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Despite its proximity to St. Louis, Red Bud was a small town. I was looking at a map of it on my phone trying to decide where the commune might be located. I’d called Helia. As head of the angel council, if there’s a commune where angels or part angels live and they’ve been accused of a crime, Helia can gather an action team to take the accused into custody. No one could remember the last time a council, any council, gathered an action team to take one of their own into custody, which meant it had been a really long time.
With Magda’s supervision, I opened a portal to my house, where the other half of the car still sat in my driveway. I gathered Angel and Helia, and surprisingly, several of my archangel kin. Raphael, Remiel, Gabriel, Haniel, and Samael had gathered at my house to form the action team. Magda was also with us, since I couldn’t be trusted to open portals in an emergency. The car incident had already become a joke, the first thing Raphael said when he arrived was next time I cut a car in half I needed to make sure it didn’t belong to a little old lady who was lonely, because he liked to have never gotten away from her. He had taken note of her children’s names, and he intended to contact them to find out why they didn’t spend more time with their mother. So, my fuck-up might turn into my dad’s good deed; I felt that was probably a win. I still had full bottle of antivenom, which seemed like a good precaution considering we knew they had venom and had already used it as a weapon. Haniel offered to fly reconnaissance over Red Bud for us, and we all readily agreed. Maybe he would be able to see where the commune was, so we didn’t have to search the entire town. Our hope was that since winged angels often flew to their destinations, it wouldn’t strike the group as suspicious.
“When Francesca was arrested, she mentioned a group with more power than BEDR and more determination that we couldn’t stop,” Magda said. “I thought it was Balthazar Leopold’s science experiment group, but maybe I was wrong, and this was what she was talking about.”
“Why would a group of angels want demons to come back to Earth?” I asked, and then I had a thought that answered my own question. “Holy fuck.”
“What?” Raphael asked.
“If I tell you, you’ll yell at me,” I responded. Uriel believed angels were divine, he was the only person on the planet that believed this as far as I knew. But he may have instilled that thought in his daughter Francesca that if demons came back to Earth and angels protected the human race from them, then maybe others would begin to believe angels were divine as well. Angels would be superior to others, because we’d be the saviors of Earth. There were a few holes in the theory, like angels had already saved the Earth from demons with the creation of the Stygian. But that was beyond ancient history, and most people these days didn’t even know demons were the souls of deceased supernaturals, so they had also of course forgotten angels built the Stygian.
The other issue was Uriel—was he involved? Had he been the first, did he start looking for converts among the members of BEDR perhaps? Was my uncle a cult leader in other words, shit. That would explain how Francesca had gotten involved. She’d refused to name any of her conspirators, was she protecting her father?
“Magda, whatever they want out of the vault has to do with demons or the Stygian if it’s this offshoot of BEDR,” I said, as I remembered Miss Wu and Tameka foreseeing the return of a nemesis, but a dark shape kept them from seeing who. Well, BEDR might qualify as a nemesis, and they were very pro-demon. Although not as pro-demon as this group seemed to be. Huh. That was interesting.
“Raphael, could you go talk to the president of BEDR and see if he knows anything? I can’t do it; we have mutual restraining orders in effect,” I requested.
“Sure,” Dad responded.
“Remind me when this ends to ask you about that,” Magda said, looking at Raphael. I blinked at her.
“Ask about what?” I asked.
“Sometimes you call him Dad and sometimes Raphael. Also, sometimes you refer to him as your dad or your father or just Raphael. I find it a little weird,” Magda said. I blinked at her.
“His name is Raphael,” I said.
“After all this,” Magda said, waving her hand at me. I shrugged, still not sure what she was talking about. Helia was grinning. I gave her a glare and she smiled wider. But she wasn’t working her magic, so that was something. “I’ll get Miguel going through the inventory of the vault,” Magda said.
“Okay, but have him do it on the down low,” Helia said. I glared at her more. Helia could get away with saying things like on the down low, but when I said it, I was sure I sounded stupid, and I definitely felt that way.
