“And he can see all those nasty looks you give me, too.”
Her face scrunched up in thought for a moment. Then she said, “Navigate us to Carmelita’s home.”
While she was driving, I called Jack to ask whether it would be possible for them to wiretap Carmelita’s phone.
“It’s not only possible, we’ve already done it. Unfortunately, we haven’t learned anything useful so far.”
“I hope that’s about to change.”
Chapter 19
AS DUSK WAS falling, we arrived in Carmelita’s neighborhood on a steep hillside in Sausalito. A heavy fog blanketed the area.
“According to her younger brother’s memories,” I said to Sophia, “she’s a real tough woman. Just so you know.”
Sonja laughed out loud. “I’ve slaughtered over a hundred demons. Most were bigger than me. I think I can handle any human. And you should be careful not to harm her or Honah will scour you, even though you are his pet.”
I cringed as I remembered how he’d reacted when that guy had punched me in the face. I couldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Our main problem, though, was that Carmelita was sure to warn Caligula about our visit as soon as we left. That couldn’t be helped, and it might work to our benefit. The FBI might be able to trace the call.
“Remember to tell me,” I said to my partner, “if you sense any demons powerful enough to cause us trouble.”
“Of course, I’ll try to remember.” Her sarcastic phrasing hung in the air.
Sonja walked up to the front door and put a smile on her lovely, innocent face. I shared her mind. A man about forty opened the door with a frown. According to one of Antonio’s memories, this guy was Carmelita’s oldest son, Lou. The man was in his mid-thirties and powerfully built. I was surprised to see him, because Antonio had thought he worked closely with his sorcerer uncle.
“Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any.” He tried to slam the door in Sonja’s face, but she put her shoulder into the door. Although she looked puny as Ingrid Lund, she was still much stronger than a human.
Lou hadn’t expected resistance, and he’d waited too long to push harder.
“I’m FBI Special Agent Ingrid Lund. I’m here to speak with Carmelita Bartoli.”
The guy pushed the door harder, clearly not impressed by her badge. I jumped into his head, took control of him, and forced him to step back. Unfortunately, that left me in his mind when he needed to go find his mother. I’d be separated from Sonja.
She solved the problem by following him as he walked into the kitchen. She was standing at an island talking on the telephone and holding a glass of red wine in one hand. She was in her sixties, but her hair was as black as a crow’s feathers, and her face looked decades younger.
“Mom, this lady from the FBI wants to talk to you.”
She hung up without saying goodbye. “What did you let her in here for?” she asked her son in a low, gravelly voice.
He shrugged.
Almost instantly, I felt her trying to conjure a spell to get rid of us. Luckily, Sonja was too tough for that. When the son got close enough to Carmelita, I switched into her head.
Fear was coursing through her. She knew what the FBI wanted, and she had plenty of her own secrets to hide. Instead of getting distracted by her drug dealings, I focused on the legion’s business and searched her mind for her brother’s hiding place
That was a bust. She had no idea where Caligula was. For the last year, her son had worked for him, but Caligula had cut his staff back to a bare minimum two days before and fired Lou. He told his nephew, “The fewer people who know where I am, the better for all concerned.”
Sonja started to ask about the sorcerer, but Carmelita interrupted. “I don’t have a thing to say to you except get out. If you have a search warrant, I want to see it. If you have an arrest warrant for me, I want to call my lawyer.”
Sonja had neither, but she knew I needed time to ransack our reluctant witness’s mind. So, Sonja kept asking questions and refused to budge. Carmelita was a powerfully built woman, but she couldn’t move Sonja.
While they tussled, I searched for details about any family properties Caligula might be using, and I also looked for information about who might be with the sorcerer. There I had better luck. He had kept Ophelia and four other sex slaves close, and he was surrounded by three lieutenants he trusted the most, including one of his other nephews he’d made immortal. That was all I could learn.
Lou also began pushing Sonja toward the front door, so I slipped back into his head to keep him back. Then I sent her a mental message, I got what I could, wasn’t much. We can go.
The older woman began yelling for one of her other sons to help throw the nasty FBI bitch out. A fight wasn’t going to do us any good, so Sonja strode toward the front door. I followed her in Lou’s mind until she opened the door. Then I switched back into her head, and we left.
After driving a block away, I called Jack. “By now, she’s probably on the phone to her older brother.”
“Of course, she is, and we’re taping every word. So far, though, they’re both speaking very carefully. He knows the FBI is checking his family connections, which he says is no surprise. She did tell him about the half-million-dollar ransom. That made him swear a blue streak.”
He made me grin, but only for a moment. “Please tell me you’ve pinpointed his location using the cell towers.”
Jack sighed. “That rarely works as well as we’d like. I can narrow down the general area, though, and we know his phone number. If he moves around and leaves his phone on, we can generally track him. Right now, all we can say is he’s within a five-mile radius of a tower in the center of Mill Valley. No other nearby towers are picking his phone up.”
“Mill Valley sounds like a quaint and peaceful community,” I said. “Is it small enough for us to go door to door?”
He snorted. “It’s an incredibly congested city just north of Sausalito. Its filled with twisty, turning roads covering steep hillsides. Tens of thousands of people live in that area.”
