Black City

The doctor watched us now with speculation instead of fear. Nathaniel had exposed his powers by healing me.

“What did you kill the guard for?” I hissed as Nathaniel helped me to my feet. I don’t think he yet realized we had an audience.

“He shot you,” Nathaniel said, frowning.

“He was scared to death. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“He shot you,” Nathaniel repeated.

I put my hands to my face for a moment. “In point of fact, he was trying to shoot you and got me by accident.”

“That hardly recommends him,” Nathaniel said.

“Couldn’t you have stunned him instead of killing him?”

“I was not contemplating all the angles of the situation,” Nathaniel said, anger in his voice. “I saw someone threatening you and I eliminated the threat. I do not know why we are discussing this in any case. The man is dead. What is done is done.”

“We’re discussing this,” I said through gritted teeth, “because I don’t want you to do it again.”

“Duly noted,” Nathaniel said, and then he turned his body so that I was behind him. I stood on tiptoe and peered over his shoulder so I could see what was going on.

The doctor approached us, his hands held high to show that he was no threat. He stared at Nathaniel in fascination. That fascination was almost as frightening as terror. The doctor looked like he wanted to whisk Nathaniel away and get the angel under a microscope as soon as possible.

“Do not approach any further,” Nathaniel said, the old arrogance in his voice.

The doctor stopped walking, dropped his hands to his side. “Who…who are you?”

“That’s not what you want to know,” I said, moving a little so that the doctor could see me. My voice was hard. Nathaniel wasn’t my favorite person, but I didn’t want anybody getting ideas about turning him into a lab rat. “You want to know what he is.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, barely giving me a glance.

“It’s none of your damned business,” I said, and stunned him right between the eyes. The doctor crumpled to the floor.

“I did not detect any threat from him,” Nathaniel said.

“I did,” I said grimly. “Come on, let’s check this floor for the pix before someone finds us standing over two bodies.”

“No,” Nathaniel said. “Let us wait.”

“Why? Do you want to pick a fight with another security guard?”

“You want to capture the demon, yes?”

“Of course.”

“The smell of the newly dead is irresistible to a pix,” Nathaniel said, gesturing to the guard’s body.

“Don’t tell me you killed the guard to attract the pix,” I said, disgusted.

“I told you, I killed the guard because he shot you,” Nathaniel said impatiently. “Think of this as an added bonus, as you would say.”

“That right there is the difference between you and me,” I said. “I can’t think of anyone’s death in terms of a ‘bonus.’”

“The world is changing,” Nathaniel said. “You may find soon that our perspectives are not so far apart.”

He dropped a cloak over the two of us, and we settled back to wait.

We didn’t have to wait long. A set of long fingers curled over the flaps of the air vents, and a moment later a vent popped free. The pix’s gelatinous blue body slithered from the air ducts.

“Told you they were in the air ducts,” I murmured.

Nathaniel moved his hand to shush me, but the pix hadn’t noticed us in the least. Every part of the demon focused on the body on the floor, every bit of it straining for what it wanted.

There were no marks on the demon from the nightfire blast I’d shot at it earlier. That combined with the ease with which it had leapt away from my magic told me that no simple spell would take this thing down.

The pix bounded atop the guard, making little clicking noises that sounded like glee. It buried its face in the guard’s chest, and I heard a slurping sound.

Nathaniel tensed beside me, a sign that he was readying a spell. I decided to follow his lead since he knew more about the pix than I did. Then the doctor stirred, and the pix lifted its head.

Nathaniel let loose his magic just as the pix leapt toward the doctor. The spell caught the demon behind its back leg, far off the kill shot that Nathaniel had no doubt intended. The blast was enough to knock the creature off its course, but now it was alerted to our presence.

It jumped for the ceiling, skittering along upside down like a bug, seemingly unhampered by its injury. Nathaniel’s spell had taken a big chunk of flesh out of the pix’s leg, and little drops of a jelly-like substance dripped from the wound.

I swore aloud, blasting electricity at the nasty thing. As with Nathaniel, my spell caught only a little of the demon. The electricity also didn’t slow it down a bit, even though I could smell barbecued demon in the air.

I ran down the hall after the demon, which was wickedly quick. The doctor reached out and grabbed my ankle as I went by.

The sudden halt in my momentum made me stumble, and my second blast went wild, spraying electricity into the wall. Smoke rose in the air, setting off the hallway sprinklers. The pix disappeared at the other end of the hall.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” I said, stomping down on the doctor’s fingers with my other boot. The doc howled and released my ankle, and I took off down the hall after the pix, Nathaniel close behind me.