Summoning Trouble, page 19
The nurse walked me to his room and let me in again. Strangely, she wore heavy leather gloves imbued with magic. Also, she hadn’t let me open the doors myself. Maybe they treated possession as if it were a contagious disease? Except, possession wasn’t contagious, not even a little bit. The curtains were closed in all the other rooms, so I hadn’t seen any of the possessed, I just had a feeling I could help them, and they needed it. I took the jug to the table next to Michael’s bed.
“Jerome’s message to Leviathan gave us an advantage, and this was fairly easy to get—the demons did the hard work and captured the basilisk for me,” I said, as I pulled out the stopper that was in the jug. I held the stopper over Michael, who was looking very pale. I noticed the vein in his neck pulsed and was black. The antivenom dripped down onto his cheek. His skin absorbed it in moments, and I put the stopper back in the bottle. I wanted to scold him for overdoing his healing on Penelope but didn’t. I waited to see if the antivenom would work as fast on him as it had Xerxes. His breathing became easier. Color began to return to his skin and the blackness of his vein began to recede, replaced by the more normal blue.
“Now go downstairs and help your friend,” Michael said to me.
“Okay,” I said, and Jerome stood up.
“There’s a coven close doing healing magic,” Jerome said.
“Magda’s,” I replied. “We were hoping you’d feel it even though they forced them to wait in the hallway outside the ward.”
“Even I felt it,” Remiel said. “They are stronger than they realize.”
“Good. Why is this ward so full, and why do the demons seem sad?” I asked. Possession wards were normally very small with only a patient or two, and then only for a few days while the hospital waited for a certified exorcist to come and do the exorcism after the medical exorcism failed. The difference was minute and massive between an exorcist like me and a medical exorcist. It was all about strength. About half of all medical exorcists are very weak and have to be assisted with potions. A certified exorcist had to be strong enough to need assistance less than five percent of the time.
“I thought it was my imagination,” Jerome said after a second. “But it did seem incredibly full and that everyone seemed sad. I also felt the possessed as well as the demons inside them felt sad.”
“Okay, I’m going to go give the antivenom to Penelope, and then I’ll be back in an official capacity. Thankfully, Azrael is here just in case I need official backing.”
“I’ll go make sure he stays,” Remiel said to me. “If Michael tells me he’s well enough, I can leave.”
“He was in the hallway with Magda, I’ll speak to him on my way out,” I said, and Jerome got up to follow me. I considered telling him to stay with Michael just in case, but I suspected my uncle was out of the woods. Now to help Penelope. I stopped and exchanged a few words with Azrael about the possessed inside the ward. He went to speak with the nurse, and Magda and the other members of her coven decided to follow Jerome and me. I realized then that there were only eleven coven members. I blinked. Duh, Magda and Penelope were in the same coven, holy shit and I had them healing Michael while Penelope was also sick. Sometimes I was an oblivious asshole.
I gave a drop of the antivenom to Penelope. A small drop, the demons said I had enough in each bottle to heal hundreds. It therefore was more potent than the venom and required far less. I dropped it straight into the wound. We waited, and after a minute, Penelope took a massive gulp of air and tried to sit up.
“We might have nullified the venom, but you’ve still got a bullet in you,” I said, as I fought to get her back down on the bed.
“I found Janet—I need your help!” Penelope said, grabbing on to me at the shoulders. Her long, thin, muscular fingers balled my shirt in her fists as she spoke and clutched at me.
“Okay, I will help. Can you explain what happened and who shot you?” I asked, easing her fingers from my shirt.
“Janet’s husband shot me because I found her. He has her held hostage, making potions for him and his group!” Penelope cried.
“The potions being used in the robberies,” I said.
