She reached his floor, still breathing easily after her upstairs jog, went down the hall, and stood before his door. She raised a hand to knock, but something stopped her.

A feeling ran down her spine like the tickling of spider legs skittering on bare skin. The wild card virus hadn’t given her precognition, but the decade she’d spent as a SCARE agent beside Ray had honed her senses to an almost supernatural sharpness. It had also taught her to trust her instincts, which now were whispering urgent warnings in her ears.

She paused at the door and listened. Initially it was quiet inside, but there came a brief murmur of low voices and then again silence. She frowned, staring at the hotel-room door. The Angel was not a subtle person. She felt a tiny pinch of guilt, knowing that Billy would moan when SCARE got the bill for this—they were always seriously underfunded—but she had to do what she thought was right. And the tickling feeling in her spine and the haunting whispers in her ears were telling her that this was right.

“Save my soul from evil, Lord, and heal this warrior’s heart,” she murmured. Her four-foot-long, flaming cross-hilted broadsword appeared in her leather-gauntleted hands and she plowed through the door, yanking it from its frame, shattering its wooden panels, and sending pieces flying before her into the room beyond.

“Freeze, Stunt—Jesus Christ!” a foreign-accented voice shouted. The empty bed and the aborted command that had come from one of the two men standing across the room both told her that Jamal wasn’t present, though plainly expected.

They gaped at her, momentarily caught mid-draw. She knew that she had only a fraction of a second before they’d shoot. Her sudden appearance had disconcerted them, as had the flying pieces of shattered debris they were ducking. They raised their arms to shield their faces. The Angel knew the only thing to do was disconcert them further.

She cocked her arm and threw her blade sideways. It helicoptered across the room like a flashing scythe and as it left her hand the sprinkler system in the ceiling kicked in. The fire alarm hooted, adding to the chaos. Even more astonishing, at least to the ambushers, the flames dancing on the sword’s blade were unaffected by the water spraying upon them. The Angel was not surprised. Like the sword itself, the flames were unnatural. Both were manifestations of the grace granted her by God and like her righteous anger neither could be quenched, broken, or even impeded by anything physical.

She followed the whirling blade, not breaking stride as she stooped low and in passing a desk single-handedly grabbed it by a leg and bore down upon the two men, waving the furniture over her head like an unwieldy club.

The men both seemed to be nats, but were as mismatched physically as a comedy team. One was short and round, the other tall and skinny. The skinny one was an inch or two taller than the Angel. The short, fat guy had long blond hair that was slicked back even before being soaked by the ceiling sprinkler, and was pulled into a lank ponytail.