“Why?” Remi asked. “You’re an angel, not a demon; you can come inside the Zoo. Why call us all the way out here?”
Her mouth was a grim line. “Because that building reeks of Barachiel. I avoid him. I avoid him at all times, in all ways. I don’t trust him. I know him too well. So I summoned you here.”
“Who’s Barachiel?” I asked.
She flicked a glance at Remi, then back at me. “You behave as children, even as adults, and call him ‘Grandaddy.’ Barachiel is his true name. He claims himself chief of the guardian angels.”
“That’s his angelic name?” I asked.
Remi’s drawl was quiet, but pronounced. “Ma’am, I believe you may want to modify your words and tone. Because we may be fixin’ to have us an argument, you and me, if you continue in this uncivil manner.”
Her expression personified utter contempt. “I will say what I will say. I know what he is to you. I know what he’s done to you.” She fixed me with a penetrating glare. “But recall how I warned you that not all angels want the same thing. Suspect all of them. The war is not what it seems. Good versus Evil is simplistic. Childish. Heaven is not light. Hell is not darkness. They are all the colors of gray, and we live in between.”
I eased my way one step to the side, putting more space between the battered young woman and me so I’d have room to move. Guns wouldn’t work against angels, even with breath-blessed silver bullets or iron powder—Greg was the one who’d told me that, and proved it at Wupatki by surviving my five bullets—but I thought I might possibly need to move even if it wasn’t to shoot. Remi did the same on the woman’s left. Neither of us had any clue what was coming down, but I remembered very clearly that Grandaddy was no more a fan of this Grigori than she of him.
Now Greg’s dark eyes were on the woman between us. I knew what she saw: ill-fitting clothing, bare feet, swollen face, bruises. Ropes of wavy blonde hair verging on ringlets.
Outside the chapel, I heard a sound that literally made the fine hairs on my body rise. It was purely atavistic, a deep, heavy sound rising in pitch until it slid into a shrieking, ear-piercing squeal. The sound repeated, and a second voice joined it. Then a third.
Gun was out again. “What the hell is that?” I spread and braced my legs. “What is that, and how many of them are there?”
“I count three,” Remi said.
Treble growls, treble squeals. No barking. Just that horrible sound released by a furious dog as he goes feral in an instant, where he growls on the inhale and growls on the exhale, sound and breath sawing in his throat as all teeth are bared, and saliva releases. That savage, primal sound of pure predator.
“He’s come for her,” Greg said. She strode partway down the aisle, glanced briefly at the cross hanging high over our heads against the window. She walked farther into the moonlight, halted two steps from us, put out her hands to the woman.
In a language I didn’t know, the Grigori spoke to her in obvious kindness, in support, in promise. The young woman broke from the physical protection offered by Remi and me by taking those two steps toward the angel.
She knelt. Then prostrated herself and gripped Greg’s ankles. “Angeliafóros.”
The Grigori bent, raised her. Greg put her hands on either side of the woman’s face, studied her a long moment as if reading her eyes, then leaned forward, still cradling the weight of her head, and placed a lingering kiss upon her brow. “Be who you are,” Ambriel told her, mouth still close to her brow. “Be the daughter of a king, be speaker of the truth.”
Ambriel turned the woman to face us. Gone were the bruises, the swelling. The puffy eye was whole. Her jaw was now clean, a pure sweeping line. The straight nose fit the high arch of her cheekbones, the line of brow above two pale blue eyes.
She was not beautiful. The bones were too strong. But it was a face no one could forget.
The beast beyond the door shrieked.
Greg nodded. “He knows who she is, and he’s come for her.” Her face was grim. “I had not expected this so soon.”
Remi: “Who’s out there? Demon?”
Me: “Who is she? She never told us.”
The Grigori answered Remi first. “His name is Cerberus.”
I stared at her in shock. “Hades’s three-headed hound? Why on earth would he be after her? Who is she?”
Ambriel said, “Her name is Cassandra.”
