“One that’ll let me go to sleep now and treat me in the morning?” asked Imorean, smiling hopefully at Raphael.
Raphael’s blue eyes sparkled behind his glasses. “Out of luck. The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can go to bed with your hands not hurting.”
“Fine. Fine. You’ve got a point,” sighed Imorean.
Only minutes later, Imorean sat on an exam table, bandaged hands folded in his lap. Raphael had already listened to his heart and lungs, done a reflex test and checked his eyesight.
“Are you finished?” asked Imorean with a grin, shaking his head as Raphael pulled an otoscope from his ear.
“I will be soon,” replied Raphael. “Let’s have a look at these hands.”
Imorean felt his smile fall as Raphael stood in front of the exam table, flinching as Raphael’s light fingers pressed on his bandaged hands.
“That hurts?”
“I don’t know. It feels kind of dull.”
Raphael nodded and began undoing the wrapping. Imorean swallowed. He didn’t want to see what his hands looked like. He trembled. Raphael stopped and smiled.
“Hold on.” Imorean watched as Raphael opened the door to the exam room and called out into the hallway. “Get in here so you stop worrying.”
A grin sprang to Imorean’s face as Raphael stepped back from the door and Michael walked in. He looked as tired as Imorean felt, but all the same, Imorean was glad to see him.
“I didn’t realize you were back, Michael,” said Imorean. “Gabriel said you weren’t supposed to be back for a while.”
Michael leaned on the wall near the exam table. “I was not supposed to be. We were forced to pull back from Houska.”
“What happened?” asked Imorean. He looked away and focused all his attention on Michael as Raphael began to unwrap his hands again.
“It was too heavily guarded for the style of attack I wanted to mount. There is something there that Vortigern does not want us to find.”
Imorean narrowed his eyes. “Was he there?”
“Yes. It is unusual. I have not known Vortigern to stay at one base for an extended amount of time. Our sources indicate that he has been there for several weeks.”
“What do you think’s going on?” asked Imorean. A horrible, cold feeling in his gut told him it was nothing good.
“I do not know. I have begun to assemble a team to have a closer look.”
Imorean sat straighter, nearly pulling his hand away from Raphael. “I want on.”
Michael chuckled softly. “On the team?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why?” snapped Imorean. He could feel the air going sour between them.
“I will not be leading the team. Raguel will be –”
“I know Raguel, though.”
“You have met him once, during a meeting. He is a different beast when he is in the field. You have never worked with him before. You have not done any offense attack work. Which reminds me, we will need to start you on that.”
“If you’re going to start me on offense work anyway, why don’t you put me on the team? It’ll give me something to train toward,” said Imorean, trying to keep the venom out of his voice.
“I have a different mission for you.”
“Michael!” shouted Imorean. “I haven’t been back half an hour and you’re already laying out more tasks! When will you get it through your th –”
Imorean made a muffled sound of protest as Michael’s hand clapped over his mouth, stopping him mid-sentence.
Michael lowered his voice just above a whisper. “The mission I have for you will be extremely dangerous and could get everyone involved into a lot of trouble. Does the word ‘danger’ have your attention or must I say more?”
Imorean took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes to slits. He glared at Michael hard enough to stare a hole in his head and sent a message.
“Yes, but if you don’t take your hand off my mouth right now, I’ll bite you.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Michael’s mouth, then he dropped his hand away and stepped back. “I will give you more details at a later date. Right now, the walls have ears. Raphael, how is everything looking?”
Imorean looked down at his hands, glad Michael had been distracting him. The sight that greeted him stifled the air in his lungs. His hands were nothing but a burned mass of shiny skin. Blisters and welts had erupted toward the sides of his hands, but a majority of the palm didn’t even look like skin. It was a horrible mess of red and white. He flinched as Raphael leaned down and blew cold air across the flats of his palms. Slowly, the livid colors muted to a neutral level. A coolness covered Imorean’s hands and he breathed relief.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Angel healing method. I figured you needed something more potent than a human cure. You did a number on yourself,” said Raphael, standing upright. “I’ll give you something to take before bed. The skin will be sensitive for a few hours, but it should be nearly normal by the morning. Michael, for fire, what do you suggest?”
