by Liz Meldon
“Sir, yes sir.” Alaric topped it off with a little salute, smirking when the chaos demon’s narrowed gaze landed on him. “Come on, Malachi. We’ve been over this. Let’s just go.”
With Kingsley leading the way, the group set off, sticking to the far edge of the magical bubble, striding along the faintly shimmering wall: Cordelia and Alaric at the front, Gibson in the middle, followed by Malachi holding Ella at an arm’s length away from the mess of demons and rubble, and then Moira bringing up the rear. Her hands warmed as she stepped out onto the street, gaze forever moving, forever taking in the demons watching her.
“Wait.” Kingsley held up a fist, bringing the group to a halt. The vampire turned around, his eyes searching, his frown deep. “D’you hear that?”
Ella looked back to her, eyes wide, and Moira shook her head. She didn’t hear it—not at first. But then—a high-pitched whistling sound, growing louder by the second. Swallowing hard, she looked up.
“Angels incoming!” a demon roared from the crowd. Far above the mess, nine identical lights plummeted toward them like shooting stars. Falling stars. Comets. Fireballs.
Demons jumped into action immediately; those in the middle of the horde whipped tarps off four freestanding structures and revealed the largest mounted machine guns Moira had ever seen.
“Get back,” Alaric called, motioning for the group to retreat right up to Cordelia’s shimmering ward. They all scrambled to comply, Ella stumbling into it with a yelp—but moving five feet away from the demon army wouldn’t do them any good. The whistling was like thunder now, like the scream of an oncoming train two seconds away from flattening you to the track.
“Get down!” Moira shouted. She jumped for Ella, dragging her to the ground as the angels ripped through Cordelia’s barrier. The ward seemed to part for the intruders, not the kind to keep anything out, just hidden, but it held firm otherwise.
And good thing, too. As soon as the angels breached, they emitted a tidal wave of light and slammed into the pavement, the force of it all akin to an earthquake. Demons screamed, Malachi and Cordelia too, and dropped down as light bathed them, but there was no singed skin or bubbling blisters. Frantic, Moira and Ella crawled on top of Malachi to shield him, but his skin had only turned a bright pink—like a sunburn after a day at the park. Snarling, he rolled them off and leapt up as soon as the light disappeared.
Nine angels. Moira scrambled to her feet, heart racing, and put herself squarely in front of Ella. Nine angels with wings. She’d never seen them before, but there they were, in all their glory. Each wing had a span at least six feet across, and as they unfurled, they sent demons flying. Like an extra pair of fists, the huge, white feathers extended wide, knocking anyone within range to the ground.
“Open fire!”
All four machine guns sprang to life in unison, their operators unleashing a storm of bullets on their enemy. Moira planted her hands over her ears, wincing at the piercing gunfire, then gasped when the angels brought their wings in, each wrapping himself in a white, feathery cocoon. Bullets ricocheted off the wings, shooting in all directions as the four targeted angels started to move, slowly but surely, straight for the guns in the middle of the demon horde.
“Get down,” Malachi growled, pushing her back to the ground. She went without a fight, shock numbing her, and then quickly scrambled over to as crouching Ella. Malachi hovered over the pair, flinching when a bullet whizzed by his ear. It shot through Cordelia’s bubble and took an immediate nosedive, bouncing a few times across the pavement before settling next to a grated manhole.
The demon army had erupted into a screaming, snarling, yowling, roaring nightmare, charging the angels in a way that had Moira’s mind jumping back to the fight in front of Diriel’s estate in Hell. This, however, was far deadlier. Nine against a hundred—yet somehow the demons still seemed outmanned. Peeking out from under Malachi’s arm, she spied a cocooned angel finally reaching the closest of the still-firing machine guns. His wings unfurled, knocking down any demons in his path down, and the angel then bent the barrel of the gun up and pushed the stand clean over.
“Holy…shit,” Ella breathed, watching from under Malachi’s other arm.
“We aren’t frightened of them for nothing,” the chaos demon muttered. His eyes narrowed, staring intently at the army, and the shrieks and yowls and snarls of the demons swelled, louder than the gunfire—until the machine guns stopped completely, destroyed by the other angels.
