Heaven and Hellsbane (17 page)

“We’re not sure. Our techs have gone over the surveillance tape a hundred times, but they still can’t make sense of it,” he said. “One minute they’re each sitting there alive and the next, the video goes white. When it comes back, they’re like this. Coroner says their heads exploded from the inside out.”

“What did the other passengers see?”

“There weren’t any. Twelve passengers and twelve dead bodies,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the carnage.

“What about the driver?”

“We’re looking for him,” he said. “For now, we’re guessing he parked the bus and took off. Didn’t report in. Didn’t talk to anyone and so far no one has seen him.”

“You said the video goes white.” A possibility itched at the back of my brain. “You mean it cut off?”

He shook his head. “No. It went white, like overexposed film. You see this white orb in the middle of the screen and it flashes outward until the whole screen whites out. A minute and a half later it shrinks down and then disappears.”

“Can I see it?”

He looked away for a second, thinking, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess. But there’s something else I have to talk to you about first.” He hiked a shoulder to talk into his walkie-talkie. “Rizzo, bring the laptop and video out here.”

His somber tone sent a shiver down my back, and I realized the horror scene in front of me wasn’t the end of this bad dream. “What else is there?”

“We found this on one of the victims.” For the first time I noticed he was holding a paper evidence envelope. He opened it and pulled out a newspaper clipping and held it up for me. “Don’t touch it. Just read.”

I did, and instantly recognized the familiar text. “Intuitive Consciousness Explorer. Explore your past, present and… This is my ad.”

“Is it?” he asked. “Keep reading.”

“Don’t pay for the answers you want. Get the answers you need from Madame Hellsbane,” I read, pausing when the text went off script. “Specializing in aiding angelic ascension. Discount rates for those who have already completed the induction cleansing offered by the spiritualist Richard Hubert. Call for an appointment…” The rest of the text was mine except for the last digit in the phone number was a two instead of a three.

I looked at Dan. “I didn’t write this, and the number’s wrong.”

He exhaled and slipped the clipping back into the envelope. “I didn’t think so. We checked with the paper. They don’t have any record of you calling or sending in an updated ad. They insist the ad they printed didn’t have the extra text about Hubert. And they have no explanation for why the paper they printed isn’t the same as the one that was distributed. As far as we can tell, your ad is the only discrepancy.”

“Peachy.” My gaze drifted back over the bloody scene, the decimated bodies. I swallowed hard, trying not to breathe through my nose. My hands were shaking, but I wasn’t sure if it was from nerves or the nausea churning through my stomach.

“We called the number,” Dan said. “It was a recorded message. Mechanical voice. Said ascension appointments were being taken yesterday only on a first-come-first-serve basis. Anyone interested was to come to your new location. But the address it gave was the parking lot in front of Saint Anthony’s Chapel in Troy Hill. This bus was to make several stops. Most of them are in Troy Hill.”

“She didn’t make it to Troy Hill.” I said.

“Who?”

“Whoever had that ad.”

“Emma, none of them made it.”

“What do you mean none of them?” I asked. “They were all answering the ad?”

Dan shrugged and looked back over the bus. “We’ve confirmed that five of them called the number. Still ID’ing the rest, but I’m betting this was a targeted attack. We just don’t know why they were targeted.”

I do
, I thought, but I just nodded and kept the info to myself.

“Wysocki,” Officer Rizzo said from outside the bus. “Got the laptop.”

Dan gestured for me to follow him and I beat him to the steps. I wanted to be anywhere but on that bus. Mike Rizzo’s stout frame dwarfed the laptop in his thick hands. He was the shortest, most round guy I knew.

“Thanks, man,” Dan said, taking the computer from him. “I’ll show her.”

Mike gave him a nod, his brown eyes shifting to me. They were the same cold, cop eyes Larry Weinbaum had given me when I first arrived. Did they really think I’d done this, or even had a hand in it somehow? I couldn’t believe that. But I could see how it looked. It was my ad that brought these people here, whether it’d been tampered with or not. Why wouldn’t they be suspicious?

Dan turned the laptop around and I helped hold it while he jabbed the enter button to start the playback. Just as he’d described, the scene showed the twelve victims—all healthy and alive—staring out the window, reading, one looked like she might actually be asleep. And then a tall man with long, bloodred hair stepped into view.

“There. See?” Dan said pointing at the screen. “There’s the white light. Now watch. It moves down the aisle and right before it gets to the nearest passenger…”

I glanced at Dan. Had he not recognized Fred from behind…or had he not even seen him step on board? All he saw was the light. I looked back to the screen and watched the scene play out exactly as he described. But instead of a white light moving down the aisle I watched Fred step up to the first victim. He reached out to the thirty-something woman, her tired face swinging up to his, her messy blond ponytail swishing with the movement. The angel touched a single finger to her forehead and the woman’s eyes went wide. There was an instant of pain registering on her face and then her head just exploded.

