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I bit down on my tongue. At least I knew Beatrice’s enchantment was working. I didn’t need to give away much more than that.
“No,” Raguel continued. “We’re here because we sensed the call of the sacred and most holy relic you’re clutching in your corrupted fingers.” He raised his rig
ht hand, gesturing at mine. “The sword. Hand it over.”
Almost on instinct, my fingers clenched even tighter, as if the sword would slip from my hand, like squeezing down on its hilt would ensure that no one could wrench it away from me.
I could almost taste the words forming at the tip of my tongue. “Over my dead body,” I almost said. The sword was egging me on somehow, like it had a mind of its own, beyond simply being smart enough to disguise itself.
“You’re not getting this thing from me,” I said instead, brandishing the sword. “It doesn’t even belong to you. Why do you want it?”
Raguel stiffened, sniffing as he raised his nose at me. “Because archangel or not, that blade remains property of the armories of heaven. It is the way of things. What you have in your hands is a holy weapon belonging to one among the most powerful of my brethren. And you, dear sweet, tainted son of the fallen, are undeserving to wield it. A nephilim, especially one who consorts with demon princes, isn’t fit to even touch that blade.” His lips drew back into a sneer. “You’re literally getting it dirty with the filth of your sinner’s spirit.”
The heat in my chest flared even harder, hotter, and I could see the golden glow of my skin’s sigils against the faces of Raguel’s four grunts. The light of my body reflected in their eyes, the same eyes that watched me with deadpan lifelessness, yet exuded this bizarre, subtle mix of emotions all the same. All four of them held something like pity in their gazes. Pity, condescension, and there, right under the surface – revulsion. To the people upstairs, that’s all I was, after all. An abomination.
I wrapped both my hands around the sword’s hilt this time, lifting it by my shoulders, preparing to strike. “You can take the sword from my cold, dead hands.”
Raguel bristled, the corner of one eye twitching. “So be it.” He lifted a finger, pointing directly at me. “Seize the sword. Hurt him if you must. Break his bones. But leave him alive. Heaven must see justice meted.”
As one unit, the four brutish angels grinned madly, then cracked their knuckles. One of their number kept cracking, though, his bones making far too much of a racket, until I realize that the sound was coming from his spine. The angel’s head twisted on his neck, bending in entirely the wrong direction. His final breath left him in a peaceful sigh. Then he came crashing to the ground, like a tree felled in a forest.
The angel’s death revealed his killer standing behind him, a shorter, certainly skinnier, but arguably stronger adversary for the angels.
“One down, four to go,” Sterling said, his words faintly muffled by the cigarette dangling from his lips.
Raguel sprang away from Sterling, which still left him sandwiched between nephilim and vampire. He glanced between us, eyes filled with fury, but I could sense the fear in the lines of his face. “Two abominations to cleanse tonight, then. Again, so be it.”
The three bodyguard angels turned on Sterling, raising huge, meaty fists as they descended on him. Sterling bobbed and weaved, slipping among their huge bulks as easily as a darting viper. A flash of lightning tore through the night, not with the roar of thunder, but only with a subtle crackle of electricity, like what you’d hear from a live wire.
Another angel slumped to the ground, joining his severed arm that had crashed onto the asphalt, bleeding out of the stump that Sterling’s katana had made of his shoulder. The blade was a gift from Susanoo, the Japanese god of storm and sea. Sterling flicked his sword against the ground, specks of dark blood spattering the cement as he gestured at the two remaining grunts, taunting.
“Come at me.”
I turned my attention to Raguel – rather, I had to, out of necessity, as he brought his own sword crashing down against me, striking with both arms. I lifted my sword to meet it, the clash and scrape of divine steel sounding almost sweet, musical, distinguishing the heaven-forged metal from the mundane. Raguel roared as he struck again and again, and I brought my sword up to meet each of his blows in time, something that only drove him madder with anger.
Part of my brain was telling me that summoning a shield from the Vestments was the prudent thing to do. Instinctively I knew I couldn’t conjure a full suit of armor, anyway – Raziel did say that I’d scrambled that particular channel in the fight with Skirnir. But any extra protection would have been helpful against Raguel, who was clearly well versed in close combat and had a zealous ferocity to back up his muscle. I’d spent enough time parrying that I knew he was going to get a lucky hit in at some point. Angels could reconstitute themselves when their essences left their husks and returned upstairs.
As for nephilim – well, I wasn’t planning to find out.
So I took my shot, bringing my sword around in a sideward slice directed at his throat. The point was to put him on the defensive, to buy myself time so Sterling and I could gang up on him. As I predicted, Raguel brought his sword up to defend himself, meaning to deflect my strike with his blade.
I did not, however, expect the archangel’s sword to sing through the air, burst into flames, then slice cleanly through Raguel’s sword like it was a stick of elegantly sculpted butter.
The look of surprise in Raguel’s eyes shortly before I lopped his head off must have matched the shock in mine. His head went sailing from his shoulders, tumbling in midair and landing with a wet, crunchy thud on the asphalt. Dirt and gravel stained the perfection of his face. I yelped in horror as his headless body thudded to the ground. It felt as if I’d just desecrated something holy, killed something beautiful, bringing the full violence of an angel’s weapon against one of their own.
What truly took me by surprise was how quickly the wave of shock passed, how my blood began to course with jolts of excitement, with the thrill of the kill.
Yet that too quickly passed as the last of the bodyguard angels turned towards his fallen master, bellowing his name into the dark. Sterling took his chance, driving his katana through the angel’s neck in a single, clean blow, decapitating him with ease. Another head thudded to the ground. Sterling’s katana sizzled and arced with electricity, angel blood dripping from its edge and onto the pavement.
“Dude,” I sputtered out, finally regaining my breath and my ability to think straight. “That was overkill.”
Sterling threw his hands up and snarled. “Are you kidding me? I handled the thugs the way minions are supposed to be handled.” He kicked at one of the corpses. “These are expendable.” He thrust his sword towards Raguel’s lifeless head. “And that? That was a precious resource you and I could have tied to a coconut tree and beaten some answers out of. I bet Florian would have enjoyed that. Wait. Where the hell is flower boy, anyway?”
I scratched my forearm, staring at the still-flaming sword in my clutches. “Yeah, about that. We’ve got a problem.”
22
“You should have led with that,” Sterling growled through bared fangs. “Flower boy is in trouble and we wasted our time waving our dicks around with those featherheads.”
