Conspiracy of Angels (14 page)

Amidst the sense of idle chatter and stress about exams, I could feel something sinister moving among the booths. Once I leaned to get a look around the corner, my attention snapped right to him. A little on the short side, with a paunch, he was wearing a Cleveland Indians jacket and a matching ball cap. He had a beard that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed in a few days, black, streaked on either side of his chin with gray.

Aside from the scraggly beard, he didn’t look particularly unkempt or dirty. The jacket was leather, now that I got a good look at it, and those things were expensive. This wasn’t some drugged-up delinquent—but a cacodaimon still rode him.

I remembered how the other riders had noticed once I caught sight of them, so I tried to keep him just on the edge of my peripheral vision. I noted two things that left me feeling increasingly unsettled. One, his movements were smooth and easy. The rider was having no trouble at all interfacing with the guy’s nervous system. Two—and I wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing—Ballcap appeared to be very much alive.

Then I realized that he wasn’t alone.

There were two others standing by the cash register—a man and a woman, both early thirties. If not for the scarlet-eyed shadows leering just above their heads, I might have mistaken them for a married couple stopping for a bite to eat on their way to work.

“Three,” Lil breathed. She stood just this side of the corner, back against the wall, her stance loose and wary. “I don’t believe it.”

I concentrated on Romulan cloaking devices and fought not to stare at the things, keeping my voice low.

“They won’t try anything in the restaurant, will they?”

“If they haven’t yet, then probably not,” she replied. She never took her eyes off the one circling among the booths. I didn’t have to look up to know he was getting closer. She made an impatient sound halfway between a huff and curse. “I’ve never seen them act like this.”

“How are they acting that’s different?” I asked. Shifting the weight of the backpack, I stepped away from the corner and ducked down. Given my height, I was more likely to be spotted than her.

Lil hunkered down a little more herself, shoulders tense, her left hand ready to pull the dainty gun from the handbag at the first sign of trouble. Her gray eyes shone brightly as she tracked the rider moving our way.

“Purposeful,” she said. “Organized. Cacodaimons are creatures of chaos. It’s in the name.”

“I told you,” I whispered. “Someone’s sending them after me.”

“No one should be able to do that,” she objected. “They’re not bloodhounds. Orders go against their basic nature.”

“Try telling them that,” I said, still edging away from the main section of the diner. I turned to see how much farther I had to go before I couldn’t back up any more. The hallway jogged to the right. Just around the corner was a fire door. The bar across the door was covered in a bright, reflective sticker.

W
ARNING
: A
LARM
W
ILL
S
OUND

I hissed to get Lillee’s attention, motioning her toward me. She gave an irritated little shake of her head, but didn’t look my way.

“Door,” I whispered urgently.

That did it. Without really turning away from the front of the diner, she slid back along the wall, sidestepping carefully on the balls of her feet so the heels of her boots didn’t click against the tile.

“You move like a chick in a cop movie,” I observed.

“This isn’t a movie, Zack. Eyes front, or the bad guys get you,” she hissed. Twitching the Derringer in my direction, she added, “Call me a chick again and you won’t have to worry about the bad guys.”

I pointed at the fire door.

“Shoot me once we’re clear, hunh?”

She looked grimly down at the warning. “Let’s hope it leads somewhere useful, because the minute we open that door, they’ll be after us.”

“I’m not facing them out in the diner,” I insisted. “No way I’m dragging all those college kids into this crazy shit. Enough people have died because of me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Bleeding mother. You pick this moment to develop a martyr complex?”

I didn’t give her time to argue. “Count of three,” I said. Then, without counting even as far as one, I opened the door and charged outside.

“Count of three my ass!” she snarled after me, but most of it was drowned in the squeal of the alarm. I was ten feet down the back alley at that point and she had to hustle to keep up with my long strides.

Ballcap must’ve been right at the front of the hallway when we went through because he pelted out the door close behind. The rider on his back lifted its head above his, spreading its cobra-like hood. Baring its teeth as he ran, it made a chittering sound that hit me on such a visceral level I almost broke my stride. Lil was right behind me and the minute I faltered, I felt her hand on my back, urging me on.

