This was not the end that she had planned and worked for. DelVecchio was supposed to have given in and killed the bastard before Heron even got wind of who the next soul was. Unfortunately, her stringy, sicko sacrificial lamb had been slaughtered by someone else.
For fuck’s sake, it was obvious he wasn’t going to make it. She was not a doctor—she just played one from time to time, natch—but that pallor alone made her think of morticians.
It wasn’t too late for the bastard, though. And after this little whoopsie, she was not taking any chances with the outcome of this round. Time to get a little more aggressive, especially given the deal she’d struck with Heron.
“Not your time to go yet.” She leaned over the bed. “I need you.”
Closing her eyes, she misted out over the man’s body, blanketing him, and then seeping inside of him through his every pore. The power innate in her filled his depleted tank, reenergizing him, pulling him out of the death spiral at the same time it healed and strengthened him.
And to think humans relied on crash carts. How rudimentary was that?
Kroner’s eyes popped open just as she was retracting herself, and as she reassumed her shape beside him, he focused on her.
Love shone out of his gaze.
Pathetic, but useful.
“Live,” she commanded, “and I shall see you soon.”
He tried to nod, but there was too much going on with the intubation thingy in his throat. He was going to make it, however. As she glanced up at the monitoring equipment, his heart rate settled down into a steady rhythm and his blood pressure regulated. Oxygen number came out of the seventies and into the nineties.
“Good boy,” she said. “Now rest.”
Raising her hand, she put him in a deep, healing sleep, and then she reassumed the image of the good old Dr. Denton.
Get in, get out, get gone.
She left the glassed-in room, nodded to the guard, and then strode down the corridor, passing the sycophants and suckups who all but dropped to their knees in her path. Which was enjoyable. To the point where she was tempted to parade around the hospital for a while just absorbing the experience of being the man.
But again, the last thing she needed was to run into anyone who actually knew the guy. And, more important, she had an appointment with her therapist first thing in the morning, and she needed to pick out what she was going to wear—which could take hours.
Which was why she needed a fucking shrink.
Time to run.
CHAPTER 13
Angel Airlines, those sets of iridescent wings that Jim was still getting used to, returned him and his boys to the Marriott in the blink of an eye. In the pair of rooms, they converged in Jim’s half, with Dog doing a little circling dance now that the band was back together.
“So what am I doing?” As Jim put the question out there, he wondered how many years it was going to take before he didn’t have to ask it of Eddie anymore. Probably a few. This job had come with no training, dire straits, and horrifying implications.
Perfect Monster.com listing, yup, yup.
“Get quiet,” Eddie said, “and hold the badge. Imagine that DelVecchio is sitting in front of you, facing you with his hands on his knees and his eyes meeting yours. As always, the more specific the vision is, the better this will work. See yourself reaching forward and placing your fingertip on his forehead, and know that this connection will give you the power to pull the memories from him even though you aren’t actually touching him. It’s all in the mind.”
“Ba-um-bum,” Adrian capped off.
Settling on the bed, Jim held the badge in his palms and felt like an utter ass. Back in his days as an XOps soldier, or hell, even earlier, when he’d just been a punk-ass civilian, he’d never been into this transcendental, belly-lint-staring, yogi maharishi-whatever crap. He supposed with enough go-arounds like this he might get used to it, but he was always going to be a doer, not a downward-dog kind of guy.
Whatever, though.
Concentrating on the badge, the thing felt like an ice cube against his skin, with all the piercing cold, just none of the dripping water. And it would have helped if he knew DelVecchio a little better, but he did what he could to see the man: the dark hair, that handsome-as-sin face, the cold, smart blue eyes—
From one moment to the next, what he pictured became something he suddenly actually saw in 3-D, as if he’d been staring at a TV and an actor had stepped through the screen to sit in front of him.
Except the shit was all wrong.
The man had two faces.
Jim shook his head, like maybe that was going to clear up the problem. Didn’t help. The primary visage was DelVecchio’s . . . and so was the other one, like a double-exposed photograph.
Something told Jim not to go any farther.
He did, anyway.
Reaching out, he put his imaginary finger on the imaginary forehead of the primary DelVecchio—
The moment contact was made, a live-wire jolt shot into him, stopping his heart and jerking his body. Then, as if he were a tuning fork, a reverberation took root—and took over. Beginning with the fingertip and vibrating down his hand and his wrist and his arm, what started as a subtle tremor became so violent, he literally shook apart . . . until there were two fingertips, two hands, two wrists, two arms, with him going between the extremes like a flag ripping back and forth in a gale-force wind.
He was vaguely aware of someone yelling his name, but there was no chance of responding. He was in a fight for his immortal life, the blurring threatening to destroy him—and he was just about to lose his grip on himself completely when the DelVecchios separated until they were distinct identities linked together only at the hips and lower body.
The one on the right was smiling, and it was not the detective. It was the older DelVecchio from the newspaper article, the one with the stained soul and the evil acts.
The son of a bitch was loving this destruction.
Fucking hell . . . Jim had a terrible feeling he was not walking away from this.
Adrian knew the shit was going to hit the fan the instant Jim’s hands started to vibrate around the badge.
Not normal.
And then streaming black smoke curled up out of the cupped link of Jim’s palms, coalescing and then encasing the angel’s grip on DelVecchio’s shield. The shaking started as nothing more than a slow back-and-forth, but quickly that motion evolved into a violent rattling until the badge dropped out of Jim’s hold, and bounced on the short-napped carpet.
For a split second, he thought that was going to stop it, but the smoke no longer needed the external source: Jim’s own hands and arms had become the base from which the quaking infection sprouted.
“If it gets to his heart, we’ve lost him,” Eddie ground out.
Which was the cue to get moving. Adrian and his best friend leaped up at the same time and went in opposite directions. As Eddie gunned for the connector to their room, Ad jumped on the bed behind Jim. Bracing himself, he knelt down and locked his arms around that big chest, positioning the grip as high as possible, to form a physical barrier against the onslaught.
He knew the moment the tide hit him—icy cold wafted across his skin, so frigid it registered as a burn. Opening himself up, he gave the rush a different area to contaminate, offering another target . . . even if it meant sacrificing himself.
But the shit wasn’t interested in him; he was barely a speed bump as the tremors headed downward for Jim’s pecs.
The saving grace they needed was that solution of lemon, white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, and witch hazel, and good thing Eddie was always prepared. He came flying in from their room with a bucketful of the stuff, moving so fast it sloshed out, splashing his leathers and his World Wildlife Foundation T-shirt.