Devil's Hand

by M. E. Patterson

  As she walked, she observed the changes that Las Vegas had undergone in only a day’s time. Nearly every building she passed bore damage: façades ripped free by swirling winds and glass windows shattered and broken, admitting snow that whipped through the now-ruined lobbies. Looters had clearly broken some of these windows, and a part of her mortal mind found a small voice with which to register its complaint. As foul and greed-ridden as it was, Las Vegas belonged to Celia, and Celia to it. She felt angry with any who would take advantage of the city during a natural disaster.

  In the distance, she could hear sirens and the occasional panicked scream or bloodcurdling yell. Along the streets lay tractor-trailers, delivery trucks, cars, bicycles, SUVs, and bodies, all frozen into the snow. The blizzard had ruptured arteries in Las Vegas. The City of Sin was suffocating beneath blankets of ice.

  A different voice–an older voice–spoke up inside her head. It wasn’t loud, but it drowned out her own monologue nonetheless. But then, this storm isn’t natural, is it?

  Her anger toward Zamagiel deepened.

  What faith do you hold, child?

  Lost in her emotions, she was struck by the sudden peculiarity of the question. She didn’t have an answer. Her family had never been extremely religious, but after the day’s events, she at least had come to believe in many things that had simply been myth before.

  Good. Belief spawns power. Power brings rule.

  She didn’t want to rule anything. She just wanted to be rid of Zamagiel once and for all. She was tired of being the prey in a fallen angel’s foolish hunt.

  Rule will follow his death. Wars will be fought and my freedom will be assured.

  Part of her thoughts–the part that had receded to the farthest recesses of her mind–grew frightened. She did not want rule, or wars. She remembered her parents.

  Forget them! They were merely vessels for power. They gave you birth and nothing else.

  But her imagined memories of their slaughter danced in her thoughts. She screamed into the cold, dead night.

  Yes! If you must remember them, remember that for now! Oh, how you hate the grigori! How you seek his utter destruction!

  She did, in fact, seek his demise. Every fiber of her being screamed out for revenge, for destruction of the one thing that had taken her life away.

  He will die. And then you will rule.

  Yes, she thought. After Zamagiel’s death, she would take the power and control to which she was entitled. This world had done nothing for her. There was no one who cared about her anymore. But then, for the first time in an hour, Trent’s face surfaced in her thoughts.

  No. Ignore him. He is a useless mortal.

  But he wasn’t useless. Trent had saved her life. He had pulled her from the writhing hands of The Book itself. Celia found herself wishing to see him again, wishing to see that rare smile that sometimes broke across his lips that suggested everything was going to be alright. Trent cared about her. Trent was her friend.

  He’s nothing, child. Nothing!

  The argument was broken by a commotion ahead in the darkness. It sounded like other people, and part of her wondered if Trent was among them. She rushed forward to see.

  She rounded the corner past an abandoned shop, and then witnessed a stomach-wrenching sight. Trapped in the raging storm, a woman had stopped her car along an empty side street, abandoned by the city in the dead night hours of a blizzard. Alone and scared and tired, the woman, wearing only nurse’s scrubs, had found herself suddenly surrounded, dragged from her car by a trio of whooping twenty-somethings with ragged clothes and baseball caps.

  The young woman lay on her back in the swirling ice now, her clothes torn asunder as she desperately fought back the advances of three groping young men, clearly high and owners of a stack of looted electronics nearby. They had found another pastime on the now-lawless streets.

  The nurse screamed, but little more than a stifled shriek escaped her lips. The men’s hands darted in and out, clawing at items of clothing and tearing away with unchecked ferocity. They yelled things like, “Come on, baby,” and “Don’t worry, girl, we’ll be gentle,” even as they laughed and whooped and complained about the bitter cold.

  Celia stopped dead in her tracks, watching for a moment as the trio clawed at their victim. She imagined the nurse as Susan and hatred welled up inside her.