“Can you hear that?” I gasped, my breath starting to come hard and fast as we raced to the mouth of the alley.

“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “Now
move
!”

The alley opened onto a little side street running behind the bank of buildings housing the diner and other shops. The street was barely more than an alley itself, cluttered with garbage cans and piles of trash. To our left in a large stretch of gravel were the tracks for Cleveland’s answer to streetcars—the Rapid Transit. Across the tracks I could see rows of little houses tucked away behind sagging privacy fences.

I thought about dashing across the tracks, then seemed to recall something about them being electrified—or maybe that was an urban legend. Either way, the gravel drop-off from the narrow side street was uninvitingly steep and featured a rather intimidating fence tipped with barbed wire.

That made it kind of a non-option, really, but I didn’t like the other alternatives, either. All I saw ahead of us were trash cans, dumpsters, and the back ends of buildings.

“Hey, Lil, I killed one of these things back at the club,” I panted.

“And…?”

“So should we stop? Face him?” I leaped over a fallen trash can even as Lil jogged left to avoid it.

“One, maybe. Three?” she responded. “Besides, I think he has a—”

She didn’t finish. Gunfire exploded behind us and a bullet whined off the bricks just above my head.

“Yeah,” I acknowledged, starting to weave back and forth to make myself harder to hit. “That complicates things.” So far, the cacodaimon seemed to be a terrible shot.

There was another alley up ahead, among the buildings to our right. The Rapid Transit tracks stretched opposite its mouth, creating a wide span devoid of cover between us and the houses across the way. Parked outside the alley was a big metal dumpster. I didn’t know where the alley came out, but our current path was little more than a long open corridor running beside the tracks. There was nothing we could put between Ballcap’s gun and our backs.

“Lil,” I called, hoping she caught my gesture. Then I jigged around the dumpster, pausing just long enough to get an idea of how far back Ballcap was.
Not far enough.
I charged off into the alley just as he was taking aim in the vicinity of my head.

The buildings on either side were tall enough to cast the narrow little alley in a cloying pall of shadow at this early hour of the day. I wasn’t complaining. Unless Ballcap had blacklight-vision, courtesy of the nightmare on his back, lower lighting meant we were harder to see and harder to hit—especially since we were both wearing dark colors.

The alley in ended in a wall.

Shit.

“Good work,” Lil said, hunching behind a spill of boxes and readying the Derringer.

“Sarcasm not helping here,” I grumbled, trying to hide my six foot three frame behind the same tumble of trash. I shrugged off the backpack and shoved it against the wall, trying to give us a little more space.

“Hunh?” she responded, genuinely puzzled. “You found a crossing. This is perfect. I’ll shoot the body, you hop over to the Shadowside and face the rider on its own turf.”

“Which would be great if I had a clue what you were talking about,” I said. Ballcap’s footfalls were already coming at us from the other end of the alley.

“OK, Captain Amnesia,” Lil said through gritted teeth. “Here’s how this will go down. I’ve got two shots, but he has to be close. Once he’s distracted, grab the rider. I don’t care from which side. Just take it out.”

I tried not to cackle madly at the thought of a bullet wound as a distraction. Instead, I focused on my sense of the other half of reality. It would come naturally, I told myself, just like at the club. Charge in and react. Don’t overthink.

In front of me, Lil shivered and I knew it couldn’t have been with the cold.

“Mother’s tears, Zaquiel,” she said under her breath. “If he didn’t know we were down here already…”

“You could feel that?” I whispered stupidly.

“
Duh.
”

And then he was on us. Lil sprang into motion, standing up from her crouched position and firing the Derringer. The little pistol went “pop, pop” as opposed to “bang, bang,” but he was close enough that the end result was more or less the same. She planted the first shot in his throat. The second she aimed at his balls.

I reminded myself never to piss her off.

Ballcap staggered back, and while her initial bullet was going to be fatal in the long run, it was the second shot that drove him to his knees. I didn’t blame him. Hell, I almost felt sorry for the poor bastard—but not for long. The rider started shrieking and yanking around inside of him, making his muscles work despite the pain and imminent death. He hadn’t dropped his gun yet, and I could see the rider trying frantically to get that arm to work.

