A Terrible Fall of Angels

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “It’s like an old movie prop,” Charleston said.

  “Is it an illusion?” Lila asked.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  “Crystal and gold, like it’s some kind of oversized jewelry,” she said.

  “I think we all see the same bottle,” Charleston said.

  “It’s a beautiful bottle, what made you gather it as evidence?” I asked.

  “First, look at it, does it look like something a nineteen-year-old guy would have in his man cave?” Lila said.

  “It did sort of stand out,” Goliath said.

  “The bottle was sitting in this little alcove hidden behind books like a twelve-year-old girl hides her diary,” Lila said.

  “His room looked like it belonged to a much younger boy,” Goliath said.

  “Some parents don’t let their kids update their rooms,” Charleston said.

  “Maybe,” Goliath said, “but the room felt like this Mark Cookson just stopped. It was all arrested development.”

  “According to the techies his browser history was a lot of incel sites, angry-at-women-for-not-fucking-you kind of shit,” Lila said.

  “That explains the rape and violence,” Ravensong said, “but it doesn’t explain this.”

  “It doesn’t feel evil, and it seems to dampen magic better than Lila does. What made you look behind the books in the first place?” I asked.

  “The choice of books,” Lila said.

  Goliath nodded. “They were occult, but nothing too unusual except that they were right next to a set of Hardy Boys mysteries.”

  “Hardy Boys, really?” Ravensong said. “I used to read those when I was in junior high, along with Nancy Drew.”

  “The whole room was a mix of younger-than-high-school-boy stuff and then the occult,” Goliath said.

  “Did you say that the bottle was behind the occult books?” Adam asked. It was almost startling that he was still in the room. I’d noticed he could be so quiet that you forgot about him, until he decided to go back to being his usual persistent self.

  “Yes,” Goliath said.

  “So, the occult books marked the spot like an X on a map in a Hardy Boys mystery?” Adam asked.

  “I guess,” Goliath said.

  “It’s like it wanted to be found,” Adam said.

  “You mean Cookson wanted the bottle to be found?” Lila said.

  Adam shook his head. “No, the bottle wanted to be found.”

  “The bottle can’t want anything, Thornton, it’s an inanimate object,” Goliath said.

  Adam was shaking his head slowly back and forth, staring at the bottle. “The bottle can’t, but what’s inside it can.”

  “How do you know what’s inside it?” Goliath said.

  “Who told you?” Lila asked.

  Adam just kept shaking his head. “I can see it.”

  “He saw my wounds through my bandages in the locker room,” I said.

  Adam nodded. “I see what is hidden,” he said, his voice distant like he was listening to something we couldn’t hear.

  “What do you see, Thornton?” Charleston asked.

  “Blood,” he said.

  “He’s right about it being blood,” Goliath said.

  “Human blood?” I asked.

  “There was human blood on the outside of the bottle when the techs swiped it,” he said.

  “Not just human blood,” Adam said, still staring at the bottle as if there was a label to read.

  “He’s right again,” Goliath said.

  “What’s in it, besides human blood?” I asked.

  “Demon,” Adam said, almost dreamily.

  “Now you’ve spoiled the surprise,” Lila said to him.

  He did a long, slow blink like he was having to drag himself back from whatever metaphysical music he was listening to in his head.

  “You got all that from swabbing the bottle?” I asked.

  Ravensong nodded.

  “What kind of freak wastes one of the rarest magical ingredients on the planet by spilling it down the bottle?” Goliath asked.

  “Mark Cookson,” Charleston said.

  “What can you sense from it, Havoc?” Ravensong asked.

  “Gently,” Charleston warned.

  I nodded; I could do gentle magically, it’s what I’d been doing most of my life once I left the College. I concentrated and just like that I could see the glow at my back that was my Guardian Angel. It wasn’t like the cold fire of the angel that had put Gimble in the hospital, but soft, pure white light, steady like a night light to guide you through the darkness. It could grow into something large and powerful to protect us like dawn spreading across the sky until the world was covered in sunlight.

  I looked at the bottle again, but this time I asked the angels to help me see more. Angels will do what you ask, because your free will is what makes the choices; you can listen to your better angels when they warn you that something is a bad idea, but if you give them an order, a request, tell them I need your help, they will do what you ask, because that’s the way free will works—your free will, not theirs, because if everything goes according to God’s plan they don’t have any.

  The spells on the crystal showed like golden lines forming script. It was a mix of Celestial and Infernal as if the bottle had been designed to hold more than just human and demon blood. The metal lacework around it glowed red and orange as if it were being shoved into the forge again.

  Adam said, “Don’t do it.”

  “Havoc is just looking at the spell on it,” Ravensong said. “I think there’s Celestial magic in its creation, not just Infernal.”

  I nodded, and said softly, “Yes.” What I was doing shouldn’t have damaged any of the spells. I wasn’t putting energy into anything, just reading what was already there, but not everything likes to be read.

  The metal glowed orange and yellow now, the red lost as the heat grew. “The metal’s glowing.”

