It was an almost perfect November afternoon. The sky was the kind of blue you’d expect to see in some gorgeous blonde’s eyes. What few clouds there were had dissipated shortly after lunch. It was cold enough for a sweater, but there was no real bite in the air yet and zero wind. As soon as the sun went behind the buildings across the street the day’s perfection would be complete. Perfect, especially if you were going to be shooting someone from five stories up.
That was Matt York’s mission today. He would be taking the head off of one Walter Owen, billionaire scumball. It was nothing he relished. Killing wasn’t something to be enjoyed. God expressly forbade it a number of times and that never left Matt’s head for an instant. The only thing that made it palatable was that he wouldn’t actually be killing a person.
He’d killed people before sure, two dozen to be exact, but those were acts of war and he was under direct orders to do so. The army chaplain had assured him that the sixth commandment didn’t include acts of war. It was strictly speaking about acts of malice against his fellow man. After a lot of prayer and a number of sleepless nights he reckoned that that made sense.
What he was about to do was definitely an act of malice. He wasn’t at war, not a war declared by any country that was. And his heart was filled with an anger that he hoped was righteous beyond question. What made this situation different was the target. If you looked at Owen’s picture, something Matt had done countless times over the last six months, what you saw wasn’t impressive in any way. He was your typical pudgy, balding white guy in his late forties to early fifties. His suits were damned expensive, but usually rumpled. However, pictures did him no justice. They didn’t capture the creature hiding behind those rimless glasses.
Matt had only seen it once in this case, but that was enough. They had shared an elevator in the building where Matt’s publisher had an office. As Matt got on he met Owen’s glance and immediately flashed back to the incident in Afghanistan. The man that he had killed in that case had the same inhuman quality about the eyes. It wasn’t anything that most people would notice, or if they did they would dismiss it as a passing shudder. But Matt noticed and thanks to his studies he knew that it could only mean one thing. Walter Owen was a demon.
Once he would have scoffed at the idea of demons walking amongst us in human form. Sure he had believed in demons for as long as he could remember. He was raised in a very conservative church and his parents cautioned him against their influence in things like television and music. But the thought of them as flesh and blood creatures or of them taking that form seemed unlikely. Their attacks were exclusively thought of as happening on the spiritual plane.
That all changed after his mom and dad were killed under some unusual circumstances. His memories of that day weren’t clear. There was a lot of blood and by all accounts he was found under a table near where what little was left of them lay, shivering and moaning. From then on he dove deeply into his faith, seeking refuge from the things he had seen. A ravenous reader and excellent student, he began to read things that caused a gradual change to occur.
In the bible angels took human form on more than one occasion. Why shouldn’t demons, who were nothing more than fallen angels, be able to do the same thing? Throughout history and across cultural divides there were stories of shape shifters, vampires, eaters of human flesh, sorcerers, and witches. He came to believe that these legends were probably more than just stories. It seemed reasonable that if demons were indeed walking among us that they would behave exactly like all of the nightmarish creatures that fairy tales warned you about. Of course all of that knowledge remained strictly theoretical until his tour of duty in the Middle East.
His mind began to drift back to that day, when he caught himself. “Focus Archangel. You’re on duty,” he muttered under his breath. It had been his nickname from an early age following him into the service and not always used favorably. He had a well earned rep as a bit of a zealot.
Crosshairs fell on the spot where Owen’s limo would be pulling up just about any time now. The perch he had chosen a month ago was directly across from the high security building where his target had a penthouse suite. It was on the fifth floor of an unfinished high rise. As far as he knew it would remain unfinished since the backing for it had dried up with the recent bust in the economy. He’d been here since well before dawn. There was no one to stop him from coming up but since it was an abandoned site he didn’t want to risk being seen entering the worksite during the day.
There were no walls to block his sight and bags of concrete and stacks of rebar made for good cover. The quality of light was decreasing rapidly, but he’d picked as good a scope as he could find off the shelf and it made excellent use of what was available. That plus the Winchester Model 70 had been easy enough to get and should do the job well. He missed some of the fancier toys that he’d had access to once upon a time, but those would just have made this hit easier to trace. As it was there was no paper trail on anything he was using and he’d dump it all afterwards.
The only thing that he would need to make sure to grab would be the homemade silencer. That was one piece of his military education that he though he’d never have a use for, but the hunting rifle made a respectable bang. Part of the noise would be lost in the concrete and steel of the surrounding buildings and the baffle should help keep what was left from giving his location away. With no direct sunlight to cause lens flare and enough light to reduce visible muzzle flash, he should be out and away before Owen’s body guards could get a bead on his location.
A long, silver Mercedes pulled up, disgorging three large men in stylish European suits. The expensive fabric did little to conceal the guns they carried and nothing at all to hide the nature of the men themselves. They were thugs, expensive ones sure, but thugs none the less. Matt had worked with just such men in parts of the world that most people couldn’t pronounce much less point out on a map. They weren’t evil, all too human, and little more than ignorant pawns. His aim didn’t waver to any of them. They were far from innocent, but they weren’t his target.
He drew in a breath, focused one part of his mind on counting his heartbeat and waited. The nearly hairless head of Walter Owen became visible, not unlike a turtle’s coming out of its shell. Adjusting for the wind and distance, Matt pulled the trigger and watched as that head disintegrated into a pinkish red sludge. Owen’s men began moving before the sound even seemed to reach them. They weren’t concerned with their charge so much, since he was way beyond their ability to guard. Instead they sought cover and the source of the dreadful sound that echoed on and on.
Matt didn’t have any eyes for any of that though. Instead his focus was on the dark shadow that seemed to pass from Owen’s body like a wisp of oil smoke. It had definite form, though no apparent substance. Serpentine, with what looked like four pairs of legs, the shade was gone almost as quickly as it had come. The vision was outside of his limited experience, but he thought he may have a clue as to what it was. And he didn’t like it’s portent a bit.
That would have to wait though. He needed to get out of there as quickly as he could. Five twists and the silencer went into a deep zippered pocket that was part of the midnight blue coverall he wore. The rifle and shell would stay here. He didn’t care if the police found it as there should be no way to trace it back to him. The matching watch cap he wore rolled down to cover his face, leaving only his eyes exposed.
A quick crouching run across the large concrete expanse took him to the opposite side of the building where he rappelled down a long nylon rope that had been sitting there coiled and ready since last week. His body moved instinctually thanks to the number of times he had gone over the motions, following the main escape route that he had planned. It was almost completely dark now, the November light running down like the clock he was racing against. Once over a fence and down an alley he stopped, breathing as regularly as he could. Adrenaline and his own will fought each other for control. Once he hit a street he’d need to look as calm as possible.
A long pull on his zippered front and the coverall puddled around his feet. Under it he had on a pair of blue jeans and a plain gray sweatshirt. He unshouldered the empty backpack that he also wore and stuffed the blue material into it. It would be burned at the earliest opportunity. His breathing slowed and sweat slowly dried in the cool night air. He now looked little different from the students and young professionals that you might find in this part of town. He was handsome, but not unusually so, his platinum hair and blue eyes more striking than attractive. At five feet nine inches tall with a runner’s build, he was far from intimidating. In short, he was someone you might look at twice, but probably wouldn’t remember long after passing him on the street.
He moved off with a sense of purpose. If his thoughts were in order he had just made a grave mistake. What he had killed up there had probably been a man after all, or at least mostly a man. If that was the case then his next steps would have to radically change.
