by Jenn Stark
“Will do.” Maria turned on her heel. Just freaking great.
The city of Las Vegas in December glittered even more than it usually did, the desperate flash and sizzle of the Christmas holidays turning the garish neon lights into violently shifting shades of red and green. It wasn’t bad during the day, but at night, it was madness.
Warrick stood in front of one of the older casinos on the Strip, a slightly tired-looking Treasure Island. He wasn’t there for the gambling, though. He wasn’t even there for the casino but for what stretched above it. A phantom white tower most humans couldn’t see, at least those who didn’t possess any psychic skills.
When he and the rest of his team had forced their way back to this plane the previous summer, on the back of one of the strongest living human psychics on Earth, they hadn’t known what to expect. It certainly hadn’t been the glitter ball of a city that Vegas had provided, though Warrick and the Syx had holed up on the Strip easily enough. The psychic who’d sprung them wasn’t the only sorcerer in town, it turned out. There was also the man who’d sent her into the Syx’s bolt-hole beyond the veil, Viktor Dal—also known in this plane as the Emperor.
Not any ordinary emperor either. No, this guy was part of a council of sorcerers whose magic was tied to the metaphysical power of the Tarot. So when Viktor said he was the Emperor, he meant the Major Arcana Emperor, with all that card’s attendant skills: charisma, dominance, brute force. Over the millennia, there’d been as many as a dozen members of the Arcana Council, each of them tied to a Major Arcana card. They represented the most powerful sorcerers on Earth. When they worked together, some whispered, they were more powerful than the gods.
Warrick snorted, thinking about that. The gods, maybe. But not his God.
Still, that didn’t mean that these sorcerers weren’t trouble, and the Syx knew the Emperor well. Knew him and had been screwed over by him already once in the past century. That wasn’t going to happen a second time.
Given his highly inflated opinion of himself, the Emperor had fully expected to keep the Syx under his thumb during their stay in Vegas, at least until he could figure out how to double-cross them again. But Warrick had bigger problems than Viktor Dal, now. Yes, he and his team were back, temporarily freed from their prison to walk the earth anew. But as he was quickly learning, on this plane, there were still two entities he needed to worry about—both of them members of the Council, both of them heavy hitters of the Tarot. Both of them powerful enough to stuff him and the Syx back beyond the veil with the barest twitch of their fingers.
Death and the Hierophant.
This incarnation of Death, a former druid priestess, had served on the Arcana Council for two thousand years. She’d mostly left the Syx alone, though by rights, in her role as Death she could command them to hunt demons at will. The Hierophant, however, had been around longer…a lot longer. And his connection to the demon horde was most definitely personal. So, with the recent release of so many more demons into the back alleys and dark corners of the planet, Warrick had known the Hierophant would come calling soon enough.
And now it was apparently time.
Warrick twisted his lips into a sneer. Hierophant. Why the archangel Michael, God’s most favored warrior, had bothered to join the largely human construct of the Arcana Council, Warrick had no idea, but damned if he hadn’t served in that capacity for thousands of years now. The archangel had taken on the role of Hierophant of the Arcana Council at the breaking of the world, when Atlantis had fallen and the sorcerers of the planet had surged together to push out the gods and goddesses that had sought to rule them so tightly. It’d worked too, against all odds. The Arcana Council had formed a protective veil around the world, then banished beyond that veil not only the deities but their minions and lieutenants as well, including most of the hordes of demons that had run rampant over the earth. Most of them. Some demons had gotten lucky and missed the purge, hiding out for centuries until it was safe enough to creep out of the shadows. Some, like Warrick and the Syx, had agreed to track down and eradicate those who stepped too far out of line. It’d been an imperfect solution, but the only one open to them. Warrick and his team had always known they were living on borrowed time, able to taste the sunshine of this earth but not savor it. Constantly forced to remember that theirs was not a life to be lived as one of God’s chosen.
They’d given up that privilege long ago.
