by Lisa M Basso
It rang several times before going to voicemail.
No way was I leaving without him. No matter how bad things were. I dropped down the end of the ladder to the concrete and pushed through the side door leading to the street as silently as I could.
My legs still wouldn’t move quite the way I wanted them to, the aftermath of being impaled in the brain. When my intentions to run along the broken sidewalk resulted in me jogging through the middle of the street in a zigzag pattern, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
The longer I ran, avoiding angels and Fallen battling in the ruined streets, the steadier I became.
A Fallen with a dripping arm wound landed in front of me, carrying a man dressed in black. I drew my gaze up the tall man’s wide chest to find Azriel staring back at me, tsk-tsking and wagging his finger. “You aren’t getting away that easy. And you left a souvenir in one of my men.” Azriel threw my bloody knife at my feet so hard I had to jump back so it didn’t cut through my boot. The metal clanked against the asphalt.
I looked up through the curtain of bloody hair hanging down over my face. “Big mistake,” I told him.
In a move swifter than I would have thought myself capable, I lunged for the knife. Azriel charged me, knocking me onto my back, and cracking my head against the street. I’d managed to get the blade of the knife up before he covered me. The heft of the blade tripled, causing my hands to slip from the handle. Warm liquid slicked my grip as my knife betrayed me, slicing through the flesh on my hands. I looked up into his face to find my very nightmare, Azriel too close and smiling.
“Better luck next time,” he said, grabbing a fistful of my matted hair and jerking me up.
The knife clanked to the ground. The slices across my hands ran so deep I couldn’t make so much as a fist.
Azriel led me around in a circle, as if showing off a prized pony. Most of his lackeys were too busy fighting the angels to notice. All except the one I had stabbed.
On my second turn as Azriel’s display item, I noticed a rip in his shirt where my knife had failed to penetrate his flesh. Dark fabric replaced where his skin should have been. The asshole had body armor on.
“Should we get going, boss?” Bleedy asked, his hand still pressed over the cut in his arm.
“We leave when I say we leave!” Azriel snarled, jerking me to his side.
Not more than ten feet beside us, an angel and two Fallen careened into the ground, kicking up asphalt and debris and quaking the ground. I shielded my head, which caused Az to tug harder on my hair. He jerked me against him. With both burning hands, I grasped the hole in his shirt and ripped it away, revealing the padded vest he wore.
His boot shot out, cracking into the side of my knee and sending me to the ground. My leg exploded in pain. Az released his hold on my hair and stomped on my knee again.
I cried out, the sound rising up through the pounding of fists and clash of swords on the ground and in the air. Somehow being stabbed in the brain had hurt less than a shattered kneecap. Who knew?
The growing heat in my palms started to overwhelm the pain in my knee. The healing had begun. I kept my hands over my knee so Az wouldn’t notice them healing.
“Finish that angel,” Azriel commanded Bleedy, pointing to the angel that had slammed into the ground with the two Fallen.
The angel between the two Fallen had already begun crawling away. He had gained less than ten feet of ground before Bleedy removed a knife from his belt and raised it high above the angel’s neck. The angel twisted onto his back with my small boot knife in his hand. He looked at me, and called to the sky, “Help the girl!” As Bleedy’s blade came down, the angel tossed the blade toward me instead of using it to defend himself.
I couldn’t watch the angel die, but I heard the blow that separated his head from his shoulders. While Az was distracted, I rolled toward the knife.
Shadows circled the sky as my halfway-healed hands curved around the handle. When I turned over, angels surrounded Azriel and Bleedy. The pain and heat of healing had begun in my knee, restructuring it enough that I could stand and limp toward Azriel.
Behind me I heard Bleedy’s head leave his body.
A shorter angel removed a rather long blade from his sheath and held it to Azriel’s neck. Az’s smile never faltered.
“No,” I said, my voice still mangled from my head injury. “Azriel is mine.”
The short angel stepped aside, offering me his hand. I waved it away.
When I inched close enough to see the black of Azriel’s eyes, the shorter angel quickly tied a strip of fabric over them, protecting me from his influence.
“You deserve to suffer,” I spat at the Fallen that taken so much pleasure in torturing not just me, but the people at my school, and countless others. “But this will just have to do.” With the edge of knife I cut away the side of his protective vest and moved it so the left side of his chest was exposed. I centered the tip of the blade over his heart. “I hope you burn in Hell for what you’ve done.”
His smile widened. “I’ll just wait for you there then.”
“I hope Lucifer throws you to the souls in his lake. That way you and Lucien can suffer together.”
With more strength that I should have had, I plunged the knife into his chest. A hot rush of blood sputtered out, slicking my grip, but I held fast and jerked the blade to the left. His body went limp. I pulled the cloth from his eyes. They were cold. Not black, not white. Just dead.
My hands trembled as I pushed him off. The angels let Azriel’s body fall. On the other side of one of the angels’ wings, Kade and Temperance came running. The shock on their faces probably mirrored my own.
Kade pushed his way through the angels. He pulled me to him and kissed the unbloodied side of my temple. “I knew you had it in you.”
