Page 88 of Bad Moon Rising
Weaving his way back to the ghost was like being on a merry-go-round of dizziness and trying to gauge the right moment to step off. Two animated corpses grabbed his ankles, tripping him to the ground because no way gravity wasn’t getting all of him. Flynn fought behind him, keeping what he could away.
The ghost emitted some sort of noise he assumed to be a laugh. Didn’t that just piss him off?
With his knife, he sliced off the hands of the corpses holding him down and got to his feet, skeleton hands still clasped around his ankles. In his peripheral vision, he saw the guy in black whipping around the room in a circle around him to keep the things clear of him. He wondered if it was Antonio dressed in black. Didn’t smell like him, but his nose was overwhelmed by the smell of decaying zombies.
He shuffled back toward the ghost. Once within distance of it, he steadied himself and threw the dust of a crushed phylactery, a Greek protective amulet, at the creature. While it sputtered and acted as if the powder burned its head, Roman intoned,
“Goddess and Hekate save help me now
To see the truth here not yet found,
For underneath the fog of immateriality lies truth.
Let that which is insubstantial be as in life,
And by the power that is three
So as I will it, so mote it be.”
The ghost flickered from vaporous form to solid. Roman hobbled forward—because a graceful lunge was out of the question—to wrangle the scythe from its hands. When it came free the weapon’s unanticipated weight caused him to slip around on the floor like a newbie ice skater until he regained his balance. By the grace of a miracle, he managed to swing the scythe in the general direction of the phantasm’s head. Swing number two decapitated it.
It returned to vaporous form and dissipated. The scythe in his hands also disappeared.
All animated corpses turned to dust.
“Is it gone?” Flynn ducked to avoid shadows as he scanned around, suspicious. He held his knife ready.
The person in black froze.
“Nobody move.” Roman held up a hand, demanding silence. He was one-hundred percent sure the ghost was gone, but no one showed up unsolicited to help them. No one knew about them. He planned to find out who’d crashed their show. And why.
He removed a white crystal on a chain from his pocket and let it rock back and forth over the area the ghost vanished. He moved steadily closer to the person in black. Palming the crystal as it completed its pendulum swing, he put a hand to the chest of the interloper and pressed backward until he was against the wall.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The man threw his hood back and let his robes fall to the floor. For an instant he was Cooper. Then, he was enveloped in a brilliant white light that streaked his hair, which had suddenly morphed into a thick ponytail. He straightened out of Cooper’s habitual slouch, growing taller, then broader. And something—make that two somethings—sprouted from his back. Two wings unfolded in a dazzling shimmer of silver, fanning out spectacularly behind him. HisBlack PantherT-shirt and faded jeans remained, oddly enough.
Roman shuffled backward, tripping over his own feet to land in a sprawl on the floor. “Zadkiel?”
Flynn snapped his mouth closed. It took him a moment to be able to form actual words. “You’re real? Roman said you helped him last year, but I thought he just snorted some magic dust or something and hallucinated.”
Blue eyes with a violent fire pinned Roman as the angel tucked a few strands of long dark hair that had escaped its binding at his neck. In a clipped Spanish accent, he said, “You guys have the most bizarre job.” He scanned the mess of corpses on the floor. “Those things were horrible, by the way. The smell alone in here…” He pinched his nose.
Flynn said, “Chasing and destroying evil assholes is hard.”
In his most perfect Tom Hanks impersonation voice, no trace of an accent, Zadkiel said, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard…is what makes it great.”
Roman compressed his lips against a smile, the first semi-mirth he’d experienced in weeks. If there was one thing about the infamous Archangel of Mercy and Surrender with his unannounced appearances, he was distinctly…uncool. His love of Avengers T-shirts and the odd movie star impressions were usually not considered trademarks of a timeless agent for God. When he did the impersonations, what made it hilarious wasn’t an angel quotingA League of Their Own;it was the fact he couldn’t stop looking to see if Roman enjoyed his impression, and then he couldn’t stop smiling when he saw that he was.
Zadkiel held out his hand to help Roman stand. Once Roman was on his feet, the angel said, “You need to sober up.”
“I’ll get right on that,” he said sarcastically. “I’m thinking I’ve done about enough in my life. About time it ended.”
“I don’t fight stinky corpses for just anyone,” Zadkiel said.
“I appreciate your help. Flynn was about to have his ass handed to him.”
“Hey, I was holding my own just fine.” Flynn kicked a corpse near him. “It was you who gave up and forced me to step in.”
