The next morning, I discovered that giving a simple order to a perfectly disciplined organization could sometimes produce slightly excessive consequences.
When I entered the workroom with a still-steaming cup of coffee in hand, I stopped in the doorway for a few seconds, staring at what looked less like an investigation and more like the preparations for a historical commission tasked with studying several decades of infernal catastrophes.
The large central table had almost completely disappeared beneath stacks of files, maps of Pentagram City covered two mobile boards, and several photographs had been pinned to one of the walls with annotations specifying their date, source, and, whenever the information existed, the sector in which they had been taken.
Three additional crates were still waiting near the door, each filled with archives my men had apparently not had time to sort through during the night.
My lieutenant stood in front of one of the maps with an open file in his hands, while two soldiers worked on the other side of the room, sorting documents by year.
None of the three seemed to consider the state of the room excessive.
I looked from the table, to the crates, then to my lieutenant before continuing forward.
“When I asked for all our archives concerning the Exterminations, I was mostly imagining that we’d retrieve whatever might actually be useful, not that you’d empty thirty years of paperwork into a single room.”
He closed the file he had been reading and turned toward me with that almost perfect stillness that always made his reactions difficult to read.
“You asked for every available archive, Commander.
So we started with internal reports, then added testimonies preserved by our agents and information purchased over the years.
The documents that have not yet been verified are in the crates near the door.”
I set my coffee down in one of the few remaining clear spaces on the table and examined the first stack of reports.
“The worst part is that you followed the order perfectly, which means I can’t even complain properly.”
A very slight tilt of his head gave me the impression that he appreciated the remark more than he wanted to show.
I removed my cap and placed it beside my cup before sitting down.
Despite a decent night’s sleep, the images from yesterday’s meeting still returned with irritating clarity.
I could see the Exorcist’s head sliding across the table, the almost immediate shift in the atmosphere of the room, and above all that brief moment when a certainty several decades old had collapsed in front of me without offering the slightest explanation.
Ever since my arrival in Hell, I had always treated the Exterminations as a fact no one could truly change.
It was possible to reduce the risks, prepare shelters, relocate resources, and organize operations to avoid certain areas whenever the angels descended, but I had never seriously considered a military defense intended to stop the Exorcists themselves.
It wasn’t out of fear.
I had known enough wars and enough supposedly superior creatures that I no longer felt much simply because an opponent showed up with wings and an exceptionally high opinion of themselves.
The problem was far more practical: there was no known way to kill them.
Sending soldiers against a force capable of taking your attacks without suffering permanent losses wasn’t courage, merely a very fast way to waste resources.
And yet Velvette had just provided proof that this rule had at least one exception.
All that remained was to understand which one.
I pulled the first file toward me.
“Summarize what you’ve found so far.”
My lieutenant approached the table and placed several documents in front of me rather than answering immediately.
He had apparently already sorted out the most interesting testimonies.
“We started with the last fifteen years because our archives are far more complete for that period.
Several reports mention Exorcists supposedly wounded or neutralized during the purges, but none of the cases can be considered reliable enough to establish a precedent.
The most spectacular testimonies are also the ones with the least evidence.”
I opened the first report.
A sinner claimed to have shot an Exorcist at point-blank range with a shotgun before seeing her disappear behind a building.
No body had been recovered, and no independent witness had confirmed the story.
The next one was even better.
A demon claimed to have torn one of an Exorcist’s wings off after surprising her in an alley.
The report included a photograph of the witness, a skinny individual whose arms barely looked capable of carrying a crate of bottles without assistance.
I looked up at my lieutenant.
“This one is particularly convincing.”
“The report states that he had consumed several substances before being questioned.”
I resumed reading with diminishing patience.
“That might explain why he stopped at only one wing.”
My lieutenant slid a third file toward me.
“This one claims to have killed three during the same Extermination.”
I read the first few lines before frowning.
“With a broken bottle?”
“That is what he stated.”
I gently set the report down.
“I’m beginning to understand why no one has ever tried turning these archives into a scientific study.”
We continued anyway for nearly an hour.
A few documents deserved more attention.
There were several testimonies from different sectors describing Exorcists being momentarily thrown off balance by powerful attacks, and some had apparently been slammed into buildings or forced backward.
Two reports even mentioned blood after close-range confrontations, but the descriptions were too vague to determine whether it actually belonged to the angels or simply to the sinners they were slaughtering.
