Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal (13 page)

Rhythmic. That was all he got, but it was enough to get him motivated: Even if it was an enemy, at least fighting would give him the sense of getting somewhere, doing something. Dear God, the monotony was almost as bad as the sense that time was running out.

And the memory of everything he’d left behind …

Man, if he had the chance to do it all over again, he’d tell her he loved her. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He wouldn’t … not tell her.

That was all.

Well, shit, he thought. Guess he wasn’t making it out of here, was he. Because a man like him made a vow like that only when he knew he’d never have to live up to it.

In the meantime, he needed to get moving again.

When he went to take a step forward, his heels seemed to have become nailed to the fluffy ground cover. Gritting his teeth, he leaned into his legs and yanked so hard that when shit came free, he actually looked behind to make sure his foot and the stub of his ankle hadn’t been left behind.

Nope, he was walking. But there wasn’t going to be any stopping again.

Following the only noise other than the wind, he made as much time as he could toward that rhythmic sound, passing by statues of the dead that crumbled as he strode by, holding the bottom of his shirt up to his mouth so he could breathe without having his larynx sandblasted.

“Nigel, where the hell are you…”

He asked the question out of habit. Not because he thought he was going to find the guy.

As Sissy watched the demon fawn over Jim’s remains, that explosive anger came back, clawing into her chest and giving her heartburn along with the urge to kill. But who was she going to go after? They needed Devina for this miracle idea.

Which might not in fact work. And might end up with the four of them in trouble with God Himself.

Plus, based on what they’d said? If things did go as planned, the parlor, if not the whole house, might be incinerated in the process. Maybe they’d create another Grand Canyon.

The Dead Sea being the starter set, as it were.

As the demon bent down again to whisper something in Jim’s ear, Sissy turned away. It was either that or go
Real Housewives
on the bitch. And with the heavy book still in her hands, she opened things up just to give her eyes somewhere to go other than all the really-frickin’-creepy across the way.

The words were so easy to read now, the sentences flowing together, the logic behind the topics making more sense than it had. She was in what she thought of as the inventory section—it was page after page of objects arranged by date and type of metal. After the inventory came a list of places all over the world. There were dates for the locations as well as precise coordinates—

“Yo, Sis.”

Startled, she twisted around toward Adrian. “Yes?”

“You might as well stand over here with me by the window. If shit gets critical, we can Hollywood-stuntman it out of the line of fire.”

“Maybe that should be ‘when,’ huh?”

As she followed Ad’s lead and settled in beside the angel’s heft, she closed the book and put it against her chest. There was comfort in having the weight against her heart, like the thing might act as a shield or something—and then Devina finally got up on her ridiculous high heels and stepped away from Jim. Not exactly something to jump up and down with joy about, but better than the show the demon had been putting on.

And when Colin got to his feet as well, Sissy was reminded that he actually was a good-looking man—not that he was a man. He was slightly leaner than Adrian, but he had the quick eyes of a fighter who was comfortable playing dirty, and the confidence of someone who was rarely, if ever, surprised.

Jim had been able to get a rise out of him, though. All it had taken was that blade across his throat.

The memory was enough to make her nauseous, and every time she blinked, she saw Jim just before he did it, staring at her, his eyes fixated like he was taking her image over the divide and into eternity with him.

“I just want to go back,” she whispered.

“To where?” Ad asked.

“Normal.” She shook her head and wanted to cry. But refused to let herself. “I just want to worry about school again. And whether my mom will give me her car. I want to get excited about my birthday. Goddamn it … I should have enjoyed all of that more.”

As the inside of her chest struggled to keep up with the waves of her emotions, she thought, Jesus, this was like she had the worst case of PMS in the world. Infuriated. In mourning. Out of her mind. All in the space of minutes.

Then again, it was hard to believe any of this was really happening. The horror was too much, the new rules of existence too many, the fear and the anger spiking in such rapid rotation now, she couldn’t label them anymore.

“Do you think this is going to work?” she asked hoarsely as Colin took one side of the parlor and Devina the other.

“I don’t know. I really … don’t fucking know.” Then Adrian spoke up loudly. “Wait, the blood! We need the blood.”

Sissy had to turn away and stare out the window as that little detail was arranged. Leaning her forehead into the bubbly old glass, she watched a lone car go down the lane, its headlights two beacons that disappeared all too soon in the dimness: The crush of midnight dark that had arrived with Devina and those gruesome creatures had lifted only slightly, the residual gloaming outside as if the demon’s presence continued to strip sunlight from the air.

Or maybe it was just later than she thought? God, that was another thing to mourn: the days when fifteen minutes had actually felt like fifteen minutes. Now time was either going like the wind or not moving at all.

Adrian shuffled back over to her. “It’s done.”

As she turned around again, he was keeping something out of sight. “Let’s do this,” the angel called out to the two … well, combatants. Devina had braced herself, which was ridiculous in those heels—although somehow she managed to look like Wonder Woman, capable of withstanding all assault even in fuck-me pumps and that black leather jumpsuit thing. Colin, likewise, was in a defensive crouch, looking as grim as death.

Maybe this will all be over, Sissy thought, holding her book right against her chest. And man, having died once, she was not looking forward to a repeat—especially as she didn’t know if she had any destination left.

Wasn’t going to be Hell this time. At least, that’s what Jim had told—

“Shall we?” Colin said, raising his palms.

“I’m ready to dance.” The demon put her hands facing outward. “Are we going on one, two, three—”

“No,” Colin drawled.

