by G. A. Rael
"Sure he does," the angel said wryly. "So does the guy about to get creamed for pulling out in front of a speeding truck on Route Forty-Four, and so do all the people who're about to be killed by the first volcanic eruption in a hundred years on a remote little island in the Pacific. You think they couldn't all do with a little more time to tie up loose ends?"
"I understand that, but --"
"But what?" he pressed. "Darren is different because you care about him? The guy is a stone's throw away from eating brains for breakfast. As for you, well, I'm a hell of a lot nicer than the guy they were planning to send after you if things got much worse. Trust me, you're both better off sticking with plan A to come along quietly."
"There has to be another way," Jordan said, taking a step back. "I made a mistake trusting that ghost. I never should have summoned you."
"I ain't no demon, girl," Samael said with a crooked smirk as he took a step toward her. "I answer a call if I feel like it, but I don't get summoned for shit and you sure don't got what it takes to send me back where I came from."
Jordan turned and ran. She knew she couldn't outrun him, but at the very least, she hoped she could buy enough time to call for Hermes. When she looked behind her, the angel was gone. Before she could even look back in front of her, she collided with a wall of muscle and fell hard to the ground.
Samael reached out and grabbed her wrist, yanking her to her feet. His movement was swift, but he didn't hurt her. "Little lady, I ain't lookin' to get rough with a girl, witch or not, but don't think I won't."
"Let me go," Jordan cried, struggling to pull her arm free from his grasp. “Hermes!”
Samael stood by patiently, looking around the quiet forest. “Looks like your pussy cat is angel shy," he said, clearly amused.
Jordan narrowed her eyes and turned her anger into focus as she put what Hermes had been teaching her to use. The angel frowned down at his hand as it began to sizzle under the heat from her arm. He loosened his grip for an instant, but it was enough to allow Jordan to break free and kick him hard in the gut before she turned to run again. When she looked back, Samael was walking toward her at an easy pace, flexing his smoking hand. She’d only ever seen the look on his face before her mother had gone out into the yard for a switch.
"Hellfire. Cute," he said flatly. "Not nearly powerful enough to do any real damage, but cute."
Jordan stopped suddenly and held out her hand. She closed her eyes until she heard the roar of flame and looked up to find Samael surrounded by a ring of fire that came up to his shoulders. He looked around, then back at her with an exasperated sigh. To Jordan's horror, he stepped through the flames without so much as wincing. His flannel shirt didn't make the trip, but the rest of him was untouched. He brushed a few smoldering scraps of plaid off his chest and continued toward her at a steady gait.
"I liked that shirt."
Jordan took off again, hoping the trees would slow him down. Agility had never been her strong suit, but despite her generous curves, she was still a fraction of the angel's size and she could slip through spaces his broad physique would make difficult. She made it further than she would have thought was possible and didn't dare to look back.
When she saw the broad outline of a man standing still up ahead, she stopped in her tracks. Her heart pounded in her ears so hard she felt sure the thing would burst out of her chest.
"What part of angel don't you understand?" he asked, sounding almost more frustrated on her behalf than his. "You're weak, even for a witch. Your strongest natural gift is healing, something that we could have helped you nurture. It's a damn shame you picked the wrong side. At least we would have put all that potential you had as a child to good use. We would have protected you."
Jordan clenched her fists as the hypocrisy in his words made her anger outweigh her terror. "Protected me? Where were you when one of your own used my 'gifts' to kill all those people?" she hissed. "Where was Heaven's protection when my father kept me locked in an attic for a decade?"
Samael frowned. "What?"
She scoffed. "So much for protecting me. You don't have any idea what I've been through. When I needed help, it was a demon who offered it. Sure, I was a fool for trusting him, but I'd be an even bigger fool if I trusted the kind of monster that ruined my life in the first place."
"Listen, I'm no guardian angel and I certainly wasn't yours," he said, taking a step forward. "Even if I was, there's a system. A guardian can't always intervene when he wants to."
