God of Destruction (13 page)

James pulled himself into the cab, followed
by their newest addition, who internally congratulated himself.
Claire leaned against the window, feeling the sudden pounding in
her head dull when it touched the cool glass. They said nothing
while they followed the taxi in front of them toward the hotel.
James didn’t look back; he just felt it when Mainyu left the
catacombs in search of Claire, just like he knew he one day would.
The day had finally come, and now James was without anyone to help
him get rid of the, newly-resurrected, God of Destruction.

“Does anyone wanna talk about w…what we just
saw? James? I feel like you know something,” Claire mumbled,
looking down at her hands in her lap.

James shook his head, wondering where the
hell he was supposed to start.

As they approached the hotel, Kierlan made a
mental note of the address. The car came to a halt against the curb
and Claire was the first out, running headlong toward the other
car. Scottie was careful to carry Alex as she woke, muttering
incoherencies under her breath. “James!” he called, readjusting her
light body. “She’s not doing so good.”

“Who’s he?” Hayden asked, glaring at Kierlan
while she pulled herself out behind Scottie, combing Alex’s hair
with her fingers. “James, what the
hell
is going
on
?”

“We’ll tell you everything when we’re back in
the room,” James explained. “We all just need to get out of the
open.” He waved his arms as he looked down the sidewalk in both
directions, gesturing toward the door. “Go upstairs.”

Kierlan reached for Claire, leading her by
the small of her back into the lobby and toward the elevator. In
return, Claire’s heart beat the frantic rhythm she walked to in
order to keep up with his long strides. His touch made her skin
prickle like an electric current; she leaned infinitesimally closer
to him, feeling the warmth radiating off his body chase away the
last of the misty cold left in her mind by the man in the
catacombs. James held Alex’s head, whispering soothing words while
he shot short glances back at Claire over his shoulder.

When they’d safely installed themselves in
the suite, Scottie and James carried Alex to the master bedroom,
laying her on the comforters while she babbled into the pillows.
James closed the door when they left her there to collect
herself.

“What happened to Alex, James?” Hayden
demanded. “And where’s Natalia? And Russell?”

“Russell and his sister are under
investigation,” Kierlan said, crossing his arms. He leaned against
the wall beside the dining room table where Claire sat. James stood
on her other side, biding his time until Kierlan made his move.

“For what?” Hayden shrieked from her position
on the couch, beside Scottie.

“Cult activity. He’s affiliated with a group
that has been known to partake in things like human sacrifice.”

Scottie chuckled. “Not surprise. That guy
always did seem like a rat.”

Hayden didn’t seem as amused. “I’m sorry, who
are you?”

He nodded to her in greeting. “Kierlan Cole,
P.I.”

Claire raised her hand.

“Uh,” Kierlan pointed to her. “Claire?”

“Is that w…why you were on the plane with
us?” she inquired. “For Russell?”

James’s eyes bugged. “You were on the plane
with us?” he demanded shrilly.

Kierlan absentmindedly scratched the back of
his neck. “I—”

“He helped me with my bag, r…remember?” she
said.

Kierlan nodded, suppressing the urge to cover
her mouth before she said anything else. “Of course.”

“And what about Alex? What’s the matter with
her?” Hayden inquired.

James ran his hand through his hair. “She’s
in shock. Claire and her went through…quite the ordeal this
morning,” he concluded.

“What?” Scottie asked.

James nudged Claire’s shoulder. “Go ahead,
Eclair, tell ‘em what happened.”

She glanced up at him nervously. “They’re not
going to believe me.” Nevertheless, he gestured for her to explain.
“During the tour, Natalia grabbed me from the rest of the group,
begging me to help her find Russell…” she began.

By the time she’d finished, she’d already had
to silence her friends several times when they tried to interrupt.
She nodded to them to acknowledge that she was done. “Then Kierlan
showed up and helped us out when the catacombs started
collapsing.”

Suddenly, they were all tongue-tied.

“Wait,” Hayden said, putting a hand to her
head. “This guy just…appeared out of thin air?”

Claire nodded, smugly glaring at James.

