Elias

As the over-saturated colours of his vision receded, Elias dropped his head into his hands and massaged his temples. Not again. As if the day hadn't been bad enough already. He had made a fool of himself at his weekly rotation at the hospital school, every phone call he received at work tempted him to chuck his headset out the window and Abigail hadn't even had the decency to confirm she was still alive.

He hadn't seen her in four days now. After Elias had asked her to leave alone what she had found among Jala's belongings, she stormed off in a huff. Thirty minutes later she had packed a duffel bag and told him she would be taking the family car for another trip to the Hunter Valley. Up there she cloistered herself with Harold in an attempt to translate Jala's notes. The terse messages she had sent the previous three days didn't suggest they were making a great deal of progress.

Elias made no further comment about it. If this was how Abigail chose to channel her grief, so be it. And if Harold wanted to indulge her, Elias was in no hurry to stop the man. Retirement didn't suit some people and Abigail could use an attentive adult in her life.

He focused on his uni work. His previous set of exam results had dragged his average down so badly Elias was afraid the repercussions would haunt him for years. Not all HR managers were sympathetic to family crises. But judging by the look the other students gave him when he flubbed that last question, he needed to work harder.

The front door lock crunched. That would explain the lack of an SMS today. Elias muted his music and got up to meet his sister.

"Hi Eli," said Abigail as she strode into the house with Harold in tow. She held the duffel in one hand and her old school backpack was in the other. "How's the study going?"

"Well enough. Are you back for good?"

"Good evening, Elias," said Harold and offered Elias a frigid smile.

Elias wondered what Abigail had told Harold about him in the past few days. She had been furious with him when she left. The thought brought a pang of worry in Elias' chest. Despite Harold's peculiar fascination with over-sized vegetables, Elias liked the man and Harold had seemed to like him too. It had been very generous of Harold to offer his help with settling their parents' estate (however insignificant that estate was).

"What a surprise to see you, Harold. You should've called ahead, I would've had dinner fixed for you two," Elias said, his gaze narrowed to Abigail. After a lifetime of living with their mother, she should have known better than to arrive with unannounced guests.

"It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision." She had the decency to blush. "We found something. We were going to call on the angels, but then Harold and I thought you would know better which angel would be more helpful. You were the only one to meet Raphael."

"A phone call couldn't settle this?"

Abigail sighed. "I thought you would want to be there when we called an angel and I didn't think you would be willing to come up to Harold's this late in the evening."

Damn right, I want to be around when there are angels involved. Abigail acted as though she didn't remember that Ramiel had once threatened to kill her, but Elias was never going to forget that. As to which angel's presence would be less objectionable to him, he had to think that through.

"I'm sorry, Harold," he said. "I was studying and my mind is still halfway through page 243. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like tea or coffee? Or are you hungry? I can order something in; there is a good Italian place down the road."

Harold settled in the armchair. "We did stop for dinner on the way, but tea would be great. Black, one teaspoon of sugar."

Elias nodded. There was no milk anyway.

As he waited for the kettle to boil, he tapped his fingers along the benchtop. Raphael had been considerate enough to ensure Elias and Abigail would be protected after Ramiel's departure, which was a gold star in his favour. But his manner bothered Elias. He had clearly thought nephilim beneath his notice and at times had been more concerned with getting information from Ramiel than treating his fellow angel. Doctors might be held in high regard, but Elias had spent enough time around the university medical school to know there were plenty of doctors who were also despicable human beings.

And Ramiel? Whatever Abigail and Harold had discovered would at least be of interest to him. But Ramiel had lied to Elias. He had promised that his blood would have only a temporary effect and that was blatantly not the case.

The kettle turned itself off. Elias found the two most respectable looking mugs and poured tea for Harold and Abigail.

"Try Raphael," he said, setting the steaming mugs on the coffee table. Perhaps he'll tell me what's wrong with me.

Abigail took out her phone, peeled back the edge of the rubber case and pulled out Raphael's coin. She pressed it between her palms. "Here it goes. Raphael!"

She held onto the coin for a good thirty seconds, but nothing happened. Sighing, she set the coin down on the table and reached for her tea.

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"It did take a while last time too," she said, although her disappointment was clear.

Elias switched on the television and after flicking through the channels settled on the news. A journalist was halfway through a report on a break-in into some military storage facility in Argentina, which didn't interest Elias in the slightest, but it was better than the resigned silence of the room. Harold and Abigail had their tea to occupy them, Elias could only wring his hands.

Shadows swayed. The hiss of wind tore through the house.

Ramiel landed in the doorway to the living room, just catching himself before he toppled too far forward and collapsed onto his knees. Straightening up, he folded his wings and looked about in confusion.

"Evening, Ramiel," Elias said, hoping his disappointment wasn't evident in his tone. "We were actually expecting Raphael."

"He has been called to the front line," Ramiel replied briskly. "What has happened? You appear unharmed to me."

Harold furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean the front line?"

"The battle for the Citadel of Hell."

"Wow, that's like... biblical," said Abigail and blushed as she realised what had just come out of her mouth.

"Were you there too?" Elias asked.

