by Meg Collett
Thinking of her soul made Clark wonder if Michaela would show up soon to deliver it to judgment. He couldn’t help it; his eyes roamed to the windows, looking for her new golden wings. Hope, the worst betrayer, fluttered up his throat.
“Okay,” Liam said, getting everyone’s attention again once Dylan was gone. “Let’s get on with it.”
“It’s clearly murder,” a Descendant to Clark’s left said. He was younger, with narrow gray eyes and dark skin. A badge indicating he was on the special Descendants’ police force was pinned to his navy blue uniform. “There are signs of burns, although they’re internal, as well as a very obvious smell, to allude to the fact that Miss Jenna was set on fire.”
“Bailey, when you say she was burned internally, you mean this fire was set from the inside?” Liam asked.
“So it would appear,” Bailey said, his voice crisp and business-like. He stepped closer to the body, finger pointing to the rope that bound Jenna’s left hand. “She was tied up first and then burned.”
“How do you know that?”
“The rope is solidly singed.” To illustrate his point, Bailey tapped on the twisted rope. It disintegrated into ash, fluttering down onto the bed. Jenna’s hand and arm stayed in the exact same position, even without the restraint holding her up. “There’s no way it could have been tied after she was burned.”
“Is there anything else?”
“There were no signs of struggle out in her apartment. The door wasn’t forcefully opened, and all her windows are still sealed tight,” Bailey said. “Nothing is knocked over or seemingly out of place. It seems she knew her killer, and maybe even voluntarily allowed herself to be tied up.”
“Thank you, Bailey. Clark?” Liam asked, sharply drawing Clark’s attention back to the moment. He’d been furiously fighting the urge to puke again.
“Yeah?” He croaked out.
“How many people know how to do this?”
Clark frowned. “You mean start holy fire?”
Liam nodded. Everyone was looking at Clark because he’d been the one to discover holy fire from the magic on his arms. It was an old Watcher trick that would gravely injure—but not kill—angels.
“Well,” Clark said, trying to think. “Me, Michaela, Gabriel, Zarachiel, Uriel, Simiel, Ophaniel, and my mom.”
Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably. Clark had just named eight of the most powerful beings in the entire world. While the names weren’t outright condemnations like they once had been, they still caused an air of discomfort for everyone trying to make it in this new world.
“Anyone else?” Liam prompted.
“The handful of fallen angels Gabriel used to finish off the hybrids that Lucifer created by stuffing human souls into fallen angels. And my dad knew.” Clark swallowed the lump in his throat, talking fast now. “And the group he took to Charleston to help Michaela, which included you obviously.”
Isaac St. James, Clark’s father, had been bitten by a hybrid in Charleston. The bite had become infected, and he’d died not long after.
The people in the room shifted uncomfortably again. When Michaela had been framed back in the beginning, the holy angels had used the Descendants to stand against her. Only Clark’s father and a few older Descendants, like Liam, had disobeyed, choosing to trust Michaela over the Aethere. They’d been right, everyone discovered after the war. But the Descendants’ error, after an eternity of blissful perfection in the eyes of the angels and themselves, had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.
When it was all said and done, it sucked being wrong and looking like assholes
Liam nodded. He had been in the group Isaac had taken to Charleston. Isaac had trusted Liam enough to name him Keeper after that fateful journey; it was the only reason Clark trusted Liam now.
“Speaking for myself, I didn’t tell anyone else the incantation. Would any Nephilim know?”
“Iris did go to Charleston with a group to help Michaela, but I don’t…I don’t know who she told.”
Iris hadn’t come back to the compound to lead the Nephilim with Clark. Instead, she’d given over her title as ruler of Nephilim and stayed back in Pennsylvania on her Amish farm to rebuild with a handful of loyal Nephilim. She’d sent Ezekiel in her place to help Clark. So far, Ezekiel had proven pretty useless since this was the first time that Clark was actually in the same room with him.
“Okay. I want a list of every single name tied to Charleston and those hybrids,” Liam said. Clark nodded weakly. “I also want a list of everyone Jenna socialized and worked with on a daily basis.”
