by Debra Dunbar
“Ni-ni, he might kill you. What will become of us if you die? You are our anchor.” She placed her forehead against mine, and I closed my eyes, feeling her cool scales against my skin. “I did not frivolously pledge my loyalty and my household to you—and neither did Dar. Let us all face this together, and we will be stronger.”
I shook my head, feeling the prickle of her little gold scales along my forehead. “There are changes in Hel that I need to assist. I feel that I’m a catalyst, a spark to tinder. If I burn, then so be it. That’s my choice. But I will not take you and Dar with me. I’ll survive. I’ll endure, as long as I know you both are safe.”
The succubus released me, blowing an exasperated puff of air into my face. “Can you talk some sense into her, Dar?”
“Nope.” He stroked a whisker, a faint smile hovering around his thin lips. “Can’t talk sense into an imbecile.”
“Good. Glad that’s settled.” I pulled the poker away from Leethu and walked back to my map in the dust, drawing another set of squiggles in the dirty floor. “The relay device that’s keyed to mine is supposed to put me in Feille’s private, royal chambers. Now, I’ve never had the honor of being there, so I don’t have any fucking idea how many rooms there are, or what the layout will be. My strategy right now is to pop into some unknown room, then race around like a total idiot until I can find the fucker. Leethu? Any ideas?”
Leethu growled and snatched the poker out of my hand. I was beginning to think that Amber’s aggressive tendencies came honestly.
“I’ve never been in the royal chambers, but most elven high lords have an entire wing warded for their private use.” She drew more geometry into the floor, and I saw a faint curl of smoke rise from the poker. Leethu was pissed. It warmed my heart. “There’s always a bedchamber with a salon for entertainment, a dressing room full of mirrors and various tables and chairs. A wardrobe is usually attached to the bedroom. I’d suspect there’s also a private armory, perhaps a private art collection area, a serenity room for meditation and contemplation. Most high lords have a safe room. He may not be in his private rooms when you arrive, so you’ll need to determine which room he uses the most and hope there’s an adequate hiding place to ambush him. Always know the location of the safe room. If you’re too late, and Taullian attacks, he’ll head there.”
Leethu was right. Feille was too much of a coward to risk himself in battle. He’d be behind eight circles and wards the moment the first arrow let loose.
“Hopefully Taullian’s intelligence will provide his spies with the optimal place to put the relay,” I commented. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a race against time.”
Leethu nodded, putting an arm on my shoulder and sliding her hand down to grip my elbow. “You’re lucky, Ni-ni. Always so lucky. The great creator smiles upon you.”
I jolted in surprise. I’d never heard any demon refer to a higher power. That was an angel thing. We demons tended to throw our lot in with a more fickle fate than any kind of universal creation power.
“Perhaps it is the great destroyer who favors me,” I teased her.
She smiled, a strange knowing smile. “Oh most definitely, but I think the great creator has an affection for you as well.”
Hopefully some higher power would send a bit of divine assistance my way because I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull any of this off.
22
This whole situation kept getting worse and worse. He should be up in Aaru, meditating, trying to center himself and increase his vibration level. Instead, he was here in northern Washington State, seagulls diving all around him in search of bits the fishermen had left behind when they cleaned their catch on the pier. The tang of salt and decay filled his nose. The ocean, her power subdued in this calm inlet, still called to him, making him wish they’d chosen a water creature to bestow the gifts of Aaru upon instead of the humans.
Oak Island—gone, allegedly by a meteor strike. Or a nuclear facility destabilized. He wasn’t ruling either one out. It wouldn’t be the first time the humans had covered up an alarming disaster by falsifying records and claiming it was a natural occurrence. It was a clandestine nuclear facility that went up, or a campsite taken down by an astrological event. Either way, several humans with magic had died along with the angel. Why Furlac had been there at all was Gabriel’s primary concern. Hopefully there would be something, some clue toward Furlac’s purpose, his cause of death, and what linked him to Vaol.
Gabriel frowned, squinting up at the heavy clouds. He’d never been quite as good as Uriel in knowing the movements of the universe, but he was fairly certain no meteor, however small, had been on a trajectory with earth during that time period. There were always little bits of things pelting the planet, but nothing large enough to make it through the atmosphere to impact within the last few months, and certainly nothing big enough to destroy an island. Cloaking himself, he unfurled his wings and took to the skies.
The angel left the harbor, heading along the channel and toward the islands ahead, the city of Bellingham at his back. Hugging the edges of the bay, he veered south around the tip of Lumm Island before flying north into the Strait of Georgia. After passing several islands, he dove down, circling where the report had indicated Oak Island had been. It had been a small island, only about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide by the report. A lighthouse blinked from the nearest island two miles away, in the early evening light.
Now there was nothing except small waves. No debris, no sediment clouded the water. The dark sea should have been greenish brown in the area, but there was nothing to indicate that an island had ever been there. Gabriel circled around, dropping low to land, his feet skimming the water. Slowing, he pulled his wings in tight. A shaft of sunlight pierced the cloud cover and reflected off their pure white with blinding intensity. The angel paced about on the surface of the sea, trying to find any indication of the small half-mile land mass that had once occupied this space.
