Infernal Justice (Angels at the Edge Book 2)

by Michael Arches

  I’d copied the video of the executions to my smartphone, and I replayed it. Then I walked over to where the fake angel must have stood. “Did anyone find any physical evidence?”

  She shook her head.

  “I wouldn’t expect any brass,” I said. “Revolvers don’t eject casings, but people sometimes reload and dump the spent cartridges on the ground.”

  Slowly, I roamed the area, but all I found was more trampled grass. Then I said, “I don’t feel any magical echoes. Did the devils get away?”

  “When the first angel on-scene flew down closer to the water, he sensed the echoes from three gathering spells. Someone had stood on a boulder down there and stole the souls of three immortals. That’s very advanced magic.”

  “Let’s get a closer look.” I turned into a falcon and flew to the tree. It had driven its roots deep into a crack and was firmly attached to the cliff. What a precarious place to survive.

  I continued down the slope, landed on the largest boulder, and took my human form. Although I studied the surrounding water for any hint of the violence that’d occurred there overnight, I saw nothing unusual. But a sense of dread filled me. I couldn’t say anything specific about the magic used earlier, but Cleo was much more sophisticated in understanding magic. If she said a gathering spell had been used, she was probably right.

  I asked anyway. “How sure are you about the details of what happened here?”

  “No doubt. The original angel reported three deadly gathering spells had been cast here, and each found an immortal target. No angels are missing, so the victims had to be demons. I confirmed his impression as soon as I arrived.”

  Cleo had never steered me wrong or exaggerated her powers of observation, so I believed her. “What else can you tell me about the victims or the executioner?”

  “Fragments of the auras destroyed continue to swirl in the air. If I had known those devils before death, I could confirm their auras. Under these circumstances, I can’t say any more than that three demons were annihilated here last night.”

  A gust of wind almost blew me off the rock, and I dropped to all fours to recover my balance.

  Then I wondered whether Honah wanted us to pin down their identities any better. I couldn’t imagine why the imposter or anyone else would want to fool us and save the three dirt bags who’d screwed up the attack on Iris and Cassandra.

  “Fair enough,” I said as I stood again. “What about the executioner? Can you tell who it was?”

  “If I meet him in person, I will certainly recognize his aura. I cannot say for sure whether the faker cast those spells, but my guess is yes. The person we saw on camera last night had an evil smile.”

  She was the expert on relationships, not me, but my instincts had told me the same thing. “Who’s the demon in charge in the Bay Area? I’ve heard a few satyrs talk about a sorcerer named Caligula.”

  Cleo patted my forearm. “That’s right. You be careful, Gabriel. Caligula Giovanni is a powerful magician and extremely dangerous. I’ve never met him, so I can’t say he destroyed the demons here. The thing is, only a few dark immortals in this region are strong enough to cast a gathering spell. Caligula is the most likely.”

  Her worry made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “I’ll be careful. I’m no hero—more than happy to let our guardians deal with Caligula. My job is just to find whoever did the dirty deed here and understand why.”

  Another strong gust of wind blew me sideways, and it seemed like a good time to leave. I turned into a falcon, and I cruised the side of the cliff close to the water. Cleo did the same in her dove form.

  I didn’t notice any specific place along the shore where the devils had met their end. Their bodies must’ve been floating in the water when they were destroyed. Just to make sure I hadn’t missed any clues, though, I flew along the water’s edge for a quarter mile north and south of the rock where the gathering spells were cast. No other signs of magic.

  When I returned to the headland, Cleo was waiting.

  “See anything interesting?” she asked.

  “I just noticed that this area is primed and ready for fires. The fields are too danged dry, and so are the forests in the hills east of us.”

  She nodded. “Every summer, we have trouble with wildfires—until the fall rains begin.”

  I sent a long message to Honah telling him what I’d seen. Then I ended by saying, The only way we can be sure the three devils are gone is to find the dark immortal who annihilated them and check his memory.

