Eran squeezed past her, trying to see around the people clustered in the way. In another moment Mireva’s clear voice rose above the growing murmurs of the crowd.
“No, I’m not going down there. Let go of me!”
Before Brynna could remind Eran to stay put, he was around her and headed toward the stairs, moving on training and instinct. But even that wasn’t much help—the noise swelled as something happened on the field and an announcer’s excited voice boomed over the speakers by the ceiling. If Gavino said anything in return, it was as lost in the noise as Eran’s shouts were as he tried to push his way to the stairs. Brynna cursed under her breath and followed, but there were too many damned people in the way to stop him before he got to the bottom of the stairs. “Eran—wait!”
Too late; the detective in him had gone into full operational mode and he was already drawing his gun. In the time it had taken Eran to move forward through the fans, Gavino had managed to get Mireva almost to the bottom of the stairs. Now she was outright fighting him; he had one hand wrapped around her arm and was trying to steer her around the railing toward a shadowed alcove behind it. A couple of feet away, some guy who had probably tried to help Mireva lay crumpled and groaning against one of the steel posts. There were a couple of other men inching warily toward Gavino, but they backed up when Eran yelled, “Police—stop right there!”
Gavino’s face whipped in their direction and his expression contorted into one of loathing. Brynna knew Eran’s gun was useless. He would never fire into this many people, but she couldn’t let him get near Gavino—the demon-in-hiding was forbidden to personally hurt Mireva, but he had no such constraints for non-nephilim. If Eran got within his reach and tried to stop him, Gavino would kill him without hesitating.
Brynna finally shoved the last knot of gawkers out of the way, then surged past Eran.
“Brynna, get back!”
“I’ll take care of him,” she snapped. “Get Mireva—”
A crack split the air, and for a moment Brynna froze. Then someone behind her shrieked, “Look out, he’s got a gun!” but the words were lost to anyone else as a roar went up from the stands and the announcer’s voice blared over the speakers again. Brynna grabbed Eran and yanked him closer so he could hear her. “Klesowitch is here!” she screamed in his ear. “He’s under the stairs!”
He pulled away from her and went to the right, leaving Brynna to deal with Gavino. At the bottom of the stairs, Mireva balled up her fist and whacked Gavino on one side of his head. It didn’t hurt him but it was enough to pull his gaze off Brynna, who grabbed the chance to leap the last few feet and jam Gavino bodily against the steel handrail. He still didn’t release Mireva, instead hauling her with him and pinning her behind his back. She fought and clawed at him, but it did no good at all.
“Hey, Astarte,” Gavino panted. He slammed Mireva back against the railing again, hard enough to knock the wind out of her but not enough to actually cause the girl any pain. “How’s it hanging?”
“Let go of her, you moldy piece of demon shit,” Brynna snarled. “Or I’ll rip your arm right out of its socket.”
Gavino’s grin was wide, impossibly wide for a human, and Brynna saw his teeth shift and sharpen inside the darkness of his mouth. His gaze flicked from left to right, and Brynna knew he was looking for Klesowitch while he tried to keep Mireva still enough for a killing shot. He let out a high-pitched, obnoxious giggle. “Sticks and stones, baby—sticks and stones!”
“Oh, I’m much more effective than that,” Brynna said. Before he could react, she sank the fingers of one hand deep into the muscle of his shoulder, pushing in and in and in until the skin split beneath her fingernails and she dug into meat. He cried out and the grip he had on Mireva released.
The teenager didn’t need an invitation to yank herself out of his range. “You jerk!” she yelled at him. Tears streaked her flushed face. “I trusted you!”
“Your bad,” Gavino ground out, then backhanded Brynna hard enough to knock her off her feet. She was up and in front of Mireva instantly, but Gavino had finally given up on the nephilim girl. Instead, he crouched and faced off with Brynna as the people around them scrambled to get out of the way. With an evil smile, he ran his fingers over the blood leaking out of the wound on his shoulder, then brought his hand to his mouth and licked the fingertips. “Mmmmm, yummy.” His eyes glowed. The noise grew as the fans outside went crazy over something exciting that was happening on the field; anything the people around Brynna and Gavino tried to say was drowned out, but Brynna heard Gavino’s next words very, very clearly.
