by eden Hudson
A foot soldier swooped out of the sky at Flamethrower. Without the vamp reactions, I couldn’t have made the shot. With them, I just barely managed to put a round in his face. He veered off to the side and dropped, holding his mouth and screaming through bloody fingers.
I whistled at what was left of my team to get their attention, then slapped my chest a couple times and pointed at the circle of vehicles around the Dark Mansion’s foundation.
“We’re with you!” Jim revved his idling chainsaw. “Lead on!”
Godkiller
Tears were dripping from my cheeks when I finished seeing Tough for what he truly was.
“I love him,” God said. “It cut my heart open when he left me. I just want him to come back. Every second of every day I follow him, hoping he’ll stop going the wrong way, just turn around and see me. And the second he does…” He smiled. “The very second he does…”
A lot of time passed before I was able to get myself under control enough to speak.
“So, now what?” I asked.
“Same as always,” He said. “You have the information. Now you choose what to do. Like always, your choice determines your future and the future of billions of other humans and non-humans alike.”
“The butterfly effect?” I asked.
“More like the hurricane effect. You happen to have a little more influence on the weather than most.”
“Do I even really have a choice?” I—we—asked. “I mean, do I actually have the power to destroy you?”
He shook His head.
“But the translation—”
“It was a good translation.” He smiled. “Bailey’s got a true gift for language.”
“The translation called me the Godkiller.”
“Earthly language is so rarely immediate. It can describe ideas and label things, but the name isn’t the thing. That’s the problem. You’ve considered the concept several times—especially since coming to Halo.”
(Lying with the truth. I know you’re not a murderer, Tough. If you can supply me with another word which means that Colter Whitney hates an entire race, I’ll be happy to amend my statement. I don’t have to betray anyone.)
“The history of the Nephilim that Bailey translated the Godkiller prophecy from was written in unborn hopes. You know what that’s like. You’ve hoped for things you knew would never happen. You prayed for them every night, wanted them so badly that your heart hurt, spent every second wishing for and doing everything in your power to make them happen. That’s the thing about hope. It’s not bound by reality. And sometimes it’s twisted by selfish desires or hatred.”
“Kathan,” we said.
“And others of his kind. They wanted so badly for you to be a means of revenge against Me that they went so far as fooling themselves with their own baseless hopes for your nature. Kathan is a good liar. So good that he eventually convinced himself.”
“But these powers…”
“The Destroyer is real and you have become that Destroyer. But you’re also —. You have a choice. You can choose to destroy the world and end all life on Earth. There are no truly sinless living beings, so you would technically be fulfilling your purpose of wiping out evil, but…”
“But Tough,” we said.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
Tough
My shotgun ran dry about twenty yards from what used to be the Dark Mansion’s huge front steps, so I flipped it around and held the barrel like a baseball bat. Jim was doing a great job of keeping an eye on the sky, swinging his chainsaw at anything with wings that got too close.
We’d made it ten more yards when a fallen angel swooped at us. He was being careful to stay out of Jim’s reach.
Flamethrower-girl flicked her lighter. There was the whoosh of aerosol. A cloud of fire lit up the night. Fire clung to the angel’s skin. He hit the dirt and rolled, trying to put it out, but the tar on his feathers went up next.
The other kid from Scout’s class hollered, “Hells yeah!”
A foot soldier hovering over the circled vehicles put a bullet in the kid’s mouth. The kid went down choking on pieces of his own tongue and teeth.
Shit. For a second there, I’d almost forgotten that we couldn’t win this fight.
I let the vamp speed go crazy and got out in front of my team. I wanted to draw fire away from them. If I was good for anything now, it was bullet-catching.
Then I saw Kathan, standing there at the center of the vehicles, on whatever was left of the Dark Mansion’s first floor. His eyes were so black that they glowed in the red-brown light. He looked right into my face and he smiled and opened his mouth. Even without the vamp senses, I would’ve heard him. His voice drilled down into my brain.
