"So what do you call a Seraph of War wearing a French maid's outfit hidden in a trunk delivered to your hotel room?""A killergram"
Once the policewoman with the strong demonic aura is spotted entering the hotel, Blakely takes the lift down to the basement. The enigmatic chap in the mackintosh gets into the lift on the ground floor, and does a double-take. He too is looking for room 322, and introduces himself as Kadris, Mercurian of Revelation (this is confirmed by Blakely's resonance). He knows of Eileth, the probably renegade Lilim of Secrets posing as a policewoman, and agrees to help make sure she stays distracted. Blakely gets out at the basement, and Kadris takes the lift up to the third floor.
Meanwhile Atoziel reaches the hotel and takes the other lift up, along with Eileth. She ignores him, and gets out at floor three despite Blakely blowing off a lot of essence to make a sizeable disturbance. Blakely meanwhile waits for the lift to get back down to him, while Atoziel carries on up to meet Helophel, Magariel and Boriel on floor 5. The four upstairs angels go down to floor 3 hurriedly. Downstairs, Kadris hurtles out of the emergency stairs, takes one look at Blakely standing in front of the lift and asks him why he's standing there when Eileth is coming down in the lift! The two of them run off through the hotel's service corridors, leading the Lilim a merry dance and buying time for the others.
Back on the third floor, Boriel picks the lock to room 322 (Remote Control is so useful) and Helophel the maid enters, followed by a lightly disguised Magariel. They find Raposo in his bedroom, performing some sort of ritual amid the mess. He looks very ill, and his arm is definitely hurt. He tells them to go away. They don't; Helophel takes him down easily as he draws a knife on her. Raposo collapses, partially from illness and partially from alcohol, but mostly because a Seraph of War thumped him hard. Magariel identifies the knife as an relic of mysterious origin, and leaps to the (correct) conclusion that it is the Dagger of Bithynia. Once Atoziel and Boriel have packed the unconscious sorceror into the trunk and headed out of the hotel the back way, Magariel picks up the Dagger, goes celestial and fails to ascend. Helophel also goes celestial and takes the Dagger herself. She manages to ascend as an irate Eileth, also celestial, enters the room. Magariel follows in Helophel's wake, not fancying trying to fight a Lilim several forces tougher than herself. A bad Lilim day for the other angels is avoided when two Malakim of the Sword arrive in celestial form to chase Eileth away; the cavalry has finally arrived.
In heaven, Helophel takes the Dagger straight to Michael. While handling the Dagger, she notes its connection to Secrets, and can tell that it is somehow twisted, haemorrhaging. It also appears to have been the source of the low, rumbling Disturbance at the crash site. Michael examines it, and tells her that it is dying. It both is and isn't the Dagger of Bithynia, he says, and orders Helophel to interrogate Raposo to find out more. The Dagger is to stay in heaven, since it would probably hurt the soul of anyone who possessed it for a while in its current state. Helophel and Magariel are to take it to Jean himself for analysis, and should accept no lesser being. Various angels of War offer the pair bits of essence, since they are flat after their efforts to ascend.
Helophel and Magariel eventually get through to see Jean; whenever they mention what they've got and that they're on a mission from Michael, their application is expedited. Jean takes their preliminary report and tells them to place the Dagger on an analysis platform. He is very careful not to touch the Dagger himself. His initial scans confirm Michael's reports, and the lesser angels leave him to his analysis and give their full report to his secretary.
Back on Earth, Atoziel drives the getaway van while Boriel performs first aid on the injured sorceror. He has been beaten up (by Helophel) and his left arm has been partially healed, but there is something strange wrong with him that Boriel simply doesn't understand. The angels abort Blakely's perfectly good plan by heading for the British Library rather than the Tower of London, phoning ahead for a medic more qualified in strange things and an interrogation team.
Blakely meanwhile decides that discretion is the better part of valour, and heads back to the Chiswick police station to start on the pile of bodies he has been assigned.
Helophel and Magariel end up debriefing again to the Laurencians, and in turn are given some more background information. Raposo was part of a sorcerous cabal in Puerto Rico. Late last year, an angel of Revelations spotted them with the Dagger, and various attempts to retrive it were launched. Raposo is a leader of the cabal, and was tracked to the airport. Attempts to retrieve the Dagger both there and in Miami failed, but were believed to have been unnoticed by Raposo. Armed with this information, Helophel and Magariel descend to the Tower, only to find that their prey is elsewhere.
Atoziel and Boriel arrive at the Library, and meet their medic; Tiriel, an angel of Destiny whose vessel is a Tibetan monk. Tiriel is something of an expert on spiritual/mystical healing as well as standard Western medicine, but even he is stumped by Raposo. The sorceror's Forces seem to be coming apart, despite his best efforts; they just don't seem to want to stay together.
The angels bring Raposo round, and the Seraph Seneschal resonates on him while Atoziel asks questions. It seems that a demon named Hamet swore that Raposo would be invulnerable when the plane crashed. Hamet is quickly identified as a Duke of Secrets, believed to be a Balseraph. Raposo further boasts that his order had the dagger for a long time, and used it to trap Hamet, whom Raposo fondly believes to have been a demonling of little consequence. After a lot of hedging and some pretty inexorable logic on Atoziel's part, Raposo is convinced that Hamet has played him for a fool. His fury is positively volcanic; Hamet meant for him to die on that plane, and he will have his revenge. Raposo claims (correctly) to be too weak to summon Hamet in his current state (he really hasn't got the idea yet). He could do it with the aid of another sorceror, and as luck would have it he knows of one; Hamet let slip that Sir Gerald Langridge might be of assistance.
Research (mostly Who's Who) reveals little initially about Langridge other than he lives at Langridge House in north London, and that he received his knighthood "for services rendered." A little more digging reveals some information about Langridge's schooling and directorships, but nothing of interest and only one rather elderly photo. Atoziel decides not to spend more time trying to crack a possible role, but does look up more information on Langridge House. No plans are available for the building, but the maps and newspaper photos suggest that it has a walled garden and will be generally hard to get into. More digging reveals that Langridge House is in an area with a higher than average incidence of demonic activity, and the Laurencians have made it known that they think there must be a demonic tether nearby. Is this perchance another trap?
Helophel and Magariel arrive, and continue the interrogation of Raposo. He tells them that he performed a ritual before the crash that should have protected him, but that it did not involve the Dagger. He was promised that the remade Dagger, fueled by enough deaths, would give him the power of a god. Choking on the word "remade", the angels enquire further. Apparently back when Roberto's father lead the cabal, they made a copy of the Dagger. It was the copy that Raposo brought with him, the original is (he believed) back with his brother sorcerors. The Seneschal reports that while the true location of the real Dagger is hidden from him, it certainly isn't in Puerto Rico. Considering the matter, Atoziel suggests that the Dagger was split; one was made physically by the sorcerors and partakes of the other, which might explain its peculiar state.
Raposo tells the angels that Hamet was first summoned about a year ago, and that it has been a long time since anyone had the Dagger in their possession for any prolonged period. It is normally just brought out for ceremonies. Magariel concludes that the Dagger could have been deadly for a very long time, or just since the two were separated. Reports of angels using the Dagger in the distant past suggest the latter interpretation.