“Who’s who?” Siobhan wondered, staring upward at the quintet of seraphim hovering in the air.
Gabriel lifted a hand, pointing at the seraphim at the point of their pentagon. Like every other female angel Siobhan had seen, her features seemed deceptively soft, and her hair—such a pale blonde it was nearly white—framed her face and swayed with each movement of her six white wings. Her skin was so pale that Siobhan suspected she may have been capable of giving off snow glare, just based on the way the lilac glow of her eyes reflected off of her face. “That is Seraphiel. The informal leader, in as much as they can be said to have one.”
His hand shifted slightly to point to the man to Seraphiel’s left. He was tall and broad and looked much like Gabriel, with his hair and skin both only a few shades darker, even if his hair was too short. Though his wings were a dark, iridescent green, and his eyes glowed an unnatural shade of gold. “Ophaniel.”
Next was another woman, with hair so red that it almost seemed to be made of fire, the tail it was gathered into drifting behind her like the flickering light of a candle, shifting and swaying with each motion of her auburn wings. Her eyes glowed a strangely unholy shade of red, the light making her dark features look harsh and alien. “Rikbiel.”
After that came another man, with wings and hair in matching shades of faintly metallic silver. His hair was long but slicked back and out of his face, and it contrasted oddly with the golden tone of his skin. His eyes glowed a pale, seafoam green, their light so dim that his eyes almost looked normal for a moment. “Zophiel.”
And finally, the last man, hovering to Seraphiel’s right. His skin was even darker than Rikbiel’s, and his hair was nearly the exact same shade as his skin. His wings shimmered slightly, golden and shining, and Siobhan couldn’t help but think that they put her would-be murderer’s wings to shame. His eyes glowed a deep, unnerving shade of violet. “And Zaphkiel.”
He glanced toward Osamu and the Apple of Eden. “It will work on them,” he began slowly, “but not as well as it did on Michael and Raphael. He will need to focus its power exclusively on the seraphim, and even then, I’m not certain it will be entirely effective.”
“Then I guess it’s good we’re here to deal with everything else,” Siobhan sighed.
“Speaking of,” Jack interrupted, “why are there so few of ‘everything else?’” He turned in a circle, looking from one outlier to the next. “It looks like there are only three.”
Indeed, three archangels circled slowly around the perimeter of the city, gradually getting closer to where the vampires were gathered in the park.
“When the seraphim decide that drastic measures are necessary, those methods…do not discriminate,” Gabriel explained carefully. “If they succeed, then anyone in the city will be dead, angels included. So it’s best to keep their own numbers limited, or risk unnecessary amounts of friendly fire.”
Michael and Raphael flew above, to no one’s surprise. Before anyone could ask, Gabriel pointed to the woman with them and stated, “Another of our sisters, Oriphael.”
Her skin was pale, but with a golden tone to it, though structurally, she looked nearly identical to her sister. Her chestnut brown hair was short and smoothed back, flat against her head and away from her face, the ends of it curling against the nape of her neck. Her wings were brown and nearly matte, with only the faintest hint of a shimmer when she flapped them.
“We might have a fourth,” Jack observed reluctantly, staring into the distance at something.
Siobhan and Gabriel followed his gaze to see Anael hovering in the distance. She made no motions to join any of her siblings, though, and there was no hostility on her face. She looked curious, at most, as if she were there purely to see what was going to happen.
“She’s not here to fight,” Gabriel stated quietly. “Not with us and not against us. She is here simply to see what will happen.”
Siobhan heaved a sigh. “Just what I’ve always wanted: an audience.”
She couldn’t even bring herself to think of how many other people were going to be watching them, right there in the middle of the city. There wasn’t much time to, anyway. All attention turned toward the seraphim again, and light rapidly began to build between them, just like at Chambersburg before them.
More than that, the air seemed to fracture slightly at the edges, as if allowing all of them to occupy such close quarters at once was physically straining the fabric of the world.
“Wasting time means that, soon enough, there will be adverse effects on reality,” Gabriel supplied with some urgency. “They will begin small, but they will happen if the seraphim aren’t handled with haste.”
This would have to happen quickly, then. It was a good thing none of them wanted to dilly-dally.
Osamu held up the Apple, and his voice turned firm as he commanded, “Get down here.” The Apple flared with silver light.
The light gathering between the seraphim was abruptly snuffed out, and slowly, they began to sink toward the ground. They looked confused, as if they weren’t quite sure why they were landing or why they had stopped doing what they were doing.
Seraphiel shook the compulsion off first, shaking her head minutely before confusion melted into outrage. With a shout, she launched herself at Osamu.
The stalemate the archangels had seemed caught in up until that point ceased suddenly, and they dove, angling for the vampires below. Gabriel flapped his wings and took off, intercepting Michael in the air. They slammed into each other with a crash like thunder and spiraled away, twisting through the air like a pair of falcons.
