Destroying Angel (31 page)

Rebecca groped in her pack. She came out with a knife. It was about eight inches long, roughly the size of the hunting knives David had carried as a boy, but serrated on the back side, and with a sheath meant to strap around the leg, not the waist.

“I’d rather have a hand grenade,” he said.

“Unfortunately, I’m short on grenades,” she said as she strapped the knife to his thigh. “If the gun doesn’t work, cut the bastard’s throat. If you can.”

The weight against his thigh felt comforting, in a way. He nodded. “Get Stephen Paul on the radio. Tell him we’re ready.”

She went back and forth on the radio. It seemed everyone was prepared and had their orders. There was no reason for any further delay, except the terror that made David’s stomach lurch and heave like a wild horse that has just discovered a saddle on its back and a bit in its mouth.

He gripped the Beretta with trembling hands while Rebecca lined up three full clips of ammo for her assault rifle. She glanced one last time at David, then rose and poured fire at the Humvee. The night lit up with gunfire from all sides—rifles, handguns from their side, and the assault rifles and the heavy machine gun from the enemy.

David climbed to his feet and ran into the road.

He’s only a man.

Jacob told himself this as he pursued Taylor Junior through the labyrinth of fins, humps, and spires of Witch’s Warts. Jacob’s enemy knew Witch’s Warts, that was all. He’d plotted a path into Blister Creek, had practiced his infiltration—the camera footage outside the temple attested to that. There was nothing supernatural helping Taylor Junior move at such speed.

Yet as Jacob followed the darting figure through the maze, he struggled with memories from earlier in the night. His head still throbbed from his fall earlier that evening, and yet it was hard to believe that it had been only a few hours since he’d wrestled with the angel—or
dreamed
he had, at least.

Starting about a quarter mile into the labyrinth, the ground heaved upward, and the fins rose higher as a result. A ravine
opened in the slickrock where spring runoff had eroded a channel. It stretched, yawning, in the darkness, with shadows hulking on the other side to mark the resumption of the stone maze.

Taylor Junior got a running start and leaped across the gap. As he cleared the ravine, moonlight winked against a buckle on his backpack, and then he disappeared, shadow against shadow.

Jacob was only seconds behind, and he ran toward the ravine, terrified, knowing he had to leap in the darkness. He remembered the failed jump from earlier in the night, when the gap between the sandstone fins stretched, impossibly, while he was airborne. Or so it had seemed. He’d misjudged the distance and fallen. And now his stomach lurched. Only the greater fear of imagining Taylor Junior reaching the center of town kept him running toward the ravine.

He reached the edge and jumped. The air rushed past his face and he was falling. And then he was across. Jacob landed in a clump of rabbit brush, rose, gathered himself, and climbed the sandstone hump on all fours. He got to the top and spotted the silhouette of Taylor Junior racing across the top, even as the hump narrowed to a few feet across. Heart pounding, Jacob followed. Darkness loomed on either side. One stumble, one misplaced foot, and he’d stagger over the edge and fall.

His quarry had nothing to lose. Anyone else might have hesitated before jumping across a ravine in the darkness or scrambling along that ridge, but the insane, twisted urgency of Taylor Junior’s mission of destruction seemed to strip away all caution.

Worse still, Taylor Junior knew he was being followed. There was no way he didn’t know. Even with the path marked for him, Jacob couldn’t completely avoid stumbling into brush or scraping
his shoes against stone. Taylor Junior must have heard by now. Jacob prepared to grab for his gun, but the man never turned.

They reached the highest point of the fin, and Jacob saw now that Taylor Junior wasn’t taking this route to lose him. By going up and over, they’d bypassed a series of ridges, dead ends, and monolithic stone walls that formed a barrier to direct passage through the center of Witch’s Warts. Jacob caught a brief glimpse of the temple, its lights casting a white, ethereal glow. It was closer than he’d have thought possible, no more than two miles distant now.

The sandstone hump ended at a narrow gap to jump in order to reach another fin. Taylor Junior made a leap. Heart pounding, Jacob followed. He reached the other side, and now the two men were scrambling back down toward the ground.

