by Nic Widhalm
“Beautiful,” he breathed.
“I thought you’d appreciate it,” the General said, joining the priest. “Our greatest minds have studied these writings for over a thousand years. We still don’t fully understand them.”
Valdis paid no attention to the old man as he continued to run his hands up and down the stone wall.
“What does it say?” Jackie asked.
“It tells the history of the world,” Mary answered, her eyes darting back and forth between Valdis and the General. “First, the war in heaven, then the uprising led by the Morning Star, and finally his execution and the disappearance of the Sword of Fire.”
Jackie wrinkled her brow. “I thought angels became human when they needed to heal? Isn’t that the whole point? Why didn’t Lucifer just…you know…” She gestured at her body. “Get some flesh?”
The General shook his head, his single eye glued to Valdis as the priest continued to run his hands over the wall. “It wouldn’t have worked,” he said. “If an angel’s killed in the beyond it’s final. They can only join the path of the Apkallu if their injury isn’t serious enough to take their life. And besides, even were that not the case and they could incarnate after death, the execution of Lord Lucifer was before the Grigori learned the secret of creating Apkallu. When Gavri’el ended the life of the Morning Star it was permanent.”
“So you guys sit in these tunnels…what? Worshiping a dead angel?”
“So ignorant,” Mary sniffed. “You haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on, and you presume to tell us our lives are a waste? Do you have any idea what the Apkallu are planning? What they would do if the Order of Venus didn’t spend every free second trying to stop them? Why do you think Lucifer was trying to lead a rebellion in the first place?”
“You said it yourself, he wanted pow—”
“Here!” Valdis suddenly cried, pointing excitedly at a section of the wall. “I knew it looked familiar.” He stretched forward until his nose practically scraped the stone, motioning for Eli to bring the flashlight closer.
“What?” The General said, his rusty voice rising with excitement. “What did you find?”
Valdis motioned at the wall, directing the group’s attention to a small section toward the bottom. There, surrounded by lines of tightly packed script, was a large triangle vivisected by three smaller ones.
“I’ve seen that before,” Jackie said softly.
“Hunter Friskin’s sigil,” said Mary.
“This inscription has been a matter of debate for centuries,” The General spoke up. “None of our scholars are certain what it means.”
“That’s because they didn’t have my father,” Valdis said, smiling to himself.
Through the eye of memory he saw himself open the box, certain his father had left for the day. He had burned with curiosity as he threw open the lid that hot summer day. Inside had been a scroll of papyrus, ancient and close to falling apart. Valdis had removed it with care, noting how the timeworn strands rubbed his fingers, leaving bits of dust and whisper-thin fibers.
He had opened the scroll, naturally, never questioning whether it was safe, whether his father would know. So young, Valdis remembered. Inside, he’d seen many things. One was the symbol which now drew his attention.
He traced his finger along its sharp edges and said with certainty, “A new Seraphim.”
“Impossible,” the General said immediately.
“Very funny,” said Mary.
Eli just laughed, his voice high and tinny in the long corridor.
Valdis ignored them and pointed to the first of the small triangles. “First choir.” Letting his finger fall to the next, “Second choir,” and finally, reaching the last, “Third choir. And connecting them all…Seraphim,” he jabbed his finger at the largest triangle that bisected the other three. “Created to rule all orders. Not of them, but above them. Like I said—a new Seraphim.”
“There are only three,” Eli’s said, his laughter fading. “Lucifer, Michael and Gabriel. And only God can make a new angel.”
“Then I suggest you ask God,” Valdis stepped back from the wall. “Or whomever left these markings,” and in his mind, but unspoken: And whomever left the same writing in Saint Catherine's.
Silence fell on the small group. The priest was proud, glowing with his discovery and pleased beyond measure to have succeeded where generations of linguists and historians had failed before him.
It was probably for that reason that Valdis missed seeing the shadows detach from the walls.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The first thing she thought was, I found him.
