chapter 6
The punk-slash-emo guy running the front desk at the Belmont Hotel didn't even give me a second look when I lumbered in holding two large duffels. I was getting more accomplished with altering my outward appearance, and had dressed down for the occasion. My hair was long and greased, I had three days growth on my chin, and my clothes were worn and dirty. On the walk over, I had also discovered how to repair my inward appearance, fixing the rips and tears in my clothing so I could see and sense myself with some semblance of physical dignity.
"How much for your best room?" I asked, approaching the desk.
Punkmo shrugged. "It's twenty-five per night, all the rooms are priced the same." He reached under the desk and produced a padlock with a key. "Just find an empty room and lock the inside. When you leave, lock the outside."
The modern world sure made being limited to cash a frustrating proposition, especially when trying to find a place to hunker down for a while. Most upscale hotels required holding a credit card on file, which meant bypassing anything a person might want to spend any amount of time in, and instead making do with something that someone could spend time in if they had to. I had to. I turned my back on him so I could count through my stash without him being able to see how much I was carrying. I handed him three hundreds.
"Good for twelve days, right?" I asked.
He furrowed his brow and looked at me. The math was a little too much for him. "Sure man."
He snatched the cash a little too eagerly and pushed the lock forward. I put down the sword to pick up the lock and stuck it into my jacket pocket.
The Belmont. The name made me laugh out loud. The place was about half of a step above the condemned projects where I had watched Rebecca drain a good guy. I was sure it had been a fine place a hundred years ago or so, but it seemed like it hadn’t been renovated since, well, ever. The interior was old, drab, and dirty, with peeling faded wallpaper and either missing or busted furniture. The rooms weren't much better, decorated with ripped sofas, old mattresses stained yellow from all kinds of bodily fluids, ancient fridges of which maybe fifty percent were functional, and a varying but always present amount of mold. Every room had roaches. Only two of the rooms I passed had people. The place was more for quickies with hookers and drug exchanges than living in, but I didn’t have too many housing options.
I settled into 7G, a room on the top floor in the southeast corner. It gave me a decent view of the streets below through small grimy windows that would hide my own visage from anyone looking in, and a mattress that had a better than fifty percent chance of not housing an STD.
I gently slid Josette off of my shoulder, placing her on top of the bed. She was still unconscious, but her breathing was steady. Her wounds continued to ooze blood, refusing to close over, and the gash on her cheek had some nasty black spider veins reaching out across her face. I had no way to judge the effect of a demonic wound on an angel, but going by what had happened to the Were when I stabbed him, she was suffering from damage that wouldn’t heal on its own. When I put my hand to her forehead, I could feel that she was burning up, maybe literally.
"Josette," I whispered.
She didn't respond. That raised the question - how do you heal an angel who was wounded in a fight against a demon? Answer - holy water. Maybe it wouldn't work, but it seemed like the best option and I didn't have much to lose. I wasn't going to let her die, not like this. She had spared my life, and I was going to return the favor. Maybe she’d even be grateful. If she wouldn't let me out of our deal, the act of kindness might be enough to convince her to at least offer some measure of help in completing the task without having my soul destroyed. Not an alliance, but maybe information.
"I'll be back," I said to her prone form as I ducked out of the room, put the padlock on the door, and headed out to find a church.
The sun had vanished behind dark, heavy clouds, and it started pouring while I walked. I needed a vessel for the holy water, so I dropped in on a liquor store and bought the cheapest bottle of wine they had, which I dumped on the pavement outside. I got into a small argument with a passing vagrant about wasting heat, and then resumed my hunt for a house of God. When I pushed through the twin doors of Our Blessed Lady Mary RC Church I was soaked to the bone, the water dripping off of me creating a slippery mess on the cold marble floors.
"That rain's right devilish."
I had been hoping to avoid running into a priest, but he was already mopping the floor when I walked in. He was an older man with short reddish-white hair, a fair complexion, and a kind smile. He wore the wisdom of age on his face and the creases around his eyes. Irish, if his accent was any indication.
"It sure is Father," I said, not making eye contact. "I'm sorry for the mess."
There was an expanding pool of rainwater gathering at my feet. He looked down at it and chuckled.
"Don't ye worry yerself child,” he said. “Ye look like ye could stand bein' outta the rain."
I had disguised the empty wine bottle as an umbrella. He looked at it, then looked at me, then looked back at the umbrella.
"Might've helped ye a wee bit if ye had used that thing,” he said, a strange look on his face. “Then again, an empty wine bottle ain't much help in a rainstorm, is it?"
