I would've stayed to play twenty questions with the seraph, but I couldn't feel the tips of all nineteen of my phalanges and, since I'd spent almost twenty-five years of my life avoiding the youngest Chancery's wrath, instinctively knew when I was coming up on time.
“Stay safe,” I told the guardian as I got up without a preamble. My muscles were stiff and uncooperative. I made a note to bring my cane the next time I came to visit.
The angel's smile faded as he briefly regarded me, but then his alien gaze returned to staring across the water.
None the wiser, Solberg found me shivering on the porch with all the bells and dressings ready to go. Solberg began, “I even found a—”
I swept past him, thanking him for the effort. Since he'd taken so long, I was ready for sleep.
Of course, my shoddy ruse was exposed by morning. I'd brought Solberg's binoculars back to the porch, but I'd left my book on the pier. That would have been telling enough, but I'd also managed to catch a cold. The pack of cigarettes left in my pocket was the cherry on the shit sundae.
Chancery was livid.
It was a blessing that I passed out halfway through his initial, emotionally charged lecture.
By the end of the second day, I couldn't get out of bed. I was sore, feverish, and swimming in a sea of tissues.
Chancery took over all executive functions, which meant phoning things in when the ‘tussin wasn't cutting it anymore. But I got the last phlegm-laden laugh, because Doc and his entourage couldn't get to us for weather related reasons.
On day four my fever broke, and Doctor Weatherby finally made it out to the property with a care package designed for a quarantine ward under fire. Too little, too late by my reckoning. Another day in bed would probably have me back on the pier if I had my way.
But I knew I had to go along with things, otherwise I'd never get to go out and play again.
Chancery's responses to things might've been a little overblown, but if I didn't let him have his way every now and then, he'd get passive-aggressive and disagreeable.
So Doc did his thing, and I allowed the whole thing to play out without further protest while Chancery carried on a running commentary from the sidelines that amounted to I told you so when you boiled it down to pulp.
During a lull in the check-up, Doc asked conversationally, “Who's the man on the porch? One of the new enforcers?”
And suddenly Chancery was looking at me like I was the one in charge. “Family friend,” I said hoarsely.
Chancery didn't want to reveal anything unwieldy in front of Doc unless I revealed everything first, so his words were carefully measured out as he said to me, “Your friend… tried to move into the house yesterday. Bardo's outside with him to keep him… pacified.”
Did that mean they'd had to beat on him or that they had to tie him up? When I frowned at him in disapproval, Chancery crossed his arms and explained, “I don't think he understands you're sick and not being actively attacked.”
“Could you pass that onto the streptococcus camping out in my throat? I don't think it understands the difference either.”
My family's long-term physician chuckled, which made Chancery sigh, “Don't encourage him, Doc.”
Doctor Weatherby patted my hand before he got up and said, “Antibiotics. Meal with every dose. Try to keep the others from coming near you without a mask. In such close quarters, it's a wonder you don't all already have it.”
“I wonder how he got it in the first place,” Chancery muttered.
Doc shrugged and explained, “Incubation period lines up with contracting it on the trip up. A moment in the cold with an already weakened immune system? Perfect petri culture.” He gave me a wink and said to Chancery, “If you give him a little more grace, he probably won’t feel the need to sneak around.”
I put a hand to my face. Doc had a habit of making things worse through his good intentions.
Chancery bristled. “I can't believe I have to continually remind everyone that we're not up here, in the middle of Bumfuck-Nowhere, to ski.” Doc opened his mouth, but Chancery cut him off with a hand-chop. “Stick to medical advice, Weatherby.”
Doctor Prince Weatherby had been working for the group since my father was in diapers. He merely cocked an eyebrow at my second. “Medical advice then. As soon as he can relieve himself without your well-meaning assistance, he should start going on walks. The mountain air would be good for him. I would also advise against skiing, Mister Chancery. But low-impact calisthenics aren't off the table.” Then, before Chancery could say anything to that, he made his own hand-chop. “Of course, whether you send a protection detail with him is more your purview. After all, security and the wellbeing of your charge is your responsibility.”
As Chancery made fish faces of indignation, Doc smiled back at me before sketching half a bow. “Kashira.”
