by L. A. Banks
Isda’s eyes immediately went to the hardwood floor where the beautiful young woman performed a sensual, undulating rhythm. The dancer’s glistening cocoa-brown skin moved in a hypnotic, serpentine sway beneath layers of delicate, sheer fabric, while the top of her body jiggled her breasts to a dizzying syncopated beat.
Spinning, her gold-coined, turquoise hip scarf gently chimed as she set her smoky gaze on Isda—the only single man at their table. Bath Kol slapped Isda on the back, making the other brothers laugh.
Men at neighboring tables seemed disappointed, but they were all coupled off with wives and girlfriends and clearly unavailable. The belly dancer inclined her head toward Isda, allowing her long, velvety, black hair to cascade down her back, then she winked at him with a brilliant white smile. He lifted his beer toward her with a gallant nod, and a deal was struck without words or translation.
“You see why I couldn’t get enough of being here back in the day? Mon, she’s got to be a cross between Ethiopian and Sudanese, have mercy,” Isda said. “Don’t knock on my door till morning, I’m in love.”
“So, okay, call me nosy,” Bath Kol said, directing the conversation away from the floor show. The crinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled around the beer bottle he was sipping. “But what happened? Once you got down there, no jinn? None of the folks that we don’t name in polite company showed up?”
“No fallen,” Azrael said, then looked up from his plate and frowned. “That is odd—I had expected an onslaught. But only general-regulation demons attacked. Normal hell scum.”
“More like defended their hole,” Isda said without looking at Azrael. His eyes were glued to the dancer’s shimmying behind.
“Gentlemen, can we eat in peace?” Aziza said with a smile. “We had the good fortune of everyone returning safe and sound, and not bringing back anything bad with them. Sometimes you just have to learn to accept the quiet as a gift.”
Azrael nodded. It was a gift he was grateful to receive.
Chapter 15
In my house? In my house!” Asmodeus bellowed, then smashed the scrying bowl against the wall. “They blinded me to the woman and then he invaded my eastern lair? I will put his head on a pike!”
Forcas remained on bended knee, his long, flowing, platinum spill of hair shielding his face as he waited for Asmodeus’s ire to recede. “Only gargoyles and harpies, some vampire bats and a few serpentines, guard that dark sanctuary, now that the other demons have pulled back. They will no longer defend our strongholds with the same level of alacrity they once did. Their position is, what’s in it for them? We have no solid answer at this juncture, milord, beyond what they feel are increasingly hollow promises to deliver. Therefore the normal legions are in hiding and are not ready to come forward to risk extermination at this point, milord. The situation is devolving.”
“Hiding? Are they insane! They will die at my hand, then! Without my direct order, they’ve had the gall to pull back from our strongholds?”
“Yes,” Forcas said in a lethal murmur, then looked up and stood. “The demons have pulled back because we have failed to deliver. The only reason they suffer our presence is because we are in legion with the Dark Lord. But he is their father. Never forget that. His spawn from Lilith. Therefore, we are in a precarious position as brothers of the Dark Lord, whereas they feel they are true birthright heirs. Our warriors returning weak and disfigured makes the demons grow bold, milord. They see no reason to be our cannon fodder or to guard our outposts when we cannot even guard them ourselves.”
“Then together we shall show all of our enemies how much pain we can inflict,” Asmodeus said through lengthening fangs.
“Calm yourself, milord,” Rahab said in an even croon. “At present we don’t have enough of an army to attack the demons. There are millions of them to our thousands. That is a fact, not conjecture. The last thing you want to do is to show Azrael your hand.” She circled Asmodeus and Forcas, slowly turning herself into a pillar of black smoke. “You are not prepared to put the Avenging Angel’s head on a pike, and the last thing you want to do is to allow Azrael to see that your men have been hobbled.”
When Asmodeus roared and grabbed at her disappearing form, she calmly reappeared out of his reach on the other side the room.
