Halo of Light

GUI

Angels can’t grab hold of a human—or a dog—and travel the way we normally travel: in the blink of an eye, skirting all mortal realm laws or utilizing all the spare quantum space so that we can fit just about anywhere. On a pinhead. In tiny spaces that a human wouldn’t fit in. Or swelling to cover a mountain peak if we needed to.

That made handling Oskar extra frustrating.

I knocked on the door of the penthouse suite I’d been directed to. Beside me, Oskar whimpered. I crouched down and braided my fingers through his ruff. The Bernese had been through a hell of a night. Animals didn’t understand what they saw, always, but it could still leave a mark.

What the dog needed now was extra love. Extra comfort. Extra care.

The door opened and I stood up.

“You must be Guiel. Please, come in,” the man said.

“And you are Alder,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Bring the dog too,” Alder said, his eyes flashing down at the dog, then back to mine.

“The dog is the reason I’m here.”

“I know.”

I passed Alder and he closed and bolted the door behind me. I glanced back at him, taking note of his appearance as I studied him. In his motions of bolting the locks, I felt a tension. Ichabod had told me nothing about this man, only that he had a place in the area, was currently there, and may have use for a dog.

I hoped the vampire understood that “use for a dog” did not entail sucking its blood. But as I studied Alder, there was nothing demonic about him. In fact, an apprehension hung over the man. There was something supernatural about him, which made the attention to the many bolts and locks on his door curious.

Alder breezed past me where I’d paused inside the entryway to the open floorplan of the suite. He flashed me a smile, his eyebrows lifting up. The apprehension at the door vanished as he moved deeper into the room. By the time he got to the drink cart set against an inside wall, he bled nonchalance.

“Would you like a drink, Guiel?”

“Will you take the dog, or not?” I asked getting right to the point. I didn’t like that this man who I knew so little about knew my name. Names hold power, as Ichabod had learned back when we first met. He was one of the first humans to ever hold it and speak it with his voice. Human or hellspawn. Only a few others had learned of it since that day, all related to projects I had done with Ichabod over the years.

This Alder. Ichabod must trust him and therefore had allowed my name to be communicated to the man.

“Tell me more about your dog, please. And would you like a drink? It’s tradition to begin negotiation talks with a libation.”

“I’ve not heard of this tradition,” I said.

“Well, that would be because it’s my tradition. Especially when it comes to negotiations with angels and other divine creatures.”

I lifted one eyebrow. I looked down at Oskar to remind myself why I was in that room at that moment, allowing a human to back me into a corner with fancy tricks and diplomatic strategies.

The girl. Her death. The mysterious shadow. Remembering sent a shiver through me.

Shivers were a human experience, but as I had mentioned before, I was Raphael’s odd angel.

“Please, Guiel. A drink. And other comforts. Have a seat, then we can talk.” Alder pointed at a sofa. “You’ve been standing there awkwardly, since you came in. Maybe that’s how they do it in heaven, but on Earth, we get into the moment. We sink into it. And we sit down.”

The violent force was still out there. Heaven was outside time. If we’d been there, we’d have endless time to sit and have a drink and gab, like humans do. But the shapeless entity that had destroyed Alexis was still out there. My goal was to get Oskar looked after, and then begin hunting down whatever was killing people.

And I would need to go to Raphael, soon, to report what was going on.

Oskar looked up at me. When our eyes met, his tail began to twitch until it became a full wag.

Something twisted in my heart. A citrus-like light. A spray of sunshine.

“Are you sure you want to get rid of the dog?” Alder’s voice interrupted the moment.

I raised my gaze to look at him and felt the smile fade from my mouth.

“Come,” I whispered, and Oskar followed me to the couch that Alder had directed me to. I sat down. “Whatever you’re drinking, I’ll also have one.”

“Wonderful.” Alder busied himself with making the drinks and soon he joined me and Oskar at the seating arrangement around a dark coffee table. A white furry rug was beneath it. The suite was rife with dark woods, leather furnishings, thick blankets, potted plants—tall ones growing from large white vases as well as small vine like types that crept along bookshelves and consoles—and books. A lot of books.

“Do you have a drink for Oskar?” I asked after saying thank you and accepting my drink from him.

Alder blinked, then chuckled. “Well, no. I hadn’t thought of that. Let me get him one.”

Soon Oskar was lapping up water and Alder had sat down and focused on me.

“Tell me how an angel has ended up with a dog.”

