She loved him more than life itself.
“You just do that to drive me crazy,” Asmodeus said fondly,
smiling as he brushed her hair back from her face.
Mind to mind, he knew her heart and he had no fear. Still,
she was kissing another man, if only Ash, his brother and friend. It was enough
to spark a little jealousy and to spur him to prove his claim to her.
With a laugh, she said, eyes sparkling, “No, Ash does it to
drive you crazy. I just go along for the ride and the side benefits.”
Asmodeus chuckled. “Like the side benefits, do you?”
He projected his intentions for later.
Heat shot through her as Gabriel caught the images from his
mind.
“Is that even anatomically possible?” she asked curiously
and tilted her head to look at him with amusement.
Red sparks flared in his eyes as he ground his hips against
hers, his hardening erection pressed against her.
“It will be fun trying.”
“It will,” she said with a grin before she sobered and
stepped back a little.
Asmodeus and Ash were here for a reason and time was tight.
“That’s something to keep in mind for later.”
It was something to look forward to once they had this
little chore done.
She took a deep breath and reached for her weapon, clipped
it to her belt, looking first to Asmodeus and then to Ash.
“All right, let’s do this.”
Indeed.
Asmodeus watched her transform into the
professional FBI agent that she was in her prim suit, with its proper white
shirt and dark skirt. Unlike many of her compatriots among the women agents,
she didn’t wear slacks, thankfully, unless she was doing a duty that required
action. He liked looking at her legs and it gave him much easier access.
For now though, what they were about to do had its dangers.
It would be akin to stirring the hornet’s nest but it had to be done.
He didn’t like the idea that she would be alone and
vulnerable for even a few seconds but that was how it had to be. She was human
and they were not. It was likely that the building would be warded against
demons.
“Are you ready?” Gabriel asked, looking at him. She reached
up to touch his face. “I’ll be fine, Asmodeus.”
Asmodeus was concerned. It was a very real fear, as she’d be
alone in Templeton’s office long enough to be at risk.
Reaching out, Asmodeus brushed her hair back from her face.
“This I know. We’ll be close, my angel, only a thought away.”
“I know,” she said, softly, “I’ll meet you there.”
Asmodeus nodded and looked at Ash. “We will see you later.”
Following them out, Gabriel glanced at two of her fellow
agents, who each gave her sharp nods as they picked up their suit jackets from
the backs of their chairs.
This would be an official visit.
As the three of them strode out of the room, two more picked
up their jackets and followed them, as if on errands of their own. Backup. They
knew Templeton had his people everywhere. Even in the Bureau.
None of them said anything. All four were agents Gabriel had
worked with in the past, people she knew and trusted.
Ahead of her, Asmodeus and Ash stepped into the stairwell to
vanish in a quick flash, leaving a small drift of smoke and the smell of
brimstone to dissipate behind the now-closed door.
* * * * *
The office building Gabriel entered sometime later was prime
real estate in midtown Manhattan.
Leaving one of the agents with the car, they moved quickly.
Gabriel breezed past the doorman and the guard at the door
with a wave of her unfolded ID. Inside, security was silenced too, with a
glance and a wave of identification as her people spread out and secured them.
Nothing else was needed. There was no search warrant as this
was to be a “friendly” visit only.
With a nod to one of the agents, Gabriel said, “No phone
calls. I don’t want there to be any warning.”
He nodded.
The other two agents fell in beside her as she strode to the
elevators and flanked her when she stepped out on the penthouse floor.
Seeing them step out of the elevators and seeing where they
were heading—the massive and impressive stainless steel doors to the executive
suite—the secretary, or whatever she was, trotted out from behind her desk on
ridiculously high heels and tried to intercept them.
Gabriel gave her a single warning glance and stuck her badge
in the woman’s face. “FBI. I need to talk to your boss. Alone. Sit down.”
The woman teetered to a halt, clearly uncertain.
Gabriel looked at her companions.
“Stay here,” she said without breaking stride, “if I’m not
out in fifteen minutes, raise the alarm.”
