by Elicia Hyder
She couldn’t respond. No air was going in or out of her lungs.
Everything in me wanted to kill her.
Instead, I threw her down onto the ground with so much force that her head bounced off the grass. With a painful gasp, she curled into the fetal position.
“Cassiel!” I shouted. “Cuff this bitch and have someone lock her up downstairs.”
Cassiel came over, unhooking the high-Z cuffs from her belt. She dropped to her knees beside Chimera, grabbing her arm. “Now you can see what it feels like to be average for a while.” She snapped the cuff around Chimera’s wrist.
The irony of it was a beautiful thing since Chimera had developed the restraint.
“Oh no,” a male voice said behind me.
Rogan stormed toward me with Anya, Kane, and Cruz carrying an arsenal behind him. His face burned with hatred.
Before I could react, he grabbed my sword, shoved Cassiel out of the way, and pulled the blade back with both hands.
Chimera couldn’t even scream before the blade sliced through her neck. Blood sprayed everywhere, splattering my face as her body crumpled one way and her head tumbled the other.
It takes a lot to shock me.
That one did. I turned my wide eyes toward Rogan as he pulled up his shirttail to wipe the blood from his face. I wrenched my sword out of his hand. “Give me that thing.”
He smiled. “Bitch had it coming.”
I guess I couldn’t blame him after what she’d done to him. But still… damn.
Cassiel stood, her face covered in blood. “So this is a take-no-prisoners war, then?”
“No. We’re taking human prisoners,” I ordered.
Speaking of humans…
Dr. Jordan ducked out of the helicopter’s side door. He looked slightly guilty, like he may have enjoyed causing so much chaos.
I clapped as he walked toward us. So did Cassiel and Rogan. “Nicely done, Doc,” I said with a grin.
“I had good teachers.” He embraced me.
“Where were you hiding? I didn’t even know you were on board,” I said.
“I tucked myself into the gun case when the humans were loading up. The angels never look in there.”
“Nice work.”
“Thanks.” He looked toward the building. “Is Sloan here?”
“Yes. Downstairs.” I kept my hand on his shoulder. “You got them out.”
His smile didn’t last. “But Iliana’s gone?”
I nodded. “I’m heading there now.”
“To the city?”
“Yes.”
He hugged me again. “Come back to us, son.”
I smiled. “I’ll bring your granddaughter back too.”
“I have no doubt.” When he released me, he started toward the front door of Echo-5.
Several of my angels were holding the guards. “Cassiel, can you figure out a place to put these guys? I think we’re running out of room in the bunker cells.”
“I’m on it. You’re going to the city?”
“Yeah.”
She squeezed my hand and looked me square in the eye. “Don’t die, Warren.”
“I don’t plan on it.” I held her gaze for a moment before turning to my angels. I touched my ear so even those out of earshot could hear me. “Three of you, go with Cassiel. Stay here to guard the building. The rest of you, fly to the city to support Iliana and the guardians. I’ll be right behind you. Stay clear of those bullets, and remember, spare human life if possible.”
Some angels on the field nodded before they launched into the sky.
Another helicopter was approaching. I searched the horizon. “We need to bring that thing down before they alert the Morning Star to what happened here.”
“We care if he knows?” Rogan asked.
“The call Chimera made might have bought us some time. She told the Morning Star Iliana was on her way, and he’s just arrogant enough to believe he’s won. It will be a full-on assault if he finds out Chimera’s dead.”
An attack helicopter flew over the ridge. “Got it!” Anya yelled, her hand aimed at the sky.
The helicopter pitched sideways.
Rogan started toward Anya to help, but I held him back. “Hang on.”
I’d always heard what a badass Anya was. Now, I wanted to see it for myself.
The helicopter tilted forward, tail over cockpit, tossing the gunners and pilots forward. Two gunners lost their weapons before she steadied the machine. Planting her feet, one in front of the other, she brought it down gently to the ground.
