"Question. Is it still B and E if you don't actually break anything to get inside?"
Adrian let that little ditty fly just as Jim and the boys took form in Thomas DelVecchio Jr.'s front hall - and all things considered, the angel could have come up with a much worse comment. Or broken into an ear-destroying, off-key rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
Jim had never spent so much time praying for plugs and muffs.
At least the bastard didn't try to rap.
"Well?" Ad said.
"Look, we don't even exist," Jim muttered. "So you could argue we're not really here anyway."
"Excellent point. Guess it's legal."
"Like it would bother you if the shit weren't."
The house was decorated in exactly Jim's style: functional, nothing special, lot of empty floor space. The problem? Nt a lot of personal effects, and they needed one that had some metal in it. Preferably gold, silver, or platinum. If they could get just an object with enough of Veck's imprint on it, they could use that as a connection to get into the man's brain from a remote location: According to Eddie, it was too risky to do it one-on-one in person. Not with Devina around.
"Let's split up," Jim said. "I'll cover the second floor."
As Ad and Eddie fanned out, he mounted the stairs two at a time. The master bedroom took up one whole half of the second story, although that sounded more impressive than the reality, because the total square footage of the place wasn't more than twenty-one hundred, maybe twenty-two.
"Christ, here much, buddy?" he muttered.
There was nothing in the room but a big bed and a crappy bedside table with a lamp on it. No alarm clock - guy probably used his cell phone for that. No landline telephone, but why would you need one? Requisite flat-screen screwed into the wall with the remote in the tangled sheets.
Some dirty clothes were in a plastic bin in the corner, socks and boxer briefs hanging off the sides as if the thing were drooling black cotton. Closet revealed ... shit actually on hangers, which was better than the duffel bag shuffle Jim had lived with for years. On the back of the door, there were a couple of belts with metal fittings, but there had to be something better he could use.
He headed for the bathroom. All the lights were off, but the guy didn't believe in drapes, so there was enough from the streetlights to go by -
As soon as he stepped into the squat, tiled room, the back of his neck went wild, ants crawling over his skin.
Devina.
"Where are you," he said, turning in a tight circle. "Where the hell are you ..."
The demon had been here - he could sense her presence lingering in the air, kind of like the stench of garbage hanging onto a trash bin even after the thing had been emptied.
And didn't this lend a little credibility to Devina's reveal at the diner.
As he turned to the sink, he frowned. The mirror was covered with a towel, and the tickling at his nape grew more intense as he reached up and pulled the terry cloth down.
Nothing except an eighties-vintage medicine cabinet sunken into the drywall. But the glass-front face of the thing was utterly contaminated.
Had she come through it somehow? he wondered.
The instant his fingertips made contact with the reflective surface, he retracted his hand. The medicine cabinet was icy cold.
Shit, Veck knew something was after him, didn't he. Why else drape the thing? The question was, how far was that demon into him?
"What did you do to him, bitch."
Replacing the towel, Jim opened the vanity drawers, rattling the backup deodorant and the extra toothpaste and the nail clippers - hey, maybe they would work. Except they were hardly something the guy would have an emotional connection with -
Light swept across the front of the house, blasting through the window Jim was standing in front of, and reminding him that he hadn't bothered to go invisi.
Disappearing himself, he looked out of the window. Directly below e driveway, Veck got out of a Yellow Cab.
Jim ghosted away from the master suite and drafted down the front stairs, becoming nothing but a disturbance of the air. Over in the kitchen he found that Ad and Eddie had done as he had, and the three of them waited together, forming nothing more than a warm pocket in the far corner of the room.
She's already in him, he thought to his boys.
I can feel her from here, Eddie sent back.
At the far end of the front hall, the door opened and closed, and got locked. Then some heavy-ass feet came down toward where they were standing.
"Fucking ... hell ..."
The cursing continued as Veck entered the kitchen, tossed his keys and ripped off his jacket. Next move was to go to the refrigerator and grab a longneck. Cracking the lid and drinking hard, it was clear he'd had a whole lot of bad night wash over his transom -
Abruptly, the man leveled his head, lowered the beer, and looked directly where they were all standing.
He shouldn't be able to sense them, much less see them.
None of them moved. Including Veck.
