—†— CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—⸸—
A Late Night Visitor
The office had settled into an almost peaceful quiet.
I sat in my chair, leaning back with my eyes half-closed, letting the exhaustion from the fight wash over me in waves. My shoulder still ached where the angel had clipped me, but the worst of it had faded. Sarah sat cross-legged on the floor near the desk, the Codex window floating in front of her as she scrolled through pages. Occasionally she’d pause to study a diagram more closely, her lips moving silently as she read the accompanying text.
Scattered around her were dozens of torn paper scraps, each one marked with crude attempts at the Incinerate ward. She’d gotten it to work once, maybe two hours ago, burning a small piece to ash. But she’d been unable to replicate the success since, and I could see the frustration building in the set of her shoulders.
Az dozed on the windowsill, his tiny form curled up like a cat. Remy hovered near the corner, silent and watchful, his glowing eyes watching Sarah.
For a moment, it almost felt normal. Safe.
Then a thunderous pounding on the door shattered the quiet.
I jerked upright, my hand instinctively reaching for the Colts hanging on the coat rack before my brain fully caught up with my body. The pounding came again, harder this time, accompanied by a voice calling out in heavily accented English.
“Sarah? Sarah, are you in there? Please, if you can hear me, answer!”
Sarah was already on her feet, moving toward the door before I could stop her.
“Wait,” I hissed, grabbing her arm. “We don’t know—”
“That’s Father Emil,” she said, pulling free of my grip. “He’s one of the priests from St. Marys. Father Marcus must have sent him.”
The pounding intensified, desperation bleeding through into the rhythm of fists hammering against wood.
“Sarah, please! Father Marcus has been beside himself with worry!”
I looked out the window to see that it was still dark outside, but the faintest hint of pre-dawn gray was starting to creep in at the edges. We’d been at this all night
“Let him in,” I said, moving to stand beside the door. “But be ready to close it fast if something’s wrong.”
Sarah unlatched the door and pulled it open.
Father Emil nearly fell through the doorway, catching himself on the frame at the last second. He was an older man, maybe seventy, with white hair and a weathered face that spoke of decades spent serving a parish in Minnesota winters. Right now that face was pale with exhaustion and worry, his eyes red-rimmed like he’d been crying or hadn’t slept, or both.
“Sarah, thank God,” he breathed in German, then seemed to catch himself and switched back to English. “We feared the worst. You’ve been gone for two days. Father Marcus has been beside himself with worry.”
Emil’s voice died mid-sentence as his eyes adjusted to the lamplight and he actually registered what he was seeing.
Sarah was standing there with dried blood smeared across her cheek where she’d wiped her face with bloodied fingers hours ago. The salt line visible across the threshold his feet had just crossed. The bloody ward was drawn in what was unmistakably human blood on the wall near the entrance, the sigil still dark and wet-looking in the low light. And scattered across the floor around Sarah, dozens of small torn pieces of paper, each one marked with crude attempts at the same repeating pattern, the evidence of her hours spent trying to replicate the one successful Incinerate ward.
“Mein Gott,” Emil whispered, his face going from pale to gray. He reached out and steadied himself against the doorframe, his legs suddenly unsteady beneath him. “Sarah, what is this? What have you done?”
He took a stumbling step backward, his eyes moving from the blood on her face to the ward on the wall to the scattered papers covered in what clearly looked like occult symbols to anyone who didn’t know better.
“Sarah, what has happened to you? What is this place? Who—”
His gaze finally landed on me, standing there in my shirtsleeves with my suspenders hanging loose, my hands still stained with dried blood.
“Who is this man? What has he done to you?”
“Father Emil, please,” Sarah said, her voice tight with urgency. “You need to come inside and close the door. We can’t have this conversation in the doorway where anyone might hear.”
“I will not—this is not—” Emil was backing away now, genuine fear written across his features. “Child, if this man has hurt you, if he has forced you into some kind of—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Az muttered from somewhere near my shoulder. “Remy, this one’s one of yours. You get to calm him down.”
I felt Remiel’s form shift beside me. The small armored figure that had been hovering near the desk began to grow, to expand, light spilling from between the joints in his armor as his true nature pushed against the constraints of his diminished form.
Then he was there, standing in the middle of my office at his full height, radiating presence in a way that made the room feel too small to contain him. His armor gleamed, every plate and joint fitted with a perfection that spoke of divine craftsmanship. The hooded cowl remained pulled forward, shadowing whatever features lay beneath, but his eyes burned through the darkness like twin suns—golden light that seemed to pierce straight through Emil’s skull and see everything the old priest had ever thought or believed.
