He shouldn’t be able to sense them, much less see them.
None of them moved. Including Veck.
And that was when Jim looked on the linoleum floor behind the detective . . . and noticed that the guy threw two shadows.
Single light source? Two opposite patches at his feet?
Keeping quiet, Jim pointed to the ground, and his wingmen nodded.
Veck reached out with his long arm and flipped a switch so that more lights came on. Then he glanced all around.
“Fucking . . . hell.”
Obviously, that was the guy’s theme song, and but for the fact that it might encourage Ad into a vocal riff, Jim was thinking of humming a few bars himself.
With a shake of the head, Veck went back to his beer, sucking it down on a oner. Leaving the dead soldier on the counter, he got two more and walked out of the room.
Destination: living room couch.
Jim and his boys drafted after him, but kept their distance. Veck was either extremely intuitive or polluted enough to have a radar screen for the angels.
Knowing their luck, it was the latter.
Sitting down, the detective disarmed, removing a respectable autoloader as well as a nasty knife. And then he unclipped his badge.
His shiny, gold-and-silver police badge.
The man held the thing in his cupped palm for the longest time, staring at it as if it were a crystal ball that he could see into . . . or maybe a mirror he was trying to see himself in.
Put it down, buddy, Jim thought. Finish up those beers, lie the fuck back, and take a little nap. I promise I’ll return it when I’m done.
Veck followed the orders well, putting the badge with his name and serial number on it by the weapons, swallowing the beers one after the other, and then leaning back against the cushions.
His eyes closed a moment later. It took a while longer before those hands went lax on his thighs and fell to the sides, but then slow, deep breathing was the confirmation—and the cue to get what they needed and go.
Jim extended his hand at waist level and went Jedi on the badge, levitating it up off the bare floor and drawing it through the still darkness to him. The instant his palm came in contact with the object, the same cold from upstairs registered, Devina’s evil dwelling in the space between the molecules of the metal.
Eddie’s caution had seemed over-kill—until now. Given the strong signal the badge was giving off, you didn’t want to get caught with your pants down if you were working on the thing.
Jim nodded toward the window, and just like mist disappearing, the three of them were up and out of there.
Across town, in the thick of Caldwell’s urban core, the St. Francis Hospital complex was a mammoth operation that glowed like the Vegas strip. Under its some twenty different roofs, lives started and ended by the thousands every year, the fight against the Grim Reaper waged by every kind of doctor and surgeon and nurse there was.
Devina was well familiar with the place: Sometimes those humans in white coats and green scrubs needed a little help to make sure the job got done properly.
And usually that meant death, but not always.
The demon entered the emergency room wing through its electronic front door. Wearing her banging-hot skin of female flesh, she got all kinds of stares from the collection of fathers and frat boys sitting in the waiting room. Which was why she didn’t take the shortcuts she could have. Ghosting through glass, steel, or brick was efficient, but lame: She loved being gawked at. Ogled. Hit on. And the burning glares of the other women, all those hate-filled, envious eyes? Even better.
Finding Kroner in the rabbit maze of wards and floors and units was a piece of fucking cake. She’d been inside of him for years, helping him hone his skills and supporting his obsession. He’d been born a sick little shit, but he’d lacked the courage to act on his impulse—and that shriveling impotence had worked in her favor. Nothing made somebody who was hardwired like him more violent against attractive young women than his own deflated pencil dick.
The ICU in question was seven levels above where she’d come in, and she took her time going to elevators, strolling along, checking out the nurses’ uniforms.
Snooze. Baggy, badly printed cotton with no cleavage showing on top and saggy asses on the bottom. What the hell did they think they were doing with that look?
When she finally got to the banks of metal double doors, she caught a ride up the building with an orderly and an old man on a gurney. The geezer was out like a light, but the pusher gave Devina not just a once-over, but a thrice-over.
No doubt he would have made it to a fourth and a fifth if the doors hadn’t opened at her floor.
She tossed him a smile over her shoulder as she stepped out, just for shits and giggles.
And then it was time to get down to business. She had the option of assuming a mist and swirling over the polished floor, but that would have caused a panic. And she could have gone straight-up invisi, but that was a failure of originality in her book: She had passed many a century enjoying the interplay with humans, disguising herself among them, nipping at their heels and brushing up against them—or going farther than that.
No reason to pass up the opportunity for some fun tonight, even though she was working. After all, her therapist was urging her to find greater balance in her life.
As she zeroed in on the unit in question, she went down a corridor that was hung with photographs of various heads of departments.
Very helpful, as it turned out.
She stopped by several, noting the features and the accessories, the name tags and titles, the white coats and the striped ties or formal blouses.
It was like shopping for a new outfit. And she came with her own tailoring service.
Stepping around a corner, she glanced up and down the hallway to make sure she was alone, and then she fritzed out the security camera above her, sending it just enough of an electrical surge to knock it cold without exploding the thing.
Then she assumed the visage and white coat of the chief of neurology, one Denton Phillips, MD.
The guise was a bit of a saggy disappointment compared to her luscious brunette suit of flesh. The man was some sixty years old, and although he was handsome in a well-preserved, snotty-white-guy kind of way, she felt ugly and badly put together.
At least it was better than what she really looked like, and a not-for-long proposition.
As she went back out into the main corridor, she strode like a man, and it was a shot in the arm to see the respect and fear in the eyes of the staff she passed. Not quite as entertaining as lust and envy, but enjoyable nonetheless.
No need to ask where Kroner was. He was a beacon easily followed—and she was not surprised to find a uniformed officer seated outside his private room.
The man rose to his feet. “Doctor.”
“I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time.”
Not likely—she had to work fast. She had no idea what Denton Phillips, MD, actually sounded like, and there was no way of being sure she got his height correct—which was what happened if all you had was a picture to go by: Now would not be a good time to run into any colleagues who would know better—or worse, the man himself.
The intensive care unit Kroner was in had curtained glass walls, and even from the outside, you could hear the hiss of the medical equipment that was keeping him alive. Sliding the door back temporarily, she pushed aside the bolts of piss-green fabric and stepped in.
“You look like shit,” she said in a male voice.
As she walked to the bed, she let the visual lie of the good doctor slip away, showing herself as the beautiful woman Kroner had first met a decade ago.
There were tubes going in and out of every orifice he had, and the tangle of wires coming off his chest made him look like some kind of human switchboard. Lot of bandages and white gauze over gray skin. Lot of bruising. And his face looked like a Mylar balloon, all red and shiny, stretched out from the swelling.