Michael sighed, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It is time we began giving lessons in control. Imorean, if you continue to release this amount of pyrokinetic energy at once, it could burn you up from the inside.”
“From what I’ve been told, that’s almost what happened,” muttered Imorean.
“Then you were lucky. Extremely lucky,” said Michael, his voice quiet. “Raphael, get Imorean’s medicine, would you? I will accompany him up to his room.”
“I can find the way on my own, you know,” said Imorean, getting down off the exam table. He wanted to be in bed. It was late and he was drained.
“I am sure you can,” nodded Michael.
Imorean frowned, but felt Michael’s resolution to escort him all the way to his room. He sighed and folded his wings. The new, black mark caught his eye again. His wings were becoming blacker and blacker. How much longer would it be before they looked like a proper gyrfalcon’s? Imorean stumbled backward half a step as Raphael pressed a bottle of pills, a pair of gloves and a tube of ointment into his hands.
“Use the ointment tonight and whenever your hands start to feel too dry. Tonight, after you’ve used that ointment, soak the gloves with it and sleep with them on. Take all the pills tonight. Between the ointment and the medicine, your hands should look normal by tomorrow. Just bear in mind that they’ll be more sensitive than usual, so handling a sword may prove difficult.”
“Roger that,” nodded Imorean. “So, I guess that means I won’t have to do any sparring classes for the next little while?”
“I would not get your hopes up,” scoffed Michael.
Raphael shook his head and smiled. “You can go on to bed now, Imorean. See you tomorrow, Michael.”
“Thanks, Raphael,” replied Imorean, stepping out of the small exam room after Michael. The halls were quiet now. Beautifully so. Even in the stillness, though, Imorean couldn’t help but feel anxious.
“Michael,” said Imorean, breaking the quiet.
“Yes?”
“How long did it take you to get a good grasp on your powers?”
Michael frowned and paused, green eyes pensive. “A few years for small storms and systems, a few decades for larger ones. Why?”
“Just trying to get an estimate on this,” replied Imorean, flapping his hands. “I’ve got a question.”
“Well, ask. There is nothing stopping you.”
“In Mexico, I lost my sword, as in I dropped it. It didn’t come back to me. Why?” asked Imorean. The question had been nagging at him the whole journey back.
Michael’s frown deepened. “At the temple?”
“Yeah.”
“Stone. It is one of the things that interferes with swords making their return.”
“You’re telling me this now?”
“Well, I cannot say we expected you to be taken prisoner in a stone temple.”
Imorean shook his head. “How does sto
ne interfere with us and our swords?”
“In an instance such as yours, where the angel is separated from their weapon by a solid wall of stone, it is near impossible for the sword to make its return. Stone is an ancient and powerful element and stone touched by supernatural means even more so. Which is why we like to build foundations out of stone. However, its nature is something of a two-edged sword, no pun intended, as it blocks the communication between angel and weapon. The only way to retrieve a sword when the two of you are separated by stone is to enter the astral plane and allow your soul to bring it back to you.”
“And you couldn’t have told me that before I left?”
“Like I said, we did not expect you to be taken prisoner in a temple. Perhaps you should be more careful.”
A humorless laugh made its way up his throat. “Always my fault, isn’t it?”
“Burden of leadership,” replied Michael, his voice sounding strained, as though he was trying not to laugh.
Imorean shook his head. “So, the walls have ears, huh?”
Michael’s voice darkened. “Sariel has arrived. He is running some work for my darling, record-keeping sister, Amriel. She likes to have him keep an annoyingly close watch on me and the other Archangels. It is unlikely that you will see him until tomorrow. To my understanding, he had some more records to pick up from Iqaluit.”
