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My phone was screeching at me from the end table. Which was weird, because I’d turned on do not disturb. I fumbled for it, got it picked up and saw it was Mom, which explained why the call had come through. I answered it on the third or fourth ring.
“Soleil,” my mom was breathing hard.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly awake.
“Your dad is on the way to the hospital!”
“Oh no, did something happen with Helia?” I grabbed at my jeans on the end table.
“No, no, she’s fine. We came home a few minutes ago, I walked in the house and nothing seemed amiss, but your dad walked in and started having breathing problems, his skin started to peel off, and he stumbled outside and told me to call you, an ambulance, and his brothers.”
“Mom, Mom what’s wrong!” I shouted at the phone and all three kids in my care were coming into the room, concern on their faces.
“Brimstone, Soleil, our house has been contaminated with brimstone.”
“We’re coming to get you,” I told her.
“No, no, Gabriel is here with me. He’s landing now. We’re coming to you. Michael and Remiel are headed to the hospital.”
“Asha,” Ariel said, quietly, touching my arm.
“It’s okay, Grammy is coming here to be with you,” I told her. “Grampy is fine too, just sick.”
“Grampy doesn’t get sick,” Aurora said, her voice small. Jerome said nothing. He sat down on the pullout bed and looked at me. I nodded, but I wasn’t sure why I was nodding. Probably something I was thinking in my head. Then I had another thought.
“Mom, make sure the cops do a walkthrough of the house. If he planted brimstone in it, he might still be there,” I rushed to say. My uncle’s voice came on the line.
“Soleil, it will be taken care of.” I nodded at that and Jerome gave me a strange look. I hung up.
“Grammy is coming here. Grampy is going to the hospital. Michael is meeting him there. Somehow, something Grampy is allergic to got in the house. He’s sick, but he’ll be okay.”
“I’ll get Duke,” Jerome said, standing up and walking toward the door of our room. For some reason, that made me cry. “There’s a guy with a gun outside the room,” Jerome whispered. I turned to look at him and he was looking through the peephole. I jumped from the bed.
“Take the girls, lock yourselves together in the bedroom!” I told Jerome as I ran to the door. “Jerome, be ready just in case.” Jerome nodded, picked up Aurora and carried her while pulling Ariel by the hand to my bedroom. I gathered magic, unsure what I would do if the guy on the other side was here to maim us or kill us. I wasn’t positive the girls were mostly immortal. They were about three-fourths human and eventually immortality became too watered down to hold up. Plus, they were young; younger beings were more likely to die than older ones, because their magic was strong but not well enough controlled to be focused on healing things like bullets to the brain.
I looked through the peephole, expecting the barrel of the gun to be in the way of me seeing the person on the other side of it. Sometimes I have a vivid imagination. I texted Duke, Walter, and Tabitha. Then I pulled the door open and made eye contact with the guy on the other side, the one holding a gun. He had triple irises and he smiled at me.
“Miss Burns, we got a call to provide your suite with protection. My name is Kabal and I work for the hotel. We’ve been informed of the attack on your father; you have my deepest sympathies. Is there anything I can do for you? We have a second guard in the elevator.”
“Let me call the front desk,” I said as I heard Duke’s door open. Duke came out with his gun drawn. Kabal put his gun on the floor and kicked it toward Duke. Walter’s door opened next and he came up behind Kabal and patted him down. He took his wallet and began looking through it. Duke told me to go call the front desk, who confirmed Kabal was one of their security guards and they’d sent him up. He pronounced his name like Cable, but his tag spelling was definitely more along the lines of a secret group of dissidents.
I apologized and told the kids they could come out. Ariel came to the door and looked at Kabal.
“I know you,” the eight-year-old said.
“How are you, Miss Ariel? Are you having fun here?”
“No,” she said. “Well, I was, but then my grandpa got sick, now I’m worried about him.”
“Ariel, how do you know him?” I asked.
“He’s my friend’s uncle,” she told me. “She’s half angel and half fairy. But she goes to angel school. Kabal is her uncle on her mom’s side. He’s an elf, if I remember right. Sometimes he comes to the school when we have big events.”