I flinched and looked away. I couldn’t watch.
The bastard.
Why had he done this? He’d used me to draw these poor people to him only to slaughter them in cold blood.

“What?” Dan asked. “Are you seeing something I’m not?”

“It’s…” I started to describe what I saw, but then thought better of it. At the end of the day Dan was still a cop. He’d want answers. He’d want to get the bad guy and right now I wasn’t sure how to define the term.

I shook my head. “No. I just…I can imagine what’s happening.”

“Well it only lasts a minute and a half,” he said. “Watch.”

I looked back in time to see that Fred had picked up his pace considerably. He’d killed ten of the twelve passengers and I glanced away again before witnessing the last two murders.

“There. Now it’s back and they’re all dead,” Dan said. “Can you explain that?”

“Not in a way that you’d want to put in writing and sign your name to,” I said. “Were any of them marked?”

“An illorum mark?” Dan shook his head. “No. Why?”

“Just checking.” They hadn’t been claimed by either side. “I’ll look into it. I think I know how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. But I have to go now.”

“I can make sure it doesn’t happen again by catching the son of a bitch who did it.” The vein on the side of Dan’s neck was starting to bulge. This was really pushing his buttons—maybe it wasn’t the only thing.

“I know. But you’re not going to be able to solve this one,” I said. “You can’t catch the…
thing
that did this. Just trust me when I tell you, something has gone seriously wrong. I have to talk to Eli. I’ve got to meet with the Council.”

Dan huffed, clearly frustrated. “Right. Whatever, Emma. But you’re not going anywhere until you come down to the station and answer some more questions.”

“Seriously?”

He started at me for half a beat, his face the picture of a man at the end of a rapidly fraying rope, and said, “Yes. Seriously.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Innocent people are being killed, Eli, not to mention the fact that I’m a friggin’ murder suspect. Mur-der. Get it? I want to talk to the Council.”

Eli leaned a shoulder against the archway to my kitchen, watching me spread the “PB” of my PB&J. “They have nothing but circumstantial evidence. You didn’t kill those people. They cannot convict you of the crime.”
I turned, waving the butter knife. “Ya’think? You have any idea how many people get convicted on circumstantial evidence every day?”

“No.”

Technically speaking, neither did I. “Well, it happens. Trust me. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Fred’s gone crazy, killing innocent people. And he’s using me to do it. I thought I’d gotten through to him at the hotel when he went after that woman in the elevator. But now he really has to be stopped. I have to speak to the Council.”

“Fraciel would argue that they are not innocent. He learned from your physical response to an awakened nephilim how to sense them. He would not have harmed them if they had not had their powers unleashed by Rifion.”

“I’m still not convinced the gibborim are only being made from last year’s cult followers. I think someone else is messing with these nephilim—another Fallen. I don’t know, but either way that wasn’t the deal.” I slapped the loaded peanut-butter slice onto the jelly half and slashed the unsuspecting sandwich down the center. “I agreed to teach him how to sense gibborim—people who were purposely using their power against seraphim and illorum. The people he’s going after haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I agree with you, Emma Jane, but you must trust me, there is little that can be done about it.” Eli pushed off from the doorway and crossed the small kitchen to me. He snagged the other half of my sandwich and took a sniff, then a nibble. Wide eyes swung up to me. “Oh. My apologies. May I?”

I tried not to laugh. It was like he was becoming more human by the minute. “It’s yours.”

“Thank you.” He swallowed another bite and continued. “Fraciel is an envoy to the Council of Seven. He works by their direct command. I doubt there is anything you could tell them that they do not already know.” He waved his sandwich half at me. “This is good.”

“Right? Food of the Gods.”

“No. But it’s still good.” He took a bigger bite.

“Yeah, well the thing about orders is there’s always room for interpretation. From what I’ve seen, the Council trusts its envoys to keep an eye on things. Which means Fred is pretty much free to interpret orders however he wants. I just can’t accept that they meant for him to start slaughtering innocent people for things they
might
do.” I grabbed two glasses from the cupboard next to the sink and poured us milk to help wash down the peanut butter.

“It’s immaterial. The Council does not meet with humans, particularly impure humans, except by the command of Father.” Eli took his glass, following me to the table.

We sat at opposite ends, the four-foot-long table still keeping us close. “But the Council will take a meeting with you. That’s all I’m asking. Get a meeting with them and I’ll crash it.”

Eli chewed the last bite of his sandwich, staring vacantly at his glass. After a final swallow, he chugged the milk, never once meeting my eyes.

With the faintest milk mustache, he set down his glass and sighed. “Okay. I’ll do it.” His pale blue eyes lifted up to me. “Plan what you want to say. Be respectful, quick, and precise. This is likely to be the only shot you’ll have.”

