Jordan sat on the hotel room's couch. Maasiai leaned next to the window, occasionally glancing out, seemingly none the worse for her little trip to Hades and Shal-Mari. Jada-dan flipped through the briefing papers again, probably looking for more information regarding how likely it was that someone would shoot at him.
One of the Renegade-Outcast pairing was Lilim, or so the report suggested. That was why all three of them wore sunglasses. Ever so slightly morose, Jordan wondered if he had been picked for this to overdose him on that Band.
It's not the Band. It's the Choir, he thought to himself, using the downtime to contemplate the un-realized bias Regulus had pointed out to him. The Bright is, in perhaps her own words, a "goof." But that is not unusual, or so I read, for the newly redeemed. Why does it matter to me that she continue to be happy? Is it only that she is new to Heaven and deserves to know the glory? That she understands that Judgment is necessary?
He shifted slightly. This self-contemplation did not seem to be helping him sort out what he felt. I am a Seraph. My emotions should not be confused. They should be simple. Many Elohim have told me my Choir is prone to purity of emotion.
He tried to cheer himself. Perhaps he was partly assigned to this mission because he had brought back a Geas to Judgment from an unredeemed Lilim. Then he sighed. It was unlikely he could accomplish the same thing with this Renegade. Not if the Outcast was as dangerous as reported. Still, one could pray.
There was a rattling of the adjoining room's door, and a murmur of a deep baritone voice. It was answered by a female one, chirping cheerfully. Jada-dan got up and moved toward the door. The sound of conversation drifted through, quieter. Still only two voices, Jordan thought.
After a moment, there was a knock on the suite door. Jad'an opened it and asked, "Do you need something?" His voice was quiet and calm, and he made no signals.
There was a female, disdainful, sniff. "That's usually my line. Can we stop the silly password stuff? I know what you are and who you work for, and you know the same about us."
The Symphony hummed around him, in harmony with her words, despite something oddly familiar about the pattern of her words. He said, "True enough. Let them in, Jad'an."
His Elohite stepped backwards, moving to stand by the king-sized bed, next to the couch where Jordan sat.
And in sauntered a tall woman in a leather jacket and denim jeans, thin, with a Seraphic look to her. Balseraphic, Jordan reminded himself. Still, there was something about her. Something that felt familiar. He couldn't place it.
The woman glanced around, while a somewhat taller, burly male loomed behind her, his dull glare a parody of Maasiai's protective alertness. He, too, wore denim and leather, uncomfortably.
The female demon's gaze finally settled back on Jordan. He frowned at her, wondering why her movements and speech patterns were so hauntingly familiar, associations tickling at the back of his mind like a breeze.
"You'd be able to see better if you took off the sunglasses," she told him, her eyes like jade stars -- cold and distant. "The Renegade Daughter isn't here."
He frowned even harder, narrow eyebrows furrowing together, but he took off the glasses. "And what is your name and nature?" he asked.
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "He's Tebah, my partner. I'm Betharan."
And the Symphony translated for him. Tebah, murder, butchery; guarding of the body. Djinn. Partner, guard, warden. And she was Betharan, Beth-haran, House of Grace and Fallen Lilim.
"You," Jordan breathed in shock, seeing her in the Groves again, on wings of light and shadow. "You yet live!"
She stared back, tall and proud, her face a mask. There was the gulf of all the Pit between them, and it seemed that her eyes were as dark and cold as the coldest winter sky he could imagine. He wondered if he saw a shadow pass over her face and hair like the ghost of a leathern wing, or if it were only his imagination.
Jordan felt his eyes narrow, and he saw the dark irony. He had once been assigned to check upon her state, and now here she was, the first Bright he had seen. Defiled. Broken. Through a thin smile, he said, "Of course you would have Fallen again, Hellborn. Wind is notoriously unreliable."
He had thought her face still and immobile before. Now she was a statue of ice. Then her lips parted, as if for a kiss, and she stared at him with her eyes gone unfocused. Her fingers crooked, with the last joint held in that stiff manner that suggested the Song of Claws was well known to the owner. She was almost gentle and yielding -- why did her expression seem a mask of murder?
Beside him, Jada-dan flinched and Maasiai's fingers began to move in the sign for Danger.
Sanity returned to the Fallen Lilim's eyes, and her glance flicked briefly to the Elohite. "If you want reliability," she murmured to Jordan, her voice soft and monotone, "you see it now. We of the Game play by rules."
And the Symphony whispered darkly around him, that yes, she was Game, and she played by those twisted rules, dancing within them as once she had danced in the winds above the Groves. And she was, yes, reliable -- after the fashion of dark Lilim and Game-Servitors.
Dear God, he thought. Why?
He almost asked her, but the Djinn interrupted, and the moment was lost in the business of hunting -- and the uneasy partnership, that the Earth not be threatened by further rogue elements.
But something within him cried numbly.
---