This time Leah came to a halt a dozen or so feet away. She raised her arms, palms forward. The crazed winds increased to a point where John felt them at the other end of the hall.

One of the men screamed so loud it was audible above the noise of his companions' desperate attempts to break through solid steel.

Then they were all screaming, a horrible chorus of shrieks and wails that made the hair on John's arms stand at attention.

The pulsing aura around Leah grew darker as she drained the life out of the would-be slave owners. Tiny, angry bolts of red lightning flashed silently inside the glow encompa.s.sing her body.

Her victims fell to their knees and tumbled onto their sides, their bodies shriveling into brittle husks. One of them remained standing, withered fingers wrapped in a permanent death grip on the metal push bar of the doors. Open mouths revealed tongues that resembled sunbaked slugs. Wrinkled, shrunken eyes stared out of cavernous sockets like albino prunes.

The gale surrounding Leah dissipated to a heavy breeze. She stood still for a moment, her back to John, framed in the throbbing circle of energy. Then she turned around so quickly it caught John by surprise.

He froze like a rabbit on the highway, pinned in place by Leah's dead eyes. A second later his senses returned and he ducked back around the corner, praying she hadn't had time to see him.

Heavy winds roared down the hall.

Jesus. This is it. I'm dead.

John debated running versus trying to reason with Leah. Could she even be reasoned with? Was she even human still? It was entirely possible she'd died while curing him and was now some kind of otherworldly force or creature.

No. I can't believe that. Leah is still in there somewhere. She has to be. I can't give up on her. She wouldn't give up on me. In fact, if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't be like this at all.

John stepped around the corner to face Death.

And then found himself diving to the ground as gunfire sounded behind him.

Del McCormick cursed his own stupidity for trying to shoot while running at full speed. He'd missed the cop by a mile, and now the son of a b.i.t.c.h had gone around the corner and could be in any of a dozen rooms.

Seeing the cop alive had surprised Del only for a moment. Obviously DeGarmo had managed to find him after Tal Nova's men attacked. She'd done her magic on her boyfriend once again. The real question was, where had DeGarmo disappeared to? She couldn't be too far away. Not with the cop right there. Which meant there might still be a chance to grab her and get the h.e.l.l out of the building.

His two remaining guards close behind him, Del sprinted toward the intersection where the cop had disappeared.

"I want DeGarmo alive!" he shouted to his men. Implicit in his command was the understanding that anyone else was fair game.

Del slowed and threw himself into a forward shoulder roll as he came to the corner. He let his momentum take him to the opposite side of the hallway and rose to one knee, gun aimed ahead of him and ready to fire, his body shielded by the wall.

It was the only thing that saved him.

A blast of air hit him like a hurricane and spun him back and around. His head struck the wall and the hallway disappeared behind a dazzling shower of multicolored stars.

What the-?

The lights faded. He tried to focus on the floor tiles but they kept moving and turning into doubles of themselves.

Seeing double. Explosion. Nova's men. Gotta hide.

Del climbed to his feet, using the wall for support. Somewhere in the other corridor a gun fired and a man screamed. Not trusting his eyesight, Del hugged the wall and felt with his hands until he located a doork.n.o.b. Opening it, he entered a room and staggered across it to a stack of broken, moldy wooden crates. With his last few ounces of strength he pushed his way between the shattered frames and the wall.

And then let the darkness claim him.

In the corridor, Del's bodyguards picked themselves up off the floor. One of them rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear the grit and dust from them, while the other shouted for Del.

They were still trying to get their bearings when the impossible became a reality.

Tendrils of black lightning emerged from the side hallway and wrapped themselves around the men before they knew what was happening. The slithering lightning split into twisting vines that snaked across the guards' bodies and burrowed into their ears, mouths and noses. Miniature supernovas of red exploded within the lines of energy. At the same time, the two men collapsed to the ground, their legs and arms contorting in ways human limbs were never meant to move.

The sound of snapping bones filled the air and the grotesque St. Vitus dance came to an end as the men went still. A moment later, both bodies collapsed into themselves, deflating like empty balloons.

