Fallen Angels 03 - Envy (47 page)

Walking fast for the main stairs, she reminded herself that even though it was after hours, the lights were stil on everywhere and there were twenty or thirty night-shift people working in the building—

When her phone went off, she nearly dropped the damn thing. And then almost lost it again when she saw it was de la Cruz. Accepting the cal , she whispered, “Don’t tel me you found the juvie record?”

“That’s what you asked me to do.”

Her feet slowed. “My God . . .”

“My brother-in-law’s cousin’s husband, actual y.”

“Tel me.”

“Truancy. That’s it.”

She stopped at the head of the stairs, and kept her voice low. “What do you mean ‘that’s it.’ ”

“The Garrison County records department has a single listing in ‘ninety-six for a Thomas DelVecchio Jr. He was brought in for skipping school repeatedly.”

“And there is no other reference? No psych evals? No—”

“Nothing. The backlog of cases were digitalized in two thousand five—and they saved ten years of files, so we just made it inside the safe zone.

DelVecchio was fourteen at the time he was brought in—and if he’d had earlier trips through the justice system, they would have been noted in that entry.”

“And there was nothing afterward.”

“Not a thing.”

There was a long silence. And then she felt compel ed to ask, “There is no way something was missed?”

“If for some reason he got into trouble in another jurisdiction, wel , then yeah. But real estate records show that his mother owned a house in the same town for twenty years and I know Veck’s résumé’s been vetted—and he has on it that he graduated from the Garrison County High School in two thousand. So I think it’s safe to assume he stayed in that area.”

Reil y put her hand on her head as her mind reeled. “He’s being framed.”

“Sure looks that way.”

“God
damn
it.”

Now she got moving, racing down the stairs, her heels clipping loudly on the marble.

“Another thing,” de la Cruz said. “While I was waiting for the cal back, I got on that Facebook page that you sent me the link to.”

“And you saw Bails?”

“Yup, I think that’s him, too. Where are you?”

“Just leaving the station house. I’m going over to Veck’s right now.”

As she passed by the housekeeping thinf, she watched her footing on the wet marble and then shot down the back hal way.

“There’s only one problem,” de la Cruz said. “We can’t use the juvie record to prove anything. We should never have gotten this information.”

She punched the bar on the rear exit and burst out into the night. “I have the Bails images on Facebook—I took screen shots of them in case they get taken down and I found the alias he’s using. I think we have enough to get a warrant to force Facebook to give us the account details and the Internet service provider. We can link him that way.”

“Proving that he’s a fan of DelVecchio Sr. isn’t enough.”

“It’s a start.”

“Agreed, but there has to be something more. And before you ask, yes, I’l cal the sergeant—unless you want to?”

“I’m going to be busy with Veck. Maybe he’l have some ideas.”

“Roger that—”

“I don’t know
how
you pul ed this off.”

“Official y, I didn’t.”

“Wel , I real y owe you. You’re a lifesaver.”

She ended the cal and got out the keys to her unmarked—

“Actual y, that’s not quite the word I would have used.”

Reil y didn’t get a chance to spin around. A hand grabbed the back of her head and slammed her face-first into the car’s hard contours, the top of the door catching her right at the browline.

As her lights went out and her knees buckled, al she heard was Bails’s voice in her ear: “You real y should have looked behind you.”

Adrian slayed the last minion with an arcing slice that went from high to low, the pitchfork’s tines piercing an oily black chest, al knife-through-butter.

At least . . . he thought he was the one who did it.

As the body fel to the ground with a wet thud, he looked around . . . at al the others of him. Who, at the very same moment, turned and looked in his direction.

He spun the pitchfork around and stabbed the ground—and the other dozens of himselves did the same thing a mere split second later.

If Eddie were here, he thought, the guy would have been pissing in his pants. Too many openings for a good assslapping.

Shit, Eddie . . . why hadn’t he been the one with the nine lives?

At that moment, the face of every Adrian grew tight, those mouths that he knew so wel flattening out, those pierced brows lowering . . . until he was surrounded, literal y, by his own grief.

The sound of slow clapping brought their col ective faces up and around. Colin had come out of the apartment and was standing on the top landing of the stairwel .

“Wel -done, lad, wel -done.”

“I had help.”

