Earth Angel (The Kamlyn Paige Novels) (15 page)

“Light ‘em up and watch them burn.
Teach them what they need to learn.”

 –Miranda Lambert

“You didn’t really think that was going to work,
did you?”

“Shit!” I screamed as I swerved the truck in terror
and slammed on the brakes. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry, but we can’t waste any more time. We have a
lot of work to do.”

“Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t help the squeak in
my voice.

How could he think I would still want to have
anything to do with him after what he just did?

“You needed a push to learn and I gave it to you. I
don’t really understand what you’re so upset about. What you did was amazing,”
he said, turning his whole body to face me in awe.

“That’s just it, Sari, you don’t get it! People
have feelings and you can’t just go around playing with them. I don’t know if
you even
feel
at all…”

Sari scooted his body across the long seat till he
was sitting as close as possible to me. He rested his arm around the back of my
seat and lowered his face to look up at me through his long dark lashes.

“You don’t think I feel?”

When I wouldn’t meet his gaze he lifted my chin
gently with the tip of his finger. His eyes pierced through me intensely.

“You have
no
idea the feelings I have.”

I was almost afraid to breath, like the sound of my
exhale would shatter the moment. His warm breath continually beat against my
neck as he stared at me with intent.

“I’m…sorry…I was just upset…with you,” I stammered,
trying to break the hold his eyes had on mine.

“Forgiven,” he said, smiling at me in satisfaction.
“Now, let’s go. We have a job to do.”

I looked up at him, not sure what he was talking
about. I hadn’t gotten a call from Cara or Don to help anyone and I wasn’t
expecting to for a while since they were still dealing with Tom’s death.

“There’s a significant and dangerous demon over in
Chicago,” he said as he moved back over to his side of the car. “You can use it
to practice some more.”

I sat in silence, trying to compose myself before I
attempted to operate the vehicle. It was ridiculous the power Sari had over me.
How could he manage to immobilize me with one glance?

“How do you know there’s a demon there?” I
questioned as I lightly pressed the gas pedal again.

“I just do,” he responded in short. “Don’t worry.
One day you’ll get good enough to where you’ll just know, too.”

*

Chicago was a six hour drive from Bad Axe; a long,
silent, awkward six hour drive. I heaved a big sigh of relief when I saw the
skyscrapers ahead of us. As many times as I’d visited Chicago while growing up,
the magic of the city was always there. I looked out my window at the tall
buildings next to us as the truck crawled down the jam-packed Lake Shore Drive.
Maybe we would have time to do something fun while we were here I thought as I
turned to drive straight into the heart of downtown. I hadn’t been to the
Museum of Science and Industry in ages.

“Pull into that parking garage over there,” Sari
said as he pointed his finger at the windshield.

I opened my mouth, but shut it again. There was no
point in questioning him on his every move anymore. He obviously knew where we
needed to go. Once we were out of the dark garage, we walked down Michigan
Avenue, the sun shining brightly overhead.

The sidewalk was busy with people, all hurrying to
return to work from their lunch breaks. Sari walked closely alongside me,
occasionally stopping to look into the store windows. Momentarily, I didn’t
feel as if we were hunting. It just felt like a wonderfully normal day. Sari grabbed
my hand and pulled me around as we walked down a set of stairs to go below the
bustling street. At the bottom of the stairwell, we turned and stopped in front
of a dark, pub-style bar. My heart skipped a beat as I read the sign on the
door.

“Here?” I asked, smiling with excitement.

Sari nodded his head as he reached for the heavy
wooden door and walked into the popular dive bar known as ‘The Billy Goat
Tavern’.

“This place has the
best
burgers I have ever
eaten!” I exclaimed. “Whenever Cara and I would take the train up here during
high school, we would always eat here.”

“As much as I like making you happy, I didn’t bring
you here because I knew you would love it,” Sari said, leaning in close as he
sat down at a table.

