Conspiracy of Angels (8 page)

I struck the blow with a nimbus of energy and the shadow-rider exploded like a mass of black jelly. The particles clung to my skin, cold at first, and then gone.

The other shadow-rider loosed a defiant shriek that ended with that self-same chittering call that had pursued me from the lake. In the periphery of my vision, Saliriel and Remy held the male officer pinned. He bucked against Saliriel as she knelt on his chest, teeth snapping for her flesh.

Then he went perfectly still.

Even as I calculated the odds that the rider had opted to go for another body, I heard shouting. Two voices, running down the hall. Then one of the same voices erupted from the dead bouncer at my feet. I stared wildly at him until I realized the voice had come from a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.

Two of the black-suited security staff pushed urgently into the room, and instantly the rider from the dead male cop darted out the door between them. With an inarticulate shout, I dove after it, leaping over bodies, almost trampling Saliriel and shouldering roughly past the two bouncers. I was dimly aware of someone—two someones, in fact—yelling my name, but I didn’t stop. All my focus narrowed to the nameless horror escaping down black halls.

I was done being hunted. I planned to end the thing.

The shadow-creature shimmied away like a panicked centipede, careening from side to side and running halfway up the walls as it went. It seemed only partly bound by the laws of gravity, and I half-expected it to run
through
the walls. As it came to one of the right-angle turns, it seemed to have the same idea, because rather than turning, it attempted to charge straight ahead.

It crashed face-first into the masonry, recovered messily, then scrambled to make the turn and keep ahead of me. Its little mishap allowed me to gain a few feet in my pursuit, and I lengthened my stride, pushing myself even harder. I started to compensate for the turn three steps ahead of it, reaching out with my right hand to steady myself, then pushing off once I was around the bend.

One of the occupants of a side room took this most inopportune time to investigate all the ruckus. He stuck his head out into the hallway, looking curiously up and down. His door opened inward, or I’d have crashed headlong into it. As it was, I practically had to slam myself into the opposite wall to avoid shoulder-checking his face.

I raced past him, snarling for him to get back inside. The shadow-rider continued to lead me on a not-so-merry chase, every once in a while diving at one of the walls as if to test whether or not it was solid. I had no idea why something that seemed to be a spirit couldn’t just jig right through, but then, I also had no clue as to why I could see it in the first place.

As we ran, I gathered a nimbus of blue-white energy around my hands. We arrived at the little foyer with its chain-link privacy screen and heavy black fire door. The door was wide open, dented a little where either the fleeing bouncer, the zombie police officers, or perhaps both had charged past. The rider zipped through, and I pelted after it just a few steps behind.

And then we were back in the room with the couches. The shadow-rider created a nightmare-shaped patch of negative space against the silver spatters that decorated the otherwise black walls. Having learned physics the hard way, it cautiously slunk toward the door that led to the main dance floor. I thought I’d finally got lucky—this one appeared to be closed.

We both saw it at the same time. The door stood slightly ajar, held that way by some obstruction close to the floor.

I charged forward, striving to get a grip on the rider, but it was a few heartbeats quicker. It dove at the space between the door and its frame and did this freaky cartoon-like maneuver, flattening itself and zipping at right angles through the crack. I made a last-ditch effort to seize its whip-like tail, but managed to over-balance myself. Before I could crash bodily into the door, I caught myself with my right hand, slamming my palm against the wall. There was a concussive sensation as the nimbus of blue-white energy I’d gathered dispersed upon impact.

I looked down, dazzled and blinking, and saw what was jamming the door.

It was a hand, delicate and feminine. Slender fingers tipped with stylish red and black polish curled lifelessly toward the ceiling, a little splash of blood cupped in the palm.

Shit.

Not wasting a moment more, I threw open the door—and was driven instantly to my knees.

C
haos. The main floor of the club exploded in sensory chaos.

The bastion of order Remy had helped me build in my mind crumbled in the face of it. There were lights and colors everywhere, jagged geometric patterns in harsh reds and ugly browns flooding the interior of the club. It took me a few moments to realize that what I was seeing wasn’t really there—at least not in a physical sense. The shock and terror of the crowd hung upon the space, visible to me as shapes and colors. If the rider was there at all, I had lost it in the riot of perceptions.

