Airs & Graces: The Angel's Grace Trilogy Book I

by A. J. Downey

  I repeated, “You know why I’m here.” We’d said our hellos and made introductions. That was all the buttering up I was going to do. Especially after he cut me off. Still, facts were facts. “You know more about it than I do.”

  “Possibly, if you risked going to Michael. Particularly considering how fond you are of mortals.”

  “I misjudged. I didn’t realize her life would be as endangered by Michael as by the Fallen.”

  “I wasn’t referring to your companion. I meant so much more. Did you never understand what your… falling out… with Iaoel was really about? She’d seen how to find the keys to the Gates. Michael is entirely focused on a rematch with Lucifer. And Iaoel was going to tell him how to properly get started – until you hid her away.”

  I froze for a long moment. It explained so much – and made my mistake so much worse. I finally managed to speak. “Help me.”

  “Why would you trust me?” he asked, folding his hands in front of him. “Oh, I see. You don’t trust me. You’re simply out of all other options, aren’t you?” The accompanying sickly smile didn’t do anything to raise my spirits.

  “Are you going to help?” I heard the slow recognition of how bad an idea this was echoing in my voice.

  Hadad contemplated it long and hard, seemingly going back and forth. At some points he would mumble, or even nod as if he’d made a point that he had not previously considered. At one point it seemed he disagreed with an earlier assessment and was arguing a point with himself. With Hadad, there was no way to tell how much was honest deliberation, and how much was theater. Then, he turned toward me and held his hand out. There was a brilliant flash, right after he uttered the word, “No.”

  I’d been an idiot to have unshielded us. It was a gamble, showing trust like that and hoping it might help. Likewise, I was in shock, and he caught me off guard. I wasn’t certain exactly what he’d begun to do. Considering this was an entity who incinerated those who chose to follow him, it could have been anything. Really, though, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he stopped.

  “On second thought, you and I are the closest relationship I have to old friends. This’ll all be more interesting with you in it, and I don’t much want anyone else winning. So, I will help, but I will also put my own personal spin on this thing.” His assistant brought him a small box from which he produced a pendant. “Here, this should be helpful.”

  It was a casual, flick-of-the-wrist motion that moved the necklace from his hand to Adelaide’s neck. I knew at once she wouldn’t be able to remove it. I also knew she would try immediately and continuously until frustration bore her to speak on the subject at length with me. Momentarily, I longed for Hell’s embrace again.

  Thankfully, Hadad began another gesture with another comment. “Now, go.” With that, we were gone. We stood outside of the abbey, listening to the wind in the trees for a moment, before Adelaide began working on the necklace.

  “That’s not going to happen. I suggest you get used to it for now. It may very well save your life.”

  “Looks old,” Adelaide commented, holding it out where she could see it before shrugging and letting it fall back to her chest. “At least it’s not ugly.” For the first time, I heard some real personality, not just fear, behind her voice. A good sign that maybe she’d make it through this after all, if either of us did. I desperately did not want to think about how I’d thrown into question if the world would. That was enough to earn her some reassessment, and I looked her over, taking in a little more detail.

  Tall for a girl, thin, with long dark hair in a braid over one shoulder. Attractive, still definitely a girl, her blue-eyed face that of innocence and youth. She’d been adjusting the zipper of her jacket and fidgeting slightly with the remnants of the shirt underneath to look more standard, less obtrusive. A further sign she was coming around, not just reacting. Good.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Her face was twisted in an almost cartoon expression of trepidation.

  It had been a while since I’d allowed myself to mix with humans on this level, and apparently it showed. “Thinking. You’re young, attractive, in good shape. Any of that might be useful.”

  “Like you’re the first guy to try that.” Not quite what I was going for.

