by Liz Schulte
“You’ve met them?”
“We talked this afternoon. It was an incredibly inconvenient location. I’ve been driving for hours. I’m quite put out, but apparently there’s a spy among you? Having trouble controlling your woman?” She winked at me.
I smiled to myself. Baker wasn’t an idiot. If the spot was safe from the angel, that’s where they’d be. “Take me back there.”
She pursed her lips, but we wove through the streets toward the highway.
****
I eyed the old prison doubtfully. Why would we be safe here? I slipped the knife into my hand, in case Sybil had turned on us, and followed her inside wordlessly. However, it wasn’t long before I heard Femi yelling at Baker about forcing her to leave.
Sybil stopped and smiled. “Your friends?”
I went past her into the room. Femi stopped abusing Baker, but her furious expression found me. “You killed her, didn’t you?” She hurtled a knife at me. I caught it by the blade just in front of my face.
I offered her the knife back. “I didn’t kill her.”
She took the handle of her weapon and crossed her arms over her chest. “Then where is she? How did you get away?”
“Was it even her?” Baker said.
Femi pointed the knife at him. “You I will still stab. I am telling you it was her. They smell different.”
He held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What did I do?”
“I didn’t notice the smell thing, but yes, it was actually Olivia.” I looked around the room scattered with debris. “Where are we and why are we here? Why would a human prison be warded against anything?”
Baker stood up and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I know you aren’t a pushover, but you need to trust me on this, boss. If we’re on the lam from an angel, this is the best place to be. Plus these walls don’t have ears.” He gave me a meaningful look. “What you really have to ask yourself is, is it more important to know how I know about this place, or to figure out what we should be doing now?”
Great Caesar’s ghost, Holden let it go and accepted the fact that the location was clean. We caught him up on everything we knew while he paced. When we were all finished, he didn’t say anything for a couple ticks.
“If you let me out, I can help,” Thomas called from a cell beside Maggie’s, not too far from where we stood. “It sounds like you could use all the help you can get.”
“Pipe down, leech,” I yelled back. “You’re lucky we took you in the first place.”
“Why did you bring him?” Holden asked.
I absolutely did not look at Femi. “He might be useful.”
“Then bring him out. Maggie too. He’s right. We do need whatever help we can get.”
“Should we get Phoenix and Quintus too?” Femi asked.
“If you can get Quintus without the angel hearing, then yeah. Phoenix is supposed to be hiding the kid. I don’t want her involved in this.”
“I think it’s too late for that.” I pulled out my phone and showed Holden the picture I’d taken in the kid’s attic.
“What am I looking at?”
I traced the drawing so he could see what I saw. “It’s the symbol for the Seal.”
He zoomed in and looked at it closer. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I don’t believe in coincidence, boss. I think the Seal was in that house and the angel has had it all along. Though I don’t know why she didn’t use it.”
“She can’t,” Holden said but didn’t expound.
Femi dropped a petulant Maggie off in the room and dragged Thomas down the hall with her. Maggie’s glare made my skin crawl, but I ignored it. One problem at a time. “Care to enlighten us?”
He sighed as if he didn’t like the answer. “You know those jinn she gathered? Well, she killed them. She pulled their souls from purgatory and put them into me. That’s why she was trying to make me shift. She was testing me. She said she had to know I was ready. She can’t use the Seal. According to Quintus only a jinni, an old one, can. She was trying to make me powerful enough to control it.”
So she did need Holden after all, which meant she probably wasn’t going to give up on him. Given enough time she could raise a whole jinn army to help her find him. Eventually we would have to deal with this. “That does explain things, but why didn’t you kill her when you had a chance?”
“What explains what?” Femi asked as she walked in with Thomas in tow.
“He’s the only one who can use the Seal. Where’d you two go?” I asked.
She flashed a grin. “The angel is probably listening for me and you, but likely not him. I had him call Quintus.”
“Good. We need to gather everyone we can because the angel will be looking for leverage.”
Holden shook his head. “She has all the leverage she needs and she knows it.” His face was stony and hard.
“And yet here you are,” Maggie said. “Men are always proclaiming to love women, but as soon as things get complicated they’re nowhere to be found.”
Flames sizzled in Holden’s eyes as he looked at Maggie, and his body blurred into mist. Violent urges hit me so hard it was nearly impossible to keep my clenched fist from swinging at the person closest to me. Just then bright buttery light filled the room, cutting through a little of the rage—a very little, but enough to provide clarity about what was happening. Holden was losing his shit.
“Quintus. Femi,” They both looked at me, though Femi was far from being unaffected herself. I nodded to Holden and the three of us went toward him from three different directions. I put myself between Maggie and Holden, which was like playing a never ending game of Russian roulette.
“Back away, Baker,” Holden growled.
“Boss, you know Maggie’s comment wasn’t directed at you personally. She was talking about me. She doesn’t know anything about you and Olivia, not really.” I held up my hands in a surrendering gesture.
“But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t answer the question. Why are you here and not with her?” Femi asked, not helping at all.
