Angel Of Solace (8 page)

“I’m not sure if I’m staying, but Kronn suggested I give it a few days. I figure I owe him that much, at least.”

“It’s not a glamorous life,” she muttered, her smile fading. “But it is the only one some of us have.”

Damien nodded, a part of him realizing how easy things had been for him. He might have been a slave, but he had never wanted for food or had to live in run-down conditions like this. He had slept in silken sheets and woken to fresh pastries. He hadn’t been beaten or tortured, and he had never really felt like danger was lurking around every corner.

How much worse had many of them had it? What had this woman before him seen in her life that he had probably only had nightmares about? It almost made him sick to think he had turned away from a life most of these people would probably embrace given the chance.

Shyrah sighed. “Look, I know the princess wants you for some reason. Maybe she’s told you or maybe she hasn’t, but whatever it is, be careful. There’s a lot more going on here than she’s letting on, I know that much.”

“I’m sure there is,” he replied distantly.

She measured him again with her eyes, but her face remained unreadable. “I have a lot of work to get done, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“It was nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, then grabbed her tools and walked off.

Damien stood there for a while longer before he decided to go and try to meet some of the others. If he was going to fit in here, there was no point in putting it off. Even if he wasn’t…well, he’d still like to know as much as possible before he made that decision. 

***

“It’s not the best way to get him acclimated to life here,” Sariel pointed out, lowering the data reader and closing her eyes. “And what if something goes wrong?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Kronn said. “We might not get another opportunity like this.”

It wasn’t a rehearsed speech, at least, but that was probably only because he hadn’t had enough time to prepare one after he had gotten this information. Not that he generally needed one anyway. The Asuran leader was quite persuasive when he wanted to be—which was most of the time.

Sariel sighed softly and nodded. She had received a brief transmission from Kronn during the trip over here, but all it said was that their operation with Beren hadn’t gone as planned. Now, knowing the details, a fresh wave of guilt was rising inside her. If she hadn’t insisted on getting to Damien personally, the slaver would probably still be alive in a cell feeding them information about his group—information that could very well save the lives of dozens of other Demons.

But then Damien himself would probably be dead, or at the very least dragged back to the Agency. He would be trapped in Louvette the rest of his life, and any chance she might have had of contacting this spirit inside her would be gone.

“You did the right thing,” he soothed, his typically perfect intuition right again. “And so did Shyrah. We just can’t afford to pass up a second chance like this.”

“You’re right,” she agreed, opening her eyes and setting the reader back on his desk. “I just don’t want to have to strain the spirit any more than I have to.”

“I know. Hopefully it won’t take long.”

She nodded. Using her powers against the Agency thugs on the
Chevalier
had nearly overwhelmed her. As formidable as her Angel abilities were, it was getting more and more difficult to use them. Each time it felt like the creature inside her was getting more of a foothold. Maybe it was. Even healing Damien—something that she should have been able to do with barely an ounce of effort—had taken its toll. For an operation like the one Kronn was suggesting, she would be doing a lot more.

But without her, they had no hope of finding this Donovan Esche. With her, they had a chance to get the vital information they needed. Perhaps they would even learn where the current Covenant base was in the city.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll have to spend most of the night putting this together.”

“Yes, but that’s fine. It will give Damien some time to mingle with the others, and if anything I think that will ingratiate him to us. He does want to help you, and I don’t think that will change.”

“No, probably not,” she murmured. “But he needs to know there are risks, and not just to me.”

“Give him a day or two before giving him the details,” Kronn suggested. “In the meantime, we need to get ready for tomorrow.”

She smiled tiredly. “And you promise nothing will go wrong?”

He smiled back with a confidence he probably didn’t feel. “Yes, I promise.”

Chapter Six

Avrick took a moment to appreciate the mighty structure in front of him, and he realized how difficult it would be to describe it to the others back in Louvette. He could detail the hundred meter tall building and cup-shaped interior, and he was sure they would understand the four spiraling staircases at each corner that allowed spectators to easily travel between any of the levels. They could also find a holo of the stadium easily enough on the global network if they wanted to look, and there were ruins of similar structures in Louvette from the time before the Reckoning.

But it wasn’t the building itself he would find difficult to describe; it was the event that took place inside of it. The Covenant had long since abolished any type of “competitive violence,” and only incredibly wealthy crime cartels were capable of sponsoring anything outside of a simple boxing match back home. Such theater had been phased out for the good of all the Lord’s children, but apparently Elassians had skipped over that page in the Sacra’thar.

“It seats well over a hundred thousand,” Vaelen commented, “and it serves as an excellent gathering place for business transactions, illegal and otherwise.”

“And people actually pay for tickets to watch this?”

