Hellbent Halo Boxed Set

by E. A. Copen

  I sighed and tugged at the collar of my shirt only to turn into Petra’s punch to the jaw. She grabbed me by the shirt and shook me hard. “What’d you do?”

  I turned my head and spat blood. “Me? You’re the one who stepped out of the spell. If you’d stayed put, things would’ve gone as they should’ve. If I were you, I’d count myself lucky to have survived that stunt.”

  “My men didn’t survive. You killed them!”

  Four dark stains spread over the floor behind her with four headless bodies lying on the ground to match. A fifth soldier, the lone survivor, surveyed his teammates with wide eyes, face locked in a shell-shocked expression.

  I pushed Petra away. “Your pride killed them. Remember that next time you decide to interrupt me when I’m working.”

  We turned in unison to eye the body burning behind us, knowing I’d destroyed the best lead. Without a body, there’d be no autopsy and no way to know how or when the wounds were inflicted.

  Petra’s lip twitched. “You destroyed my evidence!”

  I searched my person for my cigarettes and came up with a nearly empty soft pack. The last one was bent and waterlogged from my having fallen asleep outside, but it still lit up just fine. “I just saved your life. I believe a thank you is in order.”

  She glared at me, her face getting redder by the second. Petra’s heels clicked as she took several steps forward, placing herself between the burning woman and me. “So I’ve got a murder, four dead guys, a curse, and no leads. I was closer to solving this before you showed up.”

  “I wouldn’t say no leads.” I pinched the cigarette between two fingers and gestured to the floor. “We have the gypsum and the broken mirror. Put it back together, and maybe I can have a look at what came through.”

  The God Squad—or what was left of them—assembled to collect the tiny pieces of broken glass in baggies. Putting the mirror back together was all but impossible, but if they somehow managed it, I might’ve been able to sense any residual magic. Blown apart as it was, the mirror was useless.

  I pulled out my phone and paced the floor, smoking and searching for information about the name the priest had given me. Stefan Nikolaides, the untouchable missing Greek. What made him so untouchable anyway? In an organized crime group like the Komnosis family, just about everyone was replaceable. Mobsters were a hydra; cut off one head and two more would spring up.

  Stefan didn’t have an account on any social media, at least not that I could find, which seemed odd. People in their twenties and thirties practically lived on their phones, myself excluded. I didn’t trust social media. Too easy for idiots to lift information. Maybe Stefan was the same, though it was hard to imagine anyone else being as paranoid as I was.

  He might have had no social media accounts, but I did find his name on some old court documents, and an address. That was as good a lead as any. Now if only I could get away from that warehouse to look into it.

  I found a set of metal stairs and sat, studying his photo. You could tell a lot about a person from a candid photo like that one, one snapped too quick for the subject to pose or adjust their hair. Even with those sunglasses on, I recognized the familiar hangover expression of irritation. He stood by a swimming pool, but he wasn’t dressed to swim. All around him were pieces of a lavish lifestyle. Not his, but someone else’s, someone he was friendly with, considering he looked as if he’d slept in his clothes. Wrinkled clothes but he found time to put on his watch. It was an unusual watch too, small and delicate. Much too cheaply made to be anything of value.

  Mirren hadn’t mentioned much about him, but Stefan was privy to the world of magic. He’d have to be to seek out that amulet. Did that mean he was some sort of wizard employed by the Komnosis family? That’d explain why he’d be untouchable. Magic was common, but talented practitioners weren’t. Recovering the lost family wizard would be worth the favor Alexi was offering, but then why would Stefan disappear in the first place? It had to have something to do with the change in leadership. Maybe he’d seen something he shouldn’t have. In that case, Alexi’s position would be difficult. Anyone else would’ve gotten the ax, but not a powerful mage. Not the one person who gave him an edge over a crowded board of other powerful players.

  “Thank you.”

  I looked up from the photo. Khaleda stood a few feet in front of me, studying the wall and hugging herself. A thin line of dried blood ran across her throat. “What for?”

