by Erica Crouch
“They’re here,” Jeremy says, melting away from me and running deeper into the fortress for someplace to hide.
She’s here. Pen has returned, walked right into the trap I set for her. A piece of me is disappointed that it was so easy. I thought she was smarter than this—that she knew not to be so obvious. But she showed her hand, and it was so easy to manipulate her into coming to me.
Descending the stone stairs of the tower, I shove all thoughts of Jeremy aside. When I crash out into the courtyard, I see her. It’s like running into a wall. It stops me dead in my tracks, seeing my sister for the first time since she betrayed me.
She’s dressed in dark, sturdy leather, and her skin is the color of the spidering ice beneath her. Her shoulders are back—the slump she’d held herself in over so many years ironed away by defiance. There’s a new strength about her that I can’t quite pin, and when Michael reaches out to touch her, a roaring begins in my ears. I’ll cut his fingers off one by one. Then maybe I’ll feed them to the birds.
The wind tosses Pen’s hair across her face for a moment before I can see her more clearly. She’s dark and deadly, her eyes bright and her weapons at the ready. All of her muscles are poised to strike at anything that comes near her, and I drink in the picture of my warrior sister. This is who I always wanted her to be: a fighter, forged from iron and bathed in blood. She could rule Hell by my side. If others saw this version of her, they’d understand.
But no one’s seen this rendering of Pen. They saw the weak girl splashed with ink. The small demon who ducked her head and spoke to herself too often. They see a traitor, a coward, an angel-lover.
I want to kill her.
I want to save her.
I don’t know which one will win out tonight.
Pen looks behind her as more angels and demons slide over the wall, meagerly armed but their faces drawn in determination. They charge toward my soldiers, and Pen turns back to the oncoming fight. She faces my soldiers—Proserpine and Aym ready to fall upon her. But her eyes slide past them, surveying the other oncoming threats, assessing the situation. And then she sees me. Our eyes lock on one another, and I find myself saying her name. She has to hear me, and for a moment, I think she’ll listen. She doesn’t move, doesn’t go to run. All she does is stand there, looking back at me. Her arms fall to her sides.
The trance snaps when Michael takes her hand. She shakes herself out of it, her eyes leaving mine to settle on Michael’s. She’s made her choice again, and the betrayal stings just as painfully the second time. With a tug of her hand, Michael gets her moving, and they duck behind the wings of the other angels and demons they toted along with them.
Before she even takes two steps, I’m running toward her. I won’t let her get away.
Not this time.
Not again.
I scream her name, but she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t stop!
“PEN!”
The clash of our two opposing hosts of soldiers explodes in front of me, fists and weapons and screams. They’re a veil rising between me and my sister, between everything I’ve been waiting for, been preparing for. I just need to get to her, to slide my sword through Michael’s chest and get her next to me and make her see sense again. She’ll serve as Hell’s Queen, willingly or not. It’d be so much easier if I don’t have to tie her up though. She’ll come back to herself once Michael’s gone. The Pen who was loyal to me is still in there somewhere. I just have to rip the other parts of her away, clear the mess so I can find her again.
She’s there.
I push my way past Proserpine, heading for Pen, but I’m cut off from her by the others already entangling in battle. I can’t see over the fighting to follow where she goes, where she’s disappearing to. Using my elbows, I shove my way through the crowd, hitting whoever gets in my way—my own soldiers, theirs—with the hilt of my sword. I’m glad I had the forethought to bring it with me tonight. Luck was on my side when I thought to grab it after I’d heard the sparring between Aym and Zepar. I thought I’d want to jump in once one of them tired, though this is arguably a better way to expel my energy. That one thought has saved me time. I might not have seen her if I had had to run inside and arm myself.
Aym notices me and shouts, “Your armor!”
“What about it?” I say, piercing an angel through the chest. With a shriek, he wilts to my feet and I step over him.
“Too exposed,” Aym pants. She doesn’t have time to argue with me further as her sword is met with another and she’s pushed out of view.
