Conspiracy of Angels

by Michelle Belanger

  The workers in the back picked up their tools and found something else to do, as far on the other side of the club as they could manage. I almost felt sorry for them.

  With languorous grace, Saliriel bent at the knees and retrieved the skull. She rose just as slowly, smoothing her skirt with one hand while the other gently cupped the desiccated head. Kessiel’s shriveled lips skinned back from his teeth, gratuitously displaying the fangs.

  “You killed him,” she observed coldly. “There will be repercussions for this, Zaquiel.”

  “You should answer the question, Sal,” Lil demanded. She had gone very, very still, her little purse tucked casually under one arm.

  “Don’t speak,” Saliriel spat. “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “Lake View? What are you two talking about?” Remy whispered. He looked anxious and perplexed, and with all his hair pulled back in the braid, he didn’t have an easy way to hide it.

  “Sal knows,” I answered, speaking more to the decimus than to my brother. “I’ve got a feeling Sal knows lots of things about this mess.”

  Again I caught a flash of that intensely calculated look from Sal. Yellow fire glimmered in the depths of her eyes, and I wondered what the decimus was trying to see.

  “You have proof of this incident at the museum?” she inquired. She toyed with Kessiel’s head, turning it to face me. “More than a corpse, I hope.”

  I nodded.

  Pressing her sculpted lips together, she said, “Show it to me.” With a poisonous look toward Lil, she added, “In private.”

  Then she tossed the skull with its bright plume of hair casually to one of her bodyguards—the one without the concealed firearm, I noted. He caught it without hesitation, tucking it in the crook of one elbow with the air of a man who was accustomed to handling random bits of corpses.

  “See to it that this disappears,” she ordered.

  I wondered idly if minions got time and a half for disposing of bodies. Sal turned abruptly on her heel and started walking toward the back of the club.

  Lil made a hissing sound of displeasure.

  “Don’t do it Zack. That’s how she gets you. Divide and conquer.” To Sal, she yelled defiantly, “Anything you need to say, you can say in front of all of us.”

  Witheringly, Sal called back, “You present your case to me in private or not at all, Anakim. Remy, please calm the Lady of Beasts. I don’t want to have to clean up after another fight. We just got the blood out of the tiles.”

  Lil snarled her displeasure, a threat clear in every line of her face. The bouncers both reacted, rising onto the balls of their feet. They faced off with the petite redhead, and I didn’t think they’d be bested with a smile and a flash of cleavage.

  “Still as uncivilized as the beasts you command? Please,” Sal sighed. “Boys, restrain her if she becomes a problem, and put on a little music to entertain our guests. Perhaps some VNV Nation. If I recall, Zaquiel’s fond of Beloved.” She delivered the order with an exaggerated flick of the hand.

  “Get back here, bitch,” Lil growled. “You might get away with pushing Remy around, but you have no authority over one of the Anakim. Zack—you don’t have to go with her.” She twined the fingers of her left hand in an oddly geometric position.

  The tang of generic disinfectant suddenly gave way to a wholly different scent—hot sun, warm earth, and dry, dusty grass. The lioness ghosted to life beside her. The beast wriggled her haunches, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation.

  “Back off,” warned the heavy in the NIN tee. He didn’t seem to see the lioness, but he clearly knew that something was up.

  “Give me a reason,” Lil snarled.

  “Lilianna, please,” Remy whispered desperately. Turning to me, he said, “Zaquiel, you’ve been in here twice this week seeking help from Saliriel. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “Zack, seriously,” Lil hissed between her teeth. “This is a bad idea.”

  The lioness chuffed once and started pacing. Her gleaming gold eyes tracked Saliriel as she continued toward the far end of the club.

  “Sal doesn’t boss me around,” I agreed, “But neither do you, Lil. This is my call.” I eased the backpack onto the floor, not wanting to rile the bouncers any further. Then I turned to my brother.

  “If this goes south for any reason, you do everything in your power to help Lil find her sister, you hear me?” I demanded. “I might not remember, but Lailah was special to me, too.”

