Idly, Branwyn said, “The original damage was done by one of your friends.”
“And then somebody gave you poor instructions and made it worse. A tragedy.” Hadraniel held out a hand and flexed it. “It stings, making a vessel quickly. But it is enough, now. Return the device.”
Branwyn knew the truth as Aleth saw it: it was enough. Hadraniel held out its hand expectantly, a pleasant expression pasted over the anxiety stealing its grace.
This creature ordered a massacre, Branwyn reminded herself. It was hard to see in its face. But that sort of thing often was. He seemed like such a quiet guy. Hadraniel had ordered a massacre and now she was expected to just give another weapon back to the angel. Just give it back after admiring it, like a good little girl, give back her creation, twisted to a use she never imagined.
The chiming grew louder, joined by the drumbeat sound of Branwyn’s own heart and the inaudible twang of the tension winding itself tighter.
Branwyn showed her teeth in a smile as she tossed the divinity circuit across the table. Hadraniel caught it easily and slipped it over its head as Branwyn leaned back in her chair.
“I am pleased,” said Hadraniel. “You’ve demonstrated your cleverness and your willingness to be obedient. With some time you’ll make an exceptional servant.”
“Yes, we can shake hands and everything once we have a deal. But I’m a little concerned,” Branwyn admitted. Presumably, the kaiju were now engaged with their various tasks to trap and tether Hadraniel. She just had to keep it talking. “What exactly are you—and your friends, if we make more—going to be doing with it? I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of you going around wiping out everybody’s ability to think rationally. That seems dangerous these days. Air traffic controllers and emergency personnel need to rely on more than faith.”
“Fear not. We will be occupied for some time dealing with the troublemakers. First those who stole our power from us, and then those who abandoned us.” It closed its hand around the divinity circuit. “You were right about the connection between the divinity circuit and the vessel. It will be easy.”
Branwyn tried to hide her wince. She’d seen that in her casual assessment, said it, and hoped she was wrong. “Yeah? Going to do something about Senyaza? They’re one of my biggest clients at the moment.”
“You didn’t know any better,” said Hadraniel comfortingly.
“I should have,” Branwyn muttered, thinking about Titanone. “They’re part human, after all.”
“They’re insidious, something they inherited from their mortal forebears: those who seduced my siblings and tore them from Heaven. It is fortunate that the majority of mortals are both forthright and innocent.”
“How fortunate,” Branwyn echoed and cast about for something to say instead of giving into the desire to hit the angel in the face with her hammer. “Would you like to see my workshop some time? Are you happy with the design of the current circuit? It’s pretty ugly. I could do better.”
“Branwyn’s babbling,” said Penny. “Let’s cut to the chase. What are you going to pay her?” She smiled. “She needs more than dazzle. She can’t eat on dazzle. Making sure she gets paid more than dazzle is why she brought me along.”
Hadraniel stared at her, astonished, and Penny added, “Senyaza pays her thousands of dollars. Which she uses to pay her rent, eat, buy clothes that I don’t approve of. Without those things she can’t work. You do know that, right?”
“The faithful are rewarded in this life and the next,” murmured Hadraniel. Then its attention was pulled away toward the door. “What—?” It stood, its hand going to the divinity circuit resting on its chest. “Umbriel! What are you doing here?”
A man who looked like he’d been poured from the same mold as Hadraniel but given a darker paint job stood at the entrance, dressed in an unambiguously masculine suit. He crossed the room. “Hadraniel. Yes, I see what you’ve done and we must talk about that. But it isn’t safe here. The veil—oh sweet Heaven, look at you, Hadraniel!”
Hadraniel’s brow furrowed, a distant look coming into its eyes. “No!” It refocused, looking around wildly, first at Branwyn, then at Penny, and then finally at Aleth. “You? What are you—? X, I require you!”
X? Then Branwyn remembered how Hadraniel had used a nameless kaiju as a weapon once before and went cold. She didn’t need Aleth’s imbued truth to realize this was very bad. Aleth stood up, his aura rippling out like tiny splinters of ice. She stood too, grabbing Penny and her hammer and backing away from the table. Max came out of the bathroom as if on a spring and then skidded to a halt. “Oh fuck.”
