Rage and Ruin (The Harbinger 2)

“What does she have to do with Bael, Josh?” Zayne asked, using his first name and in a voice so gentle it was easy to forget that he’d just broken the man’s fingers.

Fisher didn’t answer for several minutes, only sobbed, until, finally, he rasped, “The Harbinger heard my prayers and came to me.”

I jolted as Cayman swung his legs off the chair and tipped forward.

“He looked like an angel.” The man’s eyes opened then, wide and unseeing. “He sounded like an angel.”

I totally understood how he could mistake Sulien for an angel, but to think he and his twang sounded like one? Then again, Fisher was from Tennessee. Maybe he thought all of Heaven sounded like Matthew McConaughey in a car commercial.

“What did he say?” Zayne’s voice was so soft.

The man trembled. “That he... That I could earn the one thing I wanted most. Natashya.”

Oh God.

I had a sinking suspicion where this was heading.

“He told me a man would come to me and I was to help him with what he needed, and this man was a sheep in wolf’s clothing,” he whispered now. “I thought it was a dream, but then that man showed up. The sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

Did he mean a demon pretending to be bad?

“Bael?” Zayne prodded. “A man who wasn’t a man at all?” When Fisher nodded, Zayne folded his hands under his chin. “Did you know what he is?”

“Not at first, but eventually...yes.”

I wanted to ask if he’d thought that was, I don’t know, a bright freaking red flag, but I remained silent.

“What did he want of you?” Zayne asked.

“Access to the school. I don’t know why. He never told me, and I didn’t ask. I... I didn’t want to know.” The man still trembled. “I just wanted my Natashya.”

Anger crowded out whatever sympathy I’d felt. “And it didn’t occur to you that it could be bad that a demon wanted access to a school?”

Zayne shot me a look of warning before refocusing on the senator, who didn’t answer, only cried harder. “Did you ever go into the school?”

“No. Never. I just set up the company, made a few calls and was able to purchase it. A new school was already being built to replace it. That’s all.”

Plans for a school catering to children with disabilities, I wanted to shout, but clamped my mouth shut.

“And when he told me I needed to meet with them—the witches—he told me what to say, and I... I did it.”

I had to put my hand over my own mouth to keep from speaking.

“Bael promised me he would bring Natashya back. That as soon as they had what they wanted, I would have her,” he rambled, body heaving. “And I did it. I went against everything I believed, and I did it. I knew it was wrong, that the enchantment would kill, but you have to understand—she is my everything.”

“Wait,” Cayman spoke up. “Bael said he could bring your wife back to life?”

“The Harbinger and Bael promised me.”

“No one has that power,” I said, shaking my head. The senator’s wild gaze swung toward me. He stopped shaking. “Your wife is dead. She’s probably crossed over. She can’t be brought back.”

“That’s not true.” Fisher’s lips pulled back, baring his teeth. “It’s not true.”

“Bael cannot grant you that favor. I don’t care who the Harbinger is, but neither can he,” Cayman said, rising. “Other than the one in charge up there, there is only one other being in this world who can do such a thing and he’s only ever done it once. It ended badly, so I doubt he’ll do it again. Especially for a human. No offense.”

Understanding clicked into play. “You’re talking about Grim? But he can’t bring someone back from the dead, especially not...” I looked down at the senator. “When did your wife die?”

The man’s gaze shifted to his swelling fingers. “Three years, ten months and nineteen days ago.”

That was...exact.

“She’s super dead,” I pointed out. “Like super decayed and dead.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Cayman replied, stunning me. And apparently even Zayne, because he turned toward the demon. “Grim can do anything with a soul and that’s all you need to reanimate a body.”

My eyes widened. “Do you have...her body?”

The senator didn’t answer, and my stomach churned. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know where her not-so-fresh body was being kept if it wasn’t in her grave.

“You don’t need the body,” Cayman explained. “You just need the soul.”

I gaped at him. “That’s...that’s not possible.” I couldn’t believe it. After all the dead people I’d seen, it just couldn’t be possible.

Cayman smiled. “Anything is possible, especially when you’re Azreal, the Angel of Death.