Most importantly, nothing established that an Exorcist had ever been killed.
Even after decades of rumors, exaggerations, and stories produced by survivors eager to turn their escape into a heroic victory, no serious evidence confirmed a precedent.
I finally closed the file I was reading and stood to approach the main map.
“We’re looking for the wrong kind of information.”
My lieutenant abandoned the photographs he was examining and followed me.
I picked up a pencil lying beneath the board and studied the different sectors of Pentagram City.
“We’re trying to figure out how to kill an Exorcist when we still don’t even know where Velvette’s Exorcist died.
If this really is the first case, we could spend weeks digging through these archives and find nothing except stories from sinners convinced that surviving five minutes of a purge makes them war heroes.”
I pointed to several districts that had been hit particularly hard during the last Extermination.
“That Exorcist’s head didn’t spontaneously appear among Velvette’s belongings.
Someone found it, someone moved it, and someone eventually got it to the Vees.
That trail is much easier to reconstruct than a death whose circumstances nobody knows.”
My lieutenant slowly nodded.
“So we first look for the location where the body was recovered.”
“Exactly.
Put our contacts on the recovery chain and pay properly for anything verifiable.
Scavengers who comb the streets after an Extermination become extremely talkative when they’re given a financial reason to remember.”
I returned to my cup and discovered that my coffee was already cold.
I drank it anyway.
Some sacrifices simply had to be accepted in the name of research.
It took us three days to obtain a lead solid enough to pursue.
The first pieces of information were almost as useless as the archives.
Several scavengers claimed to know the exact place where the Exorcist had been found, and strangely enough, each pointed to a different district conveniently located near their own territory.
One man even tried to sell us a photograph so badly doctored that the outlines of the original image were still visible beneath the wings he had added.
I nevertheless paid for information that could be cross-checked, because developing a reputation as a client who never paid her sources would have made the investigation considerably more difficult.
On the third day, two independent testimonies finally converged on the same industrial sector a few miles from central Pentagram City.
One came from a scavenger who had sold angelic remains to an intermediary connected to the Vees.
The other came from a former employee responsible for purchasing recovered material after the Extermination.
Neither had seen the Exorcist die.
However, both claimed that remains belonging to an angel had been recovered in the same area.
My lieutenant placed the reports in front of me while I studied the map.
“The descriptions aren’t identical, but they place the recovery point within a four-street radius.
We can narrow the area further with a few additional interviews, but we’ll probably need to go there ourselves if we want to find anything physical.”
I traced the indicated streets with my finger.
Something caught my attention in one of the files lying nearby.
I picked it up almost absently.
It was an old movement log compiled by our own agents after the last Extermination, mainly to track recovery teams operating in areas where we had commercial interests.
Carmine Industries appeared several times.
I compared the sectors.
Then the two reports.
Carmilla’s teams had been seen in the same area.
I stared at the documents for several seconds without saying anything.
My lieutenant immediately understood what had caught my attention.
“The presence of Carmine Industries after an Extermination isn’t unusual.
They regularly recover angelic steel abandoned in the streets.”
“I know.
If their teams hadn’t been somewhere in Pentagram City after a purge, that would probably be more remarkable.”
I placed the report beside the testimonies.
It still wasn’t proof.
I refused to turn an interesting coincidence into a conclusion simply because I liked the conclusion.
But Carmilla had been strangely tense during the meeting, Velvette had clearly been trying to provoke a specific reaction from her, and now we were learning that people connected to Carmine Industries had been in the area where the Exorcist’s remains had most likely been recovered.
Taken separately, each of those facts meant very little.
Together, they were beginning to form something I preferred to examine personally.
I picked up my cap.
“Prepare the car.
I’m coming with you.”
My lieutenant glanced toward the map.
“How many men do you want to bring?”
“Four soldiers will be enough.
We’re inspecting an already-cleared sector, not storming Carmilla’s headquarters.
I’d rather our presence be visible without making it look like I’m mobilizing an entire unit to search through rubble.”
I put my cap back on and took my sidearm from the desk drawer before returning it to its holster.
“And no one touches anything on site without telling me first.
If we’re lucky enough to find a trace that’s still usable, I’d rather one of our men didn’t step on it before I can examine it.”
“I’ll relay the instructions.”
He left to organize the trip while I collected the two reports.
I wasn’t certain what we would find.
But for the first time since the meeting, we had something more than assumptions.
