Part 24 (1/2)

This time Leah came to a halt a dozen or so feet away. She raised her arms, palms forward. The crazed winds increased to a point where John felt them at the other end of the hall.

One of the men screamed so loud it was audible above the noise of his companions' desperate attempts to break through solid steel.

Then they were all screaming, a horrible chorus of shrieks and wails that made the hair on John's arms stand at attention.

The pulsing aura around Leah grew darker as she drained the life out of the would-be slave owners. Tiny, angry bolts of red lightning flashed silently inside the glow encompa.s.sing her body.

Her victims fell to their knees and tumbled onto their sides, their bodies shriveling into brittle husks. One of them remained standing, withered fingers wrapped in a permanent death grip on the metal push bar of the doors. Open mouths revealed tongues that resembled sunbaked slugs. Wrinkled, shrunken eyes stared out of cavernous sockets like albino prunes.

The gale surrounding Leah dissipated to a heavy breeze. She stood still for a moment, her back to John, framed in the throbbing circle of energy. Then she turned around so quickly it caught John by surprise.

He froze like a rabbit on the highway, pinned in place by Leah's dead eyes. A second later his senses returned and he ducked back around the corner, praying she hadn't had time to see him.

Heavy winds roared down the hall.

Jesus. This is it. I'm dead.

John debated running versus trying to reason with Leah. Could she even be reasoned with? Was she even human still? It was entirely possible she'd died while curing him and was now some kind of otherworldly force or creature.

No. I can't believe that. Leah is still in there somewhere. She has to be. I can't give up on her. She wouldn't give up on me. In fact, if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't be like this at all.

John stepped around the corner to face Death.

And then found himself diving to the ground as gunfire sounded behind him.

Del McCormick cursed his own stupidity for trying to shoot while running at full speed. He'd missed the cop by a mile, and now the son of a b.i.t.c.h had gone around the corner and could be in any of a dozen rooms.

Seeing the cop alive had surprised Del only for a moment. Obviously DeGarmo had managed to find him after Tal Nova's men attacked. She'd done her magic on her boyfriend once again. The real question was, where had DeGarmo disappeared to? She couldn't be too far away. Not with the cop right there. Which meant there might still be a chance to grab her and get the h.e.l.l out of the building.

His two remaining guards close behind him, Del sprinted toward the intersection where the cop had disappeared.

”I want DeGarmo alive!” he shouted to his men. Implicit in his command was the understanding that anyone else was fair game.

Del slowed and threw himself into a forward shoulder roll as he came to the corner. He let his momentum take him to the opposite side of the hallway and rose to one knee, gun aimed ahead of him and ready to fire, his body s.h.i.+elded by the wall.

It was the only thing that saved him.

A blast of air hit him like a hurricane and spun him back and around. His head struck the wall and the hallway disappeared behind a dazzling shower of multicolored stars.

What the-?

The lights faded. He tried to focus on the floor tiles but they kept moving and turning into doubles of themselves.

Seeing double. Explosion. Nova's men. Gotta hide.

Del climbed to his feet, using the wall for support. Somewhere in the other corridor a gun fired and a man screamed. Not trusting his eyesight, Del hugged the wall and felt with his hands until he located a doork.n.o.b. Opening it, he entered a room and staggered across it to a stack of broken, moldy wooden crates. With his last few ounces of strength he pushed his way between the shattered frames and the wall.

And then let the darkness claim him.

In the corridor, Del's bodyguards picked themselves up off the floor. One of them rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear the grit and dust from them, while the other shouted for Del.

They were still trying to get their bearings when the impossible became a reality.

Tendrils of black lightning emerged from the side hallway and wrapped themselves around the men before they knew what was happening. The slithering lightning split into twisting vines that snaked across the guards' bodies and burrowed into their ears, mouths and noses. Miniature supernovas of red exploded within the lines of energy. At the same time, the two men collapsed to the ground, their legs and arms contorting in ways human limbs were never meant to move.

The sound of snapping bones filled the air and the grotesque St. Vitus dance came to an end as the men went still. A moment later, both bodies collapsed into themselves, deflating like empty balloons.

The storm winds picked up again and filled the halls with a roaring sound. Dark-gray fog rolled into the corridor, a ground-level thundercloud inside of which black and red lightning flashed in all directions.

Death marched down the hall in search of its next victim.

Chapter Eleven.

John didn't understand what was happening at first. He'd seen Del and two other men coming at him and he'd automatically ducked back around the corner.

Straight into Leah's oncoming path.

There'd been no time to think. He'd sprinted for the closest door and dashed inside. Slammed the door closed and then backed across the empty room. The opaque window in the door obscured his view, but not so much that he couldn't see the hall grow dark. Flashes of weird lightning had splashed the gla.s.s with red and howling winds rattled the door in its frame.

At one point, something that looked like a snake made of negative energy slipped under the door and rose up, waving back and forth like an ebon cobra from another world. It had paused for a moment-a moment in which John was sure he was about to die-and then retreated back under the door.

Agonized screams reached John's ears over the shrieking winds. Del? His men? John found he had no regret for their dying. They deserved it for what they'd done, what they'd planned on doing.

His lack of remorse surprised him. He'd always believed that vigilantism was a poor subst.i.tute for the law. Criminals taking out other criminals didn't help the system in the long run; it just made it harder to maintain order.

But the retribution Leah was raining down...there was something primal about it. As if Nature herself was p.i.s.sed off and had decided to do a little cleansing.

And what if that cleansing includes you?

The question came up out of nowhere. John didn't want to believe Leah could ever hurt him. She'd had multiple opportunities, and so far he was still alive. Which made him think maybe there was still enough of the real Leah inside the she-demon roaming the halls.

Except, on all those occasions, she'd been distracted by other targets. Maybe she was just going after the worst offenders first.

It did seem like the presence of something-of what? evil? past sins?-attracted her like a magnet. And where did that leave a person who'd basically led a good life but wasn't by any stretch perfect? Last on the list? Or would she leave him and go out into the world, a hurricane of destruction, killing anyone with some type of darkness in their soul?

Was she simply a greater evil than all others, or was she the hand of G.o.d, come down to clean the world?

In the end, what she was wouldn't matter. Not to the people outside the building. They'd see her as a threat and deal with her. Do whatever it took to stop her.

Or destroy her.

”Can't let that happen.”