Subtle, I reminded myself. They couldn’t suspect I had any part in the distraction.
I imagined the air around the gas line thickening in a ring around the heavy plastic tube. I focused as much air pressure as I could, pinching the line until it was closed.
With the flow of gas interrupted, the generator sputtered a few times, and then died.
The floodlights faded to a dull yellow color, and then went out completely. The house lights went off a moment later.
With my enhanced sight, I could see in the dark almost as well as a normal person could see in daylight. I looked inside the window.
Al pulled a long flashlight off a shelf nearby and flicked it on. He made a sour face as he stepped toward the stairs. “Nick, check the generator!” he called as he headed up the stairs.
I heard the front door swing open and a flashlight beam play over the generator hut as Nick stepped outside and headed toward the building to investigate.
The moment Al disappeared up the stairs I pushed at the bottom of the window with the heel of my hand. If I used the power with the window between us, the pressure would shatter the window, and the noise would bring Al back right away. I had to be as quiet as I could.
The window didn’t budge, and I felt my stomach tighten in panic. I flipped myself around and used the heel of my foot, pushing as hard as I could. I heard a scraping sound, but when I looked, I saw I had only moved the window a fraction of an inch.
Any moment, Nick would reach the hut and check the gas line. If I didn’t release the pressure on the line before he got there, he would know it wasn’t a normal interruption.
Desperate, I kicked the window harder, and it made a screeching sound as it opened. Silently cheering, I let my legs slide inside the building and, holding on to the frame around the window, wiggled the rest of the way in.
A flash of light erupted from the direction of the stairs. Al had returned of his own accord. He jerked his gun out of his holster with his free hand and fired at me without a moment’s hesitation.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I think it was a combination of my own reaction to pull away and the elemental power nudging the bullet slightly out of its trajectory, but under any other circumstances, Al’s shot would have been a bullseye.
My concentration on the gas line broke, and the generator kicked in. The lights in the basement flickered back on, and I think that distracted Al from firing a second shot right away.
It was long enough that the fallen angel inside me surged up. I wasn’t going to let Al get that second shot off. The last thing I wanted was to have to deflect another bullet.
Before Al could aim and pull the trigger, I sent a mass of air at him, slamming him back against the cement wall. The force of the impact made him drop his gun and the flashlight.
Keeping the air in the basement hurtling at him at gale-force speeds, I walked forward.
The skin on Al’s face began to rip with the pressure, and he screamed.
“Richard! No!” It was Darcy. At first, I ignored it, but she continued to yell. “Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. This is not you. Control it!”
My anger was so great I wanted nothing more than to continue to pound on Al with the wind until it crushed him.
Already his screams had turned to whimpering, and his eyes began to lose focus. He was near unconsciousness.
Darcy was right; now that I had stopped him, I didn’t need to kill him. I couldn’t let the thing inside me rule my emotions.
With a thought, I stopped my elemental attack, and Al fell to the floor. He moaned, and then to my surprise, reached out for his gun. Still stunned from the attack, his movements were slow enough that I had time to pick up his flashlight.
It was with no small satisfaction that I swung it at the back of his head, connecting hard enough to snap the flashlight in half.
“How do you like it ‘my way’?” I said to Al’s unconscious body, remembering his words that morning when he hit me with the wrench.
“Quick,” Darcy said. “Get me out of this stupid thing.”
Racing to her, I pulled the rosary over her head and tossed it in the corner.
I could feel the surge as Darcy’s power flared, turning her harness to ash. Backing away briefly from the sudden heat, I reached my hand out to help her to her feet.
“I thought you were dead,” she said. “How did you survive the fall? Did Stacy…?”
“I caught her,” I said. “I made a cushion of air to slow us down. I rushed her to the hospital in Tacoma, but I don’t know if I got her there in time.” I felt a lump in my throat. “I couldn’t stay; they called security because of the gunshot wound.”
“I’m sure she’ll pull through.” Darcy put a hand on my arm.
I nodded and put on a brave face.
“How do we get out of here?” Darcy asked, taking a step toward the stairs.
When she noticed I wasn’t following, she turned around and gave me a puzzled look.
“We have to stop David,” I said. “If we don’t do it now, we may not have another chance.”
Darcy frowned. “What do you mean, ‘stop him’?”
I held her gaze. “He’ll just keep coming after me. If he can’t find me, he’ll use Stacy. I can’t let anything happen to her. I have to find David and end it.”
“No,” she said, her voice dropping to a low note. “You can’t go down that path. Trust me; I’ve been there. It will eat you up from the inside.”
“I already have more guilt than I can stand.”
Darcy grabbed me by the shoulders. “It’s not the same. Accidents, self-defense; those are terrible. I get that. But murder is something on a whole other level. There’s no turning back. There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way,” I said.
“You don’t know that.” Darcy gave me a pleading look. I wanted to believe her; I didn’t want to have to kill anyone.
“I’ve let everyone down in my life. My mother and Chuck both paid the price. I can’t let anything happen to Stace.”
