Women of the Otherworld 09.5 - Angelic (4 page)

She blinked.
Then those big blue eyes unfocused, her mind slipping away again.
She smiled and touched my hand. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“We have.” I squeezed her hand. “Take care, Delphia.”

I started to leave. She smiled and fluttered her fingers in a wave, then leapt to her feet. “Wait! I was going to tell you…” She frowned. “I
was
going to tell you something, wasn’t I?”

I was sure I knew what she’d foreseen—my plans to quit the angel corps, meaning I might never see her again. I managed a smile.

“Nothing important,” I said, and left.

Six

Armaros
was hanging out in the human world, as demons are sometimes wont to do. According to Delphia, he was running some scheme in Tangiers, which is one of those places I’d heard about, but wouldn’t have a clue where to find on a map. For that, I
did
crack open a book. It was the fastest way to get the teleport code.

Tangiers was in Morocco, another place I was a little fuzzy on. Northern Africa, apparently, with Tangiers smack dab at the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar.

I was going to miss this part of being an angel. I loved the PI work, tracking down ghosts and demons and humans to the far corners of all the dimensions. Even more than the hunt, I loved the chase. And even more than the chase, I loved the big fight at the finish. I’d miss all this, just like I’d
miss
Delphia, and my all-access pass to the Great Library and…

But I wasn’t going to think about that. I wanted out. No time for second thoughts. Plow ahead to the finish line.

I got to Tangiers. Cool city. I’d have to save the code and bring Kristof back for a trip, though I suppose it wouldn’t be that much fun without my built-in universal translator, letting me
slink
down exotic back alleys and eavesdrop on clandestine conversations. Maybe I’d learn French… or whatever language people spoke in Tangiers.

Speaking of clandestine conversations… Using a few spells, I tracked down Armaros and found him in a sidewalk café drinking a huge, steaming cup of coffee with some very shady fellows. Armaros fit right in. He’d possessed the body of a blond guy who looked like a modern-day Indiana Jones villain—shaggy blond hair, old army jacket, aviator sunglasses, a few days of scruff. Carefree adventurer turned dangerous gunrunner.

And gunrunning did seem to be the order of the day.
Supplying arms to some rebel faction.
Typical.
In the movies, demons are always trying to overthrow the world. In truth, they’re not much different than the thug on the street corner who gives kids free drugs in hopes of turning them into regular customers. The drug dealer wants cash to feed his habit; the demon wants chaos to feed his.

People try to say there’s no God, because if there was, He wouldn’t let shit like this happen. He’d stop the demons and then humans, free of temptation, would live happily ever after. Bullshit. Armaros wasn’t forcing his guns on anyone—he was just facilitating a process humans had already started, and reaping his chaos rewards.

When I walked over, he glanced my way, frowning. I pulled out my sword. He flinched, lips forming an oath. Then his eyes narrowed and he settled back into his seat, scowling at me. Everyone else kept haggling over prices, even when I plunked myself down on the table’s edge and started polishing my sword on my shirttail.

“What do you want?” Armaros growled under his breath.

“A fair deal,” one of the men said. “That is all I ever want, Charles.
A fair deal.”

“World peace, too,” I added. “He says he wants guns, but what he really wants is world peace. Kill everyone and things will be very, very peaceful.”

Armaros glanced from them to me,
then
muttered, “I need to take a piss. Work it out while I’m gone.”

I followed him to an alley. “I’m—”

“I know who you are.
Balam’s traitor whore daughter.”

“Well, I can see why Dantalian said you make a better soldier than a politician.”

His head jerked up.
“Dantalian?”

“I’m playing courier angel today. I’d deliver it as a singing telegram, but I can’t pronounce these lyrics.”

I handed him the note Dantalian had me write out. It had taken forever because the words weren’t words at all. They were symbols. Some demonic language my angelic translator didn’t include. Not yet, at least. I’d made a copy of the note for my own research later.

“Huh,” Armaros said after he’d read it. Then he fixed me with a quizzical look. Wondering why I was helping Dantalian, I was sure, but I wasn’t explaining myself. Dantalian said Armaros would know the message came from him, and wouldn’t challenge it, and he didn’t.

“Everything clear then?” I said.

“Yeah.
Can you take a message back to him for me?”

Another example of the language for my research?
Couldn’t argue with that.
I conjured up a pen and paper, but Armaros waved it aside.

“Just relay a verbal message.”

