The Rise of Babylon

by G. A. Rael

  He was quiet for a moment. Long enough to give her hope that he might come clean and reveal that it was all just a misunderstanding and that he had a perfectly valid reason for lying to her about being in New York. A reason that didn’t involve another woman. “You know how it is with these sharks. Roger is hardly giving me time to think between all the restaurants and shows. We're at a casino right now actually. Sorry about all the noise."

  "No, I shouldn't have called. Guess I just wanted to hear your voice," she said hoarsely.

  "I'm glad you did, darling. I'd give anything to have you here with me."

  If it had sounded like a lie, Jordan thought that might have been more tolerable. It was the fact that he said it with the same sincerity and enthusiasm with which he said so many of the other wonderful things their relationship was built on that hurt unbearably. Things like, “I love you.”

  "Enjoy yourself. We can always go another time," she said, hoping her voice wasn't trembling as badly as her hands.

  "Are you alright?" he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. "You sound ill."

  "I'm fine. It’s just a bug."

  "Are you sure? If you need me to come home —”

  "No," she said more forcefully than she would have liked. "I'm fine, really. Mrs. Herrin is making me soup and I'll go to Darren if it gets worse."

  "You know how I feel about you having a vet as your primary care doctor," he muttered, "but as long as you call me if anything changes. I mean it, I can be there in the blink of an eye."

  "I will," she promised. "I should let you go."

  "I love you, Jordan. "

  She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. "I love you, too. Bye."

  Jordan hung up, blind with a flurry of emotions she didn't quite understand herself. She was angry, of course, but more than that, she couldn't understand how stupid she had been. All the signs were there. Their first date, meeting in a club. His frequent trips to the City. The sporadic if passionate sex. His bizarre habit of organization. It would take a serial killer’s precision to pull off a double life, after all. It looked like he was just a very different kind of lady killer than the rest of the town imagined.

  Now she also understood why he’d taken the news about her other consorts with a grain of salt. Of course he didn’t expect her to be with him exclusively. He was nothing if not “fair.”

  Her hand was still shaking as she dialed Darren's number. When she looked across the street, she could see that his light was still off, but desperation outweighed her guilt.

  After what seemed like a dozen rings, he finally picked up.

  "The hell do you want, Wylde? It's five in the fucking morning."

  "It's Jordan actually," she said, cringing at how small and pathetic she sounded. She had forgotten how loud Angry Darren could be. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have —”

  "Whoa, no, wait," he said, his tone changing instantly. "It's fine, but why are you calling from Chase’s phone? I would've picked up sooner if I'd known it was you."

  "I uh, don't have my cell phone with me."

  "Where is it?"

  "Somewhere in the forest, I think."

  "The forest?" His exclamation was followed by the rustling of sheets. "What were you doing out in the forest this early? Are you hurt? You sound like you've been crying. Where's Chase?”

  Jordan struggled for a moment to process all the questions. "He's in New York and I'm fine. Mostly. I think I sprained my ankle, could you —?”

  "Don't. Move."

  The dial tone droned and it seemed like Jordan had barely placed the phone back in its cradle before someone was pounding at the door. "Just a minute," she called, hopping over to the door as quickly as she could without breaking her other leg. When she opened the door, Darren almost bowled her over.

  "What happened?" he demanded, taking her by the shoulders as he looked her up and down, picking at the corner of the bandage on her chest. "Were you attacked?"

  She hesitated. "It's complicated, and I'll tell you everything, but can we please go back to your place?" she asked, hugging herself as she looked around Chase’s spacious house. "I don't really want to be here right now."

  Darren frowned and watched her for a moment before scooping her up into his arms without a word.

  “This looks weird," she protested.

  He ignored her and the looks they were getting as he carried her into his clinic. It was dark until he turned on the overhead fluorescent lights and placed her on one of the examination tables.

  "I'm not a poodle, Darren."

  "You are today. Unless you'd like me to take you to the hospital."