“Bring it, hell bitch. It’s long past time for you to die.”
REDMOND WANTED TO STAY with Brynna and take care of that little Goth bastard, but he couldn’t. Despite the noise level—the screams of the fans and the shouts of those who were focusing on the mess created by Gavino—he recognized the sound of a second gunshot when it came, even though it could have been mistaken for the snap of a bat against a fastball. A millisecond later a man bellowed in surprise and pain as a bullet blistered a path across the side of his head. The injured guy reeled sideways and Eran scrambled around the right side of the staircase, pulling his pistol free. “Klesowitch, freeze! You’re under arrest!”
At the sound of his name, Michael Klesowitch spun wildly, his oversized pistol waving in front of him. Half a dozen people dove for cover, pulling their friends with them as their shouts blended with the rest of the ballpark noise. Klesowitch lurched forward a couple of steps, then took off in earnest, twisting through the masses with the gun held in front of him like a sword.
“Son of a bitch!” Redmond ran after him, struggling to keep the guy in sight. It would be too easy to lose him—there were staircases going up the stands, restrooms, exits, dozens of ways for him to swerve away. With his teeth grinding every time the young man slipped out of his sight for a moment, Redmond could only hope that Klesowitch would try to duck out one of the exits. That would be the best end to this bad situation, to get the killer out of the park where he could try to bring him down without hurting anyone else.
No such luck.
Instead of veering right and out of the park, Klesowitch did a three-sixty and headed up one of the ramps leading to the seating sections. Twenty feet and one turn behind him, Redmond lunged between the posts at the edge, reaching through the space in the railing and trying to grab Klesowitch’s ankles as he passed. No good—his path had shifted him to the far side of the ramp and out of Redmond’s range, and all Redmond got for the effort was concrete-bruised ribs. Redmond chased after him, screaming “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” every ten or fifteen feet in an effort to clear the ramp in front of him and close the distance.
If Klesowitch was trying to get lost in the crowd, he’d chosen badly. Most of the game-goers’ attention was riveted on the playing field, where the Cubs were up and had managed to put two players on base with only one out. Despite Redmond’s yelling, nobody was looking at the two men running up the ramp, and even the drawn guns didn’t seem to impress anyone until after the fact—
“Hey, I think that guy had a gun.”
“What? I didn’t see anything. Watch the game—you’re gonna miss something.”
Klesowitch bounded off the ramp and swung around, scrambling across the bottom row of the bleachers, wading over the legs and feet of the people seated there like they were nothing but rocks to be stomped on. Eran had no choice but to follow, still yelling for the killer to stop but knowing he wouldn’t and that he was stuck chasing Klesowitch until he either got away or turned and decided to fire at Redmond himself. Klesowitch surrendering was, of course, a possibility, but Redmond thought that was as far-fetched as an alien ship landing on the pitcher’s mound in the next five minutes.
The protest from the people in the seats was immediate and heated.
“Dude, what the fuck—”
“Hey, watch where you’re stepping!”
“What is your problem?”
<
br /> And in a place like this, it wasn’t long before someone with an unforgiving nature weighed in when Klesowitch tried to shove him aside.
“I’ll break your face, you little shit!”
Redmond saw the man, a burly guy in a Rich Harden T-shirt, try to grab Klesowitch, who flailed wildly at him with his empty hand and tried to keep going. The fan’s face went red with anger and he managed to catch hold of a handful of the killer’s shirt. Redmond saw Klesowitch turn and imagined disaster in an instant—a bullet blowing out Mr. Tantrum’s head—and then all hell really would break loose.
“Police!” Redmond didn’t think he’d ever screamed as loudly in his life. “Let him go right NOW!”
