The following days confirmed something I had already had the opportunity to learn over the course of my various lives: when enough people were asked to look for something, the real problem usually wasn’t finding information, but managing to distinguish what was actually worth wasting time reading.
The investigation into the Exorcists was a particularly effective demonstration of that fact.
My men had continued digging through our archives and discreetly contacting several sources throughout Pentagram City while I resumed my usual activities.
Contrary to what my interest in the matter might suggest, I had no intention of dedicating entire days to a dead angel’s head and a piece of steel recovered from an industrial courtyard.
My domain did not stop functioning simply because Heaven had just lost its supposed monopoly on immortality.
I had therefore spent a good part of the last three days moving between several administrative meetings, inspecting a recently expanded workshop, and enduring a far too lengthy discussion regarding the maintenance costs of two buildings that some of my subordinates wanted to rebuild entirely.
I had also been forced to intervene in a disagreement between two production managers who had accomplished the impressive feat of turning a relatively ordinary supply problem into a personal conflict ridiculous enough to make its way all the way up to me.
Hell could reveal that an angel had been killed for the first time in its known history; there would always be someone, somewhere, coming to explain to me that a warehouse was short on spare parts.
In a way, I found that reassuring.
It was on the fourth day that my lieutenant entered my office carrying a folder considerably thinner than the ones he had been bringing me since the beginning of our investigation.
I finished signing the document in front of me before looking up.
“I hope the size of that file means you’ve finally started eliminating the testimonies from people claiming they strangled an Exorcist with their own intestines.”
My lieutenant approached the desk and placed the folder in front of me.
“We raised the standard after the initial results.
No testimony is now retained unless it can be cross-checked with at least one other source or contains enough verifiable details.”
“That should considerably reduce the contribution from bar regulars.”
I opened the folder.
It contained fewer than ten reports.
That was already much more encouraging.
My lieutenant remained standing on the other side of the desk while I quickly went through the first few pages.
“Several testimonies mention Exorcists being struck with their own weapons or with steel recovered after previous Exterminations.
Most remain too imprecise to determine the actual severity of the injuries, but one report has several interesting peculiarities.”
He pointed to a document dating back several decades.
I picked it up and began reading.
The incident had taken place during an Extermination, in a district of Pentagram City that practically no longer existed in its original form.
A group of six sinners had become trapped inside a building when several Exorcists began clearing the surrounding streets.
Only one had eventually entered their shelter.
Five sinners had died.
The sixth had survived.
According to his statement, one of his companions had possessed a blade made from an angelic weapon recovered several years earlier.
During the confrontation, he had managed to strike the Exorcist in the flank.
The blade had penetrated.
The angel had bled.
And the witness insisted on one particularly interesting detail: the blood had been golden.
I reread the passage before continuing.
The Exorcist had stared at her own wound with what the witness described as genuine shock, after which her behavior had changed abruptly.
She had stopped taunting the sinners and had almost immediately killed the one who had wounded her before slaughtering the others.
The survivor had managed to escape through an opening at the rear of the building while she finished off his companions.
I set the report down.
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes.”
That answer interested me almost as much as the testimony itself.
“You’re certain?”
“Our agents found him yesterday.
He left Pentagram City several years ago and currently lives in a small community outside the city.
He doesn’t appear to belong to any major Overlord and has no activities likely to attract particular attention.”
I picked up the document again.
A testimony several decades old wasn’t exactly the kind of evidence I would have dreamed of, but unlike the nonsense we had examined a few days earlier, this one contained several elements that made me want to take it seriously.
The original report had been written shortly after the Extermination in question, long before the death of an Exorcist could have given the witness any reason to alter his story.
He did not claim to have defeated the angel, did not present himself as a hero, and explicitly admitted to abandoning his companions to save his own existence.
Most importantly, the detail concerning the golden blood was already present in the original statement.
I closed the file.
“Prepare the car.”
My lieutenant tilted his head slightly.
“You want to see him personally?”