“We need to move,” Alaric shouted over the chaos. He beckoned them forward, getting into a crouched position. Much to Moira’s horror, poor Kingsley hadn’t survived the angels’ light, even at half the usual capacity inside Cordelia’s ward; they passed his ashen corpse as they scurried after the others. Ella blanched, tiptoeing around the body in silence.
Just as before, the group clung to the outer rim of the battlefield, hoping to casually slip by and avoid all the fighting. Wishful thinking. At the back once again, Moira urged her light to her fingertips, frantically searching the faces of the angels for Aeneas—searching, but unable to locate. She gritted her teeth and stood upright, trying to see over the mass of demon bodies, then cursed when an angel threw a whole squad of demons out of his way. Bodies sailed across the fray, slamming into the café’s walls, shattering the second-storey windows.
The angel—Zachariah, the same one she had stared down outside of Seraphim Securities after Severus was taken—withdrew a sword from the depths of his trench coat, and Moira swore again, much louder this time, when it burst into flames.
“Ah! Ah! Oh!” Ella pointed frantically at Zachariah, having also spotted it, and stumbled to a halt. “Flaming sword! Flaming sword!”
Malachi whirled around, and all three winced when Zachariah cut down a half dozen demons with a single sweep of that sword.
Fuck.
While the odd crack of gunfire still echoed across the battlefield, most of the demons seemed to be trying to physically overwhelm the angels. In fact, as Moira’s gaze darted around, she realized that the demons, who had been so cool and collected before while whipping out their machine guns, looked crazed now—like fast-moving zombies hurling themselves at a fence, climbing on top of each other to get the sweet, sweet brains of the humans fleeing on the other side.
It was—insanity. Moira gulped. When she looked up at Malachi, a question on the tip of her tongue, she suddenly recalled that chaos demons could control other demons.
Was he doing this?
Had he turned them into rabid dogs, foaming at the mouth, clawing manically at angels?
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. As long as the angels were distracted, she was good to go again. Forget looking for Aeneas—she just needed to get to those elevators and find Severus.
Unfortunately, the fight quickly found its way into the outskirts—right into their laps. Somehow the fighters had managed to knock an angel off balance, and he came crashing through Moira’s little brigade, separating her, Malachi, and Ella from Cordelia, Alaric, and Gibson. Malachi shoved them both back and out of the angel’s wingspan, and just before the clump of rabid demons chasing after this one could pile on, another angel dropped down on them from above. Hadrian—an overwhelmed Moira recognized him from Severus’s sketched.
Malachi lurched forward, picking a smallish demon off the ground and literally throwing him at the angel. While Hadrian cut the demon in half with his flaming sword, the distraction gave other demons a chance to swarm him, Malachi at the outskirts, his eyes black and his mouth sneering.
“Alaric!”
One thing at a fucking time. Moira whipped around at the sound of Ella’s cry, panic gripping her tight. Cordelia had disappeared. Gibson’s smashed head currently coated the polished leather dress shoes of the angel who had separated their group, and Alaric was on the ground, frantically crawling away. Gun just out of reach, all he could do was retreat, scrambling backward across the blood-slick pavement.
“Fuck me,” Moira hissed, and
before she knew it, she was running full speed at the angel. Then she leapt—soaring, soaring, soaring, until wham, right onto the angel’s back. Adriel. She’d recognize that nose anywhere. He stumbled forward with a grunt, wings ruffling. In that moment, as she snapped her arms around his neck, hoping to distract him long enough for Alaric to move, Moira couldn’t help but notice the heft of his wings. The thickness of the joint connecting them to his back, cutting through the fabric of his clothing. The powerful rush of air as those wings flapped.
Would hers be anything like this?
“Bite him!” she heard Ella shouting from the background. Without thinking, she went for it, ready to take a chunk out of the angel’s ear, only to find herself lurching forward when Adriel grabbed her forearm and dragged her over his shoulder.
Moira toppled down with a cry, landing hard on the pavement, and then rolled to the right as the flaming sword swung down after her. Hopping up onto her feet, keeping her tread light and crouching low like Malachi had taught her, she slammed the base of her palm into Adriel’s knee, the chaos demon’s voice rattling around her skull.