  She sighed in resignation. That threat was always enough to turn her into a model patient.

  "Put your foot out," he ordered. She obeyed as he carefully unwrapped the bandage, revealing a small splint made out of a peeled twig underneath. "Whoever did this has had some training in field medicine," he mused.

  "Is it sprained?" she asked warily.

  "I'd say it's broken from all the swelling and bruising. I'll have to do an X-ray to be sure."

  "But it doesn't hurt that bad," she insisted.

  "Sprains are usually more painful than a break. First, I want to take a look at this," he said, hesitating for a moment as if to give her a chance to object before he peeled off the bandage on her chest. He frowned at the sight of the seam-like slice the demon's invisible claws had left starting at her shoulder and ending at her collarbone. The wound had been cleaned and stopped bleeding long ago, but the bandage was still bloody. Darren frowned at the section of her blouse that had been cut open.

  “Did you do this?”

  She shook her head. The low growl that erupted from Darren's chest made her jolt.

  He turned away for a moment and raked his hands through his hair, almost like he was just trying to keep them busy. When he turned back to her, barely contained anger shone in his eyes. He snatched a white coat off a hook on the wall and draped it over her.

  “Jordan, if something happened to you out there, I need to know. I won't make you go to the hospital, but I do need to make sure that you're okay."

  "No, nothing like that happened,” she said quickly. “I mean, I think it would have if the wolf hadn’t shown up when it did, but… I’m okay.”

  "The wolf?" He frowned, looking at her like she was babbling gibberish. Then again, maybe she was. If he only knew that the phone call with Chase had her shaken up far more than anything that had happened in those woods. He disappeared for a moment and brought her a bottle of water, which she took gratefully. "Just tell me what happened from the beginning, alright?" He was almost straining to be soothing, but his body language revealed the truth. He was full of rage and ready to find someone to pour it out on.

  "Okay," Jordan said, taking a deep breath. Time to come clean. She didn’t have the stomach for any more deception. "But I'll have to start with the night of the party.”

  Chapter 19

  Darren

  "So let me get this straight," Darren said, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off the pulsing headache that was forming between his eyes. Jordan was capable of easing all his pain with a single glance with one notable exception—the inevitable migraine he developed from whatever irrational, stubborn or damn near suicidally reckless thing she had done or said most recently. “Chase locked you in a bank vault, but a giant werewolf—without a doubt the same one that killed five people that very night—broke in to attack you, and you didn't think to mention it to anyone?"

  She opened her mouth to defend herself, but he continued, "And then, after knowing that thing was out there, you thought it would be a fine idea to just go for a late night stroll in the woods without telling anyone where you'd be? Oh, and you mouthed off to a demon before the aforementioned werewolf tore him to bits and you just mysteriously wound up safe and sound in Chase’s house."

  Jordan gulped. "That's about the gist of it."

  The dull ache had spread out through his forehead and h
is temples and no amount of pressure was making it go away. To be fair, he couldn't blame Jordan for all of it. At least some of the pain had to be from withdrawal. Hermes had been gone for a full month now, which meant no Soylent Green milkshakes. In fact, Jordan and Samael were the only two people he could be around lately without wanting to crack open their skulls. Whether it was because Jordan was a witch or because Samael was right and he was indeed bound to protect her, he didn't care. Either way, he was grateful.

  "You can't keep doing this," he said, placing a fresh cup of coffee in front of her. They had moved upstairs so he could give her a T-shirt to change into and a more comfortable place to prop up her leg now that it had been X-rayed and casted.

  "Doing what?"

  "Acting like you're not the hot topic among the heavenly host and hell's angels," he replied. "You know I'm the last person who wants to acknowledge this shit, but when it's right in front of you with a loaded gun, you can't just act like it doesn't exist."

  "I know it was stupid to go into the woods," she muttered.

