Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane (13 page)

“Yes,” I said, turning back to Officer Wysocki. “We were together. Tommy was…a really good friend.”

“I see. Sorry for your loss,” he said, and just like that my throat closed and tears suddenly stung my eyes. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t hold it.

“You going to be okay? You need me to call someone?” he asked, obviously seeing the tears welling up.

I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

He nodded and went back to writing in his little policeman’s pad. “So his name’s Tommy? Tommy what?”

“Thomas, actually.” I swallowed, trying to get the stupid waver out of my voice. “Thomas Saint James.”

“Saint James,” he repeated, still nodding and writing. “Good. And what can you tell me about the vandals?”

He thought the demons were just a couple of vandals? What, did he think some stupid kids had scared Tommy into a stroke? No friggin’ way. I wanted to set the record straight, make it known that nothing scared Tommy—ever. But what was the alternative? To those who didn’t know him, the stroke was a believable story, and that was more important than an illorum’s reputation.

“Uh, I don’t know. Not much, I guess,” I said, not sure what he thought I knew, or what I could say that wouldn’t get me an overnight stay in a padded room.

He sighed, and his gaze swung up to me. Frustration showed in the way he jerked his hat from under his arm and dropped both hands to his sides. “Can you tell me how many vandals there were? What they looked like? What they said? Anything to help us catch them?”

My thumbs hooked on the front pockets of my jeans. “So, you think they got away?”

“Do you see them around?” he asked, scanning the small parking lot. A flicker of movement on the roof of the library over the front entrance drew my eye. There was a man standing on top of the building. Did anyone else think that was strange? I glanced at Wysocki and back to the guy, who stood with the toes of his black dress shoes jutting over the edge of the gutter.

My heart jumped to my throat. The man’s pale, almost white hair fluttered down to his elbows, his black, ankle-length jacket moving around his legs with the slight breeze. He was six-four, maybe six-six, with broad shoulders, big feet, and thick hands that he clasped behind him as I watched.

And he was staring at me. At least it seemed that way. He wore dark sunglasses, but he was definitely looking in my direction. And he was defying gravity by perching all his weight on the flimsy metal gutter. He couldn’t be a Fallen. I made a mental check of the mark on my wrist, the one meant to warn me when a Fallen was near. It didn’t even tingle. So this was an angel—a seraphim.
An angelic rubbernecker. Nice.

I looked back to Officer Wysocki, who was now looking at me like I might get that padded room after all. He didn’t see the man on the roof. People miss so much of what goes on around them. I had, too, until a few weeks ago.

“Uh…what was the question?”

“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but something smells,” he said.

It’s probably the brimstone
.

“There’s a lot of property damage in there, shelves toppled over, books everywhere, blood and some kind of black slime all over the place. There’s a glass wall, at least two inches thick, shattered. Now, I want some answers or we’ll see if a ride to the station in the back of my squad car helps jog your memory.”

“No. Okay, wait.” I seriously did not want to be trapped at the police station for the rest of the day. I had things to do, fallen angels to kill. “I didn’t get a good look at them. They were hiding between the shelves. When they started making trouble Tommy and I ducked behind some tables and I cracked my nose against one of them. There was a lot of blood and I guess the scare was…” I swallowed hard, hating the lie. “I guess the scare was too much for Tommy. I don’t know why they were there or what they wanted.”

“How many were there?”

Crap
. Whatever cover story Eli had worked up with his powers, he hadn’t clued me in. “Listen. I just lost someone very close to me. Everything’s still kind of a blur. Tommy and I weren’t the only ones in there. There was a lady at the reference desk. Have you talked to her?”

The officer tucked his hat under his arm again and flipped through his pad until he found the page he wanted. “The librarian says she thinks there were four of them. But she can’t remember anything else. Can’t even tell me if they were male or female. And no one can figure out what that black stuff is that’s on the books and floor. What do you know about that?”

Dead demon guts
, I thought. But I said, “Nothing. I don’t know what it could be.”

“Of course not.” He stared at me for a second or two, one eye narrowing, his head tilting to the side as though he were weighing his thoughts about me. Finally, he closed his notepad and jammed it into his back pocket.

He used both hands to settle his hat on his head and then propped them on his hips. “Okay. Off the record. Tell me what happened.”

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.
Yeah, ’cause that’s how it works
. “I don’t know what you mean, officer. If that’s all you need, I’d like to go home and grab a shower. I want to call Tommy’s parents. Let them know.”

