Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) (18 page)

The young man waved a quick greeting. “Ah, the elusive Ella, I presume. I’m Macbeth, IT genius of a security company run by descendants of the Seraphim, and king of the internet.”

“His penchant for modesty is becoming legendary,” Nate added.

“I’ve always wanted to meet royalty.” Ella tried to keep it light, but when Macbeth’s somber expression didn’t change it was hard to keep her stomach from going squirrelly. “I take it you and your Seraphim-descendant bosses have been trying to find out what it is we’re dealing with?”

Macbeth nodded. “After Nate reported your run-in with this thing in the hotel lobby, several flags went up. You said that when you first saw it with Richard Rainier, it was wearing the image of the deceased Lana Dever, right?”

“Right.”

“One of our online friends is an investigative journalist, and while cross-referencing Lana’s name with the Rainiers, she managed to dig up a single photo from a school fundraiser three years ago, where Lana and Richard were shown to be dancing together. That inspired me to troubleshoot into Richard’s email to see if there was a deeper connection.”

Ella blinked. “Troubleshoot?”

“He means hacked.” Nate sighed.

“
Hacked
is such a nasty word. What I do is look for weaknesses in any electronic security I come up against. I should get a medal for all the troubleshooting I do.”

“We’ll get on that as soon as we take care of our looming apocalypse problem,” Nate said, and Ella nearly laughed at the cop side of him squirming over Macbeth’s mentally acrobatic justifications. “What did you find?”

“Apparently Richard Rainier had a secret relationship going on with Lana Dever. She wasn’t a member of the Rainier family’s hoity-toity circle—she was an ordinary teacher at a private school in Asheville. According to Richard’s email exchanges with her, it seems he feared his family wouldn’t accept someone so ‘common’ into the fold.”

“I really hate the Rainiers,” Ella muttered. “Nobody thinks like that anymore, do they? The only people who should have mattered in that equation were Lana and Richard.”

“The point isn’t whether or not the Rainiers are snobs of the highest order,” Macbeth said, waving this away. “We now have proof Richard knew exactly what Lana looked like. That was one of the major clues to the demon’s true identity.”

Nate frowned. “I’m not following.”

“The next thing that happened in the hotel lobby was another big clue,” Macbeth went on, holding up a hand that begged for patience. “Ella, as you were watching Richard and his pet monster, its face began to change, right? It was still the image of Lana Dever, but it was the messed-up image you were familiar with. Were you thinking about Lana at that moment—envisioning what she looked like before she died?”

Ella frowned. “Yes. I’d never seen Lana before Charles Rainier carved her up. When I saw them in the hotel lobby, I was thinking how tragic it was that she’d been so thoroughly destroyed. And before I knew it, that pretty face turned into the nightmare I remembered.”

“Exactly. This demon isn’t into bringing the dead back to life, like we first thought. This hell spawn’s major power is all about telepathy.”

Ella felt a jolt go through Nate. “Telepathy? What, you mean like mind reading?”

“Mind reading is just the tip of the iceberg.” Macbeth grabbed up a Venti-sized cup of coffee and held onto it as if it were his security blanket. “It locks onto the most painful memories we have and uses them against us. For Richard Rainier, it’s obviously the lost love of his life. For you, Ella, it bounces from Lana’s ruined face to Charles Rainier—not surprising since you’ve got a lot of stuff in your past that would make anyone curl up into a little ball.”

Ella’s eyes narrowed. “Do I look curled up to you?”

The self-proclaimed king of the internet looked like he’d swallowed a bug. “Uh, no.”

“You were saying it uses telepathy?” Nate couldn’t seem to stop a wicked grin even as he took the hand Ella had rested on his shoulder and brought it to his lips.

“Yeah, and it’s a gift which directly feeds into its other, more obvious ability—shape-shifting. We were so distracted by that overt talent that we probably never would have figured out who this demonic dude was if Ella hadn’t experienced that strange shift in its appearance.”

“So who is this thing we’re fighting?”

“His name is Dantalion, and bottom-lining it, he’s a real badass. He’s ancient, the seventy-first of the seventy-two demons that Solomon subjugated, and a Great Duke of hell, according to apocrypha lore. Once fully manifested, his powers are ridiculous. But even in a weak, semi-manifested state he can screw up the world in a big way as long as he has some miserable idiot to feed off of, like Richard Rainier.”

