Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

she worked by the flickering light of a taper.
    * * *
     
    Brandon tried every interrogation technique he knew, short of torture.
    After several hours of interrogating the Gatekeepers in separate small, windowless rooms, he was getting nowhere. He loomed over one of them, who matched him in size, chained carefully—with his hands separated from each other—to the foot of a rusted-out bed frame. The man glared up at him. His ferocious loyalty to his mistress was clear in his dark brown eyes.
    “Why are you so loyal to her?” Brandon asked, crouching once more to stare eye to eye with the man. “She wouldn’t do the same for you.”
    “You have no idea what the baronessa is like, deep down,” the Gatekeeper growled, the first words he had spoken. “You totally misunderstand her.”
    “Then tell me.”
    “Your kind is always too busy judging to hear the truth.”
    “Try me,” Brandon said, folding his arms across his chest.
    Silence.
    Brandon paced around the room, looking down at him, knowing that to hit him would be to lose the game. He wouldn’t stoop to violence—not in this situation. He had already gone as far as he cared to go in that direction. So instead, he started talking. Talking absolute bullshit, saying the worst things he could think of about Luciana Rossetti.
    “She’s a whore. She’s weak. She’s mentally deranged. She’d sell her own grandmother to the devil, and probably did. She’d sell you Gatekeepers out if anyone ever offered her the chance.” He continued, circling the room and ranting out every insult that came to mind.
    “Enough!” The Gatekeeper lunged forward finally, yanking violently against his bonds. The entire bed frame clattered. “The baronessa is none of those things.”
    “We’re not going anywhere, so you might as well talk. There’s no harm in telling me why you remain loyal to her, is there?”
    The Gatekeeper bunched his hands into fists and gave a growl of frustration. He considered it for a moment. Then he said, “We were orphans, all of us Gatekeepers. Lost souls living on the streets. We were no better off than the vermin you see crawling in the gutters, no better than the goblins living beneath the houses here. The baronessa gave us a roof over our heads, food to eat. She gave us a purpose.”
    “Killing people,” Brandon said flatly.
    “It is a small price to pay for our freedom. At least her victims have a chance of redemption. What happens to them is temporary—they can’t be held in eternal damnation. Not unless they’re truly evil to begin with.”
    “You tell yourself that, to alleviate your conscience,” said Brandon.
    “You don’t think the devil can hold the souls of the truly innocent forever, do you? If you believe that, then you’re more screwed than I am,” the demon growled.
    “So you have a conscience, after all. I can help you. Just tell me how much poison Luciana has,” Brandon said. “You know which one I’m talking about.”
    “I know no such thing,” the Gatekeeper said.
    “Don’t play stupid. She has a poison that can kill immortals. She killed a demon in Vegas, a low-ranking bellboy. How much does she have?”
    The Gatekeeper stared back, hate snapping in his brown eyes. “That, you’ll never get out of me. What I will say is that the baronessa has the power to avenge herself on you, and all of your kind. And when she does, you’ll regret you ever came here.”
    Brandon paced a little circle around the room.
    “I’ve seen your kind come through this city before,” the Gatekeeper spat. “In the sixteenth century, we called it the Inquisition. You think you can justify torture just because you tell yourself that you’re on the ‘right’ side. You have no idea whether your side is really justifiable. Look at yourself. What makes you any different from me?”
    “The fact that I haven’t pummeled you into a bloody mess, like you would have done to me if the circumstances were reversed,” Brandon said.
    “You’d better pray that never happens,” the Gatekeeper growled.
    Brandon gagged the man quickly. And then he exited the room immediately, without saying another word. Because he was an inch away from doing real physical damage to the demon.
    Maybe the Gatekeeper was right.
    Maybe there was a fine line between angel and demon, between just how far a person was willing to go in the name of the “right” cause.
    Maybe.
    Outside in the hallway, just for a second, Brandon leaned against the wall,