by eden Hudson
You son of a bitch, I’ll rip your dick off and shove it down your throat. But I couldn’t move.
Rian pointed the sword at my chest, steadying the blade on his forearm guard. “Let’s see just how hard to kill you are, boy.”
He stepped forward and thrust the sword at my throat. A simple kill-blow. Nothing fancy. For all his bullshit, Rian wasn’t retarded. When it came time to send somebody to Hell, he made sure he did it right, no fucking around.
Little tongues of flame stretched off the sword, reaching for me. My brain started looping the sound of Mikal screaming as they dragged her to Hell.
I’d like to say I faced down death like a badass, with a snarl on my face and grim determination in my eye, but I didn’t. I flinched and shut my eyes like the chicken shit I am.
An explosion so bright that it lit up the insides of my eyelids ripped me off my knees and threw me through the air. I hit wood and rocks, then skidded across the ground. Vamp venom that smelled like human blood leaked out of my ears.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Everything was brownish-red and black. I blinked, trying to get the colors to make sense.
Then I caught sight of the moon directly overhead, coming out from behind swirling clouds. The sky was bleeding into it, turning the gray-white surface dark red. Bloody lightning flashed. The clouds burned away in a rain of sparks. The world caught on fire around me.
Godkiller
We grabbed the leg of the table that was still wet with our blood and bodily fluids and tossed it at the wall. It splintered.
Our footprints burned into the stairs as we ascended, leaving scorch marks in the wood. We reached for the door. It blew apart at our touch, shards of polished wood embedding themselves in the Dark Mansion’s walls. The carpet melted beneath our feet, and all around us the paint on the walls bubbled and cracked. The hallway ignited like it was made of tinder. Flames spread across the base trim, licked up the walls, and torched the ceiling. Burning chunks of drywall and beams rained down behind us as we stalked the hall of the Permanent Residence wing.
A foot soldier (Fatigues. Ashtaroth.) spun around, pointing his rifle at us. Bullets stung our flesh. We jerked his rifle away. The sling over his shoulder pulled him into our grasp. We grabbed his upper and lower jaws and ripped them apart. His earthly manifestation exploded into a swarm of black flies. The insects dropped out of the air, dead.
Another foot soldier (I don’t know his name, but he’s the one who tortured me. His name is Molech.) tried to run. We used the rifle like a club, struck him down. His skull crunched and he dropped to the floor, his legs still flailing. We tossed (Fatigues Ashtaroth)’s rifle aside—its barrel was melting in our grasp—and stepped onto Molech’s throat. His airway and spine crumbled under our feet and his body burst into another cloud of flies, all dropping dead from the heat.
Something black swooped toward us from above. We grabbed it out of the air. It screeched and beat its wings frantically. Its form flickered back and forth between a human boy and a crow faster and faster until its human skin began to melt. The crow feathers burst into flame. We dropped it. A coyote snarled and attacked us, but our fist snapped its jaw and threw it across the room. It lay on the floor, whimpering.
The foyer was already on fire. The remaining unbroken rafters fell around us as we headed for the South Entrance.
A female alpha ran toward us (Bitch-Alpha.), her tar-covered wings spread wide and dual scimitars flashing around her torso. When we batted her wrist aside, her manifestation exploded into a swarm of black flies. A moment later the pestilence fell out of the air. Her enforcer yelled and rushed at us, his rifle peppering our chest and face with hot lead. At the same time, a young man ran at us from behind. We grabbed the enforcer by his throat and the young man by his face. The young man’s body turned to ash in our hands. The enforcer was still screaming as he burst into a shower of dead insects.
The fighting that had surrounded us dissipated, and the efforts of every soul in the room turned toward us. Bullets, swords, knives, electricity, ice, water, and fire.
We drew it all in and expelled it in a flash of purple-white energy. The Dark Mansion exploded. The closest combatants to us were incinerated. Body parts, weapons, and building materials rained down for miles in every direction.
