Conspiracy of Angels

by Michelle Belanger

  Not the anchor. Underneath the silt, the bullet-shaped object looked like something straight from Captain Nemo’s drafting table—all dark metal fittings and thick, curving glass.

  “Is that a mini-sub?” Lil whispered. “Where the hell did he even get something like that?”

  “Guess he wasn’t just swimming down there,” I offered. “Could Dorimiel open a crossing inside of that thing?”

  She peered around the edge of our cover, then pulled back with a grimace.

  “I don’t even want to think about that.”

  Neither did I, but the black-on-black vision of cacodaimons swimming in the depths returned with sickening clarity.

  “Head in the game, Zack,” she reminded me with a jab. “I count six people on deck—seven if Dorimiel’s inside of that thing—but I think I can handle it. I see a rack of diving tanks over by that winch. Fire and oxygen make for a hell of a party.” She grabbed the propane tanks from me, set them down with the others, then gave me a shove in the direction of the cabin.

  “Remember. You’re the distraction. Go keep them busy.”

  “‘Busy,’ she says. While Sal and Remy hide out in the fucking chart room.” I stifled a bitter laugh. “You got any suggestions for tangling with someone who makes Voldemort look like a pushover?”

  “You’ll come up with something,” she responded, fiddling with the top of one of the tanks. She examined her work, then nodded to herself.

  At the far end of the Scylla—‘aft,’ Sal had called it—Jubiel and the others rushed around, hosing off the mini-sub and securing it to the deck. Once they removed the carriage, a hatch opened on top, and Jubiel rolled a set of steps up to the side, fixing them firmly in place. Then he climbed up and reached into the vessel, offering his hand to help its occupant out.

  I froze beside Lil.

  The arm that emerged was covered to the elbow in blood. For a breathless instant, I hoped that something had gone horribly wrong down there. Then Dorimiel rose, covered in gore. He paused while still half in the mini-sub, plucking a gobbet of flesh casually from one curl of his hair. He regarded the bloody morsel with the air of a man picking out a leaf. He tossed it aside with as much care.

  With a nod to his man Jubiel, Dormiel crawled from the hatch like a spider, thin and long-limbed. Under the gore his clothes were comically ordinary—a light olive polo shirt, a khaki tactical vest, a heavy gold watch that probably cost more than most cars. He reached back into the sub, bringing up the severed head of a young Asian man. He tossed this at Jubiel, grimacing as if the owner had done him some grievous personal insult by bleeding all over his clothes.

  “Help me clean up this mess,” the decimus said. He had a light baritone with hints of a British accent that carried sharply across the deck. The sound of that voice stirred echoes deep in my hindbrain. That empty ache above my heart twinged, and my palms were suddenly clammy with sweat. Choking waves of fear threatened my volition. Anger galloped swiftly on its heels, however, and I gladly embraced it.

  Across the deck, Jubiel set aside the bloody head as if he handled mangled body parts all the time—and he probably did. Dorimiel hoisted himself further up, throwing a severed arm after the head.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said, lips twisting in a sneer. “I feed the gate just like they ask me to, and it opens wider every time. All my little friends come through, but I still can’t pass a damned thing across.” He flung another chunk of dead flesh at Jubiel.

  The Nephilim flunky blinked stupidly, as if trying to muster a response, but he was well out of his depth. He scrambled to collect the grisly body parts while the other henchmen stood around at mute attention. From their collective expressions, they were happy not to be in Jubiel’s place. One of them produced a cloth for the decimus, holding it out so he could wipe his hands.

  “I’m close, though. I know it,” he said. He patted a bulging pocket in his tactical vest. “A few more tries, and I’ll shove her through—like offal down a garbage chute. Then we’ll see about the rest. No more endless war.” He wadded up the bloodied rag, planted his hands on the railings, then slid down the metal stairs.

  Jubiel jigged to get out of the way.

  “Maybe they couldn’t stand the taste of her,” he offered. From his look, he was trying to be funny.

  Dorimiel responded by throwing the blood-stained cloth in Jubiel’s face. That confirmed it—behaving like a raging asshole was somewhere in the decimus handbook.

