Chapter Thirty-One #2
“Zaniel, you know that’s not true; our faith protects us from the powers of evil better than any other.”
“I know that is what you believe, because I believed it once, too, but I have seen too much of the world outside the College of Angels, Suriel. I have seen Ravensong back down a demon by invoking the Goddess more than once; all good faiths shine a light into the darkness.”
She shook her head. “That is not what I believe, and it is not what you believed once.”
“Once upon a time I believed many things, Suriel, but that time is not now.”
“When I knew you were involved, I did not request a second to accompany me, for there is no one better at my side for the work ahead, but now I am unsure that you are up to the work.”
“You’ve had over ten years more training than I have, Suriel.”
“Why did you not call upon the angels to deal with the relic, Zaniel?”
“Because we needed a magic circle up as quickly as possible so we could keep the rest of the unit safe; Ravensong is faster at that than anyone else I know.”
“The witch says you gave her your power to tap into for her spell.”
I didn’t like the inflection on the word witch when she said it, but it was Lila who said it out loud. “You say witch like it’s a bad thing.”
“I was taught that all ways of power are lesser than the way I was taught. I mean no offense, but it is what I believe.”
“Do you think that witches are all evil?” Lila asked.
“Don’t ask her that, Lila, you won’t like the answer,” I said.
“If you think witches are evil, then why are you willing to help us?” Goliath asked.
“Yes,” Charleston said from behind us all, “if you think we are all evil pagans, why are you helping us?”
“I did not say you were evil, just misled.”
“Misled?” He said the one word in that tone he used sometimes when you knew that you were in trouble.
Either Suriel didn’t understand the tone or she wasn’t worried about the consequences.
She was still comfortable and secure in the College of Angels and everything they taught us there.
No, not taught, indoctrinated. How do you know you’re in a cult?
You usually don’t until something happens that is so terrible you can’t ignore it, or pretend it didn’t happen, and then you start questioning everything.
Suriel’s face was peaceful; she hadn’t had her moment yet, and maybe she never would. Maybe she’d be one of those people who go through life without anything forcing her to question everything; part of me envied her that, but the rest of me was sorry for her.
“It is my duty to help those afflicted by forces of the Enemy.”
“She means Lucifer,” I said.
“I know who she means,” Charleston said, still with that purr of threat in his voice.
She was looking around at all of us. “I have offended you again. I did not mean to be offensive.”
“When is the last time you were outside the College, Suriel?”
“I am not cloistered away, Zaniel.”
“How often are you allowed outside the walls?” I asked.
“It is not a prison, Zaniel.”
“You’re right, the day I left no one tried to stop me.”
“I did not mean to offend anyone, but I do find it difficult to deal with people outside.”
“You don’t get out much, do you?” Lila said, not sounding exactly friendly.
“No,” Suriel said as if she hadn’t heard the sarcasm, or just hadn’t understood it.
“What color of sash is in your bag besides red?” I asked. I’d finally noticed her small black bag like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag from a movie. When I’d left there’d been talk of going to a backpack, but apparently they’d decided it was too modern.
She looked up at me, startled at last, as if she hadn’t expected the question. She should have known I’d ask, even if it had only been for old times’ sake.
“What sash?” Goliath asked.
“We all come in to be trained as Angel Speakers, but there are different specialties. We differentiate by sashes worn over the robes,” I said.
“You should not be telling secrets to strangers,” Suriel said.
“Honey, all of us that watched Where Do Our Children Go? , that documentary on Netflix, knew about your little sashes and a lot more,” Lila said.
“I do not know what you are talking about,” Suriel said.
“It was a documentary about parents trying to get their children back from the College of Angels,” I said.
I hadn’t been able to watch all of it; it had been too hard to watch the kids going into the big double gates with their parents.
That would be the last time they saw their families unless they failed the training.
“I did not know there was such a documentary,” she said.
“Are there still no televisions at the College?” I asked.
“There is one for playing DVDs of movies and educational programming in the teachers’ lounge now,” she said.
“Well, at least that’s some progress,” I said.
“You say the angels still speak to you, Zaniel.”
“They do.”
“I need your skills with the angels in order to help your coworker.”