He reached for me when I started to turn away. “Wait, I’m serious. Totally off the record. I know something’s not right about this scene. I can…I can feel it.” He glanced around as though he was worried someone might have overheard him.

“Officer—”

“Dan,” he said. “My name’s Dan Wysocki. I mean it. Just between us.”

And the angel on the roof
. I glanced at the ominous-looking man above us. Obviously, Eli wasn’t the only one being watched now. But why me?

“There’s nothing I can tell you,” I said. “Really.” At least, I couldn’t if he wanted to keep his normal, happy life.

He pointed at me, like he’d pinned a bug. “You said nothing you
can
tell me, not nothing
to
tell me. I’m a cop, Emma; I notice the way people word things. It matters. Please. This isn’t the first…strange disturbance call I’ve gone on. I’ve seen that black slime at another scene. And when we met I had this sensation in my gut…I’ve felt it before. It means something.”

Dan looked to be in his early- to mid-thirties. There was a tan line on his left ring finger and his wallet was fat enough to bulge his back pocket. A family man.

“You married, Dan?” I asked.

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

“Five,” he said. “Four boys and a girl.”

I rolled my eyes. “Go home, Dan. Forget about the black slime and witnesses who can’t remember anything. Go home to your kids. Be a dad. Be a cop. Live your life. And don’t pick up any swords.”

“Did you say swords?”

“Yeah.” No way he knew what I meant by it.

“There were marks at the last scene. Gouges left in a telephone poll and a bus stop bench. Like something long and sharp had cut into it,” he said. “Our weapons guy said they looked like sword strikes. Neither of the librarians remembers seeing any weapons, but I saw the same kind of marks on a couple of the bookshelves in there.”

Crap
. I fought the reflex to touch my sword. “Oh, yeah? Fascinating. I have to go.”

“Hey.” His sharp tone stopped me again. “I could haul your butt downtown and
make
you tell me, you know?”

“How? You going to torture me? Put me on the rack? Use thumbscrews?” I said.

There was something about Officer Dan Wysocki I liked. Maybe it was a kindred species thing. Maybe it was his pretty eyes, or his solid stature. He looked like the kind of guy who didn’t back down easily, didn’t scare easily. I liked that. Which was why I wasn’t going to tell him a damn thing.

“Listen, I know whatever happened here isn’t…normal,” he said. “I can’t explain it, but I could feel it when I walked in and smelled that black goo. Like that stench should mean something to me. I don’t know how you’re involved, but if you need help, just let me know. I think you’re supposed to let me know.”

Okay, this was starting to creep me out. “Thanks, Dan. I’ve, um, really got to go now.”

He straightened. I could almost see him go from Dan Wysocki, confused nephilim, to Officer Wysocki, dedicated cop.

“Yeah. I’ve, uh, I’ve almost got everything.” He pulled his notepad out again, snagged the pen from his breast pocket, and triple-clicked the end. “Let me see some ID and give me your phone number in case we have any more questions or need you to identify suspects.”

“You won’t find any suspects, Dan,” I said, and his gaze flicked up to mine. His two personas battled in his eyes for a moment before the cop took hold again.

“We’ll do our best, Miss Hellsbane. I’ll need that ID and number.”

I gave him my number and driver’s license, and he finally let me walk away just as the ambulance pulled out with Tommy’s body in the back. I stood at the driver’s door of my Jeep, watching the big square vehicle make a left out of the lot and then a right onto the main street and away. No lights, no sirens, just a quiet retreat. So
not
Tommy.

Tears wet my cheeks and stung in my chest when I turned back to unlock my door. But seeing a ginger-haired angel squatting on a thin branch of a nearby tree nearly stopped my aching heart dead.

“Holy sh— What do you want?” I swiped my cheeks dry with the back of my hand.

His eyes were ghostly white, the irises so pale they looked like chips of eggshell in cotton. He wore the same long jacket as the angel on the roof, except it was white, as were his slacks, his shirt, and his shoes. The choice did wonders for him. His rich, reddish hair lay in stunning waves against the stark white of his back and shoulders.

I glanced across the parking lot and noticed another angel had joined my audience. Dressed in the same dark black as the angel on the library, he stood on the roof of a blue Golf convertible, not even bending the cloth top with his weight.