Imorean leaped up to the second floor, landing lithely on the other side of the railing. Michael landed next to him.
“Yeah, you mentioned he would be arriving here after me and the squad went to Mexico,” said Imorean, tucking his wings away. Seeing those deep, black scars on his wings still made him uncomfortable. He wondered if they always would.
“He will be keeping a close watch on us all until he decides to take his leave. Until then, we must keep sensitive information away from him. While he is working for Amriel, my trust in him is rather diminished.”
“What are you planning?” asked Imorean, pausing near his bedroom door.
Michael looked up at the ceiling and Imorean followed his gaze. His voice cut across Imorean’s mind. “I will tell you, but not here.”
Imorean nodded and ran a hand through his hair.
“I will debrief you tomorrow.”
The sentence hung and Imorean felt there was more Michael wanted to say.
“Go on,” he said, folding his arms and leaning on the door jamb. “What do you want to know?”
“While Raphael was checking you over, Gabriel told me about your encounter with Bethany. Before she escaped, you had the choice to let her live or kill her. What were you going to choose?”
Imorean took a deep breath. Even now, the choice felt both wholly wrong and entirely right in his blood. He looked away and ground his teeth. Why did Michael have to choose this question, of all questions, to ask?
“Mercy,” breathed Imorean. The word was quieter than he had wanted. He had barely heard his own voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Michael pause.
“Imorean?”
“Mercy. I would have let her go. Wrong answer, right? The weak option,” snapped Imorean, rounding on Michael. “Don’t you think it’s already hard enough for me to admit to myself that I’m a soldier. Do I have to become a murderer, too?”
Michael’s hand settled on his shoulder, firm, reassuring. “For the sake of the mission, it is not the option that I would have chosen, due to the compromise of our movements it has caused. But you are not me. Mercy is not weakness, just as malevolence is not strength. You chose to let someone your own age live, rather than become a cold-blooded killer. I believe that shows an incredible amount of resilience. Given everything she has done, mercy is not something she could have expected. Leave the cold-blooded murders to me and the others. It is best for yourself that you followed your human morality rather than make a choice that would bother even a full-fledged angel. You did what was morally right by your own self. Now go, get some rest. You are exhausted and tiredness clouds the mind. You will not doubt your own decisions when you are rested.”
“I compromised the mission, didn’t I?”
Michael paused. “Yes … but Vortigern currently does not know where we are or what stage of planning we are in. We may have to move faster, but we can overcome this. Bethany is slippery and she was probably giving information to Vortigern before you even confronted her.”
Imorean looked up as Michael’s hand slid off his shoulder. His vision was blurry and his eyes stung. He was glad when Michael looked the other way. He took a deep breath, and the tension in his chest eased. He really was tired now. How long had the others already been asleep?
“Go to bed. Soon we will start you on some control lessons,” said Michael. He stumbled half a pace as Michael gave him a gentle push. “Have a good evening, Imorean.”
The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, an automatic response from childhood. “Good night, Michael.”
Michael paused a moment more. Imorean grinned as he raised a finger and pointed at bedroom door. “Go and rest.”
Imorean nodded at Michael and gave him the tiny, mock salute his own squad gave him. “On it, boss.”
Chapter 44
Skeletal tree branches rattled against one another, cackling away in the winter night. Imorean did not know how he knew it was winter. He simply knew. He shivered and pulled his thin shirt closer. Overhead, a wind howled through the trees. A voice carried on the breeze, feminine, flitting in amongst the trunks and branches.
“Imorean?”
He straightened. “Who’s there? Who are you?”
“Oh, Imorean …”
Everything changed. Imorean felt eagerness, desperation, in the voice now. She, whoever she was, had found him. She had found him. She was coming.