“Yes. He’s a member of a radical group of demon rights people. It’s an offshoot of BEDR but far more extreme,” Penelope said as she lay back down. “Janet had a child when she was twenty-five. He has brainwashed her daughter into joining the group, and if Janet doesn’t do what they ask, they are going to infect her daughter with a wendigo.” If there was something worse than being possessed by a demon, it was being possessed by a wendigo. They encouraged cannibalism in their hosts.
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“I got to speak to Janet for about ten minutes before he noticed and shot me,” Penelope said. “The thing is, I’ve seen him before, but I’m not sure where.”
“The AESPCA,” I said.
“Yes!” Penelope responded. “He’s not the guy that Janet introduced me to last year.”
“Does the AESPCA scan for masking potions?” I asked.
“Of course,” Magda and Penelope both said.
“So, he probably used one when you met him with Janet and can’t use it at work,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” Penelope said. “Didn’t you meet him?”
“Yes, very briefly, but more importantly, Raphael met him. If he’d had bad intentions then, Raphael would have known,” I said.
“But Raphael didn’t pick up on anything,” Magda said. “Changing your face is one thing, hiding intentions from an archangel is another.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Where were they?”
“In Red Bud, Illinois. There’s a commune they are living in,” Penelope told me.
“Okay, you need surgery now. I’ll go get Janet,” I told Penelope. I left most of the coven there but took Magda. “Anything the AESPCA can do?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure. I mean, it’s her word against his and we don’t know his name,” Magda said.
“Well, the guy I met was part angel. My sister is head of the council. I think I’ll go do something drastic,” I told her.
“Soleil,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take other angels with me.” I smiled at her.
Chapter Seventeen
Despite its proximity to St. Louis, Red Bud was a small town. I was looking at a map of it on my phone trying to decide where the commune might be located. I’d called Helia. As head of the angel council, if there’s a commune where angels or part angels live and they’ve been accused of a crime, Helia can gather an action team to take the accused into custody. No one could remember the last time a council, any council, gathered an action team to take one of their own into custody, which meant it had been a really long time.
With Magda’s supervision, I opened a portal to my house, where the other half of the car still sat in my driveway. I gathered Angel and Helia, and surprisingly, several of my archangel kin. Raphael, Remiel, Gabriel, Haniel, and Samael had gathered at my house to form the action team. Magda was also with us, since I couldn’t be trusted to open portals in an emergency. The car incident had already become a joke, the first thing Raphael said when he arrived was next time I cut a car in half I needed to make sure it didn’t belong to a little old lady who was lonely, because he liked to have never gotten away from her. He had taken note of her children’s names, and he intended to contact them to find out why they didn’t spend more time with their mother. So, my fuck-up might turn into my dad’s good deed; I felt that was probably a win. I still had full bottle of antivenom, which seemed like a good precaution considering we knew they had venom and had already used it as a weapon. Haniel offered to fly reconnaissance over Red Bud for us, and we all readily agreed. Maybe he would be able to see where the commune was, so we didn’t have to search the entire town. Our hope was that since winged angels often flew to their destinations, it wouldn’t strike the group as suspicious.
“When Francesca was arrested, she mentioned a group with more power than BEDR and more determination that we couldn’t stop,” Magda said. “I thought it was Balthazar Leopold’s science experiment group, but maybe I was wrong, and this was what she was talking about.”
“Why would a group of angels want demons to come back to Earth?” I asked, and then I had a thought that answered my own question. “Holy fuck.”
“What?” Raphael asked.
“If I tell you, you’ll yell at me,” I responded. Uriel believed angels were divine, he was the only person on the planet that believed this as far as I knew. But he may have instilled that thought in his daughter Francesca that if demons came back to Earth and angels protected the human race from them, then maybe others would begin to believe angels were divine as well. Angels would be superior to others, because we’d be the saviors of Earth. There were a few holes in the theory, like angels had already saved the Earth from demons with the creation of the Stygian. But that was beyond ancient history, and most people these days didn’t even know demons were the souls of deceased supernaturals, so they had also of course forgotten angels built the Stygian.
