Revelation (10 page)

“Huh?”

“Subway. Transport. Unless you want to walk all the way to Harlem.”

She goggled. “Sure. It’s out on Second Avenue. But can’t you…y’know. Fly there? Beam yourself up, or something, like you did into my office?”

“So you believe in magic, now?”

“Just plumbing the depths of your delusions, flyboy.”

Despite his aching limbs, he grinned. “Why, yes, Dr. Sterling. I can ‘beam’ myself there, if by ‘beam’ you mean teleport on a wish. We call it
flashing
. But I can’t carry you, at least not right now. And as for flying…” His smile faded. The demon poison rotted his blood, weakening his powers. He couldn’t flash them both. And he wasn’t convinced he could defend her in the air if they were attacked. He shrugged, offhanded. “Maybe I just don’t feel like it.”

“Maybe I don’t feel like taking the subway.”

“We can get a cab, then. And on the way, you can tell me about this Patient Nothing.”

“Patient Zero.” Amusement flickered warm in her eyes.

“Whatever.”

Along the alley, deep in demon-spelled shadow, Zuul licked trembling lips, scarlet hair falling over his eyes. He’d enjoyed watching that. All that blood and exposed flesh. And that imp’s screams as the angel tortured him made Zuul shiver and sigh. Pain pornography, a cruel tease for a desperate addict like
himself. He’d wanted to feel it, the exquisite pop of bone and ligament, those harsh angel fingers searing his throat.

He sweated, hard. Fuck. He needed a fix again. Babylon sported any number of fight bars and torture clubs, and a handsome boy like Zuul never had any trouble finding volunteers. Especially when they found out how far he was prepared to go…

He slammed his head into the brick wall at his back, trying to keep his mind on the job as the angel and his human slut walked away.

Sugary angel stink curled in the air, and a sneer twisted Zuul’s lips. Luniel. One of the Tainted. Such pathetic rebellion, to defy Michael’s will on a whim but still come crawling to the archangel’s table for scraps. He’d enjoy watching Azaroth chew them all into bleeding shreds of holymeat.

But the blue-eyed son of a gloryworm was strong. He’d dispatched Zuul’s imps without breaking a sweat. Still, that was fine. The fucker was sure as hell sweating now. That fever flushing his face and setting his hands aquiver told tales of demon poison. The healing process would distract him a while.

Just what Zuul’s masters ordered. Both of them.

The feathered freak and his girl crossed the street, traffic whizzing by. The girl was sexy, in a serious, fuck-your-math-teacher-fantasy sort of way. Curving hips, luminous eyes, ripe red lips. Mmm. How blood would spurt from those lips if Zuul bit them. How she’d wail.

Zuul noted how Luniel walked a step behind her and to the side, his gaze always roving, searching for threats. He’d flashed his show-off sword away, but it lay only a half second’s wish from his hand. And the smell of his blood, open to the air through his demon-slashed face, spoke of more than casual connection. Beneath the flowery heavenstink—Zuul gagged, and spat—Luniel smelled raw. On edge. Hungry.

Zuul giggled. Stupid angel, lusting after a human woman. It only gave the demons more leverage. And Zuul knew one particular demon who’d be very interested in Luniel’s sordid little love affair. Yes. A pretty Prince of Poison who’d be more than happy to reward Zuul for his news.

Azaroth wouldn’t mind him doing a little job on the side, after all. Hell on earth was coming. Every demon for himself.

Satisfied, Zuul snapped his fingers, and vanished.

Morgan hugged her knees to her chest on the subway car’s slick vinyl bench, her back against the warm spray-painted window. The train stank of piss and sweat, and syringes littered the floor. Her heart still thudded, unwilling to calm down. She still wore her white lab coat, smeared with blood and alley dirt, as well as stinking black grease from the demon’s wings.

A demon’s wings.
Her arms shook, and she clutched her knees tighter. Her stay-up stockings were torn, and she tried to cover the hole.
Get a grip, Morgan. Either demons tried to kill you, or rabid bats bleed black acid and speak English. Accept the evidence and move on.

The subway rattled and lurched along the curved tracks. Fluorescent lights gleamed. In one corner, a scruffy group of Latino kids in baggy jeans played cards. A man and a woman wore dark business suits, briefcases and SIM implants flashing behind their ears. The woman had a pistol in a holster under her short jacket. A trio of blond Aryan gangboys with razor-cut hair and shamrock tattoos loaded their guns from a take-out tub of rounds. Their studded belts and chains glinted, the telltale lumps of knives or nerve gas canisters in their pockets. One guy in a creased red leather jacket had a machete and smoked a crack pipe. Two dark-eyed boys in turbans played knife games
on the seat, blades slashing the plastic as they stabbed for each other’s fingers.

