Conspiracy of Angels

by Michelle Belanger

He peered down at me with eyes the color of a tropical cove. They were such an intense shade of azure they seemed as surreal as his outrageous suit.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. His vaguely accented voice was rich and mellifluous. There was no mistaking it. This was the man from the phone call.

  I started to respond, but nothing English came out. Panic gripped me then—was that aphasia? Maybe I had brain damage, and amnesia was just the start. I flailed, struggling to get up, but the man pressed long-fingered hands against my shoulders, holding me prone.

  “Zaquiel, please,” he said. “There’s no call for that. Calm down and explain yourself.”

  He leaned over me, his thick, straight hair swinging forward to partially obscure his narrow face. I caught the pale curve of cheekbone, an aquiline nose, and those deep and soul-searching eyes. Something about his features seemed familiar—hauntingly so—but I was too muddled to place it.

  Licking dry lips, I croaked, “Something’s wrong.” My voice was rough, but at least this time it was intelligible.

  “Well, obviously,” he responded dryly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have come back here so soon. She’s still furious with you, you know.”

  Images weltered in my mind—a woman with warm, olive skin and hair like a cascade of midnight. He couldn’t mean her. She was trapped… somewhere. A tiny space, curved windowless walls—the knowledge fluttered just on the periphery of consciousness. I tried to grab it, but it skittered like mercury, leaving a heart-wrenching echo of loss. I needed to help her. I didn’t even know who she was.

  “Who’s furious?” I murmured.

  “Saliriel, of course,” he sneered. “You don’t insult a decimus so thoroughly without expecting consequences. Things aren’t as lax with us as with your tribe.” Then, far more gently, he asked, “Can you stand?” He extended his hand and I took it without thought.

  That was a mistake.

  The minute I touched bare skin, I was seized with a chaos of impressions—lust and blood and naked flesh. The woman at the counter, her lips parted for a kiss. Someone bound, leather straps biting into creamy skin. Other impressions, thankfully too brief to adequately process.

  A yawning emptiness opened under my ribs so intense it stole my breath. I jerked away as if he’d burned me, then sat huddled around that gnawing sensation of hunger. It wouldn’t go away. If anything, it got worse.

  He stared mutely at his pale fingers for the space of a heartbeat, then his porcelain-perfect features twisted into a ferocious mask.

  “How dare you!” he spat. “I’m not some mortal whose thoughts you riffle at a whim. Me, of all your brothers? Maybe Saliriel’s right, and you have taken leave of your senses.” The hot metal of his anger pierced like a blade through my mind.

  Brothers? A tidal surge of images battered my reason—shattered stones in the temple and those hateful, poison-green eyes. You and all your tribe. I pressed my hands to my head, desperate to block it out, but it just sucked me down further until I couldn’t distinguish memory, reality, vision, or dream.

  Somewhere in the midst of this Red Suit realized I hadn’t been attacking him.

  “Zaquiel?” he murmured, sounding vaguely contrite. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  I felt more than saw his hand extend toward my shoulder, and twisted away, pressing myself into the corner of the couch.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snarled.

  His hand still poised, he said, “All right, but I need to know what’s going on. You’re not even supposed to be here. You know that.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I hissed through gritted teeth. I still held my hands clamped over my ears and probably looked ridiculous—like a kid trying to hide from the bogeyman by covering his eyes. Yet I couldn’t help it. My brain was a roiling maelstrom, filled with things that weren’t my own. The emptiness where my own thoughts should be—memories, knowledge, anything—gaped like a chasm.

  “Well, that’s a problem,” Red Suit murmured. “Vikram, go talk to Alice and the ones who found him. See if he was attacked.”

  It took me a minute to realize he was talking to someone. A big guy, almost as broad across the shoulders as I was long in the legs, stood beside a second door set into the far wall. The door was black and his suit was black, effectively rendering both of them invisible. He was lively as a gargoyle, his face an expressionless mask.

  “Go on,” the man in the red suit said with a curt gesture. “I’ll make sure no one goes into the back rooms.”