Yet another angel, blond hair past his shoulders, dressed in a pinstriped gray suit, his arms folded across his chest, stood on the sidewalk, looking odd for the normalcy of it. If not for his white eyes, I might not have pegged him as an angel at all.

I looked back to the nearest angel, who was still squatting in the tree, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around them. “You’re wasting your time. Eli’s not going to screw up. I won’t make him fall.”

The angel gave me a slow blink, reminding me of an owl. His eerie white gaze stayed fixed on me, no sign he’d heard or understood. I glanced to the others, their pale faces all watching me, their solemn expressions unchanging.

Stimulating conversationalists
. “Fine,” I said, opening my door and climbing behind the wheel. “You want to watch? Watch me send one of your bastard brothers to the abyss.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I didn’t need to know what was on the other side of Tommy’s apartment door, just that there was another side. The speed at which I could move actually gave me more time to make decisions.

Eli had said it was some weird space-time thing. I didn’t really understand. Somehow, moving that fast, I put myself out of sync with everything else. So, once I was on the other side of the door, I’d have time to take in my surroundings and decide where I wanted to stop, thereby avoiding the chance of stopping inside something unpleasant…like a wall.

Not that I thought there’d be a wall directly on the other side of the door, but you never know. As long as I kept moving, I was golden. It had taken a while to get used to, but I had it down now.

After a deep breath, I pictured myself standing on the other side of Tommy’s apartment door. Then I took a step. With my next I slammed hard into the door. I hadn’t passed through it—I’d run faster than the speed of light right into it.

That hurt.

A lot.

But the door didn’t give an inch. I ran so hard into it every molecule of breath exploded from my lungs and stars spun in circles behind my eyes. If not for a reflexive head flinch, I would’ve broken my nose again.

Staring at the door, my mouth agape, I looked to Eli, who had appeared beside it. “What was that?”

“
That
is what I was trying to tell you,” he said. “There’s still a lot you don’t know, and I can’t possibly tell you everything at once. Some things must be learned as you go—with me at your side. That’s why I’m here…on earth.”

“Whatever.” I’d taken a quick shower to wash off the blood and demon gunk, gotten a fresh set of jeans and T-shirt, and headed over to Tommy’s place the second Eli had given me the address.

“So spill it,” I said, knotting my arms across my chest. “What just happened?”

“You have to remember you’re not pure human,” he said. “Your angelic half encompasses equal amounts in your system and makes you, or at least that half of you, susceptible to the same rules as your father.”

“Which has to do with this…how?”

“Free will,” he said, then gave a nod toward Tommy’s door. “This is the physical threshold to a human’s private realm. Access to it cannot be gained by use of angelic power unless the angel has already been welcomed in.”

“I thought that was just demons and vampires.” I shook my head at the sentence. Weird to think I’d used demons and vampires in a serious conversation.
Moving on
.

“It’s true for anyone possessing angelic blood.”

“So that’s why Tommy didn’t just pop into my house that first day?” I said. “I’d never invited him?”

“Exactly.”

“But after he’d been invited he could pop in any time he wanted.”

“Yes,” Eli said.

“So, can I walk in the normal way?”

Eli leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Of course. Humans ignore others’ free will every day. You’re still half human.”

I was pretty sure there was an insult in there, but I let it slide and reached for the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn. “It’s locked.”

“Of course,” Eli said. “Thomas was very diligent about security.”

“Do you have a key?”

He looked away. “No.”

“Where’s a lock-picking kit when you need one?” I stooped to look at the deadbolt keyhole.

“Will this do?” Eli said, and I looked to see him holding a lock-picking kit in a convenient black-zippered carrying pouch. He gave it to me.

“Cool trick,” I said, more than a little impressed. “Can you make anything out of thin air?”

“I didn’t make the lock kit,” he said, brows furrowed. “I went and retrieved one for you.”

“You stole it?”
Holy klepto, Batman
.

His shoulders stiffened, head high. “I didn’t steal it. I borrowed the kit from the manufacturer. It won’t be missed. I can return it when you’re finished.”

“Oh. Well, that makes all the difference.”
Not
. Angels lie and steal. Who knew? My gaze dropped to the open kit in my hand. Eight different tiny little tools fit snugly into pockets on either side. They looked like itty-bitty screwdrivers, except they each had weird squiggly ends that wouldn’t fit any screw I’d ever seen.

I had no idea how to use them. “Too bad it didn’t come with an instruction manual.”

