Heaven and Hellsbane (12 page)

Dan rocked back on his heels, hands on his hips. “Says he’s got a message for you.”

“Another one?”

“It is unlikely this gibborim would repeat a message his brethren delivered designed to bring you here,” Jaz said.

“Gibborim?” Dan asked.

My face warmed, knowing how it bothered Dan to be left out of this part of my life. “That’s what we’re calling the nephilim whose marks are ruined and have been targeting magisters.”

Dan hiked a thumb at the guy in the other room. “You mean he’s not human?”

I shook my head. “Not completely.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Dan said. “We apprehended him no problem. I mean, he put up a little bit of a fight. Tried to run—but we caught him, cuffed him, and brought him in. Why were we able to overpower him?”
I shrugged.

“Got me. Wanna find out?”

“Hell yeah,” he said, reaching for the door.

I sensed Jaz moving to follow and turned to stop him. “You stay here. He’s killed at least one magister. This whole thing could be a setup to get to you.”

Jaz looked through the window at the gibborim then bowed his head in acceptance. “Agreed.”

I turned back and Dan let me step into the hall first, but led the way to the next door, opening it, and strode inside.

Greg Reddmen sat on the opposite side of the table facing the door. His dull blue eyes swung up to mine and then squinted at the same instant that my stomach dropped. I swallowed, trying not to fight the wash of nausea plunging into my gut. My knees buckled and I clutched a hand to my stomach, grabbed the back of the metal chair with the other to keep from dropping to the floor.

Dan caught my shoulders, a grimace washing across his face, then quickly vanishing. “You okay?”

He’d felt the same nauseating stomach drop of being near a gibborim, but with his powers still dormant it clearly wasn’t as bad for him. For me, it took two more deep breaths before the sickening feeling subsided enough that I could answer. I nodded, yanking back the chair and dropping into it.

“Jesus, it’s worse than they said it’d be,” Greg said bent over in his chair, his arms folded across his gut.

Dan pulled back the chair next to mine. “Suck it up, Reddmen. Let’s get this over with. Time to start talking. Why’d you kill Mathew Stonewell? How’d you know him?”

The gibborim ignored Dan’s questions, his eyes narrowing on me. “So you’re Emma. Emma…Jane…Hellsbane. What’s so special about you?”

I shrugged. “I can make my ears wiggle, and my fingers are double-jointed so I can touch my thumb to my wrist.”

He lurched forward—face red, a vein bulging in his neck. “You’re a stupid whore for the seraphim tyrants!”

“Hey.” Dan slapped the metal table, making us both jump. “Enough. Hands on the table.”

Greg spared him a scowl but brought his arms up from his lap to rest on the table, his cuffs clanking against the metal. His wrists rolled to the side and flashed the broken sword mark that proved once and for all where his loyalties lay.

I looked up to find him staring at me again. “How’d this happen to you? I mean, I know my powers weren’t triggered until I picked up a sword to defend a friend of mine from a demon, and here you are serving one.”

Greg snorted and dropped back in his chair. “My powers were given to me by my God, Richard Hubert, to serve him and his angels here on earth and prepare for the coming.”

“The spiritualist Richard Hubert? The leader of that occult group they arrested last year and sent away?” That was the story the police told the press. The fact that he’d actually been a fallen angel named Rifion who’d figured out a way to trigger a nephilim’s angelic half and the power that came with it was never mentioned.

“You think we’re fools?” Greg smirked. “No man-made prison could hold a God. He released his earthly form to lead us from the next plane.”

I tipped my chin at his wrist. “That mark didn’t come with the power.”

I’d met several of the powered-up nephilim who’d come to hear Rifion when I’d gone to the religious conference where he was a featured speaker. The people he’d brought into power didn’t have the illorum mark, but they didn’t have the gibborim mark either.

Greg rolled his arm, glancing at the broken sword tattoo. “No. That came when I committed my body and soul to him by accepting his sword.”

“Who gave you the sword?” I asked. Rifion was in the abyss. I’d put him there myself. So someone else was running the show, taking advantage of the mess Rifion had left behind and using Rifion as a front man…or front God.

