The door cracked, splintering, over half of it spinning into the room. If Kate had still been on the bed or just behind the door, she’d have been in its path and she would have died. I shoved the memory of another moment like this down, back into the hole inside me where all the sins lived. I could not let them weaken me now. A sinner forgiven by God cannot be anything but strong. The wings at my back flared, flexing as if we would fly with them, and I reached my hand out to Kate. Her hand wrapped around mine and I pulled her out of the room with Gimble at my back as if he held the angel wings in place like a costume that wasn’t fastened down yet.
Kate threw her undamaged arm around me, but there wasn’t time. The demon rushed the splintered doorway. I pushed Kate into the hallway behind us. I felt the thrill of power as she stumbled through the wings. She reached up as if she felt something and then I planted my foot and braced for impact. The demon filled my physical vision, but the inside of my head was full of shining light laced with gold and silver finer than any that would ever hold a ring. My fear was gone, washed away by the light.
“I command you to leave this body in the name of God and all the angels.” I said it confident that the words with the power at my back would stop the demon.
The demon hesitated and then it laughed, staring down at its taloned hands as if surprised they were still there. “Too late, angel boy, this body’s mine.” The talons slashed at me again, going for my throat, and only the quickness of angels let me block his arm with mine and block his other arm as it came for my heart.
“Havoc, get down!” Charleston yelled from behind me.
I dropped to my knees, trying to roll away, but the wings were in the way, and Gimble was there. “Down!” Charleston shouted again.
I got to my feet, trying to fill the space of the wings at my back, and pictured them folding around Gimble and me like shields of light that nothing could pierce as I held the smaller man against me, as if I expected the wings to launch us skyward and I was afraid I’d drop him.
The shotgun blast sounded like a small bomb in the hallway, or maybe it was just that close to us. I kept all my concentration on the wing shield around us. I didn’t dare use my physical eyes to look at anything. My world had to be the shining wings around us and that phantom sensation of being tall enough to fit the giant arch of them.
The shotgun barked again, and then there was a heavy silence like what happens after explosions and gunfire when your ears stop ringing and you can hear something besides the blood roaring in your ears, except my ears weren’t ringing. I could hear perfectly, in fact I could hear better than my human hearing, as if the touch of angel wings had given me more than strength and speed and safety. It wasn’t the first time or the hundredth that I’d borrowed the senses of the angelic. I shoved the thought that went with that into the hole in my soul. Eventually I’d fill it up and it would either save me or destroy me forever, but not today.
Charleston said, “Havoc, Gimble, are you in there?”
A man’s voice that I wasn’t sure of said, “They’re right there, Lieutenant.”
“They disappeared.” And I thought that was the female guard.
It was Bridges who said, “Havoc, stop playing with the light-up feathers and tell us you’re in there.”
“We’re here. Safe,” I said, but my voice sounded uncertain enough that even I didn’t believe me.
Gimble pushed against me. “Havoc, what the hell, man? I love you, but not that way.”
Unlike the flame angel, the wings didn’t just vanish when he cursed, they opened as I opened my arms as if I really could control them with my human body.
Gimble stumbled away from me, staring down at the hospital gown and everyone in the hallway. “How did I get here?”
Charleston came up to him with a huge 20-gauge shotgun in his hands. The gun looked exactly right in his hands. He patted the gun like it was a pet and said, “Hoodoo powder and get-the-fuck-away-from-us juice.”
“You made that last ingredient up,” Lila said, scowling at him.
He just grinned at her.
“Did you kill it?” Kate’s voice made me look at her. Nurse Prescott was there with a blanket thrown over Kate. I really did owe her good liquor or something.
“You can’t kill a demon, or at least not with anything mortal,” Charleston said.
“What the hell is going on?” Gimble demanded.
Bridges said, “Look at Havoc with something besides your eyeballs, Gimble.” She pointed at me.
He turned and looked at me. He frowned and it was his frown again. A tightness I didn’t know I’d been holding released in my gut, and with the relief the wings began to fade like morning dew as the sun rises, drying the grass and turning the dewdrops to tiny prisms of light and color.
“Rainbow wings, cool,” Gimble said, grinning at me. He reached a hand out toward the wings as they faded. Bridges slapped his hand as if he were five and reaching for a cookie before it was cool enough to eat.
“Angel shit is what got you in the hospital, Gimble,” she said, voice heavy with disdain.
“Last thing I remember is the crime scene in the off-campus apartment.” He frowned, but then looked at the fading rainbow of the wings and smiled. It was a shadow of that beatific one he’d had before. He started to reach out toward them again, but a glance at Bridges and he didn’t finish the movement. “Will someone explain what’s happening to me? Please?” I think the please was aimed at Bridges. She was one of the few women I’d seen be immune to his boyish charm.
The wings vanished to physical sight, but I could still feel them like a heavy curve of feathers as I turned to see half our unit in the hospital hallway. “Which one of you could see Gimble and me standing here?” I asked. Anyone who could see through angel magic had been holding out on us.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I started to question Sato, the officer that had seen through the angel wings, but Nurse Prescott came up to me, and after everything she’d done today, I raised a hand and said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and turned to her.
“Hello, Nurse Prescott,” I said, smiling.
She smiled back. “Hello, Detective Havelock, though after the day we’ve had I think we could use first names.”
“I’m Havoc,” I said.
A look of pure cynicism filled her eyes. I realized that her eyes were green, or gray-green. It was an unusual color, but there hadn’t been time to notice until now. “Did your parents dislike you, Havoc Havelock?”
I had to smile. “Havoc is what most people call me, but no, it’s a nickname.”
“So, are you going to share your actual first name or is it even worse than Havoc Havelock?” She looked at me very directly, smile lines curled upward around her eyes and mouth, which let me know she was older than she looked. She was in shape for ten years older than me; if she was older than that I needed to ask what her exercise routine was, because she looked slim and fit.
“Zaniel, my first name is Zaniel.”
“I’ve never heard the name before, but it’s lovely, a lot lovelier than mine. I’m Hazel. I’ve always hated the name. Zaniel would have sounded much better in elementary school, though I guess for a boy it might have been a little too pretty a name.”