I glanced at Euriel as he stepped away from Faith, amused at his guilty expression, and wondered what exactly they had been up to. Euriel was one of the most dedicated and loyal angels I had ever met, and his views on sex and attraction had been voiced many times over the last couple of months as he strove to save our souls. He was the last person I would have thought could have been tempted, and yet if anyone could bring an angel to his knees, it was that wanton little goddess with hair like flames and skin so smooth you wanted to taste every inch and then start all over again. I licked my lips at the thought and made a mental note to track her down later and indulge. For now, though, work called.
“Oh good, Euriel, you’re here too.” I fought the urge to tease him. If Faith had her sights set on him, he didn’t stand a chance. I would just stand back and watch his world collapse when he realised what he had been missing. There would be plenty of time for laughing at him later. “The university just called. There’s been a break-in, and Deliah wants us to go have a look at the site before they alert the police. Shouldn’t take too long.”
“A break-in at the library? Who’d want to steal books?” Faith asked. “And what does it have to do with us? Shouldn’t we be looking for Amadi? I think that’s more important than a break-in. Isn’t there someone less involved in this who can go?”
I shrugged. “Deliah wants us to go. She thinks it might be connected. The break-in was in the restricted section, and only a certain number of people have the keycode for that part of the library. Your mother was one.”
“Adopted mother,” she grumbled.
“Shemyaza is looking for information?” Euriel questioned, suddenly interested.
“Quite possibly. Might give us an idea of what his plan is, or who he is,” I answered.
“What makes you think he has a plan?” Faith inquired, glancing between us.
“He’s a watcher who betrayed God, and he’s spent years infiltrating the minds of his followers from a prison so deep, most demons don’t even know its location, all while under incredible pain and torment. He organised his own escape and is now free on Earth. I find it highly unlikely he won’t have a plan of some kind. With personal power like that, he will want to amass more. It’s second nature for the demonic kind,” Euriel replied, his eyes flicking up to mine at the last sentence. My own eyes narrowed at his jab, but I refused to rise to the bait.
“Hmm, for once, I agree with you.” I smiled at the expression of surprise on his face. “What? His escape, the ritual, his followers, Rose, Berith, and even getting Faith there was all so meticulously planned. I agree, it’s very unlikely he has no further plans for when he reached Earth, and I doubt they are good for mankind.”
Euriel frowned. “Yes, I had wondered about Faith’s part in the ritual. We should try to find out why she was deemed to be appropriate for the sacrifice and his vessel. A low-level witch would be a poor choice for possession. Her body wouldn’t have lasted more than a day or so, and with the loyalty he seems to command among his followers, I would have thought it would have been easy for him to persuade one of his demonic followers to offer themselves up. So why Faith?” He looked down at her, clearly confused, and I saw Faith’s eyes widen slightly in panic.
“Her mother told her she had been awarded the ‘honour’ because of Rose’s devotion. I doubt they expected her to last long, just long enough until they found a more appropriate host. Anyway, we should get moving. Deliah said to get there as soon as we could. The university was being rather reluctant to allow us access, so we shouldn’t push them by showing up late.”
Euriel nodded, and I let out a breath. The distraction seemed to have worked. He began heading back up the alley towards the car and the bikes. After sharing a concerned glance, Faith and I followed him.
*
“Wow, what a mess!” Faith looked around at the piles of books and papers that had been strewn everywhere. She had a bit more colour in her face, and I was glad this hadn’t turned into another massacre, though I’d neglected to tell her about the body that had already been removed by Concordia agents. Some deceased members couldn’t be left for the police to find for obvious reasons, and the woman who had been head librarian had, if I recalled correctly, sported a fine pair of slender antlers that had curved up gracefully above her head. Not something we wanted the human police to come across.
I shook my head. “This isn’t the bit we came to see.”
She looked up at me. “Really? But they were obviously here.”
