Conspiracy of Angels

by Michelle Belanger

I couldn’t have cared less about her tracking spell right then, though I suspected it had four legs and sharp teeth.

  “What did she do with my fucking jacket?” I came close to shouting it.

  “Calm yourself or the nurse will be in here,” he said. His voice was a quiet contrast to my own. “You had something important in it?”

  Only the fucking icon of the Anakim primus. I chewed my cheeks and forced myself to breathe steadily. Remy was right—if I didn’t calm down, I was going to send the machines into fits. Could Lil have known about the Stylus? She wouldn’t have just tossed the jacket without searching it. She’d probably hoped to find the Eye, but that was at the bottom of Lake Erie.

  Perhaps they both were.

  The rush of thoughts sped my pulse again. Remy watched me avidly from the chair at my bedside. I wondered how much he really knew—or suspected. I couldn’t even ask him about the Eye—Sal had made certain of that—and I didn’t dare make mention of the Stylus.

  “Was it the demon jars?” he ventured. “They weren’t on board the Scylla.”

  “I never found them,” I said curtly.

  Remy settled back in the chair, adopting a falsely casual pose. He clung to it too stiffly. Silence stretched between us, heavy with the weight of our secrets.

  “I wish that you could trust me.” He sighed.

  I felt a stab of guilt and fervently wished the same, but I couldn’t trust him any more than he trusted me.

  “Tell me what I need to know,” I said. “That cop’s going to come back eventually.”

  “Terrorism,” Remy replied. “The museum heist, the explosive sinking of the Scylla, all of it. You and Dr. Ganjavi discovered information being smuggled in forged artifacts, and you were both taken hostage last Monday for your pains. Something went wrong with the security cameras throughout the museum, so nothing exists to dispute those claims.”

  “By ‘something,’ you mean the local Rephaim,” I suggested.

  Remy gave a little roll to one shoulder.

  “Presumably. Given some of Dorimiel’s global connections, and the origins of the artifacts in question, it wasn’t difficult to steer the authorities in that direction. Low hanging fruit, really.” He flipped a wrist distastefully. “You can choose to remember all of it or only parts. You stopped breathing long enough out on the lake to provide a workable argument for brain damage.”

  “Brain damage,” I said flatly.

  “Is there a better explanation?”

  I considered, wanting to argue, but it covered all the bases.

  “The Rockefeller Park shooting…”

  “A misunderstanding, and already handled. When they came for you and Dr. Ganjavi, you fled on foot. They chased you down to one of the park’s Cultural Gardens. You were defending yourself. Simple, really.”

  I sighed, picking at the tape on my IV.

  “I don’t suppose anyone found my Kimber.”

  Remy shook his head.

  There was a sound at the door and we both froze, waiting to see who—if anyone—came in. It turned out to be the nurse again. She must have seen a lot of Remy over the past few days, because she gave him a warm, familiar grin, her perfect, even teeth very white in contrast with her skin.

  “You’ve got about fifteen minutes, Mr. Broussard. We don’t want you wearing him out now that he’s awake.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Jeffreys,” he responded with a dazzling smile, flirting with an ease that amazed me.

  “I’ll be watching the clock now,” she said, then she ducked back out, shutting the door behind her. Remy watched it for a few moments, and I got the distinct impression that he was listening to her as she walked away. I couldn’t hear anything but the noise of the ventilation and the various monitors that were attached to me.

  Finally, my sibling turned back my way, a peculiar mix of curiosity, anxiety, and hesitation playing across his pale features.

  “What now?” I asked.

  He drew a deep breath.

  “I need to know what really happened with Dorimiel.”

  I looked away, far too conscious of all the things I couldn’t say.

  “I know Sal well enough to understand that there are things you will not—or cannot—tell me,” he began delicately.

  I lifted my brows, regarding him differently in that moment than I had before. In true Remy fashion, he didn’t come right out and say it, but he knew as well as Lil did that Sal had oathed me. He’d been with Sal a very long time. I wondered how many oaths he himself carried.

