by Lisa Medley
What better target for a freshly minted horde of demons to cut their teeth on than a hospital? St. Mary’s Hospital held the population of a small city even when it wasn’t crowded. Lately, it was packed to the gills. Deacon had used his reaper powers of persuasion to ensure that Ruth got a private room, but most of the patients were packed like sardines in a can. Now that the demons weren’t following the rules, so to speak, and were tearing the souls from still-living victims, what was easier than attacking a patient? Weak, defenseless, easy pickings. It was a miracle it hadn’t happened sooner.
The question was fight or flight? If the horde was moving through the hospital, there was a chance they wouldn’t even make it to Ruth’s fourth-floor room on the first round, but it was a chance Maeve wasn’t genetically wired to take.
“What are we going to do?” Ruth said weakly as she flipped back the blanket covering her and tried to get out of bed. She managed to get her feet swung over the side before the pain of her wounds laid her back flat, sweat beading on her forehead and chest.
“Something that doesn’t make you pass out.”
Maeve wracked her brain to figure out their best option. Flashing with Ruth again was absolutely out of the question. Flashing without her to find Deacon was equally impossible.
That left staying and fighting.
She was good with a scythe, and she knew she could hold a demon attack at bay, but for how long? She could dispatch one or two easily enough, but more? She didn’t like her odds or her options.
Maeve hiked up her pant leg and drew out the push blade sheathed there, handing it to Ruth. “Here. It’s only good up close. Let’s hope you don’t have to use it.”
“We should just flash.”
“Absolutely. Not. Deacon will have my head if I flash you again. We’ll do this together. The cavalry will show up anytime. They will have felt the pull of souls as well, and they won’t be able to ignore it. Not when it’s this strong.”
“Thank you, Maeve.”
“Thank me when it’s over.”
Closing her eyes, Maeve listened hard to the sounds outside the doorway, trying to gauge the level of panic to determine how the horde was progressing. If the rumble from the floor below them was any indication, it felt like a one-way exit portal was being opened beneath the foundation of the hospital—Camael’s version of a Slip ’n Slide to Hell.
The evil was almost palpable as adrenaline flooded her heart. She wasn’t much for prayer, but she prayed now. She prayed for a way to protect Ruth from whatever was coming for them. It didn’t take long to discover who led the charge.
“Little reaper, little reaper, let me come in.” He taunted from the other side of Ruth’s door. Camael. Even without seeing him, she sensed the same power she’d felt in the cemetery when he’d taken Olivia. His essence was recognizable.
Goose bumps rose up across Maeve’s arms, and her heart hammered in her chest. Stepping to the side of the door, her back against the wall, she made eye contact with Ruth and raised one finger to her lips, indicating that Ruth should stay silent. Gripping her scythe in both hands for maximum force, she drew it back behind her head, ready to strike the first blow against whatever burst through the door.
Until this Meridian gig, Maeve had been a vanilla reaper. She’d only experienced demon hunting in books and training drills. Now she was a seasoned expert. Still, nothing she’d experienced or learned had prepared her to deal with a fallen angel.
“Let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be. I know you’re in there. You know I’m out here. How about we just get this all over with so we move forward?”
There was no way in hell that Maeve was going to make things easier for the bastard. If she stalled, maybe the Authority would make it here in time to help protect Ruth. Until then, Maeve was all that stood between the two of them and Camael’s diabolical plan.
“I see you’ve chosen the hard way. Of course.”
A discharge of light blasted open the door, pushing the furniture across the room in an avalanche. Camael stood just outside the doorway in another host body. He sent in two of his demon minions like lambs to the slaughter.
Maeve separated the head of the first with one blow of her scythe, and then sliced through the midsection of the second on the backswing. The demons streamed forth immediately, retreating to the hallway to search for another host. She should have tried to retrieve the demons, but there was no time to test her supposed new skills with Camael waiting in the wings. Seconds later, the host souls streamed forth, handicapping her efforts further. Maeve, her new reaper senses now heightened, was helpless to resist the pull of the souls despite the danger before her.
