Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) (15 page)

That kind of tumbling was always a good thing, and with a quick glance at her watch Ella picked up the pace. The note she’d left on the bedside scratch pad had promised she’d only be gone five minutes, and she was already past her self-imposed curfew. No doubt Nate would be irked with her for not waking him to go with her on a simple condom run, but if her luck held he’d still be asleep when she got back.

She had gone no more than a couple of steps outside the small shop before she came to a dead halt, her blood icing over in a flash freeze that almost hurt. Dressed in neatly pressed khakis, white shirt and an argyle sweater vest, Richard Rainier looked like he was out for a morning round of golf. With his face in profile, he scanned the dining area with a studied air of nonchalance. Standing at his side as if yearning to be surgically attached to his hip was the image of the woman Ella knew was dead—Lana Dever.

But of course that wasn’t Lana, any more than Richard was an aging preppie looking to get his nosh on before hitting the links. They were a demon-powered dynamic duo, and they were here for Nate’s blood.

Nate
.

Panic strained to break free, and in a last-ditch effort for control she held her breath until she was sure she wouldn’t scream. Panicking wouldn’t help. What would help would be a plan. Rainier and his demon were strategically placed on the edge of the dining area and directly in front of the bank of elevators that had just disgorged a troop of Boy Scouts. Since her phone was dead thanks to her charger being left behind at her place, her only option was a house phone, which unfortunately was right by the elevators. She ducked back into the store, keeping her gaze fastened on them as she racked her brain on how she could alert Nate. She had no idea where the stairs were located. She couldn’t wander around the lobby without being seen, and she didn’t particularly relish the thought of taking on both a Rainier and a demon all by herself.

For a fleeting moment she marveled at how quickly her brain had come to a point where the idea of actual demons didn’t make her thought processes completely short-circuit. But life had taught her that the strong didn’t just survive—they adapted.

The question now was how she could adapt her way out of this.

The noisy gaggle of scouts came to a stop as their haggard troop leaders paused at the front desk for what looked like sack lunches. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a mischievous kid pantomime pulling a placidly blinking fire alarm on the wall even as Rainier turned to shoot the rowdy bunch an irritated look. That was all it took for inspiration to hit like a ton of bricks. She edged back against the wall, waiting for Rainier’s attention to turn away. Almost against her will, her gaze slipped to the thing that looked like Lana Dever practically standing on Rainier’s shoes. Obviously demons didn’t understand the human concept of personal space.

The image of Lana was truly breathtaking. It was a flawless portrait of a woman Ella had only known after a gruesome, twisted take on a Maori-like design had been carved into her face. How sad it was that the real Lana had once looked like that. In her memory, open wounds had been cut from the woman’s chin to her mouth and all over her brow...

Before Ella’s disbelieving eyes, the thing that wore Lana’s peaches-and-cream face began to lose its color, fading into the clammy, grayish pallor that Ella remembered. Slits appeared on the chin radiating from the mouth downward, and from the eyebrows up toward the hairline that became lank and reddened with blood. More slits appeared beneath the eyes so that it allowed what looked like tears of blood to run copiously down the face.

Just as she remembered.

A child’s scream rent the air. Someone dropped a breakfast plate to shatter on the polished marble floor. That seemed to be the cue for all hell to break loose. Shouts for someone to call 911 rose while dining chairs scraped across the floor, adding to the horrified cacophony. The scattered scouts came together and huddled for safety while their frantic troop leaders tried to get in front of them to shield them from the hideous nightmare that now stood next to Richard Rainier.

Hell had come to ruin everyone’s most important meal of the day.

With the single-minded determination of a woman on a mission, Ella moved from her hiding place toward the lobby’s fire alarm, her gaze never leaving the pair now getting everyone’s full attention. In a move that was so fast it appeared to blur around the edges, the now-gory mess that was supposedly Lana Dever spun in place until it faced her head-on, as if the monster had suddenly known she was nearby. Ella had thought she understood the term
if
looks
could
kill
before, but the malevolence boiling over in the demon’s eyes gave her a new definition.

The maddened intensity of the demon’s attention stopped her dead in her tracks. Jaw tight, she balanced lightly on the balls of her feet, like Jacob had taught her. If a mugger or stalker wanted to make you into a victim, the first thing to do was look that predator dead in the eye to show there was no
victim
present. She only hoped a hardcore stare-down worked just as well against spawns of hell.

“Lana!” Despite the hysteria rising to a deafening roar in the lobby, Ella clearly heard Richard’s voice as he grabbed the demon that looked like the deceased woman by the shoulders. “What is this, darling? What’s happening?”

Darling
?
Well
,
well
.
Isn’t
that
interesting
.

