Dalton smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll sing until I sing ’em through to the other side.” And she headed back into the sanctuary.
Raphael mounted his horse and glanced from Aimee to Maggie and finally to Zhai as they rode to the front of the small column of soldiers.
“The Army of Light,” Chin declared proudly when they were all in place.
Raphael tried to give him a confident smile, but his heart was thundering in his chest. Weapons or not, they were just a bunch of teenagers. But if they didn’t fight, who else would? “You guys ready to do this?” he shouted.
“I was born ready,” Maggie said.
“I guess,” said Aimee.
“Let’s do this, my brother,” Zhai said. And the Army of Light rode forth.
Chapter 30
Zhai took in the battlefield at a glance, and he felt like his heart would turn to lead inside his chest. To their right, northward, a caravan of Humvees and U.S. troops on foot swept south down Golden Avenue, heading toward them. Straight ahead, a battalion of Obies and Chinese soldiers was leaving the downtown area and moving down Church Street—which dead-ended in the churchyard where he now sat astride Chin’s black horse. From his left, or southern flank, Zhai could hear the sounds of the approaching Dark Territory army, their gut-thudding drums rattling, their earsplitting trumpets braying into the impending dusk. As he looked, he began to see glimpses of red snapping banners and glinting swords as the force made its way through the woods, and then up a small embankment from the railroad tracks that ran behind the church.
Zhai looked at Raph, Maggie, and Aimee, their heads high as they rode forward, and then he glanced back at the rest of his small battalion: Michael, Dax, D’von, Cle’von and Benji, Beet, Josh, Nass, and Kate.
Finally, there was Master Chin, wearing the samurai helmet Raphael had given him as a birthday present. Their sifu was standing firmly at the front of their little phalanx. Fourteen of them, against who knew how many trained soldiers and demonic fiends.
It was to be a clash of four armies, and theirs was by far the smallest. Still, Zhai would not allow himself to be afraid. If there was ever a moment that his years of training had been meant to prepare him for, this was it, and he forced his hands to stop shaking.
Raphael’s horse stamped impatiently, and he pulled back the reins, keeping the beast steady. “Should we split up and each of us take a flank?” Raphael asked Master Chin.
The old teacher shook his head, drawing the ancient-looking Chinese sword that hung at his side. “No. We’ll all stand and fight together,” he said. “Wait until they’ve crossed through the gates of the churchyard, then charge. No matter what, we must not let them get the ring—or ascend the Staircase of Light.”
Everyone nodded solemnly; there was no more time for talking. The Chinese and U.S. forces were already exchanging fire and sweeping toward them. Zhai’s eyes found Kate’s and he gave her a reassuring smile, then gripped his sword tighter and stared out across the grave-filled churchyard, waiting for the battle to come.
* * *
Raphael watched with admiration as his sihing, Zhai, with his usual nerves of steel, was the first to charge into the fray. He galloped into an advancing phalanx of Obies and Chinese soldiers, his sword flashing. Kate was a few steps behind chucking grenades, and the rest of the Toppers plunged into the battle, too, fearlessly following their leader into the storm of bullets. Raphael had been bracing himself for a bloodbath, but as he’d hoped, the shirts Lily Rose had made them seemed to have some sort of protective properties. The raking streams of bullets seemed to have no effect; they passed right through the charging Toppers as if they were ghosts.
“Raph . . .” Nass said nervously, and Raphael looked in the direction he was pointing. The Dark Territory army had made it up the hill faster than expected and was already swarming through the wrought-iron gates of the churchyard, led by a flock of scary-looking half-women half-birds bearing swords, which Raphael guessed from a couple of books he’d read could only be harpies.
“Charge!” he shouted and kicked his horse into a gallop, hacking the wings off the first two bird-women as he went. Immediately, a sea of sickeningly deformed demon-men in rusty body armor surrounded him. They lashed at him with everything from pole axes to bullwhips, broken bottles to stumps of table legs. He hacked at them furiously and managed to get free of their swarm, but not before his horse had suffered a few serious wounds. As he circled for another charge, he saw that his comrades were all battling with everything they had.