The two men glanced at each other and nodded.
One said, “You got it, Gabriel.”
Both of them knew what the score was. Plausible deniability.
Whatever went down inside, they could simply say they weren’t there.
Nervously Gabriel fingered the rubber-capped vials in her
pockets, thumbed the tops off as she walked toward the doors. As she hit the
doors, she tipped the vials to spill their contents of blessed water, laced with
copper flakes and herbs, across the threshold. She thought she saw a small
flash and caught the sharp tang of ozone above the faint scent of the herbs but
it might have been her imagination. Asmodeus and Ash had been concerned that
the office would be warded against them. They hadn’t been certain the water
would work at breaking those wards.
She still wasn’t. What she had seen might have been her
imagination.
It was important to keep moving. Hopefully the surprise and
shock of her arrival would keep Templeton from realizing that his wards were
gone.
Dropping the vials back into her pockets, she pulled out her
identification and advanced with it unfolded in her hand to walk across what
seemed like a half acre of marble flooring covered by thick Persian rugs.
Templeton probably didn’t care that many of those rugs had been made by
children, by slave labor, their small fingers ideal for the task.
“FBI, Mr. Templeton,” she said sharply. “Special Agent
Gabriel Nicholas. We need to talk.”
With apparent unconcern, she looked at the man in the very
expensive suit who looked up in alarm from his seat in the elegant leather
chair in front of Templeton’s large glass-and-steel desk.
“Unless you want to be a part of this,” Gabriel said, “you
need to leave.”
She had the satisfaction of seeing the faintest flash of
alarm, of shock, in Templeton’s eyes at seeing her. So, he hadn’t been certain
she’d survived but he had thought she might have. Now it was confirmed.
The look in his eyes was clear, he was recalculating
swiftly.
Even so, he was also angry, caught off guard, unprepared and
Gabriel took some satisfaction in that.
As he rose to his feet, his fingers curled beneath the edge
of his desk.
“Marcus,” Templeton said tightly, “would you be so kind as
to wait outside while I speak to Agent Nicholas?”
The other man looked from one to the other uncertainly.
“I’ll leave you to talk,” Marcus said, his voice thickly
accented—French perhaps but with odd overtones.
He was clearly uneasy but whether it was due to her status,
the situation or an issue of his own, Gabriel didn’t know. And she didn’t care.
With a nod, Marcus rose and strode toward the doors.
“Thank you,” she said and received a surprised glance at the
courtesy as the man passed her.
He would have no cause to complain about his treatment.
She gave him what she hoped was a winning smile and received
a polite but cautious nod in return.
Gabriel took advantage of the moment to clip her ID to her
belt and to reach in her pockets to remove two more of the plastic vials. She
placed her thumbs at the edge of the rubber caps. Her heart hammered as it
always did at moments like this.
Life-or-death moments.
The next few were crucial.
It would be now, or very soon.
Gabriel flipped the caps on the vials, and with a small snap
of her wrists sent the two little vials spinning away from her, their contents
scattering across the carpet.
Before the other man was clear of the room Templeton said,
his tone vicious, “This was a very foolish thing to do, Agent Nicholas.”
She knew he pressed the alarm button that was surely there
beneath the glass desktop, hidden by one of the supports.
“I wouldn’t,” she said quietly. “I have two agents outside
your office, one in the lobby and one in the street.”
On cue, hidden doors swung open and men stepped out.
Templeton gestured.
Check.
With only a thought she
called
Asmodeus and Ashtoreth
as only the queen of the Daemonae could.
In the next instant there came the sharp aroma of brimstone
and the room was suddenly filled not just by Templeton’s men but by two very
large, very angry demons in full Daemonae splendor, their wings spread.
Asmodeus was to her left, Ashtoreth to her right.
Both wore their swords.
The expansive room abruptly felt smaller and not just
because of their size, although that was certainly some of it, but it was their
presence that consumed the space.
Beside her, Asmodeus drew himself up to his full height, his
face tight and grim at the sight of the armed men.