  Beside me, Lil hissed, and I jumped.

  “I’m going to make those two dance in the ropes of their intestines before I feed them their still-beating hearts.”

  She could have set off the propane tanks with the heated fury of her words. Hideous comprehension slithered through my brain—Dorimiel had been down there with Lailah. That bulge in his pocket had to be her jar, and he’d been trying to open a crossing.

  To feed her bound spirit to the cacodaimons.

  I felt beyond sick—and beyond angry.

  “You said you had the Anarch?” Dorimiel said. “Where’d you put that meddling son of a bitch?” He drummed the fingers of one hand idly against the swell of Lailah’s jar. That hand didn’t look right. The fingers curled to talons, long and spindly at the tips. I’d never seen one of the Nephilim with a physical imperfection, and the sight of that gnarled limb raised my skin in gooseflesh.

  “Saliriel brought him, but she won’t turn him over to anyone but you,” Jubiel replied sulkily. “I put them in the chart room. Karl’s on the door.”

  “Hrmh,” Dorimiel grunted. “I wonder what that scheming chameleon will want in exchange.”

  “That’s your cue,” Lil said, looking up from the propane tanks. When I was slow to respond, she hissed, “Dammit. Move!” Then she gave me a shove.

  At the sound of my boot scuffing against the deck, Dorimiel’s head snapped up. Eyes green as infection and backlit by their own unearthly light scanned the shadows of the Scylla. They settled for a moment near the place where we crouched, and though I knew Lil and I were well hidden, it felt as if that inhuman gaze bored straight into my soul.

  Jubiel and the henchmen snapped to high alert, drawing their guns and covering every angle around their decimus.

  “Shit,” Lil swore.

  “Guess it’s time to be distracting,” I breathed. I dashed for cover, heading away from Lil. Before I could think better of it, I pulled Kessiel’s Beretta, flipped off the safety, and opened fire.

  47

  Chaos erupted on the deck. Dorimiel bellowed something in an ancient tongue, gathering dark power around his twisted hand. My nerves jangled unpleasantly at the sight—I could feel it, despite the distance.

  My first few shots went wild as I crossed from Lil’s position to a stack of wooden crates lashed to the deck. Two of Jubiel’s thugs fired prematurely toward the sound of my gun. They didn’t even come close. Then they sprinted for strategic positions behind pumps and hulking metal containers.

  Jubiel clearly didn’t care about getting shot. He stayed out in the open, running like a linebacker straight for my position.

  “Zaquiel,” Dorimiel called. “I know it’s you. I can taste your fear, and I never forget a vintage.” His smug voice carried the entire length of the ship. Like Jubiel, he seemed wholly unconcerned about the threat of bullets, remaining in the open near the housing for the sub.

  Before he could spit out another witty bad-guy taunt, I stood up from behind the crates, took a deep breath, then squeezed off shot after shot.

  As much as I wanted to take down Dorimiel, I aimed for Jubiel first. He was the closest—and in another few moments he’d be on top of me. I aimed for the heart, and then the face. He went down in a spasm of limbs, his own gun clattering across the deck. I hadn’t expected to take him out so quickly, but I wasn’t going to question my luck.

  Then Remy was shouting from the chart room. I couldn’t really make out the words over the gunfire. Saliriel’s voice was in there somewhere, as well. I thou
ght I felt Lil rush past me, but one minute she was there, and the next she was gone. So was at least one of the propane tanks.

  I slipped into this weird calm where everything slowed, and all my senses seemed hyper-real. I raised the gun away from Jubiel’s crumpled form, aiming for Dorimiel where he still stood near the sub. Casings clattered to the deck at my feet as I planted three bullets in his upper body, trying not to hit the bulge in his pocket. I landed a fourth right between those poison-green eyes. His head rocked back and the force of the impacts staggered him.

  He twisted and fell, head bouncing off the rolling metal stairs. One bullet might not fell a Nephilim, but a hail of them seemed to do the trick.

  While the other goons returned fire, one rushed to his fallen master. Dorimiel lay still, but it was short-lived. I watched in horror as his twisted claw of a hand shot up and palmed the startled guy’s face.

