by Deena Remiel
Gabriel heard a soft yelp and he smirked. Protecting innocent humans from scum like this would be his pleasure.
“Let us begin…”
Chapter Four
Storm clouds gathered in the early morning sky. Unusual for Arizona since they usually gathered towards evening. Perhaps they were reflecting Gabriel's thunderous mood as he finished his “business” with Marco de LaGuardia. He had completed that task successfully, but he felt no sense of joy. Satisfaction, yes. Joy, no. If there weren't scum like Marco on this earth, then there'd be joy.
No, these clouds portended something truly evil brewing. Gabriel had pissed off Satan by plucking at the sanity of one his minions. And Manny, Satan's tool, was next on the list. Once Gabriel identified all of the kids being exploited and sold by him for lurid, depraved acts with sick, twisted adults, Manny's time would come. There would be a showdown, of this Gabriel was sure. And he was just as sure that he would claim yet another victory against Evil. Over many millennia, Gabriel's record had been stellar.
Gabriel returned to find Caleb staring out the window at the roiling clouds. “Caleb,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” he muttered, distracted.
“Caleb, I took care of Phoebe's... problem.”
Turning away from the window, his furrowed brow eased. “I...I don't know what to say. Thank you doesn't seem close to adequate.” He extended his hand. Gabriel took it and shook it heartily.
“You are very welcome.” Gabriel eased himself onto the couch. ”How's Phoebe doing? Is she awake? And how's the search going for my house?”
“Phoebe's still sleeping, thank goodness. She was up a lot, tossing and turning. And I've actually found a place for you. I couldn't sleep either, so I scoured the internet in the wee small hours of the morning. Wait right there.” Caleb walked into his suite and came back a few moments later with a paper in his hand. “Here, check this out. It's 3,500 square feet of prime real estate in the foothills.”
“Sounds perfect. Buy it.” He barely looked at the paper, scratched his head, and continued, “Listen Caleb, about Manny, I need to get this thug off the streets for good, and I need to do it fast before any more situations like Phoebe's occurs. But before I do, I gotta know how many others are out there like you in order to assess the damage and make a plan for their remediation.”
“Geez, Gabriel. You'd really do that for all of them, too? Who the hell are you and where have you come from?” Caleb marveled, his words laced with incredulity.
“I'm just a man who has the resources to protect innocents from other people looking to exploit them. Now, tell me who your friends are so we can help them.”
Caleb, Phoebe, and Gabriel spent the rest of the morning compiling the Rescue List. There were twenty other young men and women in Manny's employ, and had been so since they were in their early teens. Neither Caleb nor Phoebe knew where they all lived, but they did know where and when they worked. Caleb took to his post behind the registration desk later that morning, and as his “co-workers” approached to receive a key to a room, he included a note giving instructions on where they should go instead - Gabriel's suite.
***
Over the course of just a few short hours, Gabriel's suite was stuffed to the gills with twenty very confused and apprehensive individuals. They mumbled and speculated, and at points buzzed like agitated bees.
“So, what do you really know about this guy, Caleb?” Robert, the perpetual skeptic and self-appointed speaker for the group asked. “I mean, he waltzes in here from out of Nowheres with lots of money, and then demands you do crazy tasks as an interview for a job with him. Then he rounds us up like some kind of guardian angel or somethin'. Sounds a bit off his rocker, if you ask me. You know what I mean?”
“Listen, Robert. I know he seems a bit eccentric, but Gabriel's the closest thing to a savior any of us has ever had. He's giving you, all of you, a chance like he gave me, to break away from Manny. If you want your life to be better, then believe in him and what he has to offer.”
Caleb looked at each and every one of them. Some were just dying for someone to give them a leg up and out of the business. But he knew, deep in his heart, it would take all of Gabriel's tricks to turn others onto the right path. Josie, he thought, had been with Manny since she was thirteen. She was nineteen now, and a hardened prostitute. Fern was nineteen as well, but she'd been sold to Manny when she was eleven. All semblance of a soul had died years ago. She was like an empty shell and seemed completely disinterested in the whole affair. Robert, well, Robert was just an angry twenty-year-old who didn't trust anybody and didn't know how to handle the little money Manny gave him from his jobs.