The demon’s head jerked as if it were trying to dodge a blow even as several people closed in on them to render assistance. Another too-fast motion brought the demon out of Richard’s clutches and next to a young man wearing a Chicago Bears hoodie and carrying a breakfast tray. He stepped back automatically, but already the demon’s appearance began to morph. For the briefest moment there was simply no face at all—no pretty Lana. No near-death Lana. Nothing. Just a blank lump waiting to be molded. And just as suddenly another person stood there—an unfamiliar, sweaty middle-aged guy whose soft, blubbery mouth leered at the man in the hoodie, who in turn grabbed a knife off his tray before dropping it with a crash.

“No, get away! You can’t touch me anymore!” The hysterical man swung wildly at the demon, who whipped around with that inhuman speed and pushed a woman straight toward the screaming man. Still screaming and flailing at anything that moved, the Chicago Bears fan knocked the woman squarely in the face, and she went down like the loser in a prizefight. As a small pool of blood puddled under the unconscious woman’s head, a twisted smile curled the demon’s sweaty face, and without warning it looked back in Ella’s direction. Pain twisted between her eyes as if something alien was trying to crowd her brain out of her skull, a sensation that was so sick and
wrong
she nearly vomited. Before she could stop it, the image of Charles Rainier forced its way to the forefront of her mind, and a shattered cry escaped her even as she blindly clawed in the direction of the fire alarm.

Nate
.
Focus
on
warning
him
.
Saving
him
...

The demon’s face began to melt, to morph into Charles’s image, and with one last frenzied half-scream she yanked on the alarm with all her might.

Chapter Thirteen

“I broke a nail.”

Startled, Nate looked away from the rush of midday traffic to
Ella. When he’d found himself alone in the hotel room, his first panicked
thought was that she’d been abducted. A frantic sweep of the room uncovered no
signs of a struggle, but he did find the note she’d left by the bed complete
with an efficient mention of the time and a promise to be back. But she’d been
gone longer than seemed necessary, and he’d been out of the room with bag in
hand the moment the fire alarm had gone off. His ability to move like lightning
had never been needed more, and though he logically acknowledged it had only
taken a handful of seconds to reach the ground floor, they had been the longest
seconds of his life.

Now, miles away from that chaos, he had no idea what it meant
that he’d become that rattled over not knowing if Ella was safe or not. Irony of
ironies, he was still too shaken to figure it all out.

“Damn.” Huddled in the passenger seat and looking as gray as
the overcast day around them, Ella stared at the down-to-the-quick tear in her
nail as if it were the most depressing thing that had ever occurred in the
universe. “I guess I broke it when I pulled the fire alarm.”

“Ella, I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“It’s just a nail.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t take the possibility of being found more
seriously.” That was what he’d meant, and the regret echoed through him until he
thought he’d go nuts. “If I’d been with you—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t walk around for the duration of
this...this madness like we’re conjoined twins.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Because then we would look like that bad condom commercial
where the man and woman can’t seem to physically separate. I refuse to be a
cliché. Or a bad condom commercial.”

He fought the need to smile. It would mess up his bad-mood
groove. “I still should have been there.”

“Why? The same events would have happened.”

“Yeah, but I might have been able to see which way the bastards
ran off.” The only thing on his mind had been getting to Ella. That need had
been the glue holding his world together, a world he strongly suspected would
have fallen apart if he hadn’t been able to find her. But he had, running
unerringly to where she’d made it out into the parking lot amidst what appeared
to be a sea of traumatized Boy Scouts. Seeing her safe and sound had been such a
beautiful moment of relief he had no doubt he’d remember it to his dying
day.

And only later did it occur to him that he’d known exactly
where she was without even thinking about it.

Kyle had been right; his mojo was coming back. But it was
coming through on an altogether different frequency. If he didn’t figure out how
it worked—fast—it was going to be worse than useless. It could wind up being a
hindrance of the deadly kind, and he’d had enough of that to last him a
lifetime.

“I don’t get it.” She’d brought her finger up to her mouth to
nurse the damaged tip, then examined it closely. “Why were they there? I mean,
why roll up like you mean business, then turn tail and run the moment you’re
spotted? What was the point of Rainier and his pet demon even showing up at your
hotel like that?”

“Make no mistake, they did have an agenda. I’ll be sure to ask
them all about it before I rip them apart with my bare hands.”

He felt her glance brush over him. Then he realized how bad he
had it if he was capable of feeling the weight of her gaze. “You might recall
from your police days that ripping people apart with bare hands—or anything
else, for that matter—is usually referred to as murder.”