“Hold on,” Ella said, holding up a hand. “I get some of what you just said, but I’ve never heard the term ‘semi-manifested’ before. Either a demon is here or it isn’t, right?”

“Being fully manifested has nothing to do with being corporeal within the human realm. It has to do with power, and right now he’s weak. At his current level of evolution, he probably wouldn’t be able to maintain a stable appearance in large crowds due to lack of strength. In other words, he wouldn’t be able to block out an inundation of human thoughts. You reported that the demon and Richard were almost standing on each other, correct?”

“Right.”

“In a semi-manifested state while in a crowd, Dantalion has to be close to the person he’s feeding off of.”

“How inconvenient for him.” Nate seemed to perk up at the news. “But very convenient for us. All I have to do is separate this demon from Richard and it’ll be a cakewalk from there.”

“Don’t underestimate Dantalion, Nate,” Macbeth warned. “Even in this state, he’s still dangerous. And fully manifested... Well, the power-up he gets is unreal, and he develops a crapload of other extremely awful abilities.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s focus on what Dantalion can do now.” Clearly not wanting to dive into the deep end first, Macbeth looked as serious as an open grave. “At the moment he can read any human being’s mind in his immediate vicinity, know all their secrets and then use that knowledge to his advantage. He’s known as the demon of a thousand faces, and is able to appear in either male or female form. Being anyone and knowing everything is pretty much the basis of this dude.”

Nate expelled a rough breath. “Gee, is that all?”

“Nope. Once he fully manifests, he goes all out by actually
controlling
thoughts of humans. Crowds no longer short-circuit him. On the contrary, his influence can affect masses all at once. He can implant visions in people’s minds so they see whatever he wants them to see, even if he’s thousands of miles away from his human targets, and fill the world with insanity. If he becomes fully manifested, Dantalion will have absolute control over every mind in the world.”

Ella’s blood ran cold at the thought of living in a world of chaos and madness. “It’s hard to believe he’s not at full power now. He’s causing a lot of trouble as it is.”

“Be grateful he’s not. The Dantalion you’re hunting at the moment is so weak he can’t even keep a corporeal form without leeching off whatever sidekick he’s latched onto—in this case, Richard Rainier. The kind of trouble he’s dealt out so far has been chump change. You know the Roman emperor Nero?”

Nate’s brows shot up. “Not personally.”

“I hear he was a music fan,” Ella offered.

Macbeth’s sigh was heavily put-upon. “I’m surrounded by comedians. There’s a professor in alternative religions and demonology who wrote a paper on how he believes Emperor Nero didn’t just spontaneously belly-flop into a pool full of crazy. He hypothesizes that Nero showed all the signs of having his brain hijacked by Dantalion, whose mere presence alone will ultimately drive a normal human insane.”

Ella remembered the sick squirming around in her head. “I can believe that.”

“There’s no way to prove whether or not this theory of Nero and Dantalion is accurate, but just think—that was only one man who might have been in the clutches of this demon. One man, and the greatest city on earth burned down. Imagine what Dantalion could do in this day and age if he becomes fully manifested. You used the word ‘apocalypse’? I think that’s right on target.”

A chill washed over her, so dreadful it tangled her stomach into desperate knots. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He’s not manifested yet.”

“Much as I hate to say this, I think he’s close to his goal.” Nate’s gaze drifted to the keyboard, and the taut-wire tension she could feel in him ratcheted her alarm up another sweaty notch. “In my dreams I saw these pulsating chains trailing off Dantalion’s fingers, and I knew they were...I don’t know. Feeding him. Only two of his fingers didn’t have any chains.”

Ella put a hand over a heart that was suddenly trying to knock its way into the open air. “What does that mean?”

“I feel that Dantalion is somehow feeding off the deaths of Briella Fields, Gabrielle Litte and Jasmine Sims, and five other people I saw with them. If I’m interpreting my visions correctly, he only has two to go. Hell, he even told me as much.”

Macbeth took a nervous gulp of coffee. “That makes sense. Dantalion’s need for energy is two-tiered. Like any other demon, he needs Rainier’s negative emotions to maintain a consistent foothold in the human realm. But to become fully manifested, he needs a much bigger payoff energy-wise. The death of innocent people would be the biggest power source of all, so that must be what he’s going for. He made a priest kill five people down here in Dallas this past summer, so that’s where your five others come from.” He paused. “What else have your visions shown you?”