The other issue was Uriel—was he involved? Had he been the first, did he start looking for converts among the members of BEDR perhaps? Was my uncle a cult leader in other words, shit. That would explain how Francesca had gotten involved. She’d refused to name any of her conspirators, was she protecting her father?
“Magda, whatever they want out of the vault has to do with demons or the Stygian if it’s this offshoot of BEDR,” I said, as I remembered Miss Wu and Tameka foreseeing the return of a nemesis, but a dark shape kept them from seeing who. Well, BEDR might qualify as a nemesis, and they were very pro-demon. Although not as pro-demon as this group seemed to be. Huh. That was interesting.
“Raphael, could you go talk to the president of BEDR and see if he knows anything? I can’t do it; we have mutual restraining orders in effect,” I requested.
“Sure,” Dad responded.
“Remind me when this ends to ask you about that,” Magda said, looking at Raphael. I blinked at her.
“Ask about what?” I asked.
“Sometimes you call him Dad and sometimes Raphael. Also, sometimes you refer to him as your dad or your father or just Raphael. I find it a little weird,” Magda said. I blinked at her.
“His name is Raphael,” I said.
“After all this,” Magda said, waving her hand at me. I shrugged, still not sure what she was talking about. Helia was grinning. I gave her a glare and she smiled wider. But she wasn’t working her magic, so that was something. “I’ll get Miguel going through the inventory of the vault,” Magda said.
“Okay, but have him do it on the down low,” Helia said. I glared at her more. Helia could get away with saying things like on the down low, but when I said it, I was sure I sounded stupid, and I definitely felt that way.
“Absolutely,” Magda replied, and dug out her cell phone.
“If there are non-angels in the group, we’ll have to leave them,” Helia said. “Can you handle that? They could get word out that we’re onto them.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think possession is their primary weapon, and, well, I’m me. If worse comes to worst, I have some experience with wendigos. Oh, shit, so does Kabal, and he’s part angel. Should we add him to our action team?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at my sister. Kabal asked my sister to marry him, and she turned him down, because she’d just gotten out of a terrible marriage. They were still dating, but I’d noticed they weren’t going out as often; perhaps it wasn’t exclusive anymore. I’d tried to talk to Helia about it and she would only say that she’d hurt his feelings by telling him no, and I hadn’t had the guts to call him and talk about it. However, I really wanted to because Helia was happier around Kabal than I’d seen her in many years, and her daughters adored the giant.
“Kabal would help,” Helia said. He was also an AESPCA agent. I nodded and pursed my lips. I frowned at Helia, who was studiously ignoring me.
“Fine.” I grabbed my sister’s phone. I knew the pin number and entered it, and then I found Kabal’s number and dialed.
“Helia is everything okay?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“It’s actually Soleil, and things are not okay. Helia is fine, but she’s had to call together an angel action team to try to capture the angel that shot Penelope. We know he’s using possession as a weapon, which I can deal with on my own, but there’s a rumor he has the ability to cause possession via wendigo, and I wouldn’t mind someone else who had a little experience with wendigos along,” I said.
“Oh man, yeah. No problem, where should I meet you?” Kabal asked.
“My house,” I responded. “Wait, actually, I’m going to send Magda to get you via portal, where are you?” He gave me the address and I passed it along to Magda. She took a breath, nodded and opened a portal. Kabal stepped through and she closed it. Magda could do the coolest shit. Remiel gave a snort, and I realized he’d just seen my thought and the thought that followed it of the car. I ignored him. Raphael had already flown away.
“You just tell me what you need me to do,” Kabal said, looking from Magda to me. “Okay, so who is in charge?” Oh, that was a good question. Technically, it couldn’t be Magda Red, she had no angel in her. Going on technicalities, Helia was the council head, so she should be in charge. However, the thought of my sister being in danger from a demon, wendigo, or basilisk envenomation made me want to puke. I looked between Remiel and Gabriel; both took steps back from the group.
