Angel Candidate, page 19
part #3 of Lucas Johnson Series
After a short pause, she closed her eyes and continued. “My parents were slain before my eyes, so I never cared much about the lives of others. The first time I tortured a man to death was when I was ten. And then there were more, many more. The guerrilla group I lived with got caught, eventually, but I escaped with my sister and a bag of money. We made it all the way into the US before we stumbled into Reid. At first, I worked with him willingly, buying his story about changing the world. But then, I saw the demonifying agent and changed my mind. Reid realized, imprisoned my sister, and told me he would let us go only after this mission was done.”
I holstered my gun, making my horns and tail disappear. “Let us talk about your future employment.”
Chapter 16
THE CLEANUP wasn’t fun. I did the unpleasant part first. After the hospital released Isabella and me, I gave her one of the company flats, cars, and a pre-charged credit card so she had somewhere to sleep and could get herself some clothes and other necessities.
First, I visited the family of Sergeant King. They weren’t happy to see me, especially after I told his former wife he died. Yes, the Church would have handled this, but I preferred to do so myself. I owed the sergeant that much.
The second visit was even worse. I didn’t spend much time in Sergeant Rosling’s body, but I did get him killed back in the Harlem explosion. I promised I would tell his daughter goodbye, and so I did. Seeing the little girl break down in tears didn’t make me happy about myself.
And the third one wasn’t much better. I went to the gym of Robert’s brother. Here, I talked the least. I walked up to the counter, told Robert’s brother that I was sorry for his loss and then I put Robert’s cross and dog tag on the counter. I added that his brother died as a hero, but those words meant little. Something died within Robert’s brother in that moment and I hated that I had to watch it.
But someone had to clean things up.
Now, I sat in my office and called in Matt. That was another topic I had to close. He skittered into the room, looking down. He’d lost some weight, his suit now hanging on him. I motioned toward the chair across the table. “Sit down.”
“Yes… Sir,” he scrambled to the chair and almost fell after sitting.
I put on an amiable smile. “You’ve done well in the last mission. If you’d like to quit, you can do so now, and I won’t hold anything against you.”
He paled. “Am I… fired?”
“No.” My expression hardened. Could he stop being terrified for a second? Okay, he probably wouldn’t be scared all the time if I hadn’t hired him at a gunpoint. “But our original arrangement didn’t include that option. So, I’m giving it to you now.”
“Ah.” He paused for a second. “No, I definitely want to keep working here if I can, Sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes…” He smiled awkwardly. “A month ago, I lived in my parent’s basement, had no car, no income, and did nothing but complain on online forums. Now, I earn six figures, live in Lower Manhattan and am practicing magic and we’ve already saved the city once.”
“Fair enough.” I returned his smile. “We will have a new employee. Her name’s Isabella. Since I’ll be taking a vacation soon, you’ll show her around. Do not, I repeat, do not, let her make you her pet. If she tries anything on you, you tell me, understand?”
His face flushed. “I… guess.”
“Seriously, Matt.” Essentially, I was giving a pep talk to a bunny who was about to work with a tigress. “You won’t do her work for her. Are we clear on that?”
He nodded, still red as a tomato.
The phone on my table rang. I picked up.
“Reception. Miss de Castilla is here to see you.”
“Give her a visitor card and send her to my office,” I said and hung up. I motioned at Matt with my head. “Bring an extra chair.”
He got up and did.
Half a minute after he sat back down, Isabella entered my office. She wore a black, formal costume made of a shirt, blouse, and a way too short skirt. Killer heels complemented the outfit. Her raven hair fell all the way to her waist, around which she had two crossed chains for a belt. Another chain lay around her neck, tied like a noose with the chain ending with a half-broken link.
I motioned toward the chair. “Take a seat, Isabella.”
She smirked, walked past the chair, and sat on my table, crossing her legs.
Right. Her last employment was Reid forcing her to do what she didn’t want to while holding a gun to her sister’s head. Now, she wanted to see what boundaries I would set and how I would react to her breaking them. This was going to be such a pain. I pointed at Matt. “This is Matthew, and he’ll show you around. Your first trip will be HR and IT.”
Isabella smiled at Matt who turned even redder.
Great. I glared at Isabella. “In the meantime, I’ll put email forwarding to your address. Your main job is to handle all internal administration that I’m supposed to be doing. The first task will be to figure out how I file a vacation. I should have five weeks and plan to use them as soon as possible.”
She stared at me, mouth gaping. “You hired me… for an office job?”
“Yeah, the nine to five type. Is that a problem?”
“No…” her voice faded.
To be precise, I hired her to do the part of my job I didn’t want to. She handled Reid’s operations well, so there was no reason she couldn’t handle mine. “Sometime in the future, you might end up going in the field, but that won’t happen anytime soon.”
