by W H Lock
In a nearby tree a crow cawed raucously. For a moment it sounded like laughter to Quinn. But Quinn shrugged it off. He snapped his fingers and the Circle flared to life, the aquamarine lines etching themselves into brighter and stronger lines. The circle started with Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal. When the song started, Quinn brushed the jacket back as a blast of white fog and cold air blasted at him. Quinn pulled a fedora out of thin air and put it on his head in one smooth sibilant dance move that began with his feet and ended the hat pulled down over his forehead.
With fast gestures of his hands, Quinn focused his will and called a Circle of Dyblygu. It was the same spell that he had used to create illusory duplicates of himself in the fight with Oscar. However, instead of several battle ready exact duplicates of Quinn, this time the Circle created four versions of Quinn dressed in sharp black suits, each one with a fedora tucked down over their eyes.
Then the song began in earnest, and Quinn, along with his backup dancer versions of himself, went through the dance routine from the live stage performance by Michael Jackson of Smooth Criminal that Quinn had been lucky to see.
At the height of the song, and Quinn’s favorite part where Michael had first done that famous lean forward, Quinn ran to jump up on the hood of the car. With a few skipping steps, Quinn was on top of car, just in time to do the lean forward out over the front of his shoes. The virtual doppelgangers performed their parts perfectly. Quinn didn’t even mind that one of them was standing in the middle of the trunk.
He was on top of the car for a few moments that it occurred to Quinn that there hadn’t been a lonely crossroad like this on the only road out from the Oswyn’s estate. In fact, it had been a single lane road the entire trip back to Los Angeles. It would be miles before another road came near this one.
“Oh, fuck,” Quinn said in the darkness and jumped off of the roof. Nothing good ever happened at a crossroads, especially one that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night. He clapped his hands and waved them in the air. Both circles dissolved away, taking the music and the dancers away.
But it was too late. Piercing white light fell down from the heavens, encircling the car. The light made a hard line around the car. Quinn held up his hands to cover his eyes and tried to look up in the night sky. The pillar of light seemed to extend out into the night and far beyond the limits of the sky. But he needn’t have bothered.
Out of the light dropped Asbiel. Gone was the vain Hollywood producer. The enraged mob boss was absent. In their place was an instrument of the Vengeance of the Lord. Asbiel, Valley of the Lord, Angel of Heaven, strode forth on the world. Her wings, golden and white, spread out behind her. Her red hair was truly flame now, intermixed with the heavenly fire that made up most of her body. She wore armor, not the sort that would appear in movies with fake anatomy. This was the real deal. Hard hammered steel with rivets to hold it together. It was covered in the marks of battles hard fought. Her forearms and lower legs were covered in form-fitting steel strapped to her smoke and flame body. In her hand, she held a flaming sword of Heaven.
“Thou hast forsaken thine oath, puppy.” Asbiel used the translated meaning of Quinn’s name. “Thine life and soul are forfeit.”
With a snarl, she raised the flaming sword above her head and cleaved the driver’s side tire and front from the rest of the car. Oil and hydraulic fluid spurted out of the car and splattered across the angel. It burned away in the flames that surrounded her.
The car alarm sounded. The remaining lights flashed in time with the sound that quickly devolved into a sad prolonged blat. A blat that ended in a pitiful wail that trailed off.
Unlike her fallen brethren, Asbiel had not taken up arms and joined Lucifer in his rebellion. She, like the five other Grigori Angels, had simply left Heaven. They enjoyed the company of Man more than that of their kind. As a result, her wings were still attached, and she still held her Sword of Heaven.
Quinn pulled his jacket off, balled it up, and threw it at Asbiel’s face. As she snagged it out of the air with her other hand, he ran and put what remained of the car between them. He pulled his Wind Blade into existence and prepared to summon a Shield of Asmodai. Despite the show he and Oscar had put on in Oswyn’s house, Quinn was skilled with the sword and the shield. He had been trained. But the time he had spent in training paled in comparison to the centuries Asbiel had to use her sword in battle.
