Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane (22 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Book of the Lost hit the interrogation table with enough weight and force to shake the legs against the linoleum. The chain between my handcuffs rattled.

“Rifion,” Eli said, standing behind me.

I leaned forward, scanning the page he’d dropped the book open to. The rows of names were in alphabetical order, and I found Rifion halfway down on the middle row.

“That’s Hubert?” I glanced up and behind me. “Wait. How’d you figure it out? You didn’t know him when I showed you the website.”

“You shared your sight with me,” he said, his black brows tightened, ice-blue eyes locked on mine. “How’d you do that?”

I sniffed a laugh. “You’re asking me?”

Eli squatted next to me, a hand on the table, the other on the back of my chair. “I’ve been training illorum for thousands of years and never, never has one had the ability to bring an image to my mind. Whispered words, halted sentences, yes. But that’s not what this was. I saw what you saw, as though I were there with you. The vision was crystal clear in my mind. It’s an ability only angels possess.”

Okay, he was starting to freak me out. Not a good sign when the crazy in your life is scared for you. “There has to be an explanation. It was probably just a fluke. I mean, I thought if you saw his face, his mannerisms, heard him talking, you might recognize him. That’s all that was going through my head:
Does Eli know him?
”

He glanced away, considering the possibility, and stood. “Interesting.”

“Right. That’s what I was thinking. Interesting.” In a totally whacked, abnormal, inhuman kind of way. Exactly the right word. My gaze swung back to the book.

“Well, now you have his angelic name,” Eli said.

“Which would be almost as good as not being handcuffed to this table,” I said, rattling my own chain for him to notice.

Eli reached out and pinched one of the fat silver links. The chain that looped through the cuffs and held me to the table dropped away, the link he’d touched broken. I pushed to my feet, the back of my legs shoving my chair so it screeched against the floor.

“Cool. Thanks. What about these?” I held up my wrists, tensing the smaller chain of the cuffs between them.

He reached for it, then stopped. “What will you tell the officer when he returns to collect you?”

“I don’t have to be here when he comes back,” I said. “They’d never even see me leave.”

“Don’t they have your name and address by now?”

“Oh. Right. There’s that.” I dropped back into my chair. “This sucks. I don’t want to go to jail.”

Eli reached for the book, slamming the cover closed before gathering the enormous thing to his chest. “No one was hurt. I can’t imagine Rifion will press charges. He wouldn’t want the unfavorable attention. You’ll be released soon.”

“You’re leaving?” I said, and couldn’t help the little girl quiver in my voice. “But I’m…I’m defenseless here. I don’t have my sword and my hands are cuffed. If Rifion comes—”

“He won’t. He’s got too much at stake to risk exposing what he is to humans. It’s not worth it. Now, I must go. I’ve interfered more than I should. A request has been made for the book. I have to pass it along,” he said. “I’ve kept it longer than I should have already.”

“Right.” Geez, I was going to be his damnation if I wasn’t more careful. “I’m sorry. Thanks for everything. I got it from here.”

“I know you do.”

“Oh. Wait,” I said. “There’s something else. Tommy was right. He knew there was something weird about the nephilim he met, the ones working with Rifion. They’ve had their powers triggered. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but they aren’t illorum. They aren’t marked. They’re like a blank slate, no direction, no rules. How is that fair?”

Something about Eli altered slightly. He seemed taller suddenly, more powerful. His beautiful face turned hard, calculating. “How many?”

“Oh, uh…I don’t know, maybe ten or twelve who actually had some power. But there were a bunch more who were working toward it. Like forty, fifty, maybe more.”

“You have to find them, the ones already brought into their power. They’ll have to be marked, or…” He seemed to stop and think, but then shook his head. “They must be marked.”

“How?”

“Your sword,” he said. “Let them touch the hilt. It should do the rest.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“The illorum sword calls a nephilim to duty, as well as triggers their powers,” he said. “These nephilim have already come into their power. It may be too late to imprint their desire to serve.”