“It’s a ruse. Look at all the books on the floor and the tables. Quantum Mechanics. Bryson’s Introduction to Farming. Archaeology Today. Love and Lust in Renaissance Italy. They’re all random. No, the person or people who were here wanted to throw us off. Come on, let’s go to the proper library.” I led her between the shelves of books to the back corner. Three racks down, I stopped, running my hands gently along the spines of the leatherbound volumes that were chained to the heavy wooden shelves.
“Let me guess,” Faith said, moving up next to me. “There’s a hidden door behind the bookcase, and you have to pull a certain book to open it?”
I cocked my head, grinning at her. “Mmm, kind of.” I moved my foot slightly, and there was a click. The bookcase in front of us slid up into a hidden compartment in the ceiling, revealing a heavy steel door behind it, and Faith gaped at me.
“How?”
Euriel rolled his eyes and pushed past me. “There’s a switch on the floor. Slide it along with your foot and it triggers the door.” He reached over and tapped a code into the keypad set into the real door. With a smooth motion, the door slid sideways, and I gestured for Faith to go in before us.
“What, no booby traps?” She grinned at me, and I smiled back.
“No, not here. Just good old-fashioned tech. Well, fairly modern tech, to be honest.”
“Alex’s work?” she asked, stepping through the door and looking around.
I gestured for Euriel to enter, then followed him in, turning to reactivate the doors. “No, I don’t think he was part of this. This has more security than special ops.”
“Aren’t spy cameras security?” she questioned, turning and fixing me with a hard stare.
I smiled guiltily. “Usually yes, but there are exceptions.” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I shrugged. We’d achieved a rather tenuous peace after the revelation that we’d been secretly filming her. In a way, her and Euriel nearly dying had worked to our advantage by putting the whole secret camera thing into perspective. We’d all had to swear that we would be completely honest with her from here on out, but I knew it would be a while before any of us would completely regain her trust—except Euriel, who had observed the whole discussion with a rather patronising, self-satisfied smirk that I had wanted to punch right off his angelic face.
She looked around the Concordia section of the university library. Most of the staff didn’t even know it existed, and there were enough agents on the staff who worked for the library and the university as a whole who kept it well hidden. Books, scrolls, and documents on every magic system and religion under the sun were stacked on shelves two stories high. The arched ceilings were beautifully painted, and long antique wooden tables stood in rows down the centre. Modern computers and information tablets filled several of them, with others left for old-fashioned reading.
“I bet Alex loves it here,” Faith murmured.
“Yeah, he does,” I said quietly, not wanting to think of my friend who hadn’t left his room in weeks.
“He should be here,” she continued. “It’s not even sunny outside.”
I sighed. “I messaged him, but I didn’t get an answer. Again.”
“He just needs time,” Euriel said. “He’ll come around.”
I nodded at him, surprised by his genuine response.
We wandered through the aisles. Unlike the room we’d just come through, the shelves here hadn’t been emptied. I paused to flick through a website left up on one of the computer screens.
“What are they?” Faith asked, moving closer.
“Just biblical scenes… Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel…” Euriel frowned. “Scenes from early Genesis? Why would Shemyaza be looking at those? They were from before his time on Earth.”
I shrugged, wondering the same thing. “Maybe he was around then? Maybe he was on Earth before the time of the watchers? His name does sound…”
Euriel nodded. “Familiar, yes. I thought the same, but it’s like a fleeting shadow I just can’t pin down.”
Faith stared at us. “So you don’t know him? Even though he was an angel?”
Euriel smiled. “There are millions of angels in Heaven, and a few million that aren’t,” he clarified with a brief look at me. “We don’t all know each other by name or by sight.”
“They aren’t big on social gatherings up there,” I muttered.
“No, they aren’t,” Euriel agreed, and to my surprise, there was an element of wistfulness in his voice. I raised my eyebrows. Humanity really seemed to be getting to him this time around. Or maybe it was someone in particular, I thought, as I watched Faith smile up at him. She leaned past him to grab a stack of books on the end of the table, sliding them towards her, and he glanced down at his arm where her hair brushed against his forearm. I shook my head then grabbed the top book off the pile.
“Worship and Sacrifice,” I read. “Interesting. Judging by what happened at the cathedral, I would have thought they were pretty well versed on that.”
