Authors: Amber Hughey
Gabriel looked up, “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Amalia, this is Aleksandre. Aleksandre, this is Amalia. She’ll be staying with us for a few days.”
“Aleks, if you prefer,” said the new angelus, in a clipped British accent. He had dark, dark brown wings, almost as dark as Gabriel’s, and eyes the color of a good milk chocolate. The effect was rather unsettling, she decided as she stared at him. His dark chocolate wings had streaks of the pale mocha, making them look like swirled chocolate.
“So what are you?” she asked as she refilled her glass, wincing when the words came out more abrupt that she’d meant.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, dark eyes confused. He glanced at Gabriel before fixing his gaze back on her.
“Sorry, I meant to ask, ‘are you solan or umbren’,” she questioned, giving him an apologetic smile.
“Ah,” he grinned as he buttered up another piece of toast. “Ah. Solan. Couldn’t tell?”
She shook her head. “Not after last night,” she muttered.
Matt chuckled and glanced at Aleks. “She thought I was one of
them
, too,” he indicted Gabriel with his chin mockingly. Aleks gave a guarded smile and leaned back, his wings relaxed and brushing the floor.
“At least I don’t have to explain my heritage every time I meet someone new,” Gabriel shot back as he relaxed his wings with a grin, flashing bright crimson as the feathers moved. He turned towards Matt, who was buttering a piece of charred toast. “You said you found something? And that by the way, is bloody revolting.”
Matt nodded and took a bite, black bits falling to the tablecloth. He ignored the dig at his food as he explained to Amalia, “Aleks and I been investigating this for about four months. We started when the third person disappeared. Kent Stoke. His father contacted us. When we realized that it wasn’t just Kent involved in this mess, we expanded our
investigation. We brought in the big guns-Gabriel, I mean,” he said, gesturing with his toast toward the dark umbren who absently nodded. “Anyways,” he continued, “The only thing we could find that connected all of the people is their relation to the virus.” He finished his toast.
“So you and Aleks are both Enforcers?” she questioned as she carefully ignored the charred crumbs on the table.
He shook his head after a pause. “No. Not both of us,” he amended. “Aleks is, but I’m something else.”
She raised an eyebrow and grabbed an apple slice. “So what are you, then?”
He surveyed the feast on the table before looking up at her, “A Caelator.”
She finished the apple slice before snagging a crispy slice of bacon. “Little bit rusty on my Latin.”
“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a Chaser.”
“What’s a Chaser?” she asked as she savoured the smoky bacon.
“Someone who chases,” he said lightly.
She looked at Gabriel who ignored her imploring stare. Turning her eyes back to Matt, she said, “So what’s a Chaser do?”
“We chase people.” Seeing her look of impatience, he added, “I catch the people, usually angelus, who are breaking the laws. The Enforcers
extract punishment. Usually, an Enforcer works with two or three chasers.”
“Usually,” Aleks interceded, “Each Chaser in on a different case, though.”
“Why is this case different?”
“It’s the scope of it,” Aleks said as Matt grabbed a slice of apple and wrapped a limp piece of bacon around it.
“So can you tell me about it?”
“Why so curious?” Aleks asked curiously as he picked at his pancake.
“Polibrarian,” Gabriel said as he stared at his computer.
When Aleks gave her a questioning look, she shrugged and replied, “former police officer, currently a librarian.”
“Ah,” Aleks said as he looked at Gabriel, eyes narrowed.
“So, she’s working with us?” Matt asked as he stared from Aleks to Gabriel.
Gabriel looked up and gave him a brief nod. “Yeah. I think we need another mind. One who’s not as involved as we are.”
“Involving a human is stupid,” Aleks proclaimed with a growl. “And dangerous.”
Gabriel gave him a surprised look. “I took the lead from you, Aleks. Earlier, you said we needed more help. I brought another person in.”
“A human,” Aleks said derisively, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve never lowered myself to working with a human. And I don’t plan on starting now.”