“Believe,” the woman said. “The city shall fall, and so must the kingdom. Beware! Bring not the horse inside the gates with Greeks in its belly. Give me an axe, and I shall chop it apart. Believe! I speak true!”
“Jesus.” I could barely speak. “She’s talking about the Trojan Horse!”
“And the Fall of Troy.” Remi shook his head. “Cassandra did predict it, and no one listened.”
“Cursed by Apollo to always speak the truth,” Ambriel said, “and never to be believed.” She looked at Remi, then again at me. “Hades is here on earth.”
Outside the little chapel, his three-headed monster screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I waited for Greg to say more. She did not. I finally shook my head in annoyance, tucked the gun away, went back to the door and squinted out the cross-shaped window into darkness. Shielded my eyes against the moonlight inside and tried to see Cerberus. Could not. Heard him, though. His voice was harrowing.
“Technically,” I turned away from the door, looked at Greg, Remi, and Cassandra standing near the altar, “we can actually go outside and be fine. Within limits.”
Remi raised his voice more than a little. “You want to go outside to meet up with a three-headed dog monster?”
“Hey, don’t forget the snake for a tail part.”
Remi was taken aback. “A literal snake?”
“A literal snake.” I wandered my way back up the aisle, fingers of both hands stuffed into tight front pockets. “Cerberus was the offspring of Echidna and Typhon. Echidna was half serpent, and Typhon, depending on which version you subscribe to, had multiple snakes growing out of his body. And also one hundred heads, including a dragon. So yeah, Cerberus comes by the snake tail honestly.”
Behind Remi, the bright moon cast enough illumination through the big windows that I could see his expression as he calculated whether he should believe me or not.
I stuck a forefinger in the air. “But what I meant was, he can’t come inside the distance barrier we erected when we reconsecrated the place. Which means we can go outside and actually shoot the thing up close and personal without risking ourselves. I like those odds. So, I’ve got silver and iron in my gun. You?”
“Same, the .45 caliber bullets and .410 cartridges. Will either kill him?”
“The stories don’t say,” I admitted, “but the writers knew nothing about gunpowder, bullets, or guns, so it’s entirely possible that the rounds alone may do him in. We’ve got five apiece, so I figure ten should be enough to take him out if we hit the usual places: eyes, brain, heart, maybe go for internal organs as well.”
“Did he die in the stories? If so, maybe we ought to use the same tactics.”
I grimaced. “Actually, no, he didn’t. Or so the writers said; but they’re not in agreement.” I felt like I was back before my students. “As the last of his Twelve Labors, Hercules went to the underworld to capture Cerberus, and Hades allowed the battle so long as Hercules didn’t use any of the weapons he came with. Of course, Hercules was half-god himself and the strongest man in the world, so he overcame Cerberus with his bare hands and took him up top to prove his accomplishment. Then Hercules either sent him back to Hades, or else Cerberus escaped on his own and went back. But I say we rewrite the script and kill the bastard for good. Especially since neither of us is Hercules. Or Kevin Sorbo, for that matter, who played him on TV. Did you watch that series?”
“I did. Though I admit to havin’ more of a liking for Xena the Warrior Princess
.”
“What’s not to like?” I looked at Cassandra, who had moved away from us to sit alone on one of the garden bench pews. Then I checked in on Greg, still standing silently before the altar, ignoring Remi and me as she watched Cassandra with an expression of faint regret. I wandered my way closer to her.
“So, what’s your suggestion? About the monster, I mean, not canceled TV shows. And just why did you pretend to be Grandaddy and tell us to bring Cassandra out here?”
“I didn’t pretend to be anyone,” she said. “You jumped to conclusions.”
“Then let me rephrase: Why did you, as yourself, tell us to bring Cassandra here?”
Greg lifted her head high, which gave her chin a stubborn tilt. “I have a task.”
“What task?”
“The business of angels,” she said, and clearly intended to say no more.
