His heart ached with the rampant, reckless ruin of lives. Willful destruction always horrified him. The explosion had thrown bricks and cement over a ten-block radius. The sluggish wind picked up the lightest dust particles and coated the entire Portland metropolitan area with the abrasive grit. The thick air smothered everyone in the odor of explosives, and the cries of the lost and injured hung in the hot air. He lengthened his wings and hung suspended in a sustained hover. Bomb experts and rescue dogs climbed the wobbling piles of debris, searching for both clues and survivors. EMTs and the Red Cross set up a quick field hospital to triage the injured and to identify the dead. The Angel of Death was everywhere at once, closing the eyelids of fallen with its skeletal fingers. Others, it merely touched their foreheads with careful delicacy. Those fell into comas. Their lost minds cried out to Lance. As he touched them, a few lifted into a healing sleep. Others refused, their souls needing to roam the in-between until they made the decision to move on or come back to the living.
