by Brian Fuller
Angel Born
Ash Angels Book 2
BOOK 2 of 3
Brian K. Fuller
[email protected]
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
Copyright 2019 © by Brian K. Fuller
All Rights Reserved
For Chris and Nathan,
the first Ash Angels
Prologue
Cain
Cain lounged in the front seat of the bass boat, rod extended, waiting for a bite. Night fishing on the glassy lake in Tennessee provided the type of seclusion he prized when he needed to think. He glanced over at Avadan, who drummed up a rhythm on his legs, bobbing his head back and forth to some song only he could hear. Cain shook his head. If he’d really wanted to think, he shouldn’t have invited Avadan along. His and Aclima’s warped son was a nervous talker, but he was also a cruel, rabid psycho—exactly what Cain needed to punish Helo.
Avadan stopped his tapping. “Ribbit, ribbit! Squawk, squawk!” he said in an irritated tone as he straightened his moronic top hat. “What a ruckus! How can you even think in this orchestra of animal nonsense?”
Cain ignored the question. The chorus of frogs, birds, and insects might discomfit someone unaccustomed to the throaty sounds of a lake in the dark, but for him the cacophony drowned out the minutiae in his mind, bringing focus.
But his focus was driving him mad.
Helo had stolen the pendant from him, and not even the other Loremasters like Avadan knew the personal consequences he would suffer for that loss. The torment that awaited him now set his teeth on edge. And to his madness came a fever, the same fever that had burned him so long ago when he had caved in Abel’s skull with a rock. He wanted Aclima, wanted her with an unholy fire that drove him to take chances in a world where Ash Angels were hunting him with everything they had.
It was odd that thoughts of Aclima should torture him so. Yes, she was one of the world’s most accomplished and beautiful women, but he had partaken of those in abundance during his long afterlife. What killed him was the simple fact he didn’t have her. Aclima was an Ash Angel now. She was out of his control and no longer one of his kind, and he couldn’t stand it.
He knew his feelings were little better than those of a child who sees a toy he hasn’t played with for a year given to someone else and then whines for its return like it’s always been his favorite. But his own childishness didn’t bother him. Children were good at getting what they wanted, and so was he. He wanted Aclima back. He would get her. He wanted Helo. He would hurt that accursed Ash Angel like no one had ever hurt him before. And when the hurting was done, when the pump of pain was primed, he would take Helo and Aclima. Once he had turned them both to Dreads, he would send them to hell so they could all suffer together.
He turned his focus outward to settle the turbulence inside. A sky half clogged with clouds allowed little illumination from the sliver moon. He had turned off the running lights on the boat. A black light shone in the direction of his cast, illuminating the fluorescent line he had purchased so he could easily see the subtle vibrations that might signal a catch. The March water was too cold to expect much success, but if he had to be out on the lake, he thought he should give it a try anyway.
Though, as for that, he hated fish. Their taste had never appealed to him, even when smothered in sauces or rubbed with juices or oils or spices. Nothing could quite cover the unpleasant taste almost everything that swam beneath the water possessed. No, his only joy in the pastime was to yank a creature free from its home and then hang on to its scaly body while it thrashed, mouth opening and closing in the poison air, bulbous eyes incapable of expressive emotion. Sometimes he threw it back before it died. Sometimes he didn’t.
“You’d best let her out of the water,” Avadan said. “Judging by her weight and nervous demeanor, she’s likely drowned already.”
Twisting in his seat, Cain faced the middle of the craft where the Sheid stood, feet apart, a long swirling rod of blackness extending from its shoulder down into the murky water. The Sheid dressed in a suit and tie, appearing as Devon Qyn ready for a board meeting. Were it light outside and had they been under scrutiny, he would command him to change to something more appropriate. As it was, Cain found the business dress on a bass boat amusing. Avadan’s Greek robe and cowboy boots, on the other hand, were just silly.
“Let her up,” Cain commanded.
