The City of Flame and Shadow

by Kim Richardson

  Milo turned, his eyes widening. “Alexa!” he shouted. “Behind you!”

  Alexa spun. Something moved at the edge of her vision—a flicker of gray and white, moving fast.

  A dead thing leaped at her from the shadows.

  Alexa cried out as she swung her weapon and the dead fell back, howling as her blade pierced through bone and into the tender flesh beneath. The thing staggered, shaking its eyeless skull from side to side as though it was in pain. But not enough to keep it down, to kill it.

  It came at her again, thrashing its taloned fingers at her face.

  Alexa ducked and came up behind it. She dug her blade through its empty eye socket, pushing until the hilt of her blade touched bone, and pulled it out. The dead crumbled, and as it hit the floor, it exploded into a cloud of sand.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Milo in the span between clangs. He slashed toward two different dead things, blows that would have disemboweled most creatures. But still they came. Missing limbs, juicy flesh falling from their bodies, they shambled forward.

  Another dead thing leaped. Alexa cursed as she looked up at the gaping jaw of the dead. She could see right through to the other side of its skull.

  The creature roared, its carrion breath brushing Alexa’s face. Her eyes watered again, and she choked at the rancid smell. Her throat burned as she tasted death on her tongue, and she gripped her blade so hard it hurt. The nightclub echoed with the earsplitting cry of the dead—deep, savage, and vicious. The mouth stretched wide with each roar. It leaned over her, eyes empty and snapping its jaw.

  “Milo! The mortals,” yelled Alexa as she plunged her blade into the skull of another dead. “You have to kill the connection!” She kicked it away.

  “I would if I didn’t have five dead things coming at me at the same time!” Milo’s sabers pierced through bone and into the tender flesh beneath one of the dead. He pulled it out, and the dead burst, throwing sand all over his face and body.

  “Do it, or they’ll die!”

  The air behind Alexa shifted, and she moved—but not fast enough. Cloth and flesh tore in her upper arm, and she barked a cry as one of the dead bit into her.

  Instinctively, she jabbed its head with her blade in quick successions, until finally the creature let her go. She untangled herself from its slippery maw and thrust her blade up through its jaw to the back of its skull. There was a pop—and the dead burst into a cloud of sand, hitting Alexa in the face and eyes.

  She urgently backed up, retreating towards the back wall. She spat, trying hard not to think about what had landed in her mouth. But her eyes burned, and for a moment her vision blurred with tears.

  She took a quick glance but didn’t see Milo behind her. She blinked, and when she finally saw him, he was surrounded by ten dead things.

  Milo fought with skill. Alexa marveled at his talent with the spirit sabers—the speed, swiftness, and utter confidence making it seem as though she were watching a brutal, unforgiving dance. The strength of Nephilim, she realized. He drove the dead off him and back. They fell around him as though their bodies were made of glass, shattering on impact. Dust and flakes of skin filled the air. She realized then he was trying to keep the dead away from her.

  Just when Alexa thought they had won, when the last of the dead shattered into a puff of sand, the ground shook and thunder cracked inside the club. Then another wall of the dead rumbled forward.

  Alexa looked back towards the dance floor and saw Anubis give a shake of its head, as if it were telling her it wasn’t over and declaring its power endless.

  “How do we keep fighting like this?” said Alexa. Her arms burned with the effort of slicing and dicing through flesh and bone.

  “I told you,” said Milo. “It’s too powerful. It can keep doing this for hours.”

  “Well, I don’t think we can.” Her own words struck hard, but she knew it was true. How was the Legion supposed to fight gods and goddesses with unmatched strength? A growing fear settled in her gut.

  And then, all at once, the dead came for them.

  Alexa didn’t have a chance to swing her weapon. She tripped on a fallen stool, stumbling backward and sprawling across the ground. Instinctively, she brought her blade up to impale the thing, expecting it to fall on her. Sharp, wet teeth reached over her arm, snapping viciously at her face.

