by Nazri Noor
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve been following me, tracking my every move, and now you’re here because of some obscure angelic edict I’ve violated. What is it now? Are you gonna write me up for hanging out with my dryad friend again?”
“Alraune,” Sadriel said, adjusting her glasses.
My muscles stiffened for a second. She knew. That was Florian’s big secret, after all. He tried to pass himself off as a male dryad – which don’t exist, by the way – because he was embarrassed of what he truly was. Alraunes are created when the blood or semen of a hanged man spills on the earth. Never knowing who his father was or what he did to deserve a hanging death was both Florian’s greatest regret and shame.
“I know all about Florian, Mr. Albrecht,” Sadriel continued. “I’ve always known. Speaking of which. Boys?”
Two of the bodyguards shimmered out of sight to the faint noise of fluttering wings. I whirled on my feet on instinct, sure enough finding the angels already flanking Florian. The Lorica’s Wings – their teleporters – could move incredibly fast, but apparently angels were even faster.
My teeth were bared when I turned to face Sadriel again, every cell in my body fighting the impulse to call on the gifts of the Vestments. “What is it now?” I growled. “You barged into our home for no good goddamn reason the last time. What’s so damn important? Are you stalking us, Sadriel?”
“Stalking is a strong word,” Sadriel said, hiding her chuckle behind her clipboard. “We – that is, my department – calculated that you would be passing through this very side street at this very moment of the day. Everyone on the west side of this building, as your companion Florian here so astutely observed, is currently occupied at work. And in this other building,” she continued, gesturing to her right, “all residents on the east side are also at their places of employment.” She pushed her pen into her chin. “With the exception of Mrs. Yamazaki, who is walking her two spitzes, and Mr. Frasier, who appears to be dead. Pity.”
I shook my head. “You took a billion words to express a whole lot of nothing. What’s your point?”
“The point, Mr. Albrecht, is that there is a pattern to this universe, and that pattern is order.” Her heels clicked as she stepped forward. “And when an anomaly like you enters the picture, it throws everything, how you say, out of whack. I would very much prefer for things to be in whack. Yes. Things that I can measure, I appreciate. They are predictable. Calculable. But you? Capricious. Mercurial. Uncertain. And that displeases me, and my department.”
“And which department is that?”
“I already told you,” Sadriel said. “It’s the Department of Extracelestial Angelic Delinquency.”
Oh, that was right. I should have remembered. Her department’s acronym was DEAD. Very cute.
Sadriel turned to the two angels at her side, raised one perfect eyebrow, then smiled. “Kill him.”
I just barely heard Florian shout “No, don’t hurt him,” before he choked out a groan. The angels must have got him, but I couldn’t spare a second to check. Sadriel’s goons were closing in on me, and as the other two had just proved, it didn’t matter how enormous these bastards were. They could move unbelievably fast.
The air just by my ear whizzed as a huge, meaty fist appeared out of nowhere. I evaded the blow just in time. That punch had been aimed right at my face. I scampered out of the way as the rest of the angel’s body materialized to join his massive hand, only to bump up against his friend, who had conveniently teleported right behind me.
“Watch where you’re going,” the angel said, his voice deep with danger. I didn’t have time to twist away from him. Thick, powerful fingers dug into my shoulder, reached for my clavicle, and pressed hard. Very, very hard.
I screamed, my voice only just covering the sound of my bones giving under the angel’s grasp. Tears filled my vision as the pain shot like lightning up my neck and down my chest. Was that a crack I heard? Did he splinter something? My sneakers scraped against the ground as I retreated from the angels, one hand clutching at my damaged collarbone, the other – my sword arm – hanging uselessly from the pain.
Sadriel’s bodyguards looked at each other and laughed, their black, beady eyes glimmering with mirth and menace. You couldn’t tell the fuckers apart. Both of them wore suits and shit-eating expressions. They also had clean-shaven heads, just like the other two that had gone straight for Florian. Speaking of which, where the hell was he? I scanned the street, gritting my teeth and hoping that I could stave the pain away long enough to summon something from the Vestments.
