Through the fire, p.27
Through the Fire, page 27
"It worked on the demons!"
"It worked on the demons because it was made from angel feathers!"
"Well, how was I supposed to know?"
"I warned you!"
"You said my name!"
"I said your full name!"
Chris made an explosive sound of derision and sheathed the second knife in favor of one of his regular blades. "I took those from Hell," Arioch growled. "You have no idea how much trouble I'm going to be in."
"Dude, I think we're in enough trouble already!" Chris gestured at the host of angels, whose anger-neutral expressions were fading toward incredulity.
"This is the defense you muster?" Raphael asked Elemiah, clearly amused. "You don't even belong here, Eli, ne—"
"This is precisely where I belong," Elemiah said with such soft conviction that even Raphael faltered. "My duty as a Power is to restrain evil where I find it on the earthly plane, Raphael. You have no business here, but this is exactly where I belong. And the situation is under control. You are most welcome to return to Heaven."
Raphael's lip curled, and Nick became aware that the angel host were shifting, preparing for a fight. His stomach clenched, grendel power equally at the ready, and his hands turned to slow fists. If he acted now, took them by surprise—
"An Exalted is an abomination before the Lord," Raphael all but purred. "You do not contain that, Elemiah. You do not restrain it. You slay it, as if it was a dragon."
"Even dragons are afforded a chance," Elemiah said steadily. "If I require your assistance, Archangel, I assure you that I'll call upon it. In the meantime—"
"In the meantime, nothing," Raphael snarled. "The abomination will die, and die now."
"You know," Nick said under his breath, "maybe I'd be less of an abomination before the Lord if things would stop trying to kill me."
"Kill him," Raphael said flatly.
For an instant Nick hardly understood what the archangel had said. The host did, though: they moved together, so smoothly that their advance felt like a kind of conviction of its own. Arioch and Elemiah both stepped in front of Chris, whose sound of protest almost made Nick laugh. Nobody got in front of Chris. It was his job to get in front of Nick, to be the protector, not the protected. "It's good for you," Nick said in a thin voice. "See what it feels like."
Chris cast him a brief, grim look, but his attention snapped forward again as a sound like rainstorms on tin roofs rumbled through the church, and impossible light erupted through it. The angels—their angels—were winged now, massive, fire-lined feathers on Elemiah and strains of light slicing through Arioch's shirt. A fallen angel shouldn't have wings like that, made of translucence, like the substance had been ripped away and only divinity remained. Those wings looked so much more celestial, so much more etherial, than the grey and gold and fire of Elemiah's.
Raphael's host didn't bother with wings, at first. They just roared forward like wind and snow and ice battering anything in its way, and the first clash of power shattered every window in the church. Angels, it appeared, could bleed, although Nick didn't know where the blood came from, whether it was their angels or the others. Elemiah had a blade now, a sword of fire that looked too big for anything mortal to wield, and it scythed through one of the angel host effortlessly.
Not scythed. That would require a scythe, not a sword. Nick hung up on the thought, trying not to go beyond it. Trying not to see blood as essence, as power that could be drained to strengthen him. The grendel magic burned for that essence, despising the limitations of a frail human body. Even a frail human body that could contain demon power, that could manipulate and employ that power, still had nothing on angelic strength. The strains of Saboac left in him craved that shit, longing for its own lost divinity, and Nick, trying to separate himself from the demon-fueled magic, wondered if the angelic power could shore him up, quench some of the demon essence he'd taken on. The knife made of angel feathers had killed demons, Chris said. Maybe the two conflicting magics would give Nick some space to maneuver in.
He hadn't quite believed Chris. Saboac, within him, had recognized the angels' divinity, but Nick still hadn't quite believed it. He knew that now, as Arioch sliced with one of those intangible wings and somehow scored a palpable hit despite its insubstantiality. He hadn't not believed him, but the wings were…
"Convincing, aren't they," Chris muttered as he retreated to Nick's side. "I didn't really believe it either until I saw the wings. They're gonna get their asses kicked, Nicky. I have a vial of holy water and a knife that angel wings absorb, so I'm about as useful here as a sack of wet shit."