The gibborim sneered, his blue eyes flicking to Dan and back to me. “I won’t defile his name by speaking it in front of a
human
.”

Dan snorted a laugh and I looked at him. “Can you give us a minute?”

He blinked at me. “No. Hell no. Em, I can’t leave you alone with this scum. He’s a killer.”

“He’s a gibborim and I’m an illorum. I can handle him,” I said. “I need this information. It’s nothing the police can use anyway. Whoever’s calling the shots for these guys is not human. Not even half human.”

Dan looked at Greg and I followed his gaze to see the gibborim grinning back at him.
Ass.

“Fine.” Dan shoved back his chair, the legs screeching against the linoleum floor as he addressed Greg. “But I’ll be right on the other side of that window. And there are fifty cops out there. One false move and a world of shit is gonna rain down on you.”

Greg looked away with a huff, but a flicker of fear twitched along his cheek and tightened around his eyes. He wasn’t fooling anyone.

The door closed behind Dan and Greg scooted to the edge of his chair. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Not interested,” I said. “Who gave you the sword? Who sent you after Karoz and Mathew?”

“The same supreme being who’s offering to save your life…and your soul,” he said.

I shook my head, hoping to re-jumble the words so they’d make sense. “What are you talking about?”

His smile brightened and his back went straight as if he’d won some battle. “Join us. Join us and never worry about another demon attack. Never worry about finding your father. Join us, and get your life back…without losing your power.”

My gaze snapped to his; I couldn’t help it. I hated the life I’d been sucked into a year ago. I hated keeping my distance from my family, worrying about Dan’s safety, worrying about being around anyone who might get caught in the crossfire if a demon chose that moment to attack me. But the one thing that made it tolerable was my angelic power.

I never asked to be able to move inhumanly fast or to speak every language. I never wanted to be able to read people’s minds or have the strength to lift a small car if I needed to. I never asked for the power, but I’d miss it now that I’d had a taste.

“I don’t deal with lackeys,” I said. “If there’s an offer to be made it needs to come from the guy who has the power to negotiate. Who gave you the sword, Greg?”

He fell back in his chair again, grinning like I’d said exactly what he’d expected me to say. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay, the offer will come from him. He’ll meet you…
alone
. And once you talk to him you’ll see what an amazing gift it is.” He laughed, as though relishing his own special gift.

“I bet. Where, and when?” I asked, anxiety spiking through me. It wasn’t my emotion. It was coming from behind the window. It was coming from Dan, and I pushed it out of my mind.

“Three a.m.,” he said. “The Mount Washington overlook.”

“Why there?” I hadn’t been to the giant concrete viewing stations perched along the mountainside overlooking the city in nearly a year. Not since Tommy had been killed. We used to meet there to practice our fighting skills.

The gibborim shrugged, still smiling. “It’s a favorite spot of his.”

“Fine. Whatever,” I said, wanting to keep my feelings about the location private. “I’ll be there.”

Greg stood beaming, his hands still cuffed in front of him. “I knew you’d say that.”

A moment before I remembered that he had the strength to break handcuffs—same as me—Greg jerked his wrists apart and the thick chain between them snapped. A heartbeat after that the gibborim was gone.

The intercom from the other room crackled and Dan’s voice piped through. “Where… Where the hell did he go?”

“Crap.” I shook my head and looked past my own reflection in the two-way mirror. “We never really had him. He was playing us the whole time.”

Chapter Twelve

“You can’t come. I can’t risk it.” I pushed past Dan in the narrow hallway, but he snagged my elbow and turned me back around.

“It’s a trap, Em,” he said.

“Maybe. But probably not for me, which is why Jaz won’t be going with me either.” I looked up in time to see the big angel appear behind Dan. Our eyes met.

“The Council believes it was the magisters’ emotional attachment to their illorum that made them careless with their own lives. Seeing their illorum attacked, and being attacked themselves by the children of their brothers, for whom they’d forsaken their pure spirit to train and guide, caught them unprepared.” Jaz lifted his chin. “I do not suffer such emotion.”