There was no hint of Ramiel's injuries from two months previous, but he didn't look well. His curls were tangled and his face seemed drawn into a permanent grimace. Back when Elias had first seen him, Ramiel had exuded arrogance; now he simply seemed exhausted. And on hearing Elias' question, his shoulders slumped all the more.

"No, I..." Ramiel shook his head. "All that is irrelevant at the present. Why did you want Raphael?"

Abigail cleared her throat. "We think we may've found something about Najran's plans."

"Show me."

Abigail dug into her worn-out schoolbag and took out a thick manila folder. She flipped it open revealing a slightly blurry printout of the photograph that had begun Abigail's quest.

"I found a photograph of a woman we saw in the church back in Italy hanging out with my mother. She went by Jala. Do you know who she is?"

Peering at the image, the corners of Ramiel's lips inched towards a smile. "I have seen images of her in my own investigation. She is a reaper who disappeared with Najran. She had called herself Elpis then."

This was no more than what Elias had assumed. He couldn't see a nephilim keeping a journal in angelic hieroglyphs, but it made sense for an angel to use this script, even if she had changed sides. Enochian remained her mother-tongue.

One by one, Ramiel examined the pages in the folder. Harold and Abigail had printed out the files from the two USB sticks so there were pages upon pages of hand-drawn diagrams to sort through.

"Where did you find these?"

"I tracked Jala to the hostel where she'd been staying. She left behind a few things," said Abigail. She dug in into her bag again to produce Jala's notebook for Ramiel to see, then, more gingerly, pulled out something wrapped in a discoloured cloth. "I couldn't understand a thing she had written, so I asked Harold to see if he could make any sense of it."

Harold peeled back the cloth to reveal a thin, aged book with a red leather cover. "This dictionary has been in my family for three hundred years. It translates your language into Seventeenth-Century Dutch, but over the last fifty years I've managed to puzzle out a few things."

Ramiel set the folder aside when he reached Jala's collection of academic literature and turned his attention to the notebook. "You ought to have called for me when you first discovered this, instead of attempting translation on your own. We may have lost valuable time."

"We weren't certain this was even anything relevant," Abigail said. "They're trying to find the third anchor, aren't they? It's a ritual to find fluctuations in —"

"Aether, yes," Ramiel cut in. "I had wondered how Najran and his allies would choose to proceed. Among angels, the approximate location of the first anchor was commonly known, but the others Sariel made certain to keep to himself. The second anchor they discovered through our folly. The location of the third is as much a mystery to us as to them. But to search the planet? That is no small task."

"They must've been performing these rituals over and over again to narrow it down. There's a stack of maps and articles on cave systems in the Andes. I think they found it in Bolivia." Abigail searched through the pages in the folder until she found the right one and gestured towards a string of sigils noted down on the side. "These are numbers, aren't they? Geographic coordinates?"

Ramiel glanced at the sigils scribbled on the map and nodded, but his focus was on the notebook. He raced through the pages, his expression grimmer by the second.

"What does it say?" said Elias. Despite his reluctance to get involved, now that Ramiel was in the room and likely to have proper answers, curiosity got the better of him.

"Much of this deals with Jala's dismantling of the wards on the first anchor. It seems while Jala worked in Australia, Najran and his children had already spent the past several months pursuing another anchor in South America. A wise choice, searching for an anchor does not attract the attention destroying one does. And if he has found the approximate location, he had to have been searching for months. These rituals are difficult, his children would have needed to recover after each one."

"So we are going to Bolivia?" Abigail said.

Elias spluttered. "Like hell you are."

"I looked up the coordinates. Two thousand years ago that area might have been untouched wilderness, but nowadays there's a pretty major city there. Do you think Ramiel can blend in? And an extra pair of eyes won't go amiss."

"Harold, do you intend to go too?" Elias asked.

The old man spun his walking stick between his fingers. "I know something of the region. Conferences have taken me to Chile more times than I can count, so I have a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. I visited Bolivia itself — twenty years ago, I grant you — but I've been there."

Shaking his head, Elias appealed to the final arbiter of reason. "But Ramiel, you wouldn't take them anyway?"

"My own investigation for the past two months has been fruitless; I would not deny help if it is freely offered," the angel answered, then turned to Abigail and Harold. "Collect what you think you will need for the trip, I will wait."

"Give me ten minutes then," Elias said through gritted teeth.

"You don't have to come, Eli."

Elias ran a hand through his hair and wondered when the tedium of revision had become the most appealing way to spend his evening. "I'm not letting you go off to South America on your own. From now on, count me in on your crusade, ok?"

"Yeah...ok. Thanks, bro."

Abigail glared at him as he strode out of the room, but Elias decided that working out what he would need with him would be more productive than further squabbling with his sister. Knowing nothing about Bolivia other than the passionate attachment of local women to bowler hats, he ended up googling the average temperature at this time of the year and whether he ought to be concerned about any exotic diseases.

"I cannot carry all three of you with me at once," said Ramiel when, a quarter of an hour later, Elias flung his over-stuffed bag onto the living room floor. "I will take Harold first, then return for you two."

"See you on the other side." Harold let out a nervous laugh and rose to his feet.