Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane

by Paige Cuccaro

  As tempting as those blissful sensations were, I couldn’t, wouldn’t ask Eli to share his angelic touch with me. I wouldn’t run from this. I owed it to Tommy. Eli owed it to Tommy. We’d needed Eli today, really needed him, and he hadn’t come.

  “Where were you?” I asked, turning my gaze back to the long black bag.

  “I came the moment I realized,” he said. “I’ve always felt his need before. I should’ve felt yours. I didn’t. I can only guess you were relying on each other and didn’t reach out to me until there was no one else.”

  “He was worried for me,” I said. “If he’d been fighting on his own, he wouldn’t have dropped his guard.”

  “Alone, the battle would have been different, but not necessarily the outcome.”

  “That’s not true. He would’ve reached out to you instead of thinking about me,” I said, desperate to find where we’d made our mistake. “You would’ve known he needed you and come to help. You could’ve done something.”

  “No,” Eli said. “There’s nothing I could’ve done. I have witnessed the last breath of countless illorum. My presence has been little comfort. Given the choice, I believe Thomas preferred seeing you in his final earthly moments.”

  “Given the choice, he’d prefer to still be breathing,” I said. “I know you can’t pick up a sword and fight, but you could’ve, I don’t know, used your powers somehow. Maybe if you’d been there, the demons wouldn’t have attacked. Maybe you could’ve snatched him out of there before it was too late.”

  “No, Emma Jane.” He caught my chin between his thumb and the crook of his finger, turning my face to his. “Understand this. I cannot interfere. What I did for you in the gardens of Augusto I should not have done. I’ve told you, it’s forbidden.”

  “Yeah, but you did it anyway,” I said. “You used your powers to get me out of there before the demons could attack. You could’ve done the same for Tommy.”

  “The distinctions I made that allowed me to act were thin, at best. Many of my brothers didn’t agree. Pointing to our active training that day and claiming ignorance to a coming attack was my only excuse. And it wasn’t a good one.”

  “You told your brothers you didn’t know the demons were about to attack?” I asked. I knew he’d lied, but I couldn’t get used to the notion. I shifted back enough to pull my chin from his hold.

  “Yes. And not very well,” he said. “The reasoning was flimsy, yet it was far more than I would’ve had today. There was nothing I could do…for either of you.”

  “You got in trouble for helping me in the gardens?” The only punishment I knew for angels was the abyss, and that seemed kind of severe for a little white lie that ultimately saved my butt.

  “I was…warned.” He glanced out the open back doors of the ambulance then back to me. His jaw tightened, and his brows drew together. “I’ll be monitored for a time. Until they’re satisfied my prejudices are well in hand. Today should go far in proving my resolve.”

  My gut twisted. “You let Tommy die to prove a point?”

  Eli flinched as though I’d slapped him. “No. Emma Jane, I…” Anger and resolve warred across his face. “No. Do not, for one instant, believe that I didn’t love Thomas—that I would not trade my life for his. Trust me when I say, there was nothing I could have done to save him. Nothing.”

  My rational brain knew he meant every word, but inside, I was aching. Logic and reason were hard to accept when my broken heart was doing the thinking. “Then what’re you doing here? I mean, what good are you? You can’t help, and I seriously don’t need an audience.”

  I caught his flinch from the corner of my eye, and regret made me look the other way. I stared at the body bag, at where Tommy’s smiling pale blue eyes should be underneath. I wanted to see his eyes again, that smile. This can’t be real.

  “I’m here because I care about you, Emma Jane, just as I cared for Thomas,” he said. “I’m here to do what I can, however small and unimportant my efforts may seem to you.”

  I felt his hand move my hair at my neck, felt his warm fingers feather my skin before a sharp jolt of pain sliced through me. I jerked away.

  “Those scratches are full of brimstone,” he said. “You need holy water.”

  “I don’t have any,” I said, reaching up to pull my too-short hair around to cover the wounds. “It’s fine. I’ll take care of it later.”

  The punch to my nose and the scratches on my neck were my only injuries. I was sore in spots, probably bruised pretty well, but Tommy had been killed. I was lucky, and I knew it. I certainly wasn’t going to sit there complaining.

