Authors: SM Reine
The commander stepped forward to crowd her space. His chest bumped against hers. He smelled like aftershave and gun oil. “You saying that Michele deserved to get shot and stabbed and left to bleed out in the desert? You think she deserved to suffer?”
“I’m saying that if he killed her, she earned it. But if you think she didn’t earn it, then it wasn’t McIntyre. Simple as that.” He tried to argue, but she didn’t let him. “Let McIntyre go—send men to follow him, use spy drones, I don’t care, but let him get back to his family until you know more. I’ll find out who killed your recruiter.”
“And why is that supposed to impress me?”
“Because,” Elise said, “I used to be the greatest kopis.”
Zettel laughed again. It was a condescending sound. “Bullshit. That’s impossible. The greatest kopis is here in Silver Wells.”
That gave her pause. She had realized that going into hiding would mean someone else would inherit the title, but she had only considered it in the most abstract way. She hadn’t really given consideration to what it would mean to have another greatest kopis, much less being in the same place as him.
After a beat, she said, “I was the one who came before him. I retired.”
“Kopides don’t retire. They die.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but didn’t get a chance. Someone shouted.
Allyson Whatley burst out of the SUV. Elise tensed, but the witch didn’t attack. “Flynn’s having a seizure!”
“What are the conditions?” Zettel asked.
She shoved a printout in his face. It was gibberish to Elise, but it must have meant something to him. He scanned them, and then stepped back, shielded his eyes, and scanned the sky.
A shadow crossed over the sun, and a lone silver feather drifted in front of Elise’s face.
It was followed by another feather, and another. But she didn’t wait to see if there would be more. Elise shoved Anthony behind the bar, and Zettel was too busy shouting indistinct orders to his team to notice that they had disappeared.
An angel dropped out of the sky and alighted in the center of the road. His bare feet came to rest on the searing asphalt.
A voice echoed through the air.
“I have come.”
It was a powerful noise, booming and resonant, even though the voice itself was barely more than a whisper. Elise still would have heard it if she was miles away, or utterly deaf. It drove through her mind like a spike.
She watched from around the side of the building as the angel stretched his wings to their full capacity, which forced Zettel to step back. Each wing was as long as he was tall, and he scattered downy feathers across the desert like hot snow. He blazed with inner light. She couldn’t see his face around the commander’s back.
Elise wished that she had brought her falchions.
“If you want to talk to me directly, you’re supposed to arrange a meeting,” said Zettel, sounding more irritated than fearful. Elise hadn’t pegged him for a complete idiot, but she was quickly changing her mind. “You can’t just wander around town like this. There are civilians, you know.”
The quiet voice roared. “I bear a message.”
“So bear it to the meetings. The ethereal delegation missed the first one.”
“We will not be attending any of your meetings.”
Zettel faltered, stunned to silence. Allyson spoke instead. “The agreement—”
“We made no agreement.”
She grew bolder. “So the last three thousand years of summits were… what, a whim?”
“We’ve fulfilled our promises to the Council of Dis. But the semi-centennial summit has been taken by your human faction, and we have no agreements with you. We won’t submit to your rules.”
Zettel found his voice again. “It’s the same damn summit it’s always been!”
The commander’s slight movement allowed Elise to glimpse the angel’s face. He was a young man with coppery hair that brushed his shoulders, and she was stunned to realize that she recognized him. “We obey the laws of no man,” said the angel. He didn’t rise to meet Zettel’s anger, but there was a flash of annoyance in his pale eyes.
Elise stepped out from behind the tent. “Nukha’il?”
The angel’s spotted her over Zettel’s shoulder. “Elise?” He completely dropped the Holy Messenger act and sounded normal.
Zettel whirled to gape at her. He composed his features quickly, but Elise ignored him as she strode forward.
It had been weeks since she saw Nukha’il. She assumed that he had taken his friend, Itra’il—who had been enslaved and driven to madness—back to the heavenly planes to restore her sanity. Elise hadn’t expected to run into him again. Not two months later, nor twenty years later.
“Where’s Itra’il?” Elise asked.