  The men were like animals, she thought, not humans. There was more desperation there than true desire. This is what the storm was doing to the city. Beyond the cold and the winds and the snow, Zamagiel’s foul storm was stirring up the sin and greed into malevolent, hateful energies amidst the chaos. These men were the worst example of the collapse: men whose lives had been so irreversibly altered by the City of Sin that, without police, they no longer knew right from wrong. Or at least they no longer had a reason to.

  “Hey!” Celia shouted, her voice just barely carrying above the din of the storm. “Leave her alone!”

  All three men looked up then, night animals caught in the act.

  “Get outta here, kid,” yelled the tallest of the three, a young man whose face was covered in blemishes and sores.

  One of his compatriots turned to him then and explained something that she could not hear, but had already guessed at. Sore Face turned his gaze back on her.

  “Actually, honey, why don’t you come on over here?”

  Celia glanced at the woman on the ground. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she was shaking violently from a combination of cold and fear.

  “Gladly,” muttered Celia.

  The three men smiled as she approached. One of them rubbed his hands together for warmth. Another, whose pants were already unzipped, reached beneath his waistband to fondle himself. His face bore an expression of imminent pleasure that did not disturb Celia so much as it enraged her.

  “Enjoying yourself?” she asked. “It’s going to be the last time.”

  None of the men moved as she came close. Like animals, they could smell danger. Had they known what was approaching them, they would have run in a heartbeat.

  Celia glared at the man with his hand in his pants. He screamed and his eyes went wide. His hand stayed where it was, trapped and frozen against his own flesh. Doubling over, he dropped to his knees, still screaming, trying desperately to both free his hand and not move it at the same time.

  She stopped only a few feet away and realized that the young nurse had a large, bloody gash on her forehead and her left eye was ruined. One of the young men was wielding a blood-smeared piece of metal rebar.

  “You like hitting women, huh?” She glared at the guy with the rebar in his hand.

  Shaken by their companion’s terrified screams, the men shifted from animalistic lust to raw survival. The guy with the rebar charged, raising the rusty metal rod to strike her across the face. He never came close.

  The old voice in her mind spoke up, and Celia discovered that she had become far more connected with the ice and snow than she had previously realized. In an instant, her right arm transformed.

  Where fingers and flesh had been, a jagged two-foot length of ice formed, transforming her limb into a sharpened weapon. Fueled by The Book’s lust for vengeance, Celia thrust the frozen shard forward, piercing the man’s shoulder. Blood sprayed down his right side and his arm jerked spasmodically, causing him to drop the metal bar. She quickly withdrew the icy spike and the man stumbled backwards. He clutched at the damaged shoulder with his left hand.

  The tall man with the sores on his face seemed to be the smartest of the bunch. Faced with something out of his nightmares, he turned and ran.

  Kill him. He has sinned.

  Celia’s countenance was calm and dead as she turned and whipped her arm toward the fleeing man. The crystalline spike slid off, leaving her normal forearm and hand where it had always been. Whistling through the air at high-speed, the icicle slammed into the man from behind and pierced straight through the back of his neck. He stood for a second in shock and then dropped to
his knees before finally slumping to the ground in a pool of steaming blood.

  She stared at the death she had just delivered. Some part of her mind rebelled against the behavior, but the voice of The Book fought it off. Behind her, lying in the snow, the other two men writhed and twisted in pain.

  Kill them both. They do not deserve life.

  She shook her head. No, she couldn’t do this, could she? She had already killed so many. As monstrous as these men were, she was not going to degrade herself further by slaughtering the fallen.

  No! They must die!

  She screamed. “I am not a murderer!” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out The Book. Steam lifted from the pages as she gripped the yellowed paper. The skin of her hand bubbled and seared.

  You cannot toss me aside. Without my protection, they will find you. They will kill you!

  “I don’t care!” she bellowed. “Let them find me!”