We stepped across the decimated threshold of the mansion, out into the world we were born to destroy. A thought sent blood-red lightning crackling across the sky, burning away the clouds. Droplets of liquid fire fell onto the summer’s scorched grass.
The moon did its best to hold back the darkness, shining its light down in bright silvers and whites. The moon of the God who had let the angels, the humans, and the other miscreations of this world (rape, ruin, torture, destroy—we were goodness and love and truth and they destroyed us) destroy us.
Yahweh. Elohim. Jehovah. God with us. (You did this. You let this happen.)
Slowly at first, then in a wave, our blood stained the moon and the sky, bathing the world in blacks and reds.
Tough
Someone next to me was choking.
It took me a second to realize hearing that meant my eardrums had repaired themselves. My right one had, anyway. The Destroyer blood-poison Rian had been talking about must’ve been wearing off.
I rolled onto my side. My brain spun inside my skull like a bad hangover. Everything was bathed in red light. My eyes didn’t want to focus.
The choking sound was coming from Scout. She was right next to me. One of her arms swiped at her chest, the hand fluttering around a huge piece of stained-glass like a butterfly that couldn’t decide where to land. Her other arm was trapped behind her back. She wasn’t trying to untwist herself.
I scraped up onto my hands and knees and crawled over to her. The blackened grass disintegrated when I touched it and I pictured a long black swipe of ash stretching out behind me like a blood smear. I crouched down beside Scout.
When she saw me leaning over her, she tried to say something, but all she did was choke some more. Her hand kept fluttering around that piece of glass. I don’t think she realized she was doing it.
She was crying.
I grabbed her fluttering hand and held it still.
She gave me a bare, thin-lipped smile for thanks.
I nodded.
Thunder boomed overhead. Someone was screaming. Others were yelling. I couldn’t understand any of the words. Scout was shaking all over. Underneath the noise of everything else, I could hear her heart. It couldn’t beat all the way. The piece of glass was stuck through it.
“Tough?” Clarion skidded to a stop next to me. “We’ve got to get out of here! Everyone’s got to fall back to the rendezvous point!”
Scout’s eyes went wide and terrified. She was afraid I would leave her.
Don’t think that about me, Scout. I shook my head, hard, and squeezed her hand. Please don’t think I’m that bad.
Clarion started to pull me up, but I shook him off. My arms and legs were working well enough now that I could scoop Scout up. She went rigid and tried to scream when I did it, but all that came out of her mouth was a bubbly sound and some blood.
Clarion had somehow held onto his gun in all the craziness. He ran ahead of me and cleared the way to the road as we went. A few other bloody survivors joined us on the way.
This blinding purplish-red glare was coming from where the Dark Mansion had been a few minutes ago. Now there was just that light hanging over a bombed-out shell.
A TBG-7 wouldn’t have caused that kind of destruction. I wasn’t even sure a case full of dynamite could have done that.
A few fallen angels were in our path, but they were staring at that purple-red light, black eyes wide and mouths hanging open. They didn’t try to stop us and Clarion didn’t engage them.
Both of the coyotes’ Broncos were waiting at the mouth of the lane when we got there, gates open. Everybody who couldn’t fly piled in. Clarion touched each one on the shoulder and counted as
they went.
I climbed in last, sitting on the tailgate next to Clarion with Scout in my lap. She had died on the way to the road, but I didn’t leave her behind.
PART II: WASHED IN THE BLOOD
Godkiller
Houses, fields, and forest burst into flame as we passed. The concrete parking lot of our target heated, cracked, and turned to slag beneath our feet. Multistoried dorms, class buildings, and a newly erected stadium caved in. People screamed and cried out from the rubble. Alarms went off across the redneck ag college’s campus.
We crossed through the sleepy college town, igniting trees and lawns, ripping buildings from their foundations in our wake.
