“Now they’ll know we’re coming,” Raziel growled.
Uriel shrugged. “Then we won’t have to hunt them down.”
However, what met them on the next level was beyond what any of them had expected. Adramelek, once again lighting up the area, stared, shocked at what he saw. He had not expected the attrition to be so complete, to have consumed the entire level. The word “kennel” had suggested that the creatures and other things on this level would have been kept in confined spaces. The whole floor was littered with debris, just as the others had been, but beyond that, were piles and piles of dead.
Animals, humans, demons, hybrids of all three lay strewn haphazardly in front of them.
“We’re not alone down here,” Ondrass snarled.
Adramelek shot him a sharp look, and at the same time, Uriel let out a loud roar of fury and teleported. Turning quickly, Adramelek saw him reappear at the far end of the hallway in front of them and grabbing someone, a someone who shrieked and cursed and batted at Uriel’s chest with gloved hands. Then Uriel was back, teleporting to rejoin them.
“Look what I found,” he said. “A scientist.”
“Foul! Accursed! Disgusting!” The scientist was not, Adramelek saw, really a scientist, but a man in a brown suit wearing a lab coat. “You ruined it all! Archdemons, bah! Archangels, you’re as bad as each other!”
“Careful, friend, you’re starting to irritate me,” Raziel warned.
The man spat at him. “You ruined our greatest work,” he cried. “You destroyed this fine facility, a facility that would mean independence from the likes of you! We’d finally be rid of angels and demons forever and able to live our own lives with our own guardians, guardians we made to make Earth a much better place!”
It fell into place in Adramelek’s mind. “Wait. The Betterment Project was a plan to create guardians for all the gates between Heaven, Hell, and Earth so no angels or demons could ever come here again? A way to shut us out?”
“Yes! Yes, yes! And Purgatory too! All of your filth, you unclean, unnatural monstrosities!”
“You created this dreadfulness,” Raziel growled.
“For the betterment of humanity!”
“I think we’d better take him up to Tzad,” Uriel said.
“I refuse! You can’t make me do anything! Free will, remember?
You have to do as I say!” The man was waving his arms.
“They might, but we do not,” Ondrass said, speaking before Raziel or Uriel could tel the man he was wrong. “I am Ondrass, Archdemon of Discord and Master of Chaos, Grand Marquis of Hel , and member of the Guild of Glass Knives, Lucifer’s elite. And this is Adramelek, Archdemon of Fire, Great Minister and Chancellor of the Order of the Fly, President of Satan’s High Council of Devils, President of the Guild of Glass Knives, and Lord of Desecration. We are not bound by the Archangels’ rules on Free Will.”
“Which means don’t piss us off,” Adramelek said.
“You’re a scientist, correct?” Raziel asked.
“No! I’m a member of the board of Transom Corp and junior director of The Betterment Project, and you can’t do this!”
“That means he knows things,” Adramelek said, ignoring the man’s protestations.
“And you can’t make me talk,” the man shrieked. He reached into his mouth and seemed to be rubbing his teeth. Then he bit down, and Adramelek heard the soft crack as a tooth shattered. “Ha! I win!” Foam began to spill out of his mouth and his body spasmed. His lips formed an insane rictus grin, and before any of them could say or do anything, the man’s body gave one last convulsion and then was still.
“Fuck me! He killed himself!” Uriel shook the dead man. “What the fuck!”
“You can get his soul in Hell,” Raziel said, looking at Ondrass and Adramelek.
“Perhaps. It depends if he went there or to Purgatory or his soul disintegrated. Some of them do that, you know. Not often, but it happens.
We’ll check our new arrivals when we get back and let you know,”
Adramelek said.
“In the meantime, search his pockets,” Ondrass said. “We might find something.”
Raziel began to riffle through the man’s clothing, pulling out two hard disks from his inner coat pocket and a sheaf of paper. There was nothing else on him. “Put him down, Uri,” Raziel said as he shoved everything into his backpack. “There’s no point going on, is there?”
“I can sense no more life,” Ondrass said softly. “Our deceased friend must have killed all the hybrids on this level.”
