Black Wings

into the Hall.”

The Hall had a steel-reinforced door and a coded entry system. It was one of the few rooms in the building with anything that resembled security. The Agency took the records of the dead very seriously.

Gabriel ran past me and followed J.B. The stairwell door banged into the wall as he threw it open, and then slammed shut with tremendous force.

“But what’s happening?” a man asked.

“I don’t know, but the important thing is that you stay safe and you stay together. Go into the Hall and lock the door, and don’t open it until I or J.B. Bennett comes back.”

“What if you don’t come back?” another woman asked.

“Then wait until the screaming stops,” I said, and ran to the stairwell.

17

THERE WAS NO SIGN OF GABRIEL OR J.B. THE STAIRWELL was eerily quiet—there were no vents. My boots echoed as I pounded up the two flights of steps and threw the door open at the first-floor lobby.

Hell awaited me.

The carnage was nearly too much to process. Everywhere I looked there were bodies of Agents, dozens of them, most of them in pieces. Blood had been spattered on the floor, on the walls and on the ceiling—the air was filled with the tang of it. This was death at its ugliest, its most undignified. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve so that I wouldn’t throw up.

The bodies of the receptionist and security guard were slumped over the front desk. There was nothing left of the guard but his torso and a few dangling entrails. His uniform appeared to be torn by the teeth of something very large.

The receptionist had fared a little better. Only her head was missing.

I shivered and realized that there was a big gaping crater where the front door and part of the exterior wall used to be. Chunks of glass and cement appeared to have been thrown inside the lobby from some kind of explosive impact. That must have been what shook the building when we were in the basement.

There were several rubberneckers standing outside on the sidewalk, most of them looking in and then backing away to scream or vomit. The sounds of screams still echoed through the vents, and I realized that whatever was in the building had moved upstairs. And that J.B. and Gabriel had gone after it.

Nobody at the Agency seemed to have been aware that many of their colleagues would be dying today. That meant that these deaths were not planned, not part of the natural order.

Ramuell.

I bolted across the lobby, trying not to think about what squished beneath my boots. I mumbled an apology to the dead. There was no way for me to get to the elevators without stepping on the bodies of my colleagues.

Like many downtown buildings, floors one through three were accessible only by elevator. The stairwell to those floors was locked and could be opened only by a security guard or in the event of an emergency, such as a fire. I figured that the current situation probably qualified as an emergency, but the only person who knew how to open the stairwell was currently in pieces scattered all over the lobby.

There were three elevators. One of the elevator doors was propped open by a human leg. The interior looked like a charnel house. The Agents inside had been trapped. I felt sick when I thought of their dying moments—confused, terrified, helpless.

This is not helping, I told myself. You have to worry about the living now, not the dead.

The other two elevators were closed. I pressed the button and crossed my fingers, hoping that they still worked.

The middle elevator doors opened with the familiar ding of the bell, and the interior was miraculously free of either Ramuell or mutilated Agents. I climbed in and stabbed the button for the fourth floor. I was sure that the nephilim had already moved past the second and third floors, and I didn’t need to see the bodies of any more people that I couldn’t help. If the battle had already moved on, then I could access the stairwell from the fourth floor and go up from there.

My stomach was knotted with anxiety as I watched the numbers change for each floor.2 . . . 3 . . . 4. Just before the doors swished open, I felt a little twinge of magic flare up. I hadn’t felt more than a whisper since I’d set that starburst on Gabriel. It still didn’t feel like my magic was anything close to full power, but there was more than a match flame. Hopefully it would be enough to keep me from getting eaten alive.

The elevator doors opened and a screaming Agent, who must have been leaning against the closed exterior doors, fell backward into the car. I jammed the OPEN DOOR button so that I could check on the Agent, whose face was covered in blood.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”

The guy kept screaming, eyes widened, obviously in total shock. I patted him all over and couldn’t find anything obvious—no gaping wounds or limbs gnawed off—so I hit the button for 1, stepped off the elevator and let the doors close. Hopefully he would have the sense to get out and run as soon as he hit the bottom floor.

There were more bodies strewn in the hallway just in front of the elevators, and the sounds of screaming, snarling and yelling to the left. I darted past some open office doors and to the conference room at the end of the hall. Just as I reached the doorway someone’s arms came flying through and I had to duck to avoid getting hit. Hot blood spattered on my face.

The stink of sulfur filled the air. Six Agents had been cornered by a horror that they would never understand.

Ramuell looked even more disgusting than he had before. The skin on his arms was shredded and burnt, some of it still hanging in pieces from his hands where the starburst had caused the most damage. His head scraped the ceiling and knocked the tiles out of place. I wondered briefly where J.B. and Gabriel were if they weren’t fighting Ramuell.

Oh, please don’t let them have been eaten.

Before I could think of or do anything, a clawed hand shot from the red mass of Ramuell’s body, wrapped around a skinny male Agent who looked like Buddy Holly, and snapped back to the creature’s mouth. I couldn’t actually see his mouth as his back was to me, but I heard the crunching of blood and bone and the terrified screams of the Agent as he was eaten alive.

The magic that had lay dormant inside me roared to life in protest. This was not to be borne. I would not allow anybody else to suffer. I just had to lure Ramuell away so I could get a safe shot at him with my nightfire, and allow the Agents time to escape.

“Hey, Big ’n’ Ugly!” I called.

The crunching paused, and several of the Agents in the corner looked panicked when they noticed me. One of them made a shooing motion at me, trying to tell me to get away. For some reason the gesture made me a little tearyeyed. He was about to get eaten and he wanted me—a total stranger—to escape.

The nephilim turned toward me. Ramuell’s eyes lit up with glee. A jean-clad leg hung between its large teeth like a macabre toothpick. Each tooth was fang-sharp and his breath stank like a butcher’s floor.

“I have been looking for you, little girl.” The leg fell out of his mouth as he spoke. “You owe me a debt for this.” He held up his burnt arms.

I launched a quick, short blast of nightfire at him, just enough to sting. The magic flowed easily from my fingertips.

“Catch me if you can.”

I smiled and crooked my finger at him, then dashed into the hallway. I heard Ramuell roar behind me and hoped that he couldn’t move very fast in the close confines of the building. I had no clear idea of where to go. I just wanted to limit casualties. If I led him into another office, I would be cornered myself, but if I kept him in the