Knight's Fall

by Angela Henry

  TWENTY

  Once West and I got outside, she spotted Ptolemy’s hearse at a stop sign two blocks up the street. I could see his emotions oozing out of the windows. Despite his bravado, Ptolemy radiated pure cowardice. It rolled out of the car in mustard-yellow waves, a distinct contrast to the intense purple haze West now generated. We got into the Range Rover and I floored it, but by the time we got to the light, Ptolemy had turned and we’d lost sight of him. Desi used my cell to call the EA to run Ptolemy’s license plates to get the NOPD to issue an alert for him. But I just followed the yellow trail as West argued on the phone.

  “What do you mean he doesn’t own a hearse? We just saw him in it!”

  “What?” I asked when she threw the phone down on the seat in disgust.

  “Zander Ptolemy’s hearse isn’t in his name, meaning we can’t track him. I have no idea where he’s gone!”

  “Try LeBrun Funeral Home.”

  Desi got back on the horn to the EA and had them run a check on vehicles registered to the funeral home. She didn’t need to. Ptolemy’s trail was still plenty strong, but I wasn’t about to tell her how I was tracking him.

  “You were right.” She looked a little embarrassed when she got off the phone. “I’ve put an alert out for it, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve lost him.”

  “Don’t worry.” I gave her a grim smile. “I got this.”

  I followed Ptolemy’s trail all the way out to an abandoned alligator farm near the bayou. I parked in front of the main building, which was pretty derelict and falling down, but there was a newish-looking aluminum warehouse at the back of the property with the garage door up. A large semi was parked inside. Four men were loading the back of the truck with white boxes stamped with the black-winged Necropolis Pharmaceuticals logo. Ptolemy’s hearse was parked in front of the warehouse. Desi called the EA again to report our location and to request backup.

  “When this is over you’re going to tell me exactly how you were able to follow him out here.” She eyed me suspiciously.

  “I’m part bloodhound.” I was only half joking. She rolled her eyes and started to get out of the car. “We’re unarmed. Shouldn’t we wait for backup or something?”

  “Who knows how long it’ll take backup to get here? And besides, I’m not going to confront anyone,” she insisted. “I just want to get a closer look. See what I can see, hear what I can hear.”

  “Fine.” I got out of the car. “Just don’t get any ideas to play the hero.”

  I noticed her purple aura had grown so intense it was almost black. Somebody was feeling not just courageous but pretty damned invincible, and that meant I’d need to keep a close eye on her.

  “Don’t worry. Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  My head whipped around so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. Did she know about my past? It wasn’t possible. She gave me a wry smile that almost, almost made her look like Ava, but not quite seeing as how strained and tight it was. Ava’s smiles had come effortlessly and lit up her whole face.

  “We should be able to see everything from here,” she said once we’d settled inside the main building at one of the broken back windows.

  “Is that Ptolemy?”

  A thin, slight man with longish hair had appeared inside the open garage door of the warehouse. He paced and impatiently checked his watch every few seconds. I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing what he looked like at the funeral home, but I knew it had to be him by the wisps of yellow that rose from his body like steam in the muggy heat. The men who were loading the truck gave off various shades of calm blues and grays. This was just a job to them. They most likely had no idea what kind of poison they were loading into the back of that truck, or they knew and just didn’t care.

  “That’s him. But I don’t see Grace or his Mercedes. He must not be here.” She sounded disappointed.

  “Looks like they’ve got a lot more product to load.” I gestured toward the sky-high piles of boxes in the warehouse that had yet to be loaded.

  “I wonder if we could sneak in there and disable the truck.”

  “Maybe it would be better to let them take off and catch them on the road in the act of transporting it across state lines,” I said.

  Personally, I’d be happy to chuck a bomb into the back of the truck and blow the whole thing to kingdom come, but I sensed West wouldn’t be down with that suggestion.

  “We’re not the FBI, Knight; we don’t need to catch them in the act, so to speak. We just need to catch them.”

