Chapter twenty-four

S ylvester sat in his darkened cubicle in the Homicide Division,

bathed in the blue glow of his computer screen and

the yellow cast of the emergency lighting. The storm had

knocked out the power, but the backup generator at the station

had kicked on almost immediately. The reduced output

was running the computers and the televisions and the few

dim emergency lights. The amber glow made the normally

bright and sterile police station look strange and eerie.

Rivulets of rain traced down the windows as the downpour

continued outside.

Sylvester’s cubicle was a temporary one that had been

set up for him in the open-air bull pen the detectives all

shared. He himself was usually downstairs in a windowless

room, double-checking paperwork for other investigators or

handling the occasional small property crime. It had been

years since he had been invited upstairs. He hadn’t had time

to unpack yet. All around him were unorganized stacks of

folders and still-unopened file boxes. On top of one of the

boxes sat a tub of Red Vines. An indulgence.

The detective had been up at 5 a.m. that morning, investigating

another pair of gruesome severed wings. Another

star, another Angel—Lance Crossman, who had already

been missing. Now probably dead, though they hadn’t found

the body yet, only his wings, which had been broken in

many places, twisted and cracked. This time the killer

hadn’t left them on Lance’s star—with the police barricades

and the media coverage, there was no way he or she would

have been able to do so unnoticed. Instead, they’d been securely

wrapped and delivered anonymously to ACPD

headquarters. The desk sergeant who’d had the misfortune

of opening the package had been taken to the hospital in

severe shock.

After that, Sylvester had gone down to Long Beach.

Local police had fished a mutilated, bloated body out of the

bay just hours before—Theodore Godson. At least the press

hadn’t been able to get any pictures.

Other detectives in ACPD had no leads on this case,

and the Angels weren’t being helpful. They’d just wanted it

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swept under the rug until after the Commissioning, although

someone had already leaked to the press the night

before that Angels were being killed. A surge of calls with

supposed tips flooded the ACPD offices. Sylvester had been

out interviewing potential witnesses all day and all night,

trying to unearth solid intel. Or the body of this third victim.

Instead all he’d been able to collect was gossip, like the fact

that Ryan Templeton had had a secret cocaine problem. Not

very heavenly of him.

On Sylvester’s computer screen were gruesome images

of the crime scenes. Disembodied wings. Glistening

blood splattered over the famous stars of the Walk of Angels.

He studied the images, scrutinizing them for details

that he had missed. As he did, the glitz and glamour of the

boulevard seemed to mix and blur with the blood and

carnage in a very unsettling way.

He flipped to a prison photo of a man with an unkempt

beard and an otherworldly look in his eyes. William

Beaubourg. Sylvester had interviewed the three arrested

HDF members at the Tombs jail downtown, trying to figure

out what they knew about the murders and Beaubourg’s

current whereabouts. After being released from San

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Quentin prison earlier this year, Beaubourg had immediately

disappeared, releasing videos on the Internet that

talked about the coming “War on Angels.” The jailed operatives

seemed to hint to Sylvester that the HDF was behind

the Angel murders. But were they just trying to gain notoriety

for their cause? Sylvester was unable to piece together

what Angel would be helping the HDF. But he couldn’t rule

them out.

And then there was Mark. Sylvester was still hunting

for hard evidence—all the dots weren’t connecting to point

to Mark Godspeed as the culprit. But Sylvester’s gut told

him that the Archangel was somehow involved. The detective

had already cleared Jackson. His alibi had entirely held

up, and he had been seen in public during the time at which

forensics figured Templeton was murdered. Plus Sylvester’s

long-honed intuition told him the Godspeed kid was clean.

Unlike most of the Immortal City.

But Mark: the way he had almost totally discounted

Sylvester’s findings, even basically threatening to discredit

the detective. How he merely wanted to cover up the

murders, not help with the investigation. Was he going for a

strange power play among the Archangels? Was managing

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this panic somehow going to allow him to consolidate control?

Sylvester thought back to Mark’s actions almost twenty

years before. With those actions in mind, Sylvester would

put nothing beyond him. There was no way he could be

trusted.

Sylvester flipped through more files, rubbing his

burning eyes. He leafed through a stack of reports Garcia

had gathered from locals living near the crime scenes.

Anybody who thought they had seen something strange had

been interviewed. Most were nothing of interest, just fancies

of worried people, but he took the time to scan through

them anyway. One of the reports he stopped on was from a

homeless man who had been sleeping in a doorway next to

Theodore Godson’s star on the night of the first incident.

The report was several pages long and appeared to be nothing

more than the rant of a drunk or a drug addict. Sylvester

groaned, pulling the report out of the stack and setting it

aside.

Then he stopped. Something on the page had caught

his eye. He looked at Garcia’s neat handwriting. There was

that word again.

Beast.

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He began reading. The man described seeing a black,

shimmering beast on the boulevard that night that had seven

heads and horrible, twisted horns. But then again the

man went on to say the beast looked nothing like the alien

spaceship he had seen the previous week. Sylvester sat back

in his chair and thought. The witness was clearly unreliable,

but the description was familiar to him. And specific. The

man had counted seven heads.

He felt a sudden surge of adrenaline as his mind made

the connection. He slid the tub of Red Vines off the file box

and dug around until he found what he was looking for. His

King James Bible. He flipped the book open, paged through

to Revelation, and started to read.

It took him only a minute to find it. Revelation 13:1.

He read it twice to himself to be sure:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast

rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns,

and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the

name of blasphemy.

