Devil's Paw

by Debra Dunbar

  I knew the drug dealer was bleeding–out in the alley behind me. I knew the wiry guy wouldn’t risk his own neck to interfere, having watched his buddy’s leg burst into chunks. It was just me and this mage, alone, in a shadowed alley. And an angel feather, something in the back of my mind prompted.

  “No, no, no.” I felt a hand on my shoulder and slippery, silicone whiteness began to cover my store of energy. “Bad little imp. We need this mage alive and in one piece.”

  An angel. And not my angel either. I’d become very familiar with how angels restrained us from using our energy, and I managed to hit his hand with a substantial amount before the rest snapped back into the slippery shell.

  He yanked his hand away, momentarily breaking contact. He’d been unprepared for my attack, and I’d injured him beyond the flesh, down to his spirit self. I took advantage of the slip and made to bolt, but he reacted quickly, slapping another hand against my neck and restraining me completely this time.

  “Feisty, huh? Well, you won’t be able to do that again.” Eyes narrowed in pain as he glared down at me. Yeah, I’d hurt him pretty good. Fucker.

  “You’ll come quietly with us, now,” the angel said, the firm press of compulsion in his voice. I’d been shrugging off a far greater power for almost a year now. His command had no impact on me, but I turned in a show of docile obedience, waiting for a moment of inattention to give me an opening to break free. If he wasn’t touching me, the restraint on my energy would break and I’d once again be able to attack and defend.

  I didn’t recognize this angel. He was one of the blond androgynous types that always seemed to look the same to me. Behind and to his left, wiry guy emerged from the protection of his doorway, casting a quick glance at drug dealer, who surely had to have been dead by this point. Damn it all, one more fucking report I’d need to fill out. How the hell was I going to explain this one to those assholes on the Ruling Council?

  “She killed Duke! Killed him.” Wiry guy walked toward the angel as he said this, gesturing at the body on the ground.

  The angel shot him an irritated glance. “I had assumed the three of you could handle one demon. Especially this one—a paltry imp.”

  I wondered for a moment if he recognized me, knew that I wasn’t just a paltry imp but the Iblis, and a demon bound by a powerful angel. How could one of Gregory’s enforcers not have gotten the memo that I was off limits? Either he didn’t know who I was, or he was some kind of vigilante, taking the law into his own hands. I wasn’t exactly popular among the angelic host, even with my supposed title and status.

  “But she was using demon stuff,” the human argued. “You told us they wouldn’t do that, that they’re afraid of getting caught.”

  The mage had slipped out from behind me and was looking down at the dead human, his face pale. Wiry guy and the angel argued, their attention turning from me, supposedly restrained and compliant. I ran a hand down the door behind me, where the mage had been pressed. It was a fire door with no knob to grant access to the building from the outside. A human couldn’t get in, but I wasn’t a human.

  The angel’s hand on my arm moved a fraction of an inch, and I was able to grab a small amount of my energy to channel into the door. While their voices grew heated, I dissolved the lock and snapped the hinges that would have prevented the door from opening inward.

  One, two, three. With a deafening crash, the door fell onto the lower part of a stairwell, clanging against the metal handholds. Startled, the angel lifted his hand slightly. It was exactly what I had hoped for. I seized control of my energy and stepped through the doorway, releasing a lightning bolt into the angel’s chest as I turned and ran up the stairs.

  I could have stayed and fought him, but even if I’d won, I would have lost. I doubt the Ruling Council would look kindly on my killing an angel, regardless of whether it was self–defense or not. I could have summoned Gregory, used the protection of our bond to my advantage, but I didn’t want to constantly be hiding behind an angel’s skirts. I needed to be strong enough to do these things on my own, to become more than the lowly cockroach he believed me to be. Besides, there was always a chance he’d refuse to come, refuse to protect me. He hadn’t exactly jumped to my defense when the demon Haagenti had me in his crosshairs, and I had been crying wolf lately, summoning him for all sorts of trumped up emergencies.

