Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) (13 page)

I had anticipated this, this time, so held onto the counter and managed to stay upright, but Cain sagged onto a chair, exhausted, his head dropping into his hands.

‘Good lord,’ Laclos murmured, to no one in particular.

I sat down heavily, putting a hand on Cain’s arm, as if I could offer solace or support.

‘Please tell me that all our enemies have showed their hands now. I really can’t cope with any more surprises,’ I said, weakly.

Then the door opened, and Jonesy came in, staring at us all like we’d beamed down from Mars.

‘OK. I only heard bits of that. But someone really needs to tell me what the fuck is going on.’

I’ll save you the 20-minute panto discussion that followed about Cain being an angel – Oh no you can’t be! Oh yes he can! – since it was pretty much like the conversation I’d had with him when I found out, though Jonesy was obviously not worried about all the sex. (Unless that case they’d worked really had been a lot more serious than either was letting on). Cain had gone to check on Val (which was the name his wife had asked that I call her the first time we met, so despite a strong suspicion that wasn’t her name – Val the Valkyrie, anyone? – I was sticking with that. Others don’t tend to give their real names out to strangers, as names have a power that can be used against them.) Having assured himself she was recovering as well as could be expected from whatever run-in she’d had with the angels – and I was hoping she’d wake up and explain, since if they had the powers to teleport into here, where had she found them? She’d said they fancied themselves observers, and the idea that they had been watching us from somewhere,
Wings of Desire
style, was actually creepier than the fact they materialised in my kitchen. But clearly none of my questions were priority right now.

‘So… let me get this straight,’ Jonesy was saying, as we sat around the ruined kitchen watching Cain duct tape the door back into place again. ‘One of the angels who just came here is your ex-girlfriend.’

‘Ex-lover.’ Cain corrected. ‘It’s not like we went on dates.’

‘And the Nordic supermodel is your ex-wife.’

‘Wife.’

Jonesy looked questioningly at me.

‘Occasional mistress?’ I supplied, trying to sound jauntier than I felt. Laclos raised a hand.

‘Ardent suitor,’ he said, clearly feeling left out. ‘But I think we’re missing the crucial point here. Seriously, can you do that body thing? Because if so, my interest in you just reached an entirely new level.’

‘What body thing?’ asked Jonesy, but Cain just shook his head.

‘No, I can’t do the body thing.’ He saw my expression and cut off my question before I asked it. ‘And I can’t teleport either. Or materialise, whatever you want to call it. That’s what it means to be earthbound.’

‘And the Amazonian beauty and yourself… I’m sorry, is it polite to use feminine pronouns?’ Laclos asked, genuinely interested: I imagined even to creatures as comfortable with gender fluidity as vampires were, this was a new one. Cain shrugged, impatient.

‘Angels don’t have a gender.’

‘Really? Because you’ll forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but you do seem
very
male to me. Exquisitely so.’

Jonesy and I exchanged glances at this, but to my surprise Cain looked like he was actually considering his answer. Having finished what he could do with the repairs, he took a beer from the fridge and sat down, his expression thoughtful.

‘I’ve been in… some version of this body for as long as I’ve been in human form, and I’m not naïve enough to think that my experiences and, to some extent, my personality haven’t been affected by how other people react to what they see as a man. Or that my… preferences haven’t been defined by the fact my formative experience was with something in the shape of a woman. Most other angels – non-earthbound angels – will change bodies more frequently, although it takes a lot of energy to burn through a body and create a new one like Aeylith did, so it’s not usually so casual.’

So that little transformation was not without motive, then, I thought.

‘So they might feel less aligned to one gender or another, they might have more insight into how it feels to be more than one. But however… masculine my existence has been, I’m not a man. Whatever Aeylith looked like to you when she left here, she’s not a woman.’ He looked at me. Considering it was him and Laclos who were supposed to have developed the psychic blood bond, he was doing an awfully good job of reading my mind. ‘She…’ he nodded at Laclos, in confirmation of his question, but his attention was on me. ‘She didn’t take on a female form because she thought I’d prefer it. She did it because she thought I’d
remember
it.’

‘So it makes no difference to you?’ Laclos queried. ‘Obviously I’m asking for a friend.’

Cain scowled, and took a drink of beer.

‘It… God, it’s like explaining physics to sheep.’

‘Thanks!’ I muttered, and he pulled an apologetic face.

‘It’s just… that’s not how we work. With other angels, that’s not how we… experience one another. Look,’ he cast around, desperately searching for something us thickos could understand. ‘You know how, when Katie changes, you can always see it’s still her?’

