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UNABLE TO THINK straight after she left Rainer, Zan drove up into Bucks County, up through the falling dark and into the trees. When it began to rain she turned back toward the city. The glistening lights of the suburbs shone through the wet glass, the rain falling away to the sides like tears from a face crying in the wind.
How can I want to punish him and soothe him at the same time? I feel separated from myself.
When Zan got home she sat in the car, listening to the thrumming of the rain on the roof. She imagined the car was a cocoon where she could stay, mindless for a century. When she burst out to face the world again she would have forgotten everything about what she used to be. She would have forgotten Rainer’s thickness lifting her up like he had the power to suspend gravity, the power to unlock her and make her as vast as the sky.
How could you do this to me?
After Zan left, Barakiel sat in his chair and stared at the river. He didn’t move, not even when the fat clouds finally unleashed their storm. No thoughts came to him. When Pellus returned in the morning, the warrior was still sitting there.
“Barakiel, what are you doing?” Pellus asked.
“Hmmm?”
“You are sitting in the rain.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“I do not know. I was here. It started to rain.”
“What is the matter with you? You have a strange look on your face.”
“The sky is crying with me,” he said, tilting his face up. “I want to stay here.”
“What is the matter with you?”
“Zan was here. She got some things. She would not let me touch her. She will not forgive me.”
Pellus sat in the chair beside Barakiel. After a time the sun broke through and they went into the house. Barakiel retreated to his bedroom but emerged a short time later to join the adept, who was at the computer.
I am lost, Pellus. Tell me what I should do.
He needn’t have worried. Pellus turned to him and delivered a stream of information. He told him that he would enlist the services of Roan, his former apprentice traveler, in the hunt for the traitor who had helped the false monks’ followers. As for the followers themselves, Pellus said he would trail the man who had rented the truck. No need for Barakiel to come along, he said. Barakiel should stay home and get some sleep. Pellus also said he was able to stay for a few days. He had told Ravellen, the Council president, that they needed to meet with money managers in New York. They could handle that in a conference call the next morning and use the rest of the time to pursue the followers. Barakiel wanted to hug him, but he yawned instead.
You are taking care of me.
“Thank you, Pellus. I will sleep for a little while, I think.”
The still, even light in his bedroom told Barakiel it was nearly noon when he awoke. He went downstairs, relieved that Pellus was not there. He prepared his coffee and sat at the kitchen table waiting for it to brew, thinking about Zan.
Perhaps I can ease her confusion and fear.
When his coffee was finished he took a mug and went to the mezzanine. He pushed aside a bookshelf to reveal another shelf hidden behind it from which he removed a coppery-gold device that held the scholarly works of the Covalent Realm. In times past, he had read these works to feel closer to home. That impulse had faded, but he was glad he had them.
Barakiel went to his computer. He placed the Covalent device beside the keyboard and called up a history of his Realm. He would translate excerpts for Zan into English and bring them to her.
It will help her understand. Maybe she will understand.
She had told him to stay away from her, but he hoped she would take the pages. He smiled to himself, remembering the day they had gone up on the roof for the first time to examine the solar array that helped power his dwelling. Zan had asked a hundred questions, fascinated by the technology. He had diligently explained how it all worked. She would not rest until her intellectual curiosity was satisfied.
I love that about you, Zan. I cannot lose you.
The translation would take time. Barakiel perused the contents, considering which excerpts would demystify the Covalent but not overwhelm her. He chose stories about the creation of the Turning, the appearance of the myriad dimensions, and the discovery of the Earthly Realm. He selected basic overviews of the civil wars and the emergence of the Council, and a brief version of the story of Lucifer’s rebellion. Much had been written about it, volume upon volume.
The warrior fell into a daydream of Zan reading an entire work on the subject, asking him questions on a Sunday morning as they sat in the sunlight drinking their coffee.
He forced himself to return to his task. He hoped he could finish by the next day. He would leave it to Pellus to observe the man who had rented the truck. He needed time alone. Pellus would certainly object to providing Zan with information about their Realm, even this simple overview, but Barakiel could not make himself care about the paranoia of the Covalent.
Best if you do not know, my friend.
