by Nour Zikra
Michael did not respond. Although he shifted his head a smidge toward Madadel, he kept his focus on me.
Madadel folded his arms and looked at me, his face thoughtful. “I just came to let you know that Reed is calling some of his friends and asking them to join our side in battle. It would greatly help us.”
In my head, I pictured thousands of kids barely out of their teens falling to the same fate as Sam. Bullet in the head. Bullet in the chest. “No,” I said and charged toward my room, squeezing myself past Madadel.
When I entered the room, Reed had his phone to his ear. “Yes, meet us at that address. Bring as many people as you can.”
“Reed, what are you doing?” I wanted to grab the phone out of his hand. Instead, I tugged at his arm. “Reed, don’t bring more people into this.”
His hazel eyes narrowed as he lowered the phone. “Hiding isn’t the solution.”
Without giving me time to respond, he left the room. My mouth hung open in complete disbelief. I heard him open his bedroom door down the hall and shut it after him. Taking a deep breath, I fell against the bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering when my baby brother became this tough.
Michael and Madadel came in a few moments later. While both had to duck to get inside, Michael was clearly the larger angel. He crammed his wings through the door.
“Adelaide.” Michael’s tall frame hovered above me. “We do need more people on our side.”
I closed my eyes. “They’re going to get hurt, and this is all my fault. I can’t stand the idea of bringing innocent people into this.”
“They will get hurt for certain if they do not protect themselves. At this moment, there is more evil than good on earth. People must defend themselves. It is not enough for us to defend them.”
My fingernails dug into the skin of my palms. “Is that why you didn’t fight Lucifer this morning when he hurt Adriel? Because Adriel had to defend himself?” I looked up at the angel, hoping he noticed my defiance.
“No, not at all.” He leaned down and touched my fisted hands, forcing me to relax them. “Like I said, Adriel made his choice. Furthermore, I was not about to enter a demon den on my own. I might be an archangel, but I am not reckless.”
“And for that, Adriel is gone.”
“If I may interrupt.” Madadel stood in the back of the room, examining the few books I’d left behind on the bookshelf years ago. In his hand, he held Brave New World. “May I ask why you called your friend when you do not want to bring innocent lives into this battle?”
He meant Lizzy, of course. Sitting up, I took a moment to think everything through, then said, “I let a few people in because they’re already part of the mess that is my life. I can’t tell them to sit back now.”
Michael shuffled from one foot to the other, his hand reaching to his side. Without a word, he pulled out an enormous sword I hadn’t seen before. I shrieked as he thrust it into the air.
“What are you doing?” My heart hammered in my chest in response to the proximity of the five-foot-long weapon to my body.
He tore out of the door, his footsteps nearly silent.
“What the fuck?”
Madadel placed my book back on the sparse bookshelf and shrugged. “A demon is outside.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I jumped to my feet and ran after Michael.
Pulling my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket felt natural at this point. My week of training had prepared me for this. I ran out the front door, Reed shouting behind me, and liberated the knife. Black stains covered my weapon; Saleos’s blood. I’d killed the bastard and would kill more of his kind.
Michael soared into the air, traveling so fast that tree leaves ruffled on both sides of the road. On the ground, not far from where Michael flew, a woman had a young boy in her grasp.
Michael plummeted to the ground and thrust his sword straight into the woman’s head. Blood sprayed the boy, who screamed and cried. I reached them just in time to see the woman fall to the ground, taking the boy down with her.
“Mommy!” The kid’s face filled with tears. “Mommy!”
I grabbed the kid out of the dead woman’s hold and hugged him against me. He didn’t look older than eight; that alone scared me.
“What did you do?” I glowered at the angel. “You killed his mom!”
Michael tucked his sword away. “That is not his mother.”
“What?”
“This demon was kidnapping him.”
At a closer look, I realized he was right. The woman didn’t resemble the child one bit. Besides, her black eyes, now transforming back to brown, made her unfit to be a parent.
“Where’s his mom, then?”
Michael pointed at a front porch five houses down. “She is dead.”
On the grass lay a woman with her guts spilled out. The kid shuddered in my arms. When I felt his tears soak my shirt, I held him tighter.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but I didn’t know what else to say. I pulled back to look at him. “What’s your name?”
“Johnny,” he muttered in between sniffles, his small, round eyes gawking at the angel.
“Do you know where your dad is?”
He nodded, his attention still captured by the archangel. “He’s with my little sister.”
“He’s home?”
“Yeah.”
I picked him up and headed to his house. “Hey, I need you to close your eyes. Can you do that, Johnny?”
He did as I asked. Moments later, I managed to get him past his dead mother and to his front door. His father met us there, clearly hysterical. He seized Johnny from me, and his worried eyes inspected the road.
Just as he said, “Where’s Gina?” his gaze fell on her body not far from where we stood.
“Did you do this?” he yelled. “Did you kill her?”
I shook my head. “I’m so sorry.”
Michael came up beside me and rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Take care of your family and forget the rest.”
His wing enfolded me, pulling me away from these unfortunate people.
“That’s it?” I said. “We’re just going to walk away?”