Beet, who was a head taller than any of the deformed soldiers, was swinging his mace in wide arcs, mowing them down like bowling pins. Josh was picking the harpies out of the air with his bow, until one swooped in from behind him and tackled him with her talons. Benji got to him quickly, though, slashing the harpy with his cutlass and helping Josh to his feet.
Aimee seemed to be everywhere, stabbing an Obie with the slender blade of her rapier one moment and then the next, slipping to a spot thirty yards away and slashing a harpy out of midair.
So far things were going okay, but when Raphael looked out in the direction of the tracks, he saw trouble coming. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of onyx-skinned or ash-colored beings with black wings were flying toward them, wielding flaming swords. They advanced on the churchyard in numbers large enough to nearly blot out the southern sky.
Raphael had seen creatures like this before. They look just like Oberon, he thought. They’re fallen angels.
“Oh, crap,” he whispered as their army winged toward them. “Chin! Zhai!” he shouted, his voice cracking with fear.
He turned to see a series of explosions (probably from the grenades Kate was lobbing at the Obies). A moment later, Chin appeared from around the southwest corner of the church, with Zhai and Maggie in tow. They all hesitated when they saw the cloud of Irin approaching, then Maggie’s eyes narrowed. The homecoming crown on her brow pulsed, and she leaned back like a baseball pitcher winding up. When she threw both hands forward, a typhoon of pinkish fire exploded from them. It decimated everything it touched, snapping treetops and setting them aflame, leveling tombstones, and sending scores of fallen angels tumbling from the sky.
The whole Army of Light cheered, but Maggie fell to her knees, spent from the effort of her mighty Shen attack. And the Irin were still coming.
* * *
Aimee understood the situation instantly, and she knew that if they didn’t do something fast, the fallen angels were going to overpower them. Instinctively, she slipped to a spot just above a wicked-looking Irin, teleporting into just in the right spot to fall on top of it and impale it with her slender sword. The dark angel gave a piercing scream and fell from the sky, and Aimee rode it down to the ground, ramming her sword in deeper as they fell. The moment they struck the earth, the Irin burst into flames, and Aimee had to step back fast to avoid being torched. In seconds, the fire completely consumed the winged body, leaving nothing but an outline of fine gray ash. Aimee stared at it for a second, trying to understand what had happened.
Then she remembered something Orias had told her: the Fallen were not permitted to touch consecrated ground. It wasn’t Aimee’s sword that had burned the evil Irin; it was the churchyard!
She looked up and saw Raphael battling two of them. Both hovered two feet above the ground as they flapped their massive wings. “Raphael!” she shouted. “Pull them down! They can’t touch consecrated soil!”
“Right!” he yelled back, ducking one flaming sword and parrying another as a third Irin came up behind him. Aimee watched it happen as if in slow motion: the flaming blade ramming through Raphael’s chest and coming out the other side. A scream died in her throat, and she slipped over, stabbed the Irin behind him in the throat with her sword, and pulled the flaming blade free of Raphael’s chest. When he spun to face her, however, his eyes were not glassy wit
h the shock of a mortal wound—he looked fine. There was no wound there. He smiled.
“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s Lily Rose’s shirt. Stuff just passes right through it!”
But there wasn’t time for another word. An Irin swooped down on him from above and he managed to parry the strike, grab the angel’s forearm, and yank it toward the ground. The moment the Irin hit, it was engulfed in flames and in seconds there was nothing left but ash.
“Army of Light! Pull them to the ground!” Raphael shouted. “They can’t touch the ground!”
Instantly, two other flames sparked as first Beet and then Zhai each managed to drag one of the hellish creatures down low enough to touch the sanctified soil of the churchyard.
But, Aimee soon realized, reaching the door of the church wasn’t really the Irin’s strategy anyway. Most of them were flying over it, entering the bell tower and swarming up the Staircase of Light that rose from it, all the way into what had to be outer space.
