by S. J. West
As soon as they get within range, Zack pierces them all with his daggers to keep them from phasing. He is able to throw them a lot farther than Leah and I can project our Heaven’s Fire. It doesn’t really matter how far away the object Zack wants to pierce with his dagger is. As long as he has line of sight, he can direct the daggers to their intended targets.
When the leviathans get within range, Leah and I combine our flames and obliterate the leviathans without much effort.
“That just seemed too easy,” I say, feeling as if we must be missing something.
“Don’t question small blessings,” Zack tells me, remaining the ever-eternal optimist of the group.
We hear the crash of something heavy striking wood down the street from us. A leviathan is butting its head against a two-story colonial home, obviously trying to get to the people hiding inside of it. A few brave souls, presumably neighbors of the people who own the home, are lobbing anything they can find at the leviathan in a vain attempt to distract it. I don’t know whether to be impressed by their bravery or concerned by their stupidity. What exactly is their plan once they have the leviathan’s attention? Either way, their tactic isn’t working: the leviathan has a one-track mind, and really seems to want the people seeking shelter within the house.
We all run down the street to help. As we’re running, Chandler plays his music in an attempt to draw the leviathan away from the house. The creature does rear its grotesque head when he hears the tune, but it quickly returns to what it was doing and continues to smash its head against the roof of the house. Zack stops in the middle of the street to aim a dagger directly at the leviathan. I watch as it flies through the air and pierces the creature’s stomach. I try to keep my eyes away from the lifeless bodies floating within its gut, but I know the horrific imagery will stay with me for the rest of my life.
When we get to the house, Chandler plays the very first tune he tried which angered the other leviathans. It has the same effect on this one, causing it to rear its unsightly head and fly directly towards us. The leviathan opens its mouth, releasing the overpowering stench of rotting corpses. We’re so close to it, Leah and I just barely have time to light our fire to destroy the Hell-spawn before it gobbles us up, too.
“Sorry,” Chandler tells us. “I couldn’t think of a better way to get it away from the house.”
“It’s all right,” I say, slightly out of breath not only from the run down the street, but also from the excitement of almost being eaten alive by the leviathan. “You did what you had to do.”
“Hey!” a man with the group of ten people, who were throwing things at the leviathan, calls out to us as they walk over to where we are. “How did you do that?”
When the people reach us, I notice they all look at me closely, open awe tinged with suspicion. A few of them, especially the women of the group, divert their gaze to Mason standing by my side and seem to put two and two together. I send up a silent prayer that we won’t have any trouble with these people.
“You’re the ones the president warned us about, aren’t you?” the man asks.
I see no reason to lie. “Yes. We’re those people, but you don’t have anything to fear from us. We’re only here to help.”
“I can see that,” the man says with a nod of his head. “Don’t worry. None of us ever trusted Ravan Draeke. It’s probably the only reason we’re still alive.” The man holds up his right hand to show me that he doesn’t have a red dragon tattoo.
In a way, it’s odd to think Lucian may have done himself a disservice by killing those with a tattoo. At least they had pledged their loyalty to Ravan, and, by proxy, to him. He killed those he could have used in this war just so he could harvest the energy from their souls. Now, he has a world filled with people who despise everything Ravan stands for. The country that will come out of this catastrophe on top is China. Jai Lin said that she never allowed any of her citizens to receive Ravan’s mark. In the days after this is all over, Jai Lin will need the support of her countrymen if the world is ever going to be made right again.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” a small red-haired woman in the group asks us.
“Just try to stay clear of those things,” I warn her. “You won’t be able to kill them on your own.”
“A group of us was thinking about storming the White House and taking Ravan down,” the man says a little too excitedly. “Do you think you could help us with that?”
“I wouldn’t advise doing that by yourselves,” Mason is quick to reply. “We’re coming up with a plan to deal with Ravan. Trust us to take care of her for you. If you want to help the resistance, find more people like yourselves and team up to stay alive. Hopefully, this will all be over soon and you can start to rebuild your lives.”
The man looks around at the devastation his neighborhood has endured.
“I don’t think things will ever be the same for us,” he says. “We’ve already lost so much.”
“Once you survive all this,” I tell him, “remember what happened here. There will always be someone out there trying to destroy what you have. Don’t let them. All of this,” I say, indicating what’s left of this man’s community, “can be rebuilt with a little hard work and a lot of determination.”
“Do you honestly believe you can put an end to what’s happening?” the red-haired woman asks me, looking desperate to hear an ounce of hope in my answer.
“I have faith that it will all be over soon,” I tell her, wondering how much we’ll have to sacrifice to end the Apocalypse.
“Well,” the spokesman of the group says, “if you can’t trust the word of a woman wielding a flaming blue sword, who can you trust?”
His words bring an unexpected smile to my face. “Exactly.”
“We need to be going,” Mason tells the group. “Try to stay somewhere safe and out of sight until we’ve dealt with these creatures.”
“We wish you luck,” the man tells me, “and we’ll try to keep our faith.”
As the group of people walks away from us, I realize that sometimes faith is all you have to get you through the tough times in your life, and meeting them has reminded me exactly why we’re here.