The Sheid raised its shoulder, the rod rising with it until the Ash Angel’s head crested the water. Her eyes drooped, and water poured from her slack mouth. Avadan was right. He had waited too long to have the Sheid pull her up, but she wasn’t dead. The glowing aura was still there. The splashing and dripping were probably scaring away all the fish.
“Raise her higher.”
The Sheid shifted its arm until the woman’s chest was above the water. Heart now free of the lake, her face cleared, eyes snapping back into focus, hands reaching out to clutch the Sheid’s vise swirling like a black storm around her neck. Her shoulder-length hair was matted to her head, her eyes darting about as if looking for rescue. Cain sized her up. She was clearly not an Ash Angel field operative. From the moment of her capture, she had shaken and fidgeted and cried enough to prove annoying. At least it would be a short evening.
“Lower her down to her neck again so she can feel,” Cain ordered the sharply dressed Sheid.
The tightening of the Ash Angel’s eyes revealed when mortal sensation returned to her body. She had just surfaced from her third near drowning, and Cain could tell the game was over now. He had won. The paltry defiance that had lingered in her countenance after the second submersion had washed away with the third, leaving nothing but wide-eyed resignation and fear.
“What’s your name?” he asked, voice stern but calm. “Your name before you died.”
“Mary Stiles-Womack.”
“Thank you,” he said, setting his fishing rod on the bottom of the boat and pulling his wireless phone out of his pocket. The reception out on the lake was better than he expected, but it still took longer than he liked to research the Ash Angel’s name. He knew all the sites to go to, and after a few minutes, he grinned as he scrolled through her information.
“So, Mrs. Mary Stiles-Womack. Hyphenated name? Things were much less complicated when we had no last names at all. Let’s see. Married to one Randall Womack. Three children—Donnie, Draper, and Deanna. You like the letter D, then? Beautiful children, really. And I mean that. So, you drove your car full of children into a lake?”
Avadan laughed. “She did? How delightful. Kids always like a little swim with Mum.”
“The tire blew. I couldn’t control it,” Mary sputtered.
“Of course, of course,” Cain said. “Shall I read what they said about you in your obituary? Mary Stiles-Womack bravely rescued Donnie and Deanna, diving in for a third time to rescue her beloved Draper. While trying to undo his seat belt, she succumbed to the water and drowned. She was a hero and will never be forgotten by the husband and children she left behind.”
Cain regarded his victim. The story had calmed her, infused her with more courage. It showed in the proud determination on her face. Time to destroy it. He gave a thumbs down to the Sheid, and it dunked Mary again. Cain continued his research, sifting through the information about Mary’s children and her husband until he found exactly what he wanted.
Avadan fidgeted. “This takes so long. I could show you a number of techniques that would get her tongue wagging much faster. It’s rather a specialty of mine.”
Cain didn’t doubt it. The man tortured people for fun, and not just normals. Dreads, Ash Angels, Possessed. Avadan didn’t discrimin
ate. Cain signaled to the Sheid again, and it lifted Mary until only her head was above the water—best to keep her sensate and cold until his work was done.
“Let’s see how things are now, Mary Stiles-Womack. Have you never been curious about what happened to those precious kids of yours? Have you kept tabs on your family since your awakening?”
“We don’t do that,” Mary said. “It’s forbidden.”
Cain smirked. “More of you do it than you know. So it looks like Mr. Randall Womack waited about thirteen months to replace you with some blonde bimbo. But, no worries, he divorced her four years later and married some other blonde bimbo. Makes me wonder why he married you at all. You’re obviously not his type.
“Happily ever after for Randall, then. But . . . no! He divorced again. Guess he’s playing the field now. Now let’s check on those kids of yours. Looks like Deanna killed herself a couple years ago.” This was a lie, but he needed to get her attention. Her husband’s trophy marriages didn’t seem to bother her in the least.
“No!” she gasped.