The music had stopped. In its auditory vacuum was a constant anxious murmur punctuated by the staccato bark of security staff. No one was actually screaming, though the echo of screams surged against my mind. I could hear the gunshots, too, as if the violent scene replayed on some level perceptible only to me. My nails bit deeply into my palm as I struggled to focus.

Tables and chairs were overturned in the wake of the assault, and the massive disco ball had been shot down. It rested in a scattering of mirrored tiles, three broken bodies flung to the floor around it in various attitudes of sudden death. Dark stains spread around the corpses.

On the floor before me lay the prone form of the Asian woman who had been running the cash register. It was her hand that had blocked the door. Her backless top revealed an intricate tattoo of Shiva Nataraja. Two gunshot wounds blossomed on either side of her spine, obliterating portions of the ink work. I stared, wondering stupidly why the rider had passed over this and the other fresh corpses.

Remy finally caught up with me. He seized my shoulder, but then his grip went slack.

“Oh, no,” he said, his voice low. “Not Alice.”

Without another word, he shoved me aside. Dropping to one knee, he rolled her over, running delicate fingers along the curve of her jaw. His long fall of glossy black hair swept forward, so it was impossible to see his face. That didn’t shield me from his pain. Jagged blues and reds strobed from him. Blinking hard, I struggled to focus on purely flesh-and-blood perceptions.

I failed, and saw what looked like ghostly wings rising from Remy’s back. They were as red as his suit and shimmered insubstantially. Had they been real, I would have been standing half inside one of them. I took a step back just in case, then jammed the heels of my hands against my eyes in a futile effort to banish the impossible perceptions.

The sharp rapport of stiletto heels echoed down the corridor to my right. Saliriel. She argued with one of the bouncers as she strode purposely our way.

“Why didn’t you shoot them the instant they pulled their guns inside the club?”

“But, ma’am, they’re cops,” the bouncer insisted. “You don’t shoot cops.”

“Idiot!” She snapped witheringly. “You couldn’t tell they were dead already?”

“But, ma’am—”

Flesh striking flesh resounded from the corridor. “No excuses,” she hissed. “You shoot anyone who’s shooting at you first. Worry about explaining things once it’s over. Honestly, it’s a miracle your species has survived with such piss-poor powers of reasoning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. They stopped a couple of feet behind us.

“Remy! Zack!” Saliriel barked. “What do you think you’re doing?” Raw as I felt, the sheer volume of her words registered as physical pain. Then she focused on the bouncer again.

“You,” she snarled, backhanding him again before she gestured toward the door. “Move! Find out who sent those shooters. As for you, sibling,” she said, fixing me with a disdainful sneer as the bouncer hustled to carry out her orders, “I want an explanation of what went on in my throne room, and then I want you out of my club. For good.”

I opened my mouth to speak, then faltered as whatever was trying to come out still didn’t feel like any language I thought I should have known. I took a deep breath.

“Shadows,” I said. “There were shadows.”

Saliriel’s eyes narrowed. “Shadows? Explain yourself.”

I shrugged. “Shadow-riders. They were puppeting the corpses. I don’t know what they were. They were just…
wrong
.”

Saliriel spat threateningly, “Don’t start spinning tales about cacodaimons. I didn’t buy it the last time, and I don’t believe it now.”

“Cocademons?” I muttered, stumbling over the strange word.

Rolling her eyes at me, Saliriel addressed my sibling.

“Remy, what did you see?” she demanded.

He pulled Alice into the room so the bouncer could close the door behind him. At least it blocked out some of the chaos from the club. Heedless of the bloodstains seeping onto his expensive suit, he sat up against the wall, cradling the dead girl in his lap. When he spoke, his usually crisp and cultured tone was rough with grief.

“You know I don’t see as well as he can, Decimus.”

“But you saw something,” Saliriel pursued.

“After he pointed it out, yes. Like a dark smudge on the air. Sal,” he said, looking up from Alice momentarily. Unshed tears shone in his eyes, but underscoring his sorrow was another emotion—it might have been fear. “I think he’s right. Cacodaimons—”

She cut him off brusquely, fury bringing gold fire to her eyes. “No,” she growled. “I’ll not have you contributing to the madness. There’s another explanation.”