  She drove the blade up, but the dead shifted and stayed clear. It growled at her, hacking sounds that could have been words if it had a tongue. It pushed itself off of her and looked toward its right. It picked up a bench and hurled it at Alexa’s head.

  She blocked the blow, her arms searing with pain at the brute force. Again and again, the creature brought the bench down with unnatural strength as though it was trying to hammer her skull to the floor like a nail to wood.

  As the bench crashed down again, Alexa buckled and with both feet hit the dead square in the chest as hard as she could. She knocked the creature clear of her, and as it landed on the ground, it dropped the bench. Alexa was already on her feet. She thrust her blade into the thing’s temple and it burst into a cloud of sand.

  The more Alexa and Milo stuck down the dead, the more they came.

  An endless supply of the living dead hurled themselves at the angels.

  Where they lunged, Milo and Alexa struck. Side by side, they had been pushed against a far wall, driven farther and farther from the mortals on the dance floor, who had barely a minute left to live.

  Anger was giving way to fear. The muscles of Alexa’s arms burned with the effort of swinging the blade and punching with her other arm.

  “Don’t stop!” Milo urged, seeing her falter. He beheaded two dead things with a powerful thrust of his sabers. “If you stop, they’ll rip us to shreds!”

  Alexa wanted to answer that she couldn’t possibly keep this up for much longer, but the effort to speak was lost on her as she ducked and sliced the abdomen of one of the dead. Its rotten entrails spilled to the floor in a sloppy mess of guts and flesh. She finished it off with a jab to the head.

  Alexa couldn’t see Anubis or even the dance floor. Her line of sight was homed in on dead things. Blades tore dead flesh, splintered bone, and knocked the creatures down and over, but still they came until they were literally torn apart, broken into pieces, and hung up on the wire.

  She kept her mouth closed as she hacked, sliced, and diced at the dead. She tried hard not to think of the wetness that covered her face and body. She focused on her goal—to save as many lives as she could.

  A wet hacking reached Alexa. She sidestepped and swung her blade at a dead thing that leapt for her neck, its bottom jaw hanging loosely by strings of flesh. She kicked it hard in the knee, and the creature buckled. But four more leaped at her, talons ripping at her clothes—

  Another burst of sand struck her, tearing through the soft flesh of her face like razor blades just as she felt an overwhelming feeling of death and loss.

  Alexa shielded her eyes. When she opened them, a small cry escaped her lips.

  All that was left of the army of the dead was the sand at their feet. They were gone.

  But Anubis escaping, taking its army of dead with it, hadn’t brought the tears to her eyes. The mortals now lay on the dance floor, their lifeless eyes open and staring blankly straight ahead.

  CHAPTER 4

  ALEXA PACED AROUND THE COUNTER DEMON DIVISION. Restless, the weight of losing all those mortals back at the nightclub weighed her down like a blanket of cold steel. She marched as if in a trance, not really seeing where she was going or noticing the same desks she kept passing, as though she was stuck in some horrible nightmare she couldn’t wake from.

  She couldn’t shake the nauseating feeling of seeing so many young, dead mortals on the club’s dance floor. Their vacant expressions and hollow eyes would haunt her forever. Not to mention the horror of what she had almost done, or thought she could do—take an innocent life to save the others.

  Perhaps another angel wouldn’t have
hesitated and would have done their duty to save all those mortals. But Alexa couldn’t do it. Because of her failure, all those mortals’ lives and souls had been taken from them before their time, and under Alexa and Milo’s watch.

  Alexa clamped down on the curse building in her chest. Her legs shook, and her hands were stiff from clenching and unclenching them as she made her fifteenth trip around the chamber. She trudged in and around desks and chairs, each step fueled only by a near-dizzying sick feeling. Failure. Failure. Failure.

  She could still taste and smell the rancid stench of the dead, and the howls of the Egyptian god Anubis still rang fresh in her mind. The Greater demon was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Its power was unmatched and still growing, fed by an infinite source of power—mortals.