Before she could think about what she was doing, the souls streamed toward her like magnets and she consumed them.
In the melee, Camael had entered the room and was nearly at Ruth’s bedside. Helpless to defend herself, Ruth was visibly steeling herself for an attack.
As she snapped out of her trance, Maeve leaped across the room toward Ruth. When Camael turned to defend himself, Maeve saw that the flesh on his host’s face didn’t completely cover the skeleton beneath any longer. While his host was ever-changing, Camael couldn’t hide his true nature. She would recognize him in any form now.
Maeve stepped in front of Ruth in a protective gesture, pushing him away. Amused, Camael walked toward them with stiff, jerky movements and an odd cant to his head. He stopped to peel a dangly bit of flesh from his neck, flicked it across the room, and then smiled at them grotesquely. A hairline fracture appeared in his face, spidering across his cheek and down his neck.
“That’s enough, Camael.” Maeve backed up against Ruth, using her body to push the hospital bed closer to the wall.
“Easy now, reaper. As you can see, my host is…not up to par. I’m afraid I’ll need a new ride for my work on Earth. God knows I’d love a good reaper.” He smiled again and his left ear slid along the side of his face like a slug before falling to the ground. “Sooner would be better than later.”
“I don’t think so.” Maeve drew back her scythe, ready to administer what she hoped would be a fatal blow.
“Again with the hard way? You can make this all go away, my friend. I came here with the idea of inhabiting the new reaper. Considering her current state, it would be a matter of mercy. But if you want to make a deal with me, I could be persuaded to settle for you instead.”
Maeve laughed. “What makes you think either of us would agree to that? Besides, if you’re some mighty angel, why do you even need to inhabit a body?”
“Fallen angel. While the rewards are many, there have been a few…drawbacks.”
“Like spending your immortal life in Hell?”
“Actually, Hell is quite pleasing to me most days.”
The lights went out, leaving only the eerie illumination of the emergency backup lights and exit lights in the interior hospital room. Maeve was preparing to attack when the floor and walls bulged and began to tremor.
“You have two choices, dear Maeve. Allow me entry, or I’ll bring this entire hospital down upon you and your friend. I swear to Lucifer, I’ll open a portal right here in this room so large that it will swallow this place whole. I’m certain the thousand or so guests in this hospital would not survive. Such a pity. Even your reaper friend’s survival would be questionable from the looks of her. It will be a soul buffet!” Camael spread his arms wide and his fingernails fell to the tile floor like ice chips.
“From the looks of your host, it will be the last thing you do in that body.”
“We shall see.”
“Why are you doing this? You’re an angel.”
“When everything you love has been destroyed, perhaps you’ll understand.”
A shudder shimmied up Maeve’s spine and electricity crackled all around her, emanating from Camael in waves. She shuffled backward as a ragged fissure appeared along the floor between her and Ruth and began to open into a slivered chasm. Noxious fumes poured from
the split as it grew wider and filled the room blurring Maeve’s vision.
Camael’s body vibrated with power.
“Stop!” Maeve cried out in desperation. “I’ll do it. Stop now.”
* * *
“No, Maeve!” Ruth pulled herself up and against the wall, but Maeve had already leaped across the growing chasm in the floor, willingly offering herself as a living sacrifice.
“Maeve! Maeve!”
Unable or unwilling to respond, Maeve made her way to Camael and stood before him. The chasm separated the women, its distance too great for Ruth to span in her weakened state even if she could get out of the bed.
Ruth gazed down into the abyss through the wreckage of the floors below her. Dizzied by vertigo, she tried to make sense of the tumult. Instead of being able to help Maeve, she was being forced to bear witness to this, this horror. All the humor vanished from Camael’s face, but what still remained of his host’s visage held a smug satisfaction. Ruth wanted to render that face in two with her blade, but she was powerless.
