by Cari Z
Steven hadn’t gone far. He was sitting on the back of Rio’s truck, smoking a cigarette and looking over at the smoke that still rose from the Westin. There were fewer sirens now, but plenty of people packed the sidewalks, and traffic had been diverted from downtown so they packed the roads as well, gaping and gossiping. Maggie lay next to Steven’s knee, almost completely unmoving, as if she was just too tired to do anything other than simply exist anymore. Rio knew how she felt.
“There’s a nice little muppet,” Steven muttered, petting Maggie’s back as he blew a cloud into the air. He turned when he saw Rio out of the corner of his eye. “Any progress, mate?”
“Maybe, but they need to talk to you.”
“Inside, then?” Rio nodded and Steven sighed. “Bloody hell, but it stinks in there.” He shook his hand and the cigarette vanished. “Never run out of smokes this way,” he smirked, hopping down off the back of the truck. It was a half-hearted effort at normalcy, but Rio played along.
“You realize that you’re essentially smoking a part of yourself, right?”
Steven waved the hand that had the gun tattooed on it. “You realize that I’ve shot people with little bits of myself, right? Smoking’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done with my own body, that’s for sure.”
“Good to know.” They got back into the room and Rio put the phone on speaker. “Go ahead, Ren, Steven’s here.”
“Steven.” Rio watched with interest as the younger man immediately perked up, his eyes boring into the phone as though he could see the man on the other side. “I think that your ability is the key to finding out where Devon is.”
“No, look, I’ve tried—”
“You’ve tried with a tattoo made out of ink, driven into your skin by a person who was getting nothing out of the experience but money and possibly an abstract sense of artistic accomplishment. Half the worth of your ability comes from intent, and you can’t deny that the stronger the intent of the person working on you, the more potent the result.”
“You an inker, mate?” Steven asked, sounding intrigued. “’Cause I’m always looking for a good one.”
“I’m an artist, but trust me, you don’t want me to leave any marks on you. You’d probably never get over them.”
“You want me to get the tat redone fresh, then?” Steven sighed. “That’ll take more time and money than I think you’ve got.”
“Stop thinking and listen to me.” Steven exchanged a startled glance with Rio and stared back at the phone. That wasn’t the sort of tone you argued with. “Intent is more important than skill with a needle, especially now. You know what you want this tattoo to do, you just need a boost in power to get it to do that job. You need a substance more potent than ink in order for that to happen.”
“What are you recommending, mate?”
“Blood,” Ren said simply. “Rio’s blood. He’s got more than enough power in him to give your tattoo the kick it needs.”
“That’s dangerous though,” Em broke in. “Even if it’s not Rio using those powers, they’ll still leave a mark. If the wrong people are listening for them, they could start to get suspicious.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Steven demanded. “What wrong people? And blood? No offense, mate, but that’s the bad kind of risky business for me. Dev’s a good guy but—”
“You will do this,” Ren told him, and god, he never ran out of a new way of speaking that could frighten the shit out of someone. He sounded certain, and fierce, and vengeful. “You will do this because if you don’t, you will diminish until you’re nothing to the powers of this world, another ant to be stepped on, another gnat to be crushed. If you do this, the pain will be brief, but your eventual rewards will be immense, that much I can promise you.”
“You’re just going to frighten him,” Em scolded his husband.
“It should frighten him; it’s the truth,” Ren said. “I’ve already seen it, you know that.”
“Yes, but they don’t know, and now isn’t the time to explain things. Steven,” Em said, “I know you have no reason to believe me, but if you come into contact with Rio’s blood I can guarantee you won’t get any diseases. In fact, you may never get sick again. There are some side effects, but Rio can explain them. It’s nothing terrible, I promise.”
