Conspiracy of Angels

by Michelle Belanger

  “What?” she asked.

  “A pen. I need one. Do you carry pens in your purse or is it just for your little peashooter?”

  She shot me an unhappy look, but grabbed her clutch-purse and began to dig through its contents. Cigarettes, a lighter, a tube of lipstick, and a compact all appeared on the table in front of her, followed swiftly by a tin of breath mints and another pair of nitrile gloves.

  “You didn’t tell me you were carrying around a portable hole,” I commented as a tube of mascara and yet another compact emerged from the purse. “Does that thing have a bottom?”

  “Here’s your pen,” she said curtly. As soon as she handed it off to me, she focused on the collection of make-up and personal effects spread out on her side of the table. One by one, the items disappeared back into the little purse. It was like watching a magic trick in reverse. Had a live dove suddenly fluttered from the purse’s depths, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “It’s a TARDIS,” I muttered. “That explains everything.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she grumbled. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

  I barely acknowledged her. Now that I had a clean workspace, I carefully unrolled the sheet of antique vellum. There was a scent and feel to the page that stirred memories deep in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t waste time with them. Instead, I spread the sheet out and began studying the three rings of numbers added to the design. On a corner of the place mat, I began arranging the numbers in a couple of different orders to see what patterns might emerge.

  The more I worked, the more frustrated I got.

  There were too many to be a lock combination or a routing number. Latitude and longitude didn’t fit. I tried adding them a couple of different ways, but that netted me nothing but more numbers, none of which seemed significant. I even checked to see if they were part of a Fibonacci sequence, marveling that I even remembered what the hell that was.

  Somewhere in the midst of all my mad calculations, Lil came back from the ladies’ room. She took her seat across from me, waved the waitress over for a refill on both our coffees, and watched in silence as I worked.

  “I need something to do instead of just sitting here,” she complained.

  I glanced up from the page, rolling my neck until it popped. “You could look up the book you threw at me. You have a smartphone.”

  “I don’t know French,” she replied with a grimace.

  “I probably do.” I dredged the book from the backpack. It had an old leather cover with damage on the spine. The author and title were stamped in worn gold leaf. “Le Pillage de l’Egypte par Napoléon,” I read, then translated for her, “Napoleon’s Plunder of Egypt.” I flipped to the title page. “The author is Henri Charles de Garmeaux. Published 1809. It’s number 15 of 100 copies. Shit. They jacked up a super-rare book. I hope they had a good reason,” I said with a frown. I set the book on the table between us, nudging it over to Lil. “It’s a long shot, but maybe it’s in some digital collection you can run a search engine through. Just see what we’re missing between pages 197 and 202.”

  “Sure… whatever,” she grumbled, then half-heartedly tapped the information into her browser.

  I bent back over the cipher, but the puzzling strings of numbers still didn’t fit anything that made sense. Stretching in the booth, I tried a different vantage point, turning the manuscript page first sideways then upside down. I stopped short of folding the antique vellum to see if there was some physical key to the code.

  “No luck?” Lil wondered.

  “It’s right in front of me. I just need to get my brain in gear.”

  “Well, I’m not finding shit,” she said, shifting around in her seat to tuck her legs under herself. Taking small, careful sips from her steaming coffee, she looked out across the crowded restaurant, eyes gliding vigilantly from one patron to the next.

  “I’ll take a look when I’m done,” I said, and I went back over the Latin of the diagram, hoping the key was in the original text. “Prim ternari ordo,” I read, “The first order: Seraphin, Cherubi, Throni. Ugh,” I added with a grimace. “It’s all names of the orders of angels, but it’s in that mangled Church Latin. It should be Seraphim and Cherubim. Thrones should be Ophanim. The original words are Hebrew, after all.”

  Lil rolled her eyes, muttering, “Thank you, Captain Wikipedia.”

  I didn’t really hear her. It finally hit me. I hunched back over the page, jotting letters and numbers with feverish intensity.

