Natural Consequences (55 page)

“C’mon out and talk to me,” Alex asked, ignoring Hauser. “Please.”

Assured that her moment would not get better, Lorelei moved around the group again. She reached out briefly to caress her lover’s neck
, revealing her presence to him alone. Her eyes remained set on the man holding him.

“Lorelei, don’t,” Alex
said quietly. “Just hold off.”

“You see her?” Hauser pressed. Lorelei slipped in behind him, undetected by the two uniformed men at his side.

“No. Chill.”

“You think this shit is
funny?!”

“Lorelei, we can’t fight our way out of this,” Alex announced, his eyes cast down to the floor. “I don’t want to spend my life hiding from the cops.”

Her hands shrank back from Hauser’s neck. She slipped back around him to stand in front of Alex. “What would you have me do?” she asked. Her voice dropped so low that only he would likely have heard her even without her enchantments. “I cannot leave you here.”

“We have to work with these guys,” Alex said. He tried to speak louder than necessary, not wanting to give away the invisible woman’s position. Lorelei’s
hand came up to caress his chest, but he didn’t look at her. “They’ve got the guys, too, but I don’t think they want us. They say they want the vampires.”

“You are too trusting,” Lorelei
warned. “Police and courts can be bought and manipulated.
You
can be manipulated. Your altruism makes you vulnerable.”

Other guards appear
ed down the hall and at the corners. “What’s happening?” asked Hauser. “Is she talking to you?”

“Well, duh,” Alex scowled.

“Tell her to stand down and show herself.”

“I can get you out of this, Alex,” Lorelei assured him, calm and cool as ever. “Just let me handle it.”

He shook his head. “I think these guys are the real deal, Lorelei. This is bigger than you and I. It’s… I need to help them. People could get hurt.”

“Have you not sacrificed enough for others already? This man cares nothing for you and your little life. Can you not see the ambition in him? He will
only use you. He threatens all that we have.”

“I have to try,” he shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I have to try.”

She looked upon him with a gentle, forgiving frown. “I fear you are being played, love.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Look, just get out of here. It’s okay.”

“No,” Hauser barked. “Carlisle, you tell her to show herself right now.” He holstered his gun, but his tone and expression gave no hint of a relaxed attitude. His other hand remained on Alex’s cuffs.

“You know I cannot abandon you,” murmured Lorelei. Then she gasped in pain and horror.

Hauser’s hand was up again, holding a simple, cheap rosary. To everyone else, the hallway remained as it was. For Lorelei, it erupted in an unbearable white light. The holy symbol dropped her to her knees. “Show yourself!” Hauser demanded.

The light scoured her enchantments from her like a hot wind. Lorelei fought to face it and saw not only her tormentor, but the silhouette of an angel that stepped up from behind to place his hand over Hauser’s.

Someone else shouted. It might have been Alex. She couldn’t hear over the two voices—one mortal, one angelic—who ordered her again, “Show yourself! Show your true self! Let mortal eyes see you stripped of the favors of Hell!”

Lorelei screamed. She felt her body warp and shrink.
One of her legs all but buckled and she felt her back twist. Her eyes no longer tracked as they should—as if one of them had gone lazy.

“No!” someone protested. She could see people struggling—Alex, she realized, and Hauser’s two minions trying to restrain him. She couldn’t help. She couldn’t even stand.

“Heaven will burn away your lies,” said the voices in tandem, “and then it will burn away your foul presence from this Ear—“

“Mother
fucker
!” she heard Rachel shout behind her.

Lorelei looked up
again. The light and its power faltered, if only for a moment, and then Rachel swept past the fallen demon. She saw the angel beside Hauser look on with fear and a protest that came too late. Before he could utter another syllable, Rachel’s fist plowed into his face and sent him flying back down the hallway.

Hauser remained. He seemed oblivious to the actions of the angels. The light from the
rosary diminished considerably, but Lorelei remained weak and vulnerable.

She turned her head to one side and saw Alex there, still coming up short in his struggle with the two guards. Their eyes met—or at least one of Lorelei’s met his, for her other eye would not
focus. She read the shock in his eyes and knew exactly what he saw.

“Get a good look, Alex,” Hauser said. “That’s who you’ve been with all this time. No magic, no bullshit.
That’s
who she is.”

“
Hauser, put that thing away!” Alex demanded. The guards had him pinned and barely able to even see her. “She’s not hurting anyone!”

“You’re right about that,” Hauser replied. “Not on my watch.”

Alex saw Hauser lower his hand, but he didn’t put the rosary back in his pocket. It remained out and at the ready. He turned his attention back to the small, terribly thin woman on the floor beside him. “Lorelei,” he said, “look at me.”

“Leave me, Alex,” she replied, her voice now little more than a croak.

He shuffled closer to her, still on his knees and still restrained by his handcuffs. She felt his presence and shrank further from it. “Lorelei, look at me.”

Though the bonds between them should have left Lorelei unable to disobey a direct command, Lorelei felt no such pull. It was not the pull of her master’s control that turned her head. She merely heard desperation in his voice and responded, despite her urge to hide away.

He saw the crooked lip that covered unsightly teeth. He saw a nose that had been broken and never properly set. Her hair was scraggly and thin enough to reveal bits of her scalp. Her back seemed misshapen. He saw scars from sickness and badly-treated wounds on skin that had been worn by the elements and malnourishment. No trace of her former beauty remained.

He saw eyes that had only ever known rejection and scorn—and the terror of feeling it again.

“Okay, get him up,” Hauser grumbled before Alex could speak. “Get them both up. Put that fuck-ugly thing in cuffs and lock her in a room under watch.”