“He is perfectly safe, Mr. Albrecht,” Sadriel called out, her voice musical and delighted. “Pray, focus on your own survival. It isn’t Florian that is in grave danger at the moment.”
My lips drew back, my chest filling with animal rage at just the sight of Sadriel. What did she want from me? When last we met, all she said was that she belonged to DEAD, a task force that supervised nephilim all over the world. This wasn’t supervision. This felt every bit like an assassination.
One of the angels blurred out of existence again, just as the Vestments answered my summons. I had a hunch where the bastard was headed. Good thing the arms and armor from upstairs were so light, or my injured arm couldn’t have held them. The sword appeared in my right hand, at about the same instance that the hairs just at the back of my head rippled, moved by the sudden appearance of something large, bulky, and made of meat. I spun in a circle, aiming just above my own eye line, bringing the sword in a glimmering arc to cut through flesh, spine, and throat.
The angel’s eyes were wide when his head toppled from where it was supposed to connect to his neck. It fell to the ground with a horrible, wet squelch, staining the asphalt with liquid and gore that was too similarly crimson to human blood. I steeled my resolve, hardening my muscles as the angel’s headless body crashed to the ground. These things weren’t human. I had to remember that. Any show of pity, any sign of weakness and I was a dead man.
I glared at the second angel, working through the pain to grasp my sword in both hands. Show all your teeth, like an animal. Someone taught me that, once. A vampire, specifically. Show your teeth. In the hands of a killer, fear is just another weapon.
“Bring it, you piece of garbage,” I snarled, spit flying from my lips, sweat soaking right through my shirt. And I’d just bathed, too. In a river, but still. “Come at me.”
And damn it if the teeth thing didn’t work. The angel hesitated, parts of his body making hesitant attempts to look ferocious, but his feet were planted firmly in place.
“I said kill him,” Sadriel said icily, her voice like a knife.
“But ma’am.” Sweat was pouring down the side of the angel’s head, dripping into the collar of his shirt. “He just killed – ”
Whatever the dead angel’s name had been, I never learned. Sadriel acted far too fast. She swept her arm in a semicircle, her pen leaving her fingers with the bang and velocity of a bullet. It struck the angel in the forehead, pointed end first, boring through his skull, then his brain. The angel’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head. He slumped to the ground with a heavy thud, blood pouring from the bullet – no, from the pen hole in his skull.
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Please,” Sadriel said, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Let’s not get him involved, too.”
I lowered my sword hand, gesturing at the second angel’s corpse. “Now was that really necessary?”
Sadriel sniffed, lifting her chin at me, her glasses glinting threateningly in the sunlight. “I don’t tolerate insubordination, Mr. Albrecht. Hesitation in a combat situation is not a trait I find admirable. Besides, they will reform, as is our way.” She sneered at the angel corpses like they had personally pissed into her oatmeal. “I pray that they will learn a valuable, if painful lesson.”
My sword arm twitched, the blade falling from my fingers. It clattered against the ground, clanging once before disappearing in a puff of golden dus
t. Sadriel’s two other bodyguards reappeared at her side with Florian standing between them. He looked unharmed, and honestly a little cheerful. I could’ve socked him in the face.
“That’s all we needed, boys,” Sadriel said. “We can go.”
My forehead wrinkled as I barreled forward, but my pain cut me short. I clutched my arm and bit on my tongue to stop myself from crying out. Florian’s eyes went wide at the sight of me stumbling. He raced to my side, supporting me with his arms. Fine. Okay. He was forgiven.
“That’s it?” I managed to grunt. “You showed up just to test me?”
“Yes, Mr. Albrecht. We came to evaluate the extent of your powers.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“Crazy is right.” Sadriel raised her finger, waving it in an upsettingly patronizing manner. “Crazy obsessed with data, with making sure you aren’t a danger to those around you. Do behave, Mr. Albrecht.” She adjusted her glasses and winked, the gesture a soft, wordless threat. “We’re always watching.”
