The boost took some of the pressure off my shoulder, but not enough. It gave out halfway through. I half climbed, half fell through the opening, and landed hard on my arm. The other arm—which was why I hit with a suppressed grunt, and not a scream that would have brought every demon in the building down on us.
The planks of the floor sagged under me as I pushed myself to my feet. The rot was so bad the whole floor had the odor of an old tree trunk half-reclaimed by the forest. Powder burns of black mold speckled the walls. The earthy odor was almost enough to cover up the scent of Hell.
I was so busy wondering whether the floor was going to give out under me, it took me a minute to notice the room was smaller than it should have been. There were two, maybe three feet between me and the far wall. And the wall was some kind of cheap particleboard. It should have been more rotted out than the floor, but it smelled fresh, and the mold hadn’t gotten to it yet.
And there were no doors. Just the window on one side and the flimsy wall on the other.
Sullivan clambered up behind me. I ignored him. I pressed my ear to the inner wall. I could hear voices, if I concentrated, but none close enough to make out. None of the demons were close by.
I felt along the particleboard until I found the spots where the slabs had been nailed in. Whoever had done the job hadn’t put a whole lot of effort into it. A couple of tugs pulled the first nail loose. I repeated the process until one of the slabs came free.
I caught the slab with my off hand and slid it aside. A small room opened up in front of us. Right away I knew this was the real building, and the rotted-away area where we’d climbed in was an illusion. A facade to fool passersby. This warehouse wasn’t abandoned. Maybe it had been, but when the demons had moved in, they’d fixed it up better than new. The tile floor gleamed. The paint on the walls was so fresh it smelled wet. There wasn’t so much as a strand of cobweb in the corners.
There was a computer set up at one end of the room. The table at the other end was cluttered with low stacks of paper and a device I recognized after a few seconds as a laminator. A quick listen at the door reassured me the demons weren’t on their way to this room yet.
I wasted a minute or two trying to guess the computer password. A sharp hiss from Sullivan pulled me away. He had a few of the papers in his hand, only they weren’t papers at all. They were small laminated rectangles. Driver’s licenses.
Sullivan held one up to the light. “They’re making fake IDs. Flawless work. These people have a professional operation here.” He set the license down and picked up an official-looking piece of paper. “And they’re not just in the business of helping teenagers ignore the drinking age. They’ve got birth certificates. Social security cards.” He waved the paper at me. “What do you know about this, Ward? Were you one of their clients?”
I snatched the paper out of his hand. It didn’t offer me any clues. A birth certificate with a name and birthplace that meant nothing to me. I didn’t know what I had expected to find, but a run-of-the-mill identity theft operation wasn’t it. There were quicker ways for an enterprising demon to make a buck.
I handed the fake birth certificate back to Sullivan, to make him happy. Evidence to a cop was like a dog biscuit to a puppy. It usually disappeared before they could get much use out of it, but it sure made them feel proud of themselves when they caught it from whoever tossed it for them.
“Enjoy,” I told him, and eased open the door.
I looked both ways. Voices in the distance, but no one in sight. I crept out into the hallway. A plan was forming in my head. Finding anything in this place would be trial and error. Really what I needed was to listen in for a while, or get a chance to explore their headquarters at my leisure when they weren’t busy getting ready to burn the whole thing down. I could do both—if I found the vehicles they were packing up and snuck inside while they were looking the other way.
I knew what Father Keller would say to that. I could see his disappointed look now. Even I had to admit my plan sounded like a great way to get myself killed. But hey, bright side, at least if they caught me I wouldn’t have to see the look in Holly’s eyes when I went back empty-handed. Or listen to Father Keller’s lecture about this little misadventure.
I inched toward the sound of voices. The louder they got, the slower I moved. I might have been taking a risk, but I wasn’t going to get foolhardy about it. Every so often, I glanced over my shoulder to see if Sullivan had started following me again. I didn’t see him. Probably still busy with those piles of evidence. Give a dog a bone and he won’t notice when you sneak out the door.
Ahead of me, the hallway opened up onto a balcony that dropped at least twenty feet down to the floor below. The lower level swarmed with demons, all carrying cardboard boxes crammed to overflowing. I edged back and pressed my back against the wall.
A familiar voice from below caught my ear. “My team searched the grounds thoroughly,” said Smith—or Kaz, I supposed I should call him. “No sign of the prisoner.”
“Search again,” ordered the woman I’d heard in the basement.
“We went over every inch of the grounds three times. He’s gone.”
The woman let out a growl that sounded more like a pissed-off panther than any noise a human throat should have been able to make. “Then make yourself useful packing—oh! My humble apologies for blocking your path. I wasn’t aware you were supervising the move personally.” Between one sentence and the next, the panther had turned into a kitten. “If… if you’ll excuse me. I have business to attend to.” Scurrying footsteps retreated into the distance.
“Do you have something to report?” The new voice sounded like a crow after fifty years of smoking.