“She rests,” Nukha’il said, folding his massive wings behind him. He was no longer gaunt from being fed a constant stream of drugs, and his skin shimmered with a milky white glow. “That is all she does now. I have forced her into hibernation, because when she wakes… Well. It’s better if she doesn’t wake.” He appraised her. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You’re telling me.”
“No. You shouldn’t be
here
.” His pale hands swept toward the expanse of desert. Elise wasn’t sure if he meant that she shouldn’t still be in Nevada, where the ethereal city and its dark gates were hidden, or if she shouldn’t be on Earth. She never knew, where angels were concerned.
“We have to resolve the issue of the quarantine,” Elise said.
Nukha’il’s face registered surprise. “There is no issue. They’re ethereal, and in our jurisdiction.”
“I’m not letting anyone else approach those gates.”
“This is why we’re having meetings,” Zettel interrupted. “It’s not an issue for anyone here to decide alone. The Union—”
She rounded on him. “The Union has nothing to do with my territory.”
“Your territory? Northern Nevada is owned by demons.”
Nukha’il inclined his head. “
Her
territory. Even so—no mortal is capable of maintaining quarantine.”
Elise held up the hand that wasn’t broken. She didn’t have to bare her palm to make the message clear. “I’m not just any mortal.”
They shared a long, understanding silence. He knew, as all angels knew, that Elise was different. He had seen it firsthand in the angelic city.
He was the first to speak.
“Very well,” Nukha’il said. “The ethereal party will send a representative to negotiate after all. But only if Elise Kavanagh mediates.” Zettel opened his mouth, but the angel’s glare silenced him. “Those are my terms.”
She didn’t want to negotiate. She just wanted everyone to leave her, and her city, completely alone. But it was better than nothing. Elise nodded. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The angel kneeled and reached his hands toward her.
She hesitated. Elise knew what he wanted, but her palms burned being so close to him. It was a gesture of supplication. He wanted to signify his obedience to her.
A dangerous gesture. She didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
But the Union was watching.
After a moment, she rested her good hand in both of his, and he bowed his head to her knuckles. Pain scythed from her palm to her elbow. “She who is above us all,” he murmured in that resonant voice, and her skin crawled.
He unfurled his wings and leaped into the air. There was no breeze, but they snapped wide and lifted him as though blown away on a hurricane. For an instant, his body was silhouetted against the sun.
Elise shielded her eyes to search for him, but he was already gone.
Something trickled down her wrist, and her hand suddenly felt like it was being sliced open. With a ragged shout, she ripped a glove off with her teeth and flung it to the dirt.
A gash had opened over her sigil. Her fingers spasmed.
Allyson stared at her as though she had grown horns, and so did Anthony. It was the reaction she had hoped for. But Zettel was no more impressed by the angel’s supplication than he was by anything else, and he strode over to shake a fist at her.
“This is our operation! We have control!”
“You have nothing,” she spat. “Nothing except my friend.”
“A murderer.”
“It’s a mistake. Take me to the Union compound—I’ll talk to him.”
Zettel’s jaw clenched. A vein bulged on his forehead. “Fine. Get in the SUV.”
IX
R
iding out to
the Union compound was a different experience without a black bag over Elise’s head, but they were still escorted by men with guns. Zettel took them directly to the trailer they had been confined in before, giving them no opportunity to explore their surroundings. “Five minutes,” he said. “Boyd, stay at the door.”
The Union locked them inside.
McIntyre was in his underwear—which were boxers covered in the Bat Signal—with his wrists zip-tied and a black bag over his head. Sweat covered his chest. “Let me go,” he said when they came in.
“I’m working on it,” Elise said.
Surprise registered in his muffled voice. “Kavanagh?” She cut him free and removed the hood. McIntyre had a hell of a shiner and a fat lip, but he looked otherwise unharmed. He must not have fought as hard as Elise had. “What the hell is going on?”
“The Union followed me to the hospital and found you.”
“You let them
follow
you? They arrested me outside the maternity ward!”
“I didn’t
let
—”
Anthony coughed. “Elise…” He nodded toward the camera in the corner. “They said five minutes. We should make this fast.”
