“Zay!” I heard Caleb’s voice boom from somewhere in the vicinity. I stayed low and tried to get my bearings. Luckily, the house he had been protecting had a clear patina of faith protecting it. I stayed low and crawled through the yard toward safety.
The bark of a rifle told me to freeze. I didn’t hear the bullet, so I didn’t think they were aiming at me, but every instinct I had was telling me to stay still. The neighborhood was oddly quiet for so much violence happening. The humans here probably never thought they’d be involved in the war. Some hid, some panicked, and some fought back, like the poor kid caught in the middle. Without a doubt, at least one had called for help. We had more than one timer running out. I didn’t want to fight normal humans and it was an easy assumption Tink and Caleb felt the same.
“Kibs?” I whispered. “Imps? Archons? Anyone here?”
“I stand by,” whispered a voice back. I blinked and the outline of a glowing sphere flickered in front of my face. “Dominion Caleb has ordered me to assist any who assist him, noble Marquis.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “Tell him where I am, I’m slowly getting my ass back to the house, and not to take any risks.”
“Language, sir,” the archon chided. “I will relay your message.”
I grunted and the archon vanished. Every one of them had the same uninteresting straight-edge personality. My crawl continued, pausing every time I heard something, paranoia growing with every inch. If the mage controlling the kid had been smart enough to get some of my ichor before it burned, I was in deep shit. They could be working on a spell to snuff me like a candle. I didn’t know if getting into the faith-protected house would protect me. The fact they hadn’t killed me yet was not much in the way of consolation.
“Noble sir Marquis!” The archon chirped in my ear. My heart skipped at least three beats. “Dominion Caleb is safe! He encourages you to move to the sanctuary house with all speed, throwing caution to the wind!”
“Great,” I said. “Acknowledge him, and then see if you can find an imp and get word to Kalil of House Asmodeus. Tell him to hurry the fuck up. Sorry, the heck up.”
The archon sniffed and vanished. I took a deep breath, gathered my legs under me, and took off for the house. A feeling of deep, impending doom came over me with each stride. A spell could come out of nowhere at any moment. I jumped over a picnic table in the neighbor’s backyard, sprinted around their house to the front, then crossed the wide open space to where Caleb and Tink were waiting. I flung myself in through the broken window. “Safe!” I wheezed.
Caleb frowned down at me. “You didn’t need to dive into me to get my attention. Almost got us both killed.”
I sat up, clutching my shoulder as a streak of pain ran down my left arm. I’d been shot in the left shoulder, broken my left wing, and just now landed hard on the left arm. Rough day. “I didn’t have time to make a good decision, just a fast one. You weren’t paying attention to me.”
“At least you did get back quickly,” Caleb said. “Anna’s starting a new spell to protect us and she needs your help.”
I stood up and swayed. My left arm felt numb after the repeated injuries and I was sweating from all the exertion. “Where is she?”
He pointed down. “Basement with the kids.”
The stairs nearly defeated me. By the time I made it to the bottom, sweat was rolling down my face and my heart was hammering. She looked toward me as I dropped to one knee. “The hell is wrong with you, demon?” she asked. “You didn’t get hit or anything, did you?”
“No, but my heart’s beating hard enough to crack my ribs from the inside.”
“You’re probably running out of steam,” she said. “Regenerated too much too fast, right?”
“It’s not anything related to regeneration,” I said. My legs refused to let me stand. “I know how that feels. This is different. I just feel like I’m going to die.”
“Don’t you always feel that way?”
“More so than normal.”
“Excuse me,” said a new voice. One of the adults in the room raised her hand, drawing our attention. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Your heart is racing, you feel like you’re dying, and you’re holding your left arm? I’m a nurse and those are classical symptoms of a heart attack.”
“I think I’m a little young for a heart attack,” I said. “But considering how my heart’s lurching around in my chest, I’m not going to discount it.”
Tink drew a rune in the air and touched my forehead. “You had a spell cast on you recently,” she said. “Not anything I recognize and it’s already fading, but whatever it was going to do, it’s done.”
“I bet I can tell you what it did,” I said. “So, what can I do about a heart attack?”
The nurse shook her head. “I’d say call an ambulance so we can start you on drugs to break up any clots, but we don’t have that option here, do we? We can’t do much without medical supplies. Take some aspirin? Or can’t you just, you know, magic it?”
Tink growled. “Healing magic isn’t my thing. Just regenerate, dumbass.”
I closed my eyes and directed ichor within my body. I could feel the heart muscle straining as it struggled for enough blood to function. One of my primary arteries had narrowed, as if someone had pinched it until the sides stuck together. I pushed ichor through the artery, slowly and carefully. It resisted for a moment, but then the surge of ichor pushed through the pinch and I felt immediate relief. I let out a sigh. “That’s better.”
The nurse gave me a timid smile. “I guess your people have some advantages.”
“At least they tried for a heart attack and not something in your brain,” Tink growled. She had already turned back to whatever spell she was working on. “You should probably check, though. I’d do as much damage as I could, if I was the one casting shit on you.”