“Way ahead of you,” I said, finishing my milk and wiping my own milk mustache with the back of my hand. “I know exactly what I want to say to those guys.”

§

I’m not sure if it was Eli’s reluctance or the Council’s that delayed the meeting for another six hours. But it was nearly five o’clock before Eli told me where to meet him.

With zero warning, he placed the image in my mind—a red line leading from my front door to him like MapQuest. I called my power, focused my thoughts, and took a step. With my next step I crossed the polished floor of the Polaris Fashion Place mall in Columbus, Ohio.

“A mall, seriously?” I asked Eli, who stood next to the Auntie Anne’s Pretzel place at the edge of the food court. “The Council of Seven archangels is meeting here? In the food court?”

Eli’s worried eyes scanned the throngs of loitering teenagers. “Yes. Whether they are exposed to one human or hundreds, their discomfort is the same.”

“Wait. They know I’m coming?” Way to bust me.

“I cannot lie to the Council of Seven, Emma Jane.” His attention focused toward the back of the food court, just in front of the entrance to The Great Indoors store, right next to the Chick-fil-A booth.

“Right. Well, if being among us lowly humans is so distasteful, why do it at all?”

Eli’s gaze swung back to me, confusion etching faint lines across his brow. “Because they love humanity. And because Father asks it of us. Being so near to humans is uncomfortable because our love for humans threatens to overpower our love for Father. That internal battle is not a pleasant experience.”

“If you say so.” Fred was running around killing innocent humans. If that was how the Council’s envoy reacted to love, I didn’t want to see how the Council members themselves expressed the emotion.

“They’re here,” Eli said, staring off in the direction of the Great Indoors store again.

I tried to follow his line of sight, but Eli was nearly a foot taller than me. All I could see were clusters of tall, lanky, pubescent bodies everywhere I looked.

“Ugh, teenagers.” Air-conditioning, shopping, and food…if hunting and tagging teenagers ever became a legal sport, the mall would be the perfect hunting grounds. Not that I would want to hurt the little darlings.

“Follow me,” Eli said, and he vanished. At least it looked like he’d vanished to bystanders, if they bothered to notice. My eyes tracked the blur of Eli as he zigzagged around tables and gaggles of teenagers.

I moved fast enough to keep up, arriving at the table half a heartbeat later. The seven men looked up—seven sets of angelic eyes focusing on me at exactly the same time. It was like stepping from a warm sauna into a blizzard, the sensation stealing my breath. “Whoa.”

Eli threw a glare my way and whispered, “Emma Jane, a little respect.”

“Sorry.” I had the urge to curtsy or bow or something, but instead I just lowered my head, shifting my gaze to the table. “Your…honors.”

What do you call archangels? Sir? Holiness?

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t think straight. Their eyes were burned into my brain so white they practically glowed. The moment I shifted my gaze away, my thoughts raced, trying to remember any other detail of their appearances. It was useless. I just couldn’t stop thinking of those stark white eyes.

The guy in the center looked at Eli. “You were right, brother. She is special.”

The distracting white glow of their eyes had just…changed. “You look so…average.”

They looked like a normal group of college-age guys now, sitting around the mall food court eating dinner. There was nothing special about them. Their eyes were normal—varying shades of blue, green, and the guy on the far left actually had brown eyes.

“Unlike your magister, the physical forms you perceive aren’t real. Think of it as a kind of mass delusion controlled by our power and therefore quite easy to alter as we like,” the guy in the middle said.

Of the group he was the best-looking, though not as hot as Eli. He had an athletic build, short, brown hair, deep blue eyes, and a prominent nose that fit his face. The five-o’-clock scruff along his jaw didn’t hurt either.

“But a second ago I saw your eyes. They were…glowing,” I said.

“Yes. It is impressive that you were able to see through our illusion for even an instant.”

I glanced from him to the other six men. I wouldn’t peg any of them as angels, let alone archangels. They wore jeans and sneakers, two of them were in cargo shorts, and they all had some sort of piercing or tattoo showing. They were fairly big guys—not linebacker big, but healthy twentysomething men. They blended perfectly into the mall crowd. I guess that was the point.

But the longer I looked, the more I noticed the telltale features of pure seraphim. How could I have missed the larger hands and long fingers, the sharper bones, the bigger eyes and oddly long limbs? Fred had once implied that their extreme features were perfection because that’s how God had created them. It seemed even archangels weren’t above pride in what they perceived as perfection.

“So you guys are the real deal?” I asked just to be sure. “The Council of Seven? Seven archangels?”

The archangel in the center smiled and for a split second he was breathtaking. “You may call me Michael. This is Saraqael, Raguel, and Remiel.” He gestured to the three seated to his left. Before he could introduce the men on his right, the blond on the end spoke.

