by L. A. Banks
The crowd released a collective scream of approval. Azrael stepped back and bowed to let the young dancers continue, then slapped them all five as they gave him props.
“Drinks on the house,” the blond said, slinging an arm over Azrael’s shoulder. “And don’t tell me some shit about how you don’t indulge. You’re on earth, man—ain’t this place awesome?”
“Bath Kol . . . I—”
“Give the man a beer. I see good things in your future,” Bath Kol said, pushing a tall pilsner into Azrael’s hand. “A cold one, after a performance like that, c’mon, son!”
Azrael laughed and looked back at Celeste, then raised the glass toward her and downed it, slamming it on the bar. She looked at the Sentinel named Bath Kol, annoyed that he’d gotten Az to take a drink, but held her peace for the moment.
To her, Bath Kol looked to be no more than thirty-five or forty and ruggedly handsome, with the kind of face that made a girl stare even when she didn’t want to. His hair was biker-spiked and his complexion was deeply tanned as though he constantly rode his bike in all weather. His brilliant white smile was infectious, and his hazel eyes were positively magnetic. Bath Kol had the body of a Spartan, pure sinew packed in a six-foot-two frame. Even grungy with a dark blond five-o’clock shadow, the man was fine . . . hell, all of them were, honestly. Heaven sure knew what it was doing when it put these males in human bodies.
“Warriors!” Bath Kol bumped Azrael’s chest with his own and released a roar.
Azrael clasped Bath Kol’s arm in a warrior’s shake. “It’s been too long!”
Fists raised around the pulsing dance floor. Celeste watched as several eyes watched her. She moved closer to the bar.
“Yeah!” Bath Kol called out. “You walked into my joint with your Light battery low and energy all fucked up even though you’d found her? Are you nuts? I thought for sure you’d have gotten your Light fuse on by now, bro. It’s time to kick some demon ass, man!”
“I . . . just found her, so, no, and it’s not like—”
“Aw, man, lighten up,” Bath Kol said, knocking back a shot. “No disrespect to the lady.”
Azrael nodded but she could tell he was still uncomfortable. This was literally like taking a college preppie into a biker bar with the Sons of Anarchy.
Celeste stood next to Azrael and stared at Bath Kol as the barmaid refilled Azrael’s beer. She’d felt Azrael visibly cringe at the rude reference to their “fusing,” and that only seemed to make Bath Kol’s smile widen. Instantly, she didn’t trust the man. Clearly Azrael was so new to earth, compared to the Sentinel’s long-term incarceration, they were going to mess with him somehow.
“She’s beautiful, man. Clean energy . . . wow. Package is sweet, too,” Bath Kol said, sending an appreciative gaze in Celeste’s direction.
“Celeste, forgive him,” Azrael said, accepting another beer. “This is Bath Kol—brother, this is Celeste.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, taking the beer out of Azrael’s hand and sipping it with her gaze steady on Bath Kol. “He’s clean. More than one, if that, is no good.”
Bath Kol rubbed the stubble on his chin and chuckled. “Oh, yeah, she’s the one.”
Celeste glanced around as she put the beer down on the bar and gave Bath Kol a hard glare.
“Don’t worry, sis. I only have really well-indulged Sentinels in here with me...none of those guys who are still trying to get back into the Light after a couple of thousand years of abstinence, so you’re safe.”
She looked off toward the dance floor for a moment, monitoring Azrael’s strained reaction, before she met Bath Kol’s hazel green gaze again. “Yeah, okay. But if life is such a groove, then why were you over at Aziza’s getting your shit realigned? Stop fucking with Az’s head just ’cause he’s new, all right, and me and you will be peace.”
“Whoa,” Bath Kol said, putting his hands up in front of his chest and laughing. “She’s warrior class at that. I love it.”
“Can we go somewhere to talk?” Azrael said with a smile.
“Definitely, brother,” Bath Kol replied, clearly unfazed by Celeste’s verbal snipe. “We’ll get your bags and I’ve got a place around the corner. Ground’s been consecrated, for what good that’ll do...given the company I keep there sometimes. But it’s pretty secure. Nobody’s jacked my bikes yet, so around here that means a lot. It’s quiet. We can talk.”