Asbiel set her sword up in the air. Impossibly, the sword resisted the pull of gravity and stayed where she had left it hanging in the air. The Rebel Angel grabbed the remains of the hood of the car and lifted it above her head to throw it aside. She lifted the car above her head effortlessly.
Quinn charged her. He threw himself at her in a tackle aimed right at her mid-section. He planned to bowl her over and get the upper hand. But that’s not what happened. Hitting her was like running headlong into a pillar of solid granite. The only thing that Quinn managed to do was drive the air from his lungs. He fell to the ground, gasping for air. Without his direct focus, the Wind Blade dissipated once again.
Asbiel laughed and threw the car into the bushes at the side of the road. The Crown Victoria four-door sedan tumbled end over end into the California brush. She grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lifted Quinn up into the air with ease.
“Oh, little puppy, verily, I can seeth wherefore thy queen hath kept thee. Thou dost amuse greatly.” She plucked her flaming sword out of the air. “But anon thou must payeth the price for breaking thine oath.”
“What oath have I forsaken? I have not forsworn my honor.”
Asbiel cocked her head in annoyance at Quinn and thrust her jaw to the side. “Dost thou presume me the fool? Was it not by thine gage thou would not pilfer the well-gotten gains of the citizens of mine demesne?” She casually tossed him to the ground.
Quinn rolled with the throw and came up to his feet in a low crouch, ready to spring in any direction. “Indeed, your wingedness. And do I not stand here hale and hearty before you, full of both mine vigor and magic? Oaths are no light thing, and to break one is to sacrifice much.”
“Indeed, and now you die,” She raised her sword and stepped forward.
“Did he tell you he robbed banks? That’s how he could afford that estate and the box office tickets.”
“What?” Asbiel stopped. The flaming blade held back at the beginning of a mighty swing.
“Verily. E’en now, Federal agents comb the smallest grains of truth from the sands of obfuscation Oswyn cast in thine eyes. They shall find that he was behind not one nor two but three successful robberies and planned a fourth here in LA. Drummonds, if one canst believe such things. Troth! I fain to wonder what Drummonds will demand of thee if they were to be told of this.”
Asbiel looked at Quinn hard. She could hear the truth in his voice.
“And as to thine demesne? When last I checked, his estate lay some measure outside e’en the most generous bounds of thine land, your wingedness. Thou art the Lady of Hollywood, no? Yon villain lay outside Los Angeles County. We are many miles from your realm, oh Valley of the Lord.”
“Do not seek to play the litigator with me, puppy. Parse thine words most carefully, else I shall strike thy tongue from thine mouth and thine head from thine shoulders!”
“He did you dirty, Asbiel,” Quinn said switching to modern speak. “He was planning to hit Drummonds, and use me as the fall-guy. He’d been hiding behind you all these years. The Feds are going to find it all. The question you need to answer is this: is he worth it? Is he worth having to answer questions involving the words what did you know and when did you know it? You’re strong, but not even you can take on the Fed’s.”
Asbiel stopped.
“You know I am speaking the truth, Asbiel. You can hear it, can’t you?”
“And I know that you lie with the truth, Chwen. I am still an Angel of the Lord, and lies ring in my ears.” Asbiel crouched forward, her wings spread out to counterbalance her far forward lean. Th
e sword was held high and behind her, ready to strike with just a swift arm movement.
“Are they ringing now?”
With a snarl, Asbiel threw the sword away from her. It sputtered out of existence. With a leap, she crossed the space between the two of them and grabbed Quinn by the front of his cheap shirt. She drove a knee into his stomach, forcing the air from his lungs. She pulled him up only to backhand him. The blow sent Quinn sliding across the road.
Gasping for air, Quinn lay on his back and realized he was probably going to die. Asbiel summoned the sword again and followed him across the road. She reached down and grabbed Quinn by his hair. She yanked him to a half sitting position, his neck fully stretched out. She raised her sword, the flames eating the air around the blade. She held the edge against this throat.
