by Greg Curtis
They got out of the car and headed for the principal's office. But to get there wasn't as straight forward as it had been. They couldn't go through the front entrance – it was covered with yellow tape and there was a policeman standing guard beside it just in case someone tried to push past it. Instead they were directed to the side entrance which was actually a fire door that had been propped open, and then had to make their way through the hallway that led to the staffroom. And even that wasn't as simple as it should be as someone had lined one entire wall of the hallway with boxes. Boxes by the looks of things that were filled with books. Had the library burnt down?
In the staffroom Katz found her first piece of good news as she saw Mark standing there waiting for them with a bag in his hand. He was alive! She couldn't have even described how good that felt, though he was heavily bandaged.
He smiled at her, a stupid looking grin really, and she ran to him and crushed him a little in her arms. Something that made him wince a little.
“You badly hurt?”
“Bit. I tried to stop him and he shot me. But mainly I fell. I woke up fine in the ambulance. Then Inglis caught me and said I'd used my gift to harm someone.”
“And?” The Choir could be rough she knew. Especially if someone had used their gift to harm someone. It was their top crime.
“He instructed me.”
Katz winced at that in remembered pain. Of course he had. Katz knew the rules and Mark did too. But still, he had tried to save her. He had done nothing wrong. In fact he was a hero. The Choir should be applauding him. But instead they'd punished him because he'd broken the rules. That was just wrong. But at the same time Cassie had saved her when all seemed lost. None of it made any sense to her. But she could suddenly understand Garrick's whole “we're nephilim, we're screwed” speech.
“Bad?”
“Just sore. It'll heal.” He smiled at her. Pretending to be braver than he was. But he was still brave. Not that she would tell him that.
“You chicken shit!” She drew a laugh from him, and that made her laugh in turn. It didn't sound like he'd had anything too serious done to him.
“Come on you!”
Maricia grabbed her gently by the shoulder, grabbed the bag Mark had brought for her in her other hand, and started leading her towards the principal's office. Mark took the opportunity to vanish. He probably had some idea of what awaited her inside.
But what awaited her wasn't what she'd expected. The moment Maricia pushed the door open the principal sitting at her desk spotted her, she got up and came to her, hobbling awkwardly on a pair of crutches. Then Miss Holdsworth – Miss Iron Britches herself! – was hugging her tightly as if they were family. It felt good. Better than that.
“I'm so sorry!”
Katz tried to tell her that, to explain what couldn't really be explained, and immediately got shushed for her trouble. The principal didn't want to know. She just kept hugging her and telling her that she was glad she was safe. It wasn't what she'd expected. But maybe it was what she wanted.
It was then that she realised that Garrick had been right all along. This school would be a good place for her. Not because they would give her a good education or keep her out of trouble. But simply because they were all like her. They were family of a sort, and family were always better when they stuck together.
And in the end the only family a nephilim had was other nephilim.
Chapter Eighteen
“Cassie.”
Garrick called the angel even though he wasn't completely sure that he wanted to. But he needed to.
The hunt was in its closing stages. Benedict had escaped the factory, but he had left behind a lot. He was down on money and allies, running out of aliases and places to hide as well. Every law enforcement agency in the country was on his trail. Worse for him, his face was plastered over the nightly news making it hard for him to move in public.
Benedict was in trouble and desperate. And that Garrick knew made him more dangerous, not less. Desperate people did desperate things. Worse still, it wouldn’t be long before he would be caught. A few months perhaps – he was clever after all. But no longer. Even if Garrick did nothing he would be caught. It was only a matter of time. And when they caught him all hell would break loose. There was nothing Garrick could do about that because he didn't know where Benedict had stashed whatever information he had.
When Benedict went down the rest of them would follow him into hell.
But against that Garrick had a new weapon in his arsenal – Cassie. Katarinka had told him what the angel had done, and while at first he hadn't believed it, in time it had started to make sense. She wouldn't break her laws. But there were times when they didn't apply. Times when she could dance. It was simply up to him to be clever enough to make sure that this was one of those times.
“Why do I sense deception child?”
Cassie appeared in front of him and he knew from her first words that she was already suspicious. But then he couldn't really hide much from her. She though, could hide a lot from him, and one of the things he was certain she was hiding concerned the thief's true nature. The more he tracked him, the more Garrick had become certain that he was something more than just a normal human being. He was too bright, too good at finding out things. He was a hunter of some sort. But that Garrick knew, would have to wait. Right now he needed Cassie's cooperation. Upsetting her with questions that she would not answer, especially questions that sounded like accusations, would not help. He had to focus on what was at hand.
