A Terrible Fall of Angels, Page 4

  “Understood,” Charleston said.

  “Then what are you going to do about it?” Paulson asked, one hand on his hip, so the white coat swept back from his scrubs as if he was going for a weapon almost.

  “What’s your background with the gifted, Doctor, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.

  “I do mind you asking.” He turned back to my boss. “What are you going to do about his disrupting this hospital?”

  “I’ll make some calls. I’ll leave Detective Havelock here until we can come up with a more permanent solution.”

  “How is the detective supposed to help the issue? I mean, if he could help, then why isn’t he already?”

  Charleston smiled at the man’s anger, trying to be pleasant. “Maybe he can help shoo the nurses out.”

  “I cannot guarantee that their fascination with this patient isn’t compromising their ability to care for the other patients on this floor. Your detective isn’t the only one here who was negatively impacted by a spiritual experience. I need my staff to be able to care for all of them.”

  “I understand that, Doctor, and I will find someone whose gifts help the situation a little more actively than Havelock here, but until I can find the right person for the job Havelock is one of my best people.”

  I fought not to react too much to that last statement. Charleston wasn’t much for that kind of compliment in front of civilians. Of course, maybe he was just reassuring the doctor. Either way I tried to look worthy of the compliment; some days I’d have believed Charleston was right, but Gimble was compromised because I had told the angel that it didn’t have to pretend to be human for me; if I hadn’t invited it to show itself in pure form it wouldn’t have done it in a public area. So it was my fault that Gimble was blissed out and projecting happy social messages to the nurses, and if he gave away all his belongings and became a monk that would be my fault, too. I prayed hard that he got over this—I didn’t want another person going insane because I couldn’t protect them from the angels. One was plenty.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The lieutenant started to make his call just down the hallway from Gimble’s room, but I saw him look at the rooms on the other side of the hallway and then he looked at the door in the middle. He wrapped his hand around something that was under his button-down shirt. I knew it was a small bag that he wore around his neck. As long as I’d known him, he’d worn it constantly. He lowered his hand from the bag and came back down the hallway to me. “Ask the doctor what is in this room. I don’t mean just metaphysical patients, but exactly what’s wrong with them.”

  “It’s going to fall under medical privacy, Lieutenant. He can’t tell us without a warrant or unless he knows that us not having the knowledge threatens lives, and even then, it’s his call.”

  “You’re probably right, but ask him anyway.” He gave me the room number as if I hadn’t seen him point, but it was always good to be precise.

  “I’ll ask, but can you give me a reason why? Because the doctor will ask.”

  “Tell him I’m not sure that everything in this hallway should be this close to each other, and ask him if it’s typical to have almost every room on the metaphysical injury floor full.”

  “Since you’re the one that sensed something, it might make more sense coming from you. He’s just in the room behind us.”

  “I need to ask for specific unit members, and some of the energy I’m feeling on this floor will not only hear the phone call, but they could sense things through the phone I don’t want them to know.”

  I leaned closer to him, lowering my voice as if that would make a difference to something that could hear both sides of a phone conversation from another room. “What are you sensing, Lieutenant?”

  “I’d have to do more spell work to be sure, and I’d have to get a warrant or the doctor’s permission for that, too.”

  “Since I’m the one on point, give me a hint.”

  “Demonic, maybe, or something masquerading as one, and then just black magic—the kind that compromises the soul of the person who casts the spell.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Did you feel it the first time you walked past the rooms?”

  He shook his head and put his hand back over the bag under his shirt. He closed his eyes for a second. “We need backup. I’ll request people from our unit and then put the word out that we have an officer down; that’ll give us all the manpower—sorry, person-power—we need.”

  “Gimble didn’t get injured on the job, he fainted. If the other cops hear that he’ll never live it down.”

  Lieutenant Charleston flashed me a grin that was very bright in his dark face. “Tell them he wrestled with an angel and lived to tell the tale, or tell them he’s a big pansy-ass and fainted from seeing his first metaphysical badass.” He gripped the bag a little tighter and the smile faded.

  I could feel it now, like something thick and dark trying to crawl down my throat, but it was as if it had to knock on the door of my mouth; I had to give it permission to enter me. I thought, By free will and the grace of God I hold fast against the darkness. The thick feeling eased back, pulling backward to the open door of the room.

  “Make those calls, Lieutenant. I’ll hold the fort.”

  “Get Paulson to talk to you, Havelock,” Charleston said as he moved down the hallway, the phone already to his ear, and his other hand tight on the bag under his clothes.

  I watched him until he rounded the corner for the elevators, gave one glance down the hallway at the other rooms, and went back to Gimble’s room to try to get Paulson to tell me what in Heaven or Hell was in the room across the hall.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  No, Detective Havoc, I won’t reveal personal information about patients just because your boss has a bad feeling.”

