CHAPTER THIRTY

Hands on me; I grabbed them, fought them. Someone screamed and it wasn’t me. A voice I should have known yelled, “Havoc, they’re trying to help you.”

“Detective Havelock, stand down! That’s an order!” I knew that voice, too. It made me blink and try to look at who I was fighting. There was a paramedic crumpled on the floor beside me. Charleston loomed over both of us standing so that he looked like a giant, as tall as the ceiling. The moment I thought that, I knew something was wrong with me. Was I hurt?

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, but my voice sounded too low, so I said it again.

“Do you know your name?”

“Havelock, Zaniel Havelock, Havoc.”

“Do you know where you are?”

I looked around the room. “Interrogation room.”

He almost smiled. “What city are you in?”

I frowned at him. “The City of Angels.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Charleston, you’re my lieutenant.”

“Yes.”

“What happened? Why am I on the floor? What happened to the medic?”

A woman’s voice said, “You happened to him.”

I looked toward the voice, but I couldn’t see her past Charleston. “Who is that?”

She peered around Charleston’s side, looking child-sized compared to him. She looked angry. “I’m his partner.” She pointed down to the paramedic on the floor.

“What happened to him?”

“I told you, you happened.” She knelt beside her fallen partner and she looked even tinier that way. Was she really that petite or was I more out of it than I thought? Charleston was a giant and she was doll-like. It was like everything was all funhouse mirrors.

Her partner groaned and started to push his way up from the floor. She started trying to examine him, but he said, “Look at our patient first, not me.”

“Our patient knocked you cold and may have broken your nose,” she said, her voice warm with anger.

Her partner turned his head enough for me to see the blood all over the front of his face and shirt. “Did I do that?” I couldn’t remember doing it, or maybe I did. I remembered hands on me, and I hadn’t wanted them to touch me.

The female paramedic glared at me. “Yes, for the third time, you did this.”

“He’s hurt, Becki,” her partner said, and I realized he was trying to make excuses for me. That seemed really sporting of him since I’d just hit him in the face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know who was touching me,” I said.

“He got attacked by demonic energy, Becki; anyone would fight.” He leaned against the wall and used the dressing she gave him to press against his still-bleeding nose, but that was all he’d let her do for him. He insisted on her looking at me first. I might owe him a drink later if he kept being that nice about it.

Becki grumbled, but she knelt beside me and again she fit between me and the closest chair. I wasn’t hallucinating, she was just that tiny.

She looked at my eyes with a flashlight, then told me to use just my eyes to follow her finger as she moved it back and forth. Her frown softened a little. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, or just meant she was calming down.

“Neil was trying to put a brace on your neck when you clocked him,” she said, and was back to sounding angry, maybe it was just her default.

“Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?” Neil asked, his voice muffled from holding the dressing against his nose.

I looked down my body to try moving everything and noticed there was fresh dressing and medical tape across my stomach. I ignored it for now and tried to move my fingers and toes. “Everything moves,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

“Why are there fresh bandages on my stomach?”

“The wounds on your stomach started bleeding again,” Neil said.

“If they’d put stitches in at the hospital they wouldn’t have started bleeding again,” Becki said, frowning her disapproval.

“It was already healed closed, so the doctor didn’t think it was necessary. Did the wounds reopen?” I asked.

“No, but there was still blood coming through the wounds when we got here,” Neil said.

“The attack was just earlier today, though, right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But angel magic healed it,” Neil said, and his voice sounded wetter, as if more blood was going down the back of his throat. That was not a good sound. It meant I’d really done a number on his nose. I might owe him more than just a drink.

“You told them what happened at the hospital,” I said, looking up at Charleston.

“I told them what I could, but I’m a Voodoo Priest, not an angel worker, so I could only give them the magic I could sense and what you said was happening.”

“Why didn’t the angels heal it completely?” Becki asked.

“I didn’t ask them to. I asked them to help us save the woman who was in jeopardy.”

“Usually that means they will heal you more than you asked, for being selfless,” Neil said.

The comment bothered me. “I wasn’t being selfless; I’d have done almost anything to save the woman.”

“I think they didn’t heal it because they couldn’t,” Becki said.

“And I think they didn’t heal it because they knew that there’s some magic in there that needs to come out before the skin closes over it,” Neil said.

“If I’d thought to ask, or if I’d needed it completely healed, the angelic power would have healed it,” I said.

“Well, the claw marks were bleeding when we got here,” Becki said.

“Did they tear open?” I asked.

“Not that we could find,” she said.

“Then how were they bleeding?” I asked.

“We’re not sure.”

“It wasn’t just blood,” Neil said, “there was power mixed in with it. The kind I usually only sense when really bad things have attacked people.”