Managing that burst of speed thing, I closed the space between us in what felt like an eye blink. In the course of that transit, there was a vague ripping sensation, like I tore through the very air in front of me. It drove all the breath from my lungs. The shadows in the alley grew suddenly starker, and the sounds of the city fell away.

I didn’t stop to wonder at the abrupt transition, because the cacodaimon was right there, hissing bare inches from my face. I shouted the syllables of my name so forcefully that the rider staggered back from it. I took that hesitation to dive in. The blades leapt to life in my hands, less solid this time, but still burning fiercely. I slashed madly at the thing, and it shrieked its fury.

As it writhed within him, Ballcap jigged and flailed as if he gripped a live wire. Somehow his gun passed right through me. I didn’t stop to wonder how or why as I grappled with his rider.

Behind me, Lil was doing something that made all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I hoped it was something helpful to me and dangerous to the cacodaimon, but I had no guarantee. I started to call up my power again, finding it harder this time to burn so brightly. I shouted in the thing’s face once more, willing myself to obliterate it. It didn’t explode into a million pieces of dark, but it did go slack and uncoil from Ballcap’s failing body.

I seized and wrestled with its shockingly cold form, and then it did the unexpected. Instead of trying vainly to get Ballcap’s broken body to work, the thing jumped ship entirely. That long, sectioned tail whipped free to wind all the way down my legs. Bitter waves of numbness cascaded in its wake. The wicked little scythes at the ends of its spindly appendages slashed furiously, scoring hits on my hands and face—although they seemed to be deflected by the thick leather of my biker jacket.

Armor indeed.

The blades sputtered, so I let them wink out, then dug both my hands into the neck of the thing. I held its razor-toothed maw just inches from my face as it gnashed viciously, trying to get a taste of me. Its gleaming red eyes looked like two bloody wounds slashed into the night of its form, and as it glared at me, malevolent intentions pressed like a weight against my mind. It made that awful chittering sound again, and then—unthinkably—it spoke.

“
Eeeeaaaattttt yyyooouuuu, sssskkkky-bbbooorrnnn! Eeaaatttt yyyoouurrrr ffacceee!
” it hissed.

Buzzing insects and shrieks of tortured metal converged in that eldritch sound. It unnerved me so thoroughly that I stumbled back beneath the rider’s weight, losing my footing enough that I fell to my knees. My immortality was still a question, but I had a sinking feeling that if the monstrosity started chewing on me, I was going to end up dead in an unpleasant and very final way.

Just as what little I remembered of my life started flashing before my eyes, there came an unexpected and deafening roar from Lil’s direction. I didn’t have time enough to be shocked by it, because less than a heartbeat later something muscled, tawny, and very big leapt at the cacodaimon. I got an up close and personal view of bright pink gums and long, ivory teeth as a huge cat came out of nowhere and clamped its vise-like jaws down on the back of the rider’s neck.

The only good thing about being body-slammed by a cat as big as me was that it had the effect of shaking my grip loose from the rider, or else I might have lost a couple of fingers as the feline bit down on the cacodaimon. Very effectively distracted, the rider convulsed, whipping its tail off of me and grappling with the new attacker.

As it unwound itself, the rider also detached half a dozen little legs it had managed to sink into my numbed thighs. I experienced a gut-twisting stab of nausea as I watched them slip out of me.

The walls of the blind alley reverberated with the coughing roar of the big cat as it struggled with its quarry. I sat on my ass on the damp and filthy pavement, vaguely aware that the only reason I wasn’t flat on my back was because of my wings. They were as physical as the rest of me, which didn’t seem right. Everything around me had grown strange. Taking a shaky breath, I tried getting back to my feet.

Lil appeared and passed right in front of me, looking like a ghost in an impressionist painting—I could see her, but not clearly. There was this slow, floaty quality to her movements, and all the colors around her were streaking. Her lightly tanned skin glowed as if lit from within, and her stormy gray eyes scintillated like twin alien stars. Her hair streamed out in rich red waves, curling on the air like the fronds of some exotic undersea flora.