A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I just looked at him and then the others. Carlos said, “I’m going to go finish questioning the uni that could see through angel magic.”

  “I already did that,” Lila said.

  He shuddered as he turned away.

  “I thought you were tougher than this, Carlos,” Lila said to his back, which was four times as wide as her slender form.

  “I got nothing to prove anymore, Lila. Games like that are for the young guys—sorry, young people. I saw it once, that was enough.”

  “Scaredy-cat,” she said.

  “Ball-busting bitch,” he said, but kept walking.

  She opened her mouth to say more, but Charleston said, “That’s enough, Bridges, you don’t have kids yet.”

  She looked up at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “The boy was the same age as Carlos’s youngest.”

  “The one who . . .”

  He nodded.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the age thing.”

  “Like I said, Bridges, you don’t have kids yet, and Havoc doesn’t have any teenagers. You’ve got to have grown-ass kids to understand that they never stop being your little boy, and you never stop wanting to protect them just like you did when they were babies.”

  I swallowed hard. “Connery is only three, I thought it got better as they got older.”

  “It gets better in some ways, harder in others as they get older, and teenagers through their twenties is a minefield I don’t envy any parent.”

  “I thought eighteen and they were grown-ups,” I said.

  Charleston laughed.

  “I am never having children,” Lila said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The skin fragments were so thin they were like cloudy plastic that you could see shadows through. “Are you sure that this is human skin?” I asked.

  Charleston held the piece delicately between his gloved fingertips. You’d think someone with fingers that thick would be clumsy, but his hands were just as delicate as they had been when he was catching footballs in the NFL.

  “There’s a piece that they already bagged and tagged that’s got what’s left of the tattoo from his hip. DNA will tell us for sure that it’s Cookson, but the nurses remember the tattoo, and it’s distinctive.”

  “What was it, the tattoo, I mean?”

  “The usual devil shit,” Lila said.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  Charleston answered, “Upside-down pentagram with a devil-goat-head-looking thing above it. Terrible tattoo, the kind you’ll cover up in a few years if you can find someone willing to try.”

  “At least it was small, that’s an easier cover-up than a big one,” Lila said.

  “I don’t think he has to worry about bad ink now,” I said, staring at the piece of skin.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” Lila said, and she looked sad now, as if the cocky, wisecracking mask had slipped.

  “Possessed individuals do not turn into full demon form, and they sure as hell don’t shed their skins like a damn snake,” Charleston said.

  “His skin was reddish in the hallway, like whoever’s imagination had turned him into the movie demon, so why does the skin left behind look like it was just Cookson’s body in this room?” I asked.

  “Excellent question,” Charleston said.

  “Could it have been a really good illusion like most demonic powers?” Lila asked.

  “Illusion can make you hurt yourself, or somebody else hurt you, but it can’t hurt you,” Charleston said.

  One of the techs came up gloved and covered head to foot in protective gear. “We need that now, Lieutenant.”

  “Has anyone used the protective suits in a live field exercise with real magic?” I asked.

  “They told us everyone wears the suit on all supernatural-related crime scenes until further notice, that’s all I know,” the tech said.

  “That you, Berger?” Bridges asked.

  “Yeah, now give me my evidence.”

  “Our evidence,” Bridges said, but Charleston just helped slip it into the container that Berger held up.

  “Think what you want to think, Bridges, you always do anyway,” Berger said, but his eyes through the face shield were all for the near-translucent sliver of skin until he had it safely contained and closed up nice and safe.

  “You’re just sore because I wouldn’t date you,” she said.

  “Being attracted to you made me question my masculinity, Bridges; you’re just too much man for me.”

  “That I believe,” she said, and smiled, pleased with herself. A lot of female cops tried to be one of the boys, but none of them worked as hard to be better than the men as Lila did.

  “I’ll take Lila at my back ahead of most of the men I know,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Charleston said.

  “Thanks, guys.”

  “Unless we need someone to reach the top shelf for us,” Charleston said.

  “Well, there is that,” I said, as if it hadn’t occurred to me before.

  “Screw you guys,” she said.

  “Lila, I’m shocked, you were at the meeting about sexually appropriate workplace vocabulary,” Charleston said, but smiled as he said it.

  “Fine,” she said, “fuck you guys.” She smiled at him and added a middle finger.

  “If we did it to her, you’d write us up,” Berger said.

  “Don’t you have evidence to test or something?” she said.

  Berger started to reply, but Charleston cut him off. “Go do your job, Berger. Bridges will stay here and do hers.”

  The tech went off without another comment, but something about the exchange had gone beyond the usual bantering at crime scenes. It made me wonder if Lila had more history with Berger that I didn’t know about, but then she didn’t know all the details about my personal life either. We were work friends and that was it. I’d worked hard to make sure that the most attractive female officer on our unit was just a friend. The only thing worse than a messy divorce was one that involved someone from work. If I went down in flames with Reggie, I didn’t want to burn up my career along with my marriage.