“Father Emil Richter,” Remiel said, and his voice carried weight that pressed against my chest like a physical force. Not loud, but resonant, echoing with harmonics that shouldn’t exist in mortal air. “You will calm yourself. You will enter this room. You will close the door behind you. And you will sit and listen to what we have to tell you.”
Emil’s mouth worked soundlessly, his eyes wide and fixed on the angel standing before him. His legs gave out, and Sarah barely caught him before he hit the floor.
“Help me get him to the chair,” she said, struggling under the old priest’s weight.
I moved to her other side and between us we managed to guide Emil to the chair across from my desk. He sank into it like a puppet with cut strings, his gaze never leaving Remiel.
“An angel,” he whispered in German. “There is an angel in this room. A real angel.
“Yes,” Remiel replied in the same language, his accent flawless and ancient. “And you will compose yourself, Father, because what we must discuss tonight is far more important than your shock at seeing one of the Host manifest before you.”
The imperious tone seemed to snap something back into place in Emil’s mind. He blinked, shook his head slightly, and when he looked at Remiel again there was less shock and more of the stern discipline of a man who’d spent decades maintaining his composure in the face of life’s cruelties.
“You speak German,” Emil said, still in his native tongue.
“I speak all tongues that were and are and shall be,” Remiel replied. Then the light began to fade from his armor, the presence that had filled the room drawing back in on itself, and suddenly he was small again. The tiny armored figure hovering near my desk, no larger than a child’s doll, his cowl still pulled forward to shadow whatever lay beneath.
“Though this form is less taxing to maintain in the mortal realm,” Remy added, his voice back to its normal measured tones. “And less likely to attract unwanted attention from my former brothers.”
Emil stared at the little angel for a long moment, then looked at Sarah, then at me, then back at Remiel. I watched him piece it together–the blood, the wards, the papers, the angel.
“Father Marcus was right,” Emil said finally, switching back to English. “He said this day would come eventually. He said one day Sarah would need protection he couldn’t provide, and that when that day arrived, we would know. He said the signs would be unmistakable.” He gestured weakly at the room around us. “I think I would have to agree.”
“Father Emil,” Sarah said gently, kneeling beside his chair. “I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you. And I need you to believe me, even though it sounds impossible.”
The old priest looked at her with eyes that had seen too much. “Child, there is an angel the size of a child’s toy floating near that man’s desk, and you are covered in blood while standing in a room full of occult symbols. I think my capacity for disbelief has been thoroughly exhausted tonight.”
Az chose that moment to materialize on the windowsill, his tiny red form stretching and yawning like he’d just woken from a nap.
“Oh good, you got the old priest calmed down,” the little demon said cheerfully. “For a minute there I thought Remy was going to have to smite him just to shut him up.” He paused, his toothy grin widening. “Don’t worry though, Father. He couldn’t actually smite you even if he wanted to. Feathers here has a hard time getting it up these days.”
“Azazel,” Remy snapped warningly.
“What? I’m just being helpful. Wouldn’t want the good father thinking he was in any real danger from an angel who can barely manifest past the size of a–”
“Azazel…”
Emil’s eyes went even wider, his gaze snapping to the small red figure.
“And that is Azazel,” Sarah said with a weary sigh. “He’s a demon. Or he was, before he and Remiel were both bound to Jay’s soul. It’s complicated.”
“He’s also an ass,” I said, moving back to lean against my desk. “But we don’t have time for the full story right now. Father, Sarah came to my office yesterday looking for help with a missing persons case. While she was here, we were attacked. Two Principality assassins came to kill her.”
“Principalities?” Emil’s face went even paler. “I don’t understand—”
“They’re a rank of angel,” Remiel began.
“I know what Principalities are,” Emil interrupted, his voice tight. “What I don’t understand is why beings of such power would concern themselves with Sarah.”
“They were riding mortal hosts,” Remy continued. “And meant to end the sister’s life before her true nature could fully awaken.”
“Her true nature,” Emil echoed. He looked at Sarah with something like understanding dawning behind his eyes. “Father Marcus told me there was something different about you. Something he’d been protecting you from since you were an infant. He said—” Emil’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “He said you carried celestial blood.”
“I’m a Nephilim,” Sarah confirmed quietly. “Celestial blood runs in my veins. I didn’t know until last night, but now…” She gestured at the scattered papers. “Now I’m trying to learn how to use what I am before it gets me killed.”
Emil sat in silence for a long moment, his hands folded in his lap, his face unreadable.
“And the blood on the wall?” he finally asked.
“The ward is mine,” I said. “I drew it to protect this building from further attacks.”
“You’re a Nephilim as well?” The old priest asked.
“Something like that.”
“And Father Marcus knows about all of this?” The priest waved his hand across the room.
