by C. S. Wilde
More out of instinct than anything else, Ava rushed toward the end of the room, and even though Liam screamed her name, she didn’t stop.
She passed by an angel who gutted a werewolf, then another who’d split a vampire in half. They were smiling as they ended those who were too weak to fight, rejoicing in their massacre.
Tears dropped from the corner of her eyes as she ran.
She had to stop this. This was not the Order. This was not what she stood for.
A piercing scream caught Ava’s ear. A woman dressed in gray crouched on the concrete floor, pleading for her life. Ava turned and went to her, only now noticing that behind the woman, a Warrior lifted his sword for a kill blow.
“Stop!” Ava cried. “For the love of the Gods, stop! She’s human!”
The Warrior tilted his head to the right, observing Ava. His sword stopped halfway across the deadly swing, but his cold eyes revealed nothing. Like some of the Warriors, his black bodysuit was sleeveless, showcasing thick arms shaped to kill.
Ava was almost there, a few more steps …
“If this human is helping them, then she’s a traitor of the light, sister.” His sword went down, severing the woman’s head from her neck.
Ava’s legs buckled midway; her kneecaps stung as they hit concrete. A void ate away her lungs, and warm tears flooded her cheeks. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a piercing shriek that shredded the walls of her throat.
The Warrior observed her with a sneer. “You’re weak, sister.”
He turned to pick out another human, this time a boy, not much younger than Kevin. The Warrior took him by his hair, and still the boy refused to let out the tears glistening in his eyes.
Something inside Ava snapped. She forced herself up, and her sword beat in unison with her heart, opening that familiar rift. It bled gold and warmth from her essence.
“Enough!” Ava raised her sword toward the Warrior.
He stopped shaking the boy by his tuft of hair and watched her with annoyance. “Stand down, Guardian. You know nothing of battle. We’re doing the Gods’ work.”
“This has nothing to do with the Gods,” she said, sensing the sadness and rage inside the Warrior, the emotions that pulled him into the dark. After the slaughter in the Order, she could understand why he felt that way. Perhaps he could still be saved from himself. “You’re angry,” she added. “They attacked us, but you must fight the darkness. Killing innocents is not the way of—” Something flickered in the corner of her eye.
The Angel and Demon of Death appeared at a distance, near a group of fallen humans. Usually, they remained unseen, thoughts inside dying people’s brains, but for some reason, the Angel of Death liked Ava and had revealed herself quite often to her.
The Powers were here and at the same time they weren’t, and because they existed in non-existence, they weren’t allowed to meddle in matters of Earth, Heavens, and Hells. Which meant that Death couldn’t stop this madness, only handle the outcome.
The Angel of Death stared at Ava, and her ethereal voice echoed in her mind like an old lost memory. “Why do you think you’re here?”
Ava frowned, knowing the answer was on the tip of her tongue, and yet she couldn’t reach it. The Angel of Death shrugged, then turned to the dead humans and began issuing their fate alongside her brother.
The Warrior watched Ava with a scowl, likely wondering where her words had gone. He looked around, glancing past the Powers, and shook his head when he saw nothing. “Are you having a meltdown, sister?”
The Warriors around him laughed and jeered.
“These humans are not innocent,” he continued. “They were consorting with the damned.” He walked to Ava, his sword in hand. “What were you doing here, sister? Were you also betraying the Order?”
No more.
The crack inside her shook. A waterfall of rumbling gold burst through the gaps, her hidden essence flooding into herself; she could feel it.
Ava’s vision reddened, blood thumping against her veins. “You’re the only damned here,” she snarled through gritted teeth.
Without second thought, she boosted toward him, a war cry rushing from her throat.
The Warrior swiveled so quickly she barely saw him. The dry pain of a sword’s hilt slamming against her back hit her at once, and she fell with her stomach on the floor.
Warriors were fast, and even with Liam’s training, Ava knew she could never win against one.