“Hey, Robert,” Caleb said quietly taking him aside. ”Don't you ever stop and think about why you stay with Manny? I mean, you hate the guy, but you still work for him. Why? Now that I'm free, I've been thinking about why I stayed as long as I did. Why I didn't run from him. Why I didn't turn him in. Why I didn't do anything. I don't have any good answers. You?”
“I don't know, man. Besides Manny, I got nothin' else. This Gabriel dude better be on the up and up or I'm gonna have to kill him, and you for pushing me into this.”
“I suggest you direct your threat towards the monster who really deserves it. One Manny Robos.”
Robert and Caleb quickly turned to find Gabriel standing in the doorway. “Oh, hey, Gabriel,” Caleb stammered and punched Robert in the arm. “What's the latest?”
“Storm's brewing, boys,” Gabriel said, not wanting to give any more information than necessary. He didn't need mavericks going in and doing a Brethren's job. He had a plan. ”I'm going to need you to keep everyone occupied this evening. Order in movies and piz...” Gabriel was interrupted by a series of cell phones ringing. Everybody looked at their phones, at each other, and then at Gabriel.
“What do we do, Gabriel?” Melanie, a bedraggled orange-haired girl croaked out, her hand shaking. “It's Manny. He just sent me a text message.”
“Yeah, me too,” they all started responding at the same time.
“Okay, okay,” Gabriel soothed, sending waves of ease and comfort as he walked around the room, lightly touching each person's shoulder. “What you do is ignore it, and turn off your cell phones. As I was saying, order up some movies and pizza. Don't leave these two rooms for any reason. My teammate, Raphael, will be here shortly to conduct individual healing sessions with everyone. He's a miracle worker, believe me. I'll be back soon. Caleb, get on the phone and call this guy.” He handed him a business card. “Tell him that tomorrow I'm sending twenty people for immediate enrollment in his Private Investigation program.”
”Yes, sir.”
“Then, find me a bigger house, a much bigger house.”
Gabriel picked up his jacket, his sword neatly hidden in the folds, and walked out leaving Caleb staring incredulously after him.
***
Primed and ready for battle, Gabriel flew over to Manny's apartment complex, shielding himself from anyone's notice. The entire city block had completely surrendered to Satan's influence. He could sense evil oozing from the cracks and crevices in the pavement beneath him. No animal life could be seen or heard anywhere. Trees had been prematurely divested of their leaves, streetlights were broken, and trash littered the sidewalks. He could hear screaming and crying reverberating off the building's windows.
Oh yeah, Satan’s been here, and all these people got for their trouble was a lousy t-shirt… and lives filled with pain.
Just how extensive Satan's hold was on Manny became more and more apparent the closer Gabriel got to Manny's apartment. Walking down the hall without his shields up, he would have been wading through evil energy like an ocean of tar. Gabriel raised his fisted sword and banged fiercely against Manny's door. Then, he simply knocked it down.
A hailstorm of bullets came flying at him. Those that hit Gabriel were quickly absorbed by his body and extruded as sweat. The rest lodged themselves in the walls around him. He prayed nobody w
as home behind those walls. As the bullets continued to spray, he strode determinedly into the foyer of the apartment straight through to the living room.
Upon seeing Gabriel's outspread wings and the enormous sword in his hand, Manny let loose with a barrage of remarks, the least offensive of which mentioned how he planned on playing Connect the Dots with the holes the bullets made. But when he saw those very bullets disappear without so much as a bloodstain, he finally froze.
“Who the hell are you?” Manny growled, and huffed like an angry bull.
“Let's just say I'm the union representative come to renegotiate terms of your workers' contracts.” Gabriel raised a cheek in a wicked half-smile and inspected his sword.