“Don’t waste your ammunition on the vampire,” he ordered. “Aim for creatures with heartbeats only.”
Like a firing squad, the fallen angels all shot at the same time.
Behind me, I heard Jim’s chainsaw drop out of gear and idle off as it hit the ground. Tawny Hicks screeched. Bullets whined past me on all sides. Aerosol sprayed, but never got lit.
I didn’t have to look back. I knew. My team was dead.
Mikal had called it. You are a disease, Tough. You ruin everything you touch. You will be the reason we win the last battle.
Kathan grinned like he could hear what I was thinking.
“They’re all going to die,” he yelled. “Even the extra manpower you’ve got sneaking in through the back pasture. Oh, yeah. I know about them. I’ve fought wars you will never conceive of, boy. There isn’t a maneuver that I haven’t seen. Hell, I invented most of them!”
Angels—way more than I would’ve guessed could fit inside that circle of vehicles—poured out through the cracks and flew over smashed-in roofs. I swung the empty shotgun at them, but they ignored me.
Coyotes and crows met the fallen angels in the air and on the ground. Snarling, cawing, yelping, gunshots.
I spotted Rian. The first reaction I had was to throw the shotgun at his fat head. It hit and spun off. He didn’t come after me, just gave me a grin and grabbed a crow out of the air. There was a wet ripping sound as Rian tore its wings off.
I sprinted toward Rian, ready to break his neck, but the second I got within arm’s reach he snapped his wings open. The hit knocked me off my feet.
Rian let the crow drop and spun around to face me. I ran at him again. Without the vamp senses, I wouldn’t have even seen him move. One second he was standing over a wingless, croaking crow, the next he was throwing everything into a punch that almost tore my jaw off.
While I was still trying to recover, Rian whipped out his revolver and shot me in the chest, three times, right through the heart. It stopped me cold.
Pain radiated out in waves, making my arms and legs go weak. I fell to my knees. My heart beat—once. Twice. Three, four, five, six times. It was speeding up.
Destroyer blood.
Rian grinned that shit-eating grin. He grabbed me by the arm and threw me. I rolled across the ashy dirt, then slammed into the landing gear of the burned-out helicopter. Something in my back snapped.
I opened my eyes just in time to see Rian stake the crow to the ground. The crow tried shifting forms to get away, flickering from Lonely’s human body to the crow and back again so fast I could see the fighting on the other side of him as if he was see-through, but he couldn’t escape. His soul was pinned down.
Rian pulled the knife out of Lonely’s boot between shifts and pried open the crow’s mouth.
Cut off the wings, cut out the tongue, stake to the ground, light on fire.
That bastard had the Sword of Judgment, but he was going to kill Lonely the long way. No need to go with the easy, sure thing when you knew you were going to win the war. Might as well enjoy yourself.
My shotgun was gone. I swiped my hands out in both directions, but there was nothing. My hand skimmed across rocks that had melted into the dirt. Under the ash and dust, that nuclear explosion that tore the Da
rk Mansion apart had turned everything into melted, glassy stone.
I wasn’t even sure I could hold a weapon if I found one. The pain throbbed down my chest, through my arms, to my fingertips, weakening my muscles. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t move. The vamp healing couldn’t kick in with the Destroyer blood cutting off the crow magic. The best I could do was pull myself along on my stomach.
Lonely cawed and coughed blood. Rian picked up the lighter and hairspray can Flamethrower-girl had dropped when they shot her.
Other crows were diving at Rian now, screeching and pecking. He turned the hairspray at them and lit it up, backing them off.
I tried to crawl faster.
Rian sprayed Lonely down with fire.
Off to my right, another crow got shot out of the sky. It shifted to Talitha when it hit the ground. She raised an AK-47 and took aim just in time for a foot soldier to saw her legs off with a .50 cal machinegun.
Clarion and two other coyotes were facing off with a pair of angels swinging curved longswords. One foot soldier laid Clarion’s shoulder open to the bone. He yelped, limp-running while dragging one useless leg. Another curved longsword lodged in a smaller coyote’s skull.
