“You ever get the feeling the universe is just messing with us at this point?” I asked him without getting up. “Unless there’s a hell dimension that is only parking garages, this is anticlimactic.”
“Don’t curse us. Last time you said anticlimactic, we wound up battling ghost sheep, mechanically destructive gnomes, and murder unicorns,” Angel growled, shoving himself to his knees.
“At least I have my pants this time,” I groused as I climbed to my feet, sore, stiff, and more than a little queasy from the drop and another trip through the Veil. There couldn’t be another world with ugly-ass cybertrucks, right? “Welcome back to Earth. Where bad ideas get funding by useless billionaires pretending to be geniuses.” I waved my hand at a mobile dumpster parked under a light. Not that it helped, since the thing was half-squashed by a broken concrete column.
“As long as there’s not a herd of rabid trash pandas hiding in that piece of garbage, I think we’re fine,” Angel said. He pressed the button on his comm. “Bobby? Wade?”
Static hissed through Angel’s earpiece. The kind of empty silence that meant either our comms were fried, no one was left to answer, or crossing the Veil again meant the connection stretched too far.
“I hope Victor and Kerry are okay,” I said.
“As long as the building didn’t drop, they’re probably fine,” Angel said.
“Maybe we can call SED from our cells?” I wondered, thinking we had to be somewhere in the human world, and I didn’t think the trash truck was a big sell across the ocean, but maybe supernatural beings were into them?
A wet crunch echoed from the shadows beyond the broken column.
Angel’s hand went to his sidearm, and he slipped in front of me, gaze peering into the dark.
“Could be raccoons,” I whispered.
The sound came again. Closer this time. Bigger. Too heavy for raccoons. Too deliberate for debris shifting. Something scraped against concrete, dragged metal shrieking with the familiar pop of broken glass.
“Is something dragging a car?” I whispered, heart pounding.
“That would be a really fucking huge raccoon,” Angel said, gaze still focused in the direction of the noise and the ramp out of the garage.
“We could just take the stairs,” I pointed toward the far door.
A low, rattling breath answered from the darkness. Footsteps, heavy enough to shake the entire structure and rain concrete debris down on our heads, headed our direction.
“Stairs,” Angel said, shoving me toward the door, and he didn’t have to tell me twice as we both raced for the steel fire door to escape whatever new nightmare was headed our way.
20
The stairwell doorclanged shut behind us with the hollow finality of a prison gate. My ears rang in the sudden silence, every ragged breath echoing off concrete walls as we listened for pursuit.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and frowned at the no signal display. In fact, the damn thing looked like it was scrambled. Had I fallen on it? I held it up for Angel to see the screen. “Broken?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “Just Veil shit.”
Angel kept his Glock trained on the door while backing us down the nearest flight of stairs. Emergency lights flickered overhead as if the electricity couldn’t quite keep running. We tiptoed down, trying to keep the sound from reverberating and alerting whatever the fuck that was to our presence.
We descended three levels, pausing at each door. One to the building, which wouldn’t budge and the other to the parking garage, which also wouldn’t open. Was the only way out through the beast awaiting us above?
The faint sound of voices echoed through the stairwell. Angel and I froze, though he had his weapon down, held in a two-handed grip for caution.
“Take my Taser,” Angel hissed.
“That sounds like people. I’m not going to Tase regular people.”
“Lots of things sound like people,” Angel whispered. “Doesn’t mean they won’t eat us.”
“Kinky.”
“Only you’d think so,” Angel sighed.
“Hello?” I called. “Someone there?” Angel huffed beside me, as if resigned to my inevitable death wish.