The ground tipped beneath Imorean’s feet. He flailed his arms as he slid down, down, down into the ground. Level. Level again. A grasp on lucidity hit him. He was in a dream. His own dream. He smiled. He was not normally a lucid dreamer. This was a nice change. He inclined his head and listened. He could hear water dripping. The toes of his sneakers were soaked. He strained in the darkness, but he could barely see. Slowly, Imorean put one foot in front of the other, moving down this darkened, dank hallway. Light flickered ahead. He blinked against it. Fluorescent. Artificial. Wherever he was, it wasn’t natural.
A figure. A figure next to him. Imorean leaped sideways. That terrible, sharp profile was unmistakable even in the low light. Aristocratic and graceful. Catlike. Vortigern. He paid him no mind, a menacing kind of focus on his face. Imorean pulled as far away as this dim hallway would allow and tried to hide. Vortigern, though, didn’t even seem to be aware of his presence. Then Vortigern stepped out down the hall, shoes thudding hard on the stone floor. Imorean inclined his head. Vortigern couldn’t seem to see him. He weighed his options and set out after him. There was no point in trying to hurt him. It wasn’t possible to cause real pain in a dream. Either way, he might find something useful.
The light overhead turned clinical, stark white. The walls whitened. Imorean breathed in. Sterile. Was this a hospital? He glanced at the walls. No. They were too white. This looked more like an insane asylum. He swallowed. Maybe it was. He couldn’t think of a more appropriate place for Vortigern to be. He looked at Vortigern again and took a chance. There wasn’t even a flicker of awareness. He waved a hand in front of Vortigern’s face. Nothing. No reaction. Imorean looked past him to the other side of the hallway. Vortigern couldn’t see him. Imorean almost laughed. Of course, Vortigern couldn’t see him. This was his own dream.
Large rooms set off by glass panes lined the opposite side of this narrow aisle way. Imorean shivered. Not an insane asylum. Perhaps a prison, then? He paused as they passed one cell. Nothing but darkness swirled inside – unnatural darkness. Someone screamed. Terrified and loud. Imorean pressed against the glass, trying to will it away, to free whoever was trapped inside. But the glass did not budge. Some dream force pulled him further down the hallway. Im
orean looked over his shoulder once more as he fell back into step with Vortigern. Three more cells drifted past. Some were empty, others contained similar swirling, black masses. Then, so suddenly that Imorean nearly bumped into him, Vortigern stopped, facing a blacked-out cell. His gray eyes were cold and calculating.
“Are we going to have a proper chat today?” he asked, crouching down.
Imorean copied Vortigern’s actions and peered into the darkness. Bang! A hand slammed against the glass from inside. Imorean rocked backward. The hand was gone again seconds later.
“Now, now,” said Vortigern, his voice quiet and somehow soothing. “No need to be like that. You know I won’t hurt you.”
A voice erupted from inside the cell, haggard and hoarse. “Liar!”
Vortigern hissed a laugh. Imorean shuddered. That sound still turned his blood cold. He looked away and peered into the cell. Loud bangs and crashes erupted from inside. Something feral and destructive was in there.
“Isolation has dulled your originality. Only a few weeks ago, you would scream the most brilliant curses at me, words that truly set my blood alight, swear up and down that the angels would be on their way to save you. They haven’t come yet. There’s only me. I’m all you’ve got. Come on. Haven’t you missed contact?” he crooned.
Imorean looked at Vortigern, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. Vortigern’s voice was quieter and softer than Imorean had ever heard before. It had lost its mocking quality. There was something seductive, irresistible about it now.
“You’re neither human nor angel,” snarled the voice from inside.
Imorean grinned. The resilience in this voice was such a beautiful counter to Vortigern. But who were they? Toddy? No. The voice didn’t sound right. Mandy?
“I’m close enough to both. Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”
There was a pause. Imorean leaned forward, brown eyes straining.
The caged voice came again, quieter this time. “Why?”
Vortigern moved closer, one hand resting on the glass. “He’s dead. Little Bethany told me this morning.”
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