“You and Anna.”
“Yes.”
“How did I guess?”
There was a squeak and yelp from the living room, followed by raucous laughter from Kibs. In the kitchen, there was only furious silence. I didn’t have anything to say. Hikari didn’t seem to have anything further to say. We simply stared at each other. The only thing running through my mind was how I wouldn’t mind at all if she stayed behind.
Before either of us could say anything to break the fragile silence, there was more pounding on the door. “Who the hell is it now?” I shouted. The pounding simply repeated. I threw one last glare her way, then walked to the front door, taking care to avoid the broken glass. “Who’s there?” I threw the door open.
I had expected a friend to show up, someone like Jase or Becky, or even one of Tink’s fellows from the local conclave. It was none of the above. Victor stood in the doorway, smiling at me as if we were perfectly friendly. “Good afternoon, demon,” he greeted me. “I heard you were leaving the area, so I thought I’d drop by. See if you needed any help to see you on your way.”
“No.” I slammed the door shut. “Shit.”
He pounded on the door again. Tink appeared next to me, her knife in hand. Caleb swept past behind me, heading into the kitchen. “I knew I should have killed him,” Tink whispered.
“Not the right thing to do at the time,” I whispered back.
“Whatever. If he kills you, I’ll make sure to carve that on your headstone. Aren’t you supposed to have Asmodeus guards around here?”
Kibs phased in behind us. “Sweetcheeks is right. There are twelve Choirboys in the area. All of them are first rank Angels aside from Victor. The Asmodeus agents are all dead or incapacitated. He must have taken them by surprise. Stall him, Zay. I’ll get word to Opheran and we’ll have a battalion here in ten minutes.” Before I could even respond, he had phased out again.
Victor pounded on the door again. I yanked the door open. “Why, demon, you aren’t afraid, are you?” he asked. “Why would the mighty Gatekeeper be concerned about a lowly Archangel?”
“One doesn’t get to become the Lord of Heaven by taking stupid risks,” I shot back.
His face darkened. Tink jabbed me in the side, then grabbed my ear and pulled me down. “What part of stalling didn’t you understand?”
“All of it.”
“Lord of Lies would be more accurate,” Victor snapped.
“Actually, that would apply more to Beelzebub.”
“Wasn’t he the Lord of Flies?” Tink asked.
“That’s true,” I said. “I’m not sure that my House would really be associated with lying, though.”
“Well, you did lie about not taking stupid risks,” Tink pointed out.
“It wasn’t a stupid risk! It was just stupid.”
“Are you quite finished?” Victor rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “I have a certain task to accomplish here.”
“Oh, so you’re not here to help me move out?” I asked.
He smiled. “I’m here to help you move on.”
I slammed the door in his face again and pushed Tink out of the way. Ichor pumped and when he blew the door open a couple of seconds later, I was well on the way to my fully demonic form. He didn’t even blink, simply pulled his scimitars out of wherever angels kept them and started carving for my face.
There was a crash from the kitchen and I assumed that another angel had appeared. Caleb and Hikari could take care of whatever was going on there. Making sure Victor couldn’t stick a sword in me was my immediate concern. I jumped backwards and tripped over our couch, landing flat on my back. Like the good, predictable angel he was, Victor leapt, flying over to skewer me.
Tink nailed him with an artful display of force vectors that sent him coasting through the window, then dropped him to the ground outside with a rather satisfying crash. I bounced to my feet just in time to see another angel step into the room, pointing a sword at Tink. I jumped back over the couch, hellfire blazing in my palms as he turned toward me. I sent one spurt of the green flames toward his eyes and the other significantly lower. Caught between covering two important areas of his body, he froze and didn’t cover either. The hellfire ate into him and I kicked him in the gut, throwing him back out into the hallway. He collapsed to the ground, unmoving.
“One out of twelve down,” Tink said. “Wish we could say two, but that wouldn’t stop you, let alone an archangel.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got other ideas on how to deal with Victor.”
