Hellsbane 02 - Heaven and Hellsbane

by Paige Cuccaro

  “Go,” Gabriel said. “Persuade the gibborim to cooperate.”

  “Wait.” I stepped closer to Fred. “I’m going with him. The gibborim, if he really is a gibborim, will be more willing to talk to me than a seraph. They think you guys just want to turn them against their fathers and oppress them. At least I share similar DNA to the guy.”

  Fred looked to Gabriel who then turned to Michael. The archangel nodded. “Take her. But Fraciel, do not forget that all life is sacred and it is not for you to interpret Father’s word. Leave that to us.”

  “Of course, brother.” The redhead made a small bow.

  “I’ll go with them,” Eli said.

  “No.” Michael flashed that breathtaking smile. “Thank you, Elizal. But we would like to speak with you. Privately, if you would be so kind. Fraciel understands our concerns and will conduct himself accordingly. Is that not true, Fraciel?”

  “Absolutely,” Fred said and threw a furtive smirk Eli’s way before vanishing.

  I had less than an instant to glimpse where Fred was headed before he was gone, and I glanced at Eli. “I can handle it. Thanks for backing me up.”

  And then I followed Fred.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I didn’t know dark until I stood on a back street of the Mumbai market in India. I couldn’t even see the body until I tripped over it.

  “Mind the illorum,” Fred said, not bothering to look back as he sidestepped a puddle. “His head’s over there somewhere.”

  I glanced in the direction he’d pointed, but I couldn’t see anything. “Are you just going to leave him there?”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Return him to his family,” I said.

  The smell of urine and rotting food made my stomach churn. I stumbled after Fred, tripping over the rutted road—stepping around garbage and the occasional cow pie.

  “We have more pressing matters,” he said. “Come back for the body later if you like.”

  “Nice, Fred.” I made a mental note to figure out who Thiel’s illorum had been. I would come back for him.

  The back road was ten feet wide and flanked on both sides by walls of corrugated sheet metal. I knew from my glimpse into Fred’s mind that we were behind the marketplace, but it took a few seconds to realize the other side of the dirty corridor was made up of the outer walls of people’s homes.

  A soft light glowed between the gaps in a wood door and I caught a quick peek of a TV screen inside. My eyes finally adjusted and I noticed more slivers of light between the sheet metal walls, tarp-covered roofs, splintering wooden doors, and shuttered windows.

  “The gibborim is still alive?” I asked, trying to slow Fred’s pace so that I could keep up with him even though we were moving at human speed.

  “How else would I be able to persuade him to reveal his master? He’s just ahead.”

  “Who’s holding him?” I jogged, closing the distance between us.

  “I am,” he said—making a sharp left into a narrow passage between the market buildings. He stopped so suddenly I almost ran into him. I stepped away as he laced his hands behind his back and looked up at the side of the building. “I have returned, gibborim, as promised. Are you prepared to call your master or die for him?”

  I followed Fred’s gaze. “Dear God, Fred, what did you do?”

  The market buildings were two shaky stories high and at the very top, pinned to the wall like a bug, was a man bleeding profusely. Worse, he was upside down. My gaze followed the dripping blood to the ground, focusing on the spatters and small pool that had collected—so surreal.

  My fists clenched and I fought not to yell…or puke. “Get. Him. Down.”

  Fred’s head snapped to me. “He is gibborim.”

  “Yes, but we’re not. We’re better than this,” I said. “You’re torturing him. Either kill him or let him down.”

  His attention slowly swung back to the guy on the wall. “We use the methods we see fit. His power has been awakened, and he has made his choice. His life is forfeit. The gibborim will deliver the demon behind the killings or he will die…slowly.”

  “He’s barely conscious,” I said. “He can’t tell you anything if you’ve tortured him senseless. If you want me to help, let him down.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” I stared at Fred.

  “I do not want your help,” he said. “You are here because the Council commands it. Because they wish me to be a distraction between you and Elizal. I haven’t the time for it.”

