these gutters. I’m not a medium and I’m not a necromancer, but when I touch haunted objects, the ghosts respond. And tonight, I needed their help.
Bo’s spirit grew more solid, and hurled himself at the Nephilim closest to me. Monroe still looked bushwacked by what was going on, but the half-turned fallen angels were close enough to anyone’s definition of monster that she decided to strike first and ask questions later. She had emptied her clip into the Nephilim, and the fact that they kept on coming must have convinced her that they were the bad guys. We could hash it out later, if we were all alive to argue about it. Now, Monroe went after the Nephilim’s backs, pistol-whipping one and pulling a truncheon from somewhere to hammer away at their skulls.
Teag’s urumi had both of the Nephilim stripped nearly bare of skin. Deep cuts to the muscle and tendons should have stopped them, but they kept on coming. Anthony hurled rocks from the gutter, and he pitched like a major leaguer, but we just didn’t have the firepower to bring these suckers down.
I saw a blur, and one of the Nephilim flew through the air. He landed on the chevaux de frise atopthe wrought iron fence behind us and stuck like a gigged frog. Another blur, and the last Nephilim stopped in his tracks, with a steel sword protruding from his chest through his heart. A second later, his head was torn from his body. The corpse shuddered and convulsed, then crumbled to ash. Sorren stood behind him, a bloodied sword in his hands.
“I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life,” I said shakily, lowering my walking stick. Bo’s ghost rubbed against Sorren, gave me a tired doggy smile, and vanished.
“What… the hell… happened here?” Bloodied and bruised, Detective Monroe staggered toward us. I’ll give her props – she had to make a split-second judgment on whom to back, and she picked the right team.
“What do you think happened?” Sorren asked. I recognized the honeyed tone of compulsion.
“I have no idea,” Monroe replied, less forcefully than before. “Those men looked normal, but no one human can take that kind of damage –”
I wasn’t Detective Monroe’s biggest fan. We’d never be BFFs, or do a girls’ night out. But right now, I felt for her. She was used to a world where there wasn’t such a thing as monsters, where everything made sense, and where the simplest explanation was the best. And she had just tumbled into the Twilight Zone.
“You fought bravely,” Sorren said in a voice that was almost impossible to resist. “Why did you follow Cassidy?”
“I know there’s more going on than what she’s saying,” Monroe said as if she were in a trance. “I figured I’d follow them, see where they went. Wondered what the lawyer has to do with it. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
I could tell that Monroe was fighting the compulsion, but her voice had taken on a dream-like quality. Anthony moved forward, and his expression was equally intrigued and repelled, but Teag vigorously motioned for him to be quiet.
“What did you see?” Sorren asked.
Monroe’s answer was halting. I’m sure for a by-the-book cop, fighting monsters strained every rational synapse in her brain. “I saw… monsters. Or people dressed up like monsters. Or terrorists that looked like… monsters.”
There’s a moment when people encounter the supernatural and it turns their world upside-down. Some people can deal with it. Most can’t. Monroe might be obnoxious, but she was a good cop. She just wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing. Neither were ninety-nine percent of the people on this planet.
“You saw an attempted drive-by shooting. The shooters were after Cassidy, Teag, and Anthony,” Sorren said quietly. “You ordered the attackers to disperse, and they did not heed your orders. Then as they drove away, you fired your weapon into the air as a warning and finally into their vehicle. There were no monsters. Nothing unusual happened. Just three people fighting off an attack. Do you understand?”
Numbly, Monroe nodded. She’d had the courage to stick around and help, even though she had no idea what was going on and didn’t actually like us. And now she could go back to her everyday existence, disbelieving in magic and monsters, secure in her very normal world. I envied her – just a little.
“You’re going to walk back to your car,” Sorren instructed. When you get there, you’ll remember helping to scare off the