“I did best you in combat, Verchiel,” Aaron angrily retorted. “Did my father as well?”
The angel recoiled as if slapped, and then a cruel smile, oozing with malice, crept across his face. “You don’t know, do you. You are ignorant to the identity of the one who sired you.” And then he began to laugh.
Aaron reacted instinctively, a weapon unlike any he had conjured before taking shape in his hand. It was a baseball bat—a Louisville Slugger formed of heavenly fire. If things hadn’t been so dire at the moment, he would have been amused.
The adversaries swept toward each other. Mere inches apart, Aaron swung his flaming club and swatted aside Verchiel’s blazing weapon. He followed with a blow at the angel’s face, the club connecting with his chin. Knocked off balance, the Powers’ leader fought to stay afloat, his wings wildly flapping. Aaron didn’t give him the chance. He brought the club down upon Verchiel’s head and watched as the angel fell to the street, wings barely softening his fall.
Aaron was beyond anger now; the idea that Verchiel might know the identity of his father spurred him on. He would have this knowledge—this missing piece of the puzzle—even if he had to beat the angel within an inch of his life to get it. He landed in a crouch before Verchiel, who was just climbing to his feet, the so-called Bringer of Sorrow still clutched in his hand. Aaron did not hesitate, swinging the bat of fire savagely down upon the angel’s wrist, forcing him to drop his weapon. The sword fell, evaporating in an implosion of fire, wisps of smoke the only evidence it had ever existed.
“You’ve taken so much from me,” Aaron spat, looming before the angel, weapon at the ready. “It’s time you gave me something in return.”
Verchiel bristled like a cornered animal. “I’ll give you nothing,” he growled, his perfect teeth stained black from his wounded mouth.
Aaron brought the bat of fire down again, driving the Powers’ commander to the street. He wanted to deliver the fatal blow, but restrained himself, keeping at bay the killer’s instinct yowling for vengeance inside him. It wasn’t easy. Here was the monster responsible for the death of his parents, of his little brother, of Zeke and Camael, broken and driven to his knees, and he longed to show the angel the same amount of mercy that had been afforded his loved ones. But not until he received the answer to the question that haunted him.
“It’s over, Verchiel,” he said, a tremble of suppressed rage in his voice. “All the misery and death you’ve been responsible for—it’s come back to bite you on the ass.”
Verchiel glared at the burning club against his armored chest, keeping him pinned to the ground. “The Creator will—”
“The Creator will what?” Aaron screamed. “What will it take for you to realize that you’re on your own?” he asked the Powers’ commander. “God isn’t protecting you!”
An expression of horror gradually crossed Verchiel’s face. And then the angel began to laugh, a high-pitched sound tainted with a hint of insanity. “Very good, Nephilim.” Verchiel giggled, looking up into Aaron’s eyes. “You almost had me. It appears that you have your father’s gift for twisting the truth.”
Aaron couldn’t stand it anymore, his fury overflowing as he lifted the bat and prepared to deliver another blow. “Who is my father!” he demanded.
But the Powers’ commander proved himself more wily than Aaron anticipated, re-igniting his sword of sorrow and abruptly stopping Aaron’s weapon. “You’ll die with the knowledge filling your ears,” Verchiel hissed as he sprang to his feet, a dagger of orange flame in his injured hand. The knife cut a course through the air on its way to the tender flesh of Aaron’s throat. “He is the one who started it all. Without his selfish act none of us would have fallen.”
The knife was coming for him, but Aaron was frozen in place by anticipation.
“Your father is …,” the angel began, but never got the chance to finish.
Tremendous bolts of lightning rained down from a roiling sky, a deluge of destructive force, incinerating everything they touched.
In the midst of combat with a Powers’ soldier, Lehash was thrown backward as a jagged strike of icy blue turned his opponent to a screaming cinder, melting the street with the heat of its touch.
It was like nothing he had ever experienced. Bolts of electrical force snapping down from the sky, striking at anything that moved. No, he corrected himself as he climbed to his feet and picked up his hat. Not anything. The Powers … the lightning was singling out the Powers host. For a brief moment he entertained the concept of divine intervention, that this was the Creator’s way of telling them that they were forgiven, but then in flash of searing white he saw her silhouette atop the rubble that had been the church.
“Lorelei,” Lehash said aloud. He watched her wield the spell of the elements, her head tossed back, arms reaching up to the sky. Tendrils of magickal power leaked from the tips of her fingers, trailing up into the heavens, into the bodies of the low hanging clouds. He had seen her weave the spell of angelic magick before, but never like this.
The lightning continued to fall, lashing out at those who attempted to escape, their ashes scattering on the blowing winds. The surviving citizens ran for cover against the electrical onslaught, but Lehash turned in the direction of his daughter. He summoned a pistol of golden fire and discharged a shot into the air, hoping to capture Lorelei’s attention. The Nephilim sorceress didn’t even flinch, continuing to stare up into the heavens, arms outstretched as she drew down the fury of the elements.
As a new succession of lightning bolts rained down from above, Lehash felt a tremor beneath his boots. The intensity of the power his daughter was unleashing, it permeated the very earth. And he remembered the tons of toxic waste buried beneath the Ravenschild Estates. He sprinted toward his daughter as he felt another vibration. He had to get her attention; he had to get her to stop before—
The air was filled with the sounds of explosions and the ground trembled beneath Gabriel’s paws. Plumes of flame, the color of tarnished sunset rose up into the sky in the distance, as if attempting to rival the perilous fury of the lightning bolts that continued to emanate from the pregnant clouds in the distance.
He had feared something like this; it was why he hadn’t wanted to leave Aaron’s side, but he couldn’t have denied his master’s wishes. Aaron had said he should protect Vilma and that was what he was going to do. The three Powers’ soldiers that had been advancing on the house stopped their progress and anxiously gazed off in the direction of the sounds of destruction, Gabriel and the girl inside temporarily forgotten.
Above the rumble of thunder, Gabriel heard Vilma’s pitiful cries from inside the house behind him. When he had reached the home earlier, he’d found the girl in the grip of what he thought to be a nightmare. But as he listened to the words she spoke, the dog came to realize that even in the midst of sleep, the girl was seeing the war being waged between the Powers and the citizens. It was her plaintive murmurings of what was happening to his friends that drove the dog from the house, and it was a good thing, too, for he would never have known they were about to be attacked.
The angels looked back to him, weapons of fire held in their hands. They must have been drawn to Vilma’s scent, he thought, to the scent of her newly awakening abilities. Gabriel crouched low and emitted a fearsome growl. Hackles rose around his neck and tail, and the power that had been inside since Aaron brought him back from the brink of death let its presence be known. Gabriel knew that he was different now, and accepted it. As Aaron had a special purpose upon the world, the dog decided that he did as well. It was his job to protect his master and to do his bidding. Vilma would be protected, or he would die trying.