“Asshole,” Uriel growled, throwing the body away.
“Agreed.” Adramelek ran a hand through his hair. “Do you want to check the computers, Raz?”
Raziel considered it. “Why not? And isn’t there a records room around here on some level? Isn’t that where you found Lily’s pack?”
“Yes, now that you mention it, there is a records room.” Adramelek nodded.
“All right, let’s check that out, and then we should set fire to this whole place.” Raziel looked around, his expression unreadable. “What a waste.” He sighed. “So much death and pain, and for what? A dream of something impossible.”
“A dream born of hate,” Uriel said.
“Yeah.” Raziel shook his head. “Take us to the records room, Adry.
Let’s finish this.”
Adramelek made no comment on Raziel’s shortening of his name.
These were strange new days indeed, he thought as he led them all to the room and its broken doors and battered walls. He wondered if perhaps this would end up being a dead end, if the dead man had destroyed all the records in the room, but he hadn’t. Perhaps he hadn’t had time to finish the job after the Venatores took a pile of records with them. The room looked as it had when Lily had first called out to Adramelek for help.
Raziel looked around and frowned. “I’m not going through all of what’s been left here. I’m moving it to Mike’s place in Oregon. Don’t worry, I’ll make copies as I go through it,” he added as Ondrass opened his mouth. “I’ll see you get them, along with the copies of the drives.”
Adramelek nodded. “That’s fair. I want to get out of here.”
Raziel waved a hand and all the boxes vanished with a soft pop. The four of them looked at each other and then Ondrass sighed.
“Let us go to the next level up and start the fire from there,” he said.
“Then we can make our way out, ensuring that the fire spreads through this whole sad and sorrowful place.”
“Burn it all to ash,” Uriel agreed.
Adramelek nodded. “Thirding the motion.”
“And I’ll fourth it.” Raziel gave the place one last look.
“Disgusting,” he muttered. “What horrors some perpetrate in their quest for control or domination.”
“And with that, we should go,” Adramelek said. He started back down the corridor toward the security door.
They went upstairs in silence, and once they were there, the four of them concentrated. It was strange working with two Archangels in concert, Adramelek thought, as they used their combined powers to start a fire made of both Hell and Heaven. There was something about it that he didn’t feel he would ever be comfortable with, and to judge from Uriel’s and Ondrass’s expressions, he wasn’t alone. Raziel’s expression was as angry and disgusted as it had been since they’d first entered, and once the fires had taken hold, Adramelek closed his eyes and muttered a prayer that he had not spoken for millennia, a prayer for the forgotten dead, for the souls who were destined for Hell to make a swift and safe journey while the others would find their destiny without incident. Beside him, he heard Ondrass muttering a similar prayer in Chinese under his breath, and beyond him, Uriel and Raziel were doing the same, murmuring a prayer in Aramaic.
When it was done, the four of them teleported out and stood at the side of the mountain, focusing on the fire with their powers. Although none of them said anything, there was an unspoken agreement
that they wanted to be sure the place was completely and utterly destroyed and that no trace would remain for anyone—or anything—to pick up where The Betterment Project had left off.
IT HAD been nearly a week since they’d left Yaak, and Liam sat at Baxter’s bedside, holding his hand. He had no idea what Raphael had done—medical terminology sailed right over his head—but the most important thing was that Baxter was going to live and be fine. Minus a leg, though, which upset Liam as he gazed at the stump that was Baxter’s limb.
He’d lost everything from the knee down. Raphael had said the bones and tissues snapped and torn so badly in some places they were nothing more than pieces and so it was the best course of action to remove the limb and get a prosthetic. That prosthetic leg sat on a table on the other side of the bed, waiting for Baxter to awaken, just as Liam was. Liam wondered if Baxter would accept the prosthetic with equanimity or if the loss of half a leg would plunge him into depression. There was a lot of therapy available, Raphael said, therapies that would get Baxter into shape so he would be comfortable with the prosthetic and as physically capable as ever. But there would also be some phantom feeling, and that was different in all amputee patients. Liam just had to wait and support his lover as much as he could.
