Biting Cold (Chicagoland Vampires #6)(41)
Author: Chloe Neill

"Do the Romans strike you as folks wiling to credit someone else for a victory?"

He had a point.

"According to Kantor," he said, "the Roman armies claimed the victory, but they didn’t exactly fight the battle."

I pointed at the document but was careful not to touch. My heart began to race as we moved closer to an answer.

"Whoever did the fighting here, Tate can do the same kind of magic. What does Kantor have to say about it?"

"He says the magic was made by a ‘Dark One.’ " The librarian smiled smugly, but he’d earned it. He was good.

"So what is a ‘Dark One’? Genies? Demigods? Are they related to fairies? Claudia, the queen, seemed to know who Tate was."

The librarian didn’t look impressed by my magical auction.

"You’d hardly believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"They’re caled ‘messengers.’ They were tal. Winged. Their magic alowed them to serve the world."

"Are you talking about angels?" Paige had leaned forward a little, like she was afraid we’d think the question was crazy.

"Yeah, but without the religious baggage," the librarian said.

He puled out another document. This one showed a fight between two creatures – one with the white wings of a traditional angel, one with wings as dark and slick as a bat’s. They were both tal and sinewy with muscle, their bodies draped in flowing cloth, their wings slicing the air like blades. They were locked in battle with each other.

"There were two kinds of messengers," the librarian said.

"Those who carried peace and bounty, and those who carried out justice."

"I assume this story does not have a happy ending?" I asked.

"You would be correct," the librarian said. "The messengers of peace did their jobs. They rewarded the good. The messengers of justice did their parts, too. They punished the evil.

Together, they kept the world in balance.

"But the messengers of justice enjoyed the violence a little too much. They decided smal missteps by humans were worthy of severe punishment. It wasn’t about justice anymore. It was about ego, about their conceptions of right and wrong. They lost their moral compass."

"The Dark Ones?" I guessed.

"The Dark Ones," he confirmed. "Angels with brutal swords of righteousness. Humans fought back against them; the Dark Ones went nuclear. They took out entire cities they thought didn’t measure up to their standards. Carthage was just one example. The conflict goes back much, much further."

"How far?" Paige asked.

"Sodom and Gomorrah far."

"Why cal them ‘Dark Ones’?" Paige asked.

"According to Kantor, the darker their souls became, the darker their wings became." He flipped a page again. This drawing showed only a caricature of a creature with dark wings, their size dwarfing the rest of the image. "Because of that, some sups, including your gnomes, referred to them as ‘Dark Ones.’ "

"And other sups?" I wondered.

He glanced at me. "Humans think of them as demons, although to be a ‘demon’ doesn’t realy mean anything. ‘Demon’ is a quality, not a species. To be demonic – those who abandon good and give themselves wholy to the darkness."

"So Todd thinks Seth Tate was a Dark One," Paige said.

"Theory or fact?"

"Tate fought Ethan with a sword, and Paulie was kiled with a blade," I said. "Paulie’s definitely guilty of some transgressions. Manufacturing V, for one. If Seth is a Dark One, he could have had a justice motive. Harsh justice, but stil."

"Ironic he doesn’t consider himself worthy of that kind of justice," Paige muttered. "But even if that explains Seth," Paige said, "what about the other Seth?"

"I have no idea. So, to summarize, Seth was an angry angel, Malory tried to conjure evil, and Seth touched the book at the same time she triggered the spel. That somehow doubled him up, so now we have two identical angry angels flying around Chicago."

The very idea made me want to run away screaming…or hide under my bed for a few weeks.

"That would appear to be the case," Paige said.

I glanced back at the librarian. "Were there a lot of messengers? If he’s one of them, can we narrow down which one?"

"There aren’t many. Some you’ve heard of: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael."

"The archangels," I said.

"An angel by any other name," the librarian said. He flipped back to the first page he’d showed us, the one with the Latin text. "There are three Dark Ones listed: Uriel, Dominic, and Azrael."

"Are there any drawings that show their faces in any detail?"

"Not that I’m aware of."

Every question we managed to answer about Tate seemed only to spawn four or five more.

But the real question was how much time we’d have to figure it al out.

The sun was nearly up before I returned to Ethan’s apartments.

I’d have much rather returned to my room, but we’d made too much progress not to give him a report. Trouble didn’t care if he was being an ass; in fact, the Tates probably would have been thriled to hear it.

I found him in a leather armchair in his sitting room, one leg crossed over the other, his head on the back of the chair, his eyes closed.

He looked exhausted, and I could sympathize. It had been a long night – too ful by half of magic books, pretentious Brits, and murder, and not nearly ful enough of satisfying answers. But we had at least one more than we’d had a few hours ago, so I stood in front of him at attention and gave him a precise report.

"So Tate is a Dark One. An angel of retribution who couldn’t control his more violent urges."

"That seems to be the case. Do you know anything else about the ‘Dark Ones’ myth? Does it sound familiar to you?"

"You mean because of my age?"

Angry or not, I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to tease him. "Wel, you were alive during the big bang, weren’t you?"

He roled his eyes. "I know the myths of the falen angels.

Those who didn’t support the right camp and ended up cast aside at a decidedly downward angle. I wasn’t aware they were aleged to have caused the destruction at Carthage. It hardly seems possible the Romans would have been able to destroy al the evidence they weren’t the true victors."

"You came back from the dead," I pointed out. "You realy aren’t in a position to argue what is and isn’t possible."

"A fair point."

"How are you feeling?" I asked him.

"She’s there," he said, rubbing his temples. "There’s a dul buzzing. But I’ve pushed it back into the corner of my brain dedicated to footbal and video games."