by eden Hudson
Clarion and two other coyotes were facing off with a pair of angels swinging curved longswords. One foot soldier laid Clarion’s shoulder open to the bone. He yelped, limp-running while dragging one useless leg. Another curved longsword lodged in a smaller coyote’s skull.
Back toward the fencerow, I could hear yelling and gunfire. Naomi’s teams getting intercepted and slaughtered.
In front of me, Lonely’s burning corpse lit up Rian’s sick grin in flickering yellow. Oily black smoke curled up into the reddish-brown sky.
“Every single creature who fought on your side, Tough,” Kathan yelled. “Every soul in this desolate redneck shithole—they’re all going to die tonight, and they have you to thank for it.”
All around me, fallen angels were ripping apart coyotes and crows and humans.
There were more of them than there were of us—more of them than there had been humans and NPs living in Halo—and they couldn’t be killed. Even if I had been in perfect health, it wouldn’t matter. There was nothing I could do.
There was nothing I could do.
I punched the ground so hard that the bones in my fist splintered and stuck through the skin over my knuckles.
You promised! You said if anybody called on You, You would answer. Colt called. Dad, Sissy, Ryder— I heard Mom screaming for You! Where the fuck were You? You promised them and You let them die! You were supposed to be the one thing I could count on and now I can’t even—
The ranting in my soul stopped making sense and turned into a howl of rage and pain. I pressed my face to the ground and I emptied my dead lungs into the dust. Soundless, pointless.
I wrapped my arms around my head. My heart slammed against my breastbone like a sledge hammer.
This isn’t supposed to be me! I’m not Your holy fucking champion. I can’t be. Do You even know half the shit I’ve done? I can’t save anyone. Cold tears dripped off my face, into the dirt and ashes. Don’t take it out on them, please. I’m the one who never got it right. Shit, I didn’t even try most of the time. I’m sorry. But don’t let Kathan win because of me. Please.
The ground shook like the world was about to crack in half. A screaming wind tore through, flipping over two SUVs from the Dark Mansion circle. Overhead, thunder boomed and crashed until I thought my eardrums had been perforated.
Then everything stopped. I took my arms off my head. The crows, coyotes, fallen angels, what was left of Naomi’s team… No one moved or breathed. Everybody was waiting to see what would happen next.
My heart beat. Just once.
A voice whispered, “The very second he does…”
Then the sky ripped open.
PART III: ME AND MY HOUSE
Tough
The sound of the sky ripping was so loud that I thought it would crack my skull open. I clamped my hands over my ears, but the noise kept going and going. The red-brown bloodstain that had been the sky for the last two nights peeled back, taking the darkness and the moon and stars with it.
Out of the rip poured light brighter than any sun I’d ever squinted hungover eyes at. There was a sound with the light—that heavenly music I’d been listening for my whole life. The music was so full and so real that I could feel it filling up every space where only air had been before. Wherever the music went, the light followed, until the night was as bright as midafternoon in July.
It hit me right inside my shattered soul, just like it had when Colt got resurrected. All I could do was put my face on the ground and cry.
“End him!” Kathan yelled over the music. “Rian, end him!”
I lifted my head. With the vamp sight, I could see Rian moving in fast-motion, ripping the Sword of Judgment out of the thin air next to his hip. He leapt over the charred bones that used to be Lonely and the cooling bodies that used to be the team I’d handpicked.
“Now!” Kathan’s voice almost cracked.
Rian’s wings blurred, giving him an extra boost of speed. He was moving so fast that his body became a smear of color cutting through the light. My eyes would only focus on one thing—the sword.
The blade whistled through the air toward my back. I tried to shove myself out of the way, but even with the vamp speed I wasn’t fast enough.
Someone jumped over me and smashed into Rian’s chest. The body and Rian rolled end over end, skidding across the ashy dirt. Rian came to a stop with one wing bent wrong under him and Colt kneeling on his stomach.
I was so excited to see him that I forgot I couldn’t yell. Colt!
