by Kim Faulks
“Hey, kid!” I swung my fist, hitting the bottom half of the door and then shoved. “Kid, you in there!”
Something screamed inside the apartment. Something small and helpless.
I stumbled sideways, righted myself, and then dropped my shoulder. Thighs tensed. A roar burned, as I drove my heels into the floor and charged.
I hit the door with a crunch. My shoulder gave way, but the door held. Still that thing inside screamed and screamed…wailing like a goddamn banshee.
Jesus…I stumbled backwards, tried to clench my fist and felt a damn unseen knife plunge deep.
The door…the damn door.
I ground my jaw, stared at the frame and surged ahead. Bones crunched, tendons tensed, until the door gave way with a sudden crack.
Something smacked my face as I stumbled inside. Wings flapped in my ears as a cold wind raced. I glanced around the darkened room, trying to make sense of the stuff inside it.
Wings flapped against my face. I stumbled, swung, and waved my hands through the air as the damn thing came again. Bigger than a moth…smaller than a bird. A sting flared across my cheek. I skimmed my fingers across my face and rubbed them together.
Blood smeared the tips of my fingers. I jerked my gaze across the shadows. What the fuck was that? “Hey, kid! Kid, you in here?”
Something crashed down outside. I scanned the dark once more and then turned for the door. Fire singed the side of my face as I stumbled into what was left of the foyer.
Flames reached high along the stairs and swallowed the ceiling. There was no way I could get through…no way. Heat tore through my chest. I tried to swallow the air...but the burn…
The foyer grayed as my world swam. Gotta get out of here…I turned toward the rear of the building and shoved off the doorframe. The thing with wings tore past me and screeched. It looked like a tiny beast, with a mouth full of wicked fangs.
I stumbled after the damn thing toward the back door. My palm burned, fingers slipping as I gripped the steel and twisted.
But the damn thing wouldn’t budge. I glanced over my shoulder as the fire raced, spreading upwards and across…coming right for me.
Panic raced, fear spread, leaving me breathless. Tears blurred the hungry orange flames…reaching…reaching.
I turned back to the handle and wrenched the steel as the inferno screamed all around me.
The tiny winged-creature tore through the air and, with a piercing screech, hit the wall. I knew then…knew there was no way out…not for me…or it.
And of all the monsters who could’ve come here to kill me…it was the ones I never would have suspected…the ones I’d bled for…the ones I’d fought to protect and serve…the ones who were human…like me.
Chapter Seventeen
Lorn
“He’s not coming,” I muttered, and stared into the growing darkness. “The sonofabitch isn’t coming.”
“Yes, he will.” Gabriel tried to reassure me.
I glanced at the blinding white glare in the dark and winced. “Can you stop with the damn light show?”
“Sorry,” he murmured and, in an instant, the harsh glow faded, leaving stars to dance in front of my eyes.
I looked back at the street corner and then glanced at the fading sun. Of all the places to bet he’d be, I was sure this was one of them. “I don’t get it. Maybe I don’t know him at all. Maybe he is the killer everyone says he is.”
“We wouldn’t be here if you truly believed that.”
I winced, hating the words. He was right, as much as I refused to admit defeat—the smug…asshole was right. I glanced at the abandoned building and tried to picture another night…one years before, when a young mother fought for her life.
I still didn’t get it, still tried to fit the pieces together. I wanted answers, and I wanted to look into his eyes when he said them. “Why here?”
Headlights splashed against the darkening street in front of me before the car turned.
We were in the middle of nowhere…abandoned warehouses and street corner gangs were all that kept this place from being a damn ghost town. I took a step over the curb to stand at the end of the road.
Why the hell were you here, mom?
A sudden chill raced along my spine as the words filled my head. I turned, catching a faint whiff of something on the breeze. Something cold…and wet.
Damp, like sodden autumn leaves…something that pulled me closer.
“Lorn?” Gabriel called out behind me as I crossed the street and headed for the building.
There was something about the graffitied, desolate shell of what once was some kind of warehouse. I stepped across the parking lot as the heavy thud of boots echoed behind me and glanced at the grounds. A steel sign sat on the ground, resting against the wall, Patterson’s Cannery.
A cannery that had this much power?
“What is it? What do you see?”
I drew in a breath and glanced toward him. “You don’t smell that?”
He stilled, tilted his head, and drew the air in deep. But it wasn’t just the scene on the air. It was the power…the sense of something watching…waiting. The sense of something other. A sense that grew more powerful as I stepped up to the eight-foot chain-link fence.
“You think a cannery is somehow important?”
Yes, I thought it was important. I glanced down at the pavement, but it was more than the building… “I want to go inside.”
Don’t do it…My mother’s voice tore through my head.
I stopped at the sound.
Breath caught.
Heart hammering, and spun.
Darkness and shadows. Cars in the distance…just me and Gabriel…just me and Gabriel.
“What is it?” Panic flared in his voice, driving the octaves higher as he scanned the street behind us.
Don’t go in there, Lorn.
I bit my lip and tried to breathe. “Why?” The word was a gasp. “Why don’t you want me to go in there?”
“Um, because it’s dark and filthy and, yeah, it’s filthy.”
