Page 21 of Catnapped

I frowned. “Which would be why the Devil pointed you my way. Not because you’re a wayfinder, but because you’ve already been involved with labs. And not just any labs, labs in this area. This makes sense. And he would know, because he’s the Devil and he can look into the future when it pleases him, so he is killing a bunch of birds with one stone, which is what he likes to do. And the more inevitable the future, the clearer and easier it is for him to see it.”

“If he bothers to look. But yes, you’re correct. According to both of my fathers, the Devil doesn’t look all that often; he likes the surprise and uncertainty, but if it’s an important matter to him, he’ll definitely peek. Since he wants you to be one of his right-hand women, he would look to see what would offer him that specific future. He got caught with this when he met Darlene; he refused to look because the game is better with surprises, so he got hoodwinked by Him. Lucifer still throws temper tantrums about it sometimes, although honestly? I don’t even see how the End of Days would work out right now. Lucifer loves Darlene, and the only reason he still has her is because of Him. That does not make him inclined to want to wage a war to the bitter end. And he’s always operated his many hells in a balanced fashion. He’s always been about the reformation of souls. Sure, he punishes them and beats morality back into them, but it’s always about the balance. If there are too many good seeds in the world, he releases the dark ones to keep things nice and orderly and balanced. He does the same. It’s something my parents were always telling me about growing up. Dad thinks the Devil is going to be the reason we never truly reach the End of Days, although for the purpose of the universal laws, it must always remain a possibility, because in order for there to be life, there must be death. Father, on the other hand, just shrugs. I always wonder what my father’s expressions are. While I would probably survive if he lowered the shroud, Mom wouldn’t.”

“Why would you survive? I certainly wouldn’t.” The research material I’d come across, from an old book written during the prior emergence and definitely classified as a forbidden text, had taken me several years to translate, requiring that I fumble through Hebrew, two different dialects of Arabic, Egyptian, and Hindi in order to understand its secrets. I’d returned the book to where I’d found it, but I’d made a copy with all of my notes, which I’d locked in one of the high-security vaults operated by the CDC, claiming it was heirloom family research I didn’t want stolen.

In reality, I wondered what would happen if the knowledge of the shrouds and their purpose did make it out into the world.

I’d read between the lines of that old text, determining the End of Days was less about humanity dying because of their sins but more about humanity dying as a consequence of the complete removal of the shrouds and His presence during the war to end all wars. The title of the end book of the bible made a great deal more sense to me when I looked at it beneath that terrible, divine light.

Revelations, indeed.

Darian drummed his fingers on the map of California, and his display of impatience drew my attention back to him. “Genetics. As far as devils go, Dad is pretty high up there; he need not be shrouded, but he is only one step below and can withstand the visages. Father is an archangel. Put those genes together, and I can withstand it. Father is very cautious about even mentioning the shroud, but we’re aware of it. It’s par for the course of having an angel in the house. Well, an archangel.”

“I’m guessing Lucifer will have to meddle with me quite a bit if he wants me as his secretary. His shroud is a world ender. So is His.”

“Yes.” He scowled. “You would no longer be human, that much is for certain. Your soul would be irrevocably changed. Well, partially. Darlene started as a human, too. She seems human enough, but she’s not anymore.”

“Well, she’s a succubus now. She acts human except when she’s hungry, has her wings out, and is hunting Lucifer because he finds being the prey of a cranky feline enjoyable,” I muttered, shaking my head over the pair. “I have had plenty of practice dealing with that train wreck during business hours. He probably planned for her to start getting hungry right around when I needed to work with him to test my abilities to handle his bullshit.” Taking a moment to think about my situation, I shrugged. “I’ll worry about it after we find Mr. Flooferson. I mean, what are the odds we have to worry about shrouds while looking for my cat?”

“Well, considering you had the attention of several archangels and the Devil, and they’re going out of their way to make sure you survive this through use of holy fire, I’d say whatever is going on with your cat is a game changer. Likely something along the lines of humanity discovering, testing, and experimenting with ambrosia. An illegal lab out of Humboldt makes a lot of sense, as it’s easier to hide the operations in a place where the locals tend to look the other way as long as the trouble doesn’t come knocking on their door. Some areas are worse than others, but there is a lot of untamed land around there. It’s not like San Francisco or Los Angeles, which are packed tight with people.”

“You officially know more than I do about California.”

“Only because of my background with one busted lab out of Humboldt. But if the lab is in Humboldt, we’ll be good with an SUV and some practitioner magic.”

