Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) - By Stacy Gail Page 0,56
her brow...
Before Ella’s disbelieving eyes, the thing that wore Lana’s peaches-and-cream face began to lose its color, fading into the clammy, grayish pallor that Ella remembered. Slits appeared on the chin radiating from the mouth downward, and from the eyebrows up toward the hairline that became lank and reddened with blood. More slits appeared beneath the eyes so that it allowed what looked like tears of blood to run copiously down the face.
Just as she remembered.
A child’s scream rent the air. Someone dropped a breakfast plate to shatter on the polished marble floor. That seemed to be the cue for all hell to break loose. Shouts for someone to call 911 rose while dining chairs scraped across the floor, adding to the horrified cacophony. The scattered scouts came together and huddled for safety while their frantic troop leaders tried to get in front of them to shield them from the hideous nightmare that now stood next to Richard Rainier.
Hell had come to ruin everyone’s most important meal of the day.
With the single-minded determination of a woman on a mission, Ella moved from her hiding place toward the lobby’s fire alarm, her gaze never leaving the pair now getting everyone’s full attention. In a move that was so fast it appeared to blur around the edges, the now-gory mess that was supposedly Lana Dever spun in place until it faced her head-on, as if the monster had suddenly known she was nearby. Ella had thought she understood the term if looks could kill before, but the malevolence boiling over in the demon’s eyes gave her a new definition.
The maddened intensity of the demon’s attention stopped her dead in her tracks. Jaw tight, she balanced lightly on the balls of her feet, like Jacob had taught her. If a mugger or stalker wanted to make you into a victim, the first thing to do was look that predator dead in the eye to show there was no victim present. She only hoped a hardcore stare-down worked just as well against spawns of hell.
“Lana!” Despite the hysteria rising to a deafening roar in the lobby, Ella clearly heard Richard’s voice as he grabbed the demon that looked like the deceased woman by the shoulders. “What is this, darling? What’s happening?”
Darling? Well, well. Isn’t that interesting.
The demon’s head jerked as if it were trying to dodge a blow even as several people closed in on them to render assistance. Another too-fast motion brought the demon out of Richard’s clutches and next to a young man wearing a Chicago Bears hoodie and carrying a breakfast tray. He stepped back automatically, but already the demon’s appearance began to morph. For the briefest moment there was simply no face at all—no pretty Lana. No near-death Lana. Nothing. Just a blank lump waiting to be molded. And just as suddenly another person stood there—an unfamiliar, sweaty middle-aged guy whose soft, blubbery mouth leered at the man in the hoodie, who in turn grabbed a knife off his tray before dropping it with a crash.
“No, get away! You can’t touch me anymore!” The hysterical man swung wildly at the demon, who whipped around with that inhuman speed and pushed a woman straight toward the screaming man. Still screaming and flailing at anything that moved, the Chicago Bears fan knocked the woman squarely in the face, and she went down like the loser in a prizefight. As a small pool of blood puddled under the unconscious woman’s head, a twisted smile curled the demon’s sweaty face, and without warning it looked back in Ella’s direction. Pain twisted between her eyes as if something alien was trying to crowd her brain out of her skull, a sensation that was so sick and wrong she nearly vomited. Before she could stop it, the image of Charles Rainier forced its way to the forefront of her mind, and a shattered cry escaped her even as she blindly clawed in the direction of the fire alarm.
Nate. Focus on warning him. Saving him...
The demon’s face began to melt, to morph into Charles’s image, and with one last frenzied half-scream she yanked on the alarm with all her might.
Chapter Thirteen
“I broke a nail.”
Startled, Nate looked away from the rush of midday traffic to Ella. When he’d found himself alone in the hotel room, his first panicked thought was that she’d been abducted. A frantic sweep of the room uncovered no signs of a struggle, but he did find the note she’d left by the bed complete