Airs & Graces (28 page)

Adelaide sat and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. There were a few whispered curse words directed at Iaoel, but eventually she relaxed. Then her body started to shake, and tears started flowing freely. I knelt in front of her, watching her carefully for any signs of distress indicating that it was all becoming too much for her. Without opening her eyes, or showing other signs of coming out of it, one of her hands shot out, grabbing my wrist and squeezing down. She bit her lower lip again, worrying it enough that blood started, but she didn’t cry out, at least.

After an hour, she slumped, still shaking and sobbing. I held her, there, next to the building, while she recovered her breath, with occasional further sobs, or more whispered curses for Iaoel. She was actually primarily jarred out of it by the sound of voices – or a voice – into a radio. She bolted upright, and I helped her along until we found a different spot with reasonable cover.

“We’re close,” she said, and wiped angrily at her face. “At least Iaoel thinks we are. The girl didn’t take it with her, to the mass graves or burning. She found a place to hide it. She didn’t even know what the keys were, Tab. Her family never knew. I finally understood that much. Her… I don’t even know how many times great-grandparent was a woodcutter. He found them. And then they just kept being passed on. They were just a family heirloom, something they had to remember their history by. But she hid them anyway. She… oh, God, she just kept thinking if she lived, maybe she could give it to her children. And then she didn’t. All of that…”

I nodded, wrapping an arm and a wing around her. She gave in to her desperate need for comfort and held tightly to me.

“She had something to hold on to,” I murmured “It gave her hope. That’s not for nothing.” I think Adelaide took some added comfort in the focus on the girl and the struggle so long ago, and I didn’t ask about the keys or what else she might have seen, letting her come to that in her own time. She’d get herself focused. She always did.

“I saw it,” she said at last. “Some of the times, when she couldn’t, uhm, hide it in herself, she found a place for them. I think she had put them there before she was dragged off for the last time. I’ll try to find it.”

“Adelaide, are you – ”

She cut me off, standing on her own, pulling away from me, offering a bit of a forced smile. “I’ll be fine, Tab. We need to do this. This just tells me that I really,
really
want to get this bitch out of my head when this is all done. You can take her wherever you’re going to take her. I’m going to have nightmares that don’t even belong to me for the rest of my life. I’m ready for this all to stop. I’m not giving up. If I need to wear my big girl panties to make that happen, then I’ll do it to the bitter end. This is my body, and I’ll be damned if she’s going to be a tenant that doesn’t pay rent. Come on.”

I followed her around one of the buildings used to house the prisoners. With little warning, she crouched, trying to dig with her fingers at the grass, rocks, and packed earth, without making much progress. Finally, she stepped back, looking to me with a pleading expression. “There. I think they’re there. That spot used to be looser ground, with a big rock hidden just under the dirt. I’m sure it was that spot.”

I don’t usually use my sword for breaking up the ground, but it served admirably for the purpose. I drove the blade in, then cut out a section, before crouching to help lift the sod and dirt. She sifted through the broken up ground, finding nothing. Then she dug deeper, while I knelt and helped her search.

That spot, as it turned out, wasn’t it. She finally gave up, and moved to another, slightly less sure, but still hopeful. We dug out more earth and stone, without luck. Finally, with the first signs of dawn approaching, she moved along the walls one more time. “There.” She pointed.

“You’re sure?”

She gestured to the wall. “Here. I’m sure. The ground looks the same, but I remember she marked the wall with a rock, so she could find it. They’ve fixed things, repainted, since then. But I remember what the wall looked like, how far it was from the corner. Help me.”

We dug again, finding the ground slightly easier to move here. It took us fifteen minutes to dig down as deeply as the starved and exhausted young woman could have buried anything unnoticed. My hand closed on something cold. I drew the keys out, still together, crusted with decades of dirt.