I let ichor course through my entire body, super-saturating myself with oxygen and energy. When it came to my head, I could sense a bulge in a blood vessel, right in the middle of all my gray matter. A careful surge of ichor to the affected spot reinforced and sealed off the weakness. Another flush of ichor took care of a couple of locations where cells were dividing out of control. One of those locations was a bit sensitive. I took personal insult at that one. “Good call.”
“Of course. I’m brilliant,” she snapped. “Now give me some of your ichor so I can finish this barrier spell.”
I offered her my hand and she slashed it open. The nurse inhaled sharply as my ichor oozed from the wound. “So, is this going to actually work against a master mage?”
She shook her head as she decorated the magic circle with our combined blood. “It’ll buy us a few more minutes, but I don’t have the time to set up any solid defenses. Once this fails, there isn’t much keeping them from casting spells directly into the house.”
“Besides the faith reinforcement.”
“What?” She looked up from her work. “Like a church?”
I nodded. “It’s nowhere near the strength of an actual church, but it’s enough. I assume there’s been some worship service or prayer group in here for a while?”
The nurse nodded. “Caleb and Ezekiel encouraged us to find strength through prayer.”
I held back a smile. Prayers to a dead God worked perfectly fine as long as you didn’t know he was dead. “That’s what’s keeping us alive. I know this sounds weird coming from someone with demonic blood, but pray more. It might make the difference here.”
She nodded and gathered the kids and other adults together. I looked back to Tink while she continued her spell. “The cognitive dissonance of some people shocks me,” she said. “I’m sitting here painting the floor with blood and magic, as pagan and occult as you can get, and they’re going to cheerfully ignore me and pray to their God.”
“Whatever keeps us alive,” I said.
“My parents never bothered with religion,” she said. “Maybe they knew better. Yeah, I know,
they couldn’t have known for sure because of the Pact, but after generations of Azriphel, I bet they stopped believing in any sort of higher power.”
“Which is even stranger, considering Azriphel was a literal demon.”
“Like I said before, cognitive dissonance.”
I grunted. She didn’t talk much about her family. “How much longer till you turn it on?”
“Another minute or so.”
“Need any more ichor?”
“I’m good.”
“I’m going up to see how Caleb’s holding up.”
“Be careful up there.” I shook off my own cognitive dissonance and headed upstairs. The house was a wreck, with glass and blood decorating the floor and walls. One of the kitchen cabinets had broken, spilling glasses and plates to the counter below in a cascade of ceramic and glass shards. I avoided the portion of the counter stained with an angel’s purity and crept toward the living room.
Caleb’s sword appeared in front of my nose. I froze. “Easy.”
“Didn’t hear you coming up. Is Anna done?” He whipped the sword away and I crouched beside him. We’d been on the move since I arrived and I took this moment to observe my friend. He was noticeably thinner than the last time we’d met. His eyes and nose were red and his features seemed harsher, sharper. Whatever he had been up to lately had been enough to actually impress itself on his timeless angelic physique.
“Another minute or so,” I said. “Any action here?”
“Nothing since you got back,” he said. A knock on the front door made us both jump. “Well, until now.”
“Are we going to open it?” I asked.
He stood up and manifested his shield. “They can’t cast through the barrier of faith, even with the door open.”
“But they can shoot through it.”
“I haven’t been subtle about where I am in the house,” he said as he walked to the door. “If they wanted to shoot me, I’d be picking bullets out of my hair by now.”
I grunted and skidded sideways, out of the line of sight of the door. He might be willing to talk, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk to a bunch of murderers. I flicked a ball of hellfire to life and waited quietly.
“I trust this is under a flag of truce,” Caleb said as he opened the door. “Though I haven’t heard your Conclave honors ours, so I’m unsure why you think I’ll honor yours.”
“Because you want to save your children.” The mage’s voice was silky. “I compliment you on your spirited defense, angel, but you can no longer hold this line. Continue to be stubborn and we’ll destroy this house and everyone within.”
“I presume you’re offering an alternative.”
“Surrender the mage and the demon.”
“And if I do?”
“We allow you and your wards to leave peacefully.”
“And what guarantees we won’t be murdered out of hand after we leave? Forgive my doubt, but your past actions give me no reason to believe in your mercy.”
The mage laughed. “No guarantees, angel. Take it or leave it.”
“Does it bother you to murder children?” Caleb’s tone grew deeper.
“Did it bother your kind to murder demon spawn?” The mage laughed again. “We know about your wars. Your angels murdered their children. The demons murdered your children. Both of you murder our children.”
“And yet you choose not to learn, but instead embrace our obvious flaws.”
“Spare me your morals, angel.” I heard the mage spit. “You have my offer. Take it or leave it.”
“I pity you,” Caleb said. “You’ve learned nothing from the horrors of the past, have you? Your Conclave is simply seeking dominion over humanity, and the best way to unite your people is with a common enemy. My people know that all too well. It only works for so long. Before long, your people will question who the true enemy is. You may think you control the spread of information, but your grasp will inevitably slip. It’ll happen before you think it will. The more vile your actions during your reign, the more devastating your fall.”