  “Go on.”

  Remy fussed with his cufflinks. “I suspect I know what you can’t talk about. I’m not really stupid, or unobservant,” he explained. “I’ve simply made choices for where my loyalties lie, and those loyalties often demand a certain manner of… discretion.” He shifted in the hospital chair, dark hair swinging forward to hide his expression. When he raised his face again, his cerulean eyes gleamed with an emotion I couldn’t name. Hoarsely, he whispered, “I saw what he did with the cacodaimons. While you were passed out, Jubiel made terrible claims. Tell me he is gone, Zaquiel. I have no desire to go to war again.”

  I didn’t dare ask what Jubiel had told him, lest I give my own secrets away—though I wondered now if all of it were pretense. How long had we played this game?

  “The cacodaimons got him,” I breathed. “He thought he controlled them, but they were eating him up from within. They turned on him in the end.”

  “So he is gone?” Remy inquired. “Truly ended?”

  I uncurled my fingers from the railings of the bed. I couldn’t remember grabbing them, but my knuckles ached from the way I’d been hanging on.

  “If being chewed to pieces by a swarm of unmakers is truly an end for one of us, then yeah—he’s gone.”

  “Good,” he said. “We may avoid war for a little while longer.”

  I flashed back to the four lost jars and all the names marked MISSING in my secret files. Two hundred years with my tribe disappearing. Someone else had to have known. I let loose a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  “I think it’s already here.”

  EPILOGUE

  After a few weeks, I got cleared to return to work. The doctors and neurologists at the hospital did everything they could to sort out my memory loss, seeking explanations for why I retained foundational knowledge like language and learned skills, but not more personal details like faces, names, and life events.

  Eventually they put me through rigorous occupational therapy to teach me a variety of mnemonic skills for moving unconscious recollections into consciousness, citing trauma in addition to brain damage. I endured it, knowing there was little any of it would do for my particular issue, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

  My occupational therapist kept telling me lightly, “brains are funny things,” as a kind of excuse for why none of her techniques worked. I wanted to tell her that demented, soul-sucking vampires were funnier, but knew she wouldn’t get the joke.

  Due to extensive water damage—imagine that—my office wasn’t ready by the time I was back at work. With effusive apologies, administration set me up in a part of the basement most staffers referred to as the dungeon. It wasn’t much more than a furnished storeroom, and it was so far off the beaten path that no one but me was ever down there—which suited me just fine.

  Museum staff threw me a party when I first got back, and I found myself surrounded by cheerful faces and sympathetic colleagues—few of whom I recognized. It was pretty awkward all around. Several tried offering condolences about Lailah. Apparently our workplace romance hadn’t exactly been discreet. After a few surly dismissals on my part, they learned to avoid the topic and anything connected to it.

  “Brain damage” is a dirty word among intellectuals, and loss of memory function is probably the worst kind. No one ever questioned my ability to do my job, because it was clear I recalled enough for that—even though I wasn’t always sure why I knew certain things. Yet for every friendly face I fa
iled to recognize, I caught more hushed whispers of pity behind my back. I’m not even sure most of them realized that they started to avoid me, but that was fine. I was definitely avoiding them.

  I wanted nobody’s pity.

  I just wanted to do my job.

  Of course, the most important part of that job had nothing to do with what the museum paid me to do, and the relative isolation of my office meant that I could discuss my work with the resident Rephaim without worrying about being overheard.

  “I don’t get it,” I complained as I hunched over the messy collection of papers and notes spread across my desk. “The cipher says Gandhi guards my brothers. I’ve looked everywhere around this museum, widening the circle each time. No plaques, no paintings, not even graffiti with Gandhi’s name. Not on the grounds or anywhere. I can’t figure out what I was trying to point myself to.”

  In this my sight is little help, diminished in this place and time.

  Terael’s regret was a palpable thing vibrating in my mind.