“Whoa, imprint their desire? That’s sounds disturbingly close to brainwashing.” I tried to catch Eli’s eye, tried to read his reaction. He wouldn’t look at me. “Have I been brainwashed?”

His gaze snapped to mine. He looked pissed. “Absolutely not. Free will is paramount. When will you stop questioning—”

“Right. Right,” I said to stop his rant. “My bad. Though, I gotta tell you, I don’t really feel like I’ve got a choice here. Either fight or be killed.”

“The threats to your life stem from demons and the Fallen who control them. Not us,” he said. “The desire to seek and destroy the Fallen is natural to nephilim. The sword simply…enhances the instinct. Humans tend to have selfish priorities. I’m not confident that, faced with the temptation of unearthly power, an unmarked nephilim would choose to use it for the greater good.”

Yeah. He was probably right about that. Powers like mine could come in wicked handy in Vegas. I shrugged. “Like you said, the demons will take care of it. Fight or be killed. We just need to warn them.”

“Not necessarily.” Eli turned away, not meeting my eyes again. I watched him in profile, the Book of the Lost clutched to his chest. “It’s the enhanced desire to kill Fallen that the demons sense. Unmarked nephilim are just as easily swayed as normal humans, and therefore, likely little threat.”

“So the demons won’t bother them?” I said, my mouth gaping. “What a jip.” The demons trying to hack off my head every other second were totally the worst part of being an illorum. Not fair these guys got to opt out.

His gaze slid to mine, one brow higher than the other. “It is your enhanced desire that has given you the will to make amends for your father’s sins—to make amends for what you are. That desire alone keeps the wrath of God and Heaven from your door.”

I swallowed, my throat tight. “Wrath of God?”

Eli dipped his chin. “Indeed. The only thing that stays God’s hand against the other nephilim, those who have not been marked, not called to duty, is the fact they live as normal humans, their angelic powers dormant.”

“And now we’ve got a bunch running around, testing out their powers, with no mark,” I said. “And a Fallen who’s rounding them up and signing them onto his team. Crap. They’re bound to piss off the Big Guy. That ain’t good.”

“Exactly,” he said. “You must find and mark them. I know how you feel about bringing others into this…life, but the deed is already done. If you don’t act to rectify this, God and His angels will.”

“Damage control,” I said. “Save the world and stuff.”

“Yes.”

I sighed, grumbled to myself. “Well, let’s hope they left a forwarding address, ’cause I’m a little tied up at the moment.” I waved my cuffed hands at him.

“I’ll return shortly,” he said. “I know a few lawyers. We’ll have you out in no time.”

Seriously?
How mundane. “Right. Thanks,” I said, but he’d vanished before I finished.

I’d no sooner adjusted my brain to the fact and settled in for my wait than the metal door to my interrogation room swung open.

A uniformed officer poked his head around the door. “Emma Jane Hellsbane?”

“Yes,” I said, figuring my ride to the county lockup had finally arrived.
Oh, joy
.

He leaned back, disappearing for a second behind the door. “Yeah. She’s in here.”

A moment later the mark on my inner wrist blazed with pain, the sensation searing up my arm like a red-hot branding iron pressed to my flesh. The spiritualist Richard Hubert, a.k.a. the fallen angel Rifion, strode through the door. On his heels followed two uniformed officers. They were both demons—I could smell the rotten eggs like the stench was pumping through the AC, filling the room. My stomach gurgled in protest.

I was on my feet, my back hitting the far wall, before I realized I’d even moved. “How’d you get in here?”

My heart slammed in my chest like a jackhammer. My throat closed, and I had to tell myself to breathe. With my hands cuffed, no sword, and the bad guys walking right past the people who were supposed to protect me, I figured I was pretty well screwed.

“Calm yourself,” Rifion said. “I’m not here to kill you. I’ve come to escort you to your new home.” He motioned toward me with both hands, and the two demon police officers advanced on me.