“So…” she looked around. “You’ve got some other agents who do the field work?”
“I do that myself. You two are the only employees I have, and I intend to keep it this way for a while.” I drew a pad of paper from a drawer and a pen. I tore off a page and wrote my login and password into the company system on it. I folded the paper before handing it over to Matt. “You might need this.”
Yeah, this wasn’t how passwords were supposed to be used. But the implicit threat of screw me over and I’ll shoot you in the head made me confident they wouldn’t do anything stupid with my account. With a trembling hand, Matt took the paper.
I tore off another page and wrote Katherine O’Connor and her phone number there. This one, I folded into my pocket. “Matthew, how about you get a head start?”
Matt understood, nodded frantically, rose and left the room.
Isabella arched an eyebrow but shrank a little.
Once the door closed behind Matt, I gave her a tired glance. “The reason you aren’t going into the field is that you aren’t ready. Your peak strength is acceptable, but only with the Scepter of Atlantis which I won’t let you wield for now. Otherwise, your endurance is pitiful, you have no experience fighting aether-wielders, and you lack martial arts training.” I paused to let my words hang in the air.
She stared at me, eyes wide. “My endurance is fine.”
“When I was in the body of Paul Simmons, you whipped me with your chains and gassed yourself in fifteen minutes,” I said.
Her jaw dropped, mouth gaping.
“So, get yourself mixed martial arts classes, HEMA classes, track shoes, and familiarize yourself with the company gym. You will be spending at least an hour a day there from now on. Once I’m done cleaning up, I’ll write you a practice routine, both for the physical part and for your aether-using abilities to develop.”
“Okay… sure, thanks.”
“I’m not kidding.” I rose. “Unlike Matt, you might have to work in the field one day. And I’m not having you here to get killed.” I headed to the hanger. My coat needed fixing, badly, but I haven’t gotten to that yet. I threw the torn thing over my shoulders. “Now, I’m off to work, so you get moving as well. Was anything unclear?”
Isabella still stared at me half-blankly.
I grabbed my backpack and headed to the garage. After checking on my GPS tracker location, I drove to the Corpus Christi Monastery. I didn’t have any particular way to contact Jack, but I felt like that wouldn’t be a problem. The supernatural world worked on trust and him screwing me over would have long-term consequences for the relationship of Lucielle’s organization and the Church.
I pulled in on the street and got out of the car. From the trunk, I took my backpack, and then walked to the monastery’s entrance.
Not surprisingly, Jack stood in the entry gate, leaning against the side. He wore the same cassock as always, giving me an amused smile.
“Howdy.” I stepped to him. “I’m here to collect my payment.”
“I was wondering how long you’d wait for that.” He motioned into the courtyard. “Let us speak inside.”
We passed through the gate and found refuge on a bench beneath the trees, standing in the wall’s shadow with the monastery head in front of us. I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Sit down,” he said. “And show me the amulet.”
“I never told you I had the soul fragment in an amulet,” I said and sat down. Careful not to break the knot completely, I loosened my tie and unbuttoned my shirt’s collar. From there, I pulled out the cross containing Evelyn’s soul fragment.
“No need to take it off.” Jack put his hand in front of my neck.
Reluctantly, I placed the pendant into his hand. At the same time, I fuelled aether into my eyes. Jack wasn’t going to give me a contact on someone who could track people by soul fragments. He was the one who would do that, and he most likely knew about the amulet because he was able to sense or detect souls.
He looked at the cross in his hand. “The spell is rather simple, though large amounts of aether are necessary for a proper execution.” Power exploded around him, so dense the air trembled. Oversized wings of black light burst from his back, each stretching a dozen yard, and a black halo burned above his head. His eyes turned into pure light. “Evelyn is in Ubar, the hidden city also called the Atlantis of the Sands.”
I got the idea of how to perform the spell by watching him, though I would have to do it on a much smaller scale. A smile crept onto my face. “I suppose we know each other, only I don’t remember.”
“You could say that, indeed.” Jack let go of the amulet and looked up at the sky. “Lucifer and I were once friends. He fell from heaven’s grace while I did not. But now, I wanted to see the man through whom he’s been reborn.”
“To figure out if you needed to kill me or not.”
“Precisely.” Jack laughed, his halo and wings disappearing. “With this, our business is settled.”
“One more thing.” I rose. “Amaranta has my hat. Is she around so I could pick it up?”
He motioned toward the monastery. “The nuns will not be pleased about us entering. Yet I suppose we can pray for forgiveness later.”
We entered through a side entrance and, as Jack said, the nuns weren’t happy to see us, glowering when they thought we weren’t watching. For some reason, I enjoyed intruding here. We crossed the stone hallways and soon stood before a room.
