“No, Doctor,” I said.
“I will not tell his wife and child that I stood here and watched him die and did nothing.”
Gonzales’s eyes fluttered, his hand slipping away from his wound as he passed out from blood loss. We were out of time. I looked down the barrel of my FN 509 and steadied my breath. Things seemed to slow down as if I had all the time in the world to aim at center body mass. The hospital gown was too baggy around him to aim anywhere else, and I wasn’t confident enough for a head shot. The head moves a lot more than the chest.
Paulson didn’t beg for Mark Cookson’s life this time.
Demon Mark said, “You wouldn’t shoot an innocent college kid.”
I didn’t bother to answer because there was nothing left to say. I didn’t even look up at his face as I aimed at his chest. I just squeezed the trigger. The demon couldn’t pass the wards, but bullets could.
CHAPTER NINE
I got two shots into the chest before he started to fall. The only sound I could hear after the shots was the blood in my own ears, or maybe it’s something else; whatever the sound is, it’s what’s left after the rest of your hearing goes away for a while.
I saw Paulson out of the corner of my eye rushing toward the room and the wounded, but I shouted at him, not sure he’d hear me, so it was probably more scream than yell: “No! Not yet!”
I glanced at him just enough to see him looking at me with wide eyes. He was pale, but he nodded, letting me know he’d heard me. I went back to staring at the room and the two men on the floor. Cookson’s body had fallen backward against the bed and then slid to the side of it. His pale, thin legs were tangled up in the large hospital gown so I couldn’t see much of his body. The gown was big enough and he was small enough that his breathing might not have been that easy to see. I couldn’t even see if he was bleeding from here; there was already too much blood on the floor from Gonzales. I would have to get up on the target before I could be sure he—it—was dead.
The energy of the wards sat across the open doorway like an invisible sheet except this sheet vibrated with energy, but it wasn’t meant to keep me out. I stepped through and didn’t even hesitate as the warm rush of it passed over my skin. I’d stepped through stronger wards than this on the job; I was still impressed that it had contained the demon.
I stared down my gun at the body. There was blood where the two bullets had entered the body but none out the back. He looked even smaller and less finished from this angle, as if I’d shot a child. I swallowed hard, and my eyes burned, which was stupid. I’d had no choice. I kept the barrel of the gun steady on the body as I pushed it with the toe of my shoe. Why not kneel and check for a pulse? Because if the demon was faking, I didn’t want to be that close to its hands. The body rolled in that boneless, empty way that no living person can fake. I didn’t need to check a pulse to know that Mark Cookson was dead.
“He’s dead, save Gonzales,” I said. I repeated it louder to make sure that Paulson heard me. He and Nurse Prescott came in with another nurse whose name I never got. I moved into the hallway to give them room to work. My part was done; I’d taken a life so they could save one. I prayed that they would be able to save Gonzales, because if he died, too, then it was all for nothing.
I felt movement down the hallway like the brush of angel wings felt before they’re seen. I aimed down the hallway and it was Charleston with his own gun out and pointed at the floor. I aimed my gun in a safe direction as I saw the hospital security in uniform at his back, and uniformed police. The tightness in my gut eased, because with Charleston I knew I had serious backup. The rest of the men and one female uniform were unknowns. You hope every cop you meet is good backup, but you never know until the bad thing happens, and then they either rise or fall.
My hearing was back enough for me to hear Charleston say, “We heard the gunshots. What happened?”
I started to explain, but Paulson and one of the nurses came out with Gonzales on a gurney. He was hooked up to two different IVs and they were moving fast, probably to surgery. The metaphysical floor had a complete operating theater, so if anything went really pear-shaped the hospital could still operate on the rest of the patients with a little less magic in them.
I wanted to ask if he would make it, but the way they were running, they didn’t know yet and doctors won’t lie about that, so I didn’t ask.
“Is that the hostage?” Charleston asked.
I nodded.
“Jesus, that’s Gonzales,” one of the male security guards said.
“Is he going to be all right?” the female security guard asked.
“Did you say there was a demon?” one of the uniformed officers asked.
“It was a possession, not a full manifestation,” I said. I glanced into the room to find Nurse Prescott kneeling beside the body that I’d shot. It was one of the bravest things I’d seen in a long time, her staying in the room where she’d been so terrified.
“What does that mean?”
Charleston looked at him. “Miller, is it? If you don’t know the difference between a possession and a manifestation, then you shouldn’t be up on this floor.”
“We just answered the call for backup, Lieutenant Charleston. Neither of us has ever worked metaphysical detail,” Miller’s partner said, coming to his rescue.
“Possession is a human being ridden by a demon; manifestation is a demon appearing in full corporeal form.”
“Corporeal?” Miller asked.
“It means body,” his partner said.
Prescott looked up as if she felt me looking at her. I smiled and gave her a little salute. She smiled back and nodded. More nurses or orderlies, and a new doctor wheeled a second gurney through the door. One of them hesitated at the wards as if he was more sensitive to them.
