Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal (9 page)

It was the hood ornament of her own Mercedes S550 4Matic—and for once, she wasn’t rushing to get the thing put back in its proper place. In fact, she’d broken the neck off herself … because that trademarked circle with its intersecting lines had a very special accessory of its own: When she’d hit Jim with her car the other night, he’d been clipped by the front hood, and a little part of him had been left behind in the ornament’s metal.

That residue in the very molecular fiber of the steel was how she’d managed to get into his house, into his bed, and oh so close to seducing him while pretending to be Sissy.

It was a one-way connection, though. So there was no way he could use it to get to her—

From out of nowhere, a wave of pain rang her chest like a bell, as if she’d been shot or stabbed. But there was nobody around. Nobody up above.

And yet something was wrong, something …

“Jim…?” She walked forward. “Jim?”

Suffocation followed. The kind that made her feel like someone had their hands around her throat. Or maybe a rope. Abruptly, she reached up to grab at that which wasn’t there, opening her mouth so she could breathe.

Fucking hell, she was now the salesguy from the hotel, her access to air cut off by an unseen force.

Except it wasn’t suffocation in the true sense. This was … an emotional pain so great it literally robbed her of the ability to inflate the lungs she pretended to have.

“Jim!”
she screamed, the dots connecting to a terrifying conclusion.

Vaporizing her physical form, she entered the HVAC system ductwork and shot through the innards of the building, expelling herself into the open air through a vent and shooting off in the direction of that old house he stayed in.

Faster, faster, faster …

She knew the very moment he left the coil of the earth: A lancing agony overtook her soul, sure as if she had been cleaved in half.

Storm clouds gathered in her wake as she landed on the front lawn of the property he rented, and she rushed for the front door—

The barrier she hit was a brick wall that didn’t exist, an invisible, impenetrable force field that repelled her so hard, she fell back on her ass. Looking up in panic, her frantic mind couldn’t figure out what the fuck it was—but then she caught sight of a subtle red glimmer. The bastard had locked her out with an additional, stronger spell.

Except it didn’t last.

With Jim’s life-force having been extinguished, his protection spell lost its source and gradually peeled free of the house, retreating from the roof and freeing up from the walls.

The inevitable recession was like watching him die in front of her, seeing his life slip away.

“Jim…” she groaned as the last of it disappeared.

Scrambling to her feet, she ran forward and went to the windows of the parlor. With shaking hands, she leaned into the bubbly old glass and cupped her palms, peering through …

The moan that rippled up through her tight throat was a release of agony. Across the parlor, Jim lay in a shambled sprawl on the floor, his arms and legs helter-skelter, as if he had fallen back without trying to stop himself or protect against the impact. Silver blood was everywhere down his chest, a gaping slash in his throat the cause of the tidal wave.

There was a crystal dagger in his right hand—that was stained with more of that mercury-like substance that filled his veins.

Clearly, he’d taken someone with him.

Such a hero, she thought as she teared up.

And yes, opposite him, Colin the archangel was a shadow of his powerful self, his face drawn in horror, his body straining as if he were in physical conflict—except there was no one coming at him. There had been, though—his face was bruising up and there was silver blood on his hands. The room was also trashed, lamps knocked over, tables overturned, sofas out of place.

Jim had been in the process of fighting with the archangel. Maybe over her honor? That was so like her Jim … but it shouldn’t have ended like it had.

And she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. That dumb whore Sissy Barten was screaming at the top of her lungs as she went over and took Jim’s head into her lap, and across the way, Adrian the angel was looking like he’d seen a ghost. Or maybe the Grim Reaper.

The only bright spot was the obvious agony of that girl, and Devina took a moment to absorb the incandescent pain. It was the only balm she was going to have for a long, long while. The shit was going to be useful, too.

But not now. Now, it was all she could do to keep from breaking down.

Splaying her fingers out, Devina leaned in until her forehead touched the cool glass. “My love…”

Some animal was loose and going crazy in the parlor.

Oh, wait—it was her, Sissy thought.

With her mouth wide-open and her lungs working with a seemingly endless supply of air, she was making a noise that was part lioness, part atomic bomb detonation. Staring at Jim’s lifeless body, cradling him against her, getting stained by his silver blood, she unhinged—

And lunged at his attacker.

Without conscious thought, she scrambled over the floor like a crab, launching herself at Colin, who remained stunned stupid either by her having smashed him on the head or because of what Jim had just done to himself.

She went for the eyes.

She didn’t get close. He grabbed her wrists and flipped her onto her back on the floor, straddling her and pinning her arms over her head.

“Fuck you!” she spat at him, fighting against the hold, kicking with her legs, thrashing around. When she tried to bite him, he somehow kept her down while freeing one of his hands—which he clapped on her jaw to hold her head in place.

He didn’t hurt her. Just let her wear herself out.

It felt like a year until all she could do was heave for breath underneath him, and still he sat over her calmly, as if he’d put no effort into any of it at all.

As water hit her face, she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from—

The man was … crying. From out of the strangest-colored eyes she had ever seen, tears were falling drop by drop and landing on her cheeks. And before she knew it, her own were mixing with his, a great wellspring of emotion bursting out and taking over where the anger had been raw as the wound Jim had given himself.

“I have lost, too,” he said in a proper English accent. “I am without as well.”

“Why did you kill him,” she moaned, even though that was not what happened. “Why—”

“I am sorry for your loss.” His voice cracked. “I am so sorry…”

She turned her head and looked at Jim’s body through waves of tears. His face happened to be tilted in her direction, and for a moment, it was as if the two of them were staring at each other—except there was no life behind his eyes.

