Gabriel was at my side in an instant, J.B. right behind him. They both manhandled me to my feet, Gabriel on the left side and J.B. on the right. Both of them patted me all over, looking for injuries.
“Get off, get off!” I shouted, and flapped my arms at them. They both stepped away.
“Are you all right?” Gabriel asked.
“Are you hurt?” J.B. asked.
“I’m fine,” I said, and wobbled a little as the ground shuddered again. Gabriel put his hand just above my elbow to steady me. I waved him away. “What the hell is going on?”
That was when the screaming started. We could hear it through the vents.
J.B. dashed into the hallway, Gabriel and I following. The Hall of Records was in the subbasement, two floors below ground level. The hall was filled with confused-looking Agents, the ones who worked on the thankless task of moving the Agency into the twenty-first century. These were the data processors who spent their working hours entering information from the file cards into a database. They looked like naked mole rats seeing the sun for the first time.
“What’s happening?” a woman asked as J.B. shot past her and into the stairwell.
The sounds of screams and snarls filled the air. Heating/ cooling vents lined the hallway, and they broadcast human agony as clearly as if it had been a P.A. system.
“Stay here,” I shouted, slowing long enough to make sure they understood. “All of you stay together and go into the Hall.”
The Hall had a steel-reinforced door and a coded entry system. It was one of the few rooms in the building with anything that resembled security. The Agency took the records of the dead very seriously.
Gabriel ran past me and followed J.B. The stairwell door banged into the wall as he threw it open, and then slammed shut with tremendous force.
“But what’s happening?” a man asked.
“I don’t know, but the important thing is that you stay safe and you stay together. Go into the Hall and lock the door, and don’t open it until I or J.B. Bennett comes back.”
“What if you don’t come back?” another woman asked.
“Then wait until the screaming stops,” I said, and ran to the stairwell.
17
THERE WAS NO SIGN OF GABRIEL OR J.B. THE STAIRWELL was eerily quiet—there were no vents. My boots echoed as I pounded up the two flights of steps and threw the door open at the first-floor lobby.
Hell awaited me.
The carnage was nearly too much to process. Everywhere I looked there were bodies of Agents, dozens of them, most of them in pieces. Blood had been spattered on the floor, on the walls and on the ceiling—the air was filled with the tang of it. This was death at its ugliest, its most undignified. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve so that I wouldn’t throw up.
The bodies of the receptionist and security guard were slumped over the front desk. There was nothing left of the guard but his torso and a few dangling entrails. His uniform appeared to be torn by the teeth of something very large.
The receptionist had fared a little better. Only her head was missing.
I shivered and realized that there was a big gaping crater where the front door and part of the exterior wall used to be. Chunks of glass and cement appeared to have been thrown inside the lobby from some kind of explosive impact. That must have been what shook the building when we were in the basement.
There were several rubberneckers standing outside on the sidewalk, most of them looking in and then backing away to scream or vomit. The sounds of screams still echoed through the vents, and I realized that whatever was in the building had moved upstairs. And that J.B. and Gabriel had gone after it.
Nobody at the Agency seemed to have been aware that many of their colleagues would be dying today. That meant that these deaths were not planned, not part of the natural order.
Ramuell.
I bolted across the lobby, trying not to think about what squished beneath my boots. I mumbled an apology to the dead. There was no way for me to get to the elevators without stepping on the bodies of my colleagues.
Like many downtown buildings, floors one through three were accessible only by elevator. The stairwell to those floors was locked and could be opened only by a security guard or in the event of an emergency, such as a fire. I figured that the current situation probably qualified as an emergency, but the only person who knew how to open the stairwell was currently in pieces scattered all over the lobby.
There were three elevators. One of the elevator doors was propped open by a human leg. The interior looked like a charnel house. The Agents inside had been trapped. I felt sick when I thought of their dying moments—confused, terrified, helpless.
This is not helping,
I told myself.
You have to worry about the living now, not the dead.
The other two elevators were closed. I pressed the button and crossed my fingers, hoping that they still worked.
The middle elevator doors opened with the familiar ding of the bell, and the interior was miraculously free of either Ramuell or mutilated Agents. I climbed in and stabbed the button for the fourth floor. I was sure that the nephilim had already moved past the second and third floors, and I didn’t need to see the bodies of any more people that I couldn’t help. If the battle had already moved on, then I could access the stairwell from the fourth floor and go up from there.
My stomach was knotted with anxiety as I watched the numbers change for each floor.
2 . . . 3 . . . 4.
Just before the doors swished open, I felt a little twinge of magic flare up. I hadn’t felt more than a whisper since I’d set that starburst on Gabriel. It still didn’t feel like my magic was anything close to full power, but there was more than a match flame. Hopefully it would be enough to keep me from getting eaten alive.
The elevator doors opened and a screaming Agent, who must have been leaning against the closed exterior doors, fell backward into the car. I jammed the OPEN DOOR button so that I could check on the Agent, whose face was covered in blood.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”
The guy kept screaming, eyes widened, obviously in total shock. I patted him all over and couldn’t find anything obvious—no gaping wounds or limbs gnawed off—so I hit the button for 1, stepped off the elevator and let the doors close. Hopefully he would have the sense to get out and run as soon as he hit the bottom floor.
There were more bodies strewn in the hallway just in front of the elevators, and the sounds of screaming, snarling and yelling to the left. I darted past some open office doors and to the conference room at the end of the hall. Just as I reached the doorway someone’s arms came flying through and I had to duck to avoid getting hit. Hot blood spattered on my face.