“Elf and weretiger,” Kabal said. “I served as a Marine for a few years, and when I came home the only thing, I was good at was protecting people. Sometimes when the kids have events at their school, I help with security and I get to see my niece.”
“You work for the hotel and her school?” I asked suspiciously.
“No, I work for Supernatural Protectors Limited as a security guard. They contract with this hotel for security, and I volunteer at the schools. Is your sister all right? I heard she was in the hospital too. Was she also attacked with brimstone?” he asked.
“No, her wings sprouted,” I said. Remiel cut one loose in my office this afternoon, and they did surgery tonight to release the other one.”
“Is she going to be okay?” he asked, looking down at Ariel and Aurora.
“Yes, she’ll be fine. They wanted to do evening surgery and keep her overnight just for observation,” I said.
“One of her wings had an infection,” Aurora offered. “Ariel has wings too, but they haven’t come out. She is having surgery next week to release them. I wish I had wings.” I invited Kabal in and had him give our room a once-over. Then I asked him to do the same to the Marshals’ rooms, because that was where we were most vulnerable. Kabal did all this without complaint or question. But he kept asking questions about Helia. I’m a bit dense at times and it took me 20 minutes to realize Kabal was interested in my sister. The three kids, even Aurora, had it figured out way before I did.
I decided in that 20-minute search that I liked him. He was attractive, seemed to like the girls, and seemed nice enough. Helia could do worse and had at least a few times. The only thing I could say for her soon-to-be-ex was that he’d given the world the girls.
Mom arrived an hour after Kabal and the phone call. She was escorted to my room by Gabriel and two more security guards with more-common names; George and Victor. It turned out that Kabal also knew my mom from school events. They chatted like old friends for a while and then she took the girls back to bed. Jerome joined them. I could tell the kid was worried about my dad. I was too, so I understood. Gabriel told me he’d stay with them. Walter said he would too. The two men set up at the table with a deck of cards. The security guards went back to guarding the door, hallway, and elevator. Duke and I went to the hospital.
Raphael had a room next to Helia. Michael stood at the end of his bed, not doing anything. Raphael looked terrible. Some of his feathers had blackened and started to shrivel. Some of the skin around his nose and lips was peeling off. His eyes looked white, like they were covered by cataracts. His voice was raspy.
I’d had time to think. My parents’ house had been emptying all evening and into the night. Easy to break in and plant brimstone. Angel the dog was in the hospital room with dad. Her skin had turned white. She had blood on her lips and her eyes looked like Dad’s; covered in a white film.
“She won’t leave him,” Remiel said. “The blood isn’t hers. We’ve sent it for testing. A vet came in and looked at her as best she’d let him. Her skin is white because it’s been burned. Your hellhound has the same reaction to brimstone as an angel.”
“Jerome made her,” I said by way of explanation.
“With some of your magic, some of his magic, and some of the Stygian,” Michael said. “I can’t heal her any more than I can your dad. They’ll have to do it themselves. We’re moving Valerie’s ceremony to next week, after everyone is out of the hospital.”
“Are they rushing the blood analysis?” Duke asked.
“Yes,” my father answered. “But the vet thinks whoever did it lost a huge chunk of skin and meat to Angel. He said all we really needed to do was check suspects for a severe dog bite.”
I knelt down and patted Angel’s head softly. “Good girl, Angel,” I whispered to her and she gave my hand a lick.
“Good job, Angel, I’m buying you the biggest doggy treat I can find,” Duke said, also gently patting Angel as she lay on the floor.
“Is she allowed to stay?” I asked anyone.
“They aren’t happy about it, but yes, they’ve agreed to let her stay. The vet gave her a shot to help with her pain, but she growls and barks when someone tries to get her away from Raphael. Including me.” Remiel answered.