“You are the true enemy,” snapped the mage. “Don’t fucking deny it. We’ve been pawns for centuries. No more. No mercy for you or disgusting halfbreed children. We’ll purge this world of your kind.”
“Halfbreed?” I said, rounding the corner and putting myself in plain sight of the mage. Caleb turned sideways to look at me, which opened up a direct path for me. “That’s insulting, my dear mage, and this is what I say to your insult.” I lifted my left hand to the sky to catch his attention, then slung my spark of hellfire from my right. The spark grew slightly as it traveled the handful of feet to the mage’s chest. He stumbled back as the flame burned into his chest. Caleb stepped back, turning wide eyes to me. I walked to the front door as the mage desperately tried to snuff the burrowing spark. He looked up as I stood in the doorway.
“Mercy,” he whispered.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s talk about mercy.” I leaned forward and stared him in the eyes from inches away. “Let’s talk about how your people murdered children. Let’s talk about how you used them as bait. How about when you took control of an innocent’s body to try to kill me? Was it you? Was it?” He didn’t say anything, but I could see fear in his eyes.
“Zay.” Caleb’s voice was distant, almost inaudible over the roaring in my ears.
“You called them halfbreed children, like it’s something to be ashamed of. No one can control who their parents are, but we can control what we do with our lives. As a halfblood, I helped prevent a disaster that would have wiped out great chunks of the planet and you’d never have known what had happened. I made sure the Four Horsemen didn’t get to rule your world. I’ve done more than enough to protect humanity. Now I have to protect humanity from shitstains like you? Bullshit.”
“Zay!”
I grabbed the mage’s chin, my hand transformed into claws and leather. Blood trickled from where my claws pierced him. “You disgust me,” I said. “You said you wanted to purge this world of our kind, didn’t you? There’s only one response to the threat of genocide.” I pulled his mouth open and snapped my fingers, summoning hellfire with my other hand. “Brutal retribution.” I thrust the ball of hellfire into his mouth and forced ichor into it. He didn’t have time to scream, only gag as green fire consumed him from the inside. I pushed him away once his eyes blackened, letting the hellfire fade, leaving a sunken, misshapen husk of burned flesh atop his shoulders.
“And that’s as much mercy as we could expect from you, isn’t it?” I shouted. “If you play with fire, you get fucking burned, Conclave! Is this the precedent you want to set? Is it?”
No one answered me, as I expected. I stepped back from the door and kicked it shut with more force than was necessary. When I turned around, Caleb was studying me with a dark expression. His shield was still in his hands. “That was an act of savagery, Zay.”
“They deserve it,” I said. My ichor was still pulsing in my ears, a rapid drumbeat of rage. “Don’t play at morality with me either, Caleb. They want to purge both of our races. I’m not going to hold back. Anyone threatening genocide needs to learn the price.”
“What use is victory if you lower yourself to their level?” he asked.
“Survival,” I said. “You of all people should know.”
His head jerked back as if I had slapped him and I knew I had crossed a line. “Go downstairs.”
“Caleb-“
“Go. Now.” His hands clenched around his weapons.
I went. Tink looked up as I came down the stairs. “Anything new?”
“Mage came to the door to offer Caleb a deal. He insulted me, so I killed him.”
She raised her eyebrows. The group of adults praying with the children went quiet for a long moment before resuming. “Must have been some insult to get that much of a rise out of you.”
I shook my head. “My demonic half is more or less in charge right now. He mad
e a comment about halfbreed children. I took it personally.”
“And?”
“I forced him to eat hellfire.”
She scowled at me. “That’s a little uncalled for, even if you are at war.”
My temper surged again. “Fuck that. Fuck all of that. They want to wipe out my race, just like the angels did. No more. I am done with genocidal bullshit. I will do whatever it takes to stop them. If it means murdering every single magic user on Earth, I’ll fucking well do it.”
“Including me?” she asked.
Our gazes locked. The bond between us stretched. For once, she wasn’t trying to piss me off or make a point, she was asking a question we both needed to hear the answer to. I took a deep breath and forced my ichor to subside a bit, just enough to inject some humanity back into my thoughts. “Not you,” I said. “Never you.”
“I hope not,” she said. Her scowl returned. “I don’t want to have to kill you either, demon.”
I made a face at her, but before I could respond, an archon popped into sight between us. “Noble Marquis, I bear a message for you! Sir Kalil of your House has arrived and is seeking the enemy! The first glorious warriors of the Choir have arrived as well! The siege is broken!”
Chapter Eight
Having angels show deference and respect made me feel like I was doing something very, very wrong. As Caleb and I walked through the halls of their capital building, every single angel who crossed our path bowed deeply. Some even took to one knee. While I twitched every time an angel glanced in my direction, Caleb didn’t even acknowledge them.
“Why is this happening?” I whispered as another pair of angels bowed in our direction.
“Not for the reasons you think,” he replied. “And don’t let it go to your head. It’s for both of us, not just you.”
“I appreciate the ego boost regardless. Even if a few of them look like they really want to pull their swords on me.”
The Demon Behind Me Page 10