Pentagram City repaired its wounds with almost insulting speed.
By the time we reached the indicated sector, most obvious traces of the last Extermination had already disappeared.
Scaffolding covered several buildings, workers were replacing shattered windows, and some façades had received enough new signs to make it seem as though their owners had been waiting for a catastrophe to modernize their businesses.
Traffic had also returned to its usual rhythm, which meant badly parked vehicles, insults shouted from sidewalks, and at least two visible arguments before our car had even come to a stop.
The soldier driving eventually found a place near an old warehouse.
I got out first and surveyed the surroundings while my lieutenant and the four soldiers joined me.
“We start with the two streets mentioned in the testimonies, then expand outward.
Focus on areas that haven’t been renovated yet, inner courtyards, or places that are difficult to access.
The main streets have already been cleaned enough times that we’re unlikely to find anything interesting there.”
The soldiers split into pairs.
My lieutenant remained beside me.
For nearly an hour, we inspected the area without finding anything that justified the trip.
There were numerous impacts on the walls, but nothing allowed us to distinguish those dating from the Extermination from those produced by Pentagram City’s countless ordinary shootouts.
We recovered several metal fragments, including a piece of angelic steel lodged in a gutter, but that was nothing exceptional.
Every year, the Exorcists abandoned or lost pieces of their weapons during the fighting.
Carmilla would never have built such a significant business around the material if it had been impossible to find.
I was beginning to seriously consider the possibility that construction work and scavengers had already erased everything that might have been useful when one of my soldiers returned to us.
“Commander, several scavengers are currently searching a building farther north.
One of them is carrying angelic fragments.”
I looked at my lieutenant.
“At least we’ll have someone to question before we go home empty-handed.”
The soldier led us toward an old industrial courtyard hidden behind two partially collapsed buildings.
Five scavengers were sorting their haul around several bags filled with cables, weapon fragments, and mechanical parts.
One of them was indeed holding a metallic fragment whose distinctive color left no doubt as to its nature.
They noticed us almost immediately.
Two instinctively reached for their weapons.
The oldest looked toward me.
Then toward my lieutenant.
His expression changed quickly enough that both hands immediately moved away from the holsters.
Katie Killjoy’s report continued to produce unexpected benefits.
The scavenger who seemed to be leading the group slowly raised his hands.
“We’re not looking for trouble.”
I stopped a few feet away from him.
“Good, because neither am I.
If nobody does anything stupid, this conversation might even be profitable for everyone.”
His gaze dropped toward the fragment he was holding.
I indicated it with a slight motion of my head.
“You found that in this area?”
He hesitated long enough for me to see the calculation forming behind his eyes.
The fear hadn’t disappeared.
But greed had just reminded him that we were still in Hell.
“Maybe.”
I smiled faintly.
“How much do you want to stop pretending you don’t understand why I’m here?”
He blinked, clearly surprised that I had skipped several usual stages of this sort of negotiation.
“You’re looking for something specific.
If where I found this interests you, the information is worth money.”
“Absolutely.
Now we agree on the principle, which saves us several minutes of pointless theater.
Give me a price.”
He named a sum so high that my lieutenant slowly turned his head toward him.
I calmly raised a hand before he could intervene.
“You know, I almost admire the audacity.
The problem is that you just valued a few minutes of your memory at the price of a small building in a decent neighborhood.”
The scavenger shrugged with slightly forced confidence.
“If you came all this way with your soldiers, then the information must be important.”
This time, I genuinely smiled.
“Very good observation.
You correctly understood that my time has value and that I would rather pay you than continue inspecting every alley in the area.
Where your reasoning becomes less impressive is when you assume I’m incapable of continuing without you.”
I took out the money I had prepared for precisely this kind of situation and showed him the amount.
“This is what your information is worth to me right now.
If you accept, you walk away with more money than you’d probably earn in several days of scavenging.
If you keep negotiating until the time I spend listening to you exceeds the time it would take me to find the place myself, your information will be worth nothing.
I’m not going to threaten you or pretend my offer is generous out of kindness; it’s simply calculated so that both of us benefit from reaching an agreement quickly.”
He stared at the money for several seconds.
One of his companions whispered something to him.
Eventually, he held out his hand.
“Deal.”
I gave him the money.
“Excellent decision.
Now show us where you found the fragment.”
He led us behind two old workshops into a narrow courtyard surrounded by walls high enough to have escaped most of the construction work.
