Fallen Angels 06 - Immortal (28 page)

It was like she was about to go to war or something.

Jogging across the four-lane street, she took the red-carpeted stairs two at a time and shoved her way into the marble lobby. The first thing she saw was the biggest flower arrangement on the planet. The thing was nearly a full story high, and it was not made of silk: the lilies and roses released a delicate fragrance that reminded her of Eddie.

“Are you Miss Barten?”

Her sneaker let out a squeak as she pivoted toward the marble-topped bays where guests checked in. There was a lone man in a black suit standing behind one of the computer stations, his hair slicked back from his forehead, his shirt so blindingly white it made her think of bleached teeth.

“Yes.”

“Please go right up.” He smiled at her like he was much, much older than she was—even though he had to be only in his mid-twenties. “The elevators are on the left. You can take any one of them.”

“Thanks.”

The ride all the way to the penthouse took a while, and she really could have done without the four walls of mirrors. The last thing she wanted to see was her face and wondered whether Jim avoided his reflection when he came here, too. Or had he no conscience? Well, whatever, she certainly wasn’t enjoying her own view: She’d been under some delusion, as she’d made it out of the house apparently without waking Ad, and gotten down here okay, that she was in full-on handle-it mode. Instead, even in her peripheral vision, her eyes looked crazed in her pale face, and her hands were shaking so badly, the sleeves of her sweatshirt were vibrating.

Ding!

The doors slid open and she stepped out onto lush carpet. Crystal sconces shed gentle butter-yellow light over walls that had a sheen of wealth to them, and real paintings were hung at intervals in both directions. There were a couple of doors to choose from, and she went over and read one of the plaques. F
RAMINGHAM
L
OUNGE
. Another one farther down read, S
TAFF
O
NLY
.

She found the P
ENTHOUSE
sign all the way at the far end.

There was a little doorbell button under the sign—but before she went to push it, the door opened of its own volition, as if a draft or, more likely, some unseen hand was at work.

And there it was.

Exactly what she had come to see, but hoped not to.

In a seating arrangement in the center of a room with a lot of glass windows, in a chair that faced the view, Devina was buck-ass naked, her long brunette hair spilling down nearly to the floor … because her head was thrown back in ecstasy.

Bathed in candlelight, Jim was looming over her, his naked body poised above his bowed arms as he kissed her.

Sissy must have made a noise. A curse. A something—because he suddenly looked up at her. Instantly, the red-hot passion in his face was replaced with shock and then panic.

“Sissy!” he barked. And then he had the colossal nerve to leap back from the woman, demon, whatever she was like he hadn’t just been caught red-handed.

He was fully aroused.

Between one blink and the next, the rage inside of her leaped free and she was no longer in control.

As she stepped over the threshold, Jim was holding his hands out like he wanted to stop her from coming into the penthouse. Then he was backing up as if looking for his clothes. The whole time, he was talking to her, his mouth moving.

She didn’t hear a thing.

But her sight worked just fine: She saw everything about him and everything about Devina, too. For her part, the demon just sat back in that low-slung chair, her hands lying on the armrests, her hooded eyes following every move that Sissy made.

Then again, what was there to say, really.

There was, however, a knife. On the coffee table by the chair. With an eight-inch blade. Absently, she noted that it was like the fancy one her dad had gotten for Christmas two years ago, the one he treated like it was a work of art. Funny, the Henckels was totally out of place in the room, looking like something that had been left behind by a caterer.

She went for it before she knew what she was doing.

Picking the blade up, she felt its weight in her right hand, and turned to Jim.

“—me get some clothes on, okay?” he was saying. “Sissy? Can you hear me? Let me just get dressed, all right?”

He wheeled around as if looking for a pair of pants.

Something registered in the back of her mind, but she didn’t give it even one brain cell of thought. There were none to spare. That rage had taken over everything in her and around her.

“I can’t believe you fucking lied,” she said. “You bastard.”

Jim put those hands in front of himself again and backed up even further—until there was a crash like he’d knocked over a lamp, although she didn’t pay any attention to that.

“Sissy, you got this wrong—”

“You fucking bastard!”

All at once, everything that had happened to her since she’d gone out to that Hannaford supermarket came back to her—as she stalked Jim, all of the unjustness of each succeeding horror was made manifest in him. The pain and terror of death. The centuries of quasi-time suffering in Devina’s well. The raw mourning of her family and her lost life.

It was the perfect storm that created the super-wave in the ocean.

And that wave was going to come crashing down on Jim Heron.

Right now.

As if destiny agreed with her, he took one final step back and came up against the bar. He was still talking to her, and he twisted around as if attempting to judge which side to try to get around.

That Grim Reaper tattoo of his was yet another reminder of why he needed to die.

The rage lifted her arm up, the blade flashing in the candlelight.

She was going to kill him. Even though he was bigger and stronger, she knew that if she made one stabbing motion … it was going to be game-over.

Her fury was that great.

Jim watched through the eyes of another as the end of the war happened right in front of him. And there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.

Trapped in Devina’s illusion of herself, frozen to the chair in the position she had arranged him in, he was roaring—but only on the inside. Outwardly, he was imprisoned and mute and unable to move, and as he watched with horror, he knew exactly how this was going to play out. Sissy was going to take that kitchen knife, lift it high over her head, and drive it right into Devina’s chest—and that demon was going to make sure there was a good target to hit.

