Chronicles of Gabriel, page 2
He’d slapped a plastic explosive to the door.
Three...two...one...
The building exploded with enough force to quake the street, but enough directed precision to harm only the people still cursing inside. Gabriel dusted off his jeans as the fireball curled into the sky above him, blotting out that beautiful sunshine with a cloud of acrid black smoke.
It had already cleared by the time he rounded the corner and crossed the street, slipping into the idling taxi. The driver turned around slowly, and Gabriel flashed him another cheerful smile.
“Now...let’s head to the airport.”
GABRIEL DIDN’T STOP at the main terminal when they reached the airstrip, but directed the cab towards a group of private planes on the other side. Two of them bore governmental insignias, but the others were conspicuously absent of identifying markers. A few of their pilots were idling beside them, scrolling through celebrity gossip and blowing clouds of cigarette smoke into the balmy day.
The cab rolled to a stop.
“This is you?” the driver asked in surprise.
He’d driven wealthy Englishmen before—and no matter how proud this one seemed of his carefully-selected sandals, he was clearly a wealthy Englishmen—but never anything like this.
Gabriel glanced out the window, reaching into his pocket. “I’m a personal shopper.” He passed a card through the grate, rolling his eyes towards the shiny row of planes. “You wouldn’t believe some of the nonsense these people think up.”
The man’s eyes twinkled as he passed back a receipt. “I wouldn’t be surprised...”
Gabriel stared a split second, then flashed a parting smile and stepped onto the tarmac, casually reactivating the GPS locater with a twitch of his hand. The taxi sped off towards the exit while he slung a bag over his shoulder and jogged up the descending stairwell of the nearest plane.
There was no need to guess which plane. It was the only one without a tail number.
A blast of air conditioning struck him the second he set foot inside, shivering over his sun-washed skin and making him reach for the discarded blazer. It slipped back over his arms as he gave a quick nod to the pilot and headed down the narrow hallway into the main cabin.
A frazzled case officer was already inside, clutching a cellphone to his ear.
“And I understand that—” He waved a silent greeting to Gabriel, trying his best to interrupt the angry tirade coming from the other side of the Atlantic. “Richard, I understand—” He broke off again, rubbing at his temples. “Well sure, that’s one interpretation—”
A string of choice profanities echoed through the phone, getting steadily louder with each one. The man drew in a breath, then covered the receiver with a strained smile.
“I’m sorry, Alden. This will just take a second.”
Gabriel lifted his hands, settling in the seat across from him.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been shelved for a more urgent problem. The man doing the shelving wasn’t even supposed to be sitting on the plane. He was a field-office manager, accustomed to sitting in a London suburb somewhere, answering phones. But those lines had started to blur after Cliff Barnes broke open the cells beneath the PC and took almost half the agency with him.
Agents had been left without partners. Caseloads had started doubling up.
The only good thing that could be said about the supernatural exodus, was that it had been relatively peaceful. But in a way, that wasn’t surprising. This hadn’t been a professional squabble, but a rift in the heart of a community. The people who left weren’t just names on a sheet of paper.
They were friends.
“No, Richard. I can’t make him transform...”
The engine had started when Gabriel locked eyes with the pilot and the plane was already taxiing onto the runway. The Privy Council didn’t generally adhere to the idea of taking turns, the same way they staunchly refused to file a flight plan. Somewhere amidst the slew of governmental connections and magical assists, its agents had grown accustomed to the finer things in life. On most flights, a heavily-tailored attendant would have already offered a drink. No such person appeared.
“—can’t just rent out another submersible, there is a weight limit to these things. Now if you insist upon diving with the—” An angry pause. Much more shouting. “Then put Roger on the line!”
There was an odd grinding sound and the case officer lowered the phone briefly from his ear, holding it like a prayer to his chest. There had already been an impressive number of calls that morning. And no matter the shifting time-zone, it always seemed to be ten o’clock.
Gabriel regarded him with a touch of sympathy, then took advantage of the lull.
“I got him,” he whispered.
The man covered the receiver. “What?”
“The bad guy, I got him.”
The case officer rolled his eyes with a grin. And a migraine. There was an empty clipboard sitting on his lap. One they weren’t technically supposed to take off without completing.
He tossed it from his legs onto Gabriel’s.
“Draw me a picture.”
With a flash of mischief, the assassin leaned back in his chair and proceeded to do just that—transforming the case summary into a flowering garden, adding gradually to the latitude and longitude, until if anyone checked, the mission would have occurred somewhere close to the moon.
He’d just put the final touches on a pair of disgruntled seals, when he caught the man’s eye twitch and caged them with an obedient smile, scribbling down answers to the same questions he’d been asked a thousand times before. Did you need to kill so many people? Should you have killed more people? Are there some people out there, right now, that we should be tracking down to kill?
Not for the first time, he wondered how his friends answered the same questions.
