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The phone did a vibrating dance on his desk. Charmeine. Raziel lunged forward, snatching it up. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“I’m fine, thank you for asking,” said Charmeine’s voice, sounding weary. “I’m in Mexico City. I don’t know if you heard about it from your contacts or not, but the Council came here early, with hardly any warning. ”
Raziel didn’t correct her assumption that his communications with the Angel Killers went both ways. “I’ve known for two days!” he gritted out. “I’ve been going mad, waiting to hear from you – what happened? Did they find out there was a security leak?”
She sighed. “Yes – our darling little Luis. He let slip to a woman in the office how curious his girlfriend is about the Council, and that he’d promised to get her and some friends in for a private audience. ”
Raziel groaned aloud; remembering the earnest face he’d seen in Charmeine’s thoughts, he could just picture it. The warning not to tell anyone about Kara must have worn off in the time that had passed since Charmeine’s encounter with him. Or else the lad had been so dizzy from angel burn he’d forgotten he wasn’t supposed to talk.
“Anyway, the woman told the preacher, who went straight to the Council,” went on Charmeine. “Apparently there’d always been a contingency plan in place. They switched to it just to be on the safe side. ”
“The Twelve didn’t get hold of Luis, did they?” asked Raziel warily.
“No, they didn’t. Do you think I’d still be around talking to you if they had? He’d gone to visit his family for the weekend; by the time they figured it out, I’d whisked him away. ”
Raziel’s shoulders slumped with relief. If Luis had been turned over to the Council, they’d have seen what had happened in seconds. “So what did you do with him?”
She snorted. “What do you think? I wasn’t going to keep him as a pet. ”
He nodded to himself; Charmeine might be maddening at times, but she never balked at necessities. Something about her tone worried him, though. “Are you all right?” he asked abruptly.
Charmeine sighed. “Yes, I suppose. It’s just. . . this isn’t easy, Raz. They delve me almost every day, to make sure I’m still compliant. It’s draining, having to keep them psychically at bay and act like nothing’s wrong. But I’ll keep holding out, don’t worry. It’s only for a few more weeks. ”
“Do I have a few more weeks?” he asked bluntly. “Or are they going to call me down there and execute me anyway?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know,” said Charmeine finally. “They’re planning some kind of response to your interview soon, but I’m not sure exactly what – they want to make you squirm for a while longer. I do know they’d prefer to take care of you in your own cathedral; they feel it’s only fitting. If you lie low, you might be okay for now. ”
Raziel nodded, grimly hoping she was right. Before the Council had a chance to come for him personally, the tables would have turned.
“Anyway, they’re pretty preoccupied with their own plans at the moment,” added Charmeine.
Raziel’s chair squeaked as he leaned back with a frown, remembering the images he’d seen in her mind. “They’re still going ahead with that?”
She gave a short laugh. “Have you been to Mexico City lately? The angels here aren’t exactly an advertisement for behaving with decorum. The Twelve are more concerned about our ‘baser instincts’ than ever. They’re going to link with the energy here first, calming it down, then spread out to all the other places in the world where they think things are out of control. ”
Raziel’s gaze narrowed at a painting on the wall. If the Twelve’s energies were linked with those of Mexico City, and then the Twelve were destroyed. . . he gave a mental shrug. All right, so the Mexican capital would definitely take some damage; it could even be levelled. As for the world’s other angelic “hot spots”, who knew? The kind of long-range energy work the Council was planning wouldn’t be instantaneous; maybe it wouldn’t have had time to fully take effect. Thankfully, at the rate humans bred, the angels’ food supply being curtailed wasn’t really an issue either way.
He could almost hear Charmeine coming to the same conclusions; her identical mental shrug. “Anyway, we’ve got to get the new information to your little band of thugs,” she said. “And it can’t be someone that close to the Council again; I only barely got to Luis in time. Should I just give it to them myself?”
“They can see auras,” pointed out Raziel.
“So? I’ll pretend to be a rogue. They were all pally with Nate, right? I’ll just put on my sanctimonious, holier-than-thou face. ”
Raziel clicked a silver pen open and shut as he considered it. Though the entire angel community knew of the rogues’ mass execution, the Angel Killers did not – and he knew from Willow’s thoughts that Kylar had once had hopes of joining forces with them. But remembering how the young assassin had refused to simply obey orders and kill Willow when he’d been told to, the idea made him uneasy nonetheless.
“No,” he decided. “Kylar can get too suspicious – the last thing we need is him poking around in things. We need to find a way to get him the information so he can trust it. ” Recalling the email he’d been reading, he brought it up on the screen again. A slow smile grew across his face.
“I might have an idea,” he said. “Leave it with me. ”
“Not too long,” cautioned Charmeine; he could hear her tension. “It makes me nervous, not even having a plan in place. I’ll call you as soon as I can get away again. ”
After they hung up, Raziel wrote several emails; a few were from anonymous accounts. Finally he hit Send on the last one, pleased with himself. A week or two was all it would take, he was sure of it – there was no way she’d be able to resist the lure he’d just cast. Once in Mexico City, she’d be the perfect liaison between themselves and Kylar, even if she thought her role there was completely different. And far less expendable, once she’d served her purpose.
Turning back and forth in his chair, Raziel allowed himself to daydream about what it would be like if his gamble paid off, and the assassination meant only the deaths of the Twelve. On the whole, angels were conservative beings. Once they got over the shock of the Council being gone, he didn’t think he’d encounter a serious challenge to his leadership – just lots of angels asking for positions in his new reign. The thought made him smile. He had so many plans for this world.
The newest, Camp Angel, was particularly exciting.
Raziel had long wished there was a way angels could savour the energy of all humans, not just the ones who’d reached some semblance of maturity. The energy of childhood was so particularly delicious, though of course it wasn’t really the done thing: to feed on too many children would soon spell the angels’ own destruction. But with families encased behind gated communities, he could keep track of exactly who was being fed from – and so with careful management, angels would be able to indulge their tastes regardless of their victims’ ages.
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