J.B. shook his head. “They were captured.”
“By the vampires? Why?”
“One of the Agents that escaped said that there was a man with the vampires. A man with black hair, and black eyes, and…”
“Black wings,” I finished. “Azazel.”
I rubbed my hand over my face, trying to think. The carnage before us was hard to process, and now my father was involved. Again.
“What was Azazel doing while the vampires were killing everyone?” I asked.
“Neutralizing the Agents,” J.B. said. “The ones that got away said it was pure luck. He was casting a spell, and the spell missed them.”
“How many escaped?”
“Of the twenty-two Agents that were sent here, only six made it back. And all of the souls of the dead are gone. Azazel took them, too,” J.B. said.
“Why?” I cried. “What is he doing? Is all of this part of his insane experiment?”
“I don’t know,” J.B. said. “And I’m not sure we’ll be able to figure it out now, in any case. He took Chloe, too.”
13
SAMIEL WENT RIGID BESIDE ME. THEN HE GRABBED J.B. by the lapel. What was she doing here in the first place?
“She’s an Agent; you know that,” J.B. said.
She told me she hardly ever collects souls anymore, that she spends most of her time working on tech projects in the basement.
“Hardly ever doesn’t mean never,” J.B. said. “The upper management requires all Agents, even me, to do several pickups a year. This was one of hers.”
“Stand down,” I said to Samiel, trying to pry his fingers off J.B.’s coat. Samiel looked like he was going to strangle J.B. on principle. “You know it’s not J.B.’s fault.”
The light of fury in Samiel’s eyes faded. He let go of J.B. and stepped back, covering his face with his hands.
“We have to find them,” I said. “We can’t leave them to Azazel.”
“Management has ordered me not to pursue Azazel,” J.B. said, his eyes bleak.
I stared at him. “Are you kidding? They’re just going to let sixteen Agents go without a fight?”
“They do not want to get involved in ‘fallen business,’” J.B. said. “I told you that before.”
“This isn’t fallen business. Azazel led a rebellion against Lucifer. He’s gone completely rogue.”
“They don’t care about the particulars,” J.B. said. “They saw what happened when Ramuell and Antares got into the Agency. They’re not going to risk more lives.”
“So they’re just going to let all those Agents go? Azazel is probably torturing them right now. I can’t believe that they would allow that just because they don’t want to get ‘involved,’” I shouted.
“Do you think I like this?” J.B. said. “Those are my people that were taken. I know them. I know their families.”
“Then why are you going to stand for this?” I said.
“I’m not,” he said. “I said that they ordered me not to pursue Azazel. And I’m not going to. But they didn’t order me not to look for the Agents under my care.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “We’ll find them.”
“You should know that you’ve been expressly ordered to, and I quote, ‘stay out of this matter entirely,’” J.B. said.
“Like I give a shit,” I said.
“That’s what I figured you’d say.”
So where do we start? Samiel asked.
I took my phone out of my pocket. “Let me see if Granddaddy has any useful intelligence. He’s got to be tracking Azazel himself, right?”
I dialed Lucifer’s number and waited, listening to the phone ring. After a while it clicked over to voice mail.
“Hello, you have reached the voice mail of the Morningstar. Please leave a message and I will get back to you when my schedule permits.”
I hung up the phone and stuffed it back in my pocket. “Why is he never around when I want him to be, but he always shows up when I don’t want him at all?”
“I’m sure it has something to do with being the Prince of Darkness,” J.B. said.
“Right,” I said. “Look, can we finish this conversation at my house? Beezle and Jude will have some ideas, and it’s hard for me to think here.”
The sight of all the mangled bodies was making it difficult for me to collect my thoughts. And I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d found Azazel already and killed him as I should have, none of these people would be dead.
I’d gotten distracted by the faeries, and forgotten my promise and my purpose. Finding Azazel—and the missing Agents—was now priority number one.
“I have to go back to the office and finish some paperwork first,” J.B. said. “You’d better come, too, and fill out the forms for the souls you lost.”
“Why bother?” I asked. “The Agency is going to be royally pissed at me when they find out I’m tracking Azazel. What’s the difference if a couple of papers don’t get properly filed?”
“How about you try following the rules for a while so as not to arouse their suspicion?”
“You’re talking logic here,” I said. “I don’t do logic.”
“Indulge me,” J.B. said.
I tapped Samiel on the shoulder. He was facing the crime scene techs as they did their gruesome work, but I knew he wasn’t really seeing them. He was seeing Chloe. It took a few seconds for him to focus on my face.
“I’m going with J.B. to pretend to be a good Agent,” I said. “Can you get home and fill in the others? We need to put together some kind of plan to find Azazel.”
Samiel nodded.
“I’ll be back soon.”
He took off, flying north toward home. I hadn’t realized he was in love with Chloe. Maybe he hadn’t realized it himself, until she was taken.
“Let’s walk,” J.B. said. “The office isn’t that far from here. We can unveil once we get across the street.”