“We’ve spent several days looking for proof that an angelic weapon can actually wound an Exorcist.
Now that we may have someone in front of us who saw it with his own eyes, I’d rather ask my questions directly than turn his testimony into a succession of reports written by three different intermediaries.”
I stood and retrieved my cap.
“No need for an escort this time.
You’re coming with me, and our driver will be enough.
If this man has managed to live quietly for several decades, showing up at his door with an entire squad is mostly likely to make him want to disappear before we even start talking.”
We left the domain shortly before noon.
As we moved farther away from Pentagram City, the gigantic buildings and aggressively bright signs gradually gave way to more widely spaced structures.
Pride never became truly quiet, but the absence of the massive concentrations of sinners found in the capital was enough to give the roads an almost peaceful atmosphere.
Almost.
We still passed an abandoned vehicle burning on the roadside and, a few miles farther on, two demons who appeared to be settling a business dispute by attempting to throw each other into a ravine.
I didn’t ask the driver to slow down.
They seemed to be handling themselves perfectly well without us.
I was rereading the old testimony when my lieutenant, seated across from me, finally broke the silence.
“May I ask you a question, Commander?”
I looked up from the report.
“Technically, you just did, but I assume that wasn’t the one you had in mind.”
He ignored the remark with the usual dignity of someone who had enjoyed several decades to become accustomed to my personality.
“Why does this investigation interest you so much?
Our domain is far enough from Pentagram City that it isn’t a priority target during the Exterminations, and we already have procedures that considerably reduce the risks.
Even if angels can be killed, that doesn’t immediately change our situation.”
I closed the report on my lap.
The question was legitimate, and I respected my lieutenant enough not to answer with a platitude.
“Because we may have just witnessed a change to one of the principles that has maintained the balance between Hell and Heaven for years.
Until now, an Extermination was a confrontation in which only one side could suffer permanent losses.
The entire behavior of the Exorcists, the Overlords, and even ordinary sinners rests on that certainty.”
I briefly watched the landscape pass beyond the window before continuing.
“If that certainty disappears, the consequences won’t stop at the districts attacked by the angels.
The simple fact that Hell can fight back changes everyone’s calculations, including Heaven’s.
I don’t yet know whether that will lead to a war, a change in the Exterminations, or simply a considerable increase in the price of Carmilla’s weapons, but I refuse to discover the new situation several weeks after my competitors.”
My lieutenant remained silent for a few seconds.
“You want to possess the information before it becomes public.”
“Naturally.
Important information has never stopped being a form of power simply because it can’t directly make something explode.”
I picked up the report again.
“And before you suddenly develop the strange idea that I’m doing all this to generously protect the inhabitants of Pentagram City, allow me to reassure you: if a war breaks out, my priority will remain our domain and those who depend on us.
I’m not going to sacrifice my resources to save strangers who would probably spend the following week trying to rob me.”
“I had not considered that possibility.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Excellent.
That means you still know me well enough.”
There was something dangerously close to amusement in his permanent wide grin.
I reopened the report.
The rest of the journey passed quietly.
The community where our witness lived was larger than I had imagined.
Around fifty buildings stretched along an old industrial road, mostly low houses built from salvaged materials and several businesses whose signs seemed to have seen better days.
The population consisted almost exclusively of sinners, which remained relatively unusual this far from Pentagram City, but the place seemed organized enough not to resemble a simple improvised camp.
Our car immediately attracted attention.
That was hardly surprising.
Even without knowing my identity, the sight of a perfectly maintained vehicle arriving with a driver whose face consisted of shadow and teeth was probably enough to raise a few questions.
The witness lived in a house near the end of the main street.
My lieutenant got out first, then held the door while our driver remained near the vehicle.
“Try not to terrorize the neighbors,” I told him before walking away.
He responded with a nod.
I wasn’t certain that a soldier without eyes and with a smile full of sharp teeth could truly follow that instruction, but the intention counted.