“Hold up. Wait,” I said, hands raised, wrists chained together. It worked. They stopped. “My new home?”

“I’ve decided you are too valuable to remain unprotected.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Panic could easily cause one of my brothers to act foolishly and order your disposal. I’ll ensure such a tragedy does not occur.”

“You’re going to protect me?” I said, gesturing between us. “That’s rich.”

Rifion tilted his head to the side and rolled his shoulders as though my take on things were immaterial.

“Right,” I said. “Well, as much as I appreciate the protective dad routine, I think I’ll keep the status quo. You know, where I’m an illorum and you’re a fallen angel and I use my neato-bandito sword to send your rapist ass to the abyss, where you belong.”

“Your sword. Yes.” He made a show of scanning the room. “Where is your sword, Emma Jane? And how will you wield it when you can’t even find the strength to free yourself from human bonds?” He tsked. “Really.”

I thought about that for a second. I hadn’t even tried to break the cuffs. I was still thinking like a human. My hands in front of me, I took a breath and yanked. The metal dug into the backs of my wrist, but the small chain between them snapped.

Cool
. “Ouch.”

“Mighty warrior,” he scoffed, then threw a nod to the two cop demons awaiting his command. “Collect her.”

“Wait,” I said, the wheels of my brain spinning for escape possibilities. Only one thing came to mind. “Help! Police! Somebody help!”

The demons hesitated and for an instant, Rifion’s attention split between me and the door, looking to see if anyone would come. That was all I needed.

Trapped in that little room with two armed demons and a powerful fallen angel, my maneuverability was limited. If I could get away, even make it to the larger room, find witnesses, my life expectancy would improve dramatically.

I focused my will, remembering the route Dan had taken when he led me through the station. On the other side of the door was a large room, a few desks, tables along the walls, a TV mounted in the corner. He’d nodded to a plainclothes cop as we passed, a detective. The room was their office.

My vision narrowed, the world around me blurred, and an instant later, I stood next to the center cluster of desks right outside the small interrogation room. The place was empty.
Shoot
.

And someone did.

Bullets whizzed past my ear. I jumped behind a five-foot-long wall of metal file cabinets just as a screech of bullets drilled the desks beside me. After a courage-sealing deep breath, I peeked around the end to see the two demon cops, guns drawn, shoulders braced against either side of the doorjamb. Lucky for me, these demons couldn’t aim well.

Another round of gunshots pounded into the cabinet, sounding surreally crisp and precise, like quick hammer strikes. The bullets exploded out the other side, way too close to my head. I dropped to my knees and scrambled to the other wall. Apparently you don’t have to aim well if you’ve got bullets that go through damn near anything.

I needed my friggin’ sword. If TV was any guide, it was probably locked in the evidence room, wherever that was.

With no sword, there was no way I could stop Rifion except to use his fear. After all, the possibility of being hunted down, caught, caged, and torturously experimented on could make a person think twice.

Was it impossible for humans to capture an angel? Maybe. But they’d thought the same thing about harnessing the atom. If he was smart, Rifion wouldn’t take the chance.

I was betting Rifion was very smart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The plan was the same. I needed witnesses. I poked my nose out just far enough to get a bead on the door from the detective’s office into the hall. Across from there was the general squad room and Officer Wysocki’s desk. I knew exactly where I was going. I’d sat at his desk for nearly an hour while he’d filled out an endless pile of paperwork. I knew the squad room well, and I focused my will.

I took a step, and the next stopped me exactly where I’d planned—Dan’s desk. He wasn’t there.
Crap
. But I wasn’t alone.

Wysocki’s desk was on the windowless end of the squad room. Ducked beside it, I counted ten officers and two Faith Harvest followers in the room. My stomach lurched, then dropped, and I fought the urge to double over with the sensation. The Faith Harvest pair was nephilim.

