by Azure Boone
Lucian frowned. "What?"
"Leaving here is out of the question, it's too dangerous. But I assure you, your brother is in the same condition as when you left him."
"How do you…" Lucian realized the stupidity of the question only to ask another stupid one. "Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Lucian went back to the bedroom and found his cell phone. A signal, what a surprise. He searched his phone book for the hospital number and hit send, going to the window and looking out. He'd feel a lot better once he got confirmation on what the angel said. God forgive him, but Dorn wasn't exactly thinking about Leo. Or anything else for that matter. He held through four minutes of automated message hell before a live person finally spoke. "St. Joseph's General, switchboard. How may I direct your call?"
"Yes, I'm calling to inquire about the status of Leo Dade. He's my brother." A keyboard chattered in the background.
"Your name?" Four more minutes of verifying his identity, he finally transferred to someone who could answer his questions.
The soft feminine voice on the line identified the speaker as Carol Mason, RN in the Neurology Department. Lucian gave his name yet again and asked how Leo was doing. "Oh. Mr. Constantin, we've tried to reach you. Can you come down to the hospital? I'd prefer not to discuss the case by phone."
What should he do? Dorn had been pretty clear about him not going anywhere. But this was his brother. And Leo needed him. The nightmare image of one of those monsters dragging Jessie away flashed through his mind. "I'm sorry, there's simply no way I can get there"
"Sir, I don't think you understand-"
"And you definitely don't understand. There is absolutely no way I can come to the hospital." Inspiration struck. "I was called back to Romania for an emergency. I can't get away for weeks, at least. So, can you please just tell me what updates there are concerning my brother's condition?" Hopefully his long dead grandmother would forgive him for what he was going to say. "I wish I could tell our grandmother that her prayers for happiness and prosperity have been answered. It would make her last few hours on Earth more peaceful."
Carol Mason, RN, sighed and Lucian had to fight back his grin of victory at her capitulation. "Okay, Mr. Constantin. I'll make an exception for your circumstances. My own grandmother recently passed, and she would certainly have wanted to know this kind of thing too." A deep breath. "Are you sitting?"
"Yes."
"You're brother has completely recovered."
Lucian's jaw dropped. "But… The doctor said he would never really recover at all."
"The doctors can't understand it. It makes no sense and should have been medically impossible."
Before Lucian could respond or ask to speak with Leo, Dorn towered over Lucian and zapped the phone out of his hand with one foreign syllable.
In the next heartbeat, everything blurred. When his vision cleared, Lucian stood in the living room with Dorn. Kassern and Troy appeared a second later, all geared up for battle.
"Something's happened," Dorn said.
A double no-shit expression met his announcement.
"Yes, I think I've gathered that much with the alarm you just nearly knocked me on my ass with." Kassern arched a perfect brow. "What's going on?"
"Somehow they've found Leo Dade and broke the binding. Apparently, he's completely recovered. No longer essentially brain dead."
"What?" Kassern sounded floored. That couldn't be good. "How is that possible?"
"Good question. We need all the current updates to figure out how and why they managed to breech the binding of an archangel." Dorn gestured toward Lucian. "And he used one of those communication devices. I thought we had prohibited them."
"We did," Kassern said, "but he's your human, not mine."
Dorn shook his head at his reckless behavior. "I…" Was he about to say he'd forgotten? Maybe he just couldn't bring himself to utter the sacrilegious word. "My apologies. We need to be prepared. Our location may have been compromised."
"Can we move?" Troy asked. Lucian had a hard time not staring at the man in uniform, or whatever it was. He was impressive and resembled a modern version of what a medieval holy warrior might have looked like, hood and all.
"We can if Dorn is ready." Kassern eyed the other angel critically, as if looking for weaknesses.
"I'm…close."
Kassern rolled his eyes. "Are we having cold feet? Do you need any pointers?"
Dorn snapped his eyes to him. "Distractions," he muttered.
