by Matt Sheehan
“I don’t know. I guess not. He might have just been holding it. What’s it matter?”
Alek turned and looked at Nero. Nero answered Alek’s look with a statement. “No. Don’t even think it. He hasn’t been active in what, a thousand years?”
“Nine hundred and ninety-seven. Which in and of itself is a reason. And regardless of the upcoming anniversary, with the potential this weapon has, sending in the big guns seems logical.”
“But it’s forbidden.”
I was getting lost. “What’s forbidden?”
Alek answered, “For Watchers to directly participate in the affairs of man. It’s been that way since the battle of Cnossus. Samael himself pinned Azazel to the ground with his flaming sword. The sword and Azazel’s bones fused to the floor of the temple and remained there, until just recently, as a warning to the remaining fallen.”
I wasn’t buying it. “I thought the battle of Cnossus was where the Six Kingdoms defeated the Cretans and ended the war.”
Alek smiled. “They were there, and played their part such as it was, but Samael stepped in and ended the war after the Watchers thwarted Hermes’s assault. Since then the angels, fallen or otherwise, have not been seen on Earth.”
“So you think Dante is an angel?” I let the look on my face convey my distaste of the direction this conversation had taken. Alek chose not to notice.
“The description sounds like Dantalion. He’s one of the fallen. It would explain why none of us questioned his allegiance. He could have dressed up as a young school girl, and I doubt even Shamus could have seen through the disguise.”
“So I assume the mission’s over?” I looked from face to face and didn’t see agreement. “If we’re really talking about a fallen angel, what the hell are we supposed to do with him?”
“Kill him, of course. They’re not immortal—not exactly anyway. Besides, we are well within our rights considering he is in violation of treaty.”
I ignored the treaty part because I really didn’t care. “And you think we can?”
“Absolutely. With our collective skills and Shamus’s raw power...it’s definitely a statistical possibility. In any event, he is most likely a simple turncoat or even a patsy.”
“Helmut, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Shamus was so excited about meeting a real-life angel that he was ignoring the fact that the angel in question would in all likelihood be trying to kill us.
“More like an end-of-a-lifetime opportunity. This is a first—you wanting to earn money and me to stay home.” He gave me his sick puppy look and I gave in. That, and I thought of a bigger bag of gold than the one I was currently holding. “Fine, I give. What’s the plan?”
And Alek filled us in.
Chapter Seventeen
I wore my own hat and trench, but underneath I had on a nondescript black uniform with metallic plates woven into the material. It was fairly light and, according to Nero, provided protection against light arms and slashing blades. Shamus looked like a child playing dress up in the oversized fatigues, but I kept my mouth shut.
Dante was staying in the Hanting Tower, one of the finer hotels in downtown Wudong. He and his men had four suites on the twenty-seventh floor, but he had 2701 all to himself. We wanted nothing to do with the rest of his team. Their innocence or guilt would be easier to ascertain, and that could be done by Alek and his men at a later date. Dante was the sole target.
We had to avoid the lobby, since it was likely staked out by at least one of Dante’s men. Shamus’s plan to have golden eagles carry us to the roof was quickly shot down during the planning process. Nero wanted to zip-line from an adjacent building and rappel down to Dante’s balcony. Eventually we agreed on sneaking in the back through the service entrance. It was, after all, a hotel, not a fortified compound.
As it turned out, we only had to stand around on the corner for a few minutes before a delivery truck pulled up and they rolled up the back door. We just acted like we owned the place and walked right in.
The elevators were in the lobby, so we took the stairs up to the second floor, caught the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor, then walked up the last flight. The elevator part was Shamus’s idea, though none of us put up much of a fight. The plan was to breach the floor silently, since Dante and his men had the whole floor, but there was no reason that we had to climb twenty-seven flights of stairs.
The hallway was quiet. We went straight to suite 2701 and found the door wedged open with a book. For some reason I noticed the title: Paradise Lost. Its significance was lost on me at the time. Alek went through the door first, followed quickly by Nero. Shamus and I were fine with a little human shielding if we were gonna be met by gunfire. As it happened, we were greeted much more cordially.
Dante was sitting at an ornate hardwood desk writing freehand in a large, leather-bound book. He looked up and smiled as we walked in. Shamus froze and seemed to me to be a lighter shade of pale than his norm.
Alek spoke first. “Well, Dante, you look a little different than I remember.”
“It’s good to see you, Alek. What’s the point? The charade’s over. It might have been fun to test my camouflage against your new friend there—” he inclined his chin toward Shamus, “—but I’m just not in the mood for games today.”
Dante was broad-shouldered and angular, with golden skin and black hair that was slicked back meticulously. While Dante and Alek bickered, I focused on Shamus. He was wide-eyed and sweating. “What’s the matter, buddy?”
“It’s the Devil. It’s the same guy I saw when I was touching the lighter.”
Shamus was barely speaking above a whisper, but Dante answered the charge from across the room.
