Snatching a glance over my shoulder, I saw Rink's vultures. The two 'Little Birds' circling the devastation of the Bell Jet Ranger. The barbecue was SAC Kaufman's funeral pyre.
'Follow the portents,' I told Rink. 'You ain't too far off. The FBI are playing at assholes now. Can you keep them off my back so I can finish Dantalion?'
'I'll do my best.'
'Would have liked you with me, Rink, but things are about to come to a head here.'
'Just kill the frog-giggin' asshole so's I can go back to my mom.'
The phone cut out.
I jammed it back in my pocket, then vaulted through the hole in the fence that Dantalion had used. A metal door in the large building directly in front of me had been pulled askew. Dantalion must have rushed through the door and into the darkness inside.
I was pretty sure that Dantalion had lost his gun. But I would have been an idiot if I'd blundered inside and been cold-cocked if he was waiting just inside the door. I slowed down. Peripherally I was aware of one of the sleek gunships racing my way. Perhaps they blamed me for the death of their leader. Maybe they were coming to shoot me. But I didn't think so. I waved to the pilot, directing him over the building to cover the exits at that side. The chopper had to swing around the high-voltage cables strung above the compound, but it looked like they were complying with my directions. The other chopper headed away, taking Bradley to safety.
Marianne Dean was safe. So now was Bradley Jorgenson. There was only one thing I wanted: to ensure that Dantalion couldn't threaten either of them again.
Pressing myself against the wall to the side of the open door, I drew my Ka-bar. Dantalion could be hiding anywhere, and the knife would be a better weapon than my gun if I stumbled into him in the dark. I shoved the SIG into the waistband at the small of my back, then quickly slipped inside the building.
My first act was to move away from the light seeping in through the door. Randomly choosing to go left, I moved silently through the shadows. Then I came to a standstill. I held my breath, closed my eyes against the darkness. Even in a pitch-black place the eyes can play tricks on the mind. You see movement in the darkness that isn't there, you jump at images conjured by the mind as the brain attempts to make sense of the sudden blindness. Far better is to trust your other senses and shut off the one suffering deprivation. We naturally close our eyes, so the brain does not rebel against the act; rather it heightens your hearing, your senses of smell and taste and touch. I'm also a firm believer in a sixth sense, that extrasensory perception that warns of impending danger. Maybe it is simply all the senses working in complete unison, maybe it's something paranormal, but it's there. I attuned myself to the dark, listening, smelling, tasting the air. A cool but steady draft wafted from deep inside the building. It caressed my face, but there was no flutter in the breeze, nothing to indicate that a human body moved nearby, disturbing the flow.
Confident that Dantalion did not lurk close by, I moved further inside. Ten paces on, I paused again. The breeze remained constant. But something plucked at my olfactory senses, and I realised I could smell blood. The coppery tang was faint. But it was there. I moved again, and the smell grew stronger.
I'm no bloodhound, so it wasn't as if I could sniff the killer out, but I was pretty sure that I was heading in the correct direction. A change in the draught told me that something ahead had affected the dynamics of the atmosphere. Dantalion had silently opened another door and was seeking refuge in an antechamber.
The smell was now of rusting machinery coupled with a hint of ozone. Somewhere nearby I could detect a static buzz. I tried to tune all these things out, but it was no good. I opened my eyes, and my night vision had adapted so that I could now make out the bulk of machines on either side of me. They squatted like amorphous creatures, silently watching my progress through the building. Ahead of me I could detect a darker shadow. I edged towards it, the Ka-bar held tight to my body so that Dantalion couldn't knock it from my hand. My boot touched a raised platform and I found I could step easily on to the first of a number of concrete stairs. Grit crunched underfoot. I halted. Listened for a response to my movement.
Nothing came back at me, so I continued.
The stairway took me to the door I assumed Dantalion had used to leave the room. Probing for the door with my free hand, I readied the Ka-bar with the other, wedging my fingers into the narrow gap between the door and the frame and exerting the slightest presure. The door swung silently away, and I stepped into the space beyond.
I was in a narrow passage, some sort of vestibule that led deeper into the guts of the building. I listened for any hint that Dantalion waited for me. But there was nothing.
The air was close, like it had been sealed within this corridor for too long. Dust sifted on to my lips, so delicate, but apparent to my heightened senses. Someone had moved through here very recently, kicked up the motes of dust that were only now beginning to settle. I pressed on.
Twenty yards further I came to a second door, this one wooden. I touched it with my fingertips and they came away sticky. Dantalion's blood. He had obviously brushed his injured arm against the door. I smiled to myself. Then I turned quickly on my heels, bringing up the Ka-bar.
It was an old trick. One I was infinitely familiar with. A false trail misled the hunter while the pursued person backtracked, waited until the hunter passed by and then launched an attack at his exposed back.
Dantalion wasn't as clever as he thought he was.
As he burst from a doorway to my right I was ready for him.
He came at me, throwing a punch aimed at what he thought was the nape of my neck. Instead I was facing him and he ran full tilt on to my Ka-bar. Six inches of razor-sharp steel rammed to the hilt into his gut.
I twisted the blade, even as he slapped at me with both hands. His blows were ineffectual, but I felt a scratch from one of his ragged fingernails. He slumped on the blade and I grabbed hold of his windpipe, closing my hand into a tight fist to halt his sour breath exploding over my face.
'Die, you freak.'
He couldn't answer. Not with his windpipe crushed in my fist, but I could have sworn that his shudder was one of humour. What was so damn funny?
I felt a weird rushing in my head.
And I knew.
That was no fingernail. It was a needle. A fucking hypodermic syringe!
Then it was my turn to slump.
43
He waited in darkness.
Coming here, stumbling twice as he'd sought concealment within the shadows, he'd put down his ungainliness to the human shell that his spirit inhabited. It was Jean-Paul St Pierre who'd stumbled, not the great Dantalion.
It occurred to him that the racing of his heart, and the endorphins flooding through his system, had negated most of his pain, and after this he would be laid up for days, unable to function while his body healed itself. Feeling the ache in his many wounds, he knew he would continue to suffer the agonies of ordinary men until his book was put right. He didn't consider this long; he didn't believe that he would exist in this weak shell of mortality much longer. His mind had been working on a subconscious level, calculating formulae, figuring the numerology of all those that he'd killed, and it had come to a conclusion. The agent he'd recently killed had raised his tally exponentially. He needed only kill Hunter and he would equal the original Dantalion. All his worldly troubles would be behind him.
Dantalion did not fear Hunter now. He was confident in his abilities. He was a professional killer. He was an angel, and even one who'd proven as adept as Hunter was no match for a divine being. He would destroy him.
Hunter had a gun but that did not faze him. There were more ways to kill a man than with bullets. Guile and trickery could defeat even the most powerful enemy.
I'm better than Hunter is, he thought. I've beaten him every other time. Hunter has shot me a number of times and his bullets haven't killed me yet. Why should things be any different this time?
With the syringe with which he'd controlled Bradley Jorgenson and the sodium amatol it held, it would be
