“The Devil’s Tail?” Kyria’s heart jumped. She glanced up at the stoic Ram. “That’s where he had planned to go before he passed out.”
Bishop shook his head and raised a hand to tap at one of his grainy photos, a picture of some frozen landscape. “No, no. The first place. Where everyone met.” He brought his hand to his nose for a sniff, and then pressed his ear against the stone wall. He sniffed the wall, too, before taking a lick. “You”—he gave Ramiel a pointed look—“were there. The family created in Hell for Heaven’s purpose were all in the same place for a bit of time. Has the purpose been lost?” He now stared at her.
Ramiel stepped between them again. “What are you talking about? What family?”
Bishop slapped the wall then clawed at it.
“She thinks she can have it all.” Bishop laughed. “I know how it began and how it’ll end, or how it most likely will end, or not end at all. Which sucks.” He turned, surprisingly graceful, and stroked his hands through the dangling dolls.
Ramiel grunted. “We just need Darius.”
“No, you don’t. The rats know what you need.” The lunatic squatted and peered into the hole in his wall. “They won’t say a thing, though. Too afraid. He’d catch them all and eat ’em.”
“Goddammit, Bishop. Focus.”
Bishop raised his head. “For someone who hates the Mother so much, you sure do like to call Her name.”
Kyria frowned. “Mother?” Unable to ignore the second time he uttered the word in a reverent tone,
Bishop regarded her like she was a child. “The Mother. Our Lord and Savior. The Almighty. Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end. Technically it has no gender.” Bishop lifted his hands. “It’s logical to say a woman gave life to the universe, isn’t it? At the very least, it sounds more poetic. So, yes. God is the Mother, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I understand it’s beyond human comprehension…but you’ll catch up. You’re not human. And it seems even our mutual friend Ramiel here has a renewed obsession with Her. She never left you.”
Ramiel stepped forward with a fisted hand. “Bullshit.”
The madman dropped his head.
Kyria interceded. One hand blocked Ram from moving forward; the other touched Bishop’s drooping shoulder as she kneeled next to him.
“I need to know where my father is.”
The crazy man froze and homed in on Kyria’s hand then slapped it. “That’s it…”
She blinked, startled. “What?”
“That’s it. Right there.” Bishop took Kyria’s fingers and turned them over to trace the lines of her palm. “It’s all waiting right here.”
She pulled her arm, but his firm grip had her trapped.
“Right here aaaand…there.” He smacked the underside of her chin and let her go. “You’re it.”
“Ow.” She staggered back, holding her chin in surprise.
Ramiel snarled and rushed forward, grabbing the front of Bishop’s shirt. He yanked him to his feet and brought him up close, face to face. “Tell us where Darius is. Now.”
Bishop only smirked, rolling his eyes toward Kyria. “Can’t tag me now, whiskey breath. She’s it. Well, the others can tag me, but I call no-tag-backs with her. Cause she’s definitely it. And you two are it together. Sooo, no-tag-backs with you, either. Sorry, them’s the rules.”
Kyria stood and dusted off the back of her jeans with trembling hands. She ached to run from this insanity, to flee and hide like she’d been doing all her life. But she was determined to figure this out even as the prospect of getting anything useful deflated by the second. “Ram, calm down. Who are the others, Bishop? Where is Darius?”
“The others? So many others. All the pieces rolling around. I’ve been losing them, but you’re here now. My big marble is back in my pocket. Two sides to this game. Two sides of a triangle. Who else wants to play? Three. Three sides. Where’s it gonna stop? Nobody knows. Yahtzee.” Mad laughter bubbled up.
Ramiel pressed the crazy man against the wall. “Bishop, focus.” His words were tight and harsh. “I’m getting tired of this stupid game. Give me the answers now.”
Closing his eyes, Bishop took a couple of deep breaths, giving no indication that a mountain of muscles and scars was threatening his life. Kyria held her breath and waited.
When Bishop finally moved, dark eyes, the color of the universe, opened and stared at her. Goose bumps rippled over her skin.