  “Got something?” she inquired, lazing halfway across the booth on her side.

  “Hebrew,” I said excitedly. “In Hebrew, every letter is a number. All these numbers. They’re really letters. I just need to switch them to their Hebrew counterparts then back to English to see what they say.”

  “Sure. You do that. How long?”

  “Give me a few minutes. Hebrew’s basically solid consonants. I just hope I was using the Hebrew to disguise something in English, otherwise this is really going to suck. Could you look up angels in Lake View?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  I frowned at her.

  “Do you have any idea how many angels are in that cemetery?” she demanded. “I’d have more luck tying a leash around your neck and letting you run through it like a bloodhound.”

  “Oh, hell no,” I responded.

  She smirked nastily, as if enjoying the image she had conjured. “If you don’t crack that cipher, it’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  After about ten minutes of transcription, I had a set of three phrases—one for each of the diagram’s rings. Even so, I wasn’t sure if they helped me or not. They read like telegrams from the Twilight Zone.

  Anakesiel and lieutenants bound.

  Neferkariel’s eye in Dorimiel’s hand.

  Gandhi guards my brothers.

  I double-checked my number–letter substitutions, wondering if I’d gotten everything right. Then I looked up at Lil.

  “Anakesiel. Neferkariel. Dorimiel—those have to be names, right?”

  She reacted so violently, she nearly upended her coffee. As it was, some of the steaming fluid splashed from her cup, landing perilously close to the antique page. With that quicker-than-human speed, I jerked the precious piece of vellum out of harm’s way. My dubious ally practically stood up on her seat in her effort to slam her hand down over the piece of scratch paper where I’d written the names.

  “Have you gone crazy?” she demanded. From the expression on her face, I was tempted to ask the same of her, but for the moment, I was too stunned to speak. I just sat there, protectively holding up the sheet of the Celestial Hierarchy.

  “You almost got coffee on it.”

  She stared at me as if I had grown a second head, and that head was reciting Esperanto love sonnets about goats. She fisted her hand around the scratch sheet, crumpling it as she pulled it away from me.

  “Hey! That’s important work you’re destroying.”

  “What were you thinking, intoning those names?” she growled.

  “What is this, fucking Beetlejuice?” I responded.

  “You make endless pop culture references no one else understands,” she complained. “Why can’t you remember anything useful? Names have power. You can use them to summon, banish, and bind. You don’t speak names like that lightly.”

  The waitress chose that moment to come over, ostensibly to refresh our coffees, but most likely to make it clear she was keeping an eye on us. She looked rather pointedly at the check on the table. Neither Lil nor myself had put down any cash. We both clammed up and I hoped desperately the waitress hadn’t caught last night’s news. As soon as she walked away, I gave Lil a sour look.

  “You think I’m stupid?” I growled. “Fine. Explain it to me.”

  She folded the scratch sheet over and over with sharp, meticulous gestures, and dropped her voice nearly to a hiss. “Those are names of the primae. At least two of them—leaders of the Nephilim
and the Anakim. Dorimiel is four syllables, so he has to be a decimus.”

  “Four syllables is a decimus?” I wondered. “Like Saliriel? Why four?”

  “I don’t fucking know. That’s just how it works. With you guys, your name is your power. Each syllable is like a spell. Speaking the name, even writing it, calls a little of the power up.”

  “So you’re afraid they’re going to hear me?” I scoffed.

  She clenched the tightly folded paper against her palm. “Let’s just say I’ve learned to be cautious.”

  “So, the Anakim primus—if it says he’s bound—”

  “It says he’s what?” she squawked, hurriedly unfolding the repurposed place mat and smoothing it out on the table before her. Her glinting gray eyes flew over my scribbled transliterations. Her olive skin grew waxy. “Are you sure you got this right?” she demanded.