“Absolutely,” Magda replied, and dug out her cell phone.
“If there are non-angels in the group, we’ll have to leave them,” Helia said. “Can you handle that? They could get word out that we’re onto them.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think possession is their primary weapon, and, well, I’m me. If worse comes to worst, I have some experience with wendigos. Oh, shit, so does Kabal, and he’s part angel. Should we add him to our action team?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at my sister. Kabal asked my sister to marry him, and she turned him down, because she’d just gotten out of a terrible marriage. They were still dating, but I’d noticed they weren’t going out as often; perhaps it wasn’t exclusive anymore. I’d tried to talk to Helia about it and she would only say that she’d hurt his feelings by telling him no, and I hadn’t had the guts to call him and talk about it. However, I really wanted to because Helia was happier around Kabal than I’d seen her in many years, and her daughters adored the giant.
“Kabal would help,” Helia said. He was also an AESPCA agent. I nodded and pursed my lips. I frowned at Helia, who was studiously ignoring me.
“Fine.” I grabbed my sister’s phone. I knew the pin number and entered it, and then I found Kabal’s number and dialed.
“Helia is everything okay?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“It’s actually Soleil, and things are not okay. Helia is fine, but she’s had to call together an angel action team to try to capture the angel that shot Penelope. We know he’s using possession as a weapon, which I can deal with on my own, but there’s a rumor he has the ability to cause possession via wendigo, and I wouldn’t mind someone else who had a little experience with wendigos along,” I said.
“Oh man, yeah. No problem, where should I meet you?” Kabal asked.
“My house,” I responded. “Wait, actually, I’m going to send Magda to get you via portal, where are you?” He gave me the address and I passed it along to Magda. She took a breath, nodded and opened a portal. Kabal stepped through and she closed it. Magda could do the coolest shit. Remiel gave a snort, and I realized he’d just seen my thought and the thought that followed it of the car. I ignored him. Raphael had already flown away.
“You just tell me what you need me to do,” Kabal said, looking from Magda to me. “Okay, so who is in charge?” Oh, that was a good question. Technically, it couldn’t be Magda Red, she had no angel in her. Going on technicalities, Helia was the council head, so she should be in charge. However, the thought of my sister being in danger from a demon, wendigo, or basilisk envenomation made me want to puke. I looked between Remiel and Gabriel; both took steps back from the group.
“I vote Soleil in charge, of course. She has battle experience in both realms, and she did just milk a basilisk, something I don’t believe any of us can claim we’ve done,” Samael said, and I blinked at him. “Word travels fast in the family.” He shrugged.
“I second that,” Helia said. “Soleil should be in charge.” I waited for her to add something about it being my crusade or suicide mission, but she didn’t. She just smiled at me.
“I’m not family and I’m not council, so I don’t know if I get a vote, but I have fought alongside Soleil before against a wendigo, and I agree she should lead,” Kabal said.
“I’m also neither, but I think Soleil is the obvious choice,” Magda added.
“You’re both nearly family, like I used to be,” Jerome said. “So, I think your votes count.” Both opened their mouths as if to protest and Jerome held up a hand. “Yes, I have some of their DNA, but family isn’t just about DNA. It’s about who stands beside you when shit gets real.”
“That was quite moving,” I told Jerome in a serious tone. “I intended to leave you home with my mom, but maybe I should take you along as a flag bearer and bugler, so you can rally us if need be.”
“I intend to be in charge of Angel. If you think you’re going to make me stay home when there is the possibility you will be facing wendigos, you don’t know me as well as I thought,” Jerome said. Leviathan’s comments about sending the hellhound to us to ensure Jerome’s safety came back to me. Sometimes Leviathan spoke in generalities, while also talking about specifics.
“Okay, here’s the deal, you stick to the side of that hellhound like you’ve been surgically conjoined. Do. You. Understand?” I asked.