I motioned for him to go on. He said something in a language my translator didn’t cover—the same one as the note, I presumed.

“Got that?”

I handed him the paper and pen. Again, he waved it off.

“Just pass on the message. Get it close enough and he’ll understand. You need it again?”

“Uh, yes.”

He said it,
then
made me repeat it. When I got it wrong, he said it again. I repeated it back and—

The alley disappeared.

Seven

I expected to arrive in the Fate’s quarters. Instead, I teleported into an empty room, in what seemed to be a vacant house prepped for sale. I’d moved often enough in my life to recognize the look—the faint coating of dust on the window sill, the walls gleaming off-white, new paint quickly slapped up. I walked to the window, but the sun shone too brightly for me to make out anything beyond it.

As I headed for the hall, I cursed Dantalian for a fool, but not before leveling the same curses at myself.

“Couldn’t Armaros be the one betraying you, Dantalian? No? Okay, sure, I’ll just go chat with him then, and when he asks me to repeat a line in demon tongue, I’ll do that, too. Why not? It isn’t like he’s going to zap me to another part of the country, rally his djinn troops and warn them that Dantalian knows all about their evil scheme.”

I tramped down the hall, threw open the front door—and stared out into the blinding white light of nothingness. I cursed some more, then slammed the door.

“Better yet, zap me to another dimension. That’ll slow me down.”

I cast a teleport spell. Nothing happened.
Tried another, and another, feeling my power level drain as my panic mounted.

“Cool it,” I told myself, speaking aloud. “You’ve been dimension-zapped before.”

And that was exactly why I was panicking. Spells didn’t work well in empty dimensions like this. It could take days to escape or be found. On my first case, the Nix I’d been chasing had teleported an ascended angel to another dimension, where she’d stayed for what had been—to her—centuries. She now lived in a padded room, raving mad.

“And that’s exactly the sort of thinking that’ll help you get you out of here.”

My voice echoed through the empty hall. I turned into a room and sat cross-legged on the floor. When my powers had recovered, I’d try a few other things—

“Mom?”

I jumped up so fast my legs tangled and I fell backward, nearly impaling myself on my sword.

“Mom?
Is that you?”

Savannah’s voice drifted from somewhere above me. I hurried to the hall.

“Savannah?”

Her laugh tinkled down. “That is you. Where are we? One second, I’m typing a stack of invoices for Paige, then next…”

Her voice drifted off.

“Hold on. I’ll come find you.”

Damn Dantalian. Damn him to a thousand hells. I strode down the hall, searching for the stairs. But the hall just kept going, an endless corridor of doors.

“Mom?”

“I’m coming, hon. Just sit tight.”

As I strode past a room, another voice stopped me.

“Yes, if you can find her again, I’d appreciate that. No, don’t do anything. Just let me know where she is. Let me know she’s all right.”

“Kris?” I said.

I turned into a furnished room.
A home office.
Kris sat behind the desk, slumped forward, forehead resting on his hand.

“Daddy?”
Across the room, a door opened and a blond boy of about five poked his head in.

When Kris lifted his head, I saw the face of the man I’d left twenty years ago. I looked at the boy—Bryce, Kris’s youngest son, as he would have looked back then.

Kris managed a tired smile for his son.

“Hey, bud. I was just coming to—”

“Was that your witch girlfriend?”

The venom in Bryce’s voice made Kris flinch.
“Girlfriend?
No, I don’t have—”

“Not anymore. Uncle Josef said she dumped you.”

Kristof blinked back his surprise. We’d worked hard to keep our relationship a secret. “Okay, bud. How about we grab some ice cream and talk—”

“That’s why mom left, isn’t it?
Because of your witch girlfriend.”

Kristof’s surprise turned to shock. “No, that’s not—”

Bryce ran off. Kristof hurried after him.

So Bryce had known about us? Blamed me for his mom leaving? Not true—she’d abandoned them before I met Kristof.

That’s why Bryce hates Savannah
, a voice whispered behind me.
He hates that Sean treats her like a sister. He hates that his father died trying to save her. He’s never gotten over it, and it’s
all your
fault.

I wheeled. No one was there.

Djinn.

As Dantalian’s soldier,
Armaros,
would command the djinn. And what was their specialty?
Driving people insane.

“Mom?”

“Savannah?” I called cautiously now. She was probably just an illusion, but I couldn’t be sure. I continued down the hall.