chapter 10
TRSIEL TOOK US BACK INTO JANAH’S ROOM, WHERE I waited as they went at it. No, I don’t mean an angel-on-angel sword-slamming duel, though that would have been kind of fun. This was a fight of the verbal variety…and not much of a fight at that.
Trsiel talked to Janah in what I assumed was her native tongue, and she eventually calmed down, though I suspect it had more to do with his tone than his words. Trsiel had two voice settings. One, probably his natural voice, could have stopped traffic. The moment you heard it, you’d stop whatever you were doing, just to sit and listen. If he kept talking, you’d keep listening, but probably not hear a word he said, too intent on the voice to comprehend the message.
That’s the voice he’d first used to get my attention, and it was the one he now used to calm Janah. But when he switched to conversation mode, he adopted a more “normal” tone, one that would be a DJ’s dream, but not so spellbinding that you’d ignore what he was saying.
Finally, he changed to English for my benefit. He explained my mission, and with each word, Janah’s gaze un-clouded, as her mind cleared and focused. Then she turned to me, eyes narrowing.
“They send this one after her?” She snorted. “And they call me mad.”
I started to retort, but Trsiel cut me off.
“The Fates know what they’re doing,” he said.
“No, they do not. She will fail.”
“Perhaps, but—”
“She will fail. No ‘perhaps.’ This is a job for an angel, and she is not an angel.”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet what?” I said.
“This is her inaugural quest?” Janah leapt to her feet. “This is not—it cannot be—Fools!”
Trsiel tried to quiet her, but she lunged at him so fast I saw only a blur. Trsiel didn’t move. She stopped, with only an inch between them, and pulled herself up straight. She barely reached his chest, but that didn’t keep her from rattling off a tirade of invective—or what I assumed from her tone was invective, though she’d reverted to her own language. Trsiel put his hands on her arms, but she flung him off and stalked to her window.
“Without the gift, she will fail,” Janah said. “Do not ask me to lead her to her destruction. I will not.”
Janah dropped to the floor with a thud, pulled her knees to her chest, and turned to stare out her window. Even from across the room, I could see that stare go empty as her mind retreated.
Trsiel laid his hand on my forearm, and we zapped out of Janah’s room.
Trsiel didn’t take me back to the foyer, but to some kind of waiting area, empty except for two white armchairs.
“She’s right,” he said, dropping into one of the chairs. “You can’t do this without the gift.”
“What gift?”
He waved me to the other chair, but I shook my head.
“What gift?” I repeated.
“An angel’s power. Full-bloods always have it. The others get it when they ascend. The Fates must know you need it for this, so what could they be…” His voice trailed off, his brow furrowed.
“Is it the sword? I wouldn’t mind the sword.”
A tiny smile. “No, the sword is a tool. You’ll get that, too, when you ascend—”
“Ascend?”
“Yes. But the gift is a skill, an ability. Not essential in most of an angel’s tasks, but obviously Janah thinks you need it for this one, and she’s not talking until you have it. But you won’t get it until you ascend and you won’t ascend until you complete your inaugural quest.”
“‘Complete’? You think I’m auditioning for angel-hood?”
“It isn’t something you can audition for. You must be chosen, and if you’re chosen, then you have to complete an inaugural quest. Finding the Nix is yours.”
“I’m fulfilling a promise here, not completing an entrance exam. The Fates did me a favor a couple of years ago, a very big favor, and this is how they want it repaid.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken, then.”
His tone said he didn’t believe it for a second, but I fought the urge to argue. The Fates would set him straight eventually. Maybe the misdirection was intentional—assuming Trsiel would be more apt to help a future fellow angel rather than a mere contract bounty-hunter.
“So this gift,” I said. “What is it? Maybe we can see whether—”
“See!” He shot up straight in his seat. “That’s it. Your father is Balam, right?”
“So they tell me.”
“That explains how the Fates expect us to get around the problem.” A slight frown. “Or so I think.” The frown deepened, then he sprang to his feet. “We’ll need to test it.”
He grasped my forearm, and the room disappeared.
We emerged in a long gray hall that stank of ammonia and sweat. A young man in an orange jumpsuit mopped the floor, swishing the water around haphazardly, coating the floor in a layer of dirty soap, with no apparent interest in cleaning the surface beneath. At the end of the hall, a door swung open and two armed guards strode through. Their shoes slapped against the wet concrete. The young man gripped the mop handle tighter, putting a little elbow grease into it, even whistling for good measure.