Siobhan gave Jack’s shoulder a shove, pushing him to go help Viktor and Charlotte as Oriphael swooped down at them. Siobhan darted over to stand between Alistair and Myrtle as Raphael landed in their midst.
There was no time, after that, to pay attention to what any of the Lords and the Seraphim were up to.
*
Siobhan expected Raphael to be angrier. He was unhappy, certainly, but he seemed to be there more out of obligation than out of any sense of righteous justice or indignation. In fact, he kept casting glances toward where the Vampire Lords and the seraphim were going at it, as if he was expecting Osamu to suddenly appear from nowhere to make him turn on another of his siblings.
His distraction was useful, at least. Siobhan caught him by one of his ankles and dragged him down, out of the air. Before he had a chance to bolt back into the sky, Alistair kicked him in the back of one of his knees, and Myrtle elbowed him hard in the side of the head as he stumbled. He dropped to his knees for a moment, and when he surged back to his feet, his strike only glanced off of Myrtle’s shoulder. Siobhan caught her before she could trip.
He wasn’t even trying. He seemed more concerned, in that moment, with just making sure they didn’t interrupt the seraphim more than they had already been disturbed.
No one was going to complain, though.
Raphael lifted a forearm, blocking Siobhan’s next strike, and he brought two wings around himself to fend off Alistair, before he sent Alistair stumbling as he snapped those same two wings open wide.
He tried the same trick on the other side, but Siobhan stepped wide, instead coming at him from the front. He caught her fist in a large hand, but she didn’t wind up on the ground, at least.
She recognized the motion—he wanted to drag her arm behind her, possibly even to use her as a shield against the others—and she bent with it instead, curling herself closer to him so she could stomp down on his in-step. With a yelp, he released her, and she darted back to a safer distance.
Alistair was snickering as he got back to his feet, and the three of them closed in on Raphael. He turned one direction and found Siobhan smiling at him, and turned another way to see Alistair grinning, and turned again to see Myrtle waving pleasantly.
There was nowhere for him to go other than up, and with three of them so close, even that was a rather slim chance.
It ended, on the whole, rather anticlimacticall
y. It didn’t last particularly long, and hardly even anything happened, and just like that, it was done. He spread his wings out and turned, forcing the three of them to take a few steps backward, and with that breathing room, he launched himself into the air and fled. True, he hadn’t made much of a dent in Siobhan, Alistair, or Myrtle, but neither had they made much of a dent in him.
They looked around, bemused, in time to watch Oriphael fleeing at just the same moment.
“Well,” Siobhan observed slowly after a moment, “that was certainly a thing.”
Alistair and Myrtle both shrugged unhelpfully, but Siobhan supposed she couldn’t really fault them for it.
*
Oriphael was loud, but she said rather little. Mostly, she made noise, launching herself at Jack with an outraged howl, as if his very existence somehow offended her. Granted, given the platform the angels were running on, that could very well have been the case. He leapt out of the way.
She turned in a circle, her wings spread, and as one, Jack, Viktor, and Charlotte ducked and hit the deck before they tumbled out of the way as she beat her wings downward. Out of range, they scrambled back to their feet.
Whatever she lacked in loquaciousness, she certainly made up for with sheer energy, as her focus immediately latched onto Charlotte. Hopping into the air, she kicked out with both legs. Charlotte ducked just in time to avoid having her head taken off at the shoulders.
Jack lunged, his arms wrapping around Oriphael’s waist, and he slammed her down to the ground with a grunt. Yowling in outrage, she kneed him in the stomach and rolled him aside as he wheezed. Before she could do anything else, Viktor tackled her. He rolled aside immediately afterward, but by that point, Charlotte had helped Jack scramble out of the way.
Oriphael got back to her feet, one foot stomping like a child who wasn’t getting her way. Warily, Jack, Viktor, and Charlotte circled her. Angels, as a whole, weren’t particularly fun to deal with, but one so blatantly outraged was a new variable entirely.
She aimed for Charlotte, lunging toward her with her wings spread wide to keep the other two at bay. Even so, Viktor ducked in close to shove Charlotte out of the way at the last second, and Oriphael came to an abrupt halt as her quarry was forced out of reach. She adjusted course quickly, though.
Oriphael lashed out with one hand and caught a handful of Viktor’s shirt, but before she could so much as pull on him, Jack punched her in the shoulder. Mostly, all it did was get her attention, but as she turned her growling attention toward him, that seemed to be all he was going for.
Viktor wrenched himself out of her hold and stumbled back, but she turned her attention back to him soon enough. As she lunged for Viktor, though, she came up short, as Jack yanked Viktor back by the arm and Charlotte caught one of Oriphael’s wings in a white-knuckled grip with both hands.
She looked between the three of them for a moment before something not unlike alarm crossed her features. And that, evidently, was the end of that.
Abruptly, Oriphael wrenched herself free and bolted into the clouds, leaving Charlotte with a handful of feathers and leaving all three of them with rather a lot of confusion.
