Ad walked over to the window and looked out. Five o'clock and the light was just starting to drain from the sky.
Man, he was jumpy all of a sudden. "She has to know where he's being kept."
"But I marked that door. Anyone gets in there" - the guy pounded his chest with his fist - "I'm going to know."
Ad paced around a little, feeling like he had ants on the inside of his skin. Eventually, he muttered, "Look, I'm just going to head over there and check on him. I'll be right back - "
Jim stepped in front of him. "Eddie is okay. And I need you here. Shit is about to go down."
"Ten minutes."
"This is exactly what she wants. You need to realize that."
Adrian didn't want to throw down with the guy. They already had enough tempers flaring, thanks to Veck going WWE with the attitude - and Ad had enough sense to know that he was unstable himself, capable of flaring up or burning out with the flip of a coin.
But he couldn't shake the abrupt need to return to the garage.
"Look, I'll be right back. Promise." He met the savior's eyes with his own. "I swear on Eddie's soul."
"Goddamn it," Jim muttered.
"I couldn't agree more."
Without waiting for another round of disagreement, Ad spirited himself out of that house. And as soon as he took form on the garage's front lawn, he knew he'd been right to come: there was another presence inside the apartment with Eddie.
Instantly falling into fight mode, he outed his crystal dagger and -
"What the hell?" he muttered, lowering his weapon.
At that moment, Colin opened the door at the top of the staircase and stepped out onto the landing. "That would be 'Heaven,' thank you very much."
The archangel was not in namby-pamby whites, but the kind of clothes you could fight in: loose pants and a tight shirt. And he was alone, at least as far as Ad could sense thnt>
"What are you doing here?" Ad asked, even though he knew there was only one explanation.
"Watching TV."
Adrian went over to the bottom of the stairwell. "Jim doesn't have cable."
"So one can imagine how dissatisfied I am."
"Nigel's let you guard him?"
"He knows I'm here, yes - "
The wind abruptly changed direction, shifting so it came out of the east - and it brought bad news with it: Riding along the invisible currents, weaving in and out of the gusts, was a subtle groaning sound.
"Fucking. Bitch." Adrian nailed Colin with his stare. "You stay with Eddie."
"Thank you for the order," Colin said dryly. "But that is why I came."
"Yeah. Sorry."
There was no time to kiss ass any further: As the wind intensified and the moaning sounds turned into shrieks, Ad didn't just curse Devina and her warlords - he wanted to kick himself in the head. This was precisely what Jim had said was going to happen: The pair of them apart, him dealing with a bunch of soulless, boneless bastards as Jim undoubtedly handled the actual crossroads.
He'd played right into the demon's hands.
And he was going to have to stay in her palm.
He sure as shit wasn't leaving now: Colin was powerful, but there were limits - and they'd already lost Eddie once.
Not going to happen again.
Moving fast, Adrian flashed into the garage. Over in the truck, there was a duffel full of leather riding gear, and he quickly yanked on studded gloves that went all the way up his forearms, and then pulled out the black duster Eddie had used for long trips on the bike.
On his way out, he passed by a pitchfork - and doubled back to grab it. Shit knew he felt like stabbing the crap out of something - and he'd just seen how much fun lawn tools could be.
When he stepped outside again, Colin was nowhere in sight, which was good timing and exactly what he wanted: All around, minions were pulling up out of the shadows, forming into eyeless killers that were just his f**king cup of tea.
Adrian inflated his lungs until his chest stung and then he let out a war cry that shook the tree limbs around the garage, blowing them back so far a few of them even snapped.
And then he went in.
Locking a death grip on the worn wooden handle, he lunged forward, nailing the closest minion right in the gut before angling the tool heavenward - until it jacked right into the rib structure of the torso. With the tines locking in place, it was a case of up-and-over as he slung the bastard into left field like it was a bale of hay. Then it was the small matter of tucking the business end under his arm so that he caught the SOB riding up on his ass in the thighs.
Adrian wheeled around, yanked out the tool, and went over the head, bringing the curved spikes down laterally on the crippled bastard. They penetrated through the face, such as it was, and went into the chest cavity from above, reducing Devina's fighter to a mud puddle.
The squeal was so f**king satisfying.
Disengaging again, widened his stance and angled himself so that the pair of minions that were trying to split his attention got what they were asking for: Keeping his head straight forward, he measured them in the peripheral vision of both eyes.
He was banking on a third coming from behind.
It was just too cocksucking obvi.
Flexing his knees, he threw himself into the air, backflipping over the one he'd guessed right about - and then stabbing it in the back and twisting hard. As the impact registered, the minion went into a full-body spasm, acidic blood going flying to the point where he had to disengage and get gone. ping around the side of the thing, he ducked into himself and hit the ground on a roll.
When he sprang up onto his feet, he was prepared to take on the other two.
Instead, he faced an army.
Minions had boiled up from every shadow in the yard and they surrounded him, their numbers so deep, they were in and among the trees on the edges of the garage's lot.
There must have been thirty. Forty. Fifty.
Facing the overwhelming force, a resonant calm flooded through him, kind of like he was bleeding out. Eddie was going to be okay; Colin was going to make sure of that. And Ad was going to give that archangel enough time and space to get the pair of them out of here.
As for him? He wasn't getting out of this in one piece, and he was just fine with the way he was going to go.
This was the way to die: defending your territory and taking out a f**kload of the enemy on the way to your grave.
This was honorable.
As Adrian got ready to go into the thick of it, he thought, for what was going to be the last time, that he wished his friend was with still him. At least they wouldn't be separated for much longer, however.
Downtown at HQ, Reilly found herself on the verge of leaving and going home. For about an hour and a half.
There was nothing for her to do. She hadn't been assigned a new case yet; she'd finished up her work on her other ones; and God knew she was off Veck's. And yet she was sitting at her desk as though someone had superglued her butt to her chair, her colleagues having filed out a while ago.
Unfortunately, she wasn't just staring into space. She was back on Veck's father's Facebook page like some nut-job addict.
Going into the links section, she clicked through to a few sites, but none of them gave her what she was looking for. Then again, nothing with www. was going to help her out: Her answers as to why Veck had seduced her, and why she'd fallen for it, and why he had to be just like his father, were not on the Web.
She went to the videos section. God, these things were positively repulsive, most taken at fan rallies -
She frowned and leaned in toward her screen. One of the newest had been shot within the last couple days or so from in front of the prison where the elder DelVecchio was housed. In the bright sun, the signs were plainly visible and the slogans were ridiculous.
Some even rhymed.
Execution. Persecution. How original.
She watched the video again. And again. And again. Until she'd memorized the two-minute clip's pans and close-ups, as well as the part where that flashbulb went off from the back -
Wait.
Not a flashbulb.
She backed the file up and let it resume. In the back row, standing off to the side, was a man ... with a pair of mirrored sunglasses on.
There was no way of zooming in, so she just replayed.
"Oh ... God ..."
Again with the replay.
"Oh ... my ... God."
It was ... Bails?
It had to be him ... standing in and among the deranged devotees. As the camera panned, he was speaking to the guy next to him - until he saw that he was on the video and turned away.