It was a really goddamn bad idea to leave anyone alone with the hunter; but Tony wasn't fond of shotguns loaded with silver -- his shoulder still ached, all healing aside -- and it was probably worth noting that a couple of the others in this place were Court enforcers and knew how to interrogate someone.
He slipped in behind the others and gave a full-body shiver when Gray gave his full name freely like that; supernaturals tended to be wary about true names, hair and toenail clippings and other things that a wizard, like Flint, or maybe not like Flint but more subtle and creative in their power use, might find ways to royally fuck with someone in retribution for some grudge. Wizards were terrible if given enough time to creatively apply their power to the goal in mind, it's when their potential became one of the scariest things in the universe. It's why the vampires considered them freaks, lycanthropes tried to stay the fuck out of the way and why wizards, who seemed terribly squishy and relatively mortal compared to the others, were at least as powerful as the vampires within the Court system and were the nobility of it alongside the vampires.
The bloodsuckers had charm and addictive blood and blended in easily, but it was the wizards that could pull the things out of thin air, track things down, or, if provided a true name, use a name to bind a creature.
In retrospect, Tony didn't expect Gray to know the rules of the Court and that was an advantage. Nemsemet was throwing the rules out anyway, and hunters never really cared for them -- some jurisdictions liked to throw those that violated the rules out to the mercy of the mortal world, and that included hunters.
--
The sword had gone so easily through Billy Rikker's neck, so lightly and easily that it intrigued Gordon. Unlike people in this regrettable era of modernity and electronic alchemy, he'd grown up in a time when the sword saw some use and, as a cavalryman himself, understood that some swords, some steel, was wrought differently from others.
And he'd never found steel like that before.
So he'd set about finding translations for the various things written on the blade and came back with a variety of interesting graffiti.
'Chengdu: 20 Bitches and a Dragon'
'18 Sutra Positions; my love to Indira!'
'Jerusalem. Nothing to see here.'
'Venetian Masque; ALL the bitches and bros!'
'Oberon ate my-'
'Assholes all around me! Fuck Paris.'
'Chief says I can't handle my shit. Not smoking again.'
'So many mushrooms!'
And then a sigil, and wasn't that interesting? Something on the pommel to identify it further as belonging to someone, and clearly not Billy Rikker. When he'd taken it to Anastasia, who was his contact among the witches and warlocks of the city, she gave it a brush of the finger and immediately asked him, very sharply, where he'd gotten that. Gordon, seeing no reason to deal dishonestly with one of Nemsemet's key supporters, told her that it'd come from Billy Rikker.
"So it must be something that magpie acquired in the course of his escapades."
Anastasia, under Nemsemet, turned to the use of necromancy to enhance her looks and take a fading beauty and turn it back into youth, using illegal magics, though it was a pallid and disturbing youthful beauty that gave off the impression that something wasn't right on the visceral level. Dark of eye, blonde haired and immaculately couture'd in clothing that conveyed a softening of a more severe business style that blended the feminine without denying it but still created the impression of power, she didn't seem like the typical wizarding type. However much that seemed the case, in the department of subtle magics that identify, tracked and, rather importantly, cursed, she was equaled by few. Her office, in a very upscale office building at the heart of the city, had a fabulous view of the nightscape; the office was done with marble and bright lighting that complemented the ward sigils set into the wall in silver, and the summoning circle on the floor, off to the side. There was a real fire, gas-fired with coals in an open circular area, that made for a discreet and tasteful alchemy station. The place was a working lab, but it was done with a designer's exacting eye. Anastasia had started life as a fashion designer and transitioned into magic as her youthful beauty began to fade and she stumbled into a latent talent. The Court disapproved of some of her methods of preserving her beauty, which made her a fervent enemy of it. Gordon couldn't relate -- his looks were eternal, frozen in place, but the woman opposite him was frantic and ruthless in her attempts to salvage her vanity.
Nonetheless, she was a dangerous ally, and her intelligence, notwithstanding her obsession with beauty, was not to be underestimated at all. In fact, her time spent working social circles in the mortal world left her with a keen appreciation of one of the most important principles of magic -- connections.
"And you are absolutely correct, madam," Gordon told her with the mannerisms of his youth that he retained in addressing a woman, even though gender differences were far less important to a vampire, though feeding preference was often an outgrowth of sexual orientation, at least in some cases. Gordon, for example, never could bring himself to feed upon a man unless it were truly a necessity, and then found the experience oddly distasteful. There was an intimacy between predator and prey and he preferred women.
"There is power in that sword," she told him, steepling her fingers from behind the desk where the sword lay; the office was fairly modern, clean lines, carefully designed with feng shui in mind to channel spiritual energy beneficial to her purposes while redirecting and disrupting magical energy channeled from outside -- her office was . As a magician, Anastasia Petrova was one of the more useful consultants in the city for setting up wards and tracking items on the basis of their connections to people. She could read objects and see their spiritual relationship to one another, "But the full power is not the weapon itself. It's a representative of greater power, a trapping of office."
She also warded up Nemsemet's lair in the Museum; Augustus tripped right into her traps, which were enhanced with the callous use of sacrifices to fuel the magic. It was dirty, dangerous, aura darkening stuff, but she didn't seem to particularly worry about the cost of the magic.
"One of Billy's henchmen claimed that there were a couple sword-wielding beings in the Rusty Steak knife. One of them had wings," Gordon related -- it was more like an interrogation. He had use for some of Billy's henchmen, but Vinny had gotten impolite and didn't grasp the nuances, which was a nice way to say the stark fucking realities, of the new situation. Gordon had limited patience for the man's petty insolences and insistence that Gordon needed him to keep people in line.
But he'd talked at the end. Charles Gordon was a man from a different era, but he was a curious soul, so he decided to experiment with electricity in interrogating a vampire.
Turned out it worked quite well. He dimmed lightbulbs running a current through a metal frame and chickenwire, and Vinny hadn't survive the process, but he'd gotten descriptions of the people involved.
"Wings."
"And a sword."
Anastasia looked disturbed -- the implications were profound, "If they are getting involved in matters, it may well be something Lord Nemsemet must be made aware of."
Gordon nodded agreement, even as he crossed one leg over the other in his chair, his suit coat unbuttoned, "I was on my way to him after I consulted with you, but I agree, that may well be somewhat more grave. If we can, perhaps, divine the name associated with that sigil, we perhaps have a better idea of the enemies aligning against the Lord Nemsemet. It would explain a great deal of why the Rusty Steak knife was hit so unsubtly."
Angels were beings of immense power and legendary ferocity and amorality. They were not designed for free will -- they followed orders. The most warlike of the bunch, or the ones that carried the water for some of the more scary acts of history, were not programmed to think of the why, merely the how. That's how "Kill the firstborn" happened. That's how Sodom and Gomorrah went down. Angels made the Prussian generals on trial at Nuremburg look like small timers for following orders that happened to, incidentally, involve committing what humans would morally reckon an atrocity. Prussian generals had guilty consciences. Angels were designed without them. They were designed from the ground up to do their job and a conscience was deemed surplus to the requirements.
They didn't play. When you had that much power, you didn't have to. There were constraints to such power, however, and they were well understood within the community-- Angels didn't just pop up with their power. They worked within rules. They had mandates. They were under general orders from Headquarters.
Anastasia brushed her fingertip against the sword's hilt, the sigil, again, and told Gordon, "The bearer is no doubt already aware that others are handling his sword. It is a link to him, it could be used to curse or track. An angel is morally responsible for their own weapon, as well."
"It's leverage," Gordon told her.
