Page 59 of Archangel’s Lineage

“—acquaintance,” she corrected, ice creeping over her tone once more.

Wondering at their history, Vivek said, “If your acquaintance couldn’t read it, either, then—”

“—why do I believe this may be linked to the myth with which you first came to me?” Katrina completed, then turned the book over in his hands until he was staring at the back cover... and an image of that unusual evil eye.

Staring, pulsating red.

“During my search for further information on your odd little myth,” she said, “I found another myth connected to it. The available text, too, bore the image of the evil eye.” She once again reached into her pocket, this time to retrieve a piece of paper folded in four.

When Vivek opened it, he saw it was a photocopy of what looked like an ancient book. The evil eye sat at the very top of the page. “Ancient Greek?” he said, after running his eye over the lines. “I can’t read it, but I recognize it.”

“Yes. It states: ‘Watch, it was said in the Book of Marduk. Watch for evil. When it rises, come together in defense against it. Only together will the world hold. Apart, civilizations will splinter and empires will fall. This was said. The’—and there’s a word there with no translation that I can find, but it is similar to Psyche.”

“Like the mythical goddess?”

“Yes, but I am using it only as a placeholder, remember that. It is not quite Psyche, but it is no other known word, either. I checked with a scholar whose native tongue was Ancient Greek.”

Even as Vivek digested the information that Katrina knew someone who’d lived in the time the language was spoken, she went back to her translation. “His suggestion was that for translation purposes, I translate it as the ‘soul.’ If I do that, the line reads: ‘The soul has been broken and must be melded together again for the body to hold. Else there is but death and rebirth from the ashes.’ ”

“Cheery.”

“Indeed.” Katrina pointed once again at the untranslatable word. “That word shows up again in references to what is termed the Book of Marduk.”

“I know that name,” Vivek murmured, frowning. “God related to Babylon? Few thousand years ago?”

“Yes. He was an angel,” Katrina said offhandedly. “Mortals made gods of angelkind once—still do in some quarters.”

“But then it can’t be related to the myth. That history hasn’t been lost.”

“That’s what I would think, except for this.” She ran her finger over a line of text in the paper that he’d missed because it was so faded. “I had to put it under a strong lamp to read it.”

It took him serious concentration to see it. But when he did—“Shit.” It came out an exhale. “It’s in the same language as the book.”

He looked from the piece of paper to the book. “This is the Book of Marduk.”

“That was my conclusion.”

Vivek rubbed his face, trying to put it all together. “How did you even know either of these texts might exist?”

“I didn’t. First I sent out an inquiry with the image of the evil eye and got this.” She tapped the piece of paper. “Then, I put out the word that I was looking for anything written in this tongue.” She ran her finger over the near-invisible line. “The book was the result. My acquaintance had forgotten about it, but his son remembered seeing it as a child in his father’s archives.”

Vivek put both the book and the piece of paper into the messenger bag with care, then picked up his drink and threw it back. Another shock of energy, another pleasurable buzz. “No ambiguity in that prophecy or warning or whatever it is.”

“Fight against great evil together or fall,” Katrina said. “We know that firsthand. We watched the Cadre work as one to defeat she who would’ve ruled the world in death.”

Vivek was liking this quiet trend of never mentioning Lijuan by name. Immortals, it seemed, had a way of erasing someone out of existence by refusing to acknowledge they had ever walked the earth. It might take them a millennium or seven, but they had the time. “Can I ask something, my lady Katrina?”

A cool glance as she handed over her empty flute. “Ask.”

“You weren’t in New York during the war. Were you part of it elsewhere?”

A slight curve of her lips. “You are ever the spymaster’s apprentice, searching for information.”

“My fatal flaw.”

Katrina’s gaze took in his face. “I am not a warrior,” she said at last. “Like you, I deal in information. And I know and am known by many old and... not necessarily ‘good’ people who will not talk to others. Let us say I was in charge of recruitment for the forces of a senior angel, and that those forces helped defeat multiple waves of reborn.”

She flicked open her fan, waved it to create the slightest breeze. “After the recruitment phase, I was in the business of arming our troops.”

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