by eden Hudson
My body shook. Sometimes I slipped. Once my knees hit the ground. I had to set Tiffani down while I tried to get back on my feet. It felt like the skin seared black and ripped away from my hands and knees when I pushed myself up, but when I looked, no part of me had changed.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t let me fail.”
I’d always felt an answering peace when I prayed on Earth, but here in Hell, I felt nothing. Bright jags of panic shot to my heart. I didn’t want to spend eternity here, cut off from God. Everything about it hurt so much. For a second, I wished I hadn’t come. No one was worth this.
Then I felt Tiffani’s elbow bump my thigh. Hole saws drilled into my leg where she had touched. She screamed and jerked away.
I couldn’t leave her here to suffer for eternity. That would’ve been like cutting off part of my soul and trying to be happy without it. Tiff was a part of me. I had to get her out of here.
But I wasn’t strong enough to do it. That heavenly glow was fading from my skin. Once it was gone, I wouldn’t be able to fight my way through the pain anymore. It would take me over and I would be just as helpless as Tiff or any of the other souls here.
When I closed my eyes, it felt as if the insides of the lids were soaked in hydrochloric acid.
“Please, God. I can’t do this alone,” I whispered. “Please help me.”
Tough
Throughout the night, humans from around Halo trickled into the tattoo parlor. Fighting had broken out between humans and NPs, and stories were coming in about protectors killing their humans or humans killing their protectors. Addison’s brother, Parker, had seen what was left of a vamp out in front of his house on Main Cross. Someone had staked it and left it to rot. He couldn’t be sure whether it was a girl or a guy because it was so old that its body looked like a mummy. That made me wonder whether it was Mitzi. She’d dropped a couple hints while we were together about her true age, but I didn’t think she would be slow enough to get staked by a human. She was too crafty for that kind of thing.
The people who made it to the tattoo parlor brought whatever they could with them for protection—pry bars, chains, splitting mauls, kitchen knives, and Jim had got his hands on a chainsaw somewhere along the way. Most of the newcomers stayed backed against the walls, eyeing the coyotes and crows like they might attack at any second. I bet most of them would’ve given their right nut for Colt to still be alive so they could just go buy a gun from him.
After a while Finn came back, and since most of us had gone to school with him, nobody but Harper objected to him staying. Things were getting cramped. The air conditioner couldn’t keep up with the body heat, which was fine by me and probably Finn, too, but the humans had started to sweat and the coyotes were panting. The noise from the collective heartbeats was deafening if I didn’t stay focused on shutting it out.
“Crow can’t stretch out his wings without slapping somebody,” Lonely said after the hundredth or so new arrival.
“We’re going to have to set up a secondary location for refugees,” Clare said. “If something were to happen to the tattoo parlor, everyone would be wiped out at once.”
“What about Rowdy’s?” Harper said. “Its max capacity is 269. We’ve surely got less than that in here.”
I pointed at Cris, Rowdy’s bouncer, standing over by Jim and a couple of girls from Scout’s class. Harper nodded and led the way.
“Hey, Cris,” she said.
“Hey, Harper. Crazy night, huh? So, you here to enlist, too?”
“Yeah. Who’d have thought? We’re actually looking for a place to expand to, somewhere bigger we can all fit in. What’s going on with the bar? Have you heard anything out of Rowdy?”
Cris shook his head. “Rowdy took off soon as he heard what was going on. Pretty sure he’s just going to hole up somewhere and collect his insurance money if the bar gets torn down in the fight. You know how he is—always got the insurance or the plan for any possibility.”
“You think he’d care if we used it?”
“Nah, surely not. It’s plenty big. And the truck came right on time Thursday morning, so it’s stocked, too.”
“Awesome.”
We talked it over with Lonely and Clarion and decided it would be best to send over everybody who didn’t want a part in the war, along with one of Clarion’s packs as guard dogs.