After spending almost the entire previous day trailing the man who rented the truck to transport the demons, Pellus had gotten nowhere. The man had wandered about doing totally unremarkable things. Now Pellus was back at the man’s apartment, fervently wishing he would not have to once again watch him buy groceries and have idiotic conversations with people on the street. The man was not home when Pellus arrived, so he concealed himself and waited. He thought about his heartbroken warrior, who had begged off coming along for the surveillance work.
Will he be distracted in battle?
Pellus was relieved to be pulled from his gloom by the man’s return. The man went to the closet in the bedroom and took a small address book from a shoebox crammed into the corner. He went down to his car and drove to several addresses as Pellus trotted behind, an easy matter for a Covalent. At each address, the man picked up a manila envelope bound with tape. He then went to a branch of a private mail service and retrieved a small package.
The man opened the package when he returned to the car. Pellus peered in the window. The package contained two opaque, plastic cases. It had come from overseas, though Pellus could not tell precisely from where. The man ripped open the manila envelopes. They held cash, which he counted. Then he shoved everything into a black bag.
Cash. An indication of criminal activity as Barakiel has described.
After the man finished his rounds, he drove for twenty minutes until he reached a treeless block of dilapidated row houses in North Philadelphia. He pulled up to the curb in front of a handful of noisy children playing and laughing on the steps of a house near the corner.
Carrying the black bag, the man entered a house halfway down the block. About fifteen minutes later, he left with the empty bag. Pellus let him go, choosing instead to drop his curtain of refracted light and use his small camera to take photographs of the house. He concealed himself again and slipped in the back door. He was surprised to find a sleek, well-maintained interior completely at odds with the shabby appearance of the house from the street. Five men were working at huge computer monitors in the front room, made dim by the heavy drapes that covered the windows. None of the men were those he had seen in the rail yard at the equinox or with the false monks at the summer solstice.
In addition to the computer equipment, the room held various types of camera gear, both for still photography and video, as well as shelves that held the same kind of small plastic cases the man had just delivered. Upon closer inspection of the computers, Pellus could see they were not networked. There was no Internet connection. Pellus would need to wait until the men left the room so he could examine the contents of the plastic cases and the computers.
Before long, a few of the men opened some of the plastic cases, but Pellus could not tell if they were the same cases delivered by the man he had followed earlier. They were filled with memory cards, like those he used in his digital camera. The men took a few cards, plugged them into the computers, and began to work on the images they contained. Pellus angled to get a look at the screens as they worked. When he saw the images his insides churned with disgust, just as they had nearly three months before in the false monks’ ranch house in the Camargue.
Human depravity had always been an abstraction to me until that moment.
The same kind of images moved across the screens here. The men worked to duplicate photographs and videos of women trussed and chained, in pain and simpering with fear. Of women being mutilated and violated. Of lifeless women, streaked with blood in the aftermath of torture, their eyes staring.
The Covalent had to stop these detestable followers, but Pellus reminded himself that they needed to use earthly means. They needed to use the law.
Raising his camera, Pellus cursed the limitations of the refracted light with which he hid himself. He could not photograph the men as they worked. After an onerous wait, during which these perversions of men flashed dozens of suffering women across their screens, the last man left the room.
Pellus had his chance. He dropped his curtain of light to photograph the room, the shelves, and all the equipment. He downloaded the contents of the computers onto flash drives and he slipped a few memory cards out of one of the cases. Concealed once again, he settled back down to wait, his evidence tucked into a pouch beneath his robes. He wanted to follow the money.
After the sun had set, a man took the cash delivered earlier in the day and headed for the door. Pellus rushed outside. He chanced exposure for the few seconds it took him to photograph the man leaving the house with the cash and entering a vehicle. The man placed the cash in a pizza delivery bag and drove to the Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood of large colonial and Tudor houses with meticulously landscaped lawns.
The man went to the door of a large colonial, stepped inside for a moment, came out, got back in his car and drove away. From behind a tree across the street, Pellus photographed the man entering and exiting the house. When the man was gone, Pellus concealed himself again and looked through the bay window at the front of the house. No one was visible, so he slipped through the door as quietly as he could.
He found the humans in a large sunken den at the back. A huge, flat-screen television hung on one wall. A group of men sat on plush modular furniture with tumblers in their hands, watching a baseball game. Pellus recognized some of them from the rail yard.
The followers.
