“Drop me off at Chad’s place. Envy’s there, so I’ll just crawl into bed with her,” Devon said as he leaned back in the seat. “Also, do me a favor.”
Warren looked over at him as he drove. “I won’t tell anyone so it doesn’t get back to Envy.”
Devon smiled at his elder brother’s uncanny ability to always know what someone was thinking. Sometimes it made things not so awkward.
“Thanks,” Devon said. “I hate it when she worries.”
A few minutes later, Warren pulled to a stop in front of Chad’s apartment and looked over at Devon. “Get some sleep and just call me when you’re ready to come back.”
Devon shook his head, “Don’t worry about it, either Chad will drive us or I’ll call a cab.”
Warren waited until Devon opened the front door and was inside the house before he drove off. He didn’t want to say anything to Devon, but finding his brother like that had sent up red flags. The way the door had been locked from the outside was a bit too planned out making him wonder if someone or something else didn’t lock him in there on purpose.
Shaking his head, Warren decided not to think about it anymore today… he was exhausted.
Devon moved silently through the apartment toward Envy’s room. Opening the door, he smiled at the vision of her angelic face relaxed with sleep. Removing his clothes, he slipped into bed behind her and curled up against her back, wrapping an arm around her waist.
She snuggled closer before relaxing against his chest and tilted her head back. Her breathing returned to the long breaths associated with a deep sleep and Devon relaxed. He decided to let her sleep this time instead of waking her up to let her know he was there… he would have to remember to take better care of her sleep habits from now on.
*****
The seventh floor of the hospital was peacefully quiet. It had been a long and boring shift as the nurses did their rounds to the various patients. The soft rhythms of the life support machines beeped steadily, creating enough background noise to keep the darkened floor from feeling eerie.
“Long ten hours huh?” the security guard asked one of the nurses at the station.
“And then some,” the nurse said with a smile, “You going to the corner deli for lunch?”
“Yeah,” the guard answered. “You want anything?”
The nurse nodded, “We were talking about it earlier. I’ll get an answer from everyone and let you know before you go.”
The system monitoring the patients suddenly started lighting up and the nurse jumped to her feet. Blue led lights flashed sporadically making the nurse grab the phone sitting next to her.
“Doctor Gordon and Doctor Harris to the seventh floor stat,” she announced before hanging up the phone and rushing out from behind the desk.
More nurses came from the smaller stations at each end of the sprawling floor, each one trying to cover a set of rooms in order to see more patients in a shorter time. The security guard brought out his radio and called main floor security. It wasn’t long before the two doctors on duty along with a small army of ten more nurses rushed the floor to help.
Panic and mayhem started to bloom among the staff as the patients began dropping like flies. They stayed with the people as long as possible before moving on to the next one, barely taking a moment to note the time of death for each one.
As the staff moved down the hall, they realized that whatever was causing the patients to die seemed to be moving closer to the ICU also located on this floor. Though they were all thinking the exact same thing, none of them voiced that fear… it was only a coincidence after all.
The security guard was waiting at the elevator when the police arrived. He was disappointed that only two officers had answered the call but it was better than nothing. With the earthquake about a week before, added to all the people showing up dead and dismembered, he could understand the lack of available cops.
Screaming erupted down the hall and the officers pulled their guns as they ran forward. Two nurses went sailing across the hall, hitting the wall hard enough to crunch bones. They fell to the floor leaving long smears of blood behind on the pristine white paint.
“What the hell?” the security guard whispered.
The officers tightened their grips on their side arms and slowly moved down the hall toward the bodies. More staff members began flying from the doors while others attempted to run for it.
The security guard stared wide-eyed as a dark figure emerged from the last room next to the entrance of the ICU. It was fading in and out of their vision as it moved. Its face couldn’t be seen beneath the ragged black cloak, but a long bladed scythe could be seen clearly in one of its ridiculously long-fingered hands.
