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It was like peering into the face of a ghost. Susan gasped.
“Louis!”
Detective Sylvester rushed a chair over so Louis Kreuz could sit down. His face was pale and unshaven; he was a haggard shadow of his former natty self.
“You’re alive, thank God,” Sylvester said.
“You’re hurt,” Susan said, stepping up close to Louis.
“They got me before I could get out, after the Godspeed kid warned me,” Kreuz said. “I was able to escape during the confusion when the Battle Angels deserted, thanks mostly to the sympathetic guard assigned to watch me. The other guard, not exactly sympathetic.” The anguish written all over Louis’s face showed that he had a much larger, more violent story to tell. Sylvester removed the coat that had been draped over Louis’ shoulder.
Louis’s upper back was a bloodied, bandaged mess, and lower down there was another, even deeper wound. Susan cried out before she could stifle it.
They had taken his wings.
“Oh, Louis . . . ,” she said, tears flowing.
“This? It’s just a scratch,” Kreuz said, breathing deeply through the pain. He coughed, and the effort and force of it caused him to double over. His face was rapidly losing color and had turned almost gray.
“We need to get you to a doctor,” Susan said.
Louis just looked at them and shook his head. He pressed his hand against the wound—a gory mess, the bandage not stopping the blood. “I’m a goner. I know it. You know it,” Kreuz said.
“Don’t say that, Louis. You don’t know that’s true,” Susan said, tears still welling up in her eyes even though she was trying to maintain her Archangel calm.
With his fading strength, Louis pressed his hand to Susan’s arm. “My ticket’s been punched, Sue.”
Looking into his eyes, Susan didn’t want to believe it. But Louis still just silently nodded. Kreuz coughed again, and Sylvester had to help him back up to sitting. He was fading fast.
“I know this isn’t the best time,” Kreuz said with a slight, pained smile, “but right now we got some more pressing matters. The demons.”
The boom of another explosion punctuated his words.
“What do you mean?” Sylvester said.
“We can stop those bastards,” Kreuz said, looking them squarely, resolutely, in the eyes. “And I know how.”
Sylvester and Susan waited while Kreuz slipped into another coughing fit. When he was finished, he looked back up at them, his normally jovial and ruddy face now wan and deathly.
“I know how to get their leader.”
• • •
Louis died just shortly after giving the resistance the most important information it would receive in the course of this tumultuous battle for humanity. It was information that could turn the tides, and Kreuz had sacrificed his life to deliver it. Sylvester just hoped it wasn’t too late.
The loud battle outside raged incessantly, just blocks from the resistance office. Soon the office would be reduced to rubble, and the group’s time to move was running out. The radio lines had gone dead. There was no longer any way to communicate. Chaos reigned outside, and those who’d stayed behind or who were left without shelters were streaming in panic in the streets as far as they could go before hitting the imposing Hills. The demons pressed farther and farther into the city, but the Angel and human forces weren’t making it easy for them. Still, the Dark Ones kept advancing. West Angel City, with its boutique hotels and exclusive restaurants, had been flattened, and now the demons were only a mile from the heart of Angel City, the Walk of Angels. Before long the battle would be pitched on that famous street.
Detective Sylvester drew his revolver and checked to make sure it was loaded. It was. He opened the locked drawer in his temporary desk, retrieved a cardboard box full of extra ammunition, and dumped it in the side pocket of his old overcoat. The rest of the office had already been packed up, and everyone was ready to move somewhere safer.
Susan approached Sylvester, her eyes red from weeping over Louis. She had known Louis Kreuz for centuries, had worked with him in the secret resistance for many years. She’d trusted him with her life, and he had trusted her with his. And now he had paid the ultimate price.
“David,” Susan said softly, “promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Of course,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
“I mean, for me.” This made him look up. There was something left unspoken, something tender in her eyes that took Sylvester by surprise. “I—can’t lose you,” she said.
The odds were long. But Sylvester just knew he had to do something, that he would have to be the one to put Louis’s intel to good use. He’d been tracking this theory, had put his heart and soul into it, and they were so close. Communications were down, and no one else knew the truth. He would have to be the one.