And that was when Jim looked on the linoleum floor behind the detective ... and noticed that the guy threw two shadows.
Single light source? Two opposite patches at his feet?
Keeping quiet, Jim pointed to the ground, and his wingmen nodded.
Veck reached out with his long arm and flipped a switch so that more lights came on. Then he glanced all around.
"Fucking ... hell."
Obviously, that was the guy's theme song, and but for the fact that it might encourage Ad into a vocal riff, Jim was thinking of humming a few bars himself.
With a shake of the head, Veck went back to his beer, sucking it down on a oner. Leaving the dead soldier on the counter, he got two more and walked out of the room.
Destination: living room couch.
Jim and his boys drafted after him, but kept their distance. Veck was either extremely intuitive or polluted enough to have a radar screen for the angels.
Knowing their luck, it was the latter.
Sitting down, the detective disarmed, removing a respectable autoloader as well as a nasty knife. And then he unclipped his badge.
His shiny, gold-and-silver police badge.
The man held the thing in his cupped palm for the longest time, staring at it as if it were a crystal ball that he could see into ... or maybe a mirror he was trying to see himself in.
Put it down, buddy, Jim thought. Finish up those beers, lie the fuck back, and take a little nap. I promise I'll return it when I'm done.
Veck followed the orders well, putting the badge with his name and serial number on it by the weapons, swallowing the beers one after the other, and then leaning back against the cushions.
His eyes closed a moment later. It took a while longer before those hands went lax on his thighs and fell to the sides, but then slow, deep breathing was the confirmation - and the cue to get what they needed and go.
Jim extended his hand at waist level and went Jedi on the badge, levitating it up off the bare floor and drawing it through the still darkness to him. The instant his palm came in contact with the object, the same cold from upstairs registered, Devina's evil dwelling in the space between the molecules of the metal.
Eddie's caution had seemed over-kill - until now. Given the strong signal the badge was giving off, you didn't want to get caught with your pants down if you were working on the thing.
Jim nodded toward the window, and just like mist disappearing, the three of them were up and out of there.
Across town, in the thick of Caldwell's urban core, the St. Francis Hospital complex was a mammoth operation that glowed like the Vegas strip. Under its some twenty different roofs, lives started and ended by the thousands every year, the fight against the Grim Reaper waged by every kind of doctor and surgeon and nurse there was.
Devina was well familiar with the place: Sometimes those humans in white coats and green scrubs needed a little help to make sure the job got done properly.
And usually that meant death, but not always.
The demon entered the emergency room wing through its electronic front door. Wearing her banging-hot skin of female flesh, she got all kinds of stares from the collection of fathers and frat boys sitting in the waiting room. Which was why she didn't take the shortcuts she could have. Ghosting through glass, steel, or brick was efficient, but lame: She loved being gawked at. Ogled. Hit on. And the burning glares of the other women, all those hate-filled, envious eyes? Even better.
Finding Kroner in the rabbit maze of wards and floors and units was a piece of fucking cake. She'd been inside of him for years, helping him hone his skills and supporting his obsession. He'd been born a sick little shit, but he'd lacked the courage to act on his impulse - and that shriveling impotence had worked in her favor. Nothing made somebody who was hardwired like him more violent against attractive young women than his own deflated pencil dick.
The ICU in question was seven levels above where she'd come in, and she took her time going to elevators, strolling along, checking out the nurses' uniforms.
Snooze. Baggy, badly printed cotton with no cleavage showing on top and saggy asses on the bottom. What the hell did they think they were doing with that look?
When she finally got to the banks of metal double doors, she caught a ride up the building with an orderly and an old man on a gurney. The geezer was out like a light, but the pusher gave Devina not just a once-over, but a thrice-over.
No doubt he would have made it to a fourth and a fifth if the doors hadn't opened at her floor.
She tossed him a smile over her shoulder as she stepped out, just for shits and giggles.
And then it was time to get down to business. She had the option of assuming a mist and swirling over the polished floor, but that would have caused a panic. And she could have gone straight-up invisi, but that was a failure of originality in her book: She had passed many a century enjoying the interplay with humans, disguising herself among them, nipping at their heels and brushing up against them - or going farther than that.
No reason to pass up the opportunity for some fun tonight, even though she was working. After all, her therapist was urging her to find greater balance in her life.