“Go back to your home.” Calmness overtook me once more as his blue-green eyes focused on me. “I am going to revive her.”
And he did. Over my shoulder, I saw him bring the woman back to life. She stood on two feet without a scratch on her body. I put my hand over my own stomach, right where the bullet had pierced, and wondered, my eyes on the archangel, if he was what had kept me from dying.
H
When Nate and Lizzy arrived at my mother’s house, Lizzy threw her arms around me and told me she was sorry about Adriel and that we would fix things somehow. Then they opened their car’s trunk to reveal an assortment of weapons.
My eyes lingered on the one weapon that did not belong with the rest. “Why do you have an axe? Where’d all these weapons come from, actually?”
Nate picked up the axe from the jungle of knives, pistols, rifles, hammers, and baseball bats. “I sometimes go camping with friends. Somebody has to cut wood for fire. The rifles and fancy knives are for when we go hunting.”
My Swiss Army knife felt like a lump of rock in my pocket compared to the killing machine Nate was holding, but I didn’t want him to know that. “Cool,” I said and looked away, trying to hide my jealousy.
Inside, Reed had gathered some of his friends. When Lizzy, Nate, and I entered the house, Michael and Madadel were standing among them. Although all of us stared from time to time, Reed’s friends Valerie and Greg couldn’t take their eyes off the angels.
“I feel like I’m in a dream, but I keep pinching myself, and I’m still here,” Valerie said, earning a smile from me.
Six days ago, I was one of the few people on this planet who knew about angels and demons. That wasn’t the case anymore.
I gave Reed a knowing look. “We
need to head out. It’s about to hit noon, and I have a feeling Lucifer is going to do his worst when it does.”
Adriel would die in a few minutes, as Lucifer had declared. I stared out the window, away from everyone in the room, and tried to push back the lump in my throat. He had truly died hours ago, when his soul left his body, though thinking that way didn’t stifle the tears.
We headed out not long after. Everyone grabbed their choice of weapons. Most of them went for guns. Lizzy couldn’t decide which weapon she could handle, so she grabbed both a baseball bat and a pistol for emergencies. Although I would have loved to have the axe, I wasn’t confident in my ability to use it, so I grabbed a baseball bat, since it was light and gave me some reach. When I thought about grabbing the pistol, a knot formed in the pit of my stomach, and all I could think about was Devin shooting Sam and then me. Nope, no guns for me.
Reed split us up in four different cars. He told Valerie and Greg to ride with him and gave me orders to drive Mom’s Chrysler, which had been parked in the garage. With me came Michael and another one of Reed’s friends, whose name I couldn’t remember. He was a scrawny little guy. I worried about him the most. He hopped in beside me with a gun clutched in his hand. I told him to keep it pointed at the floor.
Madadel sat in the back of Reed’s car, crammed now that Valerie shared the seat with him. Reed’s other friends drove their own cars. And off we went.
Since I could sense Lucifer’s presence, I led the group. The closer I drove in his direction, the more my blood boiled in my veins. He wasn’t far. In fact, it almost felt like he was also heading toward me.
“Before we get there,” I said, shooting Michael a glance in my rearview mirror. He blocked the back windshield, preventing me from seeing anything on the road behind us. “I need to ask you about Lucifer’s weapon. What do you know about it?”
Michael looked grim. “I know everything.” His mouth set in a hard line.
“Can you tell me what it is? Lucifer made it clear I can’t kill him so long as I don’t know anything about it.”
He watched me in the mirror but didn’t answer.
“What? You said you know everything about it. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I cannot tell you about the weapon.” In the mirror, his eyes burned right through me, leading me to think he wanted me to know something he couldn’t say out loud. “Telling you what the weapon is would interfere with a choice you have to make on your own. And I do not have permission to guide you with this issue.”
That left me quiet for a while. I zipped down the road, avoiding a few cars trying to get out of the city, drivers who misguidedly thought there would be peace elsewhere. Behind me, I sensed my brother and friends trying to match my speed. If we had time, I would have slowed down.
Closer still. Lucifer’s blood thumped in my ears. I pressed down on the gas, not caring if the rest caught up. We were almost there. In a few minutes, I’d face my father.
“Did you heal me yesterday?” I looked at Michael. “When I was shot?” The question came out of nowhere, but I suddenly needed to know.
Reed’s skinny friend’s head snapped in my direction. “You were shot?”
Both Michael and I ignored him.
“No, Adelaide.” Michael sighed. “That was not an angel’s work.”
“Then what was it?”
“You will figure it out.”
As we neared the main battle zone where Lucifer waited, we saw more people in the streets. They ran in the opposite direction of where we were heading. When I slowed down, some brave souls banged against the car’s windows, shouting for us to let them in. I weaved around them. The sound of my honk carried throughout the streets like a siren announcing my arrival. I wanted Lucifer to know I was here. I wanted all his demons to know.
“What are you doing?” Reed’s friend looked frantic. He reached over and grabbed my hand, trying to remove it from the horn. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
“Shut it.” I slapped his hand away. “You shouldn’t have come. I told Reed bringing people into this wasn’t a good idea.”
