by Ching, G. P.
“Break him,” Lucifer hissed.
Levi obliged. Cord cried out as the Watcher’s heel stomped on his wing, and the sound of his bones snapping resounded through the small room. The pain was infinite. He flapped his wings and tried to pull away, but the room was too dark for him to call any real power. For angels, sunlight was renewal and darkness a prison. Lucifer knew this.
“Cord. Good of you to join us. Where have you been?”
Cord pressed himself against the wall and remained silent.
“You’ve changed, my friend. Care to explain how this transformation occurred?”
Turning slightly, Cord refused to meet the Devil’s eyes.
“The problem, Cord, is you are one sorry excuse for an angel. For as strong and ancient a Watcher as you were, you are a baby angel who doesn’t even know that his tears stink of Heaven. How dare you come here?”
A whimper escaped Cord’s lips as Lucifer closed in. The slither of evil flesh gripped his broken wing. The contact burned, but Lucifer did not let go.
“Where are the Soulkeepers? How did they change you?” Lucifer demanded, tugging sharply on the limp wing. Cord cried out, noticing the bone poke through his feathers. The entire appendage burned and throbbed. He bent over and hurled from the pain.
Lucifer lowered his lips to Cord’s ear. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way. I hope you choose hard. I will enjoy watching you suffer.”
Borrowing a move from his Watcher days, he forced himself to smile against the pain. He flashed Lucifer his middle finger. The Devil’s fist pounded his cheek, sending him flying against the conference room wall. He crashed to the floor, his broken wing crumpling painfully under him. He was bleeding now where the bone poked through. Head swimming, he flailed helplessly in his own blood.
“Auriel, torture this creature until he gives us the information we want. Spare him no suffering.”
“Of course, My Lord,” she said with a proud smile.
What little light there was in the room faded. Horrified, Cord recognized the cause. No source of natural light existed in this room, and the electric lights were off. The only reason he could see was by his own glow. The fading light then was an ominous forbearance, his body conserving its energy to nurse its afflictions. Without light to feed his healing, he was veritably doomed.
Auriel’s face appeared in front of his slowly failing vision, her blond illusion coming and going with each blink.
“I’ve been waiting for a project worthy of me, Cord,” she said through her teeth. “Welcome back.”
Her fist connected with his temple.
* * * * *
“Have you seen Cord?” Bonnie asked Malini. “We’re on deck for quota tonight. Sun’s almost down.”
“No.” Malini tipped her face toward the ceiling. “Cord.”
“See? He has super hearing. Why isn’t he coming?” Bonnie asked.
“Cheveyo.” Malini tapped the boy, who was stuffing his face with a ham sandwich, on his shoulder. “Have you seen Cord?”
He shook his head.
“What’s going on?” Jacob asked.
“We can’t find Cord,” Bonnie said.
Dane turned in his seat. “Maybe he’s in his room. He really likes to hang out by the holy water, especially when he’s thinking things through.” Dane raised an eyebrow at Malini.
Bonnie broke away from the group and jogged up the stairs, navigating the toppled pews and fallen statues. She passed through the door to what used to be the foyer of the church, where an enormous holy water font remained unscathed from the initial Watcher attacks. When she saw Katrina soaking weapons, she pulled up short.
“Have you seen Cord?”
With a haunting rattle, Katrina pulled the chain she’d been washing from the water and placed it on top of a pile of clean weapons. She nodded. “Sure, about an hour ago.” Standing tall, she placed her hands on her hips and stretched her back.
“We can’t find him. Did he say where he was going?”
Katrina narrowed her eyes. “Not exactly. He apologized to me, I forgave him, and then he said he was going to do something that really mattered to thwart Lucifer. He wanted to make it up to all of you.”
Bonnie marched forward until she was almost on top of Katrina. “Why didn’t you say anything? Where did he go?”
“I didn’t think he meant now, like literally. I thought he meant over time … by working with all of you.”
“But you saw him leave?”
“Of course, but he pops in and out of the room all the time. Where are you going?” Katrina called at her back.
