Sons of Angels (14 page)

“You had to test it, didn’t you?” Felicia stood and backed away from the table. She glared at the imp. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“He’s not supposed to be. He’s demon kin.” Jasfoup reached forward and touched her eyelids. Everything came into a sharp, sudden focus, and Felicia froze in horror.

“You’re a demon too.”

Harold frowned. “Didn’t we just tell you that?” He turned to Jasfoup. “Didn’t we?”

“We did.”

Felicia cringed and backed away. “What did you do to me?”

“Just gave you the Sight.” The demon sipped his tea. “It’s a temporary spell but you might as well get used to it. Yours will develop soon enough.”

“I don’t want to get used to it. What are you doing here? Are you taking over the world?”

Jasfoup cringed. “Certainly not! Think of the paperwork.”

Harold picked up the sugar spoon. “We’re people. Just like you.”

“Only not werewolves. That’s something to be grateful for.”

Felicia concentrated on the pine table, using the grain as a mandala to help calm herself down. Meinwen had given her one from Tibet last year. It had given her the willies. When her heart had stopped threatening to leap out of her chest, she looked up. “This is too bizarre.”

“You seem awfully calm for someone who’s just met a demon.” Harold reached across and touched her arm. His hands felt remarkably cool and smelled of cinnamon. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll bite your head off?”

Felicia shook her head. “After what I’ve seen recently, a demon is the least of my problems. I think my mother was killed by an angel.”

“An angel?” Jasfoup frowned. “Why?”

“There was this thing in her house that looked like a man made of fire. I assumed it was a demon, but after last night I’m not so sure. I think it was after me.”

“What angels appear as fire, Jasfoup?” Harold raised his eyebrows. “Cherubim?”

“Any of them, really.” Jasfoup shrugged. “Fire is the closest element to what they’re made of. You didn’t catch its name, by any chance?”

Felicia frowned. “Elizabeth. Mum called it Elizabeth. She said a girl drove her home from the hospital and stayed the night.”

Jasfoup shook his head. “I don’t know any angels called Elizabeth. Do you, Harold?”

“It seems unlikely.” Harold sipped his tea.

“I think it was after me. The one last night was. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Gillian.”

“You need some security. I never thought to ward the gallery when I did this place.”

Jasfoup nodded. “You need an alarm system to warn you about portals opening. I’ll have a look into that.”

“You could ask my lad to design you one.” Devious helped himself to Felicia’s mug. “Delirious would be able to knock something up.”

Harold gave a snort of laughter. “You could certainly ask him but you should see the plumbing he did in my bathroom first.”

“Is Delirious another imp?” Felicia took a proper look at Devious. The only way she could comprehend it was if she thought of it as a child’s toy. A child’s toy from an adult-rated horror film, perhaps, but still...

“Of course he’s another imp. Quite good with his hands too.”

Felicia shuddered at his wink. “Could you help me find my sister? She went missing from the hospital yesterday.”

“Is she a werewolf too?” Jasfoup unfolded the map again. Now she was close enough, Felicia could see that he’d colored two of the houses in red, one of them her mother’s. Another house was circled but not colored. He put his finger on the hospital and Felicia moved it to the psychiatric ward, almost surprised his skin felt normal.

“No. She has one of those imps, though. It tells her what it can see.”

“I’m surprised it didn’t warn her about being kidnapped.”

Harold looked at the map. “You have no clue who might have taken her? What about this Raffles chap you mentioned the other day?”

“I think it was. He was looking for her, certainly, and he was there on Sunday with this Elizabeth, although Mother said it was a woman, not an angel.”

“Well, your mum wouldn’t have seen an angel, would she?” said Harold, sitting back in his chair. “Not if she was a mundane.”

“She was Changed too.” Felicia tapped her mother’s house. “She was a nephilim.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for one, I saw her scales and secondly, her dad told me.”

“Hang on.” It was Jasfoup’s turn to frown. “You met her dad?”

“Yes, I was as close to him as I am to you now.” Felicia rubbed her eyes. “He could alter his appearance. He said his name was Taliel and he was an earthbound angel.”

“Taliel? One of the ninth.” Jasfoup stood and began pacing.

“The ninth?” Felicia raised her eyebrows.

“A grigori.” Harold pored over the map. “One of the ninth rank of angels. It was they who came to teach the people of Adam to farm and cook.”

“And shag,” added Jasfoup. “If you’ve got a grigori for a grandfather, that means that you’re half-nephilim as well, as is your sister.”

“Wait a minute.” Harold stabbed at the map “If her mum was nephilim, that explains why an angel killed her. Was Carol Goodwin a nephilim too?”

“I could find out.” Jasfoup took out his phone. “If so, we could predict where it strikes next.”

“Wait.” Felicia’s chair scraped across the stone floor. “What about Julie? Does this mean she’s already dead?”

“Quite the opposite.” Harold smiled brightly. “If she was, the hospital would be a smoking pile of ash as well.”

Chapter 15

Julie could feel the pass of sunlight–her skin warm then cool as clouds occluded the sun until it set, leaving her with just the memory of its warmth.

Wrack shifted around her shoulders, his tail coiling tighter around her neck. “It’s gone cold. How long do we have to stay here?”

