Harsh Gods (31 page)

Leaving Lil to search the study, I headed deeper into the house. The temptation to find the kitchen—and a coffee maker—ran high, but I kept my head down, focused on the weak pool of light aimed at my feet.

The next room off the study was a recreation room with a huge fifty-two-inch flat-screen mounted to one wall. Floating shelves held a few exotic-looking trinkets, but on closer inspection, most of them were standard décor—the kind of stuff cranked out in Indonesian sweatshops.

I strode carefully through the rec room to what could only be classed as a man-cave, then down a hallway that opened on one side in a double-wide archway leading to an elaborate dining room emptied of table and chairs. Blood darkened the polished teak of the floor—even the cleaning crew hadn’t cleared all the stains. The plastic bags tied round my boots crinkled with every step.

That sound must have covered his movement, because I had no sense that anyone was behind me until I felt the cold barrel of a pistol pressed against the base of my skull.

I froze.

Basso laughter dragged prickling shards along my spine.

“I could have killed you ten times over,” he boasted, his tone chillingly flat. “You have gotten soft, Zaquiel.”

“Garrett?” I even managed to sound flippant about it, as opposed to pants-shitting scared. I didn’t turn around to confirm my suspicion—the cold stamp of that barrel was a great deterrent against any kind of sudden motion.

“You do not need to keep up your ignorant act,” he answered. “You can acknowledge your old ally by Name.”

Old ally.
I closed my eyes, exhaling very slowly as my mind raced around its many vexing holes. What kind of ally would hold a gun to my head? I fucking hated my brothers. At least I knew I was right about Shadow-and-Flame.

“Didn’t want to discuss business in front of your partner,” I lied. I curled my fist around Lil’s flashlight, calculating just how quickly I could dive through to the Shadowside.

Not quick enough to avoid a bullet.

“He is annoying,” Garrett acknowledged in his curiously flat tone. “And persistent. I did not realize that you were acquainted.”

“You know me,” I said, laughing tightly. “Always making friends.”

Behind me, Garrett snorted. He didn’t remove the gun.

“You been following me all night or just since I got here?” I asked.

“I do not wish to repeat what happened in Damascus,” he said flatly. “I announced my business with the seal. You could have showed sense and backed off.” He ground the barrel a little deeper. “The decimus is my responsibility. You will leave him to me.”

“I don’t feel particularly cooperative when someone holds a gun to my head,” I snapped. “Besides—it’s not like a bullet will get rid of me.”

“Long enough for me to hunt down my quarry,” Garrett scoffed. “I will have twenty years, perhaps thirty, to prepare myself for when you retaliate.”

“Sounds like you got it all figured out,” I said.

“I learned from our last disagreement,” he growled.

So much for bluffing.

Every muscle screamed for me to whirl around, grab the gun, and smash it into his face repeatedly while I shouted the names of each of the girls who had died in this house—starting with little Kaylee. There was something soul-killing in knowing how he had robbed the world of the youngest girl’s smile. Her gutting terror still echoed, only one room away.

My power ratcheted up for that inhuman burst of speed, but I couldn’t risk it. He might match me and pull the trigger. I ground my teeth in futile rage.

“Well, I guess you have no honor, then,” I said, uncertain why I chose that particular word. From the subtle shift of the gun, I must have hit a nerve. I ran with it. “If you’re going to shoot me in the back of the head like some honorless cur, get on with it.” “Cur” was probably pushing it. I held my breath. Shockingly, Garrett eased up on the pistol.

“I could lecture you on honor,” he spat. “You, who abandoned our crusade—all for the sake of a woman. Do the cries of her pleasure salve your conscience at night?”

I gaped, and he probably took it for shock. Was he talking about Lailah? I wanted to pin him to the wall and demand explanations, but I couldn’t risk playing my hand. For the moment, he didn’t know about my amnesia.

“I don’t tolerate people gossiping about my sisters like that.”

Lil stood at the end of the hallway, one shoulder casually braced against the wall. Lightning threatened in the gray wells of her eyes. I wondered how long she’d been standing there, waiting for him to take the gun away.

Giving in to the urge to move, I put some distance between me and Garrett—and whoever was riding around in his head. I ended with my back against a wall. If I was going to take a bullet, at least I’d see the muzzle-flash.