“Go for pain centers,” he’d insisted, pinching the underside of her bicep. “Go for weaknesses.” How many fucking times had he knocked her over by cutting her off at the knees?
Much to her delight, the move worked, sort of—Adriel fumbled, only to be shot seconds later by Alaric, the flash of the gun making her blink rapidly. He managed to hit the angel’s sword hand, and the flaming weapon clattered to the ground. However, before Moira could follow through—punch to the throat—Adriel reared back and swung at her.
Moira managed to grab his arm before he actually backhanded her, the cold, purplish blood of his injured hand splattering onto her cheek. The force of the blow still sent her tumbling back, and she landed hard next to Alaric, who already had his gun up.
Two beats of Adriel’s enormous wings, the gust of air they brought up, knocked the handgun right out of Alaric’s grasp.
“Abominations,” the angel spat—at both of them. He glared at his wounded hand, then pitched forward, the venom, the hatred, positively oozing from every pore. “Wretched insults to the very Creator of this universe! I’ll gladly rip you apart, limb by limb, until—”
Moira shrieked when something burst out of his chest: a silver-tipped walking stick made of—onyx? Adriel’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, a choking sound gurgling up his throat, and then he toppled to his knees.
“Adriel,” their rescuer crooned, his tone perfectly civil over the chaotic din of the battle, his outfit perfectly stylish against the backdrop of carnage, “don’t you dare threaten my son.”
“Father?”
With a lengthy exhale, a solemn death rattle, Adriel slid down what Moira could now confirm was, in fact, a black walking stick. The angel crumpled unceremoniously to the ground, dead. Wings limp. Eyes glassy. Lips parted. Towering over him, the infamous Verrier plucked a checkered silk pocket square from the breast pocket of his jacket and used it to clean the blood off his weapon.
All Moira could do was gawk: at the dead angel, feathers fluttering in the breeze; at the statuesque Verrier, who looked nothing like Alaric. The same white hair as hers sat atop his head, swept back in a low ponytail. The once white-and-grey pocket square, now stained a deep purple, paired well with his exquisitely tailored suit—all black, from the tie to the laces of his oxfords. Over his arm hung what looked like a dark grey trench, which he tossed aside with a slight twitch of his cheek, his expression otherwise totally impassive.
He was kind of—breathtaking?
Moira snapped her mouth shut, her cheeks warming when his cold blue eyes swept over her.
“Is your dad an angel?” she hissed, turning on Alaric and smacking his arm. The hybrid startled on impact, shaking his head quickly and frowning at her.
“What? No. He’s a prince of Hell. Haven’t you been listening—”
“And what, precisely,” Verrier started, his voice like velvet—velvet that suddenly hardened, its edge sharp enough to draw blood, “do you think you’re doing, son of mine?”
He slammed his walking stick on the ground for maximum effect, then strolled across Adriel’s lifeless body. Moira winced as his foot ground the angel’s face into the pavement—just as Adriel had done to poor Gibson.
“Do you have a death wish?” he snarled, dropping low and grasping his son by the front of his shirt. “Do you know the agony you put me through?”
A screech, distinctly female and terrified, cut off Alaric’s response, and to her right, in the frays of battle, Moira heard the tail end of a threat.
“…shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Moira’s eyes widened when she spied an angel holding Cordelia up by the end of her braid. Feet dangling above the ground, she swung at him, her hands blazing red, her teeth gritted.
“Cordelia!” Suddenly Alaric was crawling over Moira—and it was then she caught it, a sight that had her yelping in surprise.
His eyes.
They were grey.
Full grey. A smoky, dark color—but not black.
Moira scrambled back, trying to get out of the way, but the hybrid had already taken off like a sprinter shooting off the starting block.
“Did he just…have…? Did he just go through hybrid puberty?” Moira pressed a hand to her forehead, wincing as the tiny rocks from the road bit into her skin. “He’s a demon hybrid though. Right? He’s…”
She stilled at the weight of Verrier’s gaze when it landed on her, his smile predatory, unnerving.
