by SM Reine
The angels spread their wings and caught the wind. They began to take off. Leliel was in the air within seconds.
“They’re running!” Abel shouted. Or at least, that was what he tried to shout. He was already midway to wolf and his mouth didn’t work right, so the words came out a slurred growl.
Summer shrieked behind him. “Abram!”
Abel’s eyes zeroed in on one of the ascending angels. It was the one who could cast magic, and his arms were locked around Abram as they climbed toward the sky. Beyond the clouds, he glimpsed a sliver of Heaven—impossible to tell which one, but it didn’t really matter.
They were taking his son.
The angels hadn’t merely anticipated an attack. They had prepared an attack of their own—an attack specifically on Abram.
Abel shifted faster as he rushed up the mountain, leaping from peak to peak. The mage was flying low to avoid sinkholes into other dimensions. He wasn’t out of reach yet. But Abel was slow, his bones shifting as he raced to catch Abram, and it made him slip.
The spirit wolves flooded around him, more nimble on the mountain than he was. Their paws didn’t even need to connect with the ground in order to climb. They lifted on the wind, rushing toward Abram and the mage.
Both angel and human vanished into another dimension before the pack could reach them.
With howls, they spiraled back to Abel, ruffling through his fur.
He could almost hear their thoughts now. They didn’t think like people did, but they were definitely individuals with distinctive personalities. Some were angrier than others.
Right now, all of them were furious that Abram had been taken.
Abel agreed.
Hands seized his shifting shoulders, and he launched into the air. Surprised, he yelped and thrashed. “Hold still,” Nash grunted. “You’re heavy enough as it is.” His wings thrust against the air, carrying them into the foggy dampness of the clouds. Abel struggled to breathe in the cold.
When they broke through, they were no longer high above the Himalayas.
They were plunging headfirst toward Heaven.
Shamain was pocked with volcanos, like pustules on a rotting body. Rivers of magma flowed through leafless, shriveled trees. Halfway up one of the cobblestone streets, the city turned to cracked, dusty pavement and black temples with iron spires.
Heaven and Hell had merged.
Gravity shifted, and Nash shouted as it dragged them down. They began to spiral toward a magma lake that reeked of rotten eggs, its gases burning Abel’s nose.
The mage who held Abram captive was struggling for altitude, too. Abel could smell blood and gunpowder tracing through the wind. Abram had shot him multiple times.
“Get ready!” Nash shouted into the wind, and then he dropped Abel.
They were positioned directly over the mage. Abel tumbled toward the other angel, paws extended below him, claws glimmering in the light of the fires.
The city grew huge around him.
Abel slammed into the mage’s back and bit down on his shoulder.
With a cry, the angel dropped Abram. Nash swooped past, catching Abram only a few feet above the magma, and beat his wings hard to climb on the hot winds of Hell once more.
Good. Nash wouldn’t let him die.
Abel and the mage continued to plummet. He sank his teeth into the nearest wing and ripped his head back, shredding the feathers. Abel had gotten pretty good at severing angel wings when he’d been fighting in Dis; there was a perfect place to drive his fangs between the beating muscles that would rip the tendons and loosen the joint. Then all it took was a hard tug, and…pop.
But it was hard to grip while they were falling, and he didn’t manage to rip the wing free before they plowed into the ground on a narrow island between rivers.
The angel rolled to his feet, shoving Abel off of him. “Leliel!”
Abel squinted through the smoky sky. Lightning flashed. He glimpsed Leliel dogfighting with Nash, who was slowed by Abram’s weight.
Pain blazed down Abel’s side, and he yelped, twisting away from the attack. The mage had taken his moment of distraction to slash at him with one of those sabers. Luckily, its blade wasn’t on fire—but it was white-hot from being dipped in magma.
The angel slashed again. Abel was ready for it this time. He threw himself down and the blade whistled over his head. Just as quickly, the blade angled, sweeping around for another blow. The sheer speed of it was shocking. Angels were almost as fast as werewolves.