  "That's not all I'm talking about. You should have told me about the wolf the night it happened. Or Samael. Hell, even Chase. How are we supposed to protect you if we don't even know what's out there?"

  "That's just it. I don't want you to have to protect me," she muttered, blowing into her mug. "You already died because of me, Samael fell and Chase…” She trailed off. "I'm tired of the people I love getting hurt trying to clean up my messes."

  "I'm sorry, but that's not your call to make," he said, gruffer than he intended. "You didn't make Hank Thomas put a gun to my head. Samael chose to fall and maybe he did it for you, but he made the choice himself. As for Chase, he —” He cut himself off before he could say something he'd regret. He knew he was being a hypocrite by not telling her about Chase’s supernatural secret when he had just scolded her for not telling him about the wolf, but he convinced himself it was different. After all, if Darren had any reason to believe Chase was a danger to her after all this time, he'd be dead. "He loves you, I can say that much."

  "At least someone can." Her voice broke only slightly, but it was enough.

  Darren sat beside her on the couch and placed a hand on the blanket covering her legs. "Did he do something? Are you guys fighting?”

  "He didn't do anything," she said in a clipped tone that discouraged further questioning. "He's just not the man I thought he was, that's all."

  If you only knew, he thought. "What do you mean?" It was hard to sound neutral when he’d been preaching the “Chase is a bodysnatcher” gospel for the better part of two decades.

  "The engagement was a mistake,” she said shakily. Darren was too stunned by her words to fully understand them at first. When she kept going, he felt even more like he’d woken up in a different reality. “It started as a misunderstanding. Did you know I said yes to him by accident?" Her short laugh could have easily been a sob.

  "No," he said carefully. Now the look on her face during their public engagement made a bit more sense. "I didn't."

  "I stayed with him because God knows why. I mean, it only started because I needed a distraction after I found out about what you told Allison," she murmured.

  Darren's chest tightened. He told himself this was the wrong time, but a little voice in the back of his mind argued that he might never get another. "About that, Jordan. I never told Allison anything you told me in confidence. I never told anyone. When I found out what she said to you that night at Raymond's, I ended it.”

  The words were out of the gate before he could fully realize the consequences. The look of hope shining in her eyes gave him the answer to the question that had remained unanswered since the party. Some part of her, however small, still loved him.

  The expression of relief turned to confusion. "If you didn't tell her I was a virgin when we got together, then who did?"

  Darren knew he didn't have a heartbeat, but sometimes he could swear he felt it racing. Don't do it. This is a mistake. She shouldn't find out this way.

  The voice was right. It was a horrible, selfish, juvenile shot to take, especially since her relationship with Chase was already in turmoil. The man she deserved would never stoop so low.

  “Chase did.”

  The look of anguish on Jordan's face robbed him of even a second's vindication.

  "What?" Her voice was like a child's, fragile and lost with no sense of direction.

  He tried to swallow but the knot in his throat wouldn't budge. "It was just something Allison said. She was pissed, it's probably not even true."

  His attempt at backpedaling were futile. Tears were streaming down her face and her shoulders shook faintly as she hugged herself. Darren might not have been the cause of those tears, but he knew he was the one who had made them fall.

  “Jordan,” he said helplessly, touching her shoulder. Like a house of cards, she collapsed against his chest and sobbed uncontrollably. As he held her in his arms and stroked her soft hair, he developed a newfound appreciation of what it really meant to be careful what you wish for. Now that he had it, he would have done anything to put things back the way they were.

  He knew then that Samael was right. The thing that had risen from the dead was not Darren St. Clair. He would gladly trade the grief-stricken woman in his arms for the one who’d found solace in the arms of his rival.

  Jordan fell asleep in his arms, either because she had exhausted her tears or her energy. He laid her gently back on the couch and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. He crept from the apartment as quietly as he could with his stiff movements and went downstairs to open the clinic.

