in his dark eyes. “Of course, but you were the one who took it. You were the one who gave it to the Ash Angels to study and destroy. I’m surprised the Ash Angels hung on to it so long before they chose to annihilate it. Tell me, how did they do it? Burn it? Grind it up?”
Helo was confused now, but he couldn’t ask for clarification without revealing his own ignorance. He had no idea how or why Cain thought it was gone. “I really don’t know. They didn’t make a big deal of it. I wasn’t there.”
Cain frowned. “They didn’t let the victorious Helo, who snatched it from the legendary Cain, attend the destruction of the one thing that could bring King into the world?”
