To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1)

by Sean M O'Connell

  Just the sound of that voice, a relic from Rio’s filthy streets, sent an electric chill down Valdez‘s spine. He had built exorbitant fortunes, dined with heads-of-state, left his mark on the world… Yet here was his past, come back to haunt him on his day of triumph.

  Unacceptable.

  On any other day, under any other circumstance, Hunter would find a slow and creative way to eliminate this throwback nuisance. It would be such a pleasure to put this old friend through a protracted ordeal of physical and psychological torture, the way the Bruja had done with Peni. The two of them had so much history to discuss…

  Unfortunately, current circumstances limited the degree to which he would be able to relish the elimination of this long-dormant revenge play.

  “No, my old friend!” he responded in kind. “It is time that I send you to meet your weak, pathetic brothers.” He smiled into the face of his fellow Brazilian and laughed.

  Cruz beat his wings once, darting through the space between them with grim determination setting his face hard as stone.

  The two of them met in the air with a sound like thunderclap. Contrasting black and white feathers jarred loose by the impact jerked away on the turbulent breezes.

  For a moment, the roiling battle around them appeared to stand still

  .

  Serena rode the hot morning updrafts in the stretching seconds, transfixed by the sight. Seeing her former boss for the first time since his manifestation, the hairs at the nape of her neck stood on end. Stripped shirtless, his corded muscles pushed against taught skin as if trying to escape their own fevered existence. From his mouth came a string of curses, interspersed with more foreign sounds. Sounds she had heard before maybe.

  From the Bruja.

  As his employee, she had often noticed his smooth, graceful movements. Now he jerked in hyper-fast muscle contractions. Instead of fluidity, his motion was defined by blurred twitches of limbs and wings.

  Those wings.

  Massive and obsidian black. Black like tar. Cave black.

  They stirred the air and blotted the morning sun. Nearest his body, the feathers were trimmed with vivid oil-spill colors that seemed to shift according to the angle of light, like fish scales. Perspiration steamed out of his hair, giving him an ethereal, grim approximation of a halo.

  He was frightening.

  No, nothing to be scared of.

  She finally broke her own stupor and moved to help Father Cruz. His voice carried through the commotion as he recited breathless Portuguese rhythms that she assumed were prayers. The priest and the mogul traded blows, spinning and wheeling away from the most concentrated areas of combat. Their attacks belied inexperience, each punch or kick aimed at the other’s most vulnerable spots.

  Father Cruz wore a look of intense hatred, speaking his prayers through gritted teeth. With apparent disregard to the flames that licked at his borrowed clothing, he engaged Valdez with vehement focus.

  Serena’s vision swam as she pushed herself into the space surrounding the Fallen leader. Nausea gripped her instantly, the way it had in her first confrontation with the Bruja. Sinister energy poured from Valdez into his immediate atmosphere, called forth by the words the witch had taught him. In Serena’s sight, he loomed impossibly huge and surrounded by a corona of smoky clouds. A hallucination. She tried blinking it away, but the fog only thickened.

  Instead, she focused her acute hearing on the prayers of her fellow Angel.

  It worked.

  Immediately she snapped back into the reality of raucous violence, gunfire, and buffeting winds.

  Cruz and Valdez had spun away yet again, clutching at one-another’s throats.

  Temporarily out of danger, Serena took the space of a few heartbeats to observe her former boss and try to pick out a weakness, a flaw in his movement that she could exploit. He moved too fast, and she didn’t have the same combat-trained brain as her former husband.

  Abandoning the analytical approach, she threw herself into the fray, hurtling into Valdez from behind and attacking his massive wings, trying to hinder his flight.

  Taut neck and back muscles strained against her weight as she wrapped her arms down around the base of his wings and locked her hands in a modified full-nelson. His mobility effectively stolen, Valdez cursed, as they tumbled earthward.

  “Whore!”

  Blisters raised on her skin as he clutched blindly to dislodge her.

