Page 50 of Death is My BFF

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said.

He moved too fast for me to comprehend. One moment, there was a desk between him and me, and the next, David had me pinned to the floor, shielding me with his body.

There was a deafening explosion of glass as an enormous mass crashed through the windows.

IX

The protective shield above me vanished as David got up. Dazed, I stared blankly up at the ceiling, then lifted myself from the floor to find the source of the crash.

My mind shut down. Everything shut down.

Regaining my senses, I focused on the back of David’s Armani shirt as I tentatively approached him and thethinghe was crouched over. Rain slanted through the gaping hole where a window had been, saturating us. Waves of shifting winds engulfed a small potted plant, which had miraculously survived on the sill, and hurled it into the city below.

My legs gave out from under me. Sprawled across the floor amongst shards of bloodied glass lay an angelic-looking creature with frayed ivory wings. The wings beat once, then twice; the feathers cut clean through the couch beside me like a knife through butter and nicked my leg. I shrieked. The creature now lay still, its head slowly turned to face me. Terror climbed up my throat. Its eyes had been freshly gouged out, blood dripping from the remains of flesh in the sockets and half of its humanlike features mauled to a shredded pulp.

There was so much blood. So much blood.

The angelic creature jerked into alertness, throwing an outstretched hand toward David with foreign words. David’s features strained with pain, and he recoiled from the being. The tendons in his neck bulged as if he were fighting an invisible force. Regaining composure, David oddly laughed. Then his head snapped back, heavenward, and he gurgled out a curse. He dropped down to one knee, then the other, locked in a rigid position.

Switching its attention from David to me, the angelic creature stood on unstable legs, staggering forward. It reared larger than life, bladelike wings unable to fully extend against the walls of the otherwise huge office. Reaching for me with long fingers, it hooked into David’s Bears jersey and yanked me closer.

“You areher,” it said, blood trickling from its mouth. “A great evil is coming. Soon, they willallcome for you!”

I turned my head away from its nightmarish face with a sob, frantically trying to get free.

A blurred arm shot out between the creature and me as David gripped the angel around the throat and flung it against the wall with a great force. He moved impossibly fast, pinning the angelic creature with one hand. It thrashed about, wings twitching, crying out in a foreign tongue.

I stood there, held by the numbing horror of it all.

A shadow cast across the room, drawing my attention outside through the cavernous gap in the massive windows. Through the pelting rain, a horde of birds ascended into the sky with shrill, unnerving croaks. They greased any light from the city with their coal feathers, before rocketing toward us like piranhas smelling blood.

David whipped his head over his shoulder. “Faith!Run!”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

Adrenaline took the baton. I sprinted through the waiting room, my feet striking marble as a thousand throaty croaks chased me like an orchestra of doom. I punched down the long hallway, made a sharp turn, and slid, catching myself with one hand as my heel gripped the floor again. Kicking off, I flung myself inside the elevator and slammed my fingers frantically into the buttons. The doors closed just in time, birds spearing into the polished metal like bullets.

Bland elevator music played.

“Thefuck?”

Plastered against the back wall of the cubical contraption, I fought with every fiber of my being to catch my breath. My hands patted around the pockets of David’s sweatpants.

My phone. I’d left it in his office.

“This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.”

The bottom floor didn’t come fast enough. I made haste through the lobby, shoving my whole weight into the colossal glass doors of the entrance into the D&S Tower, only to be ensnared by a surge of rain and wind outside. There were scarcely any pedestrians or cars.

This was New York City, and the streets werebare.

I ran in any direction.

Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!

My heart nose-dived into my stomach. Ahead of me, on the sidewalk, a group of the birds spiraled together into an inky mass, forming two terrifying-looking men with jet-black clothes. Porcelain skin, stark black eyes. Hollow cheekbones with lean bodies and bony fingers leading to nails like scalpels at the ends.

Screaming, I came to a quick halt, slipping once more in the process. The one creature tried to grab me, but the rubber of my cheap Converse thankfully gripped the wet sidewalk again, and I launched onward to my only escape: a dark, spine-chilling alleyway beside the D&S Tower.

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