Lost in Time (Blue Bloods 6)

“It is the truth,” Deming said. “Gabrielle’s mistake was bad enough, but you have made it worse by breaking your oath and taking up with her spawn.”

“You will apologize for your rudeness!” Jack ordered, leaping to his feet.

Deming stuck out her chin, looking as haughty as a Chinese empress. “You forget we no longer answer to your bidding. Azrael kept her honor. Where is yours?”

“Let me show you.” Jack smiled and reached for his sword.

In a flash, the two had crossed blades, and sparks flew from the heavenly steel.

“Do not threaten my sister,” Dehua warned, unleashing her weapon as well, while Sam and Ted Lennox did the same.

“Careful, Abbadon,” Sam said. “We are not your enemies, but we will protect our own.”

This had gone far enough. Schuyler jumped between the warring angels, her hands outstretched so that all were forced to lower their swords.

“Jack, it’s all right. Deming, you don’t know me, but I’m hoping that we can all make peace somehow. There’s something more important at stake here than any of us,”

Schuyler said. “Please. If we fight between ourselves, we lose everything.”

Deming glowered, but Jack backed down. “You are right as usual,” he said to Schuyler, with a soft look on his face. He turned back to hi

s adversary. “I warn you, Kuan Yin, that I will insist on my wife receiving your utmost respect. But I apologize for threatening you.”

Weapons were quickly holstered, and the couples reunited—Sam and Deming and Ted and Dehua instinctively going to each other’s sides. They looked at the newcomers warily, unsure what to do with them.

“Well then,” Jack said, as if nothing had happened. “If you four are not here to drag me into the Countess’s service, or bring me back to my sister for the blood trial, why did you ambush us?”

“We hunt Nephilim,” Deming said. She pointed her sword at Schuyler, and for a moment it looked as if another fight would break out. But the Venator said simply, “Her glom signature was muddied, a mixture of divine and human, like theirs. We thought she was one of them.”

EIGHT

Checkpoint Charlie

Oliver remembered the trip to the mojave. It had been one of those last-minute excursions. His parents had friends who lived in Palm Springs, and their kids—a couple of spoiled California teenagers, Brentwood bohos with shaggy hair and expensive toys—had asked if he wanted to see Death Valley with them. There had been talk of looking for an abandoned ghost town, and Oliver had jumped at the chance to go, since anything was better than sitting around while the adults got drunk on Pimm’s Cup and talked about tennis tournaments.

At first he had worried he’d made a mistake. The dirt roads through the canyons were flooded from a rainstorm, and what was supposed to have been a two-hour trip became an eight-hour odyssey and a bit of a nightmare. But thankfully, his hosts had turned out to be good-humored and up for the adventure, instead of sulking and annoyed, and they’d had fun driving through the vast empty desert landscape that looked a bit like pictures he’d seen of the surface of the moon, lonely and vacant and odd.

“Was it like this the first time you were here?” Oliver asked Mimi as he peered out the dusty window.

“No. It’s always different. I think it looks like this because you’re with me. It uses things from your mind that you can process.”

Oliver fiddled with the radio tuner on the dashboard, but the only music was Wagner.

“Figures,” Mimi said. “Helda’s a fan. You might as well rest a bit. We won’t get there for a while.”

“How long have we been down here?”

“Time isn’t the same,” Mimi explained. “Not like it is up there. In the underworld, there isn’t a past or a future; there’s only now. We get there when we get there. It’s a test of endur-ance. We could drive in circles forever as a punishment.”

“Good lord.”

“Wrong guy.” Mimi smirked. “But you’re not dead, and I’m not human, so I think Helda’s just playing with us.”

“Who’s this Helda you keep talking about?”

“She sort of runs the place. Named it after herself.”

“Right.”