“You
son of a bitch!” Alex snarled. “What did you do to her?”

“You don’t get it,” Hauser shook his head. “
That’s who she really is. She’s a monster and a murderer. This is my job. I’m here to save you. Guys, get ‘em up.”

* * *

The mere sight of the angel filled Rachel with rage, just as he feared it would. He had hoped to avoid her detection, at least until the most vital part of his mission could be finished. Instead, she caught him in the middle of that task.

Rachel’s punch would have pulverized the skull of a mortal man. Though he was intangible to the mortal world, he had no such defense against one of his own kind. She hit him hard enough to lift him off his feet and send him flying back through the far wall.

He landed inside an empty office. He tried to recover quickly, but knew he would be too late. Rachel appeared again through the wall and immediately swung her leg up into his groin. He braced himself just in time to keep from being knocked through the building itself, but that did little to save him from the pain. He let out a low grunt and doubled over, and felt yet another blow as Rachel’s strong left hook came into his cheek and knocked him to the floor.

“I told you to fuck off and
stay
away when you were
fired
, Donald! Do you remember that? You remember sulking away in shame after being fired for cowardice? Do you think my being promoted means you get some kinda fucking parole?”

The angel at her feet groaned out a couple of incomprehensible words. Still seething with anger, Rachel reached down to hoist him to his feet and then wrapped her left arm around his neck. Dragging him along with her, she poked her head through the wall. She saw Hauser’s men haul
Alex and Lorelei away. Lorelei looked hurt—but she would survive.

Rachel also saw Hauser put the
rosary back into his inner coat pocket.

“Son of a bitch,” Rachel hissed. She shoved Donald back into the empty office. “
You better talk fucking fast, asshole! Where do you get off empowering a mortal like that?”

Donald rallied, standing up straight and stepping up to her. “You dare strike a fellow ang—“

She slapped him hard enough to turn his head to the side. “Ask me that again, shithead!”

“You have no right to strike me!”

“The fuck I don’t! This is my city you’re fucking around in, and you know damn well that you are not welcome here.”

“My charge led me here,” he protested.

“Alex isn’t your charge anymore, asshole. Remember? I just asked you if you remembered that. You lost that job because you fucked it all up.”

“Not Alex. Hauser. He fights against servants of the Pit and their spawn.
He
still walks under the protection of Heaven. It is my duty and my right to aid him.”

“By empowering him with divine wrath?” Rachel burst.
Her eyes narrowed as the implications caught up to her. “You set all this up.”

Donald raised his hands as if to call a halt to her accusations. “Hauser and his people learned of the demise of this city’s vampires all on their own.
Jason’s computer picture gave them the connection they needed.”

“Jason’s what?” Rachel blinked. “You’re telling me they found a picture on the fucking Internet and that brought ‘em here? One fucking picture? How’d they even
find
that, Donald? They just happened to be looking at random pages? Do you even know how the Internet works?”

“Well, I… it matters not!” scowled Donald.

“I told you to leave Alex alone,” she said. “Have you been talking to him? You have, haven’t you?”

“Alex is no longer under the protection of Heaven! I will speak to him if I must in pursuit of my duties.”

“He’s under
my
protection, jackass. He’s not your pawn anymore.”

“He was never a pawn,” Donald sneered indignantly. “How dare you. I made him a hero, time and again, until he began to resent me. I never should have let that filthy Gypsy witch touch him.”

“You abandoned Alex!” Rachel gasped, taken aback by the gall on display. “You abandoned him and you abandoned me!”

“Who do you think unlocked the door to that chapel?” he protested.

“Yeah, and then you ran like a bitch! You left him there on his own when you should have helped him.”

“Alex showed me none of the fire and prowess of his earlier lives. How was I to know how that fight would have turned out?”

“So you just pissed yourself and bailed. I know this story.”

“What would you have had me do? Expose myself? Like you did?”

“I’d have had you do your fucking job, asswipe! I had no control over being in that chapel! You know that! Those assholes had magic that worked on angels!”

“And I had no right to expose yet another angel to it!” replied Donald, jerking his thumb at his chest.

“Oh, you seriously expect me to believe that’s why you ran away? Have you even convinced yourself?”

“It
all seems to have worked out for you quite well regardless,” Donald huffed. “You and Alex both walked out of there and right into a bed with that demon whore.”

Rachel’s fists clenched hard enough for her knuckles to crack. Donald blinked and took a step away. “Hauser,” she seethed. “You’re here as Hauser’s guardian, and he’s after vampires… but you know damn well he doesn’t need
you empowering him with a rosary just to take on vampires…”

Donald swallowed hard. “I have my duty!”

“Yeah. Duty.” She stepped forward. “What did you call her again?”

Donald stared into her eyes. He then blinked, took a deep breath, and fled through the window.

* * *

“How long do we sit waiting in the car?”

“You realize that telling you anything now is kind of a problem for me, right?”

The question would have drawn a frown out of Amber, were one not already entrenched on her face. “Does it
mean anything if I tell you this sucks for me, too?”

“What, sitting in a car in your own handcuffs? Yeah, I bet it does.”

“That, too,” Amber muttered. “I meant what I said before. I feel awful about this. And about hurting you.”

Jason looked back over his shoulder at her. “Believing anything you say now kinda has the same problem as answering any of your questions,” he said.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does,” she sighed. “It’s true, though. For what it’s worth. And I’m not mad at you for this. It’s just that I didn’t want to see you both make so much more trouble for yourself. Especially you.”