Page 74 of King Among the Dead

His hell theory, Kay had called it. Then it was Rose’s turn to gasp.

“You’re bluffing,” Beck said, voice strained and hoarse. “You don’t have that kind of power.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But my friend Daniel does.” Castor lifted his arm, twirled the dagger, and offered its handle to the conduit at his side.

The moment Daniel’s hand touched the hilt, a low pulse moved through the floor; a wall of air pressed Rose back against the column to which she was bound. The guards shrank back against the walls; the one who’d brought Castor the dagger retreated, disappearing from view.

“Why?” Beck demanded, seething now, struggling at his bonds.

Rose twisted her wrist, back and forth, back and forth – and the knife in her sleeve finally slipped loose of its sheath. Its point slid down into her palm, slicing her skin – and the rope.

Daniel regarded Beck with a flat, disinterested stare; an angel contemplating a mortal. The white glow around him swelled. They were all just specks of dust to him; little sin-filled blips of nothing. “The Rift closed too soon,” he said, and Beck stilled, listening.

Rose listened, too, sawing at the rope as best she could, moving as little as possible.

No one was watching her, though. Every eye was riveted on the conduit.

“The day that it opened was to be the day of reckoning. The forces of Heaven and Hell were to converge on the battlefield of this mortal plane. But Hell’s gates didn’t open.”

“No one to kill but us humans, then,” Beck spat. “You had to make do.”

“Yes,” Daniel said, without inflection.

“Being a drug dealer was just a bonus, then?”

The first sign of expression: Daniel’s lip curled. “Don’t insult an angel with your petty human morality.”

“Our friend Daniel has the power to open a portal to hell,” Castor said, gleeful, eyes shining.

“And what do you get out of it, Tony?” Beck snarled.

The man looked rapturous. “The favor of heaven’s forces. Incredible power. Untold riches.”

“Yes. Untold riches,” Daniel said, and plunged the dagger into the gangster’s stomach.

A collective shout went up from all the guards.

Three of them rushed Daniel – and Daniel lifted his hand, and decapitated all of them with a flick of his fingers.

He pulled the dagger out, and blood coursed from the wound, spilling down Castor’s legs even as he gasped and clutched at his stomach. The blood ran over his shoes…and touched the stones of the floor.

The room exploded with light. White, and then red. Rose closed her eyes against it – and against the physical shove of power that blasted out from the center of the circle. It ripped across her like a wind, howling, tugging at her hair and clothes.

The roomshrieked.

Her right hand came loose, and she lifted it up to shield her eyes, daring to crack them open as the initial flare of light dimmed. She had the sense that shock and fear blurred some of what she was seeing; twisted the impossible into something her brain could process.

A seething pool of crimson liquid, viscous, dark, and velvet as fresh blood, steamed at the circle’s center, spreading outward by the moment. A tide. A tide of blood. Daniel stood at its center, dagger in one hand, Caster’s throat in the other; the gangster had lost consciousness, but the blood still poured down his body, dripping down into the darker, thicker tide that seemed to boil up through the stones. It swept outward, covering the chalk sigils, swallowing them.

And from it…wraiths. That was all she could think to describe them as. Indistinct blurs of shadows; the impressions of dragging claws, and reaching arms, and gaping, fanged mouths. One flew straight at one of the guards, and he screamed, and fell, blood spraying across a column in an arc. Others flew up to the burning lamps, and she saw slitted, gleaming golden eyes, and fangs like knives…

They had to get out of hereright now.

She shook her sleeve knife totally free, gripped its hilt, and reached to cut the rope that secured her other hand.

A tight grip on her wrist halted her. Warm breath in her ear. A voice, low and urgent: “Wait.” It wasn’t Beck.

She twisted around to look at him, whoever he was, fighting to get her wrist, and her knife, free. But he held fast, fingers strong, the way he pinched the nerves in her arm sure and effective; her hand went limp, and the knife clattered to the floor.

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