  “If the names are right, then the rest is right,” I said. “Not that it makes much sense. I mean, eyes in hands? Isn’t that a little Pan’s Labyrinth? And Gandhi? Don’t tell me he’s still running around. Maybe I was delirious when I wrote it.”

  “If you wrote your code in code, I’m going to kick you,” she promised.

  I held my hands up helplessly. Lil scowled and picked at the crumpled edge of the paper.

  “The first line seems clear enough. If someone managed to bind the Anakim primus and his lieutenants, then it’s war,” she said, adding, “If you dragged Lailah into another fucking war, I am never going to forgive you.”

  “Another one?” I asked. “How many have there been?”

  “Someone’s counting?” she demanded. With an exasperated snarl, she explained, “It’s all you people do. One tribe goes after another tribe because they don’t like the way they’re doing things. They bloody the other guys’ noses, so of course, vengeance must be had. You know what a war among immortals amounts to? It’s a glorified circle-jerk. I kill you, you come back and kill me—we go round and round. It accomplishes exactly squat.” By the time she finished, she was practically spitting out the words.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but she was really on a tear, color rising to her cheeks. A couple of the college students glanced curiously our way.

  “Your tribe’s the worst of all,” she continued. “You think you’re the fucking purity police—like you’ve got a right to judge anything that isn’t mortal. I don’t know how many times you’ve passed ‘judgment’ on the Voluptuous Ones.” She said it sneeringly, and actually used air quotes. “What you should be doing is your job—patrolling the boundaries, but no. It’s just crusade after crusade.”

  An angry tirade rose to the back of my throat. I wanted to bellow that she was wrong, that we had a right and a purpose for our actions. The words “sacred duty” blazoned in my mind. Snippets of the vision from Club Heaven rose unbidden in memory, and I was back in the temple filled with writhing, naked revelers, hunting the fanged priesthood at the heart of it all.

  And there was an end to war. I got a little more of the memory. Killing him wasn’t the last thing we did. There was some kind of prison sentence connected with those letters scribed upon his skin. That little bone stylus had been the key. My pulse sped with the force of the recollection, but it cut off, leaving my hands to throb with the memory of heavy bronze blades.

  This wasn’t getting us any closer to saving Lailah. I closed my eyes, trying to shove the thoughts and their attendant emotions aside.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Lil chided. “Think about it for once. You’re no better than the rest of us, flyboy.”

  Lil’s features locked in a grim smirk. She was baiting me—and enjoying it. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Half-glimpsed memories continued roiling just beneath the surface of my conscious mind, stirring turbulent emotions. My hands were shaking. I balled my fists until the only thing I could feel was the ache of nails digging into my palms. If I stopped, a tidal surge of fury would sweep away all reason.

  “We’re done discussing this,” I muttered. I swiftly rolled the manuscript page, grabbed my backpack, and escaped to the rear of the restaurant.

  20

  It probably wasn’t the most mature way of ducking out of the argument, but I locked myself in the bathroom. Egg Hedz’s men’s room was a single person affair, which suited me perfectly. I dropped the backpack onto the floor, then leaned over the sink, splashing water on my face. I could almost see the memories stirring in the depths of my pale eyes—a shapeless march of phantom images bereft of sense but blazing with emotion. My pulse raced as my adrenaline rose—immediately answered by a twinge over my heart. It didn’t hurt exactly.

  It just felt… empty.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The pain—or non-pain, really—came again, stealing my breath. I slipped out of my leather, hanging it up on the hook. Then I stood in front of the mirror and hiked up my T-shirt until I could get a good look.

  Five neat, oblong-bruises shone darkly against my pale chest. I hadn’t noticed them earlier. They were spaced in a curious arc across my sternum. The rich purpling under the skin suggested recent bruising. The chest hair was missing over each of them—not burned away, but simply absent.

