Adrian pounded on my back to help me cough out the water. Once I was breathing normally again, he withdrew his knife and carved an X onto the stone support beam next to us.
“This looks like the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said, the knife disappearing under the water to presumably go back into his pants. “Remember that.”
“Gateway’s under the Brooklyn Bridge, got it,” I said. Not only was the water cold, it also had a current. If Adrian hadn’t hauled me against him and held on to a corner of the bridge’s support beam, we would have floated down the waterway by now.
“Brutus!” Adrian called out, and the gargoyle swooped back toward us. When he got close, I saw that his expression was as incensed as a newly bathed cat’s, and I wondered if this was the first time that Brutus had ever gotten wet.
“I know, boy, we’re getting out of here,” Adrian muttered.
He let me go and said something in Demonish. Brutus dipped down and grabbed Adrian with his clawed hands, then flung him high over his head. Before I had time to wonder if Brutus had lost his mind, he swooped down under Adrian, who landed on Brutus’s back and grabbed the reins as if he were a cowboy stuntman. If I wasn’t busy treading water while floating past the bridge, I would’ve given them a round of applause.
Then Brutus flew down and angled himself toward me, and I grabbed the arm that Adrian held out to me. He hauled me up with a lot less flair, not that I wanted to duplicate his aerial acrobatics. When he settled me in front of him, I gripped the base of Brutus’s wings to steady myself, and hugged my legs to the gargoyle’s sides to keep from sliding off.
“When did you learn to do that?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard against the wind.
Adrian’s mouth touched my ear as he leaned down. “During one of the long, lonely nights when Zach kept me from you.” Then he pulled the reins to the right, and Brutus turned, flying us back toward the large city across the bridge.
“Stay high,” Adrian shouted to Brutus.
The rest of what he said was in Demonish, so I didn’t understand it. Not that I was trying to translate based on the few words that I knew. I was too busy staring at the endless glittering cityscape beneath us. Some buildings were so tall that a quick swoop downward would’ve had Brutus brushing their roofs. Other, smaller buildings seemed to crouch next to the skyscrapers as if seeking shelter in their shadows. Brake lights and headlights colored the streets below with lines of red and white, and all the various noises were so loud that they drifted up to us as a dull hum even from our height.
Brutus flew us toward a large, darkened section within this brightly lit concrete maze. As he descended and I saw the tops of trees, I realized that this must be Central Park. Brutus landed next to a small bridge, and as soon as we slid off, he shook out his wings, expelling the last of the water from them.
By this time, I’d figured out why we were in New York. “You think the staff might be here,” I said through teeth that were starting to chatter. Summer or not, being soaked in a cold river and then flown around at high altitudes was enough to make anyone chilly.
“Father Louis said that the chapel’s first stop in America had been New York, although he didn’t say where. Still—” he flashed me a quick grin “—five minutes on Google will fix that. We know that the staff used to be in the chapel’s other, previous locations, and since the demons didn’t beat us to it in France, it might be here.”
“It’s definitely worth checking out,” I agreed.
Adrian’s gaze swept over me, lingering in certain spots. “Plus, I know a safe place we can stay in the city, so after we check the chapel’s old site, we’ll go there. First, though, I need to call my friend to get you some dry clothes and shoes.”
Dry clothes sounded so good. So did a shower. Not only was I wet and chilly, I could smell things that I didn’t want to think about. That river hadn’t been hygienic, to say the least.
“What about Brutus?”
Adrian patted the gargoyle. “He can fly around Central Park and then get some fish out of the bay. He’s got to be hungry.”
At the mention of food, my stomach let out a disturbingly loud noise, as if I needed reminding that it had been over a day since I’d eaten. Adrian heard it and he pulled me into his arms.
“Sorry this has been so rough on you,” he breathed.
I let out a choked laugh. “Me? You’re the one who’s gotten slashed up, shot up and beaten to a pulp recently.”
He waved a hand, as if those were only minor nuisances. “I’ve been through much worse, and for a lot longer.”
That’s right, Demetrius had spent decades training Adrian under extremely brutal circumstances, all so Adrian could become the most lethal Judian who’d ever lived. Half-Judian, a dark inner whisper reminded me. The other half was demon. His lineage literally consisted of “evil” and “more evil.” What would Adrian do once he found that out? Would it change his determination to help me fight against demons and minions? Could he bring himself to stand with me against Demetrius, if he knew that Demetrius was his real father?
I pushed those thoughts back. Half, whole, whatever Adrian was, I trusted him. More than that, I loved him. That’s why when he murmured, “Stay here, Ivy. Costa’s cell is soaked, so I need to get to a phone to call my friend,” and then left me alone in the park, I stayed.
Two hours later, I was worried enough about him to regret this decision. I started heading out of the park, determined to look for Adrian, when I saw a figure running toward me and realized that it was him.
“I’ve got a car waiting at the entrance,” he said, grabbing my hand. Then he yelled out, “Brutus! You need to follow us.”