I gave it up and swiped the air with my arm in a broad, dismissive gesture. “Okay, fine; never mind. The bottom line is, you knew Cassandra was with us and manipulated events to make sure we brought her out here. Now I want to know why.”
“You can’t protect her,” the angel said. “Not against a god.”
“Why not meet in a church in the city?”
“They are burning. Here it is safe. Here is the power of the white man’s belief and the Native American.”
Beyond the door, in the darkness, Cerberus screamed. The sound ran up the scale into the ear-piercing vicinity. “This doesn’t sound safe to me.”
“He can’t enter. That is safety.”
Well, yeah. Sort of. Pretty limited, though.
“Hades wants her,” Greg said, “and you two can’t protect her.”
“Uh, we’ve kind of already done some of that,” I pointed out, thinking of my rescue of her at the strip mall.
“Not adequately,” she clarified with precise enunciation. “Not against Hades. He’s a god. Your job is to handle demons, and the creatures they animate, or inhabit.”
“AHHhhhhh,” Remi’s inflection rose, then fell in an overdone tone of discovery. “We’re sittin’ at the kids’ table, are we? Allowed to go out after supper and play with the demons, but not the big hat all-grown-up gods?”
I wondered if angels could get constipated, or if Greg had some other reason for always being in a foul mood. “Hades would strip the flesh from your bones,” she said, “then crack them open to suck the marrow out. Oh, do be my guest. Follow his pet back to the underworld. While Hades is dining on everything else, Cerberus will eat your livers.”
Dramatic and graphic. In response I waved a minatory forefinger in the air. “No liver-eating, no bone-cracking. Our job is to save the world, right? Well, okay, one tiny little portion of it, since we’re just-born newbies. To me, that means take out as many enemy combatants as we can. What do you care if we manage it? Wouldn’t you thank us? And if we died you probably wouldn’t even know it, and you’d miss your chance to gloat.”
She pressed her lips together into a straight, flat line of annoyance. “I don’t want any of the children to die. Children are meant to grow up apart from violence, to be properly trained before being assigned a mission and a territory.”
I snorted to myself. Heaven sounded much like a national conglomeration with a sales force.
Remi nodded. “Children as in heaven’s kids? Not humans, right?”
“Humans are not able to fight,” she answered. “I’ve told you before—humans will be collateral damage. It was time to acquaint you with the truth of your births, your gifts, yes. But Barachiel accelerated your deployment for his own goals. It’s much too soon, and you’re endangered because of it. This is why your abilities have not fully manifested, why you cannot rely on them. You are both vulnerable. Fragile, in a way.” She stretched out an arm and pointed at the door. “The wards of the rite hold for now, but it’s tenuous because the gifts of your essence are weak as yet.”
“I thought you said we were safe in here.”
“Inside, yes. But the buffer outside will fail. Someone higher in the hierarchy, someone stronger, should tend it.”
“Then do it,” I challenged. “You’re an angel. Go out there and strengthen the wards, or whatever, and take out Cerberus for us. Then we can all go home and hit the sack, sleep for a week.”
Greg raised her head again. “I will do neither.”
“Why?” Remi asked. “You said you don’t want us to die, so how ’bout you blow up that three-headed beast the way you blew up the black dog at Wupatki? Then we fragile little flowers won’t be dead, and Hades won’t kill Cassandra.”
“Hades doesn’t want to kill Cassandra,” Greg said sharply. “He wants to use her. And so do Barachiel and others.”
I glanced at Cassandra. “Use her how?”
The Grigori shook her head slightly, as if in disbelief that we could be so dense. “She speaks truth to power. Perfect truth to literal power.”
Finally, I got it. “Cassandra is the scout sent out ahead for recon, to bring back information necessary to formulating or amending a battle plan. Only it isn’t a literal scouting job, but visions. Predictions. So Hades, working with Lucifer, wants her, and you say Grandaddy wants her for the same thing, but you don’t agree with his goals or his methods. So why are you here? Why do you need Cassandra? What’s your stake in this?”
“I’m Switzerland,” she said.
