“Humans,” Merodach spit. “I don’t know why you even bother. All they do is scream and scatter like birds. You can’t protect them and you can’t win this war.”
He released my hair and the relief on my scalp was instantaneous. I pressed my hands into my head to soothe my skin as I gathered my limbs together and pushed myself to my feet. I picked my swords back up. “You reapers keep saying that, like you’re trying to convince yourselves it’s true. That’s pretty pathetic.”
“Xastur!” he barked, his pale eyes frozen on my face. Another demonic reaper appeared beside Merodach. “Wrap it up.”
Xastur nodded and vanished in a flash. Merodach tilted his head at me with a curious look. He opened his mouth to speak, but a form materialized right where Xastur had just gone from. The figure was lightning-fast and I was able to make out a hand—a hand that took hold of Merodach’s throat and sent him flying across the room and crashing through a window. He disappeared into the darkness outside as glass rained down. As the newcomer slowed and his blurred form took shape, I recognized Cadan.
“Are you okay?” he asked me, his eyes blazing.
“Yeah,” I said, and the nausea began to spin in my gut again. “They killed my friend. Oh my God, Landon is dead.” I wanted to grieve for him, but now wasn’t the time. “I think Xastur is helping Merodach run the show. Find and stop him.”
Cadan nodded and disappeared after Merodach. I looked around, hoping to figure out how many reapers were left alive. Will was covered in blood and his sword was stained neon beneath the black lights. He finished off the last of them, and when his gaze caught Merodach climbing back through the window, Will’s face twisted with hatred.
“Marcus!” he roared to rally the other angelic reaper.
Marcus appeared in the room, his own hands and clothes tattered and bloodied from battle. “They’re dead,” he said. “They’re all dead, except for Xastur. He took off.”
Merodach surveyed the other reapers and his gaze rested on me. He bared his teeth, flashing bright fangs in the black light. “The coward. You win this one, Preliator.”
Will roared with rage and launched himself in the air toward Merodach, sword swinging. Merodach whirled to the side to avoid the blade, but Will followed him. They were neon blurs in the darkness, nearly invisible—until Will’s body rammed into the wall and Merodach appeared above our heads, black wings spread wide. Feathers drifted to the floor. Merodach’s hands rolled into fists and he loosed a bellow of fury and frustration. And then he vanished. When Merodach didn’t reappear, I ran to Will’s side and helped him to his feet. He punched the wall, his fist burying deep, and he swore at the top of his lungs.
“He’ll be back,” Marcus offered. “You’ll have another shot at him. At least we didn’t lose anyone.”
“Ellie did,” Cadan said in a low voice.
Reality came crashing down on me. I didn’t want to look at Landon’s body, but my legs moved toward him anyway. He was crumpled on the floor against the opposite wall, his limbs tangled like a tossed doll’s, and what was left of his face stared straight up at the ceiling.
One of my best friends was dead. I wasn’t sure if that fact would ever begin to make sense. Merodach had taken someone else I loved from me. There was one deafening thought repeating itself in my head, so loud I couldn’t think, like I’d forgotten the entire English lexicon but for five words.
I will kill them all.
10
“I WANT TO KNOW WHERE XASTUR WENT,” I SAID, my tone sharp and commanding. “I want to play croquet with his head by dawn, do you understand?”
The three reapers nodded in unison.
“Someone has to know a demonic reaper named Xastur,” I continued. “I want Ava and Sabina on this too. Marcus, call Ava and tell them to drop whatever they are doing.”
Without questioning me, Marcus took his phone out and dialed. He began to relay what had happened as Ava listened on the other end. Will stepped close to me. The scent of blood on him was gut-wrenching.
“We may not track him down tonight,” he warned. “But eventually we will. He will die for what he did to Landon and the other humans.”
“I swear I will make him suffer,” I said.
Will studied my face for a couple moments before exhaling. “Xastur may give us something on Merodach too.”