The man obeyed without thinking, reflex saving his ass as Klesowitch lurched away. Redmond followed only a few seconds later, ignoring other people who were starting to pick up on the incident and giving the big guy a hard push back onto his seat as he passed. “Sit the fuck down and stay there,” Redmond snarled, just in case visions of I wanna be a hero started zinging through the Harden fan’s mind.
Klesowitch had made it all the way to the steps at the far side of the section then barreled downward, ramming his way through the people and sending drinks and food flying in every direction. Curses flew after him as people saw the commotion coming and tried futilely to get out of his way. Redmond was at a disadvantage, losing ground because every spot that Klesowitch opened up closed behind him as people stood or leaned out of their seats to stare after him. Klesowitch almost fell down the steps to the lower bleacher seats, then found there was no way to go but back to the right. Redmond anticipated the move and leaped over the railing, but he was a fraction of a second too late; he hit hard enough to make his teeth snap, and by the time he got back to his feet, Klesowitch was headed down again, running as fast as he could.
This time the narrow steps were fairly clear, with most folks staying in their seats and intent on watching the game. Redmond closed the distance fast and almost had him when Klesowitch actually leaped over the railing. He grabbed at the top of the retaining fence that angled out of the wall below the railing, then clawed his way toward the edge with his gun still in one hand.
Disbelief made Redmond thunk hard into the railing at gut height instead of jumping over it. “Klesowitch, you are under arrest—stop, damn it!” But he might as well have been shouting at a wall, and there was no time to do anything but thrust his pistol back into its holster and go for it himself.
Redmond’s landing on the retaining fence didn’t have the forward momentum that Klesowitch’s had, and instead of being able to grab the killer, the detective landed on the green chain-links and slid downward, nearly wedging his feet between the fencing and the wall. The metal scraped Redmond’s face and hands before he could hook his fingers into it and haul himself up. He moved as fast as he could, but it was still no good. The three feet separating them was as wide as a chasm, and even as Redmond strained to reach him, Klesowitch hauled himself over and swung into the heavy mass of vines covering the wall below.
Redmond didn’t hesitate. The twelve-foot or so drop almost put him on top of the stunned Klesowitch, and Redmond gasped when the ground rammed into him. Klesowitch rolled away and clawed his way out of the greenery, but when Redmond pulled up and tried to follow, hot pain shimmied out of his ankle and into his shin. “Son of a bitch!” he swore, and crawled out of the vines instead. Another two feet and he was up and lurching across the field like a dancer with a broken heel, but he’d be damned if he was going to give up.
“Klesowitch, this is your final chance. Stop or I’ll shoot!”
He was only about twenty feet away. With desperation etched into his features, Klesowitch spun and tried to run backward. His gun wavered crazily in front of him as he tried to track Redmond’s progress.
“Klesowitch—Mike—don’t! Drop the gun before anyone else gets hurt. I’m not gonna ask you again.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Klesowitch suddenly screamed at him. “The Holy Man told me it was all right! He told me he would take care of everything. Go away!”
Holy Man? That was an angle Redmond didn’t have time to explore right now. “I can’t do that—”
“Then have it your way!”
It all happened so fast but at the same time so slowly. Klesowitch stopped, finally, but instead of dropping his weapon he raised it and pointed it at Redmond. Something in Redmond’s mind registered the motion of the man’s arm as it rose and acknowledged the thousands of people sitting behind him. Klesowitch’s bullet might hit him, or it might go into the vine-covered wall at his back, or it might go into the stands; then someone, a man who had a family at home, or a teenager who’d come to the game with her boyfriend, or a kid who’d come to the game with his dad, would go on record as being the ninth death at the hands of Michael Klesowitch. Almost all of the ball field was clear behind the younger man, the sight of two men with guns spilling onto the field from the bleachers sending the ballplayers sprinting for the dugouts.
Before the killer could steady his aim, Redmond pulled out his Glock and shot Michael Klesowitch in the forehead.