“Raphael! Master Chin!” she shouted. “Look up—they’re getting up the stairs!” She expected Raphael to take some drastic action, but he stood frozen in place, staring away from the church, out across the churchyard. She followed his gaze and understood. Leading the Irin army were Oberon and Azaziel, and they were wearing wicked-looking black armor and holding swords of simmering red flame. And they were moving toward Raphael and Aimee.
She braced herself, preparing to watch the duel that was about to take place. Chin tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked around to see that his face was smeared with blood from a deep gash on his forehead—but he looked as determined as ever.
“They must not be allowed to ascend the staircase,” he said quickly. “Teleport us up to the bell tower, Aimee. We have to get the ring.”
* * *
Raphael glanced to his right, where Zhai was locked in what seemed to be a death battle with his sister, Li. To his left, Beet was fighting side by side with Michael Ponder. Benji and Josh were saving Dax Avery from an Irin and a swarm of harpies. The Cunningham brothers were standing back to back, swinging their swords wildly at the tangle of Irin and deformed knights surrounding them. Maggie was using what was left of her Shen energy to blast a series of pinkish fireballs at Rick, who bounded toward her, his mouth full of jagged, gaping teeth, like some kind of demonic shark. Raphael took all this in just seconds and then turned his attention back to the two supernatural beings coming toward him.
Oberon grinned in recognition as he approached Raphael, and Raphael saw that there were strange, translucent, glowing eyes hovering in his scarred eye sockets—which was somehow even creepier than the empty spaces would have been. The fallen angel who was with him—an even taller, more beautiful being who wore a strange black crown—seemed to be fixated on Raphael as well, but he stood back at the edge of the woods outside the churchyard, apparently happy to let Oberon do his dirty work.
“An eye for an eye, they say!” Oberon shouted at Raphael. “But I think I’ll take much more than that from you. And as for that pretty shirt of yours, it won’t protect you from my ancient Irin weapon.”
With an evil laugh, Oberon charged.
Raphael didn’t hesitate. As soon as Oberon drew close, he snarled and attacked, clashing swords with him, dodging a slice from his flaming blade, then striking back, settling into the flow of combat.
He wasn’t thinking of the fight blow by blow. The whole thing was one great, fluid motion. Each strike, each block, like the crashing and receding of the ocean, was part of the same unending flow. Oberon’s flaming weapon crackled and hissed like a lightsaber as it whooshed toward Raphael in a seemingly endless series of strikes and feigns—and he was good with a sword. In the first two minutes of the duel, Raphael’s leg was scorched and his left arm slashed and burned. Still he fought on, even more furiously than before, ducking a wild strike and countering with a slash to Oberon’s face.
Now that the fallen angel was wounded, Raphael redoubled his effort, driving him all the way back to the iron fence. He threw a feint and got his enemy to overcommit, then managed to nick his hand with the tip of his samurai sword. Oberon’s flaming blade fell to the ground, and Raphael cocked back to give him the deathblow.
But at that moment there was a massive change in the air, and Raphael looked over his shoulder to find that the staircase leading up from the church spire had now disappeared, as had the beam that shot into the tunnel. Someone must have moved the ring.
The distraction lasted only an instant, but when Raphael turned back to Oberon, he saw a black bar speeding toward his head and recognized it as part of the churchyard fence that Oberon had pulled free. He heard more than felt the metallic thump as it connected with his head, and the next thing he knew he was on his knees, his vision blurred, and his head spinning. Raph’s weapon fell from his numb fingers. He felt hot blood flowing down his face and looked up to see a flaming sword raised above him.
And then it came down.
Raphael tried to throw himself backward, out of the way of the strike. He managed to avoid the head blow that Oberon was attempting, but when he tried to shield himself from it he felt a sharp, paralyzing pain in his forearm as a flaming blade slashed him to the bone.
He lay on his back now, scrambling backward as the fallen angel advanced toward him, the fiery sword in his hand poised to deliver a final strike.
There was the sound of an impact on Raphael’s left, then another on his right, and both were followed by bursts of flame. He realized with a shock that the Irin were falling from the sky. Somehow when the staircase disappeared, it must have stunned them or something, because they weren’t using their wings, they were just plummeting to the ground like huge black raindrops.
