Chapter Twenty #2
“The world is still trying to make sense of what happened. Then, I see you on the stage with a new demon. Not the redhead who took you from my home, but one with horns. And then these demons speaking Greek made the news, claiming to be Hades and Persephone. All deceivers. All liars, leading men astray from the One True God. When you disappeared from the footage, I knew he was bringing you here.”
I tried to shake my head, but my neck wasn’t working.
She was implying that the angels were behind my arrival here. In fact, it sounded like she was directly crediting Silas.
If that was the case…
No, no, no, I thought. She’s insane. She’s a liar. There’s no way he was behind this. But if he was…was that why the angels didn’t intervene the moment his clock was up? Is that why he…
My stomach roiled at the line of thinking. It was impossible. And if my mother didn’t stop monologuing, I was going to be sick all over again.
“I raised someone who would do something wonderful for the Kingdom of Heaven. I just didn’t realize she’d accomplish it by showing everyone the Lord was real because she was on the wrong side of history. But God works in mysterious ways. He uses sinners all the time to accomplish His Will.”
“God did not orchestrate this,” I said. “I did.”
There were no shadows on her face as she slowly closed her eyes and got to her knees. She clasped her hands together and began to pray.
Oh, fuck.
My breathing became rapid and shallow. A high ringing in my ears drowned out her faithful murmurs. I didn’t have a phone. Even if I did, who could I call? It wasn’t like Azrames had a cell. It wasn’t like Caliban…
The cave.
Fine, then. I’d do some praying of my own.
I balled my hands into fists, holding my breath as I closed my eyes, struggling to relax enough to picture a cave.
I envisioned the void with as much detail as possible, willing myself to see the wet limestone, the stalactites, and the gaping maw.
I stared into the dark end of possibility as I shouted into my mind that I needed him.
That I was at my mother’s. That she’d lost her mind.
That if he didn’t come soon, someone else would.
I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me, but it was all I had.
A crack of thunder shook the house, yanking me out of my attempt at meditation. The building’s foundation trembled. The windows rattled. My ears rang with the high, piercing sound that enveloped the home. My mother fell sideways onto her hip, catching herself with one hand.
“They’re here.” She smiled.
I looked over my shoulder out the glass panels at the burst of glitter in the backyard.
Two intense patches of light, one rose gold and one silvery blue contrasted with the brown-green grass of early fall.
Two men emerged from the shimmering clouds against the rows of pines and tall privacy fence that lined the property, each in the white and beige leathers I’d come to know so well, weapons on their hips.
I recognized them immediately.
The Michelangelo painting and the Spanish saint.
I sucked in a painful breath as I stumbled away from the door.
I winced away from my mother, shoving myself into the corner of the dining room while she whispered her gratitude to her god.
The men advanced toward the house looking like twin linebackers too beautiful to exist among mortals.
They’d step through the door itself in five seconds.
They’d have their hands through my chest and on my heart in ten.
It was the most horrible sight I’d ever seen in my life.
I was a child, begging for my soul.
I was in the bathroom mirror, gasping for air.
I was in Daily Devils all over again, golden goo dripping off its surfaces as Fauna snarled at Azrames. “This isn’t just the end of her cycle. They came to smite her.”
Caliban had looked up helplessly from his place on the floor. “…I can work with the body, but if it’s an angel who ended the soul…”
This was it.
Three seconds.
Two.
A sonic boom sent us both to the floor as the earth itself split, cracking the very bedrock of the home as it trembled.
Three times louder than the angelic thud, this was a true, otherworldly explosion.
My mother grunted from the kitchen floor.
I cried out as my hands and knees hit the ground, looking up with a gasp just in time to see the cloud of shimmering darkness, and within the shadow, the murderous face of the man I loved.
“Caliban!”
“No!” Lisbeth screeched.
My twitching smile of relief was reflexive. He was here. He’d come for me.
The cry that escaped me was desperate and primal as the angels spun on him. I struggled to my feet, running to the glass in time to see that he was not alone. Caliban had reinforcements. Everyone was outside except for me, trapped behind glass with my captor like a caged animal.
My heart surged at the sight of the terrifying, metal sphere covered in spikes.
They were going to fight.
“I can’t kill them,” I heard Azrames shout through gritted teeth. He danced on the balls of his feet as he began to swing his meteor hammer, the spiked silver catching in the early light. His words were muffled through the glass, but this was no quiet exchange.
“But I can,” Caliban growled in return, brandishing a long, thin blade. “Buy me time.”
I wanted to pound on the glass, to cheer for them, but I knew better than to distract them from battle, and I had my own war to win.
I wouldn’t have had the time to react if I hadn’t caught the white-blond reflection over my shoulder in the glass.
I dropped in the nick of time as my mother charged me.
She careened into the window with a howl as I rolled onto my side, scrambling across the slick wood in time to grab a chair and throw it between us.
I didn’t look over my shoulder, but I heard the catch of her foot and the pained cry as she stumbled on the obstacle.
I took off at top speed to the steps and hesitated.
Stupid people in movies always ran up the stairs.
I slipped into the basement instead, closing the door behind me as quietly as possible as I prayed that she’d take off toward the master bedroom at the top of the steps.
I stumbled down the carpeted steps in heels, barely catching myself on the banister as I ran to the back of the den.
I’d distinctly remembered the two fire-safe egress windows.
