Conquer the Dark (29 page)

A fast-approaching military vessel sped toward them with several men aboard, yelling at the smaller boat. Ka-deem released a curse, but then stopped the engine.

“These are Egyptian police,” Kadeem said, then spit. “They are Arab, not Nubian, and this is apartheid here that people don’t know. This was part of why people gathered in Tahrir Square! Even after the protests, old ways die hard, and the corruption goes on! This is what you don’t see on the American news. But we all have lived this for years.”

“Put the ax away, brother,” Bath Kol warned quietly, going to Azrael’s side. “This is just some human bullshit. Do
not
smoke a mortal by accident.”

Azrael opened his hand and the ax disappeared.

“We have to pay,” Kadeem fumed. “They see Americans on my boat or heard of such on my fishing boat, and they think I am poaching tourist business. I don’t have a license to ferry tourists to the monuments or even to my own village! I can only fish. I cannot have friends. I must pay these bribes they will ask. This just lines their pockets and not a penny goes to the actual government. They have moved my people farther and farther south, flooded us when they built the dam and made us move without a care about our lands—now these bribes! Nothing is free—not the land, not the water … soon not the air!”

“Rest easy, brother,” Azrael said with a frown. “Some things I
can
fix. This is one of them.”

“Stop, stop!” an officer yelled, pulling his military speedboat up beside Kadeem’s fishing trawler. “You have no authorization to carry commercial passengers!”

“Asalamu alaikum,”
Azrael said, looking at the lead officer hard. “I’m not a commercial passenger. I’m here visiting my family. I am Daoud’s brother from far away, and these are all my family. We are here because we heard he died.”

The officer glared at him. “Daoud had no rich American family.”

“Solve his murder and you might find out what resources the man had that you don’t know about,” Azrael said in a booming voice as he leaned into the officer. “Extort my brother Kadeem here, and you will see just how unhappy we all are that Daoud lost his life in an untimely matter.”

“We had nothing to do with any of this unfortunate business,” the officer said, backing up.

“No, but you turned a blind fucking eye to it,” Isda yelled from his position up on the bow. “A lot of t’ings can happen in the dark, bro—police officers go missing sometimes, too, mon.”

“Have you threatened me? I am the law!”

“No!” Azrael shouted, his eyes turning blue-white as he pointed upward toward the sky. “The Source is
the Law
! Be gone and never bother my brother or his family again!”

Terrified officers bumped into each other as they stared into Azrael’s supernatural gaze. They pushed down on their vessel’s throttle full force, speeding away, leaving Kadeem’s boat bouncing in their wake.

“What did you show them?” Kadeem said, laughing and amazed. He glanced around at the group, not having seen Azrael’s eyes from his position behind the tall warrior’s back.

“I showed them their own mortality and what hell looked like from the inside out,” Azrael said.

Isda jumped down off the bow. “It’s just a little something that he does.”

Forcas entered the perfume
shop and glanced around. The salesman immediately ran to the back to summon Nazir. An unnatural wind lifted Forcas’s long, silken tresses and full-length, black leather coat, so out of place in the arid Egyptian heat. Guards and customers alike stopped and stared as Forcas proceeded to the back of the shop without waiting for an invitation or escort.

Nazir ran out of his back salon, trying to block Forcas from barging in on his most recent customer. “Wait, wait, come to my private office.”

Forcas grabbed Nazir by the front of his cotton shirt and slowly closed his fist, then held up his hand to paralyze the approaching guards.

“You did not follow my instructions,” Forcas murmured through lengthening fangs. “You were to be our eyes and ears and to simply watch them. But you got greedy and allowed that
fat fuck
, Omar, to try to abduct them? What was your petty little scheme—to shake them down and to get paid twice? Watch them as well as extort one of them for a hefty ransom?”

“No, no, I assure you—”

“
Cease
to speak before I rip out your tongue.” Forcas leaned in closer. “Did you invoke the demons for such a task or did they simply seek an opening in your loyalty and seize the opportunity?”

“Demons?” Nazir wheezed, his eyes bulging as he gazed at Forcas’s extended incisors. “I do not do sorcery! I am a businessman.”

Forcas smiled and released the man. “Of course you don’t, but you’ve already made a deal with the devil nonetheless.”

The tables blew over
in Omar’s Stone Works as Forcas walked through the front door. Gale-force wind knocked icons off the shelves, scattered receipts and papers off Omar’s desk, and made the men working in the stone quarry yard cover their faces with their forearms.

“Emerge, demons!” Forcas ordered, and waited as Omar’s body began to tremble and then convulse.

After vomiting green bile all over himself and the floor, Omar threw his head back, and the veins in his thick, meaty neck, temples, and eyes bulged as he opened his mouth and a large, slimy figure the color of bog silt climbed out of his mouth. His human shell dropped to the floor like a discarded skin sack in a grisly pool of blubber and blood. The faceless, slimy entity that had abandoned Omar’s body then slowly began to take shape from its previous sluglike form. Gnarled teeth and claws appeared first, then a sunken face and red-glowing eyes emerged from the darkness of its hunched and twisted form.

