Conspiracy of Angels (6 page)

Red Suit flipped his hair. “Why on earth would you swim in Lake Erie at this time of year?” he inquired with disdain.

“To get away from the cops, maybe,” I ventured. “There’s some kind of APB out for me. Do I look armed and dangerous to you?”

An inscrutable expression tracked across his features.

“Always,” he murmured.

“What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?” I demanded.

He pulled away from me, refusing to elaborate, no matter how I hounded him. I gave it up. We proceeded in silence for another couple of twists and turns through the dimly lit maze. Finally, he drew up in front of one of the black doors. This one had no number, and there was no voyeur-friendly window opening onto the room beyond. Red Suit laid a hand on my shoulder in a gesture that seemed cautionary, affectionate, and patronizing all at once.

“Remember,” he said, pitching his voice low, “when you speak to Saliriel, don’t slip and use any male pronouns. She still hasn’t forgiven you for the last time you were here.”

“Last time?” I asked.

“You’re really not joking, are you?”

“Why would I joke about something like this?” I cried.

“A respectful tone will serve you better,” he suggested. At my look of outrage, he laid a quelling hand on my shoulder. Lowering his voice conspiratorially, he added, “And if you recall nothing else my brother, know that I am your ally here.”

“Mmmkay,” I responded skeptically. “So when do I start getting answers?”

He withdrew his hand quickly. I didn’t miss the fact that for a moment he couldn’t meet my eyes.

“Whenever my Decimus Saliriel decides you deserve them.”

S
aliriel, as it turned out, was the mother of all drag queens. At least, that’s how it looked to me. He—or she, rather—was conservatively six foot six, but stood significantly taller thanks to a pair of candy apple red platform heels that added at least another five inches to her towering, slender form. The heels had the effect of making her already long legs look like they went on for miles.

Like Red Suit, she had porcelain-pale skin with nary a blemish. Her pallor was heightened by the fact that she wore almost exclusively white—white fishnets, a white vinyl mini, and a matching white halter with a red vinyl cross stretched between sizably enhanced breasts—
hello nurse?
Her wild mane of hair was a bright platinum blond with pink streaks and what looked like tinsel woven in, so that as the light caught it, lone strands here and there glittered in shiny metallic bursts.

Her eyes were a green so pale they were almost yellow—not the green from the vision, I noted with irrational relief—and her bright blend of gold, silver, and white eye shadow only served to heighten the cat-like effect. Her full, pouting lips were painted a pale, opalescent pink that looked like it was looted from the inside of a conch shell.

When Red Suit ushered me through the door, Saliriel utterly dominated the room. She had a force of personality that was palpable. It didn’t hurt that she stood towering over two collared slaves—a man and a woman, both naked—and their posture was that of total submission. The set of her shoulders, the angle at which she lifted her pointed little chin, bespoke an authority that brooked no resistance.

The room wasn’t huge, but it seemed spacious because it was nearly empty of furniture. As with the rest of the club, floor, walls, and ceiling were black, but four blocky columns were painted the same dark red as the trim out in the hall. These stood two apiece on either side, creating a visual line that drew the eye to an elaborate throne of crushed red velvet. It stood on a raised dais against the far wall. There seemed to be another door tucked in the corner behind the throne, but aside from a few restraints on the walls, the rest of the space was bare.

Saliriel stood out like some vinyl-clad version of the White Queen, her pale, slender limbs and long platinum hair Barbie-doll perfect and unreal. She turned her leonine gaze on me, and I noted two things from her expression.

One, she recognized me.

Two, she wasn’t pleased that I was here.

“Oh, really, sibling?” she sighed in a well-trained contralto. “It’s only been two days. Do you have nothing to occupy yourself besides badgering me?”

Sibling?
My brain actually hiccupped for a moment as I tried to process this news. Me, Red Suit, and now Ru Paul’s long-lost white sister—we were related? I could see it, kind of, in the nose and the jawline, but seriously? I wondered what Mom and Dad were like.

“He says he doesn’t remember anything,” Red Suit offered in the silence that followed. “He stumbled in here and collapsed. No shields. No cowl.”

