Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent (23 page)

“Exactly.  Gina and I said hell no almost at the same time.  The lead agent got real serious and said it wasn’t up to us.  He took two steps forward and suddenly the whole lot of them just got pressed right across the room and out the front door.  So then, just a second ago, they came back with SWAT teams.  There was a flash of purple light and all their stuff got cut in half.”

“Cut in half, Roy?  What do you mean?”

“Like sliced right in half.  Assault rifles, body armor, and battering ram, even their SWAT van got the top sliced off it.  Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been seeing some shit the last few years, you know.  No one hurt, just guns cut in half, half their vests sliding down to the ground like someone ran around them with a hellacious sharp blade without cutting them.  Pistol belts, helmets, radios, and when they moved their van to bring it closer, the top half just slid back and dragged on the ground behind it.  It’s a huge mess and they’re running around like chickens.”

“Is the lead agent still around, Roy?  Can you put him on the phone?”

“Yeah, I see him.  Agent Creese.  Let me grab him.  Agent Creese!  Hey Agent, you have a call.”

“Agent Charles Creese, who am I speaking with?”

“Tatiana Demidova, Agent Creese, and I have Christian Gordon with me.”

“
You need to turn yourselves in, Miss Demidova. Now, before it gets ugly.”

“You don’t call launching a Tomahawk missile at us ugly, Agent Creese?  Or sending assassins with poison?”

“Ma’am, I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is that you need to come in before people get hurt.”

“Nice to see you’re following your training, Agent, but I’m not on the phone to talk to you about us.  It’s you and your men I’m worried about.  See, you just got a warning, and I hope it was graphic enough for you.  All your gear ruined but no one hurt.  If you continue your current approach, you and all your men will die.  Toni and her parents are protected—from you, from assassins, and from kidnappers.  Frankly, I’m surprised you got the warning you did.  Most people with guns who go near Toni and her folks just die.  We warned your leaders, but as a leader yourself, you’re going to have to decide if losing your life and all your men’s lives is justified in this instance.  So good luck with that and I sincerely hope that you and all your people go home safely today.  Please hand the phone back to Roy.”

“
He looks pissed, Tanya, and he’s looking at his service handgun, or what’s left of it.  We’ll see what he does.”

“Roy, is Toni running around there?  I think my worse half wants to talk to her,” she said, giving me a wink.

“
Sure.  Hey Toni, Mr. Chris wants to say hello.”

“Hello? Mr. Chris?” 
a tiny voice said.

“Hi Toni, it’s Tanya, here’s Chris,” she said, handing me the cell phone.

“Hi Toni, how’re you doing?”

“
Oh, alright, I guess.  Mom and Dad seem pretty worried, but I wasn’t.”

“No, you weren’t worried or afraid?” I asked.

“No.  If it gets scary, I just close my eyes and it seems as if nothing has changed.  Then I usually see the purple man and I know he’ll take care of me.”

“You see a purple man?”

“Yeah, inside my eyelids.”

“What does he look like?”

“
He’s you, silly.  He looks just like you.”

Chapter 19

The Baltimore Basilica was America’s first cathedral after the constitution was signed and it’s a beast… at least as far as churches go. From outside, it looks a lot like the Capitol building with white columns and a massive sky-lit dome.  Inside is even more impressive.  Of course, it was closed when we got there just after dark.  The door was locked when Arkady tried to open it, but it clicked open when Tanya reached her fist out to knock. 

My memories of Tanya have been returning more and more lately, but none of them included the wide-eyed look I saw when the door opened itself at her approach.  I would even call it fear, except the link told me it was more anxious than afraid.  The idea of being a self-fallen angel is hard for me to fathom.  It’s completely impossible for her.

I slipped by her and pulled the massive door open enough to get in and was immediately met by an Abercrombie model with curly blond hair and wicked vivid blue eyes. 

My memories of my childhood are intact; the ones of the last few years are now a hodgepodge of scattered images, but I do remember Barbiel.  Maybe it was dying and re-meeting all the Brethren, I don’t know, but I can remember talking with my assigned angel.

“Malahidael, you’ve been away too long,” he scolded, clasping my arm.

“Nice to see you too, Mom,” I said.  The others were moving slowly into the church behind me.  Lydia looked a little nervous, but Arkady and Trenton looked downright spooked, at least as spooked as killer vampires can look.

“Mom?” Barbiel asked, completely missing my jibe.

I sighed and started to explain but he held up one hand as he thought it through.

“Oh.  That is a common thing for mothers to say to adult children that haven’t visited, isn’t it?  So you implied that I was being motherly even though I am clearly not and thus the irony that is humor.  Right?”

“Spot on,” I said.

He frowned in mock annoyance.  “I am so not about you anymore,” he said, brushing by me to hug Tanya. 

“Let me guess.  You’ve been reading the texts of teenage girls during Mass, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he allowed.

“Might not be the best fit, you being an immortal angel of Heaven and they being adolescent girls.  Just saying,” I said.

“Anyway, I’m glad to see you.  We have much to talk about,” he said, leading us through the narthex and into the nave proper.  Tanya and I slid into the front most pew, with Stacia sliding into the one behind us.  After a moment, Lydia slipped in beside Stacia.  Arkady and Trent stood uncertainly in the aisle but after both Tanya and I waved them to sit, they finally settled in the pews four rows back.  Barbiel stood on the raised chancel, looking like a hip young priest about to preach.

“So, Amaymon is free on earth, wearing the body of that woman you used to dislike so,” he began without preamble.  “And he has Orias with him,” he added gravely, pausing to see how we responded.

“Okay, we don’t know what that means,” I answered after looking at my companions.  As I did, I noticed Trenton and Arkady both following movement with their eyes and heads, about where Barbiel was.