  The shape and the pattern of these five bruises—four spaced out from one another in a loose arc and one a little further down—left me feeling unsettled. As I ran my fingers over them, pressing for tender areas, I realized why. I laid the tip of my right index finger over the first of the four top marks. It fit almost perfectly. With a little contorting on my part, I managed to twist my arm around so I could match all five marks up to the splayed fingers of my right hand, plus my thumb. Though I had a wide span with my fingers, I had to stretch a little to match the pattern on my chest. The hand that left these marks was a little larger than my own, then—a fact which was impressive by itself.

  I stared at the mirror for several long moments, trying to work out both why and how someone would leave bruises over my heart with the tips of their fingers. Considering some of the wild things I’d witnessed over the course of the night, the idea of someone marking me didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility, but it did make me wonder.

  What else had been done?

  Maybe there was more to see and I just wasn’t looking with the right eyes.

  “Clenched fist,” I murmured to myself, recalling Remy’s rushed lesson. I held out one hand, matching motion with intention. Only this time, I slowly uncurled that force of psychic perception.

  It was awkward, trying to do it in the mirror. My irritating monkey brain offered up at least half a dozen reasons for why I probably wasn’t going to see anything at all. I closed my eyes, willing myself to relax and “just do,” as Remy had counseled.

  When I looked back to the mirror, nothing had changed, but my gaze was drawn to the stupid little half-mask dangling from its cord just below my throat. Frustrated, I reached up and yanked the charm off, stuffing it in the pocket of my jeans. Lil could squawk over it later. Right now I didn’t need masks or amulets or whatever, interfering with what I wanted to see. Still holding my shirt up awkwardly above the bruises, I looked back to my reflection in the mirror.

  The first thing I noticed was the wings.

  They arced up and out behind me, the ghostly outline of them glowing with pale filaments of energy. The color was blue-white, just like the power I had wielded against the shadow-rider in combat at the club. That had been bright, almost blinding. The wings, however, were a softer, steadier glow. They didn’t look feathered exactly, but they weren’t leathery bat wings either. They had their own unique shape and form, like nothing I’d seen in nature. There was visible structure and musculature, all of it rimmed with—or completely comprised of—light.

  If I’d had any doubt left, this settled it.

  Angels.

  I flexed muscles that weren’t strictly physical and watched the wings shift in response. Once I got past the impossibility of it, I thrilled with exultation. I had fucking wings.

&nbs
p; How cool is that?

  I couldn’t help playing. I stretched and flexed them, watching as they spread out behind me—to the point where they intersected with and extended through the bathroom walls. That was a weird sensation, and it was even stranger to see. Then I tried to think of the cowl Remy had described, tucking them tight against my back and imagining a shimmering veil of energy settling over them. Not shimmering, though, I reminded myself.

  Lackluster.

  Unremarkable.

  A non-color that perceptions should skitter past. As I tried to envision this, the only thing that came to mind was a Romulan cloaking device. I chuckled at the insanity of it, then decided to roll with it, and watched my image ripple slightly—then the wings were gone. Or almost gone. I could just barely make out a hint of the energetic structures tucked tight against me. It felt cramped somehow, and a little stifling, but I could live with it.

  So much for needing Lil’s little mask.

  Given her tirade about my people earlier, I didn’t think I wanted to be wearing anything she made for me anyway. She might have answers, but there was going to be a price every step of the way.

  With that thought, I turned my attention to the bruising on my chest—and was almost violently sick in the bathroom sink. Looking at them with my altered perception, the marks didn’t look so much like bruises as they did ragged holes in my skin. Like patches of pure void, they bored to the core of me. I jerked my hand away on instinct, afraid that if I touched them now, my fingers would sink endlessly into their depths. That would completely unhinge me.

  I looked away.

  Then I pulled the shirt back down, tucking it in hurriedly. For several moments, I stood there, feeling sick and scared. My instincts clamored that the marks were tied to my loss of memory. Even as I thought it, a recollected flash galvanized me—a green-eyed figure lifting a hideous, shadow-wreathed hand. Searing pain. Dark water. Falling.