out a cop or two pretty easily, but there are a lot of people here, and a lot of cops. Unless he wants to be riddled with bullet holes, he’ll have to get in, get it done, and get out. So if we can throw him off, slow down his schedule, anything, we might have a chance to keep him from killing anyone.”
“Even if we stop him—or them—tonight, he might take another run at it.”
“He might,” I agreed. “The cops’ attorneys have already been warned Tate was coming, but they didn’t believe it. Maybe if he shows himself tonight, they’ll take the threat seriously. Maybe they can be put into protective custody or something.”
“Any chance this ends well?”
“I can’t imagine that it will,” I said. “But we fight the good fight anyway.”
“Spoken just like an RG member. I’m so proud.” He gave me a supportive clap on the back. “I’ll take the west column. You take the east.”
“Sounds good. Good luck.”
“You, too.”
Jonah disappeared into the crowd, and within seconds the building’s doors opened. The protestors began screaming and chanting en masse, their signs bobbing up and down with the new burst of energy.
The attorneys came out first—four men in expensive suits and probably equally high-maintenance egos. They were followed by the officers—four men of various ages and races, still in uniforms, despite how much they’d tarnished them.
They walked down the steps and grouped together at the podium. The first attorney adjusted the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Members of the press. We are thrilled tonight that justice has been done in Chicago.”
There was no sign of Tate, but he couldn’t be far behind a statement like that.
Someone tapped my shoulder. “Hey, you can’t have that here.”
At the same time, I caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man moving through the crowd. My heart quickened.
“Hey, did you hear what I said? Hand over the sword or we’re taking a little trip into the lockup.”
I glanced behind me. A uniformed CPD cop—a barrel-chested man with a thick mustache—tapped my sword with his stick. A second cop moved in closer, probably thinking I was the threat they were supposed to be watching for.
“Sir, the guy who killed Paulie—the drug lord?—he might be in the crowd.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” He stuck the stick back into his utility belt but put a hand on the butt of his service weapon. “Give me the sword, ma’am, or we’re going to have some trouble. And there are a lot of uniforms here tonight. You don’t want to start something you can’t finish.”
I glanced back at the crowd. Just as the attorney finished his remarks and the cops stepped up to the podium, the dark-haired man had wedged his way through the crowd to the front of the rope line. Now that he was clear of the crowd, I could see his face.
It was Tate. One of them, anyway.
I looked back and appealed to the cops. “It’s definitely him—Seth Tate. Do you see him? He’s standing at the front of the crowd. Dark hair?”
The second cop, a little savvier than his friend, frowned and looked over, but the first cop wasn’t buying it.
“All right, I’m taking that weapon, and you’re coming with me.” He put a hand on the sheath of my sword and pulled hard to dislodge it from my belt.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I said, chopping his hand away with a swipe of my arm and whipping out my sword.
Tate picked that moment to act—ripping the rope away and stepping into the gap between the crowd and the cops. He screamed out—that same primordial noise we’d heard in the silo. He wore a trench coat. He whipped it off to reveal a naked torso, and summoned the giant broadsword back into his hands.
And that wasn’t all he was carrying.
Tate arched his back and held out his sword. As the horrified crowd looked on, great black wings sprouted from his shoulder blades. The purple-black membranes of his wings were marked by veins and tendons, stretched taut by long, thin bones that ended in needle-sharp claws. His wingspan must have been twenty feet. Twenty terrifying feet. They flapped once, then twice, filling the air with the scents of sulfur and smoke.
A shock of base fear ran through me. It was easy to think of Tate as a storybook creature, but this was no storybook. He was something old and fundamental to the earth, created not to protect men, but to judge them. He would see into your heart of hearts,