It wasn’t like him to feel helpless or uncertain what to do, but he did. Nathan stood in place long after Kaylee had left the driveway.
“Amira!” He heard the quiet teen creep down the stairs behind him. She didn’t hear his yell, but she sensed him coming.
With a gasp, Amira whirled and ran up the stairs.
Nathan chased her, stretching his arm to block the doorway to her room, where she was headed. She looked scared, her blue eyes wide and her aura flaring with multiple colors.
He took a deep breath. “First, are you okay?” he asked.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. She nodded.
“Second, what the fuck is going on?”
She squirmed.
Nathan took her other arm to hold her still. For a moment, he thought the sweetest girl on the planet was about to defy him the same way Kaylee had. She had a pocketknife clenched in her fist.
Nathan worked it free and tossed it.
“Shadowman,” Amira said and shivered, as if the name alone scared her.
“He can’t come here,” he reminded her. “We have enough moonstones to keep the devil himself away.”
“That girl,” Amira said. “She brought Shadowman to the Center. He knew I was there. He knows I’m here.” Tears filled her eyes. “Nate, I have to go!”
“What possessed you to try to kill her?” he asked. “Don’t cry, okay? Focus.”
Amira nodded and swallowed hard then answered. “To get rid of Shadowman.”
“Amira, we have to find Shadowman’s host. His name is Mike.”
“No!” Amira cried. “She is his host.”
Nathan frowned. They never considered the idea that Shadowman was anchored by anyone other than Mike. It felt like an oversight, except that no part of him wanted to believe innocent Kaylee of being the host for the demon. Mike made sense. By all accounts, he was a lying, cheating scumbag who probably left a few skeletons in his past. Mike was the kind of person a demon clung to.
“Nate, I would never, ever hurt a human. Ever. But he has to be stopped,” she said solemnly. “We can’t let him get to the portal.”
“I know, baby. I just want to handle this in a way where we don’t have to take an innocent life,” he said, releasing her.
“Me, too,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t know what else to do.”
He offered a warm smile. “First things first. Go pack. I know where to take you, so Shadowman can’t get you.”
Amira studied him for a moment then went.
Disturbed, Nathan waited in the hallway, not trusting the first gen not to bolt. He whipped out his phone to call Maggy.
“Hey,” he said when she answered. “I think we got a problem.”
“Yeah, bigger than you know,” she replied.
“What?”
“We just found Mike’s body. He’s been dead for a couple days. There’s no way he’s the host for Shadowman.”
Nathan’s spirits sank. “Good news for you. I think I know who his host is. Not talking about it over the phone, though.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“I’m taking Amira somewhere safe,” he added. “I’ll meet up with you later.”
“Safe?” Maggy hesitated. “What’s going on, Nathan?”
“Townhouse is compromised. I’m taking her to someone who can help.”
“Oh, god, not Troy. He’s – ”
“Later, babe.” He hung up.
Troy, the man who trained Nathan, had recently retired. Or was forced to, depending on which story one believed. In either case, Nathan knew where he was and what exactly he could expect from the out-of-control spirit guide.
Amira left her room, backpack slung over one shoulder. She looked upset and Nathan understood why. First gens knew violence and evil existed but weren’t able to commit either, because they were still able to remember how sacred humans were to the angel corps. It took a lot of courage for her to try to kill Kaylee, a sobering indication of how dangerous Shadowman was, if a first gen was willing to do the unthinkable.
He tapped her arm to draw her attention. “We’re going across town. Tell no one where I take you, okay?”
She nodded.
Nathan led her to the garage, mind working quickly. Technically, Mike and Kaylee were both innocent. It was easier for him to contemplate killing a scumbag like Mike than it was a beautiful, smart woman like Kaylee. But if her death meant preventing Shadowman from opening the portal to Hell, wasn’t it worth doing?
There was a time when he might not think twice about killing anyone.
That was a long time ago, he told himself.
He put the key in the ignition and paused. Odd. He hadn’t thought of the incident that made him accept the position as a spirit guide in a while. It seemed too long ago to matter, and yet, he found himself thinking of it again. Thinking of her again, the woman he’d married and lost three thousand years ago. She and Kaylee had some similar features. Both women had dark blonde curls and blue eyes. Both were Pisces.
Both made his blood burn in a way that was more intense than channeling energy from the Other Side.
“Nate, we have to go!” Amira urged.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts then started the car. He pulled out of the driveway and drove slowly through the neighborhood, until he reached 395, which cut through central DC.