  How many more Greater demons had Hades brought into the world? How could the Legion defeat such creatures? How could she or another angel fight such evil?

  But she didn’t contemplate her own doom as she let herself tumble into dread and rage and despair. She was consumed by the thought of Milo’s.

  If Anubis hadn’t stopped him, would the angel warrior have killed that mortal man?

  The thought sent a chill through Alexa. She cringed at what she’d almost allowed Milo to do. He might be Lucifer’s son, but there was no evil in him. His actions had always been geared toward the greater good, toward the Legion’s best interest. If Milo had taken that man’s life, she knew it would have changed him forever.

  As she tramped around the chamber, not even Milo’s sacrifice could ward off the deepening chill she felt in her chest.

  The Counter Demon Division was unnaturally silent.

  The once angel-packed chamber had always welcomed Alexa with the sounds of hundreds of voices, the tapping of fingers on keyboards, and the tread of busy angels coming and going. All that was now reduced to the sound of Alexa’s own tread.

  The desks and chairs sat empty. Where they were once placed neatly, they now stood jumbled and overturned, as though they were moved in haste. Papers were scattered over the floors. All the desktop screens were black. All except for one.

  A single female angel sat at one of the desks in the middle of the chamber. Thin lines marked her face and around her eyes and mouth. Her short auburn hair stood up at odd angles, as though she’d repeatedly run her fingers through it in frustration. Her screen beeped as it showed a multitude of red dots peppering a map of the world, dots that Alexa knew where breaches in the Veil, Rifts, and other demonic activity.

  Upon her arrival in CDD an hour ago, Alexa had tried to spark a conversation with the angel.

  “Where is everyone?” Alexa had asked.

  “Can’t you see I’m busy,” the female angel had growled. “How am I supposed to work if you keep interrupting me? If they’re not here, they must be out there.” She’d pointed to a spot on her screen that looked like the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “It’s no use! It’s happening too fast. Too fast! It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. We’re all doomed!”

  Alexa had wanted to reply it was the first time she’d interrupted the angel but decided to leave well enough alone since she looked like she was in her own hell.

  After that, Alexa couldn’t stand the eerie and unnatural silence or the covert glances the female angel kept shooting her, as though Alexa was still interrupting her. So she had started to pace around the chamber, trying to bring it back to life.

  She needed to do something. Waiting was driving her mad. The last thing she needed was to be alone with her thoughts…

  There was a ting, and the doors of the elevator opened. Alexa turned to see Milo strutting across to the chamber in the same black gear as before. There hadn’t been time to change as he was pulled into an emergency meeting.

  “How did the meeting go?” Alexa had already crossed the chamber and reached Milo by the time he’d made four strides. “Are we suspended? Tell me we’re not suspended? I can never tell if it’s good news or bad news with that blank look on your face.”

  Milo’s mouth fell open and he frowned. “Why would you think we’d get suspended?”

  Alexa caught the female angel listening so she lowered her voice. “Because of what happened. Because of all those lost souls. Because we couldn’t stop Anubis. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what you talked about.” She tried hard to keep the bitterness from her voice, so she didn’t sound jaded by being excluded from the meeting with the High Council. More than ever, she felt a disconnect with the Legion.

  Milo’s eyes were bright, though the smile he gave her didn’t meet it. “Why do you always think the worst in every situation?”

  “Because it would be stupid not to.” Alexa watched the frown on Milo’s face deepen before she pressed, “Are you going to answer me?”

  “Look around you, Alexa,” answered the warrior angel. “There are far fewer trained angels than before. The Legion needs us more than ever. Especially you. Your gift is a godsend, really. They’d never pass on it.”

  “Well, they have a funny way of showing it.” This time Alexa didn’t hide the resentment in her voice. “I thought after the council cleared me—for a second time—they’d finally trust me. But they’ll never trust me. They’ll never see past this gift of mine and who gave it to me. It’ll always be Hades’ touch that altered me. Let’s face it. It’s why they didn’t want me in that meeting with you.”

  Milo tensed. “They do trust you.”