  I shook off thoughts of my very complicated relationship with the angel and dashed up the stairs, swinging my way around the landings to keep speed. I heard pounding footsteps behind me, felt the swish of elven nets as they whisked by. The mage was in pursuit, and probably the angel too since I doubted my lightning bolt had done more than piss him off. I wasn’t sure about wiry guy. He’d seemed rather disillusioned with his companions, and he may have taken the opportunity to break and run. Still, the two after me were more than enough to take me down.

  Fourth floor and the footsteps clanging on the metal stairs behind me grew closer. Desperate, I burst through a door and into an office area, barreling into an employee and sending him flying against a copier. The door slammed against the wall once more, indicating that one or more of my pursuers were right on my heels. I didn’t dare look back, instead weaving in and out of the walled cubicles like a frantic rat in a maze, trying to lose them long enough to find somewhere to hide.

  The office employees screamed, some racing for the exit while others hid under their modular desks. Their panic gave me an idea: I lit fire to the contents of various trashcans as I ran past. Before long, curls of smoke rose toward the ceiling, setting off fire alarms and the building sprinkler system. The office dissolved into chaos, people running for the stairwells in a mass exit. I inserted myself into one crowd and searched for the mage or the angel as I tried to stuff myself through the fire door with the fifty other people fighting to get out. They were nowhere to be seen, which meant they’d probably be waiting for me somewhere.

  We moved into the stairwell, and I paused on the landing as the people beside me hurried down the stairs. Up or down? Were the mage and angel still searching for me in the office? Were they waiting on one of the landings? Or had they exited the building? I raced through the options and decided they’d most likely be waiting for me on the street, expecting me to escape with the humans. With an angel to wipe the minds of all witnesses, they wouldn’t think twice about grabbing me. Which left one way to go — up.

  I climbed the additional three floors to the roof exit, trying to be as quiet on the metal stairs as I could. Even on tiptoes, each tread squawked with the weight of my foot. The roof door was even worse. I don’t think it had been used in years. I struggled, finally managing to open it wide enough to squeeze out. The hinges were so rusty that the door remained ajar as I made my way across the roof, looking for a hiding place.

  Huge boxes containing the air conditioning units hummed, blowing out scorching air as I walked by. There was the one entrance, a square with the door I’d come out of. Other than that, the air conditioning units were the only things up here. The roof had a slightly spongy, rubbery feel, and in spite of the slight angle for drainage, small puddles of water pooled from this morning’s rain. The roof was edged in a low cement rim, about two feet high with holes attached to downspouts at the corners.

  As I walked the perimeter, I kept my eye on the door, anxious that my pursuers might decide to do a thorough search of the building. I peered over the edge carefully, watching as the firemen cleared the building and began to usher the office workers back in.

  “Nice view, isn’t it?”

  I jumped and spun around, narrowly avoiding toppling off the roof. The angel leaned casually against one of the massive air conditioning units. I’d been watching the only entrance. How the hell did he get up here? Fly? If so, he was definitely breaking the rules — angels might occasionally manifest wings in front of humans but flying around was frowned on. If he didn’t care about those rules, he probably didn’t care about the one that said he shouldn’t kill the Iblis, a membe
r of the Ruling Council.

  “You might as well come with me.” He strolled across the roof in my direction. “You’re dead anyway, and what I have in mind would be far less painful than what you’ll go through when one of the enforcers catches up to you.”

  He couldn’t know who I was or he would realize no enforcers would dare mess with me. But what was it he had in mind? I was curious, even though death, painful or not, wasn’t exactly on my agenda today.

  “I’m surprised they’re not here now with all the energy you’ve been throwing around.” A faint tinge of blue surrounded him and snaked its way toward me, sent to sooth me into compliance.

  “Maybe I’ll take my chances with the enforcers,” I told him as I thought furiously about how to escape. “Unless you’re offering to treat me to a latte or buy me a puppy, that is.”

  He laughed. “Oh no, I plan to kill you, but you’ll be in comfort and probably live for a week or two. Death by the enforcers will be excruciating, especially if the big guy comes to get you.”

