Finally, when I couldn't take it anymore, I gave in to my trembling muscles. I sank to the ground and rested my head against his knee. His hand found my hair, stroking it gently this time. The couch made for an uncomfortable respite, so we retired to my bedroom and collapsed onto the bed.
Sighing, Dante lay back against the covers and half-pulled the sheet over him. I hadn't taken up much energy from him, but he still wore the exhausted, blissfully lethargic look of so many men after sex. I didn't feel particularly wiped out, and upon realizing I'd left my cigarettes in the other room, I promptly climbed out of bed to retrieve them.
"I almost believed it this time," he said when I reached the doorway.
"Hmm?" I asked, pausing and glancing back.
"That you were into it," he explained. "I almost believed you were."
I narrowed my eyes. "Are you accusing me of faking?"
"No, you never fake. But that doesn't mean you're always into it either. Sometimes I get the feeling you sleep with me simply because you've got nothing else better to do."
"That's not true," I said. "There are plenty of guys better than you."
He crooked me a smile. "But none who are as convenient or who can provide the illusion of a regular partner and bed warmer."
"Man, you sure do know how to ruin the afterglow."
"Nah, I'm just being realistic, that's all. I don't mind you using me." His joking aside, I could see the underlying affection. Bitter and cynical he might be, but the look he gave me was filled with sincere caring.
I rolled my eyes. "I'm not using you." But as I walked off to the living room, I wasn't sure if I believed that myself.
CHAPTER 7
"More Timbits?"
I shook my head for the third time. If I'd learned anything about the Satanists-excuse me, the Army of Darkness-in my breakfast meeting with them two days later, it was that they really liked donuts. A lot. They kept trying to force food on me and seemed particularly fond of the aforementioned Timbits, which were like donut holes except with a cuter name.
"No thanks."
After the donuts, a large part of the meeting focused on me. They all wanted to know who I was, where I'd come from, how my own group operated, etc. I spun lies out as fast as I could, rapidly building up a backstory for my Seattle Satanist group. The Army listened eagerly, and I hoped I'd be able to remember everything I was saying if quizzed afterward.
"You'll just have to come visit us sometime," I said, hoping to allay the questions. "That's the only way you'll really understand. For now, I mean, Kristin wanted me to come here to talk about you guys."
The mention of Kristin sobered them up. Evan nodded. "Georgina thinks we maybe need to expand our activities."
There were six total gathered here, the truly "active" members. They ranged from 20s to 40s in age, and like Evan, they had that same sort of pleasant demeanor that was more suited to helping you pick out a DVD player or lawn mower than sacrifice a goat. Maybe it was just a Canadian thing. One of the members, a tiny blond college student named Allison, frowned. "But why? We're already doing what the Angel wants."
They all looked at me, and I saw conflict on their faces. I'd slept with a man far more moral than Dante last night and was in the full throes of succubus charisma. I could tell it affected them. It was part of why they were so intrigued by me, and it would give me leverage here. Yet, I also realized, no matter how powerful they thought Kristin was and no matter how much they respected her endorsement of me, I was still an outsider and not necessarily to be trusted, appealing or not. Again, I marveled at the strength of their conviction.
"Well, I don't want you guys to stop…" That was, of course, exactly what I wanted. "But most of what you're doing is scaring people." That wasn't exactly true, but how else could I describe it? "It seems like now that you've established yourselves, you should use that strength to start influencing people toward the Angel's will. Surely you'll best do his- her bidding by actually leading people into darkness." I made eye contact with each person as I spoke, smiling and putting as much coaxing charm as I could into my voice.
A guy with a shaved head, whose name I'd forgotten, popped a chocolate glazed Timbit into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "That makes sense."
Allison didn't agree. "If that's what the Angel wanted us to do, we would know. Right now, we need to keep doing just as we have. We are getting strong, and we need to make sure that strength doesn't wane in the face of our enemies."
