A Hundred Words for Hate (23 page)

The road was empty, and that was good. He hated to think his speed would hurt anyone. He risked a quick glance at Fernita, buckled into the passenger seat next to him. She appeared to be in a kind of catatonia, staring ahead through the windshield, mouth slightly agape. He considered asking her whether everything was all right, but figured he already knew the answer to that.

The image of something huge dropping from the sky and crashing through the old lady’s roof flashed before his eyes again, and he got that awful tickling sensation in his crotch that told him if he wasn’t such a big boy, he would have been pissing himself.

It was nice to see that he at least had control of that.

There was a turn up ahead and Steven took it—big mistake. It turned out to be a private drive, leading to what appeared to be an unfinished housing development.

“Ah, shit,” he grumbled, bringing the car to a complete stop, and then throwing it in reverse. He thought about giving Remy a call again, but decided that he didn’t want his blood pressure getting any higher. When—
if
—Mulvehill ever saw him again, Remy would be buying the homicide cop twenty-five-year-old Scotch every week for years, taking him out to Morton’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then to the nearest Kappy’s for more Scotch just for good measure.

That would fix him.

Mulvehill backed out of the dead end and slammed the car into drive, hitting the gas just as the sky—or at least a piece of it—fell into the road in front of them.

It landed with an explosion of asphalt and dirt, but it didn’t slow him down. It couldn’t. Mulvehill knew deep in his gut that he had to keep going forward, to get them out of there before . . .

His thinking stopped. It had no experience with things like this, so it had nowhere else to go. All he knew was that they had to escape or something very bad was going to happen to them.

“Hold on,” he told Fernita, trying to sound calm, as if this were something he did all the time, but he was sure it came out high and squeaky, like some fucking cartoon character.

The air was filled with thick, choking dust, but Mulvehill swerved to the left and drove right through it—only to come to an abrupt stop. Both he and Fernita pitched forward before their seat belts snapped them back. Mulvehill’s foot was still on the gas, and he could hear the engine screaming—feel the tires spinning, but they weren’t going anywhere.

Eyes darting up to the rearview mirror, he tried to see through the dust behind them. Something—something huge—had the bumper in its grip and it wasn’t going to let them go.

Mulvehill put the car in reverse and gunned the engine, sending the car rocketing backward to hit something horribly solid. He snapped the gear to drive and stomped on the gas pedal. This time the car shot forward, but the damage to the back end made it difficult to control and they fishtailed off the road and careened down an embankment.

Fernita screamed as branches whipped at the windshield and boulders tore at the underside of the car, their out-of-control descent coming to an abrupt and violent stop when they hit the base of an old oak tree. The front of the car crumpled like an accordion.

Now Remy owes me a fucking car
, Mulvehill thought just before his forehead bounced off the soft center of the steering wheel, making the horn toot briefly and his brain vibrate painfully inside his skull.

He thought he might like to grab a little nap, but frantic hands were shaking him.

“Hey,” Fernita called. Mulvehill was going to tell her to leave him alone, but the sound of sheer panic in her voice roused him more fully, and he remembered their situation.

“I’ve got it,” he said groggily, having no real idea what that meant, but he was already on the move, undoing his seat belt and pushing open the driver’s-side door. The ground was at an incline, and he dropped to his knees, sliding a bit toward the front of his car before regaining his footing. Steam hissed from the obliterated radiator, and he again cursed the name of Remy Chandler as he hauled himself up and around the back of the car to get Fernita. Pulling open the door, he leaned inside to help her undo the seat belt.

“Leave me here,” she said quietly, and he stopped, staring through the thick lenses of her glasses into her deep brown eyes filled with panic.

“What are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t want you,” she said. “Leave me and get yourself away from here.”

“Like hell I will,” he said, and practically pulled her from the seat. “Be careful here,” he told her. “The ground isn’t level and . . .”

A roar from the direction of the road interrupted him. It was like the blast of an eighteen-wheeler’s air horn, only with more of an I-want-to-kill-and-eat-you kind of vibe to it.