Amira was antsy and Nathan too distracted by thoughts of hurting Kaylee to speak. Had he gone that soft over the years? Or was there something more about her that was bothering him? Was it possible to feel something beyond attraction to someone he just met?
Her fear of Shadowman made more sense. Some part of her knew the fallen guardian was not only connected to her but evil, or she wouldn’t have bailed out Nathan in the first place. What had the creature done to scare her? What would it do, if it thought she was trying to help Nathan get rid of it?
Nearing his exit, he forced himself to focus on driving and merged onto the main loop around DC. Half an hour later, he left the major highways for the quiet town of Crofton, Maryland. Nathan drove a short distance down a forest lined, two-lane road before finally pulling into a driveway.
The large, brick house tucked away from the road was in a peaceful setting, hedged by trees, with a three quarter ton pick-up truck parked out front.
Nathan got out of the car. The bushes hugging the house needed to be trimmed and the flowers weeded.
Amira looked at him uncertainly.
He waved her forward and walked to the front door, opening it. As he expected, it was open. No one who met the house’s owner would cross him. Troy had never locked his doors, as long as Nathan could remember.
“Troy!” he called. “We’re coming in.”
No response.
Nathan let his eyes adjust to the darkened foyer. It was tastefully decorated with antique furniture, just like the formal sitting and dining rooms that flanked the foyer. A wooden staircase ascended to the second floor. Past it was another hallway - lined with two doors - that emptied into a large kitchen.
He listened but heard nothing. The only guardian angels in the house were crowded upstairs. Sensing them, he started up the stairs. Amira was at his heels, her aura fluttering between bright shades of worry and fear. Nathan reached the top of the stairs and strode down the hallway, following the angels.
Troy was slung on his belly across his bed, his snoring loud enough to assure Nathan he was alive. The master bedroom was trashed and reeked of alcohol, and his former mentor wore only underwear, a t-shirt and one boot. His dark hair was bushy, the huge beard and mustache covering the lower half of his face.
Amira made a sound of disgust.
Nathan waved for her to wait outside the room. He considered Troy, uncertain if he should smile or be horrified by the deterioration of his mentor. Troy was still muscular and fit, even if he looked like a wild man.
“Troy.” Nathan kicked his booted foot.
The spirit guide groaned.
“C’mon. Wake up.”
Troy sprawled onto his back.
Nathan barely made out his eyes in the mass of hair covering his face.
“Is this what I have to look forward to when I retire?” he asked, pulling an ottoman away from a chair in the corner closer to the bed. Nathan sat down. “Hey. Come on. Wake up.” He slapped Troy’s cheek.
“Get … the fuck out,” Troy muttered, swatting at his hand.
“Get the fuck up,” Nathan repeated. “I need help.”
“I’m retired.”
“I’m calling in a favor.”
Troy sighed. “I’m enjoying my new life.”
“Right.” Nathan looked around the disaster of a room. Clothes, shoes and trash littered the master bedroom. “You owe me. Remember? Something about saving your sorry ass a few times.”
“Once!” Troy grumbled. He wiped his face and struggled to sit.
“What the hell happened to you?” Nathan demanded, almost concerned for his friend. “You try to drink yourself to death?”
“Yeah. Didn’t work. I quit, but Pedro won’t let me go. Approval rating dropped below zero, and I still can’t retire. You believe that shit?”
“Pedro does what Pedro wants. Anyway, get up. I’ve got a gig for you,” Nathan said.
“I don’t want a gig.”
“It’s a girl.”
Silence.
Nathan leaned back. From the same era, they’d spent thousands of years together, enough time for Nathan to know about Troy’s soft spot for women. Whatever he was going through, he’d never walk out on a damsel in distress.
“She’s in trouble,” Nathan added.
Troy was quiet for a second then swung his legs off the bed and faced Nathan. He was unrecognizable. Nathan pointed toward the bathroom off the side of the master bedroom.
“And gorgeous.”
Nathan sat back as Troy stood. The stinky, furry man made his way towards the bathroom and slammed the door. Nathan rose and crossed to the hallway. Amira was wringing her hands in the hallway, pacing. She looked up when he appeared.
“Nate, I don’t like it here,” she said, distraught.
“If I remember correctly, the guest bedroom is down here.” He started down the hall.
She trailed.
Nathan opened a door leading to a guest bedroom in need of a good cleaning. Dust was thick on all the flat surfaces and even managed to coat the moonstones lining the windowsill. He doubted anyone had been in there since he last saw it five years before.
Unimpressed, Amira regarded the room critically.
He touched her arm, waiting for her to look at him before speaking.