“But like I said, he’s only done that once before, and if you ask him if it can be done, he’ll lie at first, but he can release a soul, he can destroy it and...” He paused for pure dramatics. “He can bring back the dead.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Cayman stepped toward the couch and then knelt so the senator was eye level with him. “I can also tell you that Azreal would never make such an agreement. There is literally nothing anyone can offer him. You were lied to.”

The man did not move.

Zayne lowered his hands. “She was your weakness. They found it,” he said, repeating what he’d said to me earlier. “They exploited it.”

My gaze flickered over the man. “The sad thing is, you would’ve seen her again. If she had been good and you were good, you would’ve seen her when you died. You would’ve joined her, stayed with her for all of eternity. But now?” I shook my head. “You will not.”

His eyes squeezed shut. “They promised me,” he whispered. “They promised me.”

I sighed, chest heavy, torn between hating this guy and feeling sorry for him. How could I feel both? He wasn’t a good person. Maybe at some point he had been, but he’d turned a blind eye to everything wrong to get what he wanted, and I...

A coldness filled the pit of my stomach as I glanced at Zayne, thinking that I never wanted to know what it felt like to get to the point the senator had, where I’d do anything to bring back the love of my life.

I, who rarely prayed, prayed then to never know what that felt like.

Ever.

36

We left the senator a broken man with more mental and emotional hurts than physical. There was nothing else to coax from him other than heartbreak.

It hadn’t been a waste of time, despite what Cayman said, because we now knew how a man like Senator Fisher had gotten wrapped up in this. But knowing left me with a heavy heart and distracted thoughts as we patrolled, hoping to lure the Harbinger out of whatever hidey hole he’d crawled back into.

It was tragic, what love could drive a person to do.

Zayne called an end to the evening earlier than usual, and for once I didn’t complain or feel guilty about not scouring every nook and cranny of the city. Finding the Harbinger was paramount, but I suspected that the moment we entered the school on Saturday—in two days—Sulien would show up. And once we got into that school, we’d know exactly what we were dealing with.

I had a feeling we’d be blowing up some stuff shortly after.

As we walked to where the bike was parked, I said, “Something I’ve been thinking about. Why do you think Bael is being hidden? He’s being protected. Isn’t that weird?”

“If it were demons protecting him? No. But the Harbinger, who is a Trueborn? Yes.” As we reached his bike, he slid his hand onto my lower back, and feeling the weight of it there was even better than holding hands. “I’ve been trying to come up with different scenarios, but all we know is that Bael is needed alive for whatever this plan is.”

I sighed, staring up at the sky. With all the lights of the nearby buildings, I couldn’t see if there were any stars. “I wonder what made Sulien become like this. We don’t know what he’s planning, other than to help bring about the end of the world, but obviously it’s something insanely evil. He said he’s never loved anyone, so we know it’s not like with the senator.”

Zayne tossed a leg over the bike, seating himself. “We’re working with demons,” he said, looking back at me. The glow from a nearby streetlight glanced off his face, creating shadows under his cheeks. “Not just because we see a different side of some demons, but also because we think what we’re doing is for the greater good.”

I followed where he was heading with that. “And you think he’s working with demons because he thinks whatever he’s planning is for the greater good?”

“It’s possible. Throughout history, people have done messed-up things because they believed in something—because they believed they were right. Wardens are no different. I don’t think there’s any being that hasn’t done bad things while believing it was for the right reason.”

I nodded, thinking that whenever anyone believed what they were doing was right, it was nearly impossible to convince them otherwise.

I climbed onto the bike and wrapped my arms around his waist. He reached down, squeezing my knee in return, and we were off.

The ride back to the apartment was fast, but I used the time to sort of...detach myself from what happened with the senator and everything to do with the Harbinger. I thought perhaps Zayne was doing the same thing. We needed that, to carve out a tiny bit of time that belonged to us, to our lives, and by the time Zayne eased to a stop in the garage, next to his Impala, I was ready to be...normal. For a little while.

“Ready to check out the new place?” he asked as we walked to the elevator doors.

“I actually forgot about that,” I admitted, laughing as we stepped inside.