Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane

by Paige Cuccaro

  “There’s a fire escape.” I may not be able to pick a lock, but I could break a window.

  “Someone will undoubtedly call the police,” Eli said.

  “Then we’ll have to move fast. Lucky for us, we’re good at that.” I thought of the metal landing outside Tommy’s window. I took a step, everything blurred, and with my next I stopped right outside. An instant later the world caught up to me. Eli was already waiting, casually sitting on the thin railing.

  “It’s not unlocked by any chance, is it?” I asked.

  His eyes closed as he shook his head.

  “’Course not.” I tried the window anyway. It was locked, but after pressing my nose to the glass, I realized it was one I could pick. “I need a credit card. There’s one in my purse under the backseat of the Jeep.”

  Two heartbeats later, Eli held out the card to me. I pushed against the window and slipped the card between the old rubber seal. It took a little bit of wiggling and shaking the window, but within a few minutes, I’d managed to push the casted metal lock the other way. Look out, Thomas Crown.

  With the window open, I climbed inside and turned, waiting for Eli to follow. He didn’t. “You coming?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said. “All the years you two were together, Tommy never invited you into his place?”

  “He did. But after you were marked, Thomas…revoked his invitation.”

  I couldn’t be certain what would’ve made Tommy upset enough with Eli to do such a thing, but I had a pretty good idea. In the end, no matter what he’d said, Tommy didn’t trust Eli. He didn’t trust any of the angels, and after spending the day with my angelic tail, I was beginning to have the same opinion. I just couldn’t lump Eli into that category, no matter how much Tommy had warned me.

  “But he doesn’t really live here anymore,” I said.

  “His essence still protects his home,” Eli said. “A human’s essence, the power of their will, can linger for years in a home, even longer around favorite objects. All of Tommy’s earthly possessions are inside there. His will still holds me out.”

  I thought about that as I stood on Tommy’s kitchen chair next to the window. I closed my eyes, listened, felt, smelled. I could sense him, a subtle current in the air, a familiar pressure against my body, like the sixth sense that tells you someone is near…only fainter.

  I inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of Tommy’s home and with it, the scent of the man himself. Cheap, powdery male cologne, a faint scent of stale water, and the warm smell of his skin hinted on the air that filled my lungs. Eli was right. There was still so much of him here.

  “I’m sorry, Eli. I’ll hurry.” My stomach soured for the pained look on Eli’s face. He’d loved Tommy, and they’d had a falling out because of me. It was my fault he wasn’t welcome in Tommy’s home, my fault Tommy had died with his long friendship with Eli strained.

  “The heartache of loss is suffered only by the living, Emma Jane,” Eli said. “Thomas has moved beyond such things.”

  I nodded, turned, and stepped down off the chair, trying to believe him.

  Afternoon sun lit the small room with soft, filtered light. There were clean dishes in the dish rack and a dirty spoon and bowl in the sink, cloudy dried milk marking both. Tommy’s last meal at the apartment, as though he’d only stepped out a moment ago.

  My throat clenched, and my chest hurt. I closed my eyes against the sudden sting of tears and pushed past my emotions.

  Tommy wouldn’t have wanted this. He’d want me to figure out which Fallen had ordered his death and take the bastard’s head. Yeah. I could do that.

  Damn, I missed him.

  I banished the thought before it pulled me down again and stepped into the living room, touched the back of the couch. He’d used bedsheets for curtains on the two living room windows, and they were tied back, allowing the sun to light the room. He hardly had any furniture, just the basics any growing boy needs—couch to rest his butt, coffee table to rest his feet, twenty-inch TV on a stack of plastic milk crates, and an upholstered wing chair for guests.

  The coffee table in front of the couch was about the messiest thing in the apartment—half-opened newspapers, magazines with sections cut out, notepads, and crumpled notepaper piled on either side of a hefty-sized laptop.

  “Nice.” I sat on the couch, perching on the edge in front of the computer. Now I knew where all his money went.