There was no way in hell Holden would explain himself to her or anyone right now. He was holding on, but by a thread. Last time Olivia left him, he beat the snot out of Quintus who not so coincidentally was keeping his mouth shut this time around.
Holden took a couple deep breaths, but they didn’t help. “Baker, if the three of you keep advancing on me, I will kill all of you.” His voice was soft and matter of fact. “I can’t control it.”
I stopped and the other two followed suit. Thomas took Maggie to the corner of the room, as far away from Holden as they could get. Sybil stood back, watching with something close to glee. At any second it looked like she would start clapping and cheering him on. Slowly we all backed away, allowing him to get himself together and the anger to ebb.
“You got to see Olivia?” Quintus said. I gave him a look that said “Shut your trap,” but he ignored me. “How is she? Did you tell her we miss her?”
Much to my sheer and utter amazement, Holden softened and everything in the room softened with him. “She knows.”
“Then she is trying to get back for good. Olivia isn’t the type to give up.”
Holden nodded, but just barely. “She said to let her go and take care of you. All of you.”
He looked slightly disgusted by this, but he was here. Of all the times to start listening to her, he had to choose now? I cracked my knuckles. Okay, maybe this wasn’t bad. Olivia could fight the angel better from within than we ever could from outside. This allowed us to focus where we needed to, where we could actually make a difference.
“Look, the angel wants to close this path permanently, and the demons want to open it to two-lane traffic, right? The way I see it, our only play is to get to the opening and close it before the angel gets there. That’s the only way to keep the demons from luring her in and opening it.”
Holden shook his head. “I don’t think we should close it.” He looked at Quintus. “It upsets the balance.�
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Quintus nodded slowly. “I actually agree with him. Closing off a way for the underworld to get here could have untold consequences.”
“So which is the lesser of the two problems? Too many people are fighting in this, for something not to happen one way or the other. I don’t think things staying the same is even an option anymore,” Femi said. “And the question that none of you are asking, but someone sure as hell should, is why the sudden pantie-twist about this tunnel. It’s been there for like ever. Why do they care what happens to it now?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Don’t you think it’s something we should find out?” she asked.
“I don’t know that we have time to stall. Olivia is ready to make her move and that means so is Hell,” Holden said.
Femi was right though. We should have all the answers before we acted, but life doesn’t always work out the way you want. Sometimes you just have to make due. The tunnel was the most immediate problem that we needed to solve. At the end it was either going to be open or closed, neither of which was ideal. On one hand, the big baddies in Hell could meander in and out of our world at will, leaving a catastrophic path of destruction. Not only that, but the demons that were here could go home without being exorcised and expelled from their human bodies. They could just walk the humans they possessed right on down to Hell. How long would it be before the two worlds were indistinguishable? On the other hand, closing the pathway completely and freeing the jinn would create a power vacuum, and if all these cats were right, the universe would find a way to establish a new balance. Sometimes it’s better to stick with the enemy you can anticipate.
The council’s offer was getting more and more tempting.
“Neither are acceptable outcomes,” Quintus said. “There has to be another way.”
“We could ask Uriel,” I said.
“No.” Holden shot it down before the words were even out of my lips. “Under no circumstances are we bringing the angels into this. We know what their plan is. They will take her.”
“Glad to see you’re being reasonable,” I said. “The angels come, Olivia dies. They’ve made that clear.”
“Holden’s right. No angels,” Femi said. “Look, there has to be another way that we just aren’t seeing.”
“What happens if you do both?” Maggie asked. “Like if the demons open it at the same time the angel closes it?”
Now that was a doozy of a question. “I don’t know, doll.” I turned to Quintus. “Any guesses? Would one cancel the other?”
“Perhaps,” Quintus said slowly. “I believe it would freeze the tunnel as it is and no one would be able to reverse it, in theory at least. But there’s no way to make sure those two events happen at exactly the same time. If one occurred even a millisecond before the other, all would be lost.”
Holden pointed to him. “Can you confirm that theory?”
“I can look through our records,” he said. “There might be something.”
He nodded. “Do that. Make sure this will work.”
“What about the timing?” Femi asked.
Holden smiled a little. “Who’s to say we have to wait for them to do it? If we get our shit together now and get to the opening before the demons or Olivia, we can stop this before they even have a chance. Or, at the very least, we’ll buy ourselves more time.”
“The succubus said that Hell needed an angel to open it. We assumed they would use Olivia. If we’re doing this without her, we need a spare angel. I take it a guardian won’t work.” Femi looked at Quintus.
He shook his head.
“Any other ideas?” Femi said.
Holden shrugged. “There’s always Uriel. He might actually be willing to help if it means preserving the peace.”
“I like it. So what else do we need? Sybil, figure out exactly how the demons were planning on opening the pathway. Femi, you wanna tackle how Olivia was planning on closing it? Holden, since you can transport, you should scout the location. I’m sure the demons will be guarding it. We need to know what we’re walking into.”
“What are you going to do?” Femi asked.
