False Gods (Sins of the Father 2)

“We kind of did, actually.” He pointed down the street. “There’s an alley down that way. My guys and I just sort of chatted for a bit. They wanted a break. One of them was vaping. Did you know vaping was a thing?” He leaned in close, placing his hand by his mouth, then waggling his eyebrows. “They say that Sadriel’s a hard-ass.”

I scowled at him and folded my arms. “You don’t say. And here I was, risking life and limb for nothing.”

“Aww, they weren’t gonna kill you, Mace. Just rough you up a bit.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I told you. My guys and I were chatting, just over there.”

My fists clenched, as did my teeth. “Let’s just – ugh. Let’s just get this day over with. It just started and I already want to roll back into bed.”

Where it was comfortable, I thought, and where I didn’t run the risk of having my clavicles crushed my some insane angels who all uniformly looked like secret service Mr. Cleans. Or, for that matter, demon princes who could wear whatever shape they liked, them and their brimstone-stinking minions.

That was the one good thing I could say about angels. When they died, or at least when their husks did, they sort of just stayed there for a bit, looking convincingly like murdered human beings. My guess was that whoever invented celestial vessels wanted to send their killers on a sort of guilt trip by making the bodies look, behave, and bleed as realistically as possible.

But my guilt gland was fresh out, especially when it came to dealing with – geez, what was Sadriel, anyway, truly? I wasn’t buying her story about her task force, or her department, or whatever it was. I mean, DEAD? Really? Mental note, I told myself. Grill Raziel about her, shortly after shaving him fully bald.

It only took a few minutes to reach Silk Road. I hated that I was already all sweaty and maybe – just maybe – a little stinky from the scuffle with the angels. Beatrice seemed just the type to be all uppity about it, too. But we couldn’t exactly head back to the domicile just so I could take a damn shower. Whatever. She was just going to have to deal with me and my Mace musk.

Florian and I maneuvered the perfumed, manicured crowds of Silk Road, the city’s center of luxury dining and designer goods. Even outdoors the colonnade smelled of fresh citrus, despite the total absence of anything resembling an orange or lemon tree. I chalked it up to magic each time I had to pass through the place, which made sense since the center of Silk Road did contain a fair bit of enchantment.

“You first,” I said, letting Florian enter the manhole that would take us to the Black Market. The ring of caution tape stretched around it ensured that no civilians – the normals, that is – would take note of the nondescript sewer opening that the arcane underground used to access the illicit bazaar of wonders hiding on the other side of Valero’s reality.

Florian disappeared into the manhole, jumping straight in, and I knew that the sound of his feet hitting the ground would never come. Our destination wasn’t technically found at the bottom of the manhole, but at the other end of the interdimensional tunnel it represented.

I braced myself, holding my breath, tightening the muscles in my stomach. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of travel magic, too. Stupid flying sickness. I could only hope that it wouldn’t make me puke up a glorious storm once I entered.

“Here goes,” I mumbled. I jumped in, and fell, and kept on falling for what felt like minutes, my body slipping down an empty abyss. Then out of nowhere, the ground came up to meet my feet, my landing soft and – not to brag – kind of graceful.

Florian was standing off to the side of the market’s featureless entrance chamber. He nodded as he spotted me. “Took you long enough.”

I clenched my jaw. “My tummy is still sensitive, and an angel tried to shatter my upper body into little bitty pieces. Come on, man. Give me a break.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, sorry, geez. Forget I said anything.”

We trudged together under the massive archway that spelled out a bright, neon welcome to the Black Market, an interdimensional mirror image of Silk Road that appeared to be made almost entirely out of dark velvet. The streets, the shops, the lampposts, you name it, all of it seemed to be sculpted out of midnight velour. The exceptions were the lights, of course, whether they were mundane bulbs or magical fires burning without smoke or heat.

“No thanks,” I said over and over, in a kind of droning tattoo as we negotiated the market. I shook off the odd, pushy hawker who was selling me dried eels, and another one who was trying to convince me that pickled raven’s eggs were either delicious or an incredible ingredient for brewing potions. How would I even know if that was true? The only truth was that Florian and I were both brutally, heartbreakingly broke.

Florian clucked his tongue and chuckled under his breath. “I love how her workshop is always so easy to find.”

I followed the line of his finger and grimaced. Situated in the same quarter of the compound as the other enchanters, Beatrice Rex nonetheless stood out for her signage, which was enchanted to display her name in enormous blinking lights alongside a portrait of her huge, massive head.

Sorry, that was mean. Beatrice has a perfectly lovely, normal-sized head, if you didn’t believe the billboard. I was just having a bad day.

5

Beatrice Rex looked much the same as the last time I saw her: still blonde, still beautiful, and still with that impetuous, dare I say bratty aura about her that quietly suggested that she was better than you. Not completely, no, of course, just in the places where it counted. Like appearance, for example. And wealth.

“Mason,” she said, a patently false smile pasted to her lips as she greeted me.

I could tell that every muscle in her body was straining against her urge to swivel her eyeballs down and up my body. I almost laughed when it happened. “Are you really weari

ng that? Here?” her expression seemed to say. I couldn’t even take offense anymore. It was just Beatrice being Beatrice. Hey, she can keep her couture and her ruffles and all that fancy stuff, okay? It was hot out, and a tank top was practical.

And naturally, the same couldn’t be said for how Beatrice’s eyes treated the sight of Florian. They lit up as he ambled in behind me, her teeth practically sparkling as bright as her irises, as the gaudy signboard that she kept above the store.

So things hadn’t changed when it came to our fancy fashion friend, really, unless you counted what appeared to be new stock around the store, a new collection of leather bags and accessories. One of them shifted on its shelf, then growled at me. I backed away, ready to punch it in its, uh, face? What was that thing?