by Harley James
“You Englishmen got some way with words.”
Spencer spun around. A tall, handsome figure in a black trench coat approached confidently from the other side of the beach.
Baal. One of five archdemons set free by a blood ritual at Nate’s club during Halloween. He’d been raising a ruckus in San Francisco for a few weeks now, but all Guardians had a score to settle with this rotter.
Spencer stoked his fire element, ready if the archdemon tried any fuckery. “You have a lot of nerve showing your face after what you did to Hector.”
He’d brutalized the Guardian, then stolen his relic. The Guardians were still reeling from the horrific series of events that spun out from there.
Baal stopped next to Nikolai, his hands clasped in front of him. He’d appropriated the body of a fit male in his mid-forties, his hair thick and dark with only slight recession at the temples.
“That Hector fella was kinda easy to kill, if you gotta know,” Baal said in a rough accent that made Spencer remember bygone servants with Cockney articulations. “I wouldn’t be too quick to claim him as one of your own. Especially when stories of your cunning have reached into the far corners a’Hell, Mr. Jameson. I do hope the stories match the man.”
Steady on. Spencer shoved down his rage. Outward expressions of anger only fed a demon’s deviance. “No stories ever match the man.”
Baal’s eyes crinkled when he laughed. “You’re probably right about that.” His foot came up to prod Nikolai’s inert form. “What happened to this chump?”
Spencer saw movement behind the rocks near the parking lot. An ambush orchestrated by Baal?
His senses flared outward, but he detected nothing overtly malevolent. Other than the spawn of Satan less than fifteen feet away, of course. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Baal pressed his hands against his chest, mouth agape. “Now why would I off such a powerful member of my own team? Frankly, I don’t appreciate the accusation, pal.”
“And I don’t appreciate your dodgy Nephilim dropping bodies all over my city.” Those fuckers lived to break people from the inside—magnifying whatever darkness was already there to push them into complete despair.
Baal laughed again, unbuttoning his coat to place well-manicured hands on his hips. Spencer frowned. The contrast between the archdemon’s well-groomed appearance and his wise-guy manner of speaking was disconcerting.
“The Nephilim need no orders from me to tear into the minds of weak humans. Those fallen angels got some rage issues to deal with—‘specially after that bitch Leviathan turned the Rephaim against them. Used to be demons left other demons alone. Now it’s like every devil for himself.” Baal glanced at Nikolai again. “And this sorry bastard was so twisted, he was probably gonna ice himself anyways, ya read me?”
“On the contrary, most mental health sufferers do not commit suicide.” Unless the Nephilim got to them. “You’ve had your fun, Baal. Now gather your…associates and find a realm other than Earth to terrorize. I’ll only ask once.”
Baal’s eyes twinkled, his pointer finger tapping his lip. “I tell you what, Mr. I-talk-so-proper-you-can-kiss-my-ass, I’ll order all Nephilim in the state of California to move out…if ya hand over the Holy Coat.”
Spencer steeled his features to mask his surprise, pushing the eyeglasses he didn’t actually need (thank you Guardian-enhanced vision) further up the bridge of his nose. It was no secret that most of the Guardians in the Unholy Inc network safeguarded holy relics. But how did Baal discover which particular relic was at Inferno?
“I know it’s gonna be tough to part with,” the archdemon continued. “I mean, you’ve had that old scrap of fabric for a shit-ton of years. But really, wouldn’t it be a relief to off-load it?”
Indeed. The Holy Coat had been in Spencer’s possession for four hundred years. Roman soldiers had cast lots on the robe that Christ had worn before his crucifixion. The ancient relic had enormous power, for good or evil, depending on who wielded the object.
So, yes, it would be a relief not to worry about it anymore.
Which was why he was giving it to Jinx before the Archangel shuttled him to Hell for reneging on his promise.
Baal dropped his hands to his sides and took several steps toward Spencer, Nikolai at his back. Spencer’s fire element flared through his chest and shot down his fingertips. Pick the proper moment for battle. A phrase he’d told his naval crew during the summer of 1588 when their fleet defended England against the Spanish Armada.
