He should have thought of all that earlier. He should have known there’d be people here, working late. He’d been a little too distracted to notice before⏤first by tracking the demon, then by being thrown through the window when he finally caught up with her.
Still, he cursed inwardly anyway. He cursed even as his eyes scanned the dark street for the demon, straining to listen even as he strained his eyes, looking for movement.
He should have checked out the area better before he risked letting the demon notice him.
He never stopped staring down the road as he thought it.
He could multi-task. He could beat himself up while he hunted.
He turned his head, looking in the other direction.
Nothing.
Apparently, even high-heeled shoes didn’t slow these damned things down.
Opening his powers slightly, which entailed more of a relaxing of control than an effort, per se, he looked for her that way, too. He’d noticed he could often sense them if they were close enough. As soon as he was in more of his “angelic” state, he caught a whiff of her aura, in the direction of the studio’s semi-realistic movie lot streets.
The damned thing was already far enough away to annoy him.
She’d run for a segment down the hill from where he stood, which Dags happened to know consisted of a fake small town complete with town square, a white-painted bandstand, a row of quaint storefronts, a bank, a movie theater, a few restaurants. That area was immediately followed by a more urban-looking segment of the lot, consisting of city crosswalks, apartment buildings, a modern bank, a subway exit, the bottom half of skyscrapers.
Dags had seen enough, though.
He broke into a full run.
He continued to try to pinpoint her exact location as his booted feet pounded the asphalt down the sloped road.
He tried not to think about the studio guy he’d left behind on that lawn, or how weird he probably looked, running at top speed into the backlot in the middle of the night.
He’d deal with the demon first.
He’d deal with the demon, then figure out if he needed to cover his tracks with the movie studio and the people side of things.
Even just thinking about that made him nervous, though.
In Dags’ experience, people were generally more complicated than demons.
Chapter 2
The Ritual
He caught up with her just past a row of fake brownstones meant to emulate one of a dozen neighborhoods in New York City, or one of its boroughs.
Well, “caught up with” was sort of a euphemism.
She hit him with a lamp post.
Well, part of a lamp post.
Dags rounded the corner, coming onto the street with the brownstones, still running at more or less a full sprint⏤
⏤and the ridged metal pole slammed right into his stomach.
He’d been running more or less all-out.
He also had his angelic powers partly open to track her, but she still managed to surprise him, swinging the pole in a fast, tight arc before he could slow himself down.
Even so, he couldn’t help thinking he was lucky.
Lucky she was still more bent on killing him than getting away.
The lamp post threw him up into the air and backwards before he comprehended what was happening. After that initial beat of shock, it hurt like hell, knocking the wind out of him as she swung sideways and up, throwing him into a second-story window of the movie set street.
Like the coffee shop window, he broke the glass.
Unlike the coffee shop window, he managed to catch himself on the window frame, gasping, his body half inside the fake apartment over the street. He spent about a second wondering if she’d broken at least two of his ribs. He spent a few more hanging there, fighting past the pain of the wind being knocked out of him.
Then, using the wooden frame as leverage, he launched himself back down to the street when he saw her red eyes looking up at him.
He used the blue-green lightning to accelerate his fall.
By the time he reached her, he was moving so fast, he could barely see her.
It didn’t stop his booted feet from slamming into her face.
He kicked her down to the pavement, and both of them crashed into it and rolled.
When he eyes refocused, working again, Dags found himself in the fake gutter of the fake street. She started to struggle, trying to kick free of him, and he rolled over and on top of her, gripping her throat in his blue and green lightning-infused hands.
He opened up his power for real.
The green and blue angel fire surged out of his chest and palms.
It still took him aback, just how much punch was packed in that first dose he let loose, after holding it back for so long.
He let out a gasp, feeling something akin to relief as it flooded into her.
The demon inside the human screamed.
Dags didn’t loosen his grip, but still had to fight to keep his hold on her throat when she bucked upwards, trying to get him off. She screamed louder, her fingers gripping his wrists, her red-painted nails digging into his skin as she tried to pull him off.
He directed the stream of light, focusing it now on her chest.
He was slowly learning, through trial and error, what worked and what didn’t, what was faster and what was slower. The point at the center of the chest, what he thought of as the auric “heart,” even if it wasn’t the precise location of the body’s physical heart, seemed to work the best.
He flooded that point with the blue-green charge, going from relaxing to actually aiming, then to putting some effort into expelling the angel fire out of him faster.
He murmured the words his grandfather had given him as he did.
He’d gotten the ritual in a meditation, what felt like a million years ago now.
In truth, it had been something closer to eight years.
Right around the time he ran into his first demon.
The body below him started to convulse, screaming louder.