“Just that he doesn’t want me looking at him until he’s ‘ready,’ and it’s pissing him off that he can’t seem to pinpoint where I am. It’s like I’m in some kind of weird demonic blind spot.”

“What I find strange is that Dantalion hasn’t adopted any traumatic faces to terrorize you, Nate.” Ella shook her head, frowning. “Nobody’s past is trauma-free, and I know you’re no exception. Yet in both your visions and in real life, Dantalion only shows you the image of a faceless man. Why is that?”

“I have no idea.”

“And another thing.” Ella glanced back to the screen. “You said Dantalion had a priest kill five people in your area, but the demon didn’t go for a Seraphim descendant who was right there. Why? Why cower behind regular people?”

Macbeth looked surprised by the question. “I...don’t know, now that I think about it.”

“Neither do I.” Nate’s eyes hardened and the smile curling the corners of his mouth was a cold baring of teeth. “But I’ll be sure to ask him.”

Chapter Sixteen

The breeze coming off of Lake Michigan made Ella wish she’d had more time to grab something heavier than a hoodie; maybe Nate’s huge duster coat they’d left in the car would have been a better choice. She huddled closer to Nate as they moved along the wide concrete walkway lined with trendy restaurants and boutiques, and he obliged her by draping a protective arm over her shoulders.

“You can’t tell me you’ve come to love all this cold.” He brought them to a stop so a mother could take a picture of her brood gathered around a signpost that held various distances to cities from that point, then resumed when the kids got into a shoving match. “You’re a Southern hothouse flower. How can you stand it here in the North Pole?”

“It’s not that bad. Asheville has been known to get snow, you know.”

“Still, Chicago is a nice place to visit, but it’s completely different from anything found down South. Though maybe that’s part of the appeal for you?”

Her teeth wanted to chatter, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or nerves. “I suppose that was a part of it, at least in the beginning. Other than my cousin, who let me stay with his family for the first month I was here, I didn’t have any reminders of home. At the time that was what I needed—just a little breathing space to get my head right and my feet back under me.”

“I knew your cousin lied to me. He swore he hadn’t seen you in years.”

“You found me anyway.”

“Greatest find I ever made.” He glanced at her. “Have you fallen in love with your adopted town, or would you ever consider moving back down South?”

“Not to Asheville. I’m done with that place.”

“What about somewhere else? Someplace that’s not as cold as a well-digger’s ass.”

“Since I don’t know how cold a well-digger’s ass is, it’s hard to say.” It was also hard to concentrate on their conversation. She knew what Nate was trying to do, and she loved him all the more for his attempt to distract her from the fact that with every step, they closed in on the magnificent botanical center of Chicago, the Crystal Gardens, on the edge of the pier’s amusement park.

And if Nate’s visions were right, the hideout of a demon.

The crowds thinned after they passed the golden arches of a fast-food eatery, the bigger attractions now behind them. Part shopping venue, part amusement park and cruise excursion embarkation point, part convention center, Navy Pier was Chicago’s premier tourist attraction, and it always seemed to be under some sort of renovation as it revamped itself to fit the times. While the amusement park was still open, most of the section that housed the convention center next door to it was currently veiled with smoked glass, layers of scaffolding and industrial-sized blue tarp. A full moon hung over the water, and she was so busy admiring its magnificent glow on the water’s inky black surface that it took her a moment to realize Nate had come to a halt.

“Nate?” She searched his face, and saw he was looking at the scaffolding with an expression that seemed almost puzzled. “What is it?”

“Expectations really can be a bitch to let go of, along with the burden of guilt. Did you know that, Ella?”

She put her hand to his cheek, alarmed. Maybe Dantalion had already gotten his demony claws into Nate’s mind and had twisted it sideways. “What are you talking about?”

“All my life I expected to be crippled in terms of power, so I was. I expected what little power I had to work quietly, so it did. And when that gift wound up hurting people, I felt so guilty I wanted it to go away. So it vanished. Now I’ve got to let it all go and just...let it happen on its own terms. And wherever it takes me, I’m not going to do my version of what my mother did by denying its existence. Good or bad, I’m committed to following my gift.”

“Why are you saying this now?”

“Because that tarp is glowing and I just saw in my mind’s eye the two of us going through it.” He glanced back at her. “It’s not glowing, is it?”

