Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane (21 page)

My weight shifted, the world slowed, and power suddenly hummed through my veins, giving inhuman strength to human muscle. In that same instant, the circle around me tightened. Demons advanced. I didn’t care.

A breath before I swung, someone yelled. “Freeze! Police.”

I glanced over my shoulder then turned, my sword dropping to my side, my free hand going up in surrender. Everywhere I looked, all I saw were gun barrels, every one of them pointed at me.

Time caught up, made me blink as my brain struggled, a few beats behind. Police were everywhere, yelling. “Freeze! Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon!”

In the snap of a finger, the demons had shifted from seething, threatening beasts to innocuous convention goers. Some melted into the crowd of nephilim onstage; others feigned fear, cowering behind chairs, taking cover next to tables.

The demons set me up. Any visible threat, any justification for my drawn weapon was gone. All that was left was me with my big honkin’ sword, threatening to swing at the spiritualist Richard Hubert and his fifty or so
unarmed
loyal followers. I admit, it didn’t look good.

I dropped the weapon, put both my hands up in surrender. It didn’t seem to make a difference to the adrenaline-pumped cops.

“Don’t move! Don’t move!” they yelled, edging closer.

“Emma?” someone said.

My gaze snapped to the uniformed policeman among the sea of uniformed policemen washing toward me, guns still drawn.

“Officer Dan?” I groaned.

“Hold your fire,” Wysocki yelled. “Hold your fire. I got this. I got it.”

No one fired, but they still had a bead on me with their guns. One cop darted forward, grabbed my sword, and stepped back like I might try and snatch it. I released the power I’d sent to call my blade and watched the gleaming metal vanish. The cop holding it nearly dropped the hilt out of shock. I didn’t care as long as Dan didn’t touch that grip.

Officer Wysocki holstered his weapon, snagging his cuffs from farther back on his belt. “Jeezus, Emma. Threatening a priest? What the hell’s going on with you?”

“He’s not a priest.”
He’s a fallen angel
. But I doubted it’d make a difference. Dan spun me around so my back was to him, and I held my hands behind me without being asked.

“You have the right to remain silent…”

The cuffs pinched.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I think they make the fingerprint ink hard to remove on purpose. Sort of an added humiliation on top of the humiliation of being arrested. The wet wipe Officer Wysocki gave me was practically dry already, and I’d worn holes in it scrubbing at my blackened fingertips.

My stomach dropped when he shoved through the steel door with the itty-bitty window on top, and tossed my official file onto the institutional, gray metal table. It slid a few inches to stop in front of his chair as he sat. “All right, Emma. Want to tell me what was going on today?”

Geez, I wished he’d stay in the room or out of it, so my nephilim senses would stop warning me another of my kind was near. I saw him grimace, so at least he was suffering as much as I was.

“I accidently put twenty bucks in the collection plate, and I was trying to get my change back,” I said. “Those Faith Harvest people are real misers.”

“C’mon, Emma.”

“Okay, okay, Hubert was telling all those people he was an immortal god and I was just going to test the theory with my sword.”
Close to the truth
.

“Emma…”

“Speaking of my sword,” I said. “I kinda need that back. Um, now.”

He made an amused sniff, then looked me in the eye and realized I wasn’t joking. “Your butt’s going to be on the next transport to the county jail in about thirty minutes, Hellsbane. We don’t normally arm our prisoners with swords, or even sword handles. What is that thing anyway, some kind trick weapon? The plastic blade collapses into the handle or something?”

A horrible thought occurred to me. “You didn’t touch it, did you? My sword—I mean the handle. You didn’t touch it, right?”

I reached for his wrists, my cuffs and the chain they used to attach me to the table clanking against the top as I moved. I managed to snag his right hand, twisting it to see his wrist. No mark. He jerked away before I could grab the other to check.

“Hey. Hey. Enough.” He held his hands up and out where I couldn’t reach. But I could see his left wrist was clean, too. “What the hell’s with you?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head, leaned forward so I could reach to scrub my face with both hands. “Bad day. Really bad, long, bad day.”

“Yeah. Well, mine hasn’t been a bowl of peaches, either,” he said. “What was going on in that ballroom? Were they burning something, incense or drugs or something? The second I walked in there I thought I’d puke.”

“I don’t know.” Why should I spell everything out for him? No one warned me before it was too late. Ignorance is bliss, right?

“No,” he said. “I just got a weird feeling in my gut. Like…”

“Like you were riding a roller coaster?”

“Yeah, one too many. Almost lost my lunch.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you ate some bad sushi.”

“I didn’t eat any sushi today.”

“Bad tuna?”

“Emma.” The way he barked my name made me flinch. I hated that.

He waited a few beats, either for me to collect myself or for him to collect himself, I’m not sure which. “Listen. We’ve had this conversation before,” he said.