“It did,” he said, pushing from the wall. “I assumed since you asked for the kit you knew how to use it.”

I opened my mouth for my clever retort about “assuming,” when someone behind me yelled.

“Hey!”

I turned.

“What’re you doing there? What’s that you got?” The man climbed the last two steps to the landing on Tommy’s floor at the end of the hallway just as I slapped the little leather case closed and shifted my hands behind my back. I shook it, hoping Eli would get the hint and take the incriminating evidence. He didn’t.

“Uh, nothing,” I said. “I just stopped by to get something out of my friend’s apartment.”

The beer-bellied man waddled on skinny, bowed legs toward me. His dirt-brown shorts came to the wrinkled knees of his legs. His black socks covered his calves, and he wore a dingy gray tank top that looked like it’d been on him for decades.

“Oh, yeah? Whose apartment? What’s friend’s name?” he asked in accented, broken English. Maybe Russian? He raised the little ball of his chin, and the large, beaklike nose above it. His bushy black eyebrows creased to a point over his small brown eyes and his thick comb-over shifted back.

I hiked a thumb at the door. “Tommy Saint James.”

“He in there?”

“Uh, no.”
He’s dead.
My chest gave a quick pinch to remind me. I shook the pick kit at the small of my back, my mind screaming for Eli to take it.
Take it!

When he didn’t, I glanced behind me.
Crap
. Eli was gone. My gaze went heavenward.
Thanks for the heads-up, magister.

“I’m owner of building. What your name? Lemme see what you got there.” The greasy landlord tried to reach around me, and his bulging belly bumped my arm.
Eeww
.

“Emma.” Rather than let him touch me again, I showed him the lock kit. It just wasn’t worth wanting to scrape my skin off later.

He took the kit and opened it. “Why you have this? You trying to break into apartment?”

“No.”
Yes
. “No, I wasn’t. I was just…”

“I’m calling police,” he said, turning back down the hall, taking my stolen lock-picking kit with him. “You wait here. Police coming now.”

I sighed. “Screw this.”

What’s the use of having superhuman-angel powers if you can’t use them to get yourself out of a jam? A half second later, I was outside on the street at my Jeep.

Tommy’s apartment was on Mount Washington. The area had a close community feel—a lot of big houses built close together, with brick porches and small, fenced yards. The neighborhood boasted some great architecture, too, beautiful Queen Anne–style homes, a few Victorians, but most were good old American Foursquare.

The huge old houses had been sectioned into apartments long ago. One last, longing look at the window to Tommy’s place, and I pushed the key into the door lock of my Jeep.

Eli popped in beside me. “You’re leaving?”

I jumped, and the key popped back out. “Where were you?”

He lifted a card-size pamphlet between us. “Getting the instruction manual. It took me a few minutes to find. They print it in a separate building from where the kit is made. Why do you ask?”

“Because I got busted by the landlord, that’s why.”

“You shouldn’t have been trying to break in,” he said.

“Ya think? Or maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to break in without someone watching my back.”

“Ignoring free will never ends well,” he said. “Besides, as I’ve told you, I cannot interfere.”

“I’m not asking you to interfere. I’m just saying a heads-up would’ve been nice. Maybe a, ‘Hey, Em, you’re about to get busted by a disgusting hairy egg with legs.’ Y’know, or words to that effect.”

He closed the small distance between our bodies, and despite the heated city around us, the scent of fresh spring air, wildflowers, and sun-warmed fields enveloped me. I closed my eyes and inhaled a quick, guilty breath. Did all angels smell this good, or was it just Eli? I didn’t want to know.

“Emma Jane, now more than ever I must temper my actions,” he said, his voice a soft conspirator’s whisper. “Even now I am watched, judged. I cannot give the council cause to question my control.”

I opened my eyes and met the ice blue of his gaze. “The council? Tommy said they were just other angels, seraphim. What’s the council?”

His eyes shifted to his right, and I looked. The angel from the tree at the library squatted on the cross arm of a tall telephone pole on the other side of the road, his arms wrapped around his knees. The long tails of his white coat hung below him, fluttering like a flag in the wind. His ginger-red hair shifted past his shoulders.

“The council of seven,” Eli said. “Seven archangels privileged with having our Father’s ear. Interpreters of His word.
That
seraphim is one of the council’s watchers. A seraphim, but tasked with a mission by the council.”

“A spy. How can you be sure?”