“No.” Before Ella could stop herself, she grabbed his hand and took comfort in how solid it felt. “But I’m ready if you are.”

“Last chance to be smart and back out.” He pulled her close, and the fierce tenderness in the arms that held her warmed her more than their shared body heat. “I can’t tell you to hide out until it’s all over, because I know you won’t. I’ve finally figured out that hiding from a fight is something you won’t do.”

And she’d thought he would never learn. “Damn straight.”

“So I’m not telling. I’m asking.” As if he found the feel of her body irresistible when she was so close, he rubbed his hands over her back then, with a quick glance around the sparsely populated area of the pier, slid them lower to cup her bum. He massaged the rounded flesh until she could no longer feel the cold. “I’m asking you to stay out of this. Protect yourself like the irreplaceable treasure you are. Value yourself like I do, and let me do this on my own.”

“Nate.” Her throat clenched on a knot of turbulent emotion too chaotic and sweet to adequately label. He thought she was valuable. Irreplaceable. With just a few words this man turned her inside out. “Feel free to take on that Dantalion guy, I won’t get in your way. In fact, if what your friend Macbeth said is true, negativity is part of this demon’s daily diet. My bad memories would probably feed him in the same way that Richard Rainier feeds him, so there’s no way I want to give that thing any extra fuel as you go up against him. I’ll do my best to keep Rainier away from Dantalion so his pet demon can’t plug into him. It’s the only thing I can think of to help level the playing field for you. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I do know one thing—you will not be going in there alone.”

A harsh breath erupted from him before he crushed her against him as though needing to forever imprint the feel of her on his flesh. “What I wouldn’t give to have you a thousand miles away from this spot.”

“I’m right where I want to be.” She breathed in the warm male scent of him, and she knew in her heart it was true. No matter what hell they were about to walk into, facing it as a team was the only way to go.

His mouth nuzzled into her hair, his arms tightening for a bone-cracking moment in a response that needed no words. Then he let her go only to drag her toward the tarp, his face harsh and unrecognizable with a determination that was downright grim. “This ends now. And when we’re done, I’m taking you home.”

* * *

It was hard for Nate to believe Ella couldn’t see the path leading him through the construction zone, but he wasn’t going to second-guess it. He was done questioning, done with trying to guide his abilities in a direction that he could comfortably live with. Being careful hadn’t cut it in the past, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be enough now. Now was the time to go all in. Not only was he fighting to keep the world from going down the frigging toilet, but for the first time in his life he had a reason to keep all the dark and ugly things at bay.

He’d take on all of hell itself if it meant keeping Ella safe.

The only illumination came from the moonlight streaming in through the windows they passed, but no matter how dark it got he knew exactly where to go. Without pause he wove his way through stacks of boxed floor tile into a nearly blacked-out service hallway that smelled like the French fries of the fast-food place they’d passed earlier. With his free hand he pulled the 9mm from its back holster, pausing at a heavy blue tarp draped over a rectangular double-doorway to hold it out to Ella.

“Do you know how to use this?”

“I can’t.” He could see her grimace in the gloom as she pushed his hand away. “Jacob branded me as hopeless after I missed a target ten times in a row. It was like some kind of record. Besides, I think you’ll need it more than me.”

“Something tells me going up against a Great Duke of hell with a pistol isn’t going to do a whole lot of damage.”

“Trust me, it’s better off with you.”

“I’m trusting you to take care of yourself.” Palming the gun, Nate bent and pressed a quick, hard kiss on her mouth and wished to whatever higher power would listen to a man like him that they’d have time for much, much more once this night was over. “You ready?”

He heard her breath quaver. “As I’ll ever be.”

Adrenaline burned through his veins as he ducked through the tarp and into a vast room. As big as any cathedral, it was a multi-faceted glass botanical garden that currently had only a few palm trees in circular planters dotted around the room. Illumination trickled in from the amusement park portion of the Pier beyond, the giant Ferris wheel a dancing circle of light while the full moon shone through the multi-paned glass ceiling. The air smelled of sawdust and freshly poured earth, and through the night-washed gloom he could make out the skeletal stands of scaffolding leading up to a massive display of specialized spotlights. Here and there, the gutted-out area was dotted with blank round banquet tables, but most of those tables were folded and stacked against the walls, along with a veritable fleet of folding chairs, bags of mulch and mountains of black crates that looked like they might hold sound or lighting equipment.

