Rusty Nails (The Dade Gibson Case Files) (17 page)

“Would some of you men please help!” Lilith shrieked, digging her nails into Leon’s meaty forearm. “This man is going to take me outside and rape me.”

Enraged that things weren’t going as he had planned, Leon jerked Lilith off of her feet. He could feel some of the strands of hair breaking under the girl’s weight. Her screaming made him feel just a little bit better about the whole thing. And then he saw a couple of the club’s more liquored up patrons stagger to their feet in her defense. He sighed knowing that this was going to get messy.

“This ain’t got nothing to do with you boys,” he said, his voice a thunderous rumble in the still silence of the club. “You should just all sit down while you’ve still got your teeth.”

But chivalry and Johnny Walker were motivating the men, not fear. They were simply too drunk to be afraid.

“If you can get this baboon to put me down, I’ll do anything you want,” Lilith shouted. “And I do mean anything.”

Leon shrugged his massive shoulders in disgust as the two advanced on him, but he didn’t put Lilith down. The more sober of the two, threw the first punch, hitting Leon squarely in the jaw. But it was like running his fist into a brick wall, and Leon looked at him calmly before grabbing him by the throat and throwing him backward onto an occupied table. The two men who were sitting there jumped out of the way, but they were none too happy about having their evening ruined. Leon tried to fend off both men with his one free hand, but Lilith wouldn’t stop thrashing which made things a lot harder. Frustrated but knowing he didn’t have any other choice, he threw the woman to the floor and started breaking noses.

Chapter 41

Dade heard the commotion in the front of the club, and knew that things weren’t going to go as he had planned. They rarely did. But for the moment he still had the upper hand. The barrel of the .45 was still firmly implanted in Midael’s open mouth.

Although he couldn’t tell for certain what was going on in the next room, Dade was fairly sure that Leon and Lilith weren‘t getting along. Women were shrieking, tables were splintering under the weight of large, heavyset businessmen, and glass was shattering. From all indications, there was an all-out brawl going on, and Leon was undoubtedly at the center of it. Which meant that Lilith probably wasn’t with him anymore. Unwilling to take any unnecessary risks, Dade drew his other pistol.

******

In all the excitement Leon had lost track of Lilith. It was only when she drew a stiletto across his abdomen that he realized where she was. Although he knew that he should be going after her, the cut was deep, and he sank to the floor with a thud, his legs suddenly feeling like worn-out pipe cleaners. His blood was spilling out onto the floor like a drink that had been turned over, and he knew that he needed immediate medical attention. Lilith waved at him once and smiled as she headed toward the bar. Leon groaned, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to help his friend.

No one challenged Lilith as she poured herself a stiff shot of gin. But one drink soon turned into two and then three as Lilith intermittently closed her eyes and ran a shard of broken glass along the lines in her palm. Soon the blood was trickling onto the bar and onto her abdomen as she tried to make herself as enticing as possible for her several familiars.

Thinking the cuts in her hands to be insufficient, Lilith then ran the glass lightly along each forearm, going all the way up to the bicep, drawing thin lines of blood. The shadows began to respond almost immediately, swirling and shifting in the scarcely lit club like slicks of oil.

Although he was weak from the fight and the loss of blood, Leon knew that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He touched his wound gingerly with his fingertips to make sure that he was awake, and it felt like he had poured kerosene into the cut. But he didn’t cry out. He wasn’t going to underestimate this woman twice and presume that she wouldn’t hear his pain. Instead, he bit his lip and waited until the pain had returned to a dull ache before opening his eyes again.

The shadows were still there, dancing with Lilith, touching her with midnight hands. The black forms were vaguely human, and it was impossible not to see them as such. Leon watched in amazement as Lilith whispered secret thoughts to them. The writhing shadows responded like a nest of frenzied snakes, slithering along her skin, chilling her with their touch. Lilith opened her mouth in ecstasy and waited for the kiss of death to touch her warm lips like a sensual wine. Tendrils of darkness wafted near her nostrils like black smoke, and she breathed it in willingly. She whispered her plans to the wind, to the sky, to any dark swirl of shadow that would listen. Then, having said all she needed to, Lilith reluctantly released the night and sent it off in search of the man responsible for so much chaos. The only mistake she made in all of this was turning her back on Leon and presuming him dead.