“Thou art banned, mortal. Thy and thine ilk have but one day to flee my demesne. If I see one scrap of thee, one ounce of thine shadow, the breath in thy lungs shall be forfeit. Dost thou understand?”
Quinn nodded.
With a single massive flap of her wings, she took him into the sky, a glowing white angel of vengeance. With no effort, she disappeared into the dark California night. The column of light faded with her departure. The car still remained in pieces and in the bush.
Quinn let out a long slow sigh of relief. When he stood up, the crossroads were gone. He was standing on a dark desert highway with nothing more than a cool wind in his hair. He used his shirt to clean the blood off of his face. The car was a write-off. It would take magic more powerful than Quinn knew to get it back on the road let alone in one piece and on the road.
Quinn picked his jacket up off the road, brushed it off and threw it over his shoulder. As he walked down the road, he whistled one of his favorite Frank Sinatra songs.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Quinn always liked the end of a successful job. Everyone was all smiles and happy, and he just felt like dancing with a huge grin on his face. He had made it back to the warehouse with a little bit of magic and a lot of a ride-share app on his smartphone. Once Quinn had sent the all clear, they had come back to the warehouse one by one. Quinn placed two calls to Gwen’s number with no answer. He followed it up with a few messages, but she didn’t respond. Oscar was supposed to deliver the bag to the arranged location. Quinn pushed the niggling worry back. If she hadn’t gotten the bag and the skull by now, she would have been lighting up his phone.
Karen was first. Quinn handed a briefcase over to her. She opened it and was happy with the contents and nodded her acceptance. She didn’t say where she was going and didn’t ask about the bruises forming on his face. Quinn didn’t ask what was next and only said, “Thanks, Karen.”
To Quinn’s surprise, Eno and Fred showed up together. They grinned ruefully at his questioning look.
Eno kicked a bit at the floor with his foot and ducked his head. He rubbed the back of his neck and then looked up at Quinn with a rueful grin.
“We’re going to open a detective agency,” Freddy said. “Figure between the two of us we can crack any case and with us being a werewolf and a vampire, that’s like free marketing right there.”
“Good luck, fellas,” was all that Quinn could say.
After some time, Rube stuck his head in through the door. “Is it alright for me to be here now?”
“Come on in, Rube. You’re the next to last,” Quinn said from the place he’d taken by sitting on the table that had been left behind. He had two briefcases left. One of them he pushed out with his foot.
Rube picked it up and popped the case open on the table. He whistled at the stacks of money that waited for him inside.
“Normally that would be gold, Rube. But for you I used cash. I didn’t think you’d be equipped to handle a large amount of precious metals without drawing attention to yourself.”
“Thanks, Quinn. You’re the best,” Rube said. “You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get me a Superbird. I got my eye on a red one in Tennessee. It’s only got 50K some miles on it.”
Quinn laughed and said, “I assume that’s a car, right?”
Rube looked back down at the contents of the case and nodded.
Quinn slapped him on the shoulder and laughed again. “Usually we don’t talk about what we do next, Rube. That way if one of us gets snagged on the way out, we can’t roll over on the others.”
“Oh,” he said. He closed the latches on the case and spun the lock dials. “In that case, I’m headed to California to buy a 1968 bright orange Dodge Charger with a custom horn.” Rube nodded at him one more time and didn’t look back on his way out of the warehouse.
The plan had been for Oscar to come by the warehouse last. Oscar would give Quinn the skull and Quinn would pay him out. Gwen would come after everyone was gone. They'd go out for dinner, dancing, and then who knows where they'd go? There were so many things he wanted to show her. He had thought maybe they’d go to China together or maybe he really would take her to that Caribbean resort with the bioluminescent algae. So, he waited.
And waited.
And kept waiting.
He sat on the table waiting for either Oscar or Gwen to walk in through the door. Quinn heard one the outer doors open and close. Footsteps came through the darkness. But there was something off about them. They weren't the sound of the Oxford’s that Oscar preferred or the flats Gwen normally wore or even the sound of expensive heels. It was the sound of mid-priced office shoes. They had the easy slide of someone who'd worn the edges down. It was also the sound of boundless patience.