  “Ah, that’s right. I forgot. You’re the all-powerful Equinox Agency. You follow your own set of rules.” I tried hard not to be distracted by the pulse of her heartbeat in the hollow of her throat and the memories of how she used to moan when I kissed her there. I mean when I kissed Ava there. I had to stop thinking of Desiree West as Ava Duval. They weren’t the same person. They were two separate existences split from the same soul. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it or why anyone would purposefully switch Ava’s very existence for that of Desiree’s. It just didn’t make any sense to me. I expected a smart-assed reply, but West wasn’t paying me any attention.

  “He’s here,” she said instead.

  I looked out the window to where a black Mercedes made its way down a narrow back road leading to the garage from the east. It pulled up and parked next to Ptolemy’s hearse. Dr. Langdon Grace had finally arrived.

  I can remember like yesterday my first encounter with a Nephilim. I’d been charged with saving the life of a man whose wife had been plotting to kill him with poison she’d put into a cherry pie. My job had been to make sure he didn’t eat it, by any means necessary. So I made the man’s landlord forget to pick up a screwdriver he’d been using to repair the railing on the steps leading to the man’s basement apartment, causing him to fall down the steps when he stepped on the screwdriver. He got a bad concussion and broke some bones, his wrist, and more importantly, his jaw. Not from the fall, but from when his wife heard his cries for help and accidentally swung the door open into his face.

  With his jaw wired shut, the man couldn’t eat the poisoned pie. And with him out of the house, the wife abandoned her murderous plan and slept with the landlord, who’d been after her for months. She thought he loved her so much that he’d left the screwdriver on the steps on purpose to kill her husband so they could be together. Go figure. And what did they have as a late-night snack after making love? Cherry pie. The landlord saw it in the fridge and, knowing 9 1/2 Weeks was her favorite movie, fed it to her while she was blindfolded.

  Back at the hospital, I’d made one last visit to my charge to make sure he was okay and witnessed a nurse injecting something into the IV of my charge’s elderly roommate as he slept. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if I hadn’t seen the black feather that fell from beneath the nurse’s lab coat and noticed her missing aura. Nephilim don’t have auras. I knew she wasn’t a demon. They stink like, well, hell. But you’d almost mistake a Nephilim for human if you didn’t know what to look for, the main thing being their ice-cold, pupilless eyes. They usually wear colored contacts, but I could see through them. Fortunately my charge walked in his sleep. He got out of bed and knocked over his roommate’s IV stand, pulling the IV out of his arm and saving his life. The Nephilim nurse couldn’t see me, but she sensed my presence and wisely left.

  Dr. Langdon Grace stepped out of his Mercedes, looking impeccable in a tailored charcoal gray suit that made his white-blond hair practically glow. Zander Ptolemy rushed up to greet him. Grace waved him away with a dismissive hand, and Ptolemy followed behind him like a puppy, finally jumping in front of him and blocking his path when he wouldn’t acknowledge him.

  “Dr. Grace, give me another chance. Please.” Ptolemy held out the box, anxious for Grace to take it.

  “You’re late, and you’ve thrown my production schedule off by a day.” Grace brushed past without looking at him. “I’ve made other arrangements.”

&n
bsp; “Someone’s sure not happy,” commented West.

  “Grace is apparently a stickler for punctuality.”

  “You can hear them?” she said, looking at me in shock. Shit. I forgot she couldn’t hear a conversation from a hundred feet away.

  “I can read lips,” I replied quickly. West shot me a look. She opened her mouth to say something else when I pushed her head down and ducked down beside her.

  “Get down. He’s looking this way.”

  Through a gap between the windowsill and the wall, I could see Grace looking our way. He took a step in our direction before Ptolemy shoved the box at him again, pleading with him to take it.

  “What’s going on?” West tried to shove me out of way so she could see.

  “Looks like he’s trying to get Grace to take the brain matter he reanimated.”

  “Let me see,” she whispered.

  “Go ahead and look; I think the coast is clear.” She nudged me over to look out the window. Grace took the box from Ptolemy, and Ptolemy smiled.

  “Thank you, Dr. Grace, thank you,” said Ptolemy. His aura was turning from coward yellow to a calming blue-gray. “You won’t regret giving me a second chance. I promise I won’t be late again.”