"Let me guess, 'Everything happens for a reason?'" she asked, stepping back. She knew there was no hope of escape at that point unless she could somehow buy enough time for Hermes to find her. Unless Samael was right and he had abandoned her. After she had learned all that he had kept from her regarding Darren's soul, she wasn't holding out much hope.
"Some things," Samael said ruefully, holding out his hand. "Please, don't make this any harder than it already is. Just come quietly and I'll do what I can to help you."
When Jordan turned to run for the last time, she barely made it a step before she was pinned against the angel's bare chest. He looked even stronger than he had with his shirt on and she wondered why she had ever thought she stood a chance against him, even for a moment. He stared down at her with something akin to pity in his gaze before he grabbed her wrists and spun her around so he could pin them behind her back. Before she could process what was happening, cold metal shackled her wrists together.
"Alyssa Hurlow, by the authority of the Heavenly H.O.S.T., you're now under arrest," he recited mechanically. All traces of his amusement had vanished. He turned her around again, resting his hands on her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I hoped I wouldn't have to do it this way, but you've left me no choice. I'll try to get you a fair trial and ask them to consider the fact that you voluntarily surrendered. If you behave, there's no reason for them to know you ever put up a fight. Understand?"
Tears of frustration streamed down Jordan's cheeks and the lump in her throat made it impossible to speak. She could only nod.
Not that she had any fight left in her. Not if Darren was going to die anyway. Her only hope now was that his mother would have a change of heart in what Jordan was beginning to think had been her plan to have him killed all along. She could only pray--to what, she wasn't sure--that Natalie wouldn't tell them where Darren's soul was.
"Good girl," Samael said, putting a hand on her back to steady her as he urged her to walk forward. Jordan obeyed in resignation, gasping when her foot rose off of grass only to fall onto a flat surface so white and smooth it almost didn't look real.
She looked up sharply and found herself in what appeared to be an office building. There were people in suits and business casual clothes bustling about, carrying papers and briefcases. There was a hallway with no fewer than a dozen doors on one end and someone disappeared down an identical hallway on the other end of the large desk stationed in the center of the room. A woman sat behind the counter, her black hair pulled back into a sleek bun as she typed something on a computer hidden behind her high desk.
Jordan struggled to process what had just happened. Teleportation? Wherever they were, she had a bad feeling it didn't have a physical address on earth.
“Where the hell are we?” she demanded, looking around the pristine office space. “Is this… Heaven?”
Samael watched her with folded arms and a knowing smirk. “‘Fraid not. You were a lot closer the first time.”
Jordan swallowed hard, straightening her spine as she forced herself to come to terms with the fate she’d always known she was destined for, long before she’d ever signed her soul away to Hermes. “I’m in Hell.”
“Sure are,” said Samael. “But there’s no need to look so shook up about it. Hell ain’t such a bad place to be, and there is a silver lining.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
His grin widened. “The Whore of Babylon? You’re a regular celebrity down here.”
Thirty-Eight
Samael smiled at her obvious dismay. "Now you see why I like to work in the field. This place makes me claustrophobic," he said, shrugging his shoulders like he was trying to stretch out. He kept his hand on Jordan's back as he led her over to the desk.
The woman behind the desk finally looked up and gave Jordan no more than a cursory glance. "It's not like you to make a personal delivery, Samael."
"This one's a special case," he said, leaning on the desk. "Alyssa J. Hurlow, known aliases including Cassandra Evers, Elsa Ryan and, currently, Jordan Adams. She's here for questioning and processing. Class-K witch, voluntary surrender."
The woman had been typing all of what he said into her computer but raised an eyebrow and looked up at the last part. "Voluntary surrender? A witch?"
Jordan frowned, wondering why Samael wasn’t telling the secretary who she really was. Usually it was the label of Whore that she found offensive, not the absence of it.