At first glance, the place seemed ordinary.
Some rubble had been pushed against a wall, a broken pipe ran across the ground, and several cracks bore witness to the damage suffered by the surrounding buildings.
The scavenger pointed toward an area near one wall.
“The piece was there.
Well, around there.
There were others when I arrived, but some guys had already been through.
After a purge, if you’re not one of the first, you mostly get the leftovers of the leftovers.”
I crouched down.
The ground had been trampled enough times to make any precise reading impossible, but some marks on the wall were more interesting.
Several deep cuts crossed the masonry at angles suggesting extremely close-range combat.
My lieutenant approached as well.
“Those marks probably weren’t caused by gunfire.”
“No.”
I followed the direction of the cuts with my eyes.
Someone had fought here with a weapon capable of penetrating deeply into stone.
That could match an Exorcist’s spear.
Which, once again, proved nothing.
My lieutenant crouched near a crack and used an ordinary knife to free a metal shard almost completely hidden beneath the dust.
He carefully placed it on a piece of cloth before handing it to me.
I immediately recognized angelic steel.
I examined it from several angles.
The fragment was too small to identify with certainty what weapon it had come from.
“Did you see a body when you arrived?” I asked the scavenger.
“No.
The place had already been picked through.”
He scratched the back of his neck before adding, “But I saw people around here during the Extermination.
Well, not exactly in this courtyard.
In the street right behind it.”
I looked up.
“Who?”
He hesitated.
“Carmine people, I think.”
My lieutenant remained perfectly still.
I straightened.
“What makes you think they worked for Carmilla?”
“Their clothes and gear.
I’ve seen her teams after other Exterminations.
But this was during it, not after.
Two women were with the group.
I was hiding in a building farther away, so I wasn’t exactly gonna come out and ask for their IDs while the angels were slaughtering everyone.”
Two women.
Clara and Odette immediately came to mind.
I let nothing show on my face.
Carmilla had two daughters.
Two daughters she protected with an intensity that no one who had worked with her could seriously doubt.
I thought back to the meeting and the way she had tensed when Velvette began pressing the issue of the dead Exorcist.
It still wasn’t proof.
But the coincidence was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
“Do you remember anything else?”
The scavenger shook his head.
“Not really.
I spent most of the time trying not to die.”
A perfectly reasonable answer.
I placed the fragment inside a small metal box intended for evidence recovered during the investigation.
“Then we’re done.”
He seemed surprised.
“That’s it?”
I looked at him.
“You sold me the information I asked for, you didn’t obviously lie to me, and no one here tried to draw a weapon.
Why would I complicate a transaction that went perfectly well?”
His gaze flicked toward my soldiers.
I understood what he had imagined.
“Contrary to certain rumors, I don’t automatically kill everyone I speak to.
It would make commerce extremely complicated.”
One of the scavengers behind him let out a nervous laugh.
I turned away.
“Good luck.
And if you find anything else specifically from this courtyard, you now know a buyer who pays.”
We left without incident.
Once we were far enough away, my lieutenant moved closer to me.
“Carmilla’s daughters may have been present during the confrontation.”
I kept my eyes on the street ahead.
“Maybe.
We have the testimony of a scavenger who was observing from a distance during an Extermination and thinks he recognized people from Carmine Industries.
It’s interesting, especially considering Carmilla’s reaction yesterday, but I’m not going to turn that into certainty simply because the puzzle is beginning to take a pleasing shape.”
We were approaching the car when my lieutenant spoke again, this time with greater caution in his voice.
“Do you want to contact Carmilla?”
I shook my head.
“Absolutely not.
If she really has information she chose to hide from a room full of Overlords, telling her we’ve traced her organization’s movements won’t suddenly make her talkative.
It will only tell her which leads we’re following and give her time to close them.”
I got into the car before continuing.
“So we keep this information to ourselves and continue searching for whatever we can obtain without drawing her attention.”
My lieutenant took the seat opposite me.
“Understood.”
I looked at the small box containing the fragment before slipping it into the inner pocket of my cape.
It wasn’t the answer I had come looking for.
But it was more than enough to keep going.
When we returned to the domain, I placed the fragment on my desk and spent nearly half an hour looking at it more often than I would have admitted.
Beside it rested my customized pistol.
The weapon had been manufactured by Carmine Industries several years earlier, fitted to the size of my hand and modified after several rounds of testing until its balance suited me perfectly.