  His gaze flicked between me and the naked knobs of Kessiel’s thigh bones. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Lil. Wordlessly, he nodded.

  With a deep breath—and wondering whether I’d taken leave of my senses—I stepped through the living gate of Sal’s two muscle-bound attendants. Then I followed the towering figure of the Nephilim decimus as she strode toward the soundproofed back rooms.

  37

  “We had a deal, Anakim,” Saliriel snapped.

  We faced off tensely in the silver-spattered room. I hovered near the back, avoiding the psychic stain where Alice’s death was blazoned across the threshold. Sal had her arms folded under her breasts in that disturbingly provocative gesture while she leaned a hip against the arm of one of the leather couches. I’d expected a lot of things to happen once the door swung shut, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “It might help if I remembered any of it,” I countered.

  “Yes, well,” she sniffed. “I have to accept that you’re not faking.”

  “Why the fuck would I fake this shit?” I demanded.

  “The power that the Eye holds is very alluring, especially for someone with your checkered past. I couldn’t rule out a double-cross,” she said, her yellow cat-eyes fixed on my own. Pointedly, she added, “I still don’t.”

  Words failed me. My mind raced through the events of the past forty-eight hours—the cacodaimons, the cipher, the insanity at the museum. Lailah.

  “You need to tell me what the hell is going on, right the fuck now,” I hissed.

  She shifted her weight till she was sitting fully on the arm of the couch, legs primly crossed at the ankles. She balanced with a shoulder against the wall.

  “Like I said, we had a deal,” she repeated. “I give you the means. You confirm that the Eye is back in play. I got you to that ship once, Anakim. I didn’t expect you to fail. You’re normally more efficient than that.”

  I wanted to smash the disapproving look right off her face. Instead, I pressed my palms hard against my temples. There were so many scenarios whirling in my head. I didn’t know which way to jump.

  “And Remy?” I asked. “He in on it?”

  Saliriel stood so swiftly I didn’t even see her move. One minute she was lounging on the arm of the couch, the next, she had me by the shoulder. Her long fingers vised into the leather of my jacket as she spun me around.

  “You tell him nothing,” she hissed. Her face was inches from my own.

  “Back off,” I said and shoved.

  To my surprise, she let me. Crossing her arms again, she started pacing. Her heels ticked like a metronome against the tiled floor.

  “The icon must remain a secret,” she said with quiet intensity. “From everyone.”

  I watched her as she moved, trying to get a read on her body language. I’d grown accustomed to a certain level of flounce from Sal. Back here, however, all of that was missing. Lil’s many warnings clamored in my head. How much of Sal’s demeanor was genuine? I was tempted to drop some of my shields, to sense my sibling on that other level, but the pressure from Alice’s death bore down on me even though I was standing at the far end of the room. I wasn’t certain I had the control yet to block out one while sensing the other.

  “So all that posturing and denial the other night—that was for Remy’s benefit?” I wondered.

  “In part,” she allowed, “but as I said before, I thought you might be bluffing. The attack that followed in your wake? You work with spirits. You could have set that up.” She grimace
d unhappily. “And it would be just like you to use my resources, then keep the goods for yourself.”

  “That’s not like me at all!” I objected.

  Her pale yellow eyes locked onto mine.

  “Are you so certain of that?”

  I couldn’t respond. What did I have for an answer? All that was left to me were ragged memories of the man I once was—and if I was being honest, I wasn’t certain that man was exactly a saint. I leaned wearily against the back wall, my wings ghosting out of the room.

  “All right,” I acknowledged. “Forget that. You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you. We’re even,” I said. “But if you wanted to keep it secret, why bring me in on it at all?”

  The edges of her plump, pink lips curled into a delighted smile. I had a sinking feeling that the proverbial scorpion once wore a smile like that—right before it stung the equally proverbial frog.

  “My dear Zaquiel,” she answered, “you were the one who told me the Eye might have been recovered.”

