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.
“Be careful,” Gabriel shouted. “You’re using too much of your own essence.”
“I don’t know how to control it,” I said desperately. I felt a little woozy, like my blood sugar was low. I shook my head to clear it. “It doesn’t matter. We have to get Ramuell away from here before he kills anyone else.”
Gabriel nodded. “I can use my magic to bind him if you can keep him distracted for a few more moments.”
I wasn’t sure how long my magic could hold Ramuell, but I knew I wasn’t about to let him go now that we had him in our sights. If I had to pour out every last drop of myself in order to defeat the monster who had eaten my mother’s soul, I would.
Gabriel eased away from me, pulling the nightfire back. I held Ramuell now. It was my magic alone that kept the nephilim from breaking free.
Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes. My hands were before me, and nightfire poured from my fingers in a continuous flow of magic. Deep inside, down under my ribs, the place where I felt the source of my magic flow twinged like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point. Ramuell hadn’t moved. He still stood howling in the middle of the street, accepting my punishment without attempting to defend himself.
Gabriel hovered a few feet away, his lips moving, his eyes closed. He seemed to have drawn into himself, pulling up power from a well deep within.
I tried to concentrate on the source of magic inside me, tried to level off the flow of power so that I could sustain it long enough to help Gabriel bind Ramuell. But even as I struggled to control it, I felt something snap inside me, and the nightfire pouring from my fingers abruptly ceased, as if someone had shut off a spigot.
I gasped, and Gabriel’s eyes flew open. Ramuell smiled, even though the flesh of his chest and shoulders was burned through to the organs. I could see shiny, squishy things pulsing beneath a lacework of crisped and blackened skin. Then he blasted Gabriel with a ball of white fire. The force of the blast pushed Gabriel across the intersection and smashed him into the Dunkin’ Donuts sign. Sparks of electricity shot into the air as Gabriel’s limp body hit the sign with enough force to buckle it in the middle. He dropped to the ground and lay quite still.
I had no time to think or to respond. Ramuell leapt across the distance separating us and snatched me out of the air, landing lightly on his clawed feet. He held me by the shoulders as though I were a child, my feet dangling. I kicked out at his stomach and felt the toe of my boot connect with one of those soft and exposed organs. Ramuell grunted and gripped my shoulders tighter. I felt his claws cutting into me, and the familiar acidic burning that followed.
In a few minutes I would be dead, one way or another. Either Ramuell would eat me or the acid raging through my body would consume me. My blood pounded in my ears, but I dimly heard people screaming. The people from the El. The ones I had tried to protect, tried to keep from Ramuell. I had no magic left, and there was no one to help me. They would surely be eaten alive if they didn’t get away.
Ramuell chuckled, a hideous sound that started deep in his chest and rumbled to the surface. I tried to kick him again and he deftly held me away from him so that I was just as ineffectual as the child I felt like at that moment. I couldn’t punch or kick him. My magic was gone. My only weapon was my silver knife, and I couldn’t reach inside the shaft of my boot to get it. I’d thought I’d come here to gather a soul, not battle a nephilim.
“Nothing to say, little girl?” Ramuell sneered, his terrible face leaning close to mine. His teeth snapped very close to my nose and I flinched subconsciously, which made Ramuell laugh harder. “Not going to fight, or think up clever retorts? Not going to beg for your life, the way your mother did?”
The acid burned through me, making me feel weak and dizzy. I fought to stay awake. I didn’t want to be a comatose hors d’oeuvre during my last moments on Earth.
“My mother . . . never begged . . . for anything,” I said. My tongue felt thick in my mouth.
“Oh, yes, she did,” Ramuell said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “She begged for her life and the life of her mewling brat. She begs for it even now. I can hear her, inside me, with the others.”
And for a moment, I thought I could hear her, too, hear her soul crying out in anguish, trapped somewhere inside the nephilim’s body. The thought filled me with despair. I couldn’t even keep myself alive after my mother had sacrificed herself for me. Soon I would be one of the screaming souls imprisoned inside this monster.
But even as I smelled the sulfur-and-burnt-cinnamon stink of Ramuell’s breath, felt its heat on my face as he opened his mouth to consume me, something in me cried out. I wasn’t going to let the nephilim destroy me, and as I thought it, a blast of white heat exploded inside me and pushed out through every inch of skin. I felt scorched by the force of it and closed my eyes as light exploded all around me. Ramuell screamed, a scream of pain and horror like I had never heard before. The nephilim dropped me to the ground and I opened my eyes.