“Let them grow confident, let them grow bold,” she murmured seductively. “Let them expend their resources to find the tablet. Who cares about the damage that was done in Oman? It was only demons. Unless he truly beheaded your pride?”
They woke up in the small port town of Edfu, and after hastily dressing and grabbing a quick breakfast of fruit and sweet breads, they entered the dense fray of humanity. Streets too narrow for multipassenger vehicles greeted them, and cabs were tiny, honking, flylike cars that drove at insane speeds over terribly paved roads.
Horse-and-buggy cabs lined the dock waiting on cruise-ship passengers who wanted the most expedient mode of transportation to the Temple of Horus. But Celeste and the group only needed a moment to understand that these were not like the leisurely buggy rides that lined Central Park or lazily clopped along the cobblestones of Philadelphia’s Independence Mall area. These were more like Ben-Hur chariots, with drivers who raced each other through the streets and seemed to take great enjoyment in driving their horses to a froth.
The group watched for a moment as drivers took off with unsuspecting tourists in their buggies and then waved Egyptian dollars at each other laughing. It looked like madcap, unregulated harness racing through the streets of Edfu. Yet it all made sense. The faster a driver could get his load of tourists dumped at the monument and return to collect another fare, the more money he made in a day. No different from conventional cabs in a busy city, time was money; the more passengers carried, the more money the driver made in a day. Simple economics overruled safety.
“Why do I know you are seriously contemplating this?” Aziza said to Bath Kol.
He shrugged and looked at Azrael. “Because all we have is a name and a business address and all the street signs are written in Arabic, and cabbies always know where things are in a small town.”
“You do make a point,” Azrael admitted, gaining a nod from Isda.
“It’s not like we’re going to a monument—I know where those are. Here, we’re tryin’ to find some dude we got a name of,” Isda said, yawning and stretching. “But it is a gorgeous day, the sun is out, a little wake-up wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Celeste smiled and shook her head as the brothers chuckled. Melissa just sighed, and Maggie shrugged.
“If I fall, I’m killing you,” Melissa said to Paschar.
“Don’t worry, I have perfect balance,” he replied, laughing and heading toward the lead buggy on the other side of the street.
“You’re sure about this?” Maggie asked Gavreel.
He just shrugged and jogged across the street with Paschar, which did not inspire confidence. But in a few moments Gavreel waved them over as four carriages jockeyed for position in the street with agitated, prancing horse chaffing at the bit.
“Yalla, yalla,” the driver called out, and jumped down off his carriage platform.
Dodging horse manure and hostile pedestrian traffic, they made their way across and climbed into rickety buggies two by two, with Isda jumping to a top perch with a carriage driver.
“Hold tight,” the driver said, beaming, then turned and cracked a whip.
The horse pulling their carriage lifted his tail and leaped out into the street, galloping. Each carriage in the convoy followed suit, and then the drivers began the challenges. In hairpin turns around street corners, sometimes a driver would run alongside another carriage trying to overtake him, playing chicken with an oncoming, speeding mini-Toyota. The winner of the contest would laugh and make a lewd gesture to inspire another challenger. Bath Kol’s driver nearly ran their vehicle off the road and overtook another, which resulted in a stream of Arabic curses and much fist waving as their driver stood and urged his horse on.
Potholes nearly sent Isda airborne, but the driver knew the street so intimately, he just leaned into the dip like a race-car driver. It didn’t seem to bother him that the wooden wheels smacked the ground with a loud crack and came down in a way that felt as if the vehicle were going over on its side wagon-train-style.
Celeste held on to the side of the carriage as open-air markets, stores with no windows, and multicolored buildings strung with laundry lines blowing fabric went by in a blur. Small children, goats, and chickens seemed to be in imminent peril, but paid the drivers no mind. The haggling at fruit and vegetable stands never missed a beat as their rig whizzed by.
The stop in front of Omar’s Stone Works was just as abrupt. With much fanfare and indecipherable trash-talk, the winning driver jumped to the top of his carriage platform laughing as his fellow drivers argued in good nature but paid him.