Back toward the fencerow, I could hear yelling and gunfire. Naomi’s teams getting intercepted and slaughtered.
In front of me, Lonely’s burning corpse lit up Rian’s sick grin in flickering yellow. Oily black smoke curled up into the reddish-brown sky.
“Every single creature who fought on your side, Tough,” Kathan yelled. “Every soul in this desolate redneck shithole—they’re all going to die tonight, and they have you to thank for it.”
All around me, fallen angels were ripping apart coyotes and crows and humans.
There were more of them than there were of us—more of them than there had been humans and NPs living in Halo—and they couldn’t be killed. Even if I had been in perfect health, it wouldn’t matter. There was nothing I could do.
There was nothing I could do.
I punched the ground so hard that the bones in my fist splintered and stuck through the skin over my knuckles.
You promised! You said if anybody called on You, You would answer. Colt called. Dad, Sissy, Ryder— I heard Mom screaming for You! Where were You? You promised them and You let them die! You were supposed to be the one thing I could count on and now I can’t even—
The ranting in my soul stopped making sense and turned into a howl of rage and pain. I pressed my face to the ground and I emptied my dead lungs into the dust. Soundless, pointless.
I wrapped my arms around my head. My heart slammed against my breastbone like a sledge hammer.
This isn’t supposed to be me! I’m not Your holy fucking champion. I can’t be. Do You even know half the shit I’ve done? I can’t save anyone. Cold tears dripped off my face, into the dirt and ashes. Don’t take it out on them, please. I’m the one who never got it right. Hell, I didn’t even try most of the time. I’m sorry. But don’t let Kathan win because of me. Please.
The ground shook like the world was about to crack in half. A screaming wind tore through, flipping over two SUVs from the Dark Mansion circle. Overhead, thunder boomed and crashed until I thought my eardrums had been perforated.
Then everything stopped. I took my arms off my head. The crows, coyotes, fallen angels, what was left of Naomi’s team… No one moved or breathed. Everybody was waiting to see what would happen next.
My heart beat. Just once.
A voice whispered, “The very second he does…”
Then the sky ripped open.
PART III: ME AND MY HOUSE
Tough
The sound of the sky ripping was so loud that I thought it would crack my skull open. I clamped my hands over my ears, but the noise kept going and going. The red-brown bloodstain that had been the sky for the last two nights peeled back, taking the darkness and the moon and stars with it.
Out of the rip poured light brighter than any sun I’d ever squinted hungover eyes at. There was a sound with the light—that heavenly music I’d been listening for my whole life. The music was so full and so real that I could feel it filling up every space where only air had been before. Wherever the music went, the light followed, until the night was as bright as midafternoon in July.
It hit me right inside my shattered soul, just like it had when Colt got resurrected. All I could do was put my face on the ground and cry.
“End him!” Kathan yelled over the music. “Rian, end him!”
I lifted my head. With the vamp sight, I could see Rian moving in fast-motion, ripping the Sword of Judgment out of the thin air next to his hip. He leapt over the charred bones that used to be Lonely and the cooling bodies that used to be the team I’d handpicked.
“Now!” Kathan’s voice almost cracked.
Rian’s wings blurred, giving him an extra boost of speed. He was moving so fast that his body became a smear of color cutting through the light. My eyes would only focus on one thing—the sword.
The blade whistled through the air toward my back. I tried to shove myself out of the way, but even with the vamp speed I wasn’t fast enough.
Someone jumped over me and smashed into Rian’s chest. The body and Rian rolled end over end, skidding across the ashy dirt. Rian came to a stop with one wing bent wrong under him and Colt kneeling on his stomach.
I was so excited to see him that I forgot I couldn’t yell. Colt!
Rian angled the Sword of Judgment back and rammed it into Colt’s stomach.
Nothing happened. No greenish-black wailing darkness from Hell. No change in that white heavenly music.