“Oh. You found her. Good. Great. Groovy. We’re ready to go.” He closed his eyes once again and tilted his head back. “Free will is a bitch. She messes with my plan. Free will. Free will. Free Ram.” Bishop opened his eyes and focused on Ramiel with a hard look, holding eye contact as if it was a physical force. “You found her. Now you have to let her save you. Ramiel the archangel of old needs to return to battle. We’ve been waiting for you. It’s time you come back.”
“Waiting. You’ve been waiting?” An ice-cold growl rumbled from deep in Ramiel’s chest. The vibrations scurried up her spine. His heavy fist came up as if he wanted to hit Bishop. “I called out to everyone, even the Mother, but they all ignored me.” He yanked on the chain that connected his wrist to his neck. “She could have broken the chain. She has power over Hell, over everything. And She did nothing.”
A nervous laugh escaped Bishop. “No. She never left you. You needed to learn, to be prepared. You’ve seen it. Your visions are back, aren’t they? Which means it’s time. Your family needs you, and you need your family if we’re gonna win.”
Ram shook the other man to slam him against the wall again as his voice rose. “Don’t you get it? I don’t have a choice. And I don’t have a fucking family.” The broken archangel glared. Kyria wanted to reach out but feared touching him would make him snap.
She waited. After a long, tense moment of silence, Ram snorted. “But this isn’t about me.” Slowly, he lowered Bishop back to his feet and turned away to walk across the room. “Now I remember why I always hated you.”
“Maybe he means that your fam—whoever you used to know, can help us.”
Ram turned to Bishop, ignoring her. “Bishop, cut the crap and just tell me where the girl’s father can be found.”
Bishop slipped down to the floor, his back against the cold stone as he rocked back and forth, wide-eyed. Wide-eyed in a way that spoke of awe and not insanity. Bishop nodded. “It’s time. Now or never. Darius has his own set of chains.”
Ramiel took a step back, reaching an arm out to bar her from going forward.
Bishop parted his lips, and a stream of dark, ominous words flew out. “Freshly dead and decayed. Running dry through the crimson plains. All their dues must be paid. Until time stops and the void remains.”
Then he fell to the side raising his arm over his head, crying out and cowering as if fearing Ramiel would strike him. He dragged himself into a corner, as those cryptic words continued to tumble from his lips. Scarred hands and split nails scratched at the plaster on the wall, etching lines of strange characters and symbols. Kyria couldn’t read them, but she immediately recognized it as Enochian, an ancient language Val had tried to teach her.
They were also the same type of runes etched into her silver pendant. The same that covered most of Ramiel’s arms, too.
Kyria shook her head. “He’s completely crazy.”
“You think?”
She flinched from Ramiel’s curt response. Bishop obviously needed help. She just assumed he was some great being the way Ramiel sought him out for answers, but he was nothing more than just another mentally unstable homeless man barely surviving in the bowels of Houston. “We need to call somebody.”
“Plenty of people have done that before. He always finds his way back here. Even I checked him into a mental hospital once. Seven days later, he summoned me to this place with some old ritual and showed me his new pebble collection. Which he then ate with a bowl of milk. He doesn’t fucking need anyone. He has God.” He sneered the last word.
So, Bishop couldn’t help
them, no more than the rats could. Hope faded, disappearing over the horizon of her sense of helplessness.
“Come on.” Ramiel’s voice had softened.
Guilt again? He was impossible to read. She sighed as he turned and kicked a fallen piece of rotten wood on his way down the dark tunnel to the stairs.
“He said your family needed you. Where are they?”
“I never had a family. It was all drivel.”
She hesitated before following him like a lost puppy as he led the way up, one unstable step at a time. A single flame flickered in her head. If she could just see all the pieces… “What do you think it means?”
“What?” He kept facing forward, but one of his arms fell behind to offer Kyria balance as she tried to hop over a big gap in the stairwell. These mixed signals he kept sending were driving her crazy.
