I went over and took a closer look. According to the pink slip, it was an unauthorized vehicle and scheduled for towing. That figured, though I noted with interest that the slip recorded the date. Thursday—the day I turned up in the lake.
So I’d come to this marina willingly.
“Are you joining us or just standing there fondling your machine?” Saliriel called.
Grabbing the slip of paper, I pocketed it. It had a number to call in case the vehicle was impounded. If it really was my bike, I wanted to come back for it—assuming I survived the impending confrontation.
I was beginning to have my doubts about that. Lil, Remy, and I weren’t exactly an overwhelming force, and despite her reluctant cooperation, I had no reason to think that Saliriel would actually take our side if any fighting broke out—and there was bound to be fighting. Dorimiel wasn’t going to hand over the Eye simply because Sal asked nicely.
Lil and the others were halfway down one of the docks. I turned to catch up, then paused when I heard the lioness chuff unhappily. Without even thinking about it, I relaxed my eyes, letting my vision cross more fully to the Shadowside so I could see what was bugging her.
Across from me, the lioness paced back and forth, her massive paws falling soundlessly against the gravel of the parking lot. She shimmered warmly in the shadows, her amber eyes like two yellow lanterns in the night. Those lambent eyes anxiously searched the waters of the lake—and I thought I saw fear reflected in their depths. I followed her gaze toward the docks and the rest of our party.
I immediately wished I hadn’t.
The boats were insubstantial whispers of form floating upon a black sea. Only “sea” wasn’t the right word, because that would imply some kind of substance—albeit an ever-shifting one. This was a yawning, gaping void, roiling black-on-black as far as the eye could see.
This was what Sal had meant about security. A boat was hard enough to approach physically—but on the Shadowside, it would be nigh impossible.
Suddenly I realized I was trembling. There was a wind coming off the lake, deep-throated and chill, but I knew it wasn’t the wind that left me feeling too frozen to take a single step.
Fragmented dream images rose unbidden in my mind—a chasm of shadows and endless flight, my wings burning from effort and the darkness below seeking to suck me in. A hole in my mind, and teeming horrors echoing that fresh and painful void, all eager to consume what was left of me.
These weren’t nightmares. They were memories. I had thrown myself from the rail of a boat that floated even now somewhere in that formless, hungry sea, and flown desperately across the void.
“Are you coming, sibling?” Saliriel shouted impatiently. She might as well have been calling from the depths of a lightless well, inviting me to climb in.
With vision caught between the two halves of reality, I hesitated on the shore. My palms were sweating and my heart hammered so viciously in my chest that it made my ribs ache. The being from whom I’d fled—the one who had consumed my memory and bound my brothers—was still out there. Lailah was out there, too—and so was any hope for resolution.
If not victory, then at least vengeance.
“Zaquiel?” Remy called. Concern echoed in his voice.
So I put one foot in front of the other, and walked rigidly down the dock to Saliriel’s private yacht. The lioness remained on the shore, pacing.
I didn’t blame her one bit.
41
When we arrived at the slip, I had a vague feeling I’d seen the yacht before. Suddenly the message scribbled on the back of the business card made sense.
55 and Marginal—2
The marina was located at 55th and Marginal Road.
The yacht was shiny and new, or at least so well maintained that I couldn’t tell the difference. Saliriel called it a Cantius, and the name on the side proclaimed her the Daisy Fay. The Gatsby reference fit Sal like an opera glove. The vessel looked to be forty feet long, maybe a little more, and seemed built for speed. There was a wheel room up top that also had a small entertainment area. All the fittings were rich wood or brushed chrome, and everything looked sleek, modern, and expensive.
Ava, the bondage pet who doubled as a limo driver, seemed also to be in charge of the boat. Multi-talented. Already in the pilot house, she crisply called orders to the others—Asif and Gerald. Caleb hurried to join her. He helped with the mooring lines. No one bothered with life jackets.
