The mere sight of her comforted him. He didn’t know her, and yet he felt as if he always had. She reached out her hands, which he took.
Paul looked around at the hallway. He saw shell casings and several bodies lying on the floor. He saw himself on the floor. It all clicked.
“I’m sorry, Paul,” said the angel.
His breath shuddered. He wondered, suddenly, if he even needed to breathe at all now. What was the point? “Who are you?”
“My name is Elizabeth,” she said. “I have known you and loved you all your life. I have watched over you since you were born, and I will take care of you now.”
She had a friend, apparently. Another angel stood there, somewhat shorter and seemingly younger but no less beautiful. “You did good, Paul,” the blonde said. She reached out to squeeze his wrist briefly. “I’m Rachel.”
“What happened?” asked Paul.
“You fought back,” Rachel told him. Tears welled up in her eyes, but he saw as much pride as sorrow. “You saved the day. You saved your friends. And you saved pretty much everyone I love.”
“It didn’t feel like fighting,” Paul confessed. “It felt like weakness.”
“No, Paul,” Elizabeth shook her head. “It took great strength to overcome the power that held you. I only wish I could have aided you. The sorcery on this building left me unable to see you, and I had others to watch over. I could not come to you in time. I am sorry.”
“It’s what happens,” Rachel added. “It’s how all this works. We do the best we can. Elizabeth did the best she could.” She glanced at the other angel, who only had eyes for her charge. “She helped you become the man you are. I’m grateful for it.”
“What happens now?”
“Now we leave this place,” explained Elizabeth. “You will have no more fear, no more pain. You will leave behind who you have been, and you will once again be who you are. You will have answers.”
“And if you want to come back here someday, that’ll be your choice,” said Rachel. “This life is over now. But if you want another, you can have it.”
“We should go,” Elizabeth said.
“Thank you for waiting for me,” Rachel told her.
Elizabeth just nodded. “Donald is dealt with?”
“Jon and Marvin took him,” Rachel confirmed. “He’ll be dealt with later, but at least he’s under wraps for now.” She gave Paul’s arm another squeeze. “Thank you.”
Rachel left the other two to their journey. She passed Paul’s body in the hall, and Miguel’s and those of his comrades, and brought her hands to her face.
Knowing what rewards awaited those men made little difference. The dead still deserved to be mourned, even by angels.
Rachel wept.
* * *
“Look, I’ll take the fall for what I did. It was selfish and stupid and I’m not one to cover up my mistakes with bullshit. She didn’t control my mind or anything.”
“Bridger!” Lanier hissed.
“What?” Bridger whispered back.
“Shut up!”
Bridger shut his eyes tightly and nodded by way of apology. Like Lanier, he wore a body armor vest over his shirt and was now much better armed than he had been during the fight. With shotgun and carbine at the ready, the two agents positioned themselves on either side of the next closed door, counted off, and quickly pushed inside. The pair swept the room with their eyes, ready to blow away anything that moved.
Nothing stirred inside Hauser’s temporary office. The room lay perfectly still, occupied only by the old desk, chair, some of Hauser’s belongings and their improvised evidence locker.
Their posture relaxed. This room made for a clean sweep of the building. “I’m ready to call it a night,” Lanier sighed.
“Yeah, I wish,” Bridger agreed.
“I’ll bet.”
“Okay, I deserved that. Probably a lot more before it’s over, too. I get it.”
“I just don’t get how you’re so sure she didn’t do some sort of mental magic on you or something,” said Lanier. He walked around the desk to examine Hauser’s laptop, still sitting open and ready. “You just seem so much smarter than this. It’s bad enough that you banged a suspect in custody, but a sex demon? What part of that seemed like a good idea? Unless she did get into your head?”
Bridger ran a hand through his hair. “My warding spells all held. I know they did. And I knew it was seriously dumb, but…” he shook his head. “If she got into my head, she didn’t do it with magic. There’s all that sex appeal, and then there’s the occult curiosity, and-“
“Occult curiosity?” Lanier blinked. “Seriously?”
“You ever commune with spirits?” Bridger scowled. “You want to know the sort of things I’ve studied?”
Lanier held up his hands. “Nope. I’m good. Don’t need to know. You just do your occulty thing and I’ll do my tech stuff and…” He paused with a frown, looking at the phone beside the desk. “Hauser had a five,” he said.
“Huh?”
“This isn’t Hauser’s,” Lanier muttered. He picked the black phone up off the desk and activated it, finding it unlocked. He instantly recognized the screen layout. Tapping the icons, Lanier found an active message trail-or at least a series of messages from the same source in response to a single outgoing message. Checking the time stamps as he read, Lanier’s face grew pale.
“What is it?” asked Bridger.
“I think I know how they found us.”
* * *
“I should’ve just followed your lead the second you showed up,” sighed Alex. He walked hand in hand with Lorelei under the trees, ostensibly to sweep the area around the building but mostly just to catch a minute alone. The familiar beauty of his lover’s face and her normal figure had returned, as she predicted. “I just had one of those moments where I figured your priorities and mine are pretty far apart, and I didn’t want to cross a point of no return.”
“You were not wrong to hesitate,” Lorelei told him. “A further escalation would likely have had lasting consequences for our lives even after we escaped. It would have affected our friends, too. I had thought to free you and then we could address the details later, but I don’t blame you for not wanting to jump off that particular cliff.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he shrugged. “Still. You wouldn’t have been put through all of… that,” he frowned, tilting his head back toward the building. “Whatever Hauser did to you. Lorelei, you know… if that’s your true face, you know I’m not-“
“It is not,” she assured him. “I am not wounded. I do not hide my true face with an illusion, as Hauser and his people suspected. My body was molded into what you see now-or, rather, what you see when I let my demonic features show. This state also feels perfectly natural. You saw an echo of my past. I did not always look as I do now, but as I mentioned before… I was made into a succubus. What you saw is how I looked before that transformation.”
Alex nodded. “You didn’t want to talk about it,” he said gently. “I’m not going to pry. I just wanted you to know it wouldn’t freak me out one way or the other.”
Her expression softened. “Your patience means so much… but no. I am not averse to telling you the story. Not now, after all we have shared and endured. I did not want to tell you that night when you asked because you were already burdened with your own ugly memories. I know I can share my past with you. I can share anything with you.”
He nodded. “Yeah. You can.”
“Alex,” she said, coming to a stop. He felt the tug of her hand and faced her. “I must make a confession. This may be neither the time nor place, but I refuse to leave this matter hanging over our heads. It concerns the manner of my escape tonight.”
He watched her attentively, giving a little nod to encourage her to go on. “The power Hauser and Donald used weakened me. I could not simply batter the door of my cell down or burn my way out. I had to wait for our captors to provide an opportunity, and I had to be somewhat more ruthless than you may have liked.