know his way around, but Teag looked as nervous as I felt.
Higgins stopped at a pair of double doors at the end of the hallway. He opened the doors ceremoniously, and stood aside. “This way, please.”
The huge space might have been a ballroom a century ago. Now, it was empty of furniture except for a few wunderkammeren around the walls, giving it a cavernous appearance. The parquet floor was exquisite, as were the heavy velvet draperies that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows. I glanced upward at the high ceiling with its molded plaster decorations, and realized that the patterns there were composed of magical symbols.
Thirteen huge windows. Thirteen astrological signs incorporated in the plaster designs overhead, one for each of the conventional zodiac signs as well as Ouroboros, the tail-devouring serpent. Power was built into this room, and the single figure in its center who beckoned us forward fairly shimmered with magical energy.
“Wait!” I said, coming to a dead halt. “That’s one of Gerard Astor’s paintings!” I pointed to a dark, moody canvas that hung on one of the paneled walls. It was taller than I was, and the images it depicted were life-sized. Set against a background of shadows and flames, Nephilim stalked toward the beholder. Some were incredibly handsome men with a predatory gleam in their eyes, while others had begun to transform into their true, monstrous state, black-winged and sharp-toothed. I recognized Baldy, the dark-haired one I’d nicknamed Crow, and Blondie from the Nephilim who had attacked us in the alley. One of the fallen angels was Asian, while the fifth’s skin was dark as ebony. A fine net of silver chain hung over the canvas, fastened into the wall on all sides, and it looked to me as if it were designed less to protect the painting from onlookers than to protect the viewers from the painting.
I shuddered, remembering what Coffee Guy had looked like for real, and how the Nephilim at the Archive had peeled himself out of a similar painting. I thought that the silver mesh net was a wonderful addition. That made me worry about Mrs. Morrissey, and I resolved to find a way to protect her, as well as any attendees who viewed the exhibit. “His work is in another display at the Archive.”
Sorren frowned. “Astor made a deal with Darkness to achieve his fame, and it drove him mad. He either didn’t realize, or didn’t care, that his paintings could be used as portals for Nephilim to enter our world. Though he became very famous, his paintings cost a lot of lives.”
“I thought he disappeared,” I said, remembering what Mrs. Morrissey had told me. After the fight with the Nephilim I encountered at the Archive, I had no trouble believing that Astor’s paintings were cursed.
“He did,” Sorren replied. “The Alliance saved his life and removed him to a safe location, where he was cared for until he passed away.”
“So some of these people who’ve vanished, the artists and explorers, didn’t always disappear on their own, by accident?” I had known that the Alliance operated in the shadows and out of mortal channels. Now, I was glimpsing a side of it I had never considered, and it made me uncomfortable.
“Regrettably not,” Sorren replied. “Remember – I know a thing or two about ‘vanishing’ myself.” That was true. Immortals needed to be able to fake their own deaths and then reinvent themselves as someone else. “Some of our members realized the danger of what they had created or discovered, and agreed to disappear in order to keep themselves or their creations from being misused. Others, like Astor, had their minds destroyed by dark magic. We took them for their protection and everyone else’s safety, gave them the best care possible, and provided a secure home. It’s a bad business, but there’s no way around it. And before you judge, try to imagine the alternatives.”
The thought of someone with Gerard Astor’s dark power painting Nephilim portals at the whim of drug cartels, Third-World despots, or organized crime bosses chilled me to the bone.
Archibald Donnelly stood in the centre of the ballroom floor. Like the building itself, Colonel Donnelly was far more than he appeared. Donnelly had been wearing a button-down shirt, sport jacket, and khakis when we first met him, standard casual attire for upper class men at leisure in Charleston. Now, he was dressed all in gray from head to toe. He wore a silver pentacle the size of a half-dollar coin on a