"Delightful image, Chris, thanks, that's what I wanted to die thinking of."
"You're not gonna die."
"Yeah? What am I gonna do, then?"
"You're gonna power up and fight."
"Chris…"
"Nicky, there's like twenty-seven angels in here and most of them want to kill you, so unless you got a better idea, this is it." Chris almost contained a flinch as their angels met with Raphael's host in a clash of metal, and a broken piece of weaponry sailed past the barrier of Elemiah's wings. "This is definitely it."
"I can't." Nick's voice sounded small, even to him, even considering the shouts and unearthly rumble of angels at war. "I can feel it all inside me, Chris. Saboac wants the angel power as much as the demon power. It wants me to go all Sith on them. I can't stay…me. I can't stay good."
"You can." Chris grabbed the back of Nick's head, pulling his forehead against his own. "I gotcha, all right? You do whatever the fuck you have to do, and I'll get you back, okay? S'what I do. S'what I'm here for, arright?"
"Chris, you—you kept Dad off my back, you kept me alive on—" Nick crushed his eyes closed, barely able to choose the words, so many of them rose to be spoken. "On freak hunts, on days when there wasn't any food, on…you made sure I got to college. This isn't the same. You know it's not the same."
"It's exactly the same, okay? It's exactly the same. You get in trouble, I figure out how to fix it. That's how it works. So if you got an idea what to do, Nicky, you gotta go with it, because your guardian angels are getting their fine asses handed to themselves."
Nick, entirely against his own expectations, burst out laughing. "Those are Heaven's asses, huh?"
"They really fucking are." Chris let him go and lifted his chin toward the fight. "Go on. Show 'em what you're made of, bro."
Nick hesitated one more moment. "It's a bad idea."
"I know." Chris's voice gentled. "Now go on."
CHAPTER 19
The worst part, like slipping back into hunting and fighting with Chris when they'd gone after the vamps that killed their dad, the worst part was how easy it was. The grendel power was there, right there, not something he had to reach for, not something he had to try to find in himself. He just had to stop fighting the impulse to use it, and there it was, filling him, making his hands ache as it loosened in him, as it tried to escape. Directing it was hard, Nick didn't know if he could, didn't know if he could tell it the difference between an enemy and an ally and have it care.
The answer, obviously, was to get in front of his allies, so he wouldn't risk them. Couldn't risk them.
There were so many wings, though. Arioch's slices of light, cutting so brilliantly it hurt Nick's eyes as he edged forward; Elemiah's thunderous, fire-edged feathers, overwhelming with the clap and swing of battle. Raphael hadn't yet unfurled his, but the others, the host, they were now airborne and earthbound twists and storms of white wings, and it was so fucking loud. Chris went sideways from where Nick went, not fighting, and some thin nasty thread of betrayal whispered that in the crux of it, Chris didn't have his back after all. The power did, though. All he had to do was use it, and he would be unstoppable. Untouchable. He could take a stand, and the world would crumble around him. All he had to do was let go.
Elemiah's wings burned, where they touched his skin. Not even his skin: Nick wore too many layers for the wings to actually touch him, but the fire bled through canvas and flannel to scorch him anyway. Because he was demon-powered, of course. Because the grendel magic was anathema to angelic power. He would need to destroy Elemiah, too, then. Probably the fallen angel, too, and take their strength as his own. Power curled in his hands, almost physical in form, like whips of magic that he pulled back to release.
But then Chris was there again, in his line of sight. He had a weapon now, a—laughter scraped Nick's throat as he recognized it. An angel's weapon, the pike's head that one of them had lost to Elemiah's sword. He swung, huge upward movement, and an angel's wing split under the blade. Ichor sprayed and the angel screamed. Chris got an awful grin Nick had only seen a few times before, and threw himself into the fight with reckless confidence. Elemiah cried out hoarsely, a warning, but by then Nick was past him, past Arioch, and the immediate enemy—the ones Chris fought—was in front of him.
