Sins of Angels (The Complete Collection)

by Larkin, Matt

  He sat down beside her on the cot. “Lover? Are we still?” God, wouldn’t that have been the best. He sighed. “Look, lass. I know you want to change the universe, but our job is bigger than that. We’ve got to protect the universe. You can’t make things better unless we keep them from falling apart in the first place.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself? You’re just protecting humanity?”

  Yes. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Fine. Keep it up.”

  Och. “You think you’ve got all the bloody answers, don’t you?”

  She spun on him then. “No! But at least I’m willing to ask the questions. Not just take the status quo for granted.”

  “You want questions? Then how about this one. What does the Sefer say, Rach? Where is the Ark?”

  She snorted. “Like I’m going to tell you people that, Mac. Go space yourself.”

  He winced. He knew she didn’t mean it, but even he could feel the rage seeping off her—made all the worse because she knew how powerless she was.

  “Look, Rach. It’s for your own good, too. If you don’t cooperate, they’ll never let you go. You’re a Mizraim citizen. Tell us what we want to know, and you can go back to your life. Maybe we could even help get your job back at NRU. Anything’s possible.”

  She turned away and stared at the empty wall.

  A sudden chill rushed through him, a wave of wrath and disdain so profound it left him wobbly. Had she just projected that emotion into him?

  “Bloody void! You can’t even set aside your pride for your own wellbeing, can you?” He stormed out of the cell and slapped the buzzer to reactive the glass. Let her stew in there, then. Much as he wanted to help her, if she wouldn’t cooperate, what could he do?

  He stepped out of her line of sight and swore under his breath. If she wouldn’t help, maybe that friend of hers would. The ride back to the Logos had given him enough time to study up on Knight a little bit. Information was limited, but if you knew where to dig, there was some.

  He paused outside Knight’s cell. The man sat cross-legged beside his cot, staring straight out. He cocked his head to the side when David approached. Since there was no way he was stepping in there for a face-to-face, David only switched the intercom.

  “I’ve had time to do some reading, lately,” he said.

  “Not really interested in your hobbies.”

  He ignored Knight and hefted the tablet with Knight’s file displayed on it. “Ezekiel Knight, son of Gideon and Shahana Knight, both deceased. Raised as a ward of the state. The state of Gehenna. That must have been a charming childhood.”

  “Come in here and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Not likely. David almost wanted a rematch. Almost. But the man wasn’t interested in sparring. The Gehennan would clearly kill him, given the chance.

  “You’re the one who broke Rachel’s heart, huh?”

  What? Bloody void, he was interested in her. He’d known it the moment he saw the bugger on the Mazzaroth. David stilled his jaw, barely able to restrain his retort. Instead, he focused on the tablet. “Inducted into Gibborim training at a young age. Raised to be a killer among killers, with no hint of regular schooling or social interactions.”

  Knight glared at him.

  David shrugged. He supposed the background explained what an arse the man was. “And then, three years ago, discharged from the Gibborim without any explanation. All records of the event are sealed. Care to elaborate?”

  “Not really.”

  Fine. “So the ex-assassin turns mercenary, takes a number of dangerous jobs, leaving bodies in his wake. And somehow ends up working for Rachel Jordan, Angelologist. How did you find her?”

  “She was a delight.”

  Son of a bitch. David slapped the glass before he realized what he was doing.

  Knight smirked. “Warm and soft, in all the right places. The way she cooed when she was just on the edge of—”

  “Shut the fuck up, you blundering arse muncher!” David slapped the glass again.

  Knight’s smirk deepened and he shut his eyes.

  God, he was playing him. The little prick knew exactly what buttons to push. He was trying to get David to open the glass.

  Instead, David dropped his hands to his side and stood stock still for several heartbeats. Concentrate on the now. “Look. You’ve got no rights, you know that, lad? You’re not a citizen, and we don’t answer to your government. And even if we did, they seem to want to kill you. So either you’re going to cooperate with us, or you’re going to wind up hating life in short order. Follow me?”