“Nothing terrible” wasn’t exactly how Rio would have phrased it once he understood what Devon’s dads were getting at. Rio didn’t use the power that was his birthright; he hadn’t for almost seventy years. The power of a nephilim, inspired by faith and grounded in the blood of angels, rang throughout the psychic plane like a bell the size of a volcano when it was used. For centuries it had overwhelmed the minds of mystics, a haunting semi-celestial choir, until the nephilim began to diminish. Now the only people who were attuned to it, possibly the only people who knew what to look for anymore, were those who were desperately interested in harnessing that power for God. No longer the Templar, they now went by subtler names, but the interest was the same. If Rio’s power was heard by those people, even second-hand, it would inform the church that wanted to enslave him that not only was he still alive, he was still potent.
“Side effects?” Steven looked at Rio sidelong, clearly unsettled, but there wasn’t a choice. Not for either of them.
“We’ll deal with it,” Rio promised. “So you want me to carve the sigil into his palm and dip it in my blood?”
“He can do the carving if he wants,” Ren said. “As long as the intent is there, the effect will be the same.”
“Bloody hell, you want me to slice open my own hand?” Steven looked like he wanted to tear his own hair out, glancing back and forth between the phone and Rio. “Who the fuck are you people? Really?”
Rio could tell Steven was about thirty seconds away from bolting out of the room. As helpful as Devon’s parents were, they were also pretty wrathful; at least one of them was, and Rio had the feeling Ren was showing a lot more restraint than he wanted to thanks to his husband’s presence. “Guys, I’ll take it from here. I’ll call back once we get something.” Rio disconnected the call and put his hands on Steven’s shoulders, trying to keep the touch comforting, not oppressive.
“You want the honest truth, right?”
“Yes, I…what are you?” Steven glanced over at Maria, so awkwardly pillowed. “She said you’re not human.”
“Not completely human, no. Half. The other half is angel.”
Steven sputtered wordlessly for a second. “There’s…bugger that, there’s no such bloody thing!”
“You can pull pictures out of your skin,” Rio said. “How is that stranger?”
“If there’re angels, then why’s everything such utter shit?” he demanded. “Seriously, if there’s a god, why’s he doing such a poor fucking job of managing things?”
Rio restrained the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t have time for a theology lesson. “God isn’t compelled to interfere in our lives, and angels aren’t either, not easily. Just—if you can’t accept angels, then think of a creature of enormous power that doesn’t really give a shit about us except to fuck around every now and then. That’s basically what made me. Someone prayed for a strong heir, an angel decided to interfere to further a cause that interested it—trust me, this isn’t the sort of thing God’s supposed to condone. I’m not supposed to exist. I do, though, and there’s power in my blood. A lot of it.”
“So they said,” Steven muttered. He was calming down now; Rio could hear his heartbeat slowing. “They’re angels too?”
“One of them is, and one of them used to be. He spent some time in Hell, I think.”
Rio knew Steven didn’t want to believe, knew he was on the verge of writing them off as lunatics, but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. “The one said some shit was gonna come at me if I don’t help you. He some kind of psychic?”
“He could be.” Possibly expressed through his artwork…after all, it was kind of a longshot that Ren could go through millennia in Hell without com
ing out of it a little bit specialized. “Probably. I don’t know them that well, but what Emiel told you about my blood, that’s true. It won’t give you a disease. You may just end up a little more…perceptive, than you’d otherwise be.”
Steven’s gaze sharpened. “Perceptive how?” There was the deal-maker in him, trying to gain an advantage.
“Perceptive as in hyper vigilant, in a way. Having a better sense of your surroundings, knowing how many people are in a room before you set foot in it, predicting an enemy’s movements before he does much more than think about them.” Rio didn’t really know why he was telling Steven all this; this likelihood that just a few ounces of his blood would affect the man in such a way was a bit of a reach, but he wanted to be honest. Steven was about to do him a huge favor. Rio could afford some honesty in return. And if he was going to be completely honest…
“You might become a little attuned to me. I don’t know for sure; I’ve never used my blood like this before.” Other nephilim had though, liberally, and the humans who partook of their blood sometimes became their thralls, bound to their will. Rio didn’t think mentioning that would help his cause any, though, so he kept silent.