“We have to go,” Temperance said, waving us around the block.
The angels around us took flight. I didn’t waste another glance at Azriel. He was dead. That was all that mattered.
I let Kade pull me wherever it was we needed to go. It could have been shock, or my brain still healing, but moving, thinking, and feeling were too much all at once. So, I focused on just moving.
Kade knew I had it in me to really and truly kill. Good. Because I didn’t. Killing with my bare hands had been different than with the power Lucien had instilled, even different than it had been in Hell. Fathoms different. Even then, with endorphins and adrenaline bustling through my blood stream, I knew those maybe ten seconds in time would never leave my mind.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Rayna
I wiped my bloody hands on my black pants as we turned the corner into Lafayette Park. The army of angels I’d been expecting turned out to be just three.
Over my shoulder, I caught sight of something I hadn’t seen in years. My home. My fists clenched and unclenched at the sight of it. A hole had been blown through the front of it.
I kept on my feet. Barely. It was as if the hole had been blown in my own chest instead of the plaster of the old Victorian Dad, Laylah, and I had lived in together for maybe six months.
Kade, marching behind me, didn’t stop. He’d purposely been lagging half a block behind us in case we were attacked again.
“It was one of the first places the Fallen looked for you.” The voice in the distance had a familiar cadence.
I turned to see Elyon standing at the top of the hill amongst the trees in what should have been the newly renovated park. The evacuation of the city had left the fresh sod yellow and brittle, the saplings amongst the older trees tired and sagging from thirst.
Everything I knew about Elyon made me want to vaporize him on the spot. He’d caught me and Cam in a compromising position, making out on his couch. The last thing the angels could do if they wanted to keep their white wings was break the rules. And Cam had. Because I’d initiated the kiss only to realize my feelings for Cam had vanished. Elyon had kept our tryst a secret. In doing so, it gave him power over both of us
.
Another level of his power came in the form of the sword he wore around his waist. The Sword of Honor gave Elyon the ability to kill humans without losing his wings. It was the sword he had used to kill my mother. A murder he had staged to look like an accident.
Up until now I had avoided thinking about what being here would mean. Working with Elyon felt like smearing a stain across my mother’s memory. I didn’t think I had the strength to do what the entire human race needed me to. But I had to try.
“Kasade.” Elyon’s eyes tightened. “Restrain him,” he said, flicking his wrist at Kade.
The angel guards flanking Elyon left his side, passing by me.
I wouldn’t let him intimidate me again. His sword wasn’t the only powerful object on the playing field anymore. I took one step forward, staring Elyon straight in the eye while standing my ground. “If you touch him, I’ll kill every last one of you.” Then, softer. “I’ll do to you what you did to my mother.”
Elyon’s posture stiffened. The muscles in his shoulders went rigid. He nodded his head as though he’d been expecting it.
But I saw straight through his act and into his tainted soul. “How do you think your men will feel about you when they learn that you murdered her?”
Elyon stepped back with one foot. It was only half an inch, but it was more than enough to know I’d affected him. It wasn’t the defeat the darkness inside me really craved, but it was a start.
Over my shoulder I saw that Elyon’s guards had stopped short of restraining Kade. Kade didn’t press his luck either. He was trusting in me, letting me make my move.
“You would give up the entire human race for one Fallen vermin?” Elyon asked, loud enough for Kade and his angels to hear.
My eyes locked on Kade. His shoulder was wounded and bleeding from his fight with the Fallen. He was half-dead on his feet, and probably sick with the need to feed. He scowled at the two angels in front of him. His hair fell into his ash-covered face.
Returning my full attention to Elyon, I said, “I would give up everything for him. If he’s not welcome, neither am I.”
Elyon nodded to his guards, who stepped aside to let Kade by.
Too bad. I almost wished he’d asked for a fight. Too much adrenaline still buzzed through my head and hands from finishing Azriel. It did more than set me on edge; it jacked up the hum of power in my chest and haunted me at the same time. It was a bad combination.
Elyon held a hand out toward a large building at the other side of the street with four angel guards standing in front of it. “Our home is your home, but we don’t have much time.”
“Cam had better be in there,” I warned him. I bumped into his arm with my shoulder as I passed, our wings whispering by each other as we headed for Angel Central.
The two-story monstrosity was somewhere between a compound, with the high brick walls and iron gates, and a posh mansion with a fountain in the center of the driveway. The walls surrounding the columned colonial style home were covered by ivy and shrubbery.
As I got closer, Kade’s long strides caught up with me. “I could get used to this badass side of you.”
“Don’t say that,” I countered quietly. “I’m nothing like myself these days.”
I nodded to the angel standing guard at the front gate who jumped to open it for us. A small, brick lined cul-de-sac led to the front door. Inside, the marble foyer was packed with white wings, some I recognized from my showdown with Azriel.
Elyon wasn’t far behind, ordering a team to guard the park.
The sight of so many people leaving through one doorway reminded me of high school.
“Bring Camael,” Elyon ordered another set of angels at the top of the curved stairs.