Bonnie ignored her. With long strides, she returned to Sanctuary and stormed to Malini’s side. “He’s gone. Cord is gone.”
“He’s defected,” Lillian said, standing from her place at the table. “I knew this would happen. We should have never trusted him.”
“Shut up,” Bonnie snapped.
Everyone stopped eating. Silence bombarded her in the form of pointed stares from all sides. A Horseman simply did not yell at a council member, but Bonnie needed to speak her mind.
“Katrina told me he said he was going to do something to try to make it up to us for his past. I have a terrible feeling he went to spy on Lucifer. The sun is going down; he travels through light. What if he gets trapped there? What if something went wrong?”
“Calm down, Bonnie. We don’t know for sure where he went,” Malini said.
“Or if he were telling the truth,” Lillian said.
“He’s an angel. He can’t lie,” Bonnie said. “I of all people didn’t want to trust Cord, but he saved me twice. He’s had ample opportunity to leave, Lillian, and he hasn’t. He’s on our side.”
“Unless he was gathering enough to make a difference for Lucifer. He knows it all now, our quotas, our territories, the Tom Sawyer Society. Once he left, he couldn’t come back. He had to earn our trust to learn the really important stuff, and now, what a surprise, he’s gone.” Lillian stood, coolly, and addressed Malini. “I think I should go on patrol tonight in his place. It could get ugly.”
Malini gave a curt nod but placed her hand on Bonnie’s shoulder. “We don’t know why he left or what he’s doing, Bon, but we have to close ranks. I trusted him completely. Personally, I don’t think he left to betray us, but if he has been captured, he’s a liability. He knows all of our secrets. Lillian is right. This could be very bad.”
“So then we have to get him back,” Bonnie said. “Let me take a team and see if we can’t find him. Ghost could check the penthouse.”
Malini shook her head. “We can’t risk it. The fifth curse has been cast. We are down to the last blows of this challenge and God is losing. Cord knew the rule that no one was allowed to go out alone. No less than three, remember?” Malini held up three fingers.
A rattled sigh parted Bonnie’s lips.
“He broke the rules and didn’t tell anyone where he was going. I don’t agree with Lillian that his intentions were evil, but his actions were deliberate. He has to live with the consequences. We can’t save him this time.”
Tears welled in Bonnie’s eyes. She’d hated him. For months, she’d wished him dead, but over the last weeks, she was sure he’d changed. Just as she was sure that he had done something incredibly stupid … for the greater good.
Samantha wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged. “Maybe Bonnie shouldn’t patrol tonight, Malini,” she whispered.
“No,” Bonnie wiped under her eyes. “I’m fine. I understand, all right? I need to keep busy. Don’t take that away from me.”
Malini nodded her head. “Okay then, Bonnie, Sam, and Lillian, you’re on tonight. Be careful out there.”
Bonnie strapped on a set of daggers and donned her puffy purple coat, hat, and mittens. She hadn’t eaten yet, but suddenly she wasn’t hungry. She had a job to do, and it was going to take every ounce of courage and cunning she had left to do it.
Chapter 17
For the Record
Alfred Winston had been the president’s friend for a good twenty years. He trusted the man, and the relationship had been prosperous, to say the least. Alfred didn’t have an official title. His name did not appear on any record, anywhere, and he had never been photographed with the president. This meant he was perfect for a certain type of work, the type the president didn’t want associated with himself or the White House.
Today, Alfred was dressed in a black suit and bowtie with an apron tied around his waist. In his hand was a pitcher of water, one into which he had emptied the contents of a small vial. He worked his way around the conference table, filling empty water glasses while men in tailored business suits filtered into the room chatting each other up. After some time, he relegated himself to the corner. The suits took their seats around the table, and Alfred angled himself so that the tiny camera in his boutonniere was pointed directly at Milton Blake and Asher James.
Senator Bakewell opened the meeting. “The Council for the Eradication of the Unholy will come to order. First order of business is Senator Worth’s report on deaths by Watcher violence.”