"Well, I don't want to rush a great thing, but can you go ahead and knock it out of the park so we can get the hell out of here?"
The urgency in Kassern's tone triggered Lucian's panic. "What's going to happen?"
They all turned to him, but Kassern replied. "I'd rather not find out."
"You'd rather not find out? You're an archangel. You both are." Lucian shrugged and spread his hands. "Why are we worried? I'm just…trying to get a feel of what's going on."
"Weren't you there for the demon party at the hotel?" Troy's suggestion said he thought Lucian might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.
"But we have Dorn—"
"Dorn is not in any shape to fight right now." Kassern took a few steps and turned to continue pacing. "After the transformation, we're depleted." He looked at Dorn. "How are you holding up? Any symptoms?"
"Memory loss."
"How much?" Kassern's eyebrows rose.
"I remembered Sally but…I forgot I was even an angel."
Kassern whistled and grinned at Lucian. "Must've made the earth move." He turned back to Dorn. "What else?"
He shook his head. "Maxwell took all the amatorios potentia."
"What?" Kassern's eyebrows nearly disappeared under his hairline. Lucian had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the ludicrous expression.
Dorn nodded and threw his hands up. "Jumped right out, pounced and devoured it."
"I sure as hell hope you're on good terms with that stubborn ice fire lizard son of yours."
"Of course. I arrived at an understanding with him long ago. Unlike you."
"That's because Francis is an unpredictable hot headed tom cat brat." Kassern hissed and grabbed his chest, his face turning furious as he seemed to glare at something invisible. "Oh now you want to randomly come back home after a millennia? Scratch me again and see if I don't yank your ass out and remind you who the captain of this ship is! No, do not purr, you know I hate that crap. No you don't miss me, you lying little shit."
Dorn laughed out right. "Like father like son."
Kassern's gaze snapped to Dorn, eyes wide. "Wait a minute. Was that a laugh? The noise that just came out of your mouth?" He suddenly cracked up before saying, "Man, what a strange sound to hear from you." He jerked up peaceful hands. "But nice."
Dorn ignored the taunt. "I need to do too many things in this exact instance for this impossible mission of ours."
"What can I do?" Kassern offered.
"Can't you call other angels?" The idea made sense to Lucian, at least.
"We could but we shouldn't," Dorn said. "The fewer angels we include, the more power we gain. And judging from what I've gathered of this mess, we're going to need all the power we can get our hands on."
"And calling others will disturb the balance of supernatural energies and draw unwanted attention." Kassern said.
"What about me? Do I get any powers?" The question might make him seem a little… greedy for the wrong thing, but Lucian didn't want to be defenseless or useless to Jessie.
Dorn's blue gaze flicked over Lucian's body. "Hopefully. Not sure what, how, when, or why however." The angel's voice went hard and dry, showing how that bothered him.
"Great." Lucian tossed his hands.
"Kassern?" A sleepy female voice called from one of the other rooms.
The ruby angel glanced behind him then looked at all three men. "I'll go get Karly up. Troy, get Devyn. Lucian,
Dorn, bring the women. Time for a group huddle."
Dorn's head snapped around with a growl. "Sally's gone."
****
All Sally knew was she had to get to the sound of his voice. It was life. Warm, peaceful, beautiful. And pulling from inside her eye. Feeling the source embedded in her head, she was sure she would be able to touch it if her skull weren't in the way, the line of it passing through her eyeball and extending out to where he was. And the pull was uncompromising, like a migraine about to go super-nova if she refused it.
But that's not why she followed. She followed for the promise of what lay at the end, not the threat of pain. Well that too, but getting to that pleasure source was all she could think.
After a bit, her surroundings intruded on the echo of pain through her skull. She stumbled through woods with no shoes. No clothes. Body numb with cold. Another reason she needed to follow. The warmth. She craved it. Needed it more than air.