  Dealing with the human owners of his patients was more difficult than ever thanks to his withdrawal, but it was a welcome distraction from the horrible thing he had done. The guilt gnawing at him almost made him too nauseous to indulge vivid fantasies or ripping apart the people he had grown up with. Or at least, that was what he told himself.

  Fortunately, he only had a few patients that day. A couple of booster shots, a yearly exam and a Cocker Spaniel that had swallowed the greater portion of an action figure. All in all, it was a mundane day. He closed up shop a bit early, since everyone in town knew he was available after hours for an emergency anyway. Even if some of them did have an interesting idea of what an emergency was.

  Darren headed across the street and ordered a couple of vegetarian dishes so Jordan could eat something when she woke up. When he made it back to his apartment, she was already sitting up and rubbing her bloodshot eyes.

  "Hey," he said, arranging the containers on the coffee table. "Thought you could use some food."

  Her eyes were still leaking and he realized she had been crying in her sleep. "That's really sweet, but I'm not hungry."

  "Come on, it's all vegetarian. I think," he said, eying what he was pretty sure was tofu. "You had a rough night, you need to keep your strength up."

  She reluctantly reached for an egg roll, eying it like it was going to bite her before she took a small bite. She swallowed and gave a forced smile. "It's good. Thanks."

  He knew she was only doing it to humor him, but all that mattered was that she was eating. She looked out the window and as she raised her arms above her head to stretch, he tried not to pay attention to the way the thin fabric pulled against her breasts. "What time is it?"

  "A little after six," he replied. "You were kind of wiped out."

  "Yeah," she said, sitting up all the way, sweeping the residual tears away from her eyes. "I'm sorry about all that."

  "You have nothing to apologize for." He on the other hand...

  She kept staring out the window for a moment before looking back at him. "Where's Sam?”

  "Uh, about that," he said, clearing his throat. Her eyes widened, as if she was afraid he was about to drop another bomb on her. "He left town, just for a little while. He'll be back."

  "Why did he leave?"

  "Angel errands?"

  Her eyes narrowed mistrustfully. "I
'm not a child, Darren. If you want me to be honest with you, be honest with me."

  “Fair enough. He went to find Hermes.”

  "Shit."

  "He'll be fine, Jordan. He is an archangel."

  "It's not what he is that worries me, it's what Hermes isn't," she muttered.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  She pulled her knees to her chest and laid her head on them. The blanket slipped off her thigh just enough to reveal the sheer pink fabric beneath his T-shirt. He swallowed hard and forced himself to hold eye contact. Now was not the time for remembering how smooth her bare skin felt against his own.

  "The demon who attacked me in the woods kept implying that Hermes isn't really a demon. At least, not a normal one."

  "The key word there is ‘demon,’ Jordan. They lie. He was probably just trying to get in your head."

  "What did he have to gain from lying to me?" she asked. "He was just going to kill me once he was done using me."

  Her words stirred an all too familiar rage inside him. The fact that the would-be perpetrator was a thousand little pieces in a werewolf's stomach somewhere did little to quell it. He crossed his arms, finding comfort in the illusion of restraint. "Still. You saw how many of those angels Sam took out on his own. I'm sure he can handle Hermes.”

  "I hope so," she said quietly.

  "You don't want him back, do you?" Darren asked, frowning. “Hermes, I mean.”

  She shrugged listlessly. "If he wanted to be here, he would be. He wouldn't have left when we needed him."

  "Maybe it's not that black and white," he said carefully.

  She laughed. "Since when?"

  "I'm a hardcore atheist rooming with a former archangel and in love with a witch. Black and white went out the window a long time ago."

  It took him a moment to make sense of the look of shock on her face. When he realized the words that had slipped out of his mouth, he struggled for a way to reel the words back in. "I shouldn't have said that. What I meant was —”

  Before he could come up with an explanation, Jordan wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hard. He found himself returning the kiss before he could really think about what he was doing. It wasn't safe, he knew that. He was only beginning to come to terms with his own strength and she seemed more fragile now than ever.