“Listen,” Darcy said. “David can’t hurt you or Stacy if he can’t find you. We’ll run far away and hide until we can figure out a better way. I don’t know if the police will believe us, but we can call them and tell them what David did to his own father and to Chuck. At the very least, they’ll investigate. David will be so busy covering his tracks, he might lose ours.”
I could feel myself being swayed by her words. My brain told me it was a long shot, but my heart told me it was time to run, not to fight.
“You’re right.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s get out of here.”
“All right.” Darcy smiled.
I nodded and turned to go up the stairs. “There are more of us out there. If we can locate them, maybe we can find safety in numbers.”
“Others?” she asked as she followed me. “How do you know?”
“I went to see Father Putnam. He ran away, but I saw a text message on his cell phone from someone named Miles, who said they had a lead on a third. If there are three, there are probably more. If we can get to them, maybe we can all help one another.”
We were at the top of the stairs, and the basement door was closed. I put my finger to my lips as I leaned closer to listen.
There were no sounds on the other side of the door.
Carefully, I turned the knob and eased the door open. Poking my head out, I looked around for signs of Nick or David. I didn’t see or hear anything.
I stepped out into a short hall, which connected a front sitting room to the kitchen where Nick had been eating his sandwich. His plate was still on the table.
The kitchen light was on, and I didn’t want to risk turning it off in case someone was near. Staying close to the wall, I edged toward the open window and looked across the property. Nick was standing outside the generator hut, looking in through the open door as if trying to figure out what had caused the interruption.
The one thing I noticed
, however, was that he was standing as still as a statue.
Focusing my sight closer, I saw two things. The first was that he had his gun in his hand, hanging at his side. The second was that there was a long cylindrical object resting on his shoulder.
I looked closer, and realized it was a rifle. Masked by the shadow of the hut, David waited, looking through the sight.
Jumping back away from the window, I ran into Darcy, almost knocking her over.
“Front door,” I said, pointing. “Run.”
Both of us raced down the short hall into the sitting room. Darcy reached the door first and grabbed the handle to open it inward.
The moment her hand touched the knob, though, it was as if she had touched a high-voltage electric wire. It threw her back into me. I caught her and barely managed to keep both of us on our feet.
Darcy held her hand to her chest. “What the hell was that?”
“Hang on,” I said, moving around her and making my way to the door. Reaching out slowly, I stopped when I saw the hairs on my arm rise.
“He’s got the door wired.”
Darcy, still clutching her sore hand, went to the window to the side of the door. She extended a finger toward the frame, and pulled back when she felt the same electric current.
I stepped back from the door. “Did he wire the entire house?” I tried the window on the other side of the room to the same effect, and then said, “Stand back.”
“What are you going to do?” Darcy asked.
I positioned myself in front of the door and focused the power, collecting the air from inside the room and willing it toward the door.
The wind I created was strong enough that Darcy had to drop to the ground and cover her head with her hands. Her hair whipped about as the cyclone in the room grew in intensity.
I willed it against the front door, hoping it would tear the entire wall apart.
Instead, all I ended up doing was knocking the furniture in the room around. The door, the window, and the wall remained intact.
“What the hell?” I said.
Darcy, standing and trying to put her hair back in order, made a gesture toward me. “Out of the way. Let me try something.”
Focusing herself, she held her hands in front of her, palms open. I saw a small flicker of light as she caused the very molecules of air between her hands to ignite.
A ball of fire the size of a basketball grew in that space, and with a visible effort, Darcy hurled it at the door.
It exploded in a shower of flame and sparks. The drape hanging from the side of the window next to the door caught fire. The flames danced across the top of a stuffed sofa, and burned a small circular area below the door. The walls of the house were left undamaged.
With a curse, I yanked the drape off the rod and stamped the fire out with my foot. Darcy made a motion with her hand. The fire on the sofa and floor died, leaving blackened ash and burn marks behind.
I heard a voice call out. “Thank you for walking into my trap, Richard.”
Standing outside the kitchen storm door on the other side of the house, David laughed.
I pushed Darcy out of the line of sight, and stepped away from the hall. Though David was pointing the rifle in our general direction, he didn’t seem to have any intention of firing right away.
“You didn’t think I wouldn’t have taken precautions?” he asked.
Not bothering to answer his question, I shot a thin stream of air at him with as much power as I could summon.
Nick, who was standing beside David, ducked, but David didn’t even flinch.
The air stream hit the screen on the door and barely made a ripple in the mesh.
David’s smile grew wider. “The entire house is surrounded by what Father Putnam calls a spirit trap. Demons and fallen can get in, but they can’t get out. You are completely contained inside. Go ahead: test it if you like. Throw your power around like children splashing in a pool. The most you’ll be able to do is bring the house down on top of you. That would make my job much easier. Of course, I’m just as happy to wait until Father Putnam gets here, and we begin the exorcism.”