“You may call me, Raphael.”

The sandy-haired angel next to him said, “I am Uriel.”

Then after an awkward pause the dark-haired man scowling next to Michael said, “Gabriel.”

“It’s an honor to meet you,” I said grinning like a sixteen-year-old at a
Twilight
premiere. “Seriously. I mean, I can’t believe—”

“Do you suppose for even an instant that we do not know what you want, nephilim?” Gabriel said. He leaned forward and pushed his soda cup out of the way so that he could brace his forearms on the table. “You have tormented our brother to such a degree that he has lost all reason, and now you presume to request an audience with us. Worse, so brutally have you weakened him that he thought it worth the insult to expose us to your presence.”

My mouth snapped shut.

“It is not because of Emma Jane that I requested the audience,” Eli said, stepping up beside me. “Fraciel has taken great liberties with your orders. He—”

“Fraciel is a former envoy of the Council,” Gabriel interrupted. “He was my voice specifically—the physical presence of my will on earth. I trust that he understands the precise intent of the task we have set before him. He is fully aware of the potential Armageddon your weakness has permitted to evolve. He, and I, pay for it as we speak. And I, for one, am more convinced than ever that the allowances we have afforded you have done more harm than good.”

Eli stiffened. “I appreciate your concern for me, brother, but my mind is not so addled by human exposure that I would bear false witness against Fraciel. He has killed innocent humans.”

“He has not,” Gabriel said.

“Yes he has,” I blurted and instantly regretted the brain fart.

The angel’s attention snapped to me and rage burned like hellfire in his eyes. Michael touched his brother’s arm, and the angry glint in Gabriel’s eyes dimmed.

“Tell us, Emma Jane,” Michael said.

It was an effort to tear my gaze from the fuming man next to him, like taking your eyes off a crazed gunman. “I saw a video recording of Fred, I mean Fraciel, killing twelve people—”

Gabriel huffed and settled back in his chair, arms knotting across his chest as though the video proved nothing. Michael patted his shoulder. “Hear her out.”

“Why?” Gabriel said. “She lies. She could not have seen a video of a seraph. Humans aren’t capable of—”

“She is,” Eli said. “I have seen what her mind has processed. She was able to see through the effect of Fraciel’s spirit on their technology and perceived him ending the lives of the twelve humans.”

Gabriel’s lips pressed together, and his green eyes shifted to me, then back to Eli. “Fraciel was ordered to seek out and destroy the gibborim. The humans must’ve been that which he seeks.”

“They weren’t. Not yet,” I said. “Their power had been tapped, but they hadn’t been marked and they hadn’t been…seduced by the dark side. They were just twelve people, who answered a stupid ad looking for answers or just help. And he killed them.”

The archangel sighed, glancing away for a second. “Then he must have perceived some threat of which you are unaware.”

“No,” I insisted. “He tried to kill another innocent woman yesterday. I sensed her power and he picked up on it and went after her. She wasn’t gibborim, but he was ready to kill her because of what she
might
one day do. He can’t do that.”

“I can,” Fred said, suddenly beside me. “The people on that bus were not innocents. They were not human. Their conception was a sin against heaven and earth.”

“The dormant nephilim are held in the same esteem as all humans,” Michael said.

“Agreed.” Fred made a slight bow. “And should a nephilim’s power be unleashed they must commit to Father or be removed from the earth. By Father’s command, so shall it be done.”

“Agreed,” Michael said with the same small nod.

“But that’s not fair,” I said. “They didn’t even know what had been done to them. They didn’t know they had to be marked or be killed. And they weren’t even using their power.”

“Would you have us wait until they did? Until they discovered the power they hold within them?” Fred asked. “Until they used that power to subjugate humanity?”

I scoffed. “It wouldn’t ever come to that.”

Fred huffed a laugh. “No?” He shook his head and looked back at Michael. “I have no time for this. It has happened again. There’s been another attack and the gibborim have killed another of our brothers. But this time, I captured the wicked creature before he could escape with Thiel’s sword. I was about to persuade him to call his master to me when I was”—he glared at me—“summoned.”

“Thiel?” Remiel, the brunet with chocolate eyes, sat straighter. “Thiel has been returned to the divine ether?”

Fred’s glare softened as he turned back to his brother. “Yes. I will find the demon responsible and rip him, and all his gibborim monstrosities, from life’s coil. No more of our brothers shall fall to this wickedness.”

“Go,” Gabriel said. “Persuade the gibborim to cooperate.”

“Wait.” I stepped closer to Fred. “I’m going with him. The gibborim, if he really is a gibborim, will be more willing to talk to me than a seraph. They think you guys just want to turn them against their fathers and oppress them. At least I share similar DNA to the guy.”