Colt grabbed Rian’s wrists and pulled, forcing the sword out his back until the cross-guards were flush with his stomach. He head-butted Rian. Rian’s nose flattened, shooting angel blood out both nostrils. Rian tried to kick Colt off, but Colt grabbed Rian by the face. He dug his fingers and thumb into Rian’s eyes and mouth. Rian scratched and bit. Colt dug in harder. One of Rian’s eyes popped. Colt wrenched Rian’s head to the side, snapping his neck. Rian’s arms and legs went limp.
Colt staggered to his feet, grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands, and pulled. The thing was so long that he had to work his way up the blade to get it all the way out.
“No!” Kathan shoved two of the closest foot soldiers at Colt. “Get the sword!”
One took off toward Colt. He spun around. She tried to pull up at the last second, but Colt laid her open from her shoulder to her stomach.
Greenish-black light swirled through the whiteness like smoke. The wailing of tortured souls came in waves. It wasn’t loud enough to overpower the music, but it filtered through like a radio through a truck window.
The other foot soldier wasn’t having none of that. He stumbled away from Kathan, shaking his head.
Behind Colt, Rian rolled onto his hands and knees. His eye had healed back into its socket, and his spine must have grown back together. He started to push himself up.
Colt turned around. He saw Rian getting up, raised the sword, then stabbed it down through Rian’s back, pinning that fucker to the ground.
That greenish-black smoky light intensified. They flooded out of Hell. Rian punched the sword, kicked at Colt, trying everything he could to get away from them.
Colt didn’t fight them like he had when they came for Mikal. This time, he got out of the way and let them do their job. Some of them went after the foot soldier Colt had laid open. Some went straight for Rian. They dragged him kicking and screaming into the Pit.
One of them made a weird, almost-human head motion at Colt. Colt nodded back.
Behind me, somebody giggled. All the hair down the back of my neck stood up.
“Sunshine Saves Baby Boy’s Ass: Round Five Million and Ten,” Ryder said. “Just like old times, huh, Tough?”
“Less talk, more Judgment Day.” Sissy. That was Sissy’s voice. I thought I’d forgotten what she sounded like, but the second I heard her, I remembered.
/> “You got it, Bossy,” Ryder said.
“That’s enough, kids.”
My chest hitched up. If Dad had used any other tone, I probably wouldn’t have realized it was him. Or maybe I would have. But I was so used to hearing him get onto us like that, that even though I hadn’t heard him in fourteen years, I knew right away.
“They’re going to try to scatter,” Dad said. “Get to the perimeter and drive them back in.”
Ryder, Sissy, and Tiffani ran past me. They were all packing swords that shined like that living, musical whiteness of Heaven concentrated into a blade.
Sissy sliced through an enforcer’s tar-covered wing, right through feather and bone, with her shining sword. Ryder hacked off a foot soldier’s leg at the calf, then arced up and peeled the meat off its arm. Tiffani ran a foot soldier through, then kicked him off her sword.
Colt came through batting clean-up with the Sword of Judgment. They—the ones in charge of dragging the Judged angels to Hell—flew along behind Colt like buzzards, waiting for him to mark their next victim.
“Disperse!” one alpha yelled.
“No, to me!” Kathan yelled, launching himself upward. “Rally to me, brothers! Attack from above! Get the Sword of Judgment!”
All around, black blurs shot up into the sky, leaving ashy-looking spiral slipstreams in the music and white light. Only one or two of the ballsiest flew toward Colt, but they all pulled up and darted away the second he turned their direction.
Something moved in my peripheral. The vamp senses were so messed up by the Destroyer blood that I hadn’t noticed the sound of footsteps closing in on me until it was too late. I tried to push myself up, but the healing still couldn’t kick in.
Shining hands grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me over onto my back. Dad was crouched down next to me, sitting on his heels the way I always did, his Heavenly sword resting point-down in the dirt. Mom was kneeling beside him.
I threw my arms up over my face.
