‘You reek of him,’ sneered Aeylith, and Laclos reared back, dramatically, then turned to me.
‘Tell me honestly, do I sound so rude when I make comments on someone’s scent?’
I shrugged. I might as well join in the let’s wind up the angels and pretend we’re not terrified game, if I was going to be smited anyway.
‘Pretty much. ’
‘Ah. Duly noted.’
My Sense was slowly, cautiously creeping back, though skirting away from the angels, and I felt Jonesy just outside the door, straining to hear and wondering whether to come in. I hoped he wouldn’t – why attract their wrath to anyone else?
‘You’re his wife?’ Aeylith said, scowling with a level of disbelief that was frankly a little insulting. She turned to Cain. ‘We have not harmed her!’
‘Ah, no. Think of me more as the mistress,’ I said, with fake cheeriness. Please don’t smite me, I added mentally. But apparently the human floozy wasn’t enough to hold her interest, because she turned back to Laclos.
‘His blood in you is an abomination.’
‘I know!’ Laclos clapped his hands, gleefully agreeing. ‘It was my second choice of bodily fluids, but…’ his words trailed off in a strangled squawk as she raised her hands and he was on his knees, gagging and choking, pricks of red appearing on his forehead and around his mouth. She smiled, cool and cruel.
‘Perhaps I should remove it.’
She gave a flick of her wrist and Laclos cried out, blood streaming from his eyes, mouth and nose, red appearing at his ears.
‘Stop it! You’ll kill him!’ I screamed – uselessly, I know – going to help him, but Cain took a far more direct route: he stepped forward and slapped Aeylith so hard she staggered backwards, the power of the blow so great that the room itself reverberated and Baelam also stumbled, though Aeylith looked more hurt by the fact of the blow than the force of it.
‘Enough!’ Cain snarled, as Laclos, released from whatever hold she had, collapsed on the floor.
‘He is nothing!’ she cried, furious. ‘Why do you protect him?’
‘Oh, I don’t fucking know,’ Cain frowned, sounding genuinely puzzled. ‘But I am protecting him. So leave him alone.’
‘You were once so ruthless, Cain,’ Baelam sighed, sounding like he had approved of this.
‘I still am. We’re just on different sides now.’
And with one long stride he’d crossed the room, stood on the hilt of Valkyrie’s sword and flicked it with his foot up into his hand. It glowed slightly at his touch. He smiled, placidly.
‘Now, I have a question for you on the power of comparative religion – say, that of a Norse god versus a couple of second rate, low grade, sat around getting lazy and out of shape angels. Thoughts?’
‘You’ll just make it worse if you fight it,’ Baelam said, though he looked unnerved at the sword. He had the frazzled appearance of a man who’d been expecting an easy job and for whom things really weren’t going his way.
‘You said that last time, so I’m pretty sure you know how I respond to that argument.’
Both new angels were starting to look a bit uncertain, and Cain, enjoying himself now, grinned.
‘How about I make it more interesting?’
He ran the sword lightly across his forearm, drawing a red line, then casually held his arm out to Laclos, who had pulled himself to his feet. Laclos hesitated for a moment, clearly still shaken, then, realising Cain’s game, he flashed a grin of pants-shredding lasciviousness and infuriating smugness at Aeylith and, taking hold of Cain’s forearm in both hands, he lowered his head and lapped – somewhat more theatrically than he needed to – at the wound. OK, this was starting to feel like a pretty high risk play – I felt myself tense. If we lost Laclos again after all this, I wasn’t sure what would happen. But no, this time Laclos remained in control. Cain tilted his wrist ever so slightly, indicating they were done, and Laclos raised his head and licked his lips, straightening up against the counter and smiling at the angels, self-satisfied as a cat. I tried not to notice what my Sense was telling me, that beneath the sudden surge of power from even such a small dose there might not be madness anymore, but hunger roared and howled, and somewhere deep inside him, Laclos hadn’t wanted to stop. Cain, however, was acting as casually as if this was an everyday occurrence. And he was smiling, which always makes everyone nervous.