Almost.
Abel dodged again, broke through the mage’s guard, and tackled him to the ground.
Ripping out the angel’s throat wasn’t as effective a way to disable him as removing his wings, but it was satisfying to taste that silver blood and hear the pained gurgles.
Abel didn’t stick around to watch him die.
The Alpha leaped onto the drooping branches of a dead tree and used it to scramble over one of the magma rivers to the other shore. Heaven and Hell had merged just a few feet away from that tree, blending an ethereal temple with something that looked like a factory. With a single, powerful leap, Abel landed on the rooftop and scrambled up the tile.
The spirit wolves climbed with him, baying as Abel launched himself to the next building, taller than the last.
He howled to Nash, calling for help.
Nash didn’t respond. Abel couldn’t even see him anymore.
He couldn’t climb anywhere higher. He had reached the tallest point that he could see through all the smoke. In any case, the division between Earth and Hell wasn’t far; Abel could smell the snowy mountains waiting for him just a few hundred feet above his head.
Leliel appeared again, breaking through the clouds. Nash was right behind her. Abram clung to him—just barely.
Abel summoned the spirit wolves and pushed the command to them. Get me Leliel.
They swirled into the night like they were part of the smoke, converging on Leliel and swarming her with their furred bodies.
She screamed as she fell, beating her fists ineffectually at the wolves. She couldn’t seem to touch them.
But they could touch her.
Bite marks peppered her flesh as she plummeted toward Abel. Silvery blood streaked her skin and stained her filmy peach dress.
He crouched, gathering his strength, and watched her fall. She wasn’t going to land nearby—she was approaching one of the magma rivers.
Once she was within range, he leaped from the roof.
Abel connected with Leliel’s body, diverting both of them past the magma river onto a patch of what had once been grass. They slammed into the ground, rolling ankles over wings, coming to a stop against the foundation of a collapsed building.
Leliel elbowed him in the face, shoving Abel’s weight off of her. Then she began flapping again to chase Nash.
Abel didn’t let her go. He leaped onto her back, dug his claws in, and forced her to take him for a ride.
She kept flying as though he weren’t attached. She was fast and strong, even faster than her target, and she quickly began to gain on them. Nash was trying to carry Abram back to the mountaintop. They were already in the clouds, and Leliel wasn’t far behind.
Abel felt the instant that they crossed back into Earth’s atmosphere. Not because of the change in temperature and smells, but because of the changed gravity.
He waited until he was certain they were back on Earth before ripping one of Leliel’s wings off.
He didn’t err in biting this time; he felt his jaws clamp down on just the right spot, and he heard the satisfying pop of the joint becoming disconnected.
Suddenly, Leliel was falling much, much faster than Nash and Abram. And the mountain was very close.
Leliel smashed into a cliff.
They bounced off the rocks and he lost his grip on her back. He skittered down the slope. His claws couldn’t get traction. Leliel was all tangled up in him, legs and arms and helplessly flapping wing, and now she was the one pul
ling him down.
They bounced toward a second ridge—one much steeper than the cliff they’d hit.
Nash caught Abel by the tail before he could fall off.
“Sorry,” the angel said when Abel yelped.
He regained his footing quickly, yanking his tail out of the angel’s hands.
Leliel was crying a few feet away. She had caught herself on the edge of the icy cliff, both hands just barely clinging to safety. There was so much blood slicking her bitten arms that she was sliding, even with her fingertips digging into the cracks in the rocks.
“Nashriel!” she cried.
It wasn’t her ex-husband who responded to her call—but Abram.
He hauled her onto the ground at his feet and aimed his gun at her forehead. Leliel didn’t look at the gun. She looked past it, up his arm, to his face. “I can see the resemblance,” she whispered, pain twisting her features. “You have the same capacity for cruelty.”
Abel didn’t understand what she meant. Whom did Abram resemble? Was she saying that Rylie was cruel?