“Yes, I heard what he said, too,” Jerome said in a much quieter voice. I nodded. As much as I hated to admit, the magic the sixteen-year-old had would probably be both useful and necessary. Kabal was a great fighter, but he wasn’t particularly magical. And a lot of his magic was actually defensive, which I guess made sense when I really thought about it. He was part fairy as well as angel. His fey part was a bloodline of battle fey.
“Now we have to wait on Haniel and Raphael,” I said, tapping my foot. I’m not a huge fan of waiting on anything and waiting on two things is torture. I was ready to go and get it over with. About ten minutes after my pronouncement that we were stuck waiting, Raphael returned with the current president of BEDR. Zack Galinda was in his pajamas and looked like my dad might have roused him from bed and demanded they fly back here.
“Uh, I can’t be here,” Zack protested, looking at me as Dad landed, setting him on his feet in front of me. “We can’t be within fifty yards of each other.”
“Yes, but something important has come up that means we need to just forget our differences for a while. BEDR has an offshoot that is more radical, correct?”
“Uh,” Zack said. “I don’t think I would refer to either group as radical.”
“The wording right now is a matter of semantics. Do you know who is heading the group?” I asked.
“Not really,” Zack said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Look, I think they are about to steal an item to allow demons on Earth without hosts. If that’s the case, a lot of people are going to die before we get the demons under control. That violates everything BEDR has worked for, so it’s a problem for your group as well as everyone else,” I said. Zack stared at me for several moments and then nodded twice, slowly. BEDR believed demons who have a host should have rights and that possession was a beautiful thing that was mutually beneficial to the demon as well as the possessed. They also felt that possession should be consensual, comparing non-consensual possession to rape. On that we agreed. The rest of it not so much. Possession was not beautiful or mutually beneficial, and demons did not deserve a right to occupy their host, even if consensual. If we needed court orders to perform exorcisms, there’d be some souls lost due to the red tape. “So, anything you know would be helpful. We are on the same side right now and if these crackpots manage to achieve their goal, it will hurt BEDR’s reputation.”
“It was being headed by Francesca Urielita, but after she was arrested, a man took over as head. He’s really weird, though. No one knows what he actually looks like outside his group, because he has something that allows him to change his face.”
“Oh shit, he’s found the power of the bodark,” Magda said. I had never heard of a bodark, so I stared at her blankly.
“Bodarks were a type of sorcerer eons ago. They found a way to alter the bones in their face, so they don’t need potions or masks to alter their appearance, they just rearrange the bones. Some of the best bodarks could do it to the bones of their bodies too, allowing them to become taller or shorter. It’s considered dark magic, and everything associated with it is in the AESPCA archives,” Raphael said.
“Perhaps we should have better screening procedures for allowing access to the AESPCA archives,” I quipped.
“That’s been done,” Remiel said. “Unfortunately, when it is done people as a group begin forgetting things. Like we didn’t realize they stopped teaching that demons were the reincarnation of supernatural souls after death, until we realized you didn’t know. That level of forgetting even dark magic is bad.”
“Okay, then perhaps we need to screen prospective AESPCA agents better or put some of Raphael’s magic into the spells at the door, so people with bad intentions set off alarms,” I suggested. “Like you do with the possessed.”
“That is a good idea, actually,” Magda said. “Although I’m not sure how to do it.”
“That seems like a Penelope and Raphael conversation once we’ve gotten this mess cleaned up,” I said.
“So, are you done with me?” Zack asked.
“No. Do you know his name?” I asked.
“All I know is he’s part angel,” Zack said. “He wasn’t ever a member of BEDR. I’ve only met him once, when one of their members who used to belong to BEDR came to me to see about combining groups. But like you said, BEDR’s goals and their goals were incompatible, and I passed on the offer. Also, I don’t think you’re wrong, they are crackpots.” I smiled at him. In truth, I considered Zack and all members of BEDR to be crackpots, just not as threatening as this other group. “Some of our members did leave to join them, but they were actively recruiting members who had angel blood.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Between you and me, Zack, I think they want to unleash demons on Earth, so that angels can save the world from demons, and be worshipped as though we were demi-gods or something.”