“You’ve heard of Troy, the guide who trained me?” he asked.
She nodded.
“That was Troy.” He pointed towards the master bedroom.
“Really?”
He nodded. “I’m leaving you with him. He’s the best there is.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“He hit a rough patch, but he’ll take care of you. Trust me.”
Amira grudgingly crossed to the bed and set her backpack on it. A puff of dust drifted upward. She sneezed.
Nathan’s phone rang, and he glanced down to see Maggy’s number cross the screen. He silenced the call before moving into the hallway and returning to Troy’s bedroom. The sound of a shower came from behind the closed bathroom door.
“Troy!” Nathan called, pounding on it.
“Yeah!”
He cracked it open. Steam rolled out. “I gotta go. She’s in the guest bedroom.”
There was a pause then a reluctant, “All right.”
“You got my number.” Nathan closed the door and strode from the bedroom towards the stairs. Pulling his phone free, he hesitated then texted Kaylee.
Hey – can we talk?
He didn’t expect an immediate answer but hoped she’d eventually respond.
Then again, she got attacked by Amira and suspected him of kidnapping. Was his insight about Shadowman enough to pull her back in?
Maggy called again.
Nathan trotted outside, closing the front door behind him before he answered.
“Yeah,” he said.
“We really need to figure this out,” she said. “If this guy isn’t the anchor, then we gotta find him.”
“I did,” Nathan reported. He opened the door to his rental car and dropped in.
“Good. Then you can … take care of this.”
He was quiet.
“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts,” she groaned.
“I am. I don’t know why,” he admitted. “The easiest solution is usually the best. Just pull the trigger.”
“Exactly.”
“I think I need to talk to Pedro.”
“What? Why?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his eyes.
“Wait, is his anchor a girl?” Maggy asked.
“Talk later, Mags.” Nathan hung up. He started the car and then lit a cigar.
Even after three thousand years, dealing with Pedro wasn’t something he looked forward to. But right now, he was feeling … conflicted. There had to be another solution to just killing Kaylee, one that let everyone live.
He drove to downtown DC and parked under a familiar office building. The Other Side was a dimension within a dimension, a world easily accessed by those who knew how. There were several main portals, and the office building in central DC was one. It looked no different from any other building in the city. Only those with permission to visit the Other Side would walk through the front doors and end up somewhere else. Everyone else ended up in the office building.
Nathan walked in. The shift to the Other Side was barely noticeable, a subtle drop in temperature and the sudden glitter of angels in their energy forms moving around the room. He walked a familiar path to Pedro’s office.
“Pedro,” he said, knocking on the door.
“Come in.”
Nathan entered. Pedro, an archangel and the oldest of the guardian angels, was moving a fax machine the size of his torso. Nathan crossed to him and lifted it with ease. The dark-skinned angel grunted and pointed to where he wanted it.
“I need some advice,” Nathan began.
“Left.”
“It’s about the Shadowman you all sent me to DC to handle.“
“It’s not centered.”
“Are you listening, Pedro?”
“Don’t they teach humans right from left?” Pedro asked. He stepped forward and pushed the fax machine into place.
“No one uses these things anymore, Pedro,” Nathan told him.
“I do.”
Pedro’s office was an eclectic mix of technology and toys he collected over the course of his lifetime. The thirty-year-old fax machine was a recent acquisition, something Nathan found at a yard sale at Pedro’s request. It sat between an urn from Sumeria and an Egyptian pair of sandals. His rug was made from mammoth skin, the chairs carved from the bones of the generation of dinosaurs that existed before those the humans knew about.
“You are the best spirit guide ever,” Pedro said and sat at his desk. “Well, as far as you know.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Nathan said, ignoring the familiar reminder that he was a babe in Pedro’s ancient eyes. “There’s an issue.”
Pedro waited curiously, as if this was the first problem he’d encountered in an eternity as an angel.
“Shadowman is after Amira because of the gateway to Hell. And before you tell me there’s no such thing as a fallen guardian, I call bullshit. You got it?”
Pedro was quiet.
“Good,” Nathan continued. “The fallen guardian is after her. I’m after him. To take him out, I have to get rid of his host.”
“Oh, no, Nathan!” Pedro exclaimed. “You cannot take an innocent life. It’s forbidden.”
“I was getting to that.”
“Well then you must think of a different way.” Pedro smiled, pleased that he solved the problem.
There are days I really hate angels, Nathan thought to himself. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to see if you have any advice or information about Shadowman.”
Pedro appeared contemplative for a moment. He dug through his desk and pulled out a file.