Once that was settled and the non-fighting refugees were out of the way, you could breathe in the tattoo parlor again. About sixty-eight humans stayed to fight, including Cris and Harper. Without the guard pack or the messengers, Clare was down to fifty-one coyotes, and Lonely figured he had about nineteen crows, give or take twenty-seven, depending.
Things got kind of intense for a while in the after-midnight hours. The crows and coyotes passed out what was left of the guns and swords they’d brought with them. Talitha and another crow had found one cache of weapons out near the cabin, but it looked like Colt had set it up before Mikal enthralled him, then forgot about them—all the guns needed to be stripped, cleaned, and oiled. Since there was almost one primal to every human, the coyotes and crows all picked a buddy and went to work showing them how to operate the weapon they’d gotten stuck with.
I mostly just paced. All the guns and training in the world weren’t going to do much against fallen angels. They hadn’t earlier. And if that explosion was because of Desty being the Godkiller, then guns and training weren’t going to do anything against her, either. Even with the Sword of Judgment, if she saw us coming, she could just nuclear blast us off the Earth.
We were basically fighting twice the war Dad had fought. Not just one kind of thing you couldn’t kill, but two.
Harper was sitting with a coyote girl, learning how to load a shotgun. She kept forgetting how to open the bolt. Once it was open, Harper kept dropping the shells because her hands were shaking from all the tequila she’d drank over the last couple days.
The look on her face never changed, not even when her eyes teared up and she had to go to the bathroom for a minute. When she came back, her face was red and puffy, but she sat back down, picked up the shotgun, and opened the bolt. The coyote girl didn’t say anything, just gave Harper a handful of shells. Harper tried to load them. She dropped a few, but she managed to slide one in.
Fight and die or live and cry.
We were on the same page there.
Colt
The Gatekeepers watched me struggle toward the trap door at the entrance of the Pit. I tried to brace myself for the fight. I didn’t know how I was going to bring Tiff out while fighting them, but I was going to have to. They were the last obstacle to her eternal happiness and safety.
“The soul you hold is not sanctified,” the Gatekeepers’ leader said. “She cannot leave this place.”
I swallowed back another wave of acid vomit and shifted Tiffani in my arms. Protect her, fight them off, get her out…somehow get her out… I’d moved on shakier plans than that before.
“You’ve made it as far as our fallen brother,” the Gatekeepers’ leader said.
“Mikal?” I croaked.
“She was an infinitely stronger warrior than you, and we returned her to the deepest recesses of the Pit. We will continue to do so every time she tries to escape. How do you think you will pass us with that soul you carry?”
Please, God, help me. The prayer wavered in my mind. If I couldn’t bring Tiffani out, what would I do?
“Will you take her place?” the Gatekeepers’ leader asked.
“No,” Tiffani said.
Please, God, I’m scared. I used to pray that when I was little and I saw lights moving in the dark where there shouldn’t have been anything, and later during the war when it felt like I was so scared I would puke. Please help me, God. I’m so scared. Please help me.
“Your soul has already been ransomed,” the Gatekeepers’ leader said. “If you passed your sanctification to her, she could go to eternal rest.”
“No, Colt! You can’t—”
/>
“The choice is his, vampire.”
“Colt, don’t do this!” Tiffani started fighting me. Every fist felt like a lead pipe to my face and neck.
I couldn’t hold her anymore. I dropped her. She shrieked in pain when she hit the floor, but I couldn’t look away from the Gatekeepers’ leader. It was watching me. Waiting for my answer.
My body shook like crazy. This time it wasn’t from the pain, it was from the fear, from the weight of what I was accepting. I’d been in Heaven. I’d felt that peace and comfort. I’d been free from pain and fear and insanity and the responsibility for the fate of the world. It’d been so perfect and so wonderful. I didn’t want to lose that, but if this was the only way to save Tiffani from an eternity of torture—
I stepped forward. “I’ll take her place. I’ll stay here instead of her. Let my sanctification pass to her. Let her go.”