“…Okay, what now?” Viktor wondered after a moment, watching Oriphael and Raphael meet up in the sky before they vanished.
“That’s a really good question,” Jack replied, rubbing the back of his head. “Let’s…go meet up with the others, I guess.”
It was about all they could do at that point.
*
It was different, that day. When it was just one-on-one—whenever Michael considered himself to have the advantage—he always got arrogant. More so than usual, at least. With all of the seraphim gathered, it was even more noticeable.
Michael was sloppy.
They crashed together in the air, wrestling back and forth until Gabriel drew his legs up and kicked straight downward against Michael’s ribs, launching him toward the ground. Michael hit the sidewalk with enough force to make a crater, but after a brief shake to rid his wings of cement debris, he launched himself back into the air almost immediately. He crashed into Gabriel with enough force that he nearly launched Gabriel into the ground, although Gabriel recovered before he plummeted even a handful of yards. He caught Michael’s ankle and yanked him down so they were level with each other once more.
Michael’s fist flew, and Gabriel arced away from it, catching Michael in the side of the head with one wing, largely just to add insult to injury, before he winched his wings in tight again before Michael could grab ahold of any of them. He dropped a few yards before he rose again.
His next strike was forced wide, glancing off of Michael’s forearm. Gabriel launched himself backward, back-winging out of reach as Michael tried to kick him in the chest. Gabriel had always held the advantage in the air, though.
(It was, in hindsight, something Michael had always been annoyed about. The golden child did so love to win, after all.)
“You never do know when to quit,” Michael growled, clubbing his joined fists toward the back of Gabriel’s head. Arcing into a flip, Gabriel dodged the strike, instead winding up behind Michael, though Michael whipped about to face him once again an instant later. Simultaneously, they lunged for each other.
“As if you have any room to lecture me,” Gabriel snapped. Hands latched together, they grappled back and forth, as if there was a line in the sky and they were both trying to shove the other one past it. At least, until Gabriel abruptly tightened his hold on Michael’s hands and pulled him in close. Gabriel caught Michael in a headlock, though it was hasty and his grip was off. With relative ease, Michael managed to duck his head out of Gabriel’s hold.
As Michael twisted away, Gabriel’s hands clutched at the base of one wing, his fingers digging in until he could smell blood. His eyes narrowed sharply, and that was all the warning he offered before he heaved his weight backward. Michael’s expression turned to terror as he realized what was about to happen, but it was too late for him to do anything to stop it from happening.
There was a meaty ripping sound and the crunch of bone snapping, and Michael screamed, like falling rocks and a gale through the leaves, as one of his wings ripped free, separating from his back entirely. Gabriel dropped it, letting it fall to the ground below like so much trash. It more or less was by that point--detached, it served no more purpose.
It ended quickly once that first wing was ripped off. Though Michael tried to flee, he had no chance of flying with any great speed, and he most certainly had no chance of out-flying the fastest of his siblings. Gabriel caught him again with ease, wrenching him to a halt by two of his remaining wings, until bones splintered in his hold.
Afterward, beneath the pain, Michael simply looked resigned. It didn’t take some great genius to tell what was about to happen.
Still, Gabriel paused for a moment, before he struck the finishing blow.
“I do apologize,” Gabriel offered quietly, releasing the mangled wings to instead hold Michael aloft with an arm around his middle. “I didn’t want it to end up the way it did.”
“Spare me,” Michael snarled. “I don’t need your guilty platitudes.”
Gabriel sighed and caught an elbow around Michael’s neck. With a sharp jerk of motion, he wrenched his arm to the side, and there was a click and a meaty crunch as Michael’s neck snapped.
Gabriel let the body fall down into the trees in the park below. When he drew his attention back to the present, it was to watch Raphael and Oriphael rapidly flee.
*
Osamu leapt backward, landing at the back of the cluster of Lords. The sphere in his hands flared once again, and Seraphiel ground to a halt, jerking toward him periodically only to back off again, like a dog straining at its chain.
Allambee plowed into her with his shield, and she bounced off of it, hurtling away through the air and hitting the ground with enough force that she skidded, carving a trench in the ground as she did.
Everything became a flurry of activity afte
r that, as the rest of the seraphim burst into motion.
Dask’iya darted forward, her sword raised high over her head until she brought it swinging downward in an arc set to end right where Zophiel’s shoulder met his neck. It missed its mark by only a hair’s breadth, the tip of the blade instead carving into Zophiel’s chest and side as he spun away, a splash of shimmering, transparent angel blood splattering across the ground.
Dask’iya ducked, the Fang raised defensively as Rikbiel lunged to Zophiel’s defense. Her attempt to duck under the blade was warded off by a fistful of fire, so she tried instead to come from above, only to abruptly jerk to a halt as Osamu lifted the Apple once again. She regained the use of her limbs just a fraction too late, as the Fang sank straight into her gut and out her back. Dask’iya gave it a savage twist before wrenching it free once again, and Rikbiel sank to the ground in a heap, like a puppet without any strings.
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