“G-Gabriel, please, I need you…I need someone…it’s all my fault,” I whispered in between gasping sobs, sinking onto the floor as my knees gave out.
“Jordan, what’s happening? Are you hurt?”
“He s-sent me his hand. I did this to him. Oh God, it’s all my fault!”
“Where are you?”
“At t-the apartment.”
“Stay there. I’ll be over as soon as I can.” He hung up. I dropped the phone, clutching my ribs as they started to ache from the lack of air in my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to suffocate. All my fault. All my fault.
I couldn’t tell how much time had passed between the phone call and Gabriel rushing through my front door. My entire body had broken into uncontrollable shudders and I couldn’t speak because the lump in my throat had gotten too big.
Gabriel knelt in front of me, gripping my face in his large hands, his voice soft and soothing. “Jordan, look at me. You have to calm down or you’ll go into shock.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. Can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”
He swore under his breath and scooped me up in his arms, carrying me over to the couch. He took off his suit jacket and draped it around my shoulders before pulling me into his arms, rubbing my back in slow circles and murmuring that everything would be okay. I cried into his chest, clutching the front of his shirt and wishing my husband was here.
“Apple cinnamon or lemon?”
“Apple cinnamon,” I mumbled. Gabriel placed the tea bag in the mug of hot water sitting on my coffee table. He went to the kitchen and brought me some sugar. I watched the red from the tea stain the clear liquid and shuddered, tugging Gabriel’s massive suit jacket tighter around my shoulders. Maybe I should have chosen lemon.
Once the tea settled, I poured in some sugar and blew on the cup before taking a careful sip. My hands only shook a little as I held the mug up to my lips. Gabriel sat down beside me and we drank in silence for a couple minutes. I broke first.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For all of this. I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”
“Jordan…you do realize you just apologized to me for having a panic attack after some sick criminal sent you a human hand in the mail,” Gabriel replied.
I winced. It did sound silly when put into words. “Yeah, but you were probably doing something important before you came here—”
“Jordan, stop it,” he snapped. “You are not just some girl to me. You are family. My family. It is my duty to help you in any way I can. You don’t need to feel guilty every time you need help dealing with something.”
“I can’t help it, Gabriel. You’re an archangel. There are literally millions of people who need you more than I do.”
“The people of the world don’t need me and me alone. That’s what my brothers and sisters are for. Trust me, we’ve got them covered to our best ability. Now tell me who did this so I can rip him in half.”
“It’s Lamont,” I said, pushing stray strands of hair out of my eyes. “He’s sending a message. I told one of his flunkies to back off my dad and he didn’t take it well. I figured there would be ramifications, but this…this is something I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen the demons do horrible things, but this is barbaric. I have to do something about it. Lewis won’t stand a chance against someone who would butcher a guy just for talking.”
“Well, first, we must act logically. I have a friend who can take a look at the hand and give us some clues as to who this man is. We need to stop the problem at the source.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. You didn’t think you were going to take on a loan shark in Detroit by yourself, did you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Good. All we need to do is find out who he really is and end this.”
I checked my watch. “Are you sure we can do that in twelve hours? That’s how long Lewis has before his time limit is up. They’ll come for him and me.”
Gabriel flashed me a dangerous smirk. “I’d like to see them try.”
He pushed my cell phone towards me. “Call your father. Find out where he is. We need to get him somewhere safe before we make our move.”
“Thank you,” I said, unable to keep my voice from wavering a bit. “I don’t deserve a brother like you.”
He lifted my hand and kissed it, smiling. “Think nothing of it, my dear. Make the call.”
I picked up the phone and went into the kitchen to find my duster. I’d tucked Lewis’ card into one of the pockets for safekeeping. Taking a deep breath, I dialed his number and drummed my fingers on the back of the chair as I listened to it ring. Finally, on the fifth one, someone picked up.
“Hi, my name is Jordan Amador. Is Lewis there?”
“Yes, but he’s not available at the moment.”
“Okay. Could you have him call me back at this number? It’s important.”
“Oh, I’m not sure that’s going to be possible. He’s scheduled to be shot in the head in six hours.”
I froze. It took me a couple of seconds to regain composure. “Who is this?”
The male voice on the phone was silky and pleasant, but I could tell it was just a façade. “I take it you got my present, Mrs. Amador.”
My fingers clutched the chair. “Yes. What have you done with Lewis?”
“My boys and I picked him up from the airport. We’re just now leaving.”
“What do you want?”
“My pound of flesh,” he sneered. “Your Daddy’s gonna pay with cash or blood. You’d better hope he’s got the green, little girl.”
Anger bubbled up through my chest, chasing away the fear. “If you hurt him, I swear to God, I’ll make you pay.”
“Is that a threat? Hmm, maybe I’ll send you another present. A foot, perhaps?”
“This is not a game,” I hissed. “You let him go right now or heaven help me, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Sorry, but I don’t have time to die. I’ve got money to make. Stay in school, sweetheart.”
He hung up. I screamed and kicked the chair over.
Gabriel rushed to my side, apprehensive. “What happened?”