“What do I have to do to end this war? Tell me how to stop them,” I said, trying with everything in me to set aside the rage simmering just beneath my skin.
“There is no formula for what you need to do to extinguish the entire Fallen species. All I can tell you is that you must focus on who you want to eradicate.”
I pushed the bloody hair out of face. No formula. No answer. No. Way.
Focus on who I wanted to eradicate. That was the great wisdom the angels had to give.
They expected me to trial-and-error my way through this.
That would take so much more fight.
I was stronger than I’d ever been before, smarter, wiser. And I had an army of angels to back me up.
I could definitely fight.
Kade stepped beside me. He swept a hand through my bloodied hair and pulled me against him, pressing a kiss against my temple. I didn’t break eye contact with Elyon. Kade and I were a united front. If Elyon didn’t know that before, he sure as hell did now.
The angels on the second floor returned with Cam. Kade released me, but didn’t step away. Cam’s hands were cuffed in front of him.
“Let him go,” I demanded as they descended the stairs.
Elyon nodded to the angels who stopped Cam halfway down the steps. Elyon was much easier to deal with when he did everything I said. This was something I could get used to.
“I’ve been wondering,” I said, “what was the verdict of the Governing Fifteen?” Heat stormed inside my belly. I pushed on despite the parting of Cam’s lips, and the way his steps quickened down the stairs. “Did they order you to kill me the day I disappeared?”
Elyon’s lips and jaw clenched together.
“I guess we’ll never know now because I’m too important to kill.”
“You are not irreplaceable.”
“Actually, I am, seeing as I killed Lucien in Hell. They can’t make another of me if his essence is gone.”
All the eyes in the room shot to me. I could feel the heat of them surrounding me.
“We’re under attack!” one of the angels hollered through the open door.
Elyon raced passed us through the doorway. I watched the empty space he left behind.
The Fallen were here. And I had all the information I needed to take them out. My time was up.
I looked at Cam and then at Kade, who were both watching me. I laid my hand on Cam’s cheek, looking into his slate gray eyes, maybe for the last time. I forced my lips to pull up.
Dread cornered me when I turned back to Kade. I knew if I so much as looked into his eyes I would begin to unravel. So I pressed a kiss into the unbloodied shoulder of his shirt and raced out the door.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Kade
I watched Ray, coated in her blood and Azriel’s. She curved her narrow fingers into a fist, then uncurled them. Whatever battle she fought inside herself was one I couldn’t help with. She had to do this for herself, not to please the angels—or me.
Shouts from outside broke the tense silence within the house. One of the men I didn’t recognize, but had to assume was an angel, announced we were under attack.
Shit. This was really it.
Elyon ran out the door. Ray’s gaze followed him.
Her heel tapped rapidly on the marble stone beneath her boots. She hadn’t looked this frazzled since the night I broke her out of the mental hospital.
But this was different. Then she’d been scared and highly drugged. Now … well, I guess she’d never looked so fragile to me before. The way she bore her teeth down absentmindedly on her bottom lip until she drew blood, then the way the wound healed right in front of my eyes.
Guess fragile wasn’t the right word either.
Explosive.
Even with blood tacked to her face, knotting her hair, coating the top half of her shirt and the bottom half of her pants, it never occurred to me. Or I never let it be a possibility.
Ray blinked. Her brows pulled together. A tiny wrinkle formed between the pinched skin, giving me the sudden urge to rub my thumb over the spot until it smoothed down. She looked from me to Cam. She turned to him, her hand cupping his jaw. I had to grind my teeth to keep from beating him into the floor. He didn’t return her touch. He knew the score.
When she turned to me, her eyes didn’t draw all the way up my face. They never looked above my lips. Pain softened them. She pressed a chaste kiss to my shoulder. My hand came up to fold her in my arms, but she was gone before I could try. I watched over my shoulder as she ran toward the sounds of battle.
I’d never been so proud of her. Or so pissed.
I hung my head and forced myself to breathe.
Cam strode by me toward the door.
I clapped a hand over his shoulder. “Wait.”
He looked at me like I’d just told him to jump in a giant kiddie pool full of alligators.
“Let her make this choice on her own. It’s her decision, no matter what we think.”
Cam didn’t fight me, though I kind of wished he would. Then I’d have an excuse to let loose some of this rage pinging around in my brain.
“You’re right.”
I couldn’t help the jab that followed. “I know.”
What could I say; it helped to pull someone else down to my level.
Cam stared at me. That angel stare that meant he was trying to process something human, something they didn’t have the capacity to understand.
“No,” I warned, dropping my hand from his shoulder. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
“Kade—”
“Don’t worry. She knows what needs to be done. She’ll make the right decision.”
Cam grabbed my right forearm and pulled me into a one-armed hug. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, I’ve seen an angel’s soul inside you where she is concerned.”
I squeezed his arm once. “Take good care of her once I’m gone.”
“I will. If I survive.”
If. It was the big question circling my mind too. Everyone, angel and Fallen, in the vicinity could be a pile of ash in mere moments. As much of Lucien’s essence was inside Ray now, it might not matter if neither of us survived. Whatever power she was about to expel could kill her, too.