  Gimble looked from me to him and back again like it was a verbal tennis match. He was still smiling and beaming at us, but at least he was letting us talk about something besides the angel at the crime scene.

  “It’s Detective Havelock, not Havoc.”

  “I heard your lieutenant call you Havoc.”

  I nodded. “That’s a nickname; my last name is Havelock.”

  Gimble chimed in with, “Don’t feel bad, Doc, I thought his name was Detective Havoc Havelock for months, because it’s all anyone calls him at work. I don’t know why he doesn’t use his first name; Zaniel is a great name, better than George. George Gimble, with a name like that I have to work so much harder to charm the ladies.”

  I frowned at him and he just kept smiling up at me. We’d had to keep the nurses out of the room twice since Charleston left. He hadn’t been gone that long.

  “Zaniel, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name before,” Dr. Paulson said, frowning at me as if he was trying to decide if I matched my name.

  “I’ve never met another one, but George is right, I don’t go by it much at work.”

  “Whatever you call yourself, Detective, I can’t share confidential information just because your boss got spooked.”

  “Just tell me if someone on this floor tested positive for demonic contamination.”

  He reacted to the question, a slight startle. He tried to hide it, but I’d seen it. Charleston was right. “No matter how you ask the question, Detective Havelock, my answer will remain the same.”

  “Don’t you usually try to isolate demonic-contamination patients from the rest of the metaphysically injured?”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “I’m not asking you to divulge confidential patient info, I’m just asking a general protocol question.”

  Paulson seemed to mull that over and then said, “Yes, we do try to keep them a few empty rooms away from the others. If it’s a full-blown possession then they go to the nearest religious institute of their faith, not my hospital.”

  So I now knew it wasn’t a possession for certain; that didn’t leave many other options when it came to real demons. “They aren’t demon touched, are they?” It was a pol
ite term for someone with demonic ancestry. It didn’t always mean they would be bad people, or even that magically talented, but when they did have problems, they were big ones.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Stop fishing, Detective, because I’m done rising to the bait.”

  That could be a yes, or he was just tired of the word games. “Why did you break protocol and put the patient next to another darker-energy patient?”

  “How do you know . . .” He sighed, and the anger darkened his eyes again. “You didn’t know until I just told you. Damn it, Detective, I can order you out of this room and have security keep you off my floor. I will do exactly that if you ask me one more leading question.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Paulson, but there’s something wrong out there in the hallway. Something wrong in at least one room. My lieutenant felt it, and then I could feel it, so whatever it is, it’s getting stronger.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying to try and get me to give you more patient information?”

  “If you step outside this room, farther away from George’s aura, you may be able to feel it for yourself by now.”

  “No, I won’t, my psychic shielding is impenetrable.”

  “If you can shield that well, then drop a tiny bit of your protection and you will feel it.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t drop my shields, it’s a natural skill. The metaphysical practitioners at the medical school weren’t sure what would happen if they broke my shields down to teach me to control them, so they gave me a choice. I chose to leave them intact, which means I’m almost a psychic null except that I’m even more impervious to psychic attack than a true null.”

  I tried not to stare at him as I processed what he’d just said. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Doctor.”

  “I shared it because if there is a metaphysical problem that turns . . . dangerous, I need you to know that you don’t have to protect me. I have the perfect defense against everything.”

  “Appreciate knowing that,” I said.

  “I also want to be clear that I will be useless for any metaphysical offense. I can protect myself, but no one else.”

  I nodded. “Good to know,” I said.

  “Yes, most people with my ability to shield can flex it outward to protect others, but I can’t. I didn’t want you to count on me to do something I am incapable of.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “You’re welcome.” He studied my face as if he would memorize me. “You aren’t lying about what you’re sensing on the floor, are you?”

  “No, Dr. Paulson, I’m not.”

  “Then you need to know that this is the first time I’ve seen the metaphysical unit completely full. That’s why we had to put patients next to each other that we normally would have separated.”

  “Was it one incident that left a lot of injured?”

  “No, Detective Havelock, they’re all from different incidents. In fact, there’s not even a theme. It’s not a shape-shifter gang war filling the ward, or fairies getting drunk on energy at Solstice, or even spells going wrong at the dark of the moon and sending us a whole coven. There’s no pattern.”

  “Is it all”—I tried not to say evil, since the new, more sensitive vocabulary meant we couldn’t call anyone’s religion evil, but—“negative energies, except for George here?”

  “No, we have three that you would call purely negative, two that are somewhere between good and evil, and the rest are neutral. Literally just injuries from magic gone awry. We’ve even got one teenager with a broken wrist from a poltergeist.”

  “It’s rare that a poltergeist will hurt someone badly enough to be hospitalized. Are you sure it’s not something more malignant?” I said.

  “The injury isn’t that bad, but the witch on duty suggested we keep him overnight in a warded room so the poltergeist wouldn’t be able to feed off the teenage energy until a more permanent solution can be arranged.”

