by Ciara Graves
“What do we do?”
I straightened at the sound of that little voice. A kid was in here. He couldn’t be more than ten. No one in this room was in condition to fight. Many still bore bruises from whatever attack they’d managed to survive. I rushed to the window and threw back the curtains. The overhang to the back porch was wide enough they could step out onto it.
“You’re going to climb onto the roof,” I told them over the sounds of the angel’s fists on the door. “Get out there and try to get down. Then run. You hear me?”
“What are you going to do?” the woman asked, clasping my arm. “We know what you are. You can’t fight them alone.”
I patted her hand. “It’s my job to protect the innocent.”
“But you’re one of us.”
“No, I’m not.” I gave her a brief smile then a firm shove toward the window. “Go.”
They lined up at the window and began climbing out.
I scoured the room for a weapon. This room had a fireplace, and there was a small, metal shovel to clean out ashes. Stupid me, I never thought to ask Mech where they kept weapons stashed in this place. Shovel in hand, I waited until the last person was out the window, then stepped to the side.
The dresser and door exploded as a burst of holy light shot into the room.
It blinded me for a split second. A fist crashed into my face. My back smashed into the wall, and I screamed at the agony exploding down my spine.
As I crashed to the floor, I rolled and avoided a slash of the sword. One that would’ve killed me.
Years of training kicked in, and I rolled back the other way to avoid a second attack. I ducked under a sword swing, then walloped him in the gut.
He hadn’t healed himself from the shotgun blasts and was bleeding. I struck the gunshot wound again and again as he stumbled back.
I sprinted for the door. He charged after me, and as the hair on the back of my neck prickled, I sank into a somersault. His sword smashed into the wall, right where my head would’ve been.
I was near the stairs when I spotted the shotgun Tim had used.
“Lela,” Bobby shouted. “The closet!”
“What closet?” I called back, then yelped as the sword crashed into the railing.
I dodged away, but the angel threw himself at me. I dropped the metal shovel and gripped the sword’s hilt and his hands. I pushed back as hard as I could, but the railing cracked beneath me.
Then I was falling.
The fall knocked the air from my lungs. My eyes went wide as I looked up into the evil glare of the angel. He leaned through the gap I’d created in the railing. The sword in his hands flared bright as he stepped back, then leapt into the air. He landed on the first landing.
The drive to survive drove me to roll over. I dug my nails into the floorboards, dragging myself along. My legs felt numb, and my back was warm with blood. The steps pounded closer toward me as I fumbled for the shotgun.
Bobby had said the closet. As I grabbed the shotgun in one hand, I spotted a closet by the front door.
The angel was only a few yards from me. He shook his head as if disappointed to see me holding a shotgun.
“Pathetic,” he spat.
I used the gun to prop me up, then stumbled for the closet. If he was concerned about what I might find in there, he didn’t act like it. He took his time coming after me. I threw the closet door open and found several boxes of ammo on the floor.
“Use them,” Bobby was yelling. “Lela, grab them all.”
The angel’s lip lifted in disgust.
Bobby’s shouting was enough of a distraction to give me time to grab the shells. The angel kicked Bobby’s head into the nearest wall. He bounced around the room, then came to a stop under the couch.
Without Bobby silenced, the fight outside reached my ears. I hoped the ones I told to flee through the window would make it to safety somehow. None of them deserved to be killed by these bastards.
“Now then, where were we?”
“You tell me,” I snapped. I pumped the shotgun.
He scoffed as I aimed it at his chest. “It won’t kill me.”
Praying he was wrong, I said, “Wanna bet?” I pulled the trigger.
The recoil shoved the butt of the gun into my shoulder hard enough to bruise and made me stagger back a step. But unlike the shots Tim made, this one left its mark. The gunshot hit the angel’s chest dead center and sizzled through flesh, muscle, and bone.
He groaned in discomfort as I racked another shot and fired, not giving him a chance to recover.
The boom of the gun drowned out all other noise.
I racked the third shot. The sword flickered in his hands, then went out. The third round struck him in his knee, destroying it completely.
The shells had been infused with hellfire.
The box was at my feet, and as the angel fell to his one good knee, screaming in agony, I loaded more rounds. Without a second of hesitation, I fired all of them in fast succession.
Chest heaving, I waited.
The angel’s face was half gone from the final shot. His body burned from the inside out as the buckshot the shells had been filled with exploded one after another. They seeped through his body, following his veins. When they reached his heart, he doubled over, and it exploded out of his chest. Blood covered the ceiling, the walls, and me, as the angel bled out and died in the living room.
I sagged against the nearest wall, clutching the shotgun. He was dead. I survived an attack from an angel as a human. I started to slide down the wall to the floor.
A door crashed open in the kitchen.
“Seriously?” I snapped and fumbled for the shells in the box. They spilled over the floor as the angel with the spear appeared in the kitchen doorway.
He threw his head back with a furious battle-cry, then launched his spear at my head. It went wide, but the air rushed by my face all the same.
The spear thudded home, and the handle jerked back and forth until it’s holy light dissipated, and it flickered out of sight.