I forced myself to keep smiling. These people didn't understand anything, let alone their so-called enemies. I turned toward Evan and looked at him through lowered lashes. "Why settle for one goal, though? Evan, I thought you of all people really wanted to make this group great. I thought you wanted to bring more souls to the Angel's side."
"That's what we're already doing," argued Allison. She didn't seem to like me using the come-hither eyes on Evan. For his part, Evan didn't like being caught between us. He started to stammer out something but was interrupted by the shaved-head guy.
"How?" he asked Allison.
She frowned. "What do you mean, Blake? How what?"
"How are we bringing more souls to the Angel's side?"
"By striking out at those who deny her greatness."
"Yeah…" Blake frowned and finished eating another Timbit. "But I don't think doing that is bringing more souls to our side."
"Are you questioning what we've done?"
"No, I stand by it all. It's just…" Blake shrugged. "It seems like the things we're doing aren't really swaying souls toward the Angel. If anything, it's just making them take a harder stand against us." Finally! Finally someone got it. I could have kissed Blake. Maybe I would later. "I mean, I'm not really sure the Zamboni plan is really going to darken souls. It'll just make people want to defend themselves against us. Maybe it's time to do the Angel's will through more subtle means."
"Yes," I cried. "That's exactly what I-Zamboni?"
With much enthusiasm, they explained an idea they'd come up with to spray-paint a Zamboni with Satanic messages right before it came out on the ice during a hockey game. Still keeping that idiotic smile on my face, I said in a level voice, "I think maybe you should reconsider that."
Debate went on for the next hour or so. I was a bit dismayed that I hadn't swayed them all to my point of view immediately, but I'd sent enough ripples through them to make a difference. No matter what they claimed, none of them were really sure what exactly the Angel did want, of course, and while some were comfortable in their rut, others were starting to grasp my logic. I took it as a great sign of victory that when we finally got up to go, they'd decided against taking any action-say, like, the Zamboni plan-until they'd met again.
As we walked out of the restaurant, I caught up with Blake. I'd decided Evan was a lost cause. Blake seemed to be the smartest of the group, and I thought it might be time for a leadership change. With a little help, it wouldn't take much to topple Evan.
"Hey," I said, beaming at Blake. "I really liked what you had to say. Are you busy right now? Maybe we could talk some more."
He smiled back at me, genuinely interested. I probably wouldn't have even needed any succubus glamour to convince him. "I wish I could…but I have to go to work. Are you free later tonight? Like after dinner?"
"Sure." We swapped numbers, and as we were about to part, I asked in a low voice, "You don't think they'll do something anyway, do you? Despite what they said about…you know, putting the Zamboni plan on hold?"
His grin broadened. "No, they won't do the Zamboni plan. I'm sure of it."
"How?"
"Because they're out of spray paint."
"So they'll get more."
He shook his head. "Not without me. I'm their supplier. I work at Home Depot."
I again found myself with time to kill in Vancouver. It was a beautiful day, and the temperature was unseasonably warm for April. So, I went and walked along the waterfront. The water seemed bluer than our own Puget Soun
d back in Seattle, but maybe that was just because the weather tended to be sunnier here. I wandered through Stanley Park afterward and then finally meandered back to my hotel. As I did, I again passed one of the T-shirt shops. They'd changed their display and now showed a shirt with a U.S. map on it that read: Dear Canada, Please Invade .
Back in my room, I booted up my laptop to check my e-mail. There were a few from the bookstore's mailing list that I ignored, as well as the usual spam. Along with those messages, I had one from greygoose. com's mailing list, a picture of a cat with some nonsensical caption that Cody had forwarded me, and a letter from Maddie.
It was a mass e-mail she'd sent out this morning. It read: Hey, guys! I decided to start a blog. Check it out. A link followed. Even though every instinct told me not to, I clicked it.
Should have listened to those instincts.