The gargoyle, who’d waited with me while Adrian was away, chuffed in understanding. Then he flapped his great wings and soared above us as I followed Adrian out of the park.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
BY “CAR,” ADRIAN meant limousine, I soon found out. All the mirrors on it had been removed, and in the plush interior, on one of the leather seats, a long coat, new clothes, shoes and, more important, food, were waiting for me. I’d mostly dried off by now, but I still changed into the new bra, underwear and ankle-length pink dress while holding the coat over me for modesty’s sake. Adrian turned away as well while I changed, but that was probably to hide his smile. Yes, I knew I was being ridiculous, and yet still, I couldn’t bring myself to strip naked in front of him. Plus, though the driver’s privacy window was up, there was someone else in the car with us, too.
Adrian must have changed clothes on the way to getting me. He’d traded his denim pants and T-shirt for a pair of black slacks and a formal white shirt that looked like it could’ve been paired with a tuxedo. I would’ve asked where he got such nice clothes for the both of us, but the delicious smells emanating from the plastic covered container took priority.
After I wolfed down the food, which turned out to be an unexpectedly fancy meal of filet minion, mashed potatoes and mixed grilled vegetables, I finally put on my new shoes. Once I did, I decided I might never take them off. My poor feet were bruised, cracked and split in so many places from running around barefoot, a pedicurist would scream in horror if she saw them.
Now fed, clothed and properly shod, I asked the obvious question. “Who is your friend in this city? Donald Trump?”
He snorted. “No. He’s a hotel manager. This is the hotel limo, and he got our clothes and food from the hotel, too.”
“Oh.” Made sense. Then I added, “I hope he doesn’t get in trouble for all this.”
Adrian gave me a sideways smile. “He won’t. He’s on good terms with the hotel’s owner.”
“What’s that for?” I asked, gesturing to a large cooler shoved against the limo’s other section of seats.
Adrian glanced at it. “Hunks of raw meat for Brutus, in case he doesn’t get lucky with fi
sh in the bay later.”
I leaned back against the leather seats. Even with Adrian’s large frame filling up half this section, it was so spacious that I almost could’ve stretched out. I didn’t, of course. I was so tired, I’d probably pass out, and we still had work to do.
“You found out where the old chapel site is?”
He nodded, looking thoughtful. “It’s at an old estate in Jericho, Long Island. Actually, I, ah, know the place.”
“You do?” I asked in surprise.
For some reason, he seemed uneasy about the topic. “Yes, but I didn’t notice anything special about the chapel back then.”
“What is this place? Why were you there?”
He shifted in his seat, as if suddenly having trouble getting comfortable. “It used to be a huge chateau, but it nearly burned to the ground back in the 1960s. There’s not much left of it now. Just servants’ quarters, stables, that sort of thing.”
I didn’t know if this really was a sore subject for him, or if my being overly tired was the reason why it seemed like he was avoiding my question. “And how did you know it?” I repeated.
His face became shuttered, confirming my suspicions. “Because Demetrius was the one who set it on fire.”
“What?” I asked with a gasp.
His shoulders tightened. “The sixties were around the time that I started exploring the human world. Long Island wasn’t far from the Bennington realm, and the couple who owned the chateau traveled a lot. So, when I was in the area and they weren’t home, I used to stay there.”
My mouth was still agape. “You squatted in their house?”
He gave me a glare that was half defensive, half arrogant. “I was used to ruling my own realm. It gave me expensive tastes, but I didn’t want to leave a money trail that Demetrius could follow. Needless to say, he didn’t encourage my explorations in the human world.”
I could figure out the rest. “So, when Demetrius found out that you regularly crashed at this chateau, he burned it down out of spite?”
Adrian’s smile held all the iciness of a demon realm. “And told me he’d do the same to any other human place I frequented.”
That sounded like Demetrius, but I was struck by something else. “You realize that you happened to stay at two out of the three places where the staff has been,” I pointed out.
He opened his mouth to speak, then paused. “If the staff’s at the old Graenan estate, that’s true,” he finally said.
I grunted. “Proving once again that fate has a twisted sense of humor.”
The staff might have been right under Demetrius’s nose when he set that fire, and he hadn’t known it. Thank God that demons didn’t have the ability to sense hallowed objects, or Demetrius could’ve sent the realm walls crashing down decades ago.
Beyond the window, buildings and urban areas were starting to be replaced by trees and a much more rural-looking setting.
“Let’s hope the staff is still there,” I said, giving Adrian a tired, if impish, smile. “If you send Demetrius a selfie of you holding it next to that house’s ruins, he might combust with rage and save us the trouble of killing him.”
* * *
THE FORMER CHATEAU was on over ten acres of land in an area where the other estates also had a lot of elbow room. Obviously, this area still catered to the wealthy. We had to park outside the estate’s closed gates, and if we’d been in a regular car instead of a limo, I felt sure that someone would’ve called the police to report an attempted robbery.
Of course, our fancy ride wasn’t the only thing that helped. The late hour did, too. At just after three in the morning, any normal resident would be in bed. If I didn’t have a life-or-death task in front of me, that’s where I’d be. Jet lag had nothing on realm lag. I’d been bouncing back and forth between so many time zones without sleep; if I started speaking in tongues out of sheer exhaustion, I wouldn’t be surprised.
