Black Wings
Page 31

“Why is it your job to track down this monster?” J.B. asked. He leaned forward in his office chair and fiddled with some papers on his desk, making marks here and there with a pencil.
“You know, that’s a very good question. I started to track Ramuell myself because I wanted vengeance for Patrick and my mother. But Azazel could probably take care of this problem more efficiently than I could.” I looked questioningly at Gabriel.
“Ramuell’s freedom appears to be largely unknown in Lucifer’s kingdom. Lord Azazel is not certain why this is so, but he feels that Ramuell’s puppet master wants to maintain secrecy regarding the nephilim’s status, perhaps to use Ramuell as a surprise weapon during a gambit for power. Because of this, Lord Azazel is watching and waiting. He feels that Ramuell’s puppet master will be more easily discovered if the truth of the nephilim is not widely known. Additionally, hunting the nephilim presents a delicate problem for Lord Azazel.”
I thought of something that Azazel had told me in his receiving room. “Because if he harms Ramuell, it could be interpreted as a move against Lucifer.”
“Precisely. So Lord Azazel has entrusted you with this task, and I am to assist you, in hopes that we can quietly discover the traitor and return Ramuell to the Valley of Sorrows.”
“And what is it that you can do?” J.B. asked Gabriel, a sneer in his voice.
Gabriel got that steely look that told me there was going to be another stupid testosterone-fueled argument, so I quickly cut in.
“His powers are beyond your understanding. Listen, J.B., can you get us a pass into the Hall of Records? I want to see if I can trace Ramuell’s victims.”
J.B. and Gabriel shared a manly if-she-wasn’t-here-I’dkick-your-ass look. I rolled my eyes.
“J.B.?”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “But I’m coming with you. Until you catch this soul-sucking thing, I’m glue and you’re . . . something that needs to be glued.”
“A construction-paper turkey?” I said, thinking of a second-grade art project. “Look, J.B., I appreciate your offer to help, but you really don’t know what your dealing with here. Your powers as an Agent mean nothing to a creature like Ramuell.”
“What do you know about my powers? I could have unsuspected depth.”
“Right. You’ve never seen Ramuell. There’s no way your depths are that unsuspected.”
“I’m with you or you get nothing from me,” he said. “I could have you barred from the building if I wanted.”
He would do it, too, just to be a pain in the ass. I thought that Gabriel and I could probably let J.B. feel like he was involved and still keep him from the worst of it.
“Fine, let’s just get to it,” I said.
A couple of hours later the three of us were dusty and irritated and not a bit closer to finding Ramuell. We’d decided to narrow our search to the year that Katherine had died and the last six months. Gabriel and J.B. had split the files of the general populace and I had taken the Agents, which were in a different section. The records of each death were kept on typed index cards. The index cards were sorted by date and kept in long thin drawers, like the cards for the Dewey decimal system at the library—before libraries had gone digital. We each pulled several drawers from a cabinet and sat down at a table that would seat eight, and began the laborious process of flipping through each card.
We’d discovered that twelve Agents had died without showing a record of their choice, and there was no discernable pattern or link between them. None of the Agents was directly related. Ten of the deaths had occurred the year that Katherine had died. Patrick and one other Agent had died in the last six months.
“I don’t understand,” J.B. said. “If ten Agents in the Chicago area died without showing their choices, wouldn’t their supervisor have noticed?”
“Not every supervisor is as anal as you are,” I muttered.
“You know, Black, I am really sick of your attitude. You may think that paperwork is just a chore, but it is necessary to the functioning of this business,” J.B. snapped.
“Yes, because soul-collecting just couldn’t happen unless paperwork was filed afterward,” I said sweetly.
J.B.’s face turned red and he opened his mouth—no doubt to remind me of my place—when the building suddenly shook, like an earthquake had struck. The lamps swung crazily from side to side, the drawers of index cards shook from the table and plaster dust fell from the ceiling.
My chair tipped to one side and I landed heavily on my elbow, crying out in pain.
Gabriel was at my side in an instant, J.B. right behind him. They both manhandled me to my feet, Gabriel on the left side and J.B. on the right. Both of them patted me all over, looking for injuries.
“Get off, get off!” I shouted, and flapped my arms at them. They both stepped away.
“Are you all right?” Gabriel asked.