  What the fuck did he plan to do with me that would take a week or two? If he were a demon, I’d expect a long, drawn–out torture, but angels didn’t do that sort of thing. Plus, he said I’d be comfortable. I shook my head to clear it. Regardless of whatever sicko plan he had for me, I needed to concentrate on escape.

  “Yeah, I’ll take my chances with the enforcers.”

  He took a few more steps toward me, the blue stuff growing thick. “No, you’re going to come with me. There’s no way off this roof but down the stairs, and I’ll be on you before you take five steps. Come quietly and I won’t have to hurt you.”

  Yeah, I’d heard that one before. “I’m not coming with you.”

  He shrugged, edging closer. “Suit yourself. You really don’t have any other choice.”

  “There’s always another choice,” I told him as I stepped backwards off the roof.

  Frederick is not a city of lofty skyscrapers. This building was one of the tallest at seven stories, which didn’t give me a lot of time between the top and the hard pavement rushing to meet me. I tucked my arms tight against my body and gained as much speed as I could, creating my wings in a flash, less than six feet from the ground. Muscles strained as I snapped the leathery wings to their full length, angled to adjust my momentum from downward to parallel with the street. Flapping furiously, I tried to regain the speed I’d lost in the transition and rise above the cars inches from my feet. People shouted and screamed. I heard the grind of metal on metal as vehicles swerved to avoid me and collided. Gregory would probably have my ass for this, but I wasn’t about to go quietly with some homicidal angel to an inevitable death.

  I’d jumped off the Patrick Street side of the building — a broad one–way street with parking on either side. Trendy eateries, coffee houses, and antique shops in historic brick row houses lined the street, all heavily populated with an early lunch crowd. Plenty of people saw my suicidal jump and my transformation to a winged being. I didn’t care; I was too busy trying to gain altitude and avoid the parked cars. My wings were nearly thirty feet across and I felt them slap against the vehicle roofs as I slowly rose. I’d just made it past the library when a streak of white shot by me, barely missing one wing and turning half of a Mini Cooper to dust. The fucker was shooting at me! In a crowded downtown street!

  Another blast knocked a minivan across the road, leaving a pothole the size of a sofa in the asphalt. My wings beat furiously, and I tilted to turn right on Market Street, grabbing a lamppost to slingshot myself around the corner and accelerate. Chunks of pavement filled the air behind me as another blast missed me. If I hadn’t made the corner, he would have hit, and I wasn’t sure how disabling or lethal whatever he was shooting would be. My one experience with angel energy blasts had nearly ended in my death, and I got the idea this guy wasn’t using any less power.

  Weaving side to side, I avoided two more blasts and darted left, the wrong way down Church Street, past the line of law firms, financial planning offices, and houses of worship. I’d been sacrificing vertical assent for speed, and one of my wings clipped a street sign, sending it flying through the window of an upscale cosmetology school. Judging from the sounds behind me, and the pulverized bits of debris in the air, downtown Frederick probably looked like a Word War II Spitfire had unloaded its machine gun through the city.

  I banked hard to the right onto Court Street then negotiated the tight turns around City Hall that brought me back around onto Church. Angels were faster, more powerful than demons, but my leathery wings were far more maneuverable. I hoped to lose him by staying downtown and weaving in and out of the streets, keeping low and using the buildings to hide as I flew.

  The bell tower chimed the hour as I turned right, onto Bentz, speeding to get past the open expanse of Baker Park and through the residential section beyond the old armory. The buildings here weren’t more than two to three stories tall, and between the two parks surrounding the armory, there was plenty of open space for the angel to gain enough speed to flank me. I stayed low, turning down Third Street just as another blast streaked by. Desperate to loop around and return to the central area of downtown, I made a sharp left onto Klinehart’s Alley and immediately realized my error. The alley was too narrow for my vast wings, and, without the space to maneuver, my speed slowed. I felt the angel gaining, felt the heat of his reckless stream of lethal white energy. Frantic, I darted right through the old Carmack Jay’s parking lot and pulled on the red–purple that networked from my branding into my spirit–self to summon my angel, Gregory.

