by Amy Vansant
“Anne knows they’re here. Tyannah’s been living here for some time,” said Leo.
“And the Cherub?”
“He’s proven himself. He captured one of his own and held her while Tyannah and Anne drained her. Plus, if he did try something, he wouldn’t stand a chance against Tyannah in battle.”
Rathe scoffed, crossed his arms against his chest and refused to look at Tyannah, who beamed at him.
“And Anne’s okay with this?” asked Michael.
“Anne had her chance to kill him and didn’t. She’s worried his life might be tied to Tyannah’s.”
“I don’t like it.”
“We can’t take them with us.”
Michael sighed, breathing in through his nose and releasing slowly through his mouth, trying to process his new world. His shoulders slumped.
“Fine. Let’s go. Jeffrey, if anything happens, don’t be a hero. Get to safety. Worry about you first.”
Jeffrey giggled. “Not a problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Casso wandered down Rome’s Via del Corso, his face tilted to enjoy the afternoon sun on his host body’s skin. He’d grown to enjoy Earthly pleasures during his years inhabiting Seth’s body. Sun on skin sat high on his hit parade.
He was in a good mood, having sensed the arrival of six new Cherubs on Earth. Nyx had made progress, but didn’t survive the Angeli Headquarters breach. He’d felt his shadowy minion’s energy die. Shame to lose such an effective soldier, but the balance of power had shifted after the Earthly death of six Arch Angeli, and Casso felt stronger than ever.
Still, it was annoying that the new Cherubim weren’t ready. The fruits of Nyx’s labor were appearing all over the globe, but scattered. Each alone and confused.
I’ll never win this way. My impatience has cost me. I’ve cheated and been caught. I need to be smarter.
The Cherubim weren’t ready to battle the Angeli. Taksi’s players were entrenched.
Perfidia had been a mistake. It had inspired the Angeli to create the Sentinels ahead of schedule, train them, season them for battle. The very idea of Sentinels shouldn’t have occurred to them until after the arrival of the first Cherubim. Then it would have been an equal playing field for all; Sentinels on both sides learning the ropes in the heat of battle.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Perfidia had allowed him to start the process but—
Ha! Idiot. You’re a failure.
Casso groaned and did his best to block Seth’s harassment as the Angelus’ laughter rang in his head.
Shut up, you gnat.
What the Cherubim needed was a general. Someone to offer them ideas and inspiration. But the rules of play expressly prevented him from acting as their guide. He couldn’t speak directly to—
Directly.
The rules didn’t say anything about speaking to them indirectly. Even Taksi pointed out that he’d been too direct using Seth’s body to interact with the Angeli.
Had he discovered a loophole?
Of course. He could talk through Seth. He just couldn’t use him as a puppet. But if he suggested things to Seth and the Angelus repeated them, not as a simple parrot, but as a highly suggestible entity...
Casso cocked his head. He heard something.
Silence.
Seth had stopped yammering.
He smiled.
That was it. He’d have to make it nearly impossible for Seth to resist relaying his orders, while still making it theoretically possible for him to refuse. But how?
“Watch it!”
A man slammed into Casso sending Seth’s body flailing backwards against a woman who’d been walking behind him. She cursed at him in Italian, realized he’d been pushed, and then shifted her attack, gesturing rudely at the oaf who’d clipped him.
“Screw you, lady,” said the man in an Australian accent. Another man ran up behind him and put his hand on his shoulders.
“Come on, Jack, calm down.”
He pulled his friend away and mimicked the act of drinking while pointing to his friend with his other hand, informing Casso that the oaf was drunk.
Casso looked up at the building from which the man had appeared. It was a bar.
Alcohol.
He’d seen enough humans under the influence of drugs and alcohol to know how suggestible a person could become. There were other substances, psychotropic drugs, for example, that could be even more reliable. He’d seen shamans and medicine men relay the messages of their gods. Mushrooms, peyote, chemically produced psychedelics—there were countless ways he could exert influence on Seth.