  I grasped her by the arm, gently as I could, and said, “Hold on, we’re going somewhere else…”

  ***

  The mountains of Chile were quite a shock after London. The sky was only bit lighter than London’s in the early evening, but the cold and damp gave way to a crisper chill. Damp from the rain, Adelaide was shivering within moments at the transition. Thankfully, there was a village not far off. Another casual acquaintance lived there – more of a risk someone would see this trip coming than the one to London, but potentially helpful, nonetheless.

  I cautioned her, “You may want to lean forward. The effects can sometimes – ” I was stopped short by her trying to vomit, but her stomach was empty. She crumpled over; heaving dryly, and I made a mental note to prepare a more succinct warning. “ – be unpleasant,” I finished.

  “Unpleasant?” She looked up at me from where she was hunched over clutching at my arm. “Getting stabbed was unpleasant. Oh God.”

  “That will pass; try not to think about it. If we hurry, we might beat them here.” I started walking toward the village, but it wasn’t five steps before I heard the distant sound of thunder, and Adelaide cried out. I turned, fearful that she’d been shot, to find her holding the necklace away from herself. It was glowing softly with a deep golden light, bordering on orange. She was leaning back, as if trying to get away from it.

  “What the fuck is it doing?”

  “It’s warning us,” I answered, looking around to see two trucks full of what must have appeared to be locals to Adelaide approaching on the road. Six of them. Not good.

  “Oh shit, why does that not sound like a good warning? Warning about what?”

  I lifted my left arm and pulled my weapon with my right. “Them.”

  No questions this time. Much better. She just stepped behind me and grabbed the back of my coat. “How much trouble are we in here?”

  “Don’t worry,” I attempted to comfort her. “They’re just Demons.”

  I felt her lean back away from me and almost imagined the quizzical look on her face. “Don’t worry, they’re just Demons? That’s all you’ve got for me?”

  “I…”

  They figured they were close enough, at this point, and began leaping out of the vehicles, each of them with a blade in hand. They began fanning out, trying to come at us from all sides so I couldn’t protect Adelaide. “Adelaide, stand in front of me and do not move.”

  Once she shifted to directly in front of me, I extended a wing out and around her as a shield. The red light of my blade lit the tiny area around us as it reached its full extension. These Demons were little more than savages. There wouldn’t be any bargaining – they’d get what they came for, or die trying.

  Without any real sense of tactics, beyond the basic ideology of the wolf pack, the first one lunged as soon as he reached us. With the hunt on, they dropped the pretense of human visages, and made the twisted, burnt flesh and bony protrusions all along their misshapen forms evident. Adelaide screamed at the sight. The lunge of the first to reach us met my blade, the first cut burning it in half, each side of the body falling separately.

  I had to shift my stance as another tore at my wing from the other side, trying to reach Adelaide. The claws of the Demon were unpleasant, but nothing I couldn’t withstand a while longer, letting me focus on cutting down the next. They tore at me, trying to get to her, but their numbers were paltry. They needed to bring a lot more than this if they intended to have any chance in this fight. Doubtless, there were more on their way, so I needed to be quick and final.

  Four of the six had fallen, when I noticed that one had been hanging back. He was larger than the rest, which usually meant older, tougher, and apparently wiser, to
o. I couldn’t risk him trying to get away to warn someone, which meant appealing to his hunter’s instincts, and doing something to make him decide fight would gain him more than flight. An apparent mistake seemed the best course. I let my wing slip down, as if injured and my blade missed the remaining Demon by an inch. Had I killed it, the other would likely have retreated, seeing his lesser dispatched, but he saw the opportunity and couldn’t resist. He thrust himself toward Adelaide, who again cried out in fear.

  She needn’t have worried. I knocked the lesser creature aside with my wing, and, as the other lunged, I caught it by the throat with one hand before its snapping jaws got near her. I held him aloft, and thrust my blade through his warty carapace and into his heart. He howled, then went limp. After that, the last of them was almost an afterthought, I separated his body from his head a moment later.

