The building directly across from ours lit up like a giant five-hundred-watt bulb had been turned on. I shaded my eyes but didn’t look away.
“What’s happening?” Cowboy stumbled into the room and peered out with me.
“Raid,” I said.
“During the day? I never heard them raiding during the day, always at night.”
“My thoughts exactly. Either they’re on to us, or something has changed.” I frowned.
The steady thump of helicopters slid through the walls and I peered into the sky. Three huge helicopters hovered above the building across the way. Something like fairy dust fell from them, all over the building. It sunk into the stone before ten seconds had passed.
Next came the army boys sliding down ropes, landing on the top of the building armed with . . . I yanked out a pair of binoculars from the bag and watched through them. “Tasers. Not guns. Why aren’t they just killing them?”
“You say that as if it’s better,” Cowboy said. “You want them to die?”
“You want to live trapped like an animal? Forced to lose your mind?” I spoke absently as I watched the tactics of the trained men. Not that I thought they were all that good. On the contrary, they were sloppy as hell as they made their way into the building, not checking their points, not watching their backs.
I swept the binoculars up to the helicopters.
“No winged monsters,” I said softly. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but I had a notion that a ride-along was going to happen sooner rather than later.
“What are you thinking?” Cowboy asked. The look in my eyes must have clued him in, because he followed up with, “Oh, shit. Why?”
“Not today,” I said.
Cowboy let out a sigh of relief. “Seriously, I thought you were going to jump through the window.”
“It would have been the roof with a grappling hook,” I said. “We’re close enough.”
He laughed but that laughter died out when I didn’t laugh with him.
“You’re crazy.”
“Likely. But I know it.”
The sloppy army joes were spilling back onto the roof, tugging along two people. I assumed they were abnormals. Limp, sleeping, unaware that they’d just been tagged and bagged.
I put the binoculars down. “Since you’re up, keep watch.” I flicked channel 9.75 back on and let the static flow.
Taking Dinah and Diego with me, I headed back to the far bedroom. “Three hours, don’t let me sleep any longer than that.”
I shut the door, laid the two guns on the bed and then lay down next to them.
“You got a plan?” Dinah asked.
I closed my eyes, tried not to think about my mom here, hiding from my asshole father. “Yes. We’re going to find Harden first. Then we’ll hunt us up a fallen angel.”
“And kill things?” Diego asked, hope in his voice.
I breathed out slowly. “Yes. We’re going to kill things.”
18
I found Bear in my dreams but didn’t call him to me. He was sleeping too. Sleeping, which meant he was hours ahead of us, still somewhere in Europe. I bent and brushed a hand over his face, sweeping back his dark hair. He was going to break hearts one day with his striking features and fierce belief in doing the right thing.
“You’ll be better than me,” I whispered. “I’m going to shape this world so you can be better than me. So that you don’t have to be the monster I am.”
I stepped back from him and let myself just sleep. It seemed only minutes later that Cowboy was shaking me awake. “Three hours and five minutes,” he said.
I sat up and brushed my hands through my hair. “Did you eat?”
“Yeah.”
“Leave most of the stuff here. For now, it’s home base.” That being said, I had one other place we could go if we needed to. I wrote a note on a piece of paper and stuck it to the door.
“No cleaning?” Cowboy quirked an eyebrow up. “It could use a good cleaning.”
“You want someone pointing out that there are bags full of weapons?”
When Ruby followed me out, I closed the door and started down the hall. I’d pulled a T-shirt on over the corset. Dinah rested in my shoulder holster along with a second gun. Diego was on my back, also under the very loose shirt. The T-shirt hid the guns and the tattoo on my back. The underbelly of New York knew me. I pulled an army green cap down on my now-dark head. Cowboy had on a pair of sunglasses and had changed out his boots for a pair of army hikers, and his flannel shirt for a white T-shirt.
He fit in better now. We both did.
I led the way out of the building, down to the street, and headed straight for the building across the way.
Cowboy grabbed at me. “What are you doing?”
I slid between traffic, Ruby next to me, flipped off a driver who honked at me, and was across the street in a matter of seconds. Cowboy worked hard to keep up, doing better than most trying to move through the traffic like a native New Yorker.
“I want to see if there’s any residue of the spell.” I worked my way around the building, careful not to touch the stone. Here and there, spots on the building continued to glitter from the spell that had rained down on the place.
I ran my fingers over the brick. Parts of it were warm, as if it had been in the sun, but this side of the building was in the shade. I looked up and down the alley, then stepped out. I snapped my fingers and Ruby came tight to my side.
“What do you think?” Cowboy asked.
“You touch it, see if it gives you anything.” I pointed at the still-shimmering brick I’d put my fingers on.
He reached out and jerked back like he’d been bitten