  “Yeah, I know,” I replied wearily. “Neither of us are what we used to be—but life goes on, right?” I rubbed my jaw, scowling at the maps of Wade Park, Rockefeller Park, and the rest of University Circle. “Kind of wish Saliriel’s people hadn’t been so efficient at making things disappear. My bet is that the police photos from the shooting are the key.”

  My left hand throbbed, and I idly massaged the scar angled across the palm. The cut hadn’t been deep—they hadn’t even bothered to stitch it at the hospital—but the healed wound often itched and tingled. Every once in a while, my pulse thudded along the scar.

  I was really hoping I’d nicked a nerve.

  Shoving the discomfort to the back of my brain, I focused on the maps again.

  A sore subject it is, I know, but can naught be dredged from memory?

  “Everything I have is after the fact.” I sighed, too resigned to the loss to really get upset at the reminder.

  The oracle-box of sound and sight can reveal nothing more?

  “Even that reel of footage from the park has disappeared,” I complained. “Did I mention thorough?” But he had me thinking back to that night in the Pub n’ Sub, where I’d seen the police sketch of my face. Almost on reflex, I started doing one of the memory exercises the therapists had drilled into me, imagining myself back in the moment, building everything one sense at a time.

  Country music.

  Fryer grease.

  Bare feet on the tiled floor, still raw from walking a couple miles with no shoes. Little lines marching up the television screen. The police sketch itself, followed by footage of the park—a bronze statue almost the same color as the naked branches of the trees in the background.

  There was something about the statue that made it strange to see it standing so near to the scene of a shooting. A scene connected with violence. I fluttered my eyes as if dreaming, willing myself to see.

  “I’m a fucking idiot,” I said, smacking a palm against my forehead. “It’s a statue. The Cultural Gardens run all the way through Rockefeller Park. There’s got to be a section for India.”

  I brought up the browser on my computer and did a search for the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. The India Garden was a relatively new addition, and its central piece was a statue of one of the most famous sons of that country—Mahatma Gandhi. I scrolled through the images on the web page, stopping at one galvanizing photograph. It was the statue from the newscast.

  “This is it. I’m sure of it,” I said excitedly. “How the hell did I not think of this?” I grabbed my new jacket off the hook and zipped myself into the stiff leather.

  And when you see our brothers’ safe return, how long before you set them free?

  I faltered as I buckled the bottom strap across my waist.

  “Uh, about that…” I hedged. Terael didn’t think anything specifically, but I could feel the expectation as he waited for my explanation. I knew he couldn’t read my thoughts—not directly, not unless I allowed it—but still, I struggled to fight back the flood of images that arose from distant memory.

  The Anakim Primus and other members of my tribe attacking Dorimiel’s temple. The wholesale slaughter. The look on my face—all our faces—as seen from the Nephilim’s perspective.

  “Terael?” I asked, speaking to the empty air as had become my habit of late.

  Yes, my sibling?

  “Did you know Anakesiel at all?”

  When last we heard the music, brother, all seven hundred and seventy-seven touched heart and mind together in glorious song. However, he added with a reflex of sorrow, much time has passed since then, and many things have changed.

  “Seven hundred and seventy-seven. That’s a lot of big egos on a little planet,” I mused. Casting aside the flood of questions this inspired, I asked, “What was he like here, Terael? Once we couldn’t hear the music any longer.”

  Moody, as sometimes so are you, my brother.

  “Moody how?” I pressed, fidgeting with the bottom strap of the jacket. The buckle was different from the jacket now lost to me, made of a cheaper metal. This one didn’t fit right through the shoulders, either, and it certainly didn’t feel like armor. I missed the old one.

  He angered at our errors, for he felt we lost our way.

  “So what did he do about that—all that anger?” I inquired, visions of Judge Dredd dancing in my mind. “Forget it. I’ll sort it out eventually. For now, I’ve got a date with Gandhi.”