“Lady, I’m a goddamn teddy bear,” Abram said gruffly. “I could have let you fall.”
Her wing stump twitched over her shoulder. She gave a ragged sob. “You should have.”
She rolled onto her stomach, started trying to crawl away.
Abel pinned Leliel to the ground with one massive paw and glared in silent anger at Nash. Leliel was his ex-wife. Would he stop Abel from giving her the death she’d more than earned?
But Nash only watched him with cool disinterest, not a hint of judgment in his eyes. “Belphegor ordered Abram’s death, didn’t he?” Nash asked in a tone that made it clear he didn’t really care. “What did he offer you?”
“He said he’d preserve Heaven,” Leliel said. “He said he would save us all.”
“He was lying. We’re approaching genesis, Leliel. This is the end. Nothing will be preserved.”
“I had to believe,” she said. “It was the only chance we had left. That, or believing that the woman who slew Adam and stole Eve’s soul could possibly defeat Belphegor, which is sheer insanity.”
“I’ll take insanity over evil,” Nash said. “Abel, do what you must.”
Until that instant, Abel had fully intended to kill her.
Being given permission just seemed…wrong.
Now that he was looking down at Leliel, all Abel could see was the way that Rylie had looked in her last moments. How quickly she had become disoriented from blood loss, how she’d had no clue where she was or who was with her.
Leliel wilted underneath Abel. Her remaining wing crumpled, eyes shutting, tears squeezing down her cheeks.
“Do it,” she whispered.
Shit.
It was one thing to kill an angel kidnapping his son—the angel that had ordered his mate’s death. It was another thing to kill a woman crying underneath his paws.
She wasn’t even fighting back. It would have been so much easier if she’d fought back.
Abram crouched beside him, pressing his gun to the back of her head. Angels were a lot more vulnerable without their wings. A single bullet would probably do it at that point.
“Rylie,” Abram said, as if to remind Abel. “The pack. All those people.”
Leliel didn’t try to argue. She only twisted enough to gaze up at Heaven beyond the peak of the mountain, watching it with wide eyes, like it was the last thing that she hoped to see before they killed her.
Good God, did she deserve it.
Her death still wouldn’t bring Rylie back.
Abel hated this feeling of doubt. He hated all this goddamn guilt.
His anger had been defused, replaced by an emotion that wouldn’t go away whether or not he got revenge. The grief itched and ached and made him feel cold deep down where the snow couldn’t reach.
He sank his teeth into Leliel’s other wing and ripped it away. The tang of silver blood was sour in his mouth.
She didn’t scream—she barely whimpered.
Abel discarded her wing over the side of the mountain. Feathers ripped away in the wind. Halfway down the cliff, the wing vanished completely, sucked through one of those sinkholes into some other dimension. No way to tell where. Didn’t really matter.
Leliel was wingless.
He shifted back into his human form as she got onto her knees, reaching back to feel the stubs where the appendages had been. Blood slicked her fingers. She gave a ragged sob. “Eve,” she whispered like a prayer. Then she looked at Abram, running her wet fingers up his wrist. “Shoot me. Please.”
He recoiled, mouth twisting. “No.”
“Please!”
Leliel turned to Nash. “Don’t make me live like this.”
“The way things are going, none of us will live as we are for much longer.” There wasn’t even a hint of sympathy in his voice. He was as cold as the wind. “Feel free to pray that it ends swiftly in the meantime. You have an excellent working relationship with Belphegor, it seems. Perhaps he’ll have the mercy for you that we lack.”
Leliel cried hopeless tears, touching her stumps over and over, as if it might change what had happened to them. Her blood began to freeze on the snow.
“I’ll remove this,” Nash told them. “She can waste away her final hours in Heaven.”
He lifted her into the sky. By the time Abel finished shifting out of his wolf body, they had vanished into the clouds. He watched their light vanish with a sinking feeling of regret.
Abel should have killed her.