A dark mass of plant material blocked her way, but she couldn't go around. The pull in her eye wouldn't allow deviation from the path. So she pushed on, not minding the savage burn of deep scratches across delicate skin when supple briar whips struck her flesh.
Shadows drew near, all around, walking with her. Closer. Close enough to tell they weren't shadows at all, but… what? Strange Neanderthal looking things. Had they been there all along? Or had they just appeared? They moved with her, toward the same source. No, they were leading her. Guiding her?
She turned to see and cried out from the pain it created. The tension on the line became so taut it felt like half her brain would be ripped out of her skull if she strayed even the least bit. The line tightened and she gasped, hurrying, stumbling.
She began to cry, forgetting the warmth, forgetting the pleasure, all a distant memory. Only the painful urgency remained. Reality eroded away the initial motive of pleasure until she sobbed with the realization of her nightmare.
She was being taken captive. "Help me." Sally finally managed a whisper through her pain and tears.
The strange men/creatures around her growled and gathered closer until they must have carried her along.
The source of her pain and pleasure waited for her arrival just ahead in a field. The levitating golden figure seemed to rush toward her.
A sudden blast of aqua blue lit up the field, jerking her heart. The shhhooo-whomp that followed seconds after rattled every organ in her body while the golden figure before her blasted out of her vision like it had been flicked by a large pissed-off finger. The Neanderthal creatures around Sally screeched and paused.
A giant sinuous form that reminded her of Chinese dragons, scales glittering aquamarine, stormed through the air sounding like rolling thunder. Aqua spikes blasted from its wings with a single flap while its blue tail of fire swept the ground like a tidal wave. Wait, that was Maxwell, only twenty times larger.
Sally braced as the fire from the beast’s tail raced toward her. The Neanderthal things leapt into the air with another screech just as the roiling blue slammed into her.
Not hot, but warm airy mist roared in her ears and flooded her mouth and eyes until she tasted the ocean. Peering at the world through the aqua, she watched as the fiery tail continued to sweep the landscape with an arctic wave of fury that iced everything in its path.
She looked down, amazed to find a flaming aqua robe covering her. Thank God.
Neanderthal creatures came from all around and lunged for her. Dorn's back suddenly filled her vision. He was clothed in the same blue fire as her, but from the waist down. Overwhelming calm came with his presence and she found herself in a near drug haze wile muscles rippled in his alabaster torso from the chain whip in his right hand and the short sword in his left.
The whip harnessed the Enemy and Dorn wove through the creatures at a blurring speed, a streak of blue at times, leaving them twitching on the ground, aqua liquid issuing from their mouths, eyes, and ears, like they were drowning from the inside.
The beautiful snake dragon battled the fiery form and what seemed like a small army of those Neanderthal things. Balls of ice rocketed from his mouth sounding like barks of booming thunder.
Sally gasped at a bright flash of red. An angel with massive ruby looking wings appeared on the opposite side of the field, walking toward a flood of those things, shooting spheres of liquid crimson from a huge sawed off looking shot gun. God there were so many of those monkey men, like human rodents crawling over the ground.
The red angel wasn't alone. A man in a white robe walked alongside him. He loaded and shot flaming red bolts from a crossbow with inhuman speed. It looked like he was loading handfuls of fire from the burning red cross on the back of his robe.
Dorn spun and his blue eyes suddenly filled her vision. He swept her up in his arms and made everything blur.
Lucian couldn't believe he was left practically defenseless to guard the women with only an aqua pill he was not to eat unless necessary. And of course no time to explain why.
Every piece of furniture was up against the only door in the cottage. Dorn and Kassern had assured him the spiritual barriers they both placed over the structure left him with nothing to worry about. Only, Lucian remembered one little thing. The exchanged glance the two angels had shared right after that reassurance. Neither of them were positive. Hence the need for a strange blue pill that he had no clue would do if he should have to swallow it.
"Vă rugăm să-mi ajute Dumnezeu atunci când vine momentulce."