Saliriel ushered us to a living space below, and while not exactly spacious, it was cozy in its way. The warm wood and brushed chrome themes repeated, with a beige leather wrap-around couch dominating the section. I spied a lavishly appointed double bed in the berth beyond. It felt more like a posh apartment, but I couldn’t shake my unnerving perception of the lake.
I also couldn’t stand in one place for very long.
“You’d best make yourselves comfortable,” Saliriel said with a negligent wave in our collective direction. “Ava has the coordinates, but it may take as much as an hour to meet up with the Scylla.”
“Seriously?” I said. “He named it the Scylla?”
Saliriel gave a haughty toss of her head. “Do you have a problem with that? He’s a decimus. He can name his ship anything he wants. Why don’t we ask the Lady of Beasts whether or not she still names all her cars after dead Sumerian heroes?”
Given the way Lil’s eyes bored a hole through the floor, it was a good bet that the answer was yes.
I let it drop.
In a surreal twist, Sal began playing hostess, stepping over to the bar and offering us all drinks. The forty-year-old Scotch she withdrew from a cabinet under the bar probably seemed a little young to her. I wondered if she’d purchased the original bottle herself. Hell, for all I knew, she owned the distillery.
The boat began to move, and my thoughts fixated on the hungering darkness that moved of its own volition beneath my feet. Remy saw my expression and shot me a worried look. Lil was too busy watching Saliriel—I think she expected the Nephilim to put poison in the drinks.
I tried picturing the closed mental fist, tried clenching my actual fist until my knuckles ached. Nothing stopped the flood of images roiling through my mind. Flying, then falling, then sinking—all in darkness, pursued by the guilt. The agonizing memories mingled with psychic impressions until I couldn’t separate one thing from another. Muttering excuses about feeling too warm, I stepped out onto the deck. At least there I could stare into the face of my fear.
Ava maneuvered the Cantius away from the marina, pointing us toward the black expanse of the lake. The sky was overcast, so not even the moon or the stars were visible to break up the monotony. Two lonely lights—one red, one green—marked the transition from the marina to the open waters. Beyond that, Erie was a light-drinking void stretched across the horizon.
Standing there, gripping the railing, I was sick with fear, but I couldn’t look away. Once she was away from the marina, the Daisy Fay picked up speed until we were fairly skipping along the choppy waters. Spray from the lake speckled my face—or maybe that was the cold sweat I’d been working on since setting foot on the vessel.
“You won’t be much help to anyone if you confront him like that.”
My whole body jerked when Lil walked up next to me.
“There you go, proving my point,” she added. “A little harder, and you’d go right over the railing.”
“Not funny,” I said through gritted teeth.
“None of this is funny,” she allowed. She turned and leaned her back against the railing. “We’re out-gunned and we’re out-numbered. Sal has Remy drinking and reminiscing about old times down there, so I don’t know if we’ll be able to count on him once we arrive. Predictable. He never stays mad at her for long,” she added bitterly. “And you—I know you cut some kind of deal with her. I felt the oath. That was the height of stupidity.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Of course it isn’t,” she said. The wind plucked
at her hair, whipping strands of it across her face. “What did she do, extort you for the Eye?”
“No,” I insisted. “All I promised was to keep—”
The words died in my throat. I gulped air and ran headlong into the power of the oath. Nothing had prepared me for this. When I tried speaking again, I got the same result. The message was right on the tip of my brain, but even the thoughts were slippery. A slow shiver of fear crept over me. Keeping my word wasn’t a matter of choice.
“You should have known better, Zaquiel,” she chided. “Words have power. Binding yourself to them can be crippling. Never swear anything lightly.”
“Little late for that,” I grumbled.
Lil shifted against the railing, lifting her face to the veiled sky. “So Sal knows about the Eye,” she observed coolly.
“I, uh…” I stammered, but found myself up against the mental roadblock. So I cleared my throat, and opted for a different approach. “That thing—when you kissed me—to keep it from Remy. From the French book.”
