Azrael stared, shock, the break in Ose’s usual speaking pattern throwing him off. “What?”
Ose heaved a breath. “T’Chesu and Su’Yami were twins. Male twins and barely older than you are now when they died.”
Azrael felt his heart drop. “Excuse me?”
“Challenge the things people tell you, Hopti Azrael. The truth lies in the records which may have been altered but if you keep digging you’ll discover that things are very hard to cover up. That is your first lesson. The truth is Su’Yami liked to dress as a woman. His outfits were very feminine, his uniform was too. He was beautiful and loved beautiful things such as dresses that brushed his ankles. He loved lining his eyes with kohl and rubbing ruby lacquer across his lips. So I could see how they could pass him off as your mother,” Ose said, “but for The Creator’s sake! The lengths they went to!” they exclaimed, throwing their hands up.
Azrael’s throat felt dry. Ose had never lied to him before, so he didn’t understand the words they were saying now. “Please, you are confusing me right now. What–”
Ose slid a coin into Azrael’s hand. He recognized it was a Watcher’s Coin. A clan name was etched into the back. “Rachél”.
“You are from a long line of powerful angels, ones far more powerful than T’Chesu and Su’Yami for the love of The Creator! You do belong to a strong clan. The Eliyah’s are very powerful and Yofiel is very powerful, yes, but your grandfather, your true grandfather, was the former leader of the Fallen, The Fifth, the Ewe. Your grandmother was Ayesha, a puissant healer.”
Azrael’s heart began to thud in his chest. “You are lying.” The Ewe was Shemhazi. He was the leader of the rebellion; he was the person who led the War against Caeli. His son was…
“Child, your father and mother, your birth father and mother, were…Azeal of Rachél and Caireen of Ilorin.”
Azeal. The Spring of Titanomachy.
“Your father was a great man and he loved your mother dearly. He loved her so much that he died for her–”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to, child. Ask your mother.” Ose looked back out over the city line of Elysian. “The woman to strike him down.”
CHAPTER FOURTY THREE
“Lucan.”
He jarred from his nap with a flinching shudder and his eyes flew open. Pythia Del stood in front of him, her face pinched in worry and her brown eyes on him in the knowing way that Pythia Del seemed to stare.
“You were having a nightmare. I heard you calling your mother’s name.”
Lucan sighed and pulled his glasses off. “Don’t.” He straightened from where he was hunched over his desk and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t have a mother.”
Pythia Del frowned but just like there were things he held back saying to prevent from upsetting her, she knew trying to correct him would draw his anger. Instead, she took a seat at one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Shen’s procedure went well. He’ll call when Shen’s ready to be brought home.”
Lucan nodded. “Good. Then we can finally get the hell out of here. Did
you let Sheeda know? Once they relay that to the rest they can get those defeated looks off their faces.”
“I will…eventually.”
“Please do. She has a way with words…she’s a good leader. They listen to her,” Lucan said. “Even Feilong,” he snorted.
“So…speaking of Sheeda’s leadership skills, do you want the bad news?”
“There’s bad news?”
“Yes. Solar found your missing soldiers.”
“That’s the bad news?”
“If you want to consider insubordination bad. Not so much as a mutiny but damn close.”
When Pythia Del didn’t continue Lucan held out a hand expectantly. “You want to elaborate?”
“Oh, no,” she said with a faint smile. “There is no way I’m getting killed for being the messenger. You can ask them yourselves. They are in the lab arguing. You’d think they’d try to be quiet but no…the thought apparently never cross their minds.”
“In the lab? Why would they be in the…” Lucan trailed off. “They did something that required the mafdet?”
“A part of it…yes,” she said, apparently meaning to keep her word not to go into details.
Lucan growled before standing. He snatched his jacket off the back of his chair and headed for the stairs.
Of the four floors in Feilong’s condo, the basement was the most fundamentally useful. Besides the small room they kept Shen in, the bottom floor also held Durham’s lab. During their time on earth, Durham, from Durham, attended college in Durham. It was an adventure the rest of them thought was fruitless. What good was an Earthly degree going to do any of them?
Wonders.
Durham’s advanced degrees in molecular biology and chemistry had given Lucan and Pythia Del a means to a problem they’d face from the beginning: how to beat an army stronger than you.
The answer, as Durham provided, was to make yourself stronger than them. Simple in phrase, complex in execution.
Lucan pushed opened the swinging metal doors of Durham’s lab. Four individuals looked up. One smirked, the others panicked.
“Start talking,” Lucan growled.
Sheeda, Clara, and Kevin stood silent. Seven was laying on a cot out cold, an IV stuck in his arm and a thick silver substance being pumped into a vein. Durham continued fiddling around with whatever the hell instruments he had in his hand, nonplussed and entertained.
“I said start talking!” Lucan barked.
Sheeda jumped and clutched Clara’s hand. “We were only trying to help,” Sheeda pointed out.
“By doing what exactly? What could you have possibly done that would result in your needing to be restored via mafdet?”
“Sheeda’s plan was fail proof!” Clara insisted. “A two-point contingency plan, hit them from both sides. Once we get back to Caeli, our time there would be considerably easier if Aria Jinni wasn’t a factor.”