I don’t need the protection of my armor. I want to be exposed. I want to feel everything of tonight. Every blade that comes close to me, the chill of the wind. My vulnerability is a dare: Kill me. Go ahead and try.
My lack of armor is an invitation to engage me, the unguarded flesh of my chest, my neck, my arms a sweet temptation that will lure in someone stupid. Someone who has no idea what I’m capable of. I beckon them forward with a grin, but I never forget my main target. Pen—so close, playing right into the palm of my hand. My plan is unfolding exactly as I predicted it would, though she brought more help than I assumed she would. It doesn’t make a difference though. I won’t let her escape me another time, no matter how many others I have to kill to get to her. This courtyard will be littered with bodies before I let her slip through my fingers.
She won’t get away. Never again.
Behind the pandemonium of the fighting, the chapel is sitting at the edge of the lawn and watching the battle from the shadows. An idea begins to take shape in my mind. A precaution just in case things don’t turn out the way I want them to. Just in case something goes wrong.
If they came for Michael’s soul, I won’t give them the chance to make any sort of success possible. There’s not enough time for me to think. It’s too noisy and chaotic, but one thing rings loud and clear in my mind: Don’t let them win tonight. No matter what.
Drumming my fingers on my leg, I try to think. Hide it. If I store the vial somewhere they won’t find it—somewhere they won’t be able to get to or not think to check… Maybe…
I slip into the chapel unnoticed and stash the vial with the piece of his soul deep within the tombs. They won’t find it. Not before we have a chance to capture or kill them. If they come this far into the chapel, they’ll be trapped. No way out that wouldn’t be through me and my sword.
Pen’s new friends would have to concede defeat and surrender themselves—and their lives—to me and my soldiers. How tidy that would be.
Darting back outside, I sweep the lawn to make sure no one saw me. But of course, no one did. The fighting still rages, and no one has time to look away from the weapons they’re pushing back against. I run around the battle, keeping to the walls of the Tower. It starts to storm again, a crack of thunder and an opening of clouds. As snow begins to fall, I surge forward to a door that’s left open, ducking out of the swirling eddies of heavy, wet flakes and into a dark corridor. Smart. Pen must have extinguished the light from the torches. Or maybe the wind did that. She didn’t bother to close the door…
I take the stairs three at a time, listening as hard as I can to the sounds above me. How far did they get? Where are they going next?
Pen’s voice echoes off the stone walls, and she sounds like she’s coming from everywhere. From behind me, in front of me, inside my head. I can’t tell whether they went right or left, but I choose the direction of my room. I must enter it moments after they’ve left, because I can still feel her here.
The room is electric and hot, my senses alert and hyperaware of where she was. Where she stood.
The thin blade of her twin sword is stuck between two stones in the floor. I move to it, crossing the room in a few large steps. The handle is cold, but I see her fingerprint on the stone. She held it. She picked it up and considered it, even if for just a moment. That means I have a chance. I knew I would; I haven’t lost her completely.
Abandoning her sword, I survey the rest of the room. My a
rmor is tossed through, my scythe sitting a few feet from where I left it. I knew that Pen would be able to connect the dots and realize that it was a compulsion.
My sister. So smart, so reckless. Incredibly predictable.
Doesn’t she know how dangerous it was to come here?
The armory is empty—of angels, of demons, of weapons. They’ve cleaned us out, and I’m just glad that I’ve taught my soldiers to never be without a weapon. An unarmed soldier is a dead one. Claws and fists can only get you so far. Blades and bullets? Those save time.
Armed as we are, we will not have suffered any real loss here tonight. Yet, though we are nowhere close to defenseless, I doubt we will ever be able to restock on the type of supplies we had before. Those button-sized explosives will not be easy to find. Not before all of this is over. Not before we leave Earth and return to Hell.
Hopefully Proserpine still has a pocket full of the detonators.
“PEN!” I call for her again, and her name echoes around me, bouncing off the flat stone walls of the empty displays.