I nodded. “Sensei.”
After he left, led back to the main road by Bardo in a UTV, Chancery took the seat at my bedside and sighed as he settled into it. He absently complained a bit about how Chichi had chosen some suspect goons to escort the doctor, but after he was done going through the motions, he'd calmed down enough to say, “I'm sorry, Boss.”
I rolled my eyes. “For what? You didn't cough in my mouth while I was snoring on the plane, did you?”
Chancery huffed a laugh. “Not for that—”
“You—!”
“I'm joking. No, I'm sorry for making you feel like you're under house arrest.”
“You're just doing your job.”
“Yeah, I just wish you'd let me.”
“I'm sorry for making it harder than it has to be.”
He stared at me for a moment before he asked, “You talked to it?”
“Mhm.”
“Can we trust it after all?”
I nodded.
“Are you done doing stupid shit?”
“Are you going to let me out of the house without a safety briefing?”
He rubbed his face. “Compromise?”
“Escorted at all times.”
“That's a given.”
“If you say run, I run.”
“Given.”
“You let the guardian in the house.”
“I don't think—”
“Remus, he's a part of your security detail. You're really gonna let an asset like that go to waste?”
“I don't even know what the fucking thing is. I don’t want it anywhere near you unless it's actively blocking bullets.”
“He'd be a better meat shield if he was allowed within a hundred feet of me.”
Chancery's jaw was making paste out of his molars. Finally, he relented. “Under strict supervision.”
I nodded serenely and smiled. “Just like we do with every new hire, he'll be under probation, pending your review of his performance.”
Chancery sighed again. “Just… stop cheesin’ like that. You know that look wigs me out.”
I flashed him teeth. “What look?”
“The one you get when you win.”
I laughed. Chancery cringed.
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The guardian was allocated the pull-out couch in the living room, but as soon as he saw me coming down the stairs that evening, he left Chancery in the middle of one of his orientation speeches to go back outside.
I joined my second on the porch as Chancery dropped his binoculars. “What does it see that we don't?”
The guardian stood at the end of the pier and stared across the lake.
I rested against the rail to watch, but the movement reminded Chancery that I existed and he put a glove around my bare arms to try to direct me back into the house.
I shrugged him off and went in of my own accord, saying over my shoulder, “I'd come off shifts, if I were you. Watching him won't accomplish anything and we'll be down a man if we're attacked.”
“What if he breaks in?”
“Did he break in when I was sick?”
Chancery blinked at me. Then he sighed, expelling a despondent cloud of realization. “He only tried to shoulder his way in after Bardo unlocked the sliding door.”
I made an airy gesture.
He looked to Heaven for self-control. He said through his teeth, “I don't like this, Dev. It doesn't talk. It just stares and nods. I don't know what it's thinking or if it's thinking at all. It's like a robot programmed by another robot.”
Remus, your genius is showing again, I thought as I treated him to a smile. It was just a shame he poured most of his brilliant mental fortitude into paranoia.
Chancery didn't want anything to do with the supernatural, but his insight about the guardian's nature was more spot-on than he'd ever appreciate. The word robot was rooted in slave or servant. A guardian was technically a servant created by another servant. And all seraphim were technically prisoner conscripts assigned under an archangel warden.
I said, “He's programmed to destroy the things that mean to harm me. I say you have more in common with him than I do.”
“That's not funny.”
“Give him the night shift then. Relieve him in the morning… if you can.” I took a deep breath and decided to burrow back into bed before I lost the strength to do it myself. “I don't care what you do, just… make sure he gets whatever he needs to do the job he was summoned for.”
“I don't trust that Lavelle summoned it for—”
I made an aggravated sound. “Trust me, Remus. Make it fucking work. I'm going to bed.”
“... Yes, Boss.”
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I was only seven pages away from finishing my book when Chancery choked on his toothbrush while moseying down the stairs. He rushed to the back door and ripped the slide open. “The fuck are you doing?!”
Bardo and Solberg both froze halfway down the steps that led off the porch, a damp and bowing Amazon box between the two of them like a body bag.
They both talked over the top of one another as the box thumped down the stairs, coming to rest at the head of the path leading down to the pier.