“Tab!” I barely heard Adelaide’s harsh cry over a rumbling sound. I turned to see her amulet glowing brighter than I’d yet seen it, her hands clapped over her ears. I didn’t see anyone else around and took the opportunity to pull Adelaide in close, readying my sword as I protected her with one wing.

“You won’t need that. I’m not here to fight.” It was different than the last time I’d heard it, but I recognized it all the same, even before I could clearly see the man walking around the nearest corner.

“Lucifer. If you’re not here to fight, what are you here for? And, out of curiosity, how did you find us?” I noted, as he moved out of the shadows, that the world had stopped around us. There was no breeze, and the grass was utterly still. The three of us were the only things moving. At least I didn’t have to worry about detection.

When I could finally see him clearly, I could see he’d taken the form of a tall, fit man, blond-haired, blue-eyed, wearing a gray business suit. There was no direct affiliation with any of the humans who’d been here, but I still couldn’t help but think the look was a nod towards ideas of a better race, even if he didn’t think humans, or all Angels, were a part of it. “I never lost you, Tabbris. Or rather, never lost
her.
Oh, sure, that amulet makes it difficult, but I’ve learned a few tricks of my own. I’ve been following her ever since our first meeting.”

“And never approached her again? That seems unlikely.” I wanted to make it especially clear to Adelaide that nothing he said was to be taken at face value.

Lucifer just smiled. “She wasn’t ready yet. Oh, you had a lot of my plan down very nicely, Tabbris. I have to admit, after our time together before, you know me better than almost anyone. ‘Not playing the same game as anyone else.’ I like that description. But you were missing a step.”

“And you’re going to tell me what that was, I suppose?” I said. Adelaide, thankfully, didn’t seem at all inclined to come out from the protection of my wing, or to speak up, just clutching close and listening.

“Normally, I wouldn’t. I’d let you wonder, and let it eat at you. Especially since giving away parts of the master plan just leads to problems. But telling you the truth, this time, will hurt so much more than lies, even lies by omission.”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to look and listen for any waver, any hint of untruth, though I knew, in this case, I wasn’t going to find any – and if I did, they’d be intentional. I also didn’t want to fight, not here, not now, not while protecting Adelaide. So I listened. “Go on.”

He smiled brighter. “See? I knew we could be reasonable. The thing is, I don’t need Adelaide to help Iaoel fall; she was pretty much already there. I just needed to find out what she’d seen before you expelled her from her vessel and hid her and her Grace away.”

“Iaoel hadn’t fallen, when I killed her. You’re lying.”

“Just a formality, I assure you. Oh, certainly, she had her moments of wavering. But, you see, we were talking. She came to me, to understand my real goals.”

“Your real goals?”

“This place wasn’t her only nightmare. She always had so many. She told me how she’d cling to you for hours after some of them.” He was trying to add some validity, a personal touch and personal knowledge, to try to make the rest of his claims sound believable as well. I knew this game of his.

“Keep going,” I said.

“When she came to me, it was after seeing Hell. She felt what it was like to be outside of God’s Grace, outside of His sight. So we met. We talked about her visions and how she felt that the vision of Hell had to be important, because her visions always were. And we got to talking about mortals and free will – a subject near and dear to her lover’s heart – and we… bonded.”

I tensed, and Lucifer grinned. I hadn’t meant to show that he could get under my skin with words in a way torture never had. Adelaide noticed it too. “You bonded over mortals and free will? Really?” I didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm.

The grin just got bigger. “And how they got endless free passes. Confess, come back to God, and you’re golden. But she got led around by the nose by visions of a future which supposedly wasn’t set in stone, and I and mine could never be forgiven. We could never come home.”

“You have to actually be penitent to earn forgiveness,” Addy pointed out bravely, then hugged closer to my side.

“Do you? The church used to sell licenses to sin. And that was okay for mortals. Sure, they talk a big game about needing to come to God with an open heart, or whatever it is. I can never manage to sit still through the sermons… but where’s the dividing line, hmm Tabbris? Where does it hit the point where you can’t do the same thing again and again, and keep pretending you’re genuinely sorry just because guilt has creeped up on you? Who’s the judge? You? Michael? Jesus? Peter? I’ve lost track. Why do they get
endless
free passes if they say they’re sorry?” Either the anger was feigned, and he was trying to bait me, or I’d gotten under his skin a little as well.