Its appearance was deliberately understated.
I had never understood the point of turning a weapon meant to be used into a jewel decorated enough to become unpleasant to clean.
Its true value came from the angelic steel integrated into its construction and the ammunition designed for it.
I knew perfectly well what that material did to demons.
The gang leader I had executed some time earlier wasn’t going to come back to testify about it.
I picked up the fragment recovered from the courtyard and held it near the pistol.
Same material.
Or close enough that the difference was impossible to distinguish without further analysis.
An idea I had so far refused to take too seriously kept returning with increasing insistence.
My lieutenant, seated on the other side of the desk, probably noticed my expression.
“You’re thinking about the angelic steel.”
I set the fragment down.
“I’ve been thinking about it since we left the courtyard.
The theory is almost too simple, which is precisely why I refuse to fall in love with it before we have evidence.”
I lightly rotated my pistol on the wooden desk.
“We know this metal permanently kills demons.
We know the Exorcists use it systematically.
We also know that an Exorcist was killed in an area where angelic weapons were obviously present.
What we don’t know is whether this material played any role whatsoever in her death.
Finding angelic steel after an Extermination is nothing unusual.”
My lieutenant rested his hands on his knees.
“Still, if Carmilla is involved, she would have had access to that kind of weapon.”
“She has access to more angelic steel than almost anyone in Hell, which makes the hypothesis interesting without making it correct.”
I leaned back in my chair.
The problem with the scientific method was that it stubbornly refused to become more accommodating whenever a conclusion was particularly appealing.
“To verify it properly, we would need to reproduce the conditions.”
My lieutenant looked at my weapon.
“On an Exorcist.”
“Ideally, yes.”
I picked up my glass and took a sip.
“Unfortunately, I doubt Heaven’s embassy would agree to lend us one for a few ballistic tests.”
This time, I distinctly heard something resembling amusement in his voice when he replied.
“The request might be poorly received.”
I smiled.
“That’s why I leave diplomatic relations to you.”
I began considering the alternatives.
Search for precise testimonies involving wounds caused by angelic steel.
Compare the weapons recovered in the area.
Determine whether Carmine Industries had reported any losses or unusual movements on the day of the Extermination.
Above all, find other witnesses capable of confirming the presence of Carmilla or her daughters.
My phone suddenly began vibrating on the desk.
I looked down.
Charlie.
I let out a sigh that ultimately contained less annoyance than I would have liked.
“I’m starting to believe that woman possesses some ability that allows her to detect the exact moment I’m focused enough to be interrupted.”
My lieutenant gathered the reports in front of him.
“Would you like me to leave you alone?”
“No.
Stay.
If she starts recounting her day in minute detail, your presence will at least allow me to confirm later that certain parts were actually said.”
I answered.
“Hello, Charlie.”
Her voice immediately came through with its usual energy.
“Tanya!
Hi!
Am I bothering you?
Because if I’m really bothering you I can call back later, although I hope I’m not bothering you too much because I wanted to check on you and tell you what happened yesterday while you were at your meeting, and honestly way more happened than I expected when I suggested the trust exercises.”
I looked at the fragment of angelic steel.
Then the pistol.
“I’m listening.”
I almost immediately regretted those words.
Charlie began with Sir Pentious and his persistent inability to fully trust the other residents, which naturally led her to explain why the Egg Boiz complicated matters.
She then told me how Vaggie had tried several much more conventional exercises before concluding that something more concrete was needed.
From there, her story became considerably more eventful.
Charlie spoke quickly whenever she was passionate about something, but she also had this remarkable tendency to remember some detail in the middle of a sentence, open a parenthesis to explain it, and then return to the original story late enough that anyone else would have forgotten where she had started.
Strangely, I had gotten used to following along.
At one point, she imitated Vaggie, then Pentious, before adopting a voice supposedly representing Angel that I refused to consider accurate.
My lieutenant was very obviously trying to continue reading his files.
I knew perfectly well that he was listening.
“…and then Vaggie decided that if normal exercises weren’t enough, maybe they needed to be put in a situation where they’d actually be forced to rely on each other, which made a certain amount of sense when she explained it, but I really thought she was still talking about a controlled exercise and not something that dangerous, so obviously I panicked when I realized what she meant, except by then they had already left and—”
Charlie continued long enough for me to pick up my glass, finish it, and set it back down.
When she finally stopped, I waited a second to make sure she had actually finished.