Two men in pricey suits stood at the far right of the room. One was tall with dark hair. The other was bald, with a gut. He had seen them at the house used by the false monks at the summer solstice. The dark-haired man gestured to the cash on the table in front of him.
“This take is fucking bullshit.”
“What did you expect?” said the bald one. “We’re short on new product. It’s been a bitch putting everything back in place since the brothers in France disappeared.”
“Why’s it taking so long?”
“Nobody knows who they can trust. Everybody in the network thinks everybody else had something to do with it. The whole thing gives me the fucking creeps. What do you think happened to them?”
“Who knows? Maybe the Albanians decided they wanted to control distribution themselves. Or those insane fuckers from Burma.” He smirked. “Maybe the demons got hungry.”
The bald man’s eyes widened. “Don’t even joke about that shit. Jesus Christ.”
“I’m just saying, I don’t know. All I know is, we have to let it go. Asking questions could come back to bite us in the ass.”
“Would you stop it with the hunger and the biting?” The bald man gulped his drink. The dark-haired man laughed.
“Listen, Georgie-boy. If the demons get hungry we’ll toss them a couple sweet Cambodian girls, all right? Got to be tastier than us.” They chuckled before the dark-haired one resumed speaking. “At least we’re ready to move product down to Baltimore and D.C. If your envelopes are light, just get more envelopes, right?”
The two smiled smugly before the dark-haired man took the cash and walked into the other room. The bald man joined the others on the couch. Pellus surmised that these men were part of a ring of black marketeers who profited from repellant images of sexualized suffering and death. Barakiel’s righteous slaughter of the French monks had evidently disrupted their production. Pellus couldn’t wait to tell the warrior. He could use some good news.
The adept waited for the opportunity to search the house. He planned to take more photographs and look for information about the operation’s size and complexity before he returned to Barakiel. Eventually, the men would either leave or sleep.
If we cause them to be arrested, Barakiel will not have to pay the price for spilling their blood.
Hours later the house grew quiet, as some men left and those who lived there retired. Pellus searched. Although he didn’t find any of the horrific images he had seen at the North Philadelphia house, he did find four of Archibaud’s daggers and two carved medallions, depictions of the Earth within the branches of a great tree.
He and Barakiel believed the medallions were representations of an axial rift. Barakiel had found the same type of carving and daggers beside a mutilated corpse that had been left near his compound, a ritual murder performed in Lucifer’s name by the false monks at the winter solstice. Another medallion and set of daggers had been found at the site of a second ritual at the vernal equinox, when the fiends had burned the murdered man’s preserved organs inside Independence National Historical Park. The unnatural brothers had carelessly left a human spleen lying in the bushes, which led to the involvement of the FBI.
Given his expertise as a collector of bladed weapons, Barakiel had offered to help the FBI trace the daggers at Pellus’ urging. Pellus had thought they would learn something useful, but now he cursed his bad luck. That was how Barakiel met Zan.
That relentless woman had tracked down Archibaud, the artisan in France who’d made the daggers. She was on the cusp of discovering that the false monks had disappeared. Given there was nothing he could do, Pellus wasted no thought on Zan’s possible actions. He was eager to help the FBI apprehend the rest of the murderous black marketeers. He didn’t see any other way to resolve this problem.
The presence of the medallions and the daggers in this house was a stroke of good fortune. The FBI was in possession of the medallion and daggers that had been left behind after the ritual at the vernal equinox. Pellus hoped it would be eager to investigate an anonymous tip with information about similar carvings and knives.
The daggers were identical to the set the Covalent had used to trace the false monks to the Camargue in France. All he could do was hope the authorities did not question the same art dealers Barakiel had contacted to find Archibaud.
A risky path, but I see no other way.
Pellus hoped his photographs of the man who delivered the cash would be enough to link the North Philadelphia house to the Chestnut Hill house in the eyes of law enforcement. Now, he documented every piece of evidence he found. He opened the safe and photographed the cash and weapons he found there, as well as the pages of a ledger, which he believed showed the accounts of their vile business.
What a pity that Barakiel cannot squeeze the life from all of you.
Worried the Council would be suspicious, Pellus had returned to the Covalent Realm immediately after his surveillance, without discussing his discoveries with Barakiel. He would have the opportunity now, given he was back in Philadelphia to shuttle the warrior to battle.