“Alex saw that and that’s why she
fainted?”

“Wouldn’t you?” James snapped. “I saw him. I
have to tell you guy’s something. Something that you’re definitely
not going to believe.”

“At this point I don’t think there’s anything
I w…won’t believe now,” Claire laughed.

Kierlan hadn’t moved during Claire’s
fantastic tale, but he pushed himself off the wall now to approach
her. As he walked, he searched his pocket for the metal instrument
he needed.

“And you really believe all that?” he asked,
wondering how someone so beautiful could be so crazy.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” she
insisted.

Claire felt the cold metal slap across her
wrist before she’d finished speaking. A snarl of protest caught in
her throat when her eyes met the glare of the handcuffs binding her
to her chair.

Kierlan pulled a cell phone from his pocket.
He made eye contact with her for half a second before the look on
her face stung his, already shaken, determination. How could he
give her over to Natalia, now, knowing she was unbalanced and so
unbelievably meek? “Just a precaution, miss. I wouldn’t want to run
the chance of you hurting yourself.”

“Who are you calling?” James demanded,
reaching for the phone in his hand.

He didn’t look up, but he ducked easily out
of James’s reach. “My office. And a hospital. Your friend needs
help.”

“Give me the phone!”

Kierlan finally looked up with a disgruntled
frown. “And apparently so do you.”

“I already warned you, Kierlan, put down the
phone and get Claire out of the handcuffs,” James murmured with
deadly calm.

Kierlan leaned forward, contemplating whether
he should confess his reason for being there and who he was really
calling, but he didn’t. “Or what?” he challenged, making the call
and putting the phone to his ear.

James pursed his lips, looking around the
room at his friends convened there, silently watching, and Alex in
the next room. He sincerely didn’t want it to go this way, but they
would have to find out either with Mainyu on the loose. Kierlan
waited for someone on the other end to pick up.

James raised his hands, keeping his palms
forward.

Blue energy danced across them, tingling
against his skin and crackling like static while his eyes focused
on Kierlan’s chest, their depths turning completely white as a bolt
of blue energy lurched from his hands.

The blue lightning crashed into Kierlan’s
chest with all the strength and awe of nature. His body flew
backward, smashing into the wall of the suite while electricity
surged through him.

He fell to the floor, chest stained with
scorch marks, eyes closed. Claire screamed.

“Oh my God!” she shook as she stared at
James’s smoking palms, coherent sentences evading her. When nothing
came to mind, she shoved herself out of the dining room chair and
crossed the room quickly.

Her knees collapsed under her; she fell
beside the still body. Stammering through the sudden obstruction in
her throat, she managed to choke out, “James…you
killed
him!”

Scottie, reluctantly, tore his eyes from
James to join her a moment later. Hayden’s attention, however, was
focused entirely on her friend. They’d been friends for years,
they’d hung out constantly since he started dating her cousin and
she hardly knew him. And, after Claire’s speech, she couldn’t tell
if her other friend was crazy, or if there were a lot of things she
hardly knew anymore. She didn’t like wondering.

Though the electricity that had spontaneously
generated in his hand was gone now, black smoke radiated from his
clenched fists, reminding them all of what they’d just seen. His
face was painted with deep guilt. He hadn’t meant to kill Kierlan.
He hadn’t meant to…

Scottie watched the new arrival’s chest begin
to rise and fall anew and breathed a short sigh of relief. “He’s
not dead. He’s breathing.”

James didn’t dare to share in his friend’s
relief, knowing he was going to be thrown to the dogs when they
regained the ability to speak. Claire was too fixated on Kierlan’s
face to question what she’d seen, yet, eyes roaming over the
sweat-slicked skin down to the scorch marks disrupting the fabric
of his t-shirt. The smooth flesh of his chest was blackened between
the singed edges of the hole in the shirt. As her eyes trailed
down, she noticed the gun handle peeking out from the waistband of
his pants.

His body convulsed once with the electric
current coursing through him before he fell slack in her arms.
Claire couldn’t put her finger on it, she would’ve been content to
sit there and stare at him forever, memorizing every facet of his
face. So beautiful.