“I'd prefer to call it strategy.”
Garrick gestured at the couch opposite him, thinking to be polite and offer her a seat. But of course she didn't take it, choosing to instead just stand there staring at him and it suddenly occurred to him that he'd never actually seen her sit. In fact he'd never seen the angel in any other position than standing. Maybe she couldn't? Maybe that was why she was always so rigidly upright – she couldn't actually bend. Physically as well as morally. That would be sort of ironic.
“Tell me your strategy child and I will give you your answer.”
At least she hadn't rejected his idea out of hand before he'd told her what it was. That was something. She also hadn't said anything about the fact that he had a hand pinned back together and plastered up either. Everyone else had. Being shot was unusual. Being shot twice was sensational, at least according to the news – and of course he was back on the nightly news. Two attempted assassinations with Benedict’s fingerprints all over both of them. It would be a miracle if he ever got out of the news. Which was why he was once more hiding out in his home while the press were camped out by his letter box. He was beginning to think he needed to get away for a while. Find some nice, quiet place where no one knew him. And then maybe sit down and lick his wounds for a few months.
If only he didn't have a master criminal with a time bomb to deal with.
“Very well. The Choir, my people and Diogenes: It seems we all share the same problem – Armando Benedict, and whatever knowledge he has. You and the rest of the Choir are prevented from acting against him in any way because he is normal. All you can do is whisper to him of right and wrong, even though you know it is useless and he will do everything he has threatened to do regardless. Even though he knows of your existence as well as ours and Diogenes. His free will cannot be compromised.”
“You also can't use us as your agents in this matter because that would be the same as acting directly against him yourselves. The most you can do is warn us and Diogenes of the danger he poses because we are already aware of your existence and then leave us to deal with him as best we can.”
“We nephilim can act directly against him, provided we do not use our gifts to cause him harm and that we do not reveal ourselves.” Which of course was the very thing tying their hands behind their backs. It was incredibly frustrating. But that was normal life with the Choir anyway.
But it seemed that they had found a tiny amount of wiggle room. It seem
ed the nephilim could defend themselves against direct physical attacks with their gifts. That was how the attack on the school had been thwarted after all. Of course, that hadn't gone unnoticed and there were things that had had to be done because of it. The Choir would have demanded it even if his people hadn't already understood the need. First and foremost it was about hiding the evidence.
So the man who had been pushed off the roof through a mystic push had been convinced that he had simply slipped on the old tiles. The man who had shot both his companion and himself had decided that it was all an accident. The one who had had a heart attack was now convinced that he had serious health problems that had never been checked out. And the last who had fallen on the stairs because he had been blinded believed that it was all because of a dropped flash grenade.
Naturally there had been some punishments handed out, something that seemed grossly unfair to him. But grossly unfair was normal enough when you were dealing with the Choir.
Punishment however hadn’t been enough and the Choir had demanded one thing more, even though it almost seemed like a crime in itself: that those who had been harmed through their gifts, had to be cured of their injuries. All the harm had to be repaired. It had been done though it seemed wrong to Garrick. These were bad people who had done terrible things. To require their victims to then heal them while mourning the loss of two of their own was a step too far. But it was not their place to deny the Choir. Or rather, it wasn't within their power to say no. Garrick hurried on before he gave in to his natural urge to say how unfair all of that was.
“Diogenes however is not limited in any way. But they cannot be directed by either us or yourselves, and they have no gifts to aid them. And Benedict is too clever to be taken down by them unaided. They aren't police, they don't have the necessary skills nor the mandate, and even if they somehow did take him down, they might not be able to prevent him from releasing everything he has. It would be a pyrrhic victory at best.”
It was like a riddle where everyone who had the power to act was prevented from acting, and those who could act did not have the power. Fortunately Garrick thought he could see a way around it. Maybe.
“Logically then the only ones who can act are the ones with the least chance of success. Only Diogenes agents can stop him releasing the information because they too have free will that cannot be restricted in any way. But if they do so then because the Choir also warned them, then the Choir would effectively be using them as agents.”
“All of which means that the Choir would be placed in a difficult position – at least according to your rules. If Diogenes acts against Benedict that would mean you would have gone against Benedict's free willed decision. If you prevent that happening you would have to act against Diogenes’ equally free willed decision. And you can't do either.”
Garrick had no idea which option they would choose if it came down to it, or what the consequences for the Choir would be.
“To add to the problems, if Diogenes acts and somehow succeeds in stopping Benedict, there will still be more consequences. And I'm guessing that the major one will be that the deal between Diogenes and the Choir falls through. I’m guessing that you don't want that. Do you?”