He wasn’t looking at Hadraniel or Umbriel. He was looking behind Branwyn. And so were both of the angels. She turned her head to see.
The man who’d been sitting behind the window looking at a newspaper stood up. And as he did, he pulled a sword that was far too large out of nowhere at all.
Chapter Seventeen
Branwyn
The man with the sword didn’t look extraordinary. He wore badly fitting clothing that looked like it had come from a donation bin. His hair curled around his bland face. He was utterly forgettable.
Unlike his sword. It had a broad blade of hammered madness and a hilt wound with the thorns of heartbreak. It sang as it moved, a marching song for all the eschatons behind it.
Then the man holding it said, “Hadraniel,” in a toneless voice and unleashed his aura. It buzzed against Branwyn’s mind and skin, writhing like worms on speed. Aleth turned to one side as if spun by a physical blow.
Max said, moving warily, “Dammit! Who gave X a Sword? That Sword? I mean how—?”
“Indeed,” agreed Umbriel. “You have much to explain, Hadraniel. Let’s get out of here so you can do so peacefully.”
Hadraniel snapped, “Not without what I came for,” and reactivated the divinity circuit.
Even surrounded by angels and Fallen about to throw down, Branwyn was distracted by Hadraniel’s glory. It would still forgive her, she knew. All she had to do was join the two angels. The one called Umbriel looked exasperated and pulled a Sword of his own from the flesh of his palm: a thin saber of green grace that added its own whispering voice to the spiritual cacophony.
Branwyn knew she had to go with them, because she had to get close enough to one of those celestial Swords to understand how they worked. A distant foreign voice tried to tell her other truths, truths about slavery and self-destruction, but that voice knew nothing about a hunger to transcend her limits.
“Umbriel,” squeaked Rhianna from the door to the ladies’ restroom, but that was all she had time for before Candy shoved her aside and bounded out.
“X,” she cooed. “We’re here for you, baby.” She jumped past the angels and Branwyn like a jackrabbit, grabbing X’s sleeve and spinning him around before landing on top of a table. Branwyn watched dully and then transferred her attention back to Hadraniel, expectantly. It beckoned to her as it turned toward Aleth with something very like a snarl. Ribbons of light trailed from its shoulders: the partially completed tethers. Dolores came from the storeroom door, holding her hands apart like she was winding invisible yarn. But where was Severin?
Penny moved between Branwyn and the angel. The glory unleashed by the divinity circuit parted around her. “We need to get out of here, Bran.”
Shielded by Penny’s body, Branwyn tried to regather her sense of self. She was practically hugging her hammer, her head pressed against it. It was such a simple, makeshift weapon compared to the two Swords, like a cardboard tube in the hands of a child. No wonder Severin hadn’t been impressed.
The kaiju called X suddenly loomed beside her. Before she could move, he grabbed her shoulder and shoved her aside. Branwyn stumbled and looked back to see X swinging his Sword at Penny’s back. She screamed and threw herself at him, too slow, too slow to stop him. Her fingers had just grazed his arm when Penny twisted and caught the Sword in one hand. It stopped dead, all momentum stolen from it.
X le
aned on the Sword. A glow spread from the twisted blade to Penny and she looked puzzled. “Bran, I don’t think I’m supposed to be able to do this… This isn’t… I feel sick.”
Penny was a marvel, but like the hammer, she was a child’s rough sketch compared to the ancient strength of the Sword. She wouldn’t hold up, not as a celestial weapon.
Fortunately, Penny was also Penny, and more importantly right at that moment, the hammer was also a hammer. Branwyn smashed it into X’s elbow and caught Penny as she stumbled forward, pushing her toward the wall.
X grunted as his arm fell limply. Then he took the Sword with his other hand, shaking the numb one. He looked toward Hadraniel for instruction and then went to help the angel against Aleth and Max. Candy went after him, wiping some blood from her eye.