He could see right through my glamour. Were all priests Touched? There was no point being ambiguous.
"I need your help," I told him. "Holy water."
"What does someone the likes of you need with holy water?" he asked. "More like to poison you than heal you crossbreed."
I had to know. "How did you know? Are you Touched?"
He laughed then, an old, wise, hardened laugh. "I didn't just come out of the potato field laddie," he said. "And I don't need the blessin’ of a pure angel to make my eyes work proper. Ye may fool some of ‘em, but I'm a humble servant of the Lord, and I know me own. Besides laddie, what darn fool carries an umbrella, but isn’t using it to keep himself dry?"
Dante was proving to be a little unreliable when it came to who could and couldn't sense my true nature. Here was a self-proclaimed plain ordinary mortal, and he saw right through the glamour, past the blood and lineage, straight through to the truth.
"It's not for me Father," I said. "I have a friend who was injured by a demon, a Great Were." I didn't know how much he knew, but I figured if he were familiar with angels and crossbreeds, he would know demons too.
The priest rubbed his hand along his chin. "A Great Were eh? That's a nasty beastie to get into a scuffle with. How many seraph were involved?"
"Just one," I told him. "You know about weres?"
"Aye, of course I do laddie,” he said. “Always a treat to watch a werewolf movie, and laugh at how weak they portray those foul creatures ta be. A Great Were, now that's a hundred times nastier than your nastiest werewolf. Mean and smart, they are. Did you say one?"
I shrugged. "Well, one and a half I guess."
"Aye, a half," he said, his tone harsh. "The seraph was injured, and ye’re here for holy water to heal it?"
"Is it so hard to believe father, that I would try to heal an injured angel?"
My voice was rising, and he put his finger to his lips to shush me, motioning with his eyes to the few scattered people kneeling behind the church pews.
"Actually boy-o, it is," he said.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me off to the left, through a door and into his private office. He closed the door behind us, then let go of my arm and reinstated his direct glare. "Look here laddie, it takes at least three seraph to take down a Great Were on a good day. Ye're saying ye helped one seraph do it, and not only did ye win, but the angel survived?”
I hadn’t known what we were fighting, and now I realized that was probably a good thing. If I had thought about how powerful it really was I probably would never have made my kamikaze move against it.
“That’s right,” I said. “Although, I can’t be too sure about the part where she survives unless you decide to help me. I would think you would be eager to see one of yours back to good health.”
“It’s not a matter of what I want boy-o, it’s a matter of trust. Do ye even understand what ye are? Ye don't have a side but fer yerself. Ye can cross back and forth on a whim. Ye can employ all manner of trickery and deceit to meet yer aims, and only the most astute of the Divine will even have an idea they’re bein’ double-crossed. Ye can cause all sorts of mayhem, discord, destruction for no other reason than because it suits ye, all while smellin’ like roses and gettin’ all the blessins’ of Heaven."
His face was turning beet red, and his anger was growing beyond reason. Without thinking, my hand shot forward and wrapped around his neck. His eyes widened in surprise, and he stopped talking.
"Listen to me Father," I said then, my own anger stewing. "My aim is only to heal the angel. She saved my life, and I intend to return the favor. Don't make it at the expense of your own."
I let go of him then, drawing back in a shock of my own at the violent outburst. I had never been like this before. A wave of guilt washed over me.
"I'm sorry Father," I said, lowering my head. "I'm pretty new at this gig, but the one thing I know is that I'm not your enemy." I turned to leave.
"Wait," he said, rubbing his neck with his hand. I looked back at him, feeling doubly foolish for almost choking him to death. "Why do ye think the seraph survived?"
I hadn't expected the question, especially after what I had just done. "Excuse me, father?"
"A Great Were can kill an angel with one blow,” he said. “Why didn't he?"
I didn't know enough about weres of any kind to know the injury was uncommon. I told him about the fight. I gave him all the details. When I was done, he took the wine bottle and left the room. When he returned, he blessed it himself. He didn't speak again until he handed it back.
"He was gloatin’," he told me then. "He let the angel run him through so he could do it, and made straight sure not to kill her with his first cut. He didn't know what ye were. He didn't expect ye to recover. Ye got lucky killin’ him." He walked over and held out the bottle. "I don't like ye laddie, and I don't like yer kind or whom ya be workin’ fer, but if helping ye helps a seraph, I'll do it this once. Darker days are comin’ when a demon lets himself be stabbed, and Lord knows we need all the help we can get. Now go, and don't ever show yer face in my church again."