‘Hey, can you two see him?” I asked.  They nodded.  “Can everyone see him?”

Lydia and Stacia nodded as well.  I turned back to Barbiel.  “Expanding our audience, are we?”

“Michael said it was okay.  Said this group has done so much that it’s fine if I reveal myself to them,” he said.

“Sounds dirty when you say it like that,” I said.  He didn’t get it, instead just looking at me, puzzled.  “Never mind.  Who and what are Amaymon and Orias?”

“Amaymon is a Prince of Hell.  Pretty high up.  Okay, really high up.  It’s bad that he’s here inside the woman’s body.  That means he can manifest and when the barriers thin on All Hallows Eve, he can call for his legions if he opens a big enough gate.  Orias is also pretty bad news. He’s a duke of Hell and commands some legions of his own.  He’s also the one who murdered your family when you were a child.”

I froze, memories involuntarily popping up in my mind.  “What?” I growled—or maybe it was Grim who growled.

Barbiel came over and looked into my eyes for a moment before stepping back a little and nodding.

“This is how you are… when you fight?  Is this what he is like?” he asked Tanya before even letting me answer.

“We call this part of him Grim,” Tanya replied.

“Apt. Very apt.  I haven’t seen this aspect of you before, Malahidael.”

“Orias will… just before I end his time,” Grim/I said.

“Yes, well that is your job… and it is good to enjoy your job, is that not right?  But Malahidael, you should not underestimate either of these foes.  Both are fierce fighters, very powerful, especially Amaymon.  Plus, they will have minions with them and may have recruited fallen humans to assist their plans.”

“What do you know about their plans?” Tanya asked.

“Not a great deal.  Michael did intercept a legion and before he ended it, he got some—what do you call it?  Intel?” he asked.  All of us nodded in unison, then I thought about his words.

“Wait, did you say Michael ended the legion?  By himself?”

“Well yes, it was only a legion.  He could hardly share any, now could he?  This is Michael we are talking about.  Anyway, what he got was that Amaymon needs a big sacrifice to provide enough power to move his legions to earth.  The leader of the legion said something about killing everyone in a big white building to fuel the gate.”

“Big white building?  The White House?” Lydia asked.

“The Capital building is white, too,” Stacia added.  Both of them had caught Barbiel’s attention and he came right over to us, putting one hand on my shoulder to lean forward.

“We have not formally met.  I am Barbiel,” he said, reaching forward to shake each of their hands.  Then he took himself up the aisle and introduced himself to Trenton and Arkady, shaking each person’s hand very properly.  He looked pleased with himself.

“Barbiel is the Angel of October.  He is my… case officer, so to speak.  My handler,” I said to the others.

“This is all true. But all Hallows Eve is in less than a day.  You do not have a lot of time to stop Amaymon and Orias,” Barbiel said.

I frowned, thinking that my angel contact was never this businesslike, but usually had to be brought back on point.

“That’s not a lot of time to find Duclair or Amaymon or whatever I’m supposed to call him.”

“But Malahidael, we know where Amaymon is,” Barbiel said, walking to the back of the church and picking up a newspaper from a box of stuff on the floor.  He brought it back to us and held up the front page.  The paper was
The Washington Post
and the headline was
President Declares New Terrorist Threat
and the picture under it showed President Garth at his press conference, standing at a presidential podium, an arc of underlings arrayed behind him.  A poster board on an easel had large headshot photos of Tanya and me portrayed like common criminals.

Barbiel tapped one part of the newspaper photo with his finger.  We all looked closer.  There in the back, behind Garth, was a familiar feminine face.  Brianna Duclair, almost hidden behind another person but still visible enough to identify.

“Really?  She wormed her way in with the President’s advisers?” Lydia quipped.

“Brianna
was
a high level government agent before she fell down Alice’s hole to Hell.  And demons are enormously persuasive,” I said.

“So we have the entire American law enforcement community after us and by now, every citizen will think we’re the enemy while our enemy is safely inside the guard of the idiot we need to protect.  What’s our plan?” Tanya asked.

“Well, not
every
citizen thinks we’re bad,” Stacia said, looking over our shoulders at the paper.  Her tanned finger pointed at a smaller, less noticeable story, further down the page.  A picture of Brystol Chatterjee talking to reporters topped the column.  The story was a repeat of the morning television interview she had done.

“She’s gone from an obscure blog to front page news and morning news interviews.  Even the reporter writing the article is giving her fairly unbiased treatment,” Lydia said, her tone thoughtful.

“And she’s the start of our plan,” Tanya said, a gleam in her eyes. 

Four hours later—or there about—found us sitting down across from Brystol herself.  A flurry of phone calls, instructions, and favors had resulted in the arrangement of a private interview in what had to be the creepiest location in the country.  The Montingham State Hospital had once treated thousands of tuberculosis patients in the fifties and sixties.  Long abandoned, it was now privately owned by a couple who conducted paid ghost tours in the decaying buildings where hundreds had died.  Brystol was friends with the couple and had set up our secret interview after some of Nika’s vampire watchers snatched her and her cameraman Brian out from under the various spooks’ and spy types’ noses.

In addition to Brian, there were three other geeks, er, I mean technical types running the sound and video equipment, all of them just about in the throes of a geekgasm from being in our presence.

“Okay, we’re almost ready.  Thanks again, this is fantastic.  The story of a lifetime,” Brystol gushed.

“Actually, Brystol, it’s the story of a thousand lifetimes,” Tanya said.  Behind us, Arkady snorted.  He was thoroughly against this line of action but bowed down to the wishes of his queen.

“Yeah, the Coven has ruthlessly suppressed any and all previous attempts at exposing its existence,” Lydia said.