We came to this reality to save the lives of people just like them. We’ve tried our best to accomplish that, even if we’ve lost as often as we’ve won. But I know one thing: we’re not leaving this world until we’ve finished our work here.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For the next few hours we travel around North America, destroying as many of the leviathans as we can find. We run into a few rebellion angels who try to stop us, but we’re able to fight them off easily enough. Considering that the groups are usually only made up of six or fewer angels, it quickly becomes obvious that Lucian isn’t capable of tracking our movements. Odds are that he’s sent out these small groups to random locations all over the world. If he thinks they’ll stop us, he needs to re-evaluate our determination to quickly put an end to what he started.
After destroying a herd of leviathans in Roanoke, Virginia, we go back to the castle to see if there have been any reports of the creatures elsewhere in the world. I doubt we’ve killed all of the ones in North America, but I also know they have to be close to reaching Europe and Africa by now. Considering how swiftly they can move, traversing the Atlantic Ocean should only take them 12 to 14 hours, at most.
My suspicions are confirmed when we return to the castle. Andre is there, with news that the leviathans have made it all the way to Ireland and England. Thankfully, Andre had the foresight to organize a group of Watchers to scout out leviathans around the globe so our group can spend less time hunting them down. The hope is that we can destroy them as they enter the European, African, and Asian nations.
Without wasting any time, we quickly head across the Atlantic Ocean. It takes us a few hours to kill the ones that have made it to Ireland and England, but, even with that progress, I know our work isn’t anywhere close to being finished. After disposing of the
leviathans that made it as far as London, we travel to Cabo da Roca in Portugal and wait for the ones Slade spotted just off the coast there.
While we stand on the grassy cliff near the red and white lighthouse in Cabo da Roca, my heart breaks as I survey the devastating scene in front of me. Since we had to delay decontaminating the oceans because of the tsunamis, a vast amount of sea life was lost due to the poisoned waters. The rancid smell of decaying fish and ocean waves stained with blood bring tears to my eyes. So much life has been lost that can never be replaced. Millions of innocent creatures that had no knowledge of the things going on in the human world around them have been slaughtered. Lucian has forever changed the landscape of this reality. Even if we come out victorious in the end, I’m not sure this world will survive; if it does, it will certainly never be what it once was.
I feel Mason come up behind me and place his hands on my shoulders.
“You can’t dwell on the failures,” he tells me, knowing exactly where my thoughts have taken me.
“It’s hard not to when the failures are so colossal,” I reply, trying to be brave by holding back my tears. I can cry about the loss of life later. We have a job to do right now, and I need to stay focused on it.
“We did the best we could, Jess,” Leah tells me.
I look over to my right, where she’s standing between Zack and me.
“I know,” I tell her, forcing my gaze back to the devastated ocean, “but it still doesn’t change the fact that nothing will be the same here again.”
“Maybe it’s not supposed to be,” Chandler says, from his position to the left of me. “Maybe change is what this world needed. Sometimes it takes a great tragedy to bring people together to work on a common goal. I don’t think the people of this world will ever forget what’s happened here. I know I won’t. And maybe that’s part of it, too.”
I look over at Chandler. “What do you mean?”
“It could be that God wants us to take our knowledge back with us to make sure this never happens in the Origin. Even you said Lucifer wasn’t having fun with this end- of-the-world scenario. At least we can be pretty certain he won’t do the same thing back home.”
“He couldn’t anyway,” I say. “Lilith isn’t alive in our reality. He doesn’t have her to use like Lucian did.”
“True,” Chandler concedes, “but he could come close to this. If, for some reason, the princes get free in the future, he could still open all the seals if he wanted to, but I don’t think he will.”
“No,” I say with a sigh, “Lucifer likes to play with people too much. This wouldn’t be any fun for him at all, not without having his foreplay first.”
“Exactly,” Chandler replies. “He may have thought he wanted things to play out like this, but seeing it up close and personal has probably changed his mind.”
“It’ll be one of the few good things to come from this,” I say.
“Boy, you people have really been a pain in our asses,” we hear a man say behind us.
We all whip around with weapons drawn. Nina, Mason, and Slade form a defensive line to act as a protective barrier between us and the ten rebellion angels who just phased in.
I don’t feel any surprise at all when I see Will is leading this particular group of angels. He seems to be one of Lucian’s favorite henchmen.
“Glad to hear it,” I reply, not even attempting to keep it secret that I’m taking a great deal of pleasure in the fact that we’re acting as cogs in the wheels of this Apocalypse.
I can hear the growls of the leviathans behind us. They’re not super close, but close enough to make me want to put an end to this encounter as quickly as possible.
“Well,” I say, holding up my sword, “are you just going to stand there and look pretty, or are you going to attack, Will?”
“I think we’ll just stand here for a little while, if that’s all right with you,” Will says with a boy-next-door kind of grin. His blond hair flutters in the wind, giving it a tousled look. To most people, his appearance would look fresh and boyishly handsome. He was a perfect tool in Lucian’s arsenal of deception. “Seems a shame to attack before our backup arrives.”