The glow faded from my skin and the full weight of Hell crashed down on me. I fell to the floor on my hands and knees, screaming.
Tiffani reached for me, her hands bright with that Heavenly light, but they were immediately jerked out of my field of vision.
At the edge of my screaming, I heard Tiff yelling for me. Her voice was getting farther and farther away. Darkness crushed me.
Then light brighter than any I’d ever seen—even brighter than what I had experienced in Heaven while standing face-to-face with the Burning One—filled my vision. That light sung with the music of Heaven, forcing away the pain and agony of Hell, drowning out the wailing of tortured souls, and surrounding me like loving arms.
A hand grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me up, out of the Pit and through the Gates of Hell.
Tough
At about two in the morning, I heard the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifles. They were getting closer. Under that, somebody gunned an engine—no, lots of engines. I had a quick flashback to Rian and his crew driving those four-by-fours away from the bakery, but these engines didn’t sound as well-maintained as the Dark Mansion trucks had been.
The coyotes all perked up and looked toward the front of the tattoo parlor.
“Ezra, get the door!” Clarion grabbed a .308 out of a high school kid’s hands. “Cy and Zeke, you’re on me. Stop anything on foot or in the air.”
One of the younger coyotes ran to the door and jerked it open while Clare and two of the older coyotes posted up outside the entrance. The trucks slammed on their brakes out front.
Clarion’s messenger coyotes ran inside, followed by a flood of humans wearing black body armor. Except for not having wings, they looked almost identical to the foot soldiers in riot gear, and they were all armed. The humans who’d survived the first attack on the Dark Mansion, looked like they were going to piss themselves.
“That’s everybody,” shouted this tall black chick. “Close her up!”
Once Clarion and the coyotes who’d posted up outside with him were back inside and the door was shut, she headed straight for Clarion. She looked about my age, but she had to have a good eight inches on me, and she was packing a pair of custom .357s with crosses acid-etched down their barrels.
“Uncle Clare.” She socked him in the shoulder. He rolled with the blow and caught her with a couple half-power punches to the stomach. They hugged. She had an inch or two on the old one-eyed coyote, too.
“Glad you made it,” Clarion said. He nodded for me to come over. “Naomi this is Tough Whitney. Tough, Naomi Banks.”
Then he waited like our names should mean something to each other.
Naomi looked me up and down. “You’re Uncle Danny’s son? I thought you’d be taller.”
Uncle Danny? I sucked my teeth and gave her the onceover, too. You couldn’t really tell much through the body armor—except that she was tall as hell. Probably built, too, if she could run wearing that much gear.
That gave her time to catch sight of my fangs. She scowled and opened her mouth to say something.
Clarion jumped in before she could. “Naomi’s dad, Noah, and your dad were part of my pack for a while. Noah could banish demons. Raised his kids in the family business, kind of like your dad did.”
I smirked at Naomi. Sucks for you.
She was smirking back. “Let me guess, you’re the black sheep of the family?”
Let me guess, you’re the Colt—asshole OCD perfectionist looking for the best way to die. Lonely, ask her if she’s batshit crazy, too.
Lonely just grinned and kept his beak shut.
The name Noah did sound familiar. It brought to mind Dad pointing at a picture on his computer’s desktop. A linebacker-sized guy with skin like coffee, playing peek-a-boo with a laughing, red-faced baby wearing a U of Wisconsin beanie. A summer road trip that everybody remembered but me because I was that baby.
“You couldn’t call?” Naomi asked Clarion.
Noah. Uncle Clare. Uncle Danny. “Your dad used to be part of my pack.”
“That’s where things get complicated,” Clarion was still talking. “You know Kathan Dark is the show-runner around here. Well, he’s got an elemental on his side—magnetic.”
They’d been friends. Me and Jax type friends, if we could’ve both stayed alive that long. But when Mom died, when Dad went all Soldier of Heaven, when Kathan cut Dad’s fucking head off, where the hell were they?