  What I saw next made me stop shooting. Calm or no calm, all my muscles locked up with shock and disgust.

  Dark energy coiled visibly around Dorimiel’s fingers, skirling like smoke. The power thickened into inky black tendrils—one for each digit. The tendrils reached out to twine in the henchman’s hair, while one caressed the side of his jaw with a disturbingly sensual gesture. Then, like living things in their own right, the ropes of dark energy stiffened and drove themselves deep into his flesh.

  The man shrieked and jerked from the assault, and I couldn’t help feeling sympathy pains. I knew what was happening.

  It had happened to me.

  Dorimiel dragged himself up by the big guy’s head, the wound on his own face knitting like a time-elapsed film as he sucked his henchman dry. With a disdainful sneer the decimus drew his curling talons away, and the man slumped like a sack onto his side. His limbs flopped nervelessly. Thinner, wispy tendrils still trailed between the Nephilim’s hand and the twitching man’s face. Even at this distance, I could see the livid bruises imprinted on the guy’s temple and forehead, like fingerprints done in the unforgiving black of pure void.

  “Damn,” I whispered tremulously.

  Before I could react, Jubiel arose with a roar, leaping at me with his fangs bared. Another figure streaked across the deck, long hair streaming like an ebon plume. Remiel threw himself on his ill-mannered brother, and they grappled in a blur of limbs.

  “You’re insane,” Saliriel scolded in her throaty contralto. “Racing across the deck like that.” I jumped and my skin twitched. I hadn’t even heard her move behind me. She grabbed me by the collar and pulled me down behind the crates while the rest of Dorimiel’s thugs laid down suppression fire.

  Remy and Jubiel kept fighting.

  “Did you see that?” I choked. “What he did to that guy—did you see his fucking hand?”

  “Shut up and keep your head down. Bullets can kill you, you know,” Sal reminded. “Now where is the Lady of Beasts?”

  A gurgling cry rose in the night. It cut off suddenly.

  “Trent?” one of the goons called. No one responded.

  “There’s your answer,” I hissed.

  “Perfect,” she said. Sal’s smile was chilling.

  Remy shrilled in pain. Ignoring Saliriel’s words of caution, I poked my head up from behind the crates, trying to catch sight of my brother. Instead, I spied a stealthy figure scrambling up the side of the sub, working opposite from where Dorimiel still crouched on the deck.

  Lil. Quick as a cat, she hoisted herself on top, propane tank in hand. Before anyone became wise to her, she dropped the tank neatly down the vessel’s still-open hatch, then slammed it shut. A heartbeat later she sprang away, dropping and rolling toward our original cover.

  Lil made James Bond seem like an amateur.

  Dorimiel turned toward the reverberant sound of something dropping into his sub.

  “Who’s that?” Dorimiel demanded. “Petrov, Jackson, I want these intruders found and dealt with. Kill all but Zaquiel. I need what he still knows.”

  Even as he barked the commands, a second propane tank rolled across the deck in his direction. It crashed into the diving equipment near the base of the winch, like a dented, white bowling ball of doom.

  One of the henchmen figured out what was going on. He leapt at Dorimiel, dragging the startled decimus down and away as the propane tank detonated. It was a little underwhelming as explosions go, but then it set off the oxygen tanks.

  As promised, that was a party.

  The blast knocked the sub from its housing and it listed to one side, slowly sliding toward the edge of the ship. The crane supporting the carriage over the lake sagged at half-mast, smoke and fire seething from its base. Thick steel cables twisted everywhere, frayed by the strength of the explosion. The heat from the fire started warping the deck, wood and metal groaning with a sound eerily reminiscent of a whale song.

  Then a second explosion rocked the sub, this one coming from the inside. Somehow Lil had MacGyvered a delay on that propane tank. Fire blossomed bright orange and yellow against the thick glass windows. It set off a series of smaller explosions inside and, shuddering, the little vessel slid from the deck to crash into the dark waters below.

  Oily smoke choked the whole aft of the Scylla, shot through with the red glow of the flames. Against that hellish backdrop, Dorimiel rose. His clothes were singed and half his face was a bubbled mask of reddened flesh. Loosing an inhuman cry of fury and pain, he shook his twisted claw.