Donovan Esche, the third member of their group, grunted derisively. “You haven’t a clue, have you, boy? Front row tickets go for almost five thousand voca. Even mid-level seats typically sell for a thousand.”

“You’d think no one here could find anything better to do with that money,” Avrick murmured, glancing back to the slums they had just departed. The arena, for all its grandeur, was situated in a less-than-impressive part of the city about ten kilometers from their current base.

“Fish and gladiators,” Esche quoted the old axiom with a shrug. “It lowers dissent and raises morale—and turns a tidy profit. You can hardly blame them.”

“And they will face the Lord’s judgment when it is their time,” Vaelen replied stiffly. “For now, keep your mouths shut.”

Avrick smiled faintly when he saw the look on Esche’s face. The scruffy, overweight man may have been their bait here, but that didn’t exactly mean he was their ally—and his twisted lip revealed plainly what he thought of Vaelen’s condescension. It probably shouldn’t have been amusing since Esche’s mere presence was the latest symptom of everything else that was already bothering Avrick about this assignment. How could they justify working with a criminal like this? It was clear Vaelen didn’t like it either, but it was equally clear his mentor wasn’t going to question orders coming from an Angel. Marivean’s commands were as good as those from God himself.

So were Sara’s at one point.
Avrick’s smile melted at the thought. As much as he didn’t like working with human garbage like Esche or any of his gang, he liked the possible outcomes of this mission even less. Last night before he slept, he actually prayed the Asurans wouldn’t take the bait. It would only prolong the inevitable, but maybe that was good enough. Maybe it would give him time to think of something else, or to really come to terms with what he was going to have to do.

He sighed the thought away and focused on the task at hand. They were early for the game by at least two hours, but there were an impressive number of spectators already gathering outside. The three of them were all dressed in simple street clothes with long jackets, and none of them were carrying any weapons. Those would already be inside, placed by two bribed members of the stadium’s cleaning staff.

They made it through security without any problems, and ten minutes and two spirals around the staircase later, they were temporarily alone in the center of a walkway next to a food stand that hadn’t yet opened. Vaelen leaned over the counter and grabbed a hold of the small metal box stashed right behind it. He punched in a six-digit code and the box opened.

“I told you they wouldn’t have any troubles,” Esche said with a huff, taking one of the small, almost palm-sized pistols and sliding it into his jacket.

“I never doubted your ability to skirt the law,” Vaelen replied dryly.

Avrick grabbed his own Cobra pistol and took a second to examine it. It was a basic weapon he was intimately familiar with, a light-weight, easily concealable firearm designed with one specific purpose: to incapacitate anything it hit. The combination of voltage and neurotoxin inside each projectile was enough to take down a big game animal, and even an Angel’s bolstered immune system and extreme physical endurance would be no match for a clean shot.

Getting that clean shot, of course, was another matter entirely.

Vaelen quickly stashed the box and the three of them split up before more spectators came along this way. Avrick took the time to activate the previously dormant communicator in the neck of his jacket.

“Make sure everything is in order,” Vaelen’s voice came over the ear insert. “We have just over an hour.”

“You only get this bait once,” Esche put in. “I highly doubt you can afford me a second time.”

Avrick could almost picture the face his mentor was making at that comment. None of them, however, could appreciate the look on his own. Standing near the railing gazing into a puddle of water, Avrick stared down at a man he barely recognized; a man whose entire life had been spent in sacrifice to God, and in training to punish His enemies.

A man who was about to sentence the only person he had ever loved to an excruciating death.

***

“Ten minutes to the whistle,” Corin reported over the communicator. “If Esche is coming, he’ll already be here.”

“Definitely,” Kronn agreed. “Let us know when you’re ready, Sara.”

Sariel took a deep breath. Here, at the top balcony overlooking the arena, she could stare down at all the hundred-thousand plus fans scrambling to their seats and even the few dozen players doing last minute stretching exercises. While she had seen the image stills Corin had dug up on Esche, there was, of course, no possible way for her to visually identify him out of this mass of people. Had they taken a larger squad, they could have placed people at all the entrance points and gotten a positive identification that way, and then relied on the finder successfully tracking the target without getting spotted himself.

Before she had joined them, that was likely the method they would have used. Now it was completely unnecessary.

“I’ll start my search now,” she told them, then stepped away from the railing and back out into the corridor. The female washroom was only twenty meters away, and on any normal day it would probably be absurdly overcrowded. Fortunately, Shyrah had taken care of that with a well-placed “out of order” sign and a few other distractions to keep the cleaning staff occupied for the next fifteen minutes. With any luck, Sariel wouldn’t need nearly that long.

