Black Wings
Page 17

The taxi slammed into the boy with a screech of brakes. Dostoevsky went flying in a burst of pages. I saw Takahashi’s left leg crushed beneath the front passenger-side wheel. The bumper slammed into his head. It was almost as if he’d been sucked underneath the car rather than hit by it, like the car was vacuuming him off the street.
Blood pooled. Bone crunched. People screamed. The cabbie sat in the taxi, eyes bulging, hands shaking. Someone ran to check Takahashi’s pulse. At least fifteen people called 911, and another fifteen started telling whomever they had been chatting with on their cells that they had just seen a guy get smashed by a cab right in front of them.
I waited, Gabriel hovering patiently beside me. In a moment, Takahashi exhaled for the last time. His soul drifted out, looking confused as he saw his own crushed body. I lowered down to him until we were at eye level. His eyes widened when he saw me. After a moment he looked resigned.
“Are you here for me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said simply, and held out my hand.
He reached forward to place his hand in my own, and that was when everything went horribly wrong.
A woman screamed, a piercing, unending wail, and all three of us turned in the direction of the noise. Ramuell stood in front of the Starbucks, looking comically out of place next to the familiar logo. Next to him a young woman wearing a thick cabled sweater and carrying a latte had her mouth open in a wide O as she screamed. It was the first time I’d seen the nephilim in anything but complete shadow. Under the harsh glare of the streetlamp he looked like a 3-D nightmare.
He was at least nine feet tall, and red all over, like the red of human muscle beneath the skin. The color gave the nephilim a raw, oozing appearance. Black claws, thick and curved, protruded from his fingers and curved black horns rose from his head. He smiled at me, and showed a mouthful of jagged teeth as sharp as Sweeney Todd’s blade. As we watched, frozen in horror, Ramuell casually back-handed the woman next to him. The screaming abruptly stopped, drowned in a noisy gurgle as the nephilim’s claws sliced her head from her body. The shock was too much for her soul and I saw her snap her tether the moment her soul left her body. Ramuell snatched the loose soul and shoved it between his teeth. The woman’s soul screamed on, the O of her mouth disappearing beneath the nephilim’s horrible grin.
“No!” I shouted, the magic rising up in me furious and hungry. I fought for control as people started to run, knocking one another over in their haste to get away from the monster. I didn’t want the magic to overwhelm me; I didn’t want to make a mistake and hurt an innocent.
Beside me Gabriel unleashed a blue bolt of nightfire and Ramuell snarled, batting at it as if it were a softball. It missed the creature’s chest but burned the palm of his hand and he howled in pain and fury. He charged at Gabriel, who left my side, engaging Ramuell in combat. Gabriel shot more nightfire at him, and Ramuell parried with magic of his own. Balls of lava appeared at the creature’s fingertips and he launched them at Gabriel, who neatly dodged every attack. As I watched, sickened and struggling with my unstable magic, the lava that missed him landed on whatever was nearby. It burned through the roofs of cars and smashed easily through shop windows. It melted the face off one man, and left others screaming in the street, holding fragments of limbs.
All around me souls broke free of their tethers, but there were no Agents in the vicinity to collect them except me. That terrified me nearly as much as Ramuell’s presence at Clark and Belmont in full sight of screaming civilians. The lack of Agents meant that these deaths were not meant to be; they were out of sync with the order of the universe.
All deaths are predicted and managed by the bureaucracy that employs me. For this many people to die unexpectedly meant that something was very, very wrong about Ramuell’s presence here—and not just for the obvious reasons. Somehow the nephilim and his master had managed to fly under the radar of even the micromanaging Agency.
Beside me I felt James Takahashi tugging at my hand. I turned and saw his soul had gone pale with fear.
“Come on, come on,” he said, and I realized he wasn’t trying to pull me from the scene. He was trying to get me to release him so he, too, could run away. My fingers had tightened in a death grip around him as I fought to control my magic. I didn’t want to accidentally unleash an explosion that needlessly killed everyone in the intersection.
“No,” I said, feeling helpless and torn. I needed to help Gabriel. I needed to try to capture these poor lost souls winging free of their bodies all around me. “I have to make sure you get to the Door.”
“Lady, that thing is going to eat me,” he pleaded, using his right hand to try to pry my fingers off his left.
“No, he’s not,” I said firmly, and I felt something settle inside me. The magic was still there, churning and hungry, but I was in control. And I would do my job. I would help Gabriel fight Ramuell, and I would bring Takahashi to the Door. “You are not going to be eaten. You are going to have a choice, the way you are supposed to.”