A risky look up had me meeting my second's glare. I said, “Don't worry, I didn't compromise our location with a delivery truck. The boys brought that from the left property across the lake like we—”
Chancery slammed the door shut. “What's in the box, Boss?” Outside, Bardo nodded once at Solberg and they both scrambled down the steps to get the package and finish what they'd started.
“A pop-up ice-fishing sauna,” I said, resting my cheek on a propped fist.
“A sauna?” Chancery looked apoplectic.
I shrugged. “A gazebo with walls.”
“A shed,” he decided.
“Whatever you wanna call it. They'll pick up the solar generator from the right lakehouse tonight. Tomorrow morning, I'll send them to intercept the heater I had delivered to the house right across from us.”
“And why, pray tell, are they taking all of that to the pier? Hmm?”
I gave him an innocent batting of my eyelashes. “Because you don't want me getting sick again, and saunas are warm and enclosed.”
Chancery thought about it. Then he gave me a relieved, bordering on impressed, expression. “You're getting intel on the other houses.”
I gave him an approving look and snapped a finger gun, returning to the resolution of my book.
After I closed it on a sigh, Chancery was in front of the coffee machine waiting on a cup as he grumbled, “There's no way that rickety pier is gonna support a structure on the end of it.”
“Specs said it was supposed to be light and modular if built right.”
He narrowed his eyes at his mug like he either doubted the integrity of anything bought online… or the ability of his subordinates to install it correctly.
“Better get out and supervise.”
He dropped his coffee off in front of me and said, “I don't think it cares if it's in a doghouse or not.”
“It's not for the guardian. It's for me,” I reminded him.
He met my gaze with a weighted, unconvinced look, but didn't comment before leaving to find his coat and gloves.
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As a part of The Dog Accords, an eleven-page Word document that existed in part because I'd tried to do something through a loophole in our verbal compromise, I lost certain inalienable human rights that night.
After the sauna was erected, I locked myself and the guardian inside it. I was technically still escorted by someone in Chancery's security detail. And I was technically still on the property. I even managed a two-sided argument with Bardo about clubhouse rules and what kind of behavior is appropriate for grown men in their thirties.
Now, I had to sleep with my bedroom door open, exposed to Chancery's open door across the hallway. Bardo had threatened to take the door off its hinges if I didn't comply.
If the idea of house arrest was suffocating before, the actual complete lack of privacy felt so oppressive, I was nearly driven to do something insane and unseemly in full view of my subordinates if it meant I got a closed door between them and I every now and then.
Thankfully he wasn't in his room yet, a fact which I thought would help me fall asleep knowing he wasn't watching.
I thought.
Before being turned into Swiss cheese, I'd been a stomach sleeper mostly. Now, I had a special pillow and back supporter that only allowed for side sleeping. My right arm was only good for ballast these days, and any amount of pressure on my shoulder or my forearm—where pieces still remained lodged between my ulna and radius—were enough to make me consider self-amputation for sanity's sake.
In that alien position, my brain convinced every other part of me that I was clearly training for longterm sleep deprivation torture at the hands of my enemies, and so could only call it lights-out under the promise of narcotics.
Unfortunately, antibiotics don't play well with anything else, so there I lay, ergo proxy, manos absentia, in pain, in anger, on the edge of tears, frustrated by my own inadequacies.
Chancery rattled me from my wallowing with the cadence of his steps and I tried to feign sleep, but he knocked on my door frame. He wouldn't have dared if he thought I was actually asleep. He knows how homicidal I can be when barely cognizant. “Boss.”
I grunted a question mark at him.
“If I close this door, I'm locking it.”
I took several deep breaths before I grumbled, “Do what you want.”
He shut the door. The bolt didn't make a sound, but I heard the crunchy withdrawal of the key.
In the stifling darkness, I noticed a blue flash, like the flame of a butane lighter, just in front of my closet doors and I struggled to sit up.
But there was nothing, just the pale orange will-o-wisp afterimage burned into my retinas, fading into dull static even as I continued to stare.
I could hear my own heart in the blackness, thudding too fast for comfort. I fell back and grit my teeth to contain an unsolicited groan.
Fuck this noise.
I'll take Strep over the agony.