“Oh, I’m afraid so. But look, Donnie turned out okay. Married a cute girl in college. Oh, and look, you have a beautiful little granddaughter.” This was true and just the leverage he needed. “Would you like to see her, Grandma?” He tapped the picture of the baby on his phone, zooming in. With careful movements, he worked his way closer to the edge of the boat, extending the phone so she could see. Even in her dire circumstances, she smiled. Strange, the effect babies had on people.
He returned to his seat and put the phone in his pocket, retrieving his pole from the bottom of the boat and casting out into the lake. “Now, Mary Stiles-Womack, you may be aware that I have suffered a little bit of a setback lately. You’re going to help me.”
“I can’t,” she said without much conviction. Cain understood. She knew very well what was coming but had to pretend she wouldn’t cooperate to spare her conscience.
“Of course you will.”
“They’ll catch me,” she said, voice unsteady.
“You will help me,” Cain said with the same confidence he would when asserting two plus two equaled four. “You will. Understand this. I have a number of rabid dogs at my disposal, and one of those is this Dread Loremaster named Avadan.” Avadan tipped his hat. “I’m sure Aclima has told you all about him since he is her son. Avadan is, shall we say, a creature that lacks restraint and has a penchant for sloppy but creative cruelty.”
“I am not sloppy,” Avadan interjected.
Cain threw him a shut-up stare. “If you don’t answer my questions, Avadan will pay your little granddaughter a visit. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Say it out loud,” Cain prompted. Nodding was a defensive strategy to offer a half acceptance. Mary Stiles-Womack needed to vocalize her assent to drive it home to herself. “Say it now.”
“I understand.”
“Good,” Cain said, relaxing and reeling in his line a little. “The first question concerns an Ash Angel I met recently, one called Helo.”
Cain caught the flicker of recognition in her eyes. Good. He owed Helo pain for what he had done on the Tempest and wanted to get started hurting him now.
“Do you know him?” Cain asked.
“Everyone knows who Helo is.”
So he was famous. Cain stifled his ire. “What’s his real name?”
“Trace.”
“Trace what?”
“Trace Daniel Evans.”
Cain put the rod down again and retrieved his phone, tapping to bring the screen to life. Time for more research. “And is he with Aclima?”
“He left the Ash Angels. Aclima is in training.”
Cain clenched his jaw, his anger threatening to boil over. She belonged to him. If the other Ash Angels knew half of what that woman had done during her lifetime, they would put her in a dark cell and throw away the key.
“So training is in Nebraska now, right? Deep 6, as you call it.”
“Yes.”
“Very well. If you’ll give me just a moment, then.”
The Sheid dunked her.
“I am not sloppy,” Avadan grumped.
“Quiet,” Cain said. He’d liked it better when he’d had the pendant and could make all the Dreads do exactly as he wanted.
After a quick search, Trace’s obituary sprang to life on the phone. Survived by a wife, Terissa. Parents, Walter and Marlene Evans. Brother, Brandon. Military folk. He would start with the parents. Another search brought up their current address in Nashville. He shoved the phone back in his pocket and turned to Avadan.
“There are some people I need you to kill. I know you’re not sloppy, but this needs to be messy—really messy—so it makes the national news. With a little luck, it will trigger a vision in the Occulum.”
Avadan smiled cruelly. “I can do sloppy for drama’s sake. Just not for research, you understand. That is about precision.”
Cain turned to the Sheid. “Let her up and put her in the boat.”
Cain reeled in his line and stowed his rod while the Sheid hoisted the terrified Mary out of the water and plopped her on the bottom of the crowded boat, rocking the craft back and forth for a moment. Cain regarded her appraisingly, her wet clothes and hair plastered to her. She was nothing to Aclima. No woman was.
“What was your Ash Angel name?” Cain asked.
“Athena,” she answered. There was no defiance left, no pride. Just resignation.
“Pretentious,” Cain said. “What do you know about Helo’s widow? Terissa, was it?” It was a long shot, but if he was famous, she might know something.