“They already have him. Or at least that’s what the creep on the phone said,” I said in a low voice. “And he’s changed the deadline from twelve hours to six. We have to get to Lewis now. It doesn’t matter if they get the money or not—they’ll still kill him.”
Gabriel dialed away on his phone. “I can have my friend here in fifteen minutes. Pack an overnight bag. I’ll get the jet ready for a flight to Detroit.”
I went into my bedroom and threw some clothes into a duffel bag. I was halfway through stuffing soap into my toiletry bag when I realized there were tears on my cheeks. Shit.
Exactly fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang. Gabriel answered it, opening the door to reveal a short Hispanic woman in her fifties. She had curly salt-and-pepper hair, wore a crisp blue pants suit, and carried a large brown bag in her left hand.
Gabriel shut the door and waved her towards the kitchen table. “Jordan, this is Molly. Molly, this is Jordan.”
She gave me one brief nod. “What am I looking at?”
I pointed to the box and leaned against the counter, averting my gaze as she pulled on a pair of gloves and pushed the tissue aside. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her use a pair of forceps to pick up the severed hand and hold it up into the bright overhead light.
“Judging by the state of it, I’d say it was done less than twenty-four hours ago,” she said in a calm, clinical voice. “Neat, too. One clean chop, didn’t saw it off like in the movies. The wound at the wrist makes me think a cleaver.”
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “How is that helpful?”
“Well, every little detail tells us something. We’re working with professional brutes here. Some bad guys are sloppy, but this is precise. The lack of blood in the box means they knew to let the limb bleed out for a while before packaging it. I’ll dust for prints
in just a moment, but I probably won’t find any,” she said as Gabriel cleaned off the table so she could set out some of her tools.
She took out a mounted magnifying glass, a small brush, a black light, an unidentified powder, an inkpad, and a sheet of paper. Carefully, she dusted the severed hand for prints, then the tissue paper and the box. She then pressed the fingertips into the ink and made prints on the blank sheet of paper to later run through a criminal database. After that, she used the handheld black light over the hand. Nothing appeared.
“Hmm,” she mumbled as she held the box underneath the black light.
I walked over, curious. “What? Is that a good ‘hmm’?”
“Maybe,” Molly said, peering at the bottom of the cardboard box. I could make out a small spot that the light showed.
“Someone sat this box on top of a bit of cologne. Smells expensive. I’ll get a sample and run it in my lab. I’ll call you with the results. Detroit’s roughly four hours away and I can tell you where to head by the time you’ve landed.”
“So you’re saying you can help us narrow down our guy with cologne?” I asked, teetering on the edge of uncertainty.
She glanced at me. “These guys may be professionals, but they’re not perfect. If this Lamont guy is a big wig in his town, he’ll be rich, bourgeois, and well-dressed. The cologne is probably something imported, something rare. That kind of thing is traceable.”
“Good to know. Thank you for your help.”
She shrugged. “Any friend of Gabe’s is a friend of mine. I’ll get this down to the lab ASAP. You guys get in the air as soon as you can.”
“Thank you, Molly,” Gabriel and I chorused. She packed up her equipment and the hand, then left.
Gabriel turned to me, his eyes searching my face. “Are you ready to do this?”
A weak smile touched my lips. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I had to ask. You’re in enough trouble as it is. If you wanted to stay home, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“No. He’s my family. I have to help him.”
“Things will probably get nasty.”
“Nasty is a nice step up from what we usually deal with.”
Gabriel smiled. “Sad, but true. But you have to do one thing for me before we go.”
“What?”
He rested his hands on my shoulders. “On the phone, when you called me…you said that this was your fault. It’s not.”
I shook my head. “If I hadn’t sent Wallace back to Detroit—”
“—he still would have met a similar fate. If he worked for someone like Lamont, then his comeuppance would have happened one way or another. Guilt is not going to help you save your father. Guilt breeds doubt. We cannot afford doubt right now. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but you must let this go and accept that getting your hands dirty is part of being a Seer, and part of doing the right thing.”
“I just don’t want to be responsible for any more deaths, Gabe,” I whispered. “Is that too much to ask?”
He brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “No, it’s not. But you can only control yourself, not others. Remember that.”
He kissed my forehead and stepped away, his voice hardening with resolve.
“Let’s go save your father.”
Chapter 16
Michael
WE TOOK A cab to Jandira, a municipality of São Paulo where Edmond had been spotted. The entire ride was spent in a taut silence. We kept our eyes sharp for anything out of the ordinary. Darkness closed over the sky and made it harder to see so my other senses became increasingly hyperactive.
When I stepped out of the cab, I felt a sense of dread as I observed the street where we had stopped. The road stretched for miles into a heavily populated neighborhood. There were teenagers leaning against the walls of the buildings, laughing, talking, and playing on their cell phones. I even spotted a couple of children playing jump rope under a dim streetlight. After all, it was only around eight o’clock here.