It's not even a fair contest.
At least Strep doesn't make you hallucinate.
I looked down my chest toward where the closet doors were and took a breath. At least I'd know if it were real or not if I really looked using my sight.
I settled myself on top of the two support pillows and closed my eyes. “I don't wanna know…” I whispered to myself. “I don't want to know.”
“Nani ga sore, Kouji?”
I launched out of bed with a startled yelp. I hit the carpet on all fours and curled in on myself like a dying spider.
Oh fuck. That sounded like Kazumi.
Through my tears, I saw her.
There was a small flame in the dark, coming from a handheld butane lighter, toasting the end of a cigarette, highlighting a white face with red lipstick—a face empty of care—a face devoid of fear or sympathy.
She stared at me and inhaled.
Black lacquered fingernails flicked off the lighter and the round, mask-like face disappeared. “Kyotsukete.”
Be careful?
Something grappled me from behind. Through the squeezing of my throat, I managed a whimper, then a truncated scream, as I wrapped numbing fingers around the cold flesh that had coiled itself around my throat.
Fetid breath brushed against my cheek as a male ghost said, “I was told to tell you this is personal.”
The door was rattling. Voices. Shouting. Cursing. “Dev! Say something!” Chancery was shouting.
Oh, fucking thank God! This isn't all in my head. This isn't in my head! That meant I could control the situation.
With a surge of will power, I managed to draw in a deep lungful of air around the bees nest trapped in my ribcage, straining every muscle still at my disposal, pulling at the twining arms around my neck. It wasn't enough. I could see white spots in my vision, the telltale sign I was about to pass out.
I howled through locked teeth.
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I became aware we were in the pool room in the basement when the smell of chicken noodle soup brought me out of my stupor.
“Pretty sure it was the meds,” Bardo was saying. “Boss probably still had residual stuff in his system when Doc gave him the antibiotics.”
Solberg nudged me and I blinked up at him groggily. The contents of the cup he handed me sloshed dangerously from side to side and he took it from me with a quiet curse.
“Well, antibiotics can cause hallucinations on their own too,” Chancery said on a breath.
Solberg hovered a spoonful of soup too close to my face and I nearly lost my shit. “Don't you d—!”
“Hey,” Chancery called out from across the sitting room, drawing our attention. He was glaring at Solberg. “If the boss bites your hand off, we're not reattaching it. Get lost.” Then he tipped his chin at Bardo. “You too. Get some sleep. We'll deal with the window in the morning. The mess isn't going anywhere.”
Bardo bowed, but as he turned, his eyes widened and locked on Solberg as he reached out a hand. “A-Ah! Wan! Watch what you're doing! You're getting soup everywhere!”
“Sorry…”
“Don't apologize, just be careful!”
The boys left up the stairs, discussing this and that. At the top, Solberg barked, “Fuck! Have you just been standing here?” followed by Bardo hissing, “Fucking creep. Come on. Chance said he'd handle it when he's done with Devereaux.”
Chancery sat down next to me on the couch, rolling me into his side.
“Window…” I whispered. “Broken window… Creep...”
Remus was waiting for something.
There was a plastic sound rattling around in my head, along with the sounds of ripping duct tape and quiet voices ordering one another around. “There wasn't a body… was there?” I asked, indifferent to the answer either way.
Chancery snorted. “No, we taped up some clear plastic to cover your bedroom window. Your dog broke the fucking glass. Your bed is basically an Addams Family prop and the carpet’s a mess of mud and pine needles.”
“You don't seem mad about it.”
“Neither do you.”
My tongue was more of an obstacle than an asset at that moment. “I am beyond giving a shit about anything right now. What did you give me? Because whatever I'm on right now, I want some of it.”
“Codeine,” he said with a small laugh. He was playing with a raven-colored swatch of somebody else's hair. Kazumi's? I reached up to see whose it was, and someone tugged at my scalp. Annoying. There are too many handsy people in this place. Too many strangers.
Chancery cleared his throat, probably preparing to tell them off, but then he said, “I'm an idiot. I locked the door but couldn't get to you when you started screaming. The pins are misaligned. Shoddy work. I should've tested all of them, but I trusted the contractor's word. Never again. That's on me.”