Pellus had only recently been allowed to serve as Barakiel’s traveler again after his duty was stripped as punishment for saving the warrior from the swords of the Corrupted. Barakiel had been left vulnerable in battle by a loss of Balance, the price he’d paid for slaughtering the false monks in defense of human innocence. Pellus had stolen into the Turning to protect him, a violation of Covalent Law. His return to duty came with a number of conditions, one of which was that he could travel only for approved purposes. The Council knew nothing of the false monks or their followers, and Pellus and Barakiel wished to keep it that way. The less the Covalent leadership cared about the Earthly Realm, the smaller the chance they would find out about Zan.
As Pellus approached the front door, he stood for a moment in the light rain, contemplating how he could best reassure the warrior.
I want his mind on nothing but battle.
Barakiel was sitting on his couch reading. He looked up when the adept entered, his brief surprise soon replaced by expectation.
“You’re here early to discuss the followers?” he asked.
“Yes. We need to decide what we are going to deliver to law enforcement, and how.”
To that end, Pellus recounted what he had seen and heard during his surveillance. They walked to the computer. The adept took the pouch containing the evidence from under his robes. He plugged in various flash drives and memory cards, clicking through the gruesome images. Although he had described the materials he found stored at the false monks’ compound in the Camargue, Barakiel had never seen them. His face contorted in the kind of grimace usually reserved for great physical pain.
“Their eyes,” he whispered. “Guardian save me.”
“We will stop them,” Pellus said, clicking through the images as quickly as he could. “We will make sure they do not hurt any more women. Look here, I found two of those carved medallions at the Chestnut Hill house, as well as a set of Archibaud’s daggers. From what you have told me, if we send these photographs to the FBI anonymously, they will put the house under scrutiny.”
The warrior stood motionless, staring at nothing as if the images were stilled burned upon his retinas. Pellus gave him a few minutes, then gently prompted him.
He is more sensitive than I am.
“Do you agree that we should send the pictures of the medallions and the daggers to the FBI?”
Barakiel rubbed his forearm. “The FBI might put the house under surveillance, but you must realize that Zan will be one of the agents handling the case. She’ll know the evidence came from us.”
“How would she know?” Pellus jerked to face him.
What did you do?
“I told her that Emanuel Morales was murdered by humans in league with the demons.” Barakiel raised his hand to forestall the adept’s reaction. “She asked me a direct question. I refuse to lie to her anymore. It is bad enough that I am lying by omission.”
“You had to tell her something.” Pellus did not want to be hard on him in his heartbroken state, but he was perturbed that Barakiel had not told him this before. “How did she react?”
The warrior fell into a nearby chair, not facing Pellus.
“She believes I got close to her so she would find the murderers for me. She thinks I used her.” He leaned forward to hide his face in his hands. In a muffled voice, he said that Zan had warned him to stay away from the investigation, that she would arrest him if he tried to interfere.
None of this surprised Pellus, which made him nervous about his next question.
“Exactly how much have you told her?”
The adept’s tone caused Barakiel to bolt upright. “I will not lie to her anymore! I answered her questions. So yes, she knows the demons attack me at the change of seasons. She knows how long I have been here. She knows how we travel.”
A jagged blaze of energy whipped around the warrior. Pellus admired its beauty.
The force of frustration, anger, and pain.
The adept could not answer with his own frustration. Barakiel had already paid for any sin he could possibly commit. He had paid a long time ago. He was still paying.
“It hardly matters now if Archibaud tells the French police about our visit.” The adept was careful to sound matter-of-fact. “As soon as Zan hears that the fiendish monks have disappeared, she will know you were responsible.”
“I know.”
“She must realize she would never succeed in arresting you. Her threat must have been sheer bravado.”
“Sometimes she says things out of anger. Things she hasn’t thought through.”
“Well, what do you think should we do?” Pellus asked. The warrior was speechless for a few seconds.
No doubt because I am not in the habit of asking other Covalent what to do.
“We help her. Instead of sending the evidence you’ve collected to the FBI anonymously, we give it to her. We can help her much more than a mere collection of photographs.” Barakiel got excited as he spoke. He paced back and forth, gesticulating. “I am not sure, but I think she may be able to shield our identity from her superiors. Why else would they call such sources confidential informants? Maybe she will be satisfied if we help the FBI apprehend these disgusting men.”
