Minutes to Midnight (8 page)

I narrowed my eyes at her.
The 'Pheral? The same place Darius told us about? The sixth world?
"You mean…Alfheim
is
the Peripheral?"

"Alfheim is one of many
places inside the Peripheral." She released me and stood back. "Now
that I know where you've been, I can smell it. I can smell
her
. The place reeks
of
her
. But…" She
looked away and appeared to be staring at something I couldn't see.
I don't know, divine communion? I stayed where I was, wondering
where Mike was. If he walked in now, I was afraid she'd blast him.
Gabriel didn't care about anything except what Gabriel wanted. I'd
known that the moment I met her.

That was a day I didn't like remembering.
Although it was one of the clearest memories I had.

She moved again and pushed her hand against
my chest and then through it. My body went rigid and I nearly bit
my tongue. Thomas the Rhymer had recently shoved his own hand into
the book to place a page inside. The sensation wasn't as much
painful as uncomfortable. I couldn't move and my sight was
restricted to what was in front of me, which was the top of her
head and the ceiling. Whatever she was doing pulled at my spine,
and I whined and hissed through clenched teeth. The only thing I
could compare it to was having my backbone ripped out through my
ass.

When she pulled her hand out, I nearly lost
control of all my bodily functions before I curled up into a fetal
position. I was a roly poly bug, protecting my soft middle, baring
my hard outer shell. Inside I cried with fear and hatred because I
couldn't do a thing to stop her. I felt violated, and utterly
helpless. My skin was hot; I had a fever. I started shivering
again.

"I double-checked the page of your memory,
to make sure you didn't lie to me. You are lucky you didn't, and
the book's still intact. But what I don't understand is how a Djin
could have escaped from the 'Pheral…" She paced, her trench coat
billowing out behind her. "How would it know to take you? Or even
what you hold within you? You told me they never knew who or what
you were. You told me Maab was destroyed. That World has no
entrance or exit save what we make and take. It's not possible such
abominations could have grown to such a power as to break the
barriers. We own the Watchers, we control the Guardians…"

Her self-speech didn't make much sense to
me. And I wasn't in the mood to comment. I continued to bury my
head in my chest and hands, my thoughts turning to Stella.

She was still there. I hadn't been able to
help her.

She was in the 'Pheral, captive to
a…Djin?

What the hell was that? Was Gabriel talking
about a genie?

Gabriel stopped pacing and
came back to me. She knelt beside the bed and ran her fingers
through my hair. The gesture was almost pleasant, until she grabbed
a handful of it and yanked my head back so I would be forced to
look at her. "You will do everything in your power to prevent going
back to that place, do you understand me? This isn't a request,
Guardian. If you so much as put another foot into that place, I
will hurt
her
,
Darren McConnell. I'll physically rip her spin from her
body."

And then I was alone in my room.

I didn't move. I just closed my eyes tight
and sobbed. Some man I was. A guy who'd made so many stupid
decisions in his life that brought him to this. I already knew she
couldn't kill me—if I died, then the book returned to the Well of
Souls. Its knowledge would be shared with the universe. But what
she could do to me was keep me alive enough to keep the book safe.
Gabriel seemed to revel in physical torture.

There were times, like now, I wished my
family would have left me in that tree after mom died. I think I
drifted off to sleep again, and felt the soft brush of fur against
my skin, and the cold nose of a wolf against my cheek.

A BREiF HiSTORY

It wasn't a pleasant sleep, filled with
nightmares of giant spiders chasing me through a sewer, and at the
end of the tunnel was Gabriel wielding a knife to cut the book out
of my soul.

Mike woke me up with glass of water and an
aspirin. He sat on the bed and watched me as I swallowed the pill
and emptied the glass. "I thought you'd look better—but you look
like you haven't rested at all."

I handed the glass back to him. "I did.
Just…nightmares."

He held the glass in both hands between his
knees. "Sorry. I had to get the arm back in. So…" Mike shrugged.
"You ready to tell me what happened?"

"How long?"

"What?"

I focused on him. "How long have I been in
bed?"

"Two days."

"How long was I gone?"

"Four." He pursed his lips. "I took it on
faith you'd show back up again like before. And since I saw you and
the officer turn left into the alley, I hung out there. Darius
didn't want to believe me. So when you showed back up…" He
shrugged.

Jesus. "Mike…it was like before, wasn't it?
Like when I came out of the Cairn?"

He nodded as he looked at me. "Yeah. Fever.
Chills. You were delirious. It was worse this time."

I closed my eyes. "I think I was in the
Peripheral."

"The place Darius talked about?"

"Yeah." I told him everything I could
remember, except for the part where I woke up with Gabriel in my
face. He'd seen the Angel before, but his abilities weren't a match
for hers. The only person that could send Gabriel back to her World
was Samantha. She'd tried to teach me the spell to do it since she
believed I was a Sentinel like herself, a child of the God Mother
born on this earth to keep the illegal aliens out. But it didn't
work for me. When I told Nona what happened, her take was that my
duel nature wouldn't allow me to banish anything.

"I did learn something, though." I leaned
back against the headboard. "Alfheim is part of the
Peripheral."

Mike's expression slackened. "We were in the
Peripheral? The 'Pheral is where the Fairies live?"

"Yeah. Apparently. And it's where Djin live,
because that's what overshadowed Officer Jones." I swung my legs
over the side of the bed and looked left at him. "It's got Stella,
Mike."

"Then we have to get her back."

Two days. I'd been feverish for two days.
And I still felt like hammered shit. Damn. "I have to come up with
a plan. How's Officer Jones?"