Another one came to life in his hands, the holy light flooding the room. The firelight danced across his sneering face giving him a devilish look.
I loaded a shell, aimed, and fired. He caught it in the shoulder, but it didn’t slow him down. He easily tossed the spear to his other hand and thrust it forward. The blade snagged my arm as it rammed home in the wall beside me. His hand wrapped around my throat, and he hefted me off the floor.
I clutched the shotgun in my hands.
“You will die this night. All of you will die.”
I smiled as I shifted the shotgun just enough to pull the trigger.
The blast threw him back and shoved me into the wall. I pumped the gun and fired a third round, but it was out of shells.
Blood seeped from the angel’s wounds, but only one was burning. His veins sizzled and burst through his skin, but that one shot wasn’t going to be enough to stop him. The other shells clearly were not hellfire-infused.
As soon as he realized it, he cackled. “Told you.”
I dug through the box but couldn’t tell which shells were infused and which ones weren’t.
Shoving as many as I could in my pocket, I loaded more and fired one after the other. Each shot stalled him, but he wasn’t going down. His arm continued to burn away piece by piece. The bright red lines created a jagged pattern running up his neck, but not fast enough.
He’d kill me before that damned fire brought him down. I turned to bolt out the front door.
He grabbed my shoulder and spun me back around. Using the shotgun, I blocked a hit to my face, but his second strike to my gut knocked the air out of me. His fist collided with my face.
I fell back into the coffee table. He followed me and landed another solid hit to my face.
The gun remained clenched in my right hand, but there were no shells left in it.
He hauled me up by my shoulders and threw me into the stair railing. It cracked and splin
tered at the impact, covering me in debris as I fell to the floor.
The only sounds, aside from my rattling breaths were his steps as he marched across the room toward me, throwing furniture out of the way.
I was going to die here. I was going to die a mortal at the hands of an angel who until two weeks ago had been an ally. A brother. How had it gotten to this point?
A distant echo of my parents shouting my name confused me.
Then there was another voice. Mech.
He wasn’t here, was he? I couldn’t see him, but my vision was beginning to grow fuzzy around the edges.
There was one more shell in my pocket.
Somehow, I found myself loading the gun and raising it to the angel as he neared. He stopped a few feet short of me and laughed, the sound dark.
“I’ll be sure to let Hadariel know how hard you fought,” he told me. “You should’ve just stayed with us.”
My eye twitched. My finger tightened on the trigger. “Screw you.”
I pulled it.
A shell infused with hellfire struck his sternum. He went down, but not all the way. He clutched at the wound. When his hands began to glow, a fury unlike anything I ever felt before overtook me.
Shouting until my voice cracked, I lunged at him and tackled him to the floor. I bashed the butt of the shotgun into his chest, making him gasp. His hand rose, glowing blue with holy light, but it was like I was possessed by a wild beast. I slammed the butt of the gun into his hand, crushing the bones.
He screamed as I turned and did the same to his other hand.
Whatever chance he might’ve had at overpowering me disappeared as I beat his face, over and over, with the butt of the gun. He attempted to fight back, but I didn’t let up my attack.
Eventually, he stopped moving as the hellfire burned through his body.
I couldn’t stop. His skull cracked, and his face became unrecognizable.
Each of my strikes was punctuated with what Hadariel had done to me. What he’d put all those innocent ones through. Every blow he dealt flashed through my mind as I paid his angel back in kind. Angel. They didn’t deserve to be called angels anymore. They didn’t deserve to be called anything but traitors.
Still, I didn’t let up.
“Lela.”
Someone said my name, but I was too lost in the blood and horror of how this night could have gone to stop and turn around.
“Lela, what did you do?”
Hands grabbed my shoulders.
I screamed, whirling around and pointing the shotgun at the man.
He held up his hands and stood calmly, a few feet away. He was bleeding and favored his left side.
My eye twitched as the fire that had coursed through my veins only seconds ago slipped away. Weakness overcame me. I fell to my knees.
“It’s alright.” Tim hurried back to my side. “You’re alright.”
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered, clutching the shotgun in my hands.
He glanced from me to the two dead angels. “I almost was. They killed a good number of us, but the demons got here in time.”
He kept talking, but his words were just sounds. Sounds I tuned out.
I looked at the angel I’d beaten to death. There was nothing left of his face. The hellfire would continue to burn through him, and soon he’d be just ashes.
Tim said my name a few more times, but I was too numb to respond.
I’d always been a fierce warrior in a battle, but what I’d done here tonight, that anger, that fire, that had not been the angel in me. That had been something entirely different, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the changes coming over me.
I wasn’t sure I could handle being human.
Chapter 5
Mech
Bear Run was in chaos when we stepped through the portal just outside the main watchtowers. I led the charge inside the grounds and found dead bodies of demons, humans, and angels.
The demon guards left behind were engaged in a fierce fight, but they were losing ground quickly. I saw no sign of Lela or Bobby, and the urge to protect her drove the ferocity of my attacks.