But he and the Syx had served ably and well, never ignoring a single call, no matter who had uttered it.
And in all the millennia since the veil had first been cast between the humans and the gods, never once had the archangel summoned him directly. Any of them.
Until now.
“Trap?” Raum murmured. Warrick shrugged.
“No point. He can send us back with a blink. A trap might entertain him, but I don’t think so.”
“Well, he’s not going to simply let us walk free.”
Warrick snorted. “Not likely.”
They entered the lobby of Treasure Island, not drawing the attention they should have, given their height and bulk, but that was by design. If someone glanced at them and they had no problem being seen, they appeared to be men of above-average size, walking easily along the brightly lit gold-toned carpets and glittering tiles. If someone focused harder, they would see the demons’ added height, stouter frames. If the Syx didn’t want to be seen by humans—they simply weren’t. That level of discretion had long served them well, but life was proving more complicated to navigate now that they’d been on this plane full-time for the past several months. If they stayed, they’d need to come up with more consistent protocol.
If they stayed…
Warrick grimaced. There was only one person who could grant them that benediction, and he was the avowed enemy of their entire race.
Again…not likely.
They didn’t stop until they got to the corridor of elevator bays. The casino opened up at the far end of the hallway, but that wasn’t their target. Warrick and Raum needed to go up—way up. It didn’t take much to find the elevator they needed. The bay was between two light-gold-toned elevator doors and was an eye-searing white. It would’ve blinded most humans, if they could see it. Fortunately, only a few of them could.
The doors opened before they reached them, and without looking around to see if anyone was watching them, Warrick and Raum stepped inside. The portal whispered shut, and the carriage shot skyward.
A blink later and the doors opened onto an austerely simple chamber. Onyx-toned floors, gray walls and ceiling, a fire burning in the grate at the far end of the room. No windows. The archangel stood next to the fire, but to Warrick’s surprise, he wasn’t alone.
Raum muttered something low beside him, but neither of them hesitated as they stalked forward. If Death wanted to sit in on their summons, that was her right. Again, she was a member of the same Council that had once successfully banished more than ninety percent of demons from the earth. Since then, though she didn’t like to noise it around, she’d been the first line of offense on the ground for humans facing demons, giving mortals the words they needed to summon the Syx. Now, the Syx were on the ground as well.
The sooner they got this meeting over with, the sooner Warrick could get back to the demands of those humans. Demands that were coming in at an ever-increasing clip. Neither the archangel nor Death would do anything that would keep the Syx from their job, surely.
Warrick stuffed that thought back down as quickly as it rose, willing himself to indifference. If he’d learned anything during his millennia of service, it was that nothing was assured.
He and Raum reached the far end of the room, then stood at attention before the archangel. They didn’t bow, and they sure as hell didn’t kneel. Neither did the archangel expect them to.
Instead, the Hierophant regarded them with his eerily light eyes. Everything about the man was light, from his alabaster skin to his pale blond hair to his bloodless lips. He didn’t sprout win
gs, but he didn’t need to. He was as stainless and blameless as one of God’s warriors should be.
In contrast, Warrick felt like the sins of his brethren were soaked into his bones.
“You were noticed.” The archangel’s voice was low, resonant. His words rolled along the stone surfaces of the meeting chamber, then back again, echoing onto themselves. Warrick tensed. The ancient trick of demon entrapment was still successful all these centuries later.
“We weren’t trying to hide,” Warrick said, his own harsh voice cutting through the shushing echoes of the archangel’s rebuke. “The more the horde knows we’re here, within easy reach, the more they’ll think twice before taking another life.”
“The more they’ll hide as well.” It was Death who interjected, her arms folded over her chest. Warrick shifted his gaze to her. She was beautiful in the ways of the ancients, her clear eyes and hard jaw unforgiving, her body straight and tall. She was dressed in ripped jeans and a paint-stained T-shirt, her feet shoved into heavy work boots. In contrast, the archangel’s robes were pure white, like everything else about him. To interact with the modern mortal world, Death had taken on the guise of a tattoo artist and some sort of painter. Warrick didn’t understand it, but he didn’t need to.