A beast, he thought. He sifted through the reports

again, reading them with new eyes. He picked out key

phrases from the interviews, felt a strange presence at

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night, and sinking feeling of terror in the dark. They weren’t

just worried. They were feeling something. Sensing that

something was wrong. He was convinced. Something as old

as time itself, something terrible and forgotten—a

myth—was in fact real. And it was loose in the city. His intuition

had been right the whole time. He couldn’t prove it,

but he knew it as surely as he knew anything. He reached

back into the file box and rifled around again until he pulled

out a small, ornamental box made of brass. The outside had

a series of engravings between small jewels inset in the metal.

He looked at it and took a deep breath.

Suddenly a voice from behind startled him.

“Sir?”

He turned to see Garcia.

“What is it?”

“You better come see this,” the sergeant said.

“Jackson Godspeed flying out of his Commissioning?

I heard. But I’ve ruled him out already.”

“You’ll want to see this anyway.” Garcia’s expression

was grave. Sylvester set the box carefully on the desk in

front of him and rose out of his chair.

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They walked down the hall together, their bodies

throwing long shadows in the amber glow of the emergency

lights. Garcia led him to the TV in the waiting room, where

several people had already gathered to watch the ANN special

report. A serious-looking anchor was announcing the

breaking news.

“Angel City police officials won’t comment at this

time,” he said, “but in what may turn out to be the story of

the year, Jackson Godspeed has been linked to the series of

gruesome Angel attacks on the boulevard this week. And

amid the outcry in Angel City, Senator-elect Ted Linden

has called for special hearings on Capitol Hill around what

he calls the ‘Angel Question.’”

Sylvester turned to Garcia.

“Jackson? Who did this?”

“Wasn’t me,” the sergeant said. “And it wasn’t anyone

on our team, either. I checked.”

Sylvester turned and walked quickly back down the

hall. Passing his station in the bull pen, he walked back toward

the offices and burst into Captain Keele’s office

without knocking. The captain, who was signing some paperwork,

barely raised an eye as Sylvester came in.

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“Oh good, David, we were just about to have you join

us.” He motioned with his pen behind Sylvester. “These

gentlemen are here from the NAS. From the Council’s Disciplinary

Department, I’m sure you’re... familiar with it?”

Sylvester looked behind Keele. He could just make out

the outline of two large figures in the darkened office. They

seemed imposing, ominous. He couldn’t see their faces. He

turned back to the captain.

“Sir, Jackson Godspeed has nothing to do with this.

That is a totally unrelated situation.”

“You yourself had him questioned—”

“And quickly ruled him out.”

The captain regarded Sylvester patiently.

“They seem to think otherwise, Detective. They say

they have good reason to suspect him, and I’m inclined to

believe them. I think they have more experience in these

matters, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sylvester looked at the captain in disbelief.

“Then show me the evidence,” he countered. “They

can sit down with me at my desk and show me what they’ve

found. If I think it’s relevant to the case, I’ll share what we

know from the crime scenes.”

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Captain Keele leaned forward in his chair, the leather

chirping.

“David, how long have we known each other?”

“A long time, sir.”

“Good. Then you can trust me when I tell you to just

leave this one be,” he said. “Let this go.”

Sylvester was furious.

“This is my investigation—”

“Actually, it’s not,” the captain said, his voice turning

impatient. “The chief and I are handing the investigation

over to the NAS. They’re simply more experienced and better

prepared to handle this sort of thing than we are. The

department will, of course, still be involved, but in an auxiliary

capacity. You’ll be providing them with any assistance

they need, and they will be making the decisions.

Understood?”

Sylvester glanced at the two shadowy figures again.

They had not moved since he entered.

“These orders didn’t happen to come directly from

Mark Godspeed, did they?” Sylvester asked.

The captain looked down at his desk.

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“Sir, whatever’s doing this is extremely powerful, and

extremely dangerous,” Sylvester said. “Something terrible is

out there, something from another world, and I’m getting

closer to finding it. This investigation is too important to be

used as a public relations stunt for the NAS. In fact, there is

reason to believe high-standing members of the Archangels

might be involved in this violence.”

The captain’s gaze flickered briefly to the agents

standing in the back. His expression was almost

embarrassed.

“David, I think I made a mistake when I pulled you off

your light duties. I can see now that you’re not emotionally

equipped to handle something like this at present. Starting

Monday, you’ll resume your work downstairs. Now I want

you to go home and get some sleep. You look like you need

it. That’s all.”

Sylvester turned without saying anything and left the

office.

He walked slowly back down the hall to his temporary

cubicle and sat. His computer monitor had clicked over to a

colorful screen saver. He removed his glasses and polished

them.

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After a moment Garcia appeared from the hall again.

“I heard,” he said.

“Go home, Bill,” Sylvester said. “Your wife and daughter

haven’t seen you for days.” Garcia looked regretful, but

nodded in assent.

“For what it’s worth, sir, you did a hell of a good job

on this one.”

Sylvester looked up.

“You proved a lot of people wrong, sir, including me.”

Garcia hesitated a moment longer, then turned and shuffled

away down the hall.

Just as he was getting closer to the truth, the NAS was

pulling him off the case. Mark Godspeed was pulling him

off the case.

Sylvester sat back in his chair and stared at the small

box he had set on his desk. A minute passed. Then two. Suddenly

he sat forward and began scooping up files and papers

and stuffing them into his satchel. He threw in his Bible,

along with a handful of Red Vines from the tub. Then he

picked up the small box again, opened the lid, and looked

inside. Appearing satisfied at what he saw, the detective

snapped it closed and put it in his pocket. Standing, he

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pulled on his overcoat from the wobbly rack in the corner

and prepared to face the weather outside.

It was going to be a long night, and he had work to do.

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