Mulvehill had never heard of an angel who did anything like that, but he also knew there was quite a lot he didn’t know about angels and the like.

That he didn’t
want
to know.

Fernita looked at him hopelessly, and he felt a shiver go through her thin frame.

“C’mon,” he said, helping her down into the wooded area. He had no idea where they were going, but figured the farther away from this particular spot they were, the better off they’d be.

The old woman was doing far better than he would have expected. Mulvehill held her arm as they traversed the uneven terrain. He didn’t hear the horrible roaring again, and wondered if perhaps whatever it was that was chasing them had given up and gone after easier prey.

An old woman and an out-of-shape homicide cop—how much fucking easier could it be?

And suddenly their pursuer passed over them in a powerful rush of freezing air, leaving torn branches and withered leaves from the winter trees in its wake. It was moving so fast that Mulvehill couldn’t even see it, but he could hear it, the sound of its powerful, flapping wings as they ravaged the air.

Fernita slowed, cowering against him as she searched the open air above them.

“Keep moving,” Mulvehill ordered, pulling her along.

The angel dropped heavily into the woods, landing in a disturbance of fallen leaves.

Fernita gasped as they looked upon it, and Mulvehill found that he had stopped breathing, a terrible tightness forming in his chest reminding him that he’d be dead all the sooner if he didn’t take oxygen into his lungs.

Would that have been the better way to go?

It was like no angel that he had ever imagined, more monstrous than heavenly.

It crouched on all fours, but he could tell that it was huge. Its powerful body was covered in filthy armor that hinted at something once beautiful to behold. Mulvehill could just about make out intricate etchings beneath the layers of grime on the tarnished, golden metal plates that covered its large body.

But it was the face—
faces
—that made that terrible feeling in his lower regions return, and he had to make a conscious effort not to embarrass himself. The angel had one large head, but three faces—an eagle, a human, and the face of a lion, all side by side, forming one nightmarish appearance.

And they were all looking at him and Fernita with murder in their gazes.

The monster angel tensed, and Mulvehill could see that it was about ready to pounce. He reacted instinctively, reaching beneath his arm to draw his gun, chamber a round, and fire four times into the many faces.

“Go!” he cried to Fernita, not sure how far the old woman could get on her own, but wanting at least to give her a chance.

The angel reared back, one of its armor-covered hands wiping at its faces. The bullets must have at least annoyed it.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see how far Fernita had gotten, and was surprised and happy to see that her old legs had taken her into a more densely wooded area.

About to take off himself, he turned back to find the angel directly in front of him. He hadn’t even heard it move, and there it was, as big as life, looming over him and smelling like an overheated truck engine. Mulvehill raised his weapon, aiming for the human eyes.

But the angel had had enough of that, thank you very much.

It bellowed, a deafening sound, before reaching down with one of its clawed, metal-covered hands to rip away the gun and toss it above the treetops.

Mulvehill cried out as two of his fingers snapped like twigs.

If somebody had described this scenario to him, he would have imagined himself curled in the fetal position on the ground, but instead he felt more angry than anything else.

Angry that two of his fingers had been broken . . . angry that his favorite gun had been tossed away into the woods . . . angry that he was probably going to die at the hands of something that he had been taught as a child was a thing of beauty and a loving servant to God.

And more specifically, he was angry at Remy Chandler for kicking open the doorway and exposing him to a world that he shouldn’t even know existed.

The anger boiled up inside him, and he reacted, hauling off and punching the monstrous thing of Heaven in the faces as hard as he could with his unbroken hand.

The angel recoiled, its many eyes at first expressing surprise, but then the lion pulled back the flesh of its maw, showing off fearsome teeth, and Mulvehill was sure he was about to be eaten.

When there was a voice.

“Hello, Zophiel, what do you have there?”

The monster angel spun around, its multiple sets of wings unfurling in a defensive posture.

As the heavenly creature moved, Mulvehill could see who had spoken. It was an older guy, maybe someone who had seen his wrecked car from the road and come down to help.