I snorted. “No doubt. You still can’t come.”

“I am a seraph. I do not require your permission,” Jaz said.

“And I’m a cop. This is part of a police investigation.” Dan’s hands went to his hips. “So neither do I. Besides, you owe me. How am I supposed to explain Reddmen disappearing on my watch?”

I pointed at Jaz. “You can fix that. Use your angel mojo and make it look like he lawyered up and got released or something. That’s what I need from you, not lurking in the shadows behind me on the overlook. Until we discover if it’s angel or demon behind the attacks, you risk anything you do to be seen as interference.”

My finger went to Dan and I pushed it at his chest. “And you. You know this isn’t your run-of-the-mill string of murders. These people aren’t human. But those guys out there, your cop buddies, don’t know that. You bring them to the overlook tonight and they’re going to get hurt, or worse. And I couldn’t handle it if something happened to you. Stay away from the overlook. Okay?” I kissed him then turned and started down the hall, glancing over my shoulder at him. “I’ll call you when it’s over. Promise.”

I’d thought I was free and clear when I climbed into my Jeep without being stopped again by either of them. But after I made the right out of the lot and turned left onto Centre Avenue, Jaz popped into the passenger seat beside me.

“I have considered your argument and have concluded that it is unsound,” he said, dipping his head to peer out the side window. A half inch taller and the cloth top of my Jeep would have a head-shaped bump sticking out of it.

“Well, I conclude that I don’t give a crap. You’re not coming to the meeting, Jaz, and that’s final.” I made the right onto Kirkpatrick Street and then took the Birmingham Bridge to East Carson. “Fighting demons, banishing Fallen, it’s what I do, and most of the time, I’m on my own. I’m used to it.”

“The beings behind these attacks are unlike the demons and Fallen you have faced before,” he said. “They are human with the power of seraphim. I don’t think you fully grasp how dangerously volatile and chaotic that combination can be.”

I glanced from the road to him and back again, making sure he was serious. “I
am
that combination.”

He shook his head. “You are nephilim. The child of an angel and human. Your angelic power is shackled by your human half. These…
people,
these nephilim, are armed with seraphim swords that somehow seem to free their angelic half. It has become increasingly apparent that it is not only their physical bodies that are affected, making them stronger and faster, but their mental dexterity as well.”

“Yeah. I know. Seraphim can’t read their thoughts or use their mental powers against them. Sucks for you. Not my problem.” Especially since I didn’t have the kind of heart-stopping power seraphim did.

“That was only the first sign. I sensed more in this last gibborim, Gregory Reddmen. Power is building within him, a power I am quite certain his human mind is not capable of harnessing.”

“What are you saying, his brain’s going to explode or something?”

“Not literally, but…yes,” Jaz said. “I believe the longer the nephilim possess these swords, the more the seraphim power will…infect them, and the more difficult it will become for them to function normally.”

“So, what, they’ll go crazy with power?” I glanced at him again then back to the road, trying not to smile at the cliché.

“Yes,” he said. “They will become both increasingly more powerful and more unpredictable. I am not confident you can best a gibborim who’s been in possession of an angelic sword for any extended length of time. They will not think or respond rationally. You need help.”

I sighed. “Fine. I’ll call Liam and Amon to back me up.” At least neither of them would be bait for the killer sword thieves.

“The demon?” He shook his head, clearly remembering we’d been through this already. “I understand you believe good and evil is not absolute. But you cannot deny he is, or was, corrupt. All I ask is that in this battle, where so much is already uncertain, you eliminate ambiguity when at all possible.”

“Well, Jaz, that’s kind of my last option.”

“Very well then, I will create an option for you of my own,” he said and vanished.

Not good,
I thought and the refrain repeated like a haunting warning in my head the whole way home.

§

“Eli.” He was sitting on the steps when I walked through my front door. Hunched forward, his forearms resting on his knees, he’d been staring at the carpet at the bottom of the steps.