Rian angled the Sword of Judgment back and rammed it into Colt’s stomach.
Nothing happened. No greenish-black wailing darkness from Hell. No change in that white heavenly music.
Colt grabbed Rian’s wrists and pulled, forcing the sword out his back until the cross-guards were flush with his stomach. He head-butted Rian. Rian’s nose flattened, shooting angel blood out both nostrils. Rian tried to kick Colt off, but Colt grabbed Rian by the face. He dug his fingers and thumb into Rian’s eyes and mouth. Rian scratched and bit. Colt dug in harder. One of Rian’s eyes popped. Colt wrenched Rian’s head to the side, snapping his neck. Rian’s arms and legs went limp.
Colt staggered to his feet, grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands, and pulled. The thing was so long that he had to work his way up the blade to get it all the way out.
“No!” Kathan shoved two of the closest foot soldiers at Colt. “Get the sword!”
One took off toward Colt. He spun around. She tried to pull up at the last second, but Colt laid her open from her shoulder to her stomach.
Greenish-black light swirled through the whiteness like smoke. The wailing of tortured souls came in waves. It wasn’t loud enough to overpower the music, but it filtered through like a radio through a truck window.
The other foot soldier wasn’t having none of that shit. He stumbled away from Kathan, shaking his head.
Behind Colt, Rian rolled onto his hands and knees. His eye had healed back into its socket, and his spine must have grown back together. He started to push himself up.
Colt turned around. He saw Rian getting up, raised the sword, then stabbed it down through Rian’s back, pinning that fucker to the ground.
That greenish-black smoky light intensified. They flooded out of Hell. Rian punched the sword, kicked at Colt, trying everything he could to get away from them.
Colt didn’t fight them like he had when they came for Mikal. This time, he got out of the way and let them do their job. Some of them went after the foot soldier Colt had laid open. Some went straight for Rian. They dragged his ass kicking and screaming into the Pit.
One of them made a weird, almost-human head motion at Colt. Colt nodded back.
Behind me, somebody giggled. All the hair down the back of my neck stood up.
“Sunshine Saves Baby Boy’s Ass: Round Five Million and Ten,” Ryder said. “Just like old times, huh, Tough?”
“Less talk, more Judgment Day.” Sissy. That was Sissy’s voice. I thought I’d forgotten what she sounded like, but the second I heard her, I remembered.
“You got it, Bossy,” Ryder said.
“That’s enough, kids.”
My chest hitched up. If Dad had used any other tone, I probably wouldn’t have realized it was him. Or maybe I would have. But I was so used to hearing him get onto us like that, that even though I hadn’t heard him in fourteen years, I knew right away.
“They’re going to try to scatter,” Dad said. “Get to the perimeter and drive them back in.”
Ryder, Sissy, and Tiffani ran past me. They were all packing swords that shined like that living, musical whiteness of Heaven concentrated into a blade.
Sissy sliced through an enforcer’s tar-covered wing, right through feather and bone, with her shining sword. Ryder hacked off a foot soldier’s leg at the calf, then arced up and peeled the meat off its arm. Tiffani ran a foot soldier through, then kicked him off her sword.
Colt came through batting clean-up with the Sword of
Judgment. They—the ones in charge of dragging the Judged angels to Hell—flew along behind Colt like buzzards, waiting for him to mark their next victim.
“Disperse!” one alpha yelled.
“No, to me!” Kathan yelled, launching himself upward. “Rally to me, brothers! Attack from above! Get the Sword of Judgment!”
All around, black blurs shot up into the sky, leaving ashy-looking spiral slipstreams in the music and white light. Only one or two of the ballsiest flew toward Colt, but they all pulled up and darted away the second he turned their direction.
Something moved in my peripheral. The vamp senses were so messed up by the Destroyer blood that I hadn’t noticed the sound of footsteps closing in on me until it was too late. I tried to push myself up, but the healing still couldn’t kick in.
Shining hands grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me over onto my back. Dad was crouched down next to me, sitting on his heels the way I always did, his Heavenly sword resting point-down in the dirt. Mom was kneeling beside him.