He nodded his head in the direction of a small
woman eating behind us. I tried to glace over at her casually with utter
failure. She looked up at me just long enough for our eyes to meet before she
looked back down in discomfort. She had to have been about the same height as
me, if not a few inches shorter. The sleek black heels she had on added to her
stature a bit. Her shiny blonde hair was pulled tightly back into a complicated
bun and the suit she was wearing was meticulously pressed without a single
wrinkle on it. She looked like someone who worked in a very important law firm
or office of some kind, but definitely nothing evil about her.

“She just looks like a normal woman enjoying a
burger,” I said puzzled. “Speaking of burgers…” I added, smiling innocently.

“Hint taken.”

Sari stood up to make his way over to the counter.

“Two doubles, please!” I shouted after him.

If we were going to follow this woman till she was
alone, I should at least have a full stomach. We ate our burgers quickly,
occasionally glancing over to see if the tiny blonde was about to leave. It was
a half hour before she stood up and threw away her trash on her way out the
door. Sari and I looked at each other and stood up, doing the same before we
left to trail her.

After she left the tavern, she took the stairs back
up to Michigan Avenue. We made sure to stay about half a block behind her. We
didn’t want her to get suspicious. To my delight, she walked into the giant
cathedral inspired building I had always dreamed of one day working in. This
woman had it all, everything I had ever dreamed of having. Her apartment was
probably some penthouse high above the city, too. Sari and I sat down on a bus
bench to wait for her again.

“I know how much you want to go inside, but we have
to wait out here for her,” Sari explained.

“What makes you think I want to go inside?” I
asked, trying to downplay my disappointment.

Ever since my high school field trip to the Chicago
Tribune building, I’ve wanted to go back. It was my dream job. Distracting me
from fantasizing about being a successful journalist, Sari put his arm around
me to form a shield from the chilling wind.

“I remember a conversation you had a long time ago
with Rob about what you both wanted to do with your lives,” Sari said as he
rubbed up and down on my arms to warm them. “You said you wanted to be a very
important journalist at the Chicago Tribune and report events that were going
to change the world. You wanted to do something important to change peoples’
lives.”

I stared at a group of pigeons walking along the
sidewalk in front of us. I couldn’t believe he remembered what I’d said when
I
didn’t even remember ever saying that to Rob.

“I could never go back to wanting that, could I?” I
asked, thinking about the people inside the skyscraper behind us.

“You’re still making a difference in the world,
Kamlyn,” he responded in a soft, comforting tone.

I sighed. I knew he was right, but I still envied
the lives of others. At least most people got recognition for their work. I was
more of a shadow than an actual person, swooping in to save lives and then
vanishing without a trace.

Night came and the city twinkled as everyone turned
on their lights high above us. The air turned bitter cold and I wished I had
worn a jacket with a hood to keep the wind from freezing my ears. Without a
word Sari stood up, pulling me up with him. We began to follow the short,
suited woman again. Thankfully, she lived in an apartment building only a few
blocks from where she worked. If I didn’t get into a heated building soon I was
sure I would turn into a human popsicle.

As I listened to her high heels click while she
walked, I wondered why the demon inside her would want to go to work and go
through her routine activities as it did. Most demons I encountered possessed a
person so they could wreak havoc and destroy that person’s life. Could Sari
have been wrong about her? So far, everything seemed completely normal to me.

Stopping in front of a tall, chic building, the
woman unlocked the front door and climbed the stairs up to her apartment. Just
as the door was about to click shut and lock us out, Sari grabbed the handle to
hold it open. It sure came in handy to move with such great speed I gaped in
awe. We walked up the fourteen flights of stairs and stopped in front of the
last door at the end of that floor’s hallway. Not even in her apartment yet, I
was already impressed. The walls of the hallway were a honey crème color,
warmly lit by intricate gold plated fixtures placed evenly along the ceiling. I
took a deep breath.

