There, it stopped. A second later, the crack that had formed yawned further open, and the Mansion gave an odd wail-like moan. It was a sound Max had never heard before. It felt like the Mansion were alive and screaming in pain.
“What the bloody hell –”
Gabriel’s exclamation of confusion and fear was echoed in everyone’s faces. But not a single one of them knew what to do. They remained where they were, bracing themselves against whatever they were sitting or leaning on, until at last, the rumbling stopped, and the crack that had formed in the Mansion’s façade remained behind.
Like a reminder.
Or a warning.
“Someone’s discovered how to get into the Mansion, haven’t they?” Sophie asked. Her voice was tentative, but her question was sure. She knew what they all knew. The Mansion had been compromised. The question was, by who? Samael?
If he’d wanted to get into the Mansion that badly, he would have done so centuries, if not millennia, ago. No. This was someone else. Or some
thing
else.
“It’s Gregori,” Azrael stated calmly.
“It’s not safe here anymore,” Max agreed. And that was something he never thought he would say about the Mansion. Where did they go now?
“Maybe they’re right,” Eleanore said. “Maybe it is the end of the world, after all.”
Chapter Three
The dream left him covered in sweat, and the sheets torn to ribbons around him. Once again, he’d fallen victim to sleep and its endless torments. Every nightmare was worse than the one before, filled with more…
fear
. There was no other way to describe the dreamscape. They defied account, doing no more than oozing darkness and insecurity. He was always surrounded by a miasma of sticky, gooey blackness that held him down and suffocated his breath as the dream taunted him with echoes of far-off laughter and the scent of rain, like his own, but different. Because it was hers.
When he finally managed to pull himself free and awaken, he would find his room in disarray and… part of him changed.
It was more than an existential change. It wasn’t only that he was less patient and more angry. It wasn’t just that with each morning, he hired more searchers, spread his web further, and hunted harder for her than he’d ever hunted for anything in his life. That was only part of the change.
It was a
physical
change. This morning was exponentially more difficult than the morning before it, and that one had likewise been exponentially more difficult than the previous one, and at this point, he felt very much as if someone had taken a cheese grader to both his nerve endings and his patience.
At the moment, the sky over Chicago echoed his distress, mirroring his exhaustion with deep, dark, low-lying, and slow-spinning clouds, and reflecting both his fear and fury with bouts of lightning and hail that put lightning rods and tiled roofs through their paces. Occasionally, wind would carry this turmoil to Sam’s window and buffet it with moisture that blurred the scenery beyond. It felt fitting somehow.
There was a sound behind him, coming from the hall outside his office.
He didn’t bother to turn around. “Any word?” His question was terse, and his gaze was distant, focused somewhere over Lake Michigan while his fingers tensely gripped the glass of liquor in his right hand.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like hell, Sam.”
Samael’s brow furrowed. He turned from the window. She’d done it to him again. He’d heard someone come up behind him, but he’d thought it was Jason, his assistant, whom he’d sent for moments earlier. He hadn’t been expecting Lilith to show up in his doorway.
She was as beautiful as ever, demure in her pencil skirt and glasses. Those had always confused him – those glasses. Why should anyone as so obviously inhuman as Lilith need glasses? But he’d never asked her.
He realized now, as he stood there staring at her, that there had been a
lot
of things he hadn’t done during his time on Earth. Two thousand years, and you’d think you would cover all the bases. But no. As it so happened, no matter how much time a person was given, there were just some things you wouldn’t think to do.
“I’m assuming you want to tell me the Adarians look worse?” she asked, as she continued into the office on the 66
th
floor of the Sears tower and moved toward the window where he stood.
“Bragging is ungentlemanly,” he quipped in his tired voice, returning his attention to the watery nothingness out beyond the storms and city. “But yes.”
He knew this latest struggle with the Adarians and Hesperos had left him particularly drained. It was almost as if Gregori were sending the Adarians after him for the sole purpose of wearing him slowly down. There could be no other reason; he was stronger than the lot of them combined. Gregori
had
to know that. So why else throw them at him again and again if not to very slowly physically destroy him?