  I stood, replacing my blade in its hiding spot, and drew in my wings, willing them away so I appeared as just a man again. “We’re too late. There’ll be more soon. We need to – ”

  Adelaide held her hands out in front of her. “We need to go, I know. You keep saying it.” I reached for her, but she backed away. “No! Look stop, okay, just for a second will you?” She was virtually in tears. “We can’t keep doing this, it isn’t working. This is all a lot to process and you’re not very helpful, you know? I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m covered in blood from my boss, from myself, and now from those… those things. Maybe you can keep going, but I don’t hob nob with Archangels, I’m just a, what did you call? A vessel. I need rest, and you need to get a good plan together.”

  “We can’t rest until we find the keys. That has to come first. Tired, hurt, or not. If someone else finds them first…”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s find those.”

  “We are not prepared. They’ll be waiting in…”

  “Because this is working so well? I can’t survive much more of this. We need to go back to Seattle.”

  The look on her face told me I was smiling, despite myself. The lovely thing about protecting mortals and their free will, sometimes is, that it can lead in the least expected directions. Besides, whether she was right or not, a stand-up fight had as much chance of success as finding friendly contacts they hadn’t gotten to, or put a watch on yet. And next time, there’d be more Demons, or something a lot nastier. “All right, Seattle then. I believe I have a plan. It just won’t be easy.”

  “All right, so what the hell are we looking for, anyway? Keys? If we find them, they’ll stop trying to kill me?”

  “Adelaide… you have an Angel’s Grace inside you. I was hoping to remove it before it made itself at home, but it seems it likes you as a host. So instead, we need to unfold it, so you can start learning to use it. Hopefully, that will allow us to find the keys we seek.”

  She blinked. “I have a what?”

  “The thing your boss died for. The thing he was trying to keep hidden from everyone, until he completed his own journey and unfolded it. Learning to use the Grace was taking him a while.”

  “Journey? He never went anywhere. He just tended the shop, twelve hours a day, every day.”

  “Not that kind. Every Grace is different. It’s…” I tried to describe it in a way she’d follow. “Knotted up. Tangled in the past, present, and future. He’d have needed something to keep track, to try to comprehend that, before he passed it on to you. He’d have hidden it well.”

  There was a long pause as she put her fingertips up to her temples, staring into the distance towards the village. Then she looked at me with excitement. “Piorre kept a journal. Maybe he put it in that! I know where it is, and I know how to get it. The dude with the bad grill was right: there’s no way the cops are going to find it, not even if they toss the place.” She smiled in a satisfied manner; she put her hands on her hips and finished with, “Holy crap, I might be useful.”

  “And you’re certain?”

  “No. But it’s worth as much of a try as… where are we, anyway?”

  “Chile.”

  “So are there going to be more of these… things, in Seattle?”

  “Unlikely. More likely, Rahab will have called in help, or Michael will be watching, if he’s figured out who you are. Or other things.”

  “You’re so helpful,” she grumbled. “This just gets worse and worse.”

  It had been her decision. She was second-guessing it now, but originally, whether it was mortal free will, or the Grace inside her trying to give some insight, her instinct had been for Seattle, so Seattle it was. “We go in strong, and we go now.” I reached for Adelaide. “Hold on.”

  “Aw, son of a bitch.” She squeezed her eyes tightly. I didn’t have the time to tell her that wouldn’t have any effect.

  Once again in the shop, I moved quickly to a nearby garbage can while Adelaide stood there with her hands out to her sides. I offered her the can, but she held it at arm’s length with one of her hands, palm open. “No, I think I’m fine. Hey Tab, I might be finally starting to get the hang of – ” In one fluid motion, she pulled the waste basket from my hand and heaved into it.

  “It is less unpleasant, then?” I inquired.

  “Oh God, I hate you,” her voice echoed from inside the can.

  “Where is the journal?” I looked around in vain. It seemed as if half of the things in the room were deliberately hidden from my kind. It seemed so because that was what he had done. I saw many broken seals, many broken sigils around the room, and many of the contents removed. She stood upright, placing the wastebasket on the floor. “Sorry cleaning person,” she muttered, she then moved to the spot where Piorre was killed. Blood stains were still visible on the floor, and it made her pause, but we didn’t have time for nostalgia.