I wait for a response—for some noise to tell me that she’s closer than I know. A shift of her feet, the flat smack of her covering her mouth to stay silent. I train my ears to hear every small thing, but there’s nothing. She’s moved on from here. I’m about to call out to her again when I remember she’s close enough now that I don’t have to rely on my voice. Her pendant hangs around my neck, the cold chain tangled with my own. The stone is sharp in my hand.
She doesn’t need this anymore to amplify our connection. With our proximity, I can get inside her head as easily as I could get inside Michael’s with his soul.
You’ve brought your friends to slaughter. I send the thought to her, and I know she hears it. I can feel the mental reaction it causes, the shocked pause and surge of panic. How many will die for you and Michael tonight?
She doesn’t answer me, but I can sense where she went—not that I needed the information that leaks through her thoughts no matter how hard she tries to shield it. I know exactly where Pen would go. If she’s looking for Michael’s soul, she’s looking for me, and she thinks I’d be right in the center of the fighting as I usually am. She’s forgotten that blood is not my priority tonight—she is. Eventually, Pen will need to stop thinking of me as a soldier and start thinking of me as a commander. But if it’s a fight she wants…
I emerge back into the courtyard. Snow buries the grass, and I watch as a demon from Pen’s side trips over the low surround of the sculpture. They sprawl backward over the glass art, and Rimmon brings up his foot, pinning the angel down. Rimmon raises his blade—a cleaver with a long, sharp edge—and brings it down on the angel’s neck, anointing the spot with another beheading. The axman has come home.
There aren’t as many fallen or dead as I’d have guessed there would be, based on the battle cries. Pen and her cohorts are holding their ground better than expected. I’m just glad that there are only a few more of them than there are of us. We aren’t ready to take on an entire army. We don’t have the numbers. Yet. Lilith said that she’d send out the call for reinforcements. How soon will they be arriving? Will it be too late for them to do anything?
Holding my sword out in front of me, I wait for someone to approach. Come and fight me, Pen. If you think I have what you want, come and get me yourself.
In the middle of the fray, Pen’s head surfaces, rising above the others for just a minute. She’s bobbing in a sea of screams, carried on a tide of their blood, and then she disappears again, swallowed by the noise. By the bodies. By the blades. But the glimpse she had of me is enough for her to see where I’m going, to track my movement as I cross the courtyard and slip back into the chapel.
She’ll follow me, and she’ll come alone. No more risking others’ lives for something only she’s after. She’s selfish, but there are limits there, lines she’s drawn to attempt to shape herself into some figment of righteousness. I have no qualms using the morality she’s subscribed to against her.
It’s well past time we have a talk face-to-face. There are many things I wish to ask my sister. I hope she brought her excuses.
Pen
THE FIGHTING IS A VICIOUS cacophony of swords and swears. The grunting, half-formed screams of two small battalions clashing. There’s blood everywhere—not enough yet that I think we are without hope, but the smell makes me dizzy. It reminds me of everything I’ve tried to forget, and visions of the old war swim across my vision. It overlays with this fight, and I can’t separate the two.
The past battles for dominance over the present, and I’m seeing the faces of all the angels I killed. The tally of their lives survive in scars up and down my arms, across my back. Panic swims around me, rising from my feet and drowning in my chest. I can’t remember who my enemy is or who I’m fighting.
When I look around, all I see are the blood and the bite of blades. My fingers start to shake as I move my hand to the weapons at my side, but I don’t grab them yet. I can’t force myself to when all I can think is how futile our efforts are.
How will anyone win this? How can anyone survive the end of the world?
Zepar notices me and smiles. He comes at me with a jagged blade raised and ready, and I snap back to myself, reacting at the last second to stop him. No time to let the past drag me to my knees when there are still threats in front of me, when I still have something to fight for: my life, Michael’s life, and everyone who risked their own to help us.