Nick cast that whip-like feeling of power forward, watching darkness streak from his hands, as if he'd unleashed the demons he'd absorbed. An angel turned, slamming their poleaxe downward, and Nick screamed as the holy blade effortlessly cut apart his attack and pain backwashed into him. The world around him went black, pinpoint fury that focused on the angel that had hurt him. Thunderclap, that's what Chris called it: Nick brought his hands together at speed, seeing nothing but the angel, and then nothing at all as power ripped through him, through the angel, ruptured it into a blaze of light and unearthly essence. He lashed a hand forward, trying to capture that fading glory, but it was gone so fast. He couldn't take it, if he destroyed them from a distance.
Somebody—the angel Elemiah—said his name again, from very far away. Not that far. Couldn't be that far. They were in a small building, so Elemiah couldn't be more than a few feet away, but he sounded a world away, a universe away. Far enough that Nick could ignore him, because what could the angel say that would help, when angels were the enemy here.
They weren't angry, the angels. Not most of them. The ones he fought now, the ones that were easy to destroy, they met the fight with implacable conviction. They were so singularly focused on their duty and the righteousness of that duty that there was nothing to gain hold of, nothing to manipulate or shift or change. Nick spat like he was hacking away the uselessness of the skill he'd learned from the female bounty they'd picked up. Rejecting it, if it couldn't do him any good on the battlefield.
Although Raphael. Raphael, who stood apart from the fight, sneering, smug, seething with hatred. Raphael had something that skill could hook into, something that could drive the archangel mad, if Nick got deep enough inside his head. A white-winged angel threw itself at him and he caught it by the throat, the motion familiar, although it took a moment to remember he'd grabbed Saboac that way in their first encounter.
Saboac had put its hand on Nick's forehead, then. Woken his grendel power, or maybe poured some of its own essence into Nick, into the human vessel that could contain and survive and use inhuman magic. This angel beat at him with its wings, tried to stab him, and died, if that's what angels did, when Nick dragged its ethereal substance from it the way he'd done with the demons that swarmed him. Its light went out, sank into him, and flared through channels of understanding of how to use that power. He flexed his shoulders, sharply disappointed to find wings didn't spring forth, and discarded the angel's body in search of more prey.
There was Chris again, bloody now, that demented grin still in place. He had a different poleaxe, an unbroken one, and used it with a violent skill that suggested years of practice. Nick didn't think his brother had ever picked up a poleaxe before. There were angels around him, dead or dying, and Nick—pounced, he thought he pounced, cleared more air than he should be able to—to get his hands on one of the dying ones, ripping its essence from him. Saboac's wisdom howled within him, gleeful with the influx of power, and then there was Arioch, brilliant and beautiful and bloody, grinning down at Nick with an awfulness that not even Chris's bared teeth could match.
"Exciting," the fallen angel said. "Very exciting. Can't wait to see what happens next." He spun away in a blur of slicing wing, leaving Nick to heave a breath and try, for one desperate scrambling moment, to remember who he was, what he wanted. The rest of the church came into focus then, just briefly, and Nick recoiled, falling onto his butt as he began to see what he—what they—had wrought.
The dead lay everywhere, in drifts of feathers that had little to do with power, anymore. There were still several on their feet, some surrounding Elemiah, who fought with blade and wing but not the pillar of fire that Chris said he could, and a few trying, but losing badly, to Arioch, whose ruthless brutality seemed like it might have been enough to win the day all on its own. Chris, in the moment, stood alone, beaten but nowhere near broken. On the surface, at a glance, it looked like the power now bleeding from Nick's hands hadn't even been necessary.
Except beneath it all lay gory lines, dark streaks where Nick had scraped away the angels' strength, gathered it into himself, weakened them enough to turn the tide their way, and it still called to him, begging, demanding, that he take what was left, and more. His hands glowed, black light that wobbled in his vision, blurring his very bones as it crawled through his body. His eyes were hot, dark fire dripping from them, flickering through them, like if he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror he would see a blazing monster, its eyes alight with death. Even his throat tasted like fire as he tried to cough a denial, tried to voice a refusal, tried to say this wasn't him.