Without straightening or getting to his feet, his pale blue eyes swung up to mine peering from beneath the dark curtain of his hair. “Hello, Emma Jane.”

My chest tightened and something deep inside me warmed at the sound of his voice. I hurried to close the door, an irrational fear that someone might see him racing my pulse. “What’re you doing here? Is something wrong? Did something happen?”

His gaze dropped to the carpet again. “No. Nothing happened. Everything is fine.”

Every fiber of my being screamed for me to go to him—to fall into his arms, to breathe the sweet summer scent of him into my lungs. Like a sip of wine to a recovering alcoholic, or the sweet, smoky scent of a cigar to an ex-smoker—the need for him thrummed through my muscles and tingled over my skin. I’d given him up, but one sip and I’d be undone.

I stayed where I was, my back against the front door, anchoring myself to the spot. I asked again, “What are you doing here, Eli?”

His gaze came up to me and a weak smile flashed across his lips. “I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop in.”

I laughed at that, more nerves than amusement, and tossed my keys to the little table next to the door. My purse followed, hitting the floor and sliding the few inches to land next to the nearest front leg. “Should’ve called. I would’ve baked cookies or something.”

He threw me a quick glance, just a flash of bright blue eyes. “You don’t bake.”

Feeling a little more in control as the shock of finding him here wore off, I pushed from the door and stepped closer. “Yeah, well I’d have bought cookies then. Where have you been? Did they assign you a new illorum?”

He snorted, but didn’t look at me. “No. They wouldn’t do that. Where’s Jazar?”

“I don’t know. Probably off thinking up new ways to stalk me.” I folded my arms across my belly and shuffled another step closer. “So where
did
they take you? I’m going to assume they don’t have phones there or I’d have heard from you sooner.”

“Heaven. And no.”

“Huh?”

His gaze met mine, his body still hunched forward. “I’ve been home. Surrounded by my brothers. There are no phones there.”

“Oh. Right.” Instinct tugged across my shoulders, giving me an uneasy twinge in my stomach. There was something wrong. “You okay?”

“Do you have plans tonight?” he asked, ignoring my question.

“Tonight? Uh, no. No, I’m free for the rest of the weekend. Well, y’know, mostly.” I didn’t see a reason to worry him over the meeting early the next morning. There was nothing he could do to help. “Eli…does anyone know you’re here?”

I’d figured, or hoped, our separation was a temporary thing until they realized Eli and I had our feelings for each other under control. Following the rules seemed the pivotal point and yet here he was…not following the rules.

He rolled a shoulder. “It’s not a problem.”

Not a problem? The big angel powwow in my backyard a week ago would indicate otherwise. We were supposed to stay away from each other. What had changed?

But before I could ask him, Eli said, “So how are things working with you and Jazar? Anything new happen with the gibborim?”

“You don’t know?” I asked, revealing more in the question than I had intended. “I mean, I’d think you guys can see everything from up there, y’know?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I’m completely in the dark—so to speak. My brothers’ way of shielding me from anything that might distract me from finding my inner peace.” He sniffed with a quiet smirk. “They mean well, but it’s making me stir crazy, you might say. Why? Has something happened with Bariel?”

Bariel? The sherwani-wearing demon had been involved in the whole unmarked illorum thing last year with Rifion. His age and intelligence made him the most likely of the fifty or more of Rifion’s minions to have picked up the pieces he’d left behind and make the most of it. But except for the few sketchy descriptions we’d gotten of the demon helping the gibborim, I didn’t have any proof he was the one we were looking for.

Being so clever, I’d thought Bariel would’ve found the nearest rock to hide under until the dust settled. After all, avoiding banishment was what had made him an old, not to mention scary strong, demon to begin with. “He’s the one, isn’t he? He’s the demon you saw with the gibborim who attacked you in Central Park.”

“Yes. Jazar didn’t tell you?” Eli stood and walked down the steps to me.