Chapter 42

Dade felt the presence of darkness before he ever actually saw the shadows shifting and melding into each other. He could feel it gliding between crates, around the dancers’ lockers, and across the floor, heading in his direction. He tried to convince himself that it was nothing to be afraid of, held on tighter to his gun for the calming effect it had on his nerves. And still the shadows kept rolling toward him like a dark tide.

A midnight flood, the shadows thundered silently toward Dade, quiet yet ominous. He tried not to flinch as the darkness reached his boot and began to slither up his leg like a constrictor. He could feel the burn of thousands of black, rotten teeth sinking into the flesh of his leg, and it was all he could do to remain on his feet. From somewhere close by, he could hear Lilith laughing silently to herself.

Dade’s hand shook like that of an old man afflicted with a palsy as the darkness moved past his calf and headed up his thigh toward his chest where a heart beat quickly, fiercely despite the creeping death. Still, he didn’t take the gun out of Midael’s mouth.

******

Leon howled in agony as the darkness tore at his gut, inflaming the wound and invading him like a parasite would an unwilling host. Irritated that the man who had nearly torn out most of her hair was still alive and crawling weakly toward her, Lilith pulled a stiletto out of her boot. She had mistakenly left this man to die, but it was a mistake she wouldn’t make again.

Grabbing at one of the tables, Leon tried to haul himself off of the floor. The table turned over on top of him with a dull thud, and an ashtray shattered into a million translucent blue pieces. Yet, it was the smoldering cigarette that had been resting in the ashtray which did the real trick. Many sections of the floor were covered with puddles of hard liquor and the weakly glowing cigarette was the catalyst that set at least a dozen fires burning, dispelling the shadows in the room and creating a barrier between Leon and Lilith.

Leon knew he would only have one chance.

Although he felt nauseous and weak and scarcely capable of standing, Leon mustered every last bit of strength he had and launched himself at the sorceress, driving her into one of the fires. The shadows that were clinging desperately to her like needy children shrieked and fled to the other end of the club. Lilith shrieked right along with them as the flames licked up her body like insatiable lovers.

******

Dade tried to hold on to the .45 for a few more seconds as he heard Lilith shriek, but the pain made it nearly impossible. After seeing the effect that the fire had on the darkness, he held out some hope that he might still be able to regain control of the situation. But it seemed unlikely, given the fact that his fingers were slowly losing their grip on the handle of the gun. That was when Midael made his move, pushing the barrel of the pistol out of his mouth, grabbing Dade by the shoulder and twisting until he heard the shoulder dislocate.

Dade howled in pain and eagerly dropped the pistol. In that split second before Midael made his move, Dade couldn’t help but think what a tragedy it was that his family had just been snatched away from eternity and here he was rushing headlong toward it. But Midael never threw the stiletto that he had fished out of his jacket. He was too distracted by the fire in the other room and Lilith’s screaming. Dade knew that this was his only chance and sprinted for the door, his right arm still stinging from the shadows’ bite, his shoulder aching profusely from the dislocation. Midael, however, came out of his shock quick enough and had the stiletto at Dade’s throat before he could take his next breath.

******

Leon wasn’t about to die with a table on top of him. Although he had owned The Black Cat for almost two years now, he didn’t think enough of the place to take his last breath there. Using the last of his strength he pushed the splintered piece of furniture off of him and managed to roll back onto his stomach. That was when he saw Lilith, aflame in the center of a fiery gin-and-tonic puddle like a modern day witch that has been convicted for her heresy and sentenced to burn.

She ran around the room like a beheaded chicken, frantic and directionless, desperate to extinguish the flames. Wherever she went the shadows fled like scared children. Leon knew that it was only a matter of time before the fire reached the bar and everything went up in an orange ball of flame. He crawled toward the bottles of whiskey like an injured crab and prayed that he was faster than the fire.