“Two down,” Caleb said. His sword and shield were in hand and he was barely even breathing hard. “These aren’t worth a damn in a fight. They must be trainees, or washed out of training.”
“I somehow doubt that he’d throw untrained angels against us,” I said. “There’s got to be some sort of plan behind it.”
Caleb snorted. “Victor never had a grasp of tactics. Not like his father.”
Before we could say anything else, two more angels appeared in my doorway. One knelt next to the one I had kicked, then stood with a snarl. “You’ll pay for that, demon.”
“Pay for what? Kicking the ass of some Choirboy who was trying to kill me?” I held my palms up in front of me, hellfire blazing to life in each hand. “Do you actually expect us to simply roll over and die when you ask? What do they teach you in angel school?”
They tried to both come through the door at the same time. Caleb simply stepped forward and launched his shield into both of them. Both staggered back and he followed up with another shield bash, smashing the heavy metal into each of their faces in turn. In short order, there were three angels on the floor in the hallway. “Four down,” he said. “Where’d Victor go?”
“Tink sent him out the window to admire the scenery,” I said. “He hasn’t come back yet. Maybe he’s planting a garden.”
“We need to get out of here,” Caleb said. “Or at least find some place more defensible. They’re going to start putting holes in this apartment soon. If they can get more than a couple of them inside, we could have problems.”
“We held off three times this number of Lucifer and Amon demons in his old apartment,” Hikari pointed out. “Why can’t we just do that here?”
“I can’t kill them,” Caleb said softly.
“Where can we go?” I asked. “Kibs is getting reinforcements. We can’t go far.”
The building shook. I heard a scream from somewhere below, possibly from the apartment directly below. I took a long step away from the middle of the floor, a step that the others mirrored. There was a thump from above as well. “They’re in the walls?” I asked.
“Maybe we should go out the window,” Tink said. “Victor wouldn’t expect us to follow him out. Getting out into the open will let us see them coming, right?”
Caleb shrugged. “We can at least ambush them when they pour in here first.”
Our decision was made for us when the floor collapsed and the ceiling fell in seconds later. I grabbed Hikari’s hand as she stumbled and nearly fell. Caleb held his shield up to deflect a chunk of something that nearly hit him. We couldn’t stay inside any longer. While it limited their options to come and get us, it also meant the building could suffer a catastrophic structural failure at any moment. Having caused one or two of those failures in the past, I knew what it meant for whoever was in the building when it happened.
“See, I was right, wasn’t I?” I said to Hikari.
“Shut up, Zay.”
“We’ll definitely get a new dishwasher now!”
“Shut up, Zay!”
“Come on out, demon,” called Victor. I couldn’t tell where he was. “I have more playmates for you.”
“Can’t you find a better class of playmates? Maybe you could rent some from Playboy? They might fight better than this bunch, now that I think of it.”
Another crash rumbled through the apartment, this time from the kitchen. Hikari flicked her hands through a runic design before
throwing a spell into the kitchen. Fire burst out from the doorway and a howl of pain followed. “Five, maybe,” she said.
An angel dropped from above, his wings billowing out to hold him suspended above the pit that had once been my living room. This one held a rather unorthodox weapon for an angel: some sort of Kalashnikov variant, complete with banana clip. He pointed it in my direction, just as Tink threw her knife at him. The knife blurred and spun through the left wing, then snapped back to her hand like a boomerang. With that wing suddenly refusing to support him, the angel fell, but not before tightening his finger on the trigger.
Luckily, I had just enough time to prepare, and Hikari had thrown some sort of defensive spell up. Even with that, a bullet nipped through the meat of my upper left arm, barely missing the bone. “Shit,” I snarled as the pain registered. Regenerating it wouldn’t be hard, but would take time and ichor, neither of which I could spare at the moment. I settled for forcing the bleeding to stop.
“You all right, demon?” Tink called.
“I’ve never actually been shot before. This is a new experience for me.”