The word burned to death on his tongue as Raphael, a slow, poisonous smile baring his teeth, stepped into the fray with unfurled emerald wings. Literally emerald, Nick thought: certainly that color, but not soft like feathered wings, and with a translucent depth that looked like light through stone, or stone through water. There were flaws in those wings, cracks of lighter and darker shades that made up the lines of where pinions might be, and running along the heavy bones, giving the impression of innumerable battles fought and uncountable scars survived. The archangel clapped those wings and a sound like avalanches shattered through the church.
Nick heard Chris mumble, "Oh, fuck," and had just enough humanity left in him to agree before all hell broke loose.
The angels Chris had been fighting died too easily.
That wasn't right. It couldn't be right. There was no way battling an actual angelic host could be too easy, even if he'd picked up one of their own weapons to use against them. The broken pike had been good, but the poleaxe he took off one of the feathery bastards he killed with the pike was much better, like, why did this weapon ever go out of fashion levels of better.
The answer, obviously, was range weapons and guns, but that took away from the satisfaction of slashing and stabbing through a blood tide of anger that Chris didn't even think was about the fight at hand, or the enemy they faced. It had to do with keeping Nick safe, with blind fury at anything that threatened his little brother. Demons, angels, schoolyard bullies, their dad, it didn't really matter. He'd been fighting for Nick his whole life and he wasn't gonna stop now. Simple as that.
The poleaxe seemed to help focus the anger, though. It fit well in his hands, didn't weigh too much, could be used defensively, and killed the bad guys at a comfortable distance, or not, as he preferred. But they died too easily, and he didn't really understand why. It wasn't him. It wasn't even Nicky, although the glimpses he caught of his brother were terrifying, like his humanity was slipping. Like it had slipped, and everything left was a battleground between good and bad.
Then the archangel spread his wings, and Chris understood why it had been so easy. Whatever he'd been fighting, they were the little guys. The foot soldiers. More than human, sure, with their wings and their holy weapons, but maybe not much more than vampires, except on the other side of the equation. A little too fast, maybe. A little stronger than you'd expect. But not a power, not the way the archangel was.
That power flexed with the archangel's wings, the landslide-like sound only the smallest expression of his strength. Even so, you couldn't hear that sound and imagine anything human could stand up to it. The noise itself was crushing, never mind the battering sweep of dark green that cleared most of the floor of the fallen.
Hah! The sound barked in Chris's mind, although he didn't think it was audible. Cleared the floor of the dead, maybe. The Fallen leaped that wing sweep effortlessly, his own insubstantial wings flared in brilliant, if ineffective, glory. Only a few steps away, Elemiah leapt upward as well, but unlike Arioch, he didn't come back down again. His wings swept open too, but not just the broad two-wing spread of before. Six wings, like Saboac, except the resemblance ended there. Saboac's wings had been so closely entwined seeing that there were three to a side had been hard. Each set of Eli's was as massive as the first, and their beating against the air, against the church walls, against the threatening thunder of Raphael's wings, could bring down mountain ranges.
Chris had figured Eli could fly, on some level. He had to be able to, because he'd leaped over Chris's head while carrying Nick, earlier. That leap had more in common with flight than jumping, but it wasn't the same, it wasn't half the same as watching Elemiah take flight, watching him hang there in the air, and slam a pillar of fire toward the earth and sky.
Raphael shrieked, more fury than pain, and leaped skyward too. Another avalanche scrape rattled the church as another two sets of emerald wings burst forth, carrying through the fire without issue, although it ran gold over the green of his wings. The clash of weaponry, Raphael's halberd and Elemiah's sword, screamed through the church like it would take the walls down. The archangel's wings did batter the ceiling, powerful emerald bones cracking rafters and sending a rain of drywall and paint down to incinerate in Eli's flames. Eli's wingtips bent, though, his wingspan too broad to fit across the church, or even down it as they spun through aerial combat, but he stayed in the air, with fire roaring over everything it touched.