Leif was pulling out of a parking spot in front of a little bar, a girl younger than we were in his passenger seat. He and his new fucktoy leaned forward to look out the windshield as we approached. The girl’s glittery eyeshadow sparkled in the light of the fire.
For a moment, Leif’s eyebrows drew down toward the bridge of his nose. “What the…? Tempie?”
We traced his fender. The truck’s metal body melted under our fingers, welding the doors closed. Leif and the high school girl screamed. Black smoke filled the interior. The girl clawed at the dripping glass of the windows, breaking her painted nails, but unable to escape. Leif roasted alive inside his beloved truck.
A screaming wind fanned the fires of the ruined town and set the prairie ablaze.
A moment later, on the riverfront of Hannibal, the waters of the Mississippi turned to blood. The river rose, flowing over the levy for miles in every direction, and washing through the floodgates before the city could shut them.
The businesses and apartment buildings downtown were battered and broken under the weight of the river of blood. Dad died alone in his little one-room efficiency, buried in the rubble of his new life.
Aunt Arie and the other CNAs and nurses at the nursing home tried to help their patients to safety, but the bloody water swept them down the halls into inescapable nooks and crannies, breaking bones, stealing away pockets of air, and drowning them all.
Mom didn’t even open her eyes when the river smashed out the windows and filled the house we’d grown up in. She died in her bed with no one trying to save her, just like she wanted.
The floodwaters continued to rise. Gianna, Leif’s friends and family, our teachers, bosses from summer and high school jobs, everybody we had grown up with—every soul in and around our hometown was crushed under the flood.
There were so many like them left. People who used and abused the innocents of the world. People who knew and did nothing.
We turned our focus outward, projecting ourself outside of time and place. It was effortless.
With nothing but a thought and a raised hand, we spread holocausts across the surface of the Earth, smothering souls in black smoke and searing heat. Tsunamis of blood swallowed islands and coastal cities. Great winds, rains, and hail ripped trees from the ground and battered the man-made structures flat, tearing life away.
Kathan and his legions remained in Halo. They regrouped at the mansion that had been our prison. The fallen angels prepared to defend their territory from the human army, while waiting out our destruction.
Kathan wasn’t afraid of us. We were inextricably linked to his mind and could feel his thoughts. He could taste victory. He was certain that we would destroy the Creator, and that he would rise to power on the ashes and muddy water of the world.
Tough
The only sounds in the front room of the tattoo parlor were gritting teeth, groaning, and gauze and med tape unrolling. The primals and humans who hadn’t gone on the attack were helping treat injuries, but no one was talking.
Clarion had taken another count on the way inside. Out of thirty humans, forty-one coyotes, and twenty-six crows, only seven humans, thirty-three coyotes, and twelve crows had made it back. Lonely headed back out right away to do a flyover and look for any survivors that we’d missed in our retreat, but no one thought he was going to find any.
Sometime tonight I was going to have to take Scout’s body to Harper. Then I needed to stop by Owen’s and tell him I’d gotten Dodge and Willow killed. And when Lonely got back, ask him what the fuck had happened with keeping Willow away from the Dark Mansion.
But for now, we just sat.
I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes and made myself breathe. Breathe and think. It took time to kill a crow. Time and work. You had to pin it to the ground with some kind of wood, cut out its split tongue, cut off its wings, and then burn it. Coyotes were about the same—behead, cut out the tongue and heart, weigh it all down with stone, and throw it into the deepest part of a river or creek. Primals didn’t die easy. Whatever that huge explosion had been, it’d killed fourteen crows and eight coyotes in a matter of seconds.
Apparently, somebody else was thinking along the same lines as I was, because Clarion’s girlfriend finally asked, “What was it?”
We all looked at her, but nobody asked what she meant.
“The Destroyer,” Bailey said from over in the corner.
“Destroyer?”
Bailey stood up. “I don’t have Jax here anymore. He could give you the word-for-word on the prophecy. What it amounts to is this—a being capable of destroying the world has been unleashed. It’s the beginning of the end. The last battle has begun. Now she’s out there, destroying the world.”
