Black Wings

Page 32

The elevator doors opened and a screaming Agent, who must have been leaning against the closed exterior doors, fell backward into the car. I jammed the OPEN DOOR button so that I could check on the Agent, whose face was covered in blood.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”
The guy kept screaming, eyes widened, obviously in total shock. I patted him all over and couldn’t find anything obvious—no gaping wounds or limbs gnawed off—so I hit the button for 1, stepped off the elevator and let the doors close. Hopefully he would have the sense to get out and run as soon as he hit the bottom floor.
There were more bodies strewn in the hallway just in front of the elevators, and the sounds of screaming, snarling and yelling to the left. I darted past some open office doors and to the conference room at the end of the hall. Just as I reached the doorway someone’s arms came flying through and I had to duck to avoid getting hit. Hot blood spattered on my face.
The stink of sulfur filled the air. Six Agents had been cornered by a horror that they would never understand.
Ramuell looked even more disgusting than he had before. The skin on his arms was shredded and burnt, some of it still hanging in pieces from his hands where the starburst had caused the most damage. His head scraped the ceiling and knocked the tiles out of place. I wondered briefly where J.B. and Gabriel were if they weren’t fighting Ramuell.
Oh, please don’t let them have been eaten.
Before I could think of or do anything, a clawed hand shot from the red mass of Ramuell’s body, wrapped around a skinny male Agent who looked like Buddy Holly, and snapped back to the creature’s mouth. I couldn’t actually see his mouth as his back was to me, but I heard the crunching of blood and bone and the terrified screams of the Agent as he was eaten alive.
The magic that had lay dormant inside me roared to life in protest. This was not to be borne. I would not allow anybody else to suffer. I just had to lure Ramuell away so I could get a safe shot at him with my nightfire, and allow the Agents time to escape.
“Hey, Big ’n’ Ugly!” I called.
The crunching paused, and several of the Agents in the corner looked panicked when they noticed me. One of them made a shooing motion at me, trying to tell me to get away. For some reason the gesture made me a little tearyeyed. He was about to get eaten and he wanted me—a total stranger—to escape.
The nephilim turned toward me. Ramuell’s eyes lit up with glee. A jean-clad leg hung between its large teeth like a macabre toothpick. Each tooth was fang-sharp and his breath stank like a butcher’s floor.
“I have been looking for you, little girl.” The leg fell out of his mouth as he spoke. “You owe me a debt for this.” He held up his burnt arms.
I launched a quick, short blast of nightfire at him, just enough to sting. The magic flowed easily from my fingertips.
“Catch me if you can.”
I smiled and crooked my finger at him, then dashed into the hallway. I heard Ramuell roar behind me and hoped that he couldn’t move very fast in the close confines of the building. I had no clear idea of where to go. I just wanted to limit casualties. If I led him into another office, I would be cornered myself, but if I kept him in the hallway, then the other Agents would be unable to make their way to the elevator and freedom.
I had only a few moments to decide. Since most Agents were not the children of fallen angels, I figured I had a leg up in the magic department. That meant that I would have to deliberately corner myself and trust my magic to see me through.
“Well, you were looking for Ramuell. You found him,” I muttered to myself.
My stomach jittered as I raced into an office a few doors away. It is not easy to make a decision that might lead to your horrible death at the hands of a people-eating monster. I checked to make sure Ramuell followed me. He was only a few feet behind me, closer than I thought he would be, and he smiled at me as he came.
Sulfur flowed off the creature in waves. My eyes stung and my nostrils burned. I skidded into the office and behind the office door, hoping Ramuell would be distracted for a moment by my Tom-and-Jerry trick while I figured out a game plan.
I guess Ramuell wasn’t a big fan of Chuck Jones. He grabbed the door and tore it off its hinges, advancing on me.
“Boo,” I said, as I gave him a full-on blast of nightfire. At least, that was what I meant to do.
Instead my magic roared up, uncontrollable, eager for the fight. White flames seared through my palms and arrowed to the nephilim like bolts of lightning. The monster had only a moment of wild-eyed shock before the flames touched its skin.
This was different from both nightfire and the starburst, which had come forth in one huge pulse. This was a continuous flow of power that I couldn’t stop, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. I was beating him. This could end now, and there would be no more innocent deaths.
