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

by Sean M O'Connell

  Nothing else. Demons died without the accompaniment of a Halo.

  The body fell away the same as all the others, raining down through clouds of combat. Scott hoped it wouldn’t snag in the spinning rotors of one of the KC helicopters.

  His pale eyes cast about for June, with her unique hummingbird movements and coloring. He couldn’t pick her out in the confusion of flying bodies.

  More of the Fallen came for him, and he destroyed them almost absently, scanning the sky as he did for any sign of the Bruja. He fought on through the mounting odds as more and more of the enemy pushed him away from the relative safety of the Monk-manned support choppers. Skin tore and burned and healed. His bones cracked and knitted, but he couldn’t shake the shame of letting the Bruja get away, or the sense of foreboding that wormed in his guts. It wouldn’t stop until he found her, of that he was sure.

  For now, Scott focused on driving back toward the tower, refusing to fall victim to the enemy’s plan of isolation and execution. He dove, tearing vertically down the battlefield toward the courtyards, where fires raged and Haloes winked in mockery to the sun like cheerful little reminders of tragedy.

  Old Quarter- Las Vegas, Nevada

  Aaron Dayne faced inward, while the others faced out.

  His cheek pressed against the warm synthetic stock of a Clergy-issued AR-17 while his eyes squinted through a Leupold dual optic scope at one of the most horrific sights he had ever seen.

  Serena -his former wife, the mother of his child, now an Angel- hovered near the center of the moving circle of Sleepless Knight Blackhawks that had formed in an attempt to isolate the man who had been tagged as the biggest threat to the KC and Angelic causes.

  Monks and Deacons busied themselves by picking off any potential threats from the throng of Possessed that filled the skies around Babel. The dark flock had already thinned considerably in the few minutes that Valdez and Father Cruz had been locked in combat. Their rolling trajectory took the little fleet out and away, over Vegas’ old quarter.

  The neon relics of Freemont Street glowered below, waiting for the sun to go down so the few that still had power could shine again and hide the decay with their florescent pink and orange glow.

  The Angel-priest was holding his own, but Aaron wished hard as he glared at the scene through cross-hairs that the Brazilian would move, just abandon the fight for a second so he could get a clear shot, so any of the Monks could get a clear headshot.

  Worse, there was something wrong with Serena. She was no longer helping Cruz with Valdez. Through the scope, Aaron could see her clutching tentatively at her own face, then reaching with outstretched fingers like someone walking in a darkened hallway. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened.

  She’d been blinded.

  He shouted over the noise to his stoic sniper friend.

  “Can you get a shot?!”

  A barely perceptible frown of refusal.

  No.

  Valdez and Father Cruz continued to broil in intricate aerial combat. The tangle of sweaty brown limbs made it hard to distinguish one from the other. Wings beat together and twisted into black and white storms of motion. At intervals, they would abandon flight altogether and free-fall, causing the helicopters to lurch downward as they mimicked the combative dance.

  Somehow, Serena managed to stay close, within the ring of choppers. Perhaps riding the turbulent hurricane of the combined rotors helped her in her fragile state.

  Through the red light of his focus, Aaron prayed for her eyes to heal. He simultaneously hoped for a clear shot on the target designated ‘Prince’. If the Knights couldn’t kill Valdez, he still held out hope that the combined effort of two Angels could.

  A loud boom sounded from Aaron’s immediate right. Rossborough, the Monk sniper had tried a shot. A rare miss.

  Valdez had to be aware of the Monks’ presence, which is why he refused to distance himself from Cruz. Apparently cunning in the business world had carried over to combat as well.

  For perhaps the fifteenth time, Aaron cursed under his breath at the inability to communicate with the Brazilian Angel.

  Just MOVE!

  Aaron shifted his attention momentarily back to Serena. Her blonde mane whipped wildly about her, and she was rubbing at her eyes aggressively now, as if shaking out the blur. Aaron took it as a good sign.

  Concentrate.

  He turned back to Valdez as the pair once again plummeted earthward.