“Little Guardian, you better stop.” His playful tone mocked her. “Lay low, and I won’t report you for treason.”
Ava let in short, shallow breaths. “You’re the one who should be reported.” She crouched, pushing herself up, but the Warrior kicked her in her ribs, his movements a blur.
Piercing pain burst from her left side, and she fell with her back to the floor, groaning. Her bones poked at her own organs.
Up above the madness, near the ceiling, Gabriel smacked a punch on Jal that sent him crashing against a wall. They went in and out of focus, her vision blurring.
“Ava!” Liam’s voice reached her ears.
He was being held by three bulky Warriors who watched her suffering with glee. The right side of Liam’s head was coated in red, the left side of his face swollen. She stretched a shaky hand to him, and Liam growled something akin to a lion’s roar as he twisted in the Warriors’ grips. “Hellsdamned, let her go! Ava!”
He tried, but he couldn’t break free.
Ava’s failure to help him hurt more than the strikes she’d taken. So much more.
“Show her, brother,” one of Liam’s captors said, nodding to the Warrior. “Show them both the true path of the Gods.”
Veins throbbed underneath Liam’s skin. “Let her fucking go!” he spat, tears in his eyes as he thrashed under their grip. “I’ll fucking kill you all!”
Ava smiled at him because inside all that pain and desperation, that turmoil of dark clouds exploding from him, she felt a tiny whisper of light, a gentle tug of love.
For her.
She strengthened her grasp on the hilt, and her sword pulsed repeatedly, almost as if it were knocking on a door, demanding to come inside.
Thump, thump, thump!
Thump!
Ava let it in.
The rush of power took over, her body feeling as light as air. All her wounds stopped hurting, and her broken ribs cracked back in place.
The Warrior licked his lips, watching her with interest. “Not so weak, are we?”
Ava jumped to her feet and charged at him, and this time, his blurred movements were clear as day. She dodged, swiveled, attacked, their swords ringing as they clashed. She stepped back, the Warrior forward, and his sword slammed against her blade.
She pushed it back, then swung hers in a half-circle that sent his weapon flying to the right. Ava could’ve struck a killing blow. Two steps forward, a blade into his heart and it’d be done. But she chose mercy instead.
“Repent!” she said as the Warrior picked up his weapon. “All of you!”
She felt silly saying it. Obviously, they wouldn’t.
“We’re not the ones who need to repent!” The Warrior charged with a fury and she blocked him, their blades screeching, but he was too strong and her arms were already shaking.
With one quick strike, he sent Ava’s sword flying across the warehouse. Before she could recover, he punched her stomach, and she fell with her back to the ground. He dropped his sword and straddled her, then punched her face, once, twice, his knuckles crashing into her jaw bone.
“Ava!” Liam’s strangled roar came from afar. She saw four shapes piling atop him, their forms blurred in a dream-like manner.
“Let him watch!” The Warrior atop her said, his eyes shining pure wickedness as they returned to her. Then came another crash into her right cheek, and Ava saw stars.
A tsunami of molten fire and light rumbled from the rift inside her. This was different from the force that had taken hold of her before. This wa
s a gargantuan behemoth, roaring behind its cage.
Let me in.
All at once it slammed against the thin, cracked line, shattering the rift apart. Its furious waves of light wiped through Ava, pushing against the outskirts of all that made her who she was. The raging light bit into her, hungry, eager to burn everything in its path, even if it had to rip her apart to do so.
The innocent …
They were all dead or had escaped—she could hope. The light that filled her to the brim showed her this like a radar: still hearts, unmoving bodies, apart from those that held blessed blades. And then there was Liam.
Up above, Jal punched Gabriel so hard that the Archangel slammed through the wall of the warehouse. The demon locked eyes with her, well, one eye, because the other was swollen and purple.
The light pushed against her, ready to explode and wipe everything in its path. Not yet, she told herself, pushing against the ravenous force that would end her today.
She shot Jal a pleading glare. Save Liam.