  Eli stood, leaning over the gurney, reaching past me to the zipper at the top of the body bag.

  “Hey. What’re you doing?” I wanted to see Tommy again…alive. I knew I couldn’t have that, and so I wasn’t sure I was ready to see him any other way. I’d held his head in my lap until the police arrived. He’d already been cold, lifeless even then. He’d died almost instantly. It all seemed like a foggy dream in my mind.

  “You need holy water, now. You can’t allow brimstone to fester in your bloodstream. Thomas always carried a vial.” He pulled the zipper to Tommy’s chest.

  “If you’re talking about his necklace pouch, that’s his,” I said, using my fear of seeing Tommy’s lifeless eyes again to fuel my indignation. “You can’t just take stuff off his body.”

  “On the contrary, this is one of the few things I can do.” He pulled the edges of the bag apart, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

  I don’t know what I was hoping, that it wasn’t really Tommy inside there, that there’d been some mistake and he was just unconscious? I don’t know. It didn’t matter. It was Tommy inside. No doubt.

  The edges of the dark bag cupped around his face, framing all his light blond hair. He lay with his eyes closed, his long lashes shadowing his cheeks, his lips in a soft relaxed line, almost a smile. There was no blood. Why was there no blood?

  His handsome face was untouched. There was something about it that bothered me. I figured it was seeing him so…normal. He could’ve been sleeping and looked exactly the same. He wasn’t sleeping, and the knowledge clogged my throat. My breath shook. I was suddenly cold, despite the warmth of the sunny day.

  “I repaired the damage his body suffered to avoid unwanted questions.” Eli pulled the leather strap from around Tommy’s neck and worked the tiny pouch free of his T-shirt. He cupped the pouch in his hand for a second, then pulled the necklace free. He zipped the bag again, and this time, I made myself look away before the zipper hid Tommy’s serene face.

  “I don’t want it,” I said, guessing he planned to offer me the necklace. “It’s not yours to give.”

  Eli settled beside me again. “It is. I gave it to Thomas years ago. It didn’t look like this then—I’d made it for Jeannette. Thomas didn’t appreciate the feminine quality so I altered its appearance to his tastes.”

  I looked at the necklace he dangled. The leather strap was a silver chain now, the pouch a long, purplish crystal with a decorative metal top. Sunlight streamed in through the back of the ambulance and sparked off the liquid inside the crystal.

  “This is the way the vial looked when I gave it to Jeannette.” He twisted off the top, overturned it onto his fingertip. He held it straight again so the water wouldn’t spill, then dabbed his wet finger to the bridge of my nose.

  The skin warmed and tingled, broken cartilage crackled and straightened. He tipped the crystal onto his finger again and dabbed the scratches on my neck. The warm tingles started there, too, the flesh knitting itself back together, dissolving some of the bubbling brimstone that hadn’t already been sealed beneath my quickly healing skin.

  “Drink what’s left,” he said, offering the vial to me. I swallowed the small shot in one gulp and handed the crystal back. The holy water heated down my throat like brandy, sizzled through my veins, the sensation tracking its path down my neck, along my arms, down my chest and belly, and warming thr
ough my legs. I stopped hurting…physically.

  “I can change the vial into any form that suits you. But I want you to take it. Keep it with you always,” he said. “Tommy would want you to have it.”

  The mention of his name tightened my chest. I swallowed as heartache slowly hardened my resolve, boiling my sorrow to anger. This wasn’t right. Wasn’t fair. Tommy was the better fighter. He’d given up so much of his life already. He shouldn’t be the one in that bag. I should be.

  “Change it back to the way he liked it,” I said. If it was from Tommy, I wanted it to be the way he’d worn it. I wanted it around my neck when my sword sliced through the neck of the Fallen who had ordered his death. I’d get him for this, for taking Tommy’s chance at a normal life, for the dinner he never got to have with his family, the nephew he never got to know. I’d get the bastard who did this…for Tommy.

  When I looked back to Eli, Tommy’s tiny little pouch on its leather strap sat in the palm of his open hand. I took it and tied it around my neck.

