Page 23 of Concluded (The Bureau #13)

D ee was trying very hard to keep up with the conversation. It wasn’t that he was especially stupid, although he’d never claimed to be a genius. It was simply that everyone else in the room was accustomed to missions and nefarious plots and forays into weirdness, and Dee wasn’t.

Anyway, although he now understood what Chief Grimes wanted, the father part confused him.

But Achilles didn’t seem befuddled. He leapt to his feet, winced, but remained standing, fury plastered on his face.

“What the fuck?” he bellowed. “The world is teetering on the edge, what’s left of the Bureau is short-staffed and in disarray, and you’re worried about a family reunion?

That’s what you’re using limited resources on?

Look, that black hole place sucks, but not as bad as mass genocide.

Oh, and by the way, Dee’s not an agent, so he’s not at your beck and call for personal service. ”

“You’re not an agent anymore either,” Grimes snarled back. “None of us are. And I don’t need you to?—”

“Master.” Tenrael’s hand was on Grimes’s shoulder again, and although he’d spoken quietly, his voice held a definite firmness that contrasted with the subservient term.

Grimes turned his head to look at him. “What?”

“Perhaps you should explain who your father is.”

“All right,” said Grimes in a considerably calmer tone. He reached over to stroke Tenrael’s feathers, either to thank him or to calm himself. Maybe both.

And as Achilles, with a disgruntled expression, retook his chair and Grimes seemed to collect his thoughts, a realization hit Dee.

A person could submit to another not out of fear but out of love and the desire to submit.

And the relationship between those people, rather than involving the brute imposition of power, could be a delicate dance of strength and weakness.

Contrary to initial appearances, Grimes and Tenrael weren’t unequal; they’d found a way to strike a balance.

And hadn’t Dee been told already that it was all about balance?

A yearning encompassed Dee with such ferocity that, had he been standing, he would have fallen to his knees.

As it was, he had to swallow a moan and, briefly at least, squeeze his eyes shut.

That was what he wanted—no, what he needed : to have a master who loved him and who Dee loved back.

Someone who wouldn’t just use him, as Ashley had, but who would respect him.

Someone who would help Dee be a better and more complete version of himself, and who would be similarly helped by him.

How had Dee gone four decades without knowing this about himself?

But Grimes was about to speak, and this wasn’t the best time for earth-shaking self-revelations.

“My father is an angel,” Grimes said finally. “I never met him, and my mother never spoke of him. I know his identity only because of certain things I inherited from him.”

Dee thought he might be referring to his extremely pale coloring or his oddly-hued eyes.

But then Grimes shrugged out of his suit jacket, letting it fall negligently to the floor, and then swiftly removed his tie, shirt, and undershirt.

When he turned his back to them, Dee saw a pair of long, ugly scars, red lines that paralleled his spine.

Achilles caught on first. “You had wings.” His anger had fled.

“Not like Ten’s. Mine were small. Useless. I had them removed when I was eighteen. But I know they were once there, and I know what they mean.”

When Grimes turned toward them, his face was set, no emotions visible. “My father disappeared before I was born. For a long time, I assumed he’d deserted my mother. And me. I was furious at him because of this. And then one day, circa…. Christ, Ten, when was it?”

“It was 1942,” Tenrael answered without hesitating.

“Right. In 1942, that bastard Townsend gifted me with one of his cryptic pronouncements. I remember the exact words. We were talking about wounded angels needing time to heal—I’d been hurt on a mission—and he said, ‘Maybe what looks like abandonment might, in fact, be something else.’”

“So he knew what happened to your father?” Dee asked, now caught up in the story. He also wanted to ask how old Grimes was, but didn’t.

“Hell if I know. He wouldn’t explain himself then or in any of the following decades. I’ve tried to let it go, but as you might imagine, it’s always been at the back of my head.”

Dee could imagine this perfectly well. One of his parents had disappeared too, although under marginally less mysterious circumstances, and he’d spent a good chunk of his life wondering what had happened to her.

Was she alive somewhere, or was nothing left of her but crumbling bones?

Had she regretted abandoning him? Had she planned to return for him someday?

“How do you know that the prisoner who was sensed by the agent is your father?” Dee asked.

“I don’t. It’s conjecture. A hunch.” Grimes spread his arms. “Yet I know it’s him.

And Spanos, this isn’t me wanting to meet my father.

Well, I suppose there’s some of that too.

But I’ve been waiting over a century to meet him, and I could wait more.

He’s an angel , though. Not half like me.

Imagine how valuable he could be to our cause—or how dangerous he could be if the other side were able to use him. ”

Of course, Dee had no idea what angels were capable of.

He wasn’t even sure what they truly were, and whether they were literally holy creatures like in religious texts or just another kind of NHS.

Tenrael, after all, was a demon, but he wasn’t trying to drag anyone to the depths of hell. Assuming hell existed.

