Chapter Twenty-Three The Battle of Daya Memorial
She took another bite out of Matthews’s heart. “I’m Mammon,” she said, around a mouthful of his left ventricle. “What’s your name?”
Brie was frozen in absolute horror, but her angel had seen such things before. He threw his body in between them with a frantic shout. “Run! I’ll hold her off.”
A wave of heavenly fire poured from his hands, but for possibly the first time, it glanced off Mammon as harmlessly as if it were a snowball. Then, with the tiniest flick of her finger, Mammon sent him flying into the opposite wall. He struck with a gasp. A spiderweb of cracks haloed around him.
The woman tilted her head with a childish giggle. “That’s funny. Tell another one.”
Instead of letting him answer, she lifted her finger once more, and he was dragged roughly up the wall, pinned and thrashing, as though someone was holding him by the throat.
“Stop it!” Brie screamed. “Let him go!”
Mammon tossed her hair with a shrug, and the angel dropped back to the earth, clutching his throat and gasping for breath.
Brie raced towards him, sliding to a stop at his feet. “Are you alright?”
“Brianna,” he rasped. “Get out of here!”
“Brianna,” Mammon threw the heart backward over her shoulder and peered at Brie with sudden interest. “So that’s your name. What’s wrong with you, little one?” She squinted and tilted her head. “There’s something out of phase about you. You’re blurry, and I can’t see your light. Not quite in this world, not quite in the next.” She considered this a moment. “Have you, perchance, recently died?”
Cameron shook his head desperately, a terrible bruise spreading across his neck. “Don’t answer her. Don’t say any—”
But then he could speak no more because, within the space of a second, his mouth abruptly vanished — closed over with smooth skin.
Brie watched, frozen in horror.
“Now, now. Manners,” Mammon chided, considering him at the same time. “There’s something wrong with this one, too. Human, but it’s been marinated in something else for a very long time.” She looked back at Brie, amused. “Any other misfit toys running around the hospital you’d like to introduce?”
Brie stood up slowly. Keep her talking. You aren’t dead if she’s talking. Cam isn’t dead if she’s talking. “Mammon, was it?”
Greed gave her a congenial nod.
“My companion tells me you’re a powerful player in certain circles,” she continued shakily, glancing back at the angel the entire time. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
There was a burst of dark laughter, like shards of glass falling on stone. “ Keep her talking. You aren’t dead if she’s talking, ” Mammon parroted in a singsong voice.
Brie’s mouth went completely dry. Well, that’s a neat trick.
Greed bowed with a grin, then stopped short. “What is that?”
Faster than thought, she crossed the space between them. Cameron struggled helplessly in the background, chained to the floor by an unseen force, as Greed bent to examine Brie’s pendant.
Her face lit with fascination. “So you’re the one all the fuss is about.” Her green eyes danced with a spark of anticipation. “My, my, my. You’ve no idea the sorts who are out looking for you, little one. Dastardly fiends with horrible plans.” She grinned. “You’re actually lucky I’m the one who found you. May I?”
Without waiting for an answer, she reached out a finger to touch the delicate teardrop. A fountain of sparks and white lightning lashed through the air, and she jerked back her hand as if she’d touched an electric fence. There was a gasp of delight, and she caught her breath excitedly.
“Oh, it’s everything they say it is, isn’t it!” she cried. “That almost hurt! My goodness. What’s a pretty little thing like you doing with a powerful relic like this?”
Brie didn’t say a word. There was a chance she couldn’t.
Mammon rolled her eyes, then flicked her fingers up and down once more. Like a weightless doll, Brie slammed first into the ceiling, then the floor. She cried out in pain, and Cameron let out a stifled moan behind her, straining against whatever invisible force had him trapped.
Brie lifted her head a few inches off the tile, then started scrambling backward towards the atrium and Matthews’s crumbled form.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Mammon reached up and pulled a slim, serrated metal board out of thin air and started filing her nails into points. “Where did you get that marvelous little bauble? And try not to lie,” she added lightly. “It’s so boring.”
Brie continued her breathless retreat, backing away on her hands and knees.
“Are you trying to get away?” the woman scoffed. “Really?”
With a careless toss of her hand, she sent Brie careening backward at top speed, crashing through a planter box and coming to rest beside the corpse of Dr. Matthews. She blinked away stars and tried to pull in a breath, but the wind had been knocked clean out of her lungs. She clutched her chest and tasted blood as she struggled to inhale.
Mammon continued her slow advance, filing her nails all the while. “They say the key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught. I’d say you’re rather an object lesson in that little truism at this moment. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Brie could only gasp in pain.
“At any rate. I don’t know how much you overheard, but suffice to say, my patience has been tested quite enough for one night. And I’m not generally known for that virtue in the first place.” She tossed back her hair, suddenly brusque. “So why don’t you hand over your shiny little locket, and we can all get this over with? I’ve long wanted to add this to my collection.”
Brie glared up at the beautiful woman, helpless yet enraged. Her focus narrowed, and she felt something hot and powerful start to grow within her. Her pulse quickened, and her breathing slowed.