  “The bottle looks the same,” Goliath said.

  Ravensong moved closer to it. “It’s wavering like heat.”

  “Stop, Havoc, stop what you’re doing,” Charleston said.

  I stopped, pulling back so that I couldn’t see the lettering traced on the bottle. The glow at my back had hands now, resting lightly on my shoulders. Guardian Angels don’t manifest physically without a reason.

  The top of the bottle began to unscrew itself as if some invisible hand were twisting it.

  Charleston said, “Lila, disable it.”

  Lila stepped forward and the rest of us moved back so she had a clear field of “fire.” Her hands were loose at her sides, but her stance was solid, stacked, and ready for action. She could do her psychic ability so quietly that the bad guys never saw it coming, but when she didn’t have to hide, she looked like she was getting ready for a physical fight instead of a psychic one.

  I never felt anything happen when she used her power; it was more like the world got quieter, like floating in silence as if standing in the middle of Lila’s power would be the most relaxing thing in the world, but then her power didn’t work on Celestial energies, and that was mainly what I did. She just cleared the psychic debris for me.

  The stopper on the bottle stopped moving just like it was supposed to, and then it was as if the air in the room took a breath and the stopper began to unscrew itself again.

  Lila’s voice was controlled as she said, “It’s not stopping.”

  “Ravensong, can you throw up a circle of protection while I get a containment box?” Charleston asked.

  “If Havoc plays battery for me, yes,” she said.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast,” Lila said, still standing in front of the bottle, hands in fists now, physical strain showing in her arms and shoulders, feet digging into the floor as if she was standing against some invisible force that she was keeping away from the rest of us.

  Charleston yelled, “MacGregor, Thornton, with me.” They were running before the door closed behi
nd them. Running not away, but for one of the magical containment boxes that we had in storage on this floor for the rare objects that we couldn’t handle any other way.

  I went to stand behind Ravensong, who was facing the table behind Lila like a second line of defense. Most witches need words to call the quarters and put up a magical circle; some of them even needed bits of the elements water, rocks, chimes, smoke, a candle. Ravensong spread her arms to the sky, legs wide and firm so she stood like a tree, roots in the earth and hands reaching for the sky. I stood behind her, my legs fixed wide and steadying, and if I’d been a Wiccan priest to her priestess, I would have either mimicked her stance except with my arms pointed in the opposite direction or crossed my arms over my chest; instead I put my left hand on her shoulder and told the angels to help me to help her work this spell. That was enough to drop my psychic shielding and let Ravensong tap into my energy. I was literally acting as a battery to amplify her magic.

  “Narrow your field, Bridges,” Ravensong said.

  The three of us had done this before in the field, never here inside the unit itself, but location didn’t matter; magic is everywhere.

  “How small?” Lila asked.

  “Small as you can make it.”

  “Got it,” Lila said.

  I felt the familiar warmth of Ravensong’s magic and gave my own power to hers. My Guardian Angel merged with the glow at her back, and then I felt the four quarters spring to life: North like a huge towering oak tree standing phantomlike but so real that I swear I could feel its roots reaching down into the center of the Earth and hear its leaves rustling as it grew skyward; East was wind and birds on the wing and then a towering cyclone whirling and waiting to sweep away all danger if you had the power and nerve to control it; South was fire towering upward as if God’s voice should come out of it; West was ocean and rain along the shore gentle and cleansing. It took seconds for it all to happen, but we were already in that time between, so that seconds of real time felt like so much longer for us. Ravensong called Goddess and God, and their power filled the space between with that soft, skin-ruffling power that felt both gentle and powerful. Ravensong’s God was not the one I prayed to, and her Goddess was not the mother of my God, but they all blessed this circle because I gave my power to the witch to strengthen her circle and keep us all safe.

  Ravensong’s voice rang out: “The circle is closed! So mote it be!”

  I echoed her: “So mote it be!”

  The circle closed with an almost audible pop as if the pressure inside it was denser than the outside world.

  “Can’t . . . hold,” Lila said through gritted teeth.

  “Shut down, we’ve got it,” Ravensong said.

  Lila didn’t argue, just stepped away from the table and let us have a clear view of the enchanted bottle, because that was what it had to be. You didn’t find many enchanted items in modern times, things where the magic had been forged into each piece of its making. Most of them were old, the art of their making lost centuries ago, and they were all powerful.

  The stopper unscrewed itself, tittering at the mouth of the bottle, balanced to fall. Something dark moved up the side of the crystal bottle. There wasn’t time to cross the distance, but we stood within sacred space and there were other ways to move. Ravensong reached toward the bottle with her hand, but it was her totem, a phantom raccoon, that raced across the floor to climb the table and try to grab the stopper. It should have worked, but as the totem reached for the bottle, reality flickered in a way that I’d never seen happen inside a circle before, and when the raccoon reached the bottle, it had moved just out of reach. The stopper fell and the bottle was open. Ravensong yelled, “Bridges, get down!”