“Justifiable homicide in Richard Rainier’s case, and it’s
nothing at all for the demon since it wouldn’t technically die—it’d just go back
to where it belongs.”

“Uh-huh. I think I read about that in
Hellboy
.”

God help him for having a weakness for women who made him want
to laugh and curse at the same time. “As of now, whether we look like a bad
condom commercial or not, we go everywhere together. Understand?”

“We don’t have to walk belly to belly, do we? I have a healthy
sense of humor, but even I draw the line at absurdity.”

“Just think how much fun that would be, though.” His hand
sought hers before he gave it a thought, and a knot he didn’t know was there
loosened in his chest when her fingers laced with his with a welcome squeeze.
Bottom-lining it, it was his presence in her life that had dropped this madness
on her doorstep, when she’d already had more than her fair share. He wouldn’t
have blamed her if she’d tried to dislocate his digits. “I have a confession to
make—I get hot just thinking about being belly to belly with you.”

“Talk is cheap, mister. Instead of driving aimlessly around
Chicago, we could always go back to my place—”

“Since I’m positive Rainier and his zombie demon somehow killed
both Gabrielle Litte and Briella Fields, I’d feel like a sitting duck in a place
they already know about. And for what it’s worth, I’m not driving aimlessly.
I’m...feeling.”

“You’re feeling what?”

He hesitated a second, then figured she had a right to know.
“I’m testing to see if my gift of finding hidden things is returning. Not that
it was ever that hot to begin with, what with my mom crippling me at birth.”

“Lovely,” he heard her mutter. “Real Mother of the Year
material there.”

“In her mind, she was trying to save me. And who knows? Maybe
she did shelter me from the more dangerous aspects of knowing where things are.
And I’ve always wondered if I would have survived her if I’d displayed anything
stronger than my quiet little instincts. Luckily the feelings I used to have—I
called it my inner compass—were so low-level no one even noticed them, least of
all my mother.”

“But you noticed them when they vanished.”

He squeezed her fingers, grateful she understood. “Something’s
happening to me. It’s not working like it once did. This isn’t on a subconscious
level, though I suppose that’s what I’m waiting to feel now. What’s been
happening to me lately has been...I don’t know. Weird.”

“What’s been happening?”

“Dreams.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Sometimes they’re waking dreams. Though I guess things like
that are referred to as visions. Or insanity.” Nate tried not to grimace at how
loopy this shit sounded. But since they were in this together, the least he
could do was serve up the truth. “And these images I’m seeing don’t necessarily
focus on stuff I’m wanting to find. For instance, instead of dreaming about your
whereabouts when I was trying to find you, I kept getting this no-faced giant of
a guy standing in a cavernous snow globe telling me not to look in his direction
because he wasn’t ready for me yet. At the time I thought I had to lay off the
late-night snacking. Geez, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, and he had to admire how she didn’t try to
sugar-coat it. “That must have been some kind of snacking.”

“Except that wasn’t the problem. Soon after that, I had the
same dream while wide awake, only this time it hurt.”

“What do you mean, it hurt?”

“I mean it made a hangover seem like a pleasant summer breeze.
Worse yet, I felt that exact same pain when we met up with Rainier and his
zombie demon. It hammered me right between the eyes and pulled me in their
direction, even though finding the person or people who’d targeted Gabrielle
Litte and Briella Fields wasn’t on my to-do list. At that point all I wanted to
do was keep you safe.”

She made a thoughtful sound. “I think your gift has decided
you’ve finally grown up.”

He shot her a quizzical look. “You’re going to have to explain
that one to me.”

“Up until you lost your gift, you’d always used it to find the
things
you
wanted, and for the most part it was
pretty accurate, right? It was certainly accurate in finding me when I was
stumbling my way out of the Smokies.”

He nodded. “That’s basically how it worked, yeah. I’d
concentrate on a person or object, and most of the time I’d get a quiet little
hunch to go in one direction or another. Sometimes, though, I’d get nothing at
all, or worse—a false feeling and a total wash-out on whatever it was I wanted
to find. Like I said, in terms of power I’m pretty much a zero.”

“Or it’s possible you’ve been misusing your gift this entire
time.”

There was a beat of silence. “I think you need to eat. Your
blood sugar’s low.”

“I’m serious, Nate. When you made the choice to embrace your
gift and learn how to use it to help others, it was under the threat of being
discovered by your mother, who would have done heaven knows what to you. You had
to stifle everything in order to survive.”

“She hasn’t been around for a long time, Ella.”

“But by then you got used to manipulating your gift quietly,
subconsciously pushing it in the direction you wanted it to go. What if it was
never supposed to work that way?”

“I don’t know how else I’m supposed to work it.”