  This is what I’d come for. Whatever Tommy had on his Fallen and on Mr. Ticket Guy should be on the hard drive. But thanks to his greasy landlord, the police were probably on their way. I closed the monitor, snagged the power cord, wrapped it all up, and headed back to the kitchen.

  The moment I stepped into the hall, I knew I wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet. I’d known of Tommy for years, but I’d only gotten to really know the guy behind the handsome jock-star smile over the past few weeks. I wanted more, and standing in his apartment, I knew this was my last, best chance.

  I turned down the hall, past the bathroom, and into the one and only bedroom. Carrying the theme “less is more,” there wasn’t much in the way of furniture: a bed, a chest of drawers, a nightstand, a lamp, and an alarm clock. Hugging the laptop to my chest, I plopped down onto his bed, letting the springs bounce me. I leaned over and took a deep whiff of his pillow.

  “Tommy,” I said, recognizing the scent of his shampoo.

  Sirens wailed softly in the distance. They might have been going anywhere, but chances were they were coming for me. I had to leave, but it felt so final. I knew I’d never come back here. Tommy’s apartment would be cleaned out once the police notified his parents.

  I pushed myself to my feet, but before I could take a step something fluttering on the wall near the door caught my eye. “Holy crap, Tommy. What were you doing?”

  The world map he’d thumbtacked to the wall was at least four feet tall and six feet long. He’d taped photos along both sides and a few on the top. Each photo had a piece of red yarn trailing from it to some point on the map. I followed the strings out to the pictures. They were all candid shots of people I didn’t know. Except for one. Me.

  The string connected to my picture led to Pittsburgh on the map. It was a hideous photo of me, but then they always are. Not that it mattered. He’d written “Marked” across my body. It wasn’t a recent photo, either. I looked maybe fifteen.

  “Wait. I am fifteen in this picture,” I said, standing on tiptoes to get a closer look. I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I’d gotten contacts when I turned fifteen.

  There was a second string leading from Pittsburgh that connected to the picture below mine. After a few seconds staring at the blurry photo I recognized the young man. “Officer Wysocki.”

  He was younger in his photo, and nothing was written on it. Why had Tommy taken the photos so long ago?

  I stepped back, reviewing the entire display. Several of the pictures had the same word, “Marked,” written across them, but most had nothing.

  “He was tracking nephilim and illorum,” I said to myself. There were hundreds of them all over the world, United States, Europe, Africa, China.

  My skin warmed, a sense of connection coiled in my belly. I’d lost Tommy, the only person in the world who knew what I was going through, who understood like no one else. But I wasn’t alone. And I knew, just like that, why he’d done it. He didn’t want to be alone either.

  Take it, Emma Jane, Eli said, his rich voice rippling through my mind. He’d want you to have it. Leaving the map and photos will only create unwanted questions.

  “Right.” He didn’t need to tell me twice. Setting the laptop on the floor, I popped out the thumbtacks and carefully rolled the enormous map. I’d just gotten the laptop back under my arm when someone pounded on the front door.

  “Hello? Anyone home?” Crap. I knew that voice. Dan Wysocki. Sheesh! Weren’t there any other cops on duty today? “This is the police. Open the door.”

  “Wait. I have
key,” I heard the greasy landlord guy say. “Master key. I let you in.”

  The lock rattled as I climbed onto the chair at the window. Eli had already vanished from the fire escape. I heard the door slam against the wall when Dan pushed it open, heard their feet shuffling against the wood floor as they rushed in.

  My heart raced, pulse going a zillion miles a minute. With the map under one arm, the laptop under the other, I got a foot through the window, my mind screaming—get out, get out, get out.

  And suddenly I was.

  The moment my torso and head were past the window’s threshold my anxiousness triggered my angelic speed. I flew across the metal fire escape, the hard railing catching me straight across the gut. Sheer willpower and wicked-awesome balance kept me from tumbling head over heels to the alley two stories down. The laptop wasn’t so lucky.

  “Hey. You!” Officer Dan said.

