Cade looked around slowly, taking in the sight of the pool and the exercise machines in the room beyond. “The men?”
“They’re fine. Davis has a broken arm, but that’s the only major injury we’ve suffered. You took a nasty bump to your head during that confrontation with the angel; you’ve been out for hours.” How close to death Cade had actually been; their time spent lost in the Beyond; their encounter with the shade of Cade’s dead wife; Duncan purposely avoided mentioning any of that and he knew the others would as well. They agreed that it would remain their secret until Sergeant Riley decided Cade was strong enough to hear it all.
“Riley’s in charge?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Cade leaned his head back against the wall and visibly relaxed. A moment later he was fast asleep.
Duncan wasn’t surprised; Cade’s body would need a lot of rest in order to heal. He leaned against the wall and sighed. Nice that at least one of them felt safe enough to rest.
A draft swept over him suddenly from out of nowhere, a touch of hot air that carried with it the scent of charcoaled flesh and burning tar. It was there and gone again in an instant, so swift that for a moment he wondered if he’d simply imagined it, but then it returned, this time much stronger and Duncan knew without a doubt that they were in trouble. A low rumbling started, like a storm heard from a distance, but even as Duncan was climbing to his feet it grew in volume, a train roaring toward them down the tracks, coming closer with every passing second, until it surrounded them like a shuddering clash of thunder.
There was a flash of light...and then the angel was among them.
He struck swiftly, his flaming sword slashing through Ortega’s body armor as if it didn’t exist, the charred halves of Ortega’s body falling to the floor in opposite directions. The wings beat against the superheated air surrounding its arrival, sending gale force winds throughout the room, throwing the rest of them off balance as it climbed up toward the ceiling.
The angel swooped downward and struck again, though this time Chen managed to deflect the swinging sword with the barrel of his gun. The weapon became useless in his hands, the metal melting like wax where it came in contact with the angel’s blazing sword, but it was enough to save Chen’s life.
Echo had been trained to react quickly and this time was no exception. Even as the angel swept past Chen and headed for the higher reaches of the ceiling above, Flynn and Riley were responding, their firearms sending a stream of lead skyward after their quarry.
But the angel was prepared for that now, knew just what they would do, how they would react, and it jinked and jived in mid-air, putting on a display of aerial maneuverability that would have put a fighter jock to shame. Not a single round came close to even grazing its body.
The angel sped toward the ceiling...and disappeared from view.
“We’re in serious trouble,” Flynn said, even as he tossed aside his empty magazine and shoved a fresh one into his weapon, racking a round into the chamber immediately thereafter and searching the room for a trace of their enemy.
Riley didn’t respond, his thoughts on those seconds before he’d passed through the portal back into the real world. Gabrielle had told him to remember something. “Your life, and Cade’s, depends on it.”
He had no doubt she was talking about something that would help them face the angel.
Except he’d forgotten just what that something was!
The rumbling came again, softer at first but building swiftly.
“Here it comes!” Riley yelled, glancing around frantically, wondering just where it was going to appear this time as he wracked his brains for exactly what it was he was supposed to remember.
The rumbling built into a roar, the roar built into thunder...and the angel exploded out of the surface of the swimming pool, filling the air with superheated steam as the water boiled off around it.
The spray caught Duncan by surprise; he felt his skin flare in pain as the steam swept across the exposed skin of his hands and face. He collapsed to the ground, effectively out of the fight.
Of the seven of them who had emerged from the rift, only four of them were left in combat condition.
Four ordinary men against the might and power of a fallen angel?
There was just no way.
Davis had the barrel of his weapon braced against the doorframe and was firing it now, doing what he could to keep it on target despite his broken arm. Nearby, Chen abruptly ran out of ammunition and tossed his now-useless MP5 away. He drew his sword and stepped over to Davis, ready to defend his wounded teammate if it became necessary.
Riley practically screamed with rage and frustration. You idiot! How could you have forgotten?
As the angel turned and swooped down at them a third time, Riley’s shotgun went silent. A glance told him it was still loaded, but it just wasn’t firing properly. He jacked the slide, exchanging the bad shell for the next in line, but that too refused to fire.
A glance told him the angel was almost upon him. There was no time to draw his sidearm and getting his sword was going to take even longer. Hail Mary, full of grace...
A firearm went off practically next to his ear and suddenly Cade was there, standing tall in the face of danger, his shots hitting with deadly accuracy and causing the angel to divert its course at the last moment.
“Find some cover!” Cade ordered and as Riley moved to obey, just like that it came to him at last, the words and symbols bursting across the internal theater of his mind, blazing in vibrant gold script like literary fireworks. Rather than following Cade’s order he charged out into the center of the room, where the angel couldn’t help but see him, his hands already working in the complicated patterns that Gabrielle had planted in his mind, had insisted that he remember for without them he and his companions were as good as dead.
He was too late to save Ortega, and possibly Duncan. He just hoped and prayed that he had time to save the others.
Shouting to be heard over the savage shrieks of the angel, Riley called out the first portion of the binding.