The dreams weren’t helping, either. He’d caught a glimpse of his haunted reflection in the glass during a string of lightning strikes. He wouldn’t be making televised public appearances any time soon. As it was right now, stocks in his companies were flying high, especially with the frequent reports the media were making on the weather phenomena. It was of a particular benefit to be able to both make news and profit from it at the same time. But if he went on camera right now, looking as strung out as he did, the public might begin wonder whether he were sick. His stocks would probably drop, and that wouldn’t be good. His money, after all, financed so
many
things.
“You know…” Lilith began softly and casually, as she always began her more serious conversations, “some people say you can actually catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Or something to that effect.”
“I’m not after a fly. Flies are irritating and incessant, and when they come around, I summon a fly swatter and deal with them.” It was odd that he couldn’t help but picture the Adarians at the mention of flies and fly swatters. “No.” He took a drink from his glass and gritted his teeth when it burned. “I’m after a hummingbird.”
Lilith turned toward him, and her expression softened, her eyes taking on renewed interest. He had no idea why he’d said that. Why he’d likened Angel to a hummingbird. It just came out.
“I received a card recently,” Lilith told him, “and do you know, there was a passage on the back that said hummingbirds floated free from time? Lovely card. By Papyrus, I think.”
Hummingbirds floating free of time… They did seem to move at inconceivable measures. In his mind’s eye, he saw an image of a bird as brightly hued as gemstones, with wings that beat so fast, they blurred. As if they weren’t there.
Invisible wings.
He swallowed hard and looked down at the liquid in his glass as he idly swirled it. “I’m guessing you received the card from Max.”
Lilith smiled. “Jealousy is ungentlemanly too.”
That made
him
smile. She knew damn well he wasn’t jealous. He just hated the Guardian. But her teasing eased a touch of his pain somehow. It was strange how she could do that. Leave it to a woman; they had a way that baffled the male mind. It was an intangible kind of thing, this talent for calming the soul and easing disquiet. It was a magic power.
But a moment or two later, his smile slipped. He realized, quite suddenly, that she had a reason for coming to see him. She always did.
And just as suddenly, he realized what it was.
He lowered his glass. His gaze re-focused, his body re-awakened, and every one of his raw, cheese-graded nerve endings fired to furious life. “You know where she is.”
Of course she would. The damned woman knew everything.
Lilith lifted her chin and took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. “I can give you this.” She pulled a small folded piece of paper from somewhere under her blouse, no doubt her bra, as there was nowhere else to keep anything, and held it out to him. “And the only reason I’m sharing it is because you aren’t the only one looking for your hummingbird. Frankly, despite everything, I think she would be safer with you.”
Sam did away with his drink by simply making it vanish, then took the paper from her and unfolded it. By the time he’d finished reading it, Lilith had already made her way back to the door across the room.
She stopped and glanced at him over her shoulder. “But Sam, please remember what I said about flies and honey,” she told him softly. “As it so happens, hummingbirds like it too.”
Chapter Four
Fog kissed Azrael’s eyelashes and curled the ends of his long black hair. He smelled salt, as well as the blood that yet clung to the edges of his senses. He’d left his victim long behind, the body destroyed beyond the end of Pier 19, deserted and desolate this time of night. All that remained of the criminal low life were ashes, and those would be washed away by the incoming tide. But as always, the blood remained with him. It was in his nostrils, in his throat, coating the inside of his mouth, despite the magic he’d used to clean it out. He could always still feel it there.
He didn’t have to feed from them any longer if he didn’t want to. He had Sophie…
At the thought of her, he stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes. She washed over him, like a blanket of white light, warm and clean, and for just an instant, he could actually feel her silken hair brush against his cheek. He could hear her laughing.
He smiled. Then opened his eyes and continued walking.