“The Story of the Lost Brother,” Faith read, picking up more books. “The Slaughter of Innocence, Bloodlust, The Root of Violence… Well, not exactly bedtime reading.”
“Depends on what you’re into.” I winked at her, and she laughed.
Euriel gave a frustrated sigh and rolled his eyes. “Do we always need to return to the subject of debauchery?”
Faith leaned across the table, reaching for another pile, and my eyes dropped to her round ass just as Euriel’s did.
“Clearly we do,” I murmured.
“We do what?” Faith queried, standing up with a few more books in her hands. One had been left open, and she had slipped her finger between the pages to keep her place.
“Never mind,” Euriel replied irritably. “What else did you find?”
She glanced at the spines. “Genesis and the Search for Man’s Beginnings. Loss of Adam. The First and the Last. The Genesis Conspiracy, and the original classic.” She put the other books down on the table and presented the tome she was holding open—the Bible.
“Shemyaza was reading the Bible?” I asked, somewhat sceptical.
She looked down at the pages. “You know how you said that books had been pulled out at random in the other room?”
“Yeah?”
“These aren’t. They’re all about the same thing—the book of Genesis—and a specific part as well.” She frowned, reading.
“Where was it left open?” Euriel asked, leaning over her shoulder to read.
“It’s the part where Cain kills Abel,” she said, looking up. “But why would Shemyaza be looking at that?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, running my hands over my head. “Fuck, we need Alex. He knows this shit. He’d know why there was a link, or at least know where to look.” I expelled a breath in a strong rush, grabbed the book from Faith, and set it down on the table. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” she inquired, as I strode back towards the door.
“We’re going to see Alex. Enough is enough. I’ve been his friend, now I’m his team leader, and if he wants that hunk of a boyfriend back, then he’s damn well going to snap out of it and help us find him!”
It didn’t take us long to get back to the house, and I was raging all the way, thinking of what I was going to say. I didn’t want to cause him any more pain, but I’d had it. Yes, Amadi had been taken, and yes, he obviously meant more to Alex than the rest of us, but we cared about him too, and we were out there trying to find him and discover a way to get him back before that thing inside him destroyed his soul. I slammed opened the front door and stormed up the stairs.
“Alex!” I yelled, banging loudly on his and Amadi’s bedroom door. “Alex, that’s enough. Come out now. We need to talk, and I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say!” I felt Faith’s hand settle on my arm, and her touch made me pause and take a breath. “Alex, mate, come on. We know you’re all kinds of broken up about this, but we need you. Amadi needs you.”
The door opened, and I stepped back, surprised it had been that easy. As quiet and reserved as Alex was, he could be a proper stubborn pain in the ass.
“Cassiel.” Deliah stood in the doorway in her immaculate cream two-piece suit, her silver hair pulled back into an elegant French twist.
“Deliah, um… sorry. I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were still at the crime scene,” I muttered.
She raised her eyebrows. “Clearly. But seeing as you are here, and it would appear you also need to speak to Alexei about our current situation, I suggest you all come in.”
“I’ll wait downstairs,” Euriel murmured, and I turned and nodded at him. He wasn’t exactly one of Alex’s favourite people, and I wasn’t sure what use he would be—unless I needed him to help me drag Alex’s sorry ass out of the house, and I wasn’t ruling that out yet.
Faith and I followed Deliah into Alex’s room. He was up and dressed in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, leaning against the wall with his head down. He clearly hadn’t shaved in days and his eyes looked bloodshot, which I found interesting, considering the rest of him was as white as a sheet. I scrubbed my hand over my face. Fuck. I hadn’t even thought to check if he was feeding properly, what with dealing with the fallout from a cult raising a watcher from Tartarus, Faith and Euriel nearly dying, and the bloody massacres Shemyaza was leaving in his wake. Guilt flooded me, and my tone was calmer when I spoke.
“Faith, would you mind going down to the kitchen? In the centre island, there’s a small built-in fridge. Alex looks like he could really do with a drink.” I saw his eyes flick up to mine in alarm, but Faith simply nodded and slipped away.