“I don’t think he knows all of the details, how could he?” Sarah admitted. “If he knows what I am and he’s been hiding me…” She paused, her hands tightening in her lap. Then he knows why I can’t just go back to the convent and why I can’t allow myself to put others in danger.
She looked up at Emil, meeting his eyes directly. “Father, I need you to go back to St. Marys. Tell Father Marcus I’m safe.” She glanced at me, then back at the old priest. “And tell him we’ll come to see him soon. Can you do that for me?”
The old priest looked at her for a long time, something working behind his eyes that I couldn’t quite read. Finally, he nodded.
“I will tell him.” Emil’s hands gripped the arms of the chair. “But Sarah, Father Marcus has been protecting more than just you all these years.” He glanced at Remiel, then back at Sarah. “There are things happening at St. Marys. Things I think your new companions need to hear as well.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
Emil’s weathered face creased with worry. “There is something beneath the cathedral. Something old.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Father Marcus calls it a Relic. It’s guarded and kept in a hidden chamber below the foundation.”
“Guarded by what?” Sarah pressed.
“A spirit,” Emil said quietly. “A bound spirit chained to the Relic for longer than anyone can remember. Father Marcus says it has been moved from church to church, monastery to monastery.” He looked down at his hands. “And now it is here, beneath St. Marys.”
“Wait,” I said, straightening up from where I’d been leaning against the desk. “A spirit?”
Emil looked at me like he was trying to explain color to a blind man. “I do not know what it truly is, Mr. Donati. Only what I have seen.” He paused, and I watched him search for the right words. “A presence. A shadow that moves with purpose. Something that can speak, that can think, but is neither living nor dead in any way that makes sense to me.”
I turned to Az and Remy. “What do you two know about spirits? Are they dangerous?”
Az and Remy exchanged one of those loaded glances that told me I wasn’t going to like what came next.
“Yes,” Remy said slowly. “We know of spirits, and they are very dangerous.”
“How dangerous are we talking?”
“Extremely,’ Az said. His usual tone had been replaced by something more serious.”
“When most beings die, their souls travel to one of the realms. Heaven for the faithful. Hell for the damned. But some souls refuse to go. They linger. They remain tethered somehow in ways they shouldn’t be able to. Over time, they become something else. Something dangerous.”
“They exist in a space between realms,” Az added. “They can hurt Celestials and mortals in ways that we don’t understand.”
“Worse than hurt,” Remy said quietly. “A powerful spirit can slay an angel or demon. Truly slay them.”
“So you’re telling me there’s something underneath St. Marys that could do that? Actually kill celestial beings permanently?”
“If it is powerful enough, yes,” Remy said.
I looked back at Emil. “And this spirit is guarding something inside the cathedral?”
“Yes, and it has been growing more agitated,” Emil explained. His voice had taken on the careful cadence of someone who had lived with fear for so long it had become routine. “For years it was quiet. Dormant. Father Marcus said it would sometimes whisper to him when he descended to check on the Relic.” He swallowed hard. “But it never caused trouble. In recent weeks though, something has changed.”
He paused, and I could see him working through the memory of whatever he’d witnessed.
“It has become violent,” he continued. “It appears in the cathedral. It torments the other priests, showing them terrible visions. Last night, after Sarah didn’t return, it became worse than I have ever seen it.” His hands were shaking now. “It terrified young Father Hoffman so badly that the boy can’t stop shaking.”
“Why last night specifically?” Sarah asked. “What changed?”
Emil looked at her with something like pity in his old eyes. “Because you did not return. I think it somehow knew that you were in danger.” He took a breath. “The spirit’s agitation is connected to you, Sarah.”
The room fell silent. Outside, I could hear the first sounds of the city waking up. Distant voices calling to each other in the early morning cold.
“There’s something else,” Emil said. His voice had dropped even lower. “Vatican investigators. Two cardinals. They are scheduled to arrive soon, though we do not know the exact date.” He looked at Sarah. “Somehow Rome knows there is something hidden at St Marys. Father Marcus has been dreading their arrival for months.”
Remy drifted toward the window, his small form silhouetted against the pre-dawn light. He was quiet for a long moment, just staring out at the street below.
“It’s starting to snow,” he said quietly.
I looked past him and saw the first flakes beginning to fall, barely visible in the gray morning light.
“There was snow on the ground when we arrived,” Remy continued. His voice had gone flat. “Not much. Just a light covering on the steps of the cathedral.” He turned back to face us. “A Day. Maybe two at most. That’s all the time we have before past-me and the other Archangel arrive in St. Cloud.”
“You remember that specifically?” I asked. “The snow?”
“I remember everything about that mission,” Remy said. There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard before. Something that sounded like he was seeing the whole picture for the first time.
