Chapter 20

The fallen stood across from me, bent and frail at the top of the Empire State Building with only a narrow walking stick to hold her up. And yet I was the one who wobbled and went to my knees. Granddaughter. Was she shitting me?

"You are . . ."

"The grand dame of you, the one whom all your abilities stem from and from whence you find your shitty attitude and ability to kill without truly feeling the deaths." She laughed after she said that, flashing her teeth again.

"How do you not look like the other fallen? You know, the ones with the leathery wings and extra arms?" Dinah asked. It was a good question. Seeing as my head was struggling to wrap around the current information.

"I am fallen because I fell in love with the man I was hunting instead of killing him as was my job. We had a daughter, and she was an abnormal, a lovely girl who had terrible taste in men. And, of course, she passed her abilities on to you. This is the way of our line. I was . . . a killer always, though it was couched in terms of justice." She waved her stick at the sky as if flipping it off. "Because of my service, I was allowed to remain here for the typical lifespan of a human, and I am very mortal and dying. That is my punishment. Better than being stuck with those self-righteous bastards." Another flip of her stick to the sky.

Dinah spluttered, and Diego mumbled something in Spanish that might have been what the actual fuck is happening.

I stayed on my knees a moment longer before pushing back to my feet, using Ruby to steady me. I took note that she hadn't growled at the fallen one once. "So I have the blood of the fallen in me?"

She nodded. "All abnormals have the blood of the fallen in them, granddaughter. All of them. No doubt it is why Gardreel wants to wipe you all out. Because you are proof of their sins that have helped to confine them to this world." She shrugged as if it didn't bother her one bit that she was one of those sinners. "That would be my guess if I were a guessing sort of woman."

"I need to kill him," I said.

"That you do." She smiled and her blue eyes burned with a fire I understood completely. "But only another fallen can kill their own."

The image of the fallen being turned from monster into beauty before he was sucked down into what could only be Hell rolled through my mind. "Not true."

She waved a hand at me. "It was the power of a fallen you used on another fallen. They won't make that mistake again. And you're welcome for that." She grinned at me and wiggled her fingers. The back of my skull twitched and it was though she were touching inside my brain. "They didn't even notice me there in the clouds, undoing the bonds that Eligor put on your mind. Filthy, all that." She spit to one side as if to make her point. "Filthy. They have no right to bind those that are our children."

I drew in a slow breath, pushing down all the shock in me. The focus was on the task at hand. "How the hell am I going to convince another fallen to fight Gardreel? That is what you're telling me, isn't it?"

"How in the hell indeed?" she murmured and tapped her stick on the stone. "I am unable to tell you outright. That is against some stupid rule that a rather pretentious featherbrain came up with." Another swing of her walking stick upward as she jabbed it toward the sky. "But what I can tell you is that you have faced the fallen before, only he went by a different name. You know there is nothing so terrible as a convert, either to the light, or to the dark." Her eyes narrowed and I found myself mimicking her.

I'd fought the fallen before?

My heart clenched as I understood at least part of what she was telling me. "Bazixal."

The demon I'd sent back to Hell; could that be who she meant?

The air around us crackled with rising electricity and the hair along my arms stood.

My grandmother—Jesus Christ, I couldn't even think it without my jaw wanting to drop—looked upward. "We are about to get company. I do believe the fallen have realized I am here, talking to you. Forbidden and all that nonsense, though it matters not to me, my life is near its end." Another wave of her stick and the sky above us opened as though she were parting the clouds.

Drenched in a matter of seconds, I stared at her through the rain, watching her as she turned to face three of the fallen on her own.

Before I could ask, she pointed her stick at the door that led into the Empire State Building. "Off you go, find your team, stop the fallen, and get those babies back."

I didn't hesitate, though part of me wanted to see my grandmother kick ass. I picked up speed as I made my way through the upper souvenir shop to the stairs. No way was I taking the elevator and getting trapped in a steel box headed south.

A push of my hip against the bar of the stairwell door and I looked back in time to see two of the fallen being held at bay.

The third, well, he was creeping through the souvenir shop on his hands and feet, hunched like an oversized dog. Ruby let out a low growl, her back tensed, and the fur along her spine stood up. I touched her collar and brought her with me. "We can't kill him, which means we need to outrun him."

"What about the sedative?" Diego offered. "Please let me shoot him."

I pulled my T-shirt off and brought the AK-47 around, pointing him at the fallen one. I barely sighted down the barrel before I squeezed off two rounds, both hitting the monstrosity clean in the upper chest.

He roared and stood, wings spread wide for a half a beat. The sedative darts dangled from his flesh and then he wobbled and crashed sideways into a stack of snow globes that shattered.

I turned and bolted down the stairs, Ruby's nails clicking on the cement stairs. Eighty-six flights ahead of us. I pushed hard, grabbing the railings as I went even knowing that I was leaving behind fingerprints. It would give the NYPD a thrill if they dusted.

We reached the bottom in under ten minutes but, of course, the main door was locked. I yanked Dinah out and blew a hole in the doorknob. Alarms blasted through the air as I pushed the door with a hip and slid out onto the street.

The city was never really quiet, so I got a few looks as I walked away from the famous building, a gun on my back and one in my hand, wearing a corset and leather pants. I didn't care. The first good alley we came to I ducked down, heading off toward the abandoned rail station.

That was as good a place as any to start, a known messaging site for a lot of the underbelly.

Using back alleys and dodging sirens, I made my way down to the subway and hopped a ride that would take us to the Lower East Side.

I could have leaned back in the seat as we chugged along, closed my eyes for a few minutes and snagged some rest, but I couldn't close my eyes and not see . . . my grandmother.

Dinah squirmed. "I can feel you thinking."

There was no one close enough to us to hear our discussion. "This is fucking messed up."

"Yes and no," Dinah said. "Like, are you surprised that you're being called on? I'm not."

Ruby placed her chin on my knee, and I put my hand on the top of her head. My grandmother thought I was the one to stop the fallen, and in part, she wasn't wrong. There was really no one else strong enough left.

But finding a fallen to kill another fallen . . . the only possibility I kept circling back to was that she had put emphasis on the word hell. She had to mean that I needed a demon to help me. Why though? Why a demon? Circling, circling, I knew I was getting closer to the answer, I just had to find it.

Maybe the tablet would give me the answers I needed. Maybe Rio would have someone like Harden who could hack the tablet and find the answers we needed. That I needed.

"Wonder if Cowboy is okay," Diego mused.

I blinked. "It never even crossed my mind."

The subway car began to slow and I stood, bracing my legs as I scanned the car.

"This our stop?" Dinah asked.

"No, it's not," I murmured. "We're stopped in the middle of the tracks."

Which to me could mean only one thing.

We'd been found.