Timing was so often the key to success.
And until he knew what lurked beyond the rocks in that dimly-lit parking lot—he still couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary—it wasn’t the right time to skirmish with his enemy.
“Spencer, I’m sensing high energy output from you. Is everything alright?”
Ah, Pepper. Impeccable timing, as always. In addition to her remote sensing capabilities, she was a high-functioning psychic, so she had access to the Guardian telepathic frequency.
“Spencer, I’ll find you in three, two—"
“Calm down. Everything is aces, Pepper.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” she returned, the whip-crack authority in her tone coming through loud and clear on the Guardian frequency.
“Perhaps you’re growing twitchy as your fourth decade draws nigh.”
Predictably, his head of security severed their connection with the psychic equivalent of an eye roll. Thank Heavens. He didn’t want Pepper to remote-locate him in case the archdemon latched onto her energy signature and tracked her back to Inferno.
Baal’s dark eyes seemed to miss nothing. Spencer exhaled quietly, shifting his shoulders to ease the kink at the base of his neck.
“Well? I’m waiting for an answer, Guardian. What’ll it be? The Coat, or my continued presence? It’s easy to see your heart ain’t in this no more. You’re tired of watching over all the poor little humans, keeping them safe from monsters they don’t even believe in.”
Alas, he was quite right. “So, it makes sense that I hand over a key to your father’s cage?”
Baal put his palms up in front of his chest. “You don’t gotta be so passive aggressive, pal. I mean, you’re goin’ to Hell either way, so why not make it interesting, eh? Don’t you want a front row seat to Armageddon? It’ll be a shitshow like no other.”
“Michael— not to mention Alexios—might take issue with me colluding with the likes of you.”
Baal’s smile seemed so sincere. “Ah, yes, Alexios. Where is your fearless leader these days? My sources tell me he leaves his club unprotected for weeks at a time. And when he’s there, he’s not really there, ya know what I mean?” Baal raised his eyebrows and circled his index finger next to his temple. “Sounds to me like eternity is starting to get to’em. Wouldn’t it be interesting to watch his mind unravel?”
It was a concern shared by all Guardians who’d begun to notice Alexios’s growing agitation and frequent, unexplained absences.
A cool night breeze fluttered Spencer’s tie. His senses still provided no information about what had been moving in the rocks. Maybe it had only been a lusty couple spiriting away to resume their nocturnal faire boum boum.
He half wished there’d be a Nephilim or Rephaim lurking there so he could try the feather-dagger thing on a lesser adversary. “Alexios isn’t my concern, nor should he be yours. I’m tired of this conversation so, if you please, good riddance and see you in Hell.” But hopefully not too soon.
“Well, lah di dah! I don’t please, you stick-up-the-ass, pompous prick,” Baal snarled.
That went over well. Spencer grimaced, then glanced again to where Nikolai’s body was—
Gone.
His breath stopped. He spun around on the sand, scanning the area, but the ancient demon’s body was nowhere to be found.
How?
Baal’s sudden roar stabbed adrenaline up Spencer’s spine. “What have you done with him? Nikolai was mine!”
Spencer met Baal’s lunge midair, his fire element surging in his blood, hungry to be let free to char and consume. They slammed against each other and crashed to the beach, launching sheets of sand into the ocean with a noise like a waterfall.
Baal’s nails turned into claws that tore into Spencer’s face and chest, his teeth gnashing, going for the jugular. Spencer shoved his thumbs into Baal’s eyes, using the archdemon’s brief spasm of pain to lever up one side of his body and roll out from under him.
Pushing to his feet, Spencer’s left hand reached into his pocket for the feather while his right materialized his sword. He had no idea where to stab the demon with the feather, but maybe the location didn’t matter.
This better wor—
Spencer’s head snapped to the right from Baal’s powerful hook. He swung blindly with his sword, slicing into Baal’s torso twice before the archdemon launched into the air and landed behind him. Spencer spun to face him, but the archdemon began circling him at Mach speed, encompassing him in the eye of a sand cyclone.