Alfred allowed his mind to wander to the problem at hand as the men took turns speaking. Earlier, he’d cranked the heat, and most of the men drank the water with gusto to cool off. Not Mr. James. His orders were to coax him specifically to ingest the liquid and get it on film. As he refilled glasses, he pondered ways to get Asher James to drink. He couldn’t rightly hold the man down and force him to swallow.
Senator Bakewell blotted his vast forehead with his handkerchief, his face flushed red. “You, you there,” he said. “Find a way to turn down the heat in here.”
With a sigh, Alfred entered the hidden servant’s door in the corner of the room and did as he was asked. The heat wasn’t working anyway. He resumed his post as quickly as possible.
Mr. James still wasn’t drinking, but Bakewell seemed distracted. He stared at Milton Blake as if seeing him for the first time. In fact, all of the men in the room had stopped talking and gaped in the direction of Blake and James.
“Is there a reason we’ve paused the meeting?” Blake barked, rapping his knuckles on the table.
Bakewell rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his fists, blinked them closed and opened them again. “You look … That is, the lighting in here has given you a…”
“I see it too,” Worth said. “Darkness.”
And then the unthinkable. The brands on the back of their right hands began to smoke. The men screamed in pain. Bakewell plunged his hand into his glass of water. The others did the same. Blake and James looked at each other in obvious confusion, then pushed their chairs back from the table. It was now or never.
As if he were using the remainder of his pitcher to come to the aid of the burning men, Alfred lunged forward, splashing the contents over Asher James. Milton Blake cursed as rivulets stained his suit. Alfred did not regret the move. Mr. James began to smoke, and, with boutonniere camera rolling, Alfred recorded it all.
Asher’s skin reddened and then split, peeling from his hands and face. To Alfred’s horror, the scaly black skin of a demon peeked from underneath the human flesh. The man’s eyes turned yellow, and the pupils changed to resemble a snake’s. The other senators, including Bakewell, ran for the door. They didn’t make it.
The demon dropped all pretenses of being human and, wings outstretched, attacked. Bakewell’s neck spewed red blood, shredded by demon fangs. The man crumpled to the floor amid torrid screams. The demon who had once been Asher James left Bakewell to bleed out on the carpet, and pounced on Worth. An ear slapped the wall next to Alfred’s head.
“Don’t you think we should find a way out of here?” Milton Blake spoke quickly to Alfred. How had he moved so quickly around the table?
Alfred nodded, forcing his paralyzed muscles to back toward the hidden service door. He pressed the corner of the wall, and the section popped open. Milton Blake sifted through ahead of Alfred, who paused to check for other survivors. There were none. He closed the door.
“This way,” he stammered, passing Blake in the small corridor and jogging toward the kitchen.
A hand landed on his shoulder, slowing him to a walk. Milton Blake’s grip was almost painful, and he could feel the man’s body heat against his back.
“How did you know that James was a demon?”
“I didn’t. I saw the smoke and thought there was a fire. I was trying to put it out.”
“Funny, Alfred, the smoke was clearly coming from the other men, but your water landed on James.”
Alfred narrowed his eyes. How did Milton Blake know his real name? His name tag read Francis. “I’m a bad shot I guess. I was aiming for Bakewell. James was very close.”
“Hmm.”
The clanking sounds of a bustling kitchen soothed Alfred. Almost there. There was a phone in the kitchen to call security. Milton Blake gripped his shoulder tighter, causing pain to shoot up his neck. He stopped short. The hand spun him around.
“The thing you should know about lying, Alfred, is that you can’t lie to a liar. And, if you are going to try, you should make damn sure you aren’t lying to the Prince of Lies. Look into my eyes.”
Alfred had no choice but to do as the man asked. Blake had gripped him by the neck and pulled him flush against his chest. Nose to nose, he stared into the man’s baby blue irises, but beyond their innocent exterior, Alfred’s mind was bombarded with unimaginable horrors. Burning flesh, wretched screams, twisted and beaten men in a hopeless sea of darkness. He gagged and tried to close his eyes.
“Why did you throw the water on James?”
“I was following orders. He was supposed to drink the water, but he didn’t.”