Immediately following was, so have they.
Karen watched from across the street as a group of stumbling students staggered toward the door of the industrial complex, banging loudly on the steel door. She’d been watching the same song and dance for the last twelve hours and knew the pattern well: the front screen of the entrance would slide open, the bouncer would ask a series of questions—Karen couldn’t hear them, but the answers had to be simple or the idiots would never make it through—and voila, admittance granted.
Simple, elegant in its way, and easy to fake. Case in point—the group of “stumbling students,” weren’t students at all. They were Adonai. Which meant Karen wasn’t the only one who’d tracked the Power.
She could make it in before the Adonai, that wasn’t the problem. Karen was tired, but her gift still had enough spark to get her through the door and into whatever lay beyond. The real problem was what she’d do once she made it inside.
Karen had spent the previous twenty-four hours circumventing the globe. By her tally she had crossed the myriad places of the Earth a thousand times. Her feet were very, very tired.
And in that time she had failed to find a single hair from Hunter Friskin.
Something was hiding him. Maybe it was the Elohim, maybe it was the Adonai—or maybe it was something else entirely.
Karen should have been able to close her eyes and point to Hunter. It took years for the connection between a newly christened Apkallu and the one who discovered him to wear off. The bond was more than physical; it was a spiritual umbilical cord designed by the Grigori to ensure the safety of the awakened angel. It was a dangerous world for one who possessed angelic gifts and didn’t know how to use them. An unfortunate example being the nurse Friskin had accidentally killed.
It should have been easier than this. Hash and Karen had both expected the Arch to find Friskin within a few hours. That was the simple part. Find Hunter, convince him to follow her to a safe house, rendezvous with Hash, and then plan their next move. She wasn’t sure what that would be, but hopefully Hash had come up with something by now. The Domination was a strategist of the highest order, able to predict the outcome of any battle to within ninety percent certainty. Karen didn’t exactly trust him—she had been on the other side of the Elohim for far too long—but if anyone could figure a way out of this mess, it was Hash.
She continued studying the entrance to the warehouse, the dry, dusty smell of the city stinging her nose. Karen had watched over a hundred different groups of people enter this building, almost all of which had been party goers—stumbling, vomiting, obnoxious youths looking for an excuse to grind on each other. That is, until one of her surveys around the world showed her someone else.
Karen had almost missed it. The two men had stood at the door to the building, older than the kids Karen had seen the last nine-hundred-and-ninety times she had crossed this way, but nothing unusual enough to catch her attention. At least, under normal circumstances. But she’d had a premonition that Hunter might have landed in Jerusalem, so she slowed down and took a second look. And that’s when she saw the card the two men flashed at the bouncer: a five-pointed star halved by a vertical line.
The Order of Venus.
It was supposed to be a legend, a myth created by Apkallu to scare acolytes. Karen remembered seeing the symbol of the alleged Order over a decade a
go, when her mentor had first told her the story. A collection of humans who’d gathered the knowledge of the Apkallu into one place. Mortals who knew the history of the angels, who watched their battles from afar and made secret plans. The stuff of children’s stories.
But after the last two days Karen had come to believe in children’s tales. First the questions about Bath, then the discovery of the agioi at Saint Catherine's…her foundations were crumbling. If a Power could ignore a command from a superior, maybe the world wasn’t as solid as Karen had always thought. Maybe the Order was more than a rumor.
Things still didn’t add up, though. It would take more than a bunch of humans with knowledge of the Apkallu to hide Hunter. It would take someone from the first choir itself.
Karen thought back to Bath telling her to forget Friskin, to abandon him to the fate he had chosen. Completely out of character for the Cherubim. And if Hash was right, that the leaders of the Elohim and Adonai were in fact working together, hiding Hunter from Karen’s sight…
It was getting harder and harder to ignore the idea that Bath had betrayed them.