I looked at Darcy, and could see the desperation in her eyes. Whatever we did, David was several steps ahead. The only time he had been caught off guard was when I had shown up at his office. He hadn’t planned for that.
His last words gave me an idea.
I nodded to Darcy. “We should do what he said.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Bring the house down.”
She looked at me as if I were crazy. “What?”
“The walls may be protected by this spell, or whatever it is, but not the floor and the couch. You’re immune to fire. If you build a fire hot enough to eat through the guts of this house before any of the inside structure falls on you, maybe the walls will fall down or the ceiling will cave in. That might break the binding, like with the rosaries. With any luck, you can escape.”
Darcy shook her head. “First of all, I don’t think I can make a fire that hot—”
“I might be able to help with that. If I fuel the fire with wind, like when you blow on hot coals in a campfire, it will make the fire burn hotter.”
“Maybe, but you’ll be roasted.”
I looked down. “We don’t have a choice. When I die, the fallen inside me will jump to David, but he won’t know how to control it right away. You’ll have to take him out quickly.”
“I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself.”
“As long as I know Stace will be safe, I’ll be fine with that.”
“I’m not sure she would feel the same,” Darcy said, grinding her teeth.
A pang of guilt shot through me. I would be abandoning her on the same day her brother had been taken from her.
When things had gotten bad for me, she had stuck with me. I couldn’t repay her by dying.
“Do you have a better idea?”
Darcy nodded. “I think so.”
I cocked my head. “What is it?”
“You mentioned boosting my fire with your wind. Maybe together we have enough power to overcome the spirit trap. What do you think?”
“I have no idea. Two days ago, this was all hooey to me.”
She gave me a half-smile. “Worth a try, at least.”
I gestured for her to start, and she turned to face the front door. Once again, she held her hands out in front of her, a great deal wider than before, and closed her eyes in concentration.
A tiny spark the size of a firefly came to life, and as Darcy continued to build the flame, I gathered all the air in the room. Gently at first, I fanned those flames. As if stoking a furnace, together we built a fireball the size of a giant beach ball. The heat was intense enough that I could feel my skin burn. I was sending so much air into it that it was becoming hard to breathe.
“All right,” I shouted. “Now!”
With both of our wills, we sent the enormous fireball at the front door with the force of a typhoon.
The door withstood the attack, and the fireball exploded into a dozen smaller streaks of flame. The blowback knocked both of us off our feet and into the opposite wall. The plaster of the inside wall cracked with the impact, and the back of my head sang as it connected with a wooden stud.
I landed on the floor, the breath rushing out of me, and it was everything I could do to keep myself from passing out.
Beside me, Darcy had fared worse. There was a bloody gash on her forehead and she lay completely still.
The sofa, which had been scorched from the previous attempt, now completely burst into flame. The curtains lit up like tinder, and fire ate through a throw rug. The hardwood floor cracked and blistered.
I had trouble focusing my thoughts and my eyes. I felt dizzy and could barely lift myself to my hands and knees.
When I looked up, I saw that the ceiling had caught fire. Burning hotter than any normal fire could, the flames quickly spread throughout the interior of the house, turni
ng it into a blazing furnace, trapping Darcy and me inside.
Chapter Thirty
My first reaction was to shield Darcy with my body. I realized that left me vulnerable to any fiery wreckage falling from the ceiling.
When a picture frame lost purchase from the wall and flipped over, the sharp edge coming straight for my head, I instinctively pulled all the available air around us inward. Like a canister of pressurized oxygen being punctured, the air exploded out as the frame reached near me. The force tore the picture to splinters.
I had to act quickly, though, because the fire was consuming the air in the room rapidly, replacing it with smoke. If I didn’t so something fast, we would die of asphyxiation before a fiery beam of wood fell and crushed us.
Reaching out with my mind as far as I could sense, I pulled all the air around me in. Instead of creating a cylindrical tornado, like the one I had made at my house before, I forced the swirling air currents to form a protective sphere around us. Any falling objects would be deflected, as long as I could pull more air in to keep the tornado ball alive.
As one of the inner walls folded in on itself, it opened up another channel for me to draw more air in, and I felt a surge of hope.
Darcy was still unconscious, but I could sense her shallow breathing. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep us protected.
The fire reached the second floor of the house, and when it breached the roof, a section of it caved in. It felt like a sudden change in the barometric pressure as the spirit trap broke, and I knew I had one opportunity before the entire house fell on top of us.
With as much force as I could summon, I gathered all the remaining air under us and directed it to push us up through the second floor and out the hole in the roof.
We were free!
Once we were outside, I had the full expanse of air at my command. The first thing I did was to fly Darcy out into the field between the burning house and the barns, and set her down.
“There he is,” David shouted. When I looked over I saw he was bringing his rifle around to bear on me. “Kill him!”
Nick was faster with his handgun, and he fired off two rounds. We were far enough away that I had time to shift the air pressure between us and deflect the bullets into the ground.
Angel's Breath: The Second Book of Fallen Angels Page 18