Bath Kol never lost his smile as his sinewy body cut through the crowd. If she wasn’t so wary, she would definitely have called him handsome, devastatingly so. Celeste glanced over her shoulder taking note . . . damn . . . every one of them was handcrafted by the Divine. And immortal, too? Somebody slap her.
“Have you seen Gavreel?” Azrael asked as they rounded the corner.
“Does this look like a place where peace would reside?” Bath Kol laughed and hiked Celeste’s bag up higher on his shoulder.
“Not really,” Azrael replied. “Just wondered because he paid me a visit in Philly.”
Bath Kol stopped walking, bringing their threesome to a halt. “What’d you do?”
“I opened up a cylinder of energy to send earthbounds back into the Light. They were trapped and—”
“Oh, man! Shit!” Bath Kol raked his fingers through his sweat-spiked hair. “That means the dark side knows where the Light sent you.”
“But we’re not there anymore,” Celeste replied evenly.
“Yeah, well, you’d better hope that they didn’t tail you.” Bath Kol started walking again. “Gav came in through New York. That’s how he found me or I found his dumb ass. He was wet behind the ears just like you, and trying to get a lead on some fucking Colombians that move weight. He eventually followed them down to Miami and out into the freakin’ Amazon looking for his chosen. He knows she’s a Latino, was originally thinking Central American, but then picked up the vibe of her surroundings and that wouldn’t make sense if she was dropped in the barrio up here...records say she was taken young and they’ve got her working in the coca fields trying to break her spirit.”
“That will most assuredly steal his peace,” Azrael said in a sobered tone.
“Ya think?” Bath Kol looked over at Celeste. “So what’s your story?”
Before she could answer, Bath Kol stopped walking and made a fist with his hand to silence them. He slowly lowered the bag he was carrying, and Azrael dropped his as well, easing Celeste between the two men as they turned their backs to her, boxing her in. Then the alleys emptied out.
Demons belched from the darkness. From every shadow, every alley, from behind every post, twisted, fanged creatures leaped out, snarling and hissing and poised to attack. Skinless faces and red, gleaming eyes peered at them as green saliva slid down huge incisors. Crablike creatures with backward-facing human heads scrambled out from beneath abandoned cars. Terror seized the scream in Celeste’s throat as panic sweat covered her body.
Bath Kol yanked two nine-millimeters out of his waistband, throwing one to Azrael as he pushed him behind a car and took a running leap, firing as he landed on top an abandoned vehicle. Shooting with two hands, Azrael was up and over the top of the car. Celeste dropped down and hid behind the vehicle as silver shell casings pinged the ground all around her. Gruesome creatures with bat wings and gray-green skin charged them from the air, from the ground. There were too many of them! Then something yanked her underneath the car, dragging her halfway beneath the vehicle before she felt it let go the second Bath Kol’s slug blew its head off.
Green gook splattered the ground beside her. She was up on her feet in a second, headed for cover as Azrael shouted to her, “Move!”
But one of the clawed creatures had a Dumpster and slung it toward her. The metal moved so fast, the velocity was impossible to avoid. She heard both angels scream, “No!” and she covered her head to save herself from brain injury. Then everything became eerily silent. A warm light bathed her, a familiar body shielded her. Wings wrapped around her, so bright that she couldn’t e
ven look at them. The Dumpster made contact and crumpled. The next thing she knew a void was beside her, a cold rush of night air. When she looked up, Azrael was hovering five feet off the ground, ripping sections of metal off parked vehicles with magnetized energy drawing it into his hands, then hurling them into demon bodies with an insane warrior’s yell.
She couldn’t move for a second, paralyzed by the sight of him. Azrael was a being of pure, raw power and poised for immortal combat.
A glistening, muscular, twelve-foot, white wingspan blotted out the darkness. The force of his presence sent debris flying. She had to shield her eyes and face with her forearm as the preternatural wind from his wings blew everything away from him. Fury was in his now blue-white eyes, his fists were lit with supernatural, crackling white light, and demons were scurrying to get out of his line of fire.