‘Um, no.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. OK.’ He sighed and tried again. ‘It’s like… your lover changes clothes. You don’t stop loving them one day to the next depending on what they’re wearing. You might prefer one outfit to another, but that’s not what affects your feelings.’

I nodded, though I couldn’t shake the suspicion that, if that were true, Aeylith had just done the angel equivalent of pulling on a sexy little red number to remind her ex of date night.

‘So I take it from all the discussion of bleeding and screaming and maiming, it didn’t end well?’ Laclos’ tone was light but I could hear the concern in the question. Cain looked down at his drink.

‘She pinioned me.’

We all exchanged glances, but it was Laclos who spoke.

‘I…?’ A question.

‘She took my wings.’

‘You had actual
wings
?’ I blurted, which I realised immediately was the worst thing to say.

Cain tore at the beer label, twisting the bottle in his hands, looking unhappier than I had ever seen him.

‘Until they took them. She took them.’

There was a dreadful silence, none of us wanting to speak – none of us understanding, really, what this meant. Cain looked up, briefly, and read that lack of comprehension in our faces.

‘You have to understand that angels – or whatever you want to believe we are – existed pre-humanity. We only took these forms when people did. And in taking them, something changed. We are implements of violence – hammers of God or,’ a glance at atheist-me, ‘whatever species of being you think bred or created us, but we’re also creatures of love. We’re designed to love. And the things we love – that never stops. It never changes. But in human form… we became creatures of desire. Of need, and fear, and all of those things that make humans what they are. We became individuals. And we started breaking the rules. You’ve heard of Nephilim?’

‘The band?’

OK, I probably deserved that look.

‘Some angels fell in love with humans. Some… with each other.’

‘I’m guessing the bosses weren’t keen on that?’ Jonesy asked, gently.

‘She wanted to stay. To repent. The price of her forgiveness was my wings.’

I bit my fist, appalled. I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but he was brittle in his misery, and I was scared what my touch might do. Clearly Jonesy and Laclos were equally horrified.

‘They beat me. Six of them, until my bones were broken and I couldn’t stand. Then they held me down and they tore off my wings with their bare hands.’

Even Laclos, who must have seen his fair share of cruelty in his day, looked stricken.

‘I cannot imagine that was a… painless process.’

Cain smiled, bitterly, but he directed his answer at me. It was one thing to be allies – for Laclos to be able to sense whatever he could from their new bond – but it was clear Cain didn’t want either him or Jonesy to see the naked agony in his eyes.

‘No. No, it’s not. Nor is it fast. They try to grow back. To heal. So you have to dig your fingers into the flesh and keep pulling them out at the bone. Every time. Until one day they don’t grow back any more. And they take a lot of what makes you an angel with them.’

I felt tears on my face, nausea in my throat. ‘One day’? How long had he suffered? He had been betrayed and pulled to pieces by a woman that even now he was programmed still to love? It seemed beyond cruelty. Timidly, I reached out and laid my hand over his: I couldn’t bear not to comfort him. He accepted my solicitude with the tiniest of nods, but I could see he was wary of reacting in company. I had thought nothing could ruffle Cain, but I realised he was barely holding it together.

‘But if that’s true… I mean,’ Jonesy fumbled, horror jumbling his words. ‘You can’t be serious about surrendering to them again?’

Cain managed a shrug.

‘That’s all I had to get them out of here.’

‘Well,’ Laclos said, the deliberate lightness of his tone belying the fact that his eyes were now rimmed red. ‘That gives us mere days to find a way to establish a vampire détente and free you from this devil’s bargain by divining a way to defeat a bunch of vengeful super-beings. What could be simpler?’

Then Jonesy was on his feet, gun in hand.

‘I’m not sure we’ve got that long.’

***

You have got to be fucking kidding me, I thought – what is this, King’s Cross? But as I turned to see the giant wolf-like dog that reared onto its hind legs to look at us through the now-missing glass panel of the fire escape door, my Sense relaxed. Then flared again as I realised Jonesy still had his weapon out. I yelled a protest, and there was a comedic scrabble as both Laclos and Cain, having realised I’d yelled ‘It’s Katie!’ moved as one to disarm him. Had it been any other day it would have been funny, seeing poor Jonesy squashed between two supermen who were both pretty much constructed of muscle, and who moved so fast and with such force that he went down between them and then they bounced off one another like repelling magnets, before both hastily tried to reassert their dignity and pretend that never happened, like a couple of cats pretending they totally meant to fall off that table after all. So by the time I’d actually got to the door, all three men were standing around looking a bit sheepish. I tried not to wonder what Cain was actually seeing when he looked at the giant dog – if his reactions hadn’t been slowed by his misery, would he have realised it was her before I did?