I threw my arms up over my face.
“Tough?” Dad said.
Tears soaked into my t-shirt sleeves. I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but I was sucking in huge, shuddering breaths that hurt my chest and stomach. I wished I could curl up and hide. I wished I could disappear. I wished I’d died fourteen years ago, back when I was still young and good.
Dad touched my elbow. “Tough.”
If I could’ve talked, I would’ve told him how sorry I was. For not trying harder. For not being a better man. For fucking up everything I touched.
“Go ahead, love,” Mom said. “I’ve got him.”
Dad squeezed my arm once, then he was gone. His footsteps ran off to my left. A coyote barked. Dad whooped back.
Mom was still there. I could feel her watching me.
Swords clashed, guns shot, human and inhuman voices screamed. Pain and death and anger all wound together like the endless hook for a song of war. Any minute now the bass riff would come rolling in like a tank and the distorted lead guitar would scream in agony.
“Get them out of the sky!” Clarion yelled, his voice turning into a growl by the end.
“Too fast!” a crow crawked from overhead. “Too fast!”
Tongue-clicking. Then Ryder hollering, “Fuck yeah! Nice one, Sunshine!”
“Are you all right?” Colt yelled.
“Fine,” Tiffani said. “Behind you!”
“Tough.” Mom took ahold of my wrists.
I wrapped my arms tighter, sure she was going to try to pry them open.
“Tough?” Mom said, drawing out my name like she used to when she woke me up to get ready for school. “Wakey, wakey. Open those beautiful Whitney blue-greens.”
By then I was hiccupping from bawling so hard. All she had to do was put a little pressure on my arms and they would’ve slid right off my face.
She let go.
I let my arms fall and opened my eyes.
“There’s my baby boy,” Mom whispered.
She was smiling at me.
Colt
Dad, Ryder, Sissy, and Tiff fanned out through the battle in front of me, cutting paths to the perimeter.
One alpha started to fly away, but Sissy took a running jump off a twisted chunk of metal that used to be a Hummer and chopped off his right wing. He veered to the side and hit the ground in an unbalanced hop like an injured bird. I sprinted after him and sliced open his side. The Gatekeepers grabbed him before he even realized he’d been cut.
Ryder clicked off to my three. A hamstrung foot soldier. She saw me coming.
“No!” She threw down her rifle, dropped to her knees, and held up her hands. “No, please! Please don’t!”
It was too late to beg. I was the executioner, not the judge.
I brought the sword down on her shoulder. The blow cut to the bone. The foot soldier screeched and scrambled in the dirt, trying to get away. The Gatekeepers descended. A second later, she was gone.
“Dad, your six!” Sissy called.
I spun around just in time to see another foot soldier flying away, carrying a coyote by its broken leg. The coyote yelped and tried to bite, but he couldn’t pull himself up.
Dad was out of reach. He took a second to consider it, then launched his sword in a straight-arm throw at the foot soldier’s back. It stuck in the base of the foot soldier’s skull, severing his spine, and dropping him like a rock.
“Hot damn, what a shot!” Ryder yelled. He couldn’t help it. “Suck it, motherfucker!”
“Ryder, that’s enough.” But Dad was smiling.
I got to the paralyzed foot soldier a few steps ahead of Dad, stabbed it, then pulled his sword out of the soldier’s neck. I flipped it around and handed it to him hilt-first.
“Thanks,” Dad said.
“It really was a good shot,” I said.
Dad smiled again. You can’t imagine how good it is to see your dad smile when all your earthly memories of him are either worried, stressed, or out of his mind with grief.
The heavens exploded.
I hit my knees and opened my mouth out of habit. Beside me, Dad had done the same. The concussion hit the ground, then spread out in a wave of dust and ash. All around us, mortal combatants were knocked to the ground. Fallen angels who’d been thrown out of the air touched down, then pushed off again, beating their wings as hard as possible to get out of reach before one of us could get to them.