  With a grunt that barely counted as even a monosyllable, the bouncer obeyed. For the brief moment that he opened the door, the music that flooded into the room was so loud it seemed to possess both substance and weight. It was too much, and I cringed. Thankfully, the sound returned to a muted rumble as soon as the door swung shut behind him.

  Red Suit turned back to me. “You’re wide open,” he said. “No cowl, no shields. No wonder you’re a mess.”

  “Good of you to notice,” I grumbled. I was fighting to relax. It was a losing battle.

  “Look at me,” Red Suit responded, gesturing to his unearthly blue eyes. “Just like your lessons. Focus on me first. You have to close it down, like clenching a fist.” He held his hand out and for a moment I thought he was going to try to touch me again, but he just curled his slender fingers into a tight ball. He repeated the gesture, murmuring encouragingly.

  “Come on. You have more discipline than this.”

  His whole aspect and manner changed and he seemed oddly paternal. He didn’t look that much older than me—younger, if I was being honest—but it stirred some vague memory. Like I was a boy, and he was teaching me. I didn’t question it. His voice, rhythmic and soothing, guided me back to myself.

  “Clenching a fist,” I repeated.

  I followed his example and made a physical fist, trying to match my thoughts to the gesture. I held so tight, my nails bit little half-moons into my palm. The psychic noise receded by degrees, though that gnawing ache in my chest lingered. With effort, I blocked that out as well, though every once in a while it surged back into awareness.

  “That’s it,” he murmured. “Clear your thoughts. Better?”

  I considered it, then nodded.

  He dropped his hand and resumed his previous manner—stiff, formal, with the vaguest hint of reproach. I wasn’t sure which was the mask. Tenting his fingers, he paced a little, nervously looking me up and down. The Italian heels on his expensive shoes clicked smartly against the tiles, and for a while it was the loudest noise in the room. After a nerve-wracking eternity, he spoke.

  “All right then. Care to tell me what this is all about?”

  I didn’t even know where to start.

  “Zaquiel?” he prompted.

  The name no longer gobsmacked me like it had the first time he’d said it over the phone, but the syllables still felt like they vibrated my damned molecules.

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” I wondered. “Every time you say it, I feel something, here.” I gestured to that spot under my ribs where the hollow sensation still ached.

  “Of course you feel it. It’s your name.”

  “But my driver’s license says Zachary,” I insisted. I almost pulled it out to show him.

  The color drained from Red Suit’s cheeks—which was quite a feat, since he was already two shades short of looking like a corpse. Then his expression grew canny.

  “This isn’t a joke, is it, or some ploy to see her again?” he asked cautiously. “You know she had no answer the last time, Anakim. That’s not going to change.”

  I didn’t recognize the word, but hearing it on his lips like that stirred white-hot fury in me.

  “I don’t even know who you’re fucking talking about!” I all but shouted at him.

  “Oh, Zaquiel,” he breathed. I fought not to react as the word shuddered through me. “What have you gotten into this time?”

  9

  Red Suit offered me a hand up. Still seething
over nothing I could identify, I stared at it like it was a viper.

  Then I hauled myself to my feet—albeit a little shakily. I kept my left fist clenched, determined to prevent any further psychic incidents. I was seriously over them. Red Suit hesitated for a moment, appearing to decide whether or not he was offended. He turned smartly on his heel and headed toward the second door—not the one that led out to the main floor, but the one the bouncer had been guarding.

  From the way Red Suit shouldered it open, I gathered that it had some real heft to it. There was music here, too, but it was different from the pulse-pounding rhythms of the dance floor, although it was still some variety of electronica. It played from speakers set into the black-painted ceiling, and was turned low enough that I had to focus to catch anything more than a sense of cycling rhythms and ethereal female vocals. It had a hypnotic quality to it, and pitched this low the lyrics were essentially subliminal.