  Lila dropped to the floor, covering her head as if she was tucking for an explosion. It might help protect her, or it might not. I stayed at Ravensong’s back, feeding her energy as she raised her hands and did a spell without a word or a rune, or anything but her faith and the pentagram she always wore, but she had the Goddess and the God like weight and presence inside the circle. Her raccoon had run back to her side, and I saw her other mystical companions begin to manifest around her, and my Guardian Angel began to grow at my back, and then something exploded. Ravensong and I were thrown backward into the wall. I had a choice to save myself or cushion her when we hit; I chose her, she was my priestess in that moment, and as her acting priest one of my jobs was to protect her. My head hit the wall and all the light, all the magic went away, swallowed by the darkness as I lost consciousness. My last thought was God, please keep them safe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Hands on me; I grabbed them, fought them. Someone screamed and it wasn’t me. A voice I should have known yelled, “Havoc, they’re trying to help you.”

  “Detective Havelock, stand down! That’s an order!” I knew that voice, too. It made me blink and try to look at who I was fighting. There was a paramedic crumpled on the floor beside me. Charleston loomed over both of us standing so that he looked like a giant, as tall as the ceiling. The moment I thought that, I knew something was wrong with me. Was I hurt?

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, but my voice sounded too low, so I said it again.

  “Do you know your name?”

  “Havelock, Zaniel Havelock, Havoc.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  I looked around the room. “Interrogation room.”

  He almost smiled. “What city are you in?”

  I frowned at him. “The City of Angels.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Charleston, you’re my lieutenant.”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened? Why am I on the floor? What happened to the medic?”

  A woman’s voice said, “You happened to him.”

  I looked toward the voice, but I couldn’t see her past Charleston. “Who is that?”

  She peered around Charleston’s side, looking child-sized compared to him. She looked angry. “I’m his partner.” She pointed down to the paramedic on the floor.

  “What happened to him?”

  “I told you, you happened.” She knelt beside her fallen partner and she looked even tinier that way. Was she really that petite or was I more out of it than I thought? Charleston was a giant and she was doll-like. It was like everything was all funhouse mirrors.

  Her partner groaned and started to push his way up from the floor. She started trying to examine him, but he said, “Look at our patient first, not me.”

  “Our patient knocked you cold and may have broken your nose,” she said, her voice warm with anger.

  Her partner turned his head enough for me to see the blood all over the front of his face and shirt. “Did I do that?” I couldn’t remember doing it, or maybe I did. I remembered hands on me, and I hadn’t wanted them to touch me.

  The female paramedic glared at me. “Yes, for the third time, you did this.”

  “He’s hurt, Becki,” her partner said, and I realized he was trying to make excuses for me. That seemed really sporting of him since I’d just hit him in the face.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who was touching me,” I said.

  “He got attacked by demonic energy, Becki; anyone would fight.” He leaned against the wall and used the dressing she gave him to press against his still-bleeding nose, but that was all he’d let her do for him. He insisted on her looking at me first. I might owe him a drink later if he kept being that nice about it.

  Becki grumbled, but she knelt beside me and again she fit between me and the closest chair. I wasn’t hallucinating, she was just that tiny.

  She looked at my eyes with a flashlight, then told me to use just my eyes to follow her finger as she moved it back and forth. Her frown softened a little. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, or just meant she was calming down.

  “Neil was trying to put a brace on your neck when you clocked him,” she said, and was back to sounding angry, maybe it was just her
default.

  “Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?” Neil asked, his voice muffled from holding the dressing against his nose.

  I looked down my body to try moving everything and noticed there was fresh dressing and medical tape across my stomach. I ignored it for now and tried to move my fingers and toes. “Everything moves,” I said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Why are there fresh bandages on my stomach?”

  “The wounds on your stomach started bleeding again,” Neil said.

  “If they’d put stitches in at the hospital they wouldn’t have started bleeding again,” Becki said, frowning her disapproval.

  “It was already healed closed, so the doctor didn’t think it was necessary. Did the wounds reopen?” I asked.

  “No, but there was still blood coming through the wounds when we got here,” Neil said.

  “The attack was just earlier today, though, right?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But angel magic healed it,” Neil said, and his voice sounded wetter, as if more blood was going down the back of his throat. That was not a good sound. It meant I’d really done a number on his nose. I might owe him more than just a drink.

  “You told them what happened at the hospital,” I said, looking up at Charleston.

  “I told them what I could, but I’m a Voodoo Priest, not an angel worker, so I could only give them the magic I could sense and what you said was happening.”

  “Why didn’t the angels heal it completely?” Becki asked.

  “I didn’t ask them to. I asked them to help us save the woman who was in jeopardy.”

  “Usually that means they will heal you more than you asked, for being selfless,” Neil said.

  The comment bothered me. “I wasn’t being selfless; I’d have done almost anything to save the woman.”

  “I think they didn’t heal it because they couldn’t,” Becki said.

  “And I think they didn’t heal it because they knew that there’s some magic in there that needs to come out before the skin closes over it,” Neil said.