"I know, I was surprised too." He chuckled. "Be sure to make a note of that for the boss man. I'd like to handle the questioning myself, Sue."
Sue gave him a look. "You know Raguel won't approve of that."
"I know, but this is kind of a gray area between our jurisdictions," he said, lowering his tone so only she and Jordan could hear. "She came to me before the zombie situation could escalate to a matter of, you know, Biblical proportions. This is the kind of thing that could cause a big stir if it's not handled the right way and we need bad publicity like a hole in the head."
"I'm sorry, Samael," Sue said firmly. "Witches fall under Heavenly Transgressions, not the Transit Authority."
He clenched his jaw. "Fine, but there's additional case info he's gonna need and it's for an angel with arch-level clearance only. I'm sitting in."
"Take it up with Rag," she said, sliding a plain tan folder across the desk with a closemouthed smile. "I just handle processing. Sign, please."
"Oh, so you'll call him Rag, but I'm Samael," he muttered, snatching the file only to hand it back once he was finished signing it. His signature flashed so brightly that it stunned Jordan for a moment and left her blinking away the spots and tears in her vision. "I see how it is."
Sue shrugged, turning to Jordan. She lifted up a large, professional quality camera. "Say cheese."
Before Jordan could process her comment, the shutter clicked and another flash of light made her stumble. With her arms bound, she went straight forward and would have hit the floor face first if Samael hadn't grabbed her.
"Come on," he muttered, taking her by the arm to lead her down the hall.
"What was that for?" Jordan asked, still seeing spots. She struggled to keep up with Samael's long strides.
"Like she said, it's processing," he said, his mood turned sour.
"I get that, but processing for what?"
He gave her a wary glance before turning the corner down another seemingly endless hall of doors. "For Hell."
Jordan stopped suddenly, her sneakers squealing across the floor. Samael stopped and looked back, clearly annoyed. “You said we’re already in Hell.”
“This is processing, not holding.”
Jordan decided that she could happily go a lifetime without learning the difference. “Why didn’t you tell her who I am?”
“I did. Weren’t you paying attention?”
“I don’t mean giving her a list of my aliases. Why didn’t you tell her who I really am?” she demanded.
The dodgy way the angel looked around to make sure they were alone told Jordan there was more to it than him not wanting to have a big fuss. “Listen,” he said, guiding her over to a secluded hallway. “Who and what you actually are is a highly classified matter. If word got out that we let a second rate demon run around for a whole damn year with the newly awakening harbinger of the apocalypse, there’d be a mutiny. Do you know what happens when angels mutiny? Because there are a few notable paintings from the Renaissance you might wanna brush up on.”
“In other words, the higher ups don’t want to let the worker bees know how badly they screwed up.”
His mouth pressed into a hard, unamused line. “Ever heard of capture the flag, Jordan?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“In this scenario, you’re the flag, the two teams are Heaven and Hell, and the winner gets the first shot at Armageddon. Now, there have been other potentials, but it’s never gotten this far. I don’t know if you actually give a shit or if it’s all just an act, but if you weren’t here, you could have been used to do a hell of a lot of damage. And I do mean that literally.”
Jordan shifted uncomfortably, keeping her arms wrapped tight around herself. Hell was unexpectedly drafty. “Of course I care,” she muttered. “I only went with Hermes in the first place because he promised to return the people I love.”
“If that’s true, then you have my sympathies,” Samael said in a surprisingly genuine tone. “That was a promise he had no right to make.”
“My mother and brother,” she said uneasily. “He was never going to bring them back, was he?”
“Not them, no. Best case scenario, they’d end up the same as Darren. Looking and even acting like themselves for a while, but never quite right. By the time you realized how wrong they were, it would be too late for all of you.”
Jordan swallowed the rage and betrayal crawling up the back of her throat. She knew Hermes couldn’t be trusted. That wasn’t news, so why did the realization that he’d lied to her about this sting so much?