‘Sorry, it’s just…’ I shrugged, not knowing what to say. Jonesy still had his gun out, though Cain’s hand was resting on it, keeping it lowered. I could hardly blame his reaction, given the state of my flat. The wolf-dog was watching the scene with visible impatience, or as much impatience as you can glean from a vicious looking animal who looked to have a mobile phone in its mouth. But she scrabbled at the woodwork, impatience made worse by the fact that Cain had to help me un-duct-tape one side of the door so we could manoeuvre it open.

She changed as she entered, stepping smoothly into the jacket that Cain, in a surprising show of chivalry, held out for her – a sop to Jonesy’s presence, I suspected, since everyone else had seen Katie naked plenty of times. Not that the fact that she was naked was the issue: Jonesy was staring in open-mouthed astonishment as the petite, pretty Scottish woman spat out the phone and scowled at us.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you people? Don’t you ever answer your phone? We’ve been calling you for ages!’ Katie snapped. ‘Meds was so worried she wanted me to scout the place out to make sure you were still alive!’

I frowned at that: usually Medea’s magic would be the first line of defence, keeping them at a safe distance.

‘She’s on her way, she’s coming round the front,’ she sighed, her annoyance running out of steam. Then she noticed Jonesy. And the demolished kitchen, and her mouth fell open. Then she saw something in Cain’s face and the colour drained from her own.

‘Is everything OK?’ she asked me.

‘Honestly, it’d take more time and more alcohol than we have right now,’ I sighed. I could tell she was going to push further but then the doorbell went. Cain, unasked, went to answer it, and I heard him let Medea in.

‘So what’s so urgent, anyway?’ I asked, pulling Katie’s attention back from the voices in the hall.

She looked at me, her face ashen.

‘Oh my God, don’t you know?’

Well, that’s never a good answer.

‘Know what?’

‘I think we better put on the news. There’s been a terrorist attack on St Paul’s.’

We all rushed to the living room, putting on the TV and switching on the laptop at the same time, barely a mumbled greeting to an ashen-faced Medea, who was so shaken she refrained from commenting that Laclos had blood smeared over his t-shirt from Aeylith’s attack, Cain looked like he’d been run over and there was an unfamiliar armed bloke in the flat. We hit the 24-hour news station when they were doing talking heads, so couldn’t get more than a ribbon of info across the screen, but the BBC news site was more helpful. An explosion in the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral, which looked to have been only minor: no reports of casualties or structural damage, no one claiming responsibility. Of course, it could just be a coincidence that a bomb had gone off outside Laclos’ lair – though, Christ, how depressing is your life when you start hoping something is ‘only’ a terrorist attack – but this seemed unlikely. It’s a tourist spot in a central location, sure, but not at night: someone wanting to cause real problems would be more likely to hit the nearby bars in Paternoster Square, or one of the Tube or train stations nearby. I could tell, from their expressions, everyone else was thinking the same thing.

‘Is there another entrance into the crypt that we can access from a distance away from the main building?’ Cain asked, back to being all business. ‘Preferably one most people don’t know about.’

Laclos was about to answer, but Jonesy interrupted.

‘Look, I hate to be the one everyone has to stop and explain the plot points to,
again,
but somebody want to clue me in on this?’ He waved a hand that took in not only the screens but Medea and Katie.

‘Medea, Katie – Wiccan, shifter, friends of Cass – engaged – Jonesy, hunter, friend of mine,’ Cain said, with his usual succinctness. ‘Laclos’ people have a lair in the crypt of St Paul’s.’

‘But I’ve been to the Crypt at St Paul’s. There’s no vampires there. It’s a restaurant.’

‘Other crypt. Beneath that one.’

Jonesy pulled a disbelieving face, looking at Laclos.

‘Subtle.’

‘Yeah,’ Cain agreed, gruffly. ‘But there are people we know in there.’ He sighed. ‘Look, man, I know this all seems nuts to you, a hunter aligned with… all of this. But I promise you, we’re the good guys.’

‘Crazy, yeah,’ Jonesy muttered. ‘Maybe not that surprising.’

‘I’m just saying, there’s no dishonour here if you want to sit this one out. Stay here, look after my wife, make sure we don’t come back to any surprises.’

Jonesy frowned. He may have the dazed look of a man who’d been slapped repeatedly with a wet towel, but he was still a hunter, and whatever history he and Cain had, clearly it mattered.

‘No. You need help, I’m there.’

Cain nodded and, without another word, left the room. OK, then. Medea, Katie and I exchanged glances.