They stood between the two desk clusters at the center of the room, hands clasped in front of them, heads bowed, eyes closed, wearing the same Sherwani jacket Rifion still wore. They matched each other, both jackets a soft, creamy-rose color, although I was pretty sure one of them was a man. It was hard to tell; they both had long, dirty blond hair that curtained on either side of their faces. Seriously dirty blond, I mean, unwashed. Greasy and stringy.
Ick
.

They looked to be meditating, or sleeping, neither of them flinching a muscle when I’d breezed into the room.

My gaze shifted to the officers, four of them at the far desks, unmoving, staring straight ahead, arms resting flat in front of them. The nearer cluster, including Dan’s desk, held only two officers sitting in the same, unmoving pose.

I figured the other empty desk must belong to one of the two officers standing hypnotized at the coffee maker, or the one idling at the opened file cabinet, or the other just standing a few steps from the door to a smaller room. It looked as though he’d been on his way in or out and had simply stopped for no apparent reason.

My illorum mark stung like a fresh blistering burn.

“Imad, watch the door,” Rifion said, walking into the squad room at a leisurely, human speed. “Lower your weapon, Jalil. I believe Emma Jane has grasped the gravity of her situation and won’t cause us any further difficulties.”

The two demons in cop outfits took up position. Imad, I assumed, closed the door from the squad room to the hallway we’d come through, then stood in front of it.

Jalil had crossed to the opposite side of the room, his gun still drawn. He lowered it so the barrel aimed at the floor. He didn’t look happy to do it, thick neck muscles twitching, his cheek trembling with a thinly veiled snarl.

I stood, looking back to Rifion. “What’s wrong with these men? What’d you do to them?”

Rifion stopped about three feet away from me. He smiled, his face relaxed, happy, as though we were standing on a street corner to catch up. “Whatever do you mean? I’ve done nothing to these humans.”

“Bullshit. Why aren’t they moving?” My gaze drifted from one officer to the next. It took a few seconds of close observation, but I finally caught a muscle twitch, knuckles turning white with a hand’s tight fist.

I shifted my attention to his face at the exact moment his jaw flexed. Deep furrows creased his brows, his eyes shifting a millimeter, full of rage. I looked closely at another officer and then another. Oh, yeah, these guys were pissed. Something was holding them frozen, but they were fighting it with everything they had.

“Don’t you know? The ability is the same within you. Don’t you recognize it?” he said. “Can’t you sense it?”

I looked to the two greasy-headed nephilim at the center of the room and opened my mind to theirs. My breath caught, their power flashing through my mind as white-hot light. Like the long, ghostly tentacles of a jellyfish, their power stretched out in all directions, boring into the minds of each of the officers.

Stay. Be still. Obey.
The commands hummed over and over along the lines of their power, pushing on the will of the humans. And then, as though they’d been waiting until they were sure I was listening, the command changed.
Place your weapon within reach.

In one single-minded effort, every officer in the room un-holstered his weapon. The ones sitting placed the guns on the desk between their outstretched arms. The officer at the file drawer set his on top of the metal cabinet. The two at the coffee maker and the one standing by the door simply held their guns loosely at their sides. A spark of fear replaced the rage in a few men’s eyes. I couldn’t blame them.

Dread iced through my veins. “Why’d they tell them to take out their guns?”

“Incentive,” Rifion said. “Being half-human, I assume you have a certain…affinity for these mortals. I, of course, do not. Therefore it would be of no consequence to me to see them pass from this world.”

“You’d kill them?”

“No.” He shook his head, his bottom lip pouting as though the question was ridiculous. “They will kill themselves.”

The nephilim’s power whispered through the room, tickling along my mind.
Weapons to your temple
, they commanded, and the room of trained police officers helplessly obeyed.

My heart lurched. “Wait. Stop. What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

Rifion tilted his head like a puppy hearing a new sound. “Why? For you, of course. I told you—I will not lose you to another. You will join me or perish.”