I blinked at her. “Congratulations. Now tell me—”
“I’m a watcher,” she snapped, interrupting. “That’s what Grigori do: we watch. We are neutral.” She looked at Cassandra a long moment, modulated her tone to something less assertive, less angry. “I must take her off heaven’s chessboard. Enforce neutrality.”
Remi shook his head. “The minute you attempt to enforce something, you are no longer neutral.”
Ambriel lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “Call it whatever you like. I’m here to take her with me, to keep her safe. Where neither side can use her.” All the annoyance and impatience was gone. What I heard now was empathy. “It was a curse, what Apollo did to her, and later Ajax. She is half-mad already. If she is used for the war as they wish to use her, they’ll scoop out every last bit of her and leave only a desiccated body behind.”
Cerberus cried again, all three heads giving tongue. I felt a much greater urgency now that I knew the warding outside might not hold. I drew my gun, saw Remi do the same. We looked at Greg.
Remi said, “You told us we don’t get to play with gods yet. I’d suggest we’re not up to playing with their pets yet, either. So how about you call in the guys and gals responsible for animal control.”
She shook her head.
My turn. “Taking Cassandra off the board is more than watching, and you’re also throwing us—two of heaven’s most inexperienced children, according to you—to Lucifer’s wolves. Because Cerberus will cross the line when the rite fails, and our livers will be served on the devil’s finest china.”
Greg looked at both of us for long moments. Then she moved away, put out a hand to Cassandra, and when the woman joined her before the altar in the brightest moonlight, Greg whispered something. Cassandra nodded.
But Cassandra also said something we couldn’t hear. She turned from Greg, came to me, gathered one of my hands into hers. She touched the black-and-silver ring, smiled briefly, then met my eyes. “I see no blood,” she said, “no broken bones, no crushed skull.”
“Well,” I said, “that is encouraging news. How long is this happy condition supposed to last?”
Her brows knit as she thought about it. “Time eludes me, though I know what is to come.”
“So you can’t reliably tell anyone when these things will happen?”
She shook her head. “I saw the city fall. I saw that Paris would bring back the terrible woman from Sparta after stealing her from Menelaus, and I told Paris, but he ref
used to listen to me. I told him the city would fall, I told him Hector would die if the woman was brought back. But he didn’t believe me.” Tears welled. She covered them with her hands, hiding her eyes from me. Her voice was uneven, and angry. “I warned Paris. I warned our father. I warned Hector. I told him not to engage with Achilles. I told him.”
I knew the story. But I didn’t know how much written by others was true.
“I told him,” she repeated, “but he fell to Achilles, and Achilles dishonored him. Achilles destroyed him.”
Destroyed him literally, according to Homer and others; Achilles had dragged Hector’s body behind his chariot for nine days. “Have you seen all the days?” I asked. “All the days of the dishonor?”
She lifted her hands from her face. “The days?”
I wondered then if Cassandra could see the future only by waves of visions, or by fragments rather than in sequential scenes. She spoke of dishonor done to Hector, but surely she would know how long Achilles abused the body and would say so.
And yet, all I knew were stories and histories written by chroniclers, and none of them contemporaries. I wondered what they got wrong, and what Cassandra might have forgotten.
“His body was made whole,” I told her. “Your father paid the Achaeans for his son’s body, and when it came home to Troy the gods saw to it Hector was whole and clean again.”
Her eyes were wide, pupils expanded in subdued light. “I have not seen that! How do you know it?”
“I live in a different time,” I said. “A later time.”
She nodded. “I know this. Your chariots have no horses.”
That made me smile a little; engine power was still measured by the number of equines in the equation. “In my time, there are great histories, tales told of your city, of Achilles, Hector, and, well, Helen of Troy.”
“She was not of Troy,” Cassandra snapped. “The woman was a Spartan. She was never of Troy.”
I resolved not to inform Cassandra that the story of Paris and Helen was considered one of the greatest romances in history, and the ‘of Troy’ was permanently affixed to Helen’s name.
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