The Shadow Court

by Stark, Jenn

  Armaeus smiled grimly as I turned back to him. “My apologies, Miss Wilde. I had not thought the treasure of the lost chapter of the Book of Radiance would have affected me so extensively. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  The words sounded almost too smooth, the words of a recovering addict who assures you he’s kicked the habit for good, but I let them pass.

  “But again, you see the problem,” Armaeus continued, gesturing to McCullough. “This man is a stranger to us, yet he threw open his doors and came running in response to the radiant energy I put out.”

  “He’s an advanced Connected,” I reasoned. “And—uh, he said he’d been told to watch for you.”

  “Ah, but told by whom?”

  I looked down at the collapsed Connected and shook my head. “No clue. The language he was speaking, what was it? I didn’t recognize it, and that doesn’t happen anymore. I know every language spoken on this earth.”

  “And therein lies the mystery.” Armaeus nodded. “The missing chapter of the Zohar that the Spanish mystic was so certain would lead to the ruination of man was a manual on how to speak to angels. How to open up the channels of connection between one’s self and All That Is. The understanding of the deep and awesome power that each of us carries within us and how that power can profoundly affect the world around us, once full connection has been made and the right words are spoken and understood by two souls, three souls, more.”

  I stared at him. “The missing chapter contains the language of angels?” I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been. I’d encountered a nasty cabal of angels in Atlantis not all that long ago, and the Hierophant of the Arcana Council was the freaking Archangel Michael, so I’d met my share of winged warriors. But I’d never stopped to consider that they might have their own language…a language mortals didn’t know.

  Armaeus continued as if he could read my thoughts, so I tightened up my mental barriers on general principles. “Many would say the angelic language is the birthright of humankind, but the reality is far more complicated than that. Consider it more an operating code of the universe. Once you know the code, once you speak the language, manipulating all that is becomes a ridiculously simple construct. When I first learned of this book’s existence, I didn’t need to act right away. Man wasn’t ready for that information in the thirteenth century, but those who possessed it didn’t understand what they had, so there was no harm in allowing it to remain in the hands of humans.”

  “Until…” I prompted.

  “With the advent of the Spanish Inquisition, an effort born of the monarchy, not of the church, the danger grew too great. The sacred tome had to be hidden, and hidden again.” He twisted his lips. “Unfortunately, I was still new enough in my position that I believed it was not my place to cast it entirely from this world, and so I entrusted it to human hands. And they kept their pact. They found hiding places that lasted for centuries. One that even I didn’t know to look for, as I had excised the book from my memory when I gave it over to them.”

  “So you trusted them. That’s good, right?”

  He shook his head. “It was a mistake I realized I couldn’t make again. I ran across mention of some dire action in my journals, but nothing at all to clarify that action, and spent much of the next hundred years trying to remember what I had forgotten, to no avail. When the next opportunity presented itself to remove arcane lore from human hands, however, I suspect I was not nearly so foolhardy. Which brings us here to London, where we must find something that is so deeply hidden that no human might ever lay eyes on it again.”

  “And Brother McCullough?”

  Armaeus sighed. “For one brief shining moment, he knew the language of the angels. But now, and evermore, it will be lost to him. It’s too much for mortal minds to bear.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Armaeus knew the language now, had used it unconsciously, summoning Brother McCullough to us to get us off the streets. Yet he’d also dangled a mortal over the side of a precipice in the wake of learning that language, merely because the man had pissed him off. So how well could immortal minds handle the language of the angels?

  I tried not to think about that too much.

  We left before McCullough woke, taking care to leave no indication of our presence. The building didn’t seem to have a sophisticated camera system, and there was no watchman. Arguably, that meant McCullough would have no evidence he’d been summoned from his studies to bring in two strangers from the park outside under the influence of angelic communication. But as we made our way through the predawn streets of London, I found my mind turning to another possible issue.

  “The lost chapter contained the language of angels, transcribed—like a dictionary,” I said.