She stared levelly at Greed. “You can’t have it.”
Mammon smiled chillingly. “Can’t I?”
Horns split their way out of her forehead, silver stained with black. They curved backward and up again. She seemed to grow taller at the same time, her body elongating with an unnatural, animalistic quality. She threw her nail file without looking, burying it deep in Cameron’s shoulder.
His eyes cried with pain. Brie felt it in her very soul.
No!
With few options and even less time, she scrambled further into the atrium, groping blindly on the floor, before she found the thing she’d been looking for. Her body angled instinctively to hide it as she fumbled with the clasps behind her back.
“Why do you want it?” Mammon reasoned. “What use could someone like you possibly have for it?” She paused, eyes shining in amusement. “Or do you even know what it’s for?”
Brie said nothing. Another burst of laughter crackled between them, like ozone during a lightning strike.
“Keep the guardian in the dark. Well, it’s a strategy, I guess. The Bright Ones have always been notoriously poor at communication.” She clapped her hands twice, as if drawing a room to attention. “Come now, no more of these games. Hand it over willingly, or I’ll kill the other one.”
Inch by inch, the file started to drag toward the center of Cameron’s chest. The clear agony in the twists and turns of his body was unbearable. For all the things her angel could do, all the hellish nightmares Brie had seen him defeat, he was helpless against such powers.
She glared at Greed with a hatred more profound than anything she’d ever felt before, then looked at Cameron with a protectiveness that ran deeper still.
So, you can hear my thoughts, can you?
“That’s right, dear.” Mammon inclined her head sympathetically. “I know. It hardly seems fair, does it? But then, what in this wretched world does?”
Well, hear this.
Their eyes locked.
I’m going to absolutely destroy you.
“Oooh. Kitty’s got claws.” Mammon grinned, showing all her teeth. “I’m trembling in my boots.” Her legs elongated, and her feet transformed into black, cloven hooves. She stomped the ground, preparing to charge. She threw back her head in laughter.
It was the moment Brie had been waiting for. The second Mammon’s throat was exposed, she grabbed the strange wooden sculpture from Matthews’ briefcase and launched it like a discus with all her newfound supernatural strength directly at the Fallen One.
It sliced messily through her neck, sizzling where it touched, and cut off her laugh with a horrible gurgling sound before burying itself in the wall behind her. No blood issued from the wound. It merely bubbled black, as though touched by acid. Mammon’s head swung back at an impossible angle before rolling off her shoulder and dropping on the floor with a clatter of horns on tile. The rest of her started to shrink back down to a human size, and her hooves became feet again. Her body instantly knelt to the ground and started feeling around for her head. It lay several feet away in a pool of ice-blonde hair, blinking in surprise.
Brie didn’t hesitate. She sprinted forward and pulled the file from Cameron’s chest. A second later, she grabbed her pendant and pressed it to the wound. It started to seal before her eyes, and his mouth reappeared.
He sucked in the air like a man half-drowned. “Brianna,” he gasped. “How did you—?”
“There’s no time. I need to warn Rashida.”
She helped him up, and the two staggered down the hall to the elevators, making a conscious decision not to glance back as the headless body dragged its way across the floor.
The doors slid shut behind them, and a cheerful male voice floated down from the speakers, crooning about raindrops falling on his head.
They shared a silent look as they both struggled to catch their breath.
“Are you alright?” she finally managed.
“I will be,” he panted, “thanks to you. I just need a minute.”
She stared straight ahead for a second before saying, “By the way, since I’m probably about to die and all… I’m halfway in love with you. I didn’t mean any of the things I said back at the bar. Not even a little bit.”
He looked at her, shocked.
“I was having a moment.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling, refusing to meet his gaze.
“Brianna, I—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted. “You don’t. You can’t . I get it. I just thought you should know.”
They stared in silence a moment longer, then the elevator opened, and they sprinted down the hall to the morgue. Brie rattled the doors, but they were locked. They did not survive her attempts to open them. She and the angel peered curiously at her handprints indented in the steel.
“Well, that’s one way to keep her out of there, I guess,” he said.
“She’ll be getting here soon,” Brie answered, still breathless. “She’s probably in the parking lot. We have to get there first.”
A second later, they were running again, this time to the lower lot where Rashida always parked. They weren’t counting on what greeted them on the other side of the door.
Oh, no… Please, no…
Sherry slammed the door of Mike’s squad car so hard it was a miracle the window didn’t shatter apart. She caught a glimpse of them by the elevator a moment later. She froze in fury, then stormed towards them, waving a familiar letter in the air.
“What in the name of Hecate do you mean you’re moving to Croatia?”
Brie had never seen her so angry. Her eyes widened in horror. “What are you doing here?” she gasped. “You have to go back. Sherry, get back in the car.”
Sherry was enraged. “Don’t you dare push me away, Weldon!” she cried. “Is this him? Is this his doing?” She looked at Cameron like she was trying to light him on fire with her mind.