“And what about the lady who got eaten up by that monster?” Takahashi shouted. “What are you going to do about her?”
“Set her free,” I said, and there was something in my look or my voice that convinced Takahashi that I meant it. He stopped tugging, and I slowly released the pressure of my fingers on his hand.
“How are you going to do that?” he asked.
The magic flared up inside me, knowing what I wanted, eager to help me do it. “I’m going to kill the nephilim and release all the souls he has eaten.”
Takahashi looked doubtful. “If you say so.”
I nodded. “I do.”
I let go of him, trusting him to stay put. His soul was still tethered to his body—somehow neither the shock and horror of his death nor the shock and horror of the nephilim had managed to terrify him into breaking free.
While I’d been negotiating with Takahashi and trying to get myself under control, Gabriel and Ramuell had nearly destroyed the intersection. Most of the people were gone now—fled down the street or inside the nearest buildings. A row of terrified faces peered just above the lower sill of the coffee shop window. Several bodies lay on sidewalks or on the street. A few people had been blasted as they’d attempted to flee their cars, and their bodies hung half-in and half-out of their vehicles.
Gabriel and Ramuell seemed to have fought to a standstill. The nephilim stood on the north side of Clark, Gabriel on the south side, like Old West gunfighters waiting for the cue to draw. Ramuell’s body was dotted with burns, places where Gabriel’s nightfire had splashed against the red skin. The burns were dark purple and oozing.
Gabriel seemed blessedly unhurt, although it looked liked he’d lost a few feathers from his wings. They fluttered in the wind that always seemed to blow from the east, from the lake. Both Gabriel and Ramuell breathed heavily—I could see the quick little puffs of steam from Gabriel’s mouth in the cold air, and hear the faint snort that came from Ramuell with each exhalation.
Far away a siren screamed, and behind me the El rumbled, reassuringly normal, into the Belmont station. Soon people would leave the station. Some of them would walk this way. Gabriel and I had to get Ramuell away from here before the nephilim took the lives of any more innocent bystanders.
My wings rustled in the wind, and it sounded as loud as a gunshot to me. Both Gabriel and Ramuell turned to me at the same moment. Ramuell’s eyes burned red, a deep red like the coals at the bottom of a fire. Gabriel’s eyes blazed, too, but not with the starshine to which I had become accustomed. Looking into his eyes was like staring into the heart of the sun. I squinted against the glare, and for a minute they both looked so alien, so hostile, that I was scared of both of them. My heart stuttered in my chest, and I realized I wasn’t any hero. I was just plain Maddy Black, caught up in things I didn’t understand, and I was afraid.
And then Ramuell spoke, and his voice was the sound of dead things scraping over rock.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my dessert,” he said, and he smiled, and his smile was a horror to behold.
Even in the momentary paralysis of terror, I felt anger rise up in me. This monster was not going to gobble me up without a fight. My magic surged up and made little crackles of energy jump from my fingertips. I felt uncomfortably full, my skin stretched tight, my ears humming with electricity.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Lucifer’s least wanted,” I said.
Ramuell’s burning eyes narrowed to slits as he turned to face me more fully. “Watch yourself, little girl. There are lots of ways to prolong your inevitable death.”
I looked once at Gabriel, gave an infinitesimal nod, hoping he would understand what I wanted. A narrow crease appeared between the twin suns.
“You know what, Ramuell? I’ve been through a lot in the last couple of days, and I’m not really in the mood to banter with Hell’s castoff,” I said, and as I did my feet left the ground.
“Bitch,” Ramuell snarled. “I will make you suffer far more than your mother.”
The mention of my mother nearly arrested me. My heart sang out in pain at the thought of her suffering at the hands of this beast. But I didn’t want to be drawn into an emotional quagmire that could trip me up or slow me down. I concentrated on the people in the here and now, the living and dead that I needed to save, and that helped steady me.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” I said, and I blasted Ramuell with all the magic that was poised and waiting inside me. It came out in a streaming blue mass of sulfur and electricity—nightfire.
I caught Ramuell by surprise, and the nightfire poured over the nephilim in a continuous stream. Gabriel added his magic to mine, flying closer to hover at my side. His nightfire and mine mixed together like winding ribbons, my magic a darker blue than his.
While the nephilim roared in pain, he made no effort to dodge the nightfire or bat it away, nor did he attempt to defend himself by blasting us as he had done previously. Ramuell seemed paralyzed by our combined efforts. But the outpouring of magic, so strong a few moments before, started to become difficult to maintain.