“You have studied a decade longer than I have, Suriel; I can give you nothing that you do not already have in your arsenal.”
She smiled, but this was a sad smile. “You always underestimate your worth, Zaniel.”
I shook my head. “I did, and then I thought too much of myself, and the price of that was too high, so let me be humble, Suriel. I’m too dangerous any other way.”
“Oh, Zaniel, that is not what happened.”
“I was there, Suriel, I know what happened.”
She shook her head hard enough that her blond curls bounced the way they had when they were longer, and we were younger. “I will not argue old wounds with you here and now, Zaniel.”
“Good.”
“Whatever wounds we have, Zaniel, I need your help.”
“What help can I possibly be?”
“Have you seen what happened to your friend Ravensong?”
“The lieutenant described it to me, but I haven’t seen it.”
Suriel’s face was serious again. “It is something that should not be.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that demon flesh can do this, but not mortal human flesh.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Lieutenant Charleston, can you please show him a picture of the hand?”
Charleston stepped forward, using his smartphone to bring up an image. We took a lot of pictures with our phones because phenomena didn’t always last long enough to wait for forensics to arrive with better cameras. Some of it couldn’t even be captured by technology, but apparently this could.
The first image was Ravensong sitting in a chair with something on the end of her arm.
It wasn’t a bad picture, but I think my eyes just didn’t want to make sense of it.
The next one had an arm resting on a table with a Halloween glove on it; that’s what I thought, that it couldn’t be real.
It was so outsized, compared to the pale wrist that it was attached to, that it looked like something people wore on Halloween with black claws.
My pulse started beating a little faster as I looked at those claws, because I remembered them slashing at me, pressing into my stomach while I fought not to let them gut me.
“Are you unwell, Zaniel?”
I swallowed before I answered, because my mouth was dry. “I’m fine.”
“You are sweating, and it is not warm in here,” she said.
I touched my forehead and realized she was right.
Staring at the claws that had almost . .
. No, I didn’t let myself finish the thought.
The monster had tried to kill me; it failed, I lived, I won, it lost, time to get dinner, or lunch, or a drink.
That was the way you thought about it in the military and on the job.
Charleston took the phone out of my hand.
He was studying my face. I tried to give him my best blank cop face, but I couldn’t fix the sick, cold sweat on my forehead except by wiping it off.
I took even, deep breaths and that helped slow my pulse and heart.
I was probably pale, and that didn’t have a quick fix.
“I did tell you the hand looks like the demon from the hospital,” Charleston said.
I nodded and let my breath out slow. “You did. I didn’t think it would bother me.”
“I’m sorry, I do not understand,” Suriel said.
“The claws,” I said, swallowed hard, “the claws are the same ones that tried to kill me in the hospital hallway.”
“You’re saying that this hand is an exact match for the demon you all fought at the hospital?” she asked.
“Looks to be,” I said.
“But it shouldn’t be identical,” she said.
“No, it shouldn’t be, and it’s not possible that it’s done that to Ravensong. You’re right, mortal flesh does not do this.”
“It changed the kid in the hospital into its image,” Charleston said.
“No, it changed him into a half-human version of a demon. Real ones don’t look like that except in the movies, and that’s mostly because they’re being played by human beings, so they need the makeup or suit to fit the actor,” I said.
“They can change into what your lieutenant described to me, but only if mortal thought has impacted immortal flesh,” Suriel said.
“But that only happens if many humans think an immortal being should look a certain way; one person can’t permanently change the immortal’s shape.”
“They can if they are the sorcerer that works with the immortal spirit most often,” she said. “Frequency of contact with one mortal can add up over time so that one person’s vision can change the spiritual being, in the same way that hundreds viewing it at once can change its appearance.”
“You mean that one person dealing with the same demon over and over can impact it like being viewed on television did to the Archangel Michael a few years back?” Charleston asked.
“Yes, he was chosen because it was felt that he could withstand so many mortals around the world seeing him physically manifest and be interviewed on television, but even he was unable to withstand so much mortal energy shaping him into their ideal.”
“There were riots in the streets because he ended up being dark-haired and darker-skinned,” Lila said.