Please, God. Help us now!
Maeve dropped to her knees before Camael, her head hanging like a ragdoll in defeat. Her hand uncurled from her scythe’s handle, letting the blade clang to the floor—useless. Camael casually kicked the weapon into the chasm behind her.
“If I do this, you’ll stop this madness. You’ll close the portal and you won’t harm Ruth. If you don’t promise me that, you’ll never have me.”
Camael sneered. “I think we’re beyond negotiation.”
“You can’t take my body if I resist, and I can make things very difficult for you. I want your assurance. Ruth lives and the portal closes. Say it.”
Fueled by Camael’s rage, the tremors increased in intensity—hanging pictures vibrated off their nails from the hospital’s walls and fell to the floor, and Ruth’s dinner tray and water crashed off the bed cart. Screams rang up from the floors below as concrete and steel shifted and bodies and equipment plunged toward the split.
Camael’s fury was clear but so was his need. “Agreed.”
He spanned the distance between them and grasped the sides of Maeve’s head, pulling her body up long and straight, her toes hovering inches above the floor.
“Do you freely accept Camael into your body, forsaking control and command of your form from this day forward?”
Ruth watched as Maeve’s body became seemingly boneless. A soft whimper nearly escaped her own throat on Maeve’s behalf. She stuffed it down and deliberated on the distance of the chasm once again. Maybe…
“Yes.”
“No!” Ruth screamed.
Camael pulled Maeve farther up, placing his mouth against hers in a grotesque kiss. Ruth wretched as Maeve’s body began to tremble and shudder. Camael’s host body crackled and desiccated even more as he forced his essence into Maeve’s body. Soon all that was left of his former host was dust, and Maeve tumbled to the ground.
Everything stilled. The chasm remained, but the screams had been silenced, replaced with low keening.
The sound of Ruth’s pulsating heart filled her ears as her vision coned to a pinpoint. She fought for consciousness while Maeve hunched on the floor silently for several long moments. Maeve reached back and pulled out her hair tie, letting her glistening black hair fall loose to the middle of her back. She rolled onto her heels and drew herself up from the floor.
But of course she wasn’t Maeve any longer.
Her hair swung over her shoulder and across her chest as she switched around to look at Ruth. A mocking smile broke out across her face, and her head cocked jerkily to the side as Camael adjusted to his new home.
The temperature plummeted in the room, and Maeve shimmered in front of Ruth, stepping into the void and dissolving into the ether. The chasm began to suck all the power and energy from the room behind her like a great vacuum. The door tore from its hinges and was pulled into the gorge, as were the remaining furniture and other accoutrements in the room. Ruth’s bed began to roll toward the abyss as well, and she scrambled to untangle herself from the coverings. She still wasn’t strong enough.
A brilliant white light filled the room, blinding her.
Her eyes shut tight against the glare, Ruth felt the bed roll to a stop and waited for the sickening, stomach-dropping fall into the abyss. When it didn’t happen, she opened her eyes to find an angel hovering over the chasm, blazing with light and dressed in full regalia, wings spread across the length of the room.
With a touch of the angel’s spear to the edge of the split, the chasm began to mend itself deep within the Earth, sealing the bottom of the crevasse but leaving five floors below them exposed.
Chaos shook the hospital corridors as hospital staff raced to evacuate the surviving patients.
Alarms rang throughout the building and an automated voice over the intercom directed a new message for the swift and orderly evacuation of the building along marked disaster routes.
“Who are you?” Ruth asked, pain overcoming her.
“Temperance.”
Ruth’s vision pinpricked to black.
Chapter Forty-Two
Nate and Bo flashed into a war zone. The hospital was bedlam. Not only was the floor where Ruth had been staying all but destroyed, but the hallway to her room was blocked by mangled concrete and steel. A twelve-foot fissure traversed the floor beneath them. Bocephus crouched near the edge of the crack and growled into the void.
