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  “Should we stop him?” Sam asked. Samantha shook her head.

  “Give him his moment. You want to find all of the demons around here for me?”

  Sam nodded. She put her hands over his face, covering his eyes with her thumbs.

  “Light ‘em up.”

  He jerked out of his own mind and into rooms around the complex. Demons in ones and twos, sometimes sixes or sevens, here a dozen, stood, waiting to figure out what the call was. He jerked from room to room, pulling at Samantha to give her a bearing, then hopping to the next cluster. There may have been more than a hundred of them. All new, from the look of them, all nervous, all waiting for someone to tell them what to do. He finished the loop and found the first pair of demons again, and dropped out of the vision, pulling his head gently away from Samantha.

  “What’s the count?” she asked softly.

  “Too much math,” he said. “Between eighty and a hundred.”

  She glanced at Kelly.

  “Asset or liability?”

  “I don’t know. Could go either way.”

  “And him?” she asked, jerking her head at Jason.

  “Out for blood, but in control.” Sam paused. “Better than me.”

  Samantha pulled his face down and kissed his cheek.

  “He’s supposed to be. Scouts and spies aren’t in competition with tanks.”

  He turned his face away, pleased and embarrassed. Samantha walked away, going to stand away from the wall.

  “Hear me,” she yelled. “We are not afraid, but we are not here for you. Flee now, if you want to stay on this plane. We are going to close the gate.” She put her hand out behind her and Sam stepped forward to take it. Demons glitched in and out of the room.

  “You called Argo?” she asked.

  “He’s on his way.”

  “Let’s hope he brought enough blood.”

  <><><>

  Samantha walked the pillars through the parking garage.

  “Here,” she called. She sketched the symbol painted on the pillar on the sheet of paper she was carrying. She was splitting the design onto different sheets, keyed with a system Carter would have been able to decode, but few other people. Sam came to join her.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Immortality,” she said, frowning.

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means I don’t know this gate,” she said. She’d guessed she wouldn’t. To have something that would scale this big was unusual. Gates that demons could cross were unusual. Combining the two was unheard of. The power it had taken to open it was astonishing.

  “What does that mean?” Sam asked.

  “Bad things,” Samantha said. It wasn’t that she had all of the gates memorized. It was just that she recognized them all well enough to go figure out what they were. Kelly appeared next to her.

  “There’s an angry man outside,” he said. Samantha glanced at Sam. She wasn’t looking forward to the conflict, but if it was the worst thing that happened today, she’d be grateful. Sam had called Carter for her, and she had gotten on the phone to tell him to close the gate in New York. He hadn’t been happy to have been kept out of her plan, but he’d sounded amused by the idea. How many other times had there been two gates open? Jason had exhausted his desire to tear down the building Brandt had kept him in and was nearby, standing guard.

  “I’m going to go see Argo,” Samantha called. “Don’t wander off.”

  Jason materialized around a corner.

  “I’d like to meet the guy who should have known about this place and torn it down,” he said.

  “And that’s why you’re staying here,” Samantha said. “As if Argo wasn’t unstable enough.” She paused and turned to face Sam and Jason. “Look. I don’t often ask you guys to behave, right? Even with Carter, even with the angels and the demons, I don’t ask you to act any different. I’m asking now. Don’t pick at Argo. Please.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Jason said, pointing at Sam. “That’s the guy you have to worry about.”

  Samantha heaved a dramatic sigh, then waved at Kelly.

  “Show me.”

  She followed the angel through the giant complex to a parking lot on the far side.

  “Argo,” she said.

  “You attract trouble,” he said. He was tall, almost as tall as Sam, and built like a professional basketball player. He shaved his head and his dark black skin was always shiny with sweat, as if a badge of honor that he was never in one place long enough to let his body rest.

  “I find it,” she answered. “Did you bring the blood?”

  “Don’t order me around.”

  There was a fine line, often non-existent, between groveling before and standing up to Argo to get him to work with you. It was ego-bruising work, but underneath it, Argo was competent.

  “I’ve got the biggest hellsgate I’ve ever seen back there,” she said. “I can’t close it without you.”

  “I’ll be the judge,” he answered, brushing past her. She resisted rubbing her arm where he slammed into her on the way by. She hoped Kelly had gone back to Jason and Sam like she’d asked.

  She followed Argo into the building, pointing out places to turn to find one of the posts a couple of times, then giving up and letting his random sense of navigation work it out.

  “Where are the demons?” he asked.

  “Gone,” she answered. He turned back at her, drilling his finger into her chest and bending over her.

  “You let them go?”

  “I’m not here for them,” she answered, temper flaring as she bent further back. She pushed it away.

  “You had them all here, and you can keep them here, and you let them go?”

  Argo had been born in Missouri. She knew that. He had cultivated the deep-chested guttural linguistics of a native African because he thought they were intimidating. They were.

  “We need to close this gate,” she said. “We were at a standoff. I couldn’t kill all of them, but I could kill enough that none of them wanted to go first. So I told them to run, and they ran.”