Saliriel heard this, and the edge of her mouth twitched, but otherwise she refused to acknowledge that Red Suit had spoken. Her cat-like eyes guarded, she paid the two naked people at her feet just as little mind. For their part, they kept their gaze on the floor, apparently inured to such treatment. I had to fight down a rising urge to tear their leashes from her manicured hand. People weren’t for being owned.

Still, I was the guest here. Red Suit had made that clear enough.

Saliriel seemed to read the tension in my shoulders and take a subtle pleasure in it. With exaggerated disdain, the leggy giantess dropped the leashes then strode languidly in my direction. She balanced on the stilettos with such practiced ease that she might as well have been floating. She stopped a few feet in front of me, crossing her lightly muscled arms just beneath her breasts. This had the effect of lifting the surgically augmented D-cups, which were already pretty hard to ignore. It seemed like a practiced and habitual gesture. Otherwise it was really creepy, considering the fact that she had just declared herself my sister.

She drew herself up to her full height. “And tell us, Remy,” she said. “Why should we believe such a thing? On Tuesday, it was pacts with cacodaimons, and this time—what will it be? Some forbidden amulet, lost on the lake? Wild conspiracies to herald a new war? This is Cleveland, dear brother. It’s not all that interesting.”

Even though she started out talking to Red Suit—Remy—her gaze remained on me. Her attention pressed like a palpable weight against the barriers in my mind. Instinctively I shoved it away, clenching my fist so hard the knuckles cracked.

“I didn’t come here to play games,” I snarled.

Remy sucked a hissing breath, but Saliriel didn’t give him a chance to add anything to the discussion. She walked a slow circuit around me.

“Oh, but it’s all about games, my dear sibling.” Her sharp heels ticked against the tiles like the second hand of a clock. “Games and favors—it’s all we have left, really. So did you come to play with me, Anakim?”

The word from her lips nearly sent me into a blind rage. It wasn’t the term itself, but how she said it—like it was something filthy.

“Stop calling me that,” I growled.

She smirked, eyes flicking to Remy. “I thought you had no memory,” she purred. “Why would it bother you, if that were true?” She completed her circuit around me, hungry cat eyes searching my own. With a motion almost too swift to track, her pale hand shot out and she plucked at my jacket. “You stand before a decimus of the Nephilim. Take that unlovely thing off. I wish to see you without your armor.”

I surprised myself by matching her speed, slapping her hand away as soon as it landed. I wasn’t gentle about it. Her pretty pink lips skinned back in a snarl and she hissed at me like she really was half-cat. All my smart-ass comments died in my throat, because I finally saw her teeth.

Pearl-perfect and flawless, they looked normal except for the two delicately pointed canines that extended almost half again as long as the rest. I stared openly, trying to see some sign of prosthetics or anything that could help it make sense. Yet the impossible teeth continued to look like a very natural part of her unnatural smile.

Saliriel had fangs.
Real
fangs.

My thoughts tumbled back through the earlier vision, and I almost lost my grip on the mental control Remy had so patiently taught me. The creatures were real. I was standing in front of one—and it had called me brother.

I ran my tongue quickly over the insides of my own teeth, just in case I had missed an important detail like, say,
fangs
, since dragging myself out of Lake Erie. Nothing. It didn’t seem as if I would terrify my dentist any time soon, and I found myself letting loose a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“Do not presume to touch me,” Saliriel bellowed. “You have no standing within my tribe.”

“You touched me first, bitch.”

It was out of my mouth before I could think better of it.

The giantess in white vinyl responded with a string of expletives, most of which seemed concerned with my preferential sexual activities and diseased, incestuous goats. As she spat her venom, she stormed around the room in an exaggerated show of fury, shiny red heels striking the tiles with a sound worthy of gunfire. When her steps brought her toward them, the two collared slaves withdrew obsequiously to a back corner of the room.

While she ranted, Remy leaned his head close to mine, pitching his voice low.

“Why do you always have to bait her?”

“How should I know?” I shot back. “I don’t even remember her.”

Saliriel rounded on us both.

