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“Hah,” I said, chuckling. “Not everybody. Look who’s come to visit. About time you turned up, you huge, feathery jerk.” I cracked my knuckles. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
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I pivoted on my heels, my feet spread apart and my shoulders wide in what I strongly believed to be an intimidating stance as I turned to face Raziel, my chin raised for good measure. Then I stopped dead.
Raziel and I were pretty much about the same height, and I’d expected to turn around to look directly into his smug, all-knowing face. I wasn’t expecting for my head to be level with the massive and frankly terrifying pectoral muscles of a seven-foot-tall slab of angel beef.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, lifting my eyes, wondering where the hell this humongous angel’s neck ended and where his body began.
“Mr. Albrecht,” came a lilting voice from somewhere behind the wall of muscle, definitely not spoken by the angel bouncer himself. “It’s been a while.”
Ah, nuts. I knew that voice.
The huge angel took one enormous step to his side, his shadow dispersing as he lumbered off, revealing the source of the smarmy voice: a woman with a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other. She smiled at me, and it was the most condescending, patronizing expression anyone could form with a pair of lips.
“Mr. Albrecht,” said Sadriel, the angel of order. “How lovely to meet you again.”
3
I locked eyes with Florian for a moment, and I knew he could read exactly what I was thinking just from the look on my face. Evading these jerks, making it so no one could find my nephilim soul flaring like a beacon on the map? That was the whole point of seeing Beatrice in the first place, and of selling the first batch of Florian’s brews to Dionysus.
My hands bunched into fists, and my teeth clenched. This was why I left the Boneyard, too. Florian was sticking his neck out for me, putting my needs ahead of his own just so I could be sure I wasn’t being stalked by this flavor of supernatural or that at every turn. I glared back at Sadriel, hardly able to keep my temper under control despite the fact that she was flanked by four extremely large and extremely protein-obsessed bodyguards.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve been following me, tracking my every move, and now you’re here because of some obscure angelic edict I’ve violated. What is it now? Are you gonna write me up for hanging out with my dryad friend again?”
“Alraune,” Sadriel said, adjusting her glasses.
My muscles stiffened for a second. She knew. That was Florian’s big secret, after all. He tried to pass himself off as a male dryad – which don’t exist, by the way – because he was embarrassed of what he truly was. Alraunes are created when the blood or semen of a hanged man spills on the earth. Never knowing who his father was or what he did to deserve a hanging death was both Florian’s greatest regret and shame.
“I know all about Florian, Mr. Albrecht,” Sadriel continued. “I’ve always known. Speaking of which. Boys?”
Two of the bodyguards shimmered out of sight to the faint noise of fluttering wings. I whirled on my feet on instinct, sure enough finding the angels already flanking Florian. The Lorica’s Wings – their teleporters – could move incredibly fast, but apparently angels were even faster.
My teeth were bared when I turned to face Sadriel again, every cell in my body fighting the impulse to call on the gifts of the Vestments. “What is it now?” I growled. “You barged into our home for no good goddamn reason the last time. What’s so damn important? Are you stalking us, Sadriel?”
“Stalking is a strong word,” Sadriel said, hiding her chuckle behind her clipboard. “We – that is, my department – calculated that you would be passing through this very side street at this very moment of the day. Everyone on the west side of this building, as your companion Florian here so astutely observed, is currently occupied at work. And in this other building,” she continued, gesturing to her right, “all residents on the east side are also at their places of employment.” She pushed her pen into her chin. “With the exception of Mrs. Yamazaki, who is walking her two spitzes, and Mr. Frasier, who appears to be dead. Pity.”
I shook my head. “You took a billion words to express a whole lot of nothing. What’s your point?”
“The point, Mr. Albrecht, is that there is a pattern to this universe, and that pattern is order.” Her heels clicked as she stepped forward. “And when an anomaly like you enters the picture, it throws everything, how you say, out of whack. I would very much prefer for things to be in whack. Yes. Things that I can measure, I appreciate. They are predictable. Calculable. But you? Capricious. Mercurial. Uncertain. And that displeases me, and my department.”
“And which department is that?”
“I already told you,” Sadriel said. “It’s the Department of Extracelestial Angelic Delinquency.”
Oh, that was right. I should have remembered. Her department’s acronym was DEAD. Very cute.
Sadriel turned to the two angels at her side, raised one perfect eyebrow, then smiled. “Kill him.”
I just barely heard Florian shout “No, don’t hurt him,” before he choked out a groan. The angels must have got him, but I couldn’t spare a second to check. Sadriel’s goons were closing in on me, and as the other two had just proved, it didn’t matter how enormous these bastards were. They could move unbelievably fast.
The air just by my ear whizzed as a huge, meaty fist appeared out of nowhere. I evaded the blow just in time. That punch had been aimed right at my face. I scampered out of the way as the rest of the angel’s body materialized to join his massive hand, only to bump up against his friend, who had conveniently teleported right behind me.
“Watch where you’re going,” the angel said, his voice deep with danger. I didn’t have time to twist away from him. Thick, powerful fingers dug into my shoulder, reached for my clavicle, and pressed hard. Very, very hard.
I screamed, my voice only just covering the sound of my bones giving under the angel’s grasp. Tears filled my vision as the pain shot like lightning up my neck and down my chest. Was that a crack I heard? Did he splinter something? My sneakers scraped against the ground as I retreated from the angels, one hand clutching at my damaged collarbone, the other – my sword arm – hanging uselessly from the pain.
Sadriel’s bodyguards looked at each other and laughed, their black, beady eyes glimmering with mirth and menace. You couldn’t tell the fuckers apart. Both of them wore suits and shit-eating expressions. They also had clean-shaven heads, just like the other two that had gone straight for Florian. Speaking of which, where the hell was he? I scanned the street, gritting my teeth and hoping that I could stave the pain away long enough to summon something from the Vestments.