Another jump. Another reminder of his fall. Something jogged loose from his memory.

The angel.

Jacob had fallen short, but he’d grabbed the stone on the other side, and then a hand closed around his wrist. And when he looked up, the dark angel was looking back.

But that couldn’t be. He’d felt the angel’s hand on his wrist. An
evil spirit’s
hand. A
physical
presence. But an evil spirit had no body. The being’s hand should have passed right through him.

But I felt it.

Even as he thought this, Jacob saw his chance.

They’d reached the ground again, plunging briefly into darkness, but then the sky brightened to gray as they entered a clearing. The huge, dominating rocks, so clumped together moments earlier, opened into a wide, sandy expanse maybe fifty yards across. There were no fins, but here and there sandstone hoodoos, each no
more than five or six feet tall, squatted on the ground like gnomish sentinels. Clumps of brush and low, scrubby juniper dotted the ground, casting shadows in the moonlight.

Taylor Junior reached the clearing first, but the center was deep, soft sand, swept into dunes that gathered around the hoodoos, and his pace slowed dramatically as the sand gave way beneath his feet. He was no more than thirty feet ahead when Jacob reached the sand, drew his gun, and dropped to one knee to take aim.

They’d been running, scrambling, and jumping for the past twenty minutes, and Jacob was shaky with exhaustion. The gun trembled in his hand. He sucked in air, tried to steady his breathing and his hand as Taylor Junior scrambled up one of the dunes. When the man reached the top, he gave a quick glance backward, the first time he’d looked over his shoulder. The moonlight caught him full in the face. Something ugly stretched across his features. Hatred, fear, jealousy—Jacob imagined that he saw them all.

Jacob fired.

Taylor Junior staggered backward, losing his backpack as he fell. He slipped on the sand and tumbled down the back side of the dune. He made no sound.

Jacob moved forward slowly, cautious and knowing he had time. That hadn’t been a glancing blow—he’d drawn blood. Taylor Junior would still be alive on the other side, possibly fumbling for his weapon. There was a good chance he’d be sitting back, armed, and waiting for Jacob to crest the dune to get a clear shot. But he wouldn’t be going anywhere, not in a hurry.

And so Jacob circled the dune, using the hoodoos as protection. He came around to see Taylor Junior back on his feet, stumbling toward the fins on the far side of the clearing. Jacob took
aim and fired. This time he didn’t get a clear shot, and his bullet ricocheted off the rock wall behind his quarry. Taylor Junior disappeared into the rocks again, staggering.

The stagger told Jacob everything. His prey was wounded and would be easy to track now. No problem to keep pace—it was only a matter of time. Taylor Junior’s backpack had rolled and slid down the sand to come to a rest at the bottom of the dune, and Jacob took a quick look. It was filled with grenades, handguns, and boxes of nine-millimeter shells. And heavy, which made Taylor Junior’s flight across Witch’s Warts even more impressive. Jacob was exhausted—what kind of stamina did his enemy possess that he could run, climb, and jump at such speed and for so long?

Jacob tossed aside the backpack and continued his pursuit. He came around the next bend to see Taylor Junior climbing another sandstone fin. Even wounded, he was making good speed. Another moment and he’d have been out of sight. Maybe he meant to take cover now and, instead of continuing into town, would find another hiding place so he could nurse his wounds. Jacob started up after him, gun tucked into its holster, but alert for the instant his enemy turned.

Taylor Junior slid the last few feet down the far side of the fin to regain the ground. He left a smear of blood all the way down. Jacob followed and set off in pursuit across the slickrock, cutting the distance between them in half. Taylor Junior and then Jacob entered a passage between two fins, not much wider than their shoulders. Jacob fired again, but Taylor Junior ducked out the other side and the bullet pinged off the stone wall.

Taylor Junior was waiting in ambush when Jacob came through the other side. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into Jacob’s
gut. The two men flew backward. Jacob crashed into the ground, air driven from his lungs by the force of the other man’s body. The Beretta fell out of his hand. Hands grabbed at his throat.