  I left the parking lot as a blast seared the under–section of my wing and flew behind a tavern, weaving in and out of the backyards of residential row houses.

  Now! I need you right now! I thought as I again summoned the angel. I was panicked. This guy was closing in on me fast, and I had a feeling his offer of a “comfortable” death would no longer be on the table.

  Rolling, I avoided a clothesline full of linen, then angled right, barely missing a trellis full of early rosebuds, to plow into something rock–hard. I crashed to the ground on top of the obstacle and looked right into an angel’s surprised black eyes. We skidded along the pavement, and I was briefly thankful that he’d be the one with road rash, not me. Crumpling a wing painfully, we slammed sideways into a backyard fountain, and I felt his arms wrap around me, holding me steady. Time stood still as we stared into each other’s eyes, and I felt a surge of emotion. He’d come. He’d come to rescue me. Yes, I was embarrassed that I’d needed to call him, that I was such a little cockroach that I’d needed his help, but still — he’d come.

  Reaching a hand across my back, Gregory seized the waistband of my pants and flipped me up and over his head, leaping to his feet in front of me. I rolled over, dissolved my wings and got to my knees, peering between his legs to better see the expression on the angel’s face when he rounded the corner and saw my formidable protector.

  Nothing.

  No angel came around the corner, no blasts of white energy came around the corner: nothing came around the corner. After a few minutes, Gregory turned to face me, his eyebrows raised, a quizzical look on his face.

  “So, what’s the crisis, cockroach? Do you need me to lift another sofa so you can clean under it? Is there another can of tomatoes in your cabinets that you can’t reach?”

  I felt my face heat. I missed him when he wasn’t around and had taken to summoning him for all sorts of important household emergencies.

  “It was an angel, trying to kill me.”

  His eyebrows went even higher.

  “Seriously, an angel was after me,” I sputtered. “Two humans accosted me in an alley, and there was a mage, then the angel came, so I set fire to an office building and had to jump off the roof. He was going to kill me.”

  He eyed me. “An angel? And a mage? What next, little cockroach? Have Martians invaded the planet? Are they trying to kill you too, or just shove an uncomfortably long, exploratory probe up your
backside?”

  I winced, regretting I’d ever told him that story. He hadn’t believed that one either, but it had bought me a whole evening of his time watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Men in Black.

  “I swear to you on all the souls I Own that there was an angel and a mage.”

  Gregory sighed. “Fine. Describe them.”

  “Well, the angel was either an effeminate guy, or a butch girl with blondish hair and pale skin.” Not the best description, but many angels are difficult to tell apart appearance–wise. “The mage looked like Mr. Clean. He was super buff with a bald head and bushy, white eyebrows. He wasn’t wearing a robe. He had on a black t–shirt and dark jeans. There was a gold ring on the middle finger of his right hand. It looked like a signet ring — onyx with an inscribed X and inverted triangle. It was magic.”

  Gregory slowly shook his head and I got the feeling that any credibility I’d earned had slipped away. “You killed another human just now. That’s four since you’ve been the Iblis. Is this wild tale your way to get out of the reports, to shirk responsibility for the deaths? A fabricated story of a mage and an angel after you?”

  “No! I’d ditched the mage, but the angel was going to kill me — to haul me off somewhere and make me comfortable for a couple of weeks while he slowly killed me. I’m not lying; I swear.”

  Black eyes searched my brown ones. “Everyone knows you are off limits. Plenty of my Grigori are anxious to see you dead, but they’d never go against my direct order and take matters into their own hands.”

  “He didn’t seem to know I was the Iblis. I don’t think he was one of your angels.”

  The angel hadn’t been one of the Ruling Council either. I would have recognized his energy signature, even if I hadn’t recognized his corporeal form. The only other angel I’d met was Althean last August, and he’d been reduced to a pile of sand.