  The chief said, Agreed. Find him. Where should I send you and Cleopatra next?

  I had to ponder that question for a moment. The Claim Jumper had given me a great lead on the kidnapping and murder, but to get closer to the more powerful demons, I needed to find a more upscale demon hangout. I’d heard of a place called the Diogenes Club that was exclusive to dark immortals, but I didn’t know much about it.

  Let’s take a shot in the dark, I told him. Send us to the Diogenes Club. It’s supposed to be a block west of the Saint Francis Hotel.

  He said, Never heard of the club. I’ll send you to the hotel.

  Chapter 6

  CLEO AND I ended up on the sidewalk on Post Street, and we walked a block west. The club was supposed to be on the top floor of an old building. According to my source, a half-drunk wraith, the right building’s entrance was marked with a small magnifying glass carved into a brick wall surrounding the lobby.

  We had to wander around a while, but Cleo found it. The drawing of the magnifying glass was only an inch tall. When we entered the building, a doorman asked where we were going. I told him.

  “Password?”

  “Mycroft.” That was the word the wraith had used before.

  The doorman pointed at an elevator. When we stepped inside, it only went to the twentieth floor. That was a dead end if a powerful demon came along. We stepped back out into the lobby and checked to be sure the doorman was distracted before turning into pure spirits.

  It was still early in the evening, and I didn’t know how long it would take for a dark immortal to show up. I waited for Cleo to scream in my head for us to run, but she told me instead, Someone is approaching the right elevator…merge now.

  I did, and my partner did the same thing. Our host demon turned out to be a centaur in human form. When the doors opened on the twentieth floor, he stepped out into a dark hallway that led to a large oak door with a Judas hole in it.

  He knocked using his knuckles, and the door opened to reveal an old-style English club like the ones I’d seen on BBC TV shows. The walls were covered with dark wood paneling, and the hostess at the entrance wore a fancy old red dress that dropped to her ankles.

  Without a word, she led the centaur to a wingback chair next to a mahogany end table. The centaur picked up a menu from the table and pointed at a listing for Hennessy VSOP cognac.

  The hostess disappeared. Our centaur sat in the chair, pulled out a fat cigar, and fired it up even though it was illegal as hell. Then he took a copy of the Times of London from the end table and began reading.

  The room contained at least thirty other chairs and tables, all separate from the others, many of the men there were smoking. These demons obviously felt no respect for the rule of law.

  I checked the memory of the centaur to find out whether powerful demons typically visited the club. To my relief, they didn’t. In fact, the centaur liked the place because they never dropped by.

  Sharks don’t like bigger sharks swimming nearby, Cleo told me.

  While I was happy to hear we were relatively safe, I needed to find someone who knew Caligula.

  A blonde waitress dressed like a man in a charcoal gray vested suit and a starched white shirt came by carrying the centaur’s drink. I slipped into her head before she left him.

  She hadn’t seen Caligula in the two years she’d worked at the club, but she had seen lots of demons rich enough to drop a grand in one eve
ning on fancy liquor, cigars, and caviar. I hoped that some of these immortals were important enough to mingle with the head sorcerer in the city.

  -o-o-o-

  Thursday, August 10th

  IT TOOK ME four hours to find a demon close to the sorcerer. Most of these demons did everything possible to stay away from Caligula. He was too temperamental and greedy.

  Around two a.m., a young black werepanther took the last chair available. He had taken a human form, wearing a tuxedo, and he ordered a glass of Dom Pérignon champagne. When his waitress left, he pulled out an electronic tablet and began reading a French newspaper online.

  I popped into his head and discovered Andre had made a fortune in his twenties in the stock market. He timed his investments perfectly, thanks to information from fraternity brothers inside a dozen large tech companies.