“But why?” My brain whirled, trying to find sense in his actions. “You’re not supposed to do this. I mean, it’s not worth exposing yourself. I’m not worth it. I don’t even have my sword. I’m no threat to you. Just…leave. I won’t follow.”

He shook his head, his long golden hair swishing along his back. “Is it possible you truly don’t know? Of course. How could you? Your magister would never touch your mind as I did. He’d never dare defy his brother’s law and explore your soul. Fool.”

“Stop talking in riddles. Just spit it out,” I said. “What’s got you all hot for me?”

His gaze swung to the nephilim still wielding their power over the room. “You understand what they’re doing? They’re forcing their will on all these men, as well as anyone who thinks of entering this room. Two controlling ten and more.”

“Yeah. So? Color me impressed,” I said, throwing as much biting sarcasm into my tone as I could. “Now tell them to stop.”

“You tell them,” he said. “Better still—make them.”

I snorted. “Sure. Why not? Oh, that’s right. I don’t have the power to mind-fuck people.”

He sniffed, his shoulders shaking with a silent laugh. “I like the term. But you’re mistaken. You’re capable of wielding ten times the power you feel from my two children.”

“So that’s it?” I asked, folding my arms over my belly, trying to seem way more relaxed and confident than I felt. “This is all about power? What you think I have, or could have? Dude, if you wanted a nephilim with real power, you shouldn’t have killed your son Tommy. You had your own flesh and blood murdered, and you think I’d willingly do anything for you?”

His gaze shifted away. It was the only sign my words had any effect on him. A second later, those cool blue eyes were on me again. He held out his hand. “Join me. It is the only way to save these men. They will kill themselves before you can move to stop even one.”

“You’re making them do this.”

“I’m not. You are.”

“Bull.” The decision to act and the act itself happened almost simultaneously. I spun, reaching for the gun of the closest man sitting at the desk across from Dan’s. In the split second before I could touch him, his big brown eyes shifted to me, terror making the pupils huge. His finger clenched, and the gun exploded with a deafening crack of thunder.

Surprise yelped out of me and I jumped. My eyes snapped shut on reflex as the warm splatter speckled my face, my hair, my shirt. The wet feel on my lips made me want to lick, but I used the back of my hand instead, scrubbing away what I knew must be blood and God knows what else. I didn’t want to look, but the solid thump of a body collapsing to the floor made my eyes open.

Blood was everywhere. The officer I’d tried to help lay dead on the floor at my feet. The side of his head was a soft bloody mess. My stomach convulsed, bile shooting up, making me gag. I turned, doubled over, and heaved into the trashcan.

As quickly as I could manage, I straightened, wiping the spittle from my mouth with the back of my hand. I scanned the room, looking everywhere but at the body in front of me. Nothing else had changed. I swung my gaze to Rifion. “Bastard.”

He shrugged. “Your love of me is not required. Simply your bloodline, and your womb.”

In the back of my mind, I knew my body was trembling. Like a dream, I could feel my hands shaking, my knees wobbling. My chest quivered with every breath. But the rage burning through my head and heart wouldn’t acknowledge any of it. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Rifion’s cool blue eyes swung to the nephilim pair at the center of the room. “Children—”

Before he could say anything more, the door to the far hallway flew open, and Officer Wysocki rushed awkwardly into the room like he’d been thrown. He landed on his knees, vanishing from my sight behind the far cluster of desks. Metal clanked against the hard linoleum floor, confirming what I thought I’d seen in his hand.

He had my sword’s hilt.

My mind went quiet, focus narrowing, angelic instinct swelling to the surface all on its own. Power hummed through my veins, steeling my nerves. I took a step, and a single thought later I was beside him, scooping my sword from his gloved hand, already willing the blade to form. I breathed a sigh of relief, not just because I had my weapon but because it was out of Dan’s hands. He’d touched the sword, yet he hadn’t been marked. Not because of the gloves, but because he hadn’t tried to use it like I had when I’d saved Tommy. At least it was one less thing I’d have to deal with.

