until it took out the first target.
Even halfway across town, I could see the cloud of debris flying into the air. As if the destruction fueled it, the tornado began to grow larger. The delicate thread of it thickened, and the cloud above moved over the funnel below. From the amount of twigs being tossed around - because that was what they looked like from over here - I had a feeling she'd hit the frat house first.
"Not to add new pressure to this," I said, "but I think the first objective is gone."
"Don't distract him," Nick said.
Sam just laughed once. "I have a feeling that nothing we could do would distract him."
But the little smile on Ron’s lips proved he was listening. That didn't mean he responded, at least not until he finished whatever he was working on. "Bel," he said, pointing directly ahead of them. "There's about to be a four-foot section here with no wards on it. As soon as I peel back this outer layer of protections, I'm going to need you to deal with the metal beneath, and then we’re all going to have to hurry inside. I can't break these wards, but I can tear them and pull them back long enough for us to slip through."
"Just say when," Bel assured him.
Ron pushed out a heavy breath and his brow creased with concentration, then he whispered, "Now."
A split second after Ron grabbed a handful of nothing but air and pulled, the symbols and runes became apparent. As soon as Bel could fit his arm into the gap, he did, punching through the thin metal. Ron kept pulling, giving Beelzebub more room to work, and work he did. The giant demon tore at the siding like it was a tin can. It didn't take long before there was a hole in the side of the building large enough for him to walk through without ducking.
"Go, go, go," Nick ordered.
Bel went first with Sam on his heels. I followed third, and Nick hesitated only for a split second before coming in behind me. We all turned to look in time to see Ron twist so that he was pushing the wards open instead of pulling, and then he stepped backwards. Not wanting to see him hurt, Bel reached out and grabbed Ron around the waist, yanking him inside the building with us. Immediately, the protections snapped back into place.
But that didn't mean we were necessarily safe. For all we knew, there could be plenty of angels in here to watch their next shipment. We still didn't know how many choirs had been sent to Earth for this project, just that there were a lot of them. Yet for all intents and purposes, the inside of this building looked like it had been abandoned.
I could only say that because the row upon row of people didn't look real. They all sat with their legs straight out before them and their hands in their laps. Not a single one moved. I wasn't even sure they blinked. Like mannequins, they'd been organized into equally-numbered groups with walking spaces between them.
Just the sight of it made a chill run down my spine. This was wrong. I didn't need anyone to tell me that; I could see it for myself. These were people, not crates of supplies! But I wasn't the only one who was counting. Each cluster seemed to have ten people, five on each side, and every row had five clusters. There were four complete rows, and a new one had been started. It only had twelve bodies, but it was enough to prove that they were looking for more.
"That's more than two hundred people," Sam said softly. "How are we going to fix them all?"
"Can you un-mind-fuck them, Ron?" Bel asked.
"I honestly have no idea," Ron admitted. "But whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it fast."
A gentle hand landed on my shoulder, and then Nick moved in beside me, proving it was his. "Did you see what Gabriel was doing in the church this morning?"
"Yeah, he was enthralling all of them because they had to look at him. But Nick, I can't look at two hundred people that fast."
He just rubbed, the gesture meant to be encouraging. "Yes, Luke, you can. If there is any angel on the five planes who can, it's you. And I'm going to help you any way I can."
My head started bobbing as I was thinking about how to best