  I glanced back into the apartment before I could stop myself and saw Wysocki pointing at me from the kitchen doorway. “You.”

  “Crap.” I willed myself to the alley below. The world blurred and a blink later I was there, standing over the spilled guts of Tommy’s monster laptop. “Oops. Think that can be fixed?”

  “Emma Jane,” Eli said suddenly beside me. “Run!”

  “Right.” I scooped up the laptop and ran.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Is there any hope for it?” Eli nodded at the smashed remains of Tommy’s laptop lying on the folded map in my lap. We’d teleported to Olympia Park a few blocks over from Tommy’s place on Mount Washington to wait for Officer Wysocki and his buddies to leave so I could get to my Jeep.

  I glanced at him sitting on the playground swing next to mine and then down at the ruined laptop. “I don’t know. Maybe. My cousin Gretchen knows a guy. I’ll call him when we get back to the Jeep. My cell’s in my purse under the front seat.”

  Eli nodded but he wasn’t looking at me. I followed his stare to the jungle gym playset about eight yards in front of us where the red-headed angel from the library, and outside Tommy’s apartment, perched. The small play roof the angel stood on was hard plastic and colored bright yellow to go with the brilliant primary colors of the rest of the playground equipment.

  He looked enormous standing atop the pint-size set, his long, blood-red hair stirring over his shoulders, his white coat fluttering around his calves. His expression remained a constant mask, his unblinking white-blue eyes staring at us, his lips a flat line and his hands clasped loosely in front of him. In an instant the other three library seraphim joined him. One squatting on the green guardrail of a twisting tube slide, another balanced on the head of a spring-mounted hobbyhorse, and the third standing effortlessly on the two-inch-round metal rod of the monkey bars.

  The Council’s spies had followed me.

  I pushed my swing sideways toward Eli, my gaze glued on the angels. “I gotta tell ya, between you and your brothers, you definitely got the good looks in the family.”

  “They wouldn’t agree,” he said. “They are exactly as our Father created them, exactly as they were when the finger of God last touched their flesh. They are…perfect.”

  I tried not to let his idea of perfection give me a complex. “So, why all the alterations for you?”

  “I shortened my hair and lightened the color to appear more human,” he said. “To walk among you and better aid my illorum.”

  I looked at his coal-black hair. “You lightened it?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t stick. “Even the blackest human hair color never truly reaches the midnight blue my hair once was. The…alterations weren’t fun. I had to shorten the length of many of my bones as well, mostly in my hands and feet.”

  I took a better look at the redhead’s hands, big palms, long, slender fingers, then I looked back at Eli. “Well, I think you upgraded. Especially the eyes. Ginger over there is way too creepy.”

  Eli stiffened, his hand lifting, touching his cheek. “My eyes?”

  He didn’t know? Of course not. The man had zero ego. Why would he bother looking in a mirror? Or maybe he just didn’t want to notice. “Your eyes are darker. I mean, they’re still unbelievably light, but theirs…theirs are unearthly. They barely have any color at all. Trust me, eyes need color.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.” He glanced at me then back to the angels watching us. “They must’ve darkened over time. The more we interact with humans the more…tainted our spirit becomes. We grow weaker, slower. The difference is miniscule but gradually it begins to show in the color of our eyes. I didn’t realize it’d become noticeable to anyone else.”

  I reached over and took his hand, squeezed. He looked at me. “You have beautiful eyes, Eli, and a beautiful spirit. I know it comes at a cost, but I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.”

  He smiled and this time it lit his face. He pushed his swing toward me, our shoulders bumping, our heads close. “Thank you, Emma Jane—”

  “Elizal,” the redhead said, and we jumped apart. It sounded as though he stood right next to us. We looked and the angel hadn’t moved from the top of the little playground roof, hands still clasped in front of him.

  “Fraciel?” Eli said, as though he wasn’t sure the angel had actually spoken either.

  Before my brain could make sense of it Eli was standing at the base of the playset in front of Fraciel. He cupped his hands behind his back, gazing up at his seraphim brother.