  Her attention slid from the wall to me. “You saved my life at the expense of Petra’s men. You didn’t have to do that.”

  I shifted on the stairs, pulling my legs up so I could lean forward. The posture alleviated some of the nausea creeping in. The headache would surge beyond a tolerable level soon enough. I needed to show myself to bed to sleep it off, but that wasn’t going to happen. We couldn’t leave until God’s Hand dismissed us, which I didn’t think Petra was inclined to do anytime soon.

  “Better you than those fuckwits. You’re useful, at least. Know what you’re doing more than half the time, even if you are a pain in the arse.” I rubbed the back of my neck.

  “Who’s that?” She nodded to the photo in my hand.

  “Stefan Nikolaides. Missing friend of Mirren’s.”

  “That’s the job Reverend Mirren gave you?”

  I nodded.

  Khaleda slid onto the stairs next to me, forcing me to scoot over. She folded her hands and tucked them between her knees, eyes focused forward. “You remember when you first brought me to New York? What a mess I was? I couldn’t even drag myself into the shower. All I wanted to do was drink, sleep, and crawl into whatever dark hole I could find. But you wouldn’t let me. What makes you think I’m going to let you do it?”

  “I’m fine, thanks for askin’.”

  “You’re not fine, Josiah. Normally, I don’t care if you drink yourself unconscious or work until you fall over. But you promised to help me free Osric’s soul.”

  I pushed away from the stairs and jammed the picture into my pocket before turning around to face her. “If this is the part where you try to tell me to pull my head in and get sober—”

  Khaleda laughed and rolled her eyes. “Not likely. You’re a barely-functional chain-smoking alcoholic, and I’m not sure you’d survive sober. I just need to know we’re still on the same page.”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  All traces of her earlier laughter faded from her face. “Danny.”

  I turned my back to her and pulled out my pack of cigarettes only to find it empty. Damn thing. I threw it against the wall and rubbed my face.

  “I know what he meant to you,” Khaleda continued. “I know you wanted to save him. It gave you purpose, and you’ve lost that. But Manus Dei is not the place to look for structure and purpose, Josiah. They’re the reason he’s dead.”

  “I know!” I turned on her, scowling. “I know they’re backstabbing assholes better than you, Khaleda. I don’t need you to lecture me. Fuck me, maybe I should’ve let that spell chew through you. At least then I’d have some quiet.” I paced away, rubbing the throbbing in my temples.

  Something moved along the wall beside me. I didn’t need to look to see that it was Milly. I could feel her presence and the slightest hint of disapproval. Milly might not’ve been Khaleda’s biggest fan, but she didn’t like it when we fought.

  Divine magic was used here, Josiah, said Milly in my mind. Tell them.

  I shook my head. “Not until we’re certain.”

  There’s no doubt, Josiah. This is the magic of the Fallen. What other proof do you need?

  I grimaced at the thought. I’d seen a few of the Fallen on my last and only trip to Hell and didn’t look forward to seeing them again, but this did seem like their sort of thing. Twisted bastards, the Fallen.

  I paused and extended a hand to gently collect Milly from the wall. “Even if we are right, there’s no use in bringing them in. They’ll just get killed. Until we know which of the Fallen, best keep it between you an
d me, girl.”

  Milly bristled in my palm. Someone’s coming.

  At the same moment, the back of my neck itched as if someone had breathed on it. The weight of someone’s gaze. I turned, cradling the spider, to see a large, hooded figure duck out of the rain through the warehouse door. He was easily over six feet, wider in the shoulders than the gut, but not by much. He’d drawn the hood of his jumper tight and tucked his hands into the front pouch, walking hunched over like a man up to no good.

  The posture might’ve fooled most people, but I knew the old rock troll too well. “Reggie!” I lifted Milly to my shoulder to offer him my hand. “Still on Petra’s payroll, I see.”

  He lifted his head and scowled at me, ignoring my outstretched hand. “Not by choice. Thanks for that.”