  Rotor engines screamed in protest as the pilot cycled into free-fall in an attempt to stay in range. Aaron Dayne’s stomach tickled his ribs as they went weightless for a moment, riding a roller coaster. The bucking ride caused him to stumble deeper into the bay of the chopper. Regaining his balance, once again his eyes sought out the golden flash of Serena.

  She had somehow fallen almost directly below them, only a few scant feet above the overgrown rooftop gardens of the Fremont Hotel. Her hands still rubbed at her eyes, pausing every half breath as she blinked furiously against whatever fog of healing cells clouded her vision. Her back was now turned to Father Cruz and Valdez.

  Hunter clung to the priest’s throat with one hand. The other arm swung wildly behind him rather than at his opponent, tracing a repetitive pattern in the dry air. Above the rooftop plants, daylight twisted strangely and a huge swath of garden foliage withered and crisped in instant death.

  What the?…

  A sidelong glance at his seasoned sniper friend told Aaron that even the veteran Monks had never seen anything quite like that from one of the Possessed before.

  Valdez barked something, inaudible over the rotor noise, and the murdered leaves and grasses reanimated as swarms of flies and hornets.

  Impossible….

  Aaron had no time to play skeptic. As it always did in heavy moments like this one, time slowed.

  Father Cruz’s grimacing face glistened in stark crimson detail as thousands -hundreds of thousands- of biting and stinging insects rose from the rooftop like an ash-colored sheet.

  Perhaps two heartbeats sounded in the time it took for the plague to cover every visible inch of the priest’s body. They coated his wings and filled his mouth as he opened it to scream, or more likely to pray. Insect-covered hands reached up to claw at his insect-covered face.

  Another heartbeat and the lines of his body distorted as if coated in soft clay.

  Aaron was glad to have the sound of such horror drowned out by the roar of rotors and exhaust.

  Father Cruz beat his mighty wings once, twice, Shaking loose great clouds of gnats and flies. His hands swept over his body and head, shifting and pushing clumped mats of writhing bugs away from his nostrils and ears. Great bloody patches of exposed flesh showed through where he was able to peel off the masses.

  On his wings, the feathers already appeared patchy and torn. Eaten by the ravenous vermin swarm.

  The Brazilian priest writhed in torment and veered away between two of the Clergy helicopters, deeper into the deadest portion of the dying city. The pilots moved to follow, and Aaron could see the wide-eyed monks shouting to Cruz and gesturing impotently for him to… To what?

  They swung back almost immediately, ordered by some unheard source to stay with ‘Prince’.

  Cruz disappeared from view, obscured by dilapidated rooftop fountains and the insatiable swarm that chased him.

  Aaron finally exhaled, eyes shifting back to the leering face of Hunter Valdez. His enormous obsidian wings pulsed triumphantly behind him, mirroring the slick and menacing black of his mane. His mouth and hands moved continuously, bending and gathering the energy of the ash and carnage around him.

  Shots rang out, Aaron swore he could see each bullet trace a path toward Valdez’s head or heart. None found their mark.

  Impossible.

  Seeing Valdez hover unscathed as rifles thundered was perhaps even harder to believe than the awful magic that Aaron had just witnessed. These Monks and Deacons were the best the Sleepless Knights had to offer. Abo
ard the helos around him were the best soldiers of an organization comprised solely of the world’s greatest warfighters. There was virtually no possibility that all of them could miss a clear shot, even given the variables of shooting a moving target from a moving helicopter.

  Dayne inhaled again.

  At the bottom of his field of vision a sudden, white-hot flash encroached upon the red light of his perception. Pure light probed even into the shadows on Valdez’s face.

  Halo light.

  No.

  A cold fist gripped Aaron’s heart.

  Serena no longer rubbed at her eyes.

  The helicopter was directly above her now so Aaron had to lean out and look down on the awful circle of illumination that spelled her doom.