Jacob got his knee up and forced Taylor Junior away. He wrestled the man onto his back, one hand groping for the gun, or even a rock or stick to use as a weapon. He found nothing but sand. He forced his elbow down on Taylor Junior’s windpipe, but then they were tumbling over again, with the wounded man on top.

Taylor Junior was shorter and thinner than Jacob, but the muscles on his arms were as hard and lean as braided rope. His hands were strong, and his thumbs probed Jacob’s face as they wrestled, seeking an eye socket. His stench was overwhelming, a mix of body odor and something dank that smelled like the carcass of a sheep discovered in the desert, rotted and boiling with maggots.

Jacob was tiring. The man was wounded—how could he keep fighting? No human could do that. For a moment the two men locked into each other’s embrace, panting.

“You’re going to die,” Taylor Junior said. “I’m going to kill you. Your wife will be mine. Your children, mine. Your sister, mine. Your kingdom, mine. You have been sealed unto death.”

It was a feint
, Jacob thought.
He pretended to be wounded. He tricked me.

No, Jacob saw the bullet hit, saw the man stumble and fall. And Taylor Junior dropped his backpack, with all its weapons and ammo. He was wounded, and he couldn’t fight forever. Problem was, neither could Jacob.

Taylor Junior fell on his right side. He jerked to the right. He must be protecting his left side where the bullet hit.

The struggle resumed. The next time they went over, Jacob probed his hand along Taylor Junior’s left side. The shoulder, the shoulder blade. When his hand brushed Taylor Junior’s side at about the eighth rib, the man flinched. The bullet had hit the ribs there and broken them in a place that put excruciating pressure on the diaphragm. Jacob dug his fingers into the wound. They sank into fractured bone, into shredded tendon and muscle.

Taylor Junior screamed. He jerked and thrashed like a fish being gutted alive, his bucking so forceful he threw Jacob off. He scrambled backward, grabbed at his injured ribs, and struggled to his feet. He turned to flee. Jacob stood up, his muscles shaking with exhaustion. He spotted the gun where he’d dropped it, scooped it up, and turned to shoot his enemy in the back.

Jacob drew short as something blocked his path. A man stood in front of him in a white robe, open at the chest, and a black apron. The man was barefoot. The moonlight caught his robe and he seemed to glow, but his face and hair remained hidden in shadows. The evil spirit, the destroying angel. Taylor Junior slipped around the corner beyond the spirit with a single backward glance, his face frozen in pain and terror.

The being reached inside his robe. He pulled out a sword. It sucked the darkness from the air, forming a shadow so deep that everything around it seemed lighter in comparison. Caught in the moonlight, it grew darker still and sent shadows crawling like snakes along the stone wall behind it.

“Jacob Christianson,” the angel said, “this is the night of your destruction.”

He lifted the sword above his head and brought it down at Jacob’s head.

“Don’t shoot!” Lillian screamed.

Eliza thought at first that she was yelling at the figure in the yellow hazmat suit who held the assault rifle. But Lillian was screaming at Miriam, who had moved into a crouch to Eliza’s right, her gun already in hand. The assault rifle swung toward Eliza.

Their opponent was too short to be a man, and the hazmat suit disguised but did not entirely hide her form. She was heavy at the hips, built like a woman who had given birth, probably several times. Some of the children lying on the floor, their chests barely moving as they smothered in carbon dioxide, were probably her own. What was she doing? Why wasn’t she helping?

But what did the woman see? Three figures, their faces obscured behind the black, insect-like tubes coming out of the rebreather masks, had just dropped into their midst. And armed.

These thoughts flickered through Eliza’s mind even as she saw the inevitable. Miriam had become a machine, its on switch flipped, its motor spinning autonomously, its gears in motion. Her training had kicked in, and nothing would stop it. Lillian threw herself at the woman in the hazmat suit, reaching for the gun as if recognizing she had to get it down before Miriam could—