“We really need to get out of here,” Caleb said. “If I find Victor, I swear, he’s going to pay for this.”
“I think we all have a long list of grievances with him,” I said. “All right. Going to clear us a way out.” I wiped my hand through the ichor that had oozed from my arm and formed a ball of hellfire. I fed it with another drop or two, enough to cause a very satisfying bang. My aim was right below the shattered window, and the hellfire blew the entire wall and part of the floor out as well. The building groaned and smoke started rising from the traces of hellfire that busily ate into the structure. I then pointed toward the hallway. “Let’s go.”
“Good thinking,” Caleb said as he edged past me. “Now hopefully it doesn’t collapse before we get out of here.”
I paused in the hallway to make sure Tink and Hikari made it out safely, then kicked one of the angels in the chest just to make sure he stayed down. There was a distinct possibility that he wouldn’t be mobile again before the building came down. I found myself with an equally distinct lack of sympathy.
There were two angels coming up the stairwell. Caleb dropkicked one of them and rode him down the rest of the stairs. Tink and Hikari hit the other one with a flurry of magic that left him broken and bloody next to his companion. I stepped over the two of them carefully. There was enough angelic purity decorating the floor and walls that I didn’t want to take any risk of starting a volatile reaction.
The parking lot was a mess already. There was a moving truck parked close by. Someone, probably an angry angel, had turned it into something resembling metal confetti. My own car, parked nearby, resembled nothing if not modern art. “So, who knows how to hotwire a car?” I asked.
“It’s not especially easy to do that these days,” Caleb said.
“It’s child’s play,” Hikari said. Caleb stared at her. “What? Magic.”
“Cheater.”
“Don’t start with me, Caleb. Do we actually want to try and take someone’s car here, or was that just your standard issue smart ass remark, Zay?”
“It was just a thought,” I said. “But by my count, we have four angels left, including Victor.”
“So, you can count.” Victor’s voice came from above, drawing all of our attention. He stood atop the burning building, two angels standing at his sides. Both of them held rifles identical to the one that had taken a chunk out of my arm. “I wonder if you can dance as well, hellspawn.”
“My mother didn’t skip lessons on how to act in polite company,” I shouted up at him. “Namely, she taught me some manners, formal dancing, and how to speak to one’s betters. I guess that’s something your mother didn’t bother to teach you. I’ll have to let her know next time I see her.”
“You have a certain way with words,” Caleb muttered.
“It’s a gift.”
Both of the angels with Victor leveled their rifles at us, but our ritual exchange of taunts had given Tink and Hikari more than enough time to prepare. A barrier rose between the angels and us, strong enough to stop their shots cold. Bullets smashed into the invisible barrier, ripples of force spreading across my field of vision. Unable to resist, I lifted my hand dramatically, palm outwards toward Victor.
Tink smacked me. “Stop grandstanding. Blow them up or something.”
“Is that barrier going to let hellfire through?”
“Only one way to find out, demon.”
I shrugged and lit balls of hellfire. All three angels on the roof moved into defensive stances, the rifles clattering to the roof as they brought shields out to cover their bodies. I flicked the hellfire upwards, aiming for the roof of the building itself rather than them. At this range, with their level of preparation, I’d be lucky to give them anything worse than a sunburn.
It was with great surprise that I noted that I had actually flung several dozen bolts of hellfire, many of which were homing in on the angels, whose slow reactions spoke of a certain level of surprise as well. “I guess I’m better than I thought,” I said.
“Illusions,” Hikari said as the swarm of hellfire struck home.
“Oh. You’re ruining my own illusion here.”
“The illusion of competency?”
“Harsh.” I watched with a practiced eye as my hellfire ate into the roof line. Having worked in construction for the past couple of years, I had a fair idea of what held pieces of buildings up. With the damage to the building already critical, the roof wasn’t all too secure, and burning away at the walls and supports directly underneath their position was bound to have delightful results. When the roof sagged and the three angels disappeared from view amidst a cloud of black smoke, I grinned. “I’d say that’s a certain level of competency.”