  I lowered my hand but kept my grin. “She call you in to help analyze some video?”

  Reggie shifted the backpack on his shoulder. “Well, she didn’t call me for the hell of it, and she didn’t mention you two were here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

  He slid past me.

  I glanced at the bodies lying around, at Khaleda still waiting on the stairs, and decided to follow Reggie into the back room. Petra had told me to stay out so she could work, but that was before she asked for Reggie’s help. Seeing as how I was responsible for getting Reggie involved with Manus Dei to begin with, I figured there’d be no harm in tagging along. Besides, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

  The back room wasn’t much to look at, little more than an old security station with half the monitors busted. Their cables had been pulled out and stripped, left exposed to the elements like guts.

  Petra had a laptop set up on a folding table, her man sitting at it working through some code I couldn’t pretend to understand. Magic I could do, but computers? I’d always deferred that to more knowledgeable people. People like Reggie.

  Petra, who was leaning over her soldier, scowling at the screen, stood to scowl at me instead. “What are you doing in here? I thought I told you to wait outside.”

  I shrugged, much to Milly’s displeasure. “I got bored. Can’t really be helpful from out there either so I thought I’d come and see what you were screwing up in here.”

  “You’re better off just ignoring him,” said Reggie, lowering his pack to another, empty table. “He’s not very good at listening. What do you have for me?”

  Petra eyed me one more time before folding her arms over her flat chest. “No cameras in the warehouse, but we’ve pulled some footage from the traffic camera down the street. We’re adding timestamps to every vehicle that’s passed it in the last twelve hours.”

  “That corpse is more than twelve hours old,” I told her. “She’s got corpse flies laying eggs, and the innards are in full putrification. You need to review footage for at least the last two days.”

  Petra made a low, growling sound. Leave it to angels not to know about the stages of human decomposition. As long as they were in their bodies, the bodies didn’t age and healed faster than normal. They didn’t stick around after, and there probably weren’t any forensic scientists among them. That’s why they needed people like me.

  Reggie grunted and opened his laptop. It was an older model than the one the God Squad was working with, probably one Reggie’d been hauling around for years. The screen lit up and his thick fingers went to work, tapping out commands on the keyboard. A minute passed, maybe two, before Reggie got up and connected a cable to a hub in the center of the room. When he sat down, he pressed the Enter key and his screen went crazy, letters and numbers racing around faster than even the fastest eye could process. A moment later, he brought up a street map of Brooklyn with several blinking lights.

  I leaned in closer. “What’s all that?”

  “All the cameras in the area.” Reggie typed something else in and the number of lights tripled. “And now you have a map of all the wireless cameras that’ve registered with cell phone towers in the area. I’ve triangulated their locations and pinpointed them on this map. If your bad guy was stupid enough to leave his cell on while he was doing his dirty work, he’ll be one of these lights.”

  “Don’t suppose you can just peek through the cameras, could you?” I asked, leaning in.

  He shook his head and pushed me away. “Even if I did, it’d only show me what the cameras are seeing now. Better off tracking the phones through GPS. Unfortunately, there are dozens, and that’s going to take some time.”

  “Good.” I patted him on the shoulders and stepped away. “Call me when you’ve got something workable, yeah?”

  “Josiah!” Petra spat when I reached the door. “Just where do you think you’re going?”

  “We’ve got no leads here, so I thought I’d go look into doing something else with my time other than standing ’round with my thumbs up me own arse for a change.” I gave her a salute.

  “This case takes precedence over everything else, Josiah,” she shouted after me.

  I gave no indication that I’d heard her. She’d ignored me when I was trying to save her life. It only seemed fair to return in kind.

  “Come on,” I said to Khaleda as I passed by her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as she fell into step beside me, hands in her pockets.

  “First, I’m grabbing a change of clothes and something to eat. Then we’re headed to 33rd and 24th for a look around.”

  “Grab a shower, while you’re at it.” The succubus pinched her nose. “You smell like you crawled into a brewery and died.”

