That, however, was something Griffin didn’t need to know and overprotective Zeke definitely didn’t need to know. I knew. Leo knew too, I had no doubt. That was enough. We were lucky Cronus hadn’t bothered to look past me as he was making his demand and smashing an angel to pieces. Another ignorance-is-bliss situation and I was grateful for it. Cronus saw Leo and he saw me, the ant who dared play a game with him. If we could keep his focus there and only there, it would be good. Very good.
“So when Leo comes back from Colorado, he might have something that will kill Cronus? That’s the plan?” Griffin didn’t knock politely this time, and he sounded rather skeptical. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“Colorado? We were going to the airport? I thought we were going to Disneyland,” Zeke grumped in turn. I heard a distinctly disappointed thump against the door. That would be him leaning and sulking.
“I’m just wishing ravens could fly faster than a Boeing 727,” I said, sliding my shoes back on. “We’ll hit Disneyland next time. Or a gun range.” A gun range was Zeke’s Disneyland times ten. “And, no, Griff, sugar, that’s not the plan. That’s one-third of the plan. I’m the trickster and you’re the Boy Scout. Don’t forget that. If you don’t balance out my devious ways, who will?”
“We would be happy to fill that role or make it unnecessary altogether.” The voice was musical and flat all in one. Impossible? I would’ve thought so, but I was wrong.
Another angel. Could this day get any more holy and, consequently, more crappy?
He stood by the window, forming out of thin air as demons did. The gray light streamed through gauzy gold and red curtains. You would’ve thought that would add some color to him. It didn’t. “Where is Hadranyel?”
I continued to slip my second shoe on and then straightened while reaching for the shotgun on my dresser. I didn’t bother to hurry or try to conceal the motion. Angels knew very well how tricksters felt about them. They also had a conceit that didn’t allow the realization we could be any kind of threat. “I didn’t get his name. But I think he’s in the alley. I have a broom and dustpan if you want to carry his remains home.”
The angel stepped away from the window and from his natural crystal essence he changed into a more or less human body with short black hair. His wings were black too with a faint purple-blue barring at the bottom. His eyes were the same purple sheen; it was the shade that dappled a crow’s feather in a bright ray of summer sun. “That is unfortunate.” His wings were pulled in smooth and tight to his back as a hawk would do to its wings before diving on its prey. “Unfortunate for you. Hadranyel was somewhat more tolerant of your kind than I am.”
He had short, sleek black hair, the black wings already in fighting position. His clothes were black as well. It seemed as if Heaven had sent down its SWAT team. But why? Ishiah said they knew about Cronus. Heaven, in all its glorious angelic ego, knew better than to take on Cronus, if it could avoid doing so. “And you are?” I knew what he was, but not specifically which one he was. I started backing up to lock the door before the guys could come in. That would only complicate things unnecessarily and they were already complicated enough.
“Azrael.” The smile, cold and tight, was no brighter than his wings. Both were a gravity suck of darkness that fitted his identity perfectly.
Azrael, the Angel of Death, was as without compassion as any demon—a soldier and nothing else. He never sang any hosannas above a manger. He was a warrior. He’d been created for killing and only that. Heaven, ego and all, was indeed taking this seriously. When Upstairs threw down their A-game, they didn’t screw around. Azrael was one of the big boys, an archangel, and did that make him smarter, faster, stronger, better, and far more kick-ass than your average angel? Yes, in-frigging-deed it did.
“Ishiah has already delivered Heaven’s message. I’m a smart girl. I can hold a thought longer than a day. Why are you bothering with the big guns now? Why not wait until I have something to tell you?” I was almost at the door—too late, damn it—which was when Griffin and Zeke came rushing in, their shotguns ready.
Azrael took in Zeke with a faint lift to his upper lip. He saw what Zeke was. A deserter in Heaven’s eyes. Not fallen, but not right with all that is holy either . . . far from it. Then he saw Griffin and the disdain turned to disgust. Repulsion. Hatred. Eden House, if they rebuilt in Vegas, would never take Griffin back—I should’ve known that sooner or later Heaven would find out. I’d thought Eligos would whisper it to them. I hadn’t thought an angel would be the one to give him up. That an angel would recognize the difference in Griffin between his former undercover body and the one he had now hadn’t seemed likely. They looked identical and the human in Griffin now wasn’t fake as it had been before. But this wasn’t your ordinary angel we were talking about. This was an archangel. Where a lesser angel might be blind, he could see. “What is this? This is not sanctioned by Heaven, never would it be. It’s an abomination.” A sword sprung to life in his hand, one of flames. A fiery sword—with an angel, that was a given.
Peris Heaven tolerated. But the first ex-demon peri? Fallen was fallen in their eyes and that would never change.
“Don’t say that,” I warned, my finger already on the trigger. “Angels can die the same as demons, and if you call Griffin that again, you will.”
“I don’t think we should kill angels,” Griffin protested beside me, his shotgun barrel lowering slightly. “I think in the grand scheme of things that could be construed as not so much wrong but as not especially right either.” It should stop boggling me that I heard these things from Griffin, who had many reasons not to care for angels, but it didn’t. I had to cure him of this saintlike quality, because as everyone knew . . . the quickest way to sainthood was martyrdom. And as martyrdom came from a painful agonizing death, that was best avoided.
“It’s bad enough what Eligos says about you,” I told him. “I won’t hear it from someone who is supposed to be about forgiveness and redemption. If he says one more damn word . . .” But he didn’t have to. Someone else had already made up their mind; somebody had already pulled the trigger.
“He started it.” Zeke pumped another round in his Remington, still aimed at what was left of my window. “Asshole. I hate fast assholes. They’re the worst.” There was no denying that Azrael had been fast in disappearing before the slug reached him. I was swinging back and forth between whether that was a good thing or not. In Zeke’s mind—hell, in my mind too, he had started it. Zeke and Azrael were former comrades. Zeke didn’t remember it, but he knew it. He knew he’d been an angel, used by another angel because of his comparative lack of free will, a pawn, and that history wasn’t winning him over to Heaven’s side. What had actually pissed him off though was Azrael calling Griffin what he had—an abomination. For that, the pigeon did deserve to be shot. As the man said, the angel had started it. Not that it wouldn’t, again, complicate things and, truthfully, I’d never killed an angel before. They hadn’t given me quite enough reason.
Azrael reappeared, this time with some friends. Two more angels, but these had the traditional white wings that marked them as your average angel, no more archangels. That was a good thing, although neither of the new ones looked in the delivering-messages-of-love-and-guiding-us-to-the-Promised-Land mood. They were more of the cast-ye-into-eternal-hellfire frame of mind from the sword in hand and the rage in their faces.