“And how did you plan on doing that? We’ve failed that mission, Clara.”
“By getting Aiden to Jin before they yanked Aria’s soul out, that’s how! We all heard Ose. If we interfered with the demarcation event then it would have worked. They both would be gone!”
“You thought that would really work,” Lucan asked with a patience he didn’t have.
“Yes,” Kevin answered. “He’s with Fox and we all know how soft Kithlish is. If we armed him with enough of his memories, he could convenience them…I don’t know…talk them into going back. Force them even!”
Pythia Del giggled from her spot by the door. “And how did that turn out for you?” She glanced at the IV in Seven’s arm and Kevin scowled. “How did you let a bunch of Mutare brats win, and to this degree?”
Sheeda looked at Clara who looked at Kevin. “It…” he paused and cleared his throat. He looked nervous. Good. Maybe it would knock some of the bravado out of Kevin’s bullshit personality for a moment. “It wasn’t Fox,” he muttered.
“Then who?” Lucan demanded.
Sheeda wrung her hands. “Your…your grandfather.”
Pythia Del froze next to him and Lucan felt a twitch just under his eye. He took a menacing step towards them, causing Sheeda to stumbled back away from him. Clara stared at the whole situation with a calmness that betrayed the situation, which was something he liked and disliked about her. He decided to zero in on the ringleader. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
Kevin surreptitiously slid in front of the two women. “Your grandfather was at the warehouse. He retained access to his Path powers.” His eyes jutted to Seven. “He was the one who did that to him.”
“My grandfather is dead,” he reminded lowly. “He died so just tell me who did this.”
“It was Shemhazi!” Sheeda said. “I swear on my mother’s life it was!”
He looked over his shoulder at Pythia Del. “You told me my grandfather was dead.”
“No,” she
countered, a storm brewing behind her eyes. “I said I took care of it.”
“Taking care of it would mean he is dead,” Lucan ground out. “Those were my instructions. To kill him. So tell me how you took care of it if he’s still alive?”
Pythia Del’s eyes narrowed before she pushed off the wall she was leaning against and straightened to her full height. “Everyone out.”
Three scattered, leaving Seven behind, incapacitated. Durham continued to stare at his instruments, pausing every now and again to tap something into his tablet, then continuing his experiments. Pythia Del glared at him.
“I said everyone out,” she repeated with bite.
Durham snorted. “Please. This is my lab and I’m not about to abandon an active experiment on account of you two. If you want to have your little lover’s spat, have it on the roof where you do everything else. But hurry with your kissing and making up. I need someone to test this on and Lucan’s next on my hit list.”
Lucan waved Durham off. His anger wasn’t going to subside because Pythia Del wanted to have this argument where she would be called on her shit in private. “Why did you defy me?”
“Defy you?” Pythia Del snorted. “You’re not going to pull some alpha leader of the pack bullshit on me. You are not the only leader here, Lucan. You don’t give me commands, you confer with me!”
“Then you should have shown me the same respect!”
“I did it for your own good!”
“For my own good?” Lucan scoffed and threw up his hands. “He was going to ruin everything, Del! Betray everything that we stood for! Betray my father and my mother–”
“Give me a break! You never knew your parents, Lucan! Stop using them as an excuse and be honest with yourself. You want that seat because you want it. You yearn for it. You crave for it and it’s not because you want to exact revenge for two people you never fucking met. Your grandfather offered us an alternative, one that didn’t see you in the high and mighty position you so desire so you ordered his death. I wasn’t about to let you do that. Shemhazi cared about us. He never stopped.”
“So the fact that his plan called for you to never see your daughter again didn’t matter?” There was something in the back of Lucan’s head that told him to stop but he was far too angry to listen to any sort of reason, his or Del’s. “Or were you so happy hanging off his every word, seeking his comfort in the middle of the night, that you could ignore what he was asking for–”
Before he could finish his statement, Pythia Del’s fist connected with his jaw. Lucan stuttered back, more in surprise than pain, although it did hurt like a bitch. Another warning, one that told him he deserved that, sounded off in his head but Pythia Del’s fist had hurt more than his jaw, it hurt his pride. Everything she’d done was jabbing at it from all angles. It was enough, just enough, for him to lose control.
He pulled his gun out his holster. “Do you want to die?”
“You’re going to shoot me?” she laughed.
“Yes,” he answered, aiming the gun at her head.
“Fine,” Pythia Del said, backing up towards the laboratory tables. With her eyes locked on him, she grabbed a vial of mafdet.
“Uh, Dellie, I wouldn’t…those are still in testing.”
Durham’s advisory went unheard as she jabbed the self-injecting vial into her leg. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and her body twitched as the mafdet flowed into her system. When she opened her eyes, they were dull greyish silver.
Lucan didn’t lower his gun but some of the threat left him. “Del, you need to calm down.”
Pythia Del growled and blurred. Lucan felt the force against him as Pythia Del reappeared and tackled him through the lab doors. He hit the ground with a grunt and brought his gun back up to defend himself, but Pythia Del was too fast with the mafdet in her system. She smacked it out of his hand and he watched as the Glock slid across the hard, grungy, concrete floor, stopping near the stairwell and out of his reach.
