“Oh,” Dinah said. “I’d bang him like a screen door.”
Everything about the monster had shifted to a beauty so stunning that there was no earthly comparison for it. He slowly lowered to the ground and went to one knee, his back muscles rippling and trembling as his wings stretched wide. Fallen angel indeed.
He lifted a perfectly formed hand, his broad white-feathered wings dusting the ground. “How is this possible?”
Even his voice was beautiful, but no one had a chance to answer him.
A crack rent the air and the ground opened under him, red light spilling out. More hands than I could count reached up and pulled him into the crack, wrenching him into a space that was far too small for his large body and wingspan. Feathers burst up around him as those beautiful wings were shattered, ripped apart between the hands and the small space.
He screamed, reaching for his buddies, but they were already flying away.
Gone.
I blinked and the crack closed rapidly even as I stared at it until all that was left was a pile of white feathers. Silence ruled the world for a good ten seconds before car alarms started going off all the way up and down the street, and the neighborhood dogs began howling. Ruby bumped her head against my shoulder and gave a low growl as we stared at the still-smoking crack, but that was it from her.
“What the actual fuck just happened?” Peter stood next to me and reached a hand out. I took it and he helped me to my feet.
I swallowed hard, my throat dry and tight from all that power running through me. I had no answer, but a fearful possibility had begun to form inside my head.
The crack in the ground, the hands drawing the fallen down . . .
“Raid the truck,” I said, my voice growly.
We moved fast. Cowboy and Carlos helped, silent. I didn’t know how much they’d seen. What I knew was that my energy was going down the drain fast. I gritted my teeth and stumbled through the truck as I did a last check for needed items. Four bags of gear, tactical wear, walkie-talkies, anything we thought we could use. Including a tablet. I touched it and it lit up.
Clearview Rehabilitation Center.
I grabbed it and stuffed it under my shirt.
We stumbled out under the weight of the gear.
“Here,” Carlos opened his garage and his four-door truck waited. “Throw it all in the back.”
We did, and for a moment, I thought about letting Ruby get into the back too. Forget it. I took the front passenger seat and she climbed in with me, sitting at my feet. I tapped my lap and she climbed up, all sixty pounds of lean muscle, curling up like she was a lap dog. She let out a contented sigh. “Fierce, guard,” I mumbled, trusting her to keep me safe as I leaned my head back. “Head north.”
And just like that I was out cold.
Whatever had happened with the energy exchange was different from what I’d done before with Killian. With him, the electrical charge had left me feeling pumped, ready to fight, and full of energy I could barely contain. There had been no downside. But this . . . if someone had come at us right then, I would have been next to useless. I had no strength left in me. I couldn’t even stay awake, never mind fight.
I slept for a few hours, truly slept, with no dreams of Bear, no walking through the foggy darkness of my sanctuary. When I woke, we were still on the road, heading north like I’d indicated before passing out.
Ruby was on my lap, snoring through her slightly flapping lips. Peter drove; Carlos and Cowboy were quiet in the backseats. The kid was out cold, but Carlos was awake.
“That dog of yours just rushed in there to help you.” Peter shook his head. “You gave her a name?”
“Ruby,” I said. “She’s a gem.”
She gave him a look with her one eye and a soft woof. He shook his head. “Never had a dog like me before. They always know what I am.” He reached over and touched her on the head with one finger. She gave him her one-eyed stink eye and licked his hand.
“What are we going to do with the kid?” Peter said. “He’s not a bad one, but, Jesus. He’s like a puppy too big for his own feet stumbling and tripping over himself.”
“The plan hasn’t changed. He’ll come with me,” I said.
Peter didn’t answer. Carlos tapped the back of my seat. “The kid’s abilities are strong, if untrained. And the fact that he avoided capture for so long says something, don’t you think? I don’t know if he’ll be able to use his EMP pulse, but it’s worth keeping. I agree.”