  The man offered no response, didn’t even open his eyes.

  “Tell me what the Sefer says, and maybe we can reach a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “I didn’t translate it.”

  David shook his head. Fine.

  He’d tried.

  He made a special effort not to look at Rachel on his way out. But then, he just couldn’t help himself. She was still staring at the wall.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  And people believed in the Sentinels, much as they feared them. With the Vanishing, the Mizraim Empire rose and tried to reunite mankind. We believed they might succeed. We believed mankind might know peace. We forgot destruction is part of what allowed us to reach so far.

  The chair’s magnetic restraints dug into Rachel’s wrists and ankles. The Sentinel captain had probably over-tightened them on purpose. Jonathan Waller had a reputation for going to extraordinary lengths to protect his Empire. Rachel had done some digging into the man when David was assigned to his ship.

  Enough to know the man pacing before her was not someone who would give up easily. He scrubbed his beard, watching her from the corner of his eye each time he passed. Sentinels had dragged her into this circular interrogation chamber almost two hours ago, leaving her alone here as if it might intimidate her. When Waller finally showed up twenty minutes back, he said nothing, just watched her.

  Waller scratched his beard again and rounded on her. “Well, Jordan, I have a problem.”

  “Try shaving it off. Lice were a problem on Gehenna, too.”

  For a moment he sneered, leaned back as if shocked anyone could speak to him so. Then he stepped closer, seeming to dismiss her barb entirely. “I am a Sentinel captain, Jordan. I am charged with safeguarding the glorious Mizraim Empire against all threats, within and without. Anyone who stands in the way of that becomes a threat herself. I hope you follow me.”

  Rachel sighed and looked away. If she wasn’t willing to tell David about the Ark, she sure as void wouldn’t talk to Waller.

  For a moment, Waller stood there, still as a statue. When he spoke, his voice carried no emotion. “As you wish, Jordan. But understand, you will tell me what I want to know.” He tapped a comm on his forearm. “Suzuki.”

  A moment later the door opened. A woman came in and looked Rachel in the eyes. Regret, sadness flowed off her. And resignation. She injected something into Rachel’s neck, and almost immediately the room dimmed, everything becoming blurry. What was happening? What had he done to her?

  Drugs… Sentinels weren’t supposed to drug citizens. She had rights… She had…

  The woman left, and Waller ordered the lights dimmed. Only then did Rachel realize the entire wall of the chamber was a giant screen. It illuminated, displaying star clusters that might have been the Triangulum galaxy.

  “This is Asherah,” Waller said, and the screen zoomed in on a world with a purple atmosphere, charged with electrical storms. Waller’s voice was distorted, deep and resonating through her entire body. The drugs had affected her mind.

  Angels above, he was going to indoctrinate her. Sentinels did that? She thought only Redeemers stooped to mind control. She clenched her eyes, trying to hum a nursery rhyme through her mind. Anything to drown out his voice.

  Cold metal clamped over her eyes, and they were forced open. The chair spun, turning her to face Asherah as the camera zoome
d in deeper and deeper, revealing a putrid city. Men and women, if you could call them that, walked there. Some had mechanical arms, legs, faces. Cords and wires and metal and horror. The absolute mergence of man and machine. Cyborgs.

  The worst of all khapiru.

  The word screamed in her brain over and over.

  They violate the First Commandment.

  The camera zoomed in more and more, showing a glowing red cyber eye on a man. The man’s face turned into that of a demon.

  These weren’t her thoughts. He was using subliminal messages to interact with the drugs. Rachel jerked in her chair. No.

  “No!” The magnetic restraints gave no space to move, but she banged her head back against the chair. “No!” Not like this. She would not lose herself. She would not let them take her mind.

  No! Father had threatened… They washed the sins of those they judged. They washed away their minds, all they were, left them little better than drones. Ideas, free thinking, were dangerous.