Unease struck him like a sledgehammer. What if something horrible had happened to Ruth? Not only that, but Maeve was just…gone. His fragile connection to her from their energy share had been severed. Trying to make sense of the destruction, he searched for Ruth’s room number along the now-crooked wall. A white glow pulsated from the doorless entryway as he picked his path through the rubble.
Even though he was staring right at it, he couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at. At first he thought Grim had deigned to visit them, but then he realized that the angel before him was female.
Scary as hell, but definitely female.
When he approached the doorway, the angel raised her spear and pointed it at his chest. Nate couldn’t see past her wings to determine if Ruth was still in the room.
“Whoa, there. I’m a friend.”
“Temperance, no. Let him pass.”
“Ruth?”
The angel lowered her spear, although she didn’t seem too happy about it. Her wings stayed extended, flames licking from their feathery tips. Her wings were perhaps a bigger threat than the spear had been.
Slowly, hoping not to rile the angel, he entered the room, keeping to the edge, well away from her wings. The chasm still gaped open in the floor, but it was covered by a shimmering light. Nate took a tentative step onto the clear platform, and then crossed it to join Ruth.
“Nate,” Ruth whispered weakly from her bed.
“What happened, Ruth. Where’s Maeve? And who…or what is your new friend here?”
Ruth tried to sit up to talk to him, but the effort made her grimace in pain at the effort. Temperance growled a warning.
“No. Ruth. Stay put. Just tell me what happened.”
“Nate it was awful. Demons were everywhere. So many souls were torn free in the hospital.”
“And now? Can you still feel the departing souls? Are they gone?”
“They’re gone. They were taken after Camael…”
“Camael was here, too?”
“Nate, he took Maeve. No, not took her. Possessed her.”
Nate’s heart dropped into his stomach. Not. Possible. Maeve was the strongest woman he’d ever met. There was no way she’d fall prey to Camael. But the broken tether said otherwise.
“How is that possible, Ruth? He’s an angel, not a demon.”
“He’s an angel no longer.” Temperance offered. “When he fell, he lost his ability to maintain his angel form here on Earth. He requires a host, just as demons do.”
“It’s true,” Ruth said, “His host was dis
integrating before our eyes, and he wanted a reaper. He wanted me, Nate. He thought I would acquiesce because I’m so injured, but Maeve…”
“Maeve saved you.”
“Yes. Camael threatened to open the portal and drop the entire hospital into the chasm. He was determined to leave with one of us. Maeve offered herself. But now? Oh, Nate. She’s not Maeve anymore.”
Ruth sobbed into the pillow and Nate took her hand in his own, trying to make sense of how this could have happened and what it meant for them all. Now that Camael had a reaper’s body, he’d have free reign on Earth. Nate couldn’t even imagine how much worse things could get in the coming days. If Camael had been limited to a quickly deteriorating host previously, he would be unstoppable as long as he possessed Maeve.
Temperance’s wings ignited in yellow and red flames. She spread them around Ruth’s bed as a commotion in the doorway drew her attention.
“What the hell is this?” Deacon’s voice bellowed from the hallway.
“That’s new.” Kylen offered.
“And it’s a chick.” Raguel chimed in.
Other familiar voices joined in the general melee.
“Temperance! Let them pass.” Ruth said.
Temperance extinguished the flames to a slow burn and tucked her wings in just enough to let the group of men pass. Nate had never been so glad to see a bunch of reapers as he was at that moment.
“We felt the pull. It was so strong we couldn’t ignore it. What happened? Are you okay, Ruth?” Deacon rushed over to her and carefully pulled her into his arms. Nate watched as he carefully clutched her hands in his and pushed his green healing light into her. The energy flowed up both of her arms until it reached her shoulders, and then he stopped the flow. With time, she would heal completely, but it would take longer than usual because she could only be given small amounts of energy at a time.
Ruth’s face smoothed, the lines of pain temporarily erased.