It moved down the hall toward them, grabbing up nurses and flinging them aside like rag-dolls. The officers opened fire while backing away from the specter. The scythe came down in a long arc slicing one of the officers in two. Blood sprayed across the floors as the officer fell but the creature kept advancing on the officer still firing his gun.
Blood sprayed again, this time across the security guard’s face as the second officer was cut down. He vaguely registered the elevator ding, signaling that someone was coming up but he was frozen in fear and couldn’t move.
A man appeared in the corner of his vision… young, with a long trench coat and punkish dark hair. He lifted a hand toward the creature and it was sent flying down the hall. It screamed, using the scythe to stop its flight and seemed to stare at the newcomer before vanishing into the floor.
“You okay?” Ren asked the traumatized man.
The security guard abruptly collapsed in a dead faint. Ren sighed heavily and took out his cell phone. It was a good thing this hospital was close enough to some of the city paranormals or he wouldn’t have had the power to scare the thing into not attacking him too.
“We need a huge cleanup crew and the best demon exterminator on the roster.”
Chapter 4
Angelica paced back and forth in Ren’s office trying to stay within eyesight of the barrier and away from everyone else that had business in the huge room. She’d already bitten Storm’s head off when he’d informed her that staring at Zachary wasn’t going to make him wake up any faster.
She glanced at Syn who was still leaning against the wall and raised an eyebrow. She was starting to believe that man could turn into a statue if he tried hard enough. He hadn't moved in hours.
Maybe Storm was right, because the walls were starting to close in on her and Zachary hadn't as much as twitched. Her cell phone rang, the loud sound startling her out of her musings.
Seeing the caller ID and thinking Storm was just checking on Zachary she answered the call, “No Storm. He still hasn’t woken up.”
“Ren needs you at the local hospital,” Storm said seriously. “He ran into something rather nasty and has lost it somewhere in the building.”
“And he needs me to track it down,” Angelica finished gazing at Zachary one last time before turning away. “I’ll be there.”
She hung up and glanced at Syn, “I gotta go to the hospital.” Syn closed the distance between them so fast she almost missed it.
Syn wrapped an arm around her waist and smiled down at her before pulling her tight against him. It was about time she left her friend’s bedside.
Angelica blinked and they were suddenly standing in the front entrance of the hospital. PIT members dressed up as police officers were already escorting people and patients out of the building. It was far from the orderly fashion it could have been but if this thing was nasty like Storm said, then she couldn’t really blame them.
“Where is it?” Angelica asked one of the PIT team.
“I don’t know but Ren’s on the seventh floor trying to find it,” the man said recognizing her.
Angelica and Syn moved to the elevators and took one up to the seventh floor. When the doors opened, the first thing Angelica noticed was the smell of blood. Her eyes widened at the amount of carnage in the hall.
Ren had the entire area roped off with a few PIT members scattered around checking the bodies to see if anyone was left alive. The only other thing that was out of place was the security guard huddled in a ball in a corner behind the nurse’s station. He was rocking back and forth muttering something about the Reaper.
“What happened?” Angelica asked.
Ren sighed, “It looked like the Grim Reaper, scythe and all.”
“A death demon,” Angelica mused. “Never been up against one but I’ve heard they can be really vicious.”
“It sank into the floor and vanished.” Ren explained. “We haven’t been able to find it since.”
“It’s still here,” Syn informed them.
“I know… I can feel its evil energy crawling all over me like a damn disease,” Ren said in frustration.
Angelica took a deep breath and began to mentally feel her way across the hospital to the floors above and below. Sometimes she could follow the invisible path a powerful demon made, but this demon had been all over the place, crossing its own path too many times to make it easy.
Ren’s eyebrows shot up into his bangs when he felt her power touch him. “Interesting,” he said having never felt it before. He supposed that when they were within the sanctuary of the castle, her power was always dormant because she didn’t need it. Ren shrugged, knowing right now wasn’t the time to be testing out new powers and returned to his job.