The archangel let loose something out of a Batman movie, the rays of brilliant light shooting from his palms and training on Devina. As her brunette hair was stripped back from her face, she cursed and threw out her version of the same, twin black blasts powering across the parlor.

It was either that or she was clearly going up in smoke.

And talk about atmospheric change: Sissy could feel the warmth and the bitter cold, as well as the powerful electric charge that sparked where the positive and negative met. Hair lifted off the top of her head and all down her forearms—and then things got even more intense. Brilliant flashes of light began to pop free as if from friction, and she felt a strange sensation underneath her skin—like her blood was threatening to boil.

We gotta get out of here, she thought as she glanced at the window. And yet the forces were so great, she wasn’t sure even a trip out of Caldwell would be enough.

Maybe this time they were going to create another Atlantic Ocean.

As the ionizing charge increased still further, a hum began to weave through the room, subtle at first, then growing louder and louder until it became like a jet engine, until her ears registered it not as sound, but as pain. Beside her, Adrian took a step back, but it wasn’t to jump through the glass. He was bracing himself against the wall of the old house.

“You’re going to want to hold on to something,” he yelled. “It’s going to start rotating.”

As Sissy looked around for a good place to lock onto, Ad just reached out and grabbed her, dragging her against him.

“I can give us some extra coverage,” he barked. At least, she assumed that was what he’d said—she couldn’t hear a thing.

Trapping the book between them, she wound her arms around his hard torso. “How are you going to—”

All at once a shimmering came down over the both of them, the glittering shower cutting the noise and leaving a pattern in the air that she had to look through—like you’d move your eyes into one of the diamonds in a chain-link fence to see out of it.

“Nice trick,” she muttered.

“I can also crochet.”

Just when she was sure Colin and Devina couldn’t throw out any more energy, when she was certain that one or maybe both of them were going to be knocked off their feet—and likely blast the roof off the damn house—a subtle shift occurred.

Instead of hitting straight on, the two opposing forces began to slide past each other. Except there was no reason to duck and cover. Just before the two beams were going to end up breaking free, some kind of elemental force kept them tied—and with no other place to go, they began to bend around and start to circle. But it wasn’t easy. The sound was like a huge piece of metal being twisted, a great high-pitched grind that made her wince even with Ad’s spell in place.

Transfixed by the magic and the power, all she could think of was the show
Storm Chasers
. Reed Timmer and his Dominator had spent a number of seasons hunting down spring tornadoes and getting right in the middle of them—and to help the viewers understand what was going on, there had been illustrations on how twisters formed thanks to countervailing cool/dry and warm/humid fronts colliding out over the flat Midwest.

Same thing here. The first rotation appeared to be the hardest, Colin’s warm force curving around Devina’s cold one until the light and the dark doubled back and hooked into their original source. And … again. A second trip around. And … again. A third.

By the fourth time, she could see how a groove in space-time—or whatever—was being created. Nothing spilled upward or downward, as if the gathering energy were too attracted to itself to pare off willy-nilly. Instead, the circling started to happen with ease.

And then that rotation took on a life all its own.

Through the invisible lockdown Ad had put up around them, she watched as Colin’s and Devina’s poses changed, shifting from braced to direct their beams to leaning back like they were trying to keep from getting pulled in. And then the two of them were shouting at each other over the whirring noise.

They broke off at exactly the same second: Colin hitting the wall behind him with such force he went Bugs Bunny, his body embedding in the lath and plaster, and Devina going airborne and ending up in the far upper corner of the ceiling. Right before she hit with enough impact to shatter, the demon caught herself with a feline twist and stick, her body adhering itself high above and staying there like she was ready to pounce down.

Except Devina’s gravity-defying trick was nothing compared to the storm in the center of the parlor.

The forces were beginning to spin so fast that the alternation of light and dark ceased to exist and all became a resonant thundercloud gray. And that was when the objects in the room started to vibrate … then move. The sofas gravitated toward the energy, wadding up the tremendous rug in great bunches, bringing the Oriental along with them. Mirrors and paintings smacked against the walls before breaking free, flying toward the vortex and disappearing into it with unholy flares of blood-red light.

“Stay here,” Adrian gritted.

“Wait, no!” she screamed, trying to catch him before he left the protective spell. “You’re gonna get lost!”

There was no stopping him, though. And no great footing for him, either. He dropped down, as if trying to avoid the vacuum, and then fought for purchase as his body began to skid over the now-bare floor.

Up on the ceiling, like some great housefly, Devina was yelling. As her brunette hair ripped around, it flashed images of her red lips, parted, bright white teeth gleaming as she tried to communicate. But it wasn’t Ad who responded. It was Colin. With obvious effort, he dug himself out of his archangel imprint in the wall—and headed for Jim’s remains. When he outed a crystal dagger, Sissy wondered what in the hell he was going to do.

Raising his arm high over his shoulder, he buried that brilliant dagger right into the meat of Jim’s shoulder—and then he wasted no time going back to what little shelter he had.

Of course, Sissy thought. If Jim’s body were lost in there, he’d have nothing to come back to.

“Adrian! Watch out!” In spite of the fact that he probably couldn’t hear her, she pointed wildly at the coffee table. “Ad!”

Whether he heard her or had eyes in the back of his skull, she didn’t know—but the angel ducked out of the path of the marble-topped table as it flipped end over end and then went airborne, the gaping maw of that energy sucking it in with another blast of red light. Then it was the green velvet sofa’s turn.