“If I understand your day correctly, you wanted to teach Pentious and the others to trust each other through relatively harmless activities, then Vaggie decided the method lacked intensity and concluded that genuine mortal danger had greater educational value.”
There was a second of silence over the phone before Charlie protested.
“When you put it like that, it sounds like we completely lost control of the situation, and that’s not exactly what happened.
I mean, okay, maybe we lost control a little, but the result was actually really positive, and they ended up genuinely helping each other.”
I smiled as I leaned toward the nearest file.
“I’m not even necessarily criticizing the result.
I’m simply trying to understand how your rehabilitation program went from trust exercises to a method I might have used to train particularly stubborn young recruits.”
Charlie laughed despite herself.
“Vaggie would probably be happy to hear that.”
“I’m not sure it was a compliment.”
She continued for a few more minutes, explaining that Pentious had ultimately been allowed to keep his Egg Boiz and that he seemed to genuinely be starting to trust the other residents of the hotel more.
That detail interested me more than the general absurdity of the exercises.
During my first visit, I had already noticed that spontaneous behavior probably mattered more than the activities themselves.
If Pentious was genuinely beginning to view the others as people he could rely on rather than temporary allies, then Charlie might actually be achieving exactly the kind of result she was looking for.
I didn’t immediately tell her that conclusion.
She would probably have talked for another twenty minutes.
“And you?” she finally asked.
“How did your Overlord meeting go?”
I looked down at my desk.
The atmosphere of the conversation immediately changed in my mind.
I could easily dodge the question.
Charlie had no way of knowing what had happened, and the meeting concerned matters that weren’t directly related to the hotel.
Yet Adam’s decision had already placed her project at the center of something much larger, and if the possibility of killing Exorcists ever became public knowledge, Charlie would inevitably be involved.
I preferred that she learn the information from me rather than through some rumor.
“Before I answer, I need you to promise me something.”
The silence came immediately.
Charlie knew my voice well enough by now to understand that I was no longer joking.
“What?”
“What I’m about to tell you cannot leave this conversation under any circumstances.
I don’t just mean avoiding telling strangers.
I want you to tell neither Vaggie, nor Angel, nor Pentious, nor Husk, nor anyone else at the hotel.”
She hesitated.
“Even Vaggie?”
“Yes, even her.
I know she’s your partner, and I completely understand that you trust her, but the problem here isn’t simply whether someone is trustworthy.
Every additional person who possesses this information increases the risk that it spreads, even accidentally.”
I heard Charlie breathe in softly.
“Okay.
I promise.
It stays between us.”
I let a few seconds pass before continuing.
“During the meeting, Velvette brought proof that an Exorcist had been found dead after the last Extermination.
She had the angel’s head with her, so this isn’t a rumor or a misunderstood testimony.
Someone, somewhere in Pentagram City, managed to kill an Exorcist.”
For several seconds, Charlie said nothing.
I could imagine her standing frozen with the phone in her hand.
“But Exorcists are supposed to be impossible to kill.”
“That’s exactly what everyone thought until proof of the opposite was dropped onto the table in front of us.
For now, no one has publicly explained how she died, and I want the situation to remain as quiet as possible until that question has an answer.”
Her voice grew quieter.
“Does Adam know?”
“I don’t know.
Maybe Heaven already knows exactly what happened, or maybe they’re looking for the answer too.
What I do know is that we gain nothing by announcing the news to all of Pride before we understand what it means.”
I stood and walked toward the window.
The domain stretched peacefully beyond the glass, perfectly indifferent to the conversation taking place in my office.
“I want to be very clear about one thing, Charlie.
I’m not asking you to keep quiet because the possibility of war with Heaven terrifies me or because I want to protect the Exorcists.
If we discover a reliable way to kill them and they still choose to return in six months to continue their massacre, I’ll have no problem preparing my soldiers to hit them back.
The problem is that right now we don’t know anything precise enough to act intelligently.”
I took a moment to formulate what came next before continuing.
“If the news spreads now, a large part of Hell won’t hear, ‘An Exorcist was found dead under unknown circumstances.’ They’ll simply hear, ‘Angels can die.’ Gangs will try to make names for themselves, some Overlords will want to test their forces, and enough idiots will convince themselves that an ordinary weapon is sufficient because they’ll have forgotten half the information by the time they repeat it.
Pentagram City is already unstable because of the six-month deadline.