  “You fool are responsible for each and every death that those demons cause,” he said, stringing together a slurry of demonic curses as he turned away.

  “I accept that, but if we fail to close this gate, you are responsible for the deaths of anyone killed by any other demon who comes through the gate,” she answered, striking back with a few choice epithets of her own. He cornered like an enraged bull and she drew Lahn. He didn’t stop his charge toward her until Lahn had pushed indentations into his shirt with both points. Samantha held her ground, letting a piece of the fury she felt glow in her eyes. He put his arm out and poked her in the shoulder.

  “You are unworthy of the power you carry.”

  She was silent. He backed off and continued forward.

  “You could have destroyed all of them. I know what you are capable of,” he said. She didn’t answer this, either. He was wrong, but she was bound from explaining it to him. Righteous fury didn’t work like that.

  They meandered further into the building, in the middle of the stretch of space with nothing related to the hellsgate for a long way in any distance, save the obscure markings on the floor or the ceiling that formed the starpoints. Samantha was guessing seventeen posts, but her mental geography wasn’t that good.

  “I see nothing,” he finally said.

  “We’ve been in the gate since we came in the building,” she said. He colorfully called her a liar in hellspeak. She looked hard, finding the next straight line between posts ahead of them.

  “That is a connecting line,” she said pointing. It was a thick layer of tar embedded into the floor and disguised with an eclectic combination of lines and curves across the wide floor.

  “You imagine hellsgates, and call me away from real work to look at lines on the floor.”

  “You want to cross?” she asked. “You know that time has been off for a long time. This,” she said, pointing at the floor,
“is why.”

  He crossed his arms across his chest.

  “Prove it.”

  She drew Lahn out of nervous habit and swished the blade through the air as she turned toward the cavern at the center of the mall. She’d enjoy pushing him through hellside.

  They finally reached the building where Jason had been held, and she could feel Sam’s patience wearing thin. She was too angry to hold him back much longer, and she spotted Kelly standing in a corridor watching her. Argo peered into the dilapidated building and spun.

  “How long have you known about this without telling me?”

  She held her tongue. Sam abandoned waiting and started toward her. Argo’s eyes scanned the area as he took scope of the gate.

  “You have put me in a bad position, woman. Do you know how much blood it is going to take to close this gate?”

  “Yes. I do. I tried to tell you.”

  “You were unclear. This gate is big enough to leave a focal range that any demon could walk through. I’m going to have to go back and obtain more blood, and meanwhile this monstrosity will remain open.”

  He unleashed a torrent of hellspeak as he stormed out of the cavern. Samantha listened to herself breathe, waiting until Argo was far enough away that she couldn’t hear him to answer with her own stream of anger.

  “I’d have said it to his face,” Jason said in hellspeak, then, in English, “Carter was right. You do have an elegant sense for hellspeak.”

  “You understood her?” Sam asked.

  “You speak,” Samantha said flatly. Jason shrugged.

  “Not a lot else to do. You pick it up.”

  “Unclean tongue,” Kelly said. “You speak with an unclean tongue.”

  “I speak the language of the unclean tongue,” Samantha said. “I learned it on the Paradise plane.”

  Kelly shook his head.

  “No angel would utter those words.”

  “You’re right,” Samantha said, trying not to grin. “It was a saint who taught me.”

  Kelly shuddered, and she left him alone.

  “You find any more symbols?”

  “No,” Sam said. “He bring enough blood?”

  “Not even close. He didn’t believe us.”

  “What do we do now?” Jason asked. Samantha walked to the far wall of the cavern and sat down.

  “We sit on the gate and wait for him to get back. I need to find the rest of the symbols for this gate, but in the meantime we need to figure out what we’re going to do next.”

  “You said this was about closing the gate. You should not bring the remains of my kindred so close to a portal to the darkness. You took them through the darkness.” Kelly shook visibly. “You have been entrusted with a duty. If you neglect it, I will be forced to report it and we will find a more suitable carrier.”

  Samantha eased her back against the wall, feeling the dehydration and the long hike everywhere in her body. Sam disappeared and she sent him a wave of gratitude, knowing he was going in search of water.

  “First of all,” she said to Kelly as Jason took a spot a little way around the cavern from her. “The only way to get this chain off of me, outside of the Paradise plane, is to kill me. You would know that if you had studied the alternate applications of light magic on the individual planes, which you have not. Second of all, yours is not the only mandate I bear. You know that the angels call me Anadidd’na Anu’dd, as the name was given to me by O’na Anu’dd, who I haven’t seen in a while. How is he?” She paused, but Kelly stood formally before her, body quivering in righteous anger, and she let it go. “The demons call me Renouch. The one who came back. The mandate of my return is supercedent to any mandate you have on me, no matter what gravity it has. Third. Your insubordination is not something I will tolerate. If I must, I will summon Mahkail and have him bind you to me in dual priority with your guardianship over the angeldust I carry. On this plane, I am your superior, and you will respect me. When I leave you in the charge of the men I trust, you will respect them and take orders within reason. I have no such clause. You do not follow my orders within reason. You follow them absolutely. It is your responsibility to safeguard the package I carry, but you have no authority to intervene in my decision making.”