“The term ‘devil’ has such an ugly connotation.” He stood up so quickly that the chair tipped over and hit the ground with a loud crack. He was ridiculously tall. Nero and Alek had their knives unsheathed before the chair hit the ground, but Dante ignored them both. “You may call me Dantalion. You two have certainly made a mess of things.”
He was slowly making a beeline toward Shamus and I. Alek and Nero stepped in his way, but Dantalion just put his hands together and then slowly brought them apart, as if he were separating two sets of books on a shelf. Our two companions were pushed aside by unseen hands and he walked right past them.
“I should have just kept searching for the bomb maker on my own, but I let Alek talk me into letting the local Druid find him. Everyone knows how good Druids are at finding things.”
He was still smiling, but it wasn’t in a happy way. Danger signals were flashing in my head. I wished I had a gun just then, though in retrospect I’m not sure if it would have helped.
“I clearly underestimated your power, Shamus—” he turned and looked at me with his cold eyes, “—and overestimated your greed, Helmut. I thought for sure you would have just taken the money and turned Mr. Singh over.”
“Thanks, I guess. Shamus said you had wings.” I was just buying time and trying to sound confident, but my heart was pounding and it took all my nerve not to look away from him.
Rivulets of smoke began to coalesce around his back and shoulders, and then huge, bat-like wings tore through his jacket and unfurled around us. “How’s that?” It came out like a hiss, and I noticed for the first time that his incisors were way too long.
I drew the dagger that Alek had supplied me with and stepped in front of Shamus, but it was instantly knocked out of my hand. Nero lunged with a knife, but it seemed to hit an invisible barrier a foot in front of Dantalion. Nero’s fist rolled awkwardly, and the blade skittered across the floor. Alek came at him from the opposite side faster than I ever saw anyone move. He didn’t encounter any resistance, but Dantalion spun and caught the blade between his two palms an inch from his chest. He jerked the blade away and flung Alek across the room with a backhande
d gesture.
His hands were dripping blood, which at least gave me some confidence that he could be hurt. When he turned to me, I hit him right between the eyes with my overhand right of death. He staggered a step back and looked at me with a mixture of surprise and anger. Nero swung a chair at him, and Dantalion put his arm up absentmindedly to block it, but it splintered a foot in front of his arm. Nero’s momentum took him forward, and Dantalion caught him with a hammer fist to the side of his head.
I jumped on Dantalion’s back and got my arm around his neck, but before I could get my hooks in, he flipped me up and over and slammed me to the ground. I may have blacked out for a few seconds, because the next thing I knew he had me by the throat with his left hand and I was dangling in the air. He reached out with his other hand toward my knife, which was across the room, and it sailed through the air into his grasp.
Just as I thought I was going to die, I smelled ozone.
“Put him down, you bastard!”
Now technically Dantalion has no father, let alone an illegitimate one, but I commend my friend for the forceful tone of voice and the liberal use of insults. I turned to see Shamus with his hair standing on end and his eyes dancing with blue current. The look of shock on Dantalion’s face made me smile, until I realized he was still holding me and likely conducted electricity.
Shamus closed his eyes and pointed his hands, and arcs of blue current struck Dantalion square in the chest. I took the hit as well and then was unceremoniously dropped to the floor. Dantalion was still on his feet, but his arms were dead weights at his sides. He bared his fangs, and Shamus fired again, lifting him off his feet and through the window at the other end of the room.
Chapter Eighteen
Dantalion never hit the ground. We looked after he crashed through the window, but we didn’t see a body or any of the collateral damage that one would expect a 130-kilogram man to inflict on the cars and trees below. He could have recovered enough to fly away, but if people saw a giant man with wings flying over the city, they didn’t report it, because it never made the papers—not even the tabloids that report news items like that.
I was glad that at least one of our allies had seen what Shamus had done, because I certainly didn’t think they would have believed me if I told them. Alek had been conscious, albeit slightly concussed and with a leg that he said was probably broken. Nero was out so cold I initially thought he was dead. The side of his face was a purple bruise from Dantalion’s bread box of a fist, but he came to soon enough and seemed his usual disagreeable self. He was able splint Alek’s bad leg with a couple of chair legs and some torn bedsheets.
Shamus was close to catatonic after the ordeal. We raided the minibar, since it all went on Dantalion’s tab. Shamus drank six pints of canned beer and ate a jar of macadamia nuts and an assortment of fresh fruit before he was able to speak coherently. At that point he wanted to order a Monte Cristo sandwich and a dry sherry from room service, which was bizarre even for him, but since the room was half-destroyed we thought it best we took the party somewhere else.
It was then that Alek started to get his wits about him and asked about Dantalion’s men. They should have heard the commotion and come in. If they had, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. It was only Shamus going uber-Druid that had kept us from all being killed by Dantalion, and he was completely drained after that display.
Just to be safe, Nero went out the balcony and did his sneaky-sneaky thing. A few minutes later he came in by the front door. His face was stoic. “Well, chaps, we have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
Alek took a deep breath and sighed before answering. He likely knew what was coming, but Sha and I certainly didn’t. “Let’s get the good news out of the way first.”
“The men on Dantalion’s crew definitely weren’t traitors.”