  “One of your pets was put down today,” Fraciel said.

  Eli bowed his head and looked up again. “Yes.”

  “The one that remains to you is female?”

  “Yes.”

  The angel farther back, the one standing on the tube slide, stood. “We believe it is best you put her down as well, and return home.”

  I was suddenly on my feet clutching the computer and map to my chest. “Excuse me?”

  No one even looked my way.

  “I will not,” Eli said.

  The long-haired blond on the hobbyhorse said, “It is not for you to decide.”

  Eli’s gaze shifted over his shoulder. “I will not take human life. Father forbids it.”

  “It is not human,” the blond said, his white eyes narrowing.

  “She is half human.” Eli turned his back to him and faced Fraciel. “Her soul is human. Father alone decides her time on this earth.”

  “And the Council,” the angel on the tube slide said, his snow-white hair drifting off his shoulders, caught in a soft breeze. “The Council’s word is the word of Father. You accept this as truth, do you not?”

  Eli blinked, his gaze shifting to the distant seraphim. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he seemed to think for a moment and then finally said, “Yes. Has the Council dispatched you with a new commission since last we spoke?”

  The burgundy-haired angel balancing on the monkey bars finally spoke up. “Magisters do not question the envoy of the Council. Magisters obey.”

  “No,” Fraciel said before Eli could respond to the other angel. “We have not been charged with a new commission. But the state of affairs has changed since we last imparted the Council’s concerns.”

  “It has not,” Eli said. “Thomas was killed. But Emma Jane’s duty remains unchanged. Father blessed her with courage and a divine calling to fight the corruption of His creation. She has not failed that pursuit. She endeavors toward it now…to this very day.”

  The tall angel lowered himself to a squat, his pale face nearly level with Eli’s. “Its efforts toward redemption and the protection of your spirit are not interchangeable. It is a danger to you, Elizal. As was the last female. Perhaps more so after suffering the loss of the male for which you had grown too enamored. We do not want to lose you—I do not want to lose you. Come home, Elizal. Allow your brothers to heal your spirit. There will be others to aid when you are strong again.”

  “My spirit is secure. My place is here,” Eli said.

  Fraciel stood, his face tense, brows creased togethe
r. He exhaled. “It is in pursuit of a Fallen?”

  “She is,” Eli said. “She has tracked him to this city and will soon devise a way to draw close enough to dispatch him to the abyss.”

  The blood-haired angel stiffened. “Then we will wait to report our findings to the Council. See that it finds this Fallen soon, magister. And see that you do not one day meet his same fate.”

  I blinked and all four seraphim were gone. Eli’s shoulders visibly dropped and he lowered his head as though he’d been holding his breath.

  I stepped up beside him. “Thanks for going to bat for me. I know that couldn’t have been easy.”

  He didn’t say anything, just nodded, and a smile flickered across his lips.

  “What would you have done if the Council had told you to kill me?” I asked. My stomach fluttered, worrying for a half second over his answer.

  Eli raised his head, meeting my eyes. “I pray we never find out.”

  “Right.” My exhale blew out a little shaky and I stepped away.

  “The police have left Thomas’s apartment. It’s safe to return to your Jeep,” he said.

  It took a second to figure out how he knew. Then I remembered his gift for reading human thoughts. “You coming?”

  He shook his head. “I…need a moment.”

  “Right.” I nodded, tried to smile, but emotion clogged at the back of my throat and tightened through my chest. I took another step away. “Well, I’m going to head home, so…that’s where I’ll be. Gonna call my aunt, see if my cousin still knows that computer guy. Maybe do some Internet searches, see what I can find on the Fallen Tommy was going after.”

  “Try hard, Emma Jane. Please,” he said, and then he was gone, just like his brothers.

  “Right. No pressure.”

  …

  “Hi, Aunt Sara. Is Gretchen still seeing that Will guy?” I pinched the cell phone between my cheek and shoulder and shifted gears, keeping up with the busy midday traffic. Something beeped and I glanced down at the dashboard gauges. I needed gas. Crap.