And with that, the angel of order and her cohorts – alive or dead – vanished in a flash of light.
4
I winced as Florian prodded at my collarbone, lifting my arm and pressing his fingers along its length. It was like getting poked by a bunch of thick twigs, sort of like those massages where Russian men beat the hell out of you with wet branches, except way more uncomfortable. My arm, shoulder, and chest still hurt, but Florian said I was going to be okay.
“Nothing’s broken,” he declared, satisfied after using his distressingly powerful hands to squeeze my body to a pulp.
“Thanks, I think.” I rotated my arm at the socket, convinced that I was sorer than when we started.
The angels had left no trace of their visitation. The blood was gone from the pavement, and there was no sign of Sadriel’s bullet-pen. It was probably still lodged in goon number two’s brain. Yikes.
“So they seriously attacked us just to see what you can do in a fight?”
“Correction,” I grumbled. “Attacked me. Where the hell were you for the fight, anyway? It’s like you disappeared.”
“We kind of did, actually.” He pointed down the street. “There’s an alley down that way. My guys and I just sort of chatted for a bit. They wanted a break. One of them was vaping. Did you know vaping was a thing?” He leaned in close, placing his hand by his mouth, then waggling his eyebrows. “They say that Sadriel’s a hard-ass.”
I scowled at him and folded my arms. “You don’t say. And here I was, risking life and limb for nothing.”
“Aww, they weren’t gonna kill you, Mace. Just rough you up a bit.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I told you. My guys and I were chatting, just over there.”
My fists clenched, as did my teeth. “Let’s just – ugh. Let’s just get this day over with. It just started and I already want to roll back into bed.”
Where it was comfortable, I thought, and where I didn’t run the risk of having my clavicles crushed my some insane angels who all uniformly looked like secret service Mr. Cleans. Or, for that matter, demon princes who could wear whatever shape they liked, them and their brimstone-stinking minions.
That was the one good thing I could say about angels. When they died, or at least when their husks did, they sort of just stayed there for a bit, looking convincingly like murdered human beings. My guess was that whoever invented celestial vessels wanted to send their killers on a sort of guilt trip by making the bodies look, behave, and bleed as realistically as possible.
But my guilt gland was fresh out, especially when it came to dealing with – geez, what was Sadriel, anyway, truly? I wasn’t buying her story about her task force, or her department, or whatever it was. I mean, DEAD? Really? Mental note, I told myself. Grill Raziel about her, shortly after shaving him fully bald.
It only took a few minutes to reach Silk Road. I hated that I was already all sweaty and maybe – just maybe – a little stinky from the scuffle with the angels. Beatrice seemed just the type to be all uppity about it, too. But we couldn’t exactly head back to the domicile just so I could take a damn shower. Whatever. She was just going to have to deal with me and my Mace musk.
Florian and I maneuvered the perfumed, manicured crowds of Silk Road, the city’s center of luxury dining and designer goods. Even outdoors the colonnade smelled of fresh citrus, despite the total absence of anything resembling an orange or lemon tree. I chalked it up to magic each time I had to pass through the place, which made sense since the center of Silk Road did contain a fair bit of enchantment.
“You first,” I said, letting Florian enter the manhole that would take us to the Black Market. The ring of caution tape stretched around it ensured that no civilians – the normals, that is – would take note of the nondescript sewer opening that the arcane underground used to access the illicit bazaar of wonders hiding on the other side of Valero’s reality.
Florian disappeared into the manhole, jumping straight in, and I knew that the sound of his feet hitting the ground would never come. Our destination wasn’t technically found at the bottom of the manhole, but at the other end of the interdimensional tunnel it represented.
I braced myself, holding my breath, tightening the muscles in my stomach. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of travel magic, too. Stupid flying sickness. I could only hope that it wouldn’t make me puke up a glorious storm once I entered.