A scream like a hawk about to strike cut through the air, rattling the molecules and setting off cracks of thunder. Bloody red streaks burst through the heavenly tear in the sky. On the ground, the wind kicked up, swirling around us, and picking up debris like a tornado.
My eyes locked on Kathan. He had his back turned to the battle and was watching those bloody red streaks with a wide smile on his face. The center of the streaks was growing into a core so dark that it glowed purple-black.
A body appeared inside the purple-black core. Arcs of electricity and bursts of sparks rolled around its arms and legs like a downed powerline.
The Destroyer.
“Be ready to do whatever you have to,” Dad said.
“She used to be someone else,” I said. “Grace.”
This time the name wasn’t the product of a half-corroded brain. It was right. The Destroyer was Grace.
A muscle in Dad’s jaw tightened and the lines around his eyes cut deeper. “Whatever you have to do, Colt.”
I clutched the hilt of the Sword of Judgment.
If the Destroyer wasn’t with us, she was against us.
Tough
I stared at Mom. She looked exactly like I remembered, but completely different. She didn’t just have the red hair and the green eyes and the momness from every day and night of my life age zero to eight. She was also at least as young as me, as young as she’d been in every video I’d ever watched of her Lost Derringers concerts. I’d never thought of Mom as anything but a mom before, but she was pretty. Really pretty.
“It would’ve been so much easier if you’d taken after your father.” She swiped her thumbs across my face, wiping away the tears, and I realized the blue-black tattoo sleeves I’d spent most of my childhood taking for granted were gone. She rested her hand against my cheek. “I wish I could’ve been there to make it easier for you, to tell you what not to do…but you wouldn’t have listened. I never did, either. People like you and me, we have to learn the hard way or not at all.”
A brain-rattling screech shattered the air. Mom looked up. Dark red streaks had started to leak through the white rip in the sky. The wind picked up, whipping Mom’s hair around her face. Ash and dust swirled around the armies of Heaven and Hell.
“Well, kiddo, I think your babymama’s back,” Mom said.
I stared at her.
“Oh, come on,” Mom said. “You think you can just have sex with anything that moves and never have an oops-baby?”
Are you serious right now?
“Don’t you look at me like th
at, Tough Isaiah Whitney. At least when I was self-destructing, I knew to use a condom—alive or undead.”
Holy shit. I have never wanted to talk about something less than this.
Mom sighed like she used to when I was little and driving her crazy. “Whatever. Just listen. That Destroyer up there is partly your fault. You helped make her into what she is. If she goes berserk and tries to destroy the world, you’re going to have to stop her.”
I threw my hands up. How the hell am I supposed to do that?
“I don’t know.” Mom looked across the battlefield at something I couldn’t see. “But you’d better figure it out. If you don’t find a way to stop her, Colt will. And if he has to…” Mom glared down at me. “She’s pregnant with your baby, Tough. They’re your responsibility now. Man the fuck up and protect them.”
Colt
Grace streaked down through the sky toward Kathan.
I clutched the Sword of Judgment until the grips creaked in my fist. It didn’t matter who she used to be; if the Destroyer sided with Kathan, then she had turned on God. Grace or not, I would have to send her to Hell.
Kathan opened his arms as if to embrace her.
I got down, crouched like a sprinter waiting for the gun. She might be able to destroy the manifestation I’d been sent back to Earth in, but that didn’t matter. God could send me again. He could send me however many times it took to finish the job.
Grace sped up as she got closer to Kathan. When she hit his chest, the sound cracked across the solar system. On the horizon, a red-orange sunrise flickered and dimmed.
They shot toward the ground in the front pasture, moving so fast that jet streams of fire burned the oxygen around them.
I dug my fingers into the dust and braced myself.
Their impact threw up dirt, rocks, vehicles, weapons, and corpses. The shockwave rippled through the ground, tearing up the concrete parking lot and breaking apart the burned-out foundation of the Dark Mansion. My hands and feet scratched long lines in the dust as the concussion shoved me backward.