  Serena. No! Danny.. My family…

  She had landed on the rooftop lawns, chin high and staring contemptuously across the stretch of gardens at her former boss. Monks reloaded and continued firing, taking longer pauses between shots and swearing in confusion at the failure of their training and technology. Spits of dirt and dead plant matter leapt up all around their target, but not a single hole opened on his clothing or flesh. Impossibly, Valdez smiled in the crossfire as over and over again the Sleepless Knights pulled futile triggers. Aaron, with despairing resignation, didn’t waste his bullets.

  Valdez shouted something that Aaron couldn’t hear.

  Serena responded, her narrow shoulders squaring proudly. Once again the space around Valdez bent and he shot like an arrow toward her. Too fast for even those massive wings to have pushed him, faster than the slowed seconds could capture, as if he no longer obeyed the rules of reality.

  Her halo burned bright. Sealing her fate.

  Every Angel Aaron had ever seen with a Halo had died.

  The appearance of the Crown of Light was a death sentence. Without specifying when, or even how, the Halo acted as a grim, inexorable guarantee.

  Not a guarantee. A warning.

  Serena crouched low, so low that the ends of her blonde locks brushed the once-pampered soil of the rooftop garden. Valdez careened over and past her. His feathers whipped wide, grabbing great cubits of air so he could turn again and make another pass.

  A scant few yards below Aaron’s vantage, Serena stepped back. Hovering chopper blades created a false hurricane that ripped at her hair and feathers.

  “Get clear!” Aaron shouted to the pilot. “Give her room! The guns aren’t working!”

  More reluctantly than usual, the Monk pilot stomped on the pedals and yanked the chopper into a rapid ascent, just as Valdez launched himself toward Serena again for another attack.

  Now.

  Jerking into motion as fast as his body would allow, Aaron snatched a black Ka-bar tactical knife from its nest in the sniper’s boot holster. Gathering his feet below him, he shrugged off the gripping hands of the Monks that he knew would try and stop him.

  He leapt.

  Babel

  The Swans were not hard to find.

  Scott encountered Bluejean, Mark, and a weary Deacon near the base of the tower. They -like the rest of the Swans- were covered in sweat, blood, and burn residue, but unmarked by wounds. The Perfect Minority, as some of the Monks jokingly called them, systematically engaged and crushed the Possessed that had stayed around to defend Babel’s courtyards and entrances. Under-defended balconies fell quickly to the Swans and their support teams. Now the largest of them served as landing pads for SK choppers.

  Teams of Monks and Deacons followed a few of the shadowy Priests into the tower itself to flush out whatever Heaters were still hiding there. Working in their cells of four, the ‘Knights sprinted silently through the labyrinthine halls of the resort, laser-sights probing into recesses and corners and closets.

  Scott and the others took to the inner courtyards, where the conflict was still heated.

  The man named Koontz and his ‘Red Crows’ had hunkered down behind militia defenses. Bishop’s men had taken heavy casualties in the early goings and fallen back to regroup. The stalemate filled the air with massive exchanges of gunfire and heavier munitions. Both sides were beginning to run thin.

  Scott followed the Swans

  Bluejean was reckless and violent, Scott couldn’t help but notice. At the same time still flawlessly graceful. Never once did it appear that his skin broke or blistered with a sustained-and healed wound. Mark took almost as much damage as Scott himself, but didn’t so much as wince. Still they fought on.

  The three of them drove as deep behind the enemy line as they could.

  Scott and Bluejean alighted on a gunner’s nest together and used the same sandbags it was built from to beat the resistance out of the occupants.

  Many of the failing militia surrendered in the face of Scott’s massive muscles, or Bluejean’s grim frown, their cowardice as plain as their greed had been.

  None of the Fallen asked quarter, and none was given. For the winged combatants, this was a battle to the last man.

  Scott spotted red wings and leapt high. A scratch of machine-gun fire pelted and tore the feathers of his left wing before he could tuck it and dive again to dispatch the shooter. Another round, large caliber, burrowed deep into the muscle of his buttocks.

  How am I going to get that out?

  Mark was the first to reach the nest of Demons.