This could work.
He’d weakened over the years and allowed Seth to bubble to the surface. But now, with six new Cherubim on the planet, Casso could clear Seth’s mind and return him to a passive state of amnesia, while still allowing him to retain free will. Then, he’d intoxicate the Angelus and act as the voice in his muddled head. Seth would babble his suggestions aloud to the Cherubim, never realizing he was being used.
It was so crazy, it just might work.
He flagged down a man who appeared to be a local. “Where can I get drugs?”
The man’s nose wrinkled as if he’d caught a whiff of something putrid. “La farmacia?”
“Well, yes, a pharmacy could work, though I was thinking more like N,N-Dimethyltryptamine. I think the youth call it DMT.”
“Bah!” the Italian man swatted at him as if he were a fly and walked on.
Hm.
Casso saw a man with a smartphone turn into an alley. He followed.
“Pardon. Can I borrow your phone?”
The man excused himself to the person on the line and scowled. “No. Non vedi che sto parlando?”
“I understand you’re in the middle of a conversation. I’m willing to wait.”
The man scoffed and continued on his way. Casso flew to him and touched the back of his neck, knocking him unconscious. As the man fell, he snatched the phone from his hand.
“I asked nicely,” he muttered, using the Internet to find everything he needed, including how to extract DMT from Phalaris grass.
“Thank you,” he said, dropping the phone on the back of the prone man at his feet.
He strolled back to the road, stopping to read a newspaper headline. News of the missing humans in San Francisco had reached Italy. The world was in a frenzy, believing Nyx’s appropriation of the Irish bar patrons to be a new form of terrorist attack.
Terrorists. Ha.
Wait until they saw what his new Cherubim could do.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Michael and Leo arrived at HQ to find the Angeli milling about the great hall, their faces twisted with a mix of worry, sadness and anger.
“What the hell happened here?” asked Leo.
Michael grabbed the first Angelus within reach. “What happened?”
The bookish man blinked at him. “Michael? You’re back?”
“I am. What happened?”
“A Cherub appeared and released hundreds of Sentinels. We defeated them, but not before losing six Archs.”
“Six?” Leo echoed.
“Where’s the Cherub? Did you capture him?”
“Dead at the hands of our own Sentinels.”
“Which?”
The man shrugged. “Not my department. I can’t keep track of them all.”
Michael pounded the air with his fist. “This is a disgrace. We’ve grown weak and lazy; we don’t train our people to fight anymore.”
“I see red hair,” said Leo, pointing.
Michael strained to see. He felt a wash of disappointment.
“That’s Boudica.”
“No, next to her.”
Michael stood on his toes and spotted strawberry blonde hair. The woman attached to it turned, and he caught a glimpse of her profile.
Anne.
He patted Leo on the shoulder. “Give me a sec.”
Michael shifted into his energy form and flew towar
ds Anne. He transformed her into energy with a touch and carried her with him, manifesting a few minutes later with her in his arms.
Anne blinked, trying to focus. She blazed her swords and fell back against a railing.
“Not again!” she screamed, slicing at him. He barely dodged the blow.
“Anne! It’s me.”
She remained fists up and swords ready. It was only then that he realized she was wearing a denim shirt and no pants.
“What are you wearing?”
She looked down at his legs.
“You have legs.”
“Of course I have legs. Have you lost your mind?”
She shook her head. “No. No. I’m not falling for it again. You’re a Cherub wearing a Michael suit.”
“What? Anne, it’s me. Wait, is that what happened at your apartment? A Cherub pretended to be me?”
She nodded.
He scowled, recalling the broken shower door glass and realizing her unusual clothing could be related. “He was with you in your shower? Is that why you’re half-naked?”
She nodded one stiff affirmative.
“Okay. That’s disturbing. We’ll circle back to that.” He moved toward her. “Anne...”