“You do realize that the leviathans will attack you just as readily as they will us, right?” Mason questions.
Will shrugs. “Makes it a little more sporting, don’t you think?”
“Enough of this,” Slade growls, taking matters into his own hands.
Slade charges forward with a war cry as he heads straight for Will with his sword raised. Without being given much of a choice, Will raises his own blade to defend himself against Slade’s vicious attack.
Not wanting to be left out, the rest of us join in where we can.
Chandler begins to weave tunes that give us added strength and courage while slowing the movements of our opponents. Zack stays behind us and aims his daggers at the rebellion angels to take away their advantage of phasing. It makes it a lot easier for the rest of us to cut them down.
The growls of the leviathans coming in behind us grow in volume. I know we don’t have much time left before they’re on us. One of the two rebellion angels I’m fighting tries to lunge at me with his sword, but he’s driven back by a well-aimed stream of fire from Leah. Screaming in pain, he collapses to the ground, and I know that particular angel has vacated the body he inhabited. With only one left to fight now, I make quick work of her by catching her off-guard and slicing her head from the rest of her body. After she crumples to the ground, I look over to see how the rest of the group is fairing in their own fights.
Nina is working on adding two rebellion angels to the pile of four dead ones around her. Mason is still fighting one angel, with two others already slain at his feet. That leaves the intense battle still raging between Slade and Will. As far as I can tell, it seems to be a dead-even match between the two of them. Neither seems to be able to gain the upper hand over the other. Strangely enough, I realize I don’t want Slade to kill Will. He’s Dillon’s father, after all, and, for better or worse, she still loves him. I hate to imagine what her reaction would be if we killed Will. Though his soul could simply find another body to inhabit, the fact that we murdered him might turn her against us.
“Slade!” I call out. “Let him go!”
Slade looks over at me like I’ve lost my mind, but he doesn’t question my order. He immediately phases to stand by my side.
Will, who is breathing hard by this time from the exertion of the fight, taunts, “I never took you for a coward, Slade! Let’s finish this!”
“Come on, Jess, let me take him out,” Slade practically begs. “Obviously, he wants to die. Let me be the one who grants his last request.”
“Go home, Will!” I call out, taking a chance to glance over my shoulder to see how close the leviathans are now.
They’re about a mile out and closing in fast. We don’t have a lot of time.
“Watch him,” I tell Slade and Nina as we vessels turn to deal with the imminent threat of the leviathans.
We’ve done this so many times now, we have our routine down pat.
As Chandler plays his dissonant notes, Zack prepares his daggers. Once he throws them to prevent the leviathans from just phasing away from us, Leah and I patiently wait until the creatures are in range before letting our combined fires loose. Six leviathans in all meet their demise by our hands on that cliff, but I know there are probably hundreds more out in the world that will need to be exterminated.
“I have to say,” Will says, “that’s a pretty impressive skill you have there.”
I turn back around to face him. “Jealous?”
Will smiles. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. Enjoy the time you have left here, Jess.”
Will phases away, and I sincerely hope it’s the last time we see him this trip.
Once we’re through, Mason comes up to me.
“You need to get some rest,” he says, tenderly running the back of his fingers along my right cheek. “You can’t ke
ep going like this, Jess.”
“I can’t rest,” I tell Mason, even though lying down on our bed, snuggled up against his warmth, sounds like bliss. “Every minute we waste might mean a death that we could have prevented.”
“You’re not going to be any good to anyone if you kill yourself in the process,” Mason says in frustration. “All of you need some rest.” Mason looks pointedly at Leah, pulling on my Achilles heel. “If you don’t sleep for at least an hour, you might end up making mistakes that will cost you your lives. Then you won’t be any good to anyone.”
“Mason’s right, Jess,” Chandler tells me, unable to hold back a yawn. “I think we all need to get a nap. We may carry the souls of archangels, but our bodies are still human.”
“All right,” I say begrudgingly, not wanting to waste time arguing when we could all be sleeping instead. “One hour. Then we get back to work.”
Zack and Chandler look at each other right before standing straighter with shoulders back, like they’re soldiers coming to attention in front of their superior officer. They click their heels together and raise a hand in salute.
“Aye, Aye, Captain,” they say in unison.
I roll my eyes at them both. “You dorks. Come on, let’s go get some sleep.”
Mason phases me directly to our bedroom while Nina and Slade take care of Chandler, Zack, and Leah.
My husband quickly helps me strip down to just my pants and shirt before I crawl into bed. I’m not even sure my head hits the pillow before I fall to sleep. All I know is that I feel a sweet kiss on my lips sometime later, but even that isn’t enticing enough for me to completely abandon the land of dreams.
“Jess,” Mason whispers in my ear, “it’s time to get up.”
I bury my face in my pillow and groan in protest.
“I don’t wanna,” I say, realizing I sound just like one of our kids when we try to get them up in the mornings.
“I wish I could let you sleep more, baby, but you need to get up.”
I laugh and lift my head to look over at Mason.
“That’s so not fair,” I tell him, rolling over onto my back. “You know that’s what I say to the kids when I wake them up.”