That’s why I didn’t object when, safely out of sight from our limo driver, Adrian had Brutus land and then we climbed on his back. I might not like traveling via Gargoyle Airlines, but I didn’t think I had a ten-acre trek in me at the moment.
Brutus had barely taken off when my hallowed sensors started to perk up. They grew stronger over the time it took him to fly us to the ruins, and when he set us down next to the charred remains of an abandoned chateau, they were vibrating.
“Feel anything?” Adrian asked.
“Yep,” I responded. “For starters, now I’m awake, and the readings I’m getting feel stronger than the ones in France.”
“Are they stronger than the ones that were at the campus chapel?” he asked at once.
I sent my senses out as I followed that inner sensor to the far side of the rubble that marked the main house. “No,” I said at last. Then I pointed to an overgrown section of weeds that looked out of place even for abandoned ruins. “From what I’m feeling, that’s where the chapel used to be.”
Adrian looked back and forth between the weeds and the crumbled wall next to it. From his expression, he was restructuring how the house used to look when it was whole, and part of me wished I could’ve seen what was in his mind’s eye.
“I remember it now,” he finally said. “It’s unbelievable that it wasn’t destroyed by the fire, too.”
The chapel had been located right next to the main house, which hadn’t survived the blaze, yet somehow, it had. “Something must have saved it,” I said quietly.
That “something” had to be divine intervention, although I didn’t say it out loud. I might have conflicted feelings about the Great Being, but I had no doubt that He wouldn’t let a fire destroy one of His famed, destiny-fulfilling weapons.
I bent down and touched the section of ground where the pulses were the strongest. The supernatural version of red alert that seemed to follow the staff was there, and it was stronger than in France, but...it still felt like echoes compared to touching the wall in the crypt beneath the campus chapel.
“Unless its casing has been spelled to mute its effect, the staff isn’t here,” I said with a heavy sense of disappointment. “I think it used to be, though. I can feel traces of it.”
And if I went by my time-lessons-the-effect theory, then the staff had followed the migration of the chapel, first being in France, then here, and then at Marquette University. Why had someone bothered to ship it along with the disassembled chapel to all of those places? They must have known how valuable the staff was to go to such trouble. Most important, if it wasn’t in any of the previous three “holy homes” it had resided in before, where was it now?
“Maybe there’s another tablet or clue underneath this slab,” I said, choosing to be optimistic that we hadn’t come all the way here for nothing. “Or maybe the staff is here and there’s a reason why I don’t feel it. I say we dig and make sure that the staff’s supernatural vibes aren’t being muted with symbols like they were back in the Marquette chapel.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MY OPTIMISM PROVED, well, too optimistic. Brutus dug until he could have buried himself in the hole he’d made, but the site beneath the former chapel’s location yielded nothing except dirt. Adrian gave him the contents of the cooler for his efforts, which turned out to be thirty pounds of raw meat. Brutus gobbled it up in much the same way I’d devoured my dinner earlier. Then Adrian gave him instructions to follow us until we reached the city. Once there, Brutus was free to fly around at will. Once more, I was grateful for the Archon glamour that made him look like a seagull to everyone except me, Adrian and Archons. Otherwise, a gargoyle flying around New York City would garner international headlines.
As we headed back to the hotel that Adrian told me we were staying at, I was torn between feeling tired, frustrated and out of ideas. My moodiness didn’t make for much conversation. The tablet was our only clue to
the staff’s location, but we’d been to every “holy home” that it had referred to, and turned up nothing. Now what?
“Maybe we missed something at the Milwaukee campus,” I announced after almost an hour of silence. “What if the tablet wasn’t the only clue stuck inside the crypt’s walls? Of course, now it’ll be a nightmare to go back and give the crypt another look-see. The place must be crawling with every government agency possible after an obvious supernatural attack—”
“You think anyone who doesn’t already know about demons is going to have any idea what happened there?” Adrian interrupted.
I stared at him. “Demons and minions were coming out of realm tunnels and dragging people right back into them. This was too big, too public, to be swept under a rug.”
Adrian gave me a jaded look as he pressed a button and a TV screen came down from the roof of the limo. “Demons have minions placed in positions of power all around the world. They’ll have come up with an explanation that has nothing to do with the truth, believe me.”
When the TV powered on and Adrian picked a news channel, he was proved correct. “Chemical weapons attack on campus!” read the graphic behind the news anchor. “Mass causalities after domestic terrorism. Government vows retaliation.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said in disgust. “Where are all the cell phone videos that could prove what happened?”
“If they don’t get confiscated, they’ll be explained away, discredited or, most likely, never make the airwaves,” Adrian replied. “It might end up online on one of those conspiracy sites, but who pays attention to that stuff when it’s paired next to photos of Bigfoot, Nessie and Chupacabra?”
I was stopped from commenting about that when the limo pulled up to the Waldorf Astoria. I was surprised when the driver opened our door and we got out. Adrian seemed to know where he was going, and he led me inside a jaw-droppingly extravagant lobby decorated in gold and white, with marble floors that looked like they belonged at the Vatican in Rome.