“Finding him in the dark could be tough,” I said. “Plus, it’s unbelievably foggy up here now. We can barely see twenty feet in any direction.”
Jack groaned. “I hate flying close to the ground when it’s socked in like that.” He paused for a few seconds. “I guess it can’t be helped. Uh oh, my tech guy says Carmelita and Caligula just ended their call, and the sorcerer turned his phone off. We have to find him quick, before he moves out of the area.”
I sent a mental message to Honah updating him on my and Sonja’s progress. He replied right away, Excellent. Investigate possible family properties in Mill Valley. I will send everyone in the San Francisco office to help search the area.
We were making progress, but the sorcerer was still a few steps ahead of us. Unless we grabbed him quickly, he could again slip away.
-o-o-o-
ACCORDING TO ANTONIO, one of Caligula’s distant cousins did live near Mill Valley. I plugged the address into my maps app. The cousin lived up a steep, winding road west of the town’s center.
Sonja drove and I navigated. The road we followed west was paved but barely wide enough for two small cars to pass one another. She could barely see ahead, and we could’ve walked faster, but there was nowhere to park. Every square inch of this area was fenced and marked with no trespassing signs.
It was particularly hard to see street signs and house numbers in the gloom, even with our better-than-human eyesight. But after a couple of wrong turns, we found the cousin’s place.
The lot was thickly wooded, and a cedar-shingled cabin sat in the middle. If a fire started in the area, this cabin didn’t stand a chance. The trees grew so close that their branches touched the shingles.
Sonja was forced to park the car in front of the locked gate, that was the only spot where she could get out of the road.
I shared her mind and her frustrati
on. The cabin appeared to be barely large enough for one person. How could Caligula’s entire entourage stay there?
The only answer I came up with was a possible underground shelter, but that seemed unlikely. Building a bunker would’ve been very expensive, and most of the trees near the cabin would’ve had to go. We seemed to be on the wrong track again.
But we were there and needed to eliminate this possibility completely.
Sonja turned into a golden eagle long enough to fly over the fence then changed into her FBI persona. She knocked on the door but no answer. Curtains covered all the windows, and there was no hint of a light inside.
I couldn’t sense any sentient beings nearby, except for a handful of squirrels in the trees. That was hardly conclusive, though, given my poor talent at sensing such things. Do you feel the auras for anybody inside? I asked my partner.
No, you can emerge.
I took my human form and we both walked the lot. She and I were definitely alone outside the cabin. Still, we had to be certain that no one was hiding inside. Instead of bothering Honah, who was probably as busy as hell coordinating the search of the area, I checked the door’s lock. “I could probably use a credit card to push back the latch.”
“Then, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?”
I suppressed my annoyance at her snarky response. Maybe she’d been particularly close to Kiko and wasn’t going to trust me ever. That wasn’t ideal, but I’d had worse partners back in the Boise PD.
I quickly got the door open, and we entered the dark main room. The only doors led to a bedroom and a bathroom, and despite a careful search, we couldn’t find a trap door in the floor that might lead to an underground shelter. Dust covered every surface, as though no one had lived in the cabin for months.
“I sense an extremely faint aura from a spell used to light a fire in the wood stove,” my partner said. “That had to have been several months ago.”
“We can scratch this place off the list of possible hiding places,” I said.
I mentally contacted Honah to report our lack of success.
Return to the parking lot for the organic grocery store, he said. You can park your vehicle here and join us in flying the area to search for dark immortal auras.
-o-o-o-
HONAH OCCUPIED THE only vehicle in the parking lot, a small RV. Inside, he’d spread out a map of the area. It showed at least a hundred streets, most of them in residential neighborhoods.
“You two will search this part of the Tamalpais Valley,” he pointed at an area of the map near the Coast Highway. That busy road led to the Muir Woods, Stinson Beach, and the north coast. “Fly or walk, but check every residence from the outside. Report back to me if you find any sign of demons, whether Caligula appears to be close or not. Do not, under any circumstances, approach him alone.”
This seemed like a good chance to get rid of my grouchy partner. “Sonja and I aren’t really meshing. If it wouldn’t be too inconvenient, is there any chance we could each get a different partner?”
Daggers seemed to shoot out of his eyes. “No. You two will learn to work together, or you will sorely wish you had. I haven’t sent anyone to the dark side of the moon lately, but I’m willing to make an exception for either of you, or both. Get to work.”
He hadn’t needed to say anything more than No. Actually, he hadn’t needed to say anything at all. The expression on his face was clear enough. I needed to work harder to get along with my partner.
Sonja and I hurried out of the RV into the foggy darkness. When we were alone, I asked, “What did he mean by the dark side of the moon?”
She shook her head. “Each time that I think you can’t be any stupider, you say something like that and surprise me. You’d obviously picked a horrible time to ask him to break up our team, even if it is doomed to failure.”
“Yeah, I figured that out for myself, thanks. You didn’t answer my question.”
