“Yes. You can dictate to JoJo at HQ on my cell phone,” Rick said. He tapped the screen and said, “Jones. Record.”
“Copy that, LaFleur. Recording.”
Aya stepped back, standing on my other side from Mud. His hair was still loose and he had pulled it back out of the way in a long tail that draped over his shoulder. He was dressed in only thin street clothes and a light jacket and should have been cold, but seemed impervious to the temperature, his expression remote yet his yellow eyes intense, watching his boss.
Soul produced a torn piece of paper from the glowing veil of her gown. She handed it to Rick. “Add this number to the call, LaFleur.”
Rick had a momentary reaction, barely visible in the dim light. He tapped his screen and a moment later a sleepy, grumpy man answered with, “This better be good.”
Soul replied, “Mackey. This is Soul. This is my final report. It’s being taken by Unit Eighteen HQ, but you said you wanted to be kept in the loop.”
“Hang on,” he replied. There was ambient noise and the sound of a door closing. In a much stronger voice he said, “Soul. I’ve been worried.”
“And who is this?” Jo interrupted. “For the record.”
“This is Director Mackey of PsyLED,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, her voice crisp and not at all awed to be on a late-night call with the boss-boss-boss-boss in DC. A man who had obviously been awakened from sleep.
Soul said, “For the rest of you who were not in this loop at all, for the last month I have been on a clandestine assignment for Director Mackey, with the express permission and cooperation of the president of the United States, and the Dark Queen.”
“Soul. Before you start,” the director said, “were you successful?”
“Yes, sir. I was,” Soul said.
“Thank God. And are you okay?” the director asked.
“I am well, Mackey,” Soul said. “Thank you. For my final report, this is Assistant Director of PsyLED Soul. Rick, will you list the others?”
LaFleur said, “Jones. FireWind, all the same special agents, and civilians, are still present except Esther, Ingram’s sister. Also present on the ground are arcenciels Pearl, Opal, Cerulean, and an unknown arcenciel who has been approved by Soul.”
Rick put the cell into Soul’s hand and stepped back.
“A bit of backstory,” she said. “My kind had been trapped in crystals for millennia. The magical, or humans strong enough and who knew the properwyrdand the proper rituals, could, and did, capture us for our magic. The rare being or group of beings who captured three of us had immense power, power to ride us, using our gifts to walk into the past and change the direction of the present and the future. Some Mithrans and Naturaleza were intent upon riding us, to go back into the past. They never had one coherent purpose, which likely saved us all, each working to their own ends. We knew that some wished to destroy their own kind. Others wished to find, capture, and ride all arcenciels. Others wished different things.
“Over the years, I located and released many of my kind who had been trapped in crystals and allowed to languish. Jane Yellowrock released at least one other before she came into her full power.
“When she became the Dark Queen, there were two outliers, Tomás de Torquemada and Ming of Glass, each who had in their possession a trapped arcenciel.
“Already in my report, many years ago, prior to my taking human form and joining PsyLED, I located and released Vréfos, who had been captured in quartz crystal for two thousand years. Unfortunately, later, Ming of Glass and her sister were both bitten. Their sanity has been precarious since.
“Three months past, Ming of Glass was bitten again when she tried to abduct me. This resulted in a form of psychosis that was exacerbated by the return of her soul.”
Yummy walked up, and Soul stopped. Her eyes flinty hard, Soul said, “What isthatdoing here?”
“Fighting Ming and saving your people,” Yummy said. Sarcasm in the words, she added, “I await your thanks.”
“There will be no thanks. Your kind are vermin.” Soul turned her back on the vampire.
Yummy laughed, her tone sharp enough to cut iron. In her hand she held an ax, the ax from Esther’s house. She tossed it at the feet of the arcenciel. Cold iron. Soul didn’t flinch, but the other arcenciels moved further into the dark, and out of theseeingworking. Yummy laughed again.
Ignoring the ax-head, Soul said, “We heard that Tomás de Torquemada, who had an arcenciel in crystal, had come out of hiding in the Vatican, and that he was intent upon trapping and riding more arcenciels, planning to come to this country to accomplish his ends, since this was the only rift he might get near, and hoping to trap one of us.”
“What were his ends?” FireWind asked.
“He wished to bring the Inquisition to full and supreme power. To destroy every infidel in the world, and to allow what he called the onlyone true church, the Holy See, the Roman Catholic Church, to remain. He had the Coda. He knew when the world sat on a precipice. He knew what levers to use and what people to kill all through the history of the last four thousand years to bring this to pass. All he needed were arcenciels. He would have ridden back in time repeatedly. Had he found two more arcenciels, one of which was in Ming of Glass’ lair, he might have destroyed all that we know.
“This possibility was determined to be not only a national security risk but a risk to the entire world. Director Mackey and I agreed that I would go undercover and stop him.
