4. Caspian

I really didn’t want to leave Pepper and her husband alone. We couldn’t have done any of this without her and if we had a choir of angels who killed first and asked questions later, they could have a target on their backs. I trusted Lucky with their safety, though.

He got into a lot of trouble as a kid, but he straightened himself out and had put together a pretty amazing team. They were a mixed bag of supernaturals, but I could feel the power coming off of them. Lucky had enough abilities at his beck and call that there wasn’t much that could stop them.

I felt okay leaving Pepper and her husband with them and if Lucky got annoying, Pepper Crane could put the fear of literally any god into him.

Dionysus portalled us all to his place in D.C. I knew this was one of many properties he owned, but there was so much care put into the place. It was a testament to how much he loved Medusa. Yeah, the place was flashy, but it didn’t look like it was built and furnished to make a god comfortable.

Everything about this place screamed green witch. It was created with love for one to flourish. I already liked him. He fit in with us just fine, and I loved how he was with Benji. But this? This elevated him even higher in my books.

“One of my maenads, an actual maenad, not a social media follower, channels the whole ritual madness thing into the internet. She runs one site for people that want to do cam stuff and retire early and on her down time, she hacks the porn sites that have photos and videos of women posted without their consent. She gets them shut down.

“Anyway, if we want access to CCTV and someone who can click a button and get us all the news stories about angels without us having to do a million searches, I’ll need to reach out to Melina.”

“She’d probably love that,” Medusa said, wrapping her arms around his waist.

Benji was glued to his phone. He usually was any time there was drama. Most of Benji’s internet drama wasn’t as serious as this. While Dionysus was sending off his text, Benji was furiously scrolling.

“Think Lucky is going to be okay?” Pax asked.

I just chuckled. It said a lot that Pax was more worried about Lucky than Pepper.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“If Pepper has Misophonia, she’ll kill him,” Pax said.

“You’re just saying that because you have Misophonia and want to kill him sometimes,” Benji said.

“He needs to see an ear, nose, throat specialist about how loud he breathes.”

“I’m half shifter and I don’t notice it,” Benji said.

I was full shifter, and I did. Benji only noticed things that excited him and fixated on completely random things that most people would just dismiss. It was never as simple as someone’s breathing. We were saved when a notification went off on Benji’s phone.

“After the angels landed, they took to the sky and flew off in the same direction,” Benji said.

“There has to be a way for them to come here without the big light show,” Pax said. “Think about it. They’ve been supplying the Coalition with those containers we saw that had the solution with their tears in it. They didn’t have all the high-tech security when they had me the first time. I would have recognized a supernatural I wasn’t familiar with if I saw an angel without their wings. I never saw one.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Kat said. “They are allergic to silver, too. They would have been at a disadvantage if they showed up at a Coalition facility. If the humans had caught on that silver weakened them, too, then maybe it might have clued them in to something.

“No one can produce that much tears. It’s probably suspended in some kind of solution and they’ve got a facility that makes it. Did you see any shipping boxes? That would clue us in if they are mailing it or delivering it in person.”

Ugh. We should have taken a photo of the shipping label on the box. I didn’t have my phone, but Pax still had his. We were just so concerned about getting the black salt into the diffusion tank without getting caught. Our priority was getting our mate out of the basement and getting her fed. We could feel how weak she was.

We thought we’d collected all the evidence we needed, but clearly, we missed a very important piece. We weren’t usually that sloppy. I didn’t have a photographic memory and since the label wasn’t in Braille, Pax wouldn’t have read it.

I admitted our error in not taking a photo of the shipping label, but it wasn’t totally hopeless.

“There was no company name listed on the box, but the return address was in Newark. There’s a large port there, but also something else. New Eden was the original Coalition facility in the United States, but after the Church excommunicated them, they became a private corporation. Their headquarters are in Newark.

“I’ve had people watching the building since it was built. I would have thought Hannibal would be there since he was outed as the director, but that’s part of why we were never able to pinpoint who was running the show. No one has ever reported angels, but it’s also a skyscraper. We know they have wings, but they are coming from an entirely different realm. Pax is right. That big light show could just be when they want to make a show of things.”

Dionysus just grinned at me like a psychopath. I knew that smile. Benji had it every time he was about to start another one-sided feud with someone.

“I’m guessing security is tight on that building because of who they are. There are probably cameras everywhere and they have to have Wi-Fi, even if they don’t keep anything on the cloud. Do you know what happens when a fucking maenad channels all that ritual madness into a hobby?

“It kind of went out of fashion when people got all prudish and uptight, but it’s something to behold. Melina gets her high off, hacking and shutting down people who exploit women. Her big thing is that women should be able to fuck whoever they want, whenever they want, and however many people they want, but only if she wants to.

“Melina has always hated the Coalition, but she’s going to want in after that arrest. No one ever knows where she is until she wants to be found, but she’ll come for this. She’s pretty intense, but no weirder than the rest of us.”

Um. I had a feeling there was a lot Dionysus wasn’t saying about his maenad friend and her weirdness. Was she weirder than me, or weirder than Benji?

Still, we couldn’t afford to be blindsided by that many dangerous angels out there. I just hoped she was as good as Dionysus said she was.