At the top, she caught enough of her breath to answer. “His riddle. The death and decay with all that void stuff. You heard him, right?” She shuddered, and she wasn’t quite sure if it was because of the damp chill in the old mission church or because of Bishop’s weird, prophetic words. “And me saving you? Saving you from what?”
Ramiel paused, then answered. “Who cares?”
There was something he wasn’t telling her. Why keep it to himself?
I hate secrets. Did people believe she couldn’t handle the truth? Kyria rubbed at her temples.
Ramiel dusted off his leather jacket and stomped out the door in silence, kicking anything that got in his way.
Pressing her hand into her midsection, she tried to steady herself. Everything hurt from her head to her feet. At least it couldn’t get any worse.
Chapter Eleven
Back at the motel, Kyria mulled over everything Bishop had said while Ramiel fumed and paced around the small room. Sitting on the edge of the bed where Buddy scurried about, Kyria pulled a few strands of her red hair to idly braid it
“Back to the beginning,” he said. “Where the hell is that? Where were you born? Your mother? What do you know about your mother?”
She turned her face to the ceiling and tried to imagine the blue sky beyond the questionable dirt collecting on plaster. “I don’t know. She’s…buried somewhere. Maybe Peru? I couldn’t tell you half the places we’ve passed through. I’m not even sure where my parents are from.” The sting of tears threatened to rise.
“All my dad told me was that her name was Nancy. She died saving me and my father from thugs sent by a crime boss in Peru. I thought we were in a witness protection program because of Dad’s testimony. He never gave me details. Now I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
Ramiel grunted impatiently. “Eli’s sire is the demon lord in Peru. I don’t like coincidences. You didn’t have a permanent address anywhere? At all?”
“Not really. We were always on the move until the ranch. It was the first place where I belonged. The first place I could call home.” Where she thought she was going to have a real life. “That’s where I met Eli. Then, my dad said we needed to leave because we had been compromised. He found out about Eli’s father.”
He stopped pacing to stare at her. “The ranch. Well, that’s a fucking start. What’s the location?”
Val and her father drilled into her that the location of the ranch was off-limits to anyone. It was a safe house. There were other people involved. People she had never met. She balled the stiff comforter in her fist.
“Kyria, I’m sorr—”
A short flash of light interrupted him and blinded her. Buddy brushed and nudged his nose against her thigh, as startled as she was. When her eyes adjusted, she was shocked to see Bishop standing in their tiny motel room.
Well, not standing, per se. More like crushed up against the wall with a snarling Ramiel in his face. The mad scientist was gone, replaced by a hero out of a Jane Austen novel. Bishop was surprisingly dashing with the high collar, even if it was currently being crushed under Ram’s large hand.
Careful not to knock Buddy off the bed, Kyria rushed to the pair. “Ram, wait.”
He ignored her. “What the hell are you doing here?” He wasn’t going to ask how? If they could only flash to places they’d been, then how had Bishop found them? They never told him where they were staying.
“Oh goody. You brushed your teeth.” Bishop wiggled a finger through the air to poke at Ramiel’s bared fangs, uncaring that he had him pinned like a bug. Ram jerked his head out of reach before dropping the crazy mess to his feet.
Sighing, she finally wedged her way next to Ramiel, half pressing against him for reassurance and half nudging in front of him just in case he decided to play Terminator on Bishop’s face.
Yeah…like I could stop him.
In a much calmer and more reasonable tone, like she was talking to a five-year-old, Kyria inquired, “Bishop…why did you follow us?”
Bishop brushed at his pressed, long-tailed coat with surprisingly strong and clean-looking hands. “Oh. It wasn’t safe anymore.”
“What wasn’t?”
“Staying in the bunker. The Navy mobilized today. At oh-duck-hundred.” He slipped under Ram’s arm and passed by her to reach for the phone in between the beds. “The government was watching me…tapping into the wires.” Lifting the handset, he examined the jack for a second before pulling out a pair of rusty scissors from a pocket.
She bolted forward to snatch the scissors away. “No, don’t.”
Ramiel paced across what little space was left in the motel room.
“We need to get back on track.” She clapped her hands together. “Bishop. We have a mission.”