“Then don’t,” Amalia snapped. “Because let me tell you, the worst thing on a case is working with someone who doesn’t want to work with you.”
“She’s your problem,” Aleks finished, ignoring Amalia’s comment, as he pointed his fork at Gabriel. “Don’t come whinging to me when she mucks the investigation up.”
She ignored the slights on her character, species and methods and turned to Matt. “So, what can you tell me about this case? Why would a human be helpful when an angelus would likely have more experience?”
He replied after carefully choosing another choice morsel of charred toast, much to Amalia’s disgusted stomach. “I think it’s because of the combination of humans and angelus, and what’s happening to them. Right now, we know that four of the people were in relationships with angelus. Obviously one was your friend, Samantha.” He paused, pouring more coffee for himself. He shook his head, trying to organize his thoughts. “What makes this odd, and it’s why there’s two Enforcers on it, is that we keep finding bodies. The body you found yesterday? Wasn’t the first. Wasn’t the first we’ve found openly. We’ve been able to hide the
others since it’s an angelus investigation, so the human police aren’t involved. When you’re friend went missing, they became involved. One of the connections I’ve made is that everyone who’s missing is either immune or related to someone who’s immune. Like Peg. Peg has an aunt who’s immune.”
“So some of them were taken because they’re potential carriers for the immunity,” Amalia said, pushing her plate away from her.
Aleks nodded, “to the best of our knowledge, yes.”
“Why? What can they do with someone who’s only a carrier?”
Gabriel took a slow drink of coffee, staring at her, pleased that his instincts had been correct. So she was as clever as he remembered, and still as inquisitive as she had been at the wedding. Hopefully that wasn’t a skill she’d turn against him, he thought, contemplating. “We think it’s because they’re changing them, and trying to figure out how to change them back into human.”
She frowned. Why would someone want to do that? “What makes you say that?”
“Because the angelus we’ve found? They were formerly humans. We know because we have access to missing peoples databases that include both umans and angelus.“
“What about the three who could be immunity carriers? How do they fit into it?”
Gabriel glanced at Matt, who was leaning forward with an animated look on his youthful face. With a shrug, Gabriel spread cream cheese on a bagel, gesturing at Matt to take the floor. Matt smiled enthusiastically at Amalia before saying, “they don’t, not really. Aleks figures that they’re trying different ways of changing them back. One of the theories is that to change them back, they have to introduce the immunity.”
“Like a vaccine? But those don’t work if you already have it, do they?” Amalia asked, leaning forward with interest.
Aleks shrugged and looked at Matt, who leaned away from the table. “I believe it’s like the chickenpox. You get it, and the visible signs go away, but the immunity is still there, in your blood stream. Because it’s still there, you can get shingles. If a researcher could figure out how to use that base for the renati, they might be able to reverse the physical effects, but keep the immunity.”
“That doesn’t really sound plausible,” she said with a frown, “reversing the virus actually sounds pretty impossible.”
“Well,” Matt interjected, “A lot of the things you thought were impossible aren’t. Four years ago, people thought Angels were a myth. They were losing their faith at an astounding rate. Then, poof,” with the ‘poof’, Matt threw his hands in the air, sending a crumbs flying, making Amalia duck with a
smile as the black crumbs rained down on her. “We ‘appear’,” he said, inserting quote marks with his fingers. “Suddenly, people find their faith again. Somehow, a shitload of them think we’re a message from God,” he finished with a disgusted look. “Talk about impossible.”
“Yeah,” Amalia said sarcastically, “impossible.”
“Anyways, we still don’t know all the variables of this virus. At this point, nothing is impossible.” He finished with a shrug. He stood up and started to take care of the food, tossing a piece of toast to Lucy. He paused on his way to the sink, “well, not unless you expect Frankenstein to appear. I’m pretty sure that’s impossible. Now,
Godzilla
…that one might be real. Still haven’t figured that out. I am working on it, though. Pretty sure I’m almost there.”