The storm winds picked up again and filled the halls with a roaring sound. Dark-gray fog rolled into the corridor, a ground-level thundercloud inside of which black and red lightning flashed in all directions.

Death marched down the hall in search of its next victim.

Chapter Eleven.

John didn't understand what was happening at first. He'd seen Del and two other men coming at him and he'd automatically ducked back around the corner.

Straight into Leah's oncoming path.

There'd been no time to think. He'd sprinted for the closest door and dashed inside. Slammed the door closed and then backed across the empty room. The opaque window in the door obscured his view, but not so much that he couldn't see the hall grow dark. Flashes of weird lightning had splashed the gla.s.s with red and howling winds rattled the door in its frame.

At one point, something that looked like a snake made of negative energy slipped under the door and rose up, waving back and forth like an ebon cobra from another world. It had paused for a moment-a moment in which John was sure he was about to die-and then retreated back under the door.

Agonized screams reached John's ears over the shrieking winds. Del? His men? John found he had no regret for their dying. They deserved it for what they'd done, what they'd planned on doing.

His lack of remorse surprised him. He'd always believed that vigilantism was a poor subst.i.tute for the law. Criminals taking out other criminals didn't help the system in the long run; it just made it harder to maintain order.

But the retribution Leah was raining down...there was something primal about it. As if Nature herself was p.i.s.sed off and had decided to do a little cleansing.

And what if that cleansing includes you?

The question came up out of nowhere. John didn't want to believe Leah could ever hurt him. She'd had multiple opportunities, and so far he was still alive. Which made him think maybe there was still enough of the real Leah inside the she-demon roaming the halls.

Except, on all those occasions, she'd been distracted by other targets. Maybe she was just going after the worst offenders first.

It did seem like the presence of something-of what? evil? past sins?-attracted her like a magnet. And where did that leave a person who'd basically led a good life but wasn't by any stretch perfect? Last on the list? Or would she leave him and go out into the world, a hurricane of destruction, killing anyone with some type of darkness in their soul?

Was she simply a greater evil than all others, or was she the hand of G.o.d, come down to clean the world?

In the end, what she was wouldn't matter. Not to the people outside the building. They'd see her as a threat and deal with her. Do whatever it took to stop her.

Or destroy her.

"Can't let that happen."

John got to his feet. Leah deserved a chance to be normal again. If that was even possible. Which meant he had to be there in case she needed his help. He owed her his life several times over. He wasn't going to let her die because of saving him.

"Okay, G.o.d. Let's see if I'm right, that she's not going to suck the life out of me."

His hand shook as he grabbed the doork.n.o.b.

If he was wrong, he was going to wish she'd never cured him.

A heavy wind pulled the door from John's hand the moment he cracked it open. Gla.s.s shattered as it slammed against the wall. Although whatever was happening was out of sight around the corner, the effects of Leah's supernatural form were evident in the gale-force gusts that swirled through the halls and the flashes of red light in the other corridor.

Someone cried out for help. It didn't sound like Leah, but John broke into a run anyhow, the instinct to provide a.s.sistance a part of him after so many years as a cop. He rounded the corner and found the hallway blocked by a roiling cloud of black mist. Reddish lightning flashed inside it, illuminating a vaguely human form that he knew had to be Leah. Dark tendrils of energy-like the ones he'd seen before, but larger now-whipped back and forth and all around, making him think of a wounded octopus. As the h.e.l.lish nimbus churned the air, John caught a glimpse of two men on the other side.

Men who were writhing on the floor like they'd been plugged into the world's largest electrical socket. The absolute terror on their faces made John glad he couldn't see what new changes had happened to Leah.

He didn't want to know what she looked like, what she'd turned into. He just wanted to make sure she stayed safe. And if there was no chance of her becoming human again, he wanted to make sure he escaped to let someone know about the imminent danger she represented.

One of the night-black tendrils separated from the others and slowly extended in John's direction. He remembered how fast they'd moved before. In contrast to those lightning-fast strikes, this one seemed to be toying with him. Or trying to make up its mind about what to do. Then it rose up a few feet and John knew it was about to attack.