“She?” Drake asked. “It’s a girl?”
“In this case,” Bailey said. “There have been others before—male, female, hermaphrodite, various races. This one—” She nodded at me. “—happens to be your girlfriend and her identical twin, bound as one, unleashing ultimate destruction upon the Earth. I believe Kathan was trying to bind her to him. If he succeeded, he’ll have a shot at killing God and ruling the universe in His place.”
“Killing God?” Clarion’s girlfriend said at the same time as a crow-boy asked, “How can there have been others? The world still exists.”
“The others were stopped before they destroyed the whole planet,” Bailey said. “And like anything else, they possessed varying levels of power and they were directed at different targets. Atlantis, Pangaea, Easter Island, outer worlds, peoples and races of NPs we have no name for because they were wiped from the face of the Earth before recorded history.”
“How do we stop it—her?” Clarion asked. “How do we stop her?”
“That is a good question.” Bailey shrugged. “If this one is the final Destroyer, the Godkiller, as Kathan believes her to be, then we can’t. Not without the Sword of Judgment.”
“How do we know if Kathan’s right and she is the Godkiller?”
Bailey gave him a wry smile. “I’ll let you know after she kills God and ends the world.”
A couple of the crows laughed.
“So, what do we do now?” Drake asked.
“We wait for backup,” Clarion said.
This horseshit again. I stood up.
Clarion eyed me, but didn’t stop talking “The messengers should be back tomorrow night or the night after. If they’re bringing any reinforcements, we can…”
He trailed off when I went to Scout’s body. I’d laid her out on the glass piercing counter and washed her face off as good as I could when we got there. The piece of black stained glass was still sticking out of her chest. I hadn’t been able to pull it out without breaking it, so I’d left it.
I picked her up. Her skin was as cold as mine. It was going to be a long walk to Harper’s house. But that was fine. It was fine. I could carry her. I was a vampire. I was strong enough to carry her twice that distance, no problem. I’d carry the girl who had been like a little sister to me ever since I could remember back to my last living friend and show Harper how I’d killed the only thing she had left in the world.
No way Scout would grow up to be like me now. Maybe that was a good thing.
Jim held the door open for me and I nodded thanks at him.
Fuck. I swallowed. Scout n
ot getting the chance to grow up wasn’t a good thing. Anything else in the world was better than that. Anything else in the world would be better than carrying the seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old who I’d gotten killed back to her big sister.
But I had to do it. So I did.
Colt
“You’re different,” Tiffani said once.
I couldn’t carry her and talk at the same time, so I just nodded.
“Whole,” she said. “Healed.”
I smiled. It felt like the necks of broken beer bottles were twisting in my chest and arms where I was touching her, and someone was holding a cigarette to every square inch of my skin. Did I really used to wonder what it would feel like to be burned like this?
Tiffani saw me smiling. She didn’t roll her eyes, but I knew she wanted to.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Inside.”
“Yeah.”
She started crying. “You shouldn’t be here. You were supposed to be there. Safe. Happy. Why are you here?”
“You know why.” The words grated across my throat, just barely enough air to force them out of my mouth, but I knew she heard them.
She didn’t say anything else for a really long time. I tried to keep track of how many cells we’d passed, but I couldn’t focus on that. Putting one foot in front of the other was all I could handle. It was too dark to see far ahead, but I thought we were making progress.
After a while, Tiff said, “Can’t get out. Not with me.”
But I was pretty sure I could.
“If—” I choked on a wave of acid vomit, but managed not to throw up on her. “He sent me after you. If He sent me, it’s possible.”
Tough
When I got home, I laid Scout down on the couch, sat on the coffee table, and waited for Harper. I could hear her upstairs, breathing. Her heart wasn’t beating right. It wouldn’t keep a rhythm. Maybe because it was broken. Or maybe because she was blacked out.