“Almost,” he growled. With another flash of teeth, the former prince rose to his full height, brushing off his suit with one hand, gripping the stacked silver skull handle of his walking stick with the other. Pride radiated from him as he watched his son tackle the angel holding Cordelia to the ground, the flaming sword tumbling from the creature’s hand. Cordelia managed to roll away and hop back up on her feet. Blood streamed down her face, and she unleashed an unholy surge of brilliant red light, the magic slamming hard into the angel, who bellowed.
In pain? In surprise? Moira couldn’t be sure; she stood to get a better look. Alaric was soon upright again too, his father strolling toward him. Verrier stopped as two angels cut their way through the sea of rabid demons, their swords ablaze and their gazes set firmly on Alaric.
Until Verrier tapped his cane three times on the pavement. When he raised it again, it was no longer an onyx walking stick, but a great broadsword of his own, its fire black and blue. The head of every angel on the battlefield snapped toward him, and Moira let out a stuttering breath; had the guy just thrown down the gauntlet, or what?
“Is it just me,” she flinched at the sound of Ella’s voice directly beside her, “or is Alaric’s dad super hot?”
“Uh, yeah. Kind of the gorgeous badass type, I guess.” Moira pursed her lips and nodded, her heart skipping a beat when Verrier’s sword clashed against the sword of another angel. The former prince shouted for his son to go as flames flared from the blades, scorching a few snarling demons standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alaric grabbed Cordelia around her waist, the witch shrieking, spitting, hissing, like a puffed-up kitten ready to go another round with a much bigger cat, and hauled her away from the fight.
A dull ache throbbed within Moira, cutting through the pumping adrenaline that was probably keeping the bulk of the actual pain at bay.
“Where’s Malachi?” she asked. Ella nodded toward the battle.
“He was helping those guys the last I saw him,” she said, then shook her head. “Didn’t he say not to engage?”
“Pretty sure he definitely did.”
“Like, repeatedly?”
“Yup.”
“I look forward to rubbing this moment in his face later.”
“Same.”
Hands pressed to her lower back, Moira turned toward the rubble in front of Seraphim Securities, wondering if she and Ella should just go ahead without Malachi—a
nd was promptly tackled to the ground by a demon. She shrieked, elbows taking the brunt of the fall.
“Not so tough now,” he sneered, pinning her down, debris biting into her back as she tried to wiggle free.
“Get off me!”
“Oh, no, we’re only just getting started.” Spittle sprinkled her face as he screamed—this demon with severely burned flesh, so marred with red, angry skin that it looked like he was wearing a waxy mask over half his face. Her hands warmed as he bellowed, “You’ll suffer for what you did to me!”
“I don’t even know you,” she snapped, teeth gritted when she finally got her hands onto his shoulders.
Fuck this guy. They were supposed to be on the same team here, but obviously that was too much to ask for from some demons. Maybe the other angels had hurt him and he wanted to take it out on her. Maybe he was just an asshole.
“It’s Edgar,” he shouted as her hands started to glow. The demon gripped the front of her shirt and slammed her into the ground—repeatedly, pain blooming behind her eyes. “Say it! Say my name! Beg for me to stop, you little bitch—”
Moira clocked him hard across the face, then kneed him in the groin. As he toppled over, she went with the momentum, rolling on top of him and slamming a glowing hand onto the unblemished half of his face. He shrieked, but just as the real angel light hadn’t done its usual damage to the demons in Cordelia’s magic bubble, her light only seemed to sting a bit. Malachi’s skin had bubbled and blistered before. This was—not good.
He batted her hands away, knees pummelling her back, and Moira thrust the base of her palm at his nose. Blood spurted over both of them as the bones broke. Roaring, Edgar went for her eyes, dangerously long nails sharp and reaching as she reeled back.
“Moira, get off!”
She rolled without hesitation, throwing herself to the left just before Ella emptied her entire clip—all six bullets—into the demon. Panting, and in pain, Moira pushed onto her knees. Her eyes widened.
Ella had shot him twice in the face, then four times in the chest, blood pluming from every wound.
