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“There’s a lady in there with a weapon,” she says. “She’s talking to Bryn and Cosmos. I think she’s threatening them. Telling them that she has us and if they don’t let her operate freely, she’ll kill us.”
“I think we should go in there and make it very clear that’s not going to happen,” I say.
“The doors are locked.”
“It’s fine. We’ll go in through the wall.”
“I can’t go in there,” Anita says. “She already banished Crichton and Crocombe, and she’s got a holy water barricade. I’ll melt like a witch in one of those, you know, the movies.”
“I, uh…” Nina adds. She looks pale and afraid, which I understand. She is not the one who finds herself a weapon of the divine. She’s a pretty angel who could really shake up the Olympic sprints.
“Don’t worry,” I tell Nina. “I can do this on my own.”
Is there a little bit of joy in slicing through several feet of ancient stone to gain ingress to our hostage husbands? Yes. There is. The blade flares at my will and it is as it was before, reality melting away from it, or perhaps recoiling in horror might be a better description. If Bryn didn’t like what I did to the dining room table, he’s really not going to like what I’ve done here.
I step into the room. I don’t know what they call this room. Drawing room? Smoking room? Hostage room? The latter has a ring to it.
Just as Anita said, there’s a woman in the room. She smells and looks expensive and put together, like she owns fifty-one percent of any company you might care to name. I feel immediately shoddy in my bloody sweats, but ever since I met these people I seem to almost always be underdressed and covered in the essence of someone or other.
“Put the gun down,” I say to the woman who does indeed have a gun trained on Bryn and Cosmos. “Before I run you through with divine fire.”
“Look at you,” she says, keeping the gun trained on the men, but swiveling ice blue eyes toward me. “My predecessor was a moron,” she says, barely moving. “You would have been such a waste to drain. You have so much more potential than anybody imagines.”
I try not to feel too pleased. This is a hostage situation and people are dead and now is not the time to be basking in compliments from strange women.
“Put down the gun,” I repeat. It’s more grammatically correct that way, but it sounds wrong in my mouth.
She does as she’s told, putting the weapon down and lifting her hands.
“Well,” she says, turning to me. “What will you do with me now you have me?”
She’s a very pretty woman. Very well put together. Very mature. She looks self-actualized. There’s something about the way her eyes sparkle that concerns me. Obviously, it takes a certain level of cool psychopathy to pull off a heist of the kind she just did. She made a few mistakes, but the underlying plan was solid.
“If I were Cosmos, I’d cut you up into a thousand pieces,” I tell her, letting the blade dip a little.
I should have had more practice. If I’d worked more with the wood sword, I’d have more control over the tip of this one. I accidentally touch the palm of her held-up hand with the tip of the sword. She lets out a scream, and I freak the fuck out, thinking I’ve cut her fucking hand off.
“Christ! I’m so sorry!”
Golden radiant light is gleaming from the hole in her hand. Shit. Fuck.
“You’re a little clumsy with that still, aren’t you, Elise,” she says. Her tone is calm now. She recovers quickly, and for good reason, so it turns out.
“She’s angelic,” Bryn says to Cosmos, in case Cosmos didn’t have fucking eyes and couldn’t see the obvious before him.
“Why would an angel work for Fleisch?”
FOWMP!
That is the sound of a pair of gleaming white wings extending from the back of her lovely pantsuit. The intruder is an angel. More angel than any of us. She bleeds light, and she draws all eyes. Her presence is almost enough to distract from the way the floor in the middle of the room seems to be sort of… bubbling? There’s a smell I wouldn’t have associated with an angel too. A sort of sulfuric odor.
“Holy…”
“I am angelic. And a little more self-realized than any of your part blood brides,” she says. “Through Fleisch, I have become more than a one trick pony. Understand this, you sniveling little priests. The powers you imagine you protect do not need protection. They are greater than you could imagine. They are…”
We don’t get to hear what they are, because at that moment Mrs Crocombe materializes through the floor in a burning pool of lava and hits the angel lady over the head with a rolling pin.