  They hunkered down just outside the main entrance doors behind an array of supply and maintenance trucks parked in such a way that the invaders would not be able to smash through the barricade and into the tower directly with Armored Personnel Carriers or Humvees.

  The Swan’s copper-colored hair and freckled skin contrasted sharply with the rising dark of Koontz and his lieutenants.

  Bluejean joined his friend next, lightning fast, and so fluid in his violence that Scott still had a hard time believing that the same Angel had at one time been his chubby and hapless friend.

  Scott barreled into a pair of Possessed, feeling ribs give way under the sheer force of impact. The man screamed at Scott by name.

  “I’ll kill you Fitzpatrick!”

  Choking the life from the man, Scott was mildly surprised to discover that the ‘Knights were not the only ones who had done their homework.

  Though they were still physically no match for the Angels one on one -and the Swans even less so- Scott was disconcerted by the evolution of tactics displayed by their enemy. What had initially been only the threat of sheer numbers had expanded into something much more.

  Other thoughts were swept away by rage as he felt something sharp sink between his shoulder blades. With a painful whoosh, the blade punctured his lung and forced bile and blood into his mouth.

  A coppery flash like sun on water flickered over his head and then Mark was there beside him, pulling the blade free of Scott’s back and depositing it again into the chest of the Heater who had stabbed him.

  The Swan Lieutenant stared into Scott’s eyes for the briefest of moments, as if trying to burn his own thoughts into the large Angel’s brain.

  Then he was gone, barrel-rolling and jetting off toward the city. To where the hordes of Possessed no doubt ravaged the civilian landscape in an effort to draw the Angels into unfair ambushes.

  Scott felt an urge to follow. To use the radio that he had burdened himself with to call reinforcements out into the streets and suburbs.

  First things first.

  Babel was the top priority.

  If they could eliminate the enemy’s base and leader, there was a good chance that the Angels and Knights could win this war.

  If not…

  The thought was too dire to even be worth processing.

  Instead, Scott Fitzpatrick let the frigid hate build as he took a brief second to watch the remaining Swans fight Koontz and his thinning support.

  Sufficiently riled, he strode forward and gripped the bumper of a smallish box-truck. Coils of muscle in his back moved beneath his wing-roots as he wrenched and spun, lifting the tires from pavement and throwing the truck i
nto the heavy doors blocking the entrance. Massive sheets of glass shattered with a tremendous boom! Hinges gave way like rolls of quarters.

  Finally, after weeks of attempting, he had gained entrance to Babel.

  Bluejean, turned to him from where he had just finished methodically breaking the wing-bones of Babel’s latest militia chief. Koontz mewled in pain at his feet.

  The perfect Angel shook his head in the same mirthful manner that Scott and Aaron had always done when it was Bluejean who did or said something ridiculous.

  “what?” Scott frowned at the now-silent Swan leader.

  Bluejean only shrugged his wings and held his palms out in mock surrender.

  A million little prisms of black glass crunched under their feet as the two stepped together into the stadium-sized antechamber of the resort.

  The radio in Scott’s ear crackled.

  Voices –a great deal of them familiar- reported that Babel was being taken.

  Scott recognized the gruff tones of Monks and Deacons he had toiled with for so long back home in Salt Lake City.

  Home.

  The continuous string of orders and acknowledgements continued as he and Bluejean moved further into the relative silence of the massive lobby. Bluejean let his wings fold and disappear, assured by some innate sense that their work here was done. He padded silently to the base of the grand obelisk fountain, rising out of a dry pool, but impressive nonetheless.

  Scott joined him, standing shoulder to shoulder with his childhood friend and tracing the whirling patterns of petrified wood with his eyes.

  Monks poured in after them, securing the premises and branching out to meet their comrades in the corridors.

  Bluejean took in the opulence of the massive room and laughed gruffly.

  He never spoke, Scott knew. None of the Swans did. But he could still laugh.

  They stood there for several minutes.

  Hunter Valdez had built Babel to impress, to shock, and inspire awe.

  Even for two Angels, the effect was not lost.