“Rogan! Disarm them!” she shouted over the noise of the rotors.
He looked as surprised as me. Then he laughed. “Damn. OK.” He and Cruz ran toward the helicopter.
“Kane, can you fly this thing?” Anya asked.
“Nash can!” He clicked the button on his radio.
Rogan and Cruz threw the stunned humans out of the helicopter. Two of my angels grabbed them and hauled them toward the building with the others. They passed Nash as he jogged out of the building and to the cockpit.
Fury fought against Reuel again. “Put me down!”
“Let her go!” I yelled.
Reuel released her, and she ran toward me.
I grabbed Anya’s arm. “Take Fury with you. Give her the best rifle we’ve got and plenty of ammo.”
She turned an amused grin toward me.
I put my hands up. “I’ll shut up now.”
Anya put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad you love her. Now stand back, Warren.” She leaned toward me. “You’re about to see what she and I were born to do.”
Excitement rippled through me. “Who’s staying here?” I asked.
“The humans in the bunker. Lex is with them.”
“Good.”
Fury ran into my arms. At first, I thought she might punch me. She kissed me instead. Covered in blood, I kissed her back. “I’ll see you in the city,” I said against her mouth.
When I pulled away, she fisted my shirt. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t if you won’t.”
She smiled and kissed me again. Then she took off toward the helicopter with Anya, Rogan, Kane, and Cruz.
Gabriel and Reuel were walking toward me. “I’m with you,” Gabriel said. “The Father is staying here.”
The Father had walked out the front door. He locked eyes with me. His mouth didn’t move, but I heard his voice as clearly as if he was standing right next to me.
“Be safe, Archangel. Protect your daughter at all costs and end this war once and for all.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The city was peaceful from the sky.
As promised, all the main roads to and from the city were jammed up with Humvees, tanks, and SUVs. But none of them were firing on civilians.
Yet.
In the heart of the city, downtown Asheville seemed almost business as usual, except for the humans gawking up at the sky. Between the helicopters and flying angels, it was no wonder their attentions were above.
Gabriel and Reuel hovered beside me.
“He’s late,” Gabriel said.
I searched the ground. “Chimera bought us some time.”
“Lon ai Iliana?” Reuel asked.
“I’m not sure where she is. She’s not answering me.” I rose higher for a broader view. I’d be able to sense her power before seeing her.
So would the Morning Star.
Gabriel joined me. “Anything?”
“Nothing. I hope she didn’t wreck somewhere.”
“Can’t she fly?”
“Yeah.” I wondered why she hadn’t.
Something rumbled the mountains. I turned all the way around, looking for the sound. “Lo!” Reuel shouted beneath us. When I looked down, he was pointing toward the morning sun.
Two black specks were getting closer. Fast.
Reuel flew up to join us.
“Bombers.” I spun around again, this time looking for an empty space to put them d
own. Asheville had grown so much, there wasn’t much green space left on the mountainous horizon.
My eyes followed the French Broad River. Its widest point was just beyond where two of Asheville’s interstates merged together.
“What are you thinking?” Gabriel asked.
“You remember that pilot Sully?”
Reuel grunted with a nod.
“Excuse me?” Gabriel was looking at me like I was speaking a language he couldn’t understand—and he understood all of them.
“A pilot landed a 747 on the Hudson River back in 2009,” I explained.
“I vaguely remember.”
“We need to put those planes down in the river. How good is your aim?”
He held up his hands. “I’m a messenger. Haven’t dealt much with planes.”
I looked at Reuel. “I’ll take one. You take the other?”
He nodded and pushed up his sleeves.
As they neared, I realized the plane on the right was much closer than the plane on the left. When it reached the city limits, a rocket blasted from its bowels. Before any of us could react, the bomb exploded somewhere near Biltmore Park, billowing up a cloud of smoke and rubble.