She blew out a deep breath and looked skyward for a moment. Then she said, “When a light immortal does something particularly idiotic, his leader can send him to the dark side of the moon to reflect upon the error of his ways. Because that part of the moon gets no sun, it’s brutally cold. Human forms quickly freeze. It’s extremely painful, according to those who have suffered through the experience. You are forced to change into a pure spirit for the duration of your visit, thereby losing all your sensory perception. Boredom inevitably leads to mental deterioration. I seriously doubt your feeble mind would survive the experience.”
It sounded like the kind of thing I didn’t want to know any more about. Thankfully, she changed into her bird form and flew toward our assigned search area.
I hurried to keep up. If I lost sight of her, I’d have a hell of a time finding her again in this dark gray soup. Worse, she didn’t need me for anything this time. Her ability to sense magical auras was much better than mine. The only way she could get into trouble would be if I managed to get myself annihilated. Then Honah might stick her on the dark side of the moon for a while. That thought warmed me inside.
I might’ve been paranoid, but as she flew ahead of me, she seemed to go out of her way to find obstacles to dodge. I was still learning to fly while she was an expert. The only thing in my favor was her bird form was much larger. Peregrine falcons are incredibly agile, much more so than golden eagles. Even so, I managed to hit one powerline square smack in the face. That stung, and I dropped into someone’s backyard before I gathered my wits again. A German shepherd tried to make a meal of me, but I got away just in time.
At each house in our designated territory, we flew around the outside as close to the structure as possible. Ideally, we would’ve liked to enter each house, but there were too many for us to stop and con our way inside with the FBI routine.
-o-o-o-
Monday, August 21st
FOR HOURS, WE flew through our assigned neighborhoods. About two a.m., the fog blew out. Thank you, God. Then the sky showed off thousands of stars.
As time passed, my stomach began to churn more, not from hunger but from worry. Every minute that passed gave Caligula an opportunity to escape. Honah had placed angels on all of the major roads leading out of town, but there were too many back roads to watch them all.
Then, without warning, Honah’s voice resonated in my mind. We may have found the target.
Before I registered what he meant, Sonja and I were standing next to him outside a dark, two-story house with colonial architecture.
Several demons are definitely inside, he told me and Sonja. Whether they are the right ones, is another question.
Five guardians stood with us, including Jack.
Our targets appear to be in the two bedrooms on the west side of the house, second floor. Honah motioned to five of us, including me and Sonja. You will take the bedroom closest to us. Jack and Kim will come with me.
The members of my team ended up inside a large bedroom that contained two queen-sized beds. One of them contained three small lumps, probably women.
Sonja pushed me toward them. “Keep them out of the way.”
The five other angels on my team converged on the second bed. There, a large figure lay sleeping next to a smaller one. I didn’t give them a second glance. They had their problem, and I had mine.
Instead, I pulled the covers off the bed with three lumps and uncovered three water nymphs. They wore nothing, and they began screaming. A roar and yelling came from the other bed, but I ignored it.
I grabbed two of the women and dragged them toward an empty corner so they wouldn’t get hurt. When I returned to the bed for the third, she bit me on the arm. I kept my temper and pulled my dagger. She cowered, suddenly passive. I put her with the others in the corner.
Behind me, I heard a flaming blade whoosh through the air. Sulfur stung my nose. When I glanced over my shoulder, I spotted a puff of black smoke in the light from four blades.
Just that quickly, the
fighting was over, at least in this room. Sonja brought a fourth nymph to me, and I motioned for her to sit in the corner. They held each other and jabbered in what sounded like Greek.
A few seconds later, Honah strode into the room and held his hands up in resignation. “We missed the mark. The owner of this house operates a sex trafficking ring. At least, we have freed a dozen slaves. I will return you to your prior territories.”
Before I could say, “Are you kidding me?” Sonja and I found ourselves back where we’d been ten minutes before.
Things changed so quickly in the immortal world. I was still getting used to it. My emotions bounced all over the place, but that didn’t change the reality of the situation. We had to focus on finding our target damned soon or his murder spree would continue.
Chapter 20
SONJA AND I had almost finished searching our territory when we discovered a large ranch-style house with gray clapboard siding. At least it looked gray in the pale light from a quarter-moon that had recently risen. I was flying next to Sonja as we approached the building, and I spotted someone standing outside in the dark. Whoa! Who’s that?
She veered away, and I followed her until we were a few hundred yards from the house.
Sonja told me, He’s a guard. I felt a minor aura. He could be the first line of defense for more powerful demons inside.
I glanced at the guard, and he hadn’t moved or called out an alarm. I don’t think we got close enough for him to sense us. Perhaps he’s daydreaming or asleep. We need to move farther away before we send out a message to Honah.
We flew several hundred yards away and landed on the roof of an empty house where we could barely see the guard. Then we both turned into humans.
The guard looked in our direction but didn’t seem to notice us.
“Before we say anything to anyone,” I whispered, “we need to be sure we’ve found the right monsters. We don’t want to get everybody’s hopes up needlessly, like somebody did in that fiasco an hour ago.”
She started to say something but caught herself. After a pause, she whispered back, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you might be right. How do you propose we find out who’s inside without getting close enough for them to sense us?”
Infernal Justice (Angels at the Edge Book 2) Page 19
