She was only stating facts, but the words still came out shaming me. Every member of the Lorica was assigned a different rank, depending on their specialty and their status within the organization, all component parts of a body built for the policing of magical activity within the modern world. Or in North America, at least.
The Mouths were whisperers who could change or wipe minds and communicate with telepathy. Those worked in public relations, marketing, and apparently, interrogation. The Hands were the strongest combat mages, skilled in destructive and painful magics. And the Scions were stronger still, paragons of the arcane arts who’d risen above the others to assume leadership roles. Royce was a talented teleporter and telepath, while Maharani was a chronomancer, that rare individual who could command time itself. And beating at the center of it all was the Heart, a council of Scions who ruled the Lorica and directed its actions.
“Look,” I muttered. “I’m not trying to paint myself as some special person who gets to get away with pulling stupid shit all the time. You know for a fact that I do everything I do because I think it’s the right thing. And I think you’ll agree that ninety percent of the time, I actually am doing the right thing.”
Maharani wrinkled her nose. “Eighty percent. Perhaps even less. But assault, Mason? You half frightened that poor man to death. This isn’t you. This isn’t what you’re about.”
I pushed my hair out of my eyes, sighing, then sinking back into my chair, sullenly focusing on Royce’s body across the table, still frozen in the middle of some impassioned rant.
“This got way too personal for me,” I said. “It makes me sick to my stomach every time I even think of it, but – they’re eating my people, Rani. Some sick fuck out there is cannibalizing the brothers and sisters I’ve never even met. And every minute you keep me locked in here, we’re risking another murder. More butchery.”
She stared at me intently for some moments, her eyes hard and piercing. Then she shook her head and sighed. “Fuck.”
I flinched. Rani barely ever cursed. It felt so jarring to hear that out of her. “Oh, wow. That bad, huh?”
“Yes. It’s a stressful time for everyone.” She stepped over to Royce, frisking him, then fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. “We’ve been hearing similarly, conducting our own investigations. The Hunger, they call themselves, these degenerates. It’s not a fun situation, I can tell you that.” She pressed her lips down over the filter of a cigarette, fidgeting with Royce’s lighter before she remembered herself. “Oh. Did you want one, too?”
I shook my head. “I’m good. You go ahead.”
The lighter flicked. Rani took a good, long puff, then blew out a thick stream of smoke, exhaling with pleasure. “I do this sometimes, you know? Royce’s temper gets the best of him, and I lock everything down and steal a few cigarettes. It’s a filthy habit, and a dirty trick to play, but you see, it ends up calming the both of us down.”
My hands went up to my head, fingers raking through my hair as I rubbed at my scalp. “Calm. That’s what I need. But I can’t be calm, not when I know there are people out there who are killing my kind. My family, Rani. And the worst thing of all is I don’t even understand why.”
“I empathize, Mr. Albrecht, perhaps more than anyone. My husband, you see – he was dying from a very, very aggressive disease. I don’t want to get into it, but suffice to say, stage four. No hope, no available treatment. Even magic barely worked, only just held off the pain.” She shook her head, her voice much thicker when she spoke again. “He was in so much pain.”
I looked up at her, then lowered my head. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is. So I stopped time in a capsule around him, kept his body in stasis, in some hellish hope that perhaps, medical science will advance to the point that they can reverse the damage done to his human body.” Another puff of the cigarette, another slow, sad exhalation. “That perhaps doctors will come up with a miracle. All the magic in the world, and yet I couldn’t save him.”
My lips pressed tightly together. I gazed down at my open hands, unsure of what I could say.
“But you can still save your family, Mr. Albrecht. These nephilim siblings of yours, and even your mother.”
“My mother? You knew about that?”
She wrinkled her forehead. “I was there when Lucifer appeared to punish Belphegor, remember? It was he who first told you that she was alive.”
I nodded, the memories a weird tangle in the back of my head. “Right, right. And then Azrael, the angel of death, told me that Beelzebub was holding her captive.”
Rani’s eyes hardened with anger. “Bloody demon princes. It all hangs together, does it not? The killings, the cannibalism, the Prince of Gluttony.” She held out a finger in warning. “But not Marcel Dubois, Mr. Albrecht. Never Marcel Dubois.”
I bowed my head again. “I said I was sorry. I still am, okay?”
“You will make reparations some day, when we’ve put him through a course of therapy and dampened the trauma of your attack. You must. The man is an insufferable buffoon with immense talent for cooking, but that is all he is. A man. I will hear no more of you tackling innocent normals on the street,