“No. He didn’t recognize him from the visions you showed him, and he wasn’t up for a mind meld with an icky nephilim.” I dropped my hands on my hips, frustration making my jaw tight. “Dammit, we could’ve saved a lot of time.”

“I’m sorry. I just assumed you would’ve located him by now.”

“Well, I did…sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Forget it. I can handle everything.”

Seraphim could be egotistical jerks, but they loved Eli. If they thought he needed a break, telling him about the meeting wouldn’t help. But I couldn’t stand there looking into his eyes and expect to keep anything from him. I needed to put space between us. So I stepped around him, heading down the hall toward the kitchen. After the visit from the gibborim at the summer solstice celebration, I’d been too worried to eat. Now I was beyond starving.

“Emma Jane…” Eli grabbed my elbow, turning me around. “You’re keeping something from me. It’s bad enough coming from my brothers, but you should know better. I don’t need to be shielded from this. I need to know what is going on even if there’s not a lot I can do about it. Tell me.”

I didn’t know if he realized he was moving his thumb in small circles against my arm, but the sensation was decimating my willpower. I sighed and tossed my head toward the kitchen. “C’mon. I’ll fill you in.”

Eli took a seat at my gram’s old 1950s metal-frame kitchen table while I searched the pantry and then the fridge for something to eat.

“Has anyone else been attacked?” he asked, fingering my rooster saltshaker, then pushed it back to sit next to the metal napkin holder.

“Yeah. And I got a visit from one of the gibborim. He had a message for me from Bariel. I mean, I assume it was Bariel.” I gave up on the hope that the random half-filled bottles of condiments and soft drinks in my fridge would manifest into something appetizing and grabbed the pizza box on the bottom shelf. I didn’t remember ordering pizza so whatever was left inside was probably as hard as a brick. But I was seriously hungry.

“What was the message?” Eli asked.

“Same as always. Join them and never worry about demon attacks again, blah, blah, blah. You know they always neglect to mention that by joining them I’d be allowing the angel who seduced my mother to go free and clear. And forget about all the demons he would continue to call up. They already outnumber Fallen, like, fifty to one. I’d just be turning my back on all of it. Who does that?”

There was only one slice of pizza in the box and it was so old it looked plastic. I wrapped it in a paper towel and shoved it in the microwave.

“Was there a response to your refusal?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I turned and rested my backside against the counter while I waited. “He, uh, set up a meeting with me and Bariel.”

“Jazar will be with you?”

“No. He said just me.”

Eli’s dark brow creased but he didn’t say a word. Instead he looked at the rooster saltshaker again, positioning it so it sat precisely opposite the rooster pepper shaker on the other side of the napkin holder.

I couldn’t take it. “Okay—okay, I know what you’re thinking. It’s dumb for me to go alone. Bariel is a powerful demon, a killer. But that’s exactly why I have to go. I have to stop him. And I can’t take Jazar. He’d be more of a distraction than a help. I have to get close to Bariel if I’m going to find out who he’s working for and why they’re collecting angelic swords.”

“And you are still certain he is not working alone? Bariel is very clever. His master was banished. He’s free.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” The microwave dinged and I pulled out the soggy pizza slice. Cheese and grease had glued the paper towel to the top. I tried separating it, but the paper that didn’t pull off the cheese just ripped, forming a chunky paper-cheese coating. I blew on it anyway, turning back to face Eli. I was that hungry.

“I mean, I’m as sure as I can be,” I said, picking off a tiny piece of paper and tossing it behind me onto the counter. “They’re up to something, Eli, something more than just arming themselves. Something big. I can feel it.”

“Okay,” he said, but it didn’t really sink into my brain.

“And you know what? It’s kind of irritating that I have to keep explaining all of this.”

“Emma Jane—”

“I mean, I’m the expert here. I was born to hunt these guys. I swear if one more person tells me he’s going with me for my protection, I’ll scream.”

Eli stood and closed the distance between us in two steps. He took the sad pizza slice from my hands and lobbed it into the sink. “I said, okay. I understand why you need to face Bariel alone. He is powerful, but so are you. More so than any illorum I’ve ever known.”