Clark felt sick again; he’d be on both of those lists. Camille’s eyes scorched into his skin, as if she was whispering the holy fire incantation against him, just to watch him burn.
“I want photographs of the room now, Bailey. And fingerprints, if we can.”
“It’ll be crude,” Bailey answered. “But we can use some of our old dusting supplies. We can only compare them to our internal database, but that will eliminate the Descendants as the ones responsible.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Ezekiel snapped at the cop, his jaundice-colored eyes squinting beneath unkempt brows.
“Calm down, Ezekiel. He didn’t mean anything against the Nephilim,” Liam said carefully. He turned back to Bailey. “I understand. Do the best you can. I’ll leave you to it so we don’t have too many cooks in the kitchen.” He looked purposefully at Ezekiel when he said that last part. “Everyone else, let’s meet in the main hall in twenty. I want that list by then, Clark.”
Just then, a terrible cold blast gusted from the living room, tunneling down the hall like a giant locomotive. Clark heard the howl of it, like a scream of a dying woman, before the bedroom’s door slammed closed hard enough to rattle the entire apartment and quake the bed’s wrought iron frame. Horrified, everyone looked to Jenna’s trembling body. A puff of smoke escaped her open mouth, like she was breathing one last time, and then her body fell apart. Limb after limb fell to the bed and disintegrated into a pile of ashes. Only her head, with milky, dried eyes and gaping mouth, remained whole, perched atop a mound of dust.
Clark didn’t know what the hell had caused it, but the hairs on his arms stood on end.
Particles filled the room, and everyone coughed, swatting at the air in front of their faces.
No one wanted bits o’ Jenna going down their esophagus.
Chapter Four
The meeting in the main hall commenced a bit later than everyone expected. Apparently people wanted a quick shower before settling in for what would likely be a bitching fest that lasted well into the early morning hours. Clark only had time for a change of clothes—he’d waited outside Jenna’s room for Michaela.
She hadn’t shown. Or else she hadn’t shown herself to Clark. He didn’t know which was worse, but he’d swallowed his pride and gone to the meeting, knowing he couldn’t wait any longer.
The meeting hall was huge, the stone walls emitting a perpetual damp chill. Twelve sweeping stained glass windows lined the western wall. Each one depicted an Archangel¸ with Michaela in the middle. She wore silver armor, her black hair whipping in the wind. Her white wings were stretched wide, her sword lofted high. Given her battle stance, her face looked too peaceful and serene. Clark had never seen Michaela at peace. Her duties and responsibilities had tortured her; sometimes she’d cracked in very human ways. But Clark knew her. If she were in a battle like that window depicted, she would be snarling viciously, her entire heart and soul thrown into doing her job.
Which was exactly what she did now, Clark told himself. She was busy. Not seeing her today didn’t mean that she didn’t care about him anymore.
At least, Clark was happy to notice, the windows had been recently cleaned and polished. When it was believed the Archangels were all traitors, Clark had wondered if the windows would have to be torn out and new ones installed that depicted the Aethere choir’s likenesses. Thankfully, peace had been restored—however tenuous it might b
e—because the Aethere angels were ugly bastards.
The long meeting table was cramped with the Descendants’ seated members, the Nephilim council, and Camille, who acted as a liaison between the Descendants and the angels. Honestly, Camille did an even worse job liaising than Clark had done as a Descendant, and that was saying something. It was obviously karma that the only seat left when Clark arrived to the meeting was next to Camille.
Karma or the fact that everyone was terrified of her.
She hadn’t showered either. Ash lightly coated her shoulders and hair, the smell of fire tickling up Clark’s nose. She seemed entirely at ease with parts of Jenna’s body on her; Clark leaned away from her ever-so-slightly in his chair.
Liam banged his gavel onto the table, which reminded Clark instantly of his father. Actually, this entire room reminded him of his father. Clark swallowed a quick drink from his flask, feeling Camille’s judgment bearing down on him from six inches away. Turning his head in her direction, he sneezed without covering his mouth. She recoiled.