Branwyn panted, “You’re right, we need to get out of here.” She couldn’t even look at Hadraniel directly, or she’d feel the pull of its glory, but she hoped like hell the kaiju were kicking its ass. They’d been so confident they could deal with the divinity circuit—but two more celestials, each with heavenly Swords? She wouldn’t put it past them to flee and leave Branwyn to deal with the fallout.
Penny was still glowing. “I think there’s something wrong. I feel so sleepy.”
Branwyn frowned and put her hand on Penny’s chest, fiercely willing the prosthetic soul crafted from Machine fragments to stay attached to Penny. This, this is your job. Do your job. Don’t be distracted by pretty blades. But she could tell that the connections were looser than they should be and realized with a sick feeling that the soul had responded to the same call that had summoned the divinity circuit to her hand. Consequences! She never anticipated all the consequences to her actions.
Furiously, she moved her hands, tightening the bond between soul and Machine. Lightning crackled through the coffee shop, and the thunder was the sound of deep-tolling bells. Branwyn ignored it. As she worked, Penny wrapped her arms about Branwyn’s shoulders, watching over her head. “They’re leaving,” she said faintly. “The angels. The monsters have been all over the place. I don’t think they’re fighting fair.”
Branwyn felt the rush of Hadraniel’s glory pass her, heard another peal of celestial lightning, and kept her head down. Penny pulled her close, turning her body to once again shield Branwyn from the angels’ passage.
“It’s okay,” chirped Candy as she went by. “They can’t leave the area while Dolores has the veil frozen. We’ll get them. Even if somebody tried to spoil sport.”
“Where are they going, then?” Penny asked.
“Looking for a soft spot,” said Max, and was gone.
Branwyn pulled away from Penny just in time to see Rhianna running out the door after the kaiju. “Hell, I don’t think this is done yet. Where are the baristas?” There was a screech and a crash from outside and Branwyn flinched.
Penny leaned her head against the wall. “Behind the bar. Over there. I need a minute….”
“I went a little fast, maybe over tightened things some. Bright side: you probably won’t be sleepy anymore.” Branwyn went and looked behind the bar where the baristas cowered, one of them firmly holding onto the weeping lady customer. “You guys okay?”
“Alive,” squeaked one with her arms around the other two. “You?”
Branwyn looked around the coffee shop. Most of the furniture was broken. It looked like a tornado had gone through. But other than a dent in one wall and the blue radiance crawling along the ceiling, the structure of the building looked sound.
“I’ll try to be back later to help clean up,” Branwyn offered.
“Oh God,” said the barista holding onto the weeping woman. “Please don’t.”
“I’ll make sure she forgets,” Penny promised, taking Branwyn’s arm.
“Thank you,” said the barista with real gratitude. “And thank you for the warning to get down earlier.”
“No problem. Come on, Branwyn. Did you notice Severin wasn’t here? And that your sister went running out the door after Angel vs. Kaiju?”
“Yes,” said Branwyn. “I noticed both of those things and I don’t like either of them at all.”
The path of the running fight was easy to follow, because there were car pileups in the middle of the street, one for each direction of traffic. Branwyn thought sickly of Moses parting the Red Sea. “God damn it,” she muttered. “I should—”
“Everybody’s calling 911 already,” Penny said. “They went into Vroman’s. There’s a lot of customers in Vroman’s, Branwyn.” Vroman’s was a big bookstore, one of those Pasadena icons that had endured through everything thrown at it for a century. It had survived the internet; if Branwyn let some celestials tear it up, Marley would never forgive her.
Marley…
Branwyn reached into Penny’s open bag and pulled out her alarm, activating it again as they ran across the forced break in traffic. The door into Vroman’s was completely gone, as if it had been carved out of its frame. A couple of potential customers were looking between the pile-up and the door, open-mouthed. More stood just inside, staring at the car wreck. As the thudding of the alarm hit them, the two outside looked at each other and then ran across the street. One of the gawkers looked around as if waking from a daze and marched away.
Branwyn and Penny pushed their way in. Penny asked one of the bystanders, “What happened to the door?”