Against his better judgment, Pellus grinned. “I know there is a chance I could come to regret this,” he said, “but we need those debased pieces of filth off the street. Besides, what better hands? We can be certain it will be done right.”
Barakiel beamed at him.
The desired result.
“Can you imagine the followers’ faces when they are arrested and Zan enters the room to interrogate them?” Barakiel said, his eyes glittering.
“Yes. I am hoping they will think you are not far behind her.”
The warrior chuckled.
He actually chuckled.
“Perhaps they will confess,” Barakiel said. Then his good humor disappeared. He rubbed his forearm again and stared at Pellus, a crease between his brows. The adept knew what Barakiel was going to say, which did not lessen his feeling of dread.
“I have to tell her. I have to tell her that I killed the French monks. I suspect she does not approve of vigilante justice.”
“I would think not.”
“Balance help me.”
The adept knew his friend well enough to understand his conflicted emotions.
He hopes that if we help her she will forgive him, at the same time he tells himself it is a foolish dream.
“Do you think I am right?” Pellus asked. “Do you think Zan realizes the FBI would never succeed in arresting you? Or me?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should urge her to keep our secret. I am confident nothing can be traced to us. With our help, the FBI can pursue these evil men wherever they are hiding.” He rubbed his chin for a moment. “I must admit, I am surprised at myself. I enjoy the thought that the FBI will pursue whoever is dealing in these images with every resource at their disposal. I would love to see you crack their ribs and rip out their hearts, but if you cannot kill them, they should be locked away forever.”
“We are of a single mind, Pellus,” Barakiel said. “And be assured, when Zan sees the suffering of those women, she will be of our mind as well.”
“I am counting on it.”
After the battle, Remiel walked at the head of her battalion with Barakiel at her side. As they approached the edge of the Turning, she felt its magnetic pull. Remiel never tired of its intertwined bands of glowing silver and amethyst. A low, rich whir made the Turning sound almost as beautiful as it looked. She glanced at the huge warrior beside her. The beauty seemed lost on him. The other warriors were not chatting with Barakiel as they usually did during their march back to Covalent City, no doubt sensing he wanted to be left alone. Remiel pondered whether she should ask him why he seemed so troubled.
I have no complaint about his comportment in battle.
The battalion passed into the pulsating wall of energy. Remiel rolled her head from side to side, letting power flow into her tired muscles. She cast a fond glance at her companion. Her weariness was bone-deep, caused as much by the constant bad news regarding the war as it was by her physical exertion. But on this turn, the news was good. Her warriors had been successful with Barakiel among them. On this turn, her duty as the herald of death to the loved ones of lost warriors would be a lighter burden than it had been in some time.
Not only were the new tactics—many of them devised by Barakiel—effective against the demons, her warriors had fought with renewed energy. They were happy to see their superstar. Although Remiel was still Barakiel’s official commander, he served just as often under High Commander Osmadiel, who had conscripted him to shore up her weakened battalion. Lucifer bore a special animus towards Osmadiel, whose battalion had driven him from the realm.
Barakiel had been so effective for the high commander of late that she’d mentioned having him rotate into yet other battalions. Remiel had voiced her objections. He was her warrior, after all, and he was important to the morale of her battalion. So many had died that grief threatened to overtake them, but here was Barakiel, a legend in the making, fighting by their side. The son of Lucifer, possessed of the same great power but still true to his purpose. A symbol of the beauty of Warriors of the Rising as much as his father embodied their ugliness.
During the battle, the charismatic warrior had launched himself at the demons as if he saw his vicious father among them, as if his sword could cut away all knowledge of his ruined life. Remiel looked at him now, the brown blood of demons painting his limbs.
Your exile is not just. Is that why you withhold yourself from us?
His sternness did not matter. A few more battles like this one and her warriors would feel proud again. Remiel had a good relationship with Osmadiel. She could convince the high commander to limit Barakiel’s duties to only the two battalions. Her gait quickened as the head of the column emerged from the shimmering wall of energy. Soon, they would be at the city gates.
From the highest terrace of the Council Keep, Pellus contemplated the beauty of the Stream as it thrummed with furious electromagnetic storms trailing brilliant blue. He was amused by his access to the view. Not many enjoyed the privilege.
A perk of detention.