  Conjuring up all the willpower and strength she could muster, Celia hurled the paperback into a nearby storm drain. The old voice in her head, though it still lingered for a few seconds, became increasingly quieter. Her mortal voice came back to the forefront. The Book’s voice finally departed as she watched the two injured men hobble off into the black night.

  When they had finally left her sight, she turned to the downed woman. The men had bruised and bloodied the nurse, and her face bore even more damage than Celia had originally thought. Her blonde hair–dyed with red highlights–was now more blood red than dye-red. The guy with the metal bar had beaten her nearly unconscious before they had started in on removing her clothes. The gash in her forehead shone with deep, dark blood, and the massive damage to the left side of her face had left her eye bloodied, swollen shut. But she had survived. With her right eye, the nurse looked up at Celia with fear. She tried to open her lips to speak, but couldn’t make any noise.

  The woman was very pretty and probably in her early thirties, Celia estimated. She was clad in aqua-colored scrub pants and a white blouse, spotted with cartoon-style sports players. The blouse had been torn nearly in half and her bra had been ripped clear, revealing part of her right breast and most of her stomach. Her pants and underwear were around her knees.

  Celia bent down and carefully rearranged the woman’s blouse as best she could, pulled up her pants, and then tried to help her stand. She noted that the nurse’s nametag read, ‘Anna.’

  Anna trembled violently as she stood, relying on the teenager for balance. Tears streamed down one side of her face.

  Celia helped her to the open car door, brushed the accumulating snow from the seat, and helped her sit. She looked up and down the street. The streets here seemed reasonably clear.

  She turned back to the nurse. “Anna, you need to get out of here, okay? Go home. If you can get the car started, I want you to follow me.”

  Anna, still sobbing, just nodded. With a shaking hand, she reached over and turned the key, still in the ignition. The engine of the small, white two-seater grumbled to life. Celia shut the car door as the woman gripped the steering wheel and eased the car into reverse. Celia walked around behind it.

  Without The Book, Celia wasn’t sure if what she was going to try would even work, but a part of her suggested it still would. She closed her eyes and imagined the pages in the old paperback, with their strange flowing script of lines and tiny circles. Celia felt a cold shiver make its way up her spine–a shiver that she knew was not due to the blizzard. She opened her eyes and, to her surprise, the snow beneath her feet was once again shuffling away, leaving dry pavement beneath.

  The woman’s car began to back toward Celia and the tires found purchase as snow edged its way out from beneath the rubber. She raised an arm for the woman to see in her rearview and pointed in the direction she had come.

  “That’ll take you towards a Metro office,” she shouted. Memories of her escape from the police lockup buffeted her thoughts and stirred her guilt, but she fought them back.

  The young nurse turned the steering wheel slowly as she backed up. Celia hoped that if the woman got far enough into the safer part of the city, she might find some roaming police officer that could take care of her.

  The thought made her remember again what she had done in the police station. Images of dead cops flashed through her mind. She fought off the memories. She had too much to do to worry about that now.

  She walked around the car to the driver-side window, which the Anna was in the process of rolling back up. She stopped as she saw the teen approach.

  “Look,” Celia said, frowning. “Just keep going straight and try to find a cop or somebody who can help.”

  The woman nodded.

  Celia remembered something and reached inside her jacket pocket. She pulled out the apple Snake had given to her.

  “Here,” she said, and handed it to the nurse. “Something to eat in case you get stuck overnight. Things should be better in the morning. The storm will be over.”

  She thought about Zamagiel. Even without The Book, she hated the fallen angel for what he had done, and this woman’s near-rape was yet another example of the pain Zamagiel was bringing to everyone in the city.

  “I promise,” she said, with a determined frown. “The storm will end tonight.”

  The woman took the apple, then rolled up the window and put her hands on the wheel.

  As Celia moved, the snow parted beneath her feet, letting the front-wheel drive car behind her catch traction. As soon as it seemed to be moving at a decent clip, she trotted out of the way.