“I can sense it.”

“You don’t talk to God yourself?”

He looked at me. “Yes. But, like you, I do not always understand His answer. The council serves as our advisers, our arbiters, and our judiciary. Their word is not to be questioned.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that one up there’s watching me. I guess we both can’t be trusted.”

“No.” Eli’s back stiffened. “He’s not watching you.”

“Yeah, he is. At least it looks like the same one I saw at the library. One of them, anyway. Same creepy white eyes.”

Eli glanced between me and the angel on the pole, the skin at the top of his nose wrinkling, his mouth a flat serious line. “You must be mistaken.”

He seemed so sure. Too bad he was dead wrong. “Uh…no. I’m not. I’m telling you, Eli, the guy wasn’t more than eight feet away.” I jabbed a finger in the angel’s direction. “That’s the guy who was sitting in a tree at the library. I asked him what he wanted but I got nothing. He didn’t answer.”

“Of course not. Fraciel would never deign to speak to someone like you.”

I gasped. “Rude.”

Eli blinked as though his mind tripped over itself trying to puzzle out the reason for my offense. “You’re the result of sin, Emma Jane. He won’t notice you. He refuses. How would you say it? You’re not even on his radar?”

“Okay. I get it,” I said. “Kudos on the colloquialism, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re still wrong,” I said, and watched Eli go all stiff again. Too bad. “Your buddy Fraciel might be too good to speak to me, but he and his three friends were still thumbing their noses at gravity, and generally weirding me out, watching every move I made with those white eyes.”

“Who were the others?” he asked.

“How should I know? They weren’t wearing name tags.”

He shook his head, his gaze drifting back to Fraciel on the streetlight. “That can’t be. Something’s changed.”

A chill raced through me, like cold iron pumping in my veins. My mind flashed to Eli snatching me from the sharp-toothed, long-clawed grasp of death on Capri. “Because of what happened in the gardens?”

Eli looked at me, and I knew without reading his mind, he’d been thinking the same thing. They suspected it was my fault Eli was acting strangely. And maybe it was—Tommy had predicted as much. Maybe they were just waiting for proof.

“My passions are well in hand, Emma Jane,” he said, reading the thoughts swirling loud and clear on the surface of my mind. “Don’t waste another moment on worry.”

He was right. They could watch all they wanted. We weren’t going to break the rules, no matter how good Eli smelled.

I turned and stared up at Tommy’s building, pushing the spying angels from my mind. I needed to get those tickets for the televangelist’s seminar or at least the name of the guy who was getting them for him. The answer was there, inside his apartment a few feet away. If only I could figure out another way in. And then I saw it.

“There’s a fire escape.” I may not be able to pick a lock, but I could break a window.

“Someone will undoubtedly call the police,” Eli said.

“Then we’ll have to move fast. Lucky for us, we’re good at that.” I thought of the metal landing outside Tommy’s window. I took a step, everything blurred, and with my next I stopped right outside. An instant later the world caught up to me. Eli was already waiting, casually sitting on the thin railing.

“It’s not unlocked by any chance, is it?” I asked.

His eyes closed as he shook his head.

“’Course not.” I tried the window anyway. It was locked, but after pressing my nose to the glass, I realized it was one I could pick. “I need a credit card. There’s one in my purse under the backseat of the Jeep.”

Two heartbeats later, Eli held out the card to me. I pushed against the window and slipped the card between the old rubber seal. It took a little bit of wiggling and shaking the window, but within a few minutes, I’d managed to push the casted metal lock the other way.
Look out, Thomas Crown
.

With the window open, I climbed inside and turned, waiting for Eli to follow. He didn’t. “You coming?”

“I can’t.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “All the years you two were together, Tommy never invited you into his place?”

“He did. But after you were marked, Thomas…revoked his invitation.”

I couldn’t be certain what would’ve made Tommy upset enough with Eli to do such a thing, but I had a pretty good idea. In the end, no matter what he’d said, Tommy didn’t trust Eli. He didn’t trust any of the angels, and after spending the day with my angelic tail, I was beginning to have the same opinion. I just couldn’t lump Eli into that category, no matter how much Tommy had warned me.

“But he doesn’t really live here anymore,” I said.

“His essence still protects his home,” Eli said. “A human’s essence, the power of their will, can linger for years in a home, even longer around favorite objects. All of Tommy’s earthly possessions are inside there. His will still holds me out.”