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Once again, Shax lurked up a tree in cat form. He had arrived early and watched the sun slip below the horizon a while ago. He waited, and the stars pierced the purple velvet sky. Then Shax waited some more. Damn the angel. He hadn’t expected her to keep him waiting so long.
A reddish light in the trees flashed, and Kheone stepped out of a rift. He transformed into his human form. When she stood under the tree, he dropped, still silent as a cat. She whipped around, brandishing a knife, ready to defend herself. He hadn’t been silent enough. Shax held up his hands.
“I’m unarmed,” he said. A small grin crossed his lips.
“I’m not.”
“I can see that.”
He took a step closer, and she brandished her blade.
“Close enough, demon.”
“Still don’t trust me?”
Kheone snorted. Cute.
“I made a blood oath,” he said.
“You made an oath you didn’t kill Serel and knew nothing about the destruction of the Gates. Not that you wouldn’t try to kill me at the first opportunity.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t trust you, either. What’s stopping you from turning me over to Michael?”
“I gave you my word. Anyway, you’re more useful to me alive than dead.”
“Careful, Blue, you’re starting to sound like one of us.”
Shax gave her a cool smile as the blood drained from her face. Gotcha.
With a sigh, Kheone slid the knife into its sheath at her belt. She twitched as he took a step closer. Although safe for the moment, Shax didn’t doubt for a second she would draw her blade and kill him if he pressed the issue.
“Here.” She pulled a small scrap of paper from a pocket and took the last couple of steps toward him, holding it gingerly by the edge. He took the scrap from her, and she retreated, putting more distance between them.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“The symbols from the fragments? You wanted me to write them down,” she said.
“Ah, thanks. How is Michael taking it?” He suppressed a shudder as the archangel’s name left his lips. Any who spoke that name in Hell soon met with the wrath of Lucifer. Only a few had lived to tell the tale, enough to send the message to the rest of the denizens of the inferno.
Kheone pressed her lips together, considering whether to answer him. She reached some conclusion.
“He dismissed my concerns.”
Stubborn archangel, too confident in his own opinions to consider he might be wrong. Not unlike his brother, whom Shax had served all these years. He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping it would relieve the headache brewing from lack of sleep and the increase in his stress levels. At least since he had been spending time with Kheone, the Godforsaken buzzing in his brain had vanished. That was a worry for another day.
“I still don’t know why I agreed to this,” Kheone said, almost as if to herself.
“Because who could deny this handsome face?” His grin widened.
She sniffed in derision, but he thought the corners of her mouth twitched.
Shax unfolded the piece of paper. Under a lamp lighting the stairs nearby, he tried to make heads or tails of it. Some ancient runes seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember what they meant.
“Are you sure this is correct, Kheone?”
“Yes. Do you doubt me? I transcribed them from the source.”
“No, I just—They look familiar, but I don’t know what they mean.”
She approached cautiously as though he was a dog who would bite her at the slightest provocation. It wasn’t far from the truth. All he had to do was let the compulsion take hold again, and she would have a one-way trip to wherever an angel went now the Gates were gone.
“This one is angel.” She tapped the symbol. Her fingers, calloused from eons of wielding a sword, scratched on the paper. “I’m not sure of the rest.”
“Why are you being so cooperative?” He grimaced at the suspicion in his voice.
“We’re partners, right?” Kheone looked at him, blinking in confusion. “Partners share information. You have what I have.”
Oh yeah, right. He had always worked alone, sharing only when absolutely necessary to keep his head firmly attached to his body. Shax swallowed the guilt sticking in his throat. He had two pieces of information she should know.
In order to tell her about the thing hidden in the kitchen, he would have to reveal his small, furry alter ego. That was definitely not going to happen. How else could he keep tabs on her and keep her safe?
He could tell her about Aeshma. That couldn’t hurt anything, could it? She was the most likely suspect in Serel’s death. There was no reason to withhold this piece of information from Kheone.
“Shax, hello? Do you recognize any of the symbols?”
Shax set aside the guilt and other inconvenient feelings and peered at the paper. He could always tell her later. He pointed at a symbol, both similar and different from the one meaning angel.
“This means demon.”
“Okay. Why would the device have both angel and demon inscribed on it?”
“Got me. I tempt people to sin. I don’t solve puzzles. This was a bad idea, Blue. You picked the wrong demon. I’m no Sherlock Holmes.”
“You think I am?” She walked away.
He missed her warm presence at his shoulder. “That’s not what I said.”
“I’ve put my life on the line for you, Shax. Michael won’t believe me until we can uncover some evidence linking Serel’s murder to whatever happened to the Gates. Neither will any of the other angels. And any of them would kill me for working with you.”
“You think this is easy for me, trusting an angel? Jesus Christ, Kheone, how many times have we crossed blades over the fate of some wretched soul? If you won’t trust me, then let me be on my merry way. I swear you’ll never see me again.” He turned and walked two steps before she called out to stop him.
“Wait.”
Shax turned around to see her arm outstretched, reaching for him.
“You’re right, Shax. We’re used to working against each other, not with each other. I’m sorry.”
He nodded, accepting her apology, knowing what it likely cost her.