He was beautiful when he was angry, looking more like an
avenging angel than a fallen one with his wings spread around him and his
flashing ruby eyes. A shot of lust went through Gabriel just at the sight of
him in all his magnificent rage.
He was intimidating, awe-inspiring. The air seemed to
crackle with his anger. The long-checked wrath at being imprisoned and then
tortured by this man now had release.
If he was intimidating though, Ash, in his cold, implacable
fury, with his deeply slanted eyes narrowed and his sharp-boned, almost cruel
face drawn tight, had to be terrifying.
Though they filled the room with their sheer physical
presence and Asmodeus filled it with his rage and fury, Ash needed only to
stand there to fill it with menace.
They were an impressive sight, impressive enough to have
Templeton’s men suddenly shoulder their weapons.
Gabriel held a hand out to all of them warningly and put her
other hand on her own weapon, her gaze on Templeton, who glared back at her in
defiance. There was assessment in that look, his eyes narrowed as he looked
from Asmodeus to Ashtoreth to herself.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said to the men.
It was a standoff, she could sense it in the tension that
filled both Asmodeus and Ashtoreth but they still had to get the answers they
needed.
“Hello, Gordon,” she said, an echo of her first words to him
from not so long before. “We would like to talk to you.”
“You should know,” Templeton said calmly, his eyes going
from one to another of them, “that my men are armed with silver bullets.”
Asmodeus eyed him. “A waste, Templeton. Silver has no more effect
on us than any other metal, save iron.”
Which was the truth, just not all of it.
The truth was that whether made of steel, iron or silver,
enough bullets in the right places would kill him and Ashtoreth just as dead as
they would any man.
It seemed wisest not to share that knowledge. If Templeton
thought they were immune to such things, so much the better.
Their visit had been a calculated risk, to weigh what they
knew and what Templeton might know against what they did or he didn’t.
It was obvious Templeton wasn’t surprised to see them. He
had expected that Asmodeus would survive the bomb. He had also learned there
were more Daemonae than he had known. More Daemonae to summon, more to trap if
he could find and recover the
Book of Demons
with its spells and lists
of names.
That was dangerous knowledge, the knowledge they had come
for.
It chilled Asmodeus to see that expression in Templeton’s
eyes, to see that knowledge in them.
Templeton’s power had somehow increased too, although
Asmodeus didn’t know how that had happened.
Understanding flashed between him, Gabriel and Ash, mind to
mind, in an instant.
Templeton thought he had the upper hand here and it wavered
only slightly at the revelation about the bullets.
Their next move was imperative as it was the other part of
the reason for their visit and yet Asmodeus must be careful here. Templeton had
to remain unaware of Asmodeus’ true relationship to Gabriel. Nor could
Templeton become aware that the Daemonae had returned to this world. It would
give him too great a weapon. He had only to inform the church and the Daemonae
would find themselves hunted once again. That would give Templeton an important
and powerful ally.
More importantly, his Gabriel, as capable as she was, would
be out there in that world, vulnerable. That worried him, even more so now,
although Asmodeus did not let that show.
“We wanted to let you know we will be watching you,
Templeton,” Asmodeus said.
Smiling tightly, Gabriel said, “I don’t like being
kidnapped, Mr. Templeton. Just so you know. My superiors know that I’m here and
why.”
No one knew that Asmodeus and Ash were with her, but that
went unspoken.
“We can’t touch you, Mr. Templeton, but my superiors wanted
to let you know that we will be watching you, also.”
The explosion had eradicated any evidence that Templeton had
held her and Asmodeus but a blast that large didn’t go unnoticed. It left
evidence behind.
Using the date and time when she returned to this plane, she
had been able to determine roughly where they had been held—on a property owned
by one of Templeton’s subsidiaries. The building had been condemned after a
sudden “gas leak”.
That, along with her abrupt disappearance and equally abrupt
reappearance, had been enough to convince her superiors at the Bureau, if not a
court of law, that something had happened.