When he concentrated he could detect the intervals of the Stream, beats so fast that most Covalent paid no attention. In one turn, the torrent of energy would waver nearly a million times. The unmanageable speed was the reason the Covalent kept their time by the much slower pulses of the Turning, and Pellus felt each one within him now as he waited. He was obligated to remain in the Council Keep while Barakiel fought, another part of his punishment for stealing into the Turning during a battle to save his warrior from the Corrupted.
Pellus knew he should not feel caged. Rarely were Covalent free to wander the Keep, a tapering tower of cream-colored marble streaked in gold and ochre. He wished he felt awestruck as he walked its hushed halls filled with fine art and historical artifacts, but he was too worried about Barakiel. The warrior’s joyous energy, his humor and enthusiasm, had disappeared. Since Zan left him, the laughter had fled from his eyes. Now, whatever he had thrown up to hide his pain let nothing through except the lust for violence.
His hatred is his shield, but I fear he will condemn himself to a life of mere duty.
The adept no longer worried that Barakiel would abandon his purpose. He was too strong for that. He hated his father too much, but his friends could lose him nonetheless. Pellus wanted Barakiel to laugh again, to pick up one of those silly cats from the Earthly Realm and try to get Pellus to pet it as he used to do. Pellus would wrinkle his nose in distaste and Barakiel would grin like a little boy, as if to say, “You make it too easy for me.”
He wanted Barakiel to play something bright and happy on his violin. Over the previous earthly days, Barakiel had done nothing but play, but the sounds he created were cries of loss, sorrow, and longing.
I suppose sad music is better than his veiled eyes.
Tired of his gloomy reflections, Pellus turned to go back to the lower Keep. He was startled to find a Covalent there, hovering just inside the door.
“Sorry, sorry, adept, for startling you. I did not want to disturb you. Adepts, they reflect a lot, I think, I heard. Do you reflect?”
He knows I am an adept even though I am clothed in the brown robes of a navigen.
“Yes, I do. You heard correctly,” Pellus said, bowing slightly. “I am Pellus.”
“Oh, yes, yes, I know who you are. Of course, I know who you are,” the Covalent said, bowing low.
“And you are?”
“Oh, ha ha! So sorry. I am Adonael, attendant to the Council.”
Adonael. Pellus had heard of this warrior. He had been a fine fighter under the command of Abraxos, but had lost his mate during Lucifer’s rebellion and never recovered. He became addicted to haze and nearly destroyed himself. Abraxos had pulled him out of a haze lair and helped him get well, or as well as he could get. Adonael was no longer capable of fulfilling his purpose as a warrior because the haze had damaged his mind beyond what the healers could treat, but Abraxos had given him a purpose serving the Council.
Attendants were usually scholars, and quite often brilliant, tasked as they were to keep the Council organized, so Pellus surmised that a special position had been created for Adonael. Rumor had it that he had saved Abraxos’ life once, an age ago when Lucifer was still part of the High Command. Abraxos looked after the broken warrior now.
I always wondered if the story were true. Abraxos hardly strikes me as a font of compassion. I suppose because he has none for Barakiel.
“So what can I do for you, Adonael?” Pellus asked.
“For me? Not for me! For us all,” Adonael said, looking at Pellus only briefly before his eyes began to dart about. “I do not know. I do not know. It was a good idea once perhaps, but I have this feeling it is not a good idea anymore. Backfiring. Unintended consequences.”
Is he always like this, or is he just agitated?
“I am afraid I do not know the idea to which are referring, Adonael. Perhaps you could explain it to me?”
“Lucifer! Lucifer is clever. They did not think he was so clever. Ah, they were arrogant. Keep him in his place. So arrogant!”
“Who was arrogant, Adonael?”
“The Council!” Adonael said, hunching his shoulders and frowning. “How long did they think they could keep it up? Lucifer, the Lord of Destruction, he never rests. He took my mate. He will take us all. They should have killed him. Oh, if I could kill him!”
“Keep what up, Adonael? I am sorry. I do not understand.”
“To keep him in his place!” Adonael said, clearly frustrated.
Is this nonsense, or more a case of imperfect communication?
“The war in the Turning has not been going well of late. Many warriors are dying. Is this your concern?”
“Much worse, much worse than you think! We need the warrior. The shining one! He will destroy him.”
