Angel Wings, page 17
part #2 of Trappers, Inc Series
I let it.
To say I wasn’t ready for what came out of me would be a major understatement. It felt like a million needles had been hiding right under my skin, and now they flew out of my every pore and shot forward, faster than light.
I couldn’t control it. I didn’t want to. I just wanted it to be over.
A terrifying roar reached my ears, and fire no longer burned ahead. Guns no longer fired. The bullets were gone.
A wave of wind, like a horizontal tornado, made its way to the monsters and the demons, and when it hit them, it took everything out. Demons flew on the air and fell back down like rag dolls, and the ice monsters tripped on their own feet and fell backward like their strings were being pulled. Something touched my ears, like annoying flies trying to whisper to me, but when I raised my hands, I touched liquid. It was red and it smelled like metal. My ears were bleeding, but I was still aware. I was still on my knees, looking ahead, waiting…
But nobody got back up.
“Cirko,” I whispered, breathing heavily as I tried to stand. My body was weak but not weak enough to stop me. Running was out of the question, but I dragged my feet as fast as I could back to the battle, my eyes searching for Cirko. For Eae.
And I found them, the same as the demons and the ice monsters—lying on the floor.
“Cirko!” I shouted at the top of my voice, and I ran to him, stepping onto more than one demon on the way.
Cirko was lying face down on the floor. I turned him over, expecting to see his eyes open and a smile on his face. So, so foolish. He wasn’t smiling. He was barely even breathing.
“Willow,” someone called, and for a second, I looked at Cirko’s lips to see if they were moving.
But it wasn’t Cirko’s voice. It was Eae’s.
I turned my head in time to see him raising his arm up, asking for help. I rushed to the angel’s side and had to push two huge pieces of ice from his legs before I could pull him up. He was torn and bloodied, but he was breathing. His eyes were open.
“What the hell happened?” Eae said, looking around at the demon bodies and the pieces of ice that had once been ice monsters.
“Cirko,” I whispered, running back to my friend because the angel could stand perfectly on his own. “He’s not waking up. You have to help him.”
I slapped Cirko’s cheeks as hard as I could, but I got no response.
“We have to get out of here, Willow,” Eae said. “Come on, they’re going to wake up soon.”
“Can you help him?” I asked instead, holding Cirko’s hand. The bullet wounds on his body had already closed. He’d bled but the blood on his shirt was already dry. So why wasn’t he waking up?
Had I…had I done this to him?
Eae didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned down and grabbed Cirko by the arms before he put him over his shoulder.
“We have to go, now,” he ordered, and through the corner of my eye I could see a demon ten feet away from me moving.
Eae was right, they were waking up. And Cirko would wake up, too. He had to. For now, it was over, whatever the hell this was.
But as we ran toward the small light that was the door to this madness, I knew that it was far from the end.
Chapter Sixteen
When we walked out of the building, I felt like a stranger in my body, like I suddenly didn’t belong in the streets of the Bronx. Or the world.
Everything looked different, though it was all the same. It felt different, too. Something in my chest, something that had been sleeping for a long, long time was now wide awake, and it wanted nothing but blood.
Before I could drive myself mad with those strange thoughts, a woman stepped in front of us on the sidewalk. She couldn’t have been much older than me, but her brown eyes looked ancient, and they were stuck on Eae’s face.
Eae, who suddenly wasn’t breathing.
“I can help you,” the woman said, her voice barely a whisper.
I spun around and looked at the other people walking the street. Was somebody else watching us like they knew who we were and what we’d done, like this woman in front of us?
“Do you know where he is?” Eae asked.
Just when I thought nothing would surprise me anymore, the universe laughed in my face.
“I don’t,” the woman said. “But I know where he will be tomorrow.”
“Eae?” Had he forgotten that I was there, too? What the hell was going on?
But the angel barely even looked at me before turning to the woman again. “It’s her, Willow. She knows how to find Grim.”
My brows rose. It was her, as in, the her Trip was talking about?
“No,” said the woman, shaking her head. “I’m talking about Trip.”
“They’re the same guy,” I said. How could she not know this, when she claimed to know where he was?
“I think we need to get going,” Eae said, and with Cirko still over his shoulder, he turned around and crossed the street.
I couldn’t even begin to understand what was going on, but at least I knew exactly what I needed to do. It was time I paid Eliot Maine another visit, and this time there would be no lying.
The woman was still right where we’d left her when we reached Eae’s car, and he put Cirko in the back seat. I didn’t know her. Couldn’t trust her, but I could feel her soul. She wasn’t evil, and unfortunately for me, that was going to have to do. Look how low my standards had dropped, but if she said she could help us, I was going for it. We were going to need all the help we could get.
“Coming?”
She smiled like she had no idea what the hell she was getting herself into, and I wasn’t so sure she did. But she ran across the street and got into the car without a word.
“I need to talk to you,” said Eae as soon as we walked into my old apartment.
“Put him on the couch,” I said, pointing at the living room, and Eae looked at Cirko still over his shoulder, like he’d actually forgotten the demon was even there.