“What sort of practitioner magic?”

“The kind that prevents our SUV from getting shot full of holes if we happen to make a wrong turn into an area somebody doesn’t want us to be in.”

For fuck’s sake. Making a trip to the worst of the Devil’s many hells was starting to sound better than visiting Humboldt. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’m really not, unfortunately.” Darian turned and lifted the sleeve of his shirt to show me a pale scar. “I got this as a reminder of why to step lightly around illegal narcotics ops. Ironically, this scar helped me dismantle the company so I could buy it out; the guy who pulled the trigger was on the board. It turns out when members of the board start going down for attempted murder, the rest of the operation starts scrambling and is willing to sell out for a pittance to preserve their reputation.”

Nice. I could appreciate that sort of ruthlessness—something I needed to use on a daily basis in my line of work, as for some reason, a lot of executives, divines, and everything in between seemed to believe the presence of breasts excluded the presence of brains. “You don’t play nice ball, then.”

“I definitely don’t. The less ethical the business, the harder I play ball, too. That’s my father’s fault. Honestly, I like blaming my father for a lot of things. It makes my dad happy—and then he doesn’t mention when I do things more his way, which will inevitably upset my mother and my father. Cultivating my dad into an ally was one of my smarter moves. Making sure my father has limited exposure to my other activities was my next smartest move. Making sure my mother wasn’t inclined to help was my third smartest move. I want to say my smartest move was moving out of their house, but they make me visit often to prevent the crying. I really hope my father and dad can keep her busy for at least a week. They’re needy, Diana. So damned needy.”

Considering the CDC had records of an angel crashing an airplane to retrieve her child, it came to no surprise to me that an archangel would go overboard trying to protect his son. “Have you infiltrated a lab before?”

“I have.”

“But not with cat fur, I take it?”

“Human hair. The lab was experimenting on people, so I stole a sample of a vic’s hair. The path led me to somewhere in Missouri, which gave me the intel needed to bust the Humboldt lab. Finding the Humboldt lab took some work, since it was in one of the worst areas for the drug trade, which meant I had to bypass the involved locals. When they figured out which lab was getting busted and why, they were more willing to leave me alone about it. They’ll deal with drugs, they’ll kill people to protect their trades, but they draw lines at human experimentation. Morality is a strange beast in the area.” He glared at the map of Humboldt, tapping at a spot in the middle of the county. “It’s probably somewhere around here. That’s a lot of mountainous territory, difficult to generally access, and fairly established as a place where labs like to set up. There are plenty of legitimate labs in the area, too.”

“Why are the labs in such an inaccessible location?”

“Privacy and secrecy, mostly. And it makes it easier for the operators to establish illegal labs with legal labs as fronts. The inspectors check out the legal labs, deem them to code, and either fail to notice or miss the signs of the illegal labs. Some of the labs are underground, with the entrances hidden within utility sheds. Since there are legal labs in operation, the transports of supplies looks legitimate on paper. They just smuggle anything illegal in and out of their locations, which is much easier when it’s hidden among a lot of legal shipments. The government doesn’t check the trucks going in and out of the legal labs. Why bother? The most they do is surprise inspections, and the operations are set up to be hidden within ten minutes of an alarm going off. They have at least an hour of warning from where the general watch posts for the area are.”

The way Darian talked about the labs led me to believe I’d really landed in more of a mess than I had anticipated—and that my poor cat had been involved with quite the mess, too. “This doesn’t sound good for Mr. Flooferson. What will they be doing with him?”

“If it’s anything like the human labs, they’ll start with a health check to see if he is showing any signs of whatever condition they wanted to create or cure. With the people, they would do basic tests for about a week. I’m no expert, but that’s probably our time frame before they’d start doing more invasive tests. They wanted him alive, however, so it’s probable they’ll want to keep him alive. How was his health when you adopted him?”

“Good, but he was abused. He wasn’t starving or anything, and he wasn’t really in need of much actual care beyond needing a lot of work on his coat because he has long, thick fur. They didn’t really brush him or anything. But magic fixed that. He was definitely traumatized. Or so the paperwork said. He has gained a little weight since coming home with me, but I spoil him.”

“I’ll do my best to help make sure we get him back for you. When we go to do this, there are some rules we need to follow if we want to be able to use any evidence. Before we set the path, we’re going to go buy some investigative equipment, protections, and so on.”

“Protections?”