  “I never noticed the phone or the desk before, but that’s how you guys do it, isn’t it? You hide things in plain sight. Like the frat house or the abbey – they’re things we see, but they mean something different to you, right?” She walked over to the desk and grabbed the handle on the lone drawer. “This must have been here since I started working here, but until Piorre was dying, I didn’t even see it or pay it any mind. So I think it’s here.” With a bit of fanfare, she pulled the drawer open to reveal an empty space.

  She furrowed her brow as I pushed past her. “Excellent,” I commented under my breath.

  “Or, it could be invisible?” she said. “Why can’t I see it? He always looked nervous when I caught him back here.”

  I reached down and touched the cloth, pulling it off of the book. Separate, they looked like a tiny handkerchief and a book; together they gave the appearance of an empty drawer. Together with an ancient spell of concealment, that is. Piorre was a player in the game, not just a bystander. That made me pause and rethink what Adelaide’s role would be, if Piorre had planned to accomplish this goal at all costs. Did that mean she was an acceptable loss, or something more?

  There was movement by the back door and front door simultaneously. “Cops?” Adelaide asked.

  I pointed to the faint golden glow of her necklace and said, “Not entirely. Possessed, likely. We should try not to hurt them.”

  “Okay, why don’t we go? Do your thing. Get us out of here.”

  “We just got here. I need time to recover.” I looked toward the front, and Adelaide grabbed a candlestick from a nearby table.

  “Gotcha, so nothing permanent.”

  I looked at the candlestick. “They still have guns.”

  “Well, I wasn’t prepared for this,” she snapped.

  “We need a way out.” I could see the light of flashlights approaching from both sides.

  “The loft,” she whispered and moved toward the stairs. I followed as quickly as I could, but they were both on me just after Adelaide made it to the third stair. They’d embraced their Demonic physicality instead of bothering with the vessels’ guns. A stroke of luck if there ever was one.

  I could feel the claws on my back as I tried to follow Adelaide, and the ro
ar of the Demons startled her. “Fucking son of a bitch!” She turned to see me pull my blade and slash through one of them, only the light passing through the vessel, cleansing it of the Demon inside. A rather normal-looking police officer slumped to the ground, unconscious but physically unharmed.

  The other lunged for Adelaide, but I swept his legs out from beneath him before he could reach her. As he clawed me and spat at me, I held him down with my left hand, slowly lowering the lighted portion before the physical blade into his chest until the Demon was burned away, leaving only the man. To my surprise, Adelaide was wielding the candlestick, ready to slam it down on the head of the Demon if need be.

  “Is he him again?” She looked rattled but determined.

  “Yes, the Demon is gone.” Not without leaving claw marks in my back and shoulder, but I wasn’t about to let those slow me down. “We need to go. Others are coming.”

  “How bad?” she asked as she smashed a glass case with the candlestick. She removed a vintage dress from the display and shoved it inside her jacket.

  “Go now!” I ordered. She turned and led us up the stairs to the loft – and to a window that had a fire escape only a few feet away from the balcony of the adjacent building. It appeared she was intending to climb down, but that would have put us in the search area of the incoming Demons, so I grabbed her by the waist and leapt across.

  “You want to fucking tell me before you do that? I think I left my stomach on the other fire escape.” I put my hand over her mouth, and to my surprise, she didn’t struggle.

  We watched them crawl all over the building across from us, but then they seemed to lose patience and howl into the twilit sky. The sun was crawling away over the horizon, leaving us all in darkness. The eyes of the Demons and possessed vessels glimmered with the infernal energy – to those with the Grace to see – as they stared out into the dark, looking for us. Then they disappeared into the building and eventually into the street. By the time one of them thought to look on our rooftop, we had already slipped away.