  “Do you know anything about the Fallen who sent these demons?” Eli asked.

  “Not much. But I will,” I said. The guy was definitely on my shit list. One last look at the black zippered bag, and I pushed the thought of Tommy lying inside from my mind. I just couldn’t keep thinking about it. I had to let him go.

  Eli shifted his knees to the side so I could squeeze between him and the gurney and out the back doors of the ambulance. The angel followed behind me. “I’m so proud of you, Emma Jane.”

  I glanced back at Eli as I tucked the necklace inside my shirt. “For what?”

  His smile beamed. “For heeding your call. For putting your duty above your sorrow.” He reached out and stroked my cheek. His touch sent a distracting shudder straight to my center. I ignored it.

  “You’re an amazing woman, Emma Jane. Truly the flesh-and-blood finger of God. You humble me.”

  “Dude, you’ve got it all wrong. This isn’t duty. This is revenge.”

  His smile dimmed, his hands slipping into the pockets of his slacks. “I understand your need to find some kind of balance to handle your loss. But I assure you, the soul-deep need you’re feeling is the divine ordinance within.”

  “Um…no. It’s really not.” I mean, if anyone would know it’d be me, right? This was straight-up coldhearted need for revenge.

  “Your emotions are still too charged to understand how deeply your nephilim blood leads your—”

  “Eli, stop.” I didn’t want to hear it. What I was about to do, what I wanted to do, was for Tommy. No one else. “I’m not the grand, noble woman you think I am. I’m not some saint. I’m not your Joan of Arc. I’m just…me. I’m pissed. I’m human. And I want to do some very bad things.”

  “What you believe of yourself has little bearing on what God sees in you,” he said.

  Damn, the guy was determined. Whatever. “Fine. You know what? It doesn’t matter. If you want to think there’s more to me wanting to take this guy down than there is, do it. Just…stay out of my way. I’ll call if I need you. Otherwise, I’ll do this on my own.”

  “Miss?” I turned at the sound of the male voice behind me. A uniformed cop stood waiting, pen and pad in hand. My stomach dropped and rolled, like I’d gone down a giant roller-coaster hill. I knew that feeling. It wasn’t just sorrow and frazzled nerves. It was something else—a sixth sense, a nephilim sense.

  I realized in that instant he was a nephilim, and that he didn’t know. I wasn’t going to tell him…or anyone. Maybe he’d be one of the lucky ones and never be called. I shifted my belt, making sure the hilt was safely at the small of my back and away from his accidental touch.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “I need…I need to ask you a few questions,” he said, his breath hitching for a second as though something inside him had made it catch. His eyes did a quick scan of me, head to toe, and he took off his cop hat and tucked it under one thick, muscled arm.

  His nametag read D. Wysocki, and he had the bluest eyes, like actual sapphires, emphasis on the blue fire. His hair was short, light brown like coffee and cream, and his body was thick. He wasn’t fat, more like he’d wrestled in high school a few years back.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Emma Hellsbane.”

  Officer Wysocki wrote it down. “The EMTs check you out, Emma?”

  I tilted my head, wondering why he’d asked. He waved his pen at my face and T-shirt. “That’s a lot of blood. Is it yours?”

  My hand went to my nose and I glanced down at my blood-splattered shirt. I’d forgotten. The pain was completely gone. “Yeah. I’m fine, though. Bloody nose.”

  “Good,” he said. “The librarian says you came in with the stroke victim. You knew him?”

  “What stroke victim?”

  Wysocki flipped his pen to point at the ambulance behind me. I turned and looked over my shoulder just to make sure. They thought Tommy had died of a stroke? I guess having your heart drilled through could cause a stroke. Kind of like saying a guy hit by a bus died of kidney failure. Well, yeah…after bus tires crushed his kidneys.

  I realized Eli had cleaned up more than just Tommy’s appearance—the same way Tommy had said the angels had cleaned up Coach Clark’s murder all those years ago. I looked to Eli to confirm, but he was gone.

  “Yes,” I said, turning back to Officer Wysocki. “We were together. Tommy was…a really good friend.”