Dags looked around, still murmuring the words. A circle of pale blue light had formed around the two of them, glowing brighter the longer Dags spoke under his breath. The words themselves came out of him seemingly on their own now, a sing-song blur of syllables that had a rhythm and a cadence all their own.
That happened every time, too.
The sounds and phrases grew rote within seconds of Dags starting the chant; that was in spite of the words not being in any language Dags managed to identify, and he’d spent a decent chunk of time trying.
He was starting to worry someone was going to show up before he’d dealt with this.
He really should have tried to lure her somewhere off the beaten track.
Or at least somewhere other than the main street.
Really, he shouldn’t have let her get out of the coffee shop. Although, given that there’d been a guy standing there, across the street, maybe that would have been worse.
Under him, her whole body contorted and bucked.
Her screams grew guttural, less female-sounding.
Less human-sounding.
Letting out a heavy gasp, he forced more of that light into her, trying to speed things up. He murmured the ritual words faster too, and louder.
The circle of blue-white light began to shoot off sparks.
He felt pain at his shoulders, heard a loud ripping sound as the pain worsened.
Still gripping the demon’s throat, he cursed under his breath.
Damn it. His wings had come out.
Another semi-expensive coat he’d have to throw in the damned garbage.
“NO!” she screamed. “NO! STOP STOP!”
He felt it. He felt the precise instant when something in her began to shift, when the demon stopped focusing on the pain and began to realize what was happening to her. Dags felt the panic flood through the presence there as he hit her with more of the angel-fire, as the chants began to change
the frequency of the aura surrounding the human body she’d stolen.
He saw the panic hit her red-tinted eyes. He saw the precise instant when she felt herself starting to separate out of the human’s flesh and blood and bone.
“STOP!” she shrieked, bucking violently up against him. “NO NO NO NO!”
Dags couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable.
He knew what he was trying to do.
He knew the thing he was fighting wasn’t human.
It was still damned unnerving to be forcing massive amounts of blue-green current into what appeared to be a human woman, all the while she screamed at him to stop. He still didn’t even know exactly what that green-blue light was, or what it did to them exactly.
As if noticing his discomfort, she gasped out more words.
He wasn’t actually strangling her. He was only holding her throat to keep her from running away, so she still had enough breath to speak.
Maybe that had been a mistake.
“Please!” she managed. “Please… I can help you! I can help you!”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t stop chanting the ritual words.
He knew she was trying to get into his head.
They almost always tried to get into his head, once it neared the end.
He increased the voltage of the light, murmuring the ritual words louder, and she screamed again.
He could feel her trying to hold on, fighting to stay inside the body under him.
“That other angel,” she gasped. “…the girl. You want her, right? You want her. I can feel it on you… and I can help! I can teach you how to wake her up! She’ll never stay with that human, not once she’s awakened. A human will never be enough for her⏤”
For the first time, he interrupted the chanting.
“I am human,” he growled.
He didn’t know why he said it.
In any case, she laughed.
“You still believe that?” She gripped his wrist with both hands, her voice coaxing even as she gasped in pain. “Angel, you need my help. I can help you. I can teach you what you are. I can teach you. I can get her for you⏤”
“Shut up,” he snapped. “Shut up about her. I mean it.”
She smiled, red eyes flashing. “You want her. You really want her. The one you sent back, the last one… he told me…”
Dags picked her up by the throat.
He slammed her back down, hitting her head into the asphalt. He knew it wouldn’t hurt it, meaning the demon. It wouldn’t even hurt the body of the human, not while the demon was still inside it.
He still grimaced as he did it.
He stared down at those glowing red eyes, fighting a wave of unwelcome emotion.
The emotion wasn’t for the demon, or for the woman the demon inhabited.
He didn’t want to think about what it was from.
He went back to chanting the ritual words, throwing more of that blue-green charge into his voice. The circle around the two of them grew brighter, and Dags sucked in a breath, then forced more of the angel fire out through his chest, his fingers and palm, this time in a dense blast, putting real effort behind it.
She screamed.
The scream was desperate that time, blood-curdling.
He watched the blue-green fire flood into her, filling her chest, sliding up her neck to fill her throat, then her head, changing her aura. The fire started bursting out of her, and now Dags could feel her separating out from the human body for real.
She screamed, louder, deafeningly loud…
Then, all at once, the scream died.
Dags felt the essence of the demon leave the woman’s body.
He used the blue green fire to send it up, up, up, into a huge pool of pure white, shockingly bright light that lived high above his head.
He couldn’t explain where or what that light was.
He knew it was probably a mental illusion, but he saw it as above him.
It lived somewhere just… up there.
Dags didn’t understand that part of what he did at all. He knew the ritual helped force the demon’s presence out of the human, but it also opened that space over his head, and created the circle. Dags didn’t know where he sent the demons exactly⏤assuming it was anywhere at all. He experienced them as following a nearly straight line up from the circle the ritual created. He saw them travel up an invisible line, only to meet that pure-white light.