  “Mankind’s duty is clear,” her father’s voice said. “We are meant to follow the doctrines laid out by the Angels.”

  Needles rummaged in her mind.

  Asherah is the enemy. Only the Sentinels can protect mankind.

  Rachel screamed. The entire room swam around her.

  God help her. She dove deep into her own mind, trying to sing to herself. What was that song she’d heard a few weeks ago on the Mazzaroth? About searching the stars for love and… Trust the Sentinels.

  “Cooperation is salvation,” her father said.

  Waller’s face suddenly swam into focus. “Cooperation is your only hope,” he said.

  He leaned so close his breath fell on her face. His eyes bored into her. They delved deeper and deeper, scouring her very soul. She was falling, a well of nightmares eating the edges of her being as he dove into her. His presence was a hot lance through her consciousness, digging into her mind.

  A telepath.

  Get out of my head. She raged at him. Sent waves of hatred and grief and loathing. She would not allow this. Never this. He pried through her memories, drudging up her childhood. It ran through her mind’s eye, the day she walked out on her family, turned her back on the tradition of the Redeemers and earned her father’s eternal scorn.

  “You are no daughter of mine!” he shouted after her. “You sin! Khapiru!”

  Her own father had called her outcast.

  Earlier, earlier. She was twelve when her father beat her with a stun baton for questioning his lectures. For daring to even raise a doubt against traditions set in place millennia before. For two hours she’d laid writhing on the floor, sobbing, whimpering apologies, even when the only one there to listen was her cat, Clarity. Her father had given the animal away the next day.

  No!

  “Give it all to me, or I will take it!”

  “No!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face.

  “Where is the Ark?” Where is the Ark? Where is the Ark? What does the Sefer Raziel say? Cooperate. Cooperate. Cooperate.

  She focused on a memory of the starfields of the Omega Nebula. Beauty in a million colors, the wealth of the universe.

  The work of God and his Angels. Help me continue their work.

  Rachel grit her teeth, throwing out more memories of beauty and peace and love and songs and hopes and anything else she could find. Waller ripped through them like a man carving out a rainforest with a heavy blade.

  Warm wetness dribbled down her cheeks and over her lips. Her ears and nose were bleeding. Her brain was… He was slicing through her mind. Only a whimper escaped.

  Please God, no more.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  And so the Sentinels spread the near absolute order of Mizraim across the Local Group until a confrontation with Asherah was inevitable. Following the disastrous Asheran War, the Asheran Confederacy went into a period of isolation that led to nearly forty years of relative peace with Mizraim. And given the price of the last war, the Sanhedrin were more than willing to allow Asherah to control Triangulum and a handful of lesser galaxies. Of course, the Redeemers always saw concessions to those they called khapiru as weakness.

  The bridge was too hot. Of course, temperature controls regulated it, same as always, but today David sweated, trembling as he supported himself over a computer console. The Gehennan government had sent a second protest over their presence. Since Waller had ignored the first, David didn’t bother relaying the second.

  He’d looked into the eyes of dying men, men he’d killed, and seen less rage than what had hidden in Rachel’s gaze. There was no wound so deep as the sting of betrayal. To give trust and have it cast aside.

  “The ones who should have loved me best turned on me,” she’d said of her family.

  David couldn’t imagine the strength it must have taken for a sixteen-year-old girl to walk out on all she knew. To make her own future in a place like New Rome, a place where everything depended on wealth and status. Her family name may have helped, but she’d gotten into NRU on her own intelligence, drive, and refusal to submit to anyone.

  A hand brushed his shoulder, and he turned. Leah snatched her webbed fingers away the moment he looked at them. “He’s with her now.”

  David nodded. God, she should have just cooperated. Now Waller would hammer away at her for hours, days if he had to. The endless barrage of questions, sleep deprivation.

  “He had me give her Stigmata.”