  “I see. Sorry for your loss,” he said, and just like that my throat closed and tears suddenly stung my eyes. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t hold it.

  “You going to be okay? You need me to call someone?” he asked, obviously seeing the tears welling up.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  He nodded and went back to writing in his little policeman’s pad. “So his name’s Tommy? Tommy what?”

  “Thomas, actually.” I swallowed, trying to get the stupid waver out of my voice. “Thomas Saint James.”

  “Saint James,” he repeated, still nodding and writing. “Good. And what can you tell me about the vandals?”

  He thought the demons were just a couple of vandals? What, did he think some stupid kids had scared Tommy into a stroke? No friggin’ way. I wanted to set the record straight, make it known that nothing scared Tommy—ever. But what was the alternative? To those who didn’t know him, the stroke was a believable story, and that was more important than an illorum’s reputation.

  “Uh, I don’t know. Not much, I guess,” I said, not sure what he thought I knew, or what I could say that wouldn’t get me an overnight stay in a padded room.

  He sighed, and his gaze swung up to me. Frustration showed in the way he jerked his hat from under his arm and dropped both hands to his sides. “Can you tell me how many vandals there were? What they looked like? What they said? Anything to help us catch them?”

  My thumbs hooked on the front pockets of my jeans. “So, you think they got away?”

  “Do you see them around?” he asked, scanning the small parking lot. A flicker of movement on the roof of the library over the front entrance drew my eye. There was a man standing on top of the building. Did anyone else think that was strange? I glanced at Wysocki and back to the guy, who stood with the toes of his black dress shoes jutting over the edge of the gutter.

  My heart jumped to my throat. The man’s pale, almost white hair fluttered down to his elbows, his black, ankle-length jacket moving around his legs with the slight breeze. He was six-four, maybe six-six, with broad shoulders, big feet, and thick hands that he clasped behind him as I watched.

  And he was staring at me. At least it seemed that way. He wore dark sunglasses, but he was definitely looking in my direction. And he was defying gravity by perching all his weight on the flimsy metal gutter. He couldn’t be a Fallen. I made a mental check of the mark on my wrist, the one meant to warn me when a Fallen was near. It didn’t even tingle. So this was an angel—a seraphim. An angelic rubbernecker. Nice.

 
I looked back to Officer Wysocki, who was now looking at me like I might get that padded room after all. He didn’t see the man on the roof. People miss so much of what goes on around them. I had, too, until a few weeks ago.

  “Uh…what was the question?”

  “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but something smells,” he said.

  It’s probably the brimstone.

  “There’s a lot of property damage in there, shelves toppled over, books everywhere, blood and some kind of black slime all over the place. There’s a glass wall, at least two inches thick, shattered. Now, I want some answers or we’ll see if a ride to the station in the back of my squad car helps jog your memory.”

  “No. Okay, wait.” I seriously did not want to be trapped at the police station for the rest of the day. I had things to do, fallen angels to kill. “I didn’t get a good look at them. They were hiding between the shelves. When they started making trouble Tommy and I ducked behind some tables and I cracked my nose against one of them. There was a lot of blood and I guess the scare was…” I swallowed hard, hating the lie. “I guess the scare was too much for Tommy. I don’t know why they were there or what they wanted.”

  “How many were there?”

  Crap. Whatever cover story Eli had worked up with his powers, he hadn’t clued me in. “Listen. I just lost someone very close to me. Everything’s still kind of a blur. Tommy and I weren’t the only ones in there. There was a lady at the reference desk. Have you talked to her?”

  The officer tucked his hat under his arm again and flipped through his pad until he found the page he wanted. “The librarian says she thinks there were four of them. But she can’t remember anything else. Can’t even tell me if they were male or female. And no one can figure out what that black stuff is that’s on the books and floor. What do you know about that?”

  Dead demon guts, I thought. But I said, “Nothing. I don’t know what it could be.”

  “Of course not.” He stared at me for a second or two, one eye narrowing, his head tilting to the side as though he were weighing his thoughts about me. Finally, he closed his notepad and jammed it into his back pocket.