“Silence! You, especially, Remiel.” She gave him a look that could have curdled milk, and for all I knew, it would have. He faltered back a step and dropped his eyes to the ground, seeming almost as subservient as the naked slaves. The long, smooth curtain of his hair swept forward, obscuring his face. Saliriel then turned her furious gaze on me, and I surprised myself by meeting it without flinching. This only made her angrier.

She stopped in the middle of the room, fangs bared and nostrils flaring. Color had risen to her cheeks and a flush was visible across the naked expanse of flesh above her cleavage, running from one prominent collarbone to the other. Her eyes flashed yellow fire and there was no mistaking it.

They were glowing.

“You dare to enter my personal domain and accost me with insults.” No longer yelling, this quieter tone carried a deadlier weight. “I am a decimus of the Nephilim, and only the primus stands above me. I know rank holds no meaning for your pathetic tribe, but
here
it is currency. While you are under my roof, you will respect me. If I ask you to approach me naked and on your knees, you will do so because it is my whim. And if you are unwilling to do that, I will happily eject you as I did earlier this week. Are we clear, Anakim?”

“Crystal,” I spat.

I was done—done with all the bullshit about ranks and tribes and other things that made no sense to me, done with the way she treated the other people in the room like they were lower than furniture, done with her holier-than-thou attitude. I turned on my heel and headed for the door. There had to be some other place I could go for answers.

I glanced to Remy before I left, but he was still staring down at the tips of his crocodile-skin shoes. From his words in the hallway, I knew he was sympathetic to my plight, and I honestly felt bad for the guy. But if he wasn’t going to stick up for me, there was no sense in me hanging around. I started to say something—I owed him a thanks at least for helping me get the visions under control—but I never got that far.

The doors to the private chamber burst open and Vikram, the bouncer, charged in. The seam of his tailored suit was torn at one shoulder and there was a spatter of blood across the lower portion of his face. His eyes looked huge and shocky, and then I realized the blood was everywhere. It covered the entire front of his suit, slick and still pumping against the dark fabric.

Saliriel opened her mouth—no doubt to spew some scathing reprimand—then she, too, noticed the blood. Her nostrils flared.

“They’re out there shooting people,” he managed. He gulped air, and it didn’t sound right, gurgling faintly. “They’re shooting people in the club.”

“Who?” Remy demanded. The bouncer turned wild eyes on my brother. When he answered, it sounded as if he didn’t quite believe it himself.

“Police.”

A
shrill, chittering cry followed the words of the bouncer. All the hairs prickled on my scalp—I’d been pursued by that terrible sound all night. A moment later, a phlegmy voice sounded.

“Police. Freeze!” A middle-aged officer lumbered into view—the cop from the cruiser. There was a ragged wound on the side of his throat and his uniform was sticky with blood. There was no question that he was dead. Unhindered by this fact, he lifted his gun and opened fire, shooting the bouncer twice in the back. A gout of crimson erupted from the man’s mouth and he went down choking.

The blast of the gun was incredibly loud in the small space, and all the shouting that followed it seemed muffled by comparison.

Remy whirled toward the sound of the gunfire, then dashed to the far left of the room with a speed I could barely track. The cop tottered in the doorway, bringing his weapon around with unstable hands. His partner staggered into view. She opened her mouth and loosed that cry of whatever had been stalking me all night. I had no idea what had happened to the two of them, but instinct clamored that it was tied to those delinquents I’d led straight to their cruiser. But the cops had shot them. Had the dead men gotten back up to attack the officers? The possibility turned my guts to water.

Behind me, Saliriel roared angrily.

“What have you brought to my house, Anakim?”

My brain stuttered over the possibilities. The barrel of the gun, which looked enormous from my perspective, swung toward me. The arm of the police officer jerked spastically, and this was the only thing that saved me from being uncomfortably ventilated along with the bouncer. Like Remy, I skittered to the far side of the room, ducking behind one of the columns and moving faster than seemed natural. I didn’t question it. It got me out of the way of the damned gun.

“Fuck my life,” I gasped. “Zombie cops and vampire drag queens.”

“Police! Freeze!” the guy cop roared again, but it came out mushier than before, as if it was an effort for him to speak at all. From his blank expression, I doubted he had any understanding of the words. He moved more like a puppet than a person.