Huh. None of the other Adrians spoke up, so this had to be him—and what a thing to be relieved about.

For fuck’s sake, this shit was going to give him a disorder.

“I would have joined you,” Colin said as he floated down the stairs and then walked across the steaminglack-stained ground. “But as you pointed out, I am here to take care of our dearly departed.”

“Eddie okay?”

“Yes.”

Ad shook his head. “Thank God you were here.”

“Indeed.”

As the archangel strode through the remains of al those minions, his boots remained pristine even though the ground was a sloppy mess.

He and the other Adrians al looked impressed. And then he realized that they were steaming: Every Adrian had tendrils of smoke rising from their shoulders and backs, the corrosive blood eating through the leather, heading for skin.

On that note . . . Adrian ripped off the duster—

Not even a split second afterward, a chorus of flapping went off, like a flock of geese had gotten goosed and taken to the sky. And then the Adrians tossed their coats down on the ground with disgust just as he had.

Colin stopped in front of them al . “Would you like to keep your little friends?”

Adrian looked around at himselves. “They’re great backup—I wonder if they do windows? And if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you pul this off?”

Colin extended his hand. At some kind of command from him, the surface of the inky sludge covering the driveway and lawn began to vibrate, and then here and there, tiny objects rose, dripping with—

They were shards, Adrian realized, as they shed their coating of minion. Glass—no, mirrored shards.

“Tricky, tricky,” Ad murmured.

“Say good-bye to your crew, mate.”

He glanced around. And found that he wanted to tel himselves thank you—

In perfect synchronization, al of the other Adrians put their right palms up to their hearts, those dark heads dipping gravely.

And then they were gone, along with their coats.

“Can I have them back if I need them again,” Ad asked. “Like if I have to lay some carpet, or move a piano.”

“You know where to find me.”

“I do.” He reached out, but then dropped his hand when he saw the condition of his gloves. “I gotta know something.”

“What.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“You were going to lose.”

“Are you going to tel Nigel?”

“Probably. I subscribe to the notion that it is better to apologize than ask permission.”

“Know that one wel .”

There was a period of silence. “Thank you,” Adrian said roughly.

The archangel bowed with grace. “ ’Twas a pleasure. Now, I think we should get this cleaned up. Not many neighbors about, but it would be hard to explain, don’t you think?”

Good point: If there was just a skirmish, there wasn’t a lot of reason to worry about the icky aftermath. God knew that humans left plenty of oily messes around, and smudges on the ground soon disappeared with enough sunlight. This?

“The only option,” he muttered, “would be to tel peo the oil tanker exploded on the front lawn.”

“And does that not require a permit or some such?”

“Probably. As wel as a lot of gunpowder.” He shook his head. “Damn, we’re going to need a lot of—”

Cleaning solution
was the term he was going to use, as he started to wonder how much of that witch hazel concoction he could pul together. Enough for a fire truck would do the job.

Colin, however, took care of it al : Sweeping his hand in a circle, he disappeared every trace of the tremendous fight.

Adrian whistled under his breath. “You wouldn’t be in the market for a second job, would you?”

Colin smiled with a dark edge. “That would be against the rules, dear boy.”

“And God forbid we bust those bitches.”

Adrian yanked off one of his gloves and matched the archangel’s cynical expression as the pair of them clapped palms and shook hard.

“Jim’s probably waiting for me,” Ad murmured, glancing up toward the garage.

“And at the moment, I have nothing better to do.”

The relief that Eddie wasn’t alone was so profound, he was tempted to hug the motherfucker. “Then I’l just get back to work now.”

“And so shal I.”

As Adrian nodded and took to the air, he was prepared for Devina in ways he hadn’t been before.

Good thing, as it turned out, considering what he walked in on when he got to Veck’s.

W
hen Veck’s phone went off at quarter to nine, he was so keyed up, he almost didn’t bother answering the fucking thing.

He’d been marching around his house, waiting for something, anything to go down with Heron, that he was practical y vibrating off the floor, al live wire with nothing to plug into.

“Aren’t you going to answer it,” Jim asked from the other end of the kitchen. The angel had been smoking quietly in the chair he’d sat down in, like, frickin’ days ago.

Okay, it hadn’t been days. This stretch of nothing happening felt like
decades
.