“I vote Soleil in charge, of course. She has battle experience in both realms, and she did just milk a basilisk, something I don’t believe any of us can claim we’ve done,” Samael said, and I blinked at him. “Word travels fast in the family.” He shrugged.
“I second that,” Helia said. “Soleil should be in charge.” I waited for her to add something about it being my crusade or suicide mission, but she didn’t. She just smiled at me.
“I’m not family and I’m not council, so I don’t know if I get a vote, but I have fought alongside Soleil before against a wendigo, and I agree she should lead,” Kabal said.
“I’m also neither, but I think Soleil is the obvious choice,” Magda added.
“You’re both nearly family, like I used to be,” Jerome said. “So, I think your votes count.” Both opened their mouths as if to protest and Jerome held up a hand. “Yes, I have some of their DNA, but family isn’t just about DNA. It’s about who stands beside you when shit gets real.”
“That was quite moving,” I told Jerome in a serious tone. “I intended to leave you home with my mom, but maybe I should take you along as a flag bearer and bugler, so you can rally us if need be.”
“I intend to be in charge of Angel. If you think you’re going to make me stay home when there is the possibility you will be facing wendigos, you don’t know me as well as I thought,” Jerome said. Leviathan’s comments about sending the hellhound to us to ensure Jerome’s safety came back to me. Sometimes Leviathan spoke in generalities, while also talking about specifics.
“Okay, here’s the deal, you stick to the side of that hellhound like you’ve been surgically conjoined. Do. You. Understand?” I asked.
“Yes, I heard what he said, too,” Jerome said in a much quieter voice. I nodded. As much as I hated to admit, the magic the sixteen-year-old had would probably be both useful and necessary. Kabal was a great fighter, but he wasn’t particularly magical. And a lot of his magic was actually defensive, which I guess made sense when I really thought about it. He was part fairy as well as angel. His fey part was a bloodline of battle fey.
“Now we have to wait on Haniel and Raphael,” I said, tapping my foot. I’m not a huge fan of waiting on anything and waiting on two things is torture. I was ready to go and get it over with. About ten minutes after my pronouncement that we were stuck waiting, Raphael returned with the current president of BEDR. Zack Galinda was in his pajamas and looked like my dad might have roused him from bed and demanded they fly back here.
“Uh, I can’t be here,” Zack protested, looking at me as Dad landed, setting him on his feet in front of me. “We can’t be within fifty yards of each other.”
“Yes, but something important has come up that means we need to just forget our differences for a while. BEDR has an offshoot that is more radical, correct?”
“Uh,” Zack said. “I don’t think I would refer to either group as radical.”
“The wording right now is a matter of semantics. Do you know who is heading the group?” I asked.
“Not really,” Zack said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Look, I think they are about to steal an item to allow demons on Earth without hosts. If that’s the case, a lot of people are going to die before we get the demons under control. That violates everything BEDR has worked for, so it’s a problem for your group as well as everyone else,” I said. Zack stared at me for several moments and then nodded twice, slowly. BEDR believed demons who have a host should have rights and that possession was a beautiful thing that was mutually beneficial to the demon as well as the possessed. They also felt that possession should be consensual, comparing non-consensual possession to rape. On that we agreed. The rest of it not so much. Possession was not beautiful or mutually beneficial, and demons did not deserve a right to occupy their host, even if consensual. If we needed court orders to perform exorcisms, there’d be some souls lost due to the red tape. “So, anything you know would be helpful. We are on the same side right now and if these crackpots manage to achieve their goal, it will hurt BEDR’s reputation.”
“It was being headed by Francesca Urielita, but after she was arrested, a man took over as head. He’s really weird, though. No one knows what he actually looks like outside his group, because he has something that allows him to change his face.”
“Oh shit, he’s found the power of the bodark,” Magda said. I had never heard of a bodark, so I stared at her blankly.
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