"What are you saying?" Jessie's breathless words at his right reminded him of the last time he'd heard her voice that way. He had kissed her senseless.
"Just praying." He eyed Karly who paced to the right of him. "You are making me very nervous."
She shot him a glance. "Yeah well, if you knew what happened to us the last time we waited behind while they went to fight, you'd know why."
"What happened?" Jessie's tone tattled on her overworking imagination.
"Don't." Devyn's voice bit as she eyed her pacing friend.
Karly paused for a second, nodded, then resumed her floor stalking.
A blast shook the house and elicited short screams from the girls. Devyn and Karly huddled around Jessie while Lucian eyed the pill in his trembling palm. The bedroom door with all the furniture piled against it suddenly seemed like useless, juvenile hindsight.
"Eat the damn pill Lucian." Karly's voice quivered.
"Wait," Devyn whispered, leaving Lucian torn.
A gurgled laugh sounded outside the door and the piled up furniture began to slide slowly forward.
"Eat the pill!" The scream came from the two girls.
Lucian swallowed it.
"Oh God." Karly squeezed her eyes shut, her breaths trembling. "It's them."
It's them sounded like it came through a megaphone and Lucian dropped to one knee as his organs and muscles felt like they'd been plugged into a 220 socket. There was no breathing or screaming, only converging with the ripping of his pores and a back-of-the-mind prayer that what was happening to him was supposed to be.
Lucian heard, saw, tasted, and felt the creature suddenly. He'd never known anything so entirely so quickly. He needed to crush the thing's brain stem.
Lucian launched with light speed upon the creature with a kick that rocked its head back hard. He grabbed its skull and gave a vicious twist severing muscles and ligaments before dropping the limp creature to the floor. More growling things appeared at the door and Lucian repeated the operation on the next one. Then the next and the next.
A dozen executions later, Lucian froze at seeing Leo, just inside the door, looking hale and hearty for someone who'd recently been brain dead.
"Hello, Brother." Leo gave a lopsided grin.
Lucian's vision faltered briefly. No, his super-vision faltered. And his hearing. An intense vertigo flooded his brain and he hit the floor with the momentum of a sack of lead being body-slammed. Lucian vomited violently, feeling
like his body wanted to free him of his organs.
Screams echoed in his ears as he felt himself being hauled to his feet. "Little brother." The words came out garbled and rough. Nothing like Leo's carefully casual country-boy sound.
Lucian pried his eyelids open and faced the strange man.
"I think you have something that belongs to me?"
There was nothing wrong with Lucian's hearing, he realized. The person that looked just like his brother really did sound demonic. But what did Lucian have that belonged to him?
****
Jessie stared in wide eyed terror at Lucian's brother. "Ahhh. There she is," he rasped, aiming his evil eyes at her.
Lucian seemed on the verge of unconsciousness as he lolled his head in her direction. Jessie whispered no, not wanting him there, not wanting him looking at her.
"I've got unfinished business with you, bitch." He aimed a straight-arm blow at Lucian and dropped him like a ton of bricks to the floor.
Jessie had the sudden sense to run. How would she make it? Half-way over the debris blocking the door, a death grip at the nape of her neck snapped her head back and yanked her in reverse like a rag doll.
The insane man suddenly released her with a roar of fury and Jessie scrambled into a corner. Dressed in her holy knight robe, Devyn went dominatrix on him. Nailing him with several blows a second, she drove him back with ruby shards for knuckles and boot heels with blades. The brutality of her attack brought black looking oil seeping from the open wounds all over his body.
More of the monkey men things came through the door.
"Karly!" Devyn yelled.
Karly held her head, leaning against the opposite wall. "I'm trying, it won't come!"
One of those ape men raced to Karly, sniffing at her shoulder and studying closely. He threw his head back with a screeching howl, sounding like a rabid monkey in a tunnel.
Jessie covered her ears but was unable to close her eyes.