“My apologies,” he said, trying to hide his satisfied smirk.
“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath.
“Attention!” Liam shouted, eyes cutting to Clark and Camille. His voice echoed through the empty hall. Normally the entire second-floor loft was filled with the unseated Descendants, but this meeting had been called in secrecy. The silence made the hall feel like an empty cathedral. “Let’s get started. Clark, do you have my list?”
“Uh,” Clark fumbled in his jeans pocket, pulling out a dirty napkin with hastily scribbled names on it. “Sure.”
The napkin was passed up to Liam, who took it with a disgusted look on his face. “Really?” he asked, trying to smooth it down. “Are things so bad off that you can’t even find a piece of paper?”
“Hey,” Clark said with a shrug, “I was in a hurry.”
“So it would appear. Bailey, did you find anything when you, ah, sorted through the remains?”
Everyone cringed, clearing their throats. They would have a slight tickle back there for a few days.
“Nothing that would give us any leads. The fire was quite thorough, but we have a few prints to examine. Running those will take some time since we’ll have to use the back-up generator to scan through our internal database. Also, we ran back over the entire apartment for signs of forced entry, but it’s obvious she knew her killer. There was one thing…”
“What’s that?” Liam asked.
“A leather jacket that I believe belongs to Clark?” To illustrate his point, Bailey held up Clark’s jacket. “This is yours, right?”
“It might be mine,” Clark said, using his best lawyer voice.
Camille rolled her eyes beside him; she knew he hadn’t killed Jenna because she’d been with him the entire night. It was a fact that Clark didn’t want to say unless he had to. Sleeping with a Throne angel wouldn’t win him any fans among the Descendants, who were feeling wary of the angels. And he really doubted the Nephilim would be too happy about it either. They were sensitive about topics that involved sex and angels spoken in the same sentence.
“What was your relationship with Jenna?”
“I would call her a friend.”
From across the table, Dylan snorted. Liam turned and glared at the ugly Descendant. “Okay. Thank you, Clark,” Liam said pointedly, still staring Dylan down.
“We have to keep your jacket for a bit as evidence,” Bailey said.
“Fine.”
After a tense silent moment, Liam spoke again, “I know this murder is upsetting—”
“Upsetting?” Ezekiel interrupted. His gray hair was greasy and unkempt, as if he hadn’t showered for days. His simple Amish dress looked drab in the candle-lit darkness of the hall. From where Clark sat, he saw the man’s yellow teeth flashing through the dense folds of his beard. “The Nephilim came here for peace. We were promised—”
“Excuse me,” Liam said, his voice low and slow as he stared the Nephil down. “This is my meeting. I don’t know how it works with the Nephilim, but when a leader is talking, he is not interrupted.”
Ezekiel worked his mouth in anger, the dryness of his tongue slapping stickily against the roof of his mouth. Clark was making a disgusted face when the Nephil directed his glare to Clark. “We wouldn’t know. Our leader isn’t exactly the meeting type.”
Clark raised his eyebrows, inwardly shocked at the Nephil’s nasty tone. Everyone, including the other Nephilim at the table, seemed just as surprised, but Liam recovered first.
“As I was saying,” he snapped off the word, “this murder is upsetting, but as an order, we’ve dealt with these sort of things in the past. We will deal with them again. That being said, I want this cleaned up quickly. I don’t want anyone talking about it or spreading around the details. And for the love of the angels, don’t go around telling refugees that the body fell apart. I don’t want people getting nervous or feeling unsafe. This compound is supposed to be the nation’s safe house. We,” Liam gestured to the Descendants and Nephilim and Camille, “need to make these people feel like they can catch their breath here. The road ahead is going to be long and tiresome. We can’t have a murderer on the loose too.”
Everyone nodded quietly when Liam was finished except for Ezekiel, who sat with his arms tightly crossed like a child in timeout. Clark found that he couldn’t stop glancing at the Nephil; he didn’t know what he’d done to lose the man’s favor, but it must have been bad. Clark wished he couldn’t think of one instance where he might have offended Ezekiel, but, really, it was the opposite. Clark offended people all the time. It was, quite simply, his nature to piss people off. The fact that he liked it was just a side benefit.
