Kim Harrison - Something Deadly This Way Comes

“Barnabas!” Nakita exclaimed, appalled.

Barnabas ignored her. “And when you reach your power, you will use your understanding of choice to change things,” he finished.

Josh exhaled in understanding, and I stiffened. Barnabas turned his gaze to me, and I shivered at the depth of his heartache. Eons of it, stored behind his dark eyes. “You both will,” he said to me, his voice breaking. “We just have to be patient.”

“I don’t want to wait a lifetime to make a difference,” I said.

“Then you find them when you can,” Barnabas said, a new, almost eerie fervor to his voice that bordered on the fanatical. “Talk to them if they listen. Before Ron sends an angel to guard them or the seraphs send a reaper to scythe them.”

It was what I had been trying to do all along. Barnabas believed it was possible. Maybe now, Paul did, too. And if Paul did, perhaps we had a real chance.

“We have to find Tammy,” Paul said, his voice almost virulent. “We have to change this. She can’t be allowed to live her life if all that is at the end of it is . . . for the sum of her life and memories to be eaten by a mindless dish of bacteria!”

“Then we do this?” I said, hope making me shake inside.

Paul took a breath, knowing he was agreeing to more than saving Tammy. He was going to get in trouble. Ron wasn’t going to be happy. Screw Ron.

“We do this,” Paul said. His eyes closed briefly, and then he turned to look deeper into the graveyard, across it to the rest of the town. “She’s not very far away.”

“Good,” Nakita said, her expression drawn up into a worried look. “Because Demus is gone.”

It wasn’t the muggy, breathless darkness that creeped me out and made my stomach clench. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hear Barnabas and Nakita behind me somewhere, swords drawn as they jogged after me. It wasn’t that my out-of-shape breathing was harsh and heavy next to Josh’s long-distance runner’s light breaths. It wasn’t even that this end of town had bars on the windows and roll-down gates over the storefronts. What bothered me was that I was still barefoot and had stepped in something sticky.

Grimacing, I raised my foot and shuddered.

“This way,” Barnabas said, easing past me as I hesitated. I could hardly see him in the black alley, his coat making him a moving shadow. Nakita’s scent brushed past me, and I started to follow. Paul edged past Josh and me, and I couldn’t help but see how predatory the two reapers looked beside him: Barnabas dark and furtive, Nakita taut and slim, both on the hunt, both joined in thought to one goal. I was proud of them, working together like that. Demus’s amulet was in my pocket, heavy and warm. I don’t know what he intended to do to Tammy without it, but Demus and Tammy were together according to Barnabas.

“She’s just ahead,” Paul whispered as he turned, the streetlight glinting on the shine of his dress shoes. His posture was tense and eager, and I wished I could see the time line to gauge how close we were.

The brighter square of black at the end of the alley beckoned; I picked up my pace. “Watch it!” Josh whispered, reaching out and jerking me back an instant before I stepped in a foul-smelling pile of garbage outside a side door.

It was a bad part of town. I wouldn’t come here even during the day. The street was empty, seeing as it was about two in the morning. A faint brightening hinted at the coming sunrise, but it was hours off. The air stank, heavy and humid. Streetlights barely lit the potholed street, the asphalt making hardly any division between itself and the sidewalk, and then the tired, chipped buildings with their roll-down gates and bricked-up windows. It was rock, asphalt, and cement. Not a hint of anything green or alive. Not even a rat.

Which is probably a good thing, I thought as I shifted my weight from one cold foot to the other. “Thanks,” I whispered back, wrinkling my nose at the smell. My arms had gone around my middle, and I was cold. Maybe I should have waited until we were done with this prevention before claiming my body. And what was that squishy thing between my toes? This was just gross.

“She’s in there,” Paul said, his rising chin indicating a bus depot, the broken neon sign in the shape of a big arrow.

“With Demus,” Nakita said, almost hissing the word.

“The bus depot,” I said, turning to give Josh a smile. “You were right.”

Heart pounding, I took a step forward only to have Barnabas yank me back. Overhead, a streetlight popped to put us in darkness. My eyes went up as I wondered if it was Grace, and Barnabas whispered, “Cop car.”

Frustrated, I pulled back into the even darker alley. Paul was beside me and Josh. Nakita jumped straight up, vanishing onto the roof. The slow sound of an idling engine grew, and we pressed back even more, hiding behind a box. I could see inside the bus depot from where I stood with my back to the wall. Demus and Tammy were just talking, but I was sure if Demus had had his amulet, she’d be dead by now.

It was a cop car, and I silently thanked Grace for the broken light as it cruised very slowly past, the spotlight playing over the abandoned storefronts and probing into the dark places.

Standing between me and the top of the alley, Paul exhaled as the car slowly drove away. He looked determined as he shifted to the center of the alley, and I couldn’t help but feel a spark of something as we all followed him back to the street. Not romantic but perhaps a contemporary? I wondered. Someone who would really understand the hell that we had to go through. That is, if I kept my amulet.

“He’s gone,” Paul said as the cop’s brake lights flashed and the car turned a corner.

“Do you think they’re looking for me?” I asked, reluctant to step into the open.

Barnabas was a shadow on my other side, his gaze still where the car had disappeared. “Probably no. I tweaked their memories of you. I think I got everyone.”

Paul turned to frown at him. “You think ?”

Barnabas frowned right back. “Nothing is certain.”

“The car is gone,” I said, tension making me jittery. “Let’s go.”

“Black wings!” Paul said, and I froze, fighting an irrational fear as I looked up, seeing their black outlines against the sooty sky. There was a flash of brilliant light as one turned, and I looked away, shivering. I had a body. They couldn’t sense me. And even if they could, they couldn’t touch me. Not with a real aura around me again.

“What are they doing here?” Josh asked, hunched and uneasy. He’d seen what they had done to me. “Demus can’t scythe anyone if you have his amulet. And they don’t follow light reapers.” He looked at Barnabas, his expression ill. “Right?”

Barnabas said nothing as he put a hand on my shoulder and pushed us into motion. “Not usually, no. But we’ve got three reapers, a timekeeper, and a rising timekeeper out here. Even plants turn to the sun.”

And maybe Arariel was here hunting, too, I mused, following us since she couldn’t find Tammy on her own. My eyes scanning everything, we crossed the empty street, moving furtively and avoiding going right under the circling black sheets of dripping goo. God, I hated those things, and I shivered at the memory of them eating Tammy’s memories until she was nothing.

“What is Demus even doing here?” I babbled, mincing in my bare feet. “He can’t make a scythe.”

“I think he’s going to push her in front of a bus.”

I looked askance at Barnabas, trying to decide if he was being funny or not.

There was the soft sound of feathers, and a soft click of heels, and Nakita joined us as we reached the door. I pulled one side of the twin doors only to find it locked. Barnabas reached in front of me and gave a yank. With a sharp ping of breaking metal, the door opened. A fetid scent of old sneakers and stale cigarettes spilled out. Nice.