“I have no desire to trade words with you, hellcat,” he said.

“Gibburim,” she spat. “Which one are you? You all look alike.” Garrett—or the Gibburim, rather—ignored her entirely, turning to me.

“You stink of Nephilim, and consort with the Daughters of Lilith.” He pointed the pistol toward the floor, lifting his finger from the trigger. “I do not even know you.”

That makes two of us
, I thought. With my out-loud voice, I asked, “Nephilim have a stink?” Pointedly, I sniffed the arm of my leather jacket. “I guess you’re right, Lil. Remy really needs to do something about that cologne.”

She choked on a laugh. “That mouth is going to get you shot, Zaquiel.” The steely glint of her fury returned the instant she lasered her attention back to Garrett. “There’s two of us and one of you. Why don’t you find somewhere else to be?”

Shadows boiled in the air around him, shot through with gleaming flashes of red that would have been at home in the cracks of Mount Doom. He spoke with a voice ghosted through with a second, deeper tone.

“You are interfering with my hunt.”

A form appeared, riding on his back, complete with two sets of eyes shot through with angry flames. All four eyes were riveted on me. I focused on a point to the left of his flesh-and-blood mouth. That was safer for my sanity.

“What are you even doing here?” I asked.

The edges of that wide, flat mouth dragged down. “That is a question I will ask of you. You are the one who tripped my wards to this place, and you ruined hours of work, defacing the message meant for Terhuziel.”

“Hours of work?” I bellowed. “Is that what you call torturing an innocent little girl?” I couldn’t stop myself.

“Nothing touched by a Rephaim is innocent any more,” he replied.

Fuck his gun.

Power leapt to my fingers. Hissing the syllables of my Name, I let my rage stoke the blue-white fire till all my muscles sang.

“She was
four
!” I shouted. Kicking off the wall behind me, I lowered my shoulder and launched myself at him. My hands went for his gun.

“Zack—” Lil called.

I crashed heavily into his sternum. He coughed a startled breath and rocked back beneath my weight, but I might as well have shoulder-checked a tank for all it budged him. His gun hand jerked up, and I scrambled to seize it before he could point it anywhere useful.

Digging the fingers of one hand into his wrist, I aimed for a pressure point while I closed the other hand over the ass-end of the pistol. Glocks were notoriously sensitive, and I was happy his finger wasn’t on the trigger as I twisted to break his hold on the grip. Power still crackled through my hands, and I used it to my advantage, jamming more than my fingers into the soft hollow between tendon and bone.

The extra jolt did the trick—his hand jerked and I pried the firearm from his control. With his other hand, he cuffed the side of my head. Detective David Garrett might have been flesh and blood, but the thing that rode him made his fist feel like it had been carved from granite. The blow sent me reeling.

I didn’t care—I had the gun.

Thanks to the stupid makeshift booties, I skidded on the rug, barely managing to keep my feet. Righting myself, I dropped into a wider stance to compensate for my tricky footing. Gibburim Garrett maneuvered back a few steps. Before he could strike again, I brought the Glock up, sighting for the space between his thick brows.

Those twin sets of smoldering eyes narrowed at me from above Garrett’s startled human face, and he froze—then he threw his head back and emitted a belly laugh that boomed against the walls.

“Yes!” the Gibburim cried, teeth bared in a grin both exuberant and ferocious. “Shoot this police officer in reprisal for the deed committed in another warrior’s skin. That will be irony, if not justice.”

I kept my finger poised, but my grip grew uncertain.

“The hell with justice, just shoot him already,” Lil urged.

“Will you be executioner as well as judge?” Shadow-and-Flame demanded through David Garrett’s mouth. Around his human eyes, I saw the smallest twitch of fear. “No thought, no hesitation, only fury and death. Is this not the very certainty you condemn in me?”

Holding it stiffly to hide the tremor I felt, I pulled my forefinger well away from the trigger and lowered the gun. Garrett’s features briefly flashed relief, swiftly eclipsed by the Gibburim’s scorn.

“I had hoped for better from you, brother,” he intoned. “There was a time when your rage was not so swiftly quenched.”

“Get out,” I said, gesturing toward the door.

Again that booming laugh pounded against my ears. Garrett’s voice dropped several registers, the second set of tones overwhelming the first. That other voice was so deep, it rumbled like bass at a metal concert.

