Quint glanced at Eli and nodded as if they had communicated something. She moved so she could cover the darkness across from the church, in the shadows of the buildings nearby. She flipped down a night vision ocular and looked ready to shoot anything that moved. So did all the team. Jittery. Tense. I hoped no one let their little yapper dog out to pee or it might end up blasted to pieces.
To Leo, I said, “Can you go inside the church?”
“It is unlikely. Sabina lived in a chapel, slept in a chapel, next to pieces of the Blood Cross, which would burn me to ashes. The priestess was ancient. Powerful. I am young for an outclan.”
“Wait here,” Bruiser said. “We’ll try to remove the covering from a window so that you can see in.”
Eli touched his earbud and adjusted an ocular, saying, “Copy that.” To us, he said, “Koppa’s human team members found a window with loose plywood over it, around the corner. There’s also a broken window into the sanctuary at about a twelve-foot height, and four construction ladders were left in the grass by the last crew here. We can get in and Leo will have a place to watch.”
We walked around the side of the building to see a small rectangular window, nails still in the frame where plywood had been pulled off. Eli placed the ladder, climbed up, directed a light inside. Setting a hook and a belaying rope in place, he crawled in.
I heard him landing, a soft, grinding slide of shoes on the wall. Small shafts of light from his penlight flashed over the broken window glass. A dark form in night combat gear, impossible to ID in the night, followed him. Human, since the vamps were all out at the perimeter, a safe distance from the holy ground.
We stood in the darkness, watching, until Eli appeared from around a corner. “Clear,” he said softly to us, his voice floating over comms and on the quiet air. “Fawn, take your team to channel two. Guard the ladder at the sanctuary window. Set two guards to protect Leo, shooting and cover positions. Then join us inside.”
“Copy.” There was a faint click and a team of three guards moved to comply.
Fawn? Human is named after prey,Beast thought.
But the human named Fawn was brawny with muscle and looked like she could wrestle a vamp to the ground with one hand tied behind her back.Not very prey-like,I thought.
“Leo. You can see into the sanctuary through the window I entered,” Eli said.
“Thank you, Eli Younger.”
Leo followed the guard, Fawn, both of them vanishing into the shadows. The rest of the team dispersed into cover positions.
“I’ve opened a side door,” Eli said. “Come.”
Bruiser, Quint, and I followed Eli and entered through the open door, stepping past two-by-fours Eli had pulled off the doorjambs, bent nails sticking from the wood. We made our way through winding hallways, dim light entering from other broken windows, the church smelling of mold and dank water, old lino floor tiles squeaking and smushing beneath our boots. We reached a side or back entrance to the sanctuary and I spotted Leo outside, on the ladder, watching through the window.
Bruiser gave me my crown, which I hooked over an elbow, and a flashlight. I clicked on the flash, the sound sharp, bouncing off the walls. The bright light caught the white werewolf in its beam, the shining green grindy on his back. The wolf blinked against the glare and turned away. I hadn’t seen them enter, which was a little strange, except that strange had become my norm.
That was twisted bit of illogic I refused to follow.
I angled the light over the big open room. Stained glass windows reflected back the light, one broken, the others moldy. Black mold followed waterlines down the walls, long columns, like tears on the white plaster that reminded me vaguely of my dream-state visions. The wood trim everywhere was warped and bloated. The ancient wood floors were unsalvageable.
The sanctuary was in a state of utter chaos, odd-shaped offering tables and the pews had been removedand piled along one wall, stacked haphazardly, ten feet high. Equipment was everywhere: scaffolding, ladders, five-gallon buckets, hand tools, nail guns, a table saw, some kind of electric stirring machine, a disorganized mess.
I touched the Jesus amulet in my pocket. It was warmer than my fingers, warmer than the flesh on the other side of the layers of fabric. Angie’s Jesus jewelry was telling me that something important was here, somewhere. Had Alex and Santiago sent us to the right church on the first try? That would be a record.
Flashing the light over the mold-streaked walls, I spotted regularly spaced niches up front, all empty. It was different from my visions, yet there were some similarities. “It’s possible,” I said, mostly to myself.
Eli moved around the room, weapons in hand, speaking softly into comms on the other channels. I needed to concentrate on the magical items in my pockets and had elected not to use a full comms headset but only earbuds this time, and though they gave me access to only Eli’s channel and Alex’s private channel, and not the vamp channel or Fawn’s team channel, I could keep track of some things. Bruiser kept pace with me, always close, but not in my way. He walked with his weapon drawn, carried low, one-hand grip, flashlight in the other, his eyes taking in everything, including me.
I stopped and turned in a circle, the flashlights illuminating everything. There was no sign of Hayyel, and the room wasn’t an exact match for the room in my vision. Brute seemed bored, not as if his angel was nearby. But as I walked toward the center of the large room, the gold Jesus began to grow warmer. I placedle breloqueon my head and it snapped on, not as painfully tight as sometimes, thank goodness. I didn’t need a headache.
In the far corner from where we entered, near the front doors that led outside, were blue tarps tied with string to keep the plastic sheets in place over something irregular in shape and height. Or maybe several things clumped together and covered for protection from the elements and construction dust. When I stepped closer, the Jesus grew hot enough for me to let it go.
“Okay,” I said, shining my light on the tarps. “Under there.”
Brute chuffed uncertainly.
Quint silently climbed a folding ladder near a wall, to cover us from above and the back of the sanctuary where we had entered. The other guard, Fawn, who had caught up with us, swung into scaffolding and took a firing position that covered the public street door and the... foyer, though Catholics might call it something else.
Bruiser and Eli cut the ties holding the tarps and Bruiser turned to look at me with warmth in his eyes. “You will love this, Jane.” The guys lifted off the tarps, revealing people. People with wings and halos and long robes. White marble and painted plaster statues, some half naked, all with Greek and European faces. There were also stands, as if some of the statues had previously been mounted high, freestanding works of art.
I flashed my light around the front walls at the empty niches and felt stupid for associating the visions of Hayyel only with my soul home. I walked slowly to the statues and the Jesus amulet in my pocket flared bright with warmth. Not a burning heat, not yet. I walked around the statues and the heat decreased, like a kid’s game of Hot and Cold, a game I’d played with magical stuff before.