Lil pinched the bridge of her nose.
“I get it, Zack. You can stop. You sound like an idiot playing charades. Did you promise to give it to her?”
I didn’t answer.
“That’s something at least,” Lil replied, “but she swore you to secrecy.”
I still couldn’t respond, and smacked my palms against the railing in frustration.
“Answer enough,” Lil observed. She stepped closer, pitching her voice so I could barely hear it over the combined murmur of engine, wind, and waves. “If it’s there—if he really has it—drop it to the bottom of the fucking lake. That thing should have stayed buried,” she hissed. “And if you swore anything else to Sal, understand this—I am here for my sister, and I will kill anyone that gets in my way. You’re not exempt, Anakim.”
“Lil, we don’t know who else is on that boat,” I objected. “There could be other hostages—”
Lil cut me off with a curt gesture. “Everything on the Scylla needs to die, Zack,” she said bluntly. “I’m not leaving a decimus of the Nephilim with any anchors.” Her gray eyes went flat and cold. “Fuck Sal’s diplomacy. Dorimiel kidnapped my sister. I’m going to kill him, and if the bloodsucker’s going to pull his ever-living ass out of the fire, I want him to work for it. All the way across the water.”
“Killing innocents,” I said. “You don’t have a problem with that?”
The steel of her eyes found its way to her voice. “Nothing touched by the Nephilim remains innocent, Zack, and a week ago, you wouldn’t have argued that with me.”
We both fell silent, our thoughts as dark as the churning waters. Her jab at the person I used to be stung more than I cared to admit. I thought about the Eye and everything it had stolen from me.
“You think I could take it back?” I asked.
“You can’t take back an oath, Einstein. The person you swore to has to release you,” Lil responded.
I shook my head to show she didn’t understand. I faltered, trying to find a way around what I had sworn. Fear thrilled through me at how difficult a prospect that was.
“No—you know… take it the way it was taken from me. Get my life back.”
Lil’s eyes widened. Her face shifted rapidly through expressions—comprehension, shock, fury.
“Don’t you dare, Zack. Don’t even think about it,” she hissed. She raised a hand as if she intended to beat the thought out of me. I slapped it away angrily.
“Wouldn’t you do it if you were in my place?” I demanded.
“Hell no,” she growled. She balled her fists but kept them at her sides this time, muscles straining. “Don’t go that route, Zack. Some weapons cut both ways.” She turned abruptly and walked away, leaving me to brood in silence.
For a while all I could hear was the noise of the lake and the engine of the boat, punctuated by the roar of my own pulse thundering in my ears. Something empty throbbed over my heart—not with pain, but with absence.
42
“Is that a fucking gunboat?” I said as we headed toward a large metal hulk, floating low on the water. It had floodlights on sections both above and below the surface, and their combined luminescence made the ship appear unreal, like a mock-up on the set of a motion picture. Moisture in the night air reflected the ship’s lights, surrounding them with a kind of misty halo which only helped to reinforce the pervasive sense of unreality.
Ava must have heard me.
“Asheville class. Ideal for these waters. Environmental Protection Agency has a bunch out here, especially with all the algal blooms and problems with the zebra mussels.”
“To hell with the EPA,” I responded. “It’s a fucking gunboat!”
Saliriel came up from below as we made the approach. She peered at the distant vessel a moment. It was easily three times as long as the Daisy Fay.
“Always so dramatic.” She sighed.
I nearly cackled at the irony.
“What does one of the Nephilim need with a Vietnam-era gunboat?” Lil demanded.
Saliriel shrugged philosophically. “Unless he has some interest in declaring war on Canada, I suspect he simply wanted the space.”
Lil made a sour face and turned away.
Even I wasn’t sold. “Oh, come on, Sal,” I said.
“Size matters,” she said with a smirk.
Ava cut our speed, easing the Cantius up to the side of the Scylla. There was activity on the gunboat’s deck. I hovered at the railing, just staring across at the massive vessel. The sheer bulk of the ship kept my attention away from the dark, churning waters of the lake.