  “Second chance?” Grace laughed mirthlessly “Who said I was giving you a second chance?” He dropped the box on the ground and picked up Zander Ptolemy by the throat.

  His dangling legs kicked in midair. His face was bright red and contorted in shock, and his aura was back to mustard yellow and rapidly darkening to brown. He tried to speak, but Grace’s grip on his throat was too tight. Grace looked directly at the main house and the broken window West and I were spying on him from, and a sly smile creased his thin lips. He, of course, knew we were there. And I was an idiot to think that he didn’t. I thought he might choke the life out of Ptolemy right in front of us as a test to see if we’d reveal ourselves in order to save his miserable ass. I was wrong. Instead, Grace hurled the unfortunate Mr. Ptolemy like a beanbag across the yard right at the window.

  “Duck!” I dove on top of Desi just as Ptolemy came crashing through the window headfirst, shattering what was left of the glass and sending it flying everywhere.

  “Shit!” exclaimed West. She pushed me off of her and sat up, then reached for her Glock, and remembering she didn’t have it, cussed again. “Fuck!”

  I crawled over to Ptolemy, who lay in a growing pool of blood, and checked his pulse, even though I knew from his vanished aura that he was dead. If a broken neck hadn’t already killed him, the blood loss from his massive head wound would have. In the process, I got a large chunk of glass stuck in my palm, and without thinking and forgetting West was watching, pulled it out, at which point the edges of the gaping cut knit together, and the angel blood in my system healed it instantly. A gasp from West reminded me of my mistake.

  “What the . . . hell . . . are you?”

  I reached for her, and when she recoiled from me with the most disgusted look on her face, I died a little inside. But we didn’t have time for her fear or my hurt feelings with a lunatic Nephilim spoiling for a fight outside.

  “He knows we’re here. We need to get out of here now!” I grabbed her arm, pulled her to her feet, and dragged her out of the house and all the way back to the Range Rover.

  “Let go of me! We have to stop the shipment!” She pulled out of my grasp.

  “We can’t do anything if we’re dead. And even if you had a gun, it wouldn’t work on him.”

  “Why? Because he can heal himself just like you did?” She backed away from me. “Is that why you know so much about Nephilim—because you are one? Is that why you don’t seem to have existed before last year?”

  “Desiree,” I said softly.

  “I don’t know who or what you are, Xavier Knight, and I don’t care! You do what you want. I’ve got a shipment to stop.”

  Her aura was a tie-dyed miasma of purple bravery and white-hot anger, with broad stokes of reddish fear. We were both so wrapped up in our emotions, with fear and anger being the most prominent. They thrummed through our veins and pounded in our ears so loud that neither of us heard the rapidly approaching Mercedes until it was too late. Grace was behind the wheel.

  “Desi! Look out!” I lunged forward to push her out of the path of the oncoming car.

  My fingertips had barely brushed the fabric of her sleeve when the car struck her. It didn’t stop, and I was sick with shock and helplessness as she went flying up and onto the hood, shattering the windshield and denting the roof before landing hard in the dirt. She lay broken and still, and for just a second, it seemed as if my heart had stopped.

  Then all the air was driven out of my lungs as Grace drove his fist into my stomach, lifting me into the air, sending me flying backward. I hit the side of the house so hard it caved in and the porch roof fell on me, crushing my ribs, which in turn punctured my lungs. Like my palm only moments before, my lungs and ribs healed instantly, and I was back on my feet, brushing dirt and paint flakes off of me. Desi lay unmoving on the ground as her aura began to fade. I rushed toward her. But Grace blocked my path.

  “Well, well, well. Aren’t you the curious one? Why aren’t you dead?” Grace looked at me mildly perplexed.

  He’d caused more destruction in that last five minutes than most people could in a lifetime, and all without so much as wrinkling his shirt. Something welled up in me. It was dark and acrid. It burnt and ate away at my insides like acid, leaving me breathless and furious. It was rage. So much rage that I could have choked on it. I wanted to hurt and maim and tear at this abomination’s flesh until there was nothing left.

  “I’m going to rip you apart,” I told him matter-of-factly.