BRYNNA CAREFULLY BACKED AWAY from Gavino, acutely aware of all the people staring at them. There were going to be repercussions for this, but not for Gavino. She still wanted to dwell among the humans, find her redemption and forgiveness; Gavino, on the other hand, didn’t give a shit who saw what—he didn’t live in this world, he didn’t like this world, and he knew he was on his way out, one way or another. The little bastard would love to cause as much chaos and pain as possible before he left, and that, of course, meant he’d relish taking a few (or a dozen) unprepared humans with him. Already she could see a couple of guys edging up behind the demon, thinking they’d make points by rescuing her. “Get back,” she snapped at them before they could get within Gavino’s range.
Gavino whirled and smirked, dancing toward them with his long-nailed fingers flexing like talons in a Come ’ere, little human, come to Papa! gesture. Startled by her order and Gavino’s utter lack of fear, they stumbled backward, expressions confused. “So sad,” Gavino pouted. “You’d spoil my fun—hey, where’re you going?” he asked when he turned back and saw Brynna slipping away. “Please, please, please—stay out here.” He swept his arm at the wide area in front of the stairs that had cleared of people. “There’s so much opportunity for audience participation.”
“You’ve been watching too much television,” Brynna said. She kept her voice low enough so that Gavino had to keep following her to hear. “You always were stupid and overly impressionable.”
“Ooooh,” he responded merrily. “How your sarcasm burns—it burns!”
She slid farther back, aiming for an alcove below the stairwell. It was filled with garbage cans and half-crushed boxes from the food vendors, rife with the smell of garbage, a fitting place for Gavino to end his stay in this world. “Lahash must have laughed when he saw how easily you became his little lackey,” she told him. “How available you are to take the heat for him so that he doesn’t get any dirt under his immaculate fingernails.”
Gavino shrugged, trailing after her obligingly but still staying out of her range. Yeah, he was ready to see this to the end—she could see the eagerness in his eyes. “You’re a little off on that one,” he told her. “We worked this out together, the old two-heads-are-better-than-one.” His smile was gaping and moist. “Lucifer’s been pretty pleased with the results so far.”
“I’ll bet,” Brynna said.
“And we have big plans for the future.”
“You don’t have a future.”
“Wishful thinking, Astarte.” He tilted his head and for a moment he looked bewildered. “What are you doing here, anyway? This is the wrong side of the tracks for you. Why don’t you come back where you belong?”
Brynna shook her head. “No, I don’t belong in Hell anymore. I—”
“Well, you sure don’t belong here,” Gavino interrupted. “Lucifer
misses you, you know. And he will find you. Things’ll go so much easier if you go to him first. He’s always had a soft spot for you—he’ll give you another chance.”
Brynna didn’t hesitate. “That’s not the forgiveness I’m looking for,” she said.
The demon’s eyes widened, then he brayed with laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You think God is going to forgive you? After the things you’ve done?” Gavino laughed harder, nearly gasping for air. “Falling from Grace was just a start, remember? You went on to do much grander things. Do I have to compile a list? Got a hundred years to read it?”
“God will forgive anything,” Brynna said stubbornly. “Eventually.”
“Sheee-yit.” Gavino leaned forward and spat on the ground in front of Brynna. She backed up another few steps, willing him to follow, pleased when he did. His saliva sizzled for a few seconds on the concrete before drying up and disappearing. “What happened to you?”
“I got tired of dealing with fucktards like you,” she retorted, then leaped on top of him.
They went down in a snarling mound of vicious punches. All the concerns Brynna had regarding her surroundings and the bystanders flew out of her mind as Gavino tore into her with everything he had, including his teeth. She should have expected that—in Hell he’d been little more than a scavenger with pointy teeth and a voracious appetite—but somehow she hadn’t thought he would bring that nature to the forefront in a fight with a fellow demon. It was a substantial and painful underestimation of her foe, and Brynna paid dearly for her foolishness. The first thing she went for was Gavino’s neck, but her attempt to grab him below the jaw and quickly snap his neck was too predictable; Gavino lowered his chin, then ripped into the meat of her upper arm like a ravenous wolf.
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