“Right.” Steven stared at him, then stared at Grey. Finally he exhaled with a gusty sigh. “Right. Let’s get this over with, then.”
“You need a knife?” Rio asked him, heading for his duffel bag.
“Got one, thanks.” Steven slid his hand around to the back of his neck and pulled out a razor blade that Rio could have sworn wasn’t tattooed there.
“How’d you hide that?”
“Inker drew it vertically. S’like it’s just a line in my skin, but the idea of the razor blade goes deeper. Good for dirty fights.”
“Nice,” Rio complimented him, grabbing his Ka-Bar out of his bag to use on himself. “Practical.”
“Yeah, right. So…just cut the shape out, then?” Steven stared at his palm.
“Think about the meaning of the shape as you do. Every line has significance; you talked it out with the original inker. Talk it out here as you do it, even if it’s just to yourself.” Rio left the kid to ponder that while he went about making his own mark. The bathroom had little plastic cups for water; Rio made a shallow cut across the back of his left hand, then let it drip into the cup, clenching and relaxing his fist to encourage the blood to flow faster. His wounds healed quickly, too quickly. This one scabbed over before the cup was half full, and he had to reopen the cut to finish the job.
Rio saw Steven’s lips move silently as he cut the shape of the much-faded eye into his palm, interrupting his work every now and then to grimace and shake out his hand. Maggie watched them from the corner chair, silent. Her poor nose was probably overwhelmed.
“Fine,” Steven said at last. “S’as good as you’re gonna get, mate. Now what?”
“Come here,” Rio said, motioning to the bathroom. He didn’t want his blood getting everywhere. “Hold your hand over the sink.”
“Sure.” Steven extended his hand, and Rio picked up the cup of blood and began to pour. As soon as the first drops hit Steven’s skin, he winced and pulled back. “It’s hot!”
“Well, we are warm-blooded creatures.”
Steven smacked his shoulder. “Hotter than it should be, you wanker.”
“You’re just going to have to put up with that.” Maria could wake up at any moment. They were running out of time. “Suck it up and think of England.”
“Thought I was supposed to be thinkin’ about getting into that man’s head,” Steven groused, but he gave Rio back his hand. The blood flowed over the fresh new cuts, far darker than Steven’s own, and stickier somehow. It clung to the folds of Steven’s palm and insinuated itself into the image of the eye, layer upon layer of cells piling up until the lines seemed to bulge outward a little. By the time Rio was done Steven just stared at his hand with wide eyes and swallowed hard.
“Rio,” he whispered, his voice cracking a little. He looked up at Rio and blinked. “The air around your head is golden.”
Oh, second sight. Not the worst thing that could happen, but not lovely for the unprepared either. “I know,” Rio said soothingly, putting the cup down and wiping the excess blood off of Steven’s fingertips with some toilet paper. “It’ll probably go away soon. You ready?”
“Right.” Steven shut his eyes and shook himself like a dog, a full body shiver. He seemed a bit more focused after. “Right, yes. Let’s get it done.” They moved back out into the bedroom.
“Do you need me to wake him up?” Rio asked.
“Yeah, gotta have a doorway in, and that’s only there when he’s conscious.” Porter Grey was deathly pale, and Steven glanced at Rio worriedly. “You really think you can rouse ‘im?”
“Let’s find out.” Rio went to his duffel and grabbed a stun gun. It was an older model, with the two little prongs that made lightning flash between them, good for intimidation and not much more; nothing like the versions that fired from a distance, and which he remembered Devon complaining about after Rio had gotten him out of the Pearly Gates. But depending on where it was applied, the jolt this stun gun delivered could be more than an annoyance.
Rio opened Grey’s mouth, placed the prongs inside so that they touched his upper and lower teeth, and turned the taser on. The sound was appalling, a snap-crackle of skin-searing blue, but it wouldn’t do much more than make Grey’s tongue swell a little. In the moment, though, the sensation seared.