  I blinked. “I did?”

  “That meeting, Thursday morning. Lake View Cemetery,” she prompted. “I set a time and a place to hear your offer.”

  “What offer?”

  “You promised to wipe a certain file in exchange for passage to Dorimiel’s vessel.”

  “How did you even know about those files?” I choked.

  Saliriel’s smile widened, exposing her fangs. “Because I am very good at this game, brother… and you are extremely predictable.”

  I stood there and quietly fumed, reminding myself that she could be making all of this up—and with my ravaged memory, I had no sure way of knowing better. So I waited for her to continue.

  “With your typical blundering boorishness, however, you failed to comprehend why I would refuse to act directly against another decimus of my tribe.”

  “Is that a fancy way of saying you told me no?” I asked.

  Saliriel laughed once, a harsh, dry sound. “Not exactly, Anakim—simply that I required more incentive to risk my own neck for a single missing woman. Transporting one of your kind across the water, so you could infiltrate my sibling’s ship? Treasonous. So you brought up the matter of the Eye, insisting that Dorimiel was a threat to us both.”

  “And I was willing to hand over the Eye to you, just like that,” I scoffed. “Not likely.”

  She arched a perfectly plucked brow. “And why not? I’m a decimus of the Nephilim. I’ve handled it before. I know its powers—and its price.”

  “No,” I insisted.

  Her painted lips curled in a feral grin. “Yet you brought pages torn from an obscure archaeological text in French, to prove to me that Dorimiel had acquired the Eye,” she purred. “Do you recall that book, or did he take that from you, too?”

  I struggled to process all this new information, reconciling it with what I already knew. Was Sal lying? Of course she was—her lips were moving—yet some of it rang true. So I tried poking holes in anything that struck me as inconsistent.

  “How did you not know?” I asked.

  “Hrm?” Sal responded.

  “The Eye,” I insisted. “It’s an ancient Icon that belongs to your primus, and it’s in the hands of another decimus. Someone from your tribe. If you’re so good at this game, how did you not know?”

  The smug expression faltered.

  “I wish I had an answer,” she responded, “but if Dorimiel truly uncovered the Eye during that expedition—and we must accept the possibility, given what’s happened to you—then he has been extremely… discreet about it. I would have expected him to flaunt such power.”

  At no point did she mention the Stylus. I filed that away for later—I needed every advantage to keep on top of her game.

  “He has kept his secrets well,” she observed, and the wily quirk of her lips returned by degrees. “But this works in our favor.”

  “Your favor, you mean,” I said bitterly. It still didn’t sit right. “Why the hell did you meet with me Thursday morning, anyway? I heard how things went down Tuesday, when I first came to you for help. What changed your mind?”

  “Let’s be clear,” she snapped. “Tuesday night you didn’t come here looking for help, Zaquiel. You came in here to accuse me of attacking you and your precious museum. Even Remy lost his temper—and that should tell you something,” she added with a sneer.

  “Fine. I’m an asshole,” I responded. “Which makes Thursday even more confusing.”

  She sighed. “Wednesday night Dorimiel sent one of his people to speak with me.” With a sniff of disdain, she continued. “That was the first I learned they were out on my lake. They had been there nearly three weeks, and hadn’t even had the courtesy to email me.”

  I bit back a smart-assed comment. Sal was as delusional in her own way as Terael, who thought the museum was his own private temple.

  “So what—Dorimiel’s lackey just copped to breaking into the museum?”

  “Actually, he asked for my help in retrieving some things he felt belonged rightfully to his decimus.” There was a sudden edge to her voice, switchblade sharp and directed at me. Eyes agleam with yellow fire, she said, “You’d never told me what was stolen, Zaquiel. Which of my people are bound in those things?”

  “Your people?”

  “I read the papers today,” she spat. “That’s why Remy’s so agitated about this now, isn’t it? You were keeping demon jars—soul prisons—and all were made within the last two centuries. You neglected to mention that very salient detail,” she growled, and she started pacing again. This time her heels struck the floor like she intended to pound straight through it.