The entity sneered as others climbed out of the bodies around it, leaving the humans unconscious.

“You summoned?”

Forcas thrust a dripping burlap rice bag forward. “A message from Asmodeus.”

The entity cautiously accepted the bag and dumped the contents on the floor. He hissed and the others joined him as Nazir’s head hit the floor with a thud and rolled to a stop at his feet.

“Attempt an abduction of our property and my orders will be to replace this bastard’s head with yours. As a general warning, and just in case anyone gets any insane ideas or has any delusions of grandeur—do not even
think
about using the tablet for your own legions. The sarcophagus is ours—the body within it is Nephilim. Any attempt to get the tablet to raise your own armies or to negotiate with us because you have acquired the tablet before us will result in war. You may have the numbers, but never forget that we have a nuclear device on our side—the Dark Lord.”

Three hours into the
voyage, Kadeem slowed his engines and began navigating his boat toward a small, dilapidated dock. Immediately children rushed over with vendors and camel drivers, but he and his brothers shooed them away in an agitated flurry of Arabic.

Standing off a bit and watching the strange foreigners with wary curiosity, men in long, one-piece, loosely fitting cotton
didasha
robes seemed dejected that no wares would be sold. Women scowled at Kadeem, holding handmade beads and bracelets that could have been sold to the many
foreign females on his boat. But the children giggled and smiled, peeking around the backs of every angel brother and then running away.

The brothers passed uneasy glances among themselves.

“Is something wrong?” Bath Kol asked Isda under his breath as they climbed off the boat and jumped onto the wooden dock.

“I don’t know, but it’s like they can see our wings,” Isda replied quietly.

“I thought we were cloaked, even back in the recent firefight. Normal mortals shouldn’t have seen that,” Azrael said in a low murmur as the children oohed and aahed. “Only Kadeem, and his brothers and the boy.”

“Pure innocence will see the unseen,” Gavreel said quietly. “These children haven’t been exposed to anything beyond their village, and they obviously believe in us.”

“They want you to put your wings out for them,” Abdullah said with a wide smile. “They know you have them, they want to see how they come out of your backs.”

Azrael stooped down. “That might give their fathers and mothers heart attacks. Not such a good idea.”

“No, it won’t. It will make the people fight harder to keep your secret and to help them have courage.” The child looked up into Azrael’s face and touched his cheek. “You worry so much.”

Azrael stood, visibly shaken by the child’s words, and went to stand with the brothers as the last member of their group debarked from the vessel.

“Messages and signs are coming from this child. Abdullah says we should show the people in the Nubian village our wings so they’ll not only help us on our quest,
but also protect our secrets and fight our enemies if their village is laid siege to by forces of evil.”

The brothers stepped in closer, conferring, and Celeste elbowed her way into the center of their all-male group with the other women.

“I think you guys should do it,” she said, challenging their stony gazes. “These people need hope, and their faith is so strong. They
believe
and they would rather die than betray the Light. That’s something the darkness didn’t count on. The dark side looks at people like this as weak and frail, but their spirits are unwavering. They’re literally dirt-poor and still can’t be swayed by bribes or loss of life. How else would Daoud have kept his secret here so long? They literally had to drag him away from his people and threaten to raze the entire village if he didn’t tell, but they would never give him up.”

“What do you think, brothers?” Azrael glanced around the group.

Isda shrugged. “Hey, this is definitely biblical country, settings for the Torah and Quran, mon. If you gwan show the feathers, I think dey could take it better than if you broke ’em out in midtown Manhattan.”

“Hey,” Bath Kol said with a sigh. “Just prepare the folks, though. I don’t want a medical emergency that will require a Lazarus-type resuscitation.”

“I feel you,” Gavreel said, dragging his fingers through his hair.

“This could be really dicey,” Paschar warned. “But if you guys are in, I’m in.”

An odd sense of knowing filled Celeste as she listened to the brothers’ debate the merits of revealing themselves
before more humans, and that knowing encompassed an eerie sense of remembrance. Not in a bad way, but as though she’d walked back in time and was experiencing déjà vu.

“Can I try?” Celeste said, stepping up as the group’s spokesperson. “We don’t want to invoke terror, but rather inspiration and hope.”

“I cannot think of a better person to do that, Celeste.” Azrael brushed a wisp of her hair behind her ear. “You will not only be speaking to the hearts and minds of mortals, but to us as well.”

She nodded, knowing how much he needed hope after his failed attempt at healing the boy. Glancing at the waiting locals, she walked over to Abdullah and Kadeem.

“Can you gentlemen translate a message for me? We don’t want to make people flee or become afraid.”

“Yes! Yes!” Abdullah said, about to take off running toward the crowd, but his uncle placed a hand on his shoulder.