Declan wasn’t there with him, which Liam was grateful for. He loved his brother, but he wanted to think and consider not just how Baxter might cope with the prosthetic, but go back over everything they’d seen in the facility in Yaak. Liam had asked Raphael how Danny was doing, but Raphael had simply shaken his head and said he was still in a coma. Liam wondered how Lily was coping—considering how he felt, he could only imagine that she felt a million times worse.
And yet, they were all still alive, which was something. It could have been so much worse. Liam had no doubt that they were all very, very lucky and it was due solely to Lily calling the Archdemons for help. Liam wondered how many people had died in the course of the work that The Betterment Project had done before the avalanche.
He scrubbed at his face with his free hand and sat back in his chair, gazing at Baxter’s pale face. He looked at peace, his expression calm, his eyelids fluttering every so often, his breathing even. His short blond hair stuck out at all angles like a haystack, and there were a few fading bruises on his chest. Aside from his leg, Baxter was in pretty good shape.
Liam frowned as his thoughts returned to the diary Declan had unearthed. The two of them had studied it, Angelique perusing it over their shoulders and reading out bits to Riley when they hit medical terms they didn’t understand. Riley had turned an interesting shade of green during one such reading, and he had explained in a halting, hesitant voice that what the people in the medical areas had been doing was cultivating monsters to keep demons and angels out of Earth, either through fear or by eating them. Liam didn’t think an angry demon or angel would make a particularly delicious meal, but then he didn’t think the whole scheme concocted by The Betterment Project’s board had been particularly good, either.
From his upbringing and his studies with Selana and Jake, the couple who had taken him and Declan in when their parents died, Liam knew there was nothing in Earthly magic that could keep those portals or gates closed. They were operated by powers not of the same plane of existence, and trying to force those gates shut would be an exercise in futility. Not that he’d wanted to do that—it was simply that during the war, he’d asked Selana why the gates between Earth and Hell weren’t all shut down, and she had told him that only Archangels or Archdemons could do that. Part of why it had taken seventy years for the war to end was the time it had taken to close down all the gates.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”
Liam started out of his reverie and blinked, looking at Baxter. His eyes were open and there was a smile playing at his lips. “Oh thank God, you’re awake!” Liam exclaimed.
“Awake and alive, Trigger. What did I miss?”
“I’ll call Raph.”
“Oh good, that doesn’t sound ominous at all.” Baxter shifted in the hospital bed as Liam grabbed the call button and pressed it. “So, I lost a leg, huh? Well, I did want a manly scar for my efforts, I guess.”
Liam frowned at him. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny. I can make all kinds of legless jokes now. Ooh, is that my prosthetic? I’ll have to get Matt to paint it for me, so it looks like the Terminator or like something out of an anatomy textbook or something. Or like a dragon leg. That’d be so cool!”
“You’re not upset?” Liam asked.
“No way, dude. I get a wicked prosthetic. Will this make me part Iron Man or Six Million Dollar Man?”
“I have no idea who the second one is.”
“Dude, your childhood must have been empty and sad to have missed out on the awesome that is the Six Million Dollar Man.”
“I think I can survive it.” Liam squeezed Baxter’s hand gently. “Are you sure you’re okay about this?”
Baxter nodded. “Considering I really thought we were all going to die in that place, losing a leg is a tiny price to pay. So yeah, I’m good. And I bet there’s loads of physical therapy that’ll get me up and running in no time. Will my wolf shape get a prosthetic too?”
“I was going to ask if you wanted one, actual y.” It was Raphael, and he smiled at Baxter and Liam. “I’m glad to see you’re awake. How do you feel?”
“Okay. Tired, really damn hungry, like, I could murder a cow right now and just… eat the whole cow.”
Raphael laughed. “I think we can get you something that’s a little less messy. Do you feel any pain?”
“No, just a bit of an ache in my leg, and I guess I’ll have some phantom feeling like the leg’s there when it isn’t? I had a buddy in the Marines who had a prosthetic leg. He used to get that all the time.”