“This is going to be even more difficult than I thought,” I said to Belial, who merely shrugged and rifled through his pockets for a moment. He withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, firing up a coffin nail and exhaling the smoke with a relieved sigh. He couldn’t smoke in the cab and I could tell he’d been jonesing for one ever since we left the restaurant.
“We don’t have time for discretion, archangel. Let your flunkies clean up the mess once we’re done. Now let’s get to work.”
He tucked one hand in his pocket and started walking. I almost asked him where we were headed, but then he wandered over to a group of teenage girls before I could say anything.
“Excuse me,” he said in Portuguese to the nearest girl—a pretty brunette. “But I’m looking for someone’s apartment.”
Belial held up his cell phone to display the address. “Would you please tell me where this is?”
The girl smiled. “Sure. It’s three blocks down on the left, tio.”
Belial’s smile wilted. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. In Portuguese, younger girls used “tio” as a slang term for an older gentleman. It had definitely landed a blow on the demon’s ego.
I stepped closer, jumping in before he could say anything rude. “Do you know who lives there?”
The girl paused. “My friend Maria babysits a little girl there. I can’t remember her parents’ first names, but I think the girl is Juliana. The name on the mailbox is Freitas.”
Belial and I shared a look. We really didn’t need an innocent bystander to get mixed up in this mess. We nodded to the girls and headed down the street in a hurry, though not in a full run because it would spook the neighbors.
The Freitas family lived on the second floor near the rear of the building. Thankfully, there weren’t people around when we climbed the stairs and found their front door. I took a deep, calming breath and tried the knob. Unlocked. Damn it.
Belial reached for the holster under his arm and withdrew his gun, a Smith and Wesson .9mm that held seventeen rounds of blessed bullets. It could certainly get the job done if we got the drop on Edmond. Getting a body from the demons was a mixed bag. We hadn’t been able to find him, but it also meant he shared their vulnerabilities. The element of surprise was our most important asset right now.
I opened the door and the pounding thrum of capoeira music spilled out of the apartment. The smell of gasoline permeated the air, confirming the rogue angel’s presence. I could see a modest den with a couch, a bookshelf, and an old record player spinning in the corner. Belial went in first, his gun held high, his pale eyes scanning the room. I closed the door behind us and nodded to the doorway towards our left. Belial headed that way, and I heard him utter a curse before I followed him in.
A young girl, no more than sixteen, lay sprawled on the floor face-up. I rushed to her side, checking her pulse and finding nothing. The bulge in her throat and bruised skin were tell-tale signs that he’d broken her neck.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered, resting my hand on her forehead and saying a brief prayer for her soul. I rifled through her pockets and found a small wallet, confirming the girl to be Maria Guerrera, the babysitter. The parents didn’t appear to be home. One of them had to be the Seer Edmond was looking for. What had he done with the daughter?
Belial went out of the kitchen and walked through the den with me at his heels. I stretched my energy outward to feel for the rogue angel. Even with his energy masked, close proximity allowed me to sense him. It was faint, but I caught a signature in one of the bedrooms down the hall.
“Last one on the right,” I said to the demon. He reached for the doorknob. Locked.
“On three,” he mouthed. I took the spot across from him, raising my fingers one by one.
On three, we both kicked in the door. It smashed against the wall, revealing a small bedroom with purple walls and blue curtains that had teddy bear patterns on them. Edmond Saraf stood beside the bed with a g
irl no more than four years old in his arms. She had short, curly brown hair, dark eyes, and stared at us with confusion and fear on her tearstained face. She appeared unharmed, but Edmond held a knife underneath her chin as he watched us. Judging by the power coming off it, he’d acquired a special weapon, one the demons used to destroy angels’ bodies.
“Let her go,” I demanded, already filling my body with energy to attack him.
Edmond shook his head, his voice soft. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, brother.”
Righteous fury billowed inside me. “Don’t you call me that. No brother of mine would murder an innocent girl and take a child hostage. Have you forgotten where you’re from? Have you forgotten everything we angels are charged with in this life?”
“I have not forgotten. We are charged with protecting mankind. Sometimes to keep everyone safe, certain individuals must be sacrificed.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t justify your actions. You should have come to me if you discovered a great calamity.”
“I am but a humble Scribe. You are the Prince of Heaven’s Army. Such a task is beneath you and so I took it upon myself to carry out my mission. Besides, you are married to a human. You would not have the will to do as I have done.”
I gritted my teeth. “You’re right. I would never kill the people I am sworn to protect. Now let the child go or Belial will drop you where you stand.”
“I cannot.”
I glanced at the demon. “Can you make the shot?”
“Not without hurting the girl,” Belial answered, aiming the gun steadily at Edmond’s head. “I am bound by demonic law not to harm anyone but him.”
“I’m curious as to what your plan is,” he continued, addressing Edmond. “Will you kidnap the child to get her Seer parents to willingly give themselves up?”
“Once again, you misunderstand. I’m not after her parents. Juliana is a Seer.”
I went still. “What? But she’s just a baby. That’s impossible.”
“If the angels are retranslating the Book of Time as I suspect they are, you’ll find that I am right. I must do this, Michael. A thousand lives are at stake. I am sorry.”
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