“Me? I’m going to run central command and collect information from all of you. I’m also going to make sure the angel can’t hear or trace us, even when we aren’t in here. So give me a few hours before we skedaddle.”
“What about us?” Maggie asked. “We can help.” She pushed her way out from behind Thomas and joined the rest of the group.
“You two stay and help Baker. He might need the protection or to have people he can send out to collect information as he needs it,” Holden said.
Maggie’s eye narrowed. “So basically you want me to be his assistant? Um, no thanks.”
I could almost hear Holden mentally count to ten. “No. As Femi said, the angel isn’t looking for you two. She is, however, looking for us. You want to help? This is what we need.”
“Fine,” she said.
I removed myself from the room and the excited discussion that came with finally having a proactive plan. When I left, they were all discussing what needed to be done and trying to poke holes in the logic. Everyone except Quintus who went back to make sure any of this was feasible.
Nothing was ever easy. I pulled out my phone and called Leilah. We needed her expertise, even if that meant letting her in on more than I wanted to.
“I thought I was going to have to find you,” she said.
“If you have a hankering for a hunt, I’ll happily hang up.”
“Where are you?”
“I think you’re missing the point of a hunt.”
“Chol,” she thundered.
“Glad to see you still have your sense of humor.” I smiled, knowing how irritating I was being. “I’m where I met with you and Anessa. I want to discuss the terms of my return.”
She hung up and I headed to the entrance of the building. I hardly had time to light a cigarette before I heard: Foopt. Foopt. Foopt.
Less than a minute later she strolled into the building.
“I love a dame who isn’t afraid to use her wings.” I winked at the humorless dragon.
“It is dark,” she said like that was all that mattered. More than likely humans wouldn’t spot her even if she was on top of them, but it was still reckless for a council member. “Shall we?” she asked.
I leaned against the wall. “We can talk here.”
“As you wish.” She produced a contract from the inside of her long leather coat. “I believe you know where to sign.”
I took the papers and tapped them against my leg. “The thing is, I have conditions.”
She let out a long breath. “Elaborate.”
“Well, you see, fangy”—she blinked at the nickname—“I’ve got a vested interest in this world just the way it is. I want it to stay pretty much as is.”
“We’ve discussed this, chol.”
“You have concerns, and they’re not farfetched—but if I could prevent something from happening that would obliterate the balance, I’d like the council to hold off. Now’s not the time for a do-over.”
She stared at me. “What do you know?”
I shrugged. “Enough to know that if I fail, by all means destroy everything.”
“I want answers.”
“There’s a tunnel between here and the underworld. A couple big players are making moves toward it. I’m in the middle.”
“What players?”
“Oh, you know, a rogue angel, some ladder climbing demons… .”
She folded her arms behind her back. “I assume you’re aware you’re out of your depth, chol.”
“Horsefeathers!”
She gave the tiniest smile. “Your relentless confidence has been the making of you. Let’s say you do manage to succeed and maintain the balance, we would expect you to come back with no argument and to remain with us regardless of ideological differences.”
“Why are you all so hell-bent on me coming back?”
&nb
sp; She raised an eyebrow. “Do we have a deal?”
Back on the council was the last place I wanted to be, but if it meant keeping the world just as it was then it was a sacrifice I could make. “You meet my terms and you have yourself a deal.”
She nodded once. “I will speak with the rest of the council and have new contracts drawn up.” She turned to leave.
“Leilah. One more thing.” She looked over her shoulder. “How do I block an angel from monitoring me?”
She pulled in a deep breath and blew searing hot blue flames at the stone wall to her left. When the flames died away, the wall was black and charred. She took a fingernail and drew a pattern with several overlapping symbols. Inspecting it for a moment, she glanced back at me. “This should work. It would be better if it had a permanent home on your person, but other methods might work as well.”
“Gotcha. So if I get into a bind with all this, are you willing to swoop in and save our sorry asses?”
“No.” She left without another word. That old softy.
The stone room was oppressive. It probably was meant to be that way since we were in a prison and all, but I was over it.
You’re saying if I tattoo that on me, no angel will ever be able to eavesdrop on me?” I asked.
Baker’s breath tickled the back of my neck as he blew on a spot he just finished. “No time for real tattoos,” he said, drawing between my shoulder blades with henna ink and sending chills down my spine. After Quintus made a quick trip to get the supplies, Baker started tattooing. He’d already did one on Sybil and Quintus, who left as soon as they were done, and the vampires who had no choice but to stick around. His callused rough thumb made a tiny circular motion on my shoulder blade as he drew with the other hand. Thomas’s stare drilled into me, watching every touch by Baker like he still had a right to care. “Best I could do now is a brand.”
“Just something to keep in mind for the future.” I squirmed against the feel of his hand and the ink against my skin.
“Hold still, almost done.” The smile was evident in his voice. Bastard.
A few moments later he stepped back to look, then we waited for it to dry better. Finally he declared me finished and sprayed my back with some sort of hairspray. The only person left was Holden and I couldn’t imagine him sitting here, letting Baker draw on him. “Your turn, Chuckles.” I grinned.