I agreed with Carlos about Cowboy not getting snagged for a long time. In fact, it almost made me wonder if he was a plant. My jaw ticked and I forced the thought away. There was no way the facility and its overseers could have known I would make it out, or that I would attempt a breakout on that day. Hell, I hadn’t known until moments before. They would have stopped me if they’d known.
Thinking of them, my head went to Eligor and the feel of him in my mind. He’d unbound my abilities just in time, and while he had been the one to help cage me, he’d saved me too. But had it been Eligor? That sensation was almost like him, but different enough that I noticed it.
For just a moment, I saw him, and he looked back at me. Only he wasn’t the Eligor of before. This time he was a lanky, bespectacled college-looking guy. Fear was written all over his face. He shook his head, possibly as a warning, then was gone.
Fuck. They’d stuffed him in another body?
And we really were still connected. Could he keep them off me? Would he keep helping or would he end up turning on me too? Yeah, fuck was too weak a word for this.
“Sleeping Beauty!” Dinah cat-called with a whistle as Cowboy stirred. “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!”
Peter went right to teasing Cowboy about missing out on all the action, watching it all as a spectator. Cowboy mumbled something about a Magelore and a sheep on a dark night, and Peter howled with laughter, though I didn’t think it had been meant as a joke. Carlos smiled and shook his head, the fatherly figure in all this.
I put a hand over the assault weapon on my lap next to Dinah.
“Show me your smaller size.”
He shivered. “Say please.”
Dinah sighed. “Oh, don’t be a shit. Do it.”
“Please,” I said though I wanted to throw him out the window for being an ass.
The gun clicked as though there were dozens of hidden gears inside of him, more than those needed for the firing of bullets. The AK-47 effectively shrunk to a weapon that could be hidden under a coat. A miniature AK-47. Not as small as Dinah, but I could put him on my back with a coat over top.
“I can shoot longer distances better full-sized, but pretty much everything else is the same,” Diego said. “That work?”
“Good.” I urged Ruby off my lap, then checked the two guns for damage and used the refills I’d snagged from Carlos’s hidey-hole. After refilling the incendiary and smoke bomb rounds on Dinah, I flipped through the other ammo in the box. Most of it was simple stuff. Sedative rounds were new to me and could be useful. I poured the liquid into Diego’s barrel.
Yes, it was just that simple with the guns.
“Think we might be needing to knock people out instead of kill them?” he asked.
“If we go up against another abnormal working under the influence of the handlers, I’d at least try to knock them out,” I said, thinking of Easter. When I’d gotten that glimpse of Eligor, I thought I’d seen a flash of red hair behind him. It would not surprise me in the least if they used Easter to track us, and potentially kill me.
Peter cleared his throat. “Are we going to talk about what happened? With the angel wings and the crack that looked like it led straight to Hell and all the hands sucking him down, the smell of sulfur?”
My jaw ticked and I stared out the window, thinking. “I’m not sure what there is to say. You about summed it up. It confirms what I already believed—we are not dealing with abnormals.”
Carlos nodded slowly. “I’d thought you would be wrong, but i
t looks indeed as though we are dealing with a fallen angel or angels. The others were afraid when they saw their friend taken. And that you did it to him.”
I put a hand to my head, realizing that I had a pounding headache. Could be the drugs from dinner or withdrawal from the sedatives, but I suspected it was mostly from the power surge rocketing through me. My fingers tingled just thinking about it.
“Yeah, but what does it mean?” Peter tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “He couldn’t possibly have been an angel, not with that ugly shit he had going on.”
I wasn’t so sure. “Demons can make themselves look beautiful, and they usually do to fool the unwary and draw them into deals that can’t be broken. They come in all shapes and sizes—”
“Like Eligor,” Cowboy said. I nodded and went on. Because we weren’t dealing with demons, I was sure of it. “They don’t like to be seen as monstrous unless you’ve broken your end of a contract. That’s when the ugly comes out. But these three . . . they were monstrous from the start.” I frowned. “I don’t understand why shooting its own power back at it made it look angelic, much less why it was then pulled through the planes of existence into what, yes, Peter”—I looked at him—“was probably a glimpse into Hell. Or a hellish plane, however you want to look at it.”