“The shining one? Barakiel?”
“Yes, yes! You know him, adept. The shining one will save us. He must know!”
Does he want me to tell Barakiel the war is going much worse than the Council has revealed?
“What must he know? Is the city in danger, Adonael?” A door slammed somewhere below them and the damaged warrior snapped his head toward the sound.
“Time to go,” he said, and trudged down the long staircase leaving Pellus gaping after him in surprise.
Do I take this seriously? I would not put it past the Council to withhold information. I will ask Barakiel what he makes of the whole thing.
Usually, Barakiel found the arc of the hundreds of stone steps leading up to his chambers a pleasant sight. A path had always seemed like a promise to him, a small excitement of finding something new around the bend, or movement toward the comforts of home. He was not enjoying his trip along the path now. This was not his home and he was weary. He wanted to be in his rooms, so he could wash the stink of demons off him. To slice their flesh and rip their limbs from their bodies had burned off some of his bloodlust. Now he needed to close his eyes for a little while before the intense interaction of his meeting with the High Command. Pellus walked beside him in silence.
Thank you for realizing I am not feeling sociable.
When they were halfway up the hill, Pellus spoke.
“I know you want to wash up and rest, Barakiel, but I think you should know about the odd conversation I had with one of the Council’s attendants,” he said. He related his conversation with Adonael then asked Barakiel what he thought.
“It is hard for me to say without having seen his demeanor,” Barakiel answered. “What do we know about his affliction? Does it solely affect his ability to communicate, or has it impaired his cognition?”
“I do not know. I cannot say why, but I had the feeling that he was trying to tell me something real. Something we should know. Certainly, he believes that what he is trying to tell me is important. I did not see confusion in his eyes so much as frustration.”
“Well, he is certainly in a position to overhear the deliberations of the Council,” Barakiel said. He tried to remember discussions during his meetings with the commanders that could possibly be related to Adonael’s vague words.
“I may have told you, Pellus, that Osmadiel went to the Council with a plan to go on the offensive against Lucifer instead of playing this defensive game that has cost us so many warriors with so little to show for it. Neither I nor Osmadiel see any point in fighting to the status quo. Remiel and quite a few of the other commanders agree with us, I think, although we never formally discussed it. The Council rejected Osmadiel’s plan, afraid of heavy casualties. Perhaps, as a warrior, Adonael recoils from the Council’s timid strategy. I believe he was quite formidable once.”
At the Academy, trainees were told Adonael’s story as a warning against the dangers of haze. Warriors of the Rising are especially vulnerable to this drug because of their intense emotions. Haze allowed Covalent to travel off to a world where they can imagine receiving all they need and want. At first, this imagined world feels real and satisfying, but the illusion wears thin and the experience grows hollow. By that time, it might be the only thing that makes the Covalent feel alive at all, so the addict does more and more haze, trying to recapture those early experiences. This often causes irreversible damage to the brain. Sometimes, addiction leads to death. Barakiel felt a surge of empathy for this damaged warrior he had never met.
You must have journeyed into the haze in pursuit of your lost mate, unable to accept that you would never again press her flesh to yours. Like me. I cannot accept it.
“What is wrong, Barakiel?” Pellus said. “I did not mean to upset you.”
“Ah, Pellus, not your fault.” Barakiel rubbed his eyes before he resumed talking. “Adonael lost his mate in the battle against Lucifer. He must hunger to see him killed.”
When they reached the door to Barakiel’s chambers they paused, looking down the hill to the city proper where they could see citizens strolling along the Great Plaza.
“Adonael said the war is going much worse than we think. Could this be true?” Pellus asked. “How much information do you have on the overall condition of the Council Forces?”
“All they tell me is that certain battalions have taken heavy casualties, so they have looked to rebalance them, to send warriors from the stronger battalions to strengthen the weaker. This is why I fight for Osmadiel now, as well as Remiel. I did find Osmadiel’s fighters much depleted, but it is hard to know how many battalions are so afflicted. They certainly do not tell me. What Adonael says could very well be true.”
“I’ll speak with him again. If he tries to communicate the same thing a second time, we should take it seriously.”
“I agree, Pellus. If that happens, perhaps I should try to meet him.”
“Yes. He thinks you can save us.”
Barakiel snorted. “I will be lucky if I can save myself.”