Raphael looked up and saw one falling right toward him, along with the flaming sword it must have dropped when the staircase disappeared. Oberon saw it too, and backed away.
At the last second, Raphael executed a quick shoulder roll and managed to avoid getting blasted. As he did, he grabbed the Irin’s blazing sword out of the air.
A movement caught his eye, and Raphael glanced over to see Master Chin and Aimee materializing at the foot of the church wall. They had retrieved the ring, and Raph realized that’s what had caused the Staircase of Light to disappear. As soon as they showed up, Feng Xu was there, renewing his battle with Master Chin.
Oberon had seen Aimee, too. Before Raphael could take a step to follow, he was already flying, speeding across the battlefield toward her.
* * *
At that moment, a deep voice thundered across the battlefield, and Aimee froze, holding the glowing crystal ring tightly. Oberon was still in the air, hovering perhaps thirty yards away, his wings slowly churning to keep him aloft. He held a flaming sword in his hand, but as Aimee watched, it twisted and curled, changing shape until it was no longer a sword but a flaming machine gun—and he had it pointed directly at her head.
“Hand over the ring,” Oberon ordered. “Or die.”
The entire battle had ceased, and all eyes were now on Aimee and Oberon. She clutched the ring to her chest and shook her head.
“No,” she said calmly. “I won’t give it to you!”
* * *
Raphael stopped running and stood as still as the tombstones around him, watching along with everyone else as Oberon held Aimee at gunpoint. He was terrified that if he made a move, Oberon would simply pull the trigger and kill her. Cold dread ran through the crowd, and Raphael held his breath. Across the churchyard, Oberon raised the gun to his shoulder and took aim.
But there was a blur of motion, and suddenly Li Shao was standing in front of Aimee.
“No!” Li said adamantly. “You’d better give that ring to me, Aimee.”
“Give me one good reason,” Aimee retorted.
“She’s one of them!” Zhai shouted. “She’s one of the Obies!
Don’t let her have it.” He ran to Li, but Raph couldn’t tell if it was to protect her from Oberon’s weird gun or to protect the ring from her.
Again Oberon seemed ready to fire, but Kate rushed in, stepping in front of Zhai. Then Maggie hurried in to shield Kate. Raphael was on the other side of the churchyard, but he was moving forward now, certain that Oberon would shoot Maggie if he didn’t intercede.
“Out of the way, or I’ll kill every one of you!” Oberon growled.
But before he could, Aimee slipped again and appeared in front of Maggie.
“She’s my friend,” Aimee said. “You want her, you’ve gotta shoot me first.”
Raphael was running now, desperate to avert Aimee’s death, but Nass was closer, and he stepped in front of her. The rest of the Flatliners crowded in, too, shoulder to shoulder, forming a protective wall, and the Toppers lined up in front of them, making a second wall.
“Move!” Oberon screamed in a fury. “Give me the ring or I will kill you all!”
At last, Raphael reached his friends and stood at the head of the Toppers, directly in line with Oberon’s gun barrel. Raphael met Oberon’s stare and refused to look away.
“Do it, Oberon!” the dark angel in the crown commanded from the edge of the churchyard. “Destroy them!”
“You can kill them,” Raphael said. “But you’ll have to go through me to do it.” He began striding slowly, deliberately, toward Oberon, who raised the wicked hell-gun to his shoulder once more.
“With pleasure,” Oberon snarled and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 31
Raphael felt the blast from Oberon’s gun splinter every bone in his chest and liquefy his organs with the heat of a supernova star. What he felt was too catastrophic, too complete, to merely be called pain. It was like every neuron in his brain lit up at once, and it felt in that moment like his whole body had been dosed with a nuclear explosion of Shen energy powerful enough to decimate the entire planet. For a second, all he could do was experience the physical sensation of his own destruction—and then he looked down incredulously and saw the smoking hole in his chest. He managed to look over his shoulder and saw that Nass, behind him, had already fallen to the ground, as had all his friends. The bullet had gone right through him and hit them. He swayed on his feet, then, and his legs gave out and he fell to his knees.
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