A dull thud, like someone prostrating themselves on the floor. Or being pushed there. “The… the prisoner got away.” All Kaz’s cockiness was gone. If I hadn’t recognized his voice a second ago, I wouldn’t have guessed he was the same person who had threatened me. “The hatch was locked. I swear. The prisoner must have been working with someone. Or he had abilities we didn’t count on. There was no way we could have known—”
“Then you failed me.”
“Even if he goes to the authorities, it will be too late. By the time he or anyone else comes back here, there won’t be any trace of us.”
“You failed me,” O’Neill repeated—because that had to be O’Neill. “Me and everyone who depends on the work we do here. You useless, selfish, ungrateful creature.” His sibilants came out as wet hisses, his hard consonants as sharp squawks. “Who were you before I lifted you from your wretched existence? What chance of a future did you have without me? I gave you a gift beyond price, and you squandered it on laziness and incompetence.”
“Forgive this worthless insect. Give me another chance to serve you. Please.”
“Oh, you will serve,” said O’Neill. “You will serve as an example to anyone who thinks apologies can take the place of results.”
“No, wait, please. I’ll find him for you. I’ll cut off his feet as punishment for running from you. I’ll fry them until the skin is thin and crispy, just the way you like it. I—”
His words dissolved into a scream. It started low, then rose into a howl that seemed to go on forever. Then, all at once, it stopped.
I heard a wet thud from below, like an overfull garbage bag hitting the floor and splitting. “Dispose of this,” O’Neill ordered. Someone babbled an affirmative and hurried away.
Slow footsteps shook the floor below hard enough to rattle the balcony. A shadow came into view. Humanoid, but taller than any human had a right to be. Taller than the demons who had come after Holly last night—and that was with his shoulders hunched and his head bent low.
Maybe the light was warping the shadow, but the demon’s arms seemed to have too many joints. They hung oddly, more like a misassembled piece of machinery than a humanoid figure. He walked with his legs splayed outward, almost in a squat. His body lurched forward in an unnatural movement with each step.
He turned, and the shadow changed. Now I could see twin jagged arches jutting up from his back and down to either side of his arms. A latticework of splintered bone hung from that frame.
It took me a second or two to realize I wasn’t breathing.
I mashed myself as flat against the wall as I could get. I took a step to the side, back the way I came, lowering my foot inch by inch to be sure it wouldn’t make any noise. I did it again, every movement painfully slow except the slam of my frantic human heart against my ribcage. I didn’t risk a breath.
When I was sure I was far enough away not to be heard from below, I took off running. I didn’t look back.
It was a good thing the demons hadn’t made it to the room where I had left Sullivan, because I probably would have barreled right into them and not bothered trying to stop. As it was, Sullivan was halfway through drawing his gun before he recognized me. He pressed his hand to his heart instead and glared at me. “Where were you?”
I answered without slowing down. “We’re leaving. Now.” I squeezed through the opening I had made and grabbed the slab to slide it back into place.
Sullivan didn’t follow me. His arms were full of papers, and he grabbed a couple more off the table as he spoke. “You heard them—they’re going to burn this place to the ground. I plan to gather as much information as possible before that happens. This may be proof of an entirely new crime syndicate forming in Jarvis.”
I didn’t have time to argue. All I’d seen of O’Neill was his shadow, but that was enough. If we stayed, getting turned into crispy demon treats was probably the best of the things that could happen to us.
Based on how many underlings O’Neill had running around, I had figured we were dealing with the type of hellspawn I’d done my best to avoid during my time in Hell. The kind who had either been born with power to burn or clawed their way to the top of Hell’s hierarchy by kissing the right feet and stabbing the right backs. Get on the wrong side of one of them, and you’re liable to find yourself hanging off a cliff by your toenails for the next thousand years, waiting for your skin to grow back.
Those guys didn’t come up to Earth too often—why would they, when they had all the victims they could ever ask for in Hell?—so Juliana probably hadn’t run across anything that powerful. Most Inquisitors only had that kind of encounter once, anyway.
I had been wrong. We weren’t dealing with that kind of hellspawn—because we weren’t dealing with the hellspawn at all.
O’Neill was one of the Fallen.
I grabbed Sullivan by the arm and yanked him through the opening. It probably did some more damage to my shoulder, but I didn’t feel it. The papers flew out of his hands and drifted to the floor like snow.
Sullivan wrenched his arm away. Fury twisted his face—along with something I’d never seen from him before. Fear. He thought I was the threat here. I would have laughed, if laughter hadn’t been the furthest thing from my mind.
Before he could say a word, I shoved him through the window with both hands.
He landed hard on his back. He stared up at me, looking betrayed. Like I had violated some kind of unspoken agreement.
I jumped down and landed next to him. He pushed himself to his feet, handcuffs already clutched in one hand. “You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer of the law. You have the right to—”
“I just saved your life,” I growled. “Now run. That’s what I’m going to do. You want to shoot me, go right ahead. It’s better than what’s waiting for me in there. But if you want to live, run.”
Something in my voice must have broken through to him. Because when I took off toward the street, he ran right beside me.