Julie shrugged, the gesture reflected in the branches above as the leaves rustled in the evening breeze. “I don’t know. Until my sister comes for me, I suppose.”

“She doesn’t know where you are. How will she find you up here?”

“She will.” Julie tried to sound more confident than she felt. “She’ll find me somehow.”

“A little help might not hurt.” His weight left her shoulders. “I’ll be back soon.”

Julie felt the minute implosion of warm air as the imp’s portal gate opened and then he was gone. She shook her head, and above her, the moon rose over trembling leaves.

* * * *

Felicia started as a gate opened above the pine table and an imp dropped out, its hooves clattering across the pine as it fought for balance, its tail swinging madly to compensate for its forward momentum. It was smaller than Devious and had a torn ear. “Who’s this?”

Harold looked up from his map. “Delirious. Say hello to Felicia, Delirious.”

“Up yer bum.” The imp shuffled to the larger one and whispered something into its ear. Devious cuffed him.

Devious clouted it around the head. “You’ll have to tell him. It’s no use telling me.”

“Tell me what?” Harold glared at them. “What have you done, Delirious? I promise that telling me will be the least painful of your options.”

“I ain’t done nothing. There’s another imp at the manor and he’s looking for someone, only he don’t say who.”

Harold sighed and put down his pen. “Did he give any indication?”

“The wolf girl, he said.” Delirious stuck a claw in his ear and tweaked it, pulled out a gobbet of sticky yellow wax and sucked at it. “I told him there weren’t no wolf girls but he was insistin’. He reckoned he could smell her.”

“He means me.” Felicia reached out to grasp the creature’s arm. “Was his name Wrack?”

“How the bleedin’ ’ell should I know?” Delirious pulled away from her touch. “He was clanless.”

“My sister’s imp is called Wrack. It has to be the same one. He must know where Julie is.”

* * * *

In other circumstances, Felicia would have enjoyed the walk. The track wound through beeches and oaks, the occasional willow coming into sight as it passed near the bank of the river Laver, sluggish at this time of year as it meandered to the lowlands with all the urgency of a letter with insufficient postage. She could imagine Samuel Palmer coming here to make sketches for his pastoral etchings. He probably had. Some of the prints she’d seen bore a striking resemblance to the manor. Harold was terribly unconcerned about the art he owned right up until the time he was asked to part with it.

Felicia was third in the party, unless one counted the imps. The three of them constantly appeared and disappeared, gating to a point twenty yards ahead then waiting, puffing on foul-smelling cigarettes until the rest of the party caught up.

She nudged Harold. “How many have you got?”

Harold laughed. “Just the three, though they seem like a lot more when they’re darting about like this. Devious is the eldest and the other two, Delirious and John, are his offspring.”

“I’ve not met John, have I?”

“No. Just imagine Delirious without the torn ear, and that’s John.”

“How did you wind up with them?” Felicia looked ahead and smiled, her sense of smell alerting her to the presence of Gillian, twenty yards to her right. She was more of a shadow than the trees themselves. On her left ran the river, audible in its lazy scramble over rocks.

“I made a deal with Devious. A pact. His children were born in service.”

“What sort of pact? The sell-your-soul kind?”

“Sort of.” Felicia watched him grin in the dark. “I traded him the hand of a hero for lifelong service.”

“Eww. Sounds horrible.”

“It was.” Harold sighed heavily. “It was a classic from the sixties, still in its box and everything.”

“It was a toy?”

“Not at all. It was a limited-edition superhero.” Harold guided her over a series of surface roots. “I ended up with a bit of a reputation for shady pacts, though I still think I overpaid.”

Felicia laughed. “So you’re a magician then?”

“You make it sound sordid.” Harold paused as the path became steeper. Felicia could hear the sound of a waterfall in the distance.

“I’ve never been up here before. Is that a waterfall?”

“Yes.” Harold raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got good hearing.”

“I would, wouldn’t I?”

Gillian appeared beside them, silent as a tiger. “You’ll have to keep your voices down. The imp said they were near the stone at the top of the falls. The water will mask most of the noise but I don’t know what we’re facing yet. I’ll scout ahead when we’re closer.”

“Thanks.” Harold reached out to touch her, the gesture revealing more of his love for the vampire than a thousand words. She flashed him a smile and faded back into the darkness. He lowered his voice. “The waterfall is called Lover’s Leap. You’ll see it soon.”

“Do people jump from it?”

Harold shook his head. “Not generally, since it’s a fatal drop. When my grandfather built a footbridge over the falls it became the Laver’s Leat, then Lover’s Leap.” He shrugged. “A bit of local history.”

Felicia felt the ground beneath her begin to rise.

“We had a suicide last year. The priest from the village. He was engaged in some less than priestly activities and chose to jump instead of bringing his church into disrepute. You’ve got to admire him for that, though they never found his body.”

“How do you know he jumped then?”

“They found his arm wedged in the rocks half way down.” Harold chuckled. “The trout were good last year.”

The roar of the waterfall grew deafening and Felicia paused to look over the edge. Hundreds of gallons of freezing water cascaded past her into the depths below. It was hard to believe they had climbed so high with such little effort.

The imps waited for them to catch up.

Jasfoup, his wings half unfolded, squatted on the track. “The leech has gone ahead. Give her a few minutes.”