Finally ours.
When I pulled back and looked over at Steph she was crying like a baby – with a big smile on her face. I winked at her. ‘That quiet thing really worked.’
She burst into a snotty laugh and Salvatore put his arm around her, while Gray, standing alongside them, gave them a hopeless look. But when I caught his eye he gave me a quick wink – his blessing. And it meant a lot. He’d held me together the past year and our friendship had come to mean so much more to me than I had ever before let myself acknowledge.
‘Can we please go and kill some exiles now?’ Carter called out gruffly. ‘No wonder I never wanted to work with you people. It’s like a bloody soap opera!’
I looked over at him, smiling, but in full agreement. It was time to go and get Spence.
‘They’re out on the river,’ I said, surprising everyone in the room except Lincoln.
‘That’s impossible,’ both Ray and Leila stated.
I shrugged. ‘You’re just going to have to accept that I’m right. And I am. Once we get down to the river I’ll see if I can help you see through the glamour they’re using.’
‘What exactly do you mean when you say they are on the river?’ one of the conductors asked.
‘They have a big-ass steamboat.’
Ray shook his head. ‘There’s only one steamboat left in these parts and that’s a tourist attraction.’
‘The red and white one?’ I asked.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘Yeah, well there is another one: it’s grey with blue trim and it’s got all sorts of bad coming off it. There’s also a helipad on the top. My guess is that’s how they’ll bring in Spence.’
I looked at Steph, who had pulled herself together and refocused. ‘What did you find out?’
She stepped forward. ‘Dapper was right. It appears New Orleans is Sammael’s city. He made it, and as far as he’s concerned, that makes him God. We believe he’s played many roles in the history of the city. He was one of Marie Laveau’s husbands and through her he controlled the focus of religion and worship. But Sammael is Voodoo. He used exiles and Nephlim to create illusion and influence human minds, generating belief in all of his magic. He was behind a number of terrible slaughters and massacres and we suspect he was even responsible for the many disasters that have touched this land. The floods, the yellow-fever epidemic, the hurricanes …’
‘But why would he attack his own land?’ Carter asked.
Steph nodded, happy with the question. She was turning into such a scholar. ‘Because it’s sinking. Close to seventy per cent of the city is already below sea level and only protected by the surrounding levies. In just the past seventy years more than seven hundred thousand acres of wetlands have disappeared.’
‘He’s losing his hold on the land. It’s the natural order,’ Phoenix chimed in, causing all eyes to zero in on him. I could see his weariness and understood that those who did not know him found it hard to accept that he wasn’t like all the other exiles. But for now I was grateful that they seemed willing to listen. ‘The land was never intended for the air, but for the sea. It will be returned. It must,’ he explained.
‘But it’s not that simple,’ Zoe protested. ‘People live here.
There’s three hundred and fifty thousand in the city alone.’
‘It’s the natural order,’ Phoenix said again, his tone matter-of-fact.
‘And since Sammael knows this too, we fear that he’ll take matters into his own hands. It looks as if he’s trying to rewrite a new history,’ Steph added.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘Thank Christ,’ Carter muttered, while I noted Gray had his eyes cast down contemplatively.
Steph rolled her eyes at Carter. ‘Sammael sees himself as a god, and history credits a great deal of destruction to God. Biblically speaking, when it comes to entire cities; cities that look like they’ve lost their way; cities like New Orleans …’ She shifted uneasily.
‘He’s created his own Sodom and Gomorrah,’ Lincoln said, and I felt his worry surge through our bond.
Steph nodded.
I wasn’t great with my history but I knew enough. ‘But those cities were destroyed.’
Steph struggled to hold my eyes as she responded. ‘Yes. No one was left alive. And when Sammael has what he wants he’ll make an example and …’
‘He’s going to destroy New Orleans,’ Gray finished, finally joining in the conversation and looking up, his face pale. Looking much like how I felt.
‘Okay,’ I said, trying to look for the out-clause. ‘So what does he want?’
Steph shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But it will be something finite. He wants to change the way of the world. All I know for sure is that we definitely do not want to see that world.’