“Did you ever find out why Serel was in the library?”
Kheone shook her head. “He said he’d found something useful for our situation. We’d arranged to meet.” She sighed. “Serel was a scholar and a healer. He spent a lot of time in the library, trying to catch up on modern medicine and looking for a way home.”
“Really? How close was he?”
“Why?”
“It’s called motivation, Blue. If he was close, someone may have wanted to stop him. The angels may want to return to Heaven, but the demons want nothing to do with Hell.”
“I don’t understand, Shax. Demons belong there, as angels belong in Heaven. Demon powers are fading without the connection. I thought all demons craved power.”
“Hell is pain.” Shax kept his voice flat, belying the incredible suffering every demon went through. How could he make her understand Lucifer wasn’t some benevolent dictator?
“We live in anguish every minute of every day, severed from the presence of God and tortured by the memory of our state of grace in Heaven. Lucifer retained all his archangel gifts and bestowed them as rewards for loyalty and cruelty, and sometimes just because he could. He could free you from pain with a touch. The euphoria from that alone was enough to ensure his orders were carried out. But he caused pain, too, almost as capriciously as he ended it.”
Kheone stepped closer, and the hand not hovering over the knife fluttered as though she wanted to reach out to him.
“With the connection to Hell gone, so is the pain. Most demons are so twisted by the eons of torment they continue carrying on the Devil’s work even without his presence.”
A soft touch cut him off. Kheone had given in to her impulse and threaded her fingers through his. Warmth spread from the point of contact, surging through him, chasing away the hurt those memories brought. He wondered, for a moment, what her touch would feel like on other parts of his body. Shax repressed the thought. It would never happen.
“But not you,” she said gently.
“Not me.” He wanted to live in a world without pain, without coercion. And yet, here he was, being manipulated by an angel. He almost laughed at the irony.
“So, if a demon found Serel investigating how to rebuild the Gates, he would be a prime target for extermination,” Kheone said.
Shax nodded.
“When I went to the library,” she continued, “I didn’t feel any demonic magic. Angel magic everywhere, but nothing with the foul taint of demon.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I—”
Shax held up a hand. “I was kidding.” Mostly.
He thought for a minute. If a demon made the bomb, was it then filled with angelic magic? With the current relationship between himself and Kheone as an exception which proved the rule, angels and demons did not work together. Shax heaved a breath. He needed to see for himself, and a cat’s nose could more readily pick up on the subtleties of scent than a human’s.
“Can you get me into the library?” he asked.
Kheone narrowed her eyes in distrust. “Why?”
“Because if you want to find out who killed your friend, I need to go see the crime scene for myself.”
“We cleaned up already. I don’t know what you’ll find.”
“Maybe the taint of demon magic is too small for even an archangel to detect. Maybe only another demon will recognize it.”
“Yes, fine, I can do that.”
The words snapped from her mouth, her nose scrunched up in adorable irritation. Kheone opened the rift, and Shax stepped through. She took a step toward him.
“No, you stay. You’ll just interfere with my ability to sense another demon.”
“How will you get out?”
“Come back for me. Thirty minutes should be enough.”
He grinned at her, letting his feral side show through. Shax knew she wondered what his special gift was. Let her think he could turn invisible or mess with human minds. He needed to keep her in the dark about his other form for the moment. It had proven useful thus far. Besides, Kheone would see his disguise as a betrayal.
“Maybe. If I remember, instrument of darkness.”
The rift snapped closed behind him before he could shout back that her insults still sucked. Finding himself alone, Shax transformed into Machka.
The fallout from angel magic permeated the stacks, although the air had cleared. Every time he rubbed up against a book or a piece of furniture, his nerves jangled. He padded slowly up and down the stacks, taking deep breaths through his cat nose. Shax opened his mouth, tasting the air, using the special organ at the roof of his mouth—there.
The strongest scent was sharp pine with an acrid hint of smoke, the same as in the kitchen. It was most likely Serel’s. Whoever it was had been here often, and although the angel’s blood had vanished, the scent coated the books, shelves, and carpet below Shax’s paws. Other angels had been here since, but their scents were faint smears on books and residuals of footsteps. Kheone’s stood out, her pleasant scent of earth and rain a balm to his nose. The sharp sting of lemons and old wine wound around her scent. Michael, maybe? Intermingled with all the rest was the sweet smell of rot, the smell of a demon, and it wasn’t his. One of his brethren had been here, all right, probably around the same time Serel died.
Shax sneezed to clear the scents from his nose and huffed another breath of air. He could only determine the demon had been in the library but wasn’t able to get a clear picture of exactly where. Foregoing the temptation to linger on Kheone’s scent, he picked up Serel’s once again. It led him to a shelf in the middle of the aisle. He crawled up and continued following the scent until he was on the top shelf. Serel’s scent covered the book on the end, along with a slight undertone of decay. Both the angel and a demon had touched this book in the last forty-eight hours.
Shax leaped down to the ground and changed into his human form. The title on the spine read Ancient Rituals of Sumer. He tried lifting the book from its place on the shelf, but pain shot up his arm at first contact.
Shit. What was he supposed to do now?