I don’t want to add panic or war fever based on something no one understands yet.”
Charlie remained silent for a moment.
When she answered, she had regained that very particular sincerity that sometimes made it difficult to remember she had been born and raised in Hell.
“I understand.
I really promise, Tanya.
I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thank you.”
I returned to my desk.
“Do you think they can really be killed?”
I looked at the fragment.
“I believe one Exorcist is dead, which is already much more than I believed yesterday.
As for the rest, I’d rather wait for evidence before turning my assumptions into certainties.”
It was carefully true.
I didn’t tell her about the area we had explored, the scavenger who had seen members of Carmine Industries during the Extermination, Carmilla’s behavior during the meeting, or the small fragment of angelic steel currently lying beside my pistol.
Charlie had agreed to keep an extremely sensitive piece of information secret.
I had no reason to make her carry the weight of my entire investigation.
She remained silent for a few more seconds before speaking again, with a concern I immediately recognized.
“You’re going to investigate this, aren’t you?”
I looked at my lieutenant.
He had finally given up any attempt to pretend he wasn’t following the conversation.
“I have absolutely no idea what could possibly give you that impression.”
“Tanya, I know you well enough by now to know you can’t learn that something considered impossible just happened without trying to understand why.”
I smiled despite myself.
“I’ll be careful.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“It’s probably the best answer you’re getting tonight.”
She sighed, but I also heard her laugh softly.
We spoke for a few more minutes before the conversation gradually returned to subjects less likely to trigger a war between Heaven and Hell.
Charlie asked whether I planned to stop by the hotel again soon, particularly because Pentious had already modified his little automaton since my last visit.
I refused to give her a date.
Naturally, she interpreted the absence of a definitive refusal as a victory.
When we finally hung up, I placed my phone on the desk and remained silent for a few seconds.
My lieutenant was the first to break the silence.
“You trust her enough to have told her about the dead Exorcist.”
I sat back down in my chair.
“Enough to believe she’ll keep a promise when she clearly understands the consequences of breaking it.
She probably would have learned the news eventually anyway, and I’d rather she have the exact version than hear it after it’s passed through fifteen layers of rumors.”
I gestured toward the documents spread before us.
“However, she has no reason to know the rest of our investigation for now.”
My lieutenant slowly nodded.
He asked for no further explanation.
I picked up the fragment again and held it beside the pistol once more.
The more I looked at the two objects, the more the hypothesis seemed both appealing and dangerously simple.
For decades, the Exorcists had descended carrying weapons capable of permanently killing Hell’s inhabitants.
Whenever some of those weapons were abandoned, Carmilla and other scavengers turned them into commodities, and everyone knew their value against demons.
Yet no one seemed to have demonstrated that this same property could work against their owners.
Maybe because no one had ever seriously tried.
Maybe because those who had tried died before they could understand their results.
Or maybe angelic steel had absolutely nothing to do with the death we were investigating, and I was beginning to assign far too much importance to a coincidence.
I greatly preferred that last possibility to the opposite mistake of accepting a theory too quickly simply because it was elegant.
“Continue investigating Carmine Industries’ movements during the last Extermination,” I finally ordered.
“Nothing intrusive.
I don’t want any infiltration attempts, any men sent to search their facilities, and especially no direct questions to their employees.
We use only information available through our usual networks and testimonies from people outside her organization.
If Carmilla learns that we’re specifically interested in her movements, I want to know immediately, and we’ll suspend that line of investigation.”
My lieutenant took out his notebook and wrote down the instructions.
“And regarding the angelic steel?”
I set the fragment down.
“Look for testimonies in which Exorcists were struck with their own weapons or with equipment made from the same metal.
Not the barroom hero stories we read this morning; I want cases that can be cross-checked through multiple sources.
Even a minor wound interests me if it was properly observed.”
He finished his notes.
I then stood and picked up my pistol.
The weapon rested perfectly in my hand, so familiar that I sometimes forgot how exceptional the material composing it truly was.
I had always considered this weapon insurance.
A means of permanently eliminating a threat when simply destroying its body wasn’t enough.
Today, its potential value might have changed.
I ran my thumb along the slide before returning the pistol to its holster.
If our hypothesis proved correct, I had spent years carrying a weapon capable of doing what all of Hell considered impossible.
For now, it was only a possibility.
But unlike yesterday, we now had a lead solid enough to deserve being followed all the way to the end.
And I fully intended to discover where it led.