“I was screaming?”
Kazu, sitting on the pool table, nodded.
He nodded in agreement even though he didn't look at her, instead frowning at his hands. “You were trapped. And you know how we had them install the reinforced, breach-resistant doors right?”
“Mhm. They're blue.”
“Yeah, well, that was a great idea.”
I shook my head. “The gray ones were better—the ones that had metal in them. But you said those were more appropriate for panic rooms because they could cause ricochets.”
His mouth flattened unhappily. “Whatever door we might've put there instead would've been worse than it already was. Bardo almost broke a toe, and I think Solberg's gonna have bruises on his shoulders in the morning.”
“Did you get any boo-boos?”
Kazu laughed silently, covering her red, red mouth.
He rolled his eyes heavenward before closing them to collect himself. “I… made things work.”
I blinked at him. Then I smirked in satisfaction, settling back into the couch. The furniture seemed to swallow me, enveloping me in warmth and safety. I said through a Cheshire grin, “You asked the seraphim for help. Ii desu ne.”
Wait.
Suddenly the couch was a prison, too close, too restricting. I stood up too fast and the world tried to help me by getting up too, but Chancery had to assist it by grabbing my elbow which flared up with heat, bones grinding together in nauseating discomfort rather than pain. But I was upright and that was a start.
Chancery was saying something.
He could try talking to my sister.
I had to go upstairs.
I pushed open the basement door, took two steps, and collided with a wall covered in wet leaves, torn cotton, and cold chicken noodle soup. After a couple experimental pokes, I looked up. A pair of yellow goat's eyes were staring down at me.
“There you are.” I grabbed a hold of his biceps and pulled him from the basement landing. Through the wine cooler and kitchen, then passed the nook and the living room… I finally found the spot for him to stand, in the foyer, but in front of the archway that led to my office.
I let him go and turned my back, pressing up against him as I looked around. Yes. This is the spot. It had an unobstructed view of the porch, the downstairs, the landing to upstairs, the office, and the bathroom. In effect, if he stood here, he could see all the first story entry and exit points, save for the front door at his back.
I turned around and smiled. “Good right? This spot? You can see everything you want to see?”
He looked around and nodded.
I nodded too and then I sat down so the house would stop nodding along with me. The seraph sat down as well, sitting on the hollows his ankles made, like my mother used to do at traditional board meetings.
Hands landed heavily on me and my heart leaped up into my throat as my collarbone and shoulder protested at the weight. The hands left me just as suddenly and Chancery's voice said in a rush, “Sorry! I just thought you were going all the way down and the dog didn't look like it was going to help you.”
I took a deep shuddering breath and let it out. Looking through my hair, the seraphim was staring up at Chancery with a look that reminded me of an animal backed into a corner, hackles rising.
I reached out and tapped him on the leg. He didn’t look at me. I swatted him and that got his attention. I wanted to shake my head, but was afraid the lakehouse would copy me again. I said, “Chancery doesn't like you, but he won't hurt me.”
The seraph looked over my head at my second and it was like he was saying that the feeling was mutual.
Chancery huffed humorlessly, then asked, “Dev, can you stand on your own?”
“No, but I don't want your help because you always grab me wrong.”
He didn't say anything. That told me he'd realized a while ago, but had been too afraid to admit it.
I waved at him. “Leave me here. You can sleep on the couch if you don't trust him.”
“Let's get you to the pull-out.”
“I'm not crawling. Just put a blanket down. Get my pillows.”
While Chancery and I argued, several of the others in the room started gesturing at things. Then the seraph got up and I reached out to stop him from leaving his new post, but then Chancery was there, holding me back and it was too much sensation all at once and I was too tired and too hungry and too damn high to care about anything anymore.
I slid down, laid on the floor, and pressed my cheek against the cool tile of the foyer as I went limp. I took slow breaths like my physical therapist had taught me and I ignored all the voices and the suggestions and the noise. It was all air anyway, and air was better if it was just a guest. It was better if it visited when I needed it and left when it wasn't welcome. It knew when to come and when to go.
It knew better than to overstep or overstay.
