Guardian Angel (23 page)

“The Guardian Council identified Cindy’s policeman friend as one Sergeant Brian Desmond,” said Mark, “and it appears that Richard was right about Cindy sending Brian the Guardians’ secret files.”

By the word “appears,” I could already guess what we were about to be told next. I raised my eyebrows and braced myself.

“Unfortunately, Sergeant Desmond is dead,” reported Mark. “He shot himself several years ago. It was deemed a suicide.”

“How typical,” I said sarcastically.

Of course I felt sorry for Bullet-in-the-Butt Brian, yet another outside casualty of our psionic war, but more than that, I was just plain frustrated. Terry had warned me that this would end up being another wild-goose chase, but I had still hoped for something small to come of it. Every time we hit one of these dead ends, I felt as if we were trapped in a room full of locked doors where successfully picking one of the locks would only reveal a brick wall behind it.

“What about those two dead Angels from Wood-claw?” asked Terry.

“Our intelligence team is still working on that one,” said Mark. When Terry gave him an incredulous stare, he explained, “Neither of them matches any of the Seraphim or even common Angels in Lumina or at other major Angel settlements. We’re currently exploring the possibility that they may have been members of a separate Seraph division.”

“What separate division?” asked James.

Mark replied evasively, “It’s just a theory. We’ve heard rumors of the existence of a small, very select group of Angels that run top-secret operations for the king.”

“Such as?”

“We don’t honestly know,” said Mark. “But King Divine knows that we have plenty of eyes and ears in his new capital city, as of course we do. He knows this city once belonged to the Guardians and that destroying the Resistance is nearly impossible because we’re usually a step ahead of the Lumina government. Meanwhile, the Guardian Council has its spies in many of the other Angel settlements all over this country and abroad. That’s why it’s taking King Divine so long to destroy us.”

Ed Regis asked, “So this supposed secret Seraph team works outside of the usual chain of command?”

Mark nodded. “We believe there are a handful of well-trusted people who only take orders directly from and report directly to Randal Divine himself. But we don’t know who they are, where they are, or what, exactly, they’re planning here or elsewhere. And that’s assuming they even exist.”

James said in a frustrated tone, “Then if Wood-claw could have kept those guys from killing themselves, they really might have taken us to the king.”

Mark shrugged. “Again, it’s just a theory.”

“So we’re another two leads down and nothing new in Lumina,” I said dejectedly. “If we don’t get something soon, this war could be over for us before the end of next year.”

“As Cindy was so fond of saying, Richard, we just have to be patient.”

“Tell that to our allies!” I snapped back.

Over the last few weeks, a host of small independent psionic settlements had followed the example set by the Meridian and openly declared their allegiance to the Angels. We knew that a few of them had only done so in order to avoid direct conflict while they continued to secretly assist the Guardian Council, but most of the factions were serious in their commitment. Their leaders and family heads were turning themselves in for conversion. Our hourglass was emptying at an increasingly alarming pace, and every time I heard of yet another surrender, I was reminded of Raider’s words at the Chinese restaurant about the approaching tipping point of this war. How much longer did we really have?

Terry, who no doubt felt the same impatience, suddenly asked, “Just out of curiosity, Jacob, what about the Dog’s Gate?”

“What about it?” asked Mark.

“Do the Guardians still use it?”

“Yes, but not often,” said Mark. “Under the circumstances, there’s very little left to negotiate.”

Looking around, I could tell that Alia and I were the only ones who didn’t know what the Dog’s Gate was. Even our ex-Wolf seemed to be following the conversation. I was hoping my sister might ask in my stead so that I would be spared another embarrassing admission of how little I knew about the psionic world, but no such luck: Alia kept her mouth shut.

Putting my hand up, I asked, “What’s the Dog’s Gate?”

Predictably, Terry gave me a “you’ve got to be joking” look.

Ed Regis explained, “It’s a bar and restaurant out east. It’s run by an independent faction with ties to the Historian, and it serves as neutral ground for all of the psionic factions. Even the Wolves used to occasionally drop in to speak with faction representatives and negotiate temporary truces or request the extradition of psionic criminals.”

I shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

“Why do you ask?” Mark said to Terry. “The Dog’s Gate and fifty miles around it is neutral ground. You know this. You can’t capture or interrogate Angels there, and they won’t simply tell you their deepest secrets because you buy them a drink.”

Terry silently stared back at Mark.

Mark asked uncomfortably, “You’re not planning on breaking neutral ground, are you, Tiffany?”

Terry still didn’t reply, looking equally uncomfortable with the idea, so I answered in her stead, “Never ask us what we’re prepared to break to win this war.”

Mark said warningly, “You would risk the anger of the Historian, Richard.”

“I’m not afraid of that brat,” I replied evenly.

“Never mind, Jacob,” said Terry, finding her voice again. “It was just a thought. A possible last resort.”

Mark gave her a worried frown. “I would hate to be the one that tells Cindy that her children were killed over a neutral-ground violation.”

“I’m not Cindy’s child,” said Terry. “Anyway, forget about it for now.”

We finished our dinner and, parting with Mark, headed back down the narrow, cluttered corridors, carefully ducking the ceiling pipes.

As we walked, Alia, who had been silent all through dinner, griped, “I wish we didn’t have to talk about dead people when we’re eating.”

I agreed, but I doubted the food here would have tasted that much better one way or the other.

Ignoring Alia’s complaint, Terry whispered, “Assuming those Angels really were members of some super top-secret task force that reports straight to Randal Divine, what the hell were they doing snooping around the Wood-claw outpost?”

It was a rhetorical question but I answered it anyway. “They were looking for me.”

Terry nodded. “They knew that you were on the Wolf plane and that you bailed over the city. They probably didn’t know exactly where Wood-claw itself was hidden, but they’d assume that’s where you were hiding.”

I smiled. “So I guess we dodged another bullet, huh?”

“Dodging bullets doesn’t help, Half-head,” said Terry, her voice rising in frustration. “Damn the Wood-claw Knights! Those Angels could have changed everything.”

The corridor was empty but I still put a finger to my lips to quiet her down. “Let’s just work with what we have, Tiffy,” I said calmingly.

Terry didn’t reply, but James said darkly, “That’d be easier if we actually had something, Richard. Maybe we’re wasting our time here.”

“Where do you think we should be?” I asked him.

“Somewhere where we could hunt the Angels on our own terms,” said James. “This is just sitting around and watching the world turn. It’s not getting us anywhere.”

I nodded in agreement. Back during our months traveling around the country in a motorhome, the Guardian Resistance in Lumina had seemed like the best place for us to be, but now I wasn’t so sure. With the exception of keeping an additional blood runner in Lumina, our presence here wasn’t making any great difference in the war effort. Nor in the course of almost two months helping to catalog the movements of Lumina’s Angels had we come across anything that could lead us a step closer to the secret location of Randal Divine and his adopted daughter.

“How much longer are we going to stay here?” James asked Terry.

“As long as it takes,” she replied automatically.

James let out a frustrated little huff.

I knew that James’s discontent wasn’t only caused by our collective lack of progress, but also his own. During the first week of our stay, Proton had made it absolutely clear that under no circumstance would James be given psionic blocking training at Nonus Twenty Point Five. Being a powerful berserker himself, Proton was keenly aware of the dangers associated with mind control. Though the official minimum age was eighteen, Proton believed in twenty-plus, and since James was restricted to the camera crew anyway, there was no reason to risk damaging his brain.

“We’re rotting away in front of computers when we could be out there fighting this war,” said James.

“Believe me, Jack,” said Terry, “I’m just as frustrated as you, but we really have nothing to go on right now. At least here we still have a chance. Like Jacob said, be patient.”

This from our fearless leader, who not many months ago had been considering attacking a random Angel outpost on the slim chance that someone there might have information. But Terry had given up on that plan entirely. Our time in the surveillance room had taught us that Randal Divine had hidden himself far too well for hit and miss tactics to work.

Making our way through the now familiar maze, we found Raider at the door to our sleeping quarters.

“I was looking for you,” he said to Alia.

“Another run?” I asked apprehensively.