‘So… one rebel angel with a sword whose power you aren’t sure of, one 1000-year-old vampire hopped up on angel blood… Cass, you want to take a punt on the outcome?’
The angels gawped at him, and I could tell they were actually worried.
‘But I have a better offer,’ he said.
OK, that threw them. And me.
‘Why should we trust you?’ Baelam asked, eventually.
‘Because you know me, and I’m more honourable than both of you put together.’ Ah, Cain, always mincing your words, such the tactful negotiator. ‘And you know what my actions have precipitated in this city. That’s my fuck up, and I need to fix it. Let me do that, and I’ll come along without a struggle.’
‘What?’ both Laclos and I gasped in unison, but Cain didn’t – wouldn’t – look at us.
‘A few days. That’s all I’m asking. Then I come quietly and you don’t have to face up to the fact that you’re so pathetically out of shape you can’t hope to take me without embarrassing yourself by needing back up.’
Baelam looked about ready to pitch a fit, but Aeylith held out a hand and I was surprised to realise that, for all her emotional display, she was the one in charge. She cast a disdainful look around the room that took in me and Laclos, dismissed the human squalor.
‘Very well. We owe you that, at least.’
‘You owe me far more than that,’ Cain said, eliciting a wince. ‘But I’ll settle.’
She nodded, and again her expression became sad, almost wistful. Bloody hell, angels were messed up. She stepped forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth, and for the briefest of seconds, Cain’s eyelids lowered and I realised he wasn’t quite as indifferent to her as he pretended. Then she stepped back, nodded to Baelam, and they were gone.
I had anticipated this, this time, so held onto the counter and managed to stay upright, but Cain sagged onto a chair, exhausted, his head dropping into his hands.
‘Good lord,’ Laclos murmured, to no one in particular.
I sat down heavily, putting a hand on Cain’s arm, as if I could offer solace or support.
‘Please tell me that all our enemies have showed their hands now. I really can’t cope with any more surprises,’ I said, weakly.
Then the door opened, and Jonesy came in, staring at us all like we’d beamed down from Mars.
‘OK. I only heard bits of that. But someone really needs to tell me what the fuck is going on.’
Chapter 14
I’ll save you the 20-minute panto discussion that followed about Cain being an angel – Oh no you can’t be! Oh yes he can! – since it was pretty much like the conversation I’d had with him when I found out, though Jonesy was obviously not worried about all the sex. (Unless that case they’d worked really had been a lot more serious than either was letting on). Cain had gone to check on Val (which was the name his wife had asked that I call her the first time we met, so despite a strong suspicion that wasn’t her name – Val the Valkyrie, anyone? – I was sticking with that. Others don’t tend to give their real names out to strangers, as names have a power that can be used against them.) Having assured himself she was recovering as well as could be expected from whatever run-in she’d had with the angels – and I was hoping she’d wake up and explain, since if they had the powers to teleport into here, where had she found them? She’d said they fancied themselves observers, and the idea that they had been watching us from somewhere, Wings of Desire style, was actually creepier than the fact they materialised in my kitchen. But clearly none of my questions were priority right now.
‘So… let me get this straight
,’ Jonesy was saying, as we sat around the ruined kitchen watching Cain duct tape the door back into place again. ‘One of the angels who just came here is your ex-girlfriend.’
‘Ex-lover.’ Cain corrected. ‘It’s not like we went on dates.’
‘And the Nordic supermodel is your ex-wife.’
‘Wife.’
Jonesy looked questioningly at me.
‘Occasional mistress?’ I supplied, trying to sound jauntier than I felt. Laclos raised a hand.
‘Ardent suitor,’ he said, clearly feeling left out. ‘But I think we’re missing the crucial point here. Seriously, can you do that body thing? Because if so, my interest in you just reached an entirely new level.’
‘What body thing?’ asked Jonesy, but Cain just shook his head.