Karen grit her teeth and rose from her position. Time to get off the pot. She waited until the Adonai were almost through the entrance and blurred into motion.
One. She was through the door, past the enormous dance floor.
Two. Down the corridor. It split into three tunnels, then split again, then again, and again.
Three. She went down each intersection. Twice
Four. Back outside, and under the cover of darkness again.
Four seconds. She had seen everything she needed. Karen shivered, realizing for the first time what she was truly up against. There was more to the Order of Venus than she had ever expected.
Was the Power really worth it? She had only known Hunter for a handful of days. There had been that one moment, though, sitting in a small room, reminiscing over their first awakenings. Karen remembered the gentleness in his eyes when she told him about the first time she blurred. He was so young, ignorant to Apkallu culture, completely unaware what a big confession that was.
In this moment she had only two choices: stay, and commit herself to Hunter’s cause, heart and soul; or flee, return to the mansion and hope Bath was in a forgiving mood. The Cherubim knew Karen liked to take vacations here and there, she could still go back. It wasn’t too late.
In her mind she saw Hunter’s tentative smile, the way his eyes softened when he looked at her. The way he laid his hand on hers, hearing her story for the first time.
Karen made her decision.
Jackie had only a moment to think, aren’t those walls moving? before the single beam from the flashlight shut off and the corridor was plunged into darkness. A woman screamed, a piercing, terrified screech. Jackie thought it might be Mary.
“Everyone calm down, they’re not here to hurt us,” the General’s gruff voice cut through Mary’s frightened cries.
A pair of hands clamped down on Jackie’s shoulders, pulling her arms roughly behind her. Without thought her body reacted. Hunching and pulling her shoulders forward, Jackie slipped under her attacker and struck out blindly, her foot connecting against the stranger’s shin. She heard a strangled “Umf!” but didn’t stop to investigate.
Jackie dropped to the ground, reducing her profile in case there was gunfire. Groping blindly across the floor, she came in contact with another set of legs, long with a delicate calf. Jackie hooked her hands around the legs and pulled, smiling when she heard a high pitched yelp accompanied by a thump.
“Stop it, stop it everyone!” The General cried. “No one is to be hurt! Mika’il you promised.”
That bastard betrayed us. He led us along the whole time, just waiting for the Apkallu could get here.
No time to think. If it was really Mika’il it wasn’t going to be a gunfight, so Jackie pushed herself off the floor. She made out the light breathing of someone directly to her left, and taking a chance, threw a straight jab. Some residue of luck must have stayed with her, because her fist sank into a gut and an explosion of breath followed.
Move your ass, girl. Move!
Jackie’s internal compass had kept track during the fight, and she guessed the exit to the corridor was still behind her. The priest was probably huddling against the wall like last time—nothing as predictable as a coward—so all she had to do was find his cassock and make a run for—
Wind struck Jackie’s face, the sudden gust forcing her back a step. She instinctively brought her hands up to ward off the attack, but there was nothing there. The wind buffeted her again, this time from behind, and sent her staggering across the floor. Then again on her side, and again across the face. She struck out blindly, and her fist met stone. She yelped as her knuckles cracked against the wall, a wave of pain shooting up her arm.
Broken, her screaming nerves told her, but adrenaline made Jackie turn and strike again. Her blow swished through the air, falling on nothing.
The wind suddenly doubled, buffeting Jackie on both sides, and then doubled again and again. Jackie swung freely, sobbing in pain, her face wet with tears, but her hands found only empty air. Finally, the detective collapsed against a wall, her good hand curled tightly around her head. She was too battered and sore to feel shame at the childish gesture.
“Enough,” a female voice snapped, and the wind ceased. Opening her eyes, Jackie saw a thin light illuminate the tunnel. It came from a small lantern carried by a figure garbed in shadow. There were other shapes that swam in and out of the lantern light, but Jackie couldn’t see any faces. Tears streamed unbidden down her face as she stared defiantly at the figures.