Peter opened his mouth, flashing his fangs, and then shook his head. “But, wait, if you’re right and these are fallen angels, what are they doing getting sucked down into Hell?”
I had an idea, but I was hoping I was wrong. “We need to get to a church. The info I need isn’t going to be found in any database, book, or priest.”
Cowboy leaned through the gap between the two front seats. “A church?”
“A particular church,” I said quietly. “One that hosts a demon. And who better to tell us how to defeat a fallen angel than a demon?”
Cowboy’s jaw dropped and he stuttered. “Are you insane? After that, you want to talk to a demon?”
Peter started laughing. “Is this what happens when a thousand bolts of electricity zip through a person?”
“You two knob heads,” Dinah said slowly, as if speaking to someone struggling to understand, “how many hunts and kills have you two ding-dong-alongs got between you? And I don’t mean drink-down-your-dinner-too-fast kills, Magelore.”
Diego laughed. “Oh, shit, who has been touching my butt exactly? Please, God, tell me she’s as good as the Phoenix.”
Dinah burst out laughing and I just kept my eyes on the road even though I wasn’t driving. Neither Peter nor Cowboy could argue with Dinah, and they knew it. Carlos didn’t even try. He’d worked with people like me in the dark underbelly of the world. People like his boss, Rio.
But like a lot of guys with too much testosterone and not enough thought process, the two younger guys believed they could do better than a trained professional. Fuck, they were going to cause me no end of grief.
A little niggling of something at the back of my neck told me it was time to split the group up. Instinct was a bitch and a blessing all in one.
I turned to Carlos. “How far have we gone from your place?”
He looked at the dash of the vehicle. “About a hundred miles. Being safe with the posted speed limit, not drawing attention to us.”
While it wasn’t quite as far as I’d hoped we’d get, it would have to do.
“Pull over here.” I pointed at a wide spot on the side of the highway. Peter did as I asked. I got out of the truck and Ruby followed, taking a sniff around the scrubby grasses on the side of the road.
“Carlos,” I said as I grabbed two bags from the back of the truck and dragged them out, slinging them onto my back. My muscle strength and stamina weren’t up to where I wanted them, but I’d get there. Ruby tucked in close to me. I pulled a leather strap out of one of the bags and made a quick collar and leash. She didn’t need it, but appearances counted when it came to humans reporting you for stupid shit.
“Yes?” He didn’t get out of the truck.
“You ready to play hide and seek?” I looked him in the eye. “Lead them as far to the west and north as you can. When they’re on the wrong track and you’re sure of it, hide both of you, then double back.”
“This here is where we’re splitting up?” Cowboy got out of the car, his blue eyes full of confusion. “We’re not even in a town.”
I glanced at him. “Those two are going to draw the eyes of the facility as far away as they can and everyone after us will expect a town stop if they figure out we’ve split up.” I adjusted the bags in time to see a flash of hurt in his eyes. He thought I was leaving him behind.
“What about me?”
“Oh, you’re special, sunshine,” Peter said, and I realized from his tone he was more than a little jealous. “You get to go with the boss.”
Cowboy took one of the bags from me, relief in his every move.
“I just don’t want to wake up with you on top of me one night,” I said to Peter. “You know, because then I’d have to kill you.”
That made him laugh and the minor tension broke. I looked at Carlos. “You got it?”
“I got it. We’ll meet you at the address in New York you gave me in three days.”
I nodded. “I’ll see what I can drum up between now and then.”
Cowboy hefted his bag. “I’m glad I’m not going with him. No offense, Carlos. You seem cool enough.”
Dinah sighed. “Oh good, because I really want to see what’s in your pants.”