My lieutenant knocked on the door.
We had to wait almost a minute before it opened.
The demon who appeared matched the recent photograph attached to the report fairly well.
He had a vaguely reptilian appearance, dark skin marked by several scars, and two horns, one of which had been broken close enough to the base that it had never grown back properly.
He looked first at my lieutenant.
Then at me.
His shoulders stiffened.
“Holy fucking shit.”
I gave him a polite smile.
“Good afternoon to you too.”
He remained in the doorway.
“If this is about a debt, I haven’t borrowed anything from anyone in years.”
“Congratulations on your financial management, but I’m not here to collect money.
I simply want to ask you a few questions about an Extermination you survived several decades ago.”
His suspicion didn’t disappear; it simply changed form.
“Why?”
I took an envelope containing the amount we had prepared before leaving from my pocket.
“Because your testimony interests me, and I prefer to properly compensate people when they save me time.
You can refuse, in which case we’ll leave and you’ll probably never see us again.
If you accept, I’ll pay you to honestly answer a few questions.”
He looked at the envelope, then at my lieutenant.
“And if you don’t like my answers?”
“I asked you to be honest, not to tell me what I want to hear.
If your story turns out to be less interesting than the report suggests, you’ll still be paid.”
That answer finally seemed to convince him.
He opened the door wider.
“Come in.”
The interior was modest but clean.
The witness led us into a small room that clearly served as both living room and kitchen, then invited us to sit around a table whose different chairs appeared to have come from four separate sets.
I placed the envelope in front of him before even beginning.
He took it, quickly checked the contents, and slipped it into an inner pocket.
“So, what do you want to know?”
I took out the copy of his old testimony.
“You stated that you saw an Exorcist wounded by a blade during an Extermination.
I want you to tell me what you remember without trying to fill in the parts you’ve forgotten.
If you’re no longer certain about a detail, simply say so.”
He stared at the report for a few seconds.
His expression changed slightly.
“That was a long time ago.”
“I know.”
He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his broken horn.
“There were six of us.
Back then, I ran with a bunch of assholes who thought we could take advantage of the Exterminations to loot businesses while everyone was hiding.
It worked pretty well until the day we ended up on the wrong side of a street when the angels arrived.”
He clearly wasn’t trying to embellish his past.
That was already encouraging.
“We hid in an old building, thinking they’d pass us by.
One saw us go inside.
She followed us alone because she’d probably figured out we were just six idiots trapped in a room.”
His gaze drifted for a moment toward the wall behind me.
“She was right, too.
We couldn’t do shit to her.
Guns were useless, and she didn’t even seem to be in a hurry.
She watched us trying to hit her like it was funny.”
I didn’t interrupt him.
“One of the guys, Rask, had a blade he’d bought a few years earlier.
The seller said it had been made from an old angel spear recovered after a purge.
Back then, we already knew those things could permanently kill our kind, so he mostly kept it for trouble with other sinners.”
He paused.
“The angel tried to stab him with her spear.
Rask dodged as best he could and shoved his blade into her side.
Not just a scratch.
I saw it go in.”
I leaned forward slightly.
“You’re certain the blade penetrated her flesh and didn’t simply damage her clothing?”
The demon immediately shook his head.
“I’m sure.
Because she bled.”
“What color?”
This time, he looked directly at me.
“Gold.
Really gold.
Not yellow, not orange.
It almost glowed under the light.
Some of it ran over her hand when she touched the wound.”
Now that was considerably more interesting.
“How did she react?”
The witness slowly inhaled.
“Like someone who’d just discovered that something impossible had happened to her.”
He looked down at his own hands.
“What I remember most is her face.
Before that, she was smiling.
They almost all smiled during the purges.
After the hit, she looked at her blood and the smile disappeared.
She looked… I don’t know.
Surprised.
Maybe even a little scared for a second.”
“And then?”
“Then she killed Rask.”
There was nothing light left in his voice.
“Not like the others.