  The theme of the décor continued from the little antechamber—neo-Gothic with a touch of the post-apocalyptic. The ceiling and walls were black, although the little flecks of silver were absent back here. Immediately past the door was an alcove, and this was set apart from the rest of the hallway by a privacy screen fashioned from chain-link fencing.

  The floors were covered in a tile that tried to mimic black marble, but mostly ended up looking streaked and dingy. Little runners of carpet were arranged every eight to ten feet down the hall, their deep crimson pile breaking up the unrelieved black. The deep red of the area rugs was echoed by the trim around the doors—and there were a lot of doors. We were pretty much in a long, narrow hallway lined with them. It was as if we’d crossed from Club Heaven to Hotel Hell.

  The doors themselves were painted black, and each sported a silver number about three inches high. Like the fire door we just came through, they all seemed to be made of metal beneath the paint. There were windows alongside most of the doors, and it took me a moment to realize that these windows didn’t look out anywhere. Instead, they opened into the little rooms. All of them seemed outfitted with red velvet curtains—set up on the opposite side. In most cases these were closed, but a few of them stood open, revealing the rooms within.

  All it took was one peek through the red-curtained windows to figure what Club Heaven really was about. The only thing that surprised me was that not all of the little rooms were done up in black.

  Each was tricked out in the latest bondage equipment. A couple were even occupied. One seemed dark and empty until a sudden burst of fire dazzled my eyes. The lone, brilliant flash illuminated the figures of a shirtless man and a naked woman. The focal point of the fire, she threw her head back—laughing, not screaming—as the flames danced and then burnt out on her bare skin. The soundproofing here was impressive—I may as well have been watching a silent movie.

  “Don’t start,” Red Suit said automatically when he noticed me staring. He shot me an unhappy look before striding down the hall.

  “Start what?” I asked, jogging along after him.

  “One of your odious little tirades,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I know you don’t approve of the way my tribe does things, but we don’t care about your approval. The last of the Blood Wars is far behind us. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Uh…” I said, looking to a room on my right long enough to see a scene that involved a woman and needles. Lots and lots of needles. Considering the profusion of needles, there was very little blood. I had a momentary instinct to rush in and rescue her. There was no way she was a willing participant in that, was there? I clenched my fist tighter, trying to read her body language through something that didn’t involve psychic juju. She actually looked dreamy rather than distressed. Had they drugged her?

  Red Suit must have caught my expression as I hesitated at the door. He stopped and pointedly cleared his throat.

  “I’m not joking,” he warned, waggling a finger my way. “We leave our tribes behind when we deal, you and I. I’ve never judged you, brother.”

  Brother. That was the second time he’d called me that. The girl out front had mentioned family, but after the vision in the club, those words came with very mixed feelings.

  I tore myself away from the unnerving scene in the bondage suite and met Red Suit’s cerulean gaze. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Our tribes or our arrangement?” he inquired stiffly.

  “No, ‘brother’,” I said. I’d need answers on the other things, eventually, but for the moment I felt driven on the topic of family. “Do you mean that literally? Are we related?”

  Red Suit seemed flustered by the question. “You really don’t remember anything,” he marveled. After a moment he took off down the hall without offering a response.

  I lengthened my stride, easily pacing him. The hall split off and he turned abruptly to the left, barely looking where he was going. He had the air of someone who could navigate this rabbit warren blindfolded if it was necessary. Me, I wasn’t even sure I could find my way back to the main door, and we hadn’t gone that far.

  “Hey,” I called. I went so far as to grab his shoulder, hoping that the cloth of his suit would shield me from unwanted psychic input. He stopped long enough to shrug off my hand.

  “Don’t do that,” he said irritably.

  “Then talk to me,” I insisted. “I mean, you kind of look like me, now that I think about it, but who the hell dressed you growing up? I don’t think I’d be caught dead in a suit like that.”

  Red Suit pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your mouth never stops running, yet I’m always amazed at how little you say.”

  “Hey!” I objected.

  “Should I remind you now that you started it?”

  I scowled a bit, but didn’t answer him.