Isda was the first to dismount. “I’m awake now, mon.”
“Ya think?” Bath Kol muttered as he lifted Aziza down.
“A regular cab on the way back, that’s all I ask,” she said, standing on wobbly legs.
“Not the best idea,” Isda warned. “At least out in the open you’ve got a chance one of us will catch you if you tip over. In one of those little sardine cans … hey.”
“Point well taken,” Maggie said, trying to gain her bearing as Melissa grabbed her arm.
“All right,” Azrael said, collecting the group to a safe place on the pavement while Gavreel paid the drivers. “We keep this very short.” He looked through the open-air courtyard in front of the carving shop through to the back courtyard.
Celeste allowed her line of vision to track Azrael’s. Behind the customer area that displayed items for purchase, dozens of guys were sitting on the ground under the shade of an awning, hacking away at granite with sharp objects. They all wore dusty hospital-blue-colored robes and turbans. From the hungry look in their eyes as they assessed each woman as she came through the door, they could have been working on the chain gang for all she knew.
“Yeah, boss,” Isda said with a glance over his shoulder, “you don’t have to tell us twice.”
Bath Kol pounded his fist. “Let’s do this.”
Entering as a tourist group on the way to the monument, they entered the non-air-conditioned store. A man behind the front desk slowly swatted flies from his arms with a large goat-hair flange.
“Can I help?” He stood with effort, lifting his bulk and smiling slowly.
“We’re looking for Omar,” Azrael said. “Nazir in Luxor sent us.”
“The American—football!” Omar exclaimed, then ushered the group forward with his flange. “Refreshments?”
“No, we’re fine, thank you.”
Azrael kept his gaze sweeping as Omar moved the group closer to the back of the store where there was bench seating. Celeste watched tension coil in Azrael’s shoulders as the men working in the back began watching them.
“I understand you’re looking for something very special?”
“I am,” Azrael said, glancing past Omar to his workers, who had stopped carving.
Between the time it took her lashes to touch and open in a blink, Azrael had jumped up, drawn a weapon she hadn’t even realized he was carrying, and pointed it to Omar’s temple. The other brothers were on their feet, with barrels pointed toward the courtyard.
“So, Nazir’s into taking hostages, too?” Azrael said calmly. “Figured a wealthy American on vacation with his friends, women along with him, might get lost in a back alley of Edfu—or his woman might, and she’d be worth far more than the piece of stone you bastards couldn’t steal. What’s a little ransom between friends, right?”
Omar held up his hands in front of his rotund body, his expression holding both fear and shock. “No, no, sir, I assure you, everyone should relax so we can have a conversation about your needs.”
“Then tell the son of a bitch that’s hiding with a weapon behind door number three to put down the AK-47,” Bath Kol said, spitting on the floor. “I’m feeling kinda reckless here this morning. Haven’t had my coffee yet.”
Omar nodded and Bath Kol relaxed, pulling back his weapon and pointing it to the ceiling.
“You are military as well as football?” Omar glanced around the group.
“No, just from Philly,” Azrael said, still pointing the gun at Omar. “What happened to my friend Daoud Salahuddin?”
Several men in the yard stood up.
“Easy,” Isda warned, causing Omar to nervously nod again.
“I have nothing to do with anything,” Omar said, holding up his hands in front of his jiggling breasts. “My men make figurines to sell to tourists, that is all. We may know the guards there and have some cousins so that we can get the best spots and sell more of our wares than others can, but we do not do bad things to people. We see things, we provide information.”
“And you transport things out of this little port town,” Azrael said.
“A few pieces of art, here and there … the laws have changed. It’s not fair. After 1972—”
“Blah, blah, blah, a man’s gotta make a living,” Bath Kol said. “So we heard from Nazir.”
“Then you must ask him about Daoud. I don’t know why he wanted him. That was not my business.”
The brothers passed glances among each other, and Azrael pulled back his weapon.