He doubted they were asked of Molly, while Luke was probably required to fill them out in cuneiform on a rock. Julian likely left his case reports blank, unless he knew that someone in the future was going to read them, while he suspected that Devon had found a way to imprint each one upon his very soul. Rae would probably be drawing seals just like he was.
Angel would give the seals guns.
He finished with the clipboard and reached into his pocket, tracing the tips of his fingers around the diamond band. It was delicate, just like the engagement ring he’d purchased what felt like only a few blinks before. The day was racing towards them, groaning beneath the weight of a million nonsensical logistics, but it still couldn’t come fast enough. This was his wedding. To Natasha.
He would have married her yesterday. He would marry her tomorrow.
He would marry her the second he got home.
“—freeze the iguana—”
His eyes lifted slowly, drifting across the tiny cabin and settling on the case officer’s face. By the looks of things, the conversation had deteriorated quickly. It had also taken a bit of a turn.
“I can’t get anyone there until at least tomorrow,” the man muttered, pulling another phone from his pocket and scrolling frantically down the screen. “I just picked up Alden in Havana and we’re heading back to Heathrow. But we’ll be passing close enough that I could—”
“I’ll do it.”
Three conversations in two different time zones, came to a pause. The case officer stared across the cabin without blinking, tiny drops of sweat trickling down the sides of his face.
“...you will?”
“Why not?” Gabriel tossed back the clipboard with a smile, raking his fingers through his wavy hair. “We’re all finished here. It’ll give me a chance to stretch my legs.”
In the blink of an eye, things were set into motion. Plans shifted and new coordinates were given to the pilot. A fresh batch of phone calls were made to a corporation somewhere in Germany, and in a tiny office building in North Carolina, an aged secretary went racing down the hall.
“Thank you,” the case officer murmured, leaning back into his chair with a wan smile. It was too early to say for sure, but there was a good chance he was going to live an extra five years. “Shall I have them send over the file? There isn’t much time before landing, but—”
“Just give me a location. I’ll figure it out inside.”
The ring was tucked safely back into his pocket, as Gabriel’s heart quickened with a rush of adrenaline. For a passing moment, it felt almost like the old days.
No restrictions. No predictability. No net. Just point him in the right direction and let nature take its course. It was absolute freedom. And never had he found something at which he so excelled.
A part of him almost missed it.
Another part was trying very hard to forget.
Chapter 2
The plane touched down just after dusk, sinking into the tall grasses of a Savannah skyline.
Gabriel could hear the cicadas before the wheels even finished turning, a sweeping chorus that rushed inside his ears, like shells getting dragged back to the sea. The air was sharp, yet sweet with the scent of palmettos mixed with honey. And humid, he’d forgotten how humid it was in the American South. A warm breeze swept down the second the door that had opened, curling his waves into tendrils and sticking his tee shirt to the front of his chest.
Good thing I came from Cuba.
“Good thing you came from Cuba,” the case officer echoed his thoughts, peeking just enough of his head out the door to squint into the setting sun. “You’re already dressed for it.”
Once he’d been freed from that strangling panic, Kevin had actually turned out to be a lovely companion. A little star-struck, but that could no longer be avoided. More than anything, he was simply grateful. He and the others had been stretched just as thin as the agents were themselves.
Gabriel nodded mutely, his vision narrowing to the target. “And we think the place is deserted?”
There had been a failed recovery attempt, this much he had learned from the man on the plane. Bad intel, from the sounds of it. The enemy had been alerted, and the target was no longer inside. But an agent was still trapped there, having walked into a situation that was sure to get a few dozen underlings fired. The reason for this was unknown. Perhaps injury, perhaps worse. The radio link had gone dead a few hours earlier. For all they knew, the agent was already in the ground.
Kevin glanced back at his phone, re-reading the latest updates at the speed of light.
They might have been in a pastoral field, but the man’s ink stretched a bit past that, projecting so high into the atmosphere above them, it allowed him to act as a virtual satellite.
“That’s what they’re assuming—nothing but the hotel staff and our man inside.” He paused ever so slightly, tensing at the same time. “There’s a good chance it’s a collection, not a rescue.”
Gabriel nodded again, it was nothing more than he expected.
They rescued the agents. They collected the bodies.
This guy’s already been off the grid a long time.
“Don’t wait up.”
Kevin nodded automatically, then caught himself just as fast.
“Wait—don’t wait up?” he repeated anxiously.
Far be it from him to disagree with the famed assassin, but at the same time, he didn’t want to be the man responsible for the death of Gabriel Alden. Especially this close to his wedding.
Especially this close to his friends.
“What if you need backup?” he argued before Gabriel could answer. “What if something goes wrong, and you need a quick getaway, or just—”
“And you have time for that?” Gabriel answered with a light smile, turning back long enough to snap a fresh round of ammunition into place. “Be honest, where were you heading next?”
There was a pause, followed by a reluctant mumble.
“Prisoner transfer. This fallen oligarch in Bucharest—”
“Go—do that,” Gabriel interrupted, turning back to the road. “I’ll be fine here. And I’ll be finding a way back for myself.”
