Chapter Seventy-Two Azrael
Chapter Seventy-Two
Azrael
Charlotte and I barrel toward Heaven, Sloth in tow, his stolen wings beating against the air. He’s not clumsy, just unfamiliar with them after a few millennia, like a weapon reclaimed after centuries of disuse. But he was once made for this. Just like Lucifer was.
And now, for better or worse, he is again.
The wind bites.
The sky thins.
The pressure of the atmosphere increases until I can feel where Heaven looms.
Behind us, the atmosphere crackles with incoming force—Lucifer’s siblings, some of the angels that followed, are gaining on us. Radiant and wrathful, they streak through the sky like divine missiles. They’re not chasing us. They’re hunting.
Like the ruthless warriors they were always meant to be.
Their presence scrapes against my spine, a celestial gravity all its own.
But Charlotte’s warm in my arms, her heartbeat pounding against my ribs like a war drum. Her fingers curl lightly through the hair at my nape, and she buries her face in my shoulder. Like she’s chosen me, trusts me completely.
With her life. With their daughter’s.
So, I push harder.
We’re climbing fast, cutting through the atmosphere within seconds.
Still another me stands beside Lucifer as I summon my scythe into my hand, his shadows curling around his Armanis. Michael and the others storm toward us.
Above, the sky splits, and the angels hunting us gain on us like judgment itself, their divine light bleeding at their backs, wings drawn and weapons lit with Heaven’s fury. Fuck, there’s too many of them.
“Stay with her, Reaper,” Lucifer hisses down below, but I’m no longer his weapon to command. “I’ve no need of you.”
I shake my head. “I’ve waited nearly two thousand years to fight by your side again. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got enough for both of you.”
“That’s an order, Endbringer,” Lucifer snarls.
I glance at Charlotte in my arms—her eyes locked on the rift ahead, her mouth parted slightly, radiant with purpose and fury.
She can do this.
She’ll find God before Lilith.
This girl who shouldn’t have survived.
This woman who made Death and the devil fall hard.
This new immortal carrying a child with more power than half His angels could ever bear.
My little siren. My death wish.
Our future.
And below, Lucifer laughs.
That laugh—the one I’ve missed. The one that used to echo against my skin whenever I’d take him in the Garden, back when we weren’t trying to destroy each other.
He looks glorious in that tux, hellfire licking at his feet.
And he’s right.
Right now, he doesn’t need me.
Michael will never touch him again.
Not after this.
We’re going to make Heaven and Earth tremble.
I follow his order, focusing the whole of myself on Charlotte.
The gates to Heaven begin to shimmer—like a mirage in the distance, a flickering wound that doesn’t want to heal. There may be twelve locks keeping it closed, but we’re going to split the sky wide fucking open.
“You ready, baby girl?” I murmur into her ear, my voice battling against the wind.
She smiles, clinging tighter to me.
I rise like a storm, like a plague, wings stretched to the limit, and she screams as together, we rip through Heaven’s gates like we were always meant to.