“But you threatened his family,” Celeste said, touching the wall and moving closer to Omar.
Aziza nodded. “You handed him over to Nazir.”
“It was not my business!” Omar shouted. “He stole something from a big client of Nazir’s, and all anyone was trying to do was get that back. What happened in the north country, I do not know. I mind my business here. That is all I do.”
“So you weren’t given orders to find anything special for me?” Azrael asked in a low, threatening tone. “Nothing at all?”
“No, just to give you something from the shop if you wanted something.”
“You lying piece of shit,” Bath Kol said, lunging, but Isda caught him. “You were either gonna give us a fake piece of antiquity using your bootleg-copy scribes in the back, or do what my man here said and try to shake us down.”
“Picked the wrong fight on the wrong day, my Nubian brother.” Isda glared at the man and then his henchmen in the back. “We need to get out before we violate the prime edict of not snuffing a human in a rage.”
“I feel you, man,” Bath Kol said, then spit on the floor. “I am so ready to kill this fat bastard where he stands, you have no idea.”
Glancing around nervously and feeling every hair-trigger nerve fraying and popping in the men around her, Celeste looked at Azrael. That Isda had slipped and called Omar a human, which could have revealed to a demon that they were angels, was the tip-off that he was too close to the edge. If they didn’t leave soon, the room might explode in sudden violence.
“We’d better get the guys out of here before it gets really messy,” Celeste said quietly, keeping her gaze on Azrael. “Even though they are as dirty as sin, there are still a lot of people in here.”
“You tell Nazir I’ll see him,” Azrael said grimly, as the group backed out of the store.
Once on the pavement, the group jogged a few blocks, trying to get out to a main thoroughfare, which was almost impossible to find among the tightly packed, winding labyrinth of alleys.
“Eyes,” Bath Kol said, turning around in a full circle, watching their backs.
Warriors surrounded their female human charges, moving the group forward and trying to stay away from going deeper into blind alleys, which was also next to impossible.
But a small boy zigzagged through their huddle and grabbed the loop in Celeste’s jeans.
“Miss, miss, you have to hurry. Come this way to the boats before big man comes.”
Warriors stared down at the dirty-faced child. Azrael placed a hand on his head, leaning down with a frown. “Who sent you?”
“Daoud,” the
child whined, his large, luminous eyes filling with tears. “He still comes to me and my family in my dreams—he is so sad. He said the nice lady who glows inside like an angel would be there and he showed her to me,” the boy whispered, and pointed to Celeste. Then he took off running. “Yalla. They are bad men. Hurry!”
The child ran like one of the carriage horses unbridled. His skinny, brown body wended its way through human traffic, dodged cars, and sped down treacherous alleys at a breakneck pace. Every few minutes he’d glance over his shoulder to be sure the group of warriors and women were still behind him. His panic grew more palpable the deeper they got into the residential neighborhoods. Then he made a wrong turn and skidded into a hard body. But like a fleet-footed mountain goat, the child scrambled back, pushed off a wall, dodged the grab of the man—whose eyes were all-black—and zigzagged back behind Azrael, panting.
Instantly the alley filled in around them with human bodies that had black eyes and no souls. The rooftops darkened with predators in human shells. Demons had found them.
“Get down,” Azrael shouted, and then flung out his arms, calling his blades in his hands to release in opposite directions, clearing a path. In one swoosh, his blades sliced through chests, viscera, and sent demon screams and black smoke to rent the air. “Wings up!”
A hail of bullets rained down, but every angel trapped in the alley had formed what looked like a Spartan phalanx, covering the women and the small boy. Advancing in slow lockstep, they moved to the edge of the alley, and as soon as they were in the open, Azrael called his blades back, sending them hurling through the air to clear the roof.
Embers burst everywhere. Just then three carriages pulled up to the end of the block and waved them forward. In a mad dash the group hurtled toward them, climbing on as the carriages took off.
“My nephew,” their driver from before explained, lifting a rifle off the carriage floor.