She jumped him immediately and drove her spear into his chest.
After that, she stopped playing around.
Two more died almost immediately.
That’s when I ran.
There was an opening behind some machinery, and I got the fuck out while she was dealing with the others.”
I let a few seconds pass.
“Did you see the wound close?”
“No.”
“Did the Exorcist seem hindered in her movements after being struck?”
He thought seriously before answering.
“I think she held her side for a few seconds, but after that I was mostly busy trying not to die.
I can’t tell you whether she flew worse or anything like that.”
That was precisely the kind of answer I wanted to hear.
Someone inventing the story would probably have tried to give me every piece of information.
He admitted what he didn’t know.
“Did you see blood fall onto the ground?”
“Yes.
A few drops near Rask.”
“Did anyone else survive?”
He slowly shook his head.
“Not that I know of.
I came back the next day because I wanted to recover what we’d left behind, but the others were dead.”
I stopped.
“You returned to the scene?”
He nodded.
“I was an asshole, not a complete idiot.
We’d left behind plenty of stuff worth money.”
I was beginning to appreciate his honesty.
“And the blade?”
His expression changed very slightly, but enough for me to notice.
I placed my hands on the table.
“You recovered it.”
He hesitated.
“Not exactly.”
My lieutenant turned his head slightly toward him.
The demon sighed.
“It was broken.
I found a piece near Rask’s body.
I kept the fragment because angelic steel was already worth a lot, but I never found out what happened to the rest.
Probably picked up by someone else before I came back.”
My attention was now entirely fixed on him.
“Do you still have that fragment?”
He remained silent long enough to give me the answer before he even spoke.
“Maybe.”
I smiled.
“We’ve already played this game with someone else this week.
I’ll spare you the unnecessary part: if you still have it and you’re willing to sell it to me, I’m prepared to pay fairly.”
He stood without answering and disappeared into another room.
My lieutenant looked at me.
“This could be the first piece whose origin we know precisely.”
“Exactly.
The fragment found in the courtyard only proves that angelic steel was present in an area where angels were fighting, which is roughly equivalent to proving there was water in the ocean.
This one, if his story is accurate, belonged directly to the weapon that wounded an Exorcist.”
The demon returned a few minutes later carrying a small, worn metal box.
He placed it in front of us.
Inside was a blade fragment roughly four inches long.
Even after all those years, the nature of the metal was immediately recognizable.
I didn’t touch it right away.
“How much?”
This time, he named a high but perfectly reasonable amount considering what he possessed.
I negotiated anyway.
Not because I couldn’t pay.
Simply because immediately accepting the first price asked in Hell was an excellent way to encourage everyone to double the next one.
We eventually reached an agreement that seemed to satisfy both of us.
I carefully stored the fragment.
Before leaving, I turned toward him one last time.
“One final question.
In all these years, you never told this story publicly?”
He shrugged.
“To a few people.
Nobody gave a shit.
Everyone knew angels were immortal, so when I said we’d wounded one, people either told me I’d seen it wrong or that it didn’t matter because five guys died.”
I watched him for a few seconds.
That was probably the most interesting part of the entire story.
The answer might have been in front of them for decades, but no one had simply asked the right question.
The journey back was much quieter.
I kept the box containing the fragment near me and reread the original testimony once again.
This time, I was no longer trying to determine whether angelic steel could wound Exorcists.
That question was settled.
An old testimony, recorded long before the current events, described an angelic weapon penetrating an Exorcist’s flesh and drawing her golden blood.
The witness had nothing to gain by inventing the story today, since he had already told it decades earlier.
He still possessed a fragment of the weapon, and his account matched perfectly with what we now knew.
It would have taken a remarkable amount of bad faith to continue pretending we had nothing more than a vague hypothesis.
My lieutenant must have followed the same reasoning.
“You consider it confirmed now?”
I looked at the box.
“That angelic steel can wound an Exorcist?
Yes.