  He tried to bite her, to get hold of her hair in his burning fists, but she gritted her teeth and held on. Father Cruz took advantage of her help to redouble his assault. Sharp cracking sounds accompanied each of the furious punches he aimed at their enemy’s face. Serena felt Valdez go limp for a fraction of a second, dazed.

  What relief she might have felt was too short-lived even to register. With renewed fury, Valdez roared, bucking wildly and jabbing his steaming fingers into Serena’s eyes.

  It was the smell of her own skin burning, rather than the pain, that caused her to finally release her grip on his wings bring her hands protectively to her face.

  Blinded, she gasped and desperately palpated the tender tissues of her eyes. Crispy bits of her own eyelids and singed brows came away under her fingertips. A heavy blow buffeted her backward and down as Valdez and Cruz continued their fight. She tried squinting, opening her eyes wide, but the ruined micro muscles wouldn’t comply.

  Serena’s vision was reduced to a scabby red darkness.

  Panic rose, or at least the threat of it.

  Forcing herself to breathe, she tried to think of a plan.

  Remembering that their haphazard flight had already carried the three of them well away from the tower meant that she was likely safe from attacks by any of the other Possessed. Thrumming helicopter motors interspersed with gunfire further reassured her. Their KC support choppers stayed nearby.

  Those Monks would sooner die than let her be attacked in this weak moment.

  Adding encouragement was the tingling sensation in her nose and upper face. Her eyes were healing already.

  She only needed time.

  Her ears picked up the grunts and countered insults of the fighting pair, still nearby. If she could stay close to them and out of harm’s way for a few minutes longer, her eyes would heal and she could help again. Fighting the utter disorientation that came with being suspended above the desert, blind, and surrounded by the roar of desperate combat, Serena Dayne waited and prayed for her accelerated body to mend itself faster.

  Babel

  Out of the corner of his eye, Scott could see Serena and the Brazilian priest locked in an isolated struggle with one of the Possessed.

  Four hovering choppers full of Monks and Deacons formed a perimeter around them, sniping any of the other Heaters who got too close.

  The posture of the helicopters told Scott that Serena and her companion had found Valdez. The way the light rippled and twisted around them told him that something was seriously wrong, and that Valdez was more of a threat by himself than they had originally planned for. His urge to join them was tempered by the swarms of Possessed that hurtled away into the city.

  They were trying to draw the Angels into a chase, where they could be more easily isolated and executed. The plan was simple and obvious, but if the Angels weren’t careful, it could work.

  If Babel’s demons succeeded in luring the invaders away from the tower, the weight of numbers would become impossible to bear.

  June was still nearby. She had noticed the exodus of their enemy as well. Her wild hair spun in the wind as she cast worried glances from the tower to the city and back.

  In the heartbeats between battles, she glanced inquiringly toward Scott, deferring for once to his better judgment.

  Scott broke another of the Fallen with his bare hands and debated what to do.

  If he could work his way to Serena and Cruz, he would certainly be able to ensure that Valdez was killed. No matter how profound his changes were, the tycoon surely couldn’t best three Angels
and their support teams.

  Could he?

  The reason Hunter had been tagged as the invasion’s primary target –the reason for the assault altogether- was because his death or capture would likely mean the dissolving of Babel’s makeshift army. These Fallen and their allies were a significant threat because of Valdez’s organization skills and his glut of resources. The billionaire had made himself into a warlord. Overthrowing him would give the Sleepless Knights and the Angels a better chance of overcoming the seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against them.

  Strategically, it made sense for Scott to join Father Cruz and Serena now, to kill target “Prince” and complete the prime directive of the thousand or more ‘Knights and Angels he had fought alongside today and for months before.

  Only a desire to protect the innocent staid him.

  Weighty responsibility pulled toward the maze of streets and buildings as he watched the masses of dark wings dispersing into the Las Vegas morning. There were still many thousands of people scraping by in the city who hadn’t joined Hunter Valdez’s militia or relocated. For most there was nowhere else to go.

  If they were left unprotected now…

  Scott’s mind was made up for him when he saw June tuck her wings and dive, dropping like a stone.