“I need to warn you that she might not recognize you,” Jack said.
So, they did make her an angel, in the end. Good. I knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Amaranta said from the inside.
I opened the door and entered while Jack remained behind.
Amaranta sat on her bed, holding my hat in her hands. She looked the same as before, only now wearing a nun’s habit. But something ancient lurked in her aura, the blessing of Barachiel. She sighed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember who you are.”
“We’ve never met.” I put down my backpack and opened the zipper. “But you’ve got a good friend who sent me to give you something.” I grabbed the books she wrote about her life and lifted them up.
She stared at me eyes wide.
I smiled. “Your name is Amaranta Ricci. Before becoming an angel, you wrote down your life in these books so you could read them after you lost your memories.” I placed the books on her night table. “That friend’s name is Katherine and here’s her number.” I withdrew the note with Katherine’s phone number from my pocket and placed it on the books. “Oh, and this hat is mine.” I took the hat from her hands and put it on my head, immediately feeling better.
She took the first book, La Mia Vita 1, staring in disbelief at the hand-written cover. “If we’ve never met, why did I have your hat?”
“For no reason.” I spun on my heel and headed toward the door. “Have fun.” I left and closed the door before she mustered another question.
Jack stood across the hallway, looking at me with an arched eyebrow. “Are you trying to corrupt my newest angel?”
“Perhaps.” I headed toward the exit and he flanked my side. “In the biblical sense, tempting others is what I’m supposed to be doing, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “You indeed are more entertaining than your previous self.”
“Am I?” We left the monastery, returning to the courtyard. “So, will you tell me your angelic name, or should I find that out as homework?”
“That wouldn’t be the hardest of assignments.” Jack stopped and spread his wings, halo burning above his head. He turned into a shadowy frame and started vanishing. As he did, he smiled and said, “I am Azrael.”
Three days later, I entered my armory and started packing. The city I searched, Ubar, turned out to be somewhere in the sands of Saudi Arabia, so I had Isabella get me the tickets, file my vacation, and was now getting ready to leave.
My phone rang. Isabella. I picked up. “Yeah?”
“Reception called. They said someone named Katherine O’Connor is here to see you.”
I smiled. “Have Matt bring her to the armory. You hide and make sure she doesn’t see you.”
Isabella took a short pause. “Was she on the Church team?”
“Yeah, she’s the green-fire-using paladin. She might kill you on sight if you two meet.”
“Got it.” Isabella hung up.
I opened the armory door slightly so Katherine could enter and returned to packing. The largest weapon case seemed a bit oversized, but my vacation would be long. I tossed in two dozen various grenades, my gun belt, over a hundred spare bullets, packed my heaviest sniper rifle, and started folding the rocket launcher.
Steps sounded from the door. “I see you plan a peaceful vacation,” Katherine said, wearing her usual dark green coat, smiling slightly.
“Always.” I started packing rockets into the case.
She entered the room, closing the door behind herself. “Why did you cover for me?”
I gave her a smile over my shoulder before I went to pack the longsword Evelyn once gave me. “I’ll trade you that information for another one.”
She raised an eyebrow.
I straightened and approached her, stopping barely a foot away from her. “Why did you refuse to become an angel? You were the youngest angel candidate in history and, literally in the same day, you got drunk, stole a car, and crashed into archbishop’s limousine. Why?”
She met my gaze. Her green eyes were really pretty among the freckles. “O’Connor is a modernized translation of Au Conchobair. I’m a direct, firstborn descendant of Ruaidri Au Conchobair, the last high king of Ireland. I refuse to forget that and one day, I will teach this to my children. And thus, I can never become an angel.”
“Is that why you drink beer all the time?”
She reached into her coat, withdrawing a half-empty bottle of Guinness. She handed it to me.
With a shrug, I took a sip. The beer tasted like Pepsi. Okay, this wasn’t a beer. So that was why they never fired her for being drunk when working. She wasn’t. I raised an eyebrow. “What about the smell?”
From another inner pocket, she took a small, black perfume and sprayed it in my face. An intense smell of beer filled my nostrils. And she surely had one for whiskey as well.
“You lie a lot, especially for a paladin,” I said.
“My vows don’t forbid me from doing that. Plus, Jack knows and no one else matters.” She smirked. “So, what about my question? Why did you cover for me after all the mess I made?”
I shook my head with a soft smile. “In your position, I would had most likely done the same. And Amaranta’s fun, so I want her to stick around.”
“You could have covered for her and thrown me under the bus. So, what about me?” Katherine raised her chin. “Am I also fun?”
“No.” I leaned to her, my face an inch from her, looking into her eyes. “For me, you mean so much more.”
She grabbed my nape, closed her eyes, and kissed me.
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