He seemed to enjoy that he knew that fact about me, though I had concealed my wings, usually the only visible sign that I was an angel. I’d sent my staff into another dimension as well, a storage dimension, which was where my wings hid when I used one of those rather than just a simple glamour.

So, Ichabod must have told Alder of my nature.

“A woman was murdered tonight in Central Park. I was called there to comfort her.” Alder already knew I was an angel, and Alder was more than a mere human. I’d gathered that in the few minutes we’d been together. There were signs. One was in the resonance of his body—air moved around it differently from a standard human, which caused the tones coming off him to make an unusual sound signature. That was a gift for angels to hear those subtleties. Ichabod, for example, resonated differently with the atmosphere around him. The signature was one of the damned. Alder’s was one that I hadn’t sensed in ages. Since before… “You are a demigod.”

Alder started, nearly spilling his drink. He recovered and smiled.

“I am.”

A demigod. I breathed.

The gods were dead. All of them, and here, sitting before me, was a half-god.

“A rarity. And… you are hope,” I said.

Alder shook his head. His eyes were suddenly brilliant. “It’s not like that. I’m mostly mortal.” He gave a half-shrug. “At least as mortal as I am god.”

“Who else knows?”

“Not many people.”

“Angels?”

“None, that I know of.”

“You know that the gods are dead?”

“Yes.” His expression faltered.

“I’m sorry.” I sensed the sorrow in him, the thing that I would comfort if I had been sent to comfort this one. “To my point, Alder, I need your help. This dog served his master until her death. But whatever killed her is still out there, dangerous. Very powerful, not of this world. I need to return to Raphael. Whatever it is, it could strike again.”

Alder’s steel blue eyes became intense. He took a long drink and set the tumbler down on a coaster.

“Tell me everything you saw, Guiel—”

“Please, call me Gui. French pronunciation.”

“Gui. You and I have a lot to catch up on. Now that we have met. You want me to take the dog while you… go on the hunt?”

“Yes. That was what I’d intended.” Something he’d said snapped my attention back to it. “Now that we have met?”

“I’ve heard of you, from Ichabod. It’s why I need you to tell me everything you know of this force that’s killing humans.” He settled back into the sofa.

I wasn’t surprised that Ichabod had spoken of me, except that Ichabod talking to anyone was uncommon. I waited to hear more about what Ichabod said. We stared at each other.

Alder finally continued, the corners of his mouth flickering. “Supernatural things that are killing humans are of interest to me.”

I sensed that I was supposed to be intrigued by that statement, so I nodded—a gesture that I knew humans appreciated. I didn’t need to move like humans did. I was as comfortable in a prolonged silence as I was in not moving for hours at a time. But as a creature designed to impart peace and comfort to humans, I had learned small gestures that brought me to their level.

I knew already that I could trust him, however, more than talking to him I needed to report to Raphael.

And I couldn’t take Oskar with me.

The dog sat at my feet, so close that he was touching my shins. His body was warm. His sides moved evenly as he rested his chin on his paws.

“You say you don’t know what the force is?” Alder scooted to the edge of the cushion and braced his forearms on his knees. His face was earnest as though a look like that could pull the information he sought from me.

“Correct. And I’m afraid I won’t be able to explain it to you. I need to report back to my sire.”

Alder squinted and shook his head.

“I have wanted to add an angel to my quiver.”

It was my turn to squint. Alder noted the gesture and laughed.

“As I said, supernatural things that are killing humans are of interest to me. I make it my business to stop them. By sending agents who work for me after them. Assassins.”

It was clear from the way he drew out the word that it was supposed to shock or impress me. I needed to be going. The seconds continued to tick away. I felt them like a warning gong pounding just beneath the threshold of my attention.

Leaving Oskar behind was not what I wanted to do. But I could not go back to heaven with him. It was a physical impossibility—not that I had ever attempted to take something of Earth with me that hadn’t changed form already through death.

“If I leave the dog with you, will you look after him?”

“This would be a transaction, Gui. I will look after the dog if you will consider joining my team of assassins.”

I stared at Alder, hesitating, and considered turning into my most terrible form to frighten him—and I wasn’t sure why. The things of humans had always intrigued me. That was what had earned me the odd angel pet name from Raphael.

I stood up. Oskar got to his feet too, glancing up at me warily with his brown eyes. They had seen things, and the knowing in them struck me to the core. I would come back for him.

“I will consider it. After I council with my sire.”

“Return here. This place belongs to the agency, but I have it for two nights while I’m here on business.”

I crouched and lifted Oskar’s chin to gaze into his eyes.

“I will be back.”