Time slowed down. Takahashi took a drag from his cigarette. The cabbie accelerated through the intersection, jabbering into a cell phone headset as he went. My feet left the ground. Beside me, I felt Gabriel rise up as well. I glanced at him briefly and noticed that his wings looked a lot like mine. I returned my gaze to the happenings below as we floated over the street and waited.
The taxi slammed into the boy with a screech of brakes. Dostoevsky went flying in a burst of pages. I saw Takahashi’s left leg crushed beneath the front passenger-side wheel. The bumper slammed into his head. It was almost as if he’d been sucked underneath the car rather than hit by it, like the car was vacuuming him off the street.
Blood pooled. Bone crunched. People screamed. The cabbie sat in the taxi, eyes bulging, hands shaking. Someone ran to check Takahashi’s pulse. At least fifteen people called 911, and another fifteen started telling whomever they had been chatting with on their cells that they had just seen a guy get smashed by a cab right in front of them.
I waited, Gabriel hovering patiently beside me. In a moment, Takahashi exhaled for the last time. His soul drifted out, looking confused as he saw his own crushed body. I lowered down to him until we were at eye level. His eyes widened when he saw me. After a moment he looked resigned.
“Are you here for me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said simply, and held out my hand.
He reached forward to place his hand in my own, and that was when everything went horribly wrong.
A woman screamed, a piercing, unending wail, and all three of us turned in the direction of the noise. Ramuell stood in front of the Starbucks, looking comically out of place next to the familiar logo. Next to him a young woman wearing a thick cabled sweater and carrying a latte had her mouth open in a wide O as she screamed. It was the first time I’d seen the nephilim in anything but complete shadow. Under the harsh glare of the streetlamp he looked like a 3-D nightmare.
He was at least nine feet tall, and red all over, like the red of human muscle beneath the skin. The color gave the nephilim a raw, oozing appearance. Black claws, thick and curved, protruded from his fingers and curved black horns rose from his head. He smiled at me, and showed a mouthful of jagged teeth as sharp as Sweeney Todd’s blade. As we watched, frozen in horror, Ramuell casually back-handed the woman next to him. The screaming abruptly stopped, drowned in a noisy gurgle as the nephilim’s claws sliced her head from her body. The shock was too much for her soul and I saw her snap her tether the moment her soul left her body. Ramuell snatched the loose soul and shoved it between his teeth. The woman’s soul screamed on, the O of her mouth disappearing beneath the nephilim’s horrible grin.
“No!” I shouted, the magic rising up in me furious and hungry. I fought for control as people started to run, knocking one another over in their haste to get away from the monster. I didn’t want the magic to overwhelm me; I didn’t want to make a mistake and hurt an innocent.
Beside me Gabriel unleashed a blue bolt of nightfire and Ramuell snarled, batting at it as if it were a softball. It missed the creature’s chest but burned the palm of his hand and he howled in pain and fury. He charged at Gabriel, who left my side, engaging Ramuell in combat. Gabriel shot more nightfire at him, and Ramuell parried with magic of his own. Balls of lava appeared at the creature’s fingertips and he launched them at Gabriel, who neatly dodged every attack. As I watched, sickened and struggling with my unstable magic, the lava that missed him landed on whatever was nearby. It burned through the roofs of cars and smashed easily through shop windows. It melted the face off one man, and left others screaming in the street, holding fragments of limbs.
All around me souls broke free of their tethers, but there were no Agents in the vicinity to collect them except me. That terrified me nearly as much as Ramuell’s presence at Clark and Belmont in full sight of screaming civilians. The lack of Agents meant that these deaths were not meant to be; they were out of sync with the order of the universe.
All deaths are predicted and managed by the bureaucracy that employs me. For this many people to die unexpectedly meant that something was very, very wrong about Ramuell’s presence here—and not just for the obvious reasons. Somehow the nephilim and his master had managed to fly under the radar of even the micromanaging Agency.
Beside me I felt James Takahashi tugging at my hand. I turned and saw his soul had gone pale with fear.
“Come on, come on,” he said, and I realized he wasn’t trying to pull me from the scene. He was trying to get me to release him so he, too, could run away. My fingers had tightened in a death grip around him as I fought to control my magic. I didn’t want to accidentally unleash an explosion that needlessly killed everyone in the intersection.
“No,” I said, feeling helpless and torn. I needed to help Gabriel. I needed to try to capture these poor lost souls winging free of their bodies all around me. “I have to make sure you get to the Door.”
“Lady, that thing is going to eat me,” he pleaded, using his right hand to try to pry my fingers off his left.
“No, he’s not,” I said firmly, and I felt something settle inside me. The magic was still there, churning and hungry, but I was in control. And I would do my job. I would help Gabriel fight Ramuell, and I would bring Takahashi to the Door. “You are not going to be eaten. You are going to have a choice, the way you are supposed to.”
“And what about the lady who got eaten up by that monster?” Takahashi shouted. “What are you going to do about her?”