Nathan accepted it and flipped through it. He stared at it for a minute then tossed it.
Pedro laughed.
“Why do you do that?” Nathan asked with tried patience. “Humans can’t read angel script.”
“It never gets old to see you try. You should work on being happy, Nathan. Angels are never like … this.” Pedro waved at Nathan. “Tense.” Pedro handed him a new file, this one written in English.
Nathan opened it to the first page. It was clearly written on a typewriter whose ribbons were not the best. Pedro was a fan of antiquated technology, adopting new methods of doing things only after they went out of style for the rest of the world. Nathan squinted to read some of the faint words.
“This is the spirit guides’ credo,” he said, tossing it back. “I know it by heart. Why are you showing it to me?”
“To remind you that you cannot kill an innocent.”
Nathan began to think it was a mistake coming to Pedro. Angels really did make the worst bosses. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. Who else did he turn to when he was troubled, if not the head of the guardian angels?
“You want to break protocol,” Pedro guessed. “The rules are clear.”
“I can’t take a life in the course of my official …” Nathan trailed off. “Wait, Pedro. It says take a life. What if I just borrow her life long enough to sever what keeps Shadowman anchored in the human world? Then return her life to her?”
Pedro steepled his fingers, deep in thought.
“Maybe,” he answered. “But Nathan, you should never kill an innocent, even if only for the few minutes you need to send her angels back.”
“How many minutes?”
“Five-ish.”
Nathan studied Pedro. Of all the angels, Pedro was the hardest to read. There were days Nathan thought him truly scatter-brained and other days – like this one – where he suspected Pedro was smarter than he seemed. Did he provide the timeframe on purpose or not?
Pedro held out a catalog. “I want one of these.”
Nathan took it. One of the items in the music catalogue had been circled.
Just when I think Pedro has a clue … Nathan flipped the catalogue closed to see the date. While pristine, it was almost forty years old.
“Did you look on eBay?” he asked.
“Too expensive,” Pedro said. “You can find one at a flea market or yard sale for half that.”
“Do you know how long it’ll take me to find a functioning eight track player at a yard sale?”
“We’ve got time. If it’s more than on eBay, don’t buy it.”
“I’ll look,” Nathan said. If nothing else, it was an even exchange: Pedro’s information for an eight-track player.
“Something is bothering you, Nathan,” Pedro said wisely. “What is it?”
“Aside from you asking me to go to yard sales when Shadowman is hunting down an innocent first gen so he can open the portal to Hell?” Nathan asked. “Nothing.”
“You are worried. It’s not normal for you. You are normally very sure of yourself.”
Born during the Roman Empire, Nathan retained the unfaltering confidence and physical prowess of the warrior race that bred him. He also had the emotional depths and temper of a Scorpio who never backed down from a challenge and the patience of a man who had lived one too many lifetimes. There were days when it took all of this to keep him from snapping when he dealt with Pedro.
“Yeah, well, got a lot on my mind,” Nathan said. “By the way, Pedro. What comes out of the portal if it does get opened?”
Pedro’s gaze saddened. “Death,” he whispered.
Nathan had never seen the head of the guardian angel corps distraught. Uncertain how to respond, he changed the subject.
“I called in a favor to Troy, too.”
“I told him he has much good to do in this world yet.”
Of course. It’s always about the greater good. Never about us. Nathan rose.
“Here are some yard sales.” Pedro held out a newspaper, folded to display the classified ads. He’d gone to the trouble of circling two ads in yellow.
Nathan took it. “This is for Tucson, five years ago.” He’d long since stopped getting angry with the angels who were trying to relate to him in a human way. They meant well, even if they drove him crazy at times. “Pedro, one of these is at my house. I know I’m not having a yard sale.”
“I have faith. Maybe you will and someone brings you my eight track player. Or maybe the other address will have one,” Pedro suggested. “You know the way of the universe. If you ask for something or need something, eventually it comes to you.”
“It’s never quite that easy. I’ll let you know when I find your treasure.” Nathan pocketed the newspaper.
“It was good to see you, Nathan.”
“You, too, Pedro.”
Nathan left Pedro’s office and the building, reemerging into the mortal world.
He sighed on his way to the car. Accustomed to the bizarre exchanges, he still left each interaction with Pedro wishing for a little more effort on the angel’s part.
In any case, he now had a back-up plan. It still involved killing Kaylee, but at least it wasn’t going to be permanent. He’d do whatever it took to convince Maggy to do things his way.
Maybe, by the end of the day tomorrow, the issue of Shadowman would be resolved.