“No, you don’t understand.” Brie pleaded. “This isn’t—”
“You are damn right I don’t understand!” she raged. “I’ve tried to take this on good faith and just go with it, but enough is enough. You can’t throw away your whole life to run off to Europe with some guy you hardly know. I won’t allow it.”
Rashida’s green sedan pulled into the other end of the lot.
Mike appeared and tried to throw a little diplomacy on the situation. “Ladies, is there any way we could try to take this somewhere else?”
“No!” shrieked Sherry.
“Yes!” yelled Brie.
“What’s all the yelling about?” called Rashida. She’d parked and was getting out of her car a few rows down, never seeing Brie’s desperate look.
“Ida! Listen, you have to—”
She cut her sentence short as Rashida’s expression froze. She looked down at her sweater. What started as a dot of red quickly expanded into a pool of blood.
She fell without a sound, revealing a towering blonde woman with silver horns behind her, pulling a long, silver file out of her back.
Brie’s anguished scream echoed into the brimming dawn.
Mike immediately drew his weapon. “Get down on the ground! Drop your weapon and get down on the ground!”
When Mammon didn’t comply, he fired. Five shots rang out in rapid succession. Every one of them hit their mark. Not one of them made the slightest difference. They ricocheted, bouncing into cars, the walls, the ceiling.
Mike lowered his gun and stared at her uncomprehendingly. “What the hell—?”
Mammon let out a roar and, with a flick of her hand, sent him flying across the parking lot into a support pillar. He crumpled to the ground and went still. Sherry screamed in terror, dashing towards the elevator.
“Yes, run!” Brie cried. “Keep running!”
Cameron knelt to the ground, summoned the last of his strength, and flung scythe after scythe of that heavenly light. They bounced off harmlessly, vanishing in a golden mist.
Mammon’s feet became enormous hooves. Her nostrils flared with rage. She pawed the ground and started stomping toward them through the cars. The ground beneath her feet crunched and sizzled with every step. The paint on the cars blistered from the hellish heat radiating off her body. With every step, she seemed to grow.
“Have you had enough yet?” she roared as she closed in. “Is all of this—?”
She stopped short with a sputtering cough when she was abruptly covered in foam.
Sherry hadn’t run away. She’d grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and was now emptying the entire canister over the ancient, demonic woman. A woman who was frozen in utter disbelief. It seemed to last for an eternity until the stream of foam eventually slowed to a flaccid trickle. Mammon glared at Sherry, who was too terrified to break eye contact. When the last of the fire retardant fizzled out, they stood there in silence for a moment, Sherry holding the empty extinguisher with a look of dread, facing off against what looked like a fire-eyed abominable snowman.
Run! You need to—
Mammon flicked her finger and sent Sherry flying into the same pillar that had felled Mike. There was a sickening crunch as her head hit the cement. Brie let out a breathless scream as her body slid gradually towards the pavement before going still.
But Mammon wasn’t done. A wave of heat burst off her, singeing everything in its radius and blasting her free from the foam. She jabbed her index finger towards Cameron, who gasped as though he’d been impaled, then crooked it back and dragged him towards her like she had a hook in his spine.
“I’m going to skin them, you little bitch.” She locked eyes with Brie, malevolence radiating from her like a black sun. “I’m going to make you watch me turn them inside out.”
That was the moment something cracked open inside Brianna Weldon. Something old faded into memory. Something new and powerful rose in its stead.
A roar grew inside her like a tsunami, gathering tones like a wave gathers water. Light flickered beneath her skin like golden electricity as her body started to glow. Not a golden light like Cameron’s. This was pure and white. Blinding white. She levitated off the ground as the roar burst forth from her mouth, from her soul. At first, it was only incredible. In the space of a heartbeat, it was unbearable. Lightning cracked and whipped around her, forming itself into a dome of light. Her eyes, her pendant, and the inside of her mouth shone like a supernova.
Not so helpless after all.
Mammon took a step back and dropped Cameron. She lifted her hand reflexively to her ear, but it was no use. The roar surrounded everything, washed over it, pulsed through it. After a few seconds, she let out a shriek and tried to turn away, but no sooner had she taken a step than she was rooted to the spot by bands of light pouring forth from Brie’s hands.
Parts of her face and horns started to chip away, like a puzzle losing its pieces, as the still-rising sound tore through her. She started to scream in earnest, struggling against those glowing ropes, but it wasn’t any use. Her hooves turned back into feet, and her legs kept morphing between those of a woman and those of a goat. Her face remained a woman’s, screaming in pain.
In a merciless rage, Brie pulled on the ropes, forcing the creature one torturous step at a time into the dome of light. The moment she crossed its threshold, she started burning. Her ice-blonde locks sizzled and vanished. More puzzle pieces of her flesh disintegrated.
Brie pulled her closer still, until the two were standing eye to eye. At the last possible second, she grabbed Mammon’s face with both hands and spoke in a voice that was not her own.
“Go. Back. To. Hell.”
There was a violent explosion, a hailstorm of light. Then Mammon imploded in on herself like a black hole, ripping into itself until nothing remained.
The light vanished, and Brie dropped, senseless, to the ground.