Unless our witness spent several decades preparing an incredibly elaborate fraud solely in the hope that I would one day knock on his door, I consider that part established.”
I put away the report.
“And once we accept that an angelic blade can penetrate their bodies just as it penetrates a demon’s, there is no rational reason to assume they would survive decapitation, destruction of the brain, or a sufficiently severe injury caused by the same material.
Their supposed immortality was likely based far more on the absence of weapons capable of harming them than on any genuine inability to die.”
My lieutenant looked at his own blade.
His customized weapon, also commissioned from Carmilla, contained enough angelic steel that this discovery considerably changed its potential function.
“So we already possessed the necessary weapons.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh.
“That’s the part I find almost insulting.
For years, those bitches have come down to Pentagram City carrying their own lethal weapons, abandoned enough of them for Carmilla to build an entire industry around recovering them, and apparently no one ever took the time to seriously ask whether the same metal could be used against them.”
I looked out the window.
“I suppose when an entire population accepts that something is impossible for long enough, eventually they stop checking.”
That mistake had just come to an end.
As soon as we arrived, I had the fragment taken to the laboratory.
I didn’t request anything particularly complex.
I only wanted its composition compared with the piece recovered from the industrial courtyard and several samples from the stocks we had purchased from Carmine Industries over the years.
The results arrived that evening.
No significant difference.
Same nature.
Same material.
Same angelic steel.
I stood looking at the results for a few moments before setting them down on my desk.
My pistol lay beside them.
I picked it up and removed the magazine before examining one of the rounds specially manufactured for the weapon.
For years, I had considered these bullets a means of permanently killing demons.
Now, I knew they could probably do exactly the same thing to an Exorcist.
The thought inspired neither particular fear nor uncontrolled excitement.
It simply changed the list of things I considered possible.
And in my experience, that kind of change tended to become extremely important sooner or later.
My lieutenant entered a few minutes later carrying several reports.
I showed him the results.
“It’s confirmed.”
He quickly read through the first page.
“Then the Exorcist’s death becomes much easier to explain.”
“Yes.”
I returned the round to the magazine.
“And Carmilla becomes much harder to dismiss as a simple coincidence.”
I mentally reviewed the elements we had accumulated.
Carmilla possessed practically unrivaled access to angelic steel.
Her teams had been present in the relevant area.
A witness had probably seen her daughters during the Extermination.
Her behavior during the meeting had been unusual enough to catch my attention before I had even seriously begun to suspect her, and Velvette had seemed to take particular pleasure in provoking her over the subject.
Now, we knew angelic steel could indeed wound Exorcists.
I still had no concrete proof that Carmilla had delivered the fatal blow.
But I would have been particularly stupid to continue ignoring the most likely conclusion simply because it could not yet be presented before a court.
“I think she killed her,” I finally said.
“I can’t prove it, and I could still be wrong about the exact circumstances, but I would be very surprised to learn that Carmilla wasn’t directly involved.”
My lieutenant placed the reports on the desk.
“Do you want to continue looking for confirmation?”
“Yes, but we’re reducing the resources dedicated to that part of the investigation.
The important question was whether Exorcists could be killed, and we now have our answer.
Carmilla still interests me, but knowing precisely which of her blades went through which part of the angel changes nothing about what I need to do today.”
I filed the results away.
“Simply continue monitoring whatever information reaches us naturally.
If a reliable witness appears or we find something placing Carmilla directly at the scene, bring it to me.
However, I don’t want our agents mobilized solely for this anymore, and we still ask no questions directly to Carmine Industries.”
My lieutenant nodded.
The matter wasn’t disappearing.
It simply ceased to be a priority.
I was about to pick up the next report when my phone vibrated on the desk.
I looked down, almost expecting to see Charlie’s name.
It wasn’t her.
I frowned slightly at the name on the screen.
Sir Pentious.
I spent a few seconds wondering since when that man had my number.
Then I remembered that Charlie had my number.
The question had probably just answered itself.
I opened the message.