  David turned around and looked straight into Leah’s eyes. Angels above, she was serious. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her off the bridge and into the hall. “Stigmata? He’s really going to…”

  “He’s torturing her,” Leah said. “Delving her mind. He’s determined to get what she knows, whether she wants to give it up or not.”

  Delving. That was the technical term for it. But most people just called it what it was—mind rape. If she fought hard enough it would shatter her psyche. The Stigmata made the effects that much worse, that much harder to fight. Part truth serum, part hallucinogen, the drug wasn’t normally used on Mizraim citizens, except in extreme cases.

  For a second, lightheadedness took him, and he had to balance against the corridor. Not Rachel. No one deserved this. No one. And Rachel was… His. Rachel was his. And he would not allow anyone to harm her. The dizziness gave way, and he knew what he had to do.

  He spun and almost ran to the lift, dimly aware of Leah chasing after him. He hit the buzzer to go to deck five, where the interrogation room was located. The lift felt like it travelled in slow motion.

  Rachel was in there. Suffering because he had failed her. Because he’d failed to stand up to Waller when the captain demanded the Sefer.

  The second it opened, David ran down the hall, increasing to a dead sprint after a few paces.

  Rachel.

  God help him.

  He slapped the buzzer to open the interrogation room. Inside, the lights were dim and Waller was staring into Rachel’s eyes. Blood trickled out of her nose and ears and lips, from where she’d bit through them.

  A barely restrained curse died on his lips. “Captain.”

  Waller spun away from Rachel with a glare, then stepped out to meet David. The doors closed, cutting off David’s view of the poor lass.

  “McGregor, this better be important.”

  Aye. Damn important. “This isn’t right, Captain. She’s a citizen. Using the Stigmata on her, this is torture.”

  “Withholding information crucial to the survival of our civilization is the same as aiding the enemy, McGregor.” Waller shook a finger at him. “It’s treason.”

  That was insane. Treason? Rachel? Aye, she was stubborn, difficult, and argumentative… but not a traitor. Never. “Sir. We’re better than this. We cannot stoop to—”

  “To what, McGregor? I’m going to take whatever steps are needed to protect my people! And I strongly suggest you decide where your loyalty lies!”

  “My loyalty? How can you doubt my loyalty for even a
second, sir?” David’s fists balled at his side. “I have given myself entirely to the Sentinels from the day—”

  “Then act like it, soldier. Dismissed.”

  David ground his teeth, offered a terse salute, and spun, nearly running into Leah.

  “David…” she said.

  He stormed past her and back to his quarters. He was in no mood to talk to anyone, even her, and she’d be better off not testing the waters at the moment. Thundering shite! How dare Waller question his loyalty? In his entire life he’d never wavered from duty, from dedication. His every breath he gave for the people of Mizraim. And Waller would doubt it because David didn’t believe in torturing their own citizens?

  In hurting Rachel.

  He slunk into his quarters and leaned against the wall, lightly pounding his head on it. He’d betrayed Rachel’s trust for duty to his uniform. David strode over to the washroom to look at the damn thing in the mirror.

  Unrelieved black on black—a form-fitting suit that accentuated human muscles, protected him from most weapons and extreme environments, and adapted to sheath his sidearm. But it was what it represented that mattered. Over his heart, the suit had adapted to display his rank. Five small triangles, over the single great triangle of the Sentinels. Honor, duty, justice.

  And for this, he’d betrayed the woman he loved. For this, she was being tortured, her mind, her essence eroded away by a man he’d once respected. A man who had let fear of the enemy or his own frustration at being overlooked time and again by the Sanhedrin cloud his judgment.

  Rachel was no traitor. David was the one who had betrayed her. Was she loyal to Mizraim? Probably. But more than that, she was loyal to the entire human race. She was trying to do what she felt was right for the good of the species. Aye, maybe she was a bit misguided…

  The uniforms were black, because space was black, and that was their arena. They traveled in the darkness to protect the light. That’s what it meant to be a Sentinel. But today, the blackness seemed not full of pride and courage, but something else. And he couldn’t stand to look at it.