Conspiracy of Angels (36 page)

“It tells me how much oxygen you’re getting,” she replied. “Oxygen’s important for brain function.”

Something in the way she said it niggled at me.

“Is there something wrong with my brain function?” I asked. All my words came out thickly, like my tongue was carved from wood. I ran it across the back of my teeth. They felt disgusting.

The woman met my eyes and I spied the evasion immediately. Trying to sound casual, she responded.

“Why don’t you tell me your name, sir?”

I started to say
Zaquiel
, but stopped myself.

Everything crashed back in a violent rush. I struggled not to react to the memories of breathless panic—Dorimiel, cacodaimons, and plummeting through the darkness into choking, frigid waters. My pupils must have dilated or something, because her penciled brows furrowed as she studied me.

“Your name?” she prompted.

“Zachary Westland,” I replied, trying to seem calm and rational and probably sounding nothing at all like either of those things. I gripped the rail of the hospital bed so fiercely I snapped something off of her little oxygen-reader thingy. I winced as it emitted a series of angry beeps, then held it up to her, muttering, “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Westland,” she said gently. “You’ve been through a lot over the past week. Do you know where you are at the moment?”

“Hospital,” I quipped. If I was being a smart ass, that meant I was OK, right?

The nurse didn’t seem to share my belief in the restorative powers of humor. She pressed her full lips together disapprovingly.

“Aside from the hospital.”

“Cleveland,” I replied. “At least, that’s where I should be. I’m still in Cleveland, right?”

“How much do you remember about what happened to you?” she pursued, working hard to keep her tone neutral. I noticed she wasn’t exactly answering me.

“Not a whole lot,” I told her. It was mostly the truth.

She frowned. “I’m going to check some of your charts again. Are you feeling up for a visitor?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

The nurse—at least I was pretty sure she was a nurse—grabbed a clipboard and headed out of the room. I heard her speaking in hushed tones with someone out in the hall. A moment later, the door creaked a little as whoever it was entered. I looked up, expecting to see Lil or maybe Remy. Instead I was greeted by a uniformed police officer.

I almost bolted, though I hardly knew where I thought I would go in a damned hospital room.

“Hey, Zack,” he said soothingly. “It’s me, Bobby. Good to see you awake finally. You had us pretty worried.”

I recognized the name from my answering machine. His badge expanded that name to Officer Bobby Park, with the Cleveland PD.

“Bobby,” I echoed. Nevertheless, it stirred no memories.

He nodded—two rapid dips of his chin. They made the gelled spikes of his black hair quiver. He pulled one of the chairs closer to my hospital bed and, moving a brightly colored fedora to the side, perched on the edge of it. I knew who the hat belonged to, and I wasn’t exactly happy to see it there. The trim little officer misinterpreted my expression.

“You don’t remember me?” he asked.

A note in his voice made me study him more carefully. He was a young man, Asian descent, probably not more than mid-twenties. Deep lines of worry scored his round features. He dug restless fingers into the knees of his uniform. Tendons ridged the backs of his hands from gripping the fabric so tightly. I searched his face again, hoping for some flash of recognition.

Nothing.

“Sorry,” I said.

Something like pain touched his features. How well did I know this guy?

“They said that might happen—the doctors,” he amended. “Not your fault.” Then he mustered a smile of sorts. “Can I get you anything? How you feeling?”

“Like I got run over by something with its own ZIP code,” I responded.

His smile widened at this, the edges of his eyes crinkling. The laugh-lines vanished in the next instant, eaten up by his worry.

“Still got your sense of humor.” He pulled out a digital recorder, holding it up significantly. “You up for some questions? I mean, if you remember anything. We need to piece together events from last week.”

I sat up straighter in the hospital bed. Tape around my mid-section let me know my ribs had recently taken a beating. I took a shallow breath. It ended in a fit of coughing. Bobby set the recorder aside and held out the cup of water.

“We can do it another time,” he offered.

I took a drink through the straw and cleared my throat. Sometime between the
Scylla
and now, I’d been gargling razors.

“Do I have a choice in the matter?”

Bobby’s brows shot up. “No! Geez, Zack. Nothing like that. You’re not a suspect or anything. I got that covered. Maybe you don’t remember, but you can trust me.”