Mulvehill almost screamed for the man to run away, but something about his appearance stopped him. Something told Mulvehill that this probably wasn’t just a normal man. That he was something else entirely . . . something of this strange new world that Mulvehill had been unceremoniously thrown into.

“You’ve been on the hunt for too long, Cherubim,” the man with the white hair and beard said, a sly smile spreading across his face. “Wasting your time menacing a helpless human—is that not below you?”

“Malachi,” the Cherubim said in an unearthly growl as it tensed and sprang, even more furious now than when Mulvehill had shot it in its faces.

“You are the cause of this,” the monster angel roared, landing upon the stranger and driving him back to the frozen ground.

Mulvehill clutched his injured hand to his chest and stumbled back, away from the impending carnage.

The stranger appeared helpless beneath the bulk of the armored attacker, but then the homicide cop heard the oddest of things—laughter.

As the angel lay upon the man, armored claws reaching down to tear and rend its prey, the stranger was laughing.

The sound of merriment only proved to enrage the angelic beast all the more. Its body glowed with an unearthly light, and liquid fire began to drip from the tips of its hooked fingers and its three open mouths.

“And you have been a thorn in my Master’s side long enough,” the stranger announced, his expensive suit already starting to smolder and burn, but it seemed to have zero effect upon the person inside it.

Mulvehill was catching snippets of their heated debate. It was obvious that these two knew each other, and weren’t the best of buds.

“Your fetid touch has brought me to the brink of madness,” the Cherubim wailed, struggling to hold the stranger down. “For millennia I have fought the aftereffects of your influence, and only now am I able to see what must be done for Heaven to be saved.”

The stranger was laughing all the harder now, even as his body began to change.

“Do you think my Master would sully his touch upon a worthless creation such as yourself?” asked the old man, who wasn’t an old man anymore. “You’re nothing more than a stupid beast . . . a guard dog that outlived its usefulness a very long time ago. . . .”

The stranger had become another creature, and Mulvehill hadn’t a clue whether this was another kind of angel . . . or something more demonic.

Its skin was a dingy white, and covered with strange markings, like some of the tribal tats that he’d seen on many of the scumbags he’d arrested over the years.

“What madness is this?” the Cherubim hissed. “You are not the traitorous elder.”

“I am what should have been,” the pale, tattooed thing said, its body almost like liquid as it flowed around the now struggling Cherubim. “And what will be very, very soon.”

“You are an abomination!” Zophiel bellowed, panic clearly in its voice. “The Lord God would never allow you to exist, Shaitan!”

The pale-skinned thing had wrapped multiple limbs around its foe, powerful, knifelike fingers attempting to make their way between the seams of the angel’s armor. Zophiel’s movments were frenzied, its four wings flapping wildly as it attempted to flee the battleground, but its equally monstrous attacker would not allow it, the liquid flesh of the shape-changing foe slithering onto the Cherubim’s wings, preventing flight.

“Then we shall need to do something about the Lord God,” the new aggressor spoke. “But first things first.”

The pale-skinned thing spread across Zophiel’s body, constricting the Cherubim’s four mighty wings and wrapping around its throat.

Mulvehill knew that he should be getting the hell out of there, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the epic struggle before him. He had no idea whom to root for, sensing that either of these creatures would be the death of him—and Fernita.

It didn’t look good for the Cherubim. The shape-shifting thing had almost completely enveloped the angel’s armored form. At that point Mulvehill decided that he should probably move along, and had just started to turn when the Cherubim let loose a deafening cry, equal parts scream and thunderous roar. The angel’s fury echoed through the winter woods, the tormented sound shaking free the dead leaves that still clung to the trees.

Zophiel tore away the liquid flesh of its attacker, the Cherubim’s armored form now glowing white-hot with the heat of its divine body.

The pale, tattooed thing writhed upon the frozen ground, steam rising from its smoldering body, but within only seconds it appeared fine, returning to its more human shape to taunt its Cherubim foe.