All of that faded into inconsequential nothingness the instant his attention latched onto one of the few tables that had been laid out for use. Standing on top of it appeared to be a lifeless, seven-foot-tall mannequin dressed in a nondescript pair of sweatpants and nothing else. His eyes began to throb, and without looking at Ella he motioned for her to hide amongst the black crates before he moved on silent feet toward the table. His body, already warm with anticipation of battle, flashed over with invisible fire, and his muscles quivered with the urgent need to unleash a firestorm of violence. Despite his doubt that it would do any real damage, the gun felt comfortingly heavy in his hand, a solid promise of at least inflicting some sort of hurt on—

“You really think I don’t know you’re here?” That hideous screeching voice, like the sound of nails on a blackboard forced into the form of words, came from the demon no more than twenty feet away. “You puny cripple, even from this distance and incomplete as I am, I can still sense your half-breed presence.”

Nate froze, stunned. “Well. So much for being in your blind spot.”

Something that could have been a laugh grated from the monstrosity. “My brethren and I are fruit from the same poisoned tree from which you abominations originally fell.”

“We’re nothing alike.”

An amused sound came from the no-faced hell spawn. “True. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say we’re like magnets, instinctively repelling one another due to our similar bloodlines. Those moments throughout your lifetime when your skin crawled, your fragile heart raced, and you knew beyond all reason that you were being watched? That was me, cripple. Waiting to swallow you whole.”

“Why wait?” There was no way Nate was going to reveal how much those words rattled his cage, so he pushed as much coldness as he could into his voice. “I was even more vulnerable then than I am now. What’s been holding you back?”

“Timing. First I had to search out the locations of each one of you half-blooded creatures, so I wasn’t ready to make my move. Now I am.” Without warning, the faceless mannequin-like thing blurred off the table. It moved so fast Nate had no hope of dodging the spider-fingered hand that clamped like a vise around his neck before it slammed him to the ground. “Though the point is no doubt moot, I still feel the need to introduce myself.” The whisper emanated from a blank face that had no mouth, and everything human in Nate squirmed in revulsion at the absolute wrongness of it. “I am Dantalion. And I have come to destroy your everything.”

* * *

Sick horror flooded Ella as Nate flew backward to slam into the floor, the featureless, waxworklike demon landing on him with a mighty crash. The pure savagery of it was shocking, but it was the inhuman way it moved that made the contents of her stomach wobble and want to evacuate through the nearest exit.

Without warning, strong arms clamped around her from behind. She jerked her head around to see Richard Rainier grinning at her with such unholy glee that, for a terrible moment, she flashed back to Charles. Who knew that madness had a way of underscoring family resemblance?

“I’m afraid I can’t let you interfere in bringing Lana back, Ms. Littlefield,” Rainier said, seemingly breathless with the delight in getting the drop on her. “All she needs is another couple of lives to bring her all the way back. What poetic justice it is to have you, the bitch who left Lana alone to die, be the key to her miraculous resurrection.”

“What?” Maybe it was because her heart was trying to beat a hole through her rib cage, but Ella couldn’t get her brain to make sense of his words. “Lana Dever was dead by the time I managed to escape. The one you should be mad at is your brother, not me.
He’s
the one who killed her.”

“Lana told me you left her to bleed out, chained to a wall like a dog.”

“That’s not true—”

“She told me she begged you to help her.
Begged
. But you chose to help that fucking vegetable Jasmine Sims instead. She told me you let her die.”

“Are you even listening to yourself, Richard? You really believe your dead love came back from the grave to talk smack about me? Does that make any sense?”

“It makes more sense than you could possibly know,” he snarled. “My brother dragged himself up from the deepest pits of hell to apologize for what he had done, and to offer a deal to wipe away my grief. He understood how he’d destroyed me by taking Lana away. To make it up to me, he worked it so that if I gave up everything, my very soul, I could have my Lana back.”

Through all the fear and fury, there was a thread of pity. But she wasn’t Mother Teresa, and there were limits to her charity. “You Rainiers are so screwed up. Seriously.”

“Screwed up or not, I’m getting what I want, and that’s all that matters.” As if to prove the rightness of her statement, his smile slid into a high-pitched giggle. “I almost have her all the way back. When I’m close to her, I can see her face so clearly. When I make love to her, I know that soon there’s going to be a time when she won’t fade away when I’m not right there with her.”