  “Wha…?” Guilt and shame squeezed my chest. The Council didn’t trust us? They knew the feelings swirling between Eli and me, everything we fought to ignore and deny—everything I buried inside me to open my heart to Dan. My cheeks warmed. I couldn’t think about it. “I’m here because the Council is worried you’ve gone off the deep end and they want me to make sure it doesn’t cost you your nice, cozy seat back home.”

  “Cast out?” He scoffed, but there was a flash of doubt in his eyes. One of us didn’t have a clue what the Council really wanted. I hoped it was Fred, but I was starting to wonder if we were both in the dark.

  “Just let him down. Please. I can’t talk to him up there,” I said.

  “As you wish.” No sooner had the words left his lips than the guy on the wall dropped. He hit the dirt ground with a sickening thud and the crack of bones, his neck bending awkwardly as his body crumpled over it.

  The guy didn’t make a sound, and for three heart-stopping seconds I thought he might be dead. Then his hand moved and slowly he untangled his body, pushing up to slouch against the wall.

  He leaned his head back and a faint stream of light glinted off the blood oozing from a slash across his nose. It wasn’t the only wound—deep gashes bled on his arms and chest. He was missing a boot and his jeans were shredded with a dozen or more cuts and stained with blood. The blood clumped his hair, most of it standing stiffly on end from hanging upside down.

  None of the wounds were deep enough to kill him, but they couldn’t have felt good. “What’s your name?”

  The guy swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort. “Screw you,” he said, his voice raw.

  Fred laughed under his breath, but kept his mouth shut.

  “Dude, I just saved your butt and you’re going to give me attitude? Who’s calling the shots for you guys? How can we find him?”

  “You didn’t save me. You just delayed the inevitable,” the gibborim said. “All these guys know how to do is kill and destroy. It’s why they were created. They’re good at it. See?” He held his hands out for a half second to show the countless wounds, before the effort seemed too much and he dropped them to the ground again.

  “And your guy is all about love and hugging out your differences?” I asked.

  He snorted. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that. He does love us, though. You too, if you’d come to your senses. That’s why he’s helping us claim our birthright.”

  “Your birthright as a nephilim?” I asked.

  “I’m talking about heaven. These holy pricks would rather see us dead than walking those hallowed halls. We’re the perfect melding of God’s greatest creations and they’re the ones still holding the keys. That doesn’t piss you off? The way they treat you, like you’ve got some kind of disease?”

  It did, but I liked to think it was more their problem than mine. And they weren’t all like that. “Hadn’t noticed.”

  “Right,” he said, flashing a weak smile. “Well, don’t worry about it. The Coming will change everything.”

  I hadn’t heard the phrase since I read it scrawled in blood across the apartment wall during the first attack. “The Coming? That was Rifion’s plan. He wanted to make his own heaven on earth, complete with empowered nephilim for angels. You guys still working that plan?”

  He shook his head. “Rifion didn’t know Jack-shit. He was a punk. Believed his own press. The Coming is the way—the promise. When the children of perdition come
into their power and devour the usurpers of their birthright.”

  “Is that right? Wow, dream big.” Clearly hanging upside down had not done the guy any good.

  “Whatever.” He worked another hard swallow. “Ask him. He knows. They all know we can do it. Why do you think they’re freaking out so much?”

  “Enough.” Fred’s tone was sharp, but he didn’t yell. “The gibborim is stalling. If you are not going to extract the information we need, Emma Jane, step aside and allow me.”

  “Emma Jane? That’s your name?” the guy asked, his body tensing.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  His gaze flicked from me to Fred and back again and then he shook his head, slouching. “Nothing.”

  Fred flicked a finger at the gibborim and a fresh cut sliced across his cheek from ear to chin. The guy jerked, grimacing, but otherwise didn’t make a peep.