“Leave?” he responded. “
Fah!
To honor our past association, I will let you walk out without arresting you for the crimes committed in this tainted home.” At my look of incredulity, he sneered, “It would be easy enough. Does a lifetime in mortal prison appeal to your sense of martyrdom?”

“Don’t give me a reason to hurt you, Gibburim,” Lil warned. “Carly would be disappointed if I wrecked these nails clawing that arrogant smirk off your face.” The threatening growl of an angry lioness punctuated her words.

Garrett and his rider didn’t even spare her a glance—which was seriously stupid of them. Despite her joke about the manicure, Lil’s threat of violence was deadly serious.

“Don’t even think about hanging this on me,” I snarled. “You murdered a four-year-old girl just to paint a message on the damned wall, and then got your ass kicked by the guy anyway.”

Streaking flames leapt from the twin set of inhuman eyes.

I’d struck a nerve.

“You know the cost of such magics,” he replied.

“Oh, sure,” I scoffed. “Cutting a little girl to ribbons while she begs you to stop—totally justified. And now you’re riding around inside a cop. I’m sure
he’s
as willing as she was.”

“There is always a choice,” Shadow-and-Flame rumbled—but Garrett’s eyes didn’t look so certain. The thing riding him asserted control, and those scared, mortal eyes narrowed to match the inhuman ones. “This vessel cast his lot with me. But if you harbor doubts about my actions with the girl, then cease insulting me with empty words and call a trial. Or have you grown too soft in your retirement to even dare?”

I almost agreed, right then and there, but stopped myself. Did we even have tribunals? A few moments before, he was goading me to be judge and executioner, so I had no clue. Neither Sal nor Remy had ever said anything of the sort, but would the Nephilim even bother? Likely not.

That decided it.

“I want to smash your face in for what I saw you do to that little girl,” I said, “but I’ll settle for a trial. Kaylee deserves at least that much.”

“Dammit, Zack, don’t let him bait you into this,” Lil hissed.

“If I am guilty,” he stated, “I will make reparations. If not, you will join me in hunting Terhuziel. Once I have locked him down with the new seal, we shall work together to purge everything from this city that bears his taint.”

“You’re guilty,” I stated flatly.

“Then we are agreed?”

“Sure.”

A hard, flat crack echoed through the hall. Lil’s palm, impacting her forehead.

“Mother’s Tears, Zaquiel,” she cried. “You need a killswitch for that mouth.”

We both ignored her. The Gibburim Garret grinned.

“Then let us begin.”

With a hissing exhalation, he called the power of his Name. The syllables washed over me like a blast of heat from an industrial oven, evoking sparks all the way down to the tips of my wings.

Mal phāel.

The acrid stink of sulfur filled my nose, and in the next instant, a blade leapt forth in Garrett’s hand—three and a half feet of blackened steel edged in blood-red flames. It was a hacking weapon, built like a falchion, but on a much larger scale. Falchions were typically one-handed weapons. This blade required two. It had a single sharp edge and a flat end that angled backward to a point. A wavering corona of heat spilled around it, chewing the air.

“Shall we dance, my brother?” he asked. Gripping its over-long hilt in both of his big-knuckled mitts, Garrett held the flaming weapon angled protectively across his body. That maniac grin never slipped from his face.

“Hang on just a minute,” I said quickly. “I thought we had an agreement.”

“We do,” he replied. “Trial by combat. Honor must be served.”

Fuck me running.

“Zack, screw the honor-bound shit for once,” Lil snarled. “Just cut the vessel out from under him so we can get out of here.”

Even as she said it, something tugged deep in my chest. Backing out now didn’t feel like an option. With growing trepidation, I kept my eyes locked on Malphael while I caught the edge of one plastic bag with my heel. I tugged till I tore my boot free, then did the same with the other one. No need for handicaps.

Malphael took it for stalling.

“Have you grown so weak you would concede my point without so much as raising your blades to meet mine?” the Gibburim taunted. He rose onto the balls of his feet, already swaying with the urge to strike.

“I’m not going to help you purge this city when you think the murder of children is an acceptable action,” I replied. With a roar, I invoked the syllables of my own Name. Twin blades flashed to life in my hands, their wicked curves dancing with blue-white fire. I held the spirit-daggers out to either side, already planning where I’d plant them first.