Opheran seemed to be lost in thought, but focused back on us at my question. “Decades,” he said. “It depends on a great number of factors, such as his strength and your willpower, but even in a favorable situation, you’d remain susceptible to the suggestion for decades. It may not control your life, but it will always affect you while it remains.”
Chrissy shuddered. “Is there anything you can do about it?”
Before anyone could respond, a crack echoed across the chamber. “This is an outrage!” bellowed the Prince of Mammon. His High Prince sat quietly at their table, his attention seemingly elsewhere. “You interrogate prisoners and do not inform the High Council?”
“Do you inform the High Council every time you take a piss?” Amon asked. “Enough, Mammon. We have heard the same argument in different words for the past five minutes from you and Beelzebub. What exactly is so outrageous about this situation?”
“The lack of respect shown to your fellow Houses!” Mammon’s Prince pounded their table again. “This is not the normal level of disrespect you show us, Amon. We know you hold our House in disdain because we don’t live to fight like your people do. We don’t care. This situation isn’t like the rest. This is a war, and a prisoner could hold information pertinent to all our Houses.”
Leviathan’s High Prince stood up. “Allow me a question. Does this imply your Houses have not successfully taken any prisoners to date?”
“As far as we’re aware, these are the first prisoners taken by any of our Houses,” Mammon replied. He pointed a slender finger in our direction. “And one of those prisoners is now a guest of Asmodeus? Outrageous. The other is promised to the Choir? Unacceptable!”
Opheran stood up. “This prisoner has renounced her ties to the Eternal Conclave and requested the protection of House Asmodeus. We have granted her request for asylum.” He was putting it a little generously, since Tink wasn’t technically a member of our House, but she’d been contracted with me long enough. “As for him, it was an agreement the Choir insisted on in return for their cooperation. Your lack of ability to take prisoners is not our concern. We will share information as we see fit, but we are under no compulsion to allow your Houses access to the fruit of our efforts! Your actions have seen to that!”
Mammon started to speak, but before he could blather on, the High Prince of Belphagor stood. “My fellow Princes, this is a rather informal and unorthodox situation. Perhaps we should recess for a short time and reconvene as a formal High Council quorum. But, before we continue, may I ask a question to the mage at the Asmodeus table? Not the former prisoner, but the Marquis’s partner?”
Tink frowned, but stepped forward. “Yes?”
“This magic of yours.” Belphagor gestured at the circle. “Will it restrain the prisoner even in your absence?”
Warren, silent up until now, turned to face us. “Don’t leave me alone with them!”
“The circle will keep him from escaping or casting spells,” Tink said. “It has other contingencies to either knock him out or wake him up, but those need someone who knows human magic to trigger. But if all you need is a restraint, it’ll hold for days, or until someone deliberately breaks the circle from the outside.”
“Thank you,” Belphagor said, inclining her head politely to Tink. “My Princes, shall we return in ten minutes time? House Asmodeus, I believe as we are in your domain, you should preside.”
There were no arguments and demons began to shuffle out of the room. “Christina,” Opheran said. “You will not do anything unacceptable if we allow you out of Anna’s binding, correct?”
“Just keep me from looking at Zay and everything should be fine,” she said. “Sorry. I’m not sure I can hold back while I’m in this much pain.”
“Come with me.” Opheran led us out of the Council chamber. A minute’s walk brought us to another rudimentary building, the entrance guarded by two of our House’s troops. We entered the building under their gaze and found ourselves in what looked like Opheran’s office. “Please, sit,” he said, gesturing at a handful of chairs. None of them matched, but all of them looked like he had stolen them from an office. I pulled one back so I was out of Chrissy’s line of sight.
We took our seats and no one spoke for a moment. “Opheran, I need to ask you something.” Tink broke the silence and leaned into the circle. “Like she was asking before, is there anything you can do? Can you remove the suggestion on Chrissy?”
“I could,” Opheran said slowly. “But I will not. No. Allow me to explain.” He cut her off before she could explode. “The suggestion is not dangerous. She’s shown herself able to control it most of the time, and if Isaiah is not around, it’s a non-factor. As long as she has the suggestion, we know Azriphel still lives. Right now, this is vital information and I cannot justify losing it.”
Tink frowned. “I suppose. Are you all right with that, Chrissy?”
“I’m fine for now.”
“Now, Christina,” Opheran said. “I do not have much time before returning to the Council. I do not intend on bringing you back there. The Princes will interrogate the other mage, harshly, and then we will turn him over to the Choir and House Leviathan. He will survive, no doubt, but he may very well wish he hadn’t. I don’t imagine you’d enjoy watching any portion of the proceedings. Does this pose a problem for your future cooperation?”
Chrissy took a deep breath before answering. “I’m not comfortable with it, but I’m not in any place to argue with it, am I?”