“Whatever they were, they were here for me,” I said with no small measure of guilt. “I’d been dodging them all night. I just didn’t realize it.”

“And you led them here?” Saliriel demanded.

“I didn’t know what I was seeing!” I shouted. I felt helpless, and it was pissing me off. I scrubbed restlessly at my stubbled jaw, muttering, “Fuck me running.”

“You are nothing but trouble, Anakim,” Saliriel declared, slapping my chest. It was a half-hearted blow at best, and my leather jacket absorbed most of it, but it still made me bristle. I raised my hand to warn her off. We weren’t going to do this again. She balled her fists and glowered for a moment. Then she whirled on her heel and stormed to the other side of the room. Without looking over her shoulder at either of us, she cried, “Remy, leave that and get him out of my club before anything else comes after him.”

Slowly, Remy got to his feet. His long fall of hair still partially obscured his face, but not so much that I didn’t see the stricken look in his eyes.

“Her name was Alice,” he said in a deadly quiet voice.

Back still to us, Saliriel threw her hands up in an exaggerated gesture and stomped off to her throne room.

“Get him out!” she shouted from the other side of the dented door.

I cast a withering glance of my own after Saliriel’s retreating form.

“What a fucking bitch.”

R
emy didn’t look happy about it, but he left Alice behind. Head down and all business, he hustled me past the chain-link partition to another fire door. Opening this, he ushered me into a back hallway almost identical to the first one.

There were fewer doors here and no peep-show windows. A cloying scent of industrial cleaner hung heavily on the air. He strode swiftly ahead of me, Italian heels clicking sharply on the black marbleized tiles. I had to jog to keep up.

My brother stared at his toes as he walked, long hair obscuring most of his pale features. From the set of his shoulders, he wasn’t in the mood to talk, and I really couldn’t blame him, but as he navigated the dimly lit back corridor I saw my last chance for answers slipping away.

“Hey,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulder.

“Don’t,” he said icily.

I tightened my grip and he twisted away.

“Don’t touch me!” he snapped, enunciating each word crisply around wickedly pointed fangs. So it wasn’t just Saliriel.

“Got the memo,” I gasped, my hand still half-raised between us. We fell into awkward silence.

“Your power is spilling everywhere,” he muttered with a note of apology. “I’m far too raw for it right now.” Then he resumed his course down the hall. I took several long strides, hurrying again to catch up. I was careful to keep my hands to myself.

“I still need answers, you know,” I pressed. “The police are after me. I have no idea why, and if things like those… cocademons show up again, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“You’ll fight them,” he responded without pausing. “Cacodaimons, spirits—that’s what you do. Obviously some part of you remembers.”

“Yeah, but
why
?” I persisted as we turned sharply down a side hall. “And why would they follow me all the way from the lake? Tell me something useful, goddammit!”

“God has nothing to do with any of this,” he shot back bitterly. “If He ever did, He left his post ages ago. It’s just the lunatics running the asylum, now.”

A sound from the direction of the club proper made us both draw up short.

“More gunshots?” I asked.

Remy cocked his head, listening intently.

“Too muffled to be certain.” The sound came again. Remy’s eyes flew wide. “Someone breaking down a door. That’s never good.” Grabbing me by the arm, he rushed us at an inhuman pace toward a set of stairs at the end of the hall. “You need to be out of here,” he said. “Now.”

The stairs were choked with shadows, the lone, naked bulb at the bottom a useless, shattered stump in its socket. The only light came from an E
XIT
sign and the muted LED screen of a security pad mounted beside the door. Remy strode confidently through the dark, but I slowed considerably. On the steep flight of concrete steps I struggled not to trip over my size thirteens. At the bottom, he started digging in his pockets, frowning.

“Don’t tell me I left it,” he murmured.

I thought I heard another rumbling crash from the depths of the club. I had a vision of black-clad SWAT cops pouring through the doorway at the top of the stairs, riot shields and rifles at the ready. The image had everything to do with the state of my nerves and wasn’t the least bit psychic in nature. At least, that’s what I insisted to myself so I didn’t scream at Remy as he frantically patted down his suit.