“Contract negotiations? Are you out of your freakin' mind? Nobody negotiates their contracts with me, dude. They give and I receive. End of story.” Manny aimed the gun again at Gabriel's chest. ”Now, why aren't you dead? And what's up with those wing things you got attached to your back? It ain't freakin' Halloween, you know. You some kind of freak?”
“Oh Manny, Manny, Manny,” Gabriel laughed, shaking his head, and then he stopped. Manny couldn't blink fast enough and Gabriel stood before him. Gabriel took Manny by the throat, and slowly raised him so they were eye to eye. His stare bore holes straight through to the charred remains of Manny's soul. “Your reign of terror is officially over. Say goodnight, evil man. Your angel of death has arrived.” He tossed him unceremoniously onto the floor. Manny scrambled to his feet, readjusted the semi-automatic, and started shooting curses and bullets wildly about him. Gabriel ignored it all.
“For all the innocents whose childhoods and naiveté you've stolen, for all the depravity and unspeakable horrors you've cultivated and propagated, I pronounce you guilty and pass a judgment of death to be delivered swiftly and permanently. Time to return to the Hell that made you.”
Gabriel raised his sword and whispered a sacred incantation. The inscription on his blade turned a fiery red as he pivoted, swung his sword, and connected with flesh and bone. As Manny's head tumbled to the floor, his face still showed the last manic expression of his life, and the rest of his body folded into a crumpled heap. His blood quickly absorbed into the inscription on the blade. Gabriel sheathed his sword, flipped open his cell phone, and walked out.
“This is Gabriel. Send in the clean-up crew.”
###
GABRIEL SEEKER appears next in…
ANGEL RISING
Part One
SNEAK PEEK OF
ANGEL RISING PART ONE
PROLOGUE
It isn’t a pretty world for invisible children to live in. Not a chasing-butterflies-and-puppy-dog-tails kind of dream world either. Rather, these children subsist in nightmarish roach-infested, flea-bag motels, government funded apartments, and innocuous suburban homes across the country, chained to bedposts, locked in closets, hidden away from the civilized world, to be at the beck and call of loathsome, degenerate adults. No matter the building type, they know of these children’s plight all too well. If walls could talk, they’d speak of horrific, exploitive crimes against these innocents on a daily basis, and the champion who would see all of their captors struck down and sent back to Hell, a Brethren Protector named Gabriel Seeker.
This is his story, and of a woman’s, dear to his heart, who wrestled with a childhood, singularly unusual and at times dangerous, but never once had to wonder who’d protect her from the evils of the world. Born thirty-six years ago, she was the child prophesied to first become the Great Warrior Child, and then the first female Brethren Warrior when she matured to a certain age. Hannah Livingston is her name, and that milestone birthday is a mere six weeks away. So is her immortality.
A long time has passed since the apocalyptic war between Satan and The Brethren for the sake of her soul and the fate of the world. Many years since Hannah’s thought about her role in the Brethren organization and how living for an eternity will feel.
A new showdown is brewing between good and evil. It will be a time for immortals and mortals to come together as one united army and watch a new angel rising.
THE BRETHREN SERIES, paranormal
TRINITY
RELIC
NATHANAEL’S HUNT
~ A Brethren Beginnings Short Story~ (free!)
ELIXXIR
ANGEL RISING PART ONE
ANGEL RISING PART TWO (coming soon!)
THE BOOK WAITRESS SERIES, urban fantasy
THE BOOK WAITRESS (free!)
DEVIL DU JOUR
DEMON A LA MODE
A-HUNTING WE WILL GO
ROCK-A-BYE DEMON (coming soon!)
STICKS AND STONES (coming soon!)
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS SERIES, paranormal
BURNING SAGE
IMMORTAL DANCE
1-NIGHT STAND SERIES
(DECADENT PUBLISHING)
GHOST OF A CHANCE, paranormal
DISTORTION, romantic suspense