Somehow, he understood.
Jal dove like an arrow, piercing through the Warriors atop Liam, and when the demon emerged, he rose toward the cracked glass ceiling, carrying her charge, her partner, with him.
She smiled as Liam screamed her name, thrashing against Jal’s grasp, helpless to break free. “Godsdamned! Go back, Jal!” he begged. “Go back!”
They would be safe.
The Warrior atop Ava punched her face so hard that she bit her own tongue. A bitter, coppery taste flooded her mouth.
“You’ll die today, Guardian!”
He was right. And she would take all of them with her.
Ava’s skin glowed like the sun. The furious waves of fire and light filled her, again and again, drowning her from inside out. Golden lightning cracked in the air around them, veins of light heralding the upcoming beast.
A flash of golden lightning struck a Warrior on the left, disintegrating him. One moment he was there, the next he was gone, nothing but ashes in his place.
The Warrior atop her gaped at the spot and then back at Ava. He wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed. “Stop it!”
Smoke hissed from his hands, and he jumped to the side, shaking his scabbed palms.
“What in all the Heavens?” he asked with horror.
Her head felt fuzzy, halfway between consciousness and oblivion. She was going to die, of this she was certain. A thin agony spread inside Ava, but it was coated by overwhelming peace.
Liam was safe.
Her lightning cracked louder, whipping into a few Warriors and turning them to dust. But the light didn’t threaten to rip her apart anymore. It flowed from her core easily, expanding in a dome around her as quick as a flash.
Ava thought she heard the start of screaming, voices cut off mid-way, and then the smell of burnt flesh, but she couldn’t see the warehouse or the Warriors anymore, just white burning around her in golden flares. White and gold, swallowing her completely.
If stars could explode inside someone, this was it. Devoured by light and thunder, Ava drifted into oblivion.
25
Ava
Ava woke to the sound of church bells.
She got up from her bed, then put on her cotton shirt and dark blue skirt. The cotton was rough to touch, worn from all the years she’d had it, but she couldn’t afford new clothes, not anymore. She occasionally missed the soft touch of silk against her skin, but then she remembered the price of comfort, of going back, and the longing disappeared.
Ava had been born in high society, and as it was custom, she’d been married at the early age of eighteen.
Her life had been pleasant up until then, but the moment she said “I do” to her husband, her existence became a stream of gowns and balls in the ever-growing city, a bustling parade of golden chandeliers and evil intentions that felt wrong and dirty.
Her husband, Joseph, had been kind to her, and to a certain degree, she had loved him. But the poor begged for mercy and food on the streets, and rich men like him, with their top hats and golden watches, ignored their suffering. They even chortled at times, looking upon those in need with disgust and contempt.
Ava’s life suffocated her, and people didn’t notice, didn’t care, so long as she put up a beautiful smile and a pleasant attitude. Those who claimed to love her didn’t see her, like they didn’t see the poor that piled up on the streets. She was a ghost to her own mother, to Joseph, and to all of the faces whose names she easily forgot.
When she asked her husband to leave it all behind, to come with her to the countryside and help children in need, he chortled. “They must learn to help themselves, dear.” Joseph frowned, as if he thought she’d gone mad, when Ava was seeing clearly for the first time since their wedding. He fixed his cufflinks. “Now go on. We have a party to attend. Much business to be done today.”
She left him that same day, and she never looked back. Joseph tried to contact her, but after his first letters went unanswered, he silenced.
And she was fine with that.
Her mother would visit every so often, but Ava knew she didn’t tell any of her high society friends. After all, her daughter had become a castaway.
Not that Ava cared. She loved being a cook in the orphanage of the small town of Hergsby.
She had arrived with only the clothes on her body, feeling like it wasn’t enough, that she should’ve taken some money to give to the children. But it had felt tainted somehow, and she wished none of that into her new life.
Sister Mary, who had opened the orphanage door for her, had chuckled at her excuses. “The children do not need your money, child. They need you.”