The stink of sulfur filled the air. Six Agents had been cornered by a horror that they would never understand.
Ramuell looked even more disgusting than he had before. The skin on his arms was shredded and burnt, some of it still hanging in pieces from his hands where the starburst had caused the most damage. His head scraped the ceiling and knocked the tiles out of place. I wondered briefly where J.B. and Gabriel were if they weren’t fighting Ramuell.
Oh, please don’t let them have been eaten.
Before I could think of or do anything, a clawed hand shot from the red mass of Ramuell’s body, wrapped around a skinny male Agent who looked like Buddy Holly, and snapped back to the creature’s mouth. I couldn’t actually see his mouth as his back was to me, but I heard the crunching of blood and bone and the terrified screams of the Agent as he was eaten alive.
The magic that had lay dormant inside me roared to life in protest. This was not to be borne. I would not allow anybody else to suffer. I just had to lure Ramuell away so I could get a safe shot at him with my nightfire, and allow the Agents time to escape.
“Hey, Big ’n’ Ugly!” I called.
The crunching paused, and several of the Agents in the corner looked panicked when they noticed me. One of them made a shooing motion at me, trying to tell me to get away. For some reason the gesture made me a little tearyeyed. He was about to get eaten and he wanted me—a total stranger—to escape.
The nephilim turned toward me. Ramuell’s eyes lit up with glee. A jean-clad leg hung between its large teeth like a macabre toothpick. Each tooth was fang-sharp and his breath stank like a butcher’s floor.
“I have been looking for you, little girl.” The leg fell out of his mouth as he spoke. “You owe me a debt for this.” He held up his burnt arms.
I launched a quick, short blast of nightfire at him, just enough to sting. The magic flowed easily from my fingertips.
“Catch me if you can.”
I smiled and crooked my finger at him, then dashed into the hallway. I heard Ramuell roar behind me and hoped that he couldn’t move very fast in the close confines of the building. I had no clear idea of where to go. I just wanted to limit casualties. If I led him into another office, I would be cornered myself, but if I kept him in the hallway, then the other Agents would be unable to make their way to the elevator and freedom.
I had only a few moments to decide. Since most Agents were not the children of fallen angels, I figured I had a leg up in the magic department. That meant that I would have to deliberately corner myself and trust my magic to see me through.
“Well, you were looking for Ramuell. You found him,” I muttered to myself.
My stomach jittered as I raced into an office a few doors away. It is not easy to make a decision that might lead to your horrible death at the hands of a people-eating monster. I checked to make sure Ramuell followed me. He was only a few feet behind me, closer than I thought he would be, and he smiled at me as he came.
Sulfur flowed off the creature in waves. My eyes stung and my nostrils burned. I skidded into the office and behind the office door, hoping Ramuell would be distracted for a moment by my Tom-and-Jerry trick while I figured out a game plan.
I guess Ramuell wasn’t a big fan of Chuck Jones. He grabbed the door and tore it off its hinges, advancing on me.
“Boo,” I said, as I gave him a full-on blast of nightfire. At least, that was what I meant to do.
Instead my magic roared up, uncontrollable, eager for the fight. White flames seared through my palms and arrowed to the nephilim like bolts of lightning. The monster had only a moment of wild-eyed shock before the flames touched its skin.
This was different from both nightfire and the starburst, which had come forth in one huge pulse. This was a continuous flow of power that I couldn’t stop, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. I was beating him. This could end now, and there would be no more innocent deaths.
Ramuell screamed in agony, and so did I. The power was painful, burning inside me even as it burned the monster. I could feel my palms cracking and blistering from the force of the magic. The nephilim backed away from me, knocking over furniture as it lashed out in fury. The desk was set alight at Ramuell’s touch. The heat of the flames scorched my face.
“I can end this. I can end this,” I said as I moved closer. The power was consuming me. It was more than I could handle. But I didn’t want to let go. I wanted vengeance for all the deaths that this monster had caused.
I was so focused on Ramuell that I didn’t see the portal opening behind him until it was too late. He fell into the portal and it snapped closed behind him.
“No. No!” I screamed. The power pouring out of me shut off abruptly and I fell to the floor, panting, my face pressed against the carpet. The air was filled with the smell of charred flesh, and the burning desk had ignited the curtains. I had to get out of this room before I burned alive.
The sudden manifestation of yet another new power that I could not control had exhausted me. If my life ever calmed down for a few moments, Gabriel and I were definitely going to have some words about controlling my magic. I could not allow this kind of power to run roughshod over my will. I pushed to my knees and crawled toward the door, crying out in pain as my burned hands pressed into the carpet.
I heard a rustle of movement, and felt hands underneath my arms drag me out of the room. I closed my eyes as someone turned me over and rested me against a wall. There were several voices, and the smell of a fire extinguisher.
“Whoa,” said a voice next to me. I felt someone’s fingers take my wrist and assess the damage the new power had done to my hands.
I opened my eyes and saw that it was the Agent from the conference room, the one who had tried to wave me away to safety. He and the remaining Agents crowded in the hallway, several of them rushing forward to put out the fire.
“You need medical attention. Right away,” he said. “Your hands are a mess.”
I flapped my hands at him. I needed to get up, to find Gabriel and J.B. I didn’t have time to be fussed over.
“What did you do to that thing?” the Agent asked, his eyes curious. “I’ve never seen power like that before. And it . . . knew you.”