The Angel tossed back the hood of her jacket when she stepped into the empty washroom and paused at the sight of her reflection. They hadn’t bothered with hair coloring given her hood and the fact the “bleached look” was pretty popular these days, but she was wearing contacts to conceal her inhuman eyes. She barely recognized the blue ones looking back at her despite having spent most of her life with them. She had avoided mirrors ever since the Bonding; they only reminded her of what she had lost, and how different she really was.

Sariel shook her head and closed her eyes, concentrating instead on the spirit inside her. Though it was weightless and immaterial, she could feel it shift as she called forth its power. It stirred, the vague whispers of its thoughts brushing against hers, and then suddenly she was connected—and her entire world transformed.

As usual, the rush of emotions nearly overwhelmed her. It was like opening a door from a completely silent room into the center of this roaring stadium, and her eyes flicked open as she tried to steady herself. In the mirror, she saw the radiant glow of the Angel inside her begin to expand from her skin. Within moments, her entire body was engulfed in its silvery light, as if she were a holy torch standing at the center of an otherwise impenetrable darkness.

The powers of an Angel may have been impressive, but they were not particularly subtle, especially when she had to strain this deeply. Fortunately, she maintained control and let her mind stretch out across the stadium, doing her best to block out as much of the noise as possible and focus on the strands of thought that would ultimately lead her to Esche.

It was a monumental task even for a powerful telepath. She couldn’t pick out a single mind in such a crowd—not exactly, anyway—but she could scan for certain thoughts and impressions amongst the masses and latch onto those most likely to come from a man like Esche. It wasn’t so different from a computer program, Corin had told her once; she had essentially trained her mind to sift through data, and the filter was everything they knew about Esche’s personality and motivations.

It would have been easier if their normal targets were just megalomaniacs or sociopaths, but that was rarely the case. Even the most despicable people in the world—and she placed slavers and traffickers near the top of that list—believed they had good reasons for what they were doing. They often convinced themselves they were just getting by, or that the world was such a brutal place already it didn’t really matter what they did. From all the reports they had about him, Esche fit into that latter category

“Any luck?” Kronn’s voice burst into her thoughts. He sounded strained; he knew better than to interrupt her, but the minutes must have been ticking away, and they didn’t want to be here any longer than possible.

“I’m still…wait.” It was there at the edge of her consciousness, a pattern she could hone in on. She stretched her senses out even father now—instead of just feeling all the minds at the stadium, she could actually see their faces. The seconds passed and the images continued to sharpen, and finally she was looking at their quarry and the handful of men he was surrounded with. “Got him.”

“All right, where?”

She sifted through the haze, trying to place him in the seats… “Row 43, section C, third deck.”

“Perfect. Corin, you get that?”

“Already on it. Just get everyone into position—I’ll get him out of the bleachers.”

“Roger. Are you all right to meet up with us, Sara?”

Sariel blinked away the vision, and in the mirror before her, the radiance eclipsing her body faded. Kronn had never really asked that question during a mission before—had she sounded that strained? She started to soothe him, but then a blaring screech in her skull nearly knocked her over as the spirit inside her attacked.

It clawed into her thoughts as if it were trying to beat her into submission. She felt herself slipping away, her mind threatening to shut down…

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

Sariel blinked, her eyes slowly returning to focus. She was on her hands and knees on the washroom floor, and a male security guard was kneeling next to her. The spirit had gone silent.

“I…yes, I think so,” she breathed.

He squinted down at her, obviously unconvinced. “This washroom is out of order, ma’am.”

“I know, but I thought it was an emergency,” she told him, taking his hand and doing her best to stand. She felt completely drained, and her head spun when she finally got up all the way.  “It must have been that sandwich I ate.”

He chuckled lightly and kept his arm on her as if to make sure she was stable. “Hey, I’ve been there. Do you need any help?”

“No, I’ll be fine. Really. Thank you.”

She offered him just the right amount of wounded innocent smile and quickly made her way back into the corridor. He followed her with his eyes, and she did her best to control herself until she rounded the corner and leaned down to the com on her jacket. “I’m all right…I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Don’t worry—we can handle it from here,” Kronn said, his voice even tighter now. She wondered how long it had taken her to respond…

“No, I’ll help,” she insisted. “We need to get out of here together.”

She kept moving without waiting for a reply. In all likelihood, they really wouldn’t need her. Corin had some trick arranged to dupe Esche into stepping out from the bleachers and away from his friends, at which point the others would confront him and start leading him out of the stadium. Given how he was on the authorities’ Most Wanted list, it was unlikely he would start a scene; he would probably figure it would be easier to negotiate with another illicit organization rather than the Solace police.

But there was the chance he wouldn’t come peacefully, and that was part of the reason she was here. Implanting a suggestion into another’s mind was actually quite easy—far easier than she had ever thought herself before undertaking the Bonding and becoming an Angel. If the public knew about it, it would probably terrify even the most pious of them.