Reuel shot up vertically and grabbed the plane with ease, nearly halting it completely midair. With a forceful twist, he sent the plane in a slanted dive toward the city. It passed beneath us, and he somersaulted in the air to put it down in the river. The silver jet skipped like a pebble down the wide French Broad, sending up massive walls of water that flooded the streets running parallel to the river.
It was impressive, but there was no time for cheering or applause. The second aircraft fired a second rocket at the city.
Like Reuel, I rose, squared off in front of the plane, and grabbed it with my power.
Unlike Reuel, its surging energy blew me backward like a feather flitting on a summer breeze.
Gabriel joined me to help. Between the two of us, we slowed the fighter, and I managed to send a pulse of energy through it to fry its guidance system. Sweat blistered on my forehead as we fought to turn the jet toward the river.
Even without its guns, it was too dangerous in the air. The Morning Star could cause the pilot to dive-bomb the city.
“Cey alis enta ai utal?” Reuel asked, chuckling twenty yards beneath us.
I worried my eyeballs might pop out of my skull from the pressure of holding back the energy. “No, smartass, we don’t need your help!”
A thick wave of black smoke rolled behind the jet as it strained to push forward. “Gabriel, go right!” Together, we banked the plane to the right, and I pulled it toward us.
The jet lurched sideways, and Gabriel lost his grip, sending the bomber into a nosedive straight toward a high-rise. A bank building filled with human souls.
“Reuel, I changed my mind!” I yelled.
His power rippled the sky as it wrapped like a lasso around the plane’s nose. He pulled it back, steadying it in the sky.
Before he could send it into the river, something whizzed past me, followed by the tat! tat! tat! of a machine gun. We both dove sideways out of the bullet spray, losing our grip on the plane. By the time we recovered, it was speeding off toward the horizon.
“What was that?” Gabriel asked, searching the ground.
“An anti-aircraft gun…or anti-angel gun, in our case, would be my guess,” I answered.
Reuel was watching the jet speed away. His hands dropped to his sides in defeat.
“Come on. You’ll get it when it returns!” I called to him.
The south side of the city had erupted in flames from the air strike. Even from the sky, I could hear humans screaming.
Suddenly, a swell of power emerged in the center of downtown. Gabriel was pointing at it. “She’s there!”
The three of us dove toward her. When we were close enough, I saw the black top of my Challenger parked sideways in the middle of the intersection of Patton Avenue and Broadway. Behind it was the tall stone pillar in Pack Square. It crowned the top of the hill, looking down Patton Avenue, a one-way street.
Iliana was at the top of the street.
The Morning Star was at the bottom.
Military trucks and utility vehicles jammed the road behind the Morning Star’s SUV. He stood beside it, no longer dressed for a golf course. He wore ridiculous desert fatigues, a wannabe general if I’d ever seen one.
About a thousand soldiers were behind him and coming up the side streets, their weapons all pointed in Iliana’s direction.
I had no idea how everyone had congregated in that spot, but my daughter had pulled off one very important thing: she’d given herself the high ground.
Battle Strategy 101.
She was out of the car and standing on a half wall made of concrete. Her hands were stretched toward the sky, and open high-Z cuffs lay on the sidewalk beneath her. Jett seemed to be holding up some kind of invisible shield in front of her.
Reuel, Gabriel, and I landed so hard in front of the car that the pavement cracked under our feet. The sides of the Challenger were banged up and dented. They hadn’t been when she left the Wolf Gap compound.
Nathan was right. She drove like she was in a bumper car.
I touched my ear to summon the Angels of Death. “We’re in the center of downtown. Look for the giant stone penis in the sky.”
The army retrained their weapons on us as the soldiers on the side streets pushed farther toward the center. Half of them wore Legion Nine uniforms.
The soldiers outside Legion Nine looked terrified. Most, if not all, of them would have never seen flying men or young girls summoning storms before. The barrels of their weapons vibrated with fear. Bad news for the innocent bystanders lining the streets.
“Fire,” I heard the Morning Star say, his voice calm and even.
