into an appropriate imitation of solemnity.
“Long ago,” Beezle repeated, “before the Fall, a group of angels were sent to Earth to watch over humanity, and they were known as the Grigori.”
“Grigori,” I muttered, trying to remember. I looked at Gabriel. “Didn’t you say something about my father and the Grigori?”
He nodded his head, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. “Lord Azazel is chief of the Grigori, and Lord Lucifer’s right hand.”
“Ahem,” Beezle said. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
I mimed zipping my lips together and indicated that he should continue.
“Azazel is a Grigori, and so is Lucifer, and Focalor,” Beezle said. “Soon after they came to Earth, the Grigori became enchanted by the beauty of human women and began to lust after them. They lured the women to them by teaching humans forbidden things, such as the making of weapons of war, and the signs of the sun and the moon, and the resolving of enchantments. The Grigori took these women as their wives, and soon the women bore children, a race of giants called nephilim.
“The nephilim were true monsters. Each one killed its mother as it was born by clawing through her womb. Not one of them had the angels’ beauty. Each grew to more than eight feet tall, with clawed feet and fingers and great razor teeth. Each had some magic passed to it from its father, but the magic was always tainted and twisted inside it.”
“Tainted and twisted, how?” I asked.
“Well,” Beezle said, and he looked at me very steadily now, gauging my reaction. “Lucifer, for example. He was one of the angels of death, who retrieved souls from Earth for entry to Heaven.”
Something was nagging at me, but I was distracted by Beezle’s last statement. I felt a little like a magpie, chasing after the next shiny object. “Hold on a second. Heaven? Like the pearly gates and Saint Peter and all that jazz? Are you telling me there really is a Heaven? It’s not a just a story that we tell the dead to get them to come with us?”
“Well,” Beezle said. “There is something like what you would consider Heaven. There are also other choices. Isn’t that what you do when you retrieve souls? You bring them to the Door so that they can make a choice?”
“Yeah, but I never thought there was an honest-to-goodness biblical-type paradise behind the Door.”
“I don’t think this is the time to debate theology,” Gabriel said. “I believe you were about to tell Madeline of Ramuell?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to know anything of this at all,” I snapped, annoyed at his insistence that Beezle stay on track. “Who died and made you the hall monitor?”
I felt like I was on to something that no other Agent had known before. The moment of blindness when the Door opened was a deep-rooted source of frustration for many Agents, especially at the beginning of their careers. To have so much power over a soul at death and then to be unable to see where they go . . . The thought of solving the mystery was tantalizing.
“The de—Gabriel is right,” Beezle said hastily. “This is not the time for this discussion.”
“And when is the time, Beezle?” I said, angry again. The magic inside me surged up, as if it had only been waiting for my call. “What will it take for you to tell me everything I need to know? Does that monster need to kill me first?”
“The mysteries of the Door are not for humans to know,” Gabriel said, and I could see the stars flaming in the darkness of his eyes.
“Well, I’m not entirely human, am I?” I shot back.
“You are part human, and that is enough,” Gabriel said, with a ringing note of finality in his voice. “This information will not protect you from the creature, nor will it help you defeat him.”
The magic inside me sang out, and I wanted to fight. But I reluctantly conceded that Gabriel was probably right. He and Beezle certainly knew more about the monster than I did, and I would have to settle for getting the information that I needed right now. My magic slunk down again, disappointed.
These surges of power made me nervous. They frightened me, and I wasn’t certain I could control them. Something else to discuss with Gabriel and Beezle—
Beezle read concession in my face and went on. “Well, anyway, Lucifer. He was one of the angels of death who retrieved souls. But his magic, when rooted in the monstrous form of his nephilim child, was twisted. Lucifer’s son, Ramuell, does not retrieve the soul after death. He sucks it from the living body of a human being, and the soul never moves on, but lives forever, imprisoned in Ramuell’s body.”
As Beezle spoke, the gears in my head turned and everything clicked into place. “Ramuell is the creature that killed my mother and Patrick.”
“Yes,” Beezle said, watching me steadily.
“My mother’s
“Yes.”
“And what if I kill him?” I said through gritted teeth, and the magic zipped through my blood, alight with lust at the thought of death. “Will I free my mother? Will I free Patrick and any other soul trapped inside him?”
“We don’t know,” Gabriel said quietly. “No one has ever killed a nephilim before.”
“Why the hell not?” I shouted. “Obviously they’re monsters, and you and Beezle and probably every angel and demon in the world knows about them. So why hasn’t anyone gone nuclear on them and rid the world of their presence once and for all?”
“The Grigori saw the nephilim and knew they were monsters,” Gabriel said. “But they were also the Grigori’s children. The children of nightmares, yes, but their children nonetheless. The Grigori had never had children before—no angel had. They could not bear the thought of killing their own offspring. So they bound the nephilim in the Valley of Sorrows for all eternity.”
“Well, obviously their
“We are not entirely sure,” Gabriel said, frowning. “If he had simply broken free—an unlikely event, as all of the Grigori poured their power into the binding of the nephilim—then he would simply kill and destroy until he was captured again. I do not believe that Ramuell is ‘rampaging, ’ as you put it. These attacks appear to be controlled in some way. Lord Azazel has long suspected that someone, an enemy of Lucifer’s, is controlling Ramuell and using him for their own purpose.” “What
“We don’t know,” Gabriel said again. “But Lord Azazel believes that your mother’s connection to him was one reason she was targeted.”
I felt a little hysterical. “So because my mother made the mistake of falling in love with my father, she was murdered and her soul is trapped forever inside this nephilim, which no one knows how to destroy?”
Beezle nodded, and I had never seen his face as heart-broken as it was now. “As Katherine died, she performed a binding to protect you from Ramuell, using her own life force as a sacrifice. She suspected that Ramuell would come for you sooner or later. There is a circle of protection approximately one-quarter mile around this building. It does not protect you from all threats, but it will keep you safe from Ramuell. He cannot enter the circle. That is why he had to lure you out the other night, using Patrick to draw you to him.”
I felt sick. My mother had sacrificed herself for me, kept me safe long after she was gone. But there wasn’t time to dwell on that now. There was something else bothering me; the first question that I had asked hadn’t been answered yet.
“So tell me,” I said, and I was proud of the control in my voice, “just what are you, Gabriel? Why did my father think that you were the only one who could protect me from Ramuell?”
Beezle looked at Gabriel, whose jaw was clenched. There were meteors exploding in Gabriel’s eyes.
“It is your secret to tell,” Beezle said, and he bowed his head.
“And it is not the time to tell it,” Gabriel said. He held up a hand to stop the protest on my lips. “It will not help you find Ramuell.”
“But it will help me know if you are to be trusted,” I said.
“You will have to trust that Lord Azazel knew what he was about when he sent me, and that the gargoyle would not allow me here if he thought you would come to harm.”