  Not being full-blooded angels meant Nephilim didn’t have full angel powers. But they could do a few things. They could fly. They had superstrength. And they could heal themselves. So me doing battle with Grace would be like my fight with Alexi, with us pounding each other and healing over and over again until one of us got tired. And personally, I’m not a fan of wasted energy. But there was a way I could expedite things. And the thought brought a smile to my face. Grace threw back his head and roared with laughter at my declaration. I flew at him. As expected, he dealt me a punch that broke my jaw and sent me flying backward. I slammed into the side of the Range Rover so hard it rolled over on its side bowling pin-style, taking me with it.

  “Sorry about your car, Minx,” I mumbled under my breath as I landed hard in the weeds on the other side with my jaw already healed.

  The glove box had burst open and the contents spilled out, including a red plastic catsup squirt bottle. The one Madame LuLu had given me. The one I almost didn’t take. I kicked in the glass on the sunroof and reached inside to grab it. Thinking I was hiding, Grace grabbed the car by a back tire and shoved it aside. His shirt was off, and his black wings were extended. I lunged for him, but he shot straight up into the air and hovered above me out of arm’s reach.

  “Let me guess. You’re a fallen one, aren’t you?” he asked, looking down on me.

  “Why don’t you come a little closer and I’ll tell you?”

  “But how have you managed to hold on to your abilities?” he mused, more to himself than to me.

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “No, I’m afraid your luck has run out. With your superior strength and healing abilities, you’re going to make one hell of a test subject for my drug, my unfortunate friend,” sneered Grace.

  “I’m not your friend, but don’t worry,” I told him, “you’re about to have more friends than you can handle.”

  Since he wasn’t coming to me, I’d just have to go to him. I ran forward and used the overturned car to launch myself into the air, aimed, and squeezed, hitting Grace in the forehead with a putrid stream of sticky goo. It flowed down his face, getting into his eyes and mouth, coating his bare chest and the front of his expensive tailored suit trousers. Grace sputtered indignantly, spitting and wiping his face and ey
es like an angry cat. On my way down, I managed to grab hold of his foot and dragged him to the ground with me. I kept right on squeezing until the bottle was empty and Grace was covered from head to toe. Half-blind, he staggered to his feet. The squealing and scuttling started almost immediately. It came from all directions.

  The first scarab demon jumped on his back and sank its pinchers into his neck. Grace reached behind him, grabbed it, brought it down over his knee with a crunch, and broke it in half. Yellow slime melted away a large portion of his pants, reddening the skin beneath before it healed. Another scarab demon leapt on his back, and another his leg. He dispatched with those two just as easily. But he was no match for the hundred or so male scarab demons that swarmed him and dragged him to the ground as they fought over him. Even his frantic screams of pain and outrage were drowned out by the sounds of ripping and tearing flesh as each amorous suitor was determined to have a piece of him. Like I mentioned before, Nephilim can heal themselves—but only if their bodies are intact.

  I turned away from the carnage and ran to Desi. I cradled her in my arms. Blood trickled out of one corner of her mouth and from both ears. She blinked up at me, unseeing. Both her aura and the light in her eyes had almost faded completely. Even if she was no longer my Ava, she and Desiree shared a soul. Part of Ava still had to be alive somewhere inside this stranger, and I could not lose her again. Not like this. How could this be fair? Losing her twice? Could this all be part of my punishment, finding and then losing her over and over again? My vision turned suddenly blurry and out of focus, and I realized with a shock that I was crying. A river of thick, hot tears rolled down my face, dripped off my chin, and landed on Desi’s dirt- and blood-smeared face. She stirred. Her mouth started moving, and she began licking at the tears that had fallen on her lips. The light returned to her eyes.

  Could my tears be reviving her? I quickly wiped my wet face and anointed her lips and tongue with the moisture. Her aura, which had faded to mere wisps of color, suddenly sparked and flared like a lit match before settling into a faint peachy glow. It had to be the angel blood in my system. The faint traces in my tears should sustain her until I could get her to the hospital. I had just scooped her up when a dozen black SUVs and an ambulance converged on the farm. The cavalry had finally arrived. And about damned time, too.