“Exactly what kind of ‘gift’ is this?” I asked Trsiel.
“You’ll see…or so I hope.”
He led me through the door the guards had used. On the other side was a huge industrial space flanked with two layers of prison cells.
“Uh, any hints?” I asked.
Trsiel kept walking. “If I tell you what to expect, then you’ll expect it.”
“Uh-huh.”
He continued walking, without a glance either way. We passed through two sets of armored doors, and came out in a long hallway. The moment we moved through those doors, a preternatural hush fell, and the temperature dropped, like stepping into an air-conditioned library. But even in a library, you can always hear sounds, the steady undercurrent of stifled coughs, whispering pages, and scraping chairs. Here, there was nothing. Life seemed suspended, waiting with bated breath.
As we drew closer to the end of the corridor, we heard faint noises—the clatter of a dish, a mumbled oath, the shuffle of feet on concrete. Then a softer sound, a voice. A supplication carried on a sob. Prayer.
We stepped into a single-level cell block unlike the earlier ones. At the ice rink, I’d reveled in the sensation of cold. Here, the chill went right to your bones, and had little to do with air-conditioning.
Each cell here had only one bed, and we passed two vacant ones before reaching an occupant, a man in his late twenties, head bent, face hidden as he prayed. The words tumbled forth, barely coherent, voice raw as if he’d been praying for days, and no longer expected a response, but wasn’t ready to give up hope, praying like he had so much to say and so little time to say it in.
“Death row,” I murmured.
Trsiel nodded and stopped before the man’s cell. He went very still, then shook his head sharply and moved on. “We need someone to test this on. Someone who’s guilty.”
“Guilt—you mean he’s innocent?”
My gaze slid back to the praying inmate. I’d never been what you call a religious person. I’ve even been known to be somewhat disparaging of faith, and those who throw themselves into it. Too many people spend their lives focused on insuring a good place in their next one, instead of embracing the one they have. That smacks of laziness. If your life sucks, you fix it, you don’t fall on your knees and pray for someone to make it better the next time.
But here, watching this man pray so hard, with so much passion, desperation, and blind hope, I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of indignation.
“Isn’t this what you guys are supposed to do?” I called after Trsiel. “Right wrongs? See justice done?”
He slowed, but didn’t turn.
“This justice belongs to the living,” he said softly. “We can only right it after they’ve exacted it. He’ll see his freedom soon enough, on the other side.”
Trsiel moved between two cells. There was a man in each, one about fifty, but looking twenty years older, shoulders stooped, hair gray, skin hanging off his frame as if he’d lost a lot of weight, fast. The other man was maybe thirty, hunched over a pad of paper, writing as furiously as the first man had been praying.
Trsiel considered them both, then nodded at the writer. “He’ll do. I’ll be acting as a conduit. Through me, you’ll see what I see, by tapping into a higher level of Aspicio sight powers. Give me your hand.”
I reached out and grasped his fingers.
“I’m not sure whether this will work, or how well,” he said. “So be patient…and be ready.” He turned his gaze on the man. “Now…”
A wave of emotion hit me, so strong it was like a physical blow. I fought to free myself, but the undertow sucked me into a roiling whirlpool, then spit me out into a nursery. A giant’s nursery, with soaring walls, stuffed bears the size of grizzlies, and a rocking chair so high I could barely have climbed into it. Across the room, a huge woman stood beside a crib.
“Momma!”
The shrill plea screeched from my throat. It wasn’t my voice, but that of a child, a preschooler’s, still at the age where it’s difficult to tell boy from girl.
“Momma!”
“Shhh,” the woman said softly, smiling over her shoulder at me. “Let me feed the baby. Then I’ll read to you.”
“No! Read now!”
She waved me off and leaned over the crib.
“No, Momma! Me. Me, me, me!”
The baby screamed. I screamed louder, but he drowned me out. I gnashed my teeth and howled, stamped my feet and roared. Still she heard only him. Saw only him. Always him. Hated him. Hated, hated, hated! Wanted to pick him up and smash him, smash him like a doll, smash him until he broke and—
The nursery vanished.
A cat yowled, the sound piercing to the core of my brain. I laughed. A boy’s laugh now, nearing puberty. Buildings loomed on either side, pitching day into night. An alley. I stalked along it, chuckling to myself. The cat yowled again, a shriek of terror, like a baby’s…like a woman’s. The cat had reached the end of the alley and was trying to climb the wall, claws scrabbling against the brick. The stink of charred fur filled the narrow alley. The cat’s tail was burned to the bone, but it no longer seemed to feel the pain, no longer cared, only wanted to escape, to survive. It screamed again. I closed my eyes, and absorbed the scream. My groin tingled. A new sensation, strange but not unpleasant. Definitely not unpleasant.