We finished off every angel who dared attack the outpost. When the last one fell, I spotted a group of humans rushing around the side of the safe house. The front door was gone, and from the pale faces of those rushing toward me, they had barely escaped.
“Inside,” one of the women told me. “She was holding them off.”
“Who?” I demanded with a growl.
“The fallen angel. She told us to run, and we did. She stayed behind.”
I took off at a sprint for the safe house.
Bobby met me on the porch, holding his head in his hands.
“Where is she?”
“Inside, but Mech, it’s not good.”
“Is she hurt? Let me see her,” I growled when he moved to block me from entering. “Bobby, do you want to lose more than just your head?”
“She’s not hurt. It’s something else,” he said quietly, his serious tone stilling me. “Something that might be worse. She took out two angels on her own.”
“And?”
He sighed, then stepped out of the way. “See for yourself.”
Whereas a moment ago I was ready to rush inside, now I hesitated. If she killed two angels, she should be celebrating she was alive. Had she not lost her holy light after all?
After one last glance at Bobby, I stepped through the battered threshold and encountered a destroyed living room. Lying on the floor near the stairs was a dead angel. His hands were splayed at his sides, bruised and broken. It wasn’t his hands that made me stop.
The angel’s face looked like someone beat him to death with a hammer. His skull was bashed in. Hellfire burned through his chest, eating away at his flesh.
Another angel’s body lay not too far away, also in the process of being destroyed by hellfire. His heart appeared to have exploded out of his ribcage. Gore splattered the ceiling and the walls. The railing going up the stairs was broken in several places. The front windows had been shattered.
Tim’s voice came from the kitchen.
Cautiously, I aimed for the rear of the house. A struggle took place in there too. The table and chairs were piles of splinters. The back door was missing.
Huddled in the corner by the cabinets was Lela.
Tim was crouched in front of her. He was quietly asking her to let it go.
She wasn’t responding.
The floor creaked under my weight.
Tim glanced over his shoulder. “Mech.”
He straightened, and when I saw Lela, it felt like my heart stopped. She had a white shirt on when I left. There wasn’t an inch of it not covered in blood now. It drenched her hair and speckled her face and arms. In her hands was a shotgun, the butt of it sporting bits of flesh and bone stuck.
She’d beaten the angel to death with the gun. How had she managed to do that?
Her eyes were focused on the floor. Her breathing was harsh.
“Has she said anything?” I asked Tim softly.
“Nothing. I found her in the act of killing the bastard,” he replied. “I managed to get her out of the room. Thought it might help, but she won’t let it go.” He nodded to the shotgun. “Not sure if it’s loaded or not.”
“Why don’t you get out of here, just in case? I can handle her.”
He gave her a worried look then exited the kitchen the way I’d come in.
Lela remained perfectly still, aside from her ragged breaths.
I crouched in front of her slowly, not wanting to alarm her into pulling the trigger, in case the shotgun was loaded. I closed one hand around the barrel and moved in closer.
“Why don’t you let me have this?” I said softly. “Lela, let it go. The fight’s over.”
Her hands tightened around the gun. She shook her head, her hair was matted and sticky with blood, falling around her shoulders in clumps.
I held onto the gun as my other hand worked at her fin
gers. “Let it go. Everyone’s safe. The angels are dead. You can let it go.” I continued to talk to her, not raising my face, moving at a snail’s pace.
The shotgun came free, and I checked the chamber. Thankfully it was empty. I leaned it against the cabinets then sat down beside her.
“Lela, look at me.”
Her eye twitched, but that was all.
“Lela,” I said, my voice a bit more stern. “Look at me.”
Her hands curled against her thighs, and this time, she turned her head. The same eyes I’d found myself lost in the first time we were so close to one another no longer were the eyes of Commander Lela. These were vastly different. They weren’t dull. No, these were filled with darkness and pain. They overflowed with a fire that bordered on madness. The longer I looked, the harder those eyes became, until they seemed to grow cold and distant.
“I killed them,” she whispered, the words hoarse, as if she’d been screaming.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” The bite to her words was like a slap to the face. “I killed them. Brutally. This wasn’t like the other times. I—I mutilated them.” She trembled as the words tumbled out of her mouth. “They were going to kill humans. I had to stop them, no matter what the cost.”
As soon as she started talking, it was like she couldn’t stop. She told me about the attack in a rambling spew of words from start to finish, ending with when Tim found her beating in the angel’s face with the shotgun.
By the time she fell silent, her whole body shook, and tears slipped from her eyes. I wasn’t sure she realized they were there. Gently, I wiped them away, but all that did was smear the blood across her cheeks. She was a battle-hardened commander. This fight should have been nothing to her. Hadariel had gotten to her worse than I thought.
“I almost died,” she breathed. “Mech.” Her lips moved, but whatever else she wanted to say was lost as she fell forward onto me.
I held her, letting her fall apart. My gaze slipped to her back, and the anger at nearly losing her turned into a beast fighting to get free inside me.
Her shirt was soaked in blood from where her wounds had opened. My hands were now coated in red.