Except before it could, the hallway filled with the metallic chatter of heavy automatic gunfire, large machine pistols, or possibly MACs or HKs. The living storm cloud blocked most of his view, but he saw shadowy figures moving toward where the two men now lay motionless on the floor.

Something zipped past him like a wasp on steroids. Belatedly, John realized he should've hit the ground when the shooting started. Machine pistols packed more than enough punch to tear through a person and kill anyone unlucky enough to be behind the intended target.

So why hadn't he been hit?

Sparkles of light caught his attention. Tiny fireworks were exploding around the edges of the churning cloud that surrounded Leah. He remembered the way the other men had shot at her with no effect.

The safest place to be is right behind her.

John darted forward, positioning himself directly behind the center of the dark ma.s.s. He kept one eye on the weaving tentacles as he stayed in step with Leah's protective shield, which was slowly advancing on the men attacking her.

More of the tentacles formed and shot forward.

A second later the gunfire took on a disjointed rhythm and then stopped. Somebody screamed a long, drawn-out wail that was quickly joined by others. Just as quickly, they all ended.

In the resulting silence the sound of John's breathing and the blood pounding in his ears seemed like cannon fire. The cloud ceased its forward movement and dissipated slightly, allowing him a view of a pale, human-shaped object in the center.

An object that was rotating around to face him.

Later, John would thank all the G.o.ds in the universe that he never got a clear look at Leah in that moment. He believed with all his soul that seeing her face would have a.s.suredly stopped his heart, like a modern Medusa. Even obscured by layers of gray and black, it was too much to bear, so inhuman that her previous dead-looking countenance was pleasant by comparison.

John fell to his knees as sharp pains coursed through his guts. His bowels threatened to release and he squeezed his eyes closed, petrified the cloud would part and her lethal gaze would melt him on the spot.

A terrible sound filled his head, a cross between insane laughter and the growl of a prehistoric beast. Teeth clenched and body shaking, he waited for the cold touch of a tendril on his neck, a teasing stroke before it wrapped around him and drank the life from his body.

When several heartbeats pa.s.sed, and then several more, with nothing happening, he carefully opened his eyes.

And found Leah lying unconscious on the floor.

Chapter Twelve.

Leah opened her eyes and found ghostly faces hovering over her. Three of them, their features blurred to the point where they almost disappeared into the background of gray and white. Smaller shapes moved within the orbs and sounds reached her, timed with the movements.

The faces are speaking, her brain told her. She tried to understand the words, but her hearing was working as poorly as her vision.

One of the faces moved closer.

"Aya. Aya. AYA. C...n...you...ear me?"

Leah wanted to shout at the face to speak more clearly, but when she tried, her lips refused to move. The rest of her seemed paralyzed as well. That worried her. Had she been in an accident? Broken her back or neck? She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her body. See if she could sense what was wrong.

Something sharp jabbed her in the arm and her eyes popped open of their own accord. The face staring at her was a bit clearer now. Familiar.

John?

She still couldn't speak his name, but he seemed to sense she was aware of his presence.

"Leah. You're okay now. Everything will be fine."

Feeling began to return, a pins-and-needles tingling like her foot had fallen asleep, only instead of her foot it was her entire body. She tried again to move, and this time her arm rose up. She reached for John, desperate to feel his touch, to have him comfort her and take the fear away.

He glanced at her hand and backed away.

Why? she wanted to ask him. What's wrong? She felt hurt, betrayed, sad and other things that she couldn't express, even to herself. Because it was too hard to think about them.

And she was getting sleepy.

She closed her eyes, unaware of the tears sliding down her cheeks.

Images filled the darkness, a hundred different movies playing on a hundred different screens that surrounded her. No matter which direction Leah looked, dozens of movies played in endless loops.

A man on his knees begging for his life.

A wild-haired demoness floating in a black cloud.

Desiccated mummies crawling across the ground.

John bleeding to death on the floor.

Cement and plaster exploding in a strange hallway.