“She’s dead,” Mary said. “She’s an Ash Angel now.”
Cain nodded. Perfect. “And is she in training?”
“Probably,” Mary said. “I don’t know for sure. She should have graduated by now.”
“Thank you, Mary,” he said.
He pulled his .45 out from its holster and pumped three bullets into Mary’s heart. She slumped back with the force, bottom lip quivering. She’d known what was coming. He nodded to the Sheid, who picked her up by the neck and threw her into the water. Her body vanished, a cloud of ash spreading out in the murky waves of the lake.
“Well,” Avadan said, “that was amusing. You should stop by one of my prisons some time so I can show you how torturing Ash Angels is properly done. I thank you, Father, for this opportunity to do a little murder in—”
“Quiet, Avadan,” Cain said.
“But I was merely expressing—”
“I said quiet! I need to think.”
Avadan would be a force to be reckoned with if he wasn’t such a distracted nut job. As it was, his son was content to follow his lead, which suited Cain just fine. He needed someone loyal right now. Not all of the Loremasters were happy about how he had used the pendant to force them to obey his will.
Cain retrieved his rod and cast his line. For a few minutes he tried to bury his thoughts in the croaking and chirping that enveloped him. But Aclima resurfaced, memories of her—pleasurable ones—replaying in his mind over and over. But then Helo’s ripping the pendant from him began playing like a bad commercial in his mind until he could hardly stand it. Enough fishing in the dark. Cain pulled in his rod, started the motor, and navigated back to the darkened shore. It was time to get to work.
He wouldn’t fish again until Aclima and Helo were his.
Chapter 1
Preacher
Helo regarded his congregation. The chapel of the Redemption Motorcycle Club brimmed with biker types used to better sermons. Some of the leather-and-denim-clad parishioners were fat, some emaciated, all rough-hewn and coarse. Half-shut eyes stared back at Helo—Assistant Pastor Storm, as they knew him—as he plowed through another disaster of a sermon. Dolorem, in his Father James persona, sat behind him on the rostrum, softly making deliberate snoring sounds to warn Helo his lesson about Peter’s encounter with Cornelius had slipped into anesthetic territory.
“Sh
are a personal experience or a story,” Dolorem coached.
Helo cleared his throat. Heads in the congregation snapped back up only to sink again. For an early spring day in March, the weather was unusually hot. A fan oscillated and hummed a monotone lullaby in the corner, washing cool air over the sweaty parishioners. They had pulled the blinds over the windows to block out the afternoon sun. Hot. Dark. Droning. Helo couldn’t blame his audience for their sleepy eyes. If he were mortal, he would have fallen asleep ten minutes ago. Of course, Dolorem’s lively, passionate sermons never seemed to inspire sleep whatever the weather.
Helo loudly said “Okay,” yanking a few heads up. “So you see, this story, um, applies to me because, um . . .”
“Um!” Dolorem whispered behind him, reminding him to stop using the filler expression.
Helo gritted his teeth. He’d sworn he was never going to give sermons. How had Dolorem convinced him? He breathed out. “Okay, here it is. I’m just going to say it. My wife cheated on me.”
Only one completely unconscious biker failed to lift his head at this revelation. The rest riveted their bleary eyes on him, faces hopeful that the sermon had at last turned the corner onto a more interesting street.
“I found out at this work party she invited me to. She cheated on me while I was at the party with her. And—”
“You were there?” a beefy biker named Dallin asked.
“Yeah. She was cheating on me with this jerk guy from work. He was married. His wife told me about it after they had run off into the house somewhere.”
Talking about it still felt weird, but it no longer dragged him into an emotional cave.
“Did you beat the hell out of him?” Dallin asked.
“Um, no,” Helo answered. “The damage was done. I let her go.”
Dallin folded his arms. “Hmmm, I think I see your problem, Father Wussenstein. You don’t let no one touch your girl. I would have ripped that guy’s skull open and used it as a spittoon.”
Murmurs of assent rippled through the congregation.