The man started nodding, then grimaced instead. “And what if...?”
Their eyes met.
“I know how to transport a body.”
There was another pause, then the two shook hands.
It was a rather dour note to end on, but time was of the essence, and these days, situations rarely allowed for anything more. Barnes may not have attacked them directly, but he’d left them high and dry. If the other side didn’t get them, there was a strong case to be made for friendly fire.
The engine thrummed to life and the plane streaked across the ground behind him as Gabriel made his way with the greatest of caution through trees.
Despite the fact that they weren’t far from civilization, there was something utterly wild about the feel of it. Like walking through an old time novel, where the pages cracked beneath your fingers and everyone had frogs in their backyards. He stepped lightly, on guard for any sound that didn’t fit in with the landscape. The snap of metal, the rubber creak of a shoe. Free from the usual constraints of a city, his ink was able to fan out and perform a function it was rarely allowed: search.
So often it was used merely for destruction—whether that be deflecting a bullet, collapsing a building, or holding a person hostage using nothing but their own blood. It seemed he never played anymore with the nuance—the bits he focused on when he was learning. The elemental variation in the things around them, the tiny complexities as things could be merged and parted in distinct ways.
It was science, what he did. Wizard’s science, maybe. But science nonetheless.
He’d told this to Natasha once in a moment of drunken clarity. He was a scientist—nay, the world’s greatest scientist. He’d gotten a sarcastic coffee mug to that effect the following day.
But there was nothing. No weapons, no trip wires. No static hum of radios wedged in unfriendly ears. Only the soft call of a summer swallow as the sun dipped below the trees. The hotel appeared a few minutes later—framed like a fairytale upon the crest of a moonlit hill.
Just like the brochure had said.
He eased out of the underbrush and stepped onto the gravel driveway, shrugging off the mossy branches of the towering oaks. At a closer look, there was nothing particularly fairytale about it. Or Southern, for that matter. Instead of being the overpriced antebellum reenactment he’d been expecting, the place looked like it had sprung right from the pages of a detective novel.
Probably a few secret passageways. Probably a few false doors.
Definitely haunted.
And from the look of things...it was actually deserted.
He slowed down ever so slightly, trying to determine the best way inside.
As much as he’d come to admire certain aspects of the Privy Council, both he and Angel still preferred to do their own reconnaissance whenever possible. When the office worker on the plane had claimed the action was already over, he’d prepared to go in, guns blazing, just in case. But unless the enemy had approached on foot like him—a terrible strategy for a direct assault—then it was quite possible Kevin was right. There were only two cars in the parking lot, and one of them hadn’t run in over a century. The other was a passenger vehicle—almost impossible to armor, and slower than almost everything that might come up against it on the road. They might have stormed the hotel and successfully relocated their asset, but they had left sometime earlier that day.
So he’s either strapped to a chair with a bag over his head, or they buried him beneath these lovely trees.
Gabriel threw a reflexive glance over his shoulder, unsure which he would prefer.
Short of any better ideas, he threw caution to the wind and jogged lightly up the wooden steps, nodding politely to the doorman as he passed by. The man was armed, but with something better suited for squirrels. He also wasn’t nearly as shaken as he ought to be.
The lobby was a different story. Whatever happened in the lobby had to have hurt.
There weren’t many parts that weren’t soaked through in blood, and all of them had been left to the tired attendance of an elderly janitor—a man who’d decided to combat the problem with a single bucket of water and an undervalued mop. Gabriel paused immediately upon entering, then picked his way carefully across the tiles, pausing a bit uncertainly when he reached the front desk.
What the hell is happening...?
“Good evening, sir.”
Gabriel froze where he stood, half-expecting a pair of cursed twins to wander down the stairs and barter for his soul. Here was another misfitting piece of the puzzle. Another character straight out of Sherlock Holmes. The man was posed with an imperious expression between a crystal vase and landline telephone that was actually so old, it was dial up. Hand to the heart, he lowered a monocle before he spoke.
“Are you interested in booking a room?”
Is this some kind of movie set? Is everyone who works here a ghost?
Gabriel swallowed hard and took a step closer, forcing his lips into a strained approximation of a smile. Truth be told, he had no idea how to respond. They were standing in the middle of an actual bloodbath. The man had an unblemished handkerchief tucked into his lapel.
When in doubt, a simple approach was often best.
“Actually, I’m looking for a friend of mine.”
Gabriel’s mind blanked in shock, as he abruptly realized he’d never actually asked for the missing agent’s name. Or his tatù. Or a physical description. All those pesky little details.
Blame the case officer. Never look back.
“He’s, uh...he’s traveling alone. Might be kind of tall...?”
“You’re talking about Mr. Delaway, sir,” the man answered with the greatest of authority, taking the lens from his eye and polishing it with gloved hands. “He flew in a few days ago, and I’m afraid his business here didn’t go as he’d planned. He has retired into the southern wing.”