  “Answer the question,” Fred said and flicked his finger again, opening a matching wound on the man’s other cheek. “What do you know about this woman? Why did you ask her name?”

  The angel raised a finger, but the guy stiffened. “Wait. Okay—okay. We were told not to touch her. That’s all. She’s not to be hurt.”

  “Why?” Not that I was complaining. But why would a demon or a Fallen want to protect me? There’d only been one other time when a Fallen had even shown the slightest hesitation in attacking me. But what would the CEO of the Bedford Company have to do with the gibborim and the attacks on magisters?

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Fred flicked his finger again and a quick line of blood sliced up his neck to his chin.

  “Ow! I don’t know—I swear,” he said. “I figured maybe she was a great fighter or something. They want her on our side. I don’t know why.”

  “Who told you not to hurt me?” I asked. “Was it Bariel?”

  His eyes opened a fraction wider, but then he looked away to hide his expression. “Forget Bariel. You wanna know the truth? Help me kill the seraph and I’ll take you to a man who can change your world. He says he’s been waiting for you. Says you’re getting close, but he wants you to come to him on your own.”

  “What?” I closed my thoughts to Fred, my mind spinning. Was he talking about my father? Was I right? Was he behind all of this, the attacks, the sword thefts, the deaths? My stomach roiled. He was waiting for me?

  Fred sniffed, impatient. “Call him to us and Emma Jane will discuss her options.”

  “Right. You don’t call this guy,” the gibborim said. “He calls you. He’s a living God. And even if he would come, I’m not worthy of his personal aid. Besides, if there’s even a chance he could be at risk, it’s my duty to protect him—to trade my life for his safety.” He shook his head. “No. I’d rather die than risk betraying him.”

  “Very well.” Fred closed the distance before I could consider why he’d moved. He leaned down and pressed a finger to the gibborim’s forehead.

  The guy’s whole body bucked and his eyes rolled back in his head. He went limp and a second later, blood trickled from his ears, eyes, and nose.

  “What’d you do?”

  Fred looked at me like I was slow and drew his sword. “I ended him.”

  “Why?”

  “He was not going to call the demon,” he said. “Father only suffers a nephilim to live whose power is dormant or used in his service.”

  The angel looked back to the dead man at his feet, and with one graceful swing, sliced his head from his body.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Ensuring he cannot be healed,” Fred said. “My time among you has already lessened my strength or I’d have done it with far less commonality.”

  I knew the gibborim had just killed an illorum and his magister. If I’d walked in on the fight, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take his head myself. But I’d been talking to him. I’d looked into his eyes, heard him laugh. It was different now. “I could’ve changed his mind.”

  “I disagree,” the angel said, his tone as neutral as it had always been.

  “Well, I might have at least gotten a name. We could’ve found out if Bariel really is the one in charge, or if there’s someone else. Someone stronger,” I said, my mind blocked to Fred as my thoughts turned to my angelic father and his possible connection to everything.

  Fred seemed to consider that for a moment then shrugged. “Perhaps. But it no longer matters. The gibborim already shared vital information that will turn the tide in these attacks.”

  “What information?”

  “That you are not to be touched,” he said. “You will be our secret weapon. For whatever reason, they want you to join them. We will use that desire to lure them to us.”

  “Right. I don’t think so.” I hated that he’d used me once already. He was crazy if he really thought I’d willingly let him do it again. “Besides, how were you planning on luring them, anyway?”

  “I believe if they think you are at risk, they will come to save you,” he said.

  “Assuming they want me badly enough to rescue me, they’d have to think I was about to die.”

  He leveled his sword at my neck. “Precisely.”

  My sword was in my hand before I realized I’d even reached for it. “You’re not really going to try to kill me?”

  “I must,” he said, like it should be obvious. “If they do not truly believe you are at risk, they will not come.”

  He swung, and I moved to block, clashing metal against metal. He tried again, striking hard, driving me back with each blow. He really was trying to kill me.