“By my will and my might, by my heart and soul, I call you to me, Baraquel, and bind you to my control.”
Crippling pain washed over Riley before the words were completely out of his mouth, causing him to stumble and falter. A glance down at his arms showed them bent and twisted back on themselves, the fingers curled like claws, the raw energy he was summoning from the spiritual world around him too much for a man untrained in its use. Gabrielle had warned him that it would be bad, but he had never imagined anything like this! He could see the veins in his arms bulging alarmingly, could feel the blood pressure in his head as a steady pounding, like the world’s worst migraine a thousand times over, but he didn’t dare stop, no matter the damage he might cause himself.
The angel had stopped, was now hanging in mid-air, its wings pounding a steady rhythm that served to keep it aloft. It turned its head to look at him, recognizing the beginning sequence of the ritual binding, and raised its flaming weapon in challenge. As Riley watched, Baraquel flung himself toward him and his passage was so swift that the air cracked as it parted.
Protect us, Lord, Riley had time to think and then he was shouting the second half of the binding, completely convinced that it wouldn’t work and that in seconds there wouldn’t be anything left of him but bloody chunks of flesh strewn across the floor in the wake of the angel’s attack, but by God he was going to try anyway.
“Slave and servant, lord and master,” he gasped, the surge of power forcing him to his knees, the pain all but unbearable. He could feel his flesh rippling on his frame, felt as if a thousand cockroaches were squirming there beneath his skin. His eyes bulged and he was convinced that at any moment his skull would burst from the energy flaring out of his form, but he continued the chant nonetheless, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that to stop now would be the death of him. “With these words I take your freedom and force your service, here and now and ever after.”
As the energy left him, Riley crashed forward onto the floor, his whole body convulsing with the release of all that power.
No sooner had the final word left his mouth that the angel’s dive was arrested and it crashed in a heap less than a foot from where Riley now lay.
“Holy crap!” Riley gasped, the fear striking him belatedly, making his whole body shake and shiver. He turned to one side and vomited, so acutely did he recognize how close he’d just come to dying.
Gabrielle had warned him that the binding was only temporary, that without the usual level of arcane talent needed to maintain it, his control of the angel would depend on many things; his faith in his own abilities, how strong the angel actual was, and the conditions when the binding was cast. All of which practically shouted to Riley that he and the rest of Echo had to get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. As he pushed himself painfully upright and turned to face the others, he was already mapping out the path they would take back down to the monorail tunnel and out into the desert proper.
Except the Knight Commander had other ideas.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cade strode past Riley and walked up to Baraquel. Without breaking stride he began to kick the creature where it lay, over and over and over again, never once making a sound.
At least two, possibly three, of his men were dead, more were injured, and this thing had been the cause of it. He hated these damnable creatures with a passion born on personal sacrifice and pain. After this mission, the stakes and Cade’s personal regrets had grown even higher.
“Leave him, Cade! We’ve got to go!”
Cade ignored his executive officer; there was information to be had here and Cade wouldn’t leave until he had it.
Stopping his tantrum, he reached down and flipped Baraquel over on his back. The angel stayed where it was, unable to do anything, not even wiggle a feather, until Riley ordered him to do so.
Cade leaned in close, looking the so-called Lord of Eden in the eye. “You slaughtered the people here, the very ones who brought you back into existence. I want to know why.”
The angel ignored him.
“Tell him what he wants to know, Baraquel,” Riley ordered, figuring the sooner they got out the better.
But the angel ignored him, refusing to respond.
That’s not good, Riley thought.
Cade drew his sword. “You will tell me what I want to know, or I will force you to do so.”
Baraquel sneered. “You don’t have the strength to harm me,” Baraquel said mockingly, the light of challenge in his eyes.
But Cade had been studying angelic lore for years now, searching for that tiny scrap of information that might lead him to the Adversary, might bring him face to face with the abomination that had killed his wife and scarred him, both body and soul. He had learned a few things during that process and he dragged one of them out now into the light.
The wings were the key.
“So you say. But what happens when I hack off those wings with the edge of a weapon blessed at High Mass by the Lord’s representative here on Earth? What of your power then? And what’s to keep me from going onward from there?”
The heart of an angel’s power was in its wings and removing them would render the angel practically helpless. Cade prodded the paralyzed creature with the edge of his weapon, poking the relevant body parts as he named them aloud. “What will you do when I hack off an arm? Or a leg? Or a hand or foot? Will you be fit for heavenly service then, Baraquel?”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
In reply Cade kicked the creature over onto its stomach. He planted one foot on the center of its spine and grasped the edge of a wing in his left hand. Raising his sword up over his right, he prepared to bring it slashing down on the exposed flesh where the wing grew out of its back.
“Wait! Wait!” Baraquel shrieked, fear in its voice for the first time.
Cade ignored it. He’d had enough, he’d decided, and he no longer really cared why the creature had done what it had. Vargas’ people were dead and so were his own men. It was time for retribution and righteousness.