Suddenly he reached out and a truck bumper from a block away came whizzing toward him. He caught it in a two-handed grip and began using it as a baseball bat, splattering demons against buildings, the train trestle, and the asphalt. More Sentinels rounded the corner. Bath Kol lowered his weapon as Azrael sent a pulse of blue-white light out from the car bumper he held and pointed it toward the asphalt.
Burning-tar stench stung Celeste’s nose and the quake from the explosion made her fall. The blast from the bumper Azrael pointed toward the ground was as though he’d hit the asphalt with an energy cannon that resembled an RPG round. It opened a huge fissure in the middle of the street, leaving twisted pipes, open sewer lines, billowing smoke, and crackling electricity.
Celeste covered her head, fearing a gas-main explosion to follow, but before she could get up and run to safety, Azrael released a thunderous command.
“Go to Hell!”
Everything that was dead, dying, or fleeing, got sucked into the abyss and then the street instantly closed behind them. Azrael flung the bumper a hundred yards to crash into the side of a building, then touched down, one knee on the hot asphalt, one hand on the ground, looking up with blue-white eyes, his shirt burned off, his jeans in charred shreds, wings spread and breathing hard.
“Damn, man . . . definitely just like old times,” Bath Kol said, raking his hair.
As Azrael dried his hair with a clean towel, Bath Kol put a stack of money on the table. He put a set of motorcycle keys next to it, then looked up at one of his men, who slid ID, credit cards, and a passport across the table toward Azrael. “Got an automatic and ammo, too, all silver, hallowed-earth-packed shells.”
“Thank you,” Azrael said in an angry but weary tone. “I’d rather that my death blades had come through with me into this density. I am more familiar with wielding my weapons of choice in the ether, than using these conventional human weapons, but it is what it is. Again, I thank you.”
Bath Kol nodded. “It is that indeed. The city is hot now; you’ve gotta be on the move. Here’s the keys to my place up in Lily Dale. It’s a safe house on consecrated ground. We’ve got Sentinels in the area embedded with the local Native American tribes . . . psychics all around that want to protect angels and communicate with them. If anything’s going down, you’ll feel it telegraphed way before it gets to your door. It’s all good.” Bath Kol nodded at the man closest to him.
Celeste stared at the most serene young man she’d ever seen in her life. His skin was the color of polished amber, and his dark hair was swept back into a long pony-tail wrapped with silver and turquoise Native American leatherwork. A pair of dark eyes studied her as though she were a curiosity. His high cheekbones looked as if someone had decided to carve a gorgeous mask of humanity, then placed a dimple in the center of his chin.
“Jamaerah handles all manifestations,” Bath Kol said. “You can’t function down here without resources. He can make things appear and disappear like we could up in the ether, so I guess you can say that’s his specialty or gift or whatever. Maybe he can get your death blades, man? I don’t know. We’ll work on it.” Bath Kol knocked back a shot of Jack Daniel’s and poured another. “But, I ain’t seen shit like you just pulled off in the street in twenty-six thousand years, man. Impressive. Gives me hope . . . ain’t had that in a while, either.”
Bath Kol gave Celeste a glance and poured a shot of Jack Daniel’s into a clean shot glass, then set it in front of Azrael. “I’m not hatin’,” he said to her, leaning forward with a serious gaze. “But the man’s system is adrenaline-pumped and he needs to come down or it’ll mess with his kidneys. The human body wasn’t meant to stay amped to that supernatural level for long. If he keeps this shit up, he’ll look fifty by next year and will have the internal organs of an old man. Then we’ll have to get him a new frame after he burns through this one.” Bath Kol slid the drink across the table to Azrael. “After a battle, this is medicine.”
“I want her to rest,” Azrael said, accepting a shot from Bath Kol when Celeste didn’t protest, but he let it sit beside him as though considering whether to drink it. “And I want her to be safe.”
“Like that’s a problem with you around?” Bath Kol shook his head. “When you spun on the floor, I saw the sparks, but I didn’t know your wings were coming back in. I just thought it was energy bouncing off the wood to keep your velocity going.”
Azrael motioned toward Celeste with his chin. “She brought them back.”
Unsure glances passed around the group of Sentinels that had joined the battle from the club, then all eyes fell on Celeste.
