The man’s scream hit me like a physical blow. I fell backward, nearly popping the ligaments in my knees. Whatever calm concentration I had mustered, it was destroyed now. And the man continued to scream. It was the death cry of a big man, deep, wrenched up from his gut and wrung out of him until there was nothing left.
I picked myself up and stumbled once more to my knees. I sought the calm but did not find it. I heard another scream, this one more of a dry, wheezing thing. Then there were curses in English…and in Spanish, followed by a sudden, defiant yell. A single shrill cry came next. Then, a wretched, gargling throaty shout.
The walking shadow was killing the inmates one-by-one as it came, sluicing through the bars and leisurely ripping their lives away. In a corner of my cringing heart, I felt stricken with guilt. I’d given the inmates false hope. There was no way to hide from this thing.
The biker cursed it before crying out his last. The next death, there was no scream at all; only a vicious tearing splatter. Now the shadow shape was visible, just a cell away from my own. The bodybuilder put up a fight, which is to say, he banged around in his cell before groaning and falling silent.
Legs of black vapor strode forward, and it was there just outside the bar. The writhing oily black smoke seemed to coalesce in part, becoming a being of scaly, silver-blue flesh. All doubt scattered and was gone. The legend was no more. The Nephilim lived and walked the earth. And now, it leered at me with pestilent yellow eyes.
The voice that warbled out from its lips might have been the sound of a locust swarm devouring a field or the bleating of a thousand lambs being slaughtered at once. It might have been the silent cries of untold millions of unborn killed in the womb. It sounded like all of those tragedies together and yet, I could understand the speech as clearly as my own.
“I…have brought you…your tool.”
His right arm rose, and I leaped backward. Then I saw: he had The Edge and held it out for me. I shuddered to think of what had become of the FBI agents who had relieved me of The Edge in the first place. But…why would the Nephilim give me a weapon? Mr. Scratch had been one thing, a bargaining chip or a favor to call in later. But I could not discern the Nephilim’s purpose.
“I…savor…the hunt.”
Sport. The Nephilim wanted more sport from me than he’d gotten from the defenseless. I resigned myself that, it might be my very last act upon this earth, but I would give him a measure of sport before I went.
I darted forward, in one motion snatching The Edge from his hand, flicking it on, and slashing his upper arm. The ethereal blade flashed to life and neatly severed his right arm just below the shoulder. The limb fell bloodless to the floor but vanished in a column of roiling black smoke. When I looked up, its right arm was there as if I’d never landed the blow. The Nephilim smiled lecherously and backed away from my cell bars. He turned at an angle and leaned toward the cell across from mine.
“NO!” I commanded, but it was too late. Its right arm became a vortex of darkness. It spiraled into the cell and found the man beneath his cot. There was a strangled cry, several sharp cracks, and a pressurized pop. A tide of blood washed out from under the cot and spread quickly across the cell floor.
The rage burst from me like a solar flare. I lunged, dragging The Edge across the top of the steel bars. I spun, cutting across the bottom of the bars and continuing the momentum with a sharp sidekick that raked out the section I’d cut. I leaped through and slashed the Nephilim, executing a barrage that would have eviscerated and all but filleted a man. I whirled away and turned back…only to find the Nephilim seemingly unharmed, tendrils of vaporous darkness surging over every wound until the scaly flesh was completely restored.
“Long…have I searched for you…Horseman.”
“What do you want with me?” I asked, failing to hide the desperation in my voice. “I’ve done nothing to you!”
The Nephilim laughed, but it was a terrible, mirthless sound like the dry grinding of old bones. “It…is not what…you’ve done. It…is what you…are.”
In that moment, the most ridiculous thing popped into my mind. While on a mission in Japan, I had seen a sketch artist’s pencil cartoon that had left me aching with laughter. It was called Godzilla versus Bambi.
It was a very short cartoon.
I guess it came to mind because I faced a similar dynamic against a legendary power like the Nephilim. Given that, in the analogy, I was Bambi, there really wasn’t anything all that funny about my situation. But the memory and the inner laughter relaxed me. My breathing slowed. My heartbeat hammered out its regular rhythm. Even as I brandished The Edge, threatening another run at the Nephilim, I focused inwardly. I saw the endless blue plane stretch to the horizon and beyond. And this time, it raced toward me, crashing over me like a wave.
I saw golden light. I could unmask, at last.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Agent Rezvani roared onto Keystone Lane and came to a violent, screeching halt in the parking circle in front of the Pensacola Police Department. As she leaped out of the SUV, she expected to find at least a half dozen startled officers streaming out of the blocky building’s door. But no one came out to investigate the tire-burning ruckus she’d made.
“Well, it is 1:00 a.m.,” she muttered, taking the steps two at a time. “Maybe they relax things after midnight down here.”
She threw open the right hand door, plunged inside, and skidded to a hard fall on the wet floor. Whispering a few choice words under her breath, she rolled off her side and pushed herself up. That was when all words left her. She had slid in blood. Not just a splash or puddle, but a flood.
Deanna Rezvani, the FBI Special Agent, ceased to exist. In her place stood a young woman confronted with a horror beyond understanding. Thick crimson blood pooled from the base of the information counter to the opposite wall and spread all the way down twenty feet of hallway.