Outside of Clark’s inward reflection, Liam let the silence stretch out even longer this time so that his words could settle in with everyone. He sighed heavily and continued. “So, now let’s talk about the upcoming gathering of government officials. In a week’s time, the secretary of state, who is also the president of the United States now, and some United Nations officials will be here to discuss the re-establishment of a standing government. As Descendants and Nephilim, we play an important role in the rebuilding of our world because we’ve worked with the angels in the past, and we are the government’s only connection with them now. Both the people and politicians will be looking to us even more now. They need our help to fix this county. So I want things tight around here. I want to show them how we’ve handled things, saved people and a shred of humanity. I want everything to be a gleaming and shining beacon of hope. Hear me?”
Everyone grumbled their acknowledgment, even though there was nothing ‘gleaming’ or ‘shining’ about a world post-war, especially a world destroyed by angels and plagues. With barely ten thousand humans still alive in the United States and four surviving government officials, the Descendants and the Nephilim were the only semblance of order in the world, and it was a semblance of gritty, hard-won mettle that powered them through the days. There was no beacon of hope; it was just begrudging survival.
“I want this murder solved and tucked quietly away well before then,” Liam went on. “I don’t even want it to come up when they are here. I want our people to see these officials and think everything will return to normal. That the world will go on, and everyone can return to their suburbs and Suburbans, cell phones and reality television. That’s what I want.”
“That doesn’t sound unrealistic at all,” Clark said, brow cocked to illustrate his sarcasm for the more dimly witted people at the table, namely Ezekiel and Dylan.
“I know,” Liam acknowledged. “But that’s the feeling that I want to cultivate. These people have survived enough. Now they need some hope.”
Clark couldn’t argue with that. He could use a little hope right now too. Liam droned on for a while—hours—about preparations for the meeting and other day-to-day things that Clark really didn’t care about. When the meeting was finally called to a close, the priest—a bent and stooped o
ld man—went around the table and blessed the seated Descendant members, Nephilim, and Clark. The angels were the only ones exempt from the purification. With a flick of his fingers, the priest flung holy water on each person, his sagging mouth muttering a half-hearted prayer. When the priest stopped in front of Clark, the old man grunted, the blessing prayer noticeably silent. The putrid holy water landed with disturbingly accurate aim right in Clark’s mouth. He glowered at the priest, who didn’t try too hard to hide his satisfied smirk.
Clark truly believed the priest was evil.
When it was over, Clark hurried from the hall, feeling Ezekiel’s beady eyes on his back. Camille brushed by him without a word, her nose lifted in distaste. Maybe she was finally smelling herself, Clark thought with a shrug. Outside, beside a sweeping set of stairs, Zarachiel leaned against a wall. He was framed on either side by portraits of bored-looking Keepers of the Descendants. The paintings lined the hall in an eerie sort of homage to the past.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” Clark said, looking over his shoulder. Ezekiel hovered inside the hall, his head bent in a huddle with the other Nephilim. Clark didn’t know for certain, but he really believed they were talking about him.
“What?”
Zarachiel handed him a cold water bottle, which Clark took a long swig of before answering. “I think I pissed that Nephil off. The one Mom sent down from Pennsylvania.”
“How did you anger him? He hasn’t even talked to you.” The angel cocked his head, an amused look glinting in his eyes.
“I know! I’m a really likeable guy. I don’t get it.” Clark cut his eyes back to the Nephilim gossip group. Ezekiel looked up right then, and Clark couldn’t resist the urge to flip him off. Ezekiel snarled and turned back to his group, gesturing wildly. Now, Clark was certain they were talking about him.
“You’re right,” Zarachiel said dryly. “I have no clue either.”
Clark cursed for a minute; Zarachiel waited patiently. “Anyway,” Clark said, letting out a breath. He felt better already after a good colorful rant full of descriptive combinations and physically impossible tasks involving inanimate objects. “What’s up?”