“Brother,” Samyaza said, shaking Raziel firmly by the hand, clapping him by the shoulder. “Have you heard the news?”
Raziel nodded brusquely at each of us. “It is most disconcerting. Even the people upstairs won’t ignore such a strange pattern of deaths.” His eyes swept across my arms, then the pale golden glyphs visible on my clavicles, just above the collar of my shirt. “And is it true that many of them possess the same glyphs?”
I glanced at Samyaza, hating that we had to confront reality like this. We nodded, and the wind left Raziel in one despairing exhalation. I didn’t know whether to be sad, or furious.
“Something or someone out there is murdering your kind,” Raziel said, addressing me directly. “There’s one way we can be certain.”
He cupped his hands together, the sound of metal tinkling as coins appeared from out of his palms. They sparkled gold in the sunlight, spilling onto the ground. He nodded at Samyaza, who began a low, sibilant chant.
I’d seen my father do this very recently, in an attempt to demonstrate to me just how many active nephilim there were on the planet. Too many, in my opinion, enough that I would probably be in my thirties by the time I met half of them. Samyaza lifted his hands, his eyes tinged electric blue as he turned in a slow circle. The coins on the ground levitated into orbit around him, forming a loose sphere, vaguely representing each nephilim’s position on the planet.
They tinkled and spun for some moments, a strange golden globe with Samyaza at its center. He frowned as he studied the coins, the blue of his eyes flickering each time he blinked. And then it happened.
One by one, coins turned the dull color of ancient, tarnished metal, then fell on the ground. Raziel gasped, and Samyaza heaved a deep sigh. More, and more, and more, until the grass was littered with dead gold, twisted lumps of faded metal. I clutched at my stomach, baffled and horrified, and still the coins didn’t stop falling.
The rain of tainted gold ceased, far too late for our liking. Florian knelt in the grass, scanning the ground for every fallen coin. When he turned to me, his eyes were huge and sad.
“How many?” I breathed, dreading his response.
“Too many,” Florian answered. “Dozens. Almost a hundred.”
Samyaza closed his fists, the rest of the coins tumbling to the ground in a shower of glitter and gold. “They were children,” he shouted, roaring at the top of his voice. A flock of birds burst from nearby trees, black ones, an awful portent, their wings like shrouds of mourning.
“We have to figure out who did this,” Asher said. “For the sake of both nephilim and the other victims.”
Raziel blinked, then frowned, confused. “The other victims?”
Asher nodded. “Not all of them had the glyphs that Mason and Sam have on their bodies. Many of them looked normal. Just human.”
“Sacrilege.” Raziel shut his eyes. “The slaughter of innocents.”
“Some of them were your brothers and sisters, Mason,” Samyaza said, more serious and stern than I’d ever seen him. “You may never have met them, but you shared my blood.”
I shook my head, frowning. “Not just my siblings. They were people. Their lives were snuffed out, and – for what, exactly? We have to stop this. Someone will pay.”
And that someone was the Prince of Gluttony. I clenched my fists, imagining my fingers wrapped around Beelzebub’s pale neck. I clenched harder, crushing his throat in my mind’s eye.
“We need help,” I said. “And I think I know where to find it.”
4
Raziel flew off to work on his own intel, leaving me and the guys to head to the one god I knew who could give us a lead, or something like it. Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, was a lover of leisure and everything to do with pleasure, whether it was sex, food, or indeed, delicious wine. If anyone in Valero had been asking around about a supply of exotic innards, he would know.
The four of us walked the way to the Amphora, Dionysus’s home base in the city. It was a club by night, one of the hottest in Valero, a place where the god hand-selected the people who partied there, ensuring that the crowd itself was, again, one of the hottest in Valero. Unlike most other entities, Dionysus didn’t keep a formal domicile with a tether, the way Artemis’s could be accessed through the little stone fox in the Nicola Arboretum.
The Amphora itself was his domicile, part of it ensconced in Dionysus’s private sex-love-wine dimension, the other part physically present in Valero. I wasn’t exactly sure how specifically he chopped up the floor plan, but I did know that the VIP section represented a portion of his spiritual domain. You couldn’t just walk into the section without an invitation, partly for Dionysus’s own protection, and also because you’d risk your entire body being shredded to ribbons by the pressures of forced dimensional travel. Walking into a god’s home uninvited could be a very dangerous thing.
It was also a challenge, at least for me and Asher, because neither of us were of drinking age. Luckily, Dionysus was always happy to pick up when I called, and within minutes we were allowed to slip in through the club’s back exit for an audience with the god. Plus, it was daytime, anyway, which meant that the place wasn’t technically operating or serving any alcohol. I realize it’s weird for someone who’s supposed to be an angelic renegade to be so keen on obeying human rules, but shush. It’s the principle of it.
“So many new friends the nephilim brings me,” Dionysus cooed as one of his servers brought us into the main club area. It was as I remembered it, covered in swathes of deep red velvet, lit with magical fires, every available surface wrapped in swirling grape vines. “How wonderful it is to see you, Florian and Mason Albrecht.