“I didn’t think demons could do that, appear on the earthly plane in their actual form,” Miller said.
“Can I take these damn things down?” the orderly asked.
There were nods. Nurse Prescott said, “They trapped the demon just like they were supposed to.” But she stood up and touched the ward; it seemed fitting that she was the one that deactivated them.
Charleston said, “It’s incredibly rare for a demon to have physical form on this plane.”
I added, “They can appear for a few minutes in their true form, but most human imaginations can’t bear the sight of them and will change it from their original form, even if they manage to manifest.”
“What do you mean?” the first security guard asked.
They had the body on the gurney now. Prescott stood near the ward panel, letting them cover what was left of Mark Cookson. The demon was back in Hell safe and sound. He’d left the kid to die, like a rat fleeing a sinking ship.
“Infernals take on the appearances of the human imagination nearest them,” Charleston said.
“What?” Miller asked.
“What he said,” the female security guard said.
“It means they look like what the nearest human thinks they should look like, but they won’t appear in their true Hellish form, not here on Earth, except maybe for a second, then it changes,” I said. I didn’t add that a second could be enough for insanity or death for the human seeing it, but our minds protected us from so much, including demons. If a person could survive that second, then what they thought changed what they saw; demons used it to appear as our worst nightmares, but even that was usually less soul-destroying than the demon’s original form.
“So, they don’t have horns and tentacles and shit?” the male guard asked.
“Only if you think they do,” I said.
“If you see a demon, think really happy thoughts,” Charleston said.
“So, if we thought they looked like a red-skinned Ryan Gosling, that’s what they’d look like?” the female said.
“Fantasize on your own time, Belinda,” the male guard said.
“It’s possible,” I said.
“I’d rather have Ryan G
osling with horns than tentacles,” Miller said.
We all agreed on that as we watched them wheel the remains down the corridor. They were going in the same direction that they’d taken Gonzales except that no one was running. The dead don’t need to rush, they have the rest of eternity to get where they’re going.
The orderly pushing the gurney acted like he’d been stung. He stepped away from the gurney. The man on the other side said, “A little help here.”
“Didn’t you see it?”
“See what?”
I was already moving toward them when I saw the body bag twitch like a fish that wasn’t as dead as you thought.
CHAPTER TEN
The demon burst out of the body bag like an evil butterfly, because someone in the hallway had thought it should have big black bat wings. It was the wings that saved all the medics around the gurney, because the wings were too big for the hallway. The spikes on the wings caught on the sprinkler heads and got stuck in the drop ceiling. It gave them time to get out of reach of the huge muscular arms, because the body had to be over seven feet tall, muscled like some cartoon superhero. It was still wearing the hospital gown except that now the gown strained across the chest and biceps. It hung down long enough to cover the groin, and I was grateful for that. The long black horns got stuck in the drop ceiling as the demon tried to stand up and free its wings. One of the other humans in the hallway had seen Disney’s Fantasia a few too many times, so that the demon was almost as trapped in the small hallway as it had been inside the wards. It was only a matter of time before the demon figured out how its new body worked. Once it did that, people would die—if not in this hallway, then in another part of the hospital, so we had to stop it here.
“Demons are your area, Havoc,” Charleston said. It was his way of asking me for a plan. I had seconds to come up with it. No pressure.
The demon’s deep voice matched the massive chest now as it rumbled, “What the fuck? Wings? I didn’t ask for wings.”
It was the demon’s voice, but the word choice, the cadence of it sounded more like Mark Cookson. He was still in there, but now instead of the demon being inside him, he was inside the demon. That was impossible; humans couldn’t possess demons, it just didn’t work in that direction.
“I warned you that the other humans could impact your desire.” That was the demon. They were both still in there—what in Heaven was going on?
“Oh yeah,” demon Mark said, and even at a bass deep enough to make James Earl Jones proud, the two words sounded uncertain and younger than the body that was trying to stand in the hallway.
One minute he was fighting to get the wings and horns out of the ceiling and walls and the next the wings were gone, and the horns had shrunk by a foot so the demon could move its head without getting stuck in the ceiling.
“That’s better,” demon Mark said, and he stood up, careful to keep his head bent low enough so that the points of his horns aimed our way. The hospital gown sleeves started to split as it stalked toward us, swinging arms that made me think things like movie Thor or the Incredible Hulk.
“Proud of you, boy,” the demon said.
The demon’s face grinned, pleased; they were both still in there. It wasn’t possession—it was a partnership. I stopped worrying that it was impossible and started thinking how to use the impossible in our favor.
I drew my gun and aimed at the center of the biggest chest I’d ever aimed at.
“Demons are bulletproof,” Charleston said.
“Illusions are bulletproof, but illusions don’t get caught in the ceiling,” I said.
He nodded and drew his gun to move up beside me and aim down the hallway. “How solid will it be?”
“Unsure.”
“Then watch your backstop, Havoc, we got civilians on the other side of this beastie.”
“Roger that, boss.”
The uniforms unholstered their guns and said, “Where you want us, Lieutenant?”