  “I’m not stupid. I know they don’t.”

  “This meeting had nothing to do with that or with you,” said Milo, as though it should be obvious. “Only higher ranked angels were at the meeting…well, those of us left, which was about a handful if you don’t count those out on jobs. Our numbers are unusually low at the moment.” He looked around the room, his expression hardened. “I’m not going to lie to you. It’s much worse than I thought.”

  “Does it have something to do with how empty CDD is?” Alexa glanced at the empty chairs, her anger slowly dissipating. “Where is everyone? I know they can’t all be out on assignments? Where are all the angels?”

  “Gone,” said Milo, his voice hoarse and empty.

  Alexa watched his face for a moment. She didn’t like the lines around his eyes and forehead. “You mean like gone on assignment, right? Not, gone, gone?” She felt a shadow of fear gripping her throat.

  Milo clenched his jaw. “No, I mean gone as in, they deserted the Legion. They’ve forsaken us.”

  He drew back and grasped the backrest of the nearest chair. His face was like stone, his grip white-knuckled on the back of the chair.

  “He’s right,” said the female angel as she perked up in her chair. “They’ve all but abandoned us. Traitors, if you ask me. Tartarus is not punishment enough for what they’ve done.” She shook her head, the whites of her eyes showing. “They should pay the ultimate price! Suffer their true deaths. Yes, yes, that should serve them right! Death to those who turn their backs on the Legion!”

  Alexa glared at the angel until she turned back to her screen. Alexa moved slowly next to Milo, searching his face.

  “But why would so many leave? Where are they?”

  Milo turned and looked at her. “Probably some remote part of Horizon. Mount Hope or Soul Summit, maybe, but no one knows for sure.”

  “I never thought there were other parts of Horizon,” said Alexa, feeling more like a rookie than ever.

  Milo smiled feebly at her. “Horizon has many parts. This is just one small part of a much bigger world.”

  “So, what does this all mean?”

  “Well, whatever the angel Ryan had stirred,” said Milo, and added quickly, seeing the expression on Alexa face, “he wasn’t the only one. The Legion first thought it was only a handful of defected angels, but turns out they were wrong. Many angels believed in Ryan’s preaching, many that were already following the same cause even before Ryan was made an angel. It’s been going on for years in secret. It seems they were waiting for the perfect opportunity to
leave. There have always been cases of fallen angels, but this one is different. This time, the fallen took angels with them. Whatever they’d been preaching about the Cleansing, it convinced a lot of angels to follow.” His frown deepened. “Some of these angels were my friends.”

  “I’m sorry, Milo.” Alexa had never seen him with other angels apart from her and Lance. Since they’d been paired together, he’d never once mentioned a friend or even a special friend. All his focus had been on the job. She’d always thought of him as more of a loner because of what he was before he was made an angel.

  Milo was silent for a moment. He nodded distantly, blinking. “They’re calling themselves The Order of the First.”

  “The Order of the First?” repeated Alexa. The title sounded creepy on her lips. It felt wrong somehow.

  Milo’s eyes flared. “The first creation.”

  Alexa closed her mouth when she realized it was open. A chill snaked down her spine. “So, this is how they managed to convince all those angels. With a name like The Order of the First, it makes them sound special, an elite group. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that special group.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Milo let go of the chair and raked his fingers through his hair. “Whatever lies they spread, they were able to convince a quarter of the Legion including many highly ranked angels.”

  “And the rookies?”

  “Some rookies, but mostly older angels. Angels with more experience.”

  Alexa began to pace again. “This is crazy. I haven’t been an angel all that long, but I can’t help but think of all the mortals they’re abandoning. Some of them probably still have family alive. How can they be so selfish? What do they want?” she asked, but she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

  “What else? To cleanse the Earth of mortals,” answered Milo, his voice cold. So cold. “To release themselves from their obligation, and from the Legion. They don’t want to deal with the mortals anymore. It’s always been for the same reason. They just never gave themselves a title before. A title like that gives them purpose. It gives them power.”