“Since we’re doing the quid pro quo thing, I will tell you Francesca ranted a few times that her uncles had saved people from demons and didn’t get the credit they deserved for it. Instead, people feared them, instead of worshipping them as they should have. And the other archangels were treated just like ordinary people, but they weren’t, they were far superior, just look at all her dad and uncles could do. She didn’t leave BEDR voluntarily, she was forced out by the other members who got tired of listening to her talk about how great her family was,” he said, and then he blushed and looked around quickly.
“Well, I wouldn’t say our family isn’t great, but I can definitely agree it would get annoying to hear more than once,” Raphael said with a smile.
“So, why did she join BEDR?” I asked.
“I was never able to figure it out,” Zack said. “None of us knew, and then when she was asked to leave, she took most of the members with even a little angel in them with her and formed her own group.”
“Thank you,” I said, offering to shake hands. “I think we can return you to your apartment via portal if you want.”
“I know we have our differences, but I don’t want to see demons running around unconstrained,” Zack said, and I realized he was not currently possessed. He had been at each of our other meetings.
“Zack, where’s your normal demon companion?” I asked.
“There’s been a glitch with possessions lately. We are getting demons we didn’t summon coming through. Most of the members are stuck in the hospital unable to exorcize their demons, who all seem to belong to Belial,” Zack told me. “I was one of the lucky ones.”
“I know BEDR is very tight-lipped about how it performs its possessions, but I think I need to know,” I said. “Especially if something has gone wrong.”
“We use a mix of potions created by one of our members, it is a combination lust potion and summoning potion to ensure we get a specific type of demon,” Zack said.
“Huh, is your potion maker reliable?” I asked.
“Since summoning potions are regulated by the AESPCA, yes. We have to buy them from the AESPCA, and because of who we are, the AESPCA makes special batches for our use,” Zack said. “We’ve been trying to get a meeting with the head of their potion-making department but without any luck. We think they must have changed our usual potion-maker and this new one isn’t as good at lust potions.”
“I will personally look into it,” Magda Red told him, and he smiled weakly.
“Soleil don’t tell anyone I told you,” Zack said. “I can see myself losing my position over it.”
“Our lips are sealed,” I told him. Magda took another moment and then opened a portal into Zack’s apartment. He immediately stepped through; probably glad he hadn’t been seen with us.
“Do you believe him?” Samael asked.
“Yes. Isn’t Penelope head of the potion-making department as well as in charge of something to do with the magic security?” I asked Magda.
“Not exactly. Penelope is in charge of potions made for the AESPCA. She has some oversight for the potions for commercial sale, but it’s only oversight.”
“Meaning the person in charge of making potions for commercial resale answers to her,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Someone should definitely go speak with them,” I said. Damn. Zack had already left, and the portal closed. I should have asked if his fellow BEDRs were being held in the St. C. County Hospital possession ward. There was a flap of wings above me, and Haniel landed.
“I think I found them,” he said with a pant, and then collapsed on the ground near my feet. Jerome got to work immediately and found the bullet hole in Haniel’s wing. It had struck a wing spine, damaging it. I looked around for the jug of antivenom I’d been carrying for what felt like days and found it sitting in the grass, against the wall beside my garage. I didn’t remember putting it down there, exactly, but I also wasn’t surprised to find it there. I grabbed it and immediately pulled out the stopper. For the third time in four hours, I let a drop of the antivenom fall from it onto someone who was injured. Wings require a great deal of blood circulation, and because of this when one is damaged, they bleed profusely, and it takes a while for the blood to circulate out of them and into the rest of the body. I felt this might slow the antivenom process, and if he was collapsing the venom was obviously already circulating in his body, probably because he had been flying. I decided to drop a little on the skin of his face to ensure the antivenom was circulated throughout his entire system fast enough to prevent major damage.
After a few minutes, he sat up. He blinked and looked around a few times. Then he lay back down on the grass and stared up for several minutes.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to make it back,” Haniel said after a few more minutes. “I don’t know what they did to that bullet but man. I feel terrible.”