No one commented. Everyone watched everyone, exchanged dark whispers with their companions, avoided eye contact. In Babylon, at this hour, no one rode the subway alone.

Tense. Exhilarating. Nerve-wracking. But none of them had anything on the creature sitting at her side.

He’d slipped on his human guise, and his wings weren’t visible, but he still radiated menace and strangeness. He was the wrong colors, for starters. Inhuman, his skin too luminous and smooth. His blacker-than-night hair glistened, strands sticking to his bleeding cheek, and his ridiculously blue eyes glittered fever bright.

Not to mention he was the biggest guy on the train by inches. Veins stood out on his glossy arms, his muscles twitching. He was stained with demonslime and grit, but he didn’t smell like a human would, of sweat and corruption. No, he still smelled of toffee and warm, clean male skin.

She smoothed her ragged hair, self-conscious. A goth gangboy across the aisle gave her a belligerent once-over, dyed hair gleaming in front of his eyes. He wore tight black jeans and a safety-pinned black t-shirt, and his dirty kohl-lined gaze lingered on the place where her skirt rode up on her thigh.

She flushed, and crossed her legs, tugging her skirt down over her lace-edged stockings. No profit in making a scene.

But Luniel growled—yes, he actually growled, deep in his throat like an angry beast—and glared at the goth, a hot blue threat. “Watch your eyes, kid.”

The goth glanced at his watching friends, and forced a sneer, flipping Luniel a black-nailed bird. “Make me.”

Luniel just sniffed. The goth gulped, and his nose exploded in blood.

He doubled over, grabbing his face. Scarlet splashed over his leather-studded wrists and plinked on the floor. “Son of a bitch,” he spluttered.

Luniel arched calm eyebrows, and the goth and his friends muttered and looked elsewhere, and when the train jerked to a halt at Seventy-Second Street, they got off.

Morgan swallowed, dry. How had he done that? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She’d seen him slaughter and torture
those…things…without remorse. A man who used a sword like that was a practiced killer.

Who’d apparently appointed himself her protector.

And sure, she felt safe. From demon bats, or some guylined freak who perved up her skirt. Just not from
him
.

And there was still the question of what he’d want in return. Her body still trembled in memory of that stupid, bone-tingling kiss. But she wasn’t an idiot. If flyboy had designs on her body, he could damn well think again.

“So,” Lune said, as if goth blood wasn’t pooling all over the opposite seat. “Tell me about this zero thing.”

“Well,” said Morgan, relieved to have something to talk about that wasn’t
how the hell did you do that
? “It’s called a disease vector. If you can isolate enough samples, get the times of death and match them with locations, you can build up a picture of where and when the virus killed. Cross-reference that with incubation time, and you get a pattern of the spread of infection, which you can trace back to the likely origin.”

“Wow, this science shit really works. And that’s where?”

“We narrowed it down to an area in Spanish Harlem, below 110th Street.” Even as she said it, dismay filtered her guts cold.

“You mean, where the mutie gangs hang out.”

Yeah, that about sums it up.

The muties were their own plague, a scourge on the face of Babylon that the city had no solution for. Too many years of poverty, rage, inbreeding and bad drugs had created an underclass of unemployed poor, their bodies deformed, their brains too addled or altered to do anything but the most menial and underpaid jobs. The city had cut off services to parts of town in an effort to shrink the worst neighborhoods by attrition, but the muties wouldn’t go away that easily. Most were vagrants, living in boxes and drains, roaming the streets in gangs and attacking anything they thought might have money or food. Put a bike chain or an axe in their hands and they were deadly.

A few extremists in city hall were always angling to deploy nerve gas and scour the neighborhoods clean. Some said those same extremists had engineered the Manhattan virus to wipe out the muties.

If so, it ranked up there with carbon sequestration and
mandatory live flu vaccinations as one of the worst ideas of the century. The muties were bad enough when they were just hungry and pissed off. Splash on a dose of Manhattan virus…

Morgan hugged her knees again as the train swayed to a halt beside dirty white tiles at Cathedral Parkway. A trio of Mormons got on, black suits and truncheons. The train took off again. “The virus started in mutie land,” she confirmed. “I guess if you’re already a mindless zombie, it can’t hurt too much, can it?”

