Fallen Angels 04 - Rapture (42 page)

What happened next was kind of like IMAX-3D, with some kind of splatter technology thrown in. Jim’s roommate incapacitated the thing by hacking pieces off of it—an arm here, a leg there—and that was when the blood went flying. Acid was more like it. One drop on the back of Matthias’s hand, and he cursed at the sting, grinding it off on the dirt—

A second shadowy form jumped out from behind a tree, as if its appearance had been spawned by the trunk. Adrian was ready, however, spinning around, meeting it head-on as the first writhed on the forest floor.

This one he didn’t waste time with. Right through the head,
and that seemed to be the knockout drop that was required to kill the fuckers: another earsplitting screech and then that shadow was no more, gone in a blink—

Just as Adrian turned back to the demon on the ground, two more came out from the trunk that had birthed the other one, like the conifer was just coughing the fuckers up.

Matthias didn’t hesitate. Pent-up hatred gave him superstrength as he jumped out and opened his clip, alternating between the pair, that acidic blood going flying as the demons faced off at him.

“Come and get it!” he yelled.

Adrian started cursing, but fuck that. Matthias was unleashed as he went for hand-to-hand, still pulling that trigger in a controlled manner as he rushed at his enemy.

“Take a dagger!”

The other man’s command registered through his fury, and he spared a half second to glance over his shoulder. The instant he did, one of those glass weapons came end-over-end at him, flying through the air with perfect trajectory.

Matthias snatched it midflight with his free hand, and then he was immediately in business: His instincts took over, his body responding in a coordinated rush that had the forty up and pumping to hold off the one on the left as he buried that dagger into the temple of the shadow on the right.

Good-bye, sucker.

Without losing a beat, he turned on the other and did the same, even though that acid was going everywhere, and he had a lot of skin exposed—and the shit hurt.

More shadows came.

An impossible-to-beat deluge—and he was out of bullets.

Matthias tossed the useless gun over his shoulder and sank down, ready for anything. Crossroads, huh? Guess this was it—and if the right decision Jim Heron had referred to was the urge to fight?

Got it.

As the nearest shadow zeroed in on him and attacked, he had a fleeting sadness that he wouldn’t see Mels again, that this was it, that he knew he wasn’t walking away from this battle.

But … if there was an afterlife in a bad way, maybe there was a Heaven, too. Maybe he was going up this time instead of down.

Maybe he could somehow get back to Mels and let her know angels existed.

Because he knew that for sure now.

She was one of them.

Out in front of the garage, Jim was invisi and waiting for the operative to show himself. The second the bastard did, he was going to swoop in and feed a gun muzzle to the motherfucker—he wasn’t taking any chances with Matthias, and shit knew he didn’t want Devina appearing from out of nowhere and “saving” his ass again.

There was enough of her in the woods, fuck them all very much.

Man, he hoped Ad was keeping it together back there.

And P.S., the fact that the minions showed up at exactly the same time the operative did didn’t bode well—and it made him worry about that reporter. Usually Devina’s good timing was bad news for him, and he didn’t think this was going to be an exception.

Where are you, he thought as he traced the tree line, watching for the inevitable peekaboo. That bullet hadn’t been discharged by a shadow; he knew that much—and no one else had a clue they were here, or had cause to show up with a lead-based welcome wagon.

Back behind the garage, the sound of screeching made him twitchy, his body ready, willing, and panting to join the fray out in the forest. But Matthias was up in that studio, and Jim wasn’t going to give this operative a chance to infiltrate and pop the bastard.

In Hell. The blond girl is there—I was with her.
…

Jim cracked his knuckles. His vengeance was getting harder and harder to suck up, that fault line of fury threatening to break him in ways Devina’s physical torture couldn’t get close to. The bitch was smart—killing those other women. It kept Sissy right in the forefront, loud as a fire alarm, bright as a goddamn neon sign.

It was the most effective thing the demon had done so far to get under his cool—

Over to the right, a shadow moved—and it wasn’t the Devina kind. It was a man dressed in black from head to foot, a mask covering his face.

Jim observed from his superior position of not-fucking-there as the operative slipped from trunk to trunk. You had to admire the focus. In spite of the fucked-up weather, the God-only-knows-what out back, and the relative lack of cover, the guy was a study in cold calculation, every footfall exactly where it needed to be. And he was well equipped, with a good-looking gun and silencer, and no doubt a bulletproof vest under the black fleece—after all, operatives were hard to find, difficult to train, and extremely expensive to support.

Not the kind of resources you squandered.

There was no backup, at least not that Jim could sense or see. Operatives did work in pairs from time to time, but that was rare and usually only when there were multiple targets.

And clearly, they were just coming for Matthias.

Which was not going to happen. Not under Jim’s watch.