“He’s right,” Cadan added. “There’s a chain of command in their ranks. This guy obviously isn’t a grunt, and there’s a good chance he is privy to crucial information. He may even have artifacts that will help us.”
“Like a relic?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he replied. “Xastur might even have the copy of Antares’s grimoire that you’re after.”
My mind raced with possibilities. “Better yet…if Bastian figured out how to summon Lilith, then they might know how to summon others.”
“Other Fallen?” Will asked, surprised.
“No,” I said. “Summon an angel like Azrael. If we don’t find the grimoire copy with Xastur—which is likely—then we might still find out if Xastur knows how to summon Azrael. He’s an angel, an ex-archangel, to be exact. He has to know if it’s possible for me to ascend and become Gabriel.”
Cadan’s expression hardened. “Do you still want to do that?”
“I have to do whatever it takes to destroy Sammael and Lilith,” I said. “We start with talking to Azrael. We have to find out how to summon him.”
“Guys,” Marcus interjected. “Sabina knows who Xastur is.”
“Does she know where he is?” Will asked.
Marcus flashed a dark, satisfied grin as he slipped his cell back into his pocket. “Yeah, she sure does. She’s never infiltrated his hideout before because it’s too heavily guarded. So, what do you say we crash someone else’s party and pay him a visit?”
“Let’s go.” I didn’t wait for a response before I began marching toward the front door.
In the distance, countless sirens from emergency vehicles wailed mournfully.
I plugged the address Sabina gave us into my GPS. Will rode shotgun beside me and the rest of the reapers flew through the Grim straight for our destination. My heart pounded so hard in my chest that it was painful, but there was no way for me to relax. I stared hard at the road ahead, desperate to drive the images of the bodies of my friends and classmates from my mind.
My phone buzzed. Kate was calling. I took a deep breath and caught Will’s glance out of the corner of my eye. “Hey,” I answered.
Kate’s response was a string of unintelligible angry sobs and curses.
“Kate, slow down,” I ordered. “Are you safe?”
“I’m home!” she cried shrilly into my ear. “Where are you? What happened? oh my God, Ellie—”
“I’m with Will. Just calm down and stay where you are, all right?”
“They won’t tell us what happened! People were dead, Ellie!”
Landon’s mangled face flashed in my head. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her, to say out loud what I didn’t want to be real. “I know. It was horrible. People just panicked and stampeded. It was a horrible accident—”
“Oh please,” she snarled on the other end. “You saw those things. We all did. Don’t even lie to me.”
I couldn’t deal with this right now. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”
“Don’t you dare—”
I hung up and turned my phone off. I had to. There was no way for me to explain to her what happened without thinking long and hard about a realistic story. The police would be all over the scene and questioning everyone who’d been there, including myself, I was certain.
But I couldn’t think about that. Not yet. I had to stay focused on the danger I was about to walk right into. This reaper, Xastur, would be the last to get his blood on my blades tonight.
“I am so sorry about Landon,” Will said in the smallest voice.
A tremor rippled through my chest. “I’m the one who should be s
orry. It’s all my fault.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“Yeah, it is,” I snapped back a little more sharply than I’d intended. “I brought the reapers to that house. It’s my fault they were there and killed all those kids. If you guys hadn’t been there…I don’t know how many more would have died.”
“The demonic are the ones who did this,” Will said, his voice firm. “We took them all out except for two. We’ll find Xastur and then we’ll find Merodach.”
The muscles in my jaw clenched, my teeth squeaking against each other. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, we will.”
Xastur’s hideout was a dilapidated old textile factory, and as my car rolled nearer and the building loomed overhead, an ache of dread shuddered through me. I let the car idle to a standstill and I stared up at the factory. Demonic energy oozed from its crumbling walls and broken windows, coiling around frightening memories I’d shoved deep into the pits of my mind.
“Ellie.”