Pulling my dagger from my belt, I block the strike of his knife, sending it too far right. My dagger catches his wrist and draws blood, but that doesn’t slow him down. Not in the slightest. He comes back again and again, pressing me back, his muscles winning out over mine. All the sleep I missed out on over the past weeks catches up with me all at once—and the long journey across the ocean, in snow and ice and rain. It soaks through me and weighs me down; the snow that falls now buries me.
After what seems like a lifetime of holding Zepar back, Kala and Michael come out from the Tower. It only takes a glance for them to realize I’m giving way to Zepar’s advances and that, locked like this, I’ll lose. Jumping in next to me, they help drive him back. With their assistance, I’m finally able to gain an advantage over Zepar. I press my exhaustion down and let muscle memory take over as we chase him backward, which gives me just enough of a pause that I can retreat, regroup, and try again.
It’s chaos. Pure and utter chaos. A mess I can’t sort through, a blur of blades and bodies. Slashing, falling.
A girl—not the one who was scaling the wall in the courtyard and jumping out the window, but a dusty girl with a long braid that swings down her back—cuts through our fighters. With a cursory assessment of the fight, she’s able to find the weakest link in our chain: Ana. Her eyes narrow on her new target, and a sadistic smile that reminds me so much of Azael spreads across her face as she charges toward the beautiful angel who formed New Genesis.
Ana doesn’t see her coming. She’s too busy running between the moderately injured of our group, trying to help unload the cache of weapons Eli brought out. Winter swirls around her, snowflakes barely dusting her golden hair, her dark lashes. Her cheeks are ruddy from the cold, from the effort of directing and helping everyone.
I’m racing to intercept her before she gets to Ana, the only one of us who is unarmed and won’t fight back.
Zepar yells at the girl with the braid. “Aym! On your left!”
He sees me trying to cross to her, to cut her off, but I’m too far behind, and the fighting is too thick to get through—though there aren’t many of us, all the fighting is concentrated in one large clot in the courtyard. I can’t risk throwing one of my daggers toward her because the path isn’t clear. There’s too great a chance that my blade would bury in the head of one of our own.
Aym looks over her shoulder at me and smirks before she refocuses on Ana. Ana sets one of our fallen soldiers down, closing their eyes. Kneeling next to them, she whispers a brief prayer,
and by the time she gets back to her feet, Aym is descending on her. She is euphoric in her murderous mode, ready to rip and tear every angel or demon in front of her apart. Anyone not fighting with her is fighting against her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she accidentally takes down one of her fellow soldiers serving Azael when she’s like this. She’s crazed and more bloodthirsty than anyone I can remember facing in the first war.
There’s nothing I can do from this far away to stop her. I just have to wait and watch. The helplessness of the situation makes me go cold with dread.
Kala is next to me suddenly, screaming for Ana to move. “No! ANA!” Heartbreak is already shredding her voice apart, and she stumbles a little, tripping over herself.
I grab Kala, help her up, hold her back. “Eli!” I shout as loud as I can, hoping he can hear me over clamor of metal and bone.
He looks up just in time, stepping between Aym and Ana. Aym’s sword cuts him in the side, but it’s not a death blow—it’s not deep enough. Feet slipping beneath him, Eli quickly rights himself and takes his axe between his hands. He starts swinging, doesn’t stop swinging until he’s put enough room between Ana and the demon. He sends her staggering back, and the sword she has—she must have been one of the two sparring before this all broke out—is no match for his heavy, weathered axe. The few times she’s able to strike out for a hit, Eli’s able to block her with his broad shield, always protecting Ana behind him. He brings his shield up high, and he takes a second to make sure Ana’s all right. She nods numbly, watching him with wide eyes and shaking a little at the close call on her life.
A voice swims in my head. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it that it startles me for a moment before the feeling curdles into sickness. My mind fights back against the intrusion.
You’ve brought your friends to slaughter. Azael sounds insane, half hysterical with glee, but his voice—even in my mind—is ravaged with something else. Pain? Has he been hurt?