“Like demons,” Charleston said.

“Exactly,” Neil said, and coughed, wincing visibly enough that I asked Becki to take care of him.

“Not yet,” he said, though he was beginning to sound a little less sure. He waved her off and said, “The bandages are holding a magical poultice that will draw out any negative energy that isn’t yours.”

“Will the dressing need to be changed?” I asked.

“It depends on how much negative shit the demon left behind,” Becki said.

“How will I know if it needs to be changed, or if I’m clear again?” I asked.

“I’ll help check you. They walked me through it along with one of our newbie witches,” Charleston said.

I looked up at him. I was beginning to feel silly lying on the floor. “Thanks.”

“We all play to our magical strengths in this unit. You have angels and demons; I have herbalism and folk remedies like poultices that will drain the bad juju out of a wound.”

“Can I sit up now?” I asked, not exactly sure whose permission I was asking. If I hadn’t felt bad about probably breaking the paramedic’s nose, I wouldn’t have asked anyone’s permission.

“Slowly; if it hurts, lie back down,” Becki said. She was back to sounding angry, but I was beginning to think it might be her natural state. She wasn’t angry, she was cranky; they sounded the same, but angry usually didn’t last, cranky could be a constant.

I sat up using more of my arms to push than I normally did, so that I didn’t overtask my abs. There was a pull of the medical tape against my stomach; it didn’t hurt more than it had before, but Becki thought my caution was pain and tried to push me back to the floor. I outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, and most of that was muscle. She wasn’t going to be able to push me anywhere.

“It doesn’t hurt, I’m just being cautious like you told me to be,” I said, looking at her as she kept trying to push her gloved hand against me.

She stopped pushing but didn’t move her hand as she looked up at me, because with her kneeling and me sitting she was now shorter than me. “A man who actually listens and does what I ask, that’s different.” The sarcasm dripped out of the last two words.

“Hey,” her partner said, “I am not that guy.”

She frowned and looked at him, her small hand still on my shoulder as if she’d forgotten it there. “I didn’t mean you, Neil. I meant, you know who I mean, all of them.”

“You do need to find better guys to date,” he said.

“They see someone this small and think I should be cute and soft, which they think means weak.” The one comment probably explained the bad attitude. If she went around with a huge chip on her shoulder, then men might not assume her personality matched her packaging.

“I’m sorry they’re jerks,” I said.

She looked up at me, then moved her hand as if just realizing she’d left it on my shoulder. “You’re over my height limit, sorry.”

It took me a second to realize she thought I was flirting. I showed her the wedding band I was wearing. “I was apologizing for other jerky men, not trying to flirt.”

She looked embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said.

MacGregor the Elder came into the room. “Good to see you conscious, Havoc.”

“Good to be conscious,” I said.

“The Infernal specialist is here, Lieutenant.”

“Infernal specialist? I’m fine.”

“It’s not for you,” Charleston said.

“Wait, what happened to Lila and Ravensong? Where are they?” I heard the panic in my voice and tried to calm down. How had I not asked about them sooner? I felt like a bad friend.

“Lila got the wind knocked out of her.”

Charleston hadn’t mentioned what happened to Ravensong, just Lila. I felt that tightness inside me that was the body tensing for bad news. “What happened to Ravensong that would need an Infernalist?”

“One of her hands is . . . damaged,” Charleston said.

I got to my feet and asked, “Damaged how?”

“Her hand is deformed. It looks like the demon hand from the hospital.”

“That’s not possible, true transformation magic is not something that demons do. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Your expertise is angels, Havoc, not demons.”

“But we study both sides and demons aren’t contagious. They can’t turn people into one of them. It does not work like that.” I made every word clear and firm because I knew it was true. They had to be wrong.

I turned for the door and Charleston caught my arm. “Havoc, let the specialist look at her. Once they have something to report I’ll make sure you’re with me when they make it.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t possible, Lieutenant. I need to see Ravensong.”

“Not a good idea,” Neil said from where he was still sitting by the wall.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because whatever is in those wounds is demonic in nature and so is whatever is happening to her hand; until we know what happened, let’s keep the two of you separated.”

“The doctor at the hospital didn’t see anything demonic in my wounds.”

“He’s a paramedic healer, Havoc; if he advises we keep you away from Ravensong for now, then we do it. Let the specialist from the College of Angels look at Ravensong, then we’ll go from there.”

That stopped me; I couldn’t even think clearly for a second. “Why did you go to the College of Angels for your demon specialist? They aren’t who the department normally hires to help with demons.”

“You saw that bottle, it’s old as hell and has demon blood in it, contained behind spells that keep it fresh and sentient.”