"In a coma. He's got third degree burns on
the side of his face and neck. Your blasto-power, I assume?"

"Yes." And more, but I didn't say that. I
didn't want to admit that when I used the spell, I didn't know what
it would do. I asked the book for help and that was what it gave
me. Apparently it shoved out parasites…but it didn't leave the host
in good shape.

"What the hell is a gin?" Mike said.

"I don't know." I stood and moved past him
to the door. I was light headed like before and I grabbed the door
frame to hold myself up. I was starving. "Where's the book?"

"It's down on the table."

We went down to the kitchen. Mike set the
glass in the sink and I pulled a pack of processed meat from the
fridge. After shoving rolled handfuls of it into my mouth, I
grabbed a soda and went to the dining room table, sat down, pulled
the book to me and started flipping through the pages. It was
handwritten in some areas, typeset in others. A very odd mishmash
of things in alphabetical order. Once I got to the Ds, it was easy
to find the entry.

"Djins," I said aloud. "Otherwise known as
Genies."

Mike came from the kitchen. "You're shitting
me. He was possessed by a genie? I thought they lived in lamps and
granted wishes?"

"You watch too much TV." I skimmed through
the text and didn't like what I saw. "Shit."

"What?" Mike moved to read over my shoulder.
"What language is that?"

"Sumerian."

"I thought you read that."

"I do." I turned the page and continued.
"I'm surprised no one's ever talked about Djins before."

"Hello? Let me in on it."

"Well." He pulled a chair out and sat to my
left. "We got all the worlds down, right?"

"Yep."

"Now, what I've learned about the planes, or
worlds, comes from other planar beings, which you'll just have to
trust me on. However, this text doesn't use the usual terms I use.
It says before the Thrones of the Dark and Light were created,
before the Holy Ghost, which I learned is a program called
Geist—"

"A program? You mean like a computer?"

"Think organically. But it works the same
way. But before all of that, most of the Outer Worlds existed as
one. Everything lived in a sort of chaotic balance." I traced the
words with my fingers, translating again. "When the Material, Mind,
and Spirit Worlds formed, physical beings were born, possessing a
collective link to Mind and Spirit. The Djin, creatures of smoke
and shadow, were the first to toy with them. The Djin discovered
death through the mutilation and torture of the physical beings;
i.e., humans, animals, as well as other Planar beings.

"There's a bunch of exposition about the
meeting of minds…debates…the arguments between the God Mother and
her children concerning the need to set up rigid borders between
the World and set up rules…" I skimmed down the page. "Two names
keep coming up—Samael and Lilith—a split of the same Planar
essence."

"Lilith? Are you serious? Wasn't that the
name of Adam's first wife? Like…part of Apocryphal texts?"

"Yeah…but I've learned you can't really
think the literary names are what we've read. And looking at this…"
I shrugged. "Apparently Samael and Lilith were the ones who set up
the Worlds with the God Mother and worked together to sort of
create a balance of parties for discussions."

"You mean like Congress?"

"I guess so? Dark and Light hashing it out
like Republicans and Democrats. So in a way, we had the first man
and the first woman taking on leadership roles."

"Lemme guess, Lilith was the leader of the
Dark."

"No…actually she was the Seraphim, so that
makes it Light, or Angelic."

Mike looked surprised. "That is so….not
really shocking."

"I know, right?" I skimmed
ahead, moving past lines and lines of who held what position and
how it was voted on. I knew about Samael already because he was in
that diary the
Grimoire
absorbed. He was also the father of the First Borns like
Mephistopheles. It was sort of sad to read this, knowing one of his
own children would betray him later on. "Here we go. There was an
emergency council called early on—though it doesn't say how long
after the Worlds were formed. It just says that the council was
called to decide what to do about the Djin who repeatedly crossed
the borders, bribing or killing the—" I stopped and sat
back.

"What?" Mike looked from me to the book.
"Dags?"

I cleared my throat. "It says the Djin
either killed or bribed or enslaved the Guardians, the humans
chosen and imbued with the blood of the God Mother to guard the
borders between the Worlds. Their favorite place to break into was
the Material World so they could continue their corruption. The
council, comprised of the Seraphim and the Phantasm and their
Planar allies, voted to exile the Djins and any creature refusing
the council's leadership."

Mike sat forward with his elbow on the table
and his chin in his hand. "And?"

I stopped because what I read next rang
something inside of me. It was like a bell in the distance. And
from the bell, I realized what I was reading was important.

I just didn't know
how
. "It says the ensuing
battle destroyed all of the Guardians, along with all humans
possessing the God Mother's blood."

"Wait, didn't Sam talk about this at one
point? And that the God Mother's children were being reborn
now?"

"I think so. I read a shitload of history on
this stuff in a bunch of files called the Dioscuri. The Guardians
were destroyed in the Bulwark, but is this referring to that war?
Is this what actually caused it?"

"You think maybe all this is involved in
whatever the God Mother's dark purpose was? The one Sam talked
about?"

I shrugged.

Mike leaned in closer. "Does it say anything
in there about how to get into the 'Pheral? If it's where Alfheim
is—and given your condition when you reappeared I'd say yeah—then
it has to be accessible by some other means because I don't think
there's a Cairn in that alley by The Night Pub. Or does it say how
to kill a Djin? That's what we need to be looking at."

I had to tear my attention away from that
section of the book and skim ahead. But I was going to go back to
it. There were things there I needed to know. "I don't see
anything…well, they're made of smoke and thought and little else."
I moved my finger over the handwritten language. Some words didn't
come easy to me and I had to skip them. "Here it says…."