Read Online Midnight's Angels - 03 by Tony Richards - Free Book Online Page A

seemed to be no spread of this contagion or whatever you’d call it. And no sign of the intruder that had caused it in the first place. We’d agreed the meteors had somehow brought this down on us. But that was the only thing that we were even halfway sure of.
    “Maybe it’s safe to go in now?” one of Ritchie’s men suggested.
    Which got him yelled at by the judge.
    “No, forget that! Absolutely not!”
    When he turned to me, his narrow face was reddened.
    “Know what’s really getting to me? Normally, when something bad comes down, I get this feeling. It happened when Lucas Tollburn died, remember? But I keep on reaching out with every sense I have, and I’m still getting absolutely nothing.”
    “You sense nothing bad?”
    “Nothing at all. Crazy, isn’t it?” He straightened up, his nostrils flaring. “Those altered people down there? It ought to start alarm bells ringing in my head. Instead of which, I can’t sense them either. It’s like they’re no longer there.”
    The tension in the study had become palpable, by this hour. All that we could do was listen while the cops down there kept calling in.
    I hated this. What I really wanted was to head down there myself and kick down doors, confront the situation. But I’d be ignoring my own advice.
    At the moment when I thought that I was going to explode, the eastern horizon brightened, phasing through from gray to platinum. Then a ray of golden light appeared, the sun finally coming up. Levin switched the lights off in the room so we could see more clearly.
    Shadows lifted from the houses in my field of view. The details and the colors of the town began making themselves apparent. Green and red expanses of rooftops. Backyards, pools, and parks.
    As if on cue, there was another chime from the doorbell. We could hear Fleur go to answer it. A muffled conversation followed, and I thought I recognized the other voice. And then there was a sudden blur of movement in the hallway directly outside the study door.
    It resolved itself into the shape of Willets. He’d conjured himself up here rather than bothering to use the staircase. And he must have used his last reserves of magic doing that. Because the middle-aged black man looked exhausted to the core.
    His face was bloodless and his eyes were discolored. Dried sweat left a sheen on his brow. His prematurely gray hair was askew. And when he tried to step into the room, he teetered, almost falling.
    Ritchie -- forgetting his fear of adepts -- rushed across to help.
    In the years that I’d known Lehman, I had never once seen him in this condition. The man looked like he’d gone twelve rounds with a herd of buffalo.
    And then I realized the truth of the matter. Those angels I had seen him fighting … had he been fighting with them all night ?
    There were questions that badly needed answering. But I could see that now was not the time. The man was on the verge of collapsing. Judge Levin had hurried across and was helping as well. They propped the man between them, and maneuvered him into the swivel chair behind the grand cherrywood desk in here. When they let go of him, he flopped a moment, like a fish. But then he seemed to understand that he was safe and let himself sink into the deep, luxurious upholstery.
    Fleur, an attractive although slightly dumpy woman, had come upstairs after him and was hovering anxiously in the doorway.
    Willets’s head slumped back against the leatherwork, his mouth lolling open. He was not merely worn out but parched. Levin snapped his fingers. A crystal jug of water appeared on his desk, with a glass beside it. The judge filled the latter, and then pressed it to the doctor’s lips.
    Willets sipped, then coughed. He was so badly hunched that he looked almost boneless. But a little color returned to his cheeks.
    “Thank you.”
    Levin moved the glass away. The doctor blinked a few times and then turned his scarlet-studded gaze on me.
    “Glad to see you’re still