It was a poor joke, and Luniel didn’t smile. “But it does hurt, from what I’ve heard.”

“Yeah.” Her lips squeezed tight. She’d seen enough virus victims to know what they went though. Ravenous hunger, enough to make them chew their own bodies for food. Rotting skin, flesh turning to pulp. Blood clotting as it pumped, organs liquefying, eyeballs bursting red.

But before that was the worst. They still looked normal, no lesions or popped veins. But their minds twisted, their impulses turned homicidal and they developed a taste for raw meat.

Specifically, human flesh. More specifically, uninfected human flesh that was still alive.

Manhattan’s victims liked to spread the disease. They were compelled to, so fiercely they’d die in the attempt. And they used all their still-human wits and cunning to do it.

Luniel’s gaze didn’t waver. “We’ll put a stop to it, Morgan,” he said, his voice steady and hard. Damn it if she didn’t want to believe him. “We’ll find Quuzaat and get rid of him.”

“And will that help?” The virus was already wild. Surely killing one…creature couldn’t stem the tide of death? Even if that creature really had started it. But she had to go along with this, even if it was just to prove this Quuzaat didn’t exist and wasn’t responsible.

Then again, if Quuzaat wasn’t responsible…how to cure the virus? Killing a demon seemed easy—at least, it would be with Luniel on her side—compared to developing a cure or a vaccine, when so many people were already at risk or infected.

She could almost wish this demon was the cause. If it wouldn’t mean everything she’d ever believed was misguided.

Worse than misguided. Arrogantly, perilously wrong.

She sighed. You could do your head in thinking about this.

Luniel grinned, feral and dangerous, and her pulse skipped. “Will it help? One way to find out.”

They got off the subway at 116th Street, where dusty fluorescents were broken above blue-painted columns, and spray paint colored the white-tiled walls along the dim platforms. Ripped bill posters flapped in the breeze as the train rumbled on. Luniel ushered her towards the steps, avoiding sleeping vagrants. Broken concrete stuck jagged where last summer, a bungled suicide bomb had blasted a hole in one wall and no one had bothered to fix it. Someone had hung a wreath of wildflowers there, now withered and dry.

At the top of the steps, midnight breeze blew in from the river, bringing the coppery smell of blood. The moon shone, casting red shadows. Old apartment blocks loomed like skeletons, broken windows coated in dust, red neon advertising a halal deli. Garbage lined the alleyways, and security screens were pulled down tight over the sidewalk store windows. A coffee vendor’s wagon hunkered in a dim pool of light on the corner, and the guy inside rested his shotgun openly on the counter.

The gang of Aryans had gotten off at their stop, and stood by the green-fenced steps, inhaling some drug from a plastic crusher and passing it around. One gave her a sloppy grin, nudging his friends.

Luniel tugged her closer as they sidled past, beneath rippling virtual advertising for cell phone plans and home security. Sirens ebbed and flowed, and the air stank of smoke. “Walk with me.”

She tugged away, the broken pavement scraping beneath her shoes. She’d lived in Babylon ever since her student days, and she was used to the occasional guy bothering her, or racists calling her dirty names because her dark coloring made them think she was Latina or mixed race. “I’m okay. Let go.”

“Tell me you weren’t born yesterday. If you look like my girlfriend, those guys will leave you alone.” And he dropped his muscled arm around her shoulder and leaned to whisper in her ear with a showy smile. “Is it such a trial?”

“I’ll ask your girlfriend and let you know.” She swallowed, dizzied by his scent. The top of her head barely came to his
shoulder. His big body felt strong and safe. But it wasn’t reassuring. It was threatening.

“Sorry. Can’t help you there.” A dark blue glance, close. “Relieved?”

“Just forewarned.”

“Believe me, princess, if I decide to have designs on you, you’ll see it coming.” They hustled across a traffic-thick street towards the overgrown jungle of Morningside Park, headlights whizzing by. Smoke hung over the road, the stink of burning garbage.

“A man of subtlety, then?”

“I prefer to think of it as honesty.”

“How refreshing.” She spoke lightly, but her belly heated when she remembered the untamed desire that burned in his eyes after he kissed her. And what a kiss. His embrace was…overwhelming. She hadn’t wanted so badly to be touched in a long time. She’d always been too focused, too obsessed with order to pay much attention to men. But Luniel had blown all that to splinters with his hot lips and glossy black wings and fiery, sinful blue eyes.