“We assumed the demons going to ground would be preferable to them taking the lives of the innocent.”
Michael interjected. “For now, yes. But there are too many of them. Too many of the filth set free.”
Warrick eyed the archangel steadily—Michael couldn’t blame the Syx for summoning the demons. They’d been as surprised as the rest of the world. “That’s not our doing,” he growled, remembering the strangeness he’d felt as the new hordes had breached the veil. “But their arrival changes things. We noticed it in Acapulco. The entire demon population on Earth is amping up.”
“Then all the more reason for you to amp up as well,” Death said. The archangel looked mutinous, but he didn’t speak as she continued. “You must redeem yourself, Warrick, you and your team. If you gain that redemption, you can stay on Earth to tackle the new hordes that have invaded this plane. If you don’t…” She shrugged, her gaze not leaving him. “We don’t have the luxury of time. We’ll find someone to replace you.”
Beside him, Raum hissed.
“Replace us?” Warrick said. “No one else has fought so hard or so long.”
“And no one else is as close to repaying their debt as the Syx,” Death agreed. “It’s the only reason you’re being given the chance. But trust me, you’re not the only demon who craves a return to this plane. A permanent return. We would give you that and the knowledge that you cannot be banished by anyone’s hand—anyone on this earth,” she said, sending the archangel a cold look. “But you must each repent of your sin. And you must be forgiven.”
Warrick could hear a low rumble of anger, realized it was coming from him. “There is no repentance for our sins,” he said, his words little more than a snarl. “So we have always been told, so we have always known as truth.”
“Careful, Warrick,” the archangel said, his cold gaze now narrowing. “You ever want to return to the full name the Father gave you, you will open your mind and your heart to the task we set before you. Because if any one of you fails—all of you fail.”
Death stiffened, clearly surprised, but she didn’t speak. Warrick clenched his hands. He had given up his creation name when he had fallen. There was no going back to that.
However, there was also no denying how still Raum had gone beside him. Raum, once one of the heavens’ most beloved of angels, who’d been cruelly torn from the celestial ramparts for a crime he could not help but commit. For Raum, for the rest of his team, Warrick could do what was necessary.
“What do you require?” he asked levelly.
“I require you to do your job,” the archangel retorted. “Your last summons, the job was not complete. You’ll return.”
Warrick frowned. “The last… We left them all dead.”
“Not that one.” The archangel waved his hand. “Los Angeles. The drug lord filth known as Takio, the demon whose lieutenant you killed. The new technoceutical this Takio is producing must be destroyed—and he must be banished as well. Once and for all.”
“I don’t understand.” Unbidden, the images flashed before his eyes, barely out of reach, the images in the mind of the female with the hair that smelled of sky. But she’d been warded by the cross at her neck, and Warrick hadn’t been able to see much of her thoughts. Certainly nothing about a technoceutical, which were quasi-organic, quasi-synthetic drugs popular with a particular cross section of present-day Earth’s population—the very rich, and the very psychic. Still, he could feel Death’s gaze on him, and he glared at her. “Who is Takio?” he growled.
Death held his stare. “You would know this demon as Holkeri,” she said quietly.
Warrick’s sight went white.
Chapter Three
Maria slung her bag to the table, then wearily stumbled past the counter and into her kitchen, which was about the size of a sneeze. The third-story walk-up was short on character but long on security, perfect for her cover story of high school dropout and abuse survivor who was making ends meet and both exercising and exorcising her demons in a minimum-wage job at Lucy’s boxing gym. She pulled out a bottle of wine from the cabinet, then grabbed the carton of leftover Chinese food from the fridge, settling both on the counter with a clatter. A stack of envelopes lay unopened, untouched, and she swept her gaze around the rest of the apartment, taking it in with practiced focus.