“You still got kids?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let it go,” I said. “And while you’re at it, how about letting
me
go, too?”

“Tell me something, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Seriously?” I said, straightening.

“I might be able to talk to the people at Faith Harvest. I’ll vouch for you. See if they’d be willing to drop the charges, since no one got hurt…”

“Sweet.”

“First…talk.”

Oh. Right
. I didn’t want to be the one to pop his normal-world balloon. I still wished mine had never been burst. “Fine. No, they weren’t burning anything in the ballroom. That’s not what made your stomach feel weird. Good enough?”

“Not by half,” he said. “You still owe me for letting you get away when I caught you at Saint James’s apartment.”

My chest tightened at the mention of Tommy’s name. I pushed the pain away. “
Let
me get away? Dude, you never
had
me at the apartment. Wait. I mean…I was never there. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Close one
.

He snorted. “Clever.”

“And even if I
had
been there, no way would you have caught me.” I mean, seriously. I could move faster than the speed of light.

“Yeah. About that.” He leaned forward, forearms resting on the table, his big biceps pushing the stretching point of his short cop sleeves. “How’d you move so fast? One second you were standing on the kitchen table and the next you were on the balcony. A second after that you were gone.”

“I…uh…” Me and my big mouth. I couldn’t think of anything he’d believe. “Dammit, Dan, why can’t you just let it go? Trust me, you’ll wish you had.”

His back stiffened, his brows slamming low over his pretty blue eyes. “Is that a threat?”

“No,” I said. “It’s a fact. If I tell you the truth, you won’t believe it. And if you do, it’ll drive you nuts.”

“Try me,” he said. “I’m a cop, Emma. I doubt there’s anything in your little girly life that’s going to give me nightmares.”

A challenge. Yum.
“Girly? Really?”

He shrugged. Yeah, he knew it was a dumb thing to say. I glanced at the big-mirrored wall behind him. “Anybody in there?”

His eyes slid to the side like he’d look but his attention came back to me before he did. “No. Just you and me.”

Bullshit
. I own a TV. “Whatever. Okay, if I tell you, you have to promise you’ll get the charges against me dropped.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“And I need my sword back,” I said, then hurried to add, “But you can’t touch it. Someone else has to bring it to me.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to be making demands,” he said. “How about you start talking, and I’ll decide what I can do to help you out.”

“Fine.” I sighed, sinking back in the hard chair. The stupid thing looked like it had cushions on the back and seat, but the blue-green pads were as hard as the gray metal that made up the rest of the chair.

I squirmed, trying to stop my butt from getting any number. “What do you want to know? Where should I start?”

“How were you able to move so fast?” he said.

“I’m not human.” I stopped myself. Rethought. “Well, I’m not totally human. I’m half human and half”—I glanced at him, watching his reaction—“angel.”

He did one of those slow blinks, the kind you do when your brain hasn’t quite figured out how to process the info it just received. I waited.

Officer Wysocki was a decent-looking guy. Great body, solid muscle. Kind of short, but then again, so am I, so I can’t really throw stones. He looked like a good solid man, a good cop, a good dad, and I was about to blow his world all to hell.
Yay, me
.

“Okay,” he said, snapping out of his stupor. He pushed to his feet, the metal chair screeching against the ugly linoleum floor. “An officer will be in to take you to the transport in about twenty minutes. Good luck in court, Miss Hellsbane. You’ll need it.”

He grabbed my folder and turned to leave.

“Hey, wait. What about the charges? What about my sword?”

He looked back at me, defeat and frustration stewing on his cute face. “I haven’t got time for this. You’re not going to be straight with me, fine. I’ve got better things to do than help you out of your own mess.”

“
Shit
. I knew it.” Resignation weighed my shoulders, and I slumped. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

Dan turned and rested on his fisted knuckles against the tabletop, his elbows locked. “Half human and half angel?”

“Yeah. We’re called nephilim. It’s in the Bible. Look it up,” I said, still slouching.

He straightened. “Yeah. I’ve heard the term. They were described as giants. You don’t look like a giant to me.”

“Right,” I said, swinging my gaze up to him. “Listen, you said you wanted the truth. You said you knew whatever was going on wasn’t normal. Surprise! You’re right. So here it is. How about giving me and your gut the benefit of the doubt?”

He sighed, grabbed his chair, and pulled it under him as he sat. “Fine. So which half? Mother or father?”

I shifted forward, the chain on my cuffs catching on the edge of the table, my hands laid in front of me. “Father. Angels are only male.”

“So, nephilim are only female?” he asked, and I could swear I heard a tremor of hope in his voice. Did he know?