“Okay,” I said, sensing that he needed some time to brood. I did, too. Even though I’d disavowed any relationship with Azazel, it’s hard to acknowledge that the person who fathered you is responsible for organizing the killing of dozens of people. Beezle would no doubt tell me that I was being absurd, but I felt a little tainted. Like I had bad blood in me.
“You are being absurd,” I muttered to myself. Because if I had bad blood, then so did my baby. And I refused to have either one of our lives dictated by the actions of our forebears.
“Did you say something?” J.B. asked as we walked in the shadow of the Sears Tower.
Far above us the red safety lights of the tower glowed. Most of the restaurants that served the nine-to-five crowd were closed up for the night. I could see workers through the windows at Starbucks mopping the floor and cleaning the espresso machines.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking out loud.”
“You should probably know that I received an official missive from Titania shortly after I talked to you,” J.B. said.
“And?”
“She’s holding me responsible for your behavior in her court.”
“Well, that’s just dumb. I flat-out told them that I represented nobody but myself.”
“It’s apparently my fault that the situation escalated because I didn’t punish you immediately as I was supposed to,” he said.
“And it’s your fault that I don’t file paperwork on time and let souls get lost, too, I suppose,” I said.
“That’s how the Agency sees it,” J.B. said.
“I know I keep saying this, but I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry, but you won’t change, either,” he said.
“I’m not changing for anyone, especially not the faerie queen. Or the Agency. Upper management can take this job and stick it up their butt, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Titania has ordered me to appear in her court next month to receive my punishment for your actions. On Valentine’s Day,” he said.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, tuggin
g J.B.’s sleeve so that he would stop. A man walking behind us huffed as he was forced to take one step sideways to go around us.
“You’re not going, right?” I said.
J.B. shook his head at me. “I have to.”
“No,” I said, grabbing his shoulders. “You don’t have to. You have to stop thinking that way. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“The alternative is to watch her hound you until you’re dead,” J.B. said. “Do you think that’s acceptable to me?”
“Do you think it’s acceptable to me that you are going there to be tortured and quite probably killed in my place?” I shouted. “And what makes you think she’ll leave me alone even if you do nobly sacrifice yourself? She’s already proven that no agreement is sacred to her. She’ll kill you and then come after me anyway.”
“I love you,” he said, and I froze.
“I love you,” he repeated. “So I will do whatever I think is necessary to keep you safe.”
“J.B.,” I said, closing my eyes.
He took both of my hands in his. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell me that I’m just a friend to you. Don’t tell me that you still love Gabriel. Just don’t. I know all those things, but it doesn’t change the way I feel. And it can’t change the fact that I’ll always look at you and think that if I had just tried sooner, if I just stopped being afraid that you would say no, that you might be mine now instead of grieving him.”
“What can I say when you tell me things like that?” I asked, my heart breaking for both of us.
“Tell me that you’ll keep yourself safe, that you’ll stop taking crazy risks,” he said.
“I can’t promise that. My enemies will make sure of that.”
He put his hand on my face, on the white scars that covered my cheek. I nestled my head in his hand for a moment; then I pulled away.
“If you insist on going to Titania’s court, you’re not going alone,” I said.
“You don’t need to piss her off any more than you already have,” J.B. said.
“You’re not going alone,” I repeated. “Besides, I think I have an ally in court. Maybe. Possibly. Of course, his help comes with a price.”
We started walking again and I told J.B. about Puck. When I finished he seemed stunned.
“Why would Puck take an interest in you?”
“That seems to be the question of the hour,” I said as we approached the front doors of the Agency.
“Puck never takes an interest in anything except himself, and maybe Titania,” J.B. said as we entered the lobby.
We had to go through the usual screening process—biometric scan, metal detector, abandonment of anything that resembled a weapon. I was glad I’d left Lucifer’s sword at home. It really bothered me to leave it with security. And now that the Agency management had decided I was persona non grata, it was possible that they might decide to confiscate it, and then I’d really be up a creek. That sword had saved my life more times than I could count.
“I don’t know why he’s interested in me,” I said as we entered the elevator just past the reception desk. “But I should tell you that I’m not certain he’s a faerie. Or at least, not only a faerie.”
“What do you think he is?” J.B. asked.
“He told me that he was older than Titania and Oberon, and said he’d been Lucifer’s enemy forever,” I said. “What could possibly be as old as Lucifer?”
J.B. looked troubled. “Not a lot.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too. Either he’s an angel or a demon in disguise, or he’s some creature we’ve never seen before.”
“Why would a creature of such power hide himself in Titania and Oberon’s court for centuries? Why would he pretend to be inferior to them?” J.B. asked as the elevator rose to our floor.
I shrugged. “You got me. Apparently I don’t think the right way. Every time I turn around I find machinations within machinations, and in case you haven’t noticed, being sneaky is not my strong suit.”
The elevator opened and we stepped out. There were still a fair number of people working at their cubicles, even though the hour was late. Death never slept.
“I’ll call you when I’m finished,” J.B. said, heading toward his office. “Be a good girl for an hour or so, will you?”