I started to ask what he meant by that, though thanks to the answering message, I had some ideas. Before I could speak, however, Remy’s clipped and accented voice interrupted us.

“Excuse me, but what are you doing badgering my brother,” the Nephilim said, “when he has only just regained consciousness?”

He stood in the doorway, dressed in a spectacular suit of vivid goldenrod wool that only he could pull off and look dapper, rather than ridiculous. He drew himself up to his full six foot four, glowering at the police officer with an imperious expression that he’d undoubtedly learned from Sal.

“Um,” Bobby offered, squirming beneath Remy’s unearthly blue gaze. He recovered quickly enough, jumping to his feet and extending a hand politely. It was a sight, because Bobby came up approximately to Remy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even know Zack had a brother. He never said anything. I thought all his family lived in Kenosha.”

“Half brother,” I said quickly.

“Blood’s still blood,” Remiel said with a knowing expression.

“I didn’t know. There’s nothing in the records,” Bobby persisted, but it was less a challenge than it was an apology. Still holding his hand out to Remy, he said, “I’m Officer Bobby Park.”

“Remy Broussard,” Remiel said with a polite nod of his head. He delicately clasped the officer’s hand in his own.

“Well, Mr. Broussard,” Bobby responded quickly, “I’m working Zack’s case, along with several other very capable officers. He’s in good hands. I promise you, we will find the people who did this.”

“I’m sure you will make your very best effort,” Remy replied evenly. He held the young officer’s gaze, also maintaining a grip on the young man’s hand. For a moment, Bobby seemed strangely captivated. Pointedly, Remy said, “I think you’ve forgotten something.”

“Oh, sure,” Bobby said, blinking. He looked a little dazed. A moment later, he announced, “I forgot something. I’ll have to come back later.” The little guy vacated the room in such a rush that he ran off without collecting his digital recorder. I reached over and made certain it was turned off.

“Pretty sure what you just did there was illegal,” I said, eyeing the Nephilim. I didn’t know he could whammy people like that.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Remy responded.

“Suuure,” I said, drawing it out.

He looked as if he expected something more from me. I didn’t give it to him. Once the silence between us had drawn out to something surpassing awkward, Remy swept toward the chair and recovered his hat. He didn’t sit, but instead stood, picking imagined lint from the cloth.

I stared at the ceiling tiles.

“Are you well?” he ventured.

“I feel like hammered horseshit. No thanks to you.”

“Still upset about that.” It wasn’t a question.

“You think? You knocked my ass out and tied me to a chair.”

Another spate of dry coughing stole some of my vehemence. Remy spied the cup of water and held it out to me. I glared at the proffered drink. I wasn’t about to let him feed it to me. I tore it from his hand, sending the straw spinning. Remy’s expression went opaque, and he settled into the chair. He watched me for a long while, neither of us saying anything.

“She told me I would have to do it,” he said at length.

“And you obeyed her blindly.” I slammed the cup onto the nightstand. Water splashed in the process.

Remy’s fingers crimped the brim of his fedora. He caught himself before crushing it entirely. Pale lips tugging in a frown, he set the hat aside.

“Never blindly,” he objected.

I scoffed. My thoughts leapt guiltily to my back-room deal with his decimus. There were things she kept from him—and things she’d maneuvered me into keeping from him. Secrets within secrets. It couldn’t have been the first time.

“Then you don’t know Sal.”

“I know her quite well,” he replied. “Better, perhaps, than anyone.” His voice was remote, and his eyes held an echo of that distance. I wondered how many years unspooled in his internal vision. It didn’t soften me to him.

“I thought you took some kind of oath to look out for me.” Even to my ears, it sounded petulant.

“My actions on the
Daisy Fay
served that oath,” he answered. “They got you on board the
Scylla
without an immediate altercation. I didn’t agree with Sal when she first proposed that course, but once Jubiel started talking, I recognized her wisdom. At the time, it was the safest way.”

“So you hit me on the head for my own good. That’s convenient.”

He flinched as if I’d thrown acid. Lacing his fingers tightly in the absence of the fedora, he said, “I suppose I should be grateful you recall enough to be this angry.”