Bullets ricocheted off the wall behind me an instant before one shot hot and fast through my left bicep. The same sensation bit the back of my calf. I didn’t slow down to check the wounds. I couldn’t.

Instead, I turned to Jalil, the trigger-happy demon cop, who’d held his gun at the ready since he came into the room. His aim sucked, but that wasn’t stopping him from working toward an empty clip. Shots rang out in the brick-walled room, twanging off metal desks, slamming with solid thunks and bangs into everything in their path.

My vision tunneled, and I saw him at the end, gun pointed straight down the tube at me. As though the world slowed, I had all the time I needed. His finger squeezed and before it pushed the trigger all the way back, I was on him, my sword swinging.

The heavenly sharp blade met flesh and bone, spattering demon blood as it separated head from neck. My momentum spun me, turning my back to him before his body knew to drop.

The gunshots hadn’t stopped. Someone else was shooting, and my gaze snapped to Dan. Still on his knees, fire exploding from the barrel of his gun, he pounded a rapid fire of bullets into Imad, the demon guarding the other door. He didn’t know the man disguised as a cop was the least of our worries.

Imad’s body jerked and twitched as the bullets pummeled his chest. Dan’s aim was dead on, every shot straight to the heart, lethal wounds for a normal man. But Imad had never been a normal man. His body absorbed the bullets like rain on a puddle—a splat of ooze, a hole, and then the flesh healed over. That fast.

Dan emptied his clip, and then dropped behind the desks to reload. He’d emptied the replacement clip in seconds, unable to accept what his eyes were telling him. Bullets weren’t going to kill Imad.

Without the constant hammer of bullets, the silence seemed unreal, like listening through cotton balls, and it took a moment to notice the noise underneath. Someone was pounding on the squad room door. Both doors—the one Dan had forced himself through was closed again. Police from all over the building were outside the room, trying to get in, but were mysteriously kept at bay.

My gaze shifted to the Faith Harvest nephilim at the center of the room, heads down, still focusing their power. Miraculously, they hadn’t been shot, but I could feel their power straining in all directions.

They’d kept a kind of protective shield around them all the while, still ruling the minds of the cops in the room. Why hadn’t they made the men pull the triggers, blow their brains out, and end them as threats?

I knew the answer almost instantly. They couldn’t. Nearly all their power was flooding toward the doors, working hard to convince the determined men on the other side that no matter how hard they wanted to, they could not enter the room. The effort was draining the nephilim. Human will is a powerful thing, and those cops were gaining will with every gunshot they heard.

Movement snapped my gaze back to Imad. With his body completely healed and Dan busy reloading, now was his chance to advance on Wysocki. He pulled his gun, started firing, the hypnotized cop at the corner desk helpless to get out of the way.

The shots drilled through his back, two of them exploding in a red plume from the front of his chest. He slumped out of his chair to the floor, the rest of Imad’s bullets hammering the top of the now-empty desk. I had to stop Imad. Nothing else could.

“Dan,” I yelled, but the gunshots were too loud, too unrelenting. I had to let him know what I needed him to do. My mind went quiet again, my will focusing.

Power hummed through my brain, stretching out of me, searching for Dan like I’d done when I’d followed Eli around the world. I found him, his thoughts shuffling fast, weighing options, concentrating on getting the new clip into the butt of his gun.

Dan,
I said to his mind, and I felt him pause, stunned but listening.
Stop the couple at the center of the room before they force your buddies to pull their triggers.

I didn’t wait to see if he understood—if he’d do as I asked—I just moved, focusing my will on the demon heading for him. I had to get to Imad before he got a clear shot at Dan. The world narrowed into a long tunnel, and I took a step.

My next sent me flying backward, slamming with a lung-crushing thud into the far brick wall. My eyes focused past the ringing stars the impact had sent whirling through my brain, and I caught a glimpse of Rifion, his arm finishing the back swing that had sent me sailing. I slid down the wall, collapsing in a heap on the floor, struggling for a full breath.