She turned a dazed circle and blinked with little comprehension of the incoming detail. Shreds and hunks of bloody pink meat, some embedded with shards of stark white bone, lay strewn all over the office. Every glass dividing panel, every window, every wall had been splattered with all manner of gore. Blood dripped forlornly from counters, edges of desks, and from half-clotted gobs on the ceiling. Each drop sent slow ripples across the inundated floor.
Rez’s Special Agent side returned, professional detachment rescuing the other side from shock and madness. She drew her Beretta and began a slow, careful exploration of the building, and clinical procedure took over. The physical evidence seemed to indicate that the police officers had been blown apart. The carnage was certainly consistent with bomb damage or a missile strike. But there was no sign of fire or the equivalent damage to furniture. It was just human destruction.
She had no mental file to open, no list of things that could do this kind of dismembering damage to human beings without an explosion. A butchering serial killer might be as violent but, unless he gassed the entire precinct, there was no way a killer could take out all of the police. Not like this. That thought gave Rez pause. She’d had the police scanner on the whole drive. There’d been no report. Nothing. A patrolman returning from a shift would have reported the scene.
She caught a tensing chill. She slowed her movements and kept the wall at her back. Whoever had done this was likely still in the building…capable of doing to her what he had done to the others. But who could…? She couldn’t shake the question. The Smiling Jack killers were ruthless and clever. They’d rigged their home to explode, killing who knew how many? Could they have pulled this off as well? It didn’t make sense. That left a chilling possibility.
Ghost.
What did she really know about John Spector? He’d admitted that name to be an alias. He’d been secretive in dozens of ways. And what was in that silver case of his? More technologically advanced weapons? Something capable of the…the massacre she saw before her?
No, she thought, shaking the snaking logic from her mind. Spector mi
ght be a self righteous pain in the nether regions, but he wasn’t evil. Still, she had to admit that Spector was likely the most recent prisoner brought into the precinct. All this…had some connection to him.
Rez moved on, taking sure, careful steps in the blood. She rounded a corner and found a bank of monitors. She scanned the screens and stopped at the cell blocks. The third floor cells were full to capacity, and the inmates in view were severely agitated. Each time the camera cycled, focusing on a new set of third floor cells, Rez saw people throwing themselves at the steel bars, screaming, and tearing at anything they could find. Then she went to the second floor screens.
The first camera view was unclear. It was black and white, but the tones seemed off. The cell floor looked black. Then she saw the human head.
Rez fought her physiology and held back the vomit. The camera blinked, and Rez stared. It was Ghost. Or at least she thought it was. He stood near the shadows at the end of hall of cells. The man was big enough, but his face was distorted. She remembered the websites, the fan photos, and all the blurring on his face. That’s him, she thought, convincing herself but not quite there. And she saw the man she believed to be John Spector swing a sword forward in a menacing manor.
“That’s his crazy sword,” Rez whispered. But what was he swinging at? At first, she thought there was something wrong with the screen. A blotch of darkness swirled around Spector, and he seemed to be trying to fight it off.
She began to tear herself away from the screen when she saw…something that momentarily scrambled her senses. Something flashed on the screen, but not like a lens flare. It was on Spector as if the monitor’s contrast had gone haywire. The skin of his arm kindled to blinding white. His blurred face too, shifted into a blooming explosion of light. There seemed to be a radiant glow burning all around his back. And then, the camera cycled away to a different vantage.
I’m losing it, she thought, frantically leaving the police offices and searching for the route to the cell block. Finally out of the blood, she had better footing, but unfortunately her sense of direction and the department’s lack of signs left her taking several wrong turns before stumbling onto the cell blocks.
She hit the stairs to cell block two and did her best to shut out what she saw as she climbed. The top of the stairwell, the podium desk, and the gate to the cell block were all strewn with gore and painted in blood. She raced through the gate and skidded to a halt. It hadn’t been the screen. Toward the end of the hall there was a mixture of writhing shadows and blindingly bright light. She blinked and held up her arm reflexively. Squinting, she saw that the light had shape, a human form, well…basically a human form. There were strange features Rez didn’t understand.
Then, the figure of light turned and sped toward her. It covered the ground between them in heartbeats. Rez fired a shot, then two more. But the light surrounded her, lifted her from her feet, and…spoke.
“Tuck your head into my chest,” it said, its voice an otherworldly combination of intensity and calm. “Keep your eyes shut until I tell you.”
Rez did as she was told. The blinding brightness burned through her eyelids anyway, and she saw strange shapes and patterns. But that was nothing compared to the sounds. Wind and storm and rain—a violent raging tempest—screamed against her eardrums. There came a deep crackling boom, and Rez couldn’t hold on. Her consciousness slipped away in a vortex of light and sound.
Chapter 36
“Agent Rezvani.”
Rez heard someone calling her, and that seemed odd. Who calls the dead?
“Agent Rezvani,” the voice called again. “I need you to wake up.”
Wake up? Rez thought. I can’t wake up. I’m dead. Rez couldn’t recall how she died exactly, but she must have. There had been so much blood, so many dead. And then: blinding light and crushing thunder.