Whatever that light was, it seemed to absorb the demon’s essence, pulling it inside and pulling it apart.
Until it was gone.
Like the scream, the substance of the demon’s essence lost cohesion.
Within seconds, it ceased to exist.
Dags was still kneeling there, on the asphalt, panting, as the circle of light dissolved around him like smoke. He barely noticed he’d stopped chanting the ritual words, or that his fingers had loosened on the woman’s throat, the fire dimming in his chest.
He didn’t move, didn’t focus anywhere but up at that faraway white light.
Then the woman under him coughed.
Chapter 3
Responsible
Dags released her at once, lifting his weight off her abdomen and chest.
He rose to his feet, stepping sideways from where he’d been kneeling astride her torso.
He took another few steps backwards to give her space.
All that happened in less than a heartbeat.
Holding his hands out in a gesture meant to reassure her, meaning the human being who’d returned to steer this particular body, Dags fought to control his facial expression as he finished pulling back the blue-green fire.
He didn’t entirely succeed.
He clenched his jaw those first few seconds as he struggled to get it under control. He forgot about the wings until those began to retract too, then pain exploded over his shoulders as his back muscles and bones reconfigured, pulling him back into a regular human shape.
He was panting again by the end of it.
Luckily, the woman was still coming back, too.
She’d rolled to one side, coughing, gasping, holding her throat. Since he’d stepped behind her, he had his doubts she’d even gotten a good look at him yet.
Which was damned lucky.
He really needed to come up with a better process for this whole thing.
He needed a better story, at least.
She pulled herself up to a seated position, still holding her throat with one hand, a foot propped on the pavement. She made no effort to get all the way to her feet, but stared down at the broken heel of her boot, frowning before she turned her eyes up to him.
Her irises were a regular brown again.
The normal, human color, the normal human presence shining out of those clear eyes, were both immensely reassuring, and incredibly disorienting.
“Who… the hell… are you?” she said, still gasping, her brows knitting together as she massaged her neck. She coughed, fighting to clear her bruised throat, still trying to bring her breathing back under control. “Are you… the motherfucker… who strangled me?”
“No,” he said, not very truthfully, but telling himself it was true in principle. He held up his hands. “I came along. I saw you lying there, on the ground, in the middle of the street. I was worried you had a concussion, or a seizure or something.”
She’d already looked away.
Apparently, something about Dags didn’t strike her as particularly threatening, because now it was her surroundings that captured the majority of her worry and attention.
“Where the hell am I?” she said.
She’d finally decided to pull herself to her feet.
She struggled to get upright, lurching a bit when her balance didn’t cooperate, then stumbling on the broken high-heeled boot. Dags moved forward instinctively to help her, but she jerked away, her eyes wide.
Seeing the fear there, he backed away again, holding up his hands in a form of surrender.
&
nbsp; She moved so differently than the demon, he couldn’t help but stare. He should be used to this by now, but the effects of the ritual still threw him.
She continued staring around her as she found her balance on the broken boot.
“Where am I?” she repeated.
“Majestic Studios,” Dags said.
He paused, watching the bewilderment bloom over her expression.
“Do you remember coming here?” he said next. “Anything about what you’re doing here? Who you were with?”
“No.” She sounded unnerved. “You really just found me here? Lying in the middle of the street? On the pavement?”
He nodded.
He felt a twinge of guilt, but did his best to keep it off his face.
“I thought you were unconscious,” he said. “Security vehicles come through here. I didn’t want you to get run over, in case they didn’t see you. And I thought maybe you had a seizure, like I said. Or you’d fallen and hit your head.”
An even stronger wave of guilt hit him as he watched the dawning fear on her face.
He hadn’t chosen her; that damned demon did.
He also couldn’t possibly help her situation by telling her the truth.
Somehow, irrationally, neither of those things did anything to lessen his guilt. Knowing both things were one hundred percent true didn’t help much, either. Dags still felt like shit, knowing this was probably going to haunt her, what happened tonight.
It still somehow felt like his fault.
“You’re on the studio lot. In one of the permanent set areas,” he said, still watching her face cautiously. “Do you want me to help you get home? Take you to security?”
“Where are you going?” she said, her voice openly fearful now.
“I was just leaving,” he said.
Which was more or less true.
He’d done what he came here for.
Watching her stare around at the darkened studio street, he added, “I was up here for a job. I was about to head out to my car. Go home.”
That part was technically true, too.
“Do you need a ride?” he asked, more reluctantly. “Can I take you anywhere? To a friend’s house? Or to the emergency room, maybe?”
Bad Angel Page 2