“Define ‘good,’” I said, but he was already out of earshot.
It was hard not to notice that other Agents gave me a wide berth as I walked to my cubicle. Chloe had told me I’d developed some kind of reputation in the Agency. I was hardly ever there anymore, and when I was it seemed that something crazy had happened around me, so I could see why nobody was interested in saying hello to me.
My desk was covered in a thin layer of dust. Apparently even housekeeping was afraid to enter my space.
There were a bunch of forms in my in-box, most of them related to pickups that I’d done over the last two months. I hung my coat on the hook in the corner of my cubicle and sat down with a sigh, pulling the papers toward me and taking a pen out of my drawer.
The Agency is pretty well locked in the mid-twentieth century, technology-wise. The forms have to be filled out by hand or typed on a typewriter, and there are four copies of each attached in different colors.
Many Agents had suggested that paperwork would be less onerous and more efficient if we could fill out the data on a computer, but upper management was not in the least interested in efficiency. They did not like change. Change implied that something had been done incorrectly before, and management did not like to be told that they had done something incorrectly. Which was probably one of the many reasons why they didn’t like me.
After about forty minutes of laborious printing, I dropped the pen on my desk and pushed my chair back. I was rubbing the cramp out of my right hand when I realized someone was standing in my cubicle behind me.
I whirled around and came to my feet, ready to defend myself if necessary, my hand automatically groping for the sword that was not there. My chair rolled on its casters and crashed into my desk.
A man stood there, a rather heavy man with an amused expression on his face. He was only a little taller than me, and his stomach was round and protruded in front of him. He had hangdog jowls, very little hair and small blue eyes.
“I assure you, Agent Black, that no violence is necessary.”
I dropped my hands to my sides. “Who are you?”
“My name is Sokolov, and I am the assistant to the chairman of the board of the Agency.”
“Really? The chairman?” I said, leaning back against my desk and crossing my arms. I was surprised that one actually existed. I’d always figured he was a figment of J.B.’s imagination. I’d never seen him. “What does the chairman want with a lowly Agent?”
“You are hardly lowly, Agent Black,” Sokolov said. “The chairman has asked me to tell you that your first responsibility is to the souls of the dead, irrespective of the complications of your paternity. As such, you are hereby ordered not to engage in any pursuit of Azazel the fallen angel, particularly as it relates to the incident of today.”
“The ‘incident’? You mean the one where a bunch of your Agents were kidnapped and a whole lot of innocent folks were killed because the upper brass wants to stick their fingers in their ears and say ‘la-la-la’?” I asked.
“It is not for you to question the actions of your superiors,” Sokolov said.
“Too bad I don’t think anyone is superior to me,” I said.
“You should be careful, Agent Black. You have people that you care about, do you not? You wouldn’t want to see them hurt because of your inability to take orders,” he said silkily.
I pushed away from the desk and marched up to Sokolov, getting in his personal space. He smelled like peppermint and onions.
“Don’t you dare threaten me,” I said, my temper snapping. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“On the contrary, the Agency knows precisely of what you are capable. As a fur
ther notice, you are hereby warned that any further adventures beyond the Door will result in your immediate death at the hands of the Retrievers,” he said.
I blinked. “I haven’t gone beyond the Door. No Agent can.”
“You set off the alarms at headquarters at approximately four eighteen p.m. this afternoon. Your excursion was of ten minutes in length,” Sokolov recited.
“Four eighteen p.m.? But I was asleep…” I started to say; then my voice faded. That was when I’d dreamed of Gabriel, and Puck had appeared. I thought it had just been a fantasy implanted in my head by Puck. Had I really gone beyond the Door?
Sokolov nodded, as if he’d confirmed some suspicion. “Despite the fact that you were unconscious of your actions, you are not permitted to go seeking the soul of your loved one in the land of the dead. Should this occur again, you will be punished accordingly.”
“Going to send your bogeymen after me?” I asked.
“I would not sneer so if I were you, Agent Black,” Sokolov said. “The Retrievers would not be kind to you.”
“You’ve delivered your message. Now move along,” I said.
Sokolov’s face hardened. “You should take the Agency more seriously, Agent Black. We have the power to destroy you utterly.”
The Agency’s messenger boy turned on his heel and retreated from my cubicle. I pulled on my coat like I didn’t have a care in the world. I was sure they were watching me on the security cameras, and I didn’t want anyone to think I’d been even remotely affected by Sokolov. I picked up the sheaf of papers I’d filled out and walked toward the drop box where all the soul forms were collected. I pushed the forms through the slot and continued on to J.B.’s office.
His secretary was missing from the outer office, gone home for the day like a normal person who had a life. I knocked on the closed door and opened it before he could respond.
J.B. looked up, his brow furrowed. “I thought I said an hour.”
“I’m hungry now,” I said, trying to send him a meaningful glance. “Where’s that dinner you promised me?”
He buried his head in paperwork again. “I still have some stuff to do here.”
Black Lament Page 16