“They dipped them in basilisk venom,” I said. “Hence why I went and milked a basilisk today. So, you’re going home to rest after you tell us where you think they are.”
“Yes, and don’t protest. I’ll have Sophia bring you some of her healing chicken noodle soup to help you feel more like yourself faster. She was already making a batch to give some to Michael,” Raphael said.
“She’s a good woman.” I heard a touch of sadness in Haniel’s voice as he said this. I looked at him and then at my father, a bit askance. I added it to my ever-growing list of things to ask about when I had the time and guts. “There’s a cluster of small slab houses set up in a circle around a barn. It’s about three miles southeast of Red Bud,” Haniel told us. I admitted that was an odd configuration for houses. “That’s where I was when I was shot. A few of the people I saw had wings; I’m guessing seraphim by the look of it from my position above. None of them flew off after me, though, as I expected.”
The seraphim suffer a strange condition. They have wings, and they can be large, but sometimes they fail to be large enough to carry the person in flight. The reason my father and his brother’s wings were so incredibly huge were because the larger wings were needed to create lift, especially if they were carrying something. Seraphim wings averaged six feet from tip to attachment, but that wasn’t always wide enough to lift them off the ground. This was the difference between flight and gliding; once in the air, wings that were twelve feet wide tip to tip allowed them to stay aloft but getting off the ground was a problem. A lot of times they needed help by jumping off tall structures such as water towers. In comparison, just one of my father’s wings was fourteen feet from tip to attachment. Before Belial tried to eat me, mine had come in at a whopping ten feet long each. For someone who was just over five and a half feet tall and 145 pounds, I had been able to get lift. A seraph could have glided from one tall structure to another and then jumped off the water tower to make their escape, which would explain why the police didn’t find the lock on the stairs had been tampered with.
Using satellite maps on our phones, Magda and I identified the place Haniel had been shot. Now for the great debate, did we open a portal directly onto the property, which I was referring to as a farm, or did we open the portal a little way away and walk to it? Since they had shot Haniel, we’d probably lost the element of surprise. If the universe had been conspiring in our favor, there would have either been a new moon tonight or it would have been cloudy, sadly it was neither, so yeah, it was unlikely they would be surprised by our arrival regardless of what we chose. That made me think we should portal in behind one of the houses and just go to it. Raphael was in favor of a stealthier approach from a short distance.
“Well, while you were gone, we voted and it was pretty unanimous that Soleil was in charge,” Helia told Raphael. “If you’d been here, would you have voted for a different group leader? Probably not. So, we do what the person in charge wants to do.”
“We do. I can’t look after Jerome and you,” I said. “So, you get to stay here until we have everyone in handcuffs or magical shackles or something and then Magda will open a portal and you can join us.” I told my sister, taking her hand.
“Yeah. No.” Helia shook her head. “I’m fine with staying toward the back and doing what you tell me, but I’m the head of the council and it’s not legal if I’m not there,” my sister told me, squeezing my hand.
“No.” I said sternly.
“Yes.” She was just as determined. “This is non-negotiable. I have to be there to make it all legal and whatnot. If you bulldoze in there without me, even if you get the right person, we can’t prosecute unless I go with you.”
“Seriously?” I asked the other angels around me.
“She’s correct,” Raphael said frowning, and I knew it was true just looking at our father’s face. Two of his daughters would have to be in danger to pull this off.
“Okay, here’s the deal. I want Jerome stuck to one side of Angel and you stuck to the other side. Do you understand? You do not take a single step unless Angel does. The added benefit is that as a hellhound she absorbs most magic that comes toward her. If you’re standing next to her, it won’t affect you, either.” I really wanted to take a few more minutes to jump across the divide and grab a couple of demons and their armor and come back and put it on Helia and Jerome and maybe my dad and maybe my uncles. I wasn’t sure what demon armor did, but I was positive it was good stuff. However, I knew I couldn’t do that. For starters, I expected the demons to protest and then I’d need them to do the attaching and it would take a while and yeah... just not feasible. But the urge was still strong.