“No. Nephilim can be either male or female,” I said, not wanting to meet his gaze. “Most never realize it. They live perfectly normal lives. No one in the family knows. Not even their mother.”

He scoffed. “How’s that possible?”

“The Fallen—that’s what they’re called once they choose to defy God and be with a woman—the fallen angel wipes all memory of his existence from the woman’s mind and from anyone close enough to her to remind her.”

“Convenient.”

“Right.” I huffed to myself,
“Bastards.”

“So how did you find out?” he asked.

“My friend Tommy. He was a nephilim, too, but he’d been marked. Uh, called to duty, they say. He was an illorum, fighting to banish the Fallen angels into the abyss, as God had commanded.”

“How’d he do that? How was he…marked?”

“The sword,” I said. “It’s real. The blade appears and disappears with my will. When a nephilim picks up an illorum’s sword to do battle, they’re marked. Literally.” I rolled my arm to show him my wrist and the skeleton key scar. “It’s burned into your skin.”

“Ouch,” he said.

“Yeah, right?” I laughed, though nothing about this conversation was funny. “Anyway, once a nephilim is marked, their angel half and all the powers that come with it are triggered. Y’know, so we’re strong enough, and
fast
enough, to fight Fallen angels. We’re given our own sword, which is the only thing capable of killing demons and sending the Fallen to the abyss. And it’s kind of why I need it back.”

“Jeezus,” he said on an exhale. He leaned back, staring wide-eyed at me. “That’s crazy.”

“Yeah. Another thing. God really doesn’t like the whole name-in-vain thing.”

Dan snorted. “Okay.”

I shrugged. “Just a tip.”

“Wait. Back up. Did you say demons?” he asked, shifting forward in his chair.

“Yeah. Fallen angels call them up to do their dirty work, like hunting and killing illorum before we can kill the Fallen,” I said. “They also use them as bodyguards and to act as emcee at their religious revivals.”

“Religious revivals?” I could almost see his mind working. “You mean, Richard Hubert?”

“Well, no. Hubert is a Fallen angel. Bariel…I mean Bob, is the demon. Hubert’s second in command. And he ain’t the only one,” I said. “In fact, if you and the rest of Pittsburgh’s finest hadn’t stormed in when you did, I’d be sitting here in one of those black body bags. Well, not here…in the morgue, I guess. Right? Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“So, those people huddled around him on stage were demons?” Dan asked. “I knew there was something weird about them. I could feel it. Y’know?”

Crap
. That’s not what he was feeling from them. “Uh, no. They weren’t demons. Those people were nephilim. Unmarked. Hubert was working to try and trigger their angelic powers without them becoming illorum. He’s got them brainwashed. They’ll do anything for him. He wants to make his own nephilim army.”

“Why?”

“To bring down the walls of Heaven and rebuild it under his control here on Earth.” Wow, felt kind of strange to talk crazy out loud—and believe it.

Dan shook his head and took a deep breath, like he needed to digest the information. “So what was I feeling? It nearly brought me to my knees the second I got close to that stage. I sense it every time I get close to you, too. Only for a second, and then it’s gone.”

Crap. Crap on toast. Crappity-crap-crap-crap
. I did not want to be the one to tell him this. But what choice did I have?

“Dan…you’re a nephilim.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. The sensation you keep feeling is like a warning bell, letting you know another of your kind is near. That’s why you feel it around me, and why you felt it today in the ballroom. It’s also why you can’t touch my sword.”

He blinked at me, his face utterly devoid of expression or emotion. “That’s not possible.” But he knew it was true. I could see it in his eyes.

“I need my sword,” I said, but there was no sign he’d heard. “Dan, seriously. I need my sword. It’s the only way I can defend myself. Hubert saw the police take it—he’ll know I’m vulnerable.”

“He won’t get in here.” Dan sounded distracted, not at all believable, like his mind was somewhere else. I think he was in shock.

“He’s a friggin’ fallen angel. He fought against God and all the angels in Heaven and survived. You think a few measly metal bars are going to keep him out? He’s not above killing to get what he wants. The cops out there, your
human
friends, they’re in danger. Dan!” I didn’t know if that was true. I knew the Fallen would kill if they were desperate enough, if there’d be no witnesses. Whatever. The possibility was enough.

Life flickered at the back of Officer Wysocki’s eyes, and they shifted to me. He blinked, pushed his chair back, and stood. “You’re safe here. Relax. I’ll see what’s holding up your transport.”

I exhaled, loud, frustrated. I’d thought he’d believe me. “You’re going to get those people killed. You’re going to get
me
killed. Dan. Officer Wysocki. I need my sword.”

Without looking back he jerked the door open and let it drift behind him, not closing it.

There was only one person left who could help me, but calling him was like asking someone with their hands tied to scratch your nose. I sighed. What choice did I have?

“Eli!”