I shoved over to Lonely’s drafting table and grabbed some flash paper and a marker.
You and this Noah guy were supposedly Dad’s best friends but you didn’t come help him. Neither of you did, UNCLE CLARE.
Pretty hypocritical coming from a guy who had just murdered his best friend, but I was not supposed to be the good example here.
Clarion’s blond eyebrows drew in tight over his nose as he read, shifting his eyepatch. Before he could say anything, though, Naomi read the note over his shoulder.
“Don’t you dare talk about my father like that,” she snapped, getting her body all cocked like Harper and Scout always did. “Dad brought me and my sisters down here for nine months trying to get through that blockade. Mom almost left him because he wouldn’t give up on getting into Halo and go back to regular demon hunting with her!”
Clarion raised one hand to stop her. “Look, Tough, you might’ve been too busy fighting the war inside to realize that there were blockades all around the county for the duration of the NP-Human Conflict, but for those of us outside trying to get in, they were real hindrances. Tanks, razor wire, the National Guard keeping crusaders and any unsanctioned press out.”
Big surprise, Mayor Kathan had everyone in the country on his side. No wonder people outside Halo had hated Dad so much when he tried to get them to see Kathan for what he really was. Kathan had probably twisted everything Dad said with his Prince Charming act.
For a minute, my mind went off in a completely different direction: How was it that Desty hadn’t been prejudiced against me when she met me? She’d known my family was the one who tried to get the fallen angels out of Halo—she even asked me about it that first night she’d stayed over.
She must’ve seen through Kathan’s bullshit. She was too smart for Kathan’s lies and way too smart for a dumbass like me.
Or she had been smart, anyway. Who knew what she was like now? Destroyer. Godkiller. Did that kind of thing even have a thought process? I could see Tempie destroying the world, that bitch. But not Desty. The worst thing Desty had going for her was that big brain getting in her way and making her think she knew that I would’ve picked Scout over her. Tempie I could see setting the world on fire and not giving a shit who burned—her and me had something in common there—but Desty would’ve cared. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to get hurt.
Lonely elbowed me and I snapped out of it.
“—just get back to our plan of attack,” Naomi was saying. “My teams have never faced a Destroyer. Never even heard of one. What are their weaknesses? How do you kill one?”
Clarion shook his head. “As far as we’ve been able to tell, the only way to take her out of th
e game is with the Sword of Judgment. I think our best bet right now is to focus in on Kathan and his legions. If the Destroyer is on his side, there won’t be anything we can do once he points her toward Halo. But if she’s not on his side yet—which our expert thinks is the case—then maybe we can get the Sword of Judgment from his foot soldier and use it to take down as many of them as possible before she is on his side.”
“So we’re on a timetable,” Naomi said.
“We have to assume so,” Clare said. “Lonely and I talked it over. We think the best plan is to hit them again while their fortress is down. Flyover reports say the only thing that survived the blast was the basement, so they’ll either use that or move to somewhere more fortified. I don’t think they’ll abandon the mansion, though. It’s got significance for them. There’s something really poetic about the way angels operate. Danny drove Kathan off the property and out of the house after he and Shannon first settled down back here, then Kathan took the property back and burned the house to the ground. I don’t think he’ll give it up. That would seem too much like a concession.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t give something up I wanted to keep, either. Not if it had taken everything I’d had to get it and sure as hell not if somebody I hated wanted to take it away from me.
“We’ll have to work out a pattern of attack that utilizes your teams,” Clarion said to Naomi. “But the main objective is going to be the same—trying to get the sword. How many bodies did you bring?”
“Nikki’s team couldn’t make it back in time, so I just brought the three teams,” Naomi said.
“It’s three more teams than we had,” Clare said.
She nodded. “If one of you draws up a map of the attack point, I can bring my team leaders in and we can talk strategy.”