Anne’s jaw set. “Not again. I will kill you where you stand.”
He stopped and bit his bottom lip. “You are just adorable when you’re furious.”
“Not falling for it.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I had this all planned. I was going to whisk you to the top of the Eiffel Tower and profess my love for you.”
Anne looked away from him for a moment, peering over the railing on which she leaned.
“We’re on top of the Eiffel Tower?”
“Yes. Romantic, isn’t it?”
She tilted her head side to side. “In theory.”
“Right. So here I made this grand romantic gesture, and you’re trying to kill me.”
She looked at the glowing swords in front of her. “You people tried this before. You’re playing with my emotions. I thought I killed you but maybe all the Cherubim—”
Michael stopped listening as the dying light lit Anne’s face as if from within. He saw every freckle he’d ever kissed. Every worry line he’d ever tried to prevent.
Anne’s beautiful face.
Anne raised her dropping fists. “Michael would never cry.”
He touched his face and felt tears.
Oh for the love of. How embarrassing.
He pointed to his mouth. “I made this for you. Do you remember?” He smiled, just enough to bring to life the dimple in his right cheek.
Anne’s mouth fell open a crack, her eyes softer. “Is it really you?” she whispered, her own eyes growing glassy with moisture. “I can’t take it if it isn’t. Not again.”
“It’s me. I promise.” He tried to take a step forward and she held up her swords.
“Romantic gestures are a little un-Michael-like.”
He sighed. “Anne, the only thing I thought about in Chaos was you. How much I wanted to return to you.” He paused and then squinted his eyes shut. “Okay. Not the only thing. I thought a lot about how to defeat the Cherubim. But whenever I wasn’t thinking about them, I was thinking about you. I swear. No one was more surprised than me.”
Anne’s swords absorbed, though she kept her fists aloft. “Okay. I think only the real Michael could make such a romantic speech go so horribly wrong at the end.”
“What about the Eiffel Tower? It’s too much, isn’t it? Too obvious. Dammit.” He slapped his thigh.
She looked out over Paris. “No. It’s beautiful.”
“So you believe me?”
She dropped her fists. “Kiss me, idiot. Then I’ll know.”
He pulled her into his arms, kissing her with the abandonment of a man returned from the brink of death. He didn’t brush her lips with his first. He didn’t kiss lightly, searching for approval. He put his hand behind her head and planted his lips on hers until they parted and let his tongue enter like an invading army.
Just as her body relaxed and he felt properly kissed in return, his eyelids fluttered and he caught a glimpse of orange light.
Anne still held a sword behind her back.
He released her, still flush and flustered from his rush of emotion. “Really?”
“What?”
“I see the sword behind your back.”
He dropped his arms to his side and waited for her to declare the all-clear or kill him. Or attempt to kill him; he wouldn’t allow her to finish the job, of course. Declaring your love didn’t mean you had to be a total idiot.
She smirked and the orange aura glowing behind her body disappeared. “Okay. You passed.”
The tension in his shoulders released.
“What a relief.”
“Of course, the Cherub was a better kisser.”
“What?”
She giggled a strange, girly, wind-chime-like melody he couldn’t remember hearing from her before. “I’m kidding.”
“I would hope so.”
“We never kissed. His face melted off. It was a turn off.”
“Well, I’ve got that going for me. My face doesn’t melt off.”
“Point for you.”
He chuckled and drew her close to him, pecking the top of her head as they embraced.
“Should we make love here?” he asked.
She looked at the metal grating around them. “I’ve got three thoughts on that.”
“Okay.”
She held up a finger. “One, don’t say make love. It’s just, just don’t. Two, metal grating seems an uncomfortable place to make love. And three, the world might be about to end. We might want to get on that.”
“I see.”
“I mean, as much as I’d like to.”
He nodded, slowly, pondering her comments. “What if I suggested we do the horizontal hula in that five-star hotel down there and then get right back to saving the world?”
