Conspiracy of Angels (21 page)

“Boom, new crossing,” Lil supplied helpfully. “In this case, literally.”

Suddenly I flashed on the flickering images of the dismembered woman in the alley.

“What about murder?” I asked.

“Oh, that would do it,” Lil responded—a little too eagerly, I thought. “Especially something really vicious. Crimes of passion, or torture. Something long, drawn-out and inventive—that would really ramp up the emotions, and leave a stain on the space. You could even do it on purpose, if you wanted to make one.”

She was practically grinning as she talked about it. There was nothing sultry or attractive in the expression, just a kind of naked bloodlust that I didn’t really want to ponder. I folded my arms across my chest, taking comfort in the thick leather of the biker jacket.

Remy lifted a brow at this.

“You can’t be cold. Are you stalling?”

“Kind of nervous,” I admitted.

“Well, get over it,” Lil said flatly.

It wasn’t an answer I liked, but I really couldn’t argue. So I stretched a bit, shaking out my hands. They tingled all the way up to my elbows. While it wasn’t exactly painful, it wasn’t a pleasant sensation either. After a while, it started feeling itchy on the wrong side of my skin.

I mused that I probably looked like a runner, about to do a marathon—then recalled how I’d felt after coming back out of the Shadowside, earlier that morning. The marathon comparison was pretty apt. This was going to push the limits of my endurance. At least I’d had a chance to recharge my batteries.

“All right,” I said, taking a step toward the
Thinker
. “Here goes nothing.” With that, I willed myself to move from the flesh-and-blood world to that realm Lil and Remy called the Shadowside.

“We’ll be waiting here for you,” Remy said, his vaguely accented words already taking on a hollow and echoey quality.

It happened almost before I realized it. There was an initial sensation of pressure that stole my breath and made my ears pop. Then I was through, as if I’d pushed past a curtain. Suddenly everything appeared in shades of gray, with hints of color blooming here and there.

In front of me, the
Thinker
was caught in a state of perpetual explosion. The fire punctuated the soft monochrome, and even that was washed-out. Then it flickered, and was intact again, brooding upon its pedestal. In the next instant the pedestal was empty, with indistinct figures scurrying about, maneuvering the massive bronze casting atop its display. It was like the murder in the alley. Different snapshots of time jumbled over one another, vying for which was on top.

Echoes of people moved around the statue, but they were just blurry smudges on the space—the memory of passing crowds. Mostly the statue shimmered between sitting there and shattering.

Weird.

Past the
Thinker
, the museum itself was an even stranger sight to behold. Multiple versions and extensions of the building angled together in the space, some appearing more solid than the others. It was as if someone had taken pictures from the different stages of the museum’s construction, cut them out, then pasted them on top of one another in a Cubist collage. The clearest was the 1916 original—its white marble façade and towering columns a soft gray on this side.

“Tick tock,” I muttered to myself, and I started to move.

As I walked along the promenade, the memories of people ghosted past, silent and insubstantial. At best they were fingerprints left behind by the passage of the living, though in the strongest of the echoes it was almost possible to get a snippet of a thought or a face. None of it lingered, however, and the echoes of different events constantly jostled, rearranging on top of one another.

As Lil had pointed out, the repetitive movements of people on the flesh-and-blood side created currents in the Shadowside. The river of remembered footsteps parted around the
Thinker
, moving out toward the lagoon on one side, and in toward the museum on the other. The stream running toward the museum was the strongest, and I allowed it to guide my steps. It approached the main doors, but echoes of past construction flickered to life, blocking the old 1916 entrance. I veered sharply right, dodging the rise of partially imprinted walls as they faded in and out on the Shadowside. I followed the flow as it swept around the east side of the building.

It was darker over there, clustered with memories of old trees. My instincts suddenly jangling, I moved forward with caution.

It was a good thing I did. I wasn’t alone.