“I was told there was a Nephilim hiding in the basement of St. Marys. That the clergy was protecting the abomination. That I needed to get inside and complete God’s will.” He looked at Emil. “But there was never a Nephilim in the basement, was there? There was a Relic. Guarded by a spirit powerful enough to kill angels.”
Emil nodded slowly, not understanding where Remy was going with this.
“They sent me in there,” Remy said quietly. “Where the spirit was waiting.”
The room went quiet. I watched Remy stare out at the falling snow, and I understood what he wasn’t saying. What he was realizing about the mission he’d been given. About the orders that had sent him here.
He turned back to the window.
“Soon, past-me will arrive at that cathedral. And he’ll have the same orders I had. To get inside. To find what’s hidden there. To destroy anyone who stands in the way.”
“And if they find out what’s hidden under the cathedral,” I said, understanding the full picture now.
“Then everything Father Marcus has protected for decades will be exposed,” Emil finished. “The Relic. The spirit.” He looked at Sarah with genuine fear in his eyes. “And you.”
Sarah’s face had gone pale. I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, feeling her trembling beneath the fabric of her habit.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “But first we need to make sure Sarah is actually safe before we go anywhere near that cathedral.” I looked at Emil. “The angels hunting her can sense what she is from a distance. We need to hide that before we risk moving her through the streets again.”
“How do you hide what someone is?” Emil asked.
“With a ward,” I said. “A concealment ward that masks her celestial essence.” I glanced at Remy for confirmation before continuing. “But it needs to be inscribed on something she can carry with her. Something small that she can wear close to her body.”
“But it can’t be anything blessed or connected to the Church,” I explained.
Emil sat very still for a moment. Then his hand moved to his chest where something hung beneath his shirt. He pulled out a delicate chain, and at the end of it was a small golden locket.
“My mother gave this to me before she died,” he said slowly. His weathered fingers worked the clasp open with care. “She told me to keep it close, that one day I would know who needed it more than I.” He looked at Sarah, and his eyes were wet. “My mother was always very fond of you when you were little, Sarah. Never having had a daughter of her own, she doted on you whenever Father Marcus would bring you to visit.”
He held the locket out to Sarah with shaking hands.
“I had always planned to give it to you eventually,” he continued. “Perhaps when you took your final vows, or on some other significant day. But it seems that fate has decided this is the right time.”
Sarah took the locket carefully, like it might shatter if she moved too quickly. She opened it with trembling fingers, revealing two small oval frames inside. The frames were empty, whatever photographs they’d once held long since removed or faded.
“It’s perfect,” I said, leaning in to examine it. “The interior surface is smooth enough to hold the inscription. Small enough to hide beneath clothing.” I looked at Emil. “And it’s personal, meaningful. I’m not sure how but I think that matters.”
Sarah closed the locket and looked at Emil with tears streaming down her face. “Thank you, Father. I’ll take care of it. I promise.”
Emil rose from the chair on unsteady legs. “I must return to the cathedral. Father Marcus will want to know you are safe, and we need to prepare for your arrival.” He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. “One more thing, Sarah. Your mother would be proud of you. Of what you’ve become, even in the face of such terrible circumstances.”
Sarah’s head snapped up, her mouth opening like she was about to say something. But Emil was already pulling the door closed behind him, his footsteps echoing down the stairs and fading into the pre-dawn darkness.
She stood there frozen, staring at the closed door. The locket hung from her hand, forgotten.
“Sarah?” I said carefully.
“He knew,” she whispered. “He knew my mother. They knew who she was.” Her voice cracked. “All these years I thought I was abandoned by strangers. Left on the steps with no name, no history.”
I watched her process it, and watched the color drain from her face as the implications settled in.
“Why wouldn’t they tell me?” The words came out barely louder than a breath. “Why let me grow up thinking I came from nowhere?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did Az or Remy, both of them watching her with unusual quiet.
She closed her hand around the locket, her knuckles going white.
“We’ll ask Father Marcus when we get to St. Marys,” I said finally.
Sarah nodded slowly, but I could see her mind was somewhere else entirely. Working through twenty-four years of questions that had just shifted from unanswerable to deliberately unanswered.
I waited until the sound of Emil’s footsteps had faded completely before I moved to lock the door again.
“Well,” Az said from the windowsill, his voice unusually subdued. “That was a lot to process. Bound spirits, Remial getting set up, a mysterious Relic, and apparently the priests have been keeping secrets about more than just what’s under the cathedral.”
“We have work to do before we can go to St. Marys. Sarah needs that concealment ward inscribed on this locket. And I need ammunition that can actually hurt what’s coming for us.”
I looked at the window, where the gray dawn was starting to brighten into a proper morning.
“Let’s get started.”