Angel's Mark

Thirty-six

       

Everyone was yelling, and until this point, I didn't think I'd ever realized what a novelty it was to have my brother, Nura, Lucie, Caprice and Zev in the same room without a lot of yelling. Alan didn't exactly count in this situation. He just sat in the corner of the parlor, looking perplexed, mouth pressed shut.

    One moment, Lucie would say, "It's a risk we can't afford to take!"

    In the next moment, Cian would counter, "There are no other options, muffin."

    Caprice would then agree with her "little one" and then Zev would clamor to agree with Caprice and then Nura would warn us that her weird seer-senses were sending her bad vibes about this whole thing. And I just sat there and tried to think through it all, wary of Alan's eyes on me as I did.

    Here was what I knew: Alan's idea had a lot of holes in it.

    Here was what else I knew: It made a lot of sense.

    After we'd left the coffee shop, it had taken us twenty minutes to get everyone gathered in the downstairs parlor. Zev had been meditating and had nearly killed Cian and me for interrupting him. Nura, having given up on the whittling thing, had been trying to knit a miniature sock for a nonexistent baby. And Caprice, when we'd called her, had been dealing with the soul of a shifty real estate broker across town.

    Finally, when the parlor doors had been slammed shut and we all sat amongst paisley couches and polished, hand-painted china, Alan had shared his counsel.

    "Vinny," he'd said, "you said this guy doesn't respond to angelic weapons, and what not. By that reasoning we need something stronger than an angel."

    Caprice had caught on to this before any of us. "I can't tell if this is a great idea or a terrible one, and that frightens me."

    Alan said, "Demons. We'll use demons to take him down. It's the only thing that makes sense."

    He'd chronicled the idea further, so far, indeed, that it made me wonder when he'd had time to think about this. Had all of it been running through his head yesterday, as we'd listlessly drifted about his house? Had he lain awake when I'd already fallen asleep last night, pondering all of this? I realized I'd underestimated him, again. I kept underestimating him and he kept surprising me, every time.

    "I don't know how you catch demons. But assuming they've been crawling around San Francisco since the gate, or something—I only know what Vinny's told me—opened, they shouldn't be hard to find," Alan had gone on. By then, he'd been pacing across the floor, talking with his hands, head inclined toward the carpet as if reasoning with it. It's like he wasn't even aware of anyone else in the room. It was just Alan and Alan's thoughts, and the rest of us had to make room. "We harness their energy. I might be able to make them into weapons we can all wield. I'm not sure there's a precedent for that, but if not, I'll make one. The question would be how to make it safe. I'll figure that out, too."

    I'd cut in, "There's Nick's spies, too. He'll probably have them posted everywhere, stopping anything before we can start it. What then?"

    Alan had stopped pacing and just stared at me for a long, long time. Then he'd raked a hand back through his hair and pointed at me, finger trembling. "We'll eliminate them. All of them."

    Zev, bewildered, asked, "How?"

    "An explosion of demon venom. That's how we do it. It gets rid of everyone, fast. We just need to get Nick and all his comrades in a tiny, closed off space. Set it off, run away."

    Alan made a gesture, mimicking an explosion with his fingers. I'd been surprised and slightly turned on to find a smile on his face when he said, "Ka-boom. Problem solved."

    So that was the plan.

    An explosion of demon venom we didn't have yet, in a place we hadn't decided on yet, to kill Nick, who didn't know the change of plans yet. By far the most terrifying part of all of this was that I'd have to talk to Nick again, tell him I was taking over—that if he wanted Cian, he was going to do what I said.

    It was a fifty-fifty chance. Either he liked my ambition and agreed easily, or he grew suspicious. Should it be the latter, Operation Ka-boom would go, well, ka-boom.

    I had that peculiar feeling again, like I was going to vomit, but there was barely anything in my stomach to come back up again. Always on the brink. Never past it.

    I tuned back in to the ruckus of voices around me. Nura was saying, "Did you forget what happened last time we tried to face them? They got away and we might have died if Alan hadn't brought a frying pan, of all things. And Cian, you got stabbed by these people earlier this month. This just isn't right."

    "What else am I supposed to do, bub?" The word bub coming out of his mouth when he was so clearly frustrated was sort of amusing; such a soft word didn't ring well with the tone Cian was using. "Sit here and let him take me? It's this or nothing. That's how it always is."

    Lucie had her head in her hands. "I don't like this. I don't like this. CJ, I don't like this."

    He frowned at her, lifting a hand to gently rub the back of her neck. He worked his jaw, his face intense where his touch was soft. "I know, muffin. No one does. Not even me. But it has to be done. Alan?"

    Alan, sitting on the floor with his back to the armoire, looked up. He'd been absorbed in thought—there was a glassy sort of daze in his eyes that told me so—and the mention of his name had awoken him again. "Yes?"

    "How long do you think it'll take you to make that explosive?"

    He bit his lip. "I've never worked with demon stuff before—but I'll figure it out. I could do it in three days, probably."

    Three days only left one more before that fateful Friday. The silence in the room told me that everyone knew it, too.

    Then Zev, getting to his feet, said, "What are we waiting around here for? Cap, Blondie—we've got demons to catch."