Will’s voice shook me from my reverie and I realized that I’d been squeezing the steering wheel so hard my hands had turned white and I was shaking. Even so, I couldn’t let go.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “We can turn around, take you home. I’ll return with the others to get what we need.”
Lights flickered in a couple of windows in the top floor. I jumped when a shadow passed over the glow. “I remember this place.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“I died here.” I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed from the car.
Will followed. “What? When?”
“Ragnuk,” I replied distantly. “I followed him here and this is where he killed me.”
He fell silent, and I realized he had never known where I had died last. I understood that the memory was painful for both of us and I didn’t want us to let it become a distraction. I wanted revenge for Landon’s death and Xastur was the last culprit remaining alive besides Merodach. I would return to this factory, but Xastur would be the one to die tonight. He and whatever other demonic things crawled through the hallways.
“Come on,” Will said at last. “The others are waiting.”
It didn’t take long for us to rendezvous with the rest of our team. The angelic reapers, Marcus, Ava, and Sabina, stood with our own demonic reaper, Cadan. He and Will exchanged looks, but in their attempt to be civil, nothing was said between them.
Sabina stepped forward, clad in black, her blond hair pulled into a high, tight ponytail. She pulled out two guns and checked the clips in both. Two long daggers were strapped to the sides of her boots. “Xastur keeps his office on the top floor. There are vir protecting the upper levels and mostly ursids patrolling the lobby. I’ve seen two different vir outside of the building since we’ve been here. I don’t have a definitive number, but so far I’ve counted seventeen ursid reapers. I don’t know how many are deeper within the factory or how many vir reapers we will meet.”
Marcus swore under his breath. “That’s a bigger party than I thought.”
“Let’s go for it,” Ava said eagerly and called her sword into her hand.
“There are six of us,” I said, agreeing with Ava. “If we’re careful, then we have nothing to worry about. I’m not sure if we’ll have much of an element of surprise, but we should approach as if they don’t know we’re here. Xastur will need someplace to regroup, but if he’s returned to his main hideout, then he’s either completely stupid or completely oblivious. This place shouldn’t be so heavily guarded if there isn’t something important inside to guard.”
Marcus shot a grin at Will and flicked his brow. “Well then, boss lady. Let’s move in.”
I was flanked by reapers as we marched toward the factory entrance. The overgrown lawn revealed nothing, so one by one, we slipped into the Grim and let the world of reapers fill our senses. There was no way to make it all the way to the top floor without alerting Xastur and his goons. We would have to fight, and that was hard to do without making a ruckus. I could only hope that we’d have enough of a jump on our enemies to keep them from all descending on us at once. A handful of reapers at a time was something we could handle, and not a couple dozen. That was too big of a risk. I wouldn’t let anyone else I cared about die tonight.
As we neared the front door, flashes of darkness and my own blood on the dirty basement floor hit my mind’s eye like distorted, grainy tintype photographs, but I stared hard at that door. No more would I walk in fear of what had happened to me. I wouldn’t let death haunt me any longer. I would hunt death. I would be the reaper.
I kicked down the door, full force, and the sheet of metal crashed into the opposite wall. Outside light drenched the shadowed lobby. They now knew I was here, but they wouldn’t know I’d brought an army.
Movement blazed to my left and a demonic vir tore from the darkness and into view, but Will was there in an instant and he slammed his fist into the reaper’s face. A hideous crack echoed through the lobby and the vir’s head twisted almost all the way around on his neck. His body was pale stone before it crashed to the tile floor.
Marcus stepped up to the vir’s remains and slapped Will’s shoulder. “You are one bad motherf—”
He was cut off by a cacophony of earth-shaking roars resounding from deep within the cavernous factory. The walls shook free of dust, and yellowed paper and debris blew toward us from a dark hallway. I called my swords and angelfire lit up the room. Eerie white light danced off the walls and ceiling, and we waited for the ursid reapers to descend.