Cassie shook her head almost imperceptibly and Garrick knew then that he'd figured out at least one riddle that had been puzzling him all along. Why the Choir had made the deal in the first place. Diogenes hadn't thought to ask in thousands of years. They simply assumed that it was because their ancestry allowed them to see the angels and so denying them some friendly conversation would be fairly pointless. But it wasn't that at all.
The ancient philosopher might have been the one to go to the angels, but Garrick would have wagered good money that the angels had seen him coming and had welcomed his approach. Because they got more out of the deal than the normals had guessed. The Choir was all about whispering. About getting their message out in such a way that people could freely choose to listen to it and accept it or not. But they felt frustrated by their lack of success. Too many resisted. Too many refused them.
When the ancient philosopher had come to them the Choir had seen another way to get their message out. Another way of whispering. They refused Diogenes any right to tell the world about them. They had to. But they allowed him and his followers to pass on some of what they said. That wasn't by chance. It wasn't as the agents of Diogenes believed, because they had free will and felt the need to get as much of what they knew of the Choir's wisdom out to the world. Everything that the Choir would let them. It was because the Choir wanted it. Somehow, he suspected, if Diogenes hadn't asked, the Choir would have suggested it. Unfortunately everything that had followed from that decision was coming back to kick them in the butt. That was the danger with secret knowledge. It wouldn't always be secret.
Which made it all the more strange that the Choir had agreed for Diogenes to keep some knowledge back in the repositories that wasn't allowed out. They should have asked for it to be destroyed – not just hidden away. But the fact that they hadn't asked for that told Garrick one thing. It wouldn't always be secret. The Choir had always planned on it being released in time. Just not yet. Not that Cassie would admit that to him.
But this wasn't the time to crow about his sudden insight. Instead he needed the angel to accept his proposal. This was the time to be polite – even respectful.
“Does that seem like a fair assessment of the situation?”
The answer he got was merely a nod, and the carefully blank expression on her face was telling. She did not want to be guiding him in any way. He guessed she was worried that no matter what she said she would be doing just that.
“Good. Now what if we change our target? What if instead of acting against Armando Benedict to prevent him from releasing the information, we dance with the information he has?”
“Explain.”
Cassie was even more terse than before, and he guessed it was because she feared that what he was suggesting would deny Benedict his free will in some way. But it wouldn't. That was the part that had kept him sweating for so long.
“Armando Benedict has information that can cause us all harm, and he'll use it when it suits him.”
“Maybe.”
Garrick looked up at her, startled. For a moment he couldn't quite believe he'd heard her correctly. Could she really imagine that he wouldn't use it? Was she completely naïve? Then he looked at her more closely and realised she wasn't. She knew exactly what sort of man Armando Benedict was. It was just that she had to hope. She had to believe that a man could change. Any man. It wasn't just her job description; it was her very essence, and he wasn't going to be able to change that.
“Almost certainly. He wants to release it. And when he does all of us will be up the creek without a paddle.” That at least was undeniable, and eventually she nodded.
“It's his choice when and if to use it and we can't change that. Nor can we take the information from him or alter it, because that would also deny him the choice. He knows what information he has and he would know if it was missing or changed.”
“But we can dance with him.”
Garrick smiled as he said it. He liked what Katarinka had told him about how Cassie had helped her. It was that same tactic that he was planning on using. But Cassie was looking just a tiny bit worried.
“There is no need for the information he may choose to release to be dangerous to us. Only that he believes it will be.” It was the intention after all that was critical. Not what the effect would be. At least that was how he saw it. He wasn't so certain that his visitor saw it the same way though. In fact she was being remarkably quiet.
“You danced with Katarinka. No one saw you and you didn't stop the people from shooting. You didn't change the bullets to blanks and you didn't make them miss. You just made sure the bullets wouldn't hit her by moving her. And that's what we're going to do here. We make sure that whatever information he has can't hit us. We dance.”
There was silence a
fter that. Silence while he sat there and waited for a response. And while he assumed she stood there and thought about his idea. Or at least he hoped she did. She could be thinking instead about the state of his mental health.
Eventually she came to some sort of decision. The most minor one imaginable, but still one that gave him hope. It seemed that she was willing to listen further before making her mind up.
“And how would we do that?”
Garrick relaxed a little when he heard her say that. In fact he almost laughed with relief. She hadn't rejected the idea out of hand as he'd been worried that she might. On the other hand she wasn't exactly looking thrilled by the idea. But then she never looked thrilled about anything.