The seraph was careful as he wrapped me up and maneuvered me, making sure to bundle blankets and torn pillows where there were no scars. He listened to the others, and they helped him find the places that could support my weight without putting pressure on anything volatile and angry.
Chancery's incessant chatter would’ve distracted me, but the seraph acted like he didn't hear him and after a while, my second silently watched him work, taking notes with his eyes.
At long last, the angel returned to the foyer and sat against the door, watching me from his spot. It was a good spot. I was glad he liked it.
Chancery sat on the edge of the pull-out and whispered morosely, “I don't understand that thing. What was the point of that? It's a guard, not a fucking nurse maid. I could've done that if you'd just tell me what you need.”
I was finally on my stomach, and it felt like being cradled by a cloud. I didn't fucking care what the point of anything was. I just wanted Chancery to leave me alone for five fucking minutes. “Go to bed, Remus.”
“I'm not going anywhere when you're like this.”
I took a breath as I thought darkly, The second I can physically chamber one fucking round… I'm putting it in Remus Chancery's mouth.
Thankfully he eventually left to go turn off all the lights and, in between the soft footsteps and gentle clicks, I fell asleep watching the seraph silently watch me.
---
It had been several dozen eras since he'd last competed or sparred, so he didn't.
Instead, he fought.
As if it were life and death, his wings or theirs, anything that met him within the aerie left it by being scraped off the floor.
Fighting his brothers and sisters was not like fighting demons.
It was easier.
Demons give no quarter because they're usually in a vessel or shell. What real fear have they when the threat isn't to their soul, but their stolen skin?
They fight dirty, joyfully, without reservation.
He was made to use their hubris against them. He knew, unlike them, he had everything to lose if he didn't.
It shocked him to see that same vanity reflected in the eyes of his siblings. But, unlike the demons, he saw fear in their eyes too. He saw convictionless saints enter the arena and leave as flightless fools. He plucked them by the dozen from the sky and nailed them to the breathing scaffolds.
Even the middleweight harkers trembled when he charged, and their prowess with the same powers as he paled in comparison to his vibrant bloodletting.
He had been whittled down into the shape of a Hound by his maker, but two-thousand years had honed all his jagged edges into razor sharp feathers. Hound, they called him, as if he could be commanded by anything less than the Crown itself.
This test was hardly the challenge the warden made it out to be.
When the final horn rang out, everything descended, save for him.
The warden stood from their observation tower, a monument in stature compared to the birds flitting about their colossal shape.
The warden said, “We have chosen.”
He waited, wings cutting the air.
The warden pointed to a harker in the crowd, still bloodied and broken from its fall. “We choose that Hound and name him as Es'tyr!”
He wasn't stunned or humiliated.
Instead, he was vindicated.
Now everyone would know this contest to be false.
He shot straight down before the warden could speak any words of praise and he clove Es'tyr in two, dragging one half up into the air while the other writhed on the ground, undying, begging, gurgling.
He chucked his piece at the foot of the warden where it splashed a swath of brilliant blood across its beautiful white feathers.
The aerie evacuated; the meek Host fearful of the warden's wrath.
But the archangel smiled under its mask of feathers and metal barbs. “I understand you…” the warden whispered serenely. “It is I who have erred. I have slighted you, Hound. I named a guardian half your worth as my champion, and you showed me what half that servant is worth. A sacrifice, nothing more. Meat.”
The warden raised up a palm, encased in ever linking and unlinking gold, and commanded, “Alight upon me. A promise is a promise. Be mine.”
He did not believe in promises.
He did not alight upon Raguel's finger.
Iskariot, someone whispered.
He could hear the keening of his prison if he closed his eyes. So instead, he kept all thirteen of them narrowed on the archangel and he sheathed his khopesh. With a crash and crunch of bone and blood, he landed on the feeling, thinking ground and made his way back to the aerie's ready rooms.
From behind him, the booming laugh of the warden carried all the way to the heart of its living halls.
“My wings, my thrones, my guardians, your new champion must attend! He was once the so-called Saint Sabriel, Messenger of Betrayal! Now he shall ever be known as Ke'lev, Watcher for Deceit.”
Betrayal?
Is that what they called him?
The only betrayal he'd ever been cut by had been forged by this flock.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