Nothing jumped out to threaten me—not yet—but oddly shaped things slipped in and out among the shadows. Not cacodaimons. Apparently, there were other denizens of the dark on this side of things. At least one of these proved to be the wan specter of a little girl. Her prim ringlets and dainty white pinafore, all faded to a uniform gray, tied her to a bygone era. She stepped out from behind a massive oak that held more substance than she did, regarding me in silence with big, soulful eyes.

Not quite sure what else to do, I raised one hand and wiggled my fingers in what I hoped was a friendly wave. She continued to stare a few moments longer, then turned away.

“Another angel,” she muttered as she disappeared into the towering echo of remembered trees. She sounded almost bored.

Belatedly I realized that the transit had torn my cowl away. My wings were still tucked tight against my back, but they shone softly, trailing glimmers of blue-white power in my wake. That was when I realized how bright and colorful I appeared in comparison to everything else around me.

Subtlety was right out.

Keeping a wary eye on whatever else was moving within the ghostly arbor, I continued toward the eastern entrance which, I hoped, would be accessible. It seemed farther away than it should have been. I hadn’t been keeping track of how long I’d spent on this side—frankly, it was hard to do. Surrounded by past echoes, the very concept of time held a vague and distant quality. Still, the pressure of the space bore down on me, and while I wasn’t exactly sweating with effort, the strain increased the longer I moved through the shadowy realm.

Spotting the glassed-in entryway that led into the museum on this side, I finally got to witness first-hand what Lil had tried to describe. There was the vaguest suggestion of doors along the entrance, but they blurred beneath the stream of perpetual images passing in and out of them. The closer I got, that well-established current exerted a pull that became impossible to ignore.

“Resistance is futile,” I muttered to myself, though in my head the words were spoken by a Borg with Patrick Stewart’s face. Chuckling a little at my own random geekdom, I surrendered to the flow.

And then I was inside.

W
ords erupted from everywhere and nowhere, resonating with a crushing intensity.

Do you miss the music as much as I do, brother? I have not heard it since we came.

Instinctively, I clapped my hands over my ears to block out the eerie and atonal sound, even as the voice came again, beamed directly into my brain.

Have you brought our brothers back? Have you learned to set them free?

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the thoughts didn’t feel as if they were coming from inside of me. It wasn’t just words, either. Everything was layered with sense and feel and meaning, in an overwhelmingly nuanced way. All of it felt somehow twisted and bleak. Alien emotions flooded my mind with every contact, as profound as they were painful—desolation, solitude, and a brittle, attenuated longing.

If thoughts were a sea, these could drown me.

“Terael?” I croaked. I spoke out loud, if only to establish a boundary between my voice and the thing resonating in my head. “I’m looking for a woman named Lailah.” Then I added, “Dr. Lailah Ganjavi.”

Ignoring my question, the voice continued.

Kessiel came to ask forgiveness, for the slight he paid to me. Three doves he slaughtered in the offering-place, to pay for the loss of my servants. Three doves, two guardians. The numbers calculate favorably.

“Terael, can you hear me?”

Of course I hear you, Zaquiel. You stand in my domain. Although I am diminished in this time and place, I still can hear and see.

I was beginning to understand why Lil refused to come into the museum. The Rephaim’s thoughts thundered in my mind in a jarring and unnatural way. Terael’s presence lent an added pressure to the space, and I felt it wearing me down quickly. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could—or should—remain in the Shadowside.

Yet I still needed some idea of where to go—and a way to get there without bringing the entire Cleveland police force down on my head.

“Terael, I need your help,” I said. Even speaking was an effort. “There was a break-in the other day—”

Kessiel I forgive, for he has paid in blood. All who come to worship now give only coin. I long for life spilled sweetly on the altars.

That was the second time he’d mentioned Kessiel. The pervasive feel of Terael’s thought-speak made it hard to concentrate, so it took me a moment to parse the implications.

“Terael,” I asked urgently. “Is Kessiel… is he here now?”

He has been granted access to the guarded inner sanctums. The bells and red eyes slumber, as the space obeys my will.

It was beginning to make sense, the way this strange sibling perceived the world. Maybe it was how his mind surged against my own. Images and concepts came clinging with each word. The museum was his temple, its guards and curators his servants. He assumed the daily visitors came to offer worship—and perhaps some of them did, after a fashion.