‘Cain’s wife is here?’ Medea frowned, concerned. I sighed.

‘It’s been a really long night.’

‘Doesn’t look like it’s going to be over any time soon,’ Katie scowled, trying not to notice the fact that Jonesy was singularly failing to hide his curiosity about the new arrivals and was pretty openly staring. I tried to think of a tactful way of suggesting Medea stay behind – it wasn’t that I thought she was helpless without magic, but I worried that she might rely on what had always been her first line of defence, and without it would be vulnerable. I saw the same concern in Katie’s eyes. But Medea was powerless, she wasn’t stupid, and with a loaded look at us both she sat heavily on the sofa.

‘I’ll stay with her then. Makes sense I should be the one who holds the fort. Not sure I can make small talk with a Valkyrie, mind.’

I frowned at her.

‘I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.’

***

Val was still stretched out on my bed. She looked pale, but her breath was steady, and Jonesy had wiped the blood from her eyes and mouth, so with her lids closed she looked undamaged, like a marble effigy on the tomb of some ancient goddess. Cain stood, arms folded, expression unreadable, as if by staring hard enough he could assess, or even undo, the damage. I wondered about what he had said earlier, about angels never ceasing to love – it explained a lot about their relationship, hundreds of years apart then a brief, fragmented reunion. I felt like I should be jealous – Cain and I spoke of many things, but we never talked of love – but all I could feel was pity. I couldn’t conceive of living like that, where love remains raw even after you’ve realised your marriage is over, after centuries of separation. Maybe that explained why Cain was so closed off with his emotions: mistakes would be costly, irreversible and eternal. Since one of my own past loves had only recently tried to murder me, I couldn’t imagine not having the solace of hatred or indifference. I’d made enough embarrassing gaffes in my own life – what I’d rack up given eternity to mess up didn’t bear thinking about.

‘How is she?’ I asked, gently. He looked up, frowning, as Medea crept in behind me.

‘Can’t you tell?’

‘I…’ realising he was genuinely asking, I put my hand on Val’s arm, and tried to roll my Sense over her. I was nervous that her power might have a similar effect on me to Cain’s – though I assumed he wouldn’t ask me to do this if he thought that were the case – but though my Sense skittered, slightly, at her strangeness, at the depth of her power, I realised that, goddess though she was, hers was a force on the wane. Maybe it was age, maybe it was that beings such as her are only as strong as the belief they foster, but she was no harder to read than a vampire, and my Sense picked up only that she was strong and healing, nothing more, though the taint of the angels made it recoil.

‘I …think she’s recovering,’ I ventured, and he nodded, looking relieved.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘Seems vampire blood really is an all-purpose cure. Maybe I should try it myself sometime.’

‘I’m going to stay with her,’ Medea said. ‘Is there anything you want me to do?’

‘If she wakes, maybe one of your drinks? Preferably one that’ll keep her groggy enough to stop her trying to go on a revenge spree before we get back,’ he added, with a grimace, and Medea smiled.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Magic or not, she still had her tricks. Cain picked up the bag of weapons at his feet and, coming around the bed, laid a hand on Medea’s shoulder in thanks, and then he took my arm and led me into the hallway, pushing the bedroom door closed after him. I frowned at him, puzzled, but his face as he looked down at me was creased with concern.

‘I know none of this is easy for you, Cass. I should’ve warned you immortals come with a lot of baggage.’

I touched his face, gently.

‘And I know none of this is your fault.’

His mouth twitched at that, almost a smile.

‘Just remember, Cass, in all of this… remember who I chose. You were the one I came back for.’

He leaned down and kissed me, softly, briefly, but at his touch I strained forward, not willing to let him go. All of the tensions and the stress of the last few days – the last few hours – pushed us together, as we both realised how hungry we were for this contact, this release. His kiss deepened, his hold on me tightening, and I closed my eyes and allowed myself to be lost in the fierce safety of his arms.

‘Uh… sorry,’ there was a polite cough and I sprung away from Cain – though he didn’t seem in any hurry to let me go, whatever the interruption. Jonesy stood there, looking embarrassed.

‘It’s just the vampire’s getting antsy and the shape shifter is freaking me out a bit. I’m not used to being in a place where there are so many Others and I’m not allowed to shoot any of them.’

‘Wow,’ I said, smiling at Cain. ‘You two really are friends.’

‘I’m just saying, we should move before we run out of dark.’

‘Yeah. I’m ready.’ With a final, light kiss to the top of my head, Cain let me go and picked up his bag of guns again. ‘Let’s get this done.’