  More important to me, though, was the fact that he’d eaten lunch at a fancy restaurant earlier in the day, and he’d chatted with Caligula and a human slave named Ophelia. The sorcerer had just gotten the woman pregnant by using a powerful transfer spell to combine the spirits of three devils into one. He was so thrilled with his success that he’d insisted on telling any demon who wandered close enough to his table to be recognized.

  Andre’s memory confirmed my suspicion that Caligula had destroyed the three devils, but the slave’s comment to Andre was even more useful. She intended to throw a spa party at a ritzy downtown hotel with a dozen of her best friends.

  I couldn’t pass up the chance to get into the head of someone who’d slept with Caligula. When I used a mental message to tell Cleo what I’d found out, she said, How do you know the sorcerer won’t attend the party, too?

  I wasn’t sure, but it seemed danged unlikely. Attending spas is a very female thing, I told Cleo. I’m only willing to go because it might help me find Caligula.

  Three hours later, I hadn’t found any other connections to him. So I made an appointment with Cleo to meet me at the spa at nine p.m. That was when the party was supposed to start.

  She agreed and disappeared. I reported what I’d learned to Honah, and he told me, Excellent progress. The lead is definitely worth pursuing. Then he shipped me back to Golden for the day.

  -o-o-o-

  ELLEN DIDN’T GET up until eight a.m., and when I saw her, she kept yawning. “My back is killing me, and I can only sleep on my side. I only get an hour or so at a stretch.”

  I tried to say sympathetic things, but she’d done this to herself voluntarily, so I couldn’t feel much pity. She and her husband had wanted a family badly, and when he died during a Middle East deployment, she decided she wanted her baby more than ever.

  I said a short, silent prayer, thanking God for keeping me single until I managed to kill myself off in hellfire. It seemed crazy to bring children into the world when life could be so unpredictable. But I wasn’t going to dampen Ellen’s mood by telling her what I thought. Instead, I made her breakfast and headed out to finish the day’s chores as early as possible.

  The temperature was predicted to rise to the mid-nineties, so I sprayed down all the animals to help them stay cool. Back in mid-July, the monsoon season had arrived on time, and that had dramatically reduced the risk of fires in Colorado. By mid-August, though, those drenching rains were nothing but a fond memory. If we didn’t get some moisture soon, we’d face the same danger we’d survived in June. The thought of more forest fires…

  Once I returned to the house, I cranked up the air conditioner in the office and began searching online for more news about Cassandra and her attackers. I quickly discovered that the vigilante who’d apparently killed her attackers was now America’s favorite celebrity. According to a flash poll, he was even more popular than the Pope. By general consensus, he’d been given the nickname Avenger.

  To my mind, folks seemed to be in an awful hurry to decide he was a good guy. As far as I could tell, he was a demon, maybe the most powerful one in San Francisco. And I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d killed the three attackers. What was so special about them that made them fodder for his transfer spell that made Ophelia pregnant? Maybe he was just settling his score against them for invading his turf. Demons were incredibly territorial. Or perhaps Caligula was using the public outrage as an excuse to kill off rival demons. Destroying them in such a public way had to freak out other dark immortals.

  A second surprising thing I noticed online was how sympathetic people were to Mayor Winter’s troubles. He was in a hell of a fix, with no good options, but some of the rationales people used to justify his betrayal of his public trust did surprise me. Maybe I was too critical because I’d been a cop. Criminals with good intentions were still criminals.

  Some folks claimed all politicians stuck their hand out for money, and this wasn’t much different. Others said the mayor had the right to do whatever was necessary to save his only surviving daughter.

  A lot of people, particularly those outside of California, claimed San Francisco was a particularly weird place anyway, so different rules applied. That was beyond ridiculous. Federal anti-corruption laws applied everywhere else in the good ol’ USA, and California had its own laws against abuse of power. There was nothing about the air or water in the land of fruits and nuts that gave its politicos immunity from anti-corruption laws.

  So far, neither Cassandra’s uncle nor her dad had been arrested. That had to be coming soon. The only question was how they’d be charged and how severe the penalties would be. They might even be negotiating a plea bargain already.