SALUTATIONS, MISS DEGURECHAFF!
The capital letters immediately made me regret my decision.
>I HOPE THIS COMMUNICATION FINDS YOU UNDER FAVORABLE CIRCUMSTANCES!
CHARLIE HAS INFORMED ME THAT YOU MAY POSSESS CONTACTS CAPABLE OF HELPING ME RESOLVE A PROBLEM OF CONSIDERABLE SCIENTIFIC IMPORTANCE!
I looked at my lieutenant.
“Pentious has my number.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“I assume Charlie gave it to him.”
“I also assume Charlie and I are going to have a conversation regarding the definition of the word ‘private.'”
The phone vibrated again.
>TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR, THIS IS NOT A WEAPON!
A third message arrived almost immediately.
>WELL, NOT DIRECTLY.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds.
The fourth arrived.
>IT COULD TECHNICALLY BE USED IN A WEAPON, BUT THAT IS NOT ITS PRIMARY FUNCTION.
Then a fifth.
PROBABLY.
My lieutenant was now looking at my phone.
I showed him the screen.
“I’m beginning to understand why Charlie let me discover this on my own.”
A sixth message appeared.
This time, Pentious had finally thought to explain what he was looking for.
I read the description once.
Then a second time.
My irritation diminished slightly.
The component was indeed unusual.
Unusual enough that an independent inventor would have considerable difficulty obtaining one through ordinary commercial channels, but not rare enough to be beyond the reach of my contacts.
I was already thinking of two suppliers who might have one.
My lieutenant probably noticed the change in my expression.
“You’re going to help him?”
I set the phone down.
“First I’m going to find out what he’s actually trying to build.
With Pentious, the difference between a perfectly harmless machine and a cannon capable of destroying three city blocks sometimes seems to depend on a modification made after lunch.”
The phone vibrated a seventh time.
I CAN ALSO SHOW YOU THE PLANS IF YOU WANT TO CHECK!
THEY’RE ALMOST FINISHED!
I stared at the message.
“Apparently, he just solved the problem himself.”
I started typing a reply, then stopped before sending anything.
An idea had just crossed my mind.
For several days, I had been working on Exorcists, angelic weapons, and the potential consequences of a discovery capable of upsetting the balance of Pride.
Spending a few hours examining the probably absurd invention of a megalomaniacal snake might not be the worst way to change subjects.
Provided, of course, that his machine didn’t try to explode in my face.
I finally wrote my reply.
Send me the exact specifications of the component and keep your plans with you.
I’d rather examine them on-site.
I’m not promising anything until I know what you’re building.
The answer came so quickly that I suspected Pentious had been waiting in front of his phone.
>EXCELLENT!
I KNEW YOU WOULD RECOGNIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS SCIENTIFIC ENDEAVOR!
Then, a few seconds later:
>THANK YOU.
That last message was much simpler than the previous ones.
I looked at it for a moment before locking my phone.
My lieutenant gathered the files he had brought with him.
“When would you like to deal with this request?”
I picked up my glass and looked one last time at the fragment of angelic steel lying on my desk.
A few days earlier, I had wanted to know whether angels could die.
Now, I knew they could and, more importantly, I knew what could kill them.
Carmilla still had a few secrets, but those could wait.
My men would continue listening, and sooner or later another piece of information would probably surface without requiring me to personally chase down every rumor in Pentagram City.
I put the fragment back into its case and closed the file.
“Tomorrow should be soon enough.
For tonight, I think I’ve spent enough time studying the various ways to kill angels.”
My gaze returned to the phone.
“Let’s see what our dear inventor has managed to build instead, and how many basic safety rules he violated in the process.”
For the first time since the Overlord meeting, the dead Exorcist stopped occupying the forefront of my thoughts.
The question that had driven me to open this investigation finally had an answer.
Angels could bleed.
Their blood was golden.
And the weapons they had been abandoning in the streets of Hell for years could kill them.
The rest would come in time.