  “Who were they, Zaquiel? And how did your tribe manage to circumvent the strictures laid out in the Covenant of the Six, in order to lock more of us away? Anakesiel couldn’t do it—he’d sworn as surely as my own primus to never use those skills on any of our brethren. Never again.”

  “Whoa. Hold on,” I said, showing my palms. “You think my tribe’s responsible for the jars?” That confirmed it—she knew nothing about the Stylus.

  She whirled on me. “Of course your tribe. Who else but your tribe? Anakesiel and the rest of you and your endless judgments—those sanctimonious atrocities should have ended with the Blood Wars.”

  Slipping a hand into my leather jacket, I pulled out the photo I had tucked away. Wordlessly, I held it out to her. She sneered at it and hesitated, as if expecting some trick.

  “All our cards on the table,” I said. It was a lie—but for once, a convincing one.

  She leaned a little closer, peering at the letters pressed into the clay.

  “This is an image of one of the stolen jars?”

  “It is,” I responded.

  Sal snatched the photo from me, incredulity twisting her features.

  “Haniel?” she read. “But this is one of the Anakim.”

  I’d made certain to leave the image of Anakesiel’s jar under the seat in Lil’s Sebring. Remy would tell her about that one, sooner or later, but the longer I could deflect her from asking about the Stylus, the better.

  “Surprise,” I said.

  38

  “Time’s up, Zack!”

  That was Lil’s voice. She yelled so stridently from the other room that the words actually carried through the soundproofing of the door.

  “What the hell?” I murmured.

  “You don’t come out right now, I’m coming in after you!”

  I pulled the door open a crack. Outside, there were muffled sounds of a struggle. Saliriel caught my wrist and pushed the door closed again, pressing the lock on the knob.

  “Are you saying that Dorimiel bound him?” she hissed. “How?”

  “That little Nephilim trinket you sent me after takes powers, as well as memories. How do you think?” I shot back.

  Sal’s nostrils flared as she considered this, but she didn’t relinquish my wrist.

  “Zaquiel,” Lil roared, and the power she put behind it crashed against me, making the insubst
antial bits of me flare with silver fire.

  “Someone get that woman under control!” Saliriel bellowed back, loud enough to make my ears ring. She didn’t bother to open the door, just counted on her orders to carry through sheer volume. As soon as the words were out, she turned her attention back to me.

  “If I help,” she said, “I require an oath.”

  “I’m not swearing to anything,” I said.

  “We can’t blithely barge in on another decimus of the Nephilim—especially not if he’s armed with an Icon,” she answered. “Dorimiel pretends his vessel is a pleasure boat, but he’s on that lake for security. No one approaches without approval. It was risky enough the first time, getting discreetly within range so you could slip onboard through the Shadowside.”

  “Obviously you didn’t stick around long enough to help me with an exit strategy,” I grumbled.

  “That wasn’t part of the arrangement,” she replied tersely, “but it was your plan, and it failed. This time, we do things my way.”

  “Not a chance.”

  More noise came from the main floor of the club. I thought I heard Remy yelling, but with the door closed, it was too muted to make out anything of substance.

  “They’re looking for you. They’ve already come to me for help on that point. It’s a perfect opportunity. They’ll let us on board if they believe I’m delivering you.”

  I didn’t like it. “How do I know this isn’t some trick to get me out there willingly?”

  Sal tightened her grip on my wrist, and I had the sick realization that she could crush bones if she wanted. She locked eyes with me.

  “You want my help? This is the cost. You will follow my orders without question until we get you on board Dorimiel’s vessel. Everything discussed back here—including the Eye—remains our secret. You don’t breathe a word to another living being. Swear it to me.”

  “I don’t trust you, Sal. Not as far as I can shot-put your implants,” I snarled. “Even if you move against them once we’re on board, how do I know you won’t just grab the Eye, and use it on me?”