Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(72)

On the other hand, freedom of action was earned.

“Whoa, wait a minute, sport,” growled Gerlach. “I thought you said that they could only see your dream-face. Now you’re telling me you let her see your real face?”

Doubt, a rare thing, flickered across the angel’s face.

The agent took a step toward the killer. “A lot of things could come crashing down if we have to remove her from the equation. You understand what I’m saying?”

The angel said nothing.

Gerlach cupped a hand around his ear. “Sorry, didn’t quite hear that.”

“I understand everything about what is happening and about to happen,” said the angel. “I understand what will happen when the portal opens.”

Gerlach brushed past him and walked into the sacristy and stopped in front of the painting. He took a couple of pieces of gum from a pack and chewed them for a long, silent minute. The angel came and stood with him.

“You don’t believe it, do you?” he asked the agent.

Gerlach chewed.

“You don’t know what I am,” continued the angel. “Do you?”

Without turning, the agent said, “You’re a monster.”

The angel laughed out loud. “We’re all monsters. You’re every bit the fiend that I am. Maybe you’re worse. You’re the actual boogeyman.”

Agent Gerlach chewed his gum and studied the image of the grigori, or whatever this madman believed it to be, and did not reply.





CHAPTER 66

Craiger, Maryland

5:45 P.M.

Dana felt lost even though she was walking home.

Home did not feel like it was going to offer her anything but a room she could hide in and a door she could lock.

Angelo.

Angelo?

Could he be the monster?

The scars on Angelo’s hand matched what Corinda had said. Did that mean he was the angel?

Could he be a monster?

She had no idea how to answer that kind of question, so she tried to catalog what she knew about Angelo. He had a knife—that much was certain. A folding knife with a blade that locked into place that she’d seen him open with an expert flick, and then use to open boxes at Beyond Beyond. He knew cars, too, and worked part-time at an auto body shop repairing damage. Accident damage. He worked at both high schools, too, which meant that he could have known every single one of the victims.

And his name was Angelo.

Spanish for “angel.”

It all fit.

All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Almost all. She did not understand why he was doing all this. She couldn’t understand why anyone would. She didn’t understand how he could visit her in dreams. Did he have psychic qualities, too? Sunlight thought so. He’d said that the angel was powerful.

Did that mean he had looked into Dana’s mind back there on the bleachers? Did he know that she knew?

“Oh God,” she murmured, and cut a terrified glance over her shoulder.

And saw him.

Him.

Angelo was a block behind her, dressed in his work clothes but with a hood-sweater on, the hood pulled up to try to hide his face. She knew it was him, though. His hands were in his pockets. Was he gripping the knife, ready to pull it out? Ready to …

“No!” she cried, and then she spun around and ran flat out.

“Wait,” yelled Angelo. “I want to talk to you.”

Dana bolted. Her house was still six long blocks away and around the corner. It seemed like it was ten miles. Too far. Forever far away. Her backpack thumped against her spine with every step, but she didn’t want to waste the two seconds it would take to shrug it off.

She did not know anyone on this block, and all the houses looked dark and quiet. Angelo quickened his pace from a walk to a trot.

Dana dug in and ran for all she was worth. Behind her she could hear the slap-slap-slap of Angel’s work shoes.

Run-run-run! she screamed inside her head.

The footsteps were gaining, but she did not dare take another look.

Dana cut left through the front yard of a big A-frame house, zigzagged around a pair of fallen bikes, leaped over a soccer ball, jagged left again and raced down the alley between that house and the neighbor’s fence, twisted between swings on a new-looking play set, flung open a small gate, ran through it and into the backyard of the house across the shared driveway. A small dog began barking furiously at her, but she ignored it. Then a much larger dog, a husky, lunged at her and would have taken a nasty bite had it not jerked at the end of its chain. The snapping teeth missed her thigh by less than five inches. Dana left that yard at an even higher speed and tore through two more yards before taking another alley back to the street, and then screamed and jumped sideways as a car appeared out of nowhere, tires screeching, horn blaring. The driver, an old man in a checkered suit, stamped on the brakes and skidded the car to a smoking stop ten inches from her. He leaned out the window and yelled at her.

“Help,” she begged. “He’s after me!”

The driver was surprised, angry, and confused. He turned around to look where Dana was pointing.

The street was empty.

There was no sign of Angelo at all. Nothing.

“Very funny,” snarled the old man. “Why don’t you go home and grow up?”

He put his car into gear and hit the gas so hard he left five feet of smoking rubber behind him.