“I’m sorry.” Samael’s big hand on her shoulder drew her out of her misery. “It sounds like you learned in the hardest way possible why you can’t ever trust a demon.”
“I didn’t,” she said, clearing her throat. “I was just working with what I had, but it doesn’t matter now. What happens next?”
Samael’s hand fell away and he watched her with something like pity on his boyish features. “All the damned go to trial, but this is a special case. Raguel will want to handle yours in a more intimate setting.”
“Right,” Jordan muttered. “Do I at least get a lawyer?"
"Not that there aren't plenty down here, but no," Samael scoffed. "Sorry, just a little angel humor. Things don't work like that down here.”
"Okay, so how do they work?"
The angel took off his hat to rake a hand through his tousled brown hair. "Look, all you need to know is that it's better if you just do everything Raguel says. No sass, no arguing. Beg a little if you want, he's got an ego that'd make the devil cry, but don't rock the boat. He'll be your judge, jury and interrogator, so the less of a fight you put up, the better your odds.”
"Wait, an angel is going to decide my fate?" she asked, frowning. "What about God?"
Samael flinched, like she'd said a dirty word. "He delegates. A lot. Definitely don't mention Him in front of Raguel."
"But that's not fair," she cried. "What happened to 'only God can judge?'"
"It still makes a lovely back tattoo for drunken rednecks," he said in mock sympathy. "'Fraid it don't have much bearing on what we do here, though. Just keep your mouth shut unless you're kissing Rag's ass, and let me do the talking. With any luck, I'll be able to convince him you were just another preacher's kid who got led astray by demons, which ain't too far off from the truth judging from what I read in your file."
“Why does any of that even matter? I’m the Whore of Babylon, don’t you guys need me the same as Lucifer does?”
“All souls face judgment,” he said firmly. “As for your destiny, there’s a whole team of us dedicated to squelching the “potential” your kind shows each time one of you pops up. How do you think we made it this far?”
Jordan’s eyes widened. “You killed the others?”
“No,” he said harshly, wincing as he scratched his stubble. “Least, not on purpose. What happened in Paris was an accident, but that’s beside the point. We just stay on the lookout for high-risk candidates and over the centuries, we’ve gotten good at spotting them. We’re still a
ngels, so when that happens, we create a supernatural quarantine the potential won’t notice and gently guide them in the right direction. AKA, away from Whoredom.”
“So what, you keep them in nunneries and watch over them until they die?” she asked in disbelief.
“Just until they’re past a certain age. And nunneries were definitely the easiest route up until a few decades go. Tabletop gaming’s pretty addictive, so that effectively has the same result as cloistering.”
“Guess that would’ve been preferable to my upbringing.”
“Yeah… sorry we didn’t get to you in time.” He actually sounded like he felt guilty about it, too. “If I’d found you first, things would’ve turned out a lot different.”
“So let me get this straight. You’re basically the angel of the apocalypse, but you’re trying to prevent it?”
He shrugged. “Just because I was created to handle shit come Judgment Day doesn’t mean I want to see it come to pass if there’s any other option. One way or another, when those trumpets sound, a lot of lives are gonna be lost on all sides.”
“Believe it or not, that’s what Hermes is trying to prevent. Or at least, that’s what he told me.”
Samael snorted. “Wouldn’t put too much stock into that. Demons have a way of looking inside us and mirroring back whatever it is we wanna see.”
“I guess so,” Jordan murmured.
“Come on,” Samael said, jerking his head for her to follow. When he opened a door at the end of the hall, there was already someone inside the room. A tall man—still a few inches shorter than Samael—with short salt-and-pepper hair was sitting at one end of a long metal table, looking every bit the part of police interrogator. Angel, not so much.
His eyes were of the same rich brown hue as Samael's, but they were somehow as cold as the table he sat tapping his pen on. When they entered the room, he looked up with such apathy that Jordan knew immediately why Samael had instructed her to appeal only to his ego rather than his heart. It seemed unlikely that he had one.