‘No, I can’t do the body thing.’ He saw my expression and cut off my question before I asked it. ‘And I can’t teleport either. Or materialise, whatever you want to call it. That’s what it means to be earthbound.’
‘And the Amazonian beauty and yourself… I’m sorry, is it polite to use feminine pronouns?’ Laclos asked, genuinely interested: I imagined even to creatures as comfortable with gender fluidity as vampires were, this was a new one. Cain shrugged, impatient.
‘Angels don’t have a gender.’
‘Really? Because you’ll forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but you do seem very male to me. Exquisitely so.’
Jonesy and I exchanged glances at this, but to my surprise Cain looked like he was actually considering his answer. Having finished what he could do with the repairs, he took a beer from the fridge and sat down, his expression thoughtful.
‘I’ve been in… some version of this body for as long as I’ve been in human form, and I’m not naïve enough to think that my experiences and, to some extent, my personality haven’t been affected by how other people react to what they see as a man. Or that my… preferences haven’t been defined by the fact my formative experience was with something in the shape of a woman. Most other angels – non-earthbound angels – will change bodies more frequently, although it takes a lot of energy to burn through a body and create a new one like Aeylith did, so it’s not usually so casual.’
So that little transformation was not without motive, then, I thought.
‘So they might feel less aligned to one gender or another, they might have more insight into how it feels to be more than one. But however… masculine my existence has been, I’m not a man. Whatever Aeylith looked like to you when she left here, she’s not a woman.’ He looked at me. Considering it was him and Laclos who were supposed to have developed the psychic blood bond, he was doing an awfully good job of reading my mind. ‘She…’ he nodded at Laclos, in confirmation of his question, but his attention was on me. ‘She didn’t take on a female form because she thought I’d prefer it. She did it because she thought I’d remember it.’
‘So it makes no difference to you?’ Laclos queried. ‘Obviously I’m asking for a friend.’
Cain scowled, and took a drink of beer.
‘It… God, it’s like explaining physics to sheep.’
‘Thanks!’ I muttered, and he pulled an apologetic face.
‘It’s just… that’s not how we work. With other angels, that’s not how we… experience one another. Look,’ he cast around, desperately searching for something us thickos could understand. ‘You know how, when Katie changes, you can always see it’s still her?’
‘Um, no.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. OK.’ He sighed and tried again. ‘It’s like… your lover changes clothes. You don’t stop loving them one day to the next depending on what they’re wearing. You might prefer one outfit to another, but that’s not what affects your feelings.’
I nodded, though I couldn’t shake the suspicion that, if that were true, Aeylith had just done the angel equivalent of pulling on a sexy little red number to remind her ex of date night.
‘So I take it from all the discussion of bleeding and screaming and maiming, it didn’t end well?’ Laclos’ tone was light but I could hear the concern in the question. Cain looked down at his drink.
‘She pinioned me.’
We all exchanged glances, but it was Laclos who spoke.
‘I…?’ A question.
‘She took my wings.’
‘You had actual wings?’ I blurted, which I realised immediately was the worst thing to say.
Cain tore at the beer label, twisting the bottle in his hands, looking unhappier than I had ever seen him.
‘Until they took them. She took them.’
There was a dreadful silence, none of us wanting to speak – none of us understanding, really, what this meant. Cain looked up, briefly, and read that lack of comprehension in our faces.
‘You have to understand that angels – or whatever you want to believe we are – existed pre-humanity. We only took these forms when people did. And in taking them, something changed. We are implements of violence – hammers of God or,’ a glance at atheist-me, ‘whatever species of being you think bred or created us, but we’re also creatures of love. We’re designed to love. And the things we love – that never stops. It never changes. But in human form… we became creatures of desire. Of need, and fear, and all of those things that make humans what they are. We became individuals. And we started breaking the rules. You’ve heard of Nephilim?’
‘The band?’
OK, I probably deserved that look.
‘Some angels fell in love with humans. Some… with each other.’
‘I’m guessing the bosses weren’t keen on that?’ Jonesy asked, gently.
