A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(118)
It was a bad idea, but I walked up on them, trying to find a way to hurt Cookson enough for him to let Stevens go. If he was going to be saved, I had to get him away from the demon now, not later. I prayed that I’d live through crowding the demon, but I had to try to save the other cop.
I had to almost stand on top of them to catch a glimpse of a yellow eye peering over the cop’s shoulder, but the demon jerked back so that the head and all the rest of the main part of the body was lost between Stevens and his body armor, and then I realized the policeman was shorter than the demon. I had a clear shot at the legs, so I took it.
“Damn you!” Cookson yelled, and then he was pushing Stevens into me like a battering ram. I stumbled, fighting to keep my feet, and that was enough time for Cookson to get to his feet, still holding the other cop’s body like a shield. I tried to shoot the demon again, but he rushed forward, stronger and faster than humanly possible. Cookson shoved me into the glass case, and it exploded under us in a thousand biting shards.
I ended up on the bottom with Stevens between us, the demon pinning us to the broken glass. I still had my gun but it was trapped underneath the body and the demon’s weight. I fought to work it free to aim—and realized that the officer’s Guardian Angel wasn’t glowing anymore; he was dead, and his angel was free to return to God. Only my glow and the twisted thing at the demon’s back remained.
Cookson’s face was humanoid, but the mouth was full of black fangs to match the curved black claws. His skin had turned red like the scales he’d worn at the hospital. The fangs snapped at my face, and I thought, You don’t have fangs, toothless, but nothing changed. The demon snarled, “I’m half human, and we have our own imagination, Havoc. You can’t fuck with our form now, too late for that!”
I got my gun free and aimed at its face. The demon grinned and opened its mouth wide to engulf the gun and half my hand, and bit down as I pulled the trigger. I screamed and the bullet went out the back of the demon’s head while it laughed. It bit down and I screamed again.
The angel trapped at its back shrieked with me. I balled my hand into a fist and kept firing the bullets into the demon. I couldn’t kill it, but maybe I could keep it from biting my hand off. It finally reared back and spat a bullet at my face.
“That still hurts, damn, but pain is worth free will.”
His Guardian Angel screamed again as the demon’s claws scrambled for my face. If I died, the angel was trapped in torment. I prayed that if I died, I’d be able to set the angel free first.
There was the sound of wings like birds, and a voice breathed through me, “Zaniel, come to me.”
I didn’t think I could be any more scared, but I was wrong. I didn’t want to see Her again, ever, because I was afraid of what would happen. If it had been just my death on the line I might have hesitated, but I couldn’t leave the Guardian Angel to be tortured.
“I will destroy that handsome face and body, Havoc, and then I will hunt down the last women and be free to roam the Earth. No priest will exorcise me to Hell, because I will be half human.”
“That’s not possible,” I said through gritted teeth as I fought to keep his claws from my face.
“No, but it’s still true,” the demon said.
My gun clicked empty, and I couldn’t reach the extra magazine in my pocket. He raised black claws upward like five daggers. I was still trapped under the weight of two bodies, ground into the glass and diamonds. I was out of time to decide, so I did the only thing I could be certain would free the angel. I opened the space between here and where the angels dance on golden threads and sing the universe into continuous creation.
Our blood spilled out like rubies shining and bouncing in round globes because there was no gravity here. Golden lines of power sang and gleamed around us, and the angels sang the universe into being, creating and re-creating over and over. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it simply is. The perfection of it filled me and I wasn’t even afraid as I watched the rubies sparkle against the gold and silver and . . . colors that had no words to describe them surrounded us.
Stevens didn’t care, because the dead feel nothing, but Mark Cookson cared. He began to scream. The human part of him wasn’t ready to go among the angels. The demon part of him got control and growled at me, “You cannot destroy us that easily.”
The angel on his back screamed for help and now there were many others that could hear its cry. The angels came glowing and burning and I heard a familiar voice. “Zaniel, what have they done to you?”
I said, “Save the angel, set it free.”
“And what of you, Zaniel?”
“I want to go home.”
“You are home,” she said, and I could almost see her golden hair, almost see her eyes, and then she was too far inside my head and she saw what I thought home meant, and it wasn’t Her. We floated in the middle of holy fire; the seraphim had come, and neither Mark Cookson nor the demon sharing his body was pure enough of heart to survive their six-winged embrace.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I woke up in the hospital with Dr. Paulson looking down at me. “Good to see you awake,” he said, smiling.
“Good to be awake,” I said; my voice sounded rough as if I’d been out longer than I realized.
I don’t know if he saw it on my face, but he answered my question. “You’ve been unconscious for almost two days.”