  * * *

  It was about a mile to that part of the Cultural Gardens through Rockefeller Park, and I walked the whole way. The air was crisp and chill, and white holiday lights were strung on all the trees. They glittered against the faint dusting of snow. The statue of Gandhi came into view, striding eternally across the base of the memorial. I walked circles around the gaunt figure, certain I’d found the answer to the cipher.

  I still almost missed the jars, even though they were right in front of me. I kept instinctively checking around the base, expecting to find a hole or something. There was no hole, yet it felt as if the jars were just beyond my reach.

  Then I stopped thinking like a mortal, and squinted across to the Shadowside. That was the key. The statue was one of the relatively newer ones in the Cultural Gardens, and on the Shadowside, it wasn’t really there. Not yet, at least. A dim and murky outline hovered above the base, slowly gaining substance as time and peoples’ perceptions cemented the object into whatever substance made up this side of reality. Thoughts, maybe. Or dreams. Deeper questions I could explore at a later date.

  There was a crossing a little way off, by the monument of Confucius. I headed back there then stepped across, launching myself into the air. The sensation of living flight never got old. I flew the short distance back to the Gandhi statue. Then I waited for the faint echo of its base to flicker and fade. Four fist-sized objects were tucked inside. The spells of binding made them as solid on this side as any other. I slipped them into the front of my new biker jacket, cradling their chilly weight against my chest. Then I stepped back into the flesh-and-blood world.

  Lil was waiting for me.

  “Holy shit, lady!” I cried.

  “Hello to you, too, Zack,” she said wryly. She was wearing a sable driving coat over a smart navy-blue dress that ended at her knees. Sleek black boots, polished to a high gloss hugged her legs from mid-calf down. The whole ensemble had a vintage feel, and she wore it like a ’50s pin-up girl.

  “How do you keep doing that?” I complained.

  “Doing what?” she purred, amusement dancing in her bright gray eyes.

  “Randomly finding me. I didn’t see any of your little friends around, and trust me, I’ve learned to watch for them.”

  Her mirth erupted as rich, ironic laughter. It echoed through the park.

  “Come on, Zack. By now you should know. I have my ways.”

  I leaned against the statue of Gandhi and folded my arms lightly over my chest, trying to obscure the shape of the jars tucked
into my jacket.

  “No one’s seen you since the Scylla. I thought you went back to Joliet,” I said guardedly.

  “I did,” she replied. Slipping a hand into one of the pockets of the fur coat, she withdrew a jar of her own. Pointedly, she held it up in the faded light of the evening. “But we have some unfinished business, you and I.”

  My chest grew tight with the bitter absence of memory. Her name rode on the plume of my breath.

  “Lailah.”

  “You didn’t think I’d let you shirk your responsibility to her, did you?” Lil responded.

  At first I couldn’t answer. My throat felt too choked with the echo of loss. I stared past Lil at the tall, straight maples and twisted sycamores edging Doan Creek across the parkway.

  “You do know how to free her, don’t you?” Lil prompted.

  “I got the sigil-phrases from Dorimiel, but I don’t exactly remember how they work,” I admitted.

  “Looks like you have a couple of subjects you could experiment on,” she suggested. She eyed my jacket with a knowing gleam.

  I squirmed under her thundercloud gaze.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Experimenting on them?” she wondered.

  “No,” I said flatly. “Letting them back out.” There was a flash of shock on her face before her smug and sultry demeanor slipped back into place.

  “Really?” she said, brushing back a long, russet strand teased loose by the wind.

  With a shrug, I explained. “I’m not so sure they’re blameless. I don’t know if any of us really are.”

  With a thoughtful noise, she slipped her free hand into the front of her coat. It was pretty clear where that hand was going. I tried to be polite enough not to stare. Of course, I failed. She withdrew something I took initially to be an antique cigarette holder—the kind you might expect Marlene Dietrich to tote around.

  Idly, Lil twirled the object through dexterous fingers.

  “I guess you might be ready for me to give this back,” she mused.

  I did a double take at the thin length of pale bone.

  “That’s the Stylus,” I gasped.