  “Aren’t all the rooms on this floor warded against magic?” I asked.

  He looked at me as if I’d said something stupid and then pointed at a small flat box set into the wall beside the door. It was blank and innocuous looking, but I knew if I looked at it with that other part of my vision it would have holy symbols on it.

  “Of course, the new ward panels that got installed last month. Sorry, they’re new enough I keep forgetting,” I said.

  He nodded, face softening, as if I’d redeemed myself a little. “Yes, even someone with a small talent could touch the ward panel and they would be invoked.”

  “Can you activate the ward panels?” I asked.

  “I haven’t tried, but I’d go on the assumption that it’s like all magic and would require my shielding to be more porous, but I assume you have talent in that area, so the panels should work for you.”

  “Does it keep things in, or out?” I asked.

  “What is inside the warded area remains, what is outside can’t cross, or that’s the theory.”

  “Theory?” I asked.

  “It’s very difficult to make a generic warding spell that a magical practitioner can use that will stand against all energies, Detective. I cannot work magic, but I’ve seen enough of it trying to get in and out of these wards to tell you that it’s good, but it’s not a perfect system.”

  “No mystical system is perfect,” I said.

  “There are a few priests assigned to this hospital that would disagree with you, but they aren’t here right now, and I agree with you.”

  “Are the wards turned on in the two rooms with open doors, and the closed one across the hall from them?”

  “No on the open rooms, yes on the closed one.”

  “I know you don’t want to give me details, but with demons isn’t it protocol to put up any wards you have?”

  “Not in the case of possession, because we want the demon to leave the patient. If we put up magical walls to contain the demon, that means it’s less likely to be able to leave the human host even if it wants to.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t a full possession.”

  “It’s not, but it’s similar enough, and when the wards were invoked the patient’s vital signs became erratic. We tried everything else but only the wards being deactivated saved the patient’s life.”

  I fought not to give him a look similar to the one that he’d given me just minutes ago. “Don’t you think that was suspicious of demon possession? They have been known to almost kill their hosts to try to prevent priests from exorcising them.”

  “It was one of my colleagues who made the decision. I haven’t had a chance to complete my rounds on the floor because you and your friend here have caused me to have to herd the nursing staff.”

  “So you haven’t looked into any of those rooms yet?”

  “I was just stepping in to do my own evaluation when another patient needed more immediate attention and then there was you.”

  “Do you have an exorcism team on call tonight?”

  “If you mean priests, then no, but we have a Wiccan high priestess on call. She’s also a nurse so she can help triage after the supernatural emergency is over.” Something in his tone made it clear that he found her more useful than any of the priests who cycled through the hospital. I couldn’t argue that most of them didn’t have medical training.

  “Don’t most exorcism rituals take days to perform?” he asked.

  “Yes, and if we need that kind of help tonight, we’re going to need something quicker acting.”

  “We have angels,” George said, smiling up at us from the bed.

  “We did see an angel,” I said, and smiled back, because how could I not with his eyes full of such perfect trust? George was an optimist, but he’d been a police officer long enough to make detective, which meant perfect trust had been left behind years ago. I didn’t know any detectives who still believed in the ideals that they’d started with.

  George’s face crumpled a little, like he was thinking very hard about something, bu
t it wasn’t his usual grinning cynicism. It was like a glimpse of what he might have looked like at age five when the world was new and explaining yourself to grown-ups was hard.

  Nurse Gonzales went past the door, not running, but like he had a purpose. He never glanced in at us; maybe whatever effect George was having on the nurses was fading.

  Nurse Prescott rushed past the door next. It made me look down the hallway in time to see her go into the open door that Charleston had been worried about.

  I stepped farther into the hallway and the moment I did I felt . . . evil. There was no other word for it. No politically correct term covered the sensation of it crawling over my skin, raising the hair at the back of my neck and along my arms.

  Charleston texted, “Elevators not working. 20 floors be there ASAP.”

  A woman screamed and then Nurse Prescott stumbled backward out of the room; she fell on her ass in the hallway, but it was like she couldn’t look away from whatever was in the room. She started backing down the hallway on her hands and feet like the crab walk they used to make us do in gym class. I was moving to help her before I’d even thought about it. I was a cop—we ran toward the sound of screams, not away from them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I had my gun in one hand as I grabbed her arm to pull her to her feet and get her away from the room. I couldn’t see anything in the room but the bed and someone under the sheets. She screamed and batted at me with her hands. I pulled her across the floor by her arm as I said, “Police, I’m police, you’re safe.”

  She stopped slapping at me and got to her feet with my hand steadying her. She shook her head too fast and too often. She gasped. “Ray, oh my God, Ray’s . . .”

  “What’s wrong with Gonzales?” Paulson said from just behind us. He hadn’t stayed in the room where it was safe, point for him, but he was an ER doctor—they tended to run toward trouble, too.

  Her breath came out as a sob as she said, “It tore him apart.”