Devil Sent the Rain - D. J. Butler Page 0,30

with vague shame and reminded himself not to get distracted.

Twitch scrambled up to the ledge and threw herself over.

“What have you got, big boy?” she leered at him. “A bit of Vulcan’s Kiss at least, surely?”

“Better than that,” Adrian cheered himself on. “I’m getting us out of here, as soon as I can touch Eddie.” As he said it, he wondered if he was doing them any favors, or if getting them all out of his shadow just put them back into the power of the Fallen in the physical world. There, after all, they had a huge size advantage and could use sorcery. And Adrian had screwed this up before.

He wondered if he could somehow leave the Fallen behind.

“Come on, Eddie!” Mike shouted. “Kick that pendejo!”

The nearest Fallen on Eddie’s tail grabbed for him again, and Eddie took Mike’s tactical advice, slamming the heel of a combat boot into the former angel’s shining forehead. The Fallen grunted and slipped, sliding down several feet.

“Everyone touch my body somewhere,” Adrian told his friends on the shelf with him, and felt hands anchor onto his back and legs. He willed himself not to be uncomfortable with the fact that people were crowding around and touching him, and mostly succeeded.

What if he didn’t have the tawny eye in his head? Adrian thought, feeling the eye’s presence like a painful, invasive foreign body. Like a kidney stone in the urethra of his skull. Eddie would appear to have bare feet, then. Would it affect how hard he kicked?

If they were all inside Adrian’s shadow, his perception might be defining the world for all of them, and not just providing the lens through which he himself saw things.

He batted away the thought as abstract and a detour. They needed to get out of this place. He reached out and started muttering incantations.

“Grab the wizard’s hand!” Twitch called down to Eddie.

Adrian looked Eddie in the eye and Eddie stared back, concentrating on covering the last feet to Adrian, throwing himself up at a reckless pace, hand over hand and foot over foot. Dangling from Eddie’s chest and bouncing around inside the hairs carpeting the wall, Adrian again noticed a tag. It was like a dog tag, only the size of a tea saucer and golden. They all had them, he realized. He hadn’t noticed them in the climb because they’d all been covered in the vine-like growth of hair.

The plate bore Eddie’s true name.

Adrian didn’t need that, but suddenly he wondered about the Fallen. The Fallen had true names, didn’t they?

He tore his eyes away from Eddie. The three Fallen dragged themselves up the side of the wall, moving as fast as Eddie moved and maybe even a little bit faster. In New York, this wall had been twelve feet tall, if that. Here it seemed to be thirty, but that was no comfort. They were all bearing down—bearing up—on Adrian with alarming speed.

Gold saucers bounced on the chests of the Fallen, too.

Adrian’s heart leaped to attention. If he could see those names, he could end this, right here and now. Knowing the true names of his enemies and being the only one—he hoped—with access to ka-power should give him the ability to command them, bend them to his will. Maybe he could force them to help him and the band escape. Or he could escape, forcing them to stay behind. Their ba-less bodies in the physical world would be inert and useless. The band could collect their gear, walk past the Fallen like so many tons of sleeping elephant, and hail a cab.

Okay, a cab wasn’t quite their style. But they could steal a car.

“Semyaz!” Adrian yelled, trying to get the Fallen’s attention. The two former angels kept climbing and ignored him. “Yamayol!” he tried again, and this time one of them looked up.

Adrian got a glimpse of the Fallen’s name-plate and his heart sank. There was writing on it, all right, but it was in one of the Primals. Infernal, probably, if Adrian had to guess. Adrian had been born after the Tower of Babel and the Confusion of the Tongues—a long time after—and he could recognize Infernal, but he couldn’t read it. Much less speak it out loud, which is what he’d have to do.

So much for that hope. Adrian focused on the spell he was weaving. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing, so he improvised. He started with incantations he used in setting wards of obfuscation and he reversed them,