“Amazing. Child, if you were Apkallu you would stand high among us,” the female voice said. “What a waste.”
A figure stepped into the light, and Jackie immediately recognized the straggly beard and eye patch. The General.
“You promised, Mika’il,” the General said. “Just the Nephilim and his friend—my people aren’t—”
“I know what I promised,” Mika’il’s voice snapped. Jackie still couldn’t make out her face, but the voice seemed to come from a figure standing next to the lantern. “You don’t speak to me human, not like that. Not ever.”
The General scurried to the edge of the light, his head bowed. “Apologies, mistress. If you’ll allow it,” his head raised, his posture tensed, “I will take my people and go.”
Mika’il sniffed. “Absolutely not. The blasphemies of your people,” Mika’il stepped forward and grabbed a shadowed arm, dragging its owner into the lantern light, “have been ignored for far too long. I believe a purging is in order.” Mika’il’s hand lifted from the arm and fastened around its owner’s neck. As her eyes adjusted to the light, Jackie suddenly recognized the figure.
Mary’s frightened face swam into view. In the weak light it was shaded with shadow and grime, but her eyes shone with terror. They were fixed firmly on Mika’il’s arm. “Please,” she begged, her voice raw from the Seraphim’s grip. “We are just scholars. We didn’t mean any—”
A crack sounded and Mary slumped to the ground, falling only a few inches from where Jackie crouched. The General cried out and rushed to the fallen woman, but from where Jackie sat she could tell it was too late—the woman, the Captain of the Order of Venus, was dead.
“Kill the rest,” Mika’il said.
Jackie looked down the wall and saw Valdis pressed against the stone. She couldn’t make out his face, but the old man’s hunched figure was unmistakable. To her left was the golden hair of Eli, his face close enough that Jackie was almost burned by the fire in his eyes. Eli’s mouth was pressed in a tight line, his fists clenched at his sides as he watched the General cradle Mary’s twisted neck.
Jackie tensed, ready to grab the priest and make a run for it, but a soft voice stopped her. “They might be useful,” the voice said. “Especially the priest.” A slim, male figure stepped out of the darkness and into the light. He smiled at the detective. Even with the
shadows obscuring most of his olive-toned skin, Jackie recognized the Apkallu.
Bath.
“Keep them if you want, they’re useless to me,” Mika’il said, turning from the humans.
Two sets of arms grabbed Jackie on either side and lifted her to her feet. Another figure pushed Eli forward, one arm restraining his wrist, and farther down the wall the priest was collected by a hulking shape and shoved down the hallway. Trying to keep her footing, each step twisting her broken fingers like an iron vice, Jackie stumbled along the corridor behind the faint outlines of Bath and the rest of Mika’il’s group. Behind her, Mary’s lifeless body faded into shadow.
“Can you remember anything of the beyond, Herchel?”
Hunter lowered his tea slowly, giving himself a moment to think. “Not really,” he said.
“Have you ever tried?”
Hunter—the beginning of a monster headache baring down like a freight train—did his best not to scream at the Throne. Why can’t anyone just give me a straight answer? Riddle after riddle. He took a deep breath and looked inward, trying to remember a time before remembering. How did you recall something before you were born?
Hunter remembered throwing the ball with his father in their backyard. The grass brown and dry, the peach tree taking up most of the tiny yard, refusing to bloom even in perfect weather. Hunter tried to go back further, and had the barest impression of hands holding him, caressing him, carrying him from a room into something else.
The hospital. Grimacing, he tried to go back further, but hit a wall. There was nothing. Nothing beyond that faint impression of being held. So, squeezing his eyes shut, Hunter began the exercise to achieve paradox.
His head whipped back as Oriphiel’s hand struck his cheek.
“What the—?
“No. Not like that,” The Throne crossed her arms, her fingers gently stroking her own back. “You aren’t like those morons who call themselves Elohim and Adonai. You don’t need their tricks.”