“You have every right to argue.” Opheran’s voice was oddly gentle. I wasn’t certain if he was actually being nice or whether this was a ploy to get her to cooperate. “Understand, although you have renounced your Conclave ties, you were recently a combatant in a war of aggression against our people. Your partner admitted he assaulted a helpless prisoner under the guise of training. That is a war crime by any civilized standard and deserves nothing short of execution.” He paused for a significant moment. Chrissy bowed her head. “If it was not for Isaiah and Anna vouching for you, I would consign you to the same fate. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” Her head remained bowed.
“Good.” Opheran’s voice was no longer gentle. “Do you have any incontrovertible proof that Azriphel lives?”
“He told me after I was done with physical therapy,” she said, her voice dull with pain. Whether it was her ribcage or her memory, I couldn’t be sure. “He used me as an experiment. How long does a demonic suggestion last? Does it vary with distance? What stops it? Nathan Kane wanted to know how it worked. I don’t know who he told, or if he told anyone.”
“Good.” Opheran smiled. “The other Houses don’t know, and what they don’t know, they cannot interfere with. Second. Do you know where he would be held? Would it be in the data we recovered?”
“He’s a very important resource,” Chrissy said slowly. “I don’t know where he is now, and I doubt he’d be listed in the standard prisoner register. If I had to venture a guess, he’d be in one of the top security facilities, and I only know of a handful of those.”
“Where?”
“New York City,” she said promptly. “The obvious one, at the UN. Lagos, Nigeria. Tehran, Iran. I think there’s one in Germany, but I forget the city. There’s one in Papua New Guinea, not sure where exactly, but I think it’s devoted to medical research. There’s a facility in Antarctica. Maybe a couple more I’m not privy to.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “Antarctica? How’d you build a base there?”
“Magic,” she said.
“Ask a stupid question.”
Opheran nodded and turned to me. “Isaiah, Caleb, I would like you to prepare a raid on one of those secure facilities. Even if we don’t find Azriphel, I have no doubt we’ll find information relating to him.”
“And be able to check one off the list,” I said.
“Yes.”
“If you were an evil megalomaniacal mage with delusions o
f grandeur, where would you stash a very important prisoner?” I asked Caleb.
“Tehran,” he said. “New York is too easy a target. Antarctica is too obvious and isolated. The others are possible, but Iran would provide them with both cover for their activities and an additional layer of difficulty for infiltration.”
Tink snorted. “If you think I’m going to wrap myself up like they do, we’re going to have words.”
“I do,” Caleb said. “If it’s necessary, I would expect all of us to try and blend in.”
Tink snarled a few choice curses. Chrissy leaned forward and I leaned back. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“You will not,” Opheran said. “No matter how helpful, you are still a prisoner and will remain here in Camp Asmodeus until circumstances change. I apologize for the necessity, but you do understand our caution.”
“I understand.”
“So,” I said. Something about this entire exchange bothered me, but I filed my concerns away for later. “Let’s take a trip to sunny Tehran. Caleb, how long will it take you to get your Choir ready?”
“One day,” he said. “But we will need more time to get the information we need. I’ll look into our intelligence records to see if we can determine precisely where in the city we need to go.”
“We’ll be looking into it as well.” I looked at Opheran. “I think we’ll be good to go within a week. Less if Kalil gets lucky.”
“Don’t talk about him getting lucky while he’s back home with my sister,” Tink snapped.
“Really? Does she have a thing for him?”
“She better not.”
“Yeah, well, I think he’s lusting after Venora these days. I don’t want him caught in a love triangle right now. Awkward.”
Opheran stood up. “Proceed as soon as possible,” he said. “We are on a time limit. Less than four weeks remain before the High Council authorizes our surrender.”
“If there’s anything left to surrender in four weeks,” I said as Opheran swept past us. “I don’t like this sort of pressure. Caleb, do you really think we can pull this off?”
“I’m not worried about the mission,” he said. “I’m worried about Anna.”
“Huh?” I turned to see her wiping at her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Azriphel,” Caleb said softly.
“Fucking Azriphel,” she said. “Demon, are you really going to ask me to help rescue that motherfucker? I thought just looking for Lucifer was bad enough, but no, now you spring this on me. How can you ask me to do this?”
I shut my mouth before I could shoot off a thoughtless answer. That motherfucker had tried to kill us, had murdered her family for hundreds of years as revenge for his brother’s death, and was just in general a completely incorrigible asshole. “I know how you feel,” I said.
“No, you don’t.” Tink’s knife came out and she started spinning it around her fingers. “I thought he was dead and gone and now I find out he’s alive and all the hate came right back. I can’t think of anything else right now. It hurts, demon. He killed my father in front of me. He killed my family. He killed all of them except Grace. She was next. He even let me know the date and time if I wanted to try to stop him. And now you want to rescue him?” She bobbled a spin and drew blood from her finger. “Are you really going to ask me to do this?”
“Tink. Anna, listen,” I said. Her eyes widened slightly. “I hate him too. I hate him for everything he did to you and your family. I hate him for everything he did to me, to us. I am a step removed from your pain, yes, but I still feel what you feel. We’ve been together long enough.” Her eyes fixed on mine. Our bond echoed with emotion and I found it hard to keep my voice steady. “I would never ask this of you unless I didn’t have a choice.”