I shook my head, glanced at the archangel by my side, and murmured, “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Blue eyes brightened, like a shooting star against a perfect sunny sky. “You weren’t talking to me? Then who were you talking to?”
“I want to know…” I murmured. “I want you to tell me…tell me the truth. Why were you here?”
Her screams filled my head…frantic and jumbled, just snatches of conversation that were slipping away.
“Mom!” I searched for her voice, clawing hold of the faint sound as it slipped through my mind’s fingers.
“Mom?” Gabriel murmured. “Are you telling me you can hear her?”
I lifted my head to the shell of a building as her voice slipped away.
“Lorn,” he gripped my arm. “Are you telling me you can hear her voice?”
I nodded and felt the sway. I could hear her…see her…of all the years I cried for her. Of all the years I just needed to know she was with me—she never came…until now.
The building. It was all about the building.
The howl of a dog echoed from somewhere in the distance as an ache flared in the back of my throat. “Why?” The word was snatched away by the breeze. “Why don’t you want me to go in there?”
“Because she’s worried you’ll catch some filthy disease, I imagine,” Gabriel snarled and arched his wings high. “He isn’t coming, Lorn. So we’ll keep searching. He has to be somewhere. Come on, we’ll go back home and make a new plan.”
There was a scuff of his boots and a ruffle of feathers. I caught the flare of white against the growing night as he turned, and that baying of the hound was met by another, and then another.
The sound was trapped by the wind to pummel my senses.
His clothes stink of rich earth and wet leaves, and there's blood...blood on the knees of his pants. I find it when I wash his clothes. If he ever found me looking...he'd hit me.
The journal’s words filled my head. It was all I had of her…all I had of the truth.
I lifted my head as Gabriel muttered and snarled, and caught the wide gap in the chain-link fence. Mom didn’t want me to go in there…she didn’t want me here at all.
The police report had been hidden from me my entire life…everything about her death had been hidden from me my entire life.
I wanted to know.
I needed to know.
I surged forward as Gabriel arched his wings high and muttered, “Lorn, are you ready?”
My head dipped low, spine curled, as I surged through the gap in the fence. Pain flared at the sound of ripping fabric as I pushed through and out the other side.
“Lorn? Lorn, for God’s sake.”
But I was already moving, stepping around the debris and sparse grass as the baying of the hounds grew louder...five, six…more howled and yelped.
Gabriel hit the fence and gripped tight. “Think about this for a damn second!”
“I have thought about this, Gabriel. I’ve thought about this every fucking second of my life. Who killed her and why? Most times, I’ve done nothing but think about this. There’s not more thinking for me…” I took a step backwards and kicked something hard before I turned. “Tonight, I find the answers. Go home, Gabriel. I’ll be fine on my own.”
I turned and lifted my gaze to the shattered wall of the building. Darkness waited in there. Darkness and wet earth. My stomach tightened, fear was a beast bearing down on me…
Just as it had my entire life.
I took a step, and then another, climbing over the cannery sign and then through the gap.
“Lorn, for fuck’s sake!” Gabriel screamed behind me.
In all the years we’d known each other, I’d never heard him swear like that…
The chain-link fence twanged and howled behind me as I lifted my feet and stepped inside. That sense of wrongness grew stronger now…like this place was a sinkhole for the decrepit and the foul.
“Lorn, wait, damnit.”
There was a lightness in my chest as the whoosh…whoosh…whoosh of his wings echoed and he hit the ground. He couldn’t leave me…not now, probably not ever. “She was here, Gabriel. I know she was.”
I stepped deeper into the shadows and lifted my gaze. The roof was mostly gone, fallen away over time to leave a gap wide enough for a truck to pass through.
The faint rustle of feathers above carried across the space. Birds were the only thing that lived here now. Birds and memories. I took a step, moving deeper inside as the faint white light of my guardian angel flowed from behind me to illuminate the space.
Some of the machinery was still here. Conveyor belts, and tables…lots and lots of tables. My boots barely made a sound as I stepped closer, reaching out to skim my fingers across rusted metal. A cannery…a damn cannery. White heavenly glow spilled as I tried to make the connection.
“Why?”
“Were there any photographs…maybe if we had a sense of where, we might be able to understand the why?”
I shook my head as the police report filled my mind. “It was just him…just Redemption.”
The breeze picked up with the whisper of his name, and that sense of other resonated a little louder. “Do you feel that? The veil is so thin here…” I lifted my hand, fingers splayed to touch the air. “So very thin.”
“The veil to where…it’s not Heaven…or Hell. I’d feel it if it was.”
Not Heaven, or Hell.
The faint baying of the hounds outside grew louder. Yelping and snarling, blending piercing sounds to carry with the wind. I felt their calls…felt their hunger and their need.
And I felt their fear like it was my own.
Maybe we should go back…the words never reached my lips.
Instead, they clogged the back of my throat like a fist as something shifted in the darkness. Black on black moved in the corner of my eye. I wrenched my gaze toward the sight and took a step. “Over there.”
Light flared against the night, lighting up the corner of the room. Something stepped from the corner, smothered by shadows and shrouded with magic…it moved.