Amalia looked at Matt, then at a brooding Gabriel who just shrugged as if to say, “that’s Matt for you”.
“So, question for all you…winged folks,” Amalia said haltingly as she picked up a slice of apple and played with the skin.
Matt looked at her curiously as he popped a slice of limp bacon in his mouth. “Shoot,” he said, mouth full of bacon.
“What do you call a group of angelus? Angeli? Angelussess?” she asked, a slight smile curving her lips.
They stared at her with a deer caught in the headlights look. No one moved. No one answered. She narrowed her eyes at Gabriel who studiously ignored her in favor of staring at his laptop, and then turned her beseeching smile from Matt to Aleks.
Matt finally took the bait after eating another piece of limp bacon. “Eh, it’s just angelus.”
“Just angelus?”
“Just angelus. What? Am I talking to myself?” He asked, a smile dancing on his lips, He ran hand though his shor,t dark blond hair, blue eyes dancing with delight at her confusion.
“So,” she questioned, “angelus is both singular and plural. Like moose?”
Gabriel gave a snort of laughter as he shut his computer before staring at the table, hiding his smirk with his clasped hands. Aleks chuckled, and Matt’s face twitched with laughter before responding.
“Yes, like moose. Just don’t call us ‘angeleece’, like we’ve heard some people pluralize moose to meese, ya know?”
She narrowed her eyes at the three chuckling males and gestured at them collectively. “Apparently they make jackasses in your species too,” she snapped, eyes flashing bright with humor.
Gabriel stifled his grin with difficulty before rolling his eyes at Matt. “Bunch of teenagers,” he said blithely, unable to keep his twitching smile at bay.
She glared at him and pointed, “you’re included in that group. Just so you know.”
He laughed openly, enjoying the look of amusement on her face. “Oh, I’ve been told that many times. Comes from having a sister.”
She shook her head and handed her plate to Aleks, who had started to clear off the dirty dishes. Standing up, she walked out the kitchen door to the small backyard, taking Lucy with her for a potty break. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, with a much higher, chain-link fence a ways further out, near the woods that were closer to the yard than she preferred. She heard the door shut behind her, and footsteps follow her to the maple tree, the branches stripped of leaves in the harsh fall winds. The footsteps stopped behind her, the person falling silent as she watched Lucy investigate the fence line.
She turned around and saw Gabriel standing a few feet behind her. His wings were spread in the scant shade of the tree and his chinned tipped lightly toward the sky. He seems to enjoy the feel of the wind against his feathers, she thought.
“You sure you wouldn’t want to fly?” she said lightly as she watched him.
“Oh, I’m sure I would. And I know it’s not going to happen,” he replied, opening his eyes and closing his wings slowly, “but that’s not going to stop me from enjoying the air rushing through them.”
She suddenly realized that she had never seen him in the sunlight. His wings weren’t actually as dark as she’d originally thought, but a stormy gray with pewter flecks. The crimson edges were bright in the sunlight, accentuating the shape of the feathers. His eyes were on her as she watched him. Definitely gray, she thought to herself. Not the blue or green she thought when she’d first met him, but a grayish pewter that matched the highlights on his wings.
“So…Matt was telling me how the differences between solan and umbren go past the visual,” she said carefully, as she walked to the tree, resting a hand against the rough bark.
“Yes,” he said cautiously, turning to look at her, “it’s like that in every race, every species, every breed. It’s always past strictly the visual.”
“But he wouldn’t tell me what it was past the wings,” she continued, leaning against the tree, in an effortlessly casual manner that she’d picked up from Sam.
“And you want to know,” he replied grimly, closing his wings tightly in a brief spot of anger. He should have known that her insatiable curiosity would be turned towards him eventually, but he’d hoped that it would be later. Much later. She’d been better than most humans with his wings, but this… He swallowed hard. This was a completely new level of ‘different’.