He tickled her four-legged friend on the bed. His rats at the old mission came to her mind. She hoped he wouldn’t start interrogating Buddy for information. Gently, she took the hedgehog away from him, just in case.
Another growl from Ramiel grated on her nerves. Maybe she’d throw a pillow at his head. The first few times were intimidating, but now he just sounded like a grumpy old dog with no bite.
Fiddling in his pocket, Bishop snickered then darted nervous glances around the room. “They’re always after me. I thought I was safe. But I think the rats ratted. Can’t trust a rat. So, I decided to follow you guys and help out. Cause I’m helpful. Like the time I helped Donkey kick all those fairy tale bastards out of my swamp. I’m ready for another hero’s journey.” He winked at Kyria. “You got the hero, honey, I’ve got the dime. We’ll go honky-tonking and have a real fine time.”
Ram sighed. “You’re about two hundred years behind in fashion.”
Bishop straightened his spine and adjusted his fitted, old-fashioned jacket. “Well, pearl for pigs. I liked this time period.” He paused. “When are we this time? Roaring 20s? Nazi-occupied Germany? Civil Rights? Generation X? Zoe’s rise to power? No, wait, that one hasn’t happened yet.”
Ram walked over to his box of bottles. “Twenty-first century. Texas.”
Putting her hand on Bishop’s shoulder, she stared patiently into the eyes of insanity, sparkling like the Milky Way. The words he strung together encouraged laughter, but most of the time it tangled her brain figuring out what he meant.
“The ranch, Bishop. We were planning to go to the ranch before you showed up.”
“Green light.” Stars flared in his midnight eyes. “That’s not where you really want to be, but it’s a start. I’ll tell the candy man. You’re still only part human after all. All creatures born physically from a human-like body are part human, you know. Being a Nephilim isn’t what they describe in the old scrolls. They aren’t giant abominations that died during the great flood. And they certainly don’t have to have a mortal parent. What being a Nephilim actually means, my dear jelly bean, is having at least one parent that is—or once was—celestial. Even a demon that used to be an angel counts. Two angel parents? Nephilim. Angel and demon parents? Nephilim. Two demons? Yikes. Well, it’s not too bad unless you start making corrupt decisions and behaving sinfully. That’s when you begin the process of turning part
demon. So, be careful. I know it’s confusing, but them’s the rules of this universe.”
So much information thrown at her in a flurry of words scrambled her head. Alarm stung the back of her neck toward the end of his spiel. “Be careful? Why would I worry about turning part demon?”
“Oh, well. I suppose I was talking about Eli and his demon father. Umm.” He tapped his chin. “I think I’ve said too much.”
Without further word or warning, Bishop’s clothes changed to a western costume she had seen in the movies. He scooped up her hedgehog, tipped his cowboy hat, and in the next instant, he was gone.
Her lips parted in shock, and she stared at the empty space they had just occupied. A snort from Ram echoed off the thin plaster walls and pulled her out of the silent moment. He picked up another beer can, chains rattling.
“Buddy. Oh my God. He’s gone!” she exclaimed, spinning around to stare at Ram, bewildered. “He took my hedgehog.”
“He probably took him to the ranch you were talking about.” Ramiel tossed back the whole can in one gulp.
She moved to the bed. “He won’t hurt him, will he?” Concern shook her voice.
“It’s not in his nature. Your pet will be safe, wherever he’s taken it.”
She paused to collect herself. “The way he disappeared, you called it flashing. He didn’t have wings. I did it without thinking at the overpass.” She recalled the electric rush of unfamiliar sensations. Strong, not unlike a shot of adrenaline, but so much more. “Why can’t you do it?”
A fresh scowl tightened his features as he moved around to collect things. “I’m useless without wings. Can’t heal myself either, as you saw. You need the feathers to do that sort of thing, and I only have these.” He shook his chains like a bad ghost in a Dickens’ story. “We all have our demons.”
Demons took on a whole new meaning to her now. “You’re an angel, right? Not a demon?”
Unchained Desire Page 6
