Uriel: The Inheritance (Airel Saga Book Five)

Chapter XV

Zurich, Switzerland—Present Day

FRANK HAD DEPLANED IN Zurich a little baffled. Emerald had gone—he couldn't find her. It wasn't as if he could risk waiting around for her to walk out of the loo or wherever she'd gotten off to. While it was disappointing, Frank reasoned that he had bigger fish to fry on this bright and sunny day.

The buyer, for one. What any fool would want with an old book stuffed with nothing but blank pages was beyond him. Well, they weren't all blank, were they? There was that very last page, wasn't there? "But she lived," Frank said aloud, driving his freshly hired full-size Merc on the wrong side of the road, and on the wrong side of the car, for that matter.

He chuckled as a low sun in a northern hemisphere winter crested the Alps and began to sparkle off Lake Zurich. Life was quirky. "But she lived," he said again, and he wondered who "she" was. "Perhaps her name is that word I heard on the beach there," he said, "when I first picked the book up." But what was that word? Heiress? No. It was something else.

Frank Wiseman parked the car along the curb of a street that started with the letter G and got out, scanning at the slip of paper in his fat fingers. He read the address and looked around at the building numbers for confirmation. It was not the worst part of town, but then again, this was Switzerland. There were no bad parts. Such things the Swiss did not allow.

There. "Building two, number seventeen, G Street." It was actually Gasstrasse, but who cared. It was a neighborhood of multistory walkups, flats where people either lived or did business, the odd dance studio or naturopathic doctor's office. Or book buyer. Frank wasn't sure if he ought to suspect a proper bookshop or a private residence when he rang the bell.

There came from within a muffled Swiss-German reply. Friendly. Bidding him to be patient, probably. He adjusted his overcoat around his body, checked the pocket—the Stone was there—and clasped his hands together over the book in front of him, looking up at the door, anticipating the face he would see when it opened.

"Well, isn't this a pleasant surprise." Emerald Ruby, the woman he lusted after, stood in the doorway in a painted-on red dress.

A ruby dress. "I say. Fate has smiled upon us, dear girl. You look amazing, as ever." Frank felt his blood stir and something in him made whispers from long-forgotten places.

"Thank you, Mr. Wiseman. And what should bring you to my door? Oh, wait. Don't tell me. Are you my appointment?" She ran her finger down the bare skin of her neck and let it linger low in the V of her dress.

Frank had to force himself from the trance in which he found himself. She was beautiful ... well, not beautiful, but sexy . . . but she was far too young for him. "I am indeed the seller. You must be the buyer I've heard so much about. I never imagined . . . but why do you work as an airline stewardess?"

She stepped aside, inviting him in. "Rare books are not as profitable as one might think, Mr. Wiseman. And technically, I work with the buyer. You can call me his secretary."

Frank stepped inside the dimly lit entry, breathing in the bouquet of her scent as he passed by. She smells like honey and . . . and . . .

The door slammed shut and something tore behind him. He smiled, allowing his imagination to run wild. She wants me so bad, she tore her own dress off. As he turned around, he saw that he was only half right.

Frank had no time to scream as her barbed tail whipped around, slicing him across the face. Blood splattered the wall, he dropped the book, and it landed at her feet.

"Now we get to play," she said. "Do you like to play, Frankie boy? I do. My momma used to tell me not to play with my food, but I showed her."

Frank couldn't find words for what he now saw. The superhuman strength for which he had cultured a taste left him. He fell to his knees, soiling his pants.

The demon slithered free from Emerald's body, and she staggered half naked into another room.

Black goo dripped from rows of long fangs. The monster spread out one wing and then another, balancing itself. "You have done well, pawn." The demon's voice was like gravel, and as its hot breath blasted Frank's face, he understood that this was all the thanks he would receive. He trembled, trying to stand, but the demon grasped him bodily in one pincer, ripping him in half at the waist. Frank was aware of the pain. He was aware of the shock. He was aware of his feelings that this kind of treatment was unfair to him. His thoughts briefly condemned him with one word—Kimberley. But the pain was too intense.

And the Bloodstone was free. Frank could see it on the floor on the opposite side of the room. By his legs.

The demon picked up his bloody legs, popped them into his mouth, and crunched. Blood smeared his teeth and gushed down, splattering on the floor.

The Bloodstone hummed on the floor in front of the beast. It was calling now not to Frank, but to the beast—it wanted to belong to another.

So the beast took it and then finished his meal.

***

THE THREE ANTICHERUBIM MANIFESTED in the present day, in the darkness of a desert night in Arabia, the moon above merely a discarded fingernail clipping, cast among cursedly sparkling crumbs of the detritus of the sky. The three crawled up from the pit of a thin place into the blinding light of a black night, the stars set like jewels in a veil of ink above. This was the veil El had drawn to hide himself from those creatures he had made to dwell under the sun. Beauty is hatred; hatred is beauty, they thought together, and then the larger one stopped and twisted its neck around.

"The Bloodstone has been found. Two of us shall go as one, but you, Magi, must stay to guard this place." Green eyes flashed and with a flick of her tongue, Magi, the smallest of the three, obeyed without a word. She was the smallest, but by no means the weakest. In fact, she was faster and stronger than the others. There would be none better to guard the thin place, to keep any other creatures from coming through until the appointed time.

Magi watched the other two anticherubim as they turned west over the sands, seeking the assigned prince who would carry the Bloodstone into battle. They darted above the sand in spastic twitches, flitting like insects, and they were very fast. They would reach their destination very soon, the land where it all started, where the First Dawn had occurred in the First Age.

The mountains of Hijaz.

Where Eden once was.

On the way, their simple assignment was to gather the true heir and escort him to Hijaz, where the new Seer would be anointed with the blood of the Tree.

Among the many kingdoms of men on the earth, there were rulers who thought the honor of Seer would be theirs. But Magi's master was the only one who could lay claim in truth, though some there would be those who argued otherwise. The war for which the Brotherhood hungered was coming quickly; the people of the earth would be caught in the middle. But this world was rightfully Brotherhood territory. It was theirs in the beginning when man gave it over in the Garden. Mankind had been deceived for thousands of years, but the time was now here—the dawn of the chastening of man had come.