“Say it again,” she hissed in his face through clenched teeth.
“Say what,” he replied calmly, even if he felt everything but.
“Shemhazi was the father that I never had.” She punched at his face but Lucan caught it. Barely.
“Is that why you protected him and betrayed me?”
“Idiot,” she screamed before head-butting him. The force, was to say the least, great. Lucan's head slammed into the concrete and he felt the hard cement cracking under him. Pythia Del pulled her head back to do it again when the alarms began blaring. The piercing noise was enough for Lucan to land a punch of his own, which under the effects of the mafdet didn’t seem to affect her much, but it was just enough of a distraction for him to push her off him and slide away.
Pythia Del’s anger was not subsiding. She crouched low and energy began to build under her feet, glowing an eerie green. Lucan could see her intent, and he knew it was going to hurt. He didn’t want to fight Pythia Del. He just wanted answers. He wasn’t going to get them until she calmed down.
Lucan opened his mouth to say just that when the green aura covering Pythia Del dissipated.
She blinked out of her power-driven stupor. She looked down at her hands, her body. “Why?” Lucan presumed she was speaking of the mafdet’s lasting power and not any burning questions she was willing to beat out of him.
Durham tsked from the doorway of his lab, his hand lingering over the fire alarm. “You picked up a child’s dose. It’s not sustainable for combat. It’s to help aid their escape if they ever find themselves in a dangerous situation during the fighting. It lasts only seconds.” He sighed and flicked the alarm off. “Are you two done yet? I was hoping that our leaders could handle their issues better than drawing a gun and trying to rip the other’s head off. Note,” he said looking at Lucan, “if she’d grabbed the correct vial, your head would be a part of the concrete, permanently.”
“Noted,” he said from the ground, his eyes never leaving Pythia Del.
“Whatever issues you two have should not be fought near your subordinates. I thank you because that was one less test trial I have to run but…you two are what holds us together. You’re the glue. You have to better than us.”
Lucan glanced at Durham. Although he was a member of The Eleven, he was unranked because Durham seemed to be above leader-follower dynamics. He was just there, accepting the orders he thought made sense, as suggestions, and advising when they didn’t.
“Last thing. While you two were…scuffling, we got a call from Daoyi. Shen is ready. Should I gather everyone together?”
“Yes,” Pythia Del exhaled, labored. “Let’s go upstairs. Since Lucan knows everything, he can explain what we are supposed to do next.”
With his anger now dissipated, he winced at the disgust in Pythia Del’s voice. “Del…”
She didn’t answer him, but continued past him and up the stairs. Lucan touched the back of his head, wincing in pain. When he drew his hand back, it was covered in blood. Lucan learned certain trades of the black arts after a brief affair with a princess of Abaddon, an Erinyes demon. He’d perfected a protection spell called Pretego that protected his body for most harm when invoked. Only someone knowing his name could make him susceptible. Pythia Del knew his name, Pythia Del could hurt him. He gathered he’d hurt her, too. You miserable idiot.
Sighing, he trudged up the steps and into the house. “Call everyone to the Tunnels,” he commanded softly to Sheeda, Clara, and Kevin who’d witnessed everything from the top of the steps. “We have final plans to discuss.”
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
This place was familiar to him. Of all the different places they’d called home, the Tong Tunnels would always be the most important to him. It’s where they started. As Shemhazi collected the downtrodden, depressed and displaced angels, Mutare, and humans alike who had nowhere to go and no place to put their anger, this is the place they converged.
In the end, a system was created. Of course, it took the usurpation of his
grandfather’s position as leader to make that a reality, but greatness cannot be achieved without sacrifice. The system was not just a collection of rebels, wild, angry and unfocused, but an organization. That organization was built to support the creation of an army, a new army, far better, and far more disciplined and competent than ever before.
That system, that organization was The Eleven. The army was Glut.
“I believe in purpose. We all believe in purpose. Order. To live as closely to our purpose as possible. It is the banner we wave in the middle of the night when our doubts grow heavy. It is the beacon that reminds us that we fight a righteous battle. A battle for survival. The battle for our birthrights. A battle that demands that we mean something, that we are not just soldiers to be dispatched to clean up a mess.”
“Heaven’s janitors,” Sheeda muttered.
“It’s our duty, Sheeda. One I was proud to serve. But we aren’t just our duties. We deserve happiness. That’s why our plan has to work. We don’t deserve this.”
“Is this the part where we actually get to hear it?” Solar asked, his jaw working on a spit-slicked end of a straw.
Lucan nodded. “I’m not only going to tell you, I’m going to show you.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a magazine clip. He popped one of the bullets out of the clip and held it up to the candlelight for everyone to see.
Feilong squinted. “What’s that?” he said, his lip hitched.
“It’s a bullet,” Lucan stated.
“A silver bullet?” JiJi asked. She paused to look at Clara who just shrugged. “We are going to war with angels, not werewolves,” she said incredulously.
Durham stood, slowly dusting off his pants and sighing loudly. “I told you they wouldn’t get it.”
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 29