She was brought out of her admiration by a
bloodcurdling shriek.

Alex stood in the doorway to the master
bedroom, mouth closed over the scream, head held in her hand. Dark
hair fell in disarray around her shoulders and her hand was crusted
with blood. “What happened?!”

James’s mouth went dry.

She didn’t leave the doorway but her eyes
slanted to find the unfamiliar man in Claire’s arms. Personally,
Alex hadn’t thought her boyfriend of three years was capable,
morally, of hurting another human being, since he’d declared
himself a pacifist before they’d met. However, hearing the noise in
the suite’s living room, including the accusations that followed,
she’d been forced to awareness, staggering out of the bedroom to
investigate. She could remember nothing of how she got there, only
that she’d had the strangest dream: Natalia was blonde and had cut
a chunk out of her hand, making a demon materialize out of thin
air. Seeing what the room had become, she wondered how badly she
might have misjudged James, or any one of them.

She slowly left the bedroom, approaching
James like a frightened animal. “James,” she murmured soothingly,
hesitantly reaching out for him. He leaned into her when her hands
wrapped around his arms, relishing in the warmth she offered that
he would never feel again. “What happened?”

Looking around at their faces, he wished they
could return to the time where being James Bellman meant being
normal. He hadn’t needed to use his powers in lifetimes, not since
that first time, before he knew that the inevitable couldn’t be
stopped, even by his otherworldly means. This time would be
different, he could feel it with Mainyu’s return, but for better or
for worse, he couldn’t tell. Gingerly, he gripped her wrists and
peeled her away from him.

“He was going to expose us,” he explained
softly. “No one can know what happened today.”

“Y…you electrocuted him!” Claire interjected.
“With your
hands
!”

James forced himself to look away from the
hurt in Alex’s eyes and turn in Claire’s direction. Rather than
tell her to shut up like he wanted to, having interrupted his time
with Alex, again, he nodded. “You all saw what I did. Now you know
that I’m not like you.”

Alex reached for him again, wincing when his
hands met hers, disturbing the slice in her palm. “Baby, you’re
scaring me,” she said. She didn’t dare question herself on where
the vicious gash, the same from her dream, had come from.

Seeing the painful cut, he studied her palm
for a second before he pressed their hands together. Alex tried to
pull her arm from his grasp with an objective snarl, but it
wouldn’t budge.

“You’re hurting me!” she snapped before she
realized it wasn’t true. Her hand was fine and feeling better by
the second, wrapped up in a pleasant, cool sensation emanating from
his skin. She stopped thrashing only long enough to watch their
hands and the soft, blue light glowing between them. Eyes wide, she
stood frozen in place until he released her, stepping away when she
held her hand to her face.

The skin there was smooth, the only evidence
of the gash being the crusted blood.

She flipped her hand, back and forth,
searching for the missing cut, but there was nothing on either
side. “What? What the—?” she gasped. “How did you do that?”

He pursed his lips against the grimace on his
face. “I’ve been keeping a secret from you guys. You’re not going
to believe me, so just…sit down and I’ll explain everything that’s
going on.”

No one moved.

“James, you need to explain this shit
right now
, cuz I’m
this
close to a breakdown,”
Scottie growled, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch
apart.

Alex crossed her arms, though her hand was
left palm up. Her eyes occasionally flickered down to it, watching
for any chance that the illusion would shatter. They waited.

“I’m an angel.”

Alex scoffed, giving him a look. “Now’s
not
the time to be cute, Bellman…”

He held up a hand to silence her, to which
she begrudgingly obliged with an indignant expression. “I’m not
being
cute
. My name is Hosrael and I am a guardian angel.
Your
guardian angel,” he concluded, gesturing with his chin
to Claire.

Suspiciously, she pointed to herself.
“Me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been your guardian
angel for almost three thousand years now.”

Claire pulled herself from beneath Kierlan,
standing and rubbing her temple with her fingertips. “This…this is
too bizarre. Four thousand y…years? I’m eighteen,
James…Hosrael…whichever!”