Spencer covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow and shoved the feather back inside his pocket. He stoked his fire element higher, then released it in a pulse of combustion that blew the sand outward like a billion micro-bullets. With the sand wall down, his senses honed in on Baal. He hurled the sword, but the moment it left his hand he realized the archdemon’s body had been a false impression.
Baal’s fist punched through Spencer’s solar plexus. “Not as tough as I thought you’d be,” he snarled.
Drowning in red. A fiery scarlet that zipped through Spencer’s veins. His fingers grasped Baal’s forearm to dislodge his hand. Baal yelled, his arms blistering.
“Spencer, you stupid fuck!”
The bellowing rebuke was muffled as though coming through layers of cotton stuffed in Spencer’s ears, but the words and voice were crystal clear.
Nate.
If Jessie’s mate had found out about the feather-pilfering, Spencer was about to pay the piper.
“Hear that?” Spencer gasped, staring into Baal’s eyes and wanting to laugh manically, but lacking enough air to make it happen. “We’re both in…a spot of trouble…bolshie.”
PAIN.
All-inclusive. Years of it, instantaneously.
can’t
breathe
cold
help
Falling into darkness.
“Spenc, stay with us.” A soft, feminine voice. Jessie. The one he’d wronged with his feather thievery.
Hands probed his skin. Little spikes of torture. He snarled and swung out, despising and longing for the abuse simultaneously. What hath you wrought in me, Father? Whispers they thought he couldn’t hear. And heartbeats. Three. One of them out of step.
Mine.
Let me die.
“Spencer, we need to move you in case he comes back, okay?” The air molecules shifted, an exquisite softness against his cheek, a waft of coconuts and berries, then, “Now, Nate.”
A tilt-a-whirl, and he was upright. Staggering. Stomach curdling. Sick. Vomiting. If only the memories could be expelled as easily. Just let me die. More whispers from his past, layered with understory notes of his father’s lascivious laughter. Go away.
Goawaygoawaygoaway.
His vision came back online in fits and starts. Asphalt and tires. Head spinning as he lifted his chin. Stout gray clouds pasted on a blue-black sky lit up by the city’s iconic bridge. Been around the world, but it’s never far enough.
Can’t outrun your sins.
More laughter from The Marquess of Northampton.
Go AWAY!
“Easy now. There you go, into the truck.” Jessie’s warm, competent tones.
How long had she been there? If she’d noticed her feather in his pocket, she wouldn’t be talking to him this kindly. “You’ll be alright. We’ll get you to the club in no time.”
She had a voice you could fall into. What would that be like? Falling into someone. One soul, in all the world. Yours.
His head pounded, his skin re-knitting, reaching for neighboring cells in a stretch-pull that made his jaw clench and sweat slide down his temples and pool at the bottom of his spine. Sorry for taking your feather, dear Jessica. His lips couldn’t form the words.
He wished he knew if she knew he had her feather. If she didn’t, he wouldn’t have to apologize.
Or face Nate’s righteous anger.
I am no better than those I pledged to vanquish.
Still, the self-censure wasn’t enough to force his apology.
Another shift in the ether. He tensed for probing fingers. Waited, panting, and, when the touch didn’t come, his adrenaline fled. He sagged back in the truck’s bench seat, propped up by Jessica. More changes inside his body. A burning and knitting of the anatomy beneath the skin—muscles, nerves, tendons, bones.
I deserve to die. But his body wouldn’t listen.
“Your healing’s coming along nicely. You’re safe now,” she paused and then, a smile in her voice, “even from Nate.”
A rough scoff from the driver, then silence as the truck sped recklessly through the busy streets.
Eight stoplights and his body was restored. Five more to collect the threads of his humiliation into a tidy bundle of shame and shove it down amid the other hidden savageries of his life. He straightened his tattered clothing the best he could as Nate stopped the truck at Inferno’s service entrance.