A federal agent walked into the light. He was a man in his mid-forties with balding hair dressed in a white shirt, black slacks, and black shoes that needed a little bit of a shine. He wore a simple red tie. He was carrying a thick manila envelope. Quinn said nothing as the man stopped at the table.
"She's not coming, kid," the man said.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Quinn replied out of reflex. He pushed the one remaining case beneath the table with his foot. Quinn felt the center of his chest sink.
"Do you mind if I sit down?" The agent didn't wait for an answer before tossing the folder on the table and taking a seat. He sighed as if he had been on his feet all day. He kicked his legs out and stretched. “I’m not going to ask about what’s in the briefcase. I will pretend that I didn’t see it.”
Quinn crossed his arms in front of him and leaned against the table. He only turned part of the way towards this unknown Federal Agent. Neither man broke the silence. All the while, Quinn's heart sank lower and lower. He couldn't see a way through this that ended with him and Gwen in the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, or the beaches of Greece together.
"She played you, kid. You should know that," the agent said.
Quinn didn't say anything.
The agent leaned forward and flipped open the folder. On the top was an eight by ten glossy photograph of a couple walking through airport security. Quinn recognized it as LAX right away. And it was clearly Gwen and Oscar. They were even holding hands. Oscar was carrying the black bag. The bag that Quinn knew held the skull.
"Until about six months ago, your girl lived a very quiet life. She was preparing to take her vows as a nun in the Order of Saint Cyprian."
Quinn looked up from the folder at the agent. Somehow it made sense to him that she had been prepared to become a nun.
"According to one of her nunly supervisors," the agent paused and looked at Quinn. "I don't know how nuns work. Nunly? Sisterly? I have no idea. Anyway. According to the Order she had been on track for a very quiet career in the scholarly study of miracles."
Quinn nodded. The Catholic Church still refused to acknowledge the existence of the magic world and insisted on calling it all miraculous.
"And then one day she had a nervous breakdown, claiming that one of the statues was talking to her. Which sounds like something right up the alley of a bunch of nuns that study miracles, but because no one else could see it, they decided she was actually just
going crazy. They ordered her to some bedrest. A week later, she quits the order and walks out the front door."
The agent flipped a few sheets of paper over to show a photo of a somehow younger Gwen. It was clearly taken sometime in the last year, but this wasn't the woman Quinn knew. This was a picture of a shy blond young woman who hid from the world behind overly large glasses and bangs. The agent pulled another picture out from behind that one and slid it over to Quinn.
"That's her a week later walking in with one of the Vatican tours," he said. This picture showed a woman that Quinn recognized. This woman carefully styled her hair, form-fitting clothing, and sunglasses. She did everything she could to be both remarkable and unnoticed. A pretty face that people would remember but not in too great of detail. She stood in the back of a small crowd listening to a tour guide talk about something out of frame. This was the Gwen he knew.
"She ditched the tour and somehow got access to the internal areas of the city. We think she had help."
Quinn pushed the pictures away and said, "I'm glad that my tax dollars are being spent following a young woman who rejected a quiet life of introspection for companionship. But what does this have to with me, an honest businessman?"
The agent laughed. "Oh, I'm sorry, Quinn. I should introduce myself. I'm Special Agent Mark Nelson. I'm attached to the Joint Supernatural Task Force. We work in conjunction with several different agencies both inside and outside the US. It's all terrifically boring, but basically, whenever something crazy happens, we get notified. And let’s be honest, you haven’t ever paid taxes."
Quinn laughed and shrugged with a you-got-me smile. "You must have a workload that's out of this world," Quinn said.
"You don't know the half of it, kid. But it's all about what leads to chase down and which ones won't take you anywhere. And you're right. Normally someone not becoming a nun and then taking a tour of the Vatican wouldn't show up on my desk.” Nelson snapped his fingers and pointed at Quinn. He said, “Abbess. That’s the name of a head nun." Nelson looked pleased with his sudden insight.