Rez had always known she’d die while on the job, but she figured it would have been a gunshot or a car bomb or maybe even a high speed collision. It never crossed her mind that she’d be whisked to the grave by a supernatural living light—
“REZ, WAKE UP!”
Rez opened her eyes, blinked at the stars overhead, and felt sand between her fingers. “I’m not dead,” she whispered. Light shimmered in her peripheral vision. She turned her head and gasped.
A figure made of starlight stood upon the sand just a dozen paces from her. Rez squinted, blinked, and even rubbed her eyes, and her vision became more acute. He was not made of starlight or even of light. He wasn’t like the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four, but his flesh seemed molten like slow flowing lava, shot through with spidery cracks and gaps where pure white light shone through. Rez had seen that kind of pristine brilliance once before…when Ghost had spontaneously healed from the gunshot wound.
“Ghost?” she whispered.
The being turned his head, and she recognized the features. Rez caught her breath and went to one knee. “I’m still out,” she told herself. “I’m unconscious. This is a dream. Only a dream.”
“You…are not asleep,” the light figure said, his voice—at first clear like a clarion trumpet—began to strain. As he spoke this last, the words became thin and weak. “You…know…me.” He groaned, staggered to one knee, and collapsed onto his side.
“You’re hurt?” Rez leaped to her feet, took a step and froze.
She stared, transfixed at Spector’s back…his wings.
Wings.
One hand at her lips, the other pointing feebly and trembling, Rez leaped backward as one wing extended and fell, the tip just inches from her feet. No feathers like that of an eagle, no webbing like that of a bat—these were muscular wings, scaled with tough, fleshy plaits like those of a gladiator’s skirt. At a guess, the wing was eight or nine feet in length, hinged not once but twice at powerful joints made knobby beneath the flesh by heads of muscle.
To support and power such immense appendages, Spector—it felt surreal to call this being by a familiar name—had dynamic upper body development. Where a particularly well-built football player might have thick neck muscle and a dense upper back and shoulders, Spector had more. Massive, triangular slabs braced his neck and met huge panels of upper back on either side of his spine. His shoulders were almost comically large, like ribbed cannonballs covered by that smoldering flesh. But, in spite of the potential power there, Spector’s wings were now virtually motionless.
Rez ran around the outstretched wing and knelt near his face. “Spector,” she said, “Spector, is that really you?”
His eyelids fluttered, sending out flickers of white light. “I am sorry, Rez,” he whispered hoarsely. “No time to explain. Help me…help me get to the water.”
Spector rose to a knee, and his wings folded onto his back. He coughed, simultaneously retching up a gob of brilliant white liquid and causing a spurt of the same from his midsection.
“Oh, oh my gosh, is that blood?” Rez didn’t know what to do with her hands. She didn’t feel heat from him, but still, the molten appearance, bright light burning out of a myriad miniature strokes of lightning…it seemed she’d incinerate herself by touching him.
“Got to get to…water,” he groaned. “Please.”
Grimacing, she took his elbow and found him lighter than she expected. Far lighter, but not for lack of mass. His flesh was taut with blocks of thick muscle. Rez speculated absently that he’d be three feet taller than her if he wasn’t so bent over and wracked with pain. He ought to weigh close to 300 pounds, she thought. But he didn’t. Supporting him now was like bearing a teenager or spotting an athlete.
She got him to the water’s edge with relative ease. “What now?” she asked.
“Farther out.”
She led him until the warm water was waist high. “Now?”
“Let…me go,” he whispered. “Let me fall. Need to reset.”
“Reset?” she echoed.
“Let me go under,” he said. “Just don’t go anywhere.”
Rez loosened her grip, and he p
ulled free. The winged version of John Spector disappeared beneath the water with a deep gurgle.
Agent Rezvani staggered a few steps backward, almost falling into the surf herself. “What am I doing?” she asked aloud. But she found no other words. She’d had a dozen reasons for signing on with the FBI. But in the past 48 hours, each and every one of them had been taxed, stretched, worried, bent, and blown up. She’d seen things that would disturb any human being, the mind-fracturing scene at the Pensacola Police Department would haunt her memory for as long as she lived. But, beyond that, there were events related to John Spector, events that the mind had no recourse, no paradigm to reference.
As if on cue, light strobed out of the water where Spector had gone under. Dappled flares shone and sparkled. The water surged and rocked as if a school of especially large fish teemed just beneath the surface. Spector’s head came up, and he gasped for air.
Rez dove forward and reached for him.
“No!” he spluttered. “Not yet!” He went under again.
He was gone for much longer this time, but when Rez stepped forward, he came up. And he was John Spector again…a normal, if haggard looking John Spector.
He tried to get to his feet but fell backward. Rez assisted and found him a cumbersome bulk this time. She struggled, straining against the water weight, but got him upright at last. When they got safely back up onto the sand, Ghost breathed heavily, punctuated by a distinct wheezing.
“What’s wrong?” Rez asked. “I thought you did that healing thing.”
“I did,” he said hoarsely. “Wasn’t enough, not after…” His voice trailed off.