As she zeroed in on the unit in question, she went down a corridor that was hung with photographs of various heads of departments.
Very helpful, as it turned out.
She stopped by several, noting the features and the accessories, the name tags and titles, the white coats and the striped ties or formal blouses.
It was like shopping for a new outfit. And she came with her own tailoring service.
Stepping around a corner, she glanced up and down the hallway to make sure she was alone, and then she fritzed out the security camera above her, sending it just enough of an electrical surge to knock it cold without exploding the thing.
Then she assumed the visage and white coat of the chief of neurology, one Denton Phillips, MD.
The guise was a bit of a saggy disappointment compared to her luscious brunette suit of flesh. The man was some sixty years old, and although he was handsome in a well-preserved, snotty-white-guy kind of way, she felt ugly and badly put together.
At least it was better than what she really looked like, and a not-for-long proposition.
As she went back out into the main corridor, she strode like a man, and it was a shot in the arm to see the respect and fear in the eyes of the staff she passed. Not quite as entertaining as lust and envy, but enjoyable nonetheless.
No need to ask where Kroner was. He was a beacon easily followed - and she was not surprised to find a uniformed officer seated outside his private room.
The man rose to his feet. "Doctor."
"I'll just be a minute."
"Take your time."
Not likely - she had to work fast. She had no idea what Denton Phillips, MD, actually sounded like, and there was no way of being sure she got his height correct - which was what happened if all you had was a picture to go by: Now would not be a good time to run into any colleagues who would know better - or worse, the man himself.
The intensive care unit Kroner was in had curtained glass walls, and even from the outside, you could hear the hiss of the medical equipment that was keeping him alive. Sliding the door back temporarily, she pushed aside the bolts of piss-green fabric and stepped in.
"You look like shit," she said in a male voice.
As she walked to the bed, she let the visual lie of the good doctor slip away, showing herself as the beautiful woman Kroner had first met a decade ago.
There were tubes going in and out of every orifice he had, and the tangle of wires coming off his chest made him look like some kind of human switchboard. Lot of bandages and white gauze over gray skin. Lot of bruising. And his face looked like a Mylar balloon, all red and shiny, stretched out from the swelling.
This was not the end that she had planned and worked for. DelVecchio was supposed to have given in and killed the bastard before Heron even got wind of who the next soul was. Unfortunately, her stringy, sicko sacrificial lamb had been slaughtered by someone else.
For fuck's sake, it was obvious he wasn't going to make it. She was not a doctor - she just played one from time to time, natch - but that pallor alone made her think of morticians.
It wasn't too late for the bastard, though. And after thi little whoopsie, she was not taking any chances with the outcome of this round. Time to get a little more aggressive, especially given the deal she'd struck with Heron.
"Not your time to go yet." She leaned over the bed. "I need you."
Closing her eyes, she misted out over the man's body, blanketing him, and then seeping inside of him through his every pore. The power innate in her filled his depleted tank, reenergizing him, pulling him out of the death spiral at the same time it healed and strengthened him.
And to think humans relied on crash carts. How rudimentary was that?
Kroner's eyes popped open just as she was retracting herself, and as she reassumed her shape beside him, he focused on her.
Love shone out of his gaze.
Pathetic, but useful.
"Live," she commanded, "and I shall see you soon."
He tried to nod, but there was too much going on with the intubation thingy in his throat. He was going to make it, however. As she glanced up at the monitoring equipment, his heart rate settled down into a steady rhythm and his blood pressure regulated. Oxygen number came out of the seventies and into the nineties.
"Good boy," she said. "Now rest."
Raising her hand, she put him in a deep, healing sleep, and then she reassumed the image of the good old Dr. Denton.
Get in, get out, get gone.
She left the glassed-in room, nodded to the guard, and then strode down the corridor, passing the sycophants and suckups who all but dropped to their knees in her path. Which was enjoyable. To the point where she was tempted to parade around the hospital for a while just absorbing the experience of being the man.
But again, the last thing she needed was to run into anyone who actually knew the guy. And, more important, she had an appointment with her therapist first thing in the morning, and she needed to pick out what she was going to wear - which could take hours.
Which was why she needed a fucking shrink.
Time to run.