  “In what hierarchy would that be true?” Kelly asked, gathering himself taller. Sam had found water and was on his way back. Samantha wanted sleep. Instead she stood, aware that Jason was staring.

  “Freewill.”

  Kelly held her gaze for several seconds, then looked away.

  “I understand.”

  Samantha collapsed back against the wall.

  “I don’t like being authoritarian,” she said as Sam reappeared with a cooler. She sighed with relief. He had remembered that she would need water and left it in the car for her. He sat down next to her and opened a water to hand it to her. She downed it in a few swallows and gave him the empty bottle back. She looked up at Kelly again. “I’d rather you learn how to do what you need to do, and experience this plane without my intervention. Adapt. Things are different here.”

  He dropped a foot behind him, upside down on the floor, and gave her a small bow.

  “I understand.”

  She took the next water from Sam and downed it.

  “I like being alive. I’m not going to take risks that I think are unjustified. I hope that you’ll learn to trust that.”

  “How can you take risks at all, with the load you carry?” Kelly asked, earnest.

  “Beloved,” she said. “We have beating hearts. All three of us. No burden, no blessing is more critical than that. We risk our own beating hearts each and every day because of the mandates our lives have incurred. Life is its own mandate, and the most precious possession we could ever protect. The dual nature of that is the balancing act that is freewill. You cannot understand it, with your age and experience. Watch. It is the breath of God. Don’t forget that.”

  Kelly bowed lower. When he rose, his face had changed to one of determination.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Hey, Kelly,” Jason called. Kelly turned his head in time to see Jason’s arm jerk.

  “Get the ball.”

  <><><>

  In all, it took them three days to close the hellsgate. The single thing that Samantha and Argo agreed on was that it needed to be done carefully and correctly; they argued for six hours over the definition of ‘correctly’. Sam, Jason, and Samantha slept in shifts until the Argo’s people started showing up.

  “Who are they all?” Sam had asked Samantha.

  “The house of Argo,” Samantha had answered. Demons, gray and otherwise, and men attached to Argo through mutual aspiration. Lange flew in from New York.

  “Does Carter have a house?” Jason had asked.

  “Just myself and Abby. The house of Bane is empty.”

  Kelly had only narrowly suffered the indignance of keeping watch over the gate with demons, but Samantha hadn’t had to speak strongly to him again. He was trying.

  Blood had poured in from all over the country in barrels, and demons had pulled up miles of ash, tar, and charcoal as they shut down the gate.

  “Why can’t we just erase the markings and move on?” Jason asked midway through the second day, as tempers were stretching again.

  “That’s fine if you’re okay with blowing up Houston,” Samantha had told him, chin buried into her fists. Lange sat down next to her.

  “I thought this was going to be more fun,” he’d said.

  “Get out of my sight!” Argo had bellowed from somewhere else in the building, and Jason shook his head.

  “How did you deal with him, man? He might be worse than Carter.”

  Both Lange and Samantha had shaken their heads.

  “Argo’s pretty high-strung, sure, but he hasn’t got Carter’s sense of humor,” Lange had said. Samantha had nodded glumly.

  “A sense of humor is a bad thing?” Jason had asked. Two heads turned to look at him wordlessly.

&nb
sp; The last day, the amount of work dropped off, and the detail work was done. Crossing would have required an immense quantity of power, and the explosion resulting from a mistake would have only been big enough to level the building. Samantha took Jason to find Kelly and Sam.

  “We’ve had enough time off,” she said. “Time for a workout.”

  “You promised I’d get to watch the gate implode,” Jason said. She nodded.

  “Sure. We’re still six hours out from that. But we should take time where we get it.” She nodded toward Kelly. “He still doesn’t know how to bend time. If you’re going to beat him, this is your opportunity.”

  Jason grinned at Kelly.

  “Sure.”

  Kelly looked nervous.

  Samantha had scouted out a storefront with enough wallspace to be private, and she started through her stretching routine. Sam joined without thinking, and Jason stood watching for a moment before sitting down cross-legged and just waiting for them to finish. Kelly cocked his head to one side, then sat next to Jason.

  “What are they doing?” he asked.

  “Yoga,” Jason answered.

  “Is not,” Sam said.

  “What it looks like.”

  Samantha transitioned into the more athletic part of the warmup.

  “She looks better doing that than you do,” Jason commented.

  “I don’t understand,” Kelly said.

  “Two and two, then?” Samantha asked, standing upright and drawing Lahn. Sam grinned wolfishly.

  “I thought I was going to get to beat him,” Jason said, standing and pointing a thumb at Kelly.

  “That was before you opened your mouth,” Samantha said. “Now you’re going to find out what your brother can do, these days.”

  She bounced on her toes, and Sam watched for Jason’s reaction. Jason masked it carefully, drawing Anadidd’na and glancing at Kelly.

  “Don’t embarrass me, kid.”

  The angel drew his curved blade from nowhere with a motion that belied years of training.