“Why wasn’t he drummed out?” Liam wanted to know.
“Because we were running out of soldiers and were calling up all retirees who could stand and shoot.” Baxter shrugged. “So I can have a prosthetic for my wolf?”
Raphael nodded. “If you like. It’s certainly work we’ve done before.
You’ll need to get accustomed to using the one over there first, and then we’ll have you go wolf and fit you for one.”
“Awesome. I’ll be the Ten Billion Dollar Wolf.”
Liam chuckled. He was so relieved. “Next you’ll want gold-plated food dishes.”
“And remember, when I do die—hopefully of old age, in my bed, surrounded by my family—I want a Viking funeral. A longboat, shields, shield maidens and shield guys, lots of beer, incense, and epic poems about my awesomeness while my carcass burns up on a pyre on the longboat.”
Liam nodded. “Got it.”
“So when can I get out of here, Doc?” Baxter asked Raphael.
“Not for a lit le while yet. We want you to rest here one more night, and then tomorrow we’ll start the physical therapy. Say another four to five days before you can go home. Also, Angelique and the rest of the Venatores living in the house have moved you to an apartment on the ground floor. Don’t frown, it’s necessary. You’l be able to walk, but you need to pace yourself and not overdo it. I get cranky when my patients return to me a few days after they’ve been discharged just because they’ve strained themselves. Slow and steady like the turtle, young Baxter. It’s quicker in the long run.”
“You mean I can’t enter a marathon on the weekend? Damn.” Baxter gave Raphael a thumbs-up. “I’ll be good. I bet if I wasn’t, Liam here would sit on me.”
“Damn right about that,” Liam said.
“There we go. Bodyguard and nurse all in one,” Baxter said cheerfully. Then he sobered. “How’s Danny?”
Raphael sighed. “No change. He’s still in a coma. Lily’s with him.”
“You know they’re mated, right? Like, if he dies, so will she.”
“I’m aware, yes.”
Baxter hummed. “Okay. Well, try not to let him die, ’cause Angelique will kill you if L
ily dies too.”
“I will take that under advisement,” Raphael said drily. “We’re doing all we can, and I think he’ll be all right. It’s just taking him a while to heal from his injuries. Lix Tetrax has employed some medicine that is… unorthodox, but it’s worked very efficiently, so at the moment, I have no grave concerns. Beyond the coma.”
“Well, I’ll say a prayer for him,” Baxter said. “Is there a Buddhist Temple nearby?”
“Tomorrow morning you can do that,” Raphael said.
“Okay. Can I have something to eat?”
“Sure.” Raphael smiled. “I’ll have Iss cook you something.”
Baxter beamed. “Thanks, Raph.”
“You’re welcome. And you, young Liam, make sure you get some rest as well.” Raphael turned his dark eyes onto Liam.
Liam nodded. “I will. I can now, now that he’s awake and I know he’ll be okay.”
“Good. Iss can bring you both something to eat.” Raphael smiled kindly. “Rest, boys.”
When he had left, Liam turned to Baxter. “God, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“So am I.” Baxter shook his head. “What a clusterfuck that place was.”
“No shit.” Liam got out of his chair and sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. Baxter wriggled over to give him more room, reaching up to tug him down, and Liam went, stretching out on his side next to his lover.
He propped his head up on one hand, the other resting over Baxter’s heart, feeling its strong, even beat.
“I love you, you know,” Baxter said.
Liam smiled. “Yeah, I do. I love you too.”
Baxter returned the smile. “Then give me a kiss.”
Liam was only too happy to comply. He leaned down and pressed a soft, gentle kiss to Baxter’s lips, noting absently that they were dry and chapped. Baxter’s hand was in his hair, tugging lightly, and Liam hummed softly, feeling so relieved that Baxter was okay, he was almost dizzy. And Baxter was okay—he’d bounced back as if he were made of rubber; not even losing a limb had fazed him. He was genuinely relieved to be alive and not upset that his injury was the price. Liam couldn’t really argue with that. Better alive than dead in that god-awful facility.
Archangel Chronicles 7 - Shot In the Dark Page 18