“I’m not sure,” said a big man, rubbing at his face. “It was… something. I think I’d dozed off? And then these people rushed past, and there was this hole. Weird.”
“Go home,” Branwyn snapped, and he looked at her in surprise.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been meaning to do something for a while.” And he, too, walked briskly out of the store.
It was less obvious what was going on once Branwyn and Penny were in the store proper. A display of books had been knocked over, but Branwyn heard the sounds of consternation, outrage and ordinary business, not screams of terror. There was a river of people on the stairs from the second floor, mostly coming down and they were grumbling rather than panicked. Even the celestial auras seemed muffled by the weight of so many books in one place. But the alarm thumped away and a handful of people looked up from browsing, glanced at their watches or cellphones, and then strolled out of the store.
Dolores stood near the magazine rack, still winding her invisible skein. “I cannot hold it here,” she said simply. “They are running out of time, and my dear brother—” She shook her head mournfully.
“Jesus!” shrieked Candy from the crowd-clogged staircase. “Can’t any of you people operate stairs? Severin has him half-bound, Dolores. Just hang on.” She started burrowing between bodies and somebody went over the bannister, landing in a heap on the floor.
Branwyn’s fingers tightened around the alarm. She shoved her way to the front of the customer service counter. “Hey!” said a lady two people back. “You can’t cut in line.”
The clerk, listening to an earpiece with wide eyes, gave her an apprehensive glance. “I think we’re closing now, miss—”
“Somebody’s making a mess upstairs? Yeah, I know.” She laid the alarm on the counter. “This will encourage people to get out. Tell me how I can get past that very slow stampede and I’ll clean it up.”
“That’s not possible, ma’am—”
“Hey! She cut! Hey, if you’re helping her, help me first, young lady.”
Branwyn turned to glare at the polished-looking customer, but the woman was fully focused, with laser precision, on the clerk. Each time the alarm thumped, her eyelid twitched but she clearly wasn’t being swayed by it.
Penny leaned over the counter. “She won’t really clean it up, but she will make them behave themselves.”
“Fine! I don’t care! Take the stairs behind the employee door! And you, ma’am, you’ll have to come back later—”
As they did so, Penny said, “Why exactly are we going upstairs to where the fight probably is? We’re not going to end up on the roof aga
in, are we? You and Marley always seem to end up on roofs—”
“I need to get the divinity circuit back before anybody else does. And I bet my sister is up there.” Branwyn took the stairs two at a time. As she hurtled through the door, glass crunched underfoot.
The battle lines had been drawn up in a field of sparkling shards and scattered books: what had once been the stationary department. Umbriel and his Sword stood in front of Hadraniel and X stood at Hadraniel’s back. Severin stood across from them, hands hanging loosely at his sides, his head low. He was smiling faintly, his shark smile.
Candy stood at the entrance to the department, an ugly expression on her face, while Max and Aleth were against the walls, surrounding the angels like a wolf pack. Max paced back and forth. Where was Rhianna? There were still plenty of shelves standing. If she was smart, she was behind one of them. Hiding with her little gun….
Severin said gently, “Go away, Umbriel. This isn’t your affair.”
“You know it is,” said Umbriel. He made a fist with his free hand and then opened it again and something red pulsed organically in the air near the ceiling. It shimmered, brightening slowly. Then he slashed his Sword, cutting silver ribbons creeping along the floor.
“No, no,” chided Severin. He spread his hands and Branwyn had a dreamlike memory of molten glass in the palm of his hand. She stumbled backward into the stairwell, bumping hard into Penny. Shards of glass rose into the air and spun toward Severin.
Then Branwyn saw Rhianna, leaning out around one of the bookshelves. Hadraniel said, voice ringing like a bell, “Enough. Once again I have been disappointed.” Blue energy crackled along the floor and gathered in its hands, growing into a white sphere that made Branwyn ache from her teeth to her toes. The air suddenly reeked of sulfur. The building—no, the world flinched away from what Hadraniel was summoning. It was going to be very bad.
Divinity Circuit (Senyaza Series Book 5) Page 20