Among Us: A Supernatural Novel written by Carver Edlund

CRAP

Without looking, without waiting to see who had hit him, Sam lashed out with his right hand. Astonished, Aya watched the demon-killing knife sink to the hilt in a strange man's chest.

Sam let go of the knife. The sickening ocher hue and leathery shine of his skin flattened underneath its normally healthy tan like water disappearing beneath sand. The eyebrows smoothed, the nose rounded, the sharp-toothed smile shrank, the ears shortened, and the awful yellow glint in the eyes cleared. He was human again. Sam again. A Sam she'd completely lost her guard around, so comfortable in his unassuming, empathetic presence that she'd sat close enough to touch. A Sam who was breathing too fast, a welt rising across his high cheekbone.

Meanwhile, the black smoke hurriedly spiraled back into Paulie's body, sucked up as though by a vacuum. The three of them, Sam, the demon within Paulie, and Aya, stood in a breathless, weightless moment as the strange man, his thick lips pursing, calmly looked down at his torn, powder-blue dress shirt. At the aged bone handle sticking, obscenely, out of his chest.

He wrapped large fingers around the handle. He slowly, slowly pulled the knife free. The blade emerged, a cringe-worthy centimeter at a time, smeared with red blood.

Deliberately, he looked at Sam. He held the knife to the side. He opened his fingers, one by one.

The knife dropped to the carpet.

"Uriel," Sam gasped, sounding aghast, and the weight of the world crashed down.

An angel, Aya realized, feeling a bit numb. He's an angel!

Uriel smiled in apparent delight. In a deep, soft drawl, he said, "I've been waiting for this. I said I wouldn't tell you again, boy. Now you're mine."

He wasn't like Castiel, Aya thought, dazed. He wasn't like her angel, as she'd started to think of him, her dreamwalking friend. The gentle creature who wanted to watch the sharks swim. Out there on the street—had it really been only a day ago?—Castiel's true form had blazed white-gold, like an immense sword of fire, like the rays of a dawning sun as seen from Venus. Here, in her little apartment, Uriel's true form teased the edges of her filtered reikan. Wavering on the air, an insubstantial purplish halo spread around his head, absorbing the light rather than producing it. The shadows of his humongous wings, furling and unfurling with the same lazy motion as a cat displaying its claws, seemed sharper than Castiel's, as though the feathers could cut like knives.

An angel, not a demon. But absolutely terrifying.

Demon-Paulie groaned. "Aw, give me a break. Another one! Your daddy must be punting your giant feathered asses off his cloud left and right. What did you do, shit on the holy rug?"

Aya hated him. She hated the demon for stealing Paulie's voice and disfiguring Paulie's face. For making Paulie say such rotten things.

"You dare blaspheme in my presence?" Uriel said in return, the bulge of his dark eyes narrowing. He didn't acknowledge in any way that Aya stood within arms' reach. "Insignificant pustule."

"Yeah, same to you, brother—" the demon snapped, working himself up.

"I," Uriel said, his soft voice gaining volume, "am not your brother."

Aya saw it coming. She was learning how these new scary things liked to work. The angels. The demons. When Uriel threw up his hand and the demon crouched as though preparing to pounce, she launched herself at him.

At Paulie. And at the demon inside him.

Castiel was wrong. She wasn't useless. There was something she could do. To save one, she had to save both. Her arms clamped around his middle, her face barreling into his stomach.