Alek put his face in one hand and gestured with the other for Nero to continue.
“The bad news is they’re all dead. I checked the other rooms. No gunshots or blade marks...they’re just scattered around like rag dolls.
A few moments passed before Alek finally answered. “It’s a shame. They were good men, and they deserve better than the burial in an unmarked grave that they are likely to get, but there is nothing we can do about that now. I suggest we get out of here before we are charged with mass murder by the local authorities.”
We did a quick wipe down of everything we remembered touching. Sha’s snack garbage was bagged up and dropped in a dumpster a few blocks away on the walk back to our car. Nero and I each took a shoulder to help Alek bear weight on his injured leg. Shamus managed to walk some semblance of a straight line and not fall in the gutter. I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder, half expecting a crazed angel to dive-bomb us at any moment. The short walk turned out to be uneventful, and once in the car Shamus started clamoring for fish and chips and beer. There were no dissenting votes; Alek just requested crutches and morphine first.
The local pharmacy had a set of crutches and some duct tape. Alek had preloaded syringes of morphine in a med kit, and we used the duct tape to reinforce the bath towels used in his emergency splint. Once he was wrapped up and topped off, we headed over to O’Kelly’s for our post-dust-up celebration.
Alek promised to cover the tab, and we didn’t argue with him. Shamus took a bottle of top-shelf Eirish whiskey back to the table with four shot glasses, but not before ordering an unconscionable amount of deep-fried foods. I even had a shot myself. It’s not every day you get to punch an angel in the face, and even less often that one lives another day to tell the tale. If that’s not cause to drink, what is?
After a few rounds Shamus walked over to the pay phones, placed a quick call, and came back with a sly smile on his face.
“I know you haven’t trained Willie to answer the phone yet.”
The smile got bigger, but he didn’t say anything.
“What are you up to?”
“I called Phoebe. She’s on her way over to hang out with us.”
“Well, look at you. Our little boy is all grown up.” I looked at my watch and noted the late hour. “She was still at the office?”
“No, I have her home number.”
I was dumbfounded. “How the hell did you get that?” He just shrugged his shoulders. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Since I met her.”
I get fuzzy with the passage of time, but that was at least a year ago. “Well, better late than never. You don’t think Tom will be a problem?”
“He was there when I called. They were about to go out to dinner. I told her to come here instead and she said okay.”
“What’s she gonna tell Tom?”
“Maybe that she has a headache. I honestly don’t care.”
Facing a life-or-death encounter and coming out on the living side can certainly change one’s perspective. It had Shamus absolutely brimming with confidence. I’m always brimming with confidence, but I have to admit that the bar meal of fried everything was the best food I had ever tasted. I washed it down with a pint of ale and felt no guilt. I make allowances after surviving fights with mythical creatures.
I felt a change in the energy of the bar, as if everyone held their collective breath at the same moment. I turned my head toward the entrance and saw a vision that almost struck me blind: tall with flaming red hair and milky-white skin in a sleeveless red dress that was just long enough to be respectable, but not long enough to make my imagination work too hard. Due to blood-flow issues, it took my mind a moment to realize that I was looking at Officer Phoebe.
Shamus got up and met her at the door with a kiss on the lips. Her eyes initially widened in surprise, but then closed as the moment stretched. I saw some jealous glances, but their owners were able to avoid me rearranging their dental work by going back to their beers and minding their own busine
ss.
Shamus and Phoebe took a table at the other end of the bar and I gave them some privacy. Alek was near comatose from the combination of morphine, whiskey and saturated fat, leaving Nero and me to pass the time by talking up the beautiful babies. Nero turned out to be a bit of a ladies’ man himself. We had quite a nice digit competition going on, one that he was winning but not handily, when I heard a voice among the din that drew my senses to the other side of the bar.
Katina. In a tight sweater and slacks, sitting at the same table as last time. However, this time a large man in biker’s leather was putting the moves on her and crossing way over the line. Her voice was raised, but he had a big smile on his face and kept on pawing at her.
I was across the room and in his face before my mind could register what was happening. Which is exactly why I don’t drink. He was able to poke me in the chest once and almost twice before my sluggish reflexes finally clicked into gear. I caught his attempt at a second poke—he was yelling something too, but I was focusing and couldn’t make it out—and forced him to one knee with a wrist lock. The yelling quickly turned to pleading, but I still wasn’t listening. I switched the hold to a shoulder lock as I twisted his arm behind his back. I used his arm and the collar of his jacket to steer him to the back of the bar and out the open back door. I found Nero standing there with a big smile on his face in front of a large blue trash bin.
“I took the liberty of opening this up for you. I hope I wasn’t too presumptuous.”
“I actually didn’t have a plan. This—” I gestured toward the bin, “—is a great plan.” Biker dude didn’t think so, but we weren’t asking. Nero stunned him with a quick palm strike to the solar plexus, and then we two-manned him head over heels into the trash.
“You’ll surely get that raven-haired lass’s number after that display of manliness. That will put us even.”
“I actually got her number the last time we were here. I haven’t had a chance to call her because of all the trouble with you bastards.”