It was a will-o'-the-wisp. A small ribbon-like darkness that grew as I stared, bleeding and blending with the night. And as it flowed. it created substance, morphing into the shape of a human. Its features shifted, and then hardened…
“Good God,” Gabriel choked…as eyes blinked and then opened.
I stared into a mirror…an endless, dark, foreboding mirror. Strands of its red hair caught in the breeze as the creature took one step toward me and lifted its hand.
“Wraith,” Gabriel snarled as the light from his body flooded the room.
I blinked into the glare as the thing came closer to murmur, “Come, Lorn…he’s waiting.”
The unseelie…
The unseelie…
He’s waiting…
My hand twitched, aching to feel the steel of my gun. Stupid…stupid…stupid. Still the damn thing came closer.
“Lorn,” Gabriel growled, drawing my gaze.
Out of the darkness they came…ten…twenty of them…faceless at first, until their features changed. All wanting the one thing.
My palm burned. Pain roared, stinging all the way along my arm as the frantic baying of the hounds outside grew louder.
“Get the fuck of here, Lorn!”
The scream boomed in my head.
Wide blue eyes.
The light was blinding.
And pain…so much pain.
Flames consumed my hand and raced along my arm, blending black and red as, behind them, the night hag came.
Her shredded and torn cloak flapped in the wind as she lifted those soulless black eyes toward me.
Flashes pummeled me like fists in a fight…jab…claws at my neck…jab…the darkened alley…jab….taking me back here…jab…back to the place where my mother died…jab…but someone was fighting…clawing and screaming—only this it was for me.
In my head, the night hag screamed and thrashed.
In my head, the night hag lost her hold.
I’ve got you…mom’s voice carried through my head as cold arms went around me…I’ve got you, honey…stay with me…
I remembered her now…remember how mom fought for me…how she was alive…but not alive—she was alive here…amongst the cold, the empty, and the forgotten…
She was here for me. She fought for me…
You must stay with them, Lorn. Stay with your lovers…
Her words were so clear now, tearing through my head as the cloak over my memories was pulled away…because they’ll protect me?
No, she whispered…because you will protect them…
I flinched with those words as beasts came from the corner of the warehouse. Hulking black things I’d never seen before and, as I lifted my gaze to Gabriel, the glint of a curved blade cut through the air.
“Behind you!” I screamed as black flames roared from my hand.
Fire…blood…screaming mingled with the nothing.
And, for a second, the world stood still, and I realized…the hounds outside had fallen silent—they howled for us no more.
The blade sliced the air toward Gabriel’s neck. But the archangel had power of his own.
White light exploded like an atomic blast. I wrenched my arm to my face and covered my eyes as will-o'-the-wisps shrieked. Red and black danced like a fireball in my hand. I lowered my arm, staring into the blazing light, and moved closer.
Wings flapped as a brutal grunt echoed through the air.
“Lorn, run!” Gabriel screamed as the light bounced, dulled, and then brightened once more.
But there was no running…there was no hiding. I lifted my hand and felt the call of that dark power.
I was ready…I was so ready to be whoever the fuck I was. Lucifer’s daughter or not, I held his power…
Something sharp slashed my cheek. I flinched and jerked my hand high. Blood gliste
ned on the tips of my fingers. Sparkling and sliding, coating my broken nails. Rage poured out of my palm, rage and pain, and all the years I’d wondered why…all the years I’d needed a mother…one who was taken from me.
“Fuck you!” Fire flowed in waves of rage.
The thing screamed, and shrieked, but still it came again, lunging through the blinding light to hack and claw.
A grunt came from my right…and the white light faded.
“Gabriel! Gabriel!”
The heavy thud at my feet was sickening. Blood flowed from the wound in his chest. “No…no…no!” I dropped to my knees, slamming my hands over his wound.
Flames from my palm licked the deep gash over his heart. Flesh sizzled. Blood pooled. I tried to stem the flow, tried to put him all back together as his blood slipped through my fingers and trickled away under my hands.
Those blue eyes gripped me, spearing me to the spot, as claws raked my shoulder and fangs sank deep.
I screamed…screamed for him…screamed for me and, as the darkness descended, I knew I’d die here…just like my mom.
Chapter Eighteen
Rival
Black smoke billowed into the night sky in the distance. Red and blue lights followed as sirens wailed. I stared at the choking haze and quickened my steps. It wasn’t our place…it wasn’t anywhere near our place.
Still, that heavy thud inside my chest sent a ripple of fear into that cold, dark chasm of my soul. Not my place…not my place.
I kicked into a slow jog…damn cab driver wouldn’t stop—not even for a fist full of gold. Sweat beaded along my brow as I lengthened my stride. I turned the corner and caught the flashing fire truck outside the apartment building.
The sound of shattering glass carried…I drove my heels into the ground, pushing harder until the jarring thuds ripped up my legs. Humans gathered outside the apartment building and spilled out onto the street.
A black and white police car was side-ways, blocking traffic. I slowed as the officers pushed back the crowd. One of them lifted his gaze, dark, unflinching eyes found mine. “Stay back,” he warned, red and blue lights splashing across his face.