  Chapter Four

  JOSIAH

  I did us both a favor and took a long shower. The hotel rooms Manus Dei had paid for were small but adequate. That was less true about the hot water. Lukewarm was the best I could hope for. At least it stayed consistently lukewarm for thirty minutes while I tried to work out a puzzle.

  What I’d told Petra about mirrors wasn’t the whole truth. In simple terms, I supposed it was, but there were other ways to use a mirror when it came to magic. They were portals, doorways anyone could walk through if you only knew how. But a mirror was also a window, one through which powerful demons could peer at will. With enough mirrors, you could also amplify some spells. Direct a spell into a mirror and it might shatter it, though that didn’t explain the corpse. The only explanation I could come up with that fit both was human sacrifice, which made Petra right. That left a sour taste in my mouth. Even a broken clock could be right twice a day, I supposed.

  So blood was the price paid, the life lost converted to energy consumed. Why do it in front of a mirror? Better yet, why destroy the mirror afterward? Destroying the mirror would disperse any energy caught. If they’d been trying to use it as a doorway to let something through, they’d grossly underestimated the amount of blood they’d need.

  Which only means they’ll likely try again. Bugger. I struck the shower wall with a fist. More bodies meant more work and more of Petra up my ass. I should’ve told her straight up that divine magic had been used in that room, but I didn’t think she’d take it well. At least that narrowed down the suspect pool. We were either dealing with a rogue angel, a god, or one of the Fallen. Blood sacrifice didn’t necessarily clear the angels, considering the Old Testament version of their god had been pretty keen on it.

  I needed more information, a lead, or another body, hopefully one without a death curse laid on it. At least Reggie would give me something in a few hours. He’d pull the license plates and have a list of car owners by the end of the day. Not that it’d lead me to the killer, not if he was smart enough to drive a stolen car at least. Still, it’d be something more to go on than what I had.

  Meanwhile, I had to act on the lead I did have and find Stefan Nikolaides.

  I got out of the shower and ran a towel over my head before stopping in front of the mirror. Could do with a shave, I thought and pulled open the cabinet to find razors and shaving cream. You’re looking like forty days of bad nights.

  The ca
binet made a satisfying click when I closed it. No one appreciated the little things in life like that enough.

  Danny would’ve.

  I stopped lathering up my face and hesitated, focused on my haggard face in the mirror. Hadn’t meant to think of him. I never did. Yet there it was, hanging in the air like a bad smell, the scent of blood and snow on a rooftop in Manhattan, the feel of the knife twisting in my hand, the look of helpless terror frozen in his eyes.

  “Stop it.” The can of shaving cream clattered into the sink as I gripped the sides. “Pull ya head in, you fucking bastard. What’re you doing conjuring the dead with memory? Bloody stupid.” I picked up the can and pitched it into the trash where it belonged, ripped the cap off the cheap razor and put it to my face.

  Wasn’t until the razor blade was against my neck that I saw him in the mirror, a ghost the spitting image of the photo in my pants pocket. No, not exactly. This Stefan was paler, a hair taller with dark circles under his eyelids and bloodshot eyes.

  I turned, but he was gone. I was still alone in the bathroom. Warmth trickled down my neck and dripped onto the white linoleum floor in two thick red drops. I mumbled a curse and grabbed the towel to put pressure on the cut. “Christ, I need to smoke. I must be losing my damn mind.”

  Once I stopped bleeding, I finished shaving, got dressed, and went to retrieve the succubus in the room next door. She didn’t answer when I knocked on the door. Just like Khaleda to ignore me. I tried the door again, but no answer. After a look up and down the hallway, I placed my hand over the magnetic lock and sent a pulse of electrical power into it. The lock sparked, buzzed, and then clicked open.

  The room was spotless as if she hadn’t even slept in it. I stepped in, expecting to hear the shower running or some other indication she was ignoring my knocks for a reason, but the room was silent. A quick check only proved that the bathroom was empty. Her makeup was still on the counter, bottles of creams and lotions lying in a disorganized mess near the mirror.