“Sentient blood? Even demon blood doesn’t think after it leaves the body, Lieutenant.”

“Whatever demon ichor is in that bottle opened it and let itself out, Havoc. None of us have ever seen anything like it. We can’t even find any precedent in the metaphysical database, so we reached out to the College of Angels. This thing took out some of my best people; if we hadn’t had a containment spell box made by one of the best wizards in the country, God knows what harm that damn bottle would have done before help could have arrived,” Charleston said.

“Fair point, Lieutenant,” I said. I wondered which of my old classmates or teachers was in the building. It didn’t really matter; I didn’t want to see any of them. “I’m surprised the College sent someone this quickly. Going through channels usually takes days.”

“They already knew about the unusual angel activity in the city.” Charleston had said it that way on purpose, because he wasn’t going to talk in more detail about the angel at the first crime scene today than was needed for my medical care in front of outsiders. It was an ongoing case.

“Who told them that anyway?” MacGregor asked.

“The angels did,” I said, without thinking about it.

“They went and tattled on themselves?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Some Angel Speakers become Angeli Auditor, Listeners. They might not know all the details, but they’ll know it was unusual and they’ll flag it.”

I could still see that room with its couches and cushions where the Listeners lounged and spent the rest of their lives listening to the singing of angels with human scribes taking notes. It was supposed to be an honor to be offered a place there. Only the purest of angelic channels could even do it. At thirteen I’d been offered a tour, because they thought I might be able to become an Angelus Auditor, a listener to angels. I’d had nightmares for weeks after being shown inside that room. Nightmares of being fed through tubes because I’d been consumed by the music of the spheres. One of my classmates, Ambriel, had taken the honor. If she hadn’t been driven completely insane, or died, she’d still be there reporting the Celestial news and being cared for like a coma patient. Between twelve and fourteen they divided the Angel Speaker candidates up into specialty studies. A few narrowed down to one specialty and that was that for them, but the rest of us had two to three possibilities for a few more years. I’d begun studies with the higher order of angels and would have eventually become an Angelus Lucis—it translated to angel of light, but that could only refer to true angels, so we were just referred to as Lights—if I wasn’t consumed mentally or physically by the progressively higher energy levels of the angels I was exposed to. At thirteen I hadn’t even been afraid of the possibility, just honored to be singled out. I’d also been sent to train with Master Donel and the Sentinels—Angeli Extium, Angels of Destruction. There were rumors that to truly join their ranks you had to fight an angel and win like Jacob in the Old Testament. At fifteen I’d believed the rumor; by nineteen I didn’t. It had been the training with Master Donel that had helped me shine during some of Basic and not die in my first battle. Ambriel had trained as a Listener at thirteen, and at fifteen she went into the room of Angeli Auditor and never came out again.

“You all right, big guy? You look pale,” MacGregor said.

“Sit back down before you fall down,” Becki said.

“I’m okay, just . . . worried about my friend.”

“Sure, you are,” she said, and the cynicism was as thick as her sarcasm had been earlier.

I looked down at her, way down; she had to be barely five feet tall. I felt even taller than I was and awkward around her, like I was fifteen again and not used to my size. “I am worried about Ravensong.”

“You better be worried about yourself,” she said.

“Once they’ve seen Ravensong they want to see you, too,” Charleston said.

“How do you know they’ll want to see me?”

“Because they said so on the phone when they agreed to send someone out. They wanted to see all the police involved in the incident.”

“Did they ask for the names of the officers involved?” I asked.

“They did.”

I wanted to ask if they’d agreed to send someone out once they heard my name, but I didn’t want to say that in front of anyone but Charleston, not even MacGregor, let alone two paramedics I’d just met. Was it arrogant of me to think they’d sent someone because I was involved? The anxiety that made my pulse and heart rate speed up didn’t feel arrogant. If I hadn’t been all grown-up and not a kid, I’d have said I was afraid.

“I need to go check on Ravensong and the specialist,” Charleston said. “Maybe you should go to the bunk room and lie down until they want to see you.”

What I wanted to do was go home; even my tiny apartment seemed like a good idea. I wanted to run away, the way I had when I left the City of Angels and joined the army, but I couldn’t leave Ravensong to them. God knew what they might decide for the betterment of humankind, or to support the latest treaty between Heaven and Hell. I couldn’t leave her with no one here who understood that the betterment of humankind wasn’t always better for the single person involved.

“I’m fine, sir.”

He looked at me like he didn’t believe me, but he let it go. The paramedics didn’t believe me either, but Becki finally started working on her partner’s nose. When he took the dressing off, I knew I owed him more than just one drink; maybe a case of his favorite liquor would say I’m sorry I broke your nose.