  Facing south, she watched as the car finally disappeared into the blizzard mist. Behind her, she could feel the dark, inhuman presence of the city lurking in the night. The three men she had just witnessed were only a sample of the kinds of horrors that were only just beginning as the city crumbled. She turned around to face those horrors and found she was standing face to face with the worst of them all.

  Salvatore smiled, his face broken, bone visible beneath bloody gashes in his cheek. His breath didn’t form steam, despite the cold.

  “They told me you would come back to me,” he said. “You’re too strong for Raziel’s silly book, aren’t you, child?”

  Before she could respond, Celia felt the cold sensation of water rising in her throat. She began to gag. Her eyes felt as though they might explode from their sockets, as if water was pressing on the back of her eyeballs in an attempt to force them from her skull. The intense pain brought on swirling black and star-like fireworks that rushed into her vision from every direction. Her body went limp, her eyes closed. She fought to stay awake, fought to think about something–anything–that would remind her of the waking world, and her last mental image, before a deep sleep washed over her, was of Trent.

  25

  TRENT MOVED THROUGH THE TUNNELS as Las Vegas shut down around him. Sometimes he would pass drop inlets, where orange beams of light cast down from sodium lamps above. But after an hour of walking, even those went dark. Trent could only feel his way through the tunnels by touching the walls. Sometimes his feet would strike bodies, bums or tunnel druggies, most likely dead from exposure to the fearsome cold. In the distance, somewhere up above, he could, for a while, hear store alarms ringing as looters braved the storm. But as the lights blinked out, so did the alarms, dropping the blizzard-devastated city into an eerie, howling nothingness that seemed even more ominous down here in the dark.

  The cold, he realized with a start, had grown so intense as to be near paralyzing, or at least it would have been for a normal man. Trent considered that maybe more had changed about him than just the ability to impart bad luck on others. What other traits had he stolen from Ramón. He felt the cold seeping into his skin, painful and panic inducing, but yet...

  He marveled at his own resilience.

  Soon, a light appeared faint in the darkness ahead. At first, Trent thought it might be someone with a flashlight, though as he approached, it grew larger and brighter. A series of battery-powered lamp
s, all hanging from the wall of a much larger, more open chamber.

  He heard voices, and the sound of a radio, as he came closer, he started to see people, a dozen or more. He held the dagger tight, hoping that this was ‘The Church’ he had heard about, and not some gang or worse. A woman appeared out of the darkness, the lamplight casting her face in a striking pattern of light and shadow, outlining all the crags and wrinkles in her aging face.

  “Oh my,” she gasped. “Come in, come in. You poor man. Join the group, please.”

  Trent followed her into a large chamber, an open space filled with beautiful graffiti, much of it comprised of religious symbology. One wall had been turned into a shrine, with a picture of the Virgin Mary and the Christ. A beat-up old wooden crucifix leaning against a concrete pillar. The blue-white light from the lanterns danced on the face of the life-sized Jesus. Nearby, a half-dozen cracked panels of stained glass, salvaged from some church topside, had been placed against the tunnel wall and backlit with candles that cast multicolored glows across the chamber.

  The woman, probably not far past fifty, gave Trent a wink and a smile and brushed her gray hair back from her face. She seemed to be taking the insane weather fairly well.

  Trent looked around the cathedral and realized why. She had set the place up as both shelter and triage. It was her job to be cheerful and positive.

  “No worries,” she said. “You come inside, I’ll get you a cup of coffee, and we’ll wait this thing out together.” She gestured toward the unorthodox congregation. “All of us together. I’m Mary, by the way.”

  Trent tried to fake a smile, but there were more pressing issues in his mind than desires for coffee and company. “No coffee, thanks. You really think this is gonna pass?”

  She squinted and laughed. “‘Course it is! Come on in, sit for a while. You’ll feel much better, I promise. It’s only snow. We just have to wait on the Lord and wait on the weather.”