“Sure, change the subject.” I shifted among the pillows, angling my back to him. My left hand got tangled in the IV. The cut beneath the bandages throbbed dully, a grim memento of what I’d fed the Eye.

Which reminded me thunderously about the Stylus. My pulse and blood pressure spiked so swiftly, a couple of the monitors I was hooked up to vented irritable beeps. I bolted upright. Remy’s unearthly blue eyes flicked from the monitors to me, filled with unvoiced questions.

“Where’s my leather jacket?” I asked.

Remy’s brows went up slightly.

“With everything you’ve been through you’re worried about that old thing?” he responded.

“Where is it?” I insisted.

“Lil took it when she dragged you from the water. She has a tracking spell on you—did you know that?”

I couldn’t have cared less about her tracking spell right then, though I suspected it had four legs and sharp teeth.

“What did she do with my
fucking
jacket?” I came close to shouting it.

“Calm yourself or the nurse will be in here,” he said. His voice was a quiet contrast to my own. “You had something important in it?”

Only the fucking icon of the Anakim primus.
I chewed my cheeks and forced myself to breathe steadily. Remy was right—if I didn’t calm down, I was going to send the machines into fits. Could Lil have known about the Stylus? She wouldn’t have just tossed the jacket without searching it. She’d probably hoped to find the Eye, but that was at the bottom of Lake Erie.

Perhaps they both were.

The rush of thoughts sped my pulse again. Remy watched me avidly from the chair at my bedside. I wondered how much he really knew—or suspected. I couldn’t even ask him about the Eye—Sal had made certain of that—and I didn’t dare make mention of the Stylus.

“Was it the demon jars?” he ventured. “They weren’t on board the
Scylla
.”

“I never found them,” I said curtly.

Remy settled back in the chair, adopting a falsely casual pose. He clung to it too stiffly. Silence stretched between us, heavy with the weight of our secrets.

“I wish that you could trust me.” He sighed.

I felt a stab of guilt and fervently wished the same, but I couldn’t trust him any more than he trusted me.

“Tell me what I need to know,” I said. “That cop’s going to come back eventually.”

“Terrorism,” Remy replied. “The museum heist, the explosive sinking of the
Scylla
, all of it. You and Dr. Ganjavi discovered information being smuggled in forged artifacts, and you were both taken hostage last Monday for your pains. Something went wrong with the security cameras throughout the museum, so nothing exists to dispute those claims.”

“By ‘something,’ you mean the local Rephaim,” I suggested.

Remy gave a little roll to one shoulder.

“Presumably. Given some of Dorimiel’s global connections, and the origins of the artifacts in question, it wasn’t difficult to steer the authorities in that direction. Low hanging fruit, really.” He flipped a wrist distastefully. “You can choose to remember all of it or only parts. You stopped breathing long enough out on the lake to provide a workable argument for brain damage.”

“Brain damage,” I said flatly.

“Is there a better explanation?”

I considered, wanting to argue, but it covered all the bases.

“The Rockefeller Park shooting…”

“A misunderstanding, and already handled. When they came for you and Dr. Ganjavi, you fled on foot. They chased you down to one of the park’s Cultural Gardens. You were defending yourself. Simple, really.”

I sighed, picking at the tape on my IV.

“I don’t suppose anyone found my Kimber.”

Remy shook his head.

There was a sound at the door and we both froze, waiting to see who—if anyone—came in. It turned out to be the nurse again. She must have seen a lot of Remy over the past few days, because she gave him a warm, familiar grin, her perfect, even teeth very white in contrast with her skin.

“You’ve got about fifteen minutes, Mr. Broussard. We don’t want you wearing him out now that he’s awake.”

“Thank you, Ms. Jeffreys,” he responded with a dazzling smile, flirting with an ease that amazed me.

“I’ll be watching the clock now,” she said, then she ducked back out, shutting the door behind her. Remy watched it for a few moments, and I got the distinct impression that he was listening to her as she walked away. I couldn’t hear anything but the noise of the ventilation and the various monitors that were attached to me.

Finally, my sibling turned back my way, a peculiar mix of curiosity, anxiety, and hesitation playing across his pale features.