‘She wanted to stay. To repent. The price of her forgiveness was my wings.’
I bit my fist, appalled. I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but he was brittle in his misery, and I was scared what my touch might do. Clearly Jonesy and Laclos were equally horrified.
‘They beat me. Six of them, until my bones were broken and I couldn’t stand. Then they held me down and they tore off my wings with their bare hands.’
Even Laclos, who must have seen his fair share of cruelty in his day, looked stricken.
‘I cannot imagine that was a… painless process.’
Cain smiled, bitterly, but he directed his answer at me. It was one thing to be allies – for Laclos to be able to sense whatever he could from their new bond – but it was clear Cain didn’t want either him or Jonesy to see the naked agony in his eyes.
‘No. No, it’s not. Nor is it fast. They try to grow back. To heal. So you have to dig your fingers into the flesh and keep pulling them out at the bone. Every time. Until one day they don’t grow back any more. And they take a lot of what makes you an angel with them.’
I felt tears on my face, nausea in my throat. ‘One day’? How long had he suffered? He had been betrayed and pulled to pieces by a woman that even now he was programmed still to love? It seemed beyond cruelty. Timidly, I reached out and laid my hand over his: I couldn’t bear not to comfort him. He accepted my solicitude with the tiniest of nods, but I could see he was wary of reacting in company. I had thought nothing could ruffle Cain, but I realised he was barely holding it together.
‘But if that’s true… I mean,’ Jonesy fumbled, horror jumbling his words. ‘You can’t be serious about surrendering to them again?’
Cain managed a shrug.
‘That’s all I had to get them out of here.’
‘Well,’ Laclos said, the deliberate lightness of his tone belying the fact that his eyes were now rimmed red. ‘That gives us mere days to find a way to establish a vampire détente and free you from this devil’s bargain by divining a way to defeat a bunch of vengeful super-beings. What could be simpler?’
Then Jonesy was on his feet, gun in hand.
‘I’m not sure we’ve got that long.’
***
You have got to be fucking kidding me, I thought – what is this, King’s Cross? But as I turned to see the giant
wolf-like dog that reared onto its hind legs to look at us through the now-missing glass panel of the fire escape door, my Sense relaxed. Then flared again as I realised Jonesy still had his weapon out. I yelled a protest, and there was a comedic scrabble as both Laclos and Cain, having realised I’d yelled ‘It’s Katie!’ moved as one to disarm him. Had it been any other day it would have been funny, seeing poor Jonesy squashed between two supermen who were both pretty much constructed of muscle, and who moved so fast and with such force that he went down between them and then they bounced off one another like repelling magnets, before both hastily tried to reassert their dignity and pretend that never happened, like a couple of cats pretending they totally meant to fall off that table after all. So by the time I’d actually got to the door, all three men were standing around looking a bit sheepish. I tried not to wonder what Cain was actually seeing when he looked at the giant dog – if his reactions hadn’t been slowed by his misery, would he have realised it was her before I did?
‘Sorry, it’s just…’ I shrugged, not knowing what to say. Jonesy still had his gun out, though Cain’s hand was resting on it, keeping it lowered. I could hardly blame his reaction, given the state of my flat. The wolf-dog was watching the scene with visible impatience, or as much impatience as you can glean from a vicious looking animal who looked to have a mobile phone in its mouth. But she scrabbled at the woodwork, impatience made worse by the fact that Cain had to help me un-duct-tape one side of the door so we could manoeuvre it open.
She changed as she entered, stepping smoothly into the jacket that Cain, in a surprising show of chivalry, held out for her – a sop to Jonesy’s presence, I suspected, since everyone else had seen Katie naked plenty of times. Not that the fact that she was naked was the issue: Jonesy was staring in open-mouthed astonishment as the petite, pretty Scottish woman spat out the phone and scowled at us.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you people? Don’t you ever answer your phone? We’ve been calling you for ages!’ Katie snapped. ‘Meds was so worried she wanted me to scout the place out to make sure you were still alive!’
Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) Page 12