Crossing the pea gravel, he zeroed in and didn’t waste time with any showboating or big reveal from out of thin air just to get a rise out of the fucker.

In honor of the tradition he had been trained in, Jim simply let the other man pass by and then fell in step behind him, unnoticed even as he let himself become visible. Then, with quick coordination, he gripped both sides of the operative’s head and snapped the
man’s neck with one vicious jerk. As the body went loose, Jim let it drop where it did, and stood his ground.

In the unlikely event there was another operative in the woods, that was going to flush him.

Heartbeat.

Heartbeat.

Heartbeat.

Jim stretched it a little longer and then was sure it had been a solo job again. Stepping over the newly dead, he fell into a jog around to the rear—

Talk about your melees.

Minions were swarming the back forty, going up against Adrian and—Shit, was that
Matthias
with a crystal dagger?

Sure as hell looked like it.

And he was holding his own.

The first impulse was to jump in there, but Jim stopped himself. This ambush bullshit was just too obvious. And he didn’t believe that the minions were going to kill Matthias—nope, not with Devina stepping in when she had back at the Marriott.

Narrowing his eyes on the fighting, he whistled once, the shrill sound cutting through the grunting and cursing. When Adrian glanced over, Jim popped up his palms—the universal sign for, You got this?

When Adrian nodded and returned to work, Jim gave Matthias another quick measure. The bastard was on fire, that broken body somehow working with enough deadly coordination to score some serious hits—and not because the minions were giving it to him easy once they engaged with him.

They were, however, focusing on Adrian, none of them singling Matthias out until the guy forced them to.

Devina had definitely given a no-kill order to those shadowy sons of bitches: Jim had squared off with them enough to know
that they were capable of far greater offensive strategy—and the shit Adrian was dealing with was proof.

Time to go.

Jim hightailed it around to the front, threw some buffering over the corpse so that in the unlikely event someone got lost and made it all the way down the drive, they wouldn’t find a dead guy as a welcome mat.

Then he was out of there, going Angel Airlines to downtown Caldwell.

The reporter was the one exposed at the moment, and that was where Jim needed to be.

As far as Adrian could tell, the final minion showed up shortly after Jim disappeared.

The second that angel was gone, the seemingly endless supply of Devina’s PITAs dried up—proof that keeping the guy on site had been the reason for the attack.

Ten minutes later, the last shadow was dispatched, stabbed through the head by a crystal dagger wielded by Matthias.

As Adrian turned and looked at his wingman, he was breathing hard and steaming from the blood that had splattered on his shoulders.

That crippled SOB had sure as hell pulled it together in the nick of time.

“You okay?” Ad demanded between heaving gasps.

Matthias’s knees buckled and he gave himself over to gravity, letting his ass hit the ground—at least until the black blood that had been spilled on it ate its way through to his BVDs.

The man popped up off that grass like he’d been kicked in the can. “Fuck! This shit is—”

“Don’t rub your ass with your hand, idiot. Then your palm’ll get covered in it.”

Annnnnnd that was how Matthias ended up dropping trou in front of Ad.

The guy all but ripped open the front of those black slacks, and then his flat ass and thin legs let the rest happen.

“Better?” Ad said dryly as he looked around.

“Except for the stiff breeze on my ’nads, yeah.”

Ad’s eyes went back to the man’s lower body … and for some reason, his mind got stuck on the reporter in that hotel room the night before, the two of them all sexed up, but going nowhere.

That must really suck, he thought.

Clearing his throat, he nodded at the garage. “I got a change in there for you.”

“I’m ready for one.”

Matthias bent down, used the crystal dagger to slice open the pant legs, and then stepped free of them, leaving the burned-out remains smoldering on the ground like a car that had been bombed and abandoned at the side of the road.

Looking over, he tossed the dagger in a perfect end-over-end sequence at Adrian. “Thanks for the weapon—that was fun.”

Then the guy turned away and made like he was heading around the garage.

No questions. No demands of, “What the fuck?” Just, Hey, good party, my man.

Adrian hightailed it to catch up, thinking that Jim had been right about his old boss. Even half-naked, with some of his clothes still smoking, the fucker was tight as a bank vault—and Ad’s kind of guy, apparently.

Matthias stopped as he came around the corner. “Looks like we had another kind of company.”

Sure enough.

The dead operative was lying like a doormat on the fringes of the forest, half on/half off the pea gravel of the drive. Talk about bad shape: the body was chest-down, but the head was owl-backward, those dead eyes focused on the skies above.

That musta hurt.

Ad went over and crouched. “You go up and I’ll get rid of him—”

“Not a chance.” As Ad looked up, Matthias planted his feet and got his glare on. “Those things out back? Those are your world. This.” He jabbed a forefinger at the stiff. “Is mine. Get me some fucking pants while I strip him.”