“You heard me say watch your backstop and the civvies, right?”
“Yes, sir,” both said.
“If Havoc and I empty our guns, then you move forward and fire while we reload; until then stay back, the hallway’s not that big.”
“Bullets don’t work on demons,” the demon said. There was a ceiling tile stuck on the tip of one of its horns.
“You sure about that?” I asked, and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My bullet hit the demon in the middle of the chest. Charleston’s bullet hit beside mine. The demon lowered its head like a bull charging. We raised our guns as if we’d practiced the move and aimed for the head. If it had been a human-sized target, I wouldn’t have risked it, but the demon’s head was as oversized as the rest of it, bigger than the chest on an average man. I knew I could hit that, and I knew my boss could, too.
What we didn’t think of was that a skull hard enough to hold horns would be harder than normal skull. One of the bullets ricocheted right past us and into the wall. We ducked and I went to one knee. I yelled, “Top of skull is too hard.”
I had time for one more shot, so I aimed at a leg. It was a big enough target to risk taking the shot. If we couldn’t kill it before it reached us, maybe we could bring it down to us.
Charleston was emptying his magazine into the body that he could aim at around the horns and that hard head. I hit the leg because the demon stumbled and slowed down enough for me to have time to shoot it in the foot. I thought, A foot with the horns and claws, it should be a hoof, and just like that it was a hoof. But the other foot was still a foot, and hooves and feet don’t move the same. The demon fell right at us, horns and all. Charleston and the others ran, but I was still kneeling, so I tried to roll out of the way. I almost made it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The demon fell on me and it was even denser than it looked. The breath was knocked out of me and if it hadn’t raised its torso off me the weight would have slowly suffocated me. I had a second to try to catch my breath as it used one hand to raise its torso off me, its lower body still pinning my legs, and then I felt claws at my stomach.
“I’m going to wear you like a puppet,” the demon growled.
Its talking let me catch my breath and raise my gun. I fired once into its chest; the claws tore my shirt away. “I like to see what I’m doing,” he said.
The other cops were firing into its body and the bullets were hitting it. The demon was too solid to be bulletproof, but it was like shooting a side of beef for all the harm it did. It wasn’t even bleeding.
The demon looked down at me. “I hate guys with great abs,” it growled. I felt the claws start to pierce my skin; I knew better than to look, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Yes, Detective, watch as we tear out all that hard work at the gym.”
I yelled, “God!” and thought, A hand, a hand to match the foot, and the claws vanished, just like the hoof had appeared. It wasn’t possible to change the shape of a spiritual being that easily, not once it had settled into a form, but it had worked anyway. I prayed, Thank you.
“You have to focus, boy, you’re taking away our weapons,” the demon said, staring at its hand. There was blood on the fingertips from where it had cut me, but the claws it’d used were just gone.
“I didn’t do that, or the hoof.” The demon said that, too, but the cadence of the voice was different. Mark Cookson wasn’t possessing the demon: They were sharing.
Charleston must have reloaded because he came in and put his gun against the side of the demon’s head and fired point-blank. The demon brushed him away with one big arm, sending him flying. The claws were gone, but it was still dangerous, and I was still pinned under it. If only the damn thing would bleed and take damage from the bullets, I thought. That was what we needed, we needed it to bleed.
Blood dripped down on me as the demon shook its head, and then it shook harder, spraying blood around the hallway. “Why isn’t your blood burning like acid?” it asked.
&
nbsp; The next drop of blood that hit my bare stomach sizzled and burned like acid. Someone else screamed, “It’s acid!”
I thought, No it’s not, it’s ordinary human blood, and the next drop that hit me was red and harmless.
The demon looked down at me with its scary movie eyes. “You . . .”
I aimed my last bullet into its eye and thought, I want the bullet to pierce the brain and kill it. That was totally impossible, you couldn’t kill a demon, but maybe we could kill this body.
I squeezed the trigger and the demon rolled off me, moving in a blur so fast that I couldn’t stop the trigger pull and put a bullet in the ceiling where its head had been.
I got to one knee, popping my empty magazine out and reaching for my last spare magazine as I moved. The other two cops were aiming into a hospital room near me. Charleston was lying against the opposite wall where the demon had thrown him. He wasn’t moving, but even as I wondered how badly he was hurt Nurse Prescott was there. I was going to owe that woman flowers or a case of something expensive.
I turned back to the open doorway and the demon that was hiding inside. A woman screamed inside the room. I paused and wished the room would be empty. She screamed again. It had been worth a try. I pressed myself against the wall near the open door and called out, “Discorporate now, you know the priests are on the way.”
“Fuck priests!”
The demon’s voice changed again and said, “Now that’s a great idea.”
The woman screamed words this time. “Don’t touch me!”
I was not going to stay out in the hallway while they raped another woman. I prayed for an idea that would help us save her in time.
I thought, I want the demon to be small and helpless. I pictured something like Mark Cookson except red skinned, but weak. “You cannot work your magic on us without seeing us, Detective.”
A Terrible Fall of Angels Page 6