I heard their hollow loping through the halls, claws clicking cement, large bodies panting, snarling, growling orders to each other. Black fur rustled in the darkness and gnashing teeth appeared. I bolted toward the reapers as they appeared. Claws and fangs slit through the air past my skin and my knees hit the floor. I slid across the cement and was lost to them in the tangle of legs and paws, too small for them to keep me in sight. Bodies jumbled above me, snouts crunching, and I cut flesh. My blades spilled blood and bowels, and reapers went up in flame and ash. When I was past them, I jumped to my feet and whirled to face the remaining enemies. Sabina was caught in the jaws of an ursid and was thrown against the wall with a thud. Before it could make a killing bite, Marcus shoved one of Sabina’s guns to the temple of the beast and fired until bullets pounded rock. Will split a reaper in two with his blade and spun around. Ava ducked and his blade swept over her head and buried itself into the rib cage of another ursid reaper. Cadan’s sword jammed through the chest of a rearing reaper and as it fell, I hacked its head off.
When the blinding flames and cloud of ash settled, no more ursid reapers remained and we headed for the stairwell. It was quiet except for the echoes of our footsteps. I counted five stories in total as I looked up. Dying fluorescent lights flickered at each level.
Ava stepped ahead of me. “See you at the top.” Her wings sprang free and she shot into the air. Marcus and Sabina followed.
Cadan exchanged looks with Will. “You got her?” he asked.
Will’s gaze narrowed and darkened. “Yeah. I do.”
Cadan’s mouth formed a tight line as he accepted this without another word and followed the others, his wings lifting him with ease. Will wrapped his free arm around my waist and pulled me close to his body. I hugged his body tight in anticipation of liftoff.
“None of that tonight, please?” I begged him.
His green eyes met mine for an instant before he lifted his chin to the dark shaft above us. “None of what?”
I pinched his skin through his shirt with my fingers. “You know what I mean.”
His wings spread wide; feathers brushed my skin and he looked back down at me. There was a whisper of a smile and then he kissed me hard. He pulled away only a few inches and said, “I’ve got you.”
Then we rocketed through the shaft, five stories up. We landed and he set me down delicately. The others had already breached a cavernous room, and the popping sounds of gunfire and the shing of silver ag
ainst silver assaulted my hearing. I caught Xastur making a dash for the exit and I chucked my sword. The angelfire went out as it whipped through the air end over end and pounded into the reaper’s chest. He snapped back and shrieked as the blade buried in the wall, nailing Xastur with it. I stomped toward him with my remaining sword still lit.
“Going somewhere?” I asked him. “You’re developing quite the reputation of loyalty to your buddies—or lack of, more like it.”
Blood oozed down the reaper’s front and squeezed between his teeth before dribbling down his chin. “Get this thing out of my chest,” he sputtered.
“If I free you, then you’re likely to do what you do best—run,” I sneered. “We can’t have that.”
“Ellie!”
I spun at the sound of my name. Cadan jogged to a stop in front of me.
“Sabina,” he said, and I didn’t miss the desolation in his voice.
A shudder of fear went through me. “Watch this worm,” I instructed and left Cadan with the pinned Xastur.
I passed piles of rubble littering the floor of the room as I hurried toward the group of angelic reapers huddled over something rumpled in a heap at their feet. It was Sabina. Her blond hair was tangled and matted with blood as her head lay cradled in Will’s hands. Her clothes were drenched dark and a horrible wound gaped wide open in her chest. On the other side of her lay a large sword painted red. The stench of blood was nauseating and I covered my mouth with my hand. Will looked up at me from the ground and his head shook almost imperceptibly.
I knelt beside her and took her hand. Her skin was cold. Her black eyes were dulled to gray as she watched me, lips trembling, mangled chest rising and falling with struggling breath. “Gabriel,” she murmured.
With my other hand, I smoothed her hair away from her face. “Thank you, Sabina,” I said, emphasizing every word. “You have been an incredible soldier.”