“No,” replied Raider. “My wife had to leave on one last emergency business trip before the holidays and Marion wanted to invite her stunt double up for a sleepover tonight.”

Alia jumped at the offer. “Can I go?” she asked me excitedly. “Please?”

“Sure,” I said. It wasn’t Alia’s first sleepover with Marion, and the conversation there would probably be more to her liking anyway.

Alia grabbed her duffle bag and left with Raider.

Watching them go, James said, “When I first met that guy, I really didn’t like him very much.”

“Raider’s a good man,” I said. “He just takes some getting used to.”

There was still almost an hour left to the end of the day shift, and Terry and I were supposed to head directly back to the surveillance room after dinner, but James and Ed Regis offered to start their shift early.

“Night is easier anyway,” said James, who had experienced both and knew how much busier the daytime was.

Terry and I thanked them, watched them leave, and then stretched out as best we could in our cramped quarters.

It was still much too early for sleep.

The low ceiling in Twenty Point Five precluded any real combat training, but there was a weight room where we often spent an hour or so before bed. I thought about heading over there, but first I wanted to ask Terry a little more about the Dog’s Gate.

“It was just an idea, Richard,” insisted Terry. “Probably not a very good one.”

I laughed. “Prudence was never one of your virtues, Tiffy. I think Jack has a point. We could stay here till the world ended and not be any closer to Randal than we are right now.”

“Actually, I’m not too worried about breaking neutral ground,” said Terry. “Considering our mission, I have a feeling the Historian would be willing to overlook it for us. But Jacob had it right during dinner, Richard. How are we supposed to find the right target? So few Angels seem to have any direct connection with Randal Divine.”

I agreed that we had no answer to that problem. If we were going to grab a random Angel at the Dog’s Gate, we might as well just grab one right here in Lumina. Either way, our chances of getting anywhere were equally minuscule.

But with Terry’s mention of Mark, I had a different question. “Do you ever get the feeling that Jacob is keeping something from us?”

“Jacob is the codirector of the Resistance,” Terry pointed out. “I’m sure there are many things he can’t tell us.”

I shook my head. “Not that kind of secret. Something more personal.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Gut feeling,” I admitted, my confidence rapidly fading.

Terry shrugged. “We’re keeping a secret too. Anyway, I don’t know him as well as you. He’s your friend. Why don’t you just talk to him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I will.”

Chapter 11: Matters of Trust

I didn’t confront Mark that day or the day after, partly because I still had plenty of doubts about my gut feeling, and partly because I was distracted by a special New Year’s mission that the Resistance had started up.

The Guardians were getting ready to pay the Angels back in kind for a prank that they had once played on us in New Haven. And our payment was going to be made with a considerable amount of interest. During the last week of December, our tourists carefully planted small explosives in strategic locations in and around the Lumina buildings. When detonated at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, these bombs would sound like fireworks but kill or maim a fair number of Seraphim and common Angels. As our tourists worked outside, the camera crew carefully monitored their progress while all blood runners were kept on high alert, ready to move out at a moment’s notice.

After days of watching over our tourists as they sprinkled Lumina with their deadly packages, I couldn’t help feeling some disgust with the Guardians’ idea of fun and games. It wasn’t like I hadn’t killed people too, but I felt that our moral standards here had reached a new low.

“Wasn’t there something in the Bible about not killing people?” I asked Mark sarcastically.

“It’s one of the Ten Commandments,” confirmed Mark, “though we break it fairly frequently here. It’s been a long time since I was a priest.”

“Even I’ve heard of the Ten Commandments,” I told him.

“In a perfect world, Richard, we wouldn’t need them.”

The mission was, for the most part, a success, even though one of our tourists was killed on the day before New Year’s Eve while she was planting a bomb. Once the Seraphim discovered what we were up to, they doubled their guard and canceled several of their planned New Year’s parties. A few of our bombs were found and defused before midnight but the Seraphim couldn’t locate them all. As for the tourist who died, I had never even met her, and I found myself secretly relieved that she had been killed rather than wounded. It spared Alia from an extremely high-risk blood run through teams of Seraphim that were openly patrolling the streets and park.