Gabriel had a special affinity for water in all its forms. Extending his spirit being, he divided, allowing a second aspect of himself to merge with the water below. Only he and his eldest brother could manage this, a testament to how far their vibration level had progressed.
The seawater welcomed him like an old friend. It teemed with life and death, a complex mixture of mineral and algae swirling in a dance with bacteria and microscopic creatures. Becoming the sea was the closest Gabriel had ever come to divinity, to holding the entire universe in his soul. He’d missed this, forgotten how centering it was. Meditation in Aaru suddenly felt cold and sterile by comparison.
Carefully he examined the water where the island once was and found miniscule bits of debris—sediment, tree bark, rock, and various metals. The quantity was not what he would have expected from a normal explosion, let alone a meteor strike. Reaching further, he tried to piece together a history of the event. The sea had a memory, open to an angel who had the patience and skill to coax it from the depths. It told a perplexing story. There should have been trace elements of iron-nickel alloy, of iridium. Searching deep to the channel floor, he found none of the bits that should have lodged there. Meteors were heavy, most of them over ninety percent iron in an interlocking crystalline structure. One big enough to completely take out an island of this size should have left remains.
And it should have left other damage. The lighthouse two miles away blinked, unharmed. Another nearby island appeared untouched. This was no meteor. The same factors also brought him to doubt a human explosion on the island. He’d seen firsthand how sloppy the human destructive techniques were. The damage to the gate at Novaya Zemlya had been horrific, but the explosion two and a half miles in the air still devastated the island below. Any bomb or blast big enough to reduce an island to bits of dirt would have cracked the lighthouse foundations through and blown the foliage off every tree on neighboring islands. Nothing. They were pristine, yet this island was gone. Which left only one option to consider. Demons.
Gabriel r
eluctantly left the sea and consolidated his aspect back into human form. There was a reason his eldest brother was so well suited as head Grigori—he was the bearer of the sword. Guardians and enforcers could handle almost every demon that came through the gates, but every now and then a powerful one made the trip. They were generally easy to sense, energy spilling everywhere, destruction and death in their wake. They weren’t so easy to kill. And when they died, the raw energy they’d stored within them to fuel their evil burst into being, exploding like a mini nuclear blast. But a localized blast, with strange clear-cut borders. An angel could survive a small blast, but an explosion big enough to take out this island would have easily killed an angel of Furlac’s level.
So what was a non-enforcer doing sneaking down from Aaru? Why would he have been at a human research facility, or even a rural campground? He could have been indulging in sinful contact with a human, but Gabriel suspected it was something else. But what? The humans had hundreds of thousands of scientific endeavors. Demons often busied themselves in all types of nefarious industries. Could this have been one? Maybe Furlac’s connection with Vaol had been innocent, and by coincidence he had found himself in a deadly fight with a demon right after his friend had lost his life to another.
Spreading his snowy wings, Gabriel once again rose to the air and headed back to the port, determined to find some answers. He just didn’t have an adequate level of knowledge concerning human businesses. For the information he needed, he’d have to converse with them. He shuddered. Humans. He’d spent hundreds of years avoiding contact with them, but he had no choice if he wanted to get to the bottom of this. Still cloaked, the angel circled about the pier, dropping down next to a building that separated the dock area from the parking lot. Huge glass windows overlooked the bobbing boats in their slips, and a large man, shirt straining at the buttons, sat inside, appearing bored as he leafed through magazines and cast occasional glances up at a television.
Taking a deep breath, Gabriel extended himself further into his corporeal form, feeling the overwhelming pain of sensation flood through him. The smells of the seaport town increased a million fold; the colors became blindingly brilliant, the sounds deafening. It took him a moment to process it all and regain control. Staggering from the onslaught, he put his hand against the metal railing, only to recoil from the touch—cold metal, chips of bright green paint covering the grey. He’d have to remember to try not to touch anything… or anyone. That sensation—skin on skin, was the most difficult of all to handle.
Walking slowly, he made his way to the marina office, wincing at the merry jingle of the bell over the door as he entered. The man at the counter looked up, a smile on his round face.
“Can I help you?”
Gabriel relaxed, walking toward the man. He hadn’t lost his touch. It had been so long since he’d made himself visible to the humans. Centuries ago he had walked among them, indistinguishable from any other human. His siblings stood out, but Gabriel had been able to blend in, communicating without the adoring reaction the other angels caused. It had been a source of pride—something normally only the Angels of Chaos could do. But it had been so long. He had hoped to never do this again, but he couldn’t just let two angels die under mysterious circumstances without doing all within his power to investigate. That was his responsibility as a member of the Ruling Council, as an Angel of Order.
“I’ve got a question about the island that exploded. Oak Island, I believe it was called?”
The man shook his head, jowls swaying, eyes grieving. “Shame that was. Nice little island. One of the smaller ones and not as popular as the others. Never thought it would have gotten taken out by a meteor. Thing sent waves flooding all across the area. They felt it all the way up in Ketchikan.”
Meteor. A millennium ago and they would have blamed it on some vengeful god. Not that they would have been far off, if the cause of the explosion was what he suspected.