  His pale eyes traced ahead of her descent to find the target.

  Seeing the heat-rippled air and purple-black plumage the young woman aimed for, he too pulled his wings in close and let gravity propel his chase.

  Scott had only seen this woman in Bishop’s glossy photos and in his mind’s eye as Serena had described her.

  The images matched well enough.

  Even from this distance, the disorganized lines of branded shapes and tattoos were unmistakable. June had somehow sighted the Bruja just as she exited the tower, moving in fast pursuit of the swarming Fallen as they arrowed toward the suburbs. Her wings, with their distinct coloration, were easily recognizable. They threw off weird highlights that contrasted sharply with the white feathering of the Angels she passed.

  June was almost on her now, still in free-fall.

  Just before their hurtling paths converged, Scott caught another flash of motion moving toward the Bruja, a streaking form of brown and white on a beeline to intercept Valdez’s right-hand woman.

  It was another Angel. This one Scott had never seen before, broad and brown skinned, almost as large in stature as himself.

  Even hurtling in free-fall, June wasn’t fast enough to beat this Angel to the proverbial punch.

  He slammed into the Bruja from below, driving a shoulder into her waist and bending her in half. The hot rippling air momentarily froze, framing their collision in stark clarity.

  From his rapidly approaching vantage, Scott saw June throw her wings wide in surprise, halting her descent.

  Immediately she was set upon by a pair of Possessed, desperate-faced and skinny, with sallow wings that looked better fit for an unhealthy bird.

  Confident that June could best the pathetic pair, Scott tore past to join the mysterious stranger in his fight with the Bruja.

  The wicked woman had recovered from the initial impact and was now clawing at the strange Angel with focused hatred. Tendrils of weirdness reached out from the space around her, invisible, but tangible in their menace.

  Scott felt his head swim violently as he reached her and seized one of her slim wrists. Before he could twist the limb behind her she somersaulted backward and kicked him in the chin. Hard. Gritty bits of his own teeth bounced around the inside of his mouth, but he was able to maintain a vise grip on her arm. Folding his wings tight to his sides once again, he let gravity and his massive weight pull them toward the roiling mess of bodies and bullets on the courtyards below. The witch pulled something from her waistband, a slim tube, and ripped away the cap with her teeth. Before she could dump it, the other Angel knocked it away with a club-like hand. Gray powder fanned from the lip of the container as it dropped. The Bruja screamed.

  “You motherf…!!” Before she could even finish the oath, Scott’s ally had seized her other wrist in his good hand yanked upward, in the opposite direction to Scott’s descent.

  More screams nearly drowned out the hideous klop sound of her bones coming out of joint.

  The Bruja turned her head toward the muscular brown Angel and wailed like a banshee.

  Whatever sickly form of energy she and the other Fallen were able to harness poured forth from her mouth with the keening. More jarring and potent than any burn or freeze Scott had ever felt, he tried vainly to redouble his grip. Fingers spasmed away from the hideous sensation as her skin became unbearably hot. Or cold? Electrified by some black lightning.

  Snakes of ether now became powerful, sentient. Suffocating emptiness cloyed into his ears and the back of his throat, causing him to retch and gag. Futilely, the pale Angel clutched at his neck, trying to resist the strangulation with broad white fingers. His hands grabbed at nothing, only his own skin, and he was forced to spin away and distance himself from the void that sucked at his breath.

  A few flexions of his powerful wings and he was beyond the Bruja’s sphere of nega. Through watery eyes he could see the other Angel flailing under her bizarre attack. The man’s eyes were opened hugely wide, focused with feral intensity on the woman that poured her dark energy into him. Somehow, this Angel was able to maintain the grip that Scott himself couldn’t. He swung viciously at her head with his other hand.

  The Bruja was forced to writhe away at impossible angles, ignoring her own gruesome dislocation and twisting the arm that anchored her to him.