“You knew better. And then there’s the matter of the war for Judgment Day. And tempting mortals to fall. You have your job to do, your part to play as do we all…”

The grin returned, though with less sincere cheer behind it. “Oh, yes.
That.
” While he kept talking, his eyes fell on Adelaide, huddling behind my wing. “Iaoel saw a vision of me kneeling before God. It was amidst a lot of tangled things, but she thought that, just as I led some to fall, she might be able to save me. Like I said, we bonded.”

“Clearly, she didn’t succeed.”

Lucifer smirked, walking closer to me, though he held up his hands, demonstrating his lack of a weapon. This did not, in any way, suggest he was harmless. “Clearly. And, I admit, for a while, it was a fun game, not telling her she’d seen the past, not the future,” at that comment, I could feel Adelaide’s hands shaking, and her breath came sharply. I wasn’t sure how much of it was her learning more about Iaoel, and how much might be Iaoel ‘screaming’ with pictures and images in her head. Though whether she wanted out to tell her side, or join Lucifer, or something else entirely, I wouldn’t venture to guess. I gestured with mock impatience, giving him his stage, if it would make him get to the eventual point of his being here. If it was to try to take Adelaide, or the keys. He wasn’t getting either without a fight.

“Eventually, she figured it out, and I told her the truth. And by that point, she got the big picture. No matter how hard Angels work or how true they are to what their given job is, that’s all we – all
you’ll
ever be to God. A public servant who never gets a day off. Free will needs defending, and off you go with no say in the matter.”

“We make plenty of choices. Our nature dictates a lot, but not everything. If that weren’t the case, you couldn’t have Fallen.”

He had been approaching, companionably, but drew back, almost like he’d been stung. “See, this is why I couldn’t stand having you in Hell, Tabbris. I never did understand why you couldn’t get with the program. It’s not like you stop mortals from falling.”

“There has to be a risk of failure for the successes to mean anything. There’s no real virtue if it’s not tested.”

“And this is why I let you out! We can’t have that kind of talk around Hell. People get ideas.”

“You didn’t let me out. The Archangels came for me.”

I felt Adelaide shift a little, as if her breath was hitching. At the same time, Lucifer’s composure finally broke, and so did a small part of his disguise, with brief glimmers of the outline of jet black wings and bright red eyes, as he snapped back. “You think so? You think they could have gotten in and out if I hadn’t
let
them? They can’t storm the gates of Hell any more than I can storm the…” he paused, straightening his tie, composure returning, and the flickering outline of wings disappearing. “Any more than I can storm the gates of Heaven. Until the time is right. That’s why this isn’t about a fight. I knew Iaoel would surface eventually, and when she did, she’d eventually lead me to the keys. Exactly like she promised, before
you
killed her.”

“She was going to go to Michael.”

“And
lie
. And earn her darker feathers. Intent doesn’t count for anything. Everyone has bad intentions, those stray thoughts. She was on her way. She was going to tell him all about Judgment Day, when he could have his rematch. It was me she…” by now, his little show of pique, or moment of lost composure – which it was, I’d never know – was over, and he was working back into a smile. “…loved.”

It was clear from his delivery that he expected that to get a rise out of me. All of the theater, and raised tensions, and being back in control of himself was to set up his big moment. I was just as certain he didn’t expect what he got: a small smile.

“And then she let you down. She’s good at that.”

Still partly hidden under my wing, Adelaide snorted, and some of the tight grip and shaking eased as she tried not to laugh – or possibly cry or both; it was difficult to tell. Lucifer, on the other hand, looked dumbfounded, those flickers of black wings appearing again.

“You were telling a story,” I reminded him.