Trauma flipped a switch within me as raised hands, dim lights, and worship music strummed their major chords through my memory.
O Lord, set my soul on fire. I wanna burn for you.
This house was as good as on fire, and I needed out.
I stumbled past the game table, tripping on the carpet as I plunged toward the windowsill.
I grabbed the vertical latches and yanked them down, unlocking the window as I began to crank at a frantic speed.
I did my best not to make any noise as I heard a frustrated cry from somewhere in the house.
The window was open enough, but the screen was in the way.
I looked over my shoulder for a tenth of a second before slipping the shoe off my foot, plunging the heel into the mesh, and tearing a top-down gash into the barrier.
The basement door flung open, slamming into the stairwell as my mother pounded down the steps.
I leaped into the window well and hopped upward, pulling myself up with every ounce of strength my arms possessed.
I screamed as a hand reached through the mesh and grabbed my ankle.
The clangs of metal and cries of battle rang through the yard as my top caught and snagged against the corrugated metal.
I was pulled back into the window, but I was no longer afraid.
I kicked her as hard as I could, anywhere I could.
“Father God,” she groaned, “please save my daughter from herself. Please send—”
She maintained her hold as I landed a kick on her chest, then her shoulder, but screamed as my bare foot connected with her nose. She stumbled backward instantly, clutching at her face as blood flowed freely.
“Call reinforcements on me now, you bitch.”
She stumbled deeper into the den, and I seized my opportunity. I groaned as I pulled myself onto the chilly, morning grass, stumbling away from the house and toward the yard.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The angel shimmering in blue turned to me with a snarl. I barely had time to catch Azrames’s eyes widen with panic as the angel abandoned the battle to advance on me.
“Take over!” I heard Caliban’s yell. A flash of white darted away from the angel on the far side of the yard. Az dropped to the ground, sliding toward the rose-gold angel as he whipped his meteor hammer in a smooth motion toward the enemy.
The angel stalked toward me with Hulk-like aggression and focus. I stumbled in my one-shoe attempt to run, skidding backward as I scrambled away. His golden eyes burned into mine as he advanced. He lifted his sword, piercing the violet sky of first light as he readied himself for the blow.
A lightning bolt at his back stopped him in his tracks.
A glint of silver burned through the dawn as a high, bell-like sound reverberated through the air.
My very cells tingled at the eerie noise as I stared in anticipation of the giant, but he didn’t move.
Then, his knees buckled. A strange trickle of light cut across his throat.
Then, his eyes, his ears, his mouth began to slip to the side, though his shoulders stayed in place.
His head hit the ground first, preceding his thunderous fall as it thumped against the grass and tumbled toward me.
His eyes rolled into the back of his head as his lids remained open and unseeing.
Gilded goop oozed from what remained of his neck, puddling on the grass.
I scrambled from it as if it were a venomous snake.
I looked up at Caliban’s outstretched palm.
There he was. Beautiful. Perfect. Whole. He’d heard me. He’d come to rescue me. Caliban held one hand toward me, a gold-soaked sword in the other. “Love, come on—”
Azrames and I cried out at the same time, our shock converging as the threat took over.
Caliban barely had time to turn toward the advancing angel as the two locked swords. Azrames embedded his meteor hammer in the man, but though I heard the audible crunch of bone, the angel did little more than snarl.
“Mar, go!” Az growled at me as they sandwiched the angel.
But the archangel lifted his knee as high as he could to kick Caliban back.
He lost ground as he fought to keep the angel off me, and I understood the threefold problem. Azrames could not kill an archangel. Caliban was fighting to keep me alive above any other form of victory, which limited his moves. And I was a goddamn liability.
I had no moves. I had no skills. There was nothing I could do to help.
Except…
I plunged my hand into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around the poppet.
I yanked it free from the fabric and did the only thing I knew how to do.
Fear and sickness fought for my attention as I pressed the figurine to my mouth.
I’d barely whispered his name before the snarling angel whipped around in wide-eyed surprise.
He turned in time to take a fist to the jaw as Silas made contact with his face.
Caliban abandoned the battle to run to me.
“Are you okay?” he demanded.
“Not yet.” I pointed over his shoulder.
A white-and-gold lightning bolt cut the sky.
Silas had come. If he could get me out of the battle, my demons might just stand a chance.
“Az,” Caliban barked. Azrames was at my side in a flash while the remaining angel yelled behind us, glinting with two metallic sheens where their wings might be.
“You’ve already fallen from grace,” the stranger said to Silas. “Go with dignity.”
“This is why I was created,” Silas growled in return as he spun on the adversary, catching him off guard. The enemy barely had the chance to defend himself from the move as Silas used his free hand to draw his weapon. “This is justice.”
Azrames reached toward me.
“No!” I recoiled. I couldn’t leave. Not yet.
“You’re no brother of mine,” growled the rose-gold angel.
Silas came down from above just as Caliban swept from below, lodging his sword into the back of the angel’s legs, slicing the tendons that held him together. The angel cried out in pain and fell toward Silas. He reached not at him, but through him.
Silas gasped, dropping his sword as the angel made a fist somewhere deep within Silas. Caliban got to his feet, dislodging his sword from the man’s legs before plunging it through his back, spearing him through the heart.
In the time it took the angel to go down, the new archangel managed one final yank.
His hand tore free of Silas’s chest, something glimmering caught in his fist.
With it went Silas’s shimmer as the golden halo of his eyes winked out.