I looked at the cat. Then I flicked open the switchblade. The cat continued to screech, darting back and forth along the bottom of the wall. It saw the knife, but it didn’t react, didn’t know what the knife meant. As I took a slow step toward the cat, I thought how much better it would be if it understood what was coming.
“No!”
The part that was still me tried to block the vision. For a split second, the scene did go black. But then a fresh wave of hate hit me. Hate and rage and jealousy intertwined, inseparable, one feeding the other, growing like a snowball rocketing down a hill.
“Bitch! Whore!”
I slammed the knife down. Saw blood splatter. Heard screams. A woman’s scream, hoarse and ragged with animal panic, as confused and terrified as the screams of that cat in the alley. She pleaded for mercy, but her words only fed the hate.
I slammed the knife down again and again, watching flesh become meat, waiting for release, and, when it didn’t come, growing all the more frenzied, stabbing and tearing, then biting, ripping mouthfuls of flesh—
Arms closed around me. I threw them off, seeing only the knife and the blood, feeling the hate, wanting it out of my brain, kicking and punching against whatever held me there—
I ricocheted back to reality so fast my knees gave way.
Trsiel’s arms tightened around me. “Eve, I am so—”
“Goddamn you!” I wrenched free. “How dare—you could have said—goddamn you!”
I staggered across the room, legs unsteady, as if still unsure they were mine. The visions were gone, but I could feel them there, burying into the crevices of my brain. I shuddered and tried to concentrate on something else, something good. But the moment Savannah’s image popped into my head, I felt him there, as if he was watching her through me. I shoved Savannah aside, someplace safe. When I looked up, I expected to see the killer in his cell. But we were back in the white waiting room.
“I’m sorry,” Trsiel whispered behind me. “I didn’t—it’s not normally like that. I thought I could filter it, guide you, but you tapped in directly.”
He laid a hand between my shoulder blades. I shrugged it off and stepped away. The images and emotions were fading, but my brain kept plucking them back, like picking at a scab to see whether it still hurt. I pressed my palms to my eyelids and let out a shuddering sigh.
“So that’s it, then,” I said. “Your ‘gift.’ You see evil. See it, feel it…”
“We learn to control it,” Trsiel said. “Focus, so we see only what we need. When you—” He stopped, audibly swallowing his words. “I’m—this isn’t—Zadkiel does this—handles the inaugural quests and the new recruits, guides them, teaches them how to use the gift. It’s not…”
He sighed and I heard him sink into a chair. When I turned, he was slouched in the white armchair, head resting on the top, gaze fixed on the ceiling.
Surely, if you’re as old as Trsiel had to be, you’d have enough experience and enough confidence in yourself to act, if not with perfect results, then at least with perfect resolve. Yet he looked as frustrated as any human thrust into a job he’s not qualified for.
I walked to the other chair, and perched on the arm-rest. “What do you normally do, then? Angels, I mean. This—that ‘gift’—somehow, I doubt you guys use it to flit about spreading messages of peace and hope.”
A slow shake of his head. “That’s for the living. Angels aren’t evangelists. We’re warriors. Instruments of justice.”
“Hence the really big swords.”
His lips twitched and he rolled his head to the side, his eyes meeting mine. “Yes. Hence the really big swords.”
“You see evil because that’s what you fight.”
“Some of us—only the ascended ones these days. The full-bloods—” He bit the last words off and gave a sharp shake of his head. “Things have changed, and—”
Another sharp shake. He looked away for a moment. Before I could say anything, he continued, “The traditional job of angels, full-blood or ascended, is to enforce certain codes on an individual level. Clearly, as you just said, we don’t—can’t—stamp out evil in every form. We are given quests, not unlike the one you’re on, to bring certain souls to justice.”
“Celestial bounty-hunters.”
His gaze met mine, eyes sparking in a tiny smile. “Exactly.”
Again, an image of Savannah sprang to mind, but this time I left it there. “So…you can affect the living world? Protect people in it?”
“Within limits.”
“What limits?”
He shrugged and pushed to his feet. “It’s complicated, but you’ll get to that when it’s time. For now, since we know you can access the gift through me, let’s get back to Janah.”