  Bluish tendrils of smoke curled up from under the spot where the Angel’s good hand clamped on her wrist. Something long and sharp now glinted in the Bruja’s hand. Scott had no idea where it came from, or how she had concealed it in her sparse clothing.

  She flailed with it, letting its edge open great gashes on the Angel’s taut-stretched skin.

  Seeing the way his new friend’s eyes swam with each laceration -poisoned blade?- Scott pushed air and darted toward her once again, steeling himself for the disorientation and nausea that would come with contact.

  He was too late.

  A perfect white halo gleamed above the other man’s sweaty black curls.

  The Bruja’s blade had found a home between the massive Angel’s ribs, sinking to the hilt.

  The two combatants hung for a moment in a fierce embrace, slick with blood and sweat and whatever other vile liquids the witch had managed to loose on her victim. Over her tattooed shoulder, Scott’s pale eyes met with the darkening gaze of the Angel he didn’t know.

  A cry of protest, of rage and sadness, of apology for his own failure- issued from his throat.

  The Angel’s face was hard, with deep lines that seemed to solidify into stone as the life hastily drained out of him. Time slowed into lazy stretches of movement and Scott had to clamp his eyes shut to refocus against the Bruja’s aura of strangeness.

  The Angel’s patterned wings went slack, spilling feathers into the torrents of air. Gravity pulled him down and through the strata of battle until he was lost in the melee.

  Though Scott had never met the man, he mourned the loss in that paralyzed moment as he watched the body tumble. He pondered the virtues of a stranger that had warranted inclusion in the ranks of Angels.

  Bravery and sacrifice.

  Qualities that often spelled demise for those so burdened.

  Pale hair rose on Scott’s neck and arms, bringing him back to the moment just in time to spin away from an oncoming tangle of feathered bodies. Dodging the boil of combatants, he scanned his immediate surroundings for the distinctive inky purple of the Bruja’s wings.

  He cast his super-human vision in every direction, seeing everything, but nothing.

  Nothing. As if she had never been there.

  Where?…

  A slim, scarred arm wrapped around his throat, pouring with feverish heat.

  Snatching her wrist yet again,
Scott wheeled himself around and drove a wide fist into the Bruja’s midsection.

  “NOOOOO!!!” She shrieked like a wounded animal. Clutching at her belly, she fixed Scott with a look not of hate or rage, but pure terror. Tears poured immediately, streaking her cheeks.

  Shocked by her reaction, Scott paused for a heartbeat before moving for her again, ready to end the threat that had claimed so many Monks and Angels.

  “No, wait!” She kept herself curled protectively around her belly.

  Scott ignored her, clutching a handful of hair and rearing back to drive a killing blow into her sharp-featured face.

  Frantic, the Bruja said something that sounded like ‘forget’ and spat into his eyes.

  Whatever corruption her saliva carried blinded him momentarily, and she wrenched loose, leaving him to clutch a handful of her dirty locks.

  Cursing, Scott rubbed the slime from his face, blinking clarity back into his vision.

  Again he looked everywhere for her, up and down and all around him, spinning in the air for any sign. Not even the telltale ripples of abused air. Vanished.

  Lost her.

  Again he searched the skies, desperate to find the vile woman –codenamed Wicked by the ‘Knights- and kill her.

  He fought his way up and through the massed defenders of Babel as wave upon wave of Possessed flew off into the city, stealing his attention.

  There was no more time or opportunity to find her. Their chance had been wasted. By his own fault…

  Lightning coursed up his shin as one of the Possessed swung something heavy into his foot from below. The pain did much less to shake him than the crunching sound of his own breaking bones.

  Concentrate. Work to do

  With impossible agility, Scott backflipped and came down hand first on his latest attacker’s face. He gripped the sharp cheekbones and nose, digging a thumb into the man’s orbital and absorbing another blow from the crowbar swinging blindly at him. With the other hand, Scott grabbed a fistful of chin and lower jaw. The attacker made an odd whimpering sound -or perhaps he was trying to say something- before Scott jerked the bones of his face in conflicting directions. A sound like nothing he had ever heard before issued forth.