  It didn’t seem fair to prosecute them, but both men should’ve gone to the FBI or local cops and worked within the justice system. That thought gave me a twinge of guilt. It was easy to say now that Cassandra was safe.

  This was the kind of impossible problem that reminded me why I’d never wanted to be a judge. Instead of worrying about a situation I couldn’t control, I focused on investigating Avenger and his helpers. As I kept reviewing articles online, I hoped some bright news reporter would notice some clue I’d missed.

  That didn’t happen, but I saw plenty of speculation about who Avenger was and why he was killing. Most editorial writers assumed Avenger was a disgruntled cop or a judge. But that didn’t add up either. The investigation was too new for either the police or a judge to decide that our legal system had failed to provide justice for the victims.

  I had too many questions with too few answers. The one thing I did realize was why Avenger had changed the appearance of the three demons back to what they’d look like during the attack. He made the change so Cassandra could positively identify her attackers. And according to the Chronicle reporting a leak from the police department, she definitely fingered the three who’d kidnapped her.

  Another question I answered from my long list was who among the local demons was powerful enough to teleport the three thugs from Oakland to way up the Sonoma coast? Cleo had confirmed Caligula could’ve pulled that off, and it sounded like there were a couple of other demons in the area who were strong enough, too, but I had no names.

  -o-o-o-

  DURING DINNER, ELLEN could barely keep her eyes open. Lack of sleep was turning her into a zombie. I helped her upstairs then let Honah know I was ready for my night job.

  That was a big mistake. I was too early for Ophelia’s spa party, so the boss put me on a cleaning detail at the legion’s San Francisco office.

  On the plus side, he’d given Inga the same job. Dang, she was a sweet gal. And I didn’t have to worry about getting too close with someone I worked with a lot. Most of the time, Kiko was my guardian angel.

  I’d always been uncomfortable around women, but Inga seemed to go out of her way to be kind. Even better, she didn’t have to worry about starting a relationship with a cop, like most of the women I’d dated. Inga was a fighter herself, much more likely to run into danger than me. We could just relax and share a few laughs.

  The cleanup work at headquarters was easy in comparison
to ranch chores. Angels invariably cleaned up after themselves, unlike demons. So, I spent most of my time dusting while Inga vacuumed.

  Once we finished those tasks, she and I loaded the washing machine with bed sheets. “Where did these come from?” I asked.

  She tilted her head sideways and looked mischievous. “Gosh, I don’t know, Gabe, maybe the beds.”

  Nobody had told me about them. “What beds? We don’t sleep.”

  She motioned for me to follow her to one side of the meeting room where a half-dozen doors were lined up on one wall. She opened one, and the small room contained a queen-size bed, several comfortable chairs, and a coffee table with several books. A nightstand by the bed included a clock radio.

  My mind reeled. “Angels use this room for sex?”

  She burst out laughing. “No, of course not. We sit and talk about the meaning of life and immortality. The bed is there in case the conversation gets so boring, we’re rendered unconscious.”

  My face warmed. Every time I thought I couldn’t be any stupider, I surprised myself. She was too pretty, and that bed too close. I needed to find a more comfortable topic for our conversation. “Where were you born, anyway?”

  Inga snickered. “Not going there, eh? Fine. I was born in 1522 in Saxony, part of what is now Germany. I came along shortly after Martin Luther began making trouble for the Catholic Church. My father was a priest.”

  “Oops.”

  She sighed, and I realized that must’ve been tough for her back in those dark days.

  “He obviously shouldn’t have been fathering children. My mother was one of his parishioners, and when outraged town folks ran him off, she was forced to work as a cook. She raised me alone because no respectable man would marry a loose woman. A lot of men thought that since she’d succumbed to temptation once, she would keep making the same mistake.”

  I’d dug myself another deep hole. How could I be so insensitive? “I’m sorry I raised such a sore subject.”