Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) - By Stacy Gail Page 0,69
Lana Dever, but it was the messed-up image you were familiar with. Were you thinking about Lana at that moment—envisioning what she looked like before she died?”
Ella frowned. “Yes. I’d never seen Lana before Charles Rainier carved her up. When I saw them in the hotel lobby, I was thinking how tragic it was that she’d been so thoroughly destroyed. And before I knew it, that pretty face turned into the nightmare I remembered.”
“Exactly. This demon isn’t into bringing the dead back to life, like we first thought. This hell spawn’s major power is all about telepathy.”
Ella felt a jolt go through Nate. “Telepathy? What, you mean like mind reading?”
“Mind reading is just the tip of the iceberg.” Macbeth grabbed up a Venti-sized cup of coffee and held onto it as if it were his security blanket. “It locks onto the most painful memories we have and uses them against us. For Richard Rainier, it’s obviously the lost love of his life. For you, Ella, it bounces from Lana’s ruined face to Charles Rainier—not surprising since you’ve got a lot of stuff in your past that would make anyone curl up into a little ball.”
Ella’s eyes narrowed. “Do I look curled up to you?”
The self-proclaimed king of the internet looked like he’d swallowed a bug. “Uh, no.”
“You were saying it uses telepathy?” Nate couldn’t seem to stop a wicked grin even as he took the hand Ella had rested on his shoulder and brought it to his lips.
“Yeah, and it’s a gift which directly feeds into its other, more obvious ability—shape-shifting. We were so distracted by that overt talent that we probably never would have figured out who this demonic dude was if Ella hadn’t experienced that strange shift in its appearance.”
“So who is this thing we’re fighting?”
“His name is Dantalion, and bottom-lining it, he’s a real badass. He’s ancient, the seventy-first of the seventy-two demons that Solomon subjugated, and a Great Duke of hell, according to apocrypha lore. Once fully manifested, his powers are ridiculous. But even in a weak, semi-manifested state he can screw up the world in a big way as long as he has some miserable idiot to feed off of, like Richard Rainier.”
“Hold on,” Ella said, holding up a hand. “I get some of what you just said, but I’ve never heard the term ‘semi-manifested’ before. Either a demon is here or it isn’t, right?”
“Being fully manifested has nothing to do with being corporeal within the human realm. It has to do with power, and right now he’s weak. At his current level of evolution, he probably wouldn’t be able to maintain a stable appearance in large crowds due to lack of strength. In other words, he wouldn’t be able to block out an inundation of human thoughts. You reported that the demon and Richard were almost standing on each other, correct?”
“Right.”
“In a semi-manifested state while in a crowd, Dantalion has to be close to the person he’s feeding off of.”
“How inconvenient for him.” Nate seemed to perk up at the news. “But very convenient for us. All I have to do is separate this demon from Richard and it’ll be a cakewalk from there.”
“Don’t underestimate Dantalion, Nate,” Macbeth warned. “Even in this state, he’s still dangerous. And fully manifested... Well, the power-up he gets is unreal, and he develops a crapload of other extremely awful abilities.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s focus on what Dantalion can do now.” Clearly not wanting to dive into the deep end first, Macbeth looked as serious as an open grave. “At the moment he can read any human being’s mind in his immediate vicinity, know all their secrets and then use that knowledge to his advantage. He’s known as the demon of a thousand faces, and is able to appear in either male or female form. Being anyone and knowing everything is pretty much the basis of this dude.”
Nate expelled a rough breath. “Gee, is that all?”
“Nope. Once he fully manifests, he goes all out by actually controlling thoughts of humans. Crowds no longer short-circuit him. On the contrary, his influence can affect masses all at once. He can implant visions in people’s minds so they see whatever he wants them to see, even if he’s thousands of miles away from his human targets, and fill the world with insanity. If he becomes fully manifested, Dantalion will have absolute control over every mind in the world.”
Ella’s blood ran cold at the thought of living in a world of chaos and madness. “It’s