CHAPTER 54
Baltimore, MD
Laney started as the phone rang. She was reading the Book of Enoch and had gotten lost in the story. She placed her e-reader down and flipped on her phone. “Hello?”
“Hey. Did I wake you?” Henry asked.
Stretching her arms above her head trying to work out some of the kinks, she grimaced. “Sadly, no. Sleep doesn’t seem to be happening tonight. What’s going on?”
Henry sighed. “I think I've found Paul's accomplice. I’m sending you a file. Call me back after you’ve read it.”
Laney stared at her phone as Henry disconnected the call abruptly. She might not know Henry well, but she was pretty sure practically hanging up on someone was not his usual behavior. Whatever was on the file must have really shaken him up.
She booted up the computer and pulled up the file Henry sent her. A chill came over her as she began to read and it seemed to get deeper as she kept going. She swallowed hard when she was done, her whole body felt numb as she dialed the phone.
She didn’t bother with a greeting. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“I ran it through some recognition programs to match up the features. It’s him, all right.”
“Which database did you find him in? FBI? Interpol?”
“No, none of those. I found him in Dom's database.”
“Is it crazy that I keep hoping there’s another explanation for all this?”
Henry’s sigh came in loud and clear through the phone. “I know. I tried all the databases I could think of and I had absolutely no luck. Dom’s database was a last-ditch effort. Honestly, I expected the search to be as fruitless as the others.”
Laney stared at the face on her screen. It wasn’t a friendly face, but there was nothing about it that screamed fallen angel. Of course, she wasn’t sure exactly what would scream fallen angel. Wings? A crooked halo?
She stared back at the picture. If she was being honest, the man was handsome.
She glanced back at the description of the man. His legal name was Gideon Wright, but it was the name Azazyel that leapt off the screen at her.
Azazyel, the most dangerous of the fallen angels. The one who had taught mankind about war and how to use the stones.
Her heart began to pound as she contemplated the ramifications. This couldn’t be true.
She stood up, pacing the room. She made a conscious effort to still the tremors that were causing her hands to shake. “Okay. Let’s look at this logically. You had no luck with the other databases, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure there aren’t any you overlooked?”
Henry gave a small laugh. “I tend to be pretty thorough. I’ve covered all of them.”
She grinned. Right. Head of a multinational think tank. “Okay. So he’s in Dom’s database and from what’s written there, he’s a dangerous man. That still doesn’t mean he’s a fallen angel. What made Dom add him to the database?”
“Dom had a number of criteria for inclusion but the main ones seem to be unnatural/unexplained abilities, evidence of knowledge of former lives, inhuman healing abilities, and psychopathic traits.”
“And this man fits those criteria?”
Henry sighed. “He does. According to the background Dom was able to dig up, Gideon was ruthless on the battlefield, not to mention in his strategies. He had no conscience regarding targets: schools, playgrounds, homes, all fair game as far as he was concerned. Some even argue he was the mastermind behind the attack on the school in Beslan, Russia.”
She gasped and sank down into a chair. “My God, nearly four hundred people died in that attack. Half of them were children.”
Henry’s voice was grim. “Like I said, no targets appear off-limits for him. His fighting skills were first noticed when he was thirteen. There’s no record of him having any formal training, but he’s highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat. And from the reports, he’s practically a savant when it comes to weapons.”
“What about the evidence of former lives?”
“That’s where it gets really interesting. Apparently, in kindergarten he would tell the other kids he was better than all of them and that one day they would bow before him.”
She closed her eyes. “Great.”
“He also told them he was God’s first soldier. He was later expelled from that kindergarten for bringing a handgun to school. His dad swore up and down that the gun had been stripped and in parts at home.”
She felt her jaw drop. “He put the gun together at the age of five?”
“Like I said, a weapons savant. About six years later, his parents were killed by an armed intruder. The intruder was never caught. Gideon was in the house at the time. The police suspected him, but they could never prove it. According to the police reports, the kid sat there cool as a cucumber under their interrogation. He never once broke or shed a tear. In fact, he was incredibly polite. Dom contacted the investigating officers. One of them said that that case convinced him there was evil in the world. That he’d never seen an offender before or since that was so cold.”
Laney was silent as she stared at the man’s picture on the screen. She knew that a normal, non-fallen angel child with that background wouldn’t have a good chance of living within the law. If he was a fallen angel, she didn’t even want to think about the likely outcomes.
Henry’s voice intruded, as if reading her mind. “I know. It seems impossible. But what if it’s not? What if we underestimate this threat because we can’t wrap our heads around it?”
“Logically, this all fits. And yet, it all seems so fantastical. But the fact is that, deep down, I’ve had this feeling since the attack at my house. I knew there was more underlying all of this. That the stakes were much higher than we were acknowledging. And with the medical examiner’s report, doubting seems to be the height of stupidity.”
“But what do we do with this knowledge? How does this help us?”
“It tells us what we need to prevent. We can’t let Gideon get the stones.”
“What do you think he’ll do if he finds one?”
Laney’s thoughts raced through the Book of Enoch and all the other references to the fallen angels she could recall.
“If the Book of Enoch is accurate, the power contained within the Belial Stones is the power of heaven itself. If Gideon succeeds in acquiring even a single stone, he’ll use it to finally bring about the end of time. He wants to release himself and his brothers from this purgatory of Earth."
She paused, taking a deep breath. “And he’ll destroy all of us to do it.”