Gunfire exploded from the bottom of the hill. Reuel sent up another invisible shield, and the bullets ricocheted off it, shattering windows in the buildings surrounding us.
The people on the streets ran screaming then.
I pushed his arm down. “Too dangerous. If they hit us, they hit us, but no one else needs to get shot by bullets meant for angels.”
With a grunt and a nod, Reuel lowered the shield. Then he reached toward the army, and all their weapons lurched forward like he’d pulled them with a magnet.
A few weapons tumbled to the ground, then skidded along the asphalt up the street toward us.
The Morning Star smirked. “Despite your tricks, you’re still outnumbered and outgunned, and you’ll have to kill my men to get to me. Give up, so we can end this peacefully.”
“Outnumbered?” I smiled and pointed up.
Everyone looked toward the sky. The Angels of Death, hundreds of them now, descended through the storm clouds Iliana was creating.
It was clear from their terrified expressions, most of the soldiers wanted to cut and run. Regardless, they didn’t budge.
“He’s controlling them,” Jett said, holding the shield in front of Iliana.
“Fire!” the Morning Star yelled again.
Shots rattled off the buildings. Reuel’s hand shot forward and slowed the bullets sailing toward us. We ducked and swerved out of their paths.
Above us, Lachlan sent a wave of energy toward the ground, to something out of my view. Suddenly, a large blue dumpster rolled from a side alleyway into the street in front of us.
Reuel pushed it down the hill toward the troops, like a massive rectangular bowling ball. The shooting stopped and yelling began as the men scrambled out of the way.
The dumpster was ripped off the ground and flung sideways into the glass walls of an office building.
The Morning Star was seething. “Is this how it shall be then?” he screamed.
Tat! tat! tat!
The angels in the sky scattered until one of them sent a fiery bolt to the ground, causing a massive explosion about a mile away. The rapid fire stopped, and black smoke rolled into the sky in the distance.
&n
bsp; There was no time to celebrate.
A sound all too familiar ricocheted off the buildings. I heard it in slow motion, but my reflexes worked in real time. Jett fell backward before I could protect him.
The sniper’s bullet had torn a massive bloody hole through the center of his chest.
“Jett!” Iliana screamed, her arms faltering.
I grabbed Reuel’s sleeve. “Protect her. Keep her attention on the sky.”
Reuel sent up a blindingly bright shield in front of her.
Dropping to my knees beside Jett, I tore open his shirt. He was gasping for air. I pulled a sliver of brass from the splintered bone around his heart.
“The wound isn’t closing,” Gabriel said.
“It’s a Yahweh round. Same thing that almost killed Cassiel.”
“Appa, what’s happening?” Iliana asked.
I caught Reuel’s eye and shook my head. Jett was going to die, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Check his pockets!” Iliana shouted.
Another shot blasted from somewhere. Reuel’s wings spread to deflect it.
“Jett’s pockets?” I asked.
“Yes!”
A putrid smell rose from the wound as Gabriel and I searched Jett’s clothes. Inside his left jeans pocket was the vial of crystal water.
After unscrewing the vial’s lid, I forced open Jett’s blood-smeared mouth and drizzled a few drops into the back of his throat.
I pushed his lower jaw shut and got in his frightened face. “Swallow!”
He gurgled.
Good enough. The wound began to close, and he sucked in a deep breath. I slumped over, bracing my hand on the concrete sidewalk. Never thought I’d feel such relief over keeping a boyfriend around.
Thunder rumbled through the sky, and cold, heavy raindrops pounded the ground.
“He’s OK!” I shouted over the rain.
Iliana jumped down from the wall and fell to her knees beside Jett. He was panting as he grasped her hand. “I’m…I’m all right.” He looked at me. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, rising to my feet.
Gunfire blasted all around me before I could even fully straighten my spine. Reuel flipped the Challenger on its side, shielding us behind it. The car shook as bullets tore through the metal.