Pictures of her and Seth bombarded me. They'd gone to the Seattle Aquarium last night and taken assorted photos posing by puffins, squids, and other sea creatures. Worse, Seth's nieces were with them. That nearly killed me. Seth had five adorable blond nieces, ranging from four to fourteen. I loved them to pieces, and breaking up with him had been like breaking up with them too. The girls all looked reasonably happy, and I wondered if they even remembered me. Well, of course they did. It hadn't been that long. But I knew I'd keep fading from their minds until eventually, I was just some vague memory of their uncle's ex.
I shut down the laptop and decided to head down to the hotel's bar.
It wasn't quite dinnertime, so the place was fairly deserted. I took a seat at the bar near the television and promptly made friends with the bartender. Three gimlets later, I'd also made friends with an older couple visiting from San Francisco and some businessmen in town from Winnipeg. We were laughing about a recent movie when the TV suddenly changed from a curling match to static. The bartender pushed buttons on the remote ineffectually.
"What's going on?" he demanded.
A few moments later, the picture returned, but this time it was on a different channel, one showing a local news program. My smile faded, and my stomach sank.
"No," I breathed.
The camera crew was reporting from Queen Elizabeth Park, another gorgeous area in the city that I'd briefly considered going to after Stanley Park. I wondered if I might have seen this atrocity and been able to stop it if I had visited.
The Army of Darkness had staged a demonstration there late that afternoon. I counted about ten of them, so they must have recruited some of their auxiliary members. They were clothed in robes and hoods made out of cheap black and purple velvet, but I recognized two figures that looked suspiciously like Evan and Allison. Some of them held signs with pentagrams and assorted "evil" slogans while they walked around chanting something I couldn't make out. One of them had stuck a pole in the ground with a giant rubber goat mask on top of it. The mask wasn't affixed very well and kind of hung off to the side, making it look more like a mutant goat than an emblem of Hell. The footage showed a crowd gathered around and, later, police coming to break everything up.
I quickly charged the drinks to my room and sprinted off, pulling out my cell phone as I did.
"Blake? This is Georgina."
He groaned. "I know, I know. I just found out."
"What the hell happened? They said they weren't going to do anything. You said they weren't going to do anything."
"I didn't think they would!" He sounded sincerely upset. "I was at work until about a half-hour ago. I had no idea-honest. They did it on their own. I guess a bunch of them got arrested. Evan, Joy, and Crystal made it out, though."
I sighed and canceled our plans for tonight. I had to do damage control before Cedric or one of his associates came after me-and I knew for a fact they would.
I drove over to Evan's house. He answered the door, still wearing the robe but not the hood. His face was radiant and excited. "Georgina! Did you see the news? Did you see what we did?"
"Yes!" I pushed him back inside, closing the door behind me before any of the neighbors could see him. "What happened? You said you wouldn't do anything else until we met again! What happened to influencing people for the greater goo-evil?"
He finally caught on that I didn't share his excitement. "You don't think we influenced people?"
"I think you influenced some people to think you were freaks. A bunch of churches are probably going to have sermons tomorrow about staying pure and true or something like that."
Evan flounced onto his couch, speculative but still glowing with the rush of their stunt. "No, this was powerful. Its effects will be far reaching."
Far reaching enough to get me smote, no doubt. "What happened? What made you decide to do it? Had you been planning it all along?"
"No. It was just decided-a couple of hours after we met."
"But why?" I asked, frustrated.
"Because the Angel told us to."
"But you said you wouldn't!"
He looked at me like I was crazy. "But the Angel told us to. We had to obey her."
I started to argue the idiocy of that and then paused to reconsider something I hadn't given credence to before. "Are you saying the Angel actually spoke to you?"
"Yes, of course. How else would we know what she wants?"
An uneasy feeling came over me. This whole time, when they'd spoken of doing what the Angel "wanted," I'd assumed it was in the way so many religious zealots presumed they understood their deity's desires. Those who said their deity spoke to them were usually crazy.
"Does she, like, speak to you in dreams?"