Without a moment to spare, Sari kicked in the
woman’s door as I watched in astonishment. I had never seen anyone break into a
locked room with a swift kick of their foot before. I made a mental note to try
that the next time instead of breaking in by picking the lock. The woman looked
up from her plate of reheated Chinese food with little interest as the door
separated from its hinges and fell to the floor with a loud crash.

“I thought I was being followed,” she said as she
took a big bite of her rice.

Sari’s face grew cold and full of hatred. If he had
looked at me in such a way, my legs would’ve barely been able to hold me up
from fear. Instead, the woman looked at him as if he’d just said ‘hi, how are
you?’ He stepped forward and waved his hand in front of him, sending the woman
flying into the wall. Her head hit so hard that a hole was left, forming
spidering cracks all around it. In the blink of an eye, Sari was across the
room with his forearm over her throat to secure her as I watched in silent
shock. Besides inhuman strength and impossible speed, what else was he capable
of? I had no idea, but I was positive I never wanted to make him mad.

“Find something to tie her to the chair with,” he
demanded as the woman fought to escape his grip fruitlessly.

I ran to the bedroom and ripped the high thread
count white Egyptian cotton sheets off the bed and began to tear them into
strips. I brought the scraps back to where Sari now had the woman pinned to one
of her wooden dining chairs. Once I was done securing her, Sari let go and
stepped back to stand next to me. He smiled at the helpless woman in front of
him as if he’d just found a new toy to play with.

“Sorry to barge in like this, but we needed to use
you as a guinea pig for my friend here if that’s okay with you,” he said while
he walked behind me and rested his hands on my shoulders.

It was a side of Sari I’d never
seen…menacing…vindictive.

“Screw you, God boy!” the tiny blonde shouted as
she tried to free herself.

She spat towards Sari, missing him by a quick shift
of his head. Sari knelt in front of the woman, who slowly lifted her head to
look at him as her eyes shifted from baby blue to hallow black. If looks could
kill, that’s exactly what hers would have done just then. She knew there was
nothing she could do to win this one. She was trapped and death was certain.
But like a captive ferocious animal, the demon did not take its eyes off its predator.
Sari stared back as if he’d just backed a tiny kitten into a corner.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he laughed as he rubbed
his hands together in anticipation.

 He stood up and walked over to me again as I
stared down the evil before me. The young woman’s once delicate and sweet
features started to shift into something unnatural. The demon was taking over.

“Now, I want you to look at her and block
everything else out around you while you picture the demon leaving her body,” Sari
instructed in a low, slow voice.

I focused on the deep empty eyes in front of me,
but was pulled back immediately.

“Wait!” she screamed.

I tried to ignore what she had to say, knowing the
demon would say anything to stop what was going to happen, but I could not
ignore what she had to say next.

“I know who killed your son,” she whispered,
looking down into her lap.

Demons were crafty. I knew that. They got inside
your head and picked out your weakness in order to use it against you. But
somehow, I knew this was not the case. This demon was telling me the truth. I
looked into her frightened face as her eyes changed back from black to
brilliant blue. If there could be bad angels, could there be good demons? I was
sure anything was possible at that point.

“Her name is Lamia and she’s still out there,” she
heaved under shallow breaths.

I felt her sincere honesty all around me as she
spoke. Normally, when demons spoke to me I felt nothing but deceit. I don’t
know how to explain it, except it was like a sixth sense for me; probably another
one of my abilities I didn’t even know about.

“I can help you find her.”

The sincerity washed away as she said this and was
replaced with the common feeling of dishonesty. She had no idea where the
demon, Lamia, was and there was no way she could find her. She was useless to
me now, but at least she had given me a name to use before I sent her back to
where she came from. I focused my gaze back onto hers as the blackness overtook
her irises again. Realizing she had failed to persuade me in sparing her life,
she thrashed about fiercely.

I stared in fear, sure she was going to break free
from the feeble wooden chair any second. My mind was distracted as I watched
her growl, throwing her head around to impossible degrees. This time I hadn’t
packed any back up in case I could not succeed in using just my mind.