  Armaeus didn’t turn toward me. We were walking at a remarkably slow pace as he swept his gaze ahead of us, as if he was mapping a city he’d never visited before. I didn’t know if angelic language had a nav system, but it was possible.

  “Like a dictionary, yes, and a guidebook,” he finally answered.

  “And you’d totally forgotten it existed once you decided it was too scary for mortal kind.”

  That did earn me a sidelong look. “Your point?”

  “Well, we kind of have an angel on the Council. A big one. And he’s been around since the beginning. Wouldn’t he know that this chapter existed too?” The Hierophant of the Arcana Council, Michael the Archangel, wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but there was no doubting the fact he would be uniquely qualified to weigh in on the existence of an angel dictionary and helpful how-to guide and its possible ramifications to humanity.

  Armaeus chuckled. “As to whether or not the Hierophant knew about the existence of the book—that’s somewhat in doubt, given his location when the book was first written. As to his understanding of the impact of the lost chapter on the masses of humanity, that’s an excellent question, and one I fully intend to ask him when we reach the others. Who are staying quite close, as it happens. You’ve lost your phone.”

  “Okay. Good. And true.” I knew the Magician couldn’t read my mind…I was pretty sure of it…but I didn’t miss the fact that he knew what I wanted to know and why I wanted to know it, and he’d provided me all the information I needed without me asking for it. Was he merely making connections, or did the lost chapter’s teachings give him angel vision too? “Simon can hook me up with another phone when we meet up with them. Where are they?”

  “Boutique hotel near Buckingham Palace,” Armaeus murmured. He turned his head as if he was following a scent like a dog. “I’m not sure we should be walking.”

  “Ahh…well, you’re in charge of transpo if you know where we’re going and I don’t.”

  He shook his head. “Also not an option, as you’d see if you would look at me.”

  His words weren’t delivered with any level of censure, but they stung all the same. It literally hurt to look at Armaeus, but that didn’t change the necessity of it. Screwing up my courage, I risked another glance at him with my third eye.

  And staggered back a step, sucking in a harsh breath. A similar corona of electricity swirled around Armaeus as it had when he’d been passed out on the park bench, but this one was visibly being held in check, presumably by Armaeus himself. It was like watching a volcano erupt inside a trash can, with the sides about to blow at any second. “Uhhh…does that hurt?”

  “Not in any conventional way. But we’re being followed by low-level Connecteds, and they’ve picked up on the increase in my energy output. Anyone with a greater level of sophistication will be able to recognize the signature immediately. I need to get to the hotel. But the chaos of—”

  The flash of a vehicle approaching us was coming so quickly, so intently, I acted without hesitation. “Get back,” I ordered and pushed Armaeus behind me as a sleek dark gray limousine shot up next to us and stopped, the driver opening the door and sticking out one impressive gam.

  “Don’t shoot, dollface. I come in peace,�
� Nikki declared.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ride to the boutique hotel was fast and warded—which was good, as Armaeus passed out the moment he folded himself into the sleek limousine.

  “What the hell happened to him?” Nikki asked through the in-car system. “He’s practically crackling back there.”

  “What do you see when you look at him?”

  “Honestly, my gaze keeps shearing away. I try to get a fix on him but can’t hold it. Is he doing that on purpose?”

  “I don’t think so, especially not while he’s passed out. But he leveled up when we were in Spain by a lot, and I don’t think he’s fully figured out what that means. How’d you know to come find us?”

  “I was dispatched by Simon, who somehow managed to wrangle this sweet ride on zero notice.” She chortled. “Good thing I remember how to drive on the opposite side of the street. Simon said you guys had a tail, but I haven’t seen anyone.”

  “We were traveling on foot. Presumably, so were they.”

  “Maybe. But that’s not the only problem. We’ve gotten more company since you guys showed up in London.”

  “We’ve only been here a little over an hour.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s been a busy rotation. Death and the Hierophant showed up within seconds of each other, both of them pissed. Any idea what that’s about?”