As the ringer went off again, Veck glanced over. He’d tossed the cel on the counter and it was on vibrate, the thing inching closer and closer to the edge with every trembling ring-a-ding-ding.

He was quite content to let the POS walk itself right off into a free fal . Except then he saw that the screen had one word on it:
Reilly
.

Veck al but dived across the countertop. “Hel o! Hel o?
Hello!?
”

He had no idea why she would be cal ing him, but he didn’t care. Maybe she’d misdialed, or maybe she needed the pizza guy’s number. Or, hel , even if she just wanted to cuss him out, he was down for—

“You sound so pent-up there, DelVecchio.”

He frowned at the male voice. “Bails?”

“Have I told you how much I love your name? DelVecchio . . .” The guy drew out the syl ables. “Mmm, just the sound of it gets me off.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Deeel lVeccccchiooo.”

Abruptly, Veck felt a shot of blind aggression nail him in the heart. “Why are you on Reil y’s phone?”

Although it wasn’t as if he couldn’t guess. Christ, here it was again, he thought. Another snow job by someone he’d assumed he could trust—only this time, he was terrified of the consequences.

He looked over to Heron, who had put his cig out in the ashtray and gotten up—as if this was what he’d been biding his time for. “Why, Bails?”

There was a grunt and a scraping noise . . . the kind of thing that a pair of feet made over the earth.

“Sorry, just moving the body.”

Veck squeezed the phone so hard, one of the dial keys went off with a screech. “
I’m going to kill you. If you hurt her—”

There was a slapping sound. And then a groan. “Wake up, bitch. I want you to talk to him.”

“Reilly
.
”
So help them both, Veck was going to rip Bails’s head off his shoulders and bowl with it. Then he was going to disembowel the body and cut off the arms and legs.

But first, he’d castrate the motherfucker.

“Reilly
—”

“I’m . . . sorry . . .” a weak voice said.

Veck closed his eyes. “Reil y, I’m going to get you—”

“I didn’t . . . believe you . . . so sorry . . .”

The words were slurred, as if she had a swol en mouth, or maybe—God forbid—had had some teeth knocked out.

“I’m going to come and get you. Don’t worry—I’l —”

She cut him off. “I know . . . you didn’t . . . do it. . . . Bails . . . lied—”

Her scream was so loud, Veck had to jerk the phone away from his ear.

“Reil y!” he shouted, his voice ringing around his kitchen. “Reil y—”

“Sorry,” Bails cut in. “I had to introduce her to my girlfriend. They’re going to have some fun together—at least until you come join us.”

“Tell me where you are, motherfucker
.
”

“Oh, I wil , but I have someone who wants to say hel o first. But not to you. She says for you to give Heron the phone now.”

“Fuck that—”

There was a rustle and then a female came on the line. “Hel o, little Tommy.”

Oh, shit, that voice was . . . al wrong. Like someone had one of those distortion filters over the receiver. But that wasn’t the only problem.

His father had cal ed him that when he was young.

“Now listen, Tommy, I want you to give the phone over to that big, beautiful man who’s standing across your kitchen from you. Then I want you to grab your coat and get nice and armed—I’m talking your guns, your knives, whatever you like. By the time you come back to where you’ve been pacing around for the last few hours, Heron wil tel you where to go.”

“Who are you?” he gritted out.

“You know
exactly
who I am.” The laugh that fol owed was blade-sharp. “One note, by the way—those towels you keep putting up? They might stop you from seeing me, but it’s not a vice versa kind of thing. I’ve always had my eye on you.”

Veck shifted his stare over to Jim. The angel was shaking his head from side to side slowly, as if he knew exactly what was being said even though the cel was al but stapled to Veck’s ear.

“Before you throw the phone to Jim,” the woman, or whatever the fuck it was, said, “you should know that if anyone comes with you, I’l kil her. I’l take the knife I have right now in my hand and I’l start with her face. Are you aware of how long someone can live without a mouth? Long time. Ears? Teeth? She can be alive, but praying to be dead if you know what I mean. And I won’t stop there . . . I’l go down to her fingers. Just to the first knuckles. I’m good at walking the line, keeping them alive if I want to—who do you think taught your father al of his tricks?”