“Here goes,” I mumbled. I jumped in, and fell, and kept on falling for what felt like minutes, my body slipping down an empty abyss. Then out of nowhere, the ground came up to meet my feet, my landing soft and – not to brag – kind of graceful.
Florian was standing off to the side of the market’s featureless entrance chamber. He nodded as he spotted me. “Took you long enough.”
I clenched my jaw. “My tummy is still sensitive, and an angel tried to shatter my upper body into little bitty pieces. Come on, man. Give me a break.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, sorry, geez. Forget I said anything.”
We trudged together under the massive archway that spelled out a bright, neon welcome to the Black Market, an interdimensional mirror image of Silk Road that appeared to be made almost entirely out of dark velvet. The streets, the shops, the lampposts, you name it, all of it seemed to be sculpted out of midnight velour. The exceptions were the lights, of course, whether they were mundane bulbs or magical fires burning without smoke or heat.
“No thanks,” I said over and over, in a kind of droning tattoo as we negotiated the market. I shook off the odd, pushy hawker who was selling me dried eels, and another one who was trying to convince me that pickled raven’s eggs were either delicious or an incredible ingredient for brewing potions. How would I even know if that was true? The only truth was that Florian and I were both brutally, heartbreakingly broke.
Florian clucked his tongue and chuckled under his breath. “I love how her workshop is always so easy to find.”
I followed the line of his finger and grimaced. Situated in the same quarter of the compound as the other enchanters, Beatrice Rex nonetheless stood out for her signage, which was enchanted to display her name in enormous blinking lights alongside a portrait of her huge, massive head.
Sorry, that was mean. Beatrice has a perfectly lovely, normal-sized head, if you didn’t believe the billboard. I was just having a bad day.
5
Beatrice Rex looked much the same as the last time I saw her: still blonde, still beautiful, and still with that impetuous, dare I say bratty aura about her that quietly suggested that she was better than you. Not completely, no, of course, just in the places where it counted. Like appearance, for example. And wealth.
“Mason,” she said, a patently false smile pasted to her lips as she greeted me.
I could tell that every muscle in her body was straining against her urge to swivel her eyeballs down and up my body. I almost laughed when it happened. “Are you really weari
ng that? Here?” her expression seemed to say. I couldn’t even take offense anymore. It was just Beatrice being Beatrice. Hey, she can keep her couture and her ruffles and all that fancy stuff, okay? It was hot out, and a tank top was practical.
And naturally, the same couldn’t be said for how Beatrice’s eyes treated the sight of Florian. They lit up as he ambled in behind me, her teeth practically sparkling as bright as her irises, as the gaudy signboard that she kept above the store.
So things hadn’t changed when it came to our fancy fashion friend, really, unless you counted what appeared to be new stock around the store, a new collection of leather bags and accessories. One of them shifted on its shelf, then growled at me. I backed away, ready to punch it in its, uh, face? What was that thing?
“Hi, Beatrice,” Florian practically mumbled.
Ah. See, now that, that was one thing that had definitely changed. So very noticeably, too. I wondered why Florian’s approach had shifted so much. The first time he and Beatrice met he’d been the very picture of charm, flirting with her so hard and entrancing her so fixedly that she wouldn’t have budged if a swarm of fashion-starved looters had ripped through the store to wipe out her entire stock.
My eyes flitted between the two of them as I allowed a few more moments of silence. I thought I was helping, but I could actually tell that Florian was squirming under Beatrice’s sticky, icky gaze. What the hell was going on? He was supposed to be our bargaining chip.
Don’t look at me like that. Remember that time I told Florian he’d have to sell his body to help our cause? I was only half joking.
“So Beatrice,” I said, breaking the tense silence. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”
Her lashes twitched oh-so-subtly at the sound of my voice, and she narrowed her eyes as she turned to regard me, like I was a pile of garbage blocking her view of the sunset.