  “Death, no. The Hierophant, ah…maybe.” I filled her in on what information I knew about the manuscript that Armaeus had recovered. She listened without interruption as I explained the angelic Rosetta-stone nature of the lost section of the Book of Radiance, its locations inside the holy places of Barcelona, and Armaeus’s reaction to cracking the spine. But when I got to the part about the Spanish priest, I heard her suck in a quick breath.

  “Since when does Armaeus do anything to humans? Especially people at that pay grade?”

  “Exactly. I don’t like it.” I studied Armaeus as she drove, not knowing if he could hear me or not, and not particularly caring. Around us, the wind whistled and sighed, cocooning us with its chatter. “It’s not like him, and I don’t know what that means. It seems that he’s remembered the book and what its purpose was and why it was put where it was, but this, what’s happening now, is new. He also picked up on the fact that we were being followed, but he said they were low-level Connecteds and he didn’t know who they were affiliated with. Which again…”

  Nikki clucked her tongue in concern. “Which again is a problem. There are still gaps. This manuscript didn’t seem to fill any of them, except the fact that it existed. He picked up Angel Speak, but he’s not able to connect the dots about the Shadow Court.”

  “Not yet,” I agreed. “You guys find anything about the year 1571 that’s important?”

  “There was a lot about 1571 that was important, but not a hell of a lot that was actually written down,” Nikki groused. “We think we found it anyway—but hey, here we are. Simon wanted me to dump the car in the staff area, so if you’ll just hold on to that thought for a tick, lemme get us inside.”

  She quickly drove to the back of the impressive building, where an attendant came rushing out the moment Nikki nosed her vehicle into view. Armaeus roused himself to consciousness as the vehicle stopped. Within moments, we were safely inside the hotel.

  I could tell the difference immediately, but Armaeus beat me to the punch.

  “This hotel is heavily warded,” he murmured, and I could hear the strain in his voice. Instinctively, I took a step closer to him, though he didn’t seem at risk of immediate collapse.

  “Correctamundo,” Nikki said. “Apparently, it’s why we’re here. It’s a property that’s partially owned by the Council and maintains the strictest security from any sort of cyber psychic attack. Simon’s pretty happy with himself right about now, but I’m not sure if he can cover a host of angels coming down for a chat, if that’s what you think is going to happen.”

  Armaeus looked at me sharply. “You told her?”

  The question struck me the wrong way, but I fought to keep my tone light. “We’re all on the same team here,” I reminded him. “Humans and demigods alike.”

  My answer didn’t seem to mollify him, and Nikki wisely stayed quiet. After another second, Armaeus spoke. “There is a great deal of danger to any mortal wielding words of angels. Even those they overhear by mistake. Especially those.”

  “Then we’ll keep all wielding to a minimum,” Nikki said. “Here we are.”

  She ushered us into a palatial suite that would’ve seemed enormous except for the outsized egos it already contained. The Devil lounged against the far wall, his sharp eyes on Armaeus, missing nothing. Simon sat hunched over a computer screen, his fingers racing across the keys. And, just as Nikki had promised, another two members of the Council rounded out the group. Death and the Hierophant.

  Of the two, Death looked more irritated. Tall and muscular, with one side of her platinum-blonde hair shaved close to her skull, and the other side spiked up, she stood staring stonily at Armaeus as we entered the room. Dressed for a biker rally in a black tank top, beat-up jeans, and shit-kicker boots, she crossed her arms over her chest, and the sleeve of colorful tattoos that decorated one arm stood out in vivid contrast to her pale skin. But her light complexion had nothing on Michael the Archangel.