No one had been in her place. She knew it, had known it the moment she walked in, but she still double-checked every time, if only to keep herself honest. She was a big proponent of using her innate intuition as part of her chosen profession, but she never wanted to rely too heavily on it. Not when she also had eyes in her head to see, a nose to smell, ears to hear.
She poured a glass of wine, her hair still damp from her hasty shower at Lucy’s. After all these years, she still didn’t like showering in tight, enclosed spaces. Give her a concrete block with a row full of spigots and a second exit door every time. She could move in that kind of space. She could kick and fight. She could escape.
She never again wanted to be in a place where she couldn’t.
Maria pulled a set of chopsticks from the cup on the counter, then carried her dinner to the threadbare couch. She couldn’t afford a computer—too easy to steal when she wasn’t around, and probably not something her pay grade would allow. Her basic tablet was mainly for show, something to surf the internet with, little more.
Now she eyed it. No one would question her for a search history on what she’d seen yesterday. No matter how hard she’d pounded the bag at the gym, she couldn’t get it out of her mind. All that black goop… It had to be the Bonnie guy’s body releasing toxins of some sort, like Cedo had said, and that had given her an idea. An idea she’d latched on to with both hands.
Though she was willing to believe she’d imagined Bonnie’s crazy eyes because of her own fear and adrenaline, the changes she’d seen happening to the guy’s body…maybe that was the result of the drugs Cedo and his goon seemed to think Bonnie was taking. That made a certain sort of sense. If Bonnie’s blood had been doped up and emitted toxins into the air that caused hallucinations, that could explain what she saw—particularly the extra arms and legs bit. And maybe the drug Bonnie had taken was this mysterious concoction that everyone thought Takio was cooking up.
“Toxins,” Maria muttered. She bit her lip, thinking it through for the fifty thousandth time as she slurped up the cold, salty noodles…and liking the explanation more and more. It could be possible.
If so, it made her job more important than ever. She wasn’t the only one who’d seen the goop in Bonnie’s blood. Pablo had too—and not for the first time, apparently. That meant it had gone public—at least in this very tight-knit community. Maria needed to let her superiors know that they might be on the verge
of a major outbreak of something seriously bad…and that they needed to contain it, whatever it was. She also needed to make sure it hadn’t already made an appearance somewhere else.
Maria pulled her ancient tablet over, engaged her hotspot, and painstakingly keyed in a search for unusually dark or black blood. Then she started clicking links. Ten minutes later, wine in hand, she was still clicking, but she was so far down a rabbit hole, she gave up.
“Stupid freaks,” she muttered, taking another swig. It was something out of a low-rent Comic-Con—possessed humans, spaceship abductions, demons walking the earth. All she wanted was a straightforward drug reaction, and instead she got the X-Files.
Her phone beeped then, and she set down her glass, studied the device. Text, not email. You couldn’t recover deleted texts without a warrant, and even then, it was sketchy on certain devices. The text was from a department store, announcing a 20% off sale, and Maria pursed her lips at the coded message. Stan, her contact inside the LAPD, wanted to see her. She wasn’t due for a check-in for another two weeks. Why would Stan need to meet with her so close to Jack’s pickup? It didn’t feel right.
Did Jack rat me out? There was no way to know, but she didn’t think so. She hadn’t been under all that long on this job, and if Jack had turned, she’d likely have already been taken out. As quickly as people died in this neighborhood, turnover in the gangs was quick and often brutal. But Jack had been with the Guardia for a long time. He’d vouched for her, and that had carried weight. In truth, given how well respected he was, Maria had expected it to be harder to flip him. But Jack had been spooked about something before Maria had even shown up at his door. Big-time spooked.
Now she thought about the black goop on the floor at the nightclub. Had Jack seen more than he’d let on? Here she’d thought she’d scored a coup getting him off the circuit, pumping him for intel. But had he been so ready and willing to break for a reason?
Maybe police protection had been the answer to his prayers.
