Aiming the Constrictor, Simon fired twice. The first net missed the target and spread out in a metal rectangle against the black sky before disappearing. The second wrapped and trapped the Blood Angel, but not before the runes in her skin glowed again.
Another wave of force hammered Simon backward.
“Defense critical,” the calm voice advised him.
Standing, slightly disoriented, Simon looked for the Blood Angel and spotted her lying in the street sixty feet away. He took out a grenade and armed it, then tossed it at her. She tried to roll away, but the grenade went off and enveloped her in flame, killing her in shrieking agony.
There were a few other skirmishes, but when they were done not a Gremlin remained alive in the street. They’d lost five men, not counting Bruce.
No one spoke after Derek gave the order for them to gather their dead and leave. Simon helped pick up one of the dead men, settling him across his shoulders. Then they ran back to the Sloane Street tube station.
Thirty-Three
W hat you have is extraordinary.” The woman trailed her fingers along Warren’s left arm, delicately pulling at the small scales with her fingernails. The effect and her voice were almost sensual.
A prickling sensation crawled under the scales, then spread along Warren’s arm and concentrated at the back of his scalp. He wanted to pull his limb back from the woman’s grasp, but he didn’t. Tulane had told him that Naomi was the most sensitive and skilled among the Cabalists there in the caves.
She was perhaps a couple years older than him, he guessed. Surely no more than four. She would have been pretty if not for all the tattoos and piercings that adorned her flesh. There was also the matter of the two short, curved horns that thrust up from her forehead and made her look positively wicked. She was petite and full-figured, dressed in a low-cut black blouse, black leather pants, and calf-high boots with silver chains.
It was a look, Kelli would have said sarcastically. If Kelli was still in a sarcastic frame of mind. Instead, Kelli sat across the room on the floor and obediently waited for Warren.
Warren felt bad about Kelli’s behavior. Even though she’d been mean-spirited and—at times—cruel to him, he hadn’t known how much effect he’d had on her life until these past few hours. Before that he’d been too sick, in too much pain, to notice.
Still he felt more afraid of being alone in the midst of strangers than guilty about his control over her. So he continued to wish her to sit and wait for him.
“I don’t think it’s extraordinary,” Warren replied.
The woman looked up at him, then over to Tulane, who stood nearby. They were in another room, this one filled with old books in dozens of languages. Plastic cases contained different herbs and powders.
“That’s because you haven’t been properly trained to appreciate what you have,” the woman said. She continued to stroke his arm as if it were some kind of pet.
The prickling increased intensity.
Naomi looked into Warren’s eyes. “You know the demon that did this to you, don’t you?”
That caught Tulane’s interest. Neither of them had mentioned Merihim’s name to the woman. Warren was too surprised to speak.
“You know his name, don’t you?” Naomi repeated.
“Merihim,” Warren said.
Naomi smiled a little and released his arm. She pushed up from her chair and crossed the small room to the overstocked bookshelf. After a moment’s consideration, she chose a thick book with ornate leather covers and returned.
“He is one of the Greater Demons Cabalists have seen in their visions,” Naomi said. “One of those who have been Named.”
“Named?” Warren repeated.
“Not all of the demons have Names,” Naomi said. “Most of them are just things. Powerful things, yes, but they’re little more than tools. They have to claim Names for themselves, and they only do that by fighting their way to the top of the hierarchy.” She looked at Tulane with some confusion. “He doesn’t know about the demons?”
“He hasn’t been formally trained,” Tulane replied.
Naomi searched Warren with her gaze. “What,” she asked, “made you so special in the eyes of a demon like Merihim?”
Warren didn’t have an answer and didn’t try to give one.
“What do you know about Merihim?” Naomi asked.
“He called himself the Bringer of Pestilence.”
Naomi nodded and opened the book. She laid it on the table between them. There, on the page, the demon stood revealed in all his dark glory. His blue-green armor shimmered and his green trident gleamed. Dismembered corpses lay in disarray around him.
“He has been to this world before,” Naomi said, “but it has been a long time. Back in the Middle Ages, a select few of the demons visited our world, studying it to see what they would encounter here. Merihim brought death and disease to the people in Europe. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, died with him. Some say that he journeyed with Christopher Columbus to the New World and was responsible for the deaths of so many Native Americans there. The Spaniards claimed that demons were the cause of so many deaths there.”
Warren barely remembered the stories of Columbus and his voyages along the New World. He did recall the stories of the deaths, the fact that millions of Native Americans had died as a result of contact with the Europeans. Smallpox and other diseases had ravaged them.
“Some say the Native Americans knew Merihim for what he truly was,” Naomi went on. “The Native Americans were more in touch with their world. Some say they see the demons more easily than others. That’s where their legends of the Wendigo come from.”
Warren knew the Wendigo legend. The Native Americans claimed that evil “spirits” sometimes took over warriors and gave them a taste for human flesh. The cannibals and the spirits were both called Wendigo.
“The Native Americans tried to fight Merihim and bind him. He stayed in that world for over a hundred
