The Night Beat

ways to dust us into oblivion. But our minds could do it in the right combination of bad circumstances. And I was in one of those. I knew that no one could survive falling from this height and my mind was prepared to die therefore. I tried to swing it back into positive city, but it wasn’t having any. We were going splat and then we were going into the eternal blackness.
    All of a sudden I wasn’t falling any more. I wasn’t splatted, either. I risked a look over my shoulder. There was a whirlwind under me. A whirlwind made up of Dirt Corps.
    The half mummy who I was resting on grunted. “You’re heavier than you look.”
    “Thanks. Meant both sarcastically and extremely gratefully. I’d ask how you knew to show up and do this impressive save, but truth be told, I don’t care.”
    There were a variety of ghosts who were on the outside of the whirlwind, essentially keeping it moving. They all chuckled. One who I was pretty sure was someone who Maurice had fought with during the Revolutionary War spoke up. “We’re going to transport you to your next destination. Black Angel One feels that might be safer.”
    “Couldn’t be less safe than any other form of flying.” Frankly, it felt safer to me, which was ridiculous. But I didn’t argue. I also didn’t struggle or feel terrified. Dirt Corps Whirlwind was definitely the way to fly.
    In this interesting fashion we went through Necropolis to the site of the disturbance. Interestingly enough, Black Angel Two and Martin were at the Prosaic City National Cemetery. I was sick of that place already.
    We slid up to the cemetery through one of the temples to Yahweh. My personal Dirt Corps whirlwind handed me gently back to Cain. Then they spun off and the six of us shifted onto the human plane. I noted that Jack did it without any indication of confusion or problems. He was coming along fast. I was going to have to have Martin check his brainwaves -- this fast was possible without the risk of going crazy, but it was rare.
    I looked around. Impressive lack of nothing going on. “I thought you said they were under attack and there was incoming or something.”
    “Will be,” Miriam said. The others nodded. None of the angels said anything else. Apparently we were either supposed to guess or shut up. I picked shutting up.
    Jack pulled me aside. “What was that? Testing to see how easy it is to give someone a heart attack?”
    “I hate flying. In an airplane it’s okay, sort of. Any other way just plain sucks.”
    He hugged me tightly. “I thought I was going to see you die. I mean, I suppose you would have recovered, but it didn’t feel like that was going to be an option when I was watching you. I thought angels were powerful. And after all that talking up about Black Angel One, I didn’t think one of them would have butter-fingers.”
    “They are powerful, and Cain did his best. I don’t work with Black Angel One a lot.” Ever, really. “Maurice and Amanda would have known to have just one of them take me, Cain didn’t. It’s normally considered polite and a relief if they’re not reading your mind, you know.”
    “Yeah, I wasn’t enjoying that Jude guy reading me, I can say that.”
    I let this one pass. “We need to get ready for whatever’s coming, you know, if we figure it out before we’re attacked. And then we need to figure out a plan, because we’ve spent a lot of time running around and precious little thinking or running where we think we should be.”
    “I agree.” Jack let me out of his arms. “I think we need to check on the families of those from the alley. Jerry the Junkie knew something. Bobby did, too, but not as much as Jerry.”
    “Jerry was clear that Tomio was dead. So he knew it was Abaddon a few months ago, and probably that Apollyon came through the other night. I think we need to find Nero.” A thought occurred. “I think we really need to find Nero, and I’ll bet cash money that he’s either with the Tomio dupes or he’s with the families of the deceased.”
    “No argument, but why?”
    “They wanted us away from that block, and that has to mean they wanted us away from The Pleasure Palace and possibly Cotton’s pawnshop.” Me seeing Jude would only work in the favor of the Prince, because of all the past relationship issues, so they probably didn’t care about that one way or the other.
    “Yeah, you seeing your ex-boyfriend you still have the hots for probably would be viewed as a benefit to the other