  “You cannot kill me so easily, Anakim. I’ve swallowed the power of more things than you can dream, and I have new brothers.”

  He spread his arms and loosed a chittering cry. Harsh and ululant by turns, that sound had no business erupting from a human throat—or in the case of the Nephilim, semi-human. Beside me, Saliriel swore in an ancient tongue, her normally mask-like features creased with revulsion. For once, the expression was genuine. She gripped my shoulder with such ferocity that I could feel her painted nails digging into my skin even through the thick leather of the biker jacket.

  “Now do you believe me about the fucking cacodaimons?” I snarled.

  Calls resounded across the waters of the lake, answering Dorimiel’s eldritch cry. Another, more human shriek pierced the night, ending in a gurgling wheeze. Lil was still afoot, picking off henchmen one by one.

  To our left, Remy howled in pain.

  He and Jubiel tumbled into view from behind some enigmatic machinery. Jubiel had Remy pinned and it looked like he was trying to wrench my brother’s head from his neck. Both of them were bloody, but Remy had clearly seen the worst of it.

  “Remiel!” I cried, and I aimed the gun in their direction, fighting to get Jubiel in my sights. The bullet might only be a nuisance, but it could give my soft-spoken sibling a chance to regain his feet.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  I’d emptied the entire magazine.

  Saliriel slapped the useless gun from my hands. “Do not hurt what is mine!” she bellowed at Jubiel. Then she leapt at him in a streak of slender legs and platinum hair.

  I was alone behind the crates when the first cacodaimon slithered over the side of the ship, black hood flaring and crimson eyes alight. A second swiftly followed, and then a third—and they each skittered to Dorimiel like obedient hounds. Smiling triumphantly through the smoke and gloom, the blood-streaked Nephilim whispered a guttural command.

  At a flick of his fingers, the cacodaimons launched themselves at me.

  48

  With a shriek that sounded like fingernails on metal, the cacodaimons swarmed. I bellowed my name in defiance, blue-white power leaping swiftly to my hands.

  Finally—a fight I could hope to win.

  As the living shadows closed around, I slashed the air with blades of searing light. One of the creatures shrilled as I connected, and I pinned it against the deck, tearing viciously at its central mass. Clinging globules of dark scattered like blood across my vision as the thing writhed, and then dispersed, its rasping death cry echoing through the corri
dors of my mind.

  Charging a second, I seized it in hands aglow with spirit-fire. It writhed and lashed, coiling its tail around my ankle. Stinging appendages sought to drag its gnashing maw closer to my face. I wrestled with it for several moments, spinning and twisting as I sought to keep it from getting those jagged teeth into me.

  It worked to pull my legs out from under me. I kept my feet, planting them a shoulder-width apart, then drew back a hand to once again call the brilliant blade. With a thunderous cry, I drove the diamond-bright weapon of focused will straight into what served the thing for a heart. I dropped its writhing carcass to the deck, shaking out my tingling fingers as the shadow-thing dispersed.

  Another of the creeping horrors hissed a challenge, swooping up and around in an attempt to dive behind me. It raked my wings with half a dozen of its scythe-like claws. Staggered, I let out a coughing cry of agony.

  The cacodaimon took advantage of the lapse in my attention and made another scathing pass, whipping around to slam its toothsome jaw into the middle of my back. The armor of my leather protected me from the worst of it, but the impact sent me reeling. Waves of numbing cold shot through my shoulders and arms, so intense I couldn’t even catch myself when I fell. I smacked my chin painfully on the deck and saw stars. The thing clung to my back, lacerating my wings and legs where the jacket provided no cover.

  I started screaming.

  For every jolt of bone-searing cold, I knew it sank another appendage into me. It would eat me if I couldn’t get it off of me. I flailed uselessly, but couldn’t seize hold of it. The angle was all wrong.

  A fourth cacodaimon started circling.

  I heard gunshots, more explosions.

  I panicked, knowing Dorimiel had to be closing in, but I couldn’t fight past the creeping numbness stealing the life from me.