CHAPTER SIXTEEN

You said the door was stuck,” she said.

“We have . . . we can open it now, but I have to see where you are so the door doesn’t . . . so opening it doesn’t accidentally hurt you.” I shut out the image that went with that warning. I shoved it back down into the dark hole of my soul, where all the sins and horrors I’d experienced stayed.

I heard movement and the demon’s two voices started arguing. The younger one wanted to grab her, fuck her, or kill her at least, and the older one, the real demon, was trying to explain that the girl was off-limits in this moment.

Kate appeared at the door, one arm trying to cover as much of her body as she could; her other arm was held awkwardly at her side, not moving much with the dislocated shoulder. The demon had ripped the hospital gown off her. I hoped that was the worst he’d done, but one problem at a time. Save the life first, save the rest later.

“Step that way, stay along that wall,” I said, motioning with my head, because my hands were on the door. I felt that pulse of power as Gimble laid his other hand on me, so that a hand sat on both of my shoulders and suddenly I felt them—wings. Wings so tall and huge that they went through the ceiling and through the floor, spread out around my human body like I was a child trying to wear my father’s clothes. They rose up white and shining, edged with silver and shot through with gold, so beautiful. If they’d been a physical weight it would have dragged me over like a turtle stuck on its back, pinned to the earth by the weight of the glory at my back. Tears started down my face as I put my hands against the door and pushed. I knew the door would move for me, I knew it would open, because for this moment I had been granted the strength of the angel whose wings rose like a halo around me. Nothing so fragile as a door could stand against me. And just like I had at sixteen, I pushed too hard.

The door cracked, splintering, over half of it spinning into the room. If Kate had still been on the bed or just behind the door, she’d have been in its path and she would have died. I shoved the memory of another moment like this down, back into the hole inside me where all the sins lived. I could not let them weaken me now. A sinner forgiven by God cannot be anything but strong. The wings at my back flared, flexing as if we would fly with them, and I reached my hand out to Kate. Her hand wrapped around mine and I pulled her out of the room with Gimble at my back as if he held the angel wings in place like a costume that wasn’t fastened down yet.

Kate threw her undamaged arm around me, but there wasn’t time. The demon rushed the splintered doorway. I pushed Kate into the hallway behind us. I felt the thrill of power as she stumbled through the wings. She reached up as if she felt something and then I planted my foot and braced for impact. The demon filled my physical vision, but the inside of my head was full of shining light laced with gold and silver finer than any that would ever hold a ring. My fear was gone, washed away by the light.

“I command you to leave this body in the name of God and all the angels.” I said it confident that the words with the power at my back would stop the demon.

The demon hesitated and then it laughed, staring down at its taloned hands as if surprised they were still there. “Too late, angel boy, this body’s mine.” The talons slashed at me again, going for my throat, and only the quickness of angels let me block his arm with mine and block his other arm as it came for my heart.

“Havoc, get down!” Charleston yelled from behind me.

I dropped to my knees, trying to roll away, but the wings were in the way, and Gimble was there. “Down!” Charleston shouted again.

I got to my feet, trying to fill the space of the wings at my back, and pictured them folding around Gimble and me like shields of light that nothing could pierce as I held the smaller man against me, as if I expected the wings to launch us skyward and I was afraid I’d drop him.

The shotgun blast sounded like a small bomb in the hallway, or maybe it was just that close to us. I kept all my concentration on the wing shield around us. I didn’t dare use my physical eyes to look at anything. My world had to be the shining wings around us and that phantom sensation of being tall enough to fit the giant arch of them.

The shotgun barked again, and then there was a heavy silence like what happens after explosions and gunfire when your ears stop ringing and you can hear something besides the blood roaring in your ears, except my ears weren’t ringing. I could hear perfectly, in fact I could hear better than my human hearing, as if the touch of angel wings had given me more than strength and speed and safety. It wasn’t the first time or the hundredth that I’d borrowed the senses of the angelic. I shoved the thought that went with that into the hole in my soul. Eventually I’d fill it up and it would either save me or destroy me forever, but not today.

Charleston said, “Havoc, Gimble, are you in there?”

A man’s voice that I wasn’t sure of said, “They’re right there, Lieutenant.”

“They disappeared.” And I thought that was the female guard.

It was Bridges who said, “Havoc, stop playing with the light-up feathers and tell us you’re in there.”

“We’re here. Safe,” I said, but my voice sounded uncertain enough that even I didn’t believe me.

Gimble pushed against me. “Havoc, what the hell, man? I love you, but not that way.”

Unlike the flame angel, the wings didn’t just vanish when he cursed, they opened as I opened my arms as if I really could control them with my human body.

Gimble stumbled away from me, staring down at the hospital gown and everyone in the hallway. “How did I get here?”

Charleston came up to him with a huge 20-gauge shotgun in his hands. The gun looked exactly right in his hands. He patted the gun like it was a pet and said, “Hoodoo powder and get-the-fuck-away-from-us juice.”

“You made that last ingredient up,” Lila said, scowling at him.

He just grinned at her.

“Did you kill it?” Kate’s voice made me look at her. Nurse Prescott was there with a blanket thrown over Kate. I really did owe her good liquor or something.

“You can’t kill a demon, or at least not with anything mortal,” Charleston said.

“What the hell is going on?” Gimble demanded.

Bridges said, “Look at Havoc with something besides your eyeballs, Gimble.” She pointed at me.

He turned and looked at me. He frowned and it was his frown again. A tightness I didn’t know I’d been holding released in my gut, and with the relief the wings began to fade like morning dew as the sun rises, drying the grass and turning the dewdrops to tiny prisms of light and color.

“Rainbow wings, cool,” Gimble said, grinning at me. He reached a hand out toward the wings as they faded. Bridges slapped his hand as if he were five and reaching for a cookie before it was cool enough to eat.

“Angel shit is what got you in the hospital, Gimble,” she said, voice heavy with disdain.

“Last thing I remember is the crime scene in the off-campus apartment.” He frowned, but then looked at the fading rainbow of the wings and smiled. It was a shadow of that beatific one he’d had before. He started to reach out toward them again, but a glance at Bridges and he didn’t finish the movement. “Will someone explain what’s happening to me? Please?” I think the please was aimed at Bridges. She was one of the few women I’d seen be immune to his boyish charm.

The wings vanished to physical sight, but I could still feel them like a heavy curve of feathers as I turned to see half our unit in the hospital hallway. “Which one of you could see Gimble and me standing here?” I asked. Anyone who could see through angel magic had been holding out on us.