“You didn’t need to… I’m not… I don’t need…” Alex mumbled, not really meeting my eyes.
“Yes, I did, yes, you are, and yes, you do. Faith is fine with the blood thing. Give her some credit.” I walked over and sat on the leather armchair near the window. The glass appeared darker than that in other rooms. We had installed several layers of a special film that blocked the sun’s rays from entering the room, but it still allowed Alex to have natural light in his bedroom and to see out into the garden during the day. Heavy velvet curtains hung on either side of the window for days when the sun was especially bright. One of them had been dragged across haphazardly, and I pulled it back, knowing that it was grey and overcast outside. Alex blinked at the light as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. I just…” He trailed off, staring at his hands.
“It’s fine. You needed some time to deal, and we get that. We really do. But this isn’t healthy for you, Alex. You need to feed, and you need to get out of this room and be around other people.”
He sighed. “I just can’t… I don’t have the energy.”
“Well, this might help,” Faith said as she came back through the door. She held a glass and a packet of blood, which she held out to him. “I’m sorry. I should have asked. Do you want it warmed up?” She was so in earnest, even Alex cracked a small smile as he took them from her.
“No, it’s fine. Thanks, Faith.” She nodded and sat down next to him as he ripped open the top of the packet and poured it into the glass. He could have just drank out of a small hole in the top of the packet, and it amused and warmed me to see how well Faith had gotten to know him. Alex was always all about propriety and much preferred drinking out of a glass. I figured it was because he was so desperate not to become the bloodthirsty creature that lived inside, so he hung onto everything that made him feel human.
I gave him a few minutes to drink it down and watched as some colour returned to his face. He got up and set the glass and empty packet down on a tray on the chest of drawers.
“So I take it this is some kind of intervention?” he asked without turning around.
“Nope,” I replied, leaning back in my chair.
He turned and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “Oh really? Then what’s with the barging in and bringing me a drink?”
I shrugged. “Needs must. But it’s not an intervention. I’m not here in a friend capacity. I’ve tried before. So did Sam, so has Faith, and hell, if you won’t come out of the room for her, then no one stands a chance.” Alex shifted his eyes to her, wearing a guilty expression on his face. “No, not an intervention. What this is, is your boss telling you that you’ve had more than enough personal leave and that you are needed back on the team. We have a serious situation on our hands, one that requires your expertise, and I am fed up with having to use your assistants at the office because you can’t get yourself out of bed. So I am here to tell you to get up, shower, shave, and be downstairs in half an hour with your laptop, because our team has a big problem that needs sorting now.”
Alex stared at me, his mouth hanging open slightly, and I fought the urge not to laugh. Pulling myself out of the chair, I moved towards the door, Faith and Deliah behind me, but I couldn’t resist turning back as I reached it.
“Oh, Alex? Consider that a verbal warning. If I have to come back up here, it’ll be a written one.” This time, his mouth really did drop open in disbelief, and I allowed myself a grin as I headed back downstairs to where Euriel waited in the sitting room.
He looked up from a newspaper as we walked in. “Did it work?” he asked.
“We’ll see,” I answered, dropping onto the opposite sofa. “Oh, sorry, Deliah, would you like a drink or something?”
She perched on the edge of the sofa. “No, thank you, Cassiel. I shall get one when I am back in my office. Tell me what you found at the library.”
“Not a huge amount. The librarian is dead, although it looks like she was killed by one of Amadi’s fireballs. There was no evidence of… um… consumption.” Faith made a small sound and I turned to her. “Yeah, sorry, they told me on the phone before we got there. You were still looking rather pale, and I didn’t want to make it worse.”
She nodded, her pink tongue darting out to dampen her lips. “Yeah, thanks, Cas. Probably for the best.”
I watched her mouth for a moment longer than I should have before continuing. “So, yeah, a huge mess made in the university part, but the books pulled out in the real library were all studies on the book of Genesis.”
Deliah’s eyes narrowed. “Genesis? Why would a watcher be interested in Genesis? They’re only mentioned a couple of times, and not in detail. I would have thought the Apocrypha would interest him more.”