“Are you hurt?” J.B. asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, and wobbled a little as the ground shuddered again. Gabriel put his hand just above my elbow to steady me. I waved him away. “What the hell is going on?”
That was when the screaming started. We could hear it through the vents.
J.B. dashed into the hallway, Gabriel and I following. The Hall of Records was in the subbasement, two floors below ground level. The hall was filled with confused-looking Agents, the ones who worked on the thankless task of moving the Agency into the twenty-first century. These were the data processors who spent their working hours entering information from the file cards into a database. They looked like na**d mole rats seeing the sun for the first time.
“What’s happening?” a woman asked as J.B. shot past her and into the stairwell.
The sounds of screams and snarls filled the air. Heating/ cooling vents lined the hallway, and they broadcast human agony as clearly as if it had been a P.A. system.
“Stay here,” I shouted, slowing long enough to make sure they understood. “All of you stay together and go into the Hall.”
The Hall had a steel-reinforced door and a coded entry system. It was one of the few rooms in the building with anything that resembled security. The Agency took the records of the dead very seriously.
Gabriel ran past me and followed J.B. The stairwell door banged into the wall as he threw it open, and then slammed shut with tremendous force.
“But what’s happening?” a man asked.
“I don’t know, but the important thing is that you stay safe and you stay together. Go into the Hall and lock the door, and don’t open it until I or J.B. Bennett comes back.”
“What if you don’t come back?” another woman asked.
“Then wait until the screaming stops,” I said, and ran to the stairwell.
17
THERE WAS NO SIGN OF GABRIEL OR J.B. THE STAIRWELL was eerily quiet—there were no vents. My boots echoed as I pounded up the two flights of steps and threw the door open at the first-floor lobby.
Hell awaited me.
The carnage was nearly too much to process. Everywhere I looked there were bodies of Agents, dozens of them, most of them in pieces. Blood had been spattered on the floor, on the walls and on the ceiling—the air was filled with the tang of it. This was death at its ugliest, its most undignified. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve so that I wouldn’t throw up.
The bodies of the receptionist and security guard were slumped over the front desk. There was nothing left of the guard but his torso and a few dangling entrails. His uniform appeared to be torn by the teeth of something very large.
The receptionist had fared a little better. Only her head was missing.
I shivered and realized that there was a big gaping crater where the front door and part of the exterior wall used to be. Chunks of glass and cement appeared to have been thrown inside the lobby from some kind of explosive impact. That must have been what shook the building when we were in the basement.
There were several rubberneckers standing outside on the sidewalk, most of them looking in and then backing away to scream or vomit. The sounds of screams still echoed through the vents, and I realized that whatever was in the building had moved upstairs. And that J.B. and Gabriel had gone after it.
Nobody at the Agency seemed to have been aware that many of their colleagues would be dying today. That meant that these deaths were not planned, not part of the natural order.
Ramuell.
I bolted across the lobby, trying not to think about what squished beneath my boots. I mumbled an apology to the dead. There was no way for me to get to the elevators without stepping on the bodies of my colleagues.
Like many downtown buildings, floors one through three were accessible only by elevator. The stairwell to those floors was locked and could be opened only by a security guard or in the event of an emergency, such as a fire. I figured that the current situation probably qualified as an emergency, but the only person who knew how to open the stairwell was currently in pieces scattered all over the lobby.
There were three elevators. One of the elevator doors was propped open by a human leg. The interior looked like a charnel house. The Agents inside had been trapped. I felt sick when I thought of their dying moments—confused, terrified, helpless.
This is not helping, I told myself. You have to worry about the living now, not the dead.
The other two elevators were closed. I pressed the button and crossed my fingers, hoping that they still worked.
The middle elevator doors opened with the familiar ding of the bell, and the interior was miraculously free of either Ramuell or mutilated Agents. I climbed in and stabbed the button for the fourth floor. I was sure that the nephilim had already moved past the second and third floors, and I didn’t need to see the bodies of any more people that I couldn’t help. If the battle had already moved on, then I could access the stairwell from the fourth floor and go up from there.
My stomach was knotted with anxiety as I watched the numbers change for each floor. 2 . . . 3 . . . 4. Just before the doors swished open, I felt a little twinge of magic flare up. I hadn’t felt more than a whisper since I’d set that starburst on Gabriel. It still didn’t feel like my magic was anything close to full power, but there was more than a match flame. Hopefully it would be enough to keep me from getting eaten alive.