Grey’s head jerked back convulsively, and his eyes shot open as he whimpered. He clearly couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, but that wasn’t important. Rio shut off the taser and stepped back. “Now.”
“Jesus Christ,” Steven muttered. “Remind me never to piss you off, mate.” He knelt on the edge of the bed, pressed his wounded hand to Grey’s forehead, closed his eyes and—
The power was almost an audible thing to Rio, starting as a whisper and building steadily. It was an intimately familiar sound to him, like the low thrum that came from circling the edge of a crystal glass. It wasn’t the sharp strike of a bell, though, and if Rio had any luck left at all it wouldn’t become so, just stay muted and gentle and hopefully pass the sharp ears of the world by unnoticed.
The sound was gentle; the power itself was not. Steven’s teeth were gritted, his eyes squeezed tight, and Rio could see the strain build in him as he sifted through Grey’s head, searching for something he didn’t know how to identify, using his ability in a way he’d never been asked to before. He gasped, his hand slipping for a moment before redoubling his efforts. The tattoos closest to his hand began to shimmer and slide, ink smearing as the latent power in those designs was sucked into Steven’s immense effort.
Grey’s eyes were still open, blind and frightened and horrified. Rio wondered for a moment what he was seeing. His last moments with Cressidus before she shot him and left him to die? He who had been her faithful servant, betrayed at last by a heartless master. If Rio were the sort to feel kinship with murdering, evil sons of bitches, he might have right then. Instead he watched Steven and kept a weather eye on Maria. He couldn’t risk her waking up right now.
After perhaps thirty tense, breathless seconds, Steven let his hand fall away. Rio caught a glimpse of his palm before the young man pulled it protectively to his chest; the lines were dark now, as dark as if real ink had been used instead of blood, and seemed to be less raw. “Fuck,” Steven coughed, leaning over and using his free hand to clutch at his head. “Fuck, fuck…”
Rio knelt down in front of him. “Breathe,” he said, soft but commanding. “Breathe for me, in and out. Breathe.” He mimicked what he wanted until Steven was breathing in time with him, until he gradually leveled out. “Did you get it?”
“Kelowna,” Steven gritted out, still holding his hand close. “At an abandoned vineyard close to Mission Hill. Fucking hell, my hand…” He looked down at his arm, at the faint smears that were all that were left of the tattoos on his forearm and the dark, bold co
lor of the eye on his palm, and shook his head. “What the hell was that?”
“You being effective,” Rio said, ready to be gracious now that the job was done. His mind was already spinning with plans to get to Kelowna: flight, a clean passport, a way to get his weapons in…he couldn’t bring Maggie along for this part, he realized. Too dangerous. He’d have to make other accommodations for her. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Steven said, an edge of panic in his voice. “Did you know this would happen?” He waved his hand. “It feels different.”
“Different how?”
“Like permanent,” Steven said. “And you’ve still got that ruddy ring around your head, mate.”
“Give it some time,” Rio advised. He stood up. “We can’t stay here any longer, and you definitely can’t go with me. Where are you headed next?”
“Wait,” Steven snapped. “Hold on, you think you can make me a part of this shit and then leave me out of the ending? I didn’t do any of this for you, I did it for Devon. I need to know what happens to him! I deserve to know what happens.”
Rio wanted to argue, but he really couldn’t. It was true, after all. Besides, it was likely that a skillset like Steven’s would come in handy again in the future, so Rio shouldn’t alienate him if he could help it.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself,” Rio said, turning and briskly repacking his duffel. “I’m going after him, and I have to be gone before Maria wakes up.” He pulled out his phone and forwarded Em and Ren’s number to Steven’s cell. “This is the number for Devon’s fathers. One way or another they’ll probably be the first ones to know how this plays out.”
“I could go with you.”