Get out of jail, get yet another crappy criminal henchman job, get his hotshot lawyer ex-girlfriend back. Oh yeah -- and get a murderous demon exorcised from his head. Jason Torres has his route back from rock-bottom perfectly planned out, right? Th...
I was so fucking tempted. Surrender wasn't so honorless. Arrest, extradition, interrogation, Guantanamo Bay: it was nothing compared to whatever torture she had in store for me as punishment.
But the Demon clung on. It warned me that the Americans were playing on my allegiances to trick me. It pinched at my throat, reminding me that the Red Demon never ran. The Red Demon never sought mercy at anyone's feet. The Red Demon would resist every enemy.
The Demon had been waiting for a worthy fight, and what could be more worthy of a demon than an angel? Its polluted hyphae burrowed deeper into my gray matter, and a promise fizzled along my neurons; the promise that the Demon would avenge me, and my fallen men.
I attacked.
The angel was strong. I'd expected him to wilt under my punches, but he returned time after time. Each blow he landed was rubbed tenderly by the same tempting words: "You're surrounded, Red Demon. Give yourself up."
Muscles screaming with exhaustion, I lunged at him, throwing all my weight into it. We toppled into the long grass beyond the fence. Immensely strong, somehow he pinned me. The Demon's fury raged inside me, and I burst out from under the angel, whipping my arm around his slender neck before he could pin me again. I squeezed his windpipe into my elbow joint, tighter and tighter.
But he wouldn't pass out.
Too slow to avoid it, I only caught the glint of a tiny knife—a boxcutter—a heartbeat before he plunged it into my arm and ripped downward.
Screaming, blood pouring outta me like a river, I begged the Demon for strength. It answered me, and I held my stranglehold.
The angel slowed and stilled. The boxcutter fell from his fingers. My arm still bubbling in fiery agony, I snatched the knife from the dirt with bloodied hands.
Too slippery with crimson, too weak with blood loss to keep my arm around the angel's neck, I plunged the knife into his chest, twisting until it cut a ragged tear over his heart. Another twist, and the blade snapped off in his flesh.
He fell limp in my arms, both his blood and mine soaking our clothes and pumping onto the forest floor. In the seconds before I slid into unconsciousness, my darkening eyes roamed his face, but his features were hidden in the forest's shadows.
All I glimpsed was a flash of unkempt black hair, a furrowed brown forehead, elegant eyebrows twisted in agony. And the gentlest voice as the dying angel whispered his last words into the Jeddah night.
"Steph."
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The purplish blue of María Bay lay spread before me. Container ships sat like cathedrals in the darkening water. Across the park the city's Christmas lights winked on in the last sun of the afternoon. But the only thing that filled my vision was the gargoyle's crumbled claw. Dante's little wooden box had gone from under it.