  With his skin so fair it was almost translucent, his white hair, and his virtually nonexistent eyebrows, Michael looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in thousands of years. Up until a short while ago, that was actually the case. Stuck inside what most humans would describe as hell, he spent his time away from mortals quite by choice. It was only after the Magician had sent me off to fetch him that Michael agreed to exit into the real world. When he first emerged from his hidey-hole, he’d been swept away like a kid in a candy store by all the people and sounds and colors. That wonder had quickly diminished as the problems of the Council increased. Now he spent most of the time scowling, an expression he was currently perfecting. “Where is the lost chapter?” he asked before Armaeus had taken ten steps into the room.

  Armaeus didn’t stop, however, until he sank into one of the suite’s dining room chairs near Simon. I’d never seen him look so exhausted, but his voice was cool and even as he responded to the Hierophant. “Safe. How much do you know about it?”

  “Enough to hope that it had been a rumor, a rumor that was never substantiated by myself as I was otherwise engaged. You certainly never indicated such a thing existed.”

  “Would I have done so?” the Magician asked. “There was an extended period of time when I apparently knew of the manuscript’s existence but did not take steps to remove it from the mortal plane entirely. And when I did intervene, it was not to destroy the book or even to keep it for myself. It was to forget it existed. That seems…foolhardy, though no more foolhardy than the manuscript existing in the first place. How is it possible?”

  The archangel spread his hands. “It’s not my place to know the will of God, only to wonder at it, and occasionally rail against it. His creations can achieve far more than they realize, despite their best attempts at forgetting this fact. Perhaps he wanted to see how far they could go.”

  I persisted. “You don’t have any idea who could have whispered this language into the ear of the kabbalist scribe?”

  Michael’s smile was cold. “I have a few ideas, yes. But I doubt I’ll get the pleasure of confirmation.” He shifted his glance to the Magician. “Just as you, Armaeus, to this day, don’t know why, specifically, you allowed the book to remain in the hands of humans.”

  “Maybe you couldn’t destroy it,” Simon offered from the other side of the table, swiveling on his chair. “Maybe it was spelled or something to prevent any harm coming to it.”

  Kreios turned to Armaeus. “If that was the case, why would you need to intervene at all? A book that powerful could take care of itself and clearly did for a couple hundred years. Why did you get involved?”

  “I don’t…”

  “He
got involved for the same reason he got involved in 1571,” Death interrupted, her tone sharp. “There comes a time in Armaeus’s analysis where he decides that, despite all apparent indications to the contrary, the most sensitive and gifted humans cannot be trusted to handle the magic their own skills and abilities have led them to, magic that can change the course of humanity. When that happens, in his hubris, he takes steps.”

  Armaeus turned to her. “Steps you are aware of, apparently.”

  “Only insofar as they damage the humans whose memories you’ve stripped,” she said. “In the case of the lost chapter of the Zohar, you were fairly circumspect. You ensured the safety of the manuscript without destroying it, allowing it to live on in arcane lore for a few generations after you spirited it into safe hands and out of your mind entirely. That was well done. You were less circumspect with John Dee.”

  That caused everyone to stop and turn toward her.

  “John Dee,” Armaeus echoed reflectively. “Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First, in the year 1571. An extraordinary man of science, mathematics, and alchemy. It’s reasonable…quite reasonable that he would have drawn my interest. But why do you think my second lapse of memory has anything to do with him?”

  “Because that was the year he nearly died, well before his time. That was the year he began going slightly mad as well, though no one would recognize it for years. Within two more decades, he would become impoverished and frail. Once the mightiest magician of the Elizabethan age, withered away to dust.”

  Armaeus stared at her. “I did that to him? Why?”

  “I never knew the reason, honestly.” Death shook her head. “I certainly didn’t lay his decline at your door at the time. When I learned that your second memory lapse was dated to 1571, it was the first time I put two and two together. Dee had attempted to take his own life by consuming the very mixtures he was attempting to combine in his laboratory—a beautiful laboratory filled with books of every description. By all accounts, that year he had everything to live for, having just returned from a strange and secretive mission to France at the queen’s request. Nevertheless, one night, he was desolate, and he cried out for Death. I came.”