His son glanced down the mountain. There was no real trail leading back to the gateway—just a steep climb. “Guess we better go.”
But before he could start climbing, Abel asked, “Why does everyone want you dead? The angels. Those hybrids. Belphegor.”
Abram lifted his chin and stared the werewolf Alpha down. “Does it matter?”
Evasion. Of course it mattered.
The only reason that Abel could think that they’d want Abram dead was to keep him from opening the gates to Eden, like the one waiting for them on the mountain below.
The only other guy whose blood had opened the gates had been dead for months.
The truth came over Abel with a wash of heat.
Abram wasn’t his son. He was Seth’s. That had to be it, right? It was the only reason that Belphegor would be out to kill him, after all.
He’s not my son.
The thought raced through his mind over and over again.
Abel had been there when the kid was born. He’d been in the forest with Rylie as she labored, and he’d been the one to pull the tiny babies from her body. He’d held them in their first breaths and thought, Maybe I could get used to being a dad.
That was why Rylie had picked him as her mate over Seth. Because they’d produced a couple of babies together.
Now he and Abram were staring at each other, knee-deep in snow on top of the fucking Himalayas, of all places, so close to the sky that he could almost brush Heaven with his fingertips. And he was realizing that the one thing that he’d felt sure about—Rylie’s choice, before she’d died—wasn’t so certain after all.
Abram’s shoulders sagged. He must have seen the realization come over Abel.
“I promised to do it,” he said. “I already said I’d help open the gates.”
“How can you think I care about that? The fact that you can open the gates at all means…fuck.”
Abel didn’t feel like he fit into his skin anymore. He didn’t know who he was.
Abram wasn’t his son. Rylie had carried secrets about Seth into the grave. Abel hadn’t killed the angel who ordered his mate’s murder when he had a chance.
He didn’t know where he fit anymore.
“Come on, Abel,” Abram said.
He didn’t listen. Abel shapeshifted, and he ran.
Twelve
Lucas McIntyre waited with a hand on his gun and an eye on the shadows.
The line of refugees stretched into the night, wind
ing down the street, around the bakery, and vanishing into the fog beyond the train station. McIntyre stood apart from them, hanging out beside the line rather than among them, keeping an eye on the darkness in the alleys as people inched toward the evacuation point.
“Idiots,” Leticia muttered, hugging Deb to her chest. The little girl was squirming against her shoulder, but Leticia’s arms were steel, and she didn’t set her down. It was so crowded that she would never be able to keep track of the toddler among the crush.
“Idiots,” agreed Dana, the older sister.
McIntyre put a meaty finger to his lips and shook his head. “We’re evacuees too. Remember?”
“Then we’re also idiots.” Leticia shifted Deb’s weight to her opposite hip. “How much longer, Lucas?”
He glanced up the line at the barbed-wire fencing that had been erected around the town’s perimeter. They were told that it was to keep demons out of the village, but that was total bullshit; that kind of fence wouldn’t do jack against anything that was threatening enough to fence out anyway.
It was meant to keep people in. Keep the roads clear. Make it so the military could move without civilian interference, for all the fucking good the military was going to do now.
They couldn’t fix the hole that had eaten the farmhouse where McIntyre’s family had been living, or drag the farmhouse back from Malebolge onto Earth. They couldn’t make pieces of white stone stop raining from the sky and punching holes the size of dogs in roofs around the village. They definitely couldn’t do anything about the brand fucking new river of magma bisecting the town.
Nobody could do anything about those things. Not even McIntyre.
Didn’t mean he couldn’t try, though.
Dana hadn’t looked down at the ground more than twice since the sky split open, no matter how many times McIntyre caught her at it. She was staring again now. There was nothing to see for the moment—the sky was overwhelmingly black. The hail of angel stone had stopped.
McIntyre tweaked her nose. “Watch the streets,” he said gruffly. “That’s where death comes from most of the time.”
Leticia gave him a long-suffering look over their daughter’s head. “Lucas.”