"No," he said. "She appeared to me. Right here. Well, over there, actually. By the TV."
"The Angel appears to you," I said flatly. "In the flesh. Shows up and tells you what to do?"
"Of course. How else do you think we'd know?"
That uneasy feeling increased. "What does she look like?"
Evan sighed, a dreamy expression filling his features. "Oh, Georgina. She's beautiful. So beautiful. She glows-she's almost hard to look at. Her hair-it's like a cloak of gold, and her eyes…" He sighed again. "I can't describe them. Like all the colors in the rainbow."
My phone rang just then, interrupting his similes. I didn't recognize the number, but it was a Vancouver area code. "Hello?"
It was Cedric. "If you are not in my office in ten minutes," he said. "I will come and bring you here. And you won't like it."
I shoved my phone into my purse and stood up. "Evan, I've gotta run. Look, if the Angel talks to you again, can you give me a heads up next time?"
He turned hesitant. "Um, maybe."
I paused at the door. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you see…Don't take this the wrong way, but she told us not to tell you. She said to keep this to the inner circle. Probably she just needs to get to know you better."
That sent my mind reeling, but Cedric's words had a greater impact at the moment. I had no time to argue against an entity that might or might not be real. "We'll talk about this later."
I sped over to the Financial District, not bothering to count the minutes for fear of what I'd find. Nothing happened to me by the time I reached Cedric's office, so I assumed I'd made it. Kristin wasn't in the reception area, but his door was open.
"Get in here," Cedric barked.
My heart pounding, I walked into his office.
His face was filled with rage, and if I'd had any thoughts that his mild manner made him seem undemonlike, that idea was immediately banished. He clenched his fists as he glared at me, and I thanked whatever luck I had that he had remained sitting and didn't throw me across the room. Meekly, I slid into my usual chair.
"What are you doing?" he demanded. "Or rather, what aren't you doing?" He pointed to his computer screen. It didn't have Wikipedia on it for a change. Instead, it showed pictures of the demonstration for a local paper's website. "You were supposed to stop this kind of thing! Did Jerome send you here to sabotage me and spy?"
"No! They did this without telling me. I'd actually convinced them this morning not to do this other thing with a Zamboni, and then they went behind my back because their Angel of Darkness allegedly spoke to them."
As quickly as I could, I recapped the day's events and conversation. When I finished, his glower hadn't changed. He still clearly didn't believe me.
"Jerome said you were good, but I had no idea you were this good. You manipulated this group right under my nose."
"No," I repeated. "I'll swear to you by whatever you want. I tried to stop them."
He continued as though I hadn't spoken. "I am going to get shit for this from everyone. Our own people are going to come down on me-in addition to making me a laughingstock. And eventually, the other side is going to raise an eyebrow too. They don't like this kind of overt attack."
The other side. Heaven. The angels.
Angels…
"Who's your counterpart here?" I asked. "Among the angels. There must be an archangel here too, right?"
The question caught him off-guard enough that his pissed-off look momentarily lifted. "Of course. Her name's Isabelle. Why?"
"Well…Evan and the others keep saying they're directed by an angel. All this time you thought they were just worshipping some all-purpose Satanic ideal. But what if a real angel is controlling them? I mean, Jerome's given up the fight with you. If anyone had reason to give you shit, it wouldn't be our side. It'd be theirs."
Cedric was silent for several moments. "This isn't their style. It's not Isabelle's either. I've known her for a long time." When greater immortals said "a long time," they usually weren't kidding.
"Is she blond?"
"Yes, but that doesn't mean anything. We can look like anything we want. Someone appearing to this group-and I don't think anyone is-could easily make themselves blond or bald or whatever. I think you're trying to shift the blame off yourself and Jerome."
"I'm not! Look, I don't want to get mired in any of this. I just want to finish my job and go home. And if you ask me, I think someone's trying to work you over and send you looking in the wrong places." Good Lord. I sounded like everyone else now. Soon I'd be telling him he was "getting played."
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