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
