“What is your name?” Damiel asked him.
“Major Edwin Grant,” he replied, his voice monotone.
“How long have you been stationed in Florence?”
“Five years.”
Nothing remained of the Major’s sophisticated enunciation and intonation. It had been silenced by Damiel’s spell.
Damiel considered him closely. “What are your magical strengths?”
“Psychic’s Spell and Dragon’s Storm.”
“And your weaknesses?”
“Siren’s Song and Witch’s Cauldron,” he replied immediately.
Damiel nodded.
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to test the completeness of his mental lock on Major Grant. He’d started with easy questions, then moved on to a tough question that had nothing to do with this investigation, but that no Legion soldier would volunteer willingly. We didn’t like talking about our weaknesses.
If Major Grant hadn’t been completely under Damiel’s control, he would have hesitated before answering the question. He did not.
So Damiel went straight to the point. “Is Colonel Spellstorm working for the demons?”
“No.”
“Has Colonel Spellstorm betrayed the Legion of Angels?”
“No.”
“Has Colonel Spellstorm betrayed the gods?”
“No.”
“Has Colonel Spellstorm betrayed the Earth in any way, shape, or form?”
“No.” Blood dripped from Major Grant’s nose.
“Damiel,” I said.
“That happens sometimes,” he replied, his stare never wavering from the man under his spell. “He’ll be fine.” Gold magic sparked in his blue eyes. “Are you working for the demons?” he asked Major Grant.
“No.”
“Have you betrayed the Legion of Angels?”
“No.”
“Have you betrayed the gods?”
“No.”
“Have you betrayed the Earth in any way, shape, or form?”
“No.”
Blood was dripping from Major Grant’s fingers now too.
“Is that normal?” I asked Damiel.
He glanced at the Major’s bleeding fingers. “No. He’s fighting my compulsion spell.” He met Major Grant’s eyes and demanded, “What are you hiding from me?”
“Nothing.” Blood dripped out of Major Grant’s mouth.
“Damiel, you’re killing him,” I told him.
“He will recover.” Damiel pressed on. “Major, do you know of any Legion soldier currently stationed in this office, or any other office, who is working for the demons, or has betrayed the Legion of Angels, the gods, or the Earth in any way, shape, or form?”
“No.”
Damiel continued to stare into his eyes for a few moments. Major Grant’s body rattled from head to toe. He was shaking so hard that he’d cut himself on the ropes I’d used to restrain him.
Damiel waved his hand. Major Grant slouched forward, released from his spell.
“He knows nothing,” Damiel told me.
He didn’t look at all conflicted about torturing someone innocent of treachery.
But I was conflicted. Damiel hadn’t laid a hand on the man, but the brutality of his interrogation was horrifying. He’d broken his will and enslaved his mind. That was a far greater violation than cutting him up with a knife.
That is what Damiel Dragonsire does, said my inner voice that sounded like my father. He breaks people. He bends them to his will.
The doubts I’d been having about Damiel—about my feelings for him—were blaring loudly in my head now.
“What now?” I asked Damiel, trying to keep my voice level.
“Release him.”
I untied Major Grant.
“You are dismissed,” Damiel told him.
Major Grant rose slowly from the chair. He didn’t shake, but I could see the intense concentration burning in his eyes. He was trying to keep his body still, to swallow the tremors and, most importantly, not fall on his face in front of two angels.
Damiel handed him a bundle of papers. “Send in the next person on that list for questioning.”
Major Grant’s bloody fingers smeared the top page. He barely managed a salute, then he left the room with the list.
I waited until he was gone—until Damiel and I were alone in Colonel Spellstorm’s office—then I frowned at him. “How many people are you going to interrogate?”
“As many as it takes to prove my suspicions about Colonel Spellstorm.”
“Suspicions? I thought you were certain that he’s a traitor.”
“I am certain.”
“Based on what evidence?”
“His pattern of activities has changed.”
“And?”
“And he’s an angel,” said Damiel. “Angels don’t change. We follow very clear patterns, without deviation.”
“Ok, so if angels don’t change, then how did you get to be so cold-hearted? You sure didn’t start out that way.”
I knew he was more than this person he pretended to be. But every day, he was changing, becoming more and more the Master Interrogator, and less and less Damiel.
“Angels don’t change abruptly,” he replied. “Change is slow. But recently, Colonel Spellstorm’s behavior suddenly shifted. Something big is happening.”
“Maybe he has a secret lover he’s hiding away from the Legion,” I suggested.
“That is unlikely. Colonel Spellstorm has never had a problem taking a lover, or sometimes several lovers at once. As long as angels marry whom they command us to marry and we do our duty to produce children when the time comes, the Legion doesn’t care how many lovers its angels take, or even who they are.”
He spoke so casually about it, so matter-of-factly. I wondered how many lovers Damiel had taken. And whether he still had any of them.
Wait. No. Stop. I didn’t want to know.
“Colonel Spellstorm is a highly-decorated angel,” I said. “As I recall, he even helped you hunt down other traitors in the past.”
“That is true.”
“He is an unlikely traitor. And your insistence that he’s a traitor is based solely on ‘his pattern of activities has changed’? I hope when my day comes, I will receive a fair hearing before you tie me to my own office chair.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cadence.” His words pulsed with impatience. “You are incapable of treachery. We’ve already been through this.”
“Have we? Because all of this is feeling pretty damn familiar. Around and around the wheel of treachery goes; where it stops, nobody knows.”
“Being melodramatic will not help us in our investigation.”
“Neither will torturing everyone in this office,” I pointed out.
“I hope to uncover some information of value long before I’ve interrogated everyone. We are on a tight schedule, so I sorted the interrogation list by which soldiers are most likely to know something, in descending order.”
“Then I guess we’d better hope that some lowly initiate wasn’t the only soldier to overhear Colonel Spellstorm communicating with demons.”
“Indeed. There are over one thousand soldiers in this office. It could take us weeks to make our way down to the initiates. The demons might have already acted by then,” he said, missing my sarcasm—or at least pretending he had. “But I do find it unlikely any initiate knows anything. I’ve spent many years developing this interrogation ordering system, based on soldiers’ psychological profiles and mission history. It’s quite accurate. I rarely need to move past page one.”