“Dade,” he screamed with what little air he had left. “Dade, can you hear me?”

“Answer him,” Midael replied, holding the stiletto fast to Gibson’s throat as the flames crept closer.

“Yeah, Leon, I can hear you.”

“Then duck.”

Before Midael had time to react, Dade had hit the floor and was scurrying like a rat through the doorway. He looked up just in time to see a bottle of Chivas Regal sail over his head and braced himself for the gusts of heat and wind that were sure to follow.

Lilith shrieked and raced by Dade, unsure of where she was, knowing only the pain of third degree burns. And then the bottle of Chivas exploded. Dade scurried toward safety as he felt the heat at his back. He helped Leon to his feet and both of them staggered out as the place went up in smoke.

Chapter 43

Abbadon knew that time was running out and someone needed to do something. So he slipped away from Pyriel, Liz, and the spirits of Jack and Jane Gibson so he could search for Samael and the boy.

Like a bloodhound, he wound his way through the maze of streets, sometimes running into dead ends and other times needing to backtrack until Rush’s scent was strong enough to follow. He tried to reason where Samael might be holding the boy and what sort of secrets might be revealed if the angel in the boy’s skin decided to cast off his costume.

When he exited the city limits of Crowley’s Point and breathed in the noxious stench of motor oil that was tinged with the ozone smell of blood, Abbadon had a sneaking suspicion where Samael had been hiding. And it seemed like a fitting place for an angel of death to while away his hours, surrounded by rusting metal and dirty glass and dull chrome. The sign above the gates leading into Reznick’s Junkyard had been replaced with a sign that read “Welcome to Hell.” As gatekeeper of the pit, Abbadon was the seraph who remained closest to the fire, and he knew that most of these poor, misguided angels didn’t have a clue what the abyss was about. But if he had his way, they would find out soon enough.

Like pieces in some giant’s game, the automobiles were stacked three and four high. As Abbadon stepped through the opening in the chain-link gate, he could feel the oppressive weight of the machines, teetering and tottering on flattened tires, on the verge of toppling over. And while most of the cars were little more than rusty heaps of useless scrap, there was an organization about them that any laboratory rat would have understood.

In the waning sunlight, shadows poured into backseats, pooled beneath undercarriages, and settled in the empty cabs of every car and truck in the scrap yard. It looked like a dam holding back darkness had burst, sending forth a flood of shadows that twisted and turned at every corner of the automobile maze, filling the place completely with a flowing, churning black river. Abbadon kept his eyes open, keenly scanning his surroundings for any sign of movement, sniffing at the wind for any trace of seraphim. Luckily the only thing his nose picked up was the heavy stench of burned motor oil and kerosene.

A few times he thought he saw movement high up in the uppermost automobiles, strange glints of light that may or may not have had anything to do with the sun. But he tried not to acknowledge what he had seen. He didn’t turn his head, didn’t let his eyes wander, and forced himself not to walk any faster or slower than he had before seeing the scintillations of light that were probably reflections of war sabers. As he walked, he pushed his coat aside and let his taloned hand rest on the mace that hung from a loop on his belt. If there was any doubt among the dissidents why he was here, then he wanted to clear that up first thing.

Chapter 44

Leon was weak and bleeding, but the cut wasn’t as deep as he had first thought. Under normal circumstances, Dade would have insisted that they wait for an ambulance, but he knew that time didn’t allow for that right now. Leon didn’t argue the point. He realized the score too.

“We’ve got to get our hands on some Rusty Nails,” Dade said. “That seems to be the key to everything. Samael’s searching for it. Louise Hartwell is searching for it. An angelic war is going on because of it. It seems to me like we could increase our leverage with a few syringes of angel smack. Do you have any idea where we could get some?”

“Not really,” Leon said.

“You seemed to know quite a bit about Louise Hartwell the first time I brought her name up,” Dade said. “And she obviously knows where to get the drug.”