She peered down at the hotel. “Well, then, yes. Duh. Definitely.”
Turning back to him, their gazes locked and she smiled, her lip quivering, a single tear sliding down her alabaster cheek.
“Happy tears. What a nice change,” she said, her whispery voice breaking.
He kissed away the salty slider, as he had a thousand times, deep in Chaos dreams.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“The reason I brought you all here today—”
Seth exploded into laughter.
Separated from Seth but invisible to the others, Casso groaned. Seth was at his own helm now. Using the Angelus, he’d managed to gather all six new Cherubim in one spot before the Angeli Sentinels could destroy a single neophyte. He’d brought them deep into an ancient Egyptian burial site where the Angeli wouldn’t be able to track their energy signals.
But it had been exhausting. He couldn’t find the correct dosage for either the DMT he’d synthesized or the alcohol he’d used on Seth once becoming frustrated with the DMT. Half the time the Angelus hallucinated so severely he became useless. The other half of the time he giggled so much it made him almost impossible to goad into saying anything coherent.
It was only thanks to a particularly perceptive Cherub, Ceco, that he was able to gather the others at all. Ceco had somehow recognized Seth as an oracle and taken it upon himself to push Casso’s plan to the others.
Seth stopped laughing, distracted by the large sarcophagus propped in the corner. “Hey, is there a mummy in there?”
The Cherubim stared at him. They were another disaster. Besides clever Ceco, two were barely teenagers, one ball of light couldn’t take human form at all, one was an adult dullard and the last, with Vary written on his arm, shifted into different forms whenever the mood struck him. None of them human. Since arriving in Egypt, Vary had already been a lion, a cow, a lizard with fur and something that appeared to be the unfortunate offspring of a pig and a beetle.
He didn’t know what to do with Mor, the s
quiggling light Cherub. Sometimes appearing as a single brilliant orb, sometimes splitting into thousands of glowing marbles, the creature seemed next to useless for everything except illuminating the ancient crypt.
Casso worried that his original plan, to have all six Cherubim build armies of Sentinels, would have to be aborted. Judging from the telepathic reports he’d received from Nyx before his death, there’d only been two Sentinels at Angeli HQ at the time of his attack, and yet even with the battle raging around them, they’d dispatched Nyx with little difficulty. The Cherub had only scored six deaths thanks to his surprise attack and the physical weakness of the more intellectually inclined angels holed up at headquarters.
And that Con. Fascinating. A Sentinel possessing Angeli powers! How was Taksi so lucky as to acquire a game piece like that? The irony was he suspected the interaction between himself, Seth and Con had imbued the Irishman with Seth’s energy. As if Seth was vinegar, Con was oil and he was an egg. Together they’d made mayonnaise.
Casso cocked his head in Seth’s direction. Might the Angelus have some of Con’s Sentinel powers?
Seth stared dumbstruck at dancing dust particles in the light cast by Mor.
He sighed. Another overdose.
He made a suggestion directly into Seth’s muddled brain.
You should try and drain some energy from one of the Cherubim.
Seth’s head flopped to the left and he stared at the Cherubim lining the wall of the sarcophagus room, awaiting their next command.
“You know what might be fun?” he mumbled, shuffling over to a blonde, teenage girl with Sif burned into her forearm. He wrapped his fingers around her arm and Casso watched her face twist with pain. She tried to jerk away but Seth held her tight.
It worked. Seth shared some of Con’s powers.
Casso realized Sif had collapsed to the ground, her wrist still in Seth’s grasp.
You don’t want to kill her.
“I don’t?” Seth said aloud. He released Sif, who scrambled away from him with the help of the other teen Cherub. The others gave Seth wide berth as he wandered across the room, kicking pottery.
The shape-shifter, Vary, morphed into a lizard-sized dragon and blew fire at Seth’s backside as he passed.