As soon as that blade made contact with the demon? The war was over, and Devina won. After all, it was the choice that counted; it was the intent, not the outcome of actual death that mattered. That knife wasn’t going to do shit to the demon, but it was everything that counted: Sissy’s crossroads, even though engineered by Devina, was the test she was going to fail. That rage and hatred, the shit Nigel had been talking about, were carved into the tight lines of her face and her body, and she wasn’t just going to give in to them.

They had taken her over.

Ad was right; she was possessed.

Nooooooo,
he screamed inside his prison of flesh. Sissy, no!

Devina leaned backwards over the bar, like she was scrambling to get out of the way and struck with indecision over which direction to take, but he knew better. She was giving Sissy every single opportunity in the world to score a kill shot.

God, he couldn’t believe this was how the demon got everything … the quick and the dead, the angels and the archangels, the Manse of Souls and Heaven above … all hers.

His vision became wavy from tears as his failure came home to roost. His mother … Sissy … Adrian and Eddie and the archangels …

It was all over.

And Devina knew it. From her contorted position at the bar, she shot him a look out of his own face with a sly, knowing wink.

Abruptly, time slowed down until Sissy all but froze in position, everything becoming hyper-focused—

Except … wait.

The slow-mo wasn’t a perception issue. Sissy really had stopped with the knife over her head, and her body poised to strike—and she stayed that way.

Devina frowned using Jim’s face, like her dance partner had missed a beat and stepped on her foot.

Sissy pivoted, still keeping the weapon up. Her eyes were hollows of what he knew them to be, but they were not completely insane. Especially as they narrowed on him.

“What are you doing?” Devina demanded in his voice.

Sissy lowered the blade and turned fully around—at the very moment one of the tears in his eyes slipped out and traveled down the illusion of Devina’s smooth cheek.

“What are you looking at,” Devina growled.

Sissy took a step forward toward him. And then another.

All he could do was try to communicate through the pupils that were not his own, begging her to see through the lie.

“What the fuck are you doing?” his voice demanded.

Sissy ignored Devina. Instead, she reached out with her free hand and seemed to touch the air above his head. Then she went down further and he felt her brush against the skin of his neck.

“Sissy,” Devina said. “Are you really this stupid?”

Please, God, he thought. Whatever you’re seeing, stick with it.

Sissy straightened abruptly and looked at Devina. “How did you do it?”

Jim watched the illusion of himself cross his arms over his chest. He was still naked, but his cock was no longer hard as a rock—apparently, Devina had lost her own arousal.

“I came here,” his voice said, “took her clothes off, and got ready to fuck her.”

Sissy glanced back and forth between them. And then she countered levelly, “No. You didn’t.”

As Sissy lowered the knife, she looked over at Jim—who was not, in fact, Jim. She wasn’t sure how she could explain the fact that every detail about him was correct, from the cowlick on the left side of his hair by the temple to the flecks in his blue eyes, from the tattoo on his back to the power in his chest—and yet it was
not
him.

Jim, the real one, was sitting in the chair. In spite of the fact that he appeared to be every inch the demon.

There were just two tiny details Devina had gotten wrong. Two things that, however accurate the demon’s imitation of him was, she had failed to nail.

The shaking hit Sissy the same way the fury had, rocking her from head to foot, making her feel as if the world were spinning even as she was pretty damn sure the hotel was on solid ground. And it was shortly after the blender routine took over that she realized she had a fucking knife in her hand.

And she’d been about to use it on Devina.

Because, for whatever reason, the demon wanted her to. Devina had set this lie up—for God only knew what reason.

Disgusted with herself, she threw the knife at the coffee table with such force, it knocked off—

“Fucking hell! Fuck you! Fuck you both!”

And just like that, “Jim” disappeared—and “Devina” flew off that chair, the female body exploding up as if released from some kind of hold.

In mid-air, Jim emerged from the lie, everything that looked like the demon replaced by his male body and proper face. He landed like a cat and shot back over to Sissy, throwing his arms around her and holding her so hard she could barely breathe.

She wasn’t the only one who was trembling.

“You did it,” he said hoarsely. “You did it.”

“No, I didn’t—I didn’t—”

“You saved us.”

“What?”

He pulled back and kissed her. “How did you know?”

It took her a moment to hear the words and comprehend what he was asking. “N-n-noo h-h-h—damn it, I c-c-can’t talk.”

“Breathe, just breathe with me.”

“No halo.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry?”

She pointed up to the crown of his head. “N-n-n-no halo. I was about to—” She couldn’t even say the words. “I was going to … but then I noticed that there was no halo. You—you—you have a halo … because you’re an angel. And my necklace … when I looked over at her—you, I mean—I saw that ‘she’ was wearing my dove n-n-n-necklace. That’s when I knew—but why? Why would she want me to—”

“You’re one of the souls.”

“What?”

“Lemme explain at home—we’ve got to get out of here.” He looked around on the floor. “How did you get here?”

“E-E-Explorer. Out front.”

“Okay, okay, good.”

“What are you looking for?”

He bent over and picked up … a Mercedes emblem. “This.”

“From her car?” Sissy said.

“You got it. Come on.”

Jim grabbed her hand and started to hustle her out of the penthouse, but she pulled him to a stop. “You’re naked.”

“And invisible.”

“But won’t you get cold—”

“No time, come on.”

And that was how they ended up in the hotel’s elevator, her in a twenty-eight-dollar outfit from Target, him in the birthday suit the good Lord gave him.

“
I’m
one of the souls?” she said.

He looked down at her, his blue eyes grave. “Yeah. You are.”

“So … this round is won?”

Jim nodded. “You evened it up for us. You chose wisely—when you stopped. When you didn’t act on the rage as you came to your crossroads.”