“But you do have a choice,” she whispered.
“I don’t, Anna. I wish I did.” I paused to gather myself. “If we had more time, yes, I’d look for any other Lucifer, exhaust all our options, do everything I could to avoid doing this to you. I don’t want to hurt you. There just isn’t enough time. Finding him might be the last chance my people have for survival. We’re losing the war. Kane is going to win, and he’s going to use his win to grab the whole world in his little fist.” I reached out and took her hand, squeezing her knife between us. “I have to ask you to help me. It’s ok if you say no. I understand. But I have to do this or everyone and everything I care about dies.”
She squeezed my hand. I was glad the handle, not the blade, was between our palms. “You fucker,” she said. “You’re asking me to save the asshole who killed my family so he can save your whole shitty race?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Fine. I reserve the right to hurt him.”
“I don’t care as long as he gets to the Council before time’s up.”
She squeezed my hand again before pulling away. “All right. Let’s do this before I pull my shit together and think better of it.”
Caleb and Chrissy had been silent for our conversation, the latter with her eyes tightly closed. “I’ll leave for my place and prepare the 37th,” Caleb said. “Then I’ll head to yours so we can centralize the information gathering.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“I guess I’ll stay here and do nothing,” Chrissy said. “Maybe I’ll get to see all the tourist attractions. I’m sure Hell has a few things to check out, right?”
I frowned. “Messenger?” After a couple of seconds, an imp phased through the air in front of us. “Did High Prince Opheran restrict Chrissy here from using Consortium services?”
The imp shrugged. “He didn’t instruct us to restrict her.”
“All right. Can she be authorized for basic message services under my authority as a Marquis?”
“You have the right to do so,” the imp said.
“Then I do so authorize her.”
“Noted. Anything else?”
I cleared my throat. “How is Kibs?”
The imp froze in midair, then phased out without a word. I waited for a new one to show up, but none did. “That’s not normal,” Tink said.
“I am pretty sure the Consortium hates me at this point,” I said. “Well, Chrissy, at least you can get messages back and forth to us. I assume there’ll be some things you can do here.”
“Thanks.” Her tone was flat.
“I suppose we’ll get going now.”
Tink gave the other mage a short hug. “We’ll do what we can to get you trusted,” she said.
As we walked out, a third guard had joined the security detail. He gave me a quick salute and bow. “I am Sergeant Rastus. High Prince Opheran has commanded me to lead the security detail for the mage prisoner.”
“I assume you mean escorting her everywhere she goes.”
“Until ordered otherwise.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Sergeant. Please give her all due respect. I know she’s a mage and we’re at war, but she turned her back on them, risking her own life to give us some essential information.”
“Understood.” He bowed again, a little deeper.
Tink, Caleb, and I walked away from Opheran’s office. “Demonic culture still confuses me,” Caleb said.
“She’s taking an enormous risk to help us,” I said. “The House needs to know she’s a good one like Tink.”
“A good one.” Tink scowled up at me.
“You know what I mean.”
“If she is a good one,” Caleb added. Both of us frowned at him. “Didn’t it seem odd when she shifted from calling us monsters to wanting to help us so quickly? I found it very suspicious.”
“That’s what bothered me.” I snapped my fingers. “I thought something was strange about her asking to help.”
“Ever think she was just talking shit to keep the other guy thinking they were on the same side?” Tink asked.
I looked at Caleb and he shook his head. “I could feel her sincerity when she called us monsters.
”
“Doesn’t mean she’s not on our side!”
“Look, Tink, it doesn’t mean she’s on our side either.” She turned her glare back to me. “She thinks we’re monsters, but I bet she also thinks Kane’s a monster. There’s nothing wrong with helping monsters kill each other. It’s one of the Conclave’s favorite tactics. Remember how they helped trigger the war? Hell, you thought the same thing when you contracted me to fight Azzy in the first place.”
“But she’s not in the Conclave anymore!” Tink protested.
“So she says.”
“You don’t trust her.”
“Of course not.” I held my hand up as Tink went for her knife. “I want to, believe me, but she’s been all too convenient today. There’s a chance she could still be working for Kane. She’d have to be thinking very quickly on her feet, but it’s possible.”
Tink crossed her arms. “She’s terrified of him!”
“Aren’t we all? But you know if she gave him enough of a bonus to justify what she gave us, he’d be fine with it. The ends justify the means for him. Right?”
Caleb cleared his throat. “I could question her.”
“No,” Tink and I said together. “She’s harmless right now. If she fed us bad information, we can deal with her later,” I added.
The angel shook his head. “It’s foolish to not verify her story if we have any questions. It would be simple and take only moments.”
“No means no, Caleb,” Tink snapped. “What happened to treating prisoners with dignity?”
He shook his head again and sighed, but didn’t push it any further. A pair of imps phased into sight as we approached the Council chamber. I stiffened as I recognized the Chairman. “Marquis Isaiah Bright,” he rasped.
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