“Make what fast?” McIntyre asked.
“I get to interview you before the Union does,” she said. “If you want to try being honest, this would be a great time for it.”
“I already told you everything I know!”
“Then everything you know isn’t good enough. You’re about to get dragged across the country and prosecuted for the murder of a recruiter by a Union court. So if you have information that will prove you’re innocent before that happens, I would love to hear it.”
McIntyre rubbed his wrists. “How am I supposed to prove I
didn’t
do something?”
“Do you have an alibi?”
“Not exactly. I was alone at home. Tish and Dana spent the week with her parents.”
Elise and Anthony exchanged glances. She raised a questioning eyebrow, and her boyfriend mouthed:
He’s hiding something.
“You met with Michele, didn’t you?” Elise asked.
McIntyre’s jaw clenched. He lowered his voice and angled himself so that the camera would see nothing but his back. “Okay. I did meet Michele Newcomb. She claimed she wanted to talk about the summit, but when she showed up, all she wanted to talk about was recruitment.”
“So you thought you would kill her?”
“She left my place alive. But she was pushy. Michele said the Union would train me, like being in charge of my city since I was sixteen fucking years old wasn’t good enough training.” He dropped his tone even lower. Elise had to lean in to hear him. “And she said they would give me an aspis.”
“You have an aspis,” Elise said.
He shook his head. “Look… Tish isn’t a witch. Not like James is. She knows what to do with her herbs, but when we tried to do that ritual…” He ran a finger along his underarm. “She’s as good as mundane.”
She took a closer look at his skin. There was no hint of the telltale scar that resulted from the ritual binding a witch to a kopis. Hers had faded slightly over the years, but she still had a long silver line from wrist to elbow that matched one on James’s arm. “So they were going to separate you from your family.”
“At first, for training,” McIntyre said. “Michele said my family could live with me when I was assigned a team, a new territory… and an aspis.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad. You could use an actual aspis,” Anthony said. He had kneeled beside them so he could listen to their whispered conversation.
McIntyre shot a glare at him, and the room filled with deadly, silent tension.
“Anthony—shut up,” Elise said.
“What? It’s not like Leticia can protect him like an aspis should.”
McIntyre got to his feet. He wasn’t usually intimidating, but he was a big guy, and he was mad. Anthony scrambled to his feet. “I’ll cut you a break, man. You’re new at this. You don’t know shit. But a kopis and an aspis is a big deal. There’s this saying we have about it: ‘More permanent than marriage, more fatal than family, closer than the oldest friends.’ It’s not like you pick one up on a street corner like a cheap fuck. It’s more than that. Tish is… she’s
everything
.”
“And that’s your problem,” Elise said. “Nobody should be everything. Not in this business.”
McIntyre laughed. “That’s really rich, coming from you.”
She swung, but he was ready for it. He shielded his face and took the hit on his forearm, then struck back. They exchanged a flurry of blows. She shoved him into a wall with her shoulder, and he kicked her in the gut, hard enough to make her stumble.
“Hey,” Anthony said, like he was going to try to stop them.
Elise hooked a leg around his middle, gripped his shirt, and flung them both to the ground. They slammed into the floor of the trailer. The metal walls shook.
She rolled on top of him, and he tried to seize her head, but she twisted from his grip and slammed her good fist into his face. Blood spattered from his nose.
He wrestled her flat and drove his elbow into her ribs twice, hard.
She had to use her broken hand to put him in a headlock. Dull shock rolled up her arm, and he elbowed her again. It was a good, familiar kind of pain, like explosions of white-hot fire in her side. She grunted and flipped him over with her knees.
“Hey, hey! The Union’s watching, guys!”
Anthony’s reminder of the cameras was enough to stop them—almost. Elise reared over McIntyre, gripping his hair with a fist raised, and hesitated.
He squinted through a trickle of blood from his brow. “You know what, Kavanagh?” he whispered. “I feel sorry for your boyfriend.”
She slammed his head into the ground. He groaned.
Elise stood. “Me too,” she said, offering her left hand to him. McIntyre took it.
“You’re still kicking my ass with a broken hand. I can’t believe it.”