  Fred spun, his sword building momentum as it whipped around. Anger surged from deep inside me and I met his blade with my own. The impact rattled down my arms, vibrating through my bones. Ignoring the pain, I crouched, sweeping his legs with a lightning-quick kick.

  The tall angel dropped hard, his dark glasses flying off as his head snapped back, smacking against the solid dirt road. Fred had lost some of his power and speed since he’d started following me around but I still had only a fraction of an instant to bring the point of my sword to his neck. He froze, anger narrowing his white blue eyes, flaring his nostrils.

  A subtle shift of his muscles, too slight for a human to have noticed, told me he was going to make a move. I was ready.

  “Fraciel!”

  I looked up with Fred to see Eli standing at his head in front of me, sword in hand.

  “What are you thinking?” My ex-magister was furious. Hell, I was too. I pressed my sword so the point dented the pale skin of Fred’s neck.

  “I was thinking about the safety of my brothers.” Fred swallowed, the roll of his Adam’s apple forcing my blade to slice a fine red line. I didn’t much care. “One life to save millions.”

  “One life, no less precious than all the others,” Eli said.

  “Not this life, not hers.” Fred shifted his gaze to me and faster than I could react…he moved, getting to his feet to stand beside Eli. I stumbled forward, my sword point gouging a narrow hole into the hard road.

  “Her value will be realized by playing bait to the fiend who hunts our brothers,” Fred said.

  “It is not for you to decide how her life will be used in His service.” Eli growled, his hand tight around the hilt of his sword. He stepped closer to Fred. “Your thoughts were only of the gibborim and their demon master. You had no qualms against mortally wounding Emma Jane, if necessary, to lure them to you.”

  Fred sniffed a haughty breath. “No, I did not. If her death brought an end to the attacks on the righteous, then it would be an acceptable trade.”

  “Not for her,” Eli said. “And not for me.”

  Fred glanced down the narrow alley in one direction and then the other. The gleaming blade of his sword vanished, and he settled the hilt in an invisible sheath on his hip before it too disappeared. “Your loyalties are growing suspect, brother. You would be wise to search your logic and reason before you go too far and it is your neck at the end of an illorum’
s sword.”

  He vanished before Eli could respond, not that I was sure he had a response. Eli sheathed his sword and turned to face me.

  “Thanks for the back up,” I said, putting away my own weapon. “But I had it handled.”

  “Is that how you saw it?”

  I might have taken the question as sarcasm if not for his worried expression. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  “Agree to disagree,” I said glancing down at the lifeless body and then back in the direction where we’d left the dead illorum. “We should do something about these guys. Let their families know…collect the bodies. Fred was just planning to leave them. No cover up—nothing—just like the people on the bus.”

  “Come with me,” Eli blurted, clearly not listening to a word I’d said.

  “Okay, but can you help me with this first?”

  “No.” He threw an arm around my waist and jerked me hard against him. “We have to go…now.”

  And we did.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When we stopped and the world came into focus again, I shoved at Eli’s chest, pushing myself out of his arms. “What the hell, Eli? I feel like I just got kidnapped. You could’ve warned me. Or asked. I was trying to tell you I didn’t want to leave those guys there.”

  He reached for me, but then stopped himself with a frustrated exhale, hands fisting for an instant before dropping to his sides. “I’m sorry, Emma Jane. There was no time to waste. I relayed your concerns about the bodies before we left. They will be cared for.”

  I folded my arms, stubbornly trying to hold onto my annoyance. It was pointless. “Where are we?”

  He watched me walk toward the opened French doors before he answered. “Positano, Italy.”

  I stepped onto the balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The sun was just rising, lightening the early morning sky. Streetlights still twinkled through the maze of colorful houses that climbed the mountainside and spilled down to the sea. Far below, waves rushed over pebbled beaches and crashed against the stony cliffs. The sweet smell of blooming bougainvillea mixed with the crisp sea air scenting the breeze.