“I would have made sure the roof sloped down toward us so we could walk up and finish them,” Hikari said.
“Seriously, demon, you don’t expect us to go in there now, do you?” Tink chimed in. “You know that’s not going to stop them, just slow them down.”
“But I thought that was the entire point, to slow them down until our reinforcements get here?”
Both Tink and Hikari sighed and looked away as if I had said something mortally stupid. I looked to Caleb for help. He shrugged.
Before they could continue their erosion of my ego, the apartment building’s wall burst outwards. For just a moment, I saw our television spin through the air before it crunched through the roof of someone’s SUV. Three angels leaped out from the wrecked building, their clothes shining white, wings arced to catch the air. “I’d say that made them mad,” I said. “But I think they were already mad before.”
“Shut up, demon.” Tink was already drawing runes, but I could hear her breathing hard. Both she and Hikari had already given plenty of blood to power their earlier spells, and as far as I knew, human magic didn’t include regenerative powers. I was starting to feel the burn as well, but converting some of my human blood to ichor would keep me going for a while longer.
The trio of angels leapt toward us, swords out, obviously intent on bringing the fight to us. They bounced between cars in the parking lot, sometimes on top of the car, then spread out. While charging four of us seemed silly, they did hold an advantage in hand to hand combat, especially if at least two of them were fresh and there was at least one more unaccounted for. Our best chance was to drop the odds quickly.
Tink caught one of them with a force spell that nearly tore his left wing off. He spun out in mid leap and bounced off the windshield of a car, leaving a spider web pattern of cracks in the glass. On the opposite side, Hikari came within a hair of incinerating another angel. A pillar of flames threw a car up in the air, barely missing the angel.
“Down, Zay!” Caleb blindsided me and smashed me into the ground. I saw a streak of blue-white fire blaze through the air directly above me. The concussion as it hit a nearby car knocked Caleb off me and I saw stars as I bo
unced my head against the asphalt. Someone had just tried to light me up with holy fire. If the Choirboys were getting past that predilection for hand-to-hand combat, we were definitely in trouble.
“Got him,” Tink said. She spread her fingers wide and made a one-two pushing motion. The missing angel must have been hiding on the opposite side of the lot, before bouncing into the air to take a shot at me. He made the classic mistake of waiting to see the results of his shot before moving. Tink punished him for it. Two force bolts smashed his wings, sending him flying backwards into the street. I heard the screech of brakes and another crashing sound. I repressed the inclination to laugh.
“You all right, Zay?” Hikari grabbed my hand and hauled me up. “There’s two left, including Victor. He went to ground near the building.”
“I’m fine. Caleb?”
The angel was already on his feet, rolling his shoulders. “A little bruised, nothing serious. Sorry about that, Zay. I barely saw it coming.”
“Thanks, Caleb. Saved my ass.”
“So what’s the story?” Tink demanded. “Two left up? Let’s go put them down.”
“There!” Hikari pointed, then let fly a spell. An angel had put his head around the back of a van nearby. As he pulled it back, Hikari put a force bolt directly through the side of the van. The entire vehicle rocked sideways as metal shredded. The angel cried out, then I heard a thump as he hit the ground.
“Victor?” Caleb shouted. “Where are you, coward?”
“Better a coward than a traitor,” came the return shout. I spun in that direction, but he was nowhere in sight. “The Seraphim will hear of this, Caleb.”
“They will also hear of your unsanctioned assault,” Caleb shouted back. “A foolish, pathetic assault. Did you learn nothing from your previous attempts? We are much harder to kill than you give us credit for.”
“Do you really think this is unsanctioned, Caleb?”
“You would have more resources than these obviously untrained fools, Victor.” Caleb turned quickly. I followed his gaze, but saw nothing. “Spending their lives like this is unconscionable. How many have died for this?”
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