“Did the scientists see the meteor coming?”
Again the jowls swung from side to side, the man’s bulldog eyes widening with the seriousness of the topic. “Nope. Took everyone by surprise. Course, some are thinking it wasn’t a meteor after all but some secret underground government facility that exploded.”
“Either way, it’s rather frightening that that sort of thing would happen with no advanced warning at all. The loss of life must have been terrible.”
The man’s head tilted, his mouth pursed. “Well, no, unless you count a few campers. Not many people normally there.”
Gabriel frowned in confusion. His brother had said that there had been two dozen humans present as well as the angel when the catastrophe had occurred.
“Skip really lucked out. He usually takes those corporate folks out there for their team building retreats.” The man’s sour face clearly indicated his feelings for said “team building” exercises. “There hadn’t been any for a week or so. Last trip he made out was with that woman a few days before the whole thing blew.”
Maybe instead of a hidden nuclear facility, it had just been a campground rented out to a human company for their summer group sessions. Lesser demons did like to terrorize campers. Perhaps a major one had decided to get in on the fun and had been caught in the act by an angel who hadn’t, in good conscience, been able to turn his back on the slaughter of innocents.
Gabriel turned to leave, but the man continued on, clearly desperate for any kind of conversation, no matter how one-sided.
“That woman was really eager to get out there. Had some plane to catch and was trying to get someone to take her out right away—just an out and back. Told her everyone was done for the night, but that Skip could run her out in the morning. Was really surprised when he said she was staying. She didn’t have any camping equipment or nothing. Thought she was eager to get home. Sad. She’s dead now. Blowed up along with the island.”
The angel shook his head. It was folly to keep pursuing this. It was a demon. An angel had come down, probably tempted into a sinful activity, and had died killing a demon. Regardless of his sin, his noble death would wash that clean. He’d move on to the thousands of other reports and matters awaiting his attention. He had other things to do.
But he couldn’t let it go. There was too much “what if”, too much unknown and he’d never be able to find his center with these questions unanswered.
“Is Skip around?” He interrupted the man, who was going on about the other islands and their superiority in camping facilities to the ill-fated Oak Island.
“Yeah. Third pier, fourth boat on the right.”
Skip was relaxing on his boat drinking a beer. He pulled his mirrored shades off and got to his feet as Gabriel approached.
“What can you tell me about Oak Island? The man in that office said you were ferrying groups for a corporate retreat? That you took a woman out a few days before it exploded?”
Skip shifted his feet and carefully put his sunglasses back on. “Yep. Shame. I made a lot of money taking those folks out. They were camping and stuff.”
“But the woman had no gear, and she went out alone. Was she the only one on the island that you were aware of?”
It was a warm day, but not warm enough for the beads of sweat forming on the man’s forehead.
“Think she met someone there. I’m not the only one who hires out for these kinds of things. Might have been a group there. I don’t know.”
He was lying. It spiraled from him like fog, dimming his aura. He’d tried to cover it up with an answer that wasn’t quite an answer, but the lie clung to him, thick and dark.
“Was she with any other person either on or off the boat?”
Skip fiddled with his beer bottle, taking a quick sip. “I took two other guys out with her, and they all stayed,” he admitted.
“When were you supposed to pick them up? How long did these groups usually stay?”
Again Skip raised the beer bottle to his lips, only to find it empty. “I don’t bring em back. I never do.
Figure someone else does that.”
Gabriel watched Skip toss the empty into a bucket and pull another beer from a cooler. He declined when the man offered one. Reading thoughts wasn’t one of his strengths, but he could often gather bits and pieces if a human was particularly emotional. Skip was extremely emotional. He felt uncomfortable about what these corporate groups were doing on the island. It wasn’t any of his business, but it seemed kind of cult-like and kinky. He knew all the boaters in this area and no one was bringing these people back. Gabriel had a sudden flash of vision from Skip’s mind, a mass grave, bodies on the ground. It wasn’t his business. None of his business.
So not a research facility, nor a corporate teambuilding retreat either. Some kind of weird death cult. Gabriel again felt a wave of revulsion. Just the sort of thing a demon would do. But this man was almost as bad, turning a blind eye on the whole thing. The angel let a bit of his human mask slip, let his spirit shine out toward the man and filled his words with compulsion.
“It was your business. Tell me the truth of what happened.”
Skip dropped his full bottle of beer to the deck of the boat and shook with fear. “Charters are down and it was good money. I didn’t suspect anything at first, just thought it was some weird religious group, but the woman… I left her there. Left her.”
He paused for a moment, trying to get himself under control, and Gabriel eyed him with loathing. This man’s sins were not his to forgive. Humans were horrible creatures. Every second he spent among them confirmed it.
“She didn’t go quiet. All the others were subdued and kind of obedient, but when we got to the island, they slapped one of those collars on her and she went crazy. Sucker punched the one guy, fought like she was possessed. Never seen a woman fight quite like that. Like she didn’t care if she got hurt, like she enjoyed it.”
“And you left her there. You didn’t help her defend herself, didn’t call the authorities. You just left her there.”