A deeper knowledge of this sibling carried on the tide of his thoughts. The Rephaim were tied to idols, like the Nephilim were tied to blood. Somewhere within the museum there was a statue that served to house my sibling’s soul—and somehow, from that statue, his influence spread throughout the building.

“Bells, red eyes,” I muttered, struggling to comprehend. “Terael, have you shut down the alarms? Is that what you mean?”

As I have done for you often, on the nights when secret things must move within my sanctum.

I didn’t have time to ponder the implications of that. Instead, I dropped my hold on whatever allowed me to shadow-walk through the spirit realm, and took a step back into ordinary space.

Sight, sound, color and sensation all slammed into me with the force of air suddenly filling a vacuum. The whisper of the ventilation. The electric buzz of computers banked behind the greeting station. Red light spilling from the exit signs, dim under any other circumstance but almost blinding now in contrast to the non-light from whence I’d come.

There was a smell, too—sharp, coppery and wet.

Not three feet away stood a donation box crafted of Lucite and brushed metal. A pattern of gleaming droplets beaded in an arc across its front. On the tiles of the floor, a crimson splash of blood shone stark against the white of the marble.

Piled untidily in the middle were three crumpled little bodies, chests gaping redly, the gray pinions of their wings clotted in the blood. Three doves sacrificed at the foot of the donation box.

“Now that’s old school,” I muttered, stepping carefully around the mess. The newspapers were going to have a field day when they heard about it in the morning.

“Terael, where is Kessiel?” I said to the air.

He stands in that domain I have carved for you as a sign of our mutual respect, beyond the halls of service, in the cells of study and repair.

Heard from the flesh-and-blood side of reality, Terael’s voice-thoughts weren’t quite as paralyzing, but they were still damned creepy.

“Let me guess,” I said with a grimace. “He’s taking my things.”

I have forbidden him to touch the statuary or the stones. Nothing precious may he have. He has not earned that right.

“What’s he doing right now?” I asked. “Can you tell me?”

A box of lights he seeks, and paper things once stored away.
His thrumming mind brushed mine, wavering.
Have I erred, my brother?

“Damn, damn, damn!” I breathed. With the desperate hope that I’d miss any guards who might be doing their rounds, I hurried down a nearby flight of stairs. If my instincts ran true, there would be a stretch of classrooms and lecture halls, and if I hung a left from that, I’d be moving in the direction of back offices and conservator labs.

But my memories were out of date. I ended up at a bank of doors leading to a parking garage. Rubbing my temples, I wracked the fried mess of meat and synapses that was my brain.

“Terael,” I called, looking up as if he somehow hovered above me. I knew he didn’t, but I had to look somewhere. “I don’t know my way around. Where should I go?”

Have you taken new flesh so soon, that your memory has fled? It seems only days since you were here, a grown man and whole.

“Look, it’s hard to explain,” I said, trying not to let the “whole” bit get to me. “I just don’t remember, OK? Can you tell me left or right?”

In answer, my mind flooded—not with words, but with images almost too quick to absorb. It wasn’t directions so much as a download of place-knowledge burned directly into my brain. Reeling a little, I turned and started walking. Different portions of the halls looked suddenly familiar, and I followed the spatial awareness Terael had gifted to me.

You are wounded, brother
, Terael observed as I strode quickly through the darkened halls. The voice was gentler this time, less numbingly omnipresent.

“Yeah,” I said. It kind of hurt to admit.

What war between the tribes erupts beyond my walls, that Nefer-Ka has marked you so?

That stopped me cold.

I stood there, shivering as adrenaline banged around my nervous system with nowhere useful yet to go. When I managed to speak, the tremor made it to my voice.

“What did you say?”

Terael took me literally and repeated his previous statement, word-for-word—or thought-for-thought, as the case may be. I reminded myself that he was a nonhuman intelligence, stuck inside a statue for more years than I probably cared to consider. He couldn’t possibly be expected to think in a normal way, so I rephrased the question, choosing my words carefully.