  “Are you seriously telling me that skin fragments like that are the most you’ve found of the . . . Cookson?” I asked.

  “So far,” Lila said.

  I shook my head. “His whole body should be in that room, maybe even still alive, left behind when the demon was forced to flee.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s usual for demon possession, but this one, if you hadn’t noticed, Havoc, isn’t usual anything,” Lila said; she sounded disdainful, as if to say of course. The tone was close enough to Reggie’s that I had to stop myself from rounding my shoulders and hunching from it. If this kept up, I’d have issues with all women, all females. I could be even more broken than I already was.

  “Then why is there just skin left?” I asked.

  “You tell us, you’re the Heaven and Hell expert,” she said.

  “I’m the expert on the angelic; that doesn’t make me an expert on the Infernal.”

  “The closest thing to an expert in this hallway,” she said. That disdainful tone that didn’t usually bother me at all dripped from every word, or maybe I just heard it that way. It made it hard to focus on anything but the pain inside me.

  Charleston touched my shoulder and I jumped as if it had surprised me. He dropped his hand but said, “Havoc, you all right?”

  “Fine, I’m fine.” But even to me the words sounded hollow.

  “How bad are you hurt?” he asked, looking at the bandages on my arm and the holes in my shirt as if trying to see how many bandages were underneath.

  “The demon wounds are almost healed.”

  “How’s that possible?” Lila asked.

  “Angelic magic is usually automatically healing once you invoke it,” I said.

  “So the demon claws are healed, but the scratches from our other victim aren’t?” Charleston asked.

  I glanced
down at the thick dressings on my arm. “The female vic was in here for magical therapy, so there were side effects.”

  “What kind of side effects?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to betray Kate’s secret. If she’d given up her iron teeth and claws to be normal beautiful, then the fewer people who knew about it the better, because if her new appearance got on social media with her old appearance, then having a normal life was over. If normal was what she wanted, I wanted her to have it.

  “Patient confidentiality wouldn’t let him tell me much,” I finally said, but I’d waited too long to say it. Charleston and Lila both looked at me, waiting for more, because they didn’t believe what I’d just told them, and they didn’t try to hide the fact.

  “Using angelic power the way I did will automatically heal things that are opposed to it like demon injuries, but for other injuries you have to request healing, and it had just been so long since I’d used that kind of power, I forgot.” That was true, as far as it went.

  Charleston nodded, face softening as if he understood more than I was saying, or something compassionate. “How long has it been since you worked with angel magic like this?”

  “Almost ten years,” I said.

  He studied me like he was trying to read more than I was wanting to show. I gave him my best mild, friendly, blank face. It was my version of trying not to look threatening. It wasn’t my cop face exactly, but the face I used to try to ease a stranger’s reaction to me being big, physical, and male. When you were my size, or the lieutenant’s size, you had to have a softer face that you could put on like a mask, so we’d seem less threatening by just being. He’d know exactly what the look on my face meant, but he’d also know it meant I didn’t want him to look deeper. He’d respect that, unless he felt it was negatively impacting my job, and this wasn’t.

  “The doc cleared you for duty?” he asked.

  “Like they cleared you for your getting knocked unconscious,” I said, my face mild.

  He smiled, his eyes looking down. “Then we’ll both ignore doctor’s orders about getting some rest and keep doing our jobs.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Me, too. Now let’s figure out what the hell is going on.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We used Gimble’s room to decide the game plan. He sat up in the bed, tucking his legs up so that Lila could sit on the end of the bed. Charleston and I took the room’s chairs, and Antero stood, because he didn’t fit comfortably in the chairs. When Lila offered to stand so he could have the foot of the bed he got offended, so she sat, and he stood.

  Charleston had a look on his face like he might not have been kidding about physical fitness requirements for the unit, but out loud he said, “Antero stays here to question the staff. I want him to stay here until the nurse Gonzales is out of surgery and recovery and see if he can get a preliminary statement from him.”

  “I can help,” Gimble said.

  Charleston shook his head. “You’re going to need a debriefing by Internal Affairs before you can go back on full duty.”

  “Lieutenant, please, I want to help catch this guy. You weren’t at the first scene with Havoc and me. What he did to her . . . I’m fine, let me go with Havoc. He can keep an eye on me in case the angel stuff happens again.”

  “Havoc got cut up, so I’m going to send him out with Bridges for the rest of the day. I’m going to take Sato, the new uniformed officer that saw through the angelic magic in the hallway. The doctor will be happy I’m not driving with a head bump and I can get a feel for the uniform.”

  “But you both got hurt in the fight; physically I’m fine.”

  “You were so blissed out on angel magic you don’t remember most of the last few hours, Gimble. Rules are, if any of us are magically incapacitated so that we lose time or are suspected of being possessed, then IA has to clear us for duty.”

  “It was an angel, not a demon. Angels can’t possess anyone,” Gimble said. He looked like he was going to pout, which made him look even younger than he was; no wonder he still got carded.