Cowboy flushed. “I can listen, I can learn, I can help.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s got a hard-on for you. Take him and let him help,” Peter yelled as he pulled away. “We’ll draw them off, Phoenix, but don’t you fucking forget to thank me in your speech at the end of all this. To the magnificent Magelore, Peter, for his noble sacrifice!” The last word was drawn out as he and Carlos sped onto the highway, leaving me there with Cowboy.
Diego grunted. “Heard his nickname for you. If they call you Phoenix, you must be a good killer.”
“Did you not see her back there?” Dinah snapped. “She is the Phoenix. Not like the Phoenix, not trained by the Phoenix. The one and only.”
Diego sucked in a breath. “Jesus. Tell me you’re joking.”
“She’s not Jesus, she’s Phoenix. Unplug your ears,” Dinah snapped.
Standing on the highway was a good way to get noticed, especially with a dog, three massive army bags slung over our backs, and two sentient guns shouting your name. “Come on, this way.” I headed straight for the light smattering of trees off the side of the interstate. Through the bush we went, doing our best not to create an obvious path.
“You’ll train me?” Cowboy asked.
“Not in the sack!” Dinah squealed and then laughed.
“Why not in the sack?” Diego asked. “I’d take her training me in the sack. Probably rough, but I like a good spanking now and again.”
Christ kill me now and leave me for dead, Dinah had a friend to help torment me again. Though I’ll admit this to no one, my lips might have twitched. Dinah sounded all but gleeful as the two of them went back and forth with all the positions I could show the young abnormal.
“Reverse cowboy, that will be his favorite!” Dinah hollered and Diego burst out laughing, the length of the gun shaking against my back.
Ruby trotted ahead of us, the makeshift leash dragging along through the bush as she sniffed her way along, her tail wagging here and there.
“She’s happy,” Cowboy said as if he could ignore the raunchy comments from the two guns. “I’m glad you brought her along.”
I glanced at him, noting that he stared straight ahead, his face flushing pink off and on depending on what Dinah and Diego said. “She’s a good girl. I’ve been feeding her the last month. I suspected they were going to put her down.”
Cowboy did look at me then. “Like they would have put me and Peter down?”
I nodded. “I could see it in you from the first moment
they dragged you in. There are some people who can’t be broken. It’s not a bad trait, but it’ll get you killed in there.”
“You weren’t broken,” he said.
“I bent,” I replied and shrugged. “I figured out the tactics they would use real quick and gave them what they wanted. For some, it would be a pride issue. Their ego wouldn’t allow them to be small, to be humble, to look broken.” I stepped around a tree, avoiding a series of dried branches on the ground. He walked right through them. I shook my head. “My job is to survive, and that is your job too. You want me to train you, that is the first thing you need to know.”
I could hear my mentor’s voice in my head. Zee had been a survivor too, and he’d drilled it into me time and time again.
“Survive. No matter what you have to do, who you have to kill, what you have to agree to, you fucking survive. You can always make it better if you are alive. Can’t do much from the grave.”
I could almost feel Cowboy fighting that truth. “I don’t want to—”
“Then you’ll die,” I said. “You don’t have to like it, but it’s the stone-cold truth. I’d tell my son the same thing.” And in fact, I had told my boy that. I’d told him to fight when he could and run when he couldn’t. There was no shame in living, but Zee was right about the last bit.
You couldn’t make anything right if you were dead and buried.
This world was not survival of the fittest, but survival of the most adaptable.
We walked for maybe half an hour before we came out at the top of an embankment that slid down into a sleepy suburb.
“You sure. . .” Cowboy cleared his throat and tried again. “What’s the plan?”
“Good catch,” Diego said. “You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
I snorted. “And even more flies with shit.” I paused while the two guns snickered. “The plan is to find another vehicle and head to New York.”
“We don’t have Carlos anymore. How are we going to get a vehicle without it being reported stolen?” he asked.
A Savage Spell (The Nix Series Book 4) Page 13