I grabbed a bowl from the kitchen and an old cleaning rag. In the car, Cirko had started burning, and I was going to try to cool him down.
The woman stepped inside like she already knew the place by heart. Maybe she’d been there before, but right now, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I put the rag soaked in cold water on Cirko’s forehead. He was still breathing, but his eyes had yet to open.
“Thank you for having me,” said the woman, and she had no idea where to even look. “My name is Blair.”
Cirko was so hot, the rag was halfway dry in a minute. I soaked it again, then offered the bowl to the stranger.
“Hi, Blair. Mind filling this up with cold water for me?” She knew where the sink was.
Without a word, she took the bowl and made for the kitchen.
Eae looked at her like he was in constant shock. In fact, he couldn’t even tear his eyes off her back, not for one second.
“Hey,” I called, hoping to shake him out of whatever trance he was in. “Over here.” He finally looked at me. “Start talking.”
“Here,” said Blair, offering me the bowl again and another rag. “For you.” She pushed her thick brown hair behind her shoulder and touched her left ear. “Your ears are bleeding.”
Oh, shit. I’d forgotten all about that.
“Thanks,” I mumbled and took the old rag to clean myself up as well as I could.
“You might want to sit down for a second,” Eae said to Blair, almost like he was afraid to speak.
“Why?” Blair said, but Eae didn’t give either of us a second. He turned around and raised his head to the ceiling.
“Fucking bastard,” I muttered, just as he called: “Lucifer!”
We were about to receive a visit from the Devil.
Blair didn’t manage to sit or even come close to the couch before I felt the ice-cold presence of the Devil, and time stood still. I jumped to my feet on instinct and grabbed her falling body, pushing it onto the couch.
It was the wrong move. Very, very wrong.
Because the Devil was already there.
I tried to stand still, I really did, but it was impossible in that half-crouching position. Maybe the Devil wouldn’t notice. Maybe he was already sure that nobody was listening, so he wasn’t even going to look!
Except…
“Don’t bother, Willow,” Eae said with a tired sigh.
Shit. My left leg was already numb, so I straightened up. I was going to kill that angel.
“What is this, Eae?” the Devil demanded.
When I finally gathered enough balls to turn around and face them, I was thankful he wasn’t looking at me. But once again, I was struck by how ordinary he looked when talking to his brother. He looked like a thinner copy of Eae, with maybe darker hair and eyes.
“She can slip past the time freeze. Don’t know how or why. Just get over it,” Eae said.
That man had already lost all of his patience. The Devil then turned to me, his black eyes wide. Standing there awkwardly while he stared at me wasn’t going to do it, so I raised my hand and waved. What the hell else was I supposed to do?
“Hi.”
Yeah, Willow. Say hi to the Devil, will you?
When he smiled, I quickly looked away. He was the Devil, after all, and I liked my soul intact, thank you very much.
“The Velluum Sisters,” Eae said, calling his brother’s attention back to him.
I looked back at Cirko and at Blair, but neither of them were even breathing. This freezing time business was really freaky.
“It was your pet, and he did all of this with the Velluum Sisters.”
“But that’s impossible. The Sisters are buried even deeper under Monty than he is,” the Devil said, shaking his head.
“Well, they found a fucking way to communicate!” Eae shouted. “And you need to find out how, right now.”
“This whole thing is very well planned,” the Devil said, putting his hands in his pockets. “You and I both know that Grim doesn’t have the brains to set it up.”
“It doesn’t matter what we know—he’s done it,” Eae said, sounding less like himself by the second.
“He has Adrian,” I reminded both of them.
And the Devil turned the full force of his grin my way. Ugh.
“You know, I underestimated you, Willow Robinson. Here I thought you were just another trapper coming after my children, but no.” My God, he called his demons children. “You’re so much more than that. A real witch in modern times. Who would have thought?”
“Cut the crap, Luc,” Eae said, but now I wanted to hear more from the Devil. So I raised my hand to shut him up, and I stepped closer to the Devil.
“What did you say? A…a witch?”
“Exactly,” he said, so proud of himself I could have gagged. “Only witches of old could slip through the freeze, and it looks like you’re one of them.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just a trapper.” Maybe even a practitioner or whatever the hell Elton Maine had called it. But I was no witch.
The Devil showed me all of his teeth as if to brag how perfect and white they were.
“You’ve got a day to find out how they did it and put a stop to it, Luc,” Eae said.
I wanted to stop him again, to make the Devil explain why he thought I was a witch, but Eae was right. This was not important right now. What mattered was that we find Adrian.
“Even if they did somehow manage all of this, it’s really no big deal. We’ll all forget, just like always,” said the Devil, waving his hand.
A low growl from Eae, and he stopped smiling. The angel walked over to the couch, grabbed Blair by the shoulder, and turned her over.
“This is a big deal, Lucifer. A pretty huge fucking deal!”
The Devil looked at Blair’s face. He literally froze in shock for a good long second. I looked at Blair, too. What the hell did they see on her face? Because I sure didn’t.
“Magdalena,” the Devil whispered.