Colin loosened his hold. Backed off a little. Backed off a lot.

As the man, angel, whatever he was moved away from her, his legs flopped around like he meant to stand up, but didn’t have the strength or coordination. Then he rubbed his face … as if maybe that would change what was across the floor from him.

“You wanted to kill him,” Sissy said grimly. “I don’t know why you’re so fucking surprised at this.”

“Whate’er has he done to himself,” the angel whispered.

From over on the sofa that had been thrown against the wall, Adrian cursed. “He went there to get Nigel back.”

Colin’s head shot around. “I beg your pardon?”

“He killed himself to go get your boy.”

Colin frowned, his black brows locking together. “That is not possible.”

“Which was what I tried to tell him, but you know Jim. He makes his own mind up.”

Sissy was conscious of Ad glancing her way, but she didn’t pay any attention to him. She was too busy searching for that other outcome, wondering why, considering all the levels of magic in this new world she was stuck in, she couldn’t hit some metaphysical rewind and make this mess go away.

“No one has come back from there without the Creator’s permission,” the Englishman said. “You should know that.”

“Yup. Brought that up.”

“Why ever did you let him—”

“Let him? What the fuck, Colin.”

As Sissy pushed herself upright, the back of her neck started to tingle. Reaching up, she rubbed her nape—

Creeeeeeeeeeak.

The sound of the front door opening got everyone’s attention. And it was followed by a strange set of footfalls, a repeating shuffle and a punch that sounded like something out of a Wes Craven movie. Then the temperature dropped forty degrees, making the walls crackle and her breath condense in puffs in front of her face.

Sissy screamed at what appeared in the doorway: It was a corpse, an upright, rotting corpse with gray flesh hanging off its bones and stringy hair vining down its pitted shoulders.

Colin and Adrian both jumped up as the corpse held out its hand, the sinew connecting the white bone offering little in the way of a palm. “Jim,” it said in a hollow rasp. “You will let me see him.”

“The fuck I will,” Adrian growled.

“Now is not the time for this.”

“Fuck you, Devina.”

“Fine, we’ll do it the hard way.”

The light drained not just out of the room they were in, but the sky itself, blackness arriving like a stain upon the earth. And then an eerie buzzing, like bees were coalescing and beginning to swarm, filled the air.

Someone grabbed her around the waist—not Adrian, the other one. “Adrian!” the Englishman yelled.

“Take Sissy!” Ad barked.

“Have her! Get over here, mate!”

A split second later, Sissy was thrown against the far corner of the room, and the big bodies of the two men walled in front of her. A flash of lightning from outside gave her a quick visual of the corpse crumpling to her knees in front of Jim’s body … and then all hell broke loose. With the next lightning strike, black, oily forms pulled themselves free of jagged shadows around the room, becoming three-dimensional instead of two, coming alive.

And then all went pitch-black again.

Until the next lightning strike.

This time those black nightmares were closing in on the three of them, prepared for attack.

There was no way the Englishman and Adrian were going to hold them off.

No way.

“I love you … I love you … I love you…”

Jim was still saying his last words over and over again as he opened his eyes. Gray. That was his first impression. Gray sky, gray ground. His second was that the suffocation and sense of being smothered from the outside in was gone. So too was the firebrand across the front of his throat and the coppery taste in his mouth.

But his Sissy was also gone. Along with Adrian and the parlor. And Colin.

A vast gray landscape had replaced it all, the flat plane stretching farther than he could see in all directions. The only breaks in the endless horizon were boulders that rose up from the powdery ground, rock formations that were spaced intermittently and at random.

From out of the north—or was it the west? the south? the east?—a coiling wind traveled to him, hitting him in the face, making his eyes sting and his throat go dry from the dust it carried.

Sitting up, he did a full three-sixty with the checkouts. No buildings. Nothing moving. And there was no sunlight, no moonlight, no shadows, just a strange glow that had no source and yet was like the ground cover: endless.

“Shit,” he breathed.

Hard to know what he thought he’d find—then again, as of just a couple of weeks ago, he hadn’t believed in angels, demons, or that Purgatory existed. So it wasn’t like he’d come over here with a layout in mind, or a game plan. But, man, he hadn’t pictured this.

Talk about your needle-in-a-haystack routine. So much distance to cover in search of Nigel—and he wasn’t sure how much time he had. Devina was back on earth working the war while he was over here, and the best he could hope for was that, as with Hell, time didn’t work the same way in this wasteland as it did up where the sun was in charge.

Was this place below the earth? Off to the side in the Milky Way? In the depths of a worm hole? As his mind went into an unsustainable bend, he dropped that line of thinking and went to stand up.

Tried to stand up was more like it.

Getting to his feet required a crapload of effort, as if gravity on this side of the divide were so much more powerful. And when he finally was on the vertical, the ground sank down under his weight, his footprints going deep into the packed dust.

He walked forward because … what else was he going to do—

More with the wind, pushing up against his chest as he ambulated, creating a drag he had to fight against. And the dust. Christ, it was like being back in the Middle East—every breath irritated the inside of his nose, and his eyes started to feel like he’d been on an all-night bender, each blink scratching over his pupils and itching his tear ducts.

Abruptly, he thought of Sissy’s expression … and then none of the physical shit mattered. The horror on her face as he’d sliced his own throat wide-open had been the stuff of nightmares, and the knowledge that he’d put that panic and pain in her eyes was unbearable.