“I don’t understand,” Bath Kol said in a quiet tone. “You haven’t been here long enough for them to have come back that strong. Most of us took years to grow them back, earned by hard lessons . . . and none of my guys ever found one of the Remnant as a potential healing source to get them. I know I talk a lot of shit, but we’ve never had one willingly, you know...” He shrugged, but this time his expression held awe, not the jaded wiseass glance that he’d initially given her and Azrael. “You said you didn’t fuse with her and we all believe you. You ain’t no liar, Az. You’re too new for that. So is her gift in her hands?”
Azrael reached out and covered one of Celeste’s hands for a moment, his gaze focused solely on her.
“I don’t know how she healed me,” he admitted quietly. “But I feel so strongly in my spirit that, the way she did it is, she brought out the best in me. She made me become attached to someone more important than myself in every way. Made me care so deeply that it hurts. Made me want with everything in my soul to protect what the demons would rob from me and from this planet . . . and then she made me believe in what I could not see. She told me I was whole and I believed her.” Azrael withdrew his hand from Celeste’s and knocked back the shot. “She is that for me, my angel. And if I get trapped down here because of it—so be it.”
Silence answered his statement as he set the shot glass down precisely. “And I think my system finally normalized to this density . . . must have been the adrenaline rush.”
“But you came here cut up...right? Your back in shreds—I saw it in a vision. Not like when we fought here the first time when everybody had wings.” Bath Kol stood and took off his leather jacket, then stripped his dirty sleeveless T-shirt over his head. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, making the hard six-pack muscles of his stomach tremble from some unseen effort until gorgeous white wings unfurled from his shoulder blades.
“All trapped Sentinels have them,” he said in a low murmur. “All Balance Keepers have them...even the fallen have them. But how do you have them, after the order went out that no new-era Remnant Gatherers would have this advantage?”
“I don’t know,” Azrael admitted quietly.
“I never saw it coming,” Bath Kol murmured, beginning to pace behind the large dining room table that sat in the middle of the open warehouse space. “Never frickin’ saw it coming.”
“Well, just like you never saw the attack or Azrael’s wings coming,” Celeste said, nursing a bottle of water. “I really wish you’d tell me what all I’m supposed to be doing . . . I don’t wan
t to be blindsided, either.” She glanced at Azrael, allowing her gaze to travel around the gathered warriors before it settled on Bath Kol. “Please. I need to know.”
He nodded and yanked a chair out from the table, turned it around backward, and sat down on it hard.
“I heard before I came here that there were only seven of the Remnant left,” Azrael said quietly.
“You know our etheric time and time in the density are different. Years go by . . . and there aren’t seven left anymore.” Bath Kol let out a hard sigh and stared at Celeste. “This ain’t gonna help you sleep at night, sis. Az said you should rest, and I think the man is right.”
She looked at Azrael. “Not knowing what I’m supposed to do and getting snatched by demons won’t help me sleep, either.” She turned back to face Bath Kol and waited. “Didn’t you tell Queen Aziza that prophecy was instruction and knowledge?”
“Yeah, I did.”
Their gazes met, neither backing down, neither willing to give ground for a moment.
“I need both.” Celeste leaned forward across the table and folded her hands in front of her, holding Bath Kol’s gaze. “I can’t take being in the dark anymore.”
Bath Kol nodded as he rubbed his neck with a resigned sigh. “The Mayan calendar spoke of twenty-two cycles of fifty-two years . . . we gave them that to keep track of the thirteen heaven cycles that would end roughly about a hundred and fifty years before the next culture that would dominate the world crawled out of the Dark Ages into the so-called Age of Enlightenment around 1541. Then there were nine hell cycles after that, ending on August sixteenth, 1987. If you look at the hell that was globally created during that nine-cycle period, you’ll understand our perspective.
“Anyway, these cycles all had to do with how much energy and resources the dark and the Light were prophesied to have on the planet at any one time. The date August seventeenth, 1987, was supposed to mark the next shift out of the hell cycles. All of the great prognosticators kept my ass busy, from Nostradamus on down. But that said, what we call Harmonic Convergence took place . . . and seven days later on August twenty-fourth a mini-alignment took place. It was the forerunner of what’s going to go down with the heavenly bodies on 12/21/12.”