The Angel levered herself to her feet and bounded after Ray. As Peter reached for Ray with his left hand, The Angel swung her sword and sheared through his wrist. His hand flew off and shattered on the lobby floor.
Ray kept going. He slid between John’s immense, widely-braced thighs. The statue bent forward slowly at the waist and tried to catch him as he went by. He missed and the back of his exposed neck presented a tempting target. The Angel braced herself and brought her sword down like a headsman’s ax. Her first blow bit deeply. Using all her strength, she yanked the blade free desperately, and wound up and swung again as the apostle turned his head and looked at her disapprovingly. She said an apologetic prayer under her breath as her second blow caught him in the side of the throat and John’s head sprang from his neck. Thank God, the Angel thought, that it’s not bleeding. She dodged around the statue’s blinding groping arms, following Ray whose slide took him against the legs the third statue. James, the Angel christened him.
Ray’s hands dragged on the floor, and a smear of blood followed him as glass shards sliced into his palms, but that was the least of his worries. James caught him in his marble hands, and lifted him high. He squeezed, and Ray screamed. Oh, God! the Angel thought.
The statue lifted Ray high over his head and the ace spasmed. The Angel thought that Ray was trying to jerk himself away from the giant’s crushing grip, but there was no way he could escape from the statue’s cruel hands.
But he wasn’t, the Angel suddenly realized, trying to pull himself free. He was throwing something. Something clear and sharp that he’d grabbed off the floor as he slid by.
A nine-inch long, razor sharp glass shard glimmered in the sun as it flew to its target and buried two thirds of itself in Alejandro’s stomach. The Allumbrado cried out and gripped it, cutting his palms deeply as he tried to pull it out of his gut, and failed. He looked at Ray with a stricken, unbelieving expression. The Angel saw their eyes meet for a moment, and then Alejandro slumped to the ground. The statue, holding Ray above his head like a fond father might playfully hold his infant son, kept leaning back, back, back, until it fell backwards against the steps leading into the lobby, shattering into several hundred chunks of rock.
Ray hit the ground behind it, rolled, and came to his feet. He twisted briefly, as if trying to put a sore back back into place, and the Angel could see the crazy grin on his face. “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” he said to Dagon and the Witness, who were standing ten feet away, and suddenly, like that, he was on them.
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
John Nighthawk stood before the door to Fortunato’s suite. Usher and Magda were pressed against the wall out of sight on one side of the door. Blood and his handler were on the other. He looked at Usher, nodded, and raised his hand to knock, when the thunderbolt of revelation struck him.
Danger was in that room. Danger for the entire world. Nighthawk saw fire consume everything. The land was blackened, the oceans boiled away. Even the very air was aflame. And the boy was the center of all, surrounded by flame but not devoured. Perhaps Contarini was right after all. Perhaps the boy was the Anti-Christ. The warning in Revelations regarding false prophets ran through his mind along with the images of all-devouring flame. He had to think about this, but now was not the time. His hand wavered, then came down on the door to Fortunato’s suite, knocking politely.
After a moment, it opened a crack. A small, neatly dressed man peered out. He cleared his throat. “Yes?” he asked.
“We’re here for the boy,” Nighthawk said.
“Boy?”
Nighthawk smiled. “John Fortune. There’s no sense standing behind the door. We can take it down in an instant, if we have to.”
The man seemed to think for a moment, then opened it all the way. “I’m Digger Downs,” he said as Nighthawk came in. “Reporter for Aces! You’re?”
“Anonymous,” Nighthawk said as he entered the suite.
Downs started to close the door, but Usher, followed by Magda and then Blood and his handler, pushed by. “Hey—“ Downs began, then fell silent when he saw the weapons Usher and Magda carried, and the look on Magda’s face. Nighthawk knew that Downs really wanted to say something when he caught sight of Blood, but he kept his mouth shut.
Nighthawk looked around the room. “Where’s the boy?” he asked.
“He was here—”
Nighthawk looked Downs in the eye. “It’s better you bring the boy out than we go looking for him.”
Magda jacked a round into her automatic shotgun for emphasis.
“Hey,” Downs said, “if it was up to me—ah, Fortunato.”
Nighthawk recognized him as he came out of one of the bedrooms. He was tall, thin, and light-skinned. Energy shimmered the air around him like heat waves in a desert. Blood, who had strange senses of his own, whimpered at the sight of him, and cowered behind his handler’s legs. If I drained him, Nighthawk thought, I could keep going for another century. At least.
“You can’t have him,” Fortunato said flatly. “Unless you go through me.”
Magda brought her shotgun up with a cry of pure rage. Fortunato glanced at her, and she froze, literally, in mid-scream, her mouth open, face contorted, shotgun almost leveled.
“Impressive,” Nighthawk said. “How many minds can you handle at once?”
Nighthawk nodded at Usher.
“Dad—it’s all right.” John Fortune came from the same bedroom Fortunato had. He looked a little disheveled, a little frightened, but basically all right. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me. I’ll go with them.”
Nighthawk smiled at him. “Good boy.”
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, courtyard
Ray knew that the only thing that kept him from immediately being blown to shit and back by the Allumbrado gunmen was the fact that they’d blow Witness and Butcher Dagon along with him. He decided to stay nice and close to them.
Ray got in one lick on Dagon before the British ace could transform, an open-handed slap that split his lip and knocked him on his ass. Dagon transformed as he lay on the ground glaring at Ray, but was too wary to attack immediately. He and Witness circled Ray carefully. Out of the corner of his eye Ray could also see the gunmen creeping up and around him, also trying to encircle him. He realized that if they got close enough to aim carefully, he’d be in trouble.
Something the size and general shape of a softball whizzed by and struck one of the gunmen between the shoulder blades, knocking him flat. He didn’t get up. Almost immediately another chunk of stone from the shattered statue struck a second gunman in the chest. Instead of rebounding, it stuck there, squishily
Ray laughed. “Good girl, Angel,” he said.
Some of the Allumbrados fired at her, but she crouched low behind some of the bigger statue chunks, then popped up a moment later in another spot and let fly with another stone, taking most of another gunman’s head off.
The Witness suddenly turned and ran, heading for the lobby. Angel leaped up. A storm of gunfire knocked her to her feet. She was hit, Ray was sure, at least once.
“Angel!” he shouted.
“I’m okay! I’m going after him!” Ray watched her start to crawl back toward the lobby, carefully keeping to cover.
“Remember, Angel,” he called after her. “He’s afraid. He’s afraid of pain.” He looked at Dagon, grinning. “But I’m not.”
Dagon’s animal-like jaw slavered string-like lengths of drool.