Ava smiled at the memory as she stepped into her small living room, a construction of dark, creaking wood. The place had belonged to the orphanage’s head cook, Mrs. Crawford, but she’d died last year and left Ava the little wooden cottage. It might be shabby and old, but it had been a gift from a gone friend. A friend who had seen her, and Ava treasured it.
The cold, though, Lord … she hated missing something from her old life, but this she truly did: proper heating.
She went to the kitchen and turned on the old gas oven, then placed a teakettle atop it.
A puffy white landscape stretched outside the window as far as the eye could see. Ava sighed as she pictured today’s journey, the same journey she performed every day. She would cross the snow drenched fields, which usually took her thirty minutes, and then there would be another fifteen until she reached the orphanage, which bordered the outskirts of Hergsby.
During summer, the walk brought joy to her heart, but in winter, it was simply ghastly.
Ava hated the snow. It clung everywhere, and it drowned the world in thick silence. She never felt more alone than when she walked through those muted white oceans.
The cold bit into Ava’s skin and all the way to her bones as she left the house. Her patched coat was not enough to endure the harsh winter, but she couldn’t afford a new one. She could ask her mother for monetary aid, but every time the thought crossed her mind, Ava dismissed it.
“You’re the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met,” her mother had once said. “Did you truly come out of me?”
Ava chuckled at the recollection, but her light mood soon vanished. Her steps sunk three inches down in the powdery snow, and the cold slipped through her boots. Her socks became soggy when ice reached her skin and turned into water.
“Lord, give me strength,” she grunted.
Time seemed to last forever until the orphanage came to view, a small three-story construction with a gray, peeling façade.
Finally.
As soon as Ava stepped inside, shaking the snow off her clothes, something hugged her legs and didn’t let go. She looked down at little boy Charlie, who smiled at her with one missing tooth, his chubby cheeks brushed with soot and dirt.
Ava smiled back, bent down, and took him in her arms.
“Can we have meatballs today, Miss Ava?” he
begged with those big brown eyes, his tiny lips pouting. “Billy said he had meatballs once, but I never did.”
The Lord might have not given Ava a child of her own, but instead he’d given her fifty who were hers, at least in her heart.
“It depends on what we have in the kitchen, sweetheart.” She kissed his cheek and let him down. “Now go on.” She pointed toward the main room where the younger children played. The older ones must be having classes upstairs. “Go play with your friends.”
He nodded and ran to the main room.
Ava went to the kitchen, and then to the storage room outside, where they kept things that rotted quickly during winter. The cold preserved them, so that’s where the meatballs would be. But all Ava found was a scarce assortment of smoked meat and chicken, a ridiculously limited amount that was supposed to last the entire month.
Heavens, the children would be close to starving this season.
Sister Mary was waiting for Ava when she returned to the kitchen. The nun’s habit covered Sister Mary from top to bottom, which made her resemble a penguin. Her kind, round face wrinkled with a frown. “Everything all right, child?”
“I can’t find meatballs.” Ava placed both hands on her waist and looked around. “I’ll go quickly to the butcher; perhaps he has some left.”
Sister Mary shrugged. “Funds are short, Ava. The children will be perfectly happy with bread and cheese.”
“I know.” She smiled. “But the butcher has a kind heart, and he’s given us some meat in the past.”
Sister Mary crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow at her. “I’m not sure if he gave you free food out of the kindness of his heart, dear.”
Ava winked at her. “Well, if a bit of flirting gets us the food we need, then I’m sure the Lord will forgive me for this little deception. Don’t you think, Sister?”
“I suppose.” Sister Mary chuckled. “Go on, then. Do God’s work.” She drew the sign of the cross in the air, blessing Ava. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
There were no streets from the orphanage to town, just a path that cut through a thick pine forest. A small car or a carriage could drive the way, but the orphanage didn’t have money to buy either. They relied on the kindness of the townspeople to give them rides.