He reached out his hand, almost as if he wanted to touch Blair, but Eae turned her over on the couch again.
“It’s not her. She just looks like her because of Grim,” the angel said. “He’s messing with things that are beyond even you. The Archs are already coming for me. You know I’m not going to lie to them.”
“This wasn’t my doing,” said the Devil through gritted teeth. Fire danced in his black eyes.
“But you’ll fix it,” Eae said and turned his back on his brother. “Go.”
The Devil disappeared.
The cold weight lifted from my shoulders in a heartbeat, and Blair began to cough. I turned to Cirko, and though he was breathing again, he was still unconscious. I slowly moved to his feet and sat at the edge of the couch just to catch my breath.
“What the…what happened?” Blair asked, but neither Eae nor I could answer.
I looked at Eae, and he knew, even though he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We need to talk.”
“What we need is to prepare.” He turned to Blair. “You said you know where he is. So where is he?”
“I know where he will be,” Blair said. “A few days ago, Trip told me to meet him today at noon in a park here in New York. Said he’d have something for me, something that was going to…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at the floor.
“Were you the one who tried to kill Adrian?” I asked halfheartedly. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if she said yes, or what I’d do.
“I did,” she said without hesitation. “But I couldn’t.”
“Because I stopped you,” Eae said. He sounded like he couldn’t decide whether to be angry at her, or not. Whatever it was that was troubling him, it had turned him white as a sheet and had changed the angel he was completely. There was no more light in his eyes, not like there used to be.
“Because I couldn’t,” Blair said. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t know that he was going to want me to kill someone.”
“Where did you get the vajra?” Eae asked.
“What the hell is a vajra?”
Blair reached for a bag I hadn’t even noticed her carrying, a bag that she’d left by the legs of the couch where Cirko was lying. She unzipped it and took out a weapon of some sort, like a double-headed, round hammer with spikes and stones of all colors decorating the handle.
“He gave it to me. Said I’d have to kill Adrian with it.” The regret was clear in her voice. I really didn’t know how to feel about any of it.
“Did he tell you why you’d have to kill him?” I was just trying to piece it all together. So far, no luck.
But Blair shook her head. “Just that when I did, he’d tell me where to find my brother.”
I looked at Eae. What the hell was she talking about?
“That vajra is a weapon of spiritual power. It’s one of the few things in the world that can really mess up an angel and kill my Aux,” Eae said, but I still didn’t get it. “Only if it’s used by a blood relative.”
I smiled. Was he saying that Blair was related to Adrian?
How?
I was going to ask, but then something that Trip said came to my mind.
All I had to do was make everyone believe that she was dead, alter some features of her face here and there, and then feed her some tale of reuniting with her family before sending her after your Aux.
He’d been talking about Blair.
All I had to do was make everyone believe that she was dead. Hadn’t Adrian said that his father’s first family had died in a car crash long before he was born? He’d had a baby sister, and she’d died, too.
Unless she hadn’t.
“Is she—” I wanted to ask Eae, but he cut me off.
“You said Grim gave you something. A ball. Where is it?”
Oh, right. The plastic ball. “Back at the house where you found me. I never take it with me because it doesn’t do anything. It’s just a plastic ball.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. It was just to scare him. I’ve never actually spoken to the Velluum Sisters.” Thank God for that. “Now, what the hell did he mean about me?”
“Exactly what he said,” Eae said, running his fingers through his short hair. “You’re a witch.”
Such a funny guy. “I’m not a witch, dude. I’m a trapper.”
“A trapper couldn’t have done what you did back at the apartment. Had I not been an angel, I’d have ended up like him.” He pointed at Cirko.
But I shook my head. “No. I didn’t do this to him. The demons and the ice monsters did. This wasn’t me.” It couldn’t be. “I just…I just shook the ground.” That was nothing, right?
“You broke Vicos and rendered thirty demons unconscious with a blow. Next time, give me a heads up, okay?”
Next time? Was he out of his mind?
“There isn’t going to be a next time. It was just a one time thing.” I stepped in front of him because he wouldn’t look at me otherwise. “Eae, I’m just a trapper.”
He smiled, but it looked awful on him. “I need to rest, and then I need to plan. Chances are that Grim invited her because he has Adrian there, and he’s going to make her kill him.”
My heart skipped a long beat. “But he’s no longer your Aux.” Grim could kill Adrian, too, now. Not that I wanted to—God, no—but I didn’t understand.
“He knows I’ll be there, too. He wants to defeat me, remember? This is between me and him.”
But he was wrong. “This is between all of us.”
He sighed loudly. “Get some rest. I’ll wake you up at dawn.” He turned around and walked to the hallway.
“I’m not going to do it,” Blair said. “I’m not going to kill Adrian.”
“You’ll have no choice,” Eae said and continued to walk.
“Aren’t you going to tell her?” I asked because it was her right to know. She was Adrian’s sister.
But Eae didn’t answer. He just slammed the door to the guest bedroom shut.
“Tell me what?” Blair said, but luckily, I didn’t have to answer because Cirko finally woke up.