  “If I’d been ridden by one of the loa, I wouldn’t be allowed back on duty either, and that’s not demon possession either, but it’s still being too up close and personal with a supernatural power,” Charleston said.

  “But that’s different,” Gimble said. “You’re a Voodoo Priest; it’s part of your religion to call in your Deities and other powers to use your body to speak to your congregation.”

  “Thanks for making my point,” Charleston said.

  Gimble frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “If I’m going to call the loa and let them ride me, I have to let IA know ahead of time, because it falls under being magically compromised with or without memory lapses. If I have to deal with IA when I’m a priest and it’s part of my faith, then what just happened to you is absolutely something they will want to make a report on.”

  Gimble sighed and leaned back into his piled-up pillows. “How long do I have to stay here?”

  “That’s up to Dr. Paulson.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “They’ll hold you for at least two hours just to make sure it doesn’t reoccur,” I said.

  “Did the doctor tell you that?” Gimble asked.

  “No, but you were basically magically drunk by accident. The hospital will want to keep an eye on you to make sure that it’s over before they release you.”

  “Come on, Gimble,” Lila said, “you’ve been here when we brought people in that got power drunk from all sorts of things. You know the drill.”

  “But this was an angel, they’re the good guys.”

  “You can get power drunk on the good stuff even faster than the bad stuff,” Antero said.

  We all nodded, except for Gimble. He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re bleeding,” Lila said.

  He looked at his arm where she pointed. “Damn, they put a bandage on it when they pulled the needle out.”

  “How big a hole did you put in your arm getting out of bed with the IV needle still in your arm?” Charleston asked.

  “Not that bad,” he said, but he was lifting his arm up and putting pressure on it.

  Lila leaned past him and hit the button to ask for a nurse.

  “I can still help Antero question people here.”

  “No, you were involved in the incident, so you handling the witness statement could potentially compromise them, since you were compromised.”

  “Lieutenant, please.”

  There was a soft knock at the door and a younger blond nurse came through the door. “Hi, I’m Bunny, and before you ask, yes, it is my real name.” She saw the blood on Gimble and was suddenly all business as she moved toward the bed.

  Gimble smiled up at the nurse. “Well, if I have to be under observation for a few hours, I guess that’s just the way it is, Lieutenant.”

  She glanced down at him as she unwrapped the dressing to look at the wound. She got the full weight of his hazel eyes and then he smiled at her. She blinked at him like there was more to the smile than I could see. He was a projective empath, but I’d swear that wasn’t what he was doing.

  “We’ll give you the room,” Charleston said, and ushered us out. The nurse came behind us to get supplies she needed to put a fresh dressing on Gimble’s arm.

  “One of these days he’s going to cross the line and end up talking to IA about just how charming he is to the opposite sex,” Antero said.

  “It’s not his empathy,” Lila said.

  “How can you be so sure?” Antero asked.

  “Because I got tired of watching other women fall for him so hard and so fast, so I might have flexed my own power around him while he was flirting.”

  Antero said, “You can be brought up on charges using your own powers on another officer outside of emergency situations.”

  “I asked her to double-check what Gimble was doing,” Charleston said.

  We looked at him. “You saw it jus
t now. It’s charisma bordering on magical, so I asked Bridges to flex her null powers around Gimble the next time she saw him wooing a new lady.”

  Lila was a powerful psychic null; no supernatural powers worked around her or against her. She could keep it tight to her aura only, and then flare it out and even aim it, which made her incredibly useful. If she hadn’t been able to control it so well, she’d have still had plenty of job offers in maximum-security facilities that had magically talented prisoners or even psychiatric patients. That was usually the career path for people with her rather rare talent.

  “He’s not zapping the women. I don’t see it myself, but apparently he is just that charming,” Lila said.

  “I feel slow that it didn’t occur to me that Gimble was doing anything wrong until I saw how he was impacting the nurses here,” I said.

  “You said it was the combo of angelic power and his own talent,” Charleston said.

  I nodded. “Yes, but I feel naïve that it never occurred to me to wonder if he was cheating with the flirting.”

  “I’m the boss, it’s my job to think about things like that.”

  I still felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. Gimble was our newest member, so maybe that was it; but Charleston was right, there was a reason he was the boss, but part of me wondered if I’d have thought about checking Gimble out more closely seven months ago before things went south with Reggie. I pushed the thought away; if I was still thinking it tomorrow, I’d ask Charleston if my job performance was suffering. Tonight, I gave myself the benefit of the doubt. Kate’s fingernails were burning on my arm under the bandages. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask the angels to heal the wounds, any of my wounds. I could say that it was because it had been so long that I just didn’t think of it, and that was partly true, but the whole truth was I didn’t think I deserved to be healed, not after what I had done. Some sins didn’t have a shelf life, they stayed fresh and corrupting forever.

  “Everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing,” Charleston said; “let’s go do it.”

  Lila said, “Before we all high-five and go our separate ways, one question.”