  “Besides,” he added, smoothing down the lapels of the obviously expensive jacket. “I’m rather fond of my suit. The things you wear…” he added with a dismissive gesture that seemed eloquently to condemn the whole of modern fashion, “That half hide of cow? T-shirts emblazoned with what you think are witty slogans? You look like a vagrant… or a scoundrel.”

  I glanced unhappily down at my water-stained leather, the thin T-shirt beneath, and the wrinkled, faded jeans. Considering the day I’d had, none of them were exactly clean, and yet I felt a need to defend them.

  “I like this jacket,” I objected, “and clothes like this stand up to a lot. How’d you think that fancy suit of yours would have managed a dip in Lake Erie?” I left out the wild escape through the cornfield and my most recent dash through the grimy back alleys of the Flats. Dodging cops was getting to be a theme.

  Red Suit flipped his hair. “Why on earth would you swim in Lake Erie at this time of year?” he inquired with disdain.

  “To get away from the cops, maybe,” I ventured. “There’s some kind of APB out for me. Do I look armed and dangerous to you?”

  An inscrutable expression tracked across his features.

  “Always,” he murmured.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  He pulled away from me, refusing to elaborate, no matter how I hounded him. I gave it up. We proceeded in silence for another couple of twists and turns through the dimly lit maze. Finally, he drew up in front of one of the black doors. This one had no number, and there was no voyeur-friendly window opening onto the room beyond. Red Suit laid a hand on my shoulder in a gesture that seemed cautionary, affectionate, and patronizing all at once.

  “Remember,” he said, pitching his voice low, “when you speak to Saliriel, don’t slip and use any male pronouns. She still hasn’t forgiven you for the last time you were here.”

  “Last time?” I asked.

  “You’re really not joking, are you?”

  “Why would I joke about something like this?” I cried.

  “A respectful tone will serve you better,” he suggested. At my look of outrage, he laid a quelling hand on my shoulder. Lowering his voice conspiratorially, he added, “And if y
ou recall nothing else my brother, know that I am your ally here.”

  “Mmmkay,” I responded skeptically. “So when do I start getting answers?”

  He withdrew his hand quickly. I didn’t miss the fact that for a moment he couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Whenever my Decimus Saliriel decides you deserve them.”

  10

  Saliriel, as it turned out, was the mother of all drag queens. At least, that’s how it looked to me. He—or she, rather—was conservatively six foot six, but stood significantly taller thanks to a pair of candy apple red platform heels that added at least another five inches to her towering, slender form. The heels had the effect of making her already long legs look like they went on for miles.

  Like Red Suit, she had porcelain-pale skin with nary a blemish. Her pallor was heightened by the fact that she wore almost exclusively white—white fishnets, a white vinyl mini, and a matching white halter with a red vinyl cross stretched between sizably enhanced breasts—hello nurse? Her wild mane of hair was a bright platinum blond with pink streaks and what looked like tinsel woven in, so that as the light caught it, lone strands here and there glittered in shiny metallic bursts.

  Her eyes were a green so pale they were almost yellow—not the green from the vision, I noted with irrational relief—and her bright blend of gold, silver, and white eye shadow only served to heighten the cat-like effect. Her full, pouting lips were painted a pale, opalescent pink that looked like it was looted from the inside of a conch shell.

  When Red Suit ushered me through the door, Saliriel utterly dominated the room. She had a force of personality that was palpable. It didn’t hurt that she stood towering over two collared slaves—a man and a woman, both naked—and their posture was that of total submission. The set of her shoulders, the angle at which she lifted her pointed little chin, bespoke an authority that brooked no resistance.

  The room wasn’t huge, but it seemed spacious because it was nearly empty of furniture. As with the rest of the club, floor, walls, and ceiling were black, but four blocky columns were painted the same dark red as the trim out in the hall. These stood two apiece on either side, creating a visual line that drew the eye to an elaborate throne of crushed red velvet. It stood on a raised dais against the far wall. There seemed to be another door tucked in the corner behind the throne, but aside from a few restraints on the walls, the rest of the space was bare.