His fingers dug into his seat. “I can handle myself. It’s you that scares me.”
I shot him an angry look. “What’s your name?”
“Shen.” He let out a sharp breath. “You’ve met me four times already.”
“Great. Shut up, Shen.”
He didn’t. Shen turned to Michael, blabbering his troubles away.
I kept my eyes on the road and soon saw a fallen angel appear in the distance, crouching next to a body on the sidewalk by a grocery store. I recognized the fallen angel by his scarred back. He seemed to sense me too. His blank eyes shifted in my direction, and he grinned, welcoming me to the battle.
I slowed the car to a standstill. Shen yelled out, twisting in his seat so that he faced the road, and let out one last screech that sounded a lot like a cuss word.
“We’re here.” I put the car into park and jumped out.
Michael’s long strides ensured he stayed beside me with every step. Shen, on the other hand, had gotten lost, probably still stuck in the car. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Reed and the others running after us.
“You sure you can’t tell me about the weapon?” I asked Michael one last time.
Michael’s long sword glistened in my peripheral vision. He ran ahead of me, leaving my question unanswered.
The fallen angel ahead of us sprinted toward Michael, a sword of his own in his hand. It was smaller than Michael’s but still impressive.
Pulling my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket so that I held the knife and the bat in each hand, I hurried after them. I didn’t have time to do much, though. Before I’d even caught up, Michael’s sword had ripped through the fallen angel’s body, slicing him in half. I came to a halt, vomit rising to my throat. The demon’s two halves crashed to the ground, his organs leaking out in the middle.
“Gross.” I looked away, trying not to smell the urine-like odor coming from the dead demon.
Michael grabbed my wrist and pulled me away from the scene. “We must continue.” He pointed at the sky. “We need to follow them.”
Dozens of angels poured from the sky. They plunged around the corner of an abandoned car wash. I knew they were heading in the right direction; my blood burned the closer I got. Michael ran ahead of me and around the empty shop. When I caught up, we were on another street lined with buildings . . . and facing a herd of demons eager for battle.
In the center of the fight, surrounded by his monsters, Lucifer’s tall figure loomed. Michael might have seen him, but I was the one who went after him. Lucifer swung left and right, and angels dropped at his feet like flies.
I slowed down when his sword—engraved with what looked like six coiled snakes—flashed a bright silver. He pointed its curved blade at me. For a sliver of a second, Lucifer’s solid-black eyes met mine. When he looked away, his weapon came down, cutting through another angel.
My weapons paled in comparison. The cold feel of the knife against my palm did not reassure me. I stopped moving and stared at the mayhem. I couldn’t sense my feet. A mixture of demon and angel blood saturated the asphalt and got on my shoes.
“Did you come for me?” A familiar voice spoke behind me.
I spun around, coming face to face with Adriel. The corners of his lips curved upward, but his jet-black eyes seemed angry.
My breath caught in my throat.
“You don’t look happy to see me,” he said.
A metallic taste clung to my tongue, followed by the reeking smell of decay.
Chapter Thirty
ADRIEL
A part of me felt a pinch of desire for the girl. Her loose curls falling across her face reminded me of the way they’d spilled over me in the middle of the night. I’d done everything to her body, and I would do more.
Another part of me just wanted to cut her wrists and make her feel the nauseating pai
n I had endured this morning because of her.
For a second, she just looked at me. “You’re alive?” When reality kicked in, she pointed her delicate knife in my direction in warning. She held a baseball bat in her other hand, but it was limp at her side, as if she’d forgotten all about it.
I had my own sword now. Although I held it tightly in preparation, I kept it low and away from her. She needed to trust me so I could lure her in.
Behind her, demons and angels fought to the death. Mixed blood—red and black—coated the asphalt. Lucifer stood not too far off, with some of his demons circling us from a distance. They struck anyone who came our way. It was all part of Lucifer’s plan. He didn’t want anyone to hurt his daughter, but he wouldn’t say why.
Taking a step toward her, I opened my empty hand as a sign of peace, showing her I would not attack. Humans loved their body language, and they loved believing in lies they hoped were true.
“I’m okay.” Despite the knot deepening in between her eyebrows, I inched forward until just a foot separated us. “Lucifer spared me. See, I’m fine.”
She went to take a step back, her foot sliding away from me. I gripped her forearm to stop her, but that only made her stiffen. Eyes full of fear, she stared at me.
“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
She yanked her arm free but didn’t move. “What do you want?”
“You.”
I brought my free hand to her cheek and brushed my fingers along the flush of her skin. I wished I could scrape that first layer of flesh off with my sword and see what was underneath. But Lucifer had cautioned me to behave.
“The real Adriel is dead.” She took a step back. “I don’t want anything to do with a demon.”
For a small girl, she was quick. She thrust her knife at my midsection, attempting to stab me. I sprang back, my sword smashing into her knife and knocking it to the blood-soaked ground.
She jerked away, her chest rising and falling. I took her momentary halt as an opportunity to snatch her other weapon and toss it out of reach. Her eyes flickered between the knife and my sword, calculating her next move. A second later, she dashed for the blade, just as I’d expected.