Angelica moved away from the massacre to the emergency staircase. Syn was right behind her when she entered the tall, slim area and watched her look around for a moment. He felt the blood in his veins start to heat up when his sensitive ears heard the sounds of children crying… they were begging for someone to help them. Syn’s amethyst eyes slowly rose to the ceiling as he zeroed in on the sound.
Angelica inhaled sharply and started running up the stairs at breakneck speed. They ascended three floors and exited on the tenth. She slid to a stop and placed a hand over her mouth at the scene of carnage.
Looking down at her feet, she felt tears spring up in her eyes when she saw she was standing in a pool of blood. A small child not more than five years old lay just a few feet away, his life force slowly bleeding out. Small bodies lay strewn everywhere, some of them with expressions of terror frozen on their angelic faces.
“No,” Angelica whispered. She could handle almost anything that came with the job she did… blood, gore, and demons, but these children were innocent.
An eerie inhuman scream came from down the hall making Angelica and Syn look up. The death demon was standing in the main room of the children’s ward covered in blood. It slammed the butt of its scythe on the floor cracking the tile before coming at them.
Syn slowly moved past Angelica, stalking toward the demon as it approached at a rapid pace. It brought the scythe up to cut him down but Syn’s hand came up, grasping the weapon just as the blade was a centimeter from his skin.
“Let me introduce myself,” Syn hissed and slammed the palm of his hand into the chest of the demon, reaching through its robes to grasp something inside. The demon screeched and backed away, leaving Syn holding the scythe in one hand and something black and beating in the other.
“To kill a child is not allowed.” Syn said in a dangerously calm voice, hefting the scythe with a practiced hand. “You will know the pain you give.”
Dropping the black heart and shifting the scythe to his right hand, Syn spun the weapon in front of him before cutting through the demon with a precise swing. He didn’t cut the demon completely in half, wanting to watch it suffer and knowing it would take more to kill it.
“You are not the true reaper… he shows mercy where you do not,” Syn growled and brought the scythe across the demon’s chest. “He will see you shortly and lock you in a cage where others will rip you to shreds like you have done to these children.”
Syn’s last swing of the scythe went directly into the dark hood, piercing the demon’s head. The tip of the scythe buried itself into the wall, pinning the demon there. Angelica watched as Syn continued to glare at it for a moment before it suddenly burst into bright white flames.
“Syn,” Angelica whispered when he didn’t move and slowly approached him.
Syn was breathing heavily with his hands fisted at his sides. “War is not for children,” he said trying to contain his rage and keep from leveling the hospital. “This needs to be erased from history.”
Angelica reached out to touch his arm but he moved away from her. She felt tears well in her eyes when Syn walked over to the closest child, a little boy, and very carefully picked him up. Placing the small lifeless body in a bed, he sat on the edge of it and gently pushed the hair out of the child’s face.
He put his hand over the little boy’s heart. Angelica’s jaw dropped open in awe when she saw a soft white light shine where Syn’s hand was touching the child’s chest. The wounds on the boy slowly vanished along with any trace of blood.
Angelica pressed her hands to her mouth, unable to control the tearful laughter when the child suddenly inhaled deeply then started breathing normally.
Syn leaned down to whisper something in his ear before standing up and retrieving another child from his own pool of blood. He began the process again, ending once more with whispered words next to the child’s ear.
When he started on the third child, Angelica began to see sluggishness in Syn’s movements and a darkening around his eyes. She gazed around at the children still sprawled on the floor. She picked up the child closest to her and laid the little girl on an empty bed.
Syn staggered away from the third child, finding the next bed already held a body. He stumbled toward the bed as he felt beads of sweat forming on his skin… cautioning him that he was using too much power. He ignored the warning.
The two of them began to move in sync… she would pick up the children while he moved behind her, healing and whispering to them. When Angelica had placed the last child in a bed, she turned around to look at Syn and gasped as the powerful man reached out to steady himself against one of the life support machines, stumbling and knocking it over.
She rushed toward him with a hand outstretched to help him, but Syn brushed by her and went to the next child. There were tears silently streaming down his cheeks but he paid them no mind.
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