He put his hand on the door handle, anxious for them to return to Minneapolis. Anxious to be alone. There were many complexities to puzzle over.
What happened to Nikolai? Why was Baal so furious over losing him if he was already dead? Was the body spirited away by some entity…or was Nikolai actually alive and managed to slip away unnoticed by both a Guardian and an archdemon?
That would be a formidable feat.
Spencer was more intrigued than ever about the ancient demon. “Thank you for the deliverance. I shall have one of my staff return this truck to the place where you helped yourselves to it on my behalf. Enjoy the rest of your evening and give my regards to your team at Mirage.”
“Not so fast, Jameson,” Nate growled.
“You sure you’re okay?” Jessie asked at the same time.
Spencer’s gaze dropped from Nate’s glare. Seeing concern in Jessie’s silvery blue eyes, he forced a lazy smile, though he felt anything but relaxed.
“All is well, madam.” He looked at her winged shoulders. What was the extent of her angel powers when a single feather was incredibly potent?
His curiosity was off the charts, but it would be ungentlemanly to enquire. “I…” His hand sought the white plume in his shredded breast pocket.
Bugger all! It, too, was gone.
Had it fallen out on the beach? In the parking lot? In the truck?
He bent at the waist to search the floorboards and down between the seat and passenger door.
“Looking for the angel feather you filched, you gob shite?”
Spencer snapped upright, his stomach turning over as he met his fellow Englishman’s furious look. It took a lot to vex Nate—unless it was anything to do with his soul mate.
Right now he was squeezing the steering wheel like it was someone’s neck. Mine specifically.
“When did you take it, Jameson? Did you pluck it right off her body?” Nate’s low voice reverberated through the truck.
“Do you have it?” Spencer asked hoarsely. Please, please, say you have it. The alternatives were terrifying.
“Do you think I would be this irate if we did?”
“This method of questioning isn’t productive,” Jessie chided, her no-nonsense demeanor reminding Spencer that she’d been a promising law student who moonlighted as a mixologist before she died and came back, restored by the Archangel Raphael as a warrior angel.
She swiveled toward Spencer. “What do you know about my feathers? Can they help us fight the three remaining archdemons?”
Nate’s right hand slamm
ed on the steering wheel. “Your feathers need to stay on your body, Jess. You’re not a goddamn fowl we can pluck for dinner.”
Spencer rubbed a hand over his recently repaired chest wall. If it wasn’t here, the feather had obviously fallen out during the fight. “We need to go back and search the area. Now.”
Jessie shook her head. “We were in a hurry to get you out of there, but I’m sure Nate or I would have noticed one of my feathers lying around. They’re pretty conspicuous.”
Spencer wanted to flee from the pressure cooker the truck had become. His own guilt, Nate’s temper, and Jessie’s mystifying calm were too much. Plus, it was damn cold outside, two of his human bouncers were watching from their stations next to the door, and Jinx was probably waiting for him in his office. So...
Poppycock. He should run.
The sooner he unloaded his relic on Jinx, the sooner he could be alone and contemplate all the ways he was screwed.
Most probably, Baal was now in possession of the feather.
My fault. Maybe Michael would send Jessie herself to eviscerate him. That had a poetic justice to it.
He raked a hand through his hair and lowered his voice because only one of the bouncers watching by the door was clued into their supernatural mumbo jumbo. “A single feather can immobilize a demon long enough to decapitate it. I find it incomprehensible that you weren’t aware of this—or any of the Guardians for that matter. We’ve been dealing with demons for millennia.”
Jessie whispered softly to her mate before turning back to Spencer. “What were you doing on the beach with Baal? You know we can’t fight these archdemons alone.”
“I’m not dull-witted. I was meeting with…an informant who was going to show me exactly how to use the feather. I wasn’t planning on Baal showing up, but when he did, I hoped the feather would come to my aid. How did you manage to dispatch him?”
“He was preoccupied when you two were rolling around on the sand, so we had the element of surprise,” Jessie said. “Nate and I both came at him, but at the last moment, he felt our approach and teleported. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”