Saliriel stepped up to the wheel room with Ava and Caleb. She put Asif and Gerald to work making preparations for us to board the other vessel. Remy was still below. That left Lil with me.
“It’s a lot bigger than I was expecting,” she murmured.
“Still planning to kill everything?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I may need a distraction.”
“That’ll be easy,” I mused. “They’re not going to be happy to see me.”
One of the figures on the Scylla’s deck seemed significantly taller than the others, with a familiar lithe and spindly build. Nephilim. There were reasons history referred to us as giants. Of all the “family” I had thus encountered, I measured in as the short one at six foot three.
“Here, hold my purse,” Lil said suddenly. She didn’t wait for a response, just shoved it at me.
I blinked down at her, mystified.
“The hell?”
As I held it loosely in one hand, she started pulling things out of her little bag of holding, stashing them on her person. With quick and practiced efficiency, she tucked the Derringer into the back of her waistband and slipped a tactical knife into the top of her boot. When she bent to adjust her pants leg, I noticed she already had another knife tucked into the top of the other one.
“What are you, a freaking ninja?”
She eyed me skeptically. “I like to be prepared. Speaking of which, take one of these,” she added, digging into the pocket of her blazer and pulling out a tangle of charms. She unwound one from the mess. It was a bronze amulet stamped in the shape of a stylized sun.
I took it, and held it gingerly.
“Uh, thanks, I think,” I said. “What’s it do?”
“Kind of like a flash-bang. Snap the charm to activate it,” she instructed. “It’s just a one-shot. Face it away from you.” I frowned at the gaudy little pendant, turning it around in my hand. MADE IN CHINA was stamped on the back.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, but I shoved it in one of my pockets anyway.
Lil slipped another of the cheap little pendants around her neck. It appeared to be a pewter Mardi Gras mask. Purple, white, and green enamel glimmered brightly on its vaguely misshapen surface.
“Is that like the masking charm you threw on me the other night?” I asked.
“Something like that,” she replied, then proceeded to u
ntangle the remaining few charms, tucking each away in different pockets. She froze when Remy walked up to us, then quickly smoothed the lines of her suit jacket, managing to make it look like she was fussing with her clothes.
“I had no idea this was out here,” he said, nodding toward the ship.
“I wonder what else Saliriel hasn’t been telling you,” Lil said, sneering nastily. “By the way, did you enjoy the drinks?”
“No sense turning down good Scotch,” Remy replied defensively.
Lil muttered something unkind, which Remy chose to ignore.
“Unless Sal’s plan is a game-changer, we’re pretty well screwed,” I said, gesturing toward the Scylla. “That’s not a boat—it’s a floating fortress.”
The expression in Remy’s unearthly blue eyes grew pensive as he studied the stark metal lines of the other vessel. He turned to Lil.
“Can you sense her?”
“What?” she asked sourly.
“Your sister,” he persisted. “We should be close enough. Can you sense her?”
Lil’s frown deepened as she peered over to the deck of the gunboat.
“No,” she said, adding quickly, “it’s hard to pick up on anything with all this water.”
Remy made a thoughtful sound. More suspicious than ever, Lil twisted to make a study of him. Hurt and anger quarreled on her features.
“Sal fed you more bullshit than whiskey.” It wasn’t a question.
Remy didn’t seek to deny it, I noted. Rigidly, they faced off with one another, Lil glowering and Remy bearing her challenge passively. Tension knit on the air between them until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What’s it mean if you can’t sense her?” I asked.
Before Lil could respond, Remy said, “It might mean she’s not here.”
Lil shot him a withering look.
“What about dead?” I asked bluntly.
To my surprise, Lil just shook her head irritably. “No, dead would be easy. Once her spirit slipped free, she’d come to me on the Shadowside. It’s the silence that’s had me worried this whole time.”
Conspiracy of Angels Page 23