“You keep talking about what
you
wanted to find. But what about what’s
needed
? When
you thought your gift was gone, there was no point in trying to manipulate it in
any specific direction. With that kind of pressure gone, it’s possible your true
abilities are now operating the way they were always meant to.”

He shook his head. “I don’t get how I
need
all the weird stuff I’m dreaming about. I mean, snow globes and
rowboats? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That part might just be the usual dream weirdness, but the
faceless man is another story. From what you just said, you saw a faceless being
before you even knew something without a face existed. That can’t be a
coincidence.”

“But you just proved my point, Ella. I don’t
need
that no-face nightmare. What I
need
is for that shithead to get out of my realm and
back into his.”

“Right. And the only person around here who can make that
happen is you. Hence the visions.”

He pursed his lips. “I think you’re the first person I’ve ever
met who’s successfully used the word ‘hence’ in a sentence.”

“I actually think it’s encouraging this faceless thing doesn’t
want you looking for it, almost like it’s afraid of you for some reason,” she
said, ignoring him. “What do you think that means?”

“If I knew that, I’d be turning this town upside down looking
for him.” With that, he abruptly took an exit ramp north of the Loop district in
downtown Chicago. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should stop trying to guide
things and just dream a way out of this.”

“Why not? That’s no crazier than anything else I’ve heard the
past couple of days.”

He tried not to wince, but when the woman was right, she was
right.

* * *

Ella took one look at the room’s flowery wallpaper and
figured The Shore Hotel must have been the best place to stay around the time
Ferris Bueller was taking a day off. A dated, waist-high bureau dominated by an
oversized mirror faced a king-sized bed. The violet carpet had also seen better
days, but she took comfort that the gold and white bedspreads looked relatively
new, and the multitude of pillowcases appeared bleached to within an inch of
their lives.

“Home sweet home.” She plopped her bag next to the bed while
Nate plugged in both his phone and laptop, then opened the latter and made
himself comfortable at the laminated round table. “It could be worse. There
could be no Wi-Fi.”

“Bite your tongue.” The pale, colorless glow from the screen
lit his face as he let his fingers do the walking across the keyboard. “The one
thing I need now is to stay in touch. I’ve got some friends who have great
research resources, and they’ll want to know about this latest incident. Who
knows if it’ll help, but it’s better than flying blind.”

“I wouldn’t begin to know where to look for answers. All I know
is that as long as I can keep that thing from showing me Charles Rainier’s face,
I can hold my own. But otherwise...” She trailed off, shivering at the memory.
Ironic or not, the idea of an actual demon was nothing compared to the dread and
hopelessness Charles Rainier inspired. “I can’t emphasize enough how much I hate
that face.”

“I know.” He glanced up from the screen. “I’ll get you home
before you can begin to miss your little purple house, I promise.”

And
then
what
? She felt the words rise so fast she almost
wasn’t able to stop them. Good grief, she had to have a screw loose if she was
looking for a promise of a relationship while they were enmeshed in a game of
hide-and-seek with a spawn of hell. “If we were at my house, we wouldn’t have to
worry about finding the dastardly duo. They’d come to us.”

“On
their
time, when
they’re
prepared. Playing the role of sitting duck
isn’t my idea of a good time. I do the hunting around here.”

“You wouldn’t have to go looking for them if I hadn’t freaked
out so badly this morning.” With nothing else to do, she wandered to the window
framed by plum-colored drapes and saw a surprisingly pretty view of Lake
Michigan. “I swear I had it all under control until that thing started squirming
around in my head and fishing out Charles Rainier’s face. Whenever I cave like
that, it shows just how weak I still am. I
hate
that.”

“You’re not weak. You’re the kind of strong that inspires me to
take on the world and make it a place that’s worthy of you.” Again his gaze
snapped away from the screen to lock on hers. “Wait. What do you mean, squirming
around in your head? Did that demon do something to you? Did it touch you?”

“No.” Reeling from the achingly sweet flood of emotion his
admission unleashed, Ella tried not to get too swept away by focusing on the
simple task of drawing the window’s sheers. “I told you, it didn’t even seem to
know I was there until after its face started to change from the unscarred and
perfect Lana, to the horror-show Lana I remembered. It is strange,” she added,
her brow furling as she came to perch on the edge of the bed. “Richard Rainier
and his evil sidekick gave me the impression that they’d wanted to blend in with
the crowd and not make a fuss. Then without warning the demon went all
slasher-flick nightmarish, and it caused a panic. Maybe it wanted to feed off of
that negativity? That’s how spawns of hell are usually portrayed in just about
every Halloween movie I’ve ever seen.”