Taking a firmer grip on the creature’s wing, Cade brought his sword slashing down toward it.
“I know about your wife! I can tell you about your enemy, the one you call the Adversary.”
Cade’s sword point skittered across the floor an inch from the angel’s neck. Dropping its wing and grabbing the creature by the hair, he hauled its head up off the ground so he could see its face. Cade said, “What?”
“I will tell you everything you want to know about your enemy. All you’ve got to do is let me go.”
“I’ll carve you into a hundred pieces if you don’t tell me!” Cade growled.
But Baraquel had found his weak spot and he knew Cade was bluffing. “No, you won’t. If you do, you’ll never get the information you need. It could take years for you to find it on your own.”
Cade slammed its head down into the floor and stepped away, his rage in full bloom yet knowing he couldn’t lose control.
Riley rushed over and grabbed his arm. “Cade, that binding is only temporary! I don’t know how much longer it will hold. He already won’t follow my commands; it can’t be much longer until he is free to move again. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“How did you learn to do that?” Cade asked. In all the years they’d been together, he’d never known Riley to be anything but leery about the use of magick of any kind.
Riley glanced away, letting go of Cade as he did so. “It doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to get out of here while we still can.”
But Cade would have none of it. “Tell me, damn it!” he shouted, grabbing Riley and forcing him to face him.
The big master sergeant held up his hands, showing he wasn’t a threat, and sighed. “It’s complicated, boss.”
“Then you’d best get started before that thing over there,” he pointed at Baraquel, “gets up again.”
Riley glanced at the angel, the fear plain on his face. He began talking, trying to get the story out as quickly and as coherently as possible, given the circumstance. “Earlier, after Davis stabbed that thing with his sword, it called down an incredible amount of power and sent all of us, the entire Echo Team, into the Beyond.” Riley explained how Cade had been injured, how they’d gotten lost in the endless tunnels, and how they had only healed him with outside help. “Your wife, Gabrielle, appeared, ordered us to take her to you. With her help Duncan was able to heal your injury.”
“Gabbi? Gabbi was there?” Cade’s rage fled. Now he felt confused, hurt.
“She said you were in danger of dying, that she could come to you only when your life was in mortal danger. She also gave me a message for you.”
Cade looked at him and Riley could see the hope shining in his eyes.
“She said to tell you that you could ‘find her across the Sea of Lamentations, on the Isle of Sorrows where the earth weeps beneath the tear in the sky.’ And she made me promise to tell you that looking for her was exactly what the Adversary wants you to do. Now can we go?”
“Not yet. Get everyone ready to move out.”
Ignoring Riley’s growing nervousness, and the stares of his surviving men, Cade walked back over to Baraquel. “All right, you son of a bitch,” he said, holding up his sword in front of it so he could swear on the cross built into the shape of the hilt. “I give you my word before God that I will personally not harm you further, provided you tell me what I want to know.”
“And your men?” Baraquel asked slyly.
“My men, too. They will allow you to go free upon my orders.”
“Sworn and done!” The angel laughed, its face creasing into a wide grin that was a horrible sight to behold.
“Tell me about the Sea of Lamentations. And the Adversary.”
“The Sea lies at the heart of the place you call the Beyond. Its waters are poisonous to the living and its depths contain the souls of the dead, th
ose who either have refused or are unable to travel onward to the other side. The angel Asherael, the one you know as the Adversary, makes his home on an island in the middle of the Sea.”
Baraquel’s left wing twitched and Cade knew he didn’t have much time left. “What is his weakness? How can he be killed?”
“A man of God, talking of killing? How distressing!” the angel joked, but answered the questions nonetheless. “There is a city there, the City of Despair, and within its boundaries Asherael is vulnerable. To destroy him, you will have to face him on his own ground.”
As Cade watched, the angel moved its head back and forth, as if stretching its muscles. “You have vowed not to harm me,” it said, its grin growing wider in anticipation of the slaughter to come. “But I have not done the same. I’ve answered your questions, absorbed your abuse. Now it is my turn to have a little fun.”
Echo’s commander stepped back, out of reach, as the angel’s hand snapped shut and then opened again. The binding was failing; Baraquel would be free in a matter of moments.
“Let’s get out of here!” Riley shouted from the doorway.
But Cade had one more card up his sleeve to play. He had sworn that neither he nor his men would harm the renegade angel directly, but that did not mean there weren’t others who might be willing to do the job. It was a calculated risk, and a huge one at that, but Cade was willing to take that chance.
“Go!” he shouted to his teammates and then turned away, not looking to see if they obeyed. Time was at a premium and he needed every second he had left.
An understanding of an angel’s vulnerability was not the only thing he had learned in his years of research. Opening up his heart and raising his hands to heaven, Cade bowed his head and called out in a language that hadn’t been spoken on earth in centuries.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Baraquel heard what he was saying and began to twist and squirm; doing everything he could to free itself from the last remaining traces of Riley’s binding. Standing nearby, Cade repeated his call.
Angels Scream (Echo Team Book 2) Page 18