“Realistically, it would be a publicity nightmare if they kicked out an angelic hellhound that had been injured while attacking a serial killer,” Uriel said, and I hadn’t even realized he was here. He was hidden in the corner of the room, behind the curtain that could be pulled around the bed to give Dad privacy, which was weird, because he was the only patient in the room. “I have told them I will make sure the world knows it if they kick her out. She doesn’t have any fur, so it’s not like she’s going to shed everywhere. She won’t leave Raphael, so she isn’t going to be roaming around making mischief.”
“Your dog can use a human toilet,” Michael said.
“I know,” I said. “Jerome taught her, that way on days when Valerie was too sick to let her out, it wasn’t an issue.”
“She even flushes.” Michael had a touch of wonder in his voice.
“She’s smarter than the average dog,” I commented.
“And bigger,” Uriel said, standing. “You have a suspect?”
“Yes,” Remiel answered.
“I think we should go check him for a dog bite,” Uriel said. Duke nodded. I walked over and gave my father a kiss on his forehead. He opened his eyes and took hold of my arm.
“Be careful, Soleil.”
“Dad, I can raise a demon army with a thought. I’m learning to use my other powers. It’s him that should be careful, he messed with the wrong archangel.” My dad gave me a thin smile. I’d been mad about the attacks on Bill and Camilla, as well as Martha and her family. Now, I was fucking furious! Duke drove, Remiel gave directions. I sat up front, Uriel sat in the back. Michael had stayed behind with Dad.
Uriel gave us all the information he’d dug up on Jesse Young. He was not a registered witch, but his sister and father were. It was four in the morning when Duke parked outside Jesse’s house. We saw an unmarked car sitting a few houses down. Remiel got out and walked over to it. There were two cops in it. I didn’t know either of them.
“He hasn’t moved since we got here,” I heard one say.
“Are you sure he’s there?” Remiel asked.
“Yeah,” the other detective said.
“Good, stay here. I want to talk to him first.”
“Remiel, we can watch him, but we can’t let you kick in his front door until we get the blood back and prove it’s his,” the detective said.
“I have no intention of kicking his door down, I just want to talk to him and check him for a dog bite.”
One of the cops got out and came with us. I wondered if we looked like a goon squad. Three beings with wings, Duke, and another human stalking through the dark toward someone’s house. If people were awake to see it, it might have been scary.
Remiel knocked loud, nearly beating on the door with his fist. It was early enough in the morning that Jesse Young had no doubt been asleep. He came to the door in his boxers. There was a large dog bite on his calf. It had a bandage on it, but it had still been bleeding and the bandage didn’t cover the entire thing.
“You should definitely have gone and gotten that cleaned at a clinic, Angel isn’t exactly of this world, who knows what’s in her saliva.”
“Excuse me, who are you?” He blinked at us.
“My name is Remiel,” my uncle said. “This is my niece, Soleil Burns, owner of Angel the hellhound and daughter of Raphael the Archangel. The other one with wings is Uriel. The guy with the baseball cap is a U.S. Marshal. The other guy is a detective with St. Louis Country Sheriff’s Department.”
“Why are you knocking on my door at this time of the morning?” Young asked.
“We wanted to see the dog bite. Angel’s never bitten anyone, and given her size, we weren’t sure whether you still had your leg,” I told him. He did still have his leg, but I didn’t know how much of his calf muscle he had left. Judging by the bandage, it wasn’t much.
“Get the fuck out of here!” he sneered.
“Or what, you’ll call the police?” I asked as Remiel pushed into the little house. Jesse Young was wide awake, and the gravity of the situation was starting to set in. We had two official police officers with us, and he didn’t know what we knew beyond the fact that Angel had bitten the shit out of him. I didn’t have to read minds to know what he was thinking.
“You can question me properly at the station, when my union rep and lawyer are present. Until then, get out!” I stepped back from him and the detective stepped forward, grabbed his arm, and cuffed him.
“You should still take him to a doctor, I was serious about not knowing what kind of saliva Angel has.” I told them as they read him his rights. It wouldn’t do to have him die of an infection, and for all I knew, Angel had the same bacteria make-up in her saliva as Komodo dragons.