I nodded. “So would I, though he did have part of it up on a screen. The book of Adam and Eve.”
“There’s a book about Adam and Eve? Isn’t that what Genesis is about?” Faith asked.
“Well, yes, briefly. The book of Adam and Eve forms part of the Apocrypha, a collection of writings created at the same time as those in the Bible but never made it in. Good job too, it really is a lot of rambling and whining by Adam. There’s a lot of poor me about it.”
“For once, I agree with Cassiel,” Euriel murmured behind his newspaper. “Considering he was the starting point of mankind, he always struck me as a bit of a waste of space. Eve was a vast improvement.”
“You’re forgetting Lilith,” I pointed out, knowing the reference would needle him. He lowered the paper and glared at me.
“What else did you find, Cassiel?” Deliah interjected, giving us both a stern glare from her ice-blue eyes.
“Not much else, but like I said, everything seemed centred around Genesis, and Faith found the Bible open to the passages that talk about Cain and Abel, so I’m wondering if that was the focus. And if it is, then why? What would Shemyaza need to know about the sons of Adam and Eve?” I mused.
“Well, there’s long been a rumour that Cain was actually the son of Lilith, and Abel was the son of Eve.” I smiled at the soft voice behind me. Alex moved around the sofa and sat opposite me, opening his laptop.
“Who’s Lilith? You keep mentioning her,” Faith queried.
“The mother of demons,” Euriel spat out. “A disgusting, loathsome creature, almost as guilty for the fall of mankind as Eve.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but Deliah held her hand up. “Suffice it to say, she was created before Eve, and when she and Adam didn’t get on, Lilith was banished and Eve was created to take her place. Lord Euriel, I suggest you keep a professional tone and don’t let personal prejudices and passions overrule your logical thinking.”
Euriel’s mouth snapped shut, and I grinned.
Deliah stood up, placing her handbag over her arm. “Now then, Alexei. I am sorry to have to say this, but Shemyaza appears to be consuming more and more human victims in his desire to keep his current host healthy. Amadi is a strong, fairly powerful demon, but something tells me Shemyaza will need a host stronger than what his body can provide, and that must be what he is looking for. We need to trace them as fast as possible before more murders can occur on this scale, or worse. Why don’t you see what you can find? I would think that maybe trying to locate Rose might be easier. She’ll be his link to the world, and therefore, more public. Euriel, maybe you could help Alexei. Cassiel, where’s Sam?”
“Sam had some business to sort out at the surf centre, and I believe he was also wanting to spend a little time with his sister. He had a call that something was up and went to find out what. He didn’t give a lot of detail, but I think it was pack politics, to be honest. I said I’d call if we needed him.”
Deliah nodded. “That’s fine. If Alexei’s research turns anything up, we can always recall him. As for you and Faith, Shemyaza’s rise has been reported in brief to Sheol, but I think we need a delegation down there to explain exactly what happened. While you are down there, you can attempt to question Lilith. She may have some idea as to why Shemyaza would be interested in Cain and Abel.”
I let out a quiet groan at the thought of returning to Dis.
“Do you have a problem with my instructions, Cassiel?” Deliah asked, though there was a twinkle in her eyes, the devious old coot.
“No, Deliah, as always, I am more than happy to carry out your instructions,” I replied, the sarcastic note coming through nice and clear. The older woman gave me a small, knowing smile.
“What am I missing?” Faith questioned, looking from Deliah to me and back again.
“Cassiel prefers not to visit Sheol, especially Dis,” Deliah informed her.
Faith looked at me, frowning. “Why not? Is it really… bad down there?” There was a waver in her voice, and I reached out to take her hand.
“No, it’s fine, it’s just…”
“Cas is rather popular in Dis. He gets a lot of unwanted… attention,” Alex inserted. I was glad to see he was actually smiling, though I would have preferred it not to have been at my expense.
“Attention? What kind of attention?” Faith asked, still looking confused.
I sighed and glared at Deliah. “You’ll see.”