“Why?”
Alfred didn’t answer, but his eyes flicked to his boutonniere. Milton Blake used his free hand to crush the white rose and the tiny camera inside. The fist he formed was aimed at Alfred’s heart.
“Idiot do-gooders. When will you ever learn?”
Blake’s fist smashed through Alfred’s ribcage, leaving him with no time to consider who the man was, what his words meant, or what would happen to the camera’s live transmission, beamed wirelessly and automatically to a handful of the nation’s top journalists.
* * * * *
Malini could not believe what she was seeing. “Jacob, Grace, come quick.”
The two Soulkeepers entered Sanctuary from the kitchen. Grace dropped the towel she was holding when she saw the television.
The local news station was replaying a video clip again and again, clearly showing Asher James transform into a demon and Milton Blake murder a man. The Council for the Eradication of the Unholy had been dismantled. In fact, the members were all dead. A sharply dressed news reporter kept repeating the same thing: Harrington Security found to be a scam. People are flocking in record numbers to churches around the globe to use holy water to remove their brands. Brands no longer required for the purchase of goods. Chaos in the streets as demons attack.
“It’s a miracle,” Grace said. “We’ve won! The challenge is ours.”
Jacob was still gaping silently at the image of black wings spread over Bakewell’s dead body.
“I wish I could say you were right, Grace, but my gut tells me this is the beginning, not the end,” Malini said.
“What? Why?” Jacob asked, finding his voice.
“This is the fifth gift. It exposes Lucifer for what he is. But the Devil isn’t going to run. After the second gift, when the Watchers were exposed, what did he do?”
“He had the Watchers attack, then used the terror to his benefit,” Jacob said.
“Lucifer is backed into a corner. When have we ever seen him back down in that situation?”
“Do you know what it will be?” Grace asked.
A scream pierced the night from the direction of the street. Malini prayed for Cheveyo, Dane, and Ethan, who were on patrol. This war was far from over.
“I don’t. Not yet. Grace, go get Samantha, Ghost, and
Lillian from the laundry room.”
Grace took off toward the rectory.
“Where’s Katrina?” Malini asked Jacob.
“She left a few hours ago with Father Raymond for Paris.”
“Good. She’ll be safer there. Where’s Hope?”
“She was fussy and coughing. Bonnie took her into the shower to see if the steam would help,” Jacob said.
“I’ll get her,” Malini said. “When Grace gets back, tell everyone they are needed in the field as soon as possible.”
“What about Dane?” Jacob asked.
“He needs to stay here with Hope and me. He won’t have a power to borrow.”
Jacob paused. “You’re not coming?”
“No. I need to consult the immortals. We have to use every advantage at our disposal.”
“It’s not that I’m disappointed. I want you to be safe. Just be careful. There will be no one here to protect you.”
Glancing over her shoulder, she locked eyes with the boy she loved. “I can take care of myself, Jacob. I’m the Healer.”
Jacob nodded and then turned away as Grace arrived with the others.
Malini continued through the door to the large sitting area connected to the bathroom and shower. This used to be a bride’s room, where brides would dress, do their makeup, and wait to walk down the aisle on their wedding day. It used to be a hopeful place, not the overused facility for a set of war-torn, black-blood-covered warriors. Inside, the sound of sobs and a labored cough broke through the heavy steam.
“Malini, thank God,” Bonnie said. Her face was moist with droplets of steam, but the trails down her cheeks made it clear she’d been the one crying. “Hope stopped breathing. She started again, but look, her lips are blue.”
Bonnie handed her the baby. “You’ve got to heal her.”
“I will,” Malini said softly.
“Why isn’t it working? You’ve healed her before. She keeps getting sick again, every time worse than the last. What’s wrong with her?”
Malini glanced at the floor and made a decision. “What is wrong with Hope is something I cannot heal. When you brought Abigail to the In Between through the red stone, a piece of Hope’s soul stayed there. Hope is outgrowing the piece that is left in her body. She’s disconnected. If I can’t figure out a way to bring her soul back, she’ll die.”