He didn’t have to feed from the scum of the world now, but there were too many of them. There was so much evil. He was more than capable of vanquishing at least a tiny part of it. He owed them that much – the people that remained. It wasn’t easy being mortal. It was pain, from birth to death, and loss and fear in-between. The last thing they needed was a superhero who didn’t do his part when he was very much able to.
Az made his way like a tall shadow back to the Embarcadero, then strode to the very first car he saw parked along the sidewalk. It wasn’t his vehicle; he just needed the car’s door. He could move through the shadows to any other location he desired, but only a door would take him to the Mansion.
The Mansion may be developing cracks and it may be experiencing tremors, but for the moment, it remained his only home, and it was Sophie’s too. She was there right now, and as usual, he couldn’t wait to return to her.
“Azrael.”
Az stopped in his tracks and experienced a series of emotions one after the other. The first was surprise. This was the first time someone had managed to sneak up on Azrael in… well, he couldn’t actually remember any other time.
The second emotion he experienced was fear. And that was unusual for him. But he recognized this voice. It made him think of ice. And
that
made him think of Sophie trapped in a castle composed of it, on a glacier in the middle of a frigid nowhere.
“Gregori.” Very slowly, he turned around. Already, he could feel the flames of his power heating up his eyes.
Gregori nodded in genteel greeting, keeping his distance where he stood in his crisp, tailored white suit, outlined by the darkness of the bay behind him. The single light out on Alcatraz winked over Gregori’s shoulder as the light house’s beam passed by, reminding Az of all Gregori had done, especially out on that island.
“I’m aware of how unwelcome a visitor I am at the moment. However, I’ve chosen to speak with you rather than your brethren for a reason. I believe you to be more capable of seeing the larger picture, Azrael.”
“Just what picture is it you want me to see, Gregori?” Az asked calmly. “One in which the human race becomes victim to heart devouring re-animated Adarians? Or the one where dragons, gargoyles, werewolves and even
my
vampires form an army under your reign to do away with all other life altogether?” Every nerve in Az’s body was sparking with magic, at complete odds to his docile exterior. But it was no doubt nothing compared to the hidden power broiling within the man standing several feet away.
“Samael has an archess.” Gregori had apparently decided to ignore everything Az had just said. Az expected no less.
“I’m aware.”
Gregori’s brow raised in interest.
“News travels fast in the shadows,” Az explained.
Gregori seemed to consider this a moment, then nodded. “It’s imperative that he not unite with her. Once he does, the Culmination will occur.”
“Ah yes,” said Azrael, lifting his head a touch. “The Culmination.” He’d heard so very much about the Culmination of late. And so very little. He still had absolutely no clue what the hell it was.
“You have no idea what it is, do you?” Gregori asked.
He almost laughed at that. Almost. Because it was quite possible Gregori has pulled the lack of knowledge directly from Azrael’s mind, and that wouldn’t be a good thing. The implications were terrifying.
Without waiting for Az to confirm it, which clearly wasn’t necessary, Gregori turned a little and paced a few feet, lacing his hands behind his back in a demeanor that oozed serene confidence. “Everything you know, everything you do, and everything you hope for this world will be lost. You will be whisked back to the angel realm and any chance you might have once had to right the wrongs you feel the people and animals of Earth need righted will depart along with you.”
He stopped and turned to face Azrael again.
“But that’s only the beginning. The rip in time and space that it takes to remove such volatile forces as yourself and your brothers from this realm will wreak havoc on this planet, throwing the people you’ve come to care so much for into total disarray. Who knows how many will die?” He paused, and his expression became one of recollection. “Oh yes, that’s right.
You
will know, as a point of fact. Because once you return to the angel realm, Azrael, you will again take up your mantle as the Angel of Death. So I’m afraid you’ll be
well
aware of just how much suffering has been unleashed upon Earth.”
He waited a moment, as if to allow what he’d just told Azrael to sink in, and then he continued, like a steam train on a one-way track to Hell.