Ramuell screamed in agony, and so did I. The power was painful, burning inside me even as it burned the monster. I could feel my palms cracking and blistering from the force of the magic. The nephilim backed away from me, knocking over furniture as it lashed out in fury. The desk was set alight at Ramuell’s touch. The heat of the flames scorched my face.
“I can end this. I can end this,” I said as I moved closer. The power was consuming me. It was more than I could handle. But I didn’t want to let go. I wanted vengeance for all the deaths that this monster had caused.
I was so focused on Ramuell that I didn’t see the portal opening behind him until it was too late. He fell into the portal and it snapped closed behind him.
“No. No!” I screamed. The power pouring out of me shut off abruptly and I fell to the floor, panting, my face pressed against the carpet. The air was filled with the smell of charred flesh, and the burning desk had ignited the curtains. I had to get out of this room before I burned alive.
The sudden manifestation of yet another new power that I could not control had exhausted me. If my life ever calmed down for a few moments, Gabriel and I were definitely going to have some words about controlling my magic. I could not allow this kind of power to run roughshod over my will. I pushed to my knees and crawled toward the door, crying out in pain as my burned hands pressed into the carpet.
I heard a rustle of movement, and felt hands underneath my arms drag me out of the room. I closed my eyes as someone turned me over and rested me against a wall. There were several voices, and the smell of a fire extinguisher.
“Whoa,” said a voice next to me. I felt someone’s fingers take my wrist and assess the damage the new power had done to my hands.
I opened my eyes and saw that it was the Agent from the conference room, the one who had tried to wave me away to safety. He and the remaining Agents crowded in the hallway, several of them rushing forward to put out the fire.
“You need medical attention. Right away,” he said. “Your hands are a mess.”
I flapped my hands at him. I needed to get up, to find Gabriel and J.B. I didn’t have time to be fussed over.
“What did you do to that thing?” the Agent asked, his eyes curious. “I’ve never seen power like that before. And it . . . knew you.”
I really didn’t have time for answering questions about my freaky new magical abilities, even if I was inclined to explain everything to this guy I’d never met before.
“I nuked it,” I said shortly. It seemed like as good an explanation as any. “Tell me what happened here. I was in the basement.”
“I don’t know. I was in my office when the building started to shake, and then I heard the screaming coming through the vents. I went into the hallway just as a bunch of other monsters came out of the elevators.”
“There are more of them?” I asked, my magical senses on high alert.
“At least a dozen. I don’t even know how they all crammed into the elevator, to tell you the truth.”
“What happened to them?”
“J.B. Bennett and some other guy I’ve never seen before—he must be another Agent from somewhere; he had the biggest wings I’ve ever seen—anyway, they came busting out of the second elevator right after the monsters and started blasting them with magic I’ve never seen before. Kind of like yours. They managed to divert most of the creatures into the stairwell,” he said. “Then a few minutes later that big thing came out of another elevator and came after us.”
There was an unnerving combination of gratitude and suspicion in his eyes, and I thought it prudent to get away before he started asking more questions about my abilities. These people were on edge and they might decide that a burning stake was just the thing for the weirdo Agent with creepy powers.
“Listen, I’m not sure if the building is completely secure, but if you can get an elevator to the first floor, you should be able to get out. I was in the lobby before I came up here and there were no creatures down there. But,” I said, holding up a warning hand as they started to move past me. “Whatever you saw up here, it’s a hundred times worse down there. So be prepared.”
The first Agent nodded and the others bobbed their heads in time.
“Be careful,” I said, and ran to the stairwell. Now that the shock of the dead bodies and Ramuell was over, I was petrified with fear for J.B. and Gabriel. I thought that Gabriel could probably handle himself—he was half nephilim, after all—but he would have to watch after J.B., who was just a puny human with an Agent’s magic.
The stairs were coated in blood and there were unidentifiable organic bits everywhere. It looked like one of the monsters had exploded. The air was a strange mixture of sulfur, ozone, apple pie—ah, there’s Gabriel—and pine tar. I hurried up the steps as quickly as I could, tracing the path of the battle by following the trail of blood and gore.
As I climbed I had time to calm down and think. I was confused by the smell of sulfur since Ramuell hadn’t made it any farther than the last floor. The smell could mean only one other thing—demons. How had they managed to get inside? The building was warded against magical intruders. There are a lot of supernatural creatures—witches, faeries and the like—that would love to have foreknowledge of certain deaths, and it was in our interest to keep them out.