But maybe it didn’t matter whether angels were superheroes. Because Dee had been told that the balance was precarious. It might take nothing more than a small breeze to tip things irrevocably one way or the other.

Before he could speak up—and he wasn’t sure what he was going to say anyway—Achilles sighed. “He’s been in that place since before you were born?”

“Perhaps,” Grimes said.

“How long is that?”

“I was born in 1897.”

While Dee did the math, Achilles swore under his breath. His complexion, normally warm, had gone sickly pale. “Almost a hundred thirty years of… nothingness? I guess maybe an angel could survive that physically. But what about his mind?”

“I don’t know,” Grimes said quietly.

This was a lot more uncertainty than Dee was comfortable with.

Nobody knew for sure whether Grimes’s father was held captive in the black hole.

If he was, nobody knew whether he’d be willing to help, and if so, what he could do.

And to top things off, it seemed uncertain that he’d possess the mental capacity to do anything at all.

Oh, and even assuming everything was great with the angel, Dee had no idea whether his own powers were strong enough for someone to wish their way into—and out of—the black hole.

But hadn’t both Abe Ferencz and Achilles lectured Dee about the power of hope? It was time for Dee to hope, dammit. Possibly for the first time in his life.

“I’ll do my best to help,” he announced.

Everyone stared at him. And a funny thing happened: they all looked at him with relief and admiration.

They—a hero, a half-angel, and a frigging demon—were regarding him as if he were someone worthy.

Dee sat straighter in his chair, confident for one of the first times in his life that he’d made the right decision.

Well, that kiss the night before had been the right decision too. He was also sure of that.

Grimes gave him a small smile. Dee had the definite impression that the guy smiled very rarely, but this one seemed genuine. “Thank you, Mr. Martell.”

“You might as well call me Dee. But you know my real name is Damnation, right?”

“Were either of your parents capable of foreseeing the future?”

“I doubt it. They’d both have made better choices if they could.”

Grimes smiled again. “Then we won’t assume that your name is a prophecy.”

“I’d like to assume the same about my name, please,” Achilles chimed in.

Dee must have looked puzzled, because Achilles explained.

“In the Iliad , the Fates say that Achilles will live either a long uneventful life and be forgotten after he dies, or a short one where he’s remembered as a hero. I’d prefer Option C.”

Dee, who had no clue why his parents had saddled him with Damnation, now wondered what Achilles’ parents had been thinking. Was it a common name among Greeks even nowadays, a nod to their heritage, or a wish for their son’s future? Dee might ask him sometime, if he got a chance.

In the meantime, he needed to say something else. “There’s a complication. We’re not at all sure I have enough juice to grant your wish. If I can’t do it at all, I guess we’ll figure that out pretty quickly. But what if I get you there and then the magic sort of fizzles out and you’re trapped?”

Grimes frowned. “I’m willing to risk?—”

“Master. You do great harm to our cause if you cannot return. We need you. I need you as well.”

“Jesus,” Grimes muttered. “Okay, then Dee can give me two wishes, one for each leg of the trip.”

Dee had already considered this. “I’ve never granted someone more than one wish at a time. Ashley tried to do a couple of doubles, just small things, and it didn’t work. I’m guessing that transporting you to the black hole is not a small thing.”

“Then give me a one-way ticket and I’ll figure something out when I’m there.”

“Your father is an angel and he’s had over a century to figure something out, but he’s still there. Apparently.”

“I don’t care!” Grimes snapped. “I’m not going to just walk away from this. I can’t. I’ll?—”

Achilles got to his feet again. “What if someone else wishes that the chief—and the prisoner—would be zapped back here?”

“Unlikely to work,” said Dee. “It’s really hard for a wisher to affect a third party so directly, and when they try, the results aren’t pretty.” He was thinking specifically of several love charms gone very wrong, to such an extent that he’d refused to make any more even when he was broke.

“Well, fuck,” said Achilles, which summed things up succinctly.

Dee, however, had a solution. “I’ll go with the chief.”

Now everyone looked shocked. Dee was slightly stunned too, even though he’d made the decision himself just a few moments ago. He was not the type to throw himself at danger. But he didn’t regret making the offer.

Achilles limped over to Dee’s chair and squatted so he could look into his eyes. “You don’t need to atone for past sins. It doesn’t work that way. And Dee, you do not want to go to that place.”

“I don’t want to,” Dee agreed with a sigh. “But I’m going to. And not to atone. It’s the right thing to do, and I want to help. I really do.” He chuckled. “Maybe I’ll be the one with the short but storied life.”

Achilles stood up straight and looked away, as if the entire subject pained him. Surely he couldn’t be that concerned about Dee’s welfare. Dee was nothing to him… even though Dee was slowly coming to accept that Achilles was definitely not nothing to him.

And then Achilles crossed his arms and made a soft grunt. “Okay, well, not to steal Dee’s thunder or anything. But Chief, you’re staying put. I’m joining Dee for the rescue operation.”