“But how are they going to help us find Stevie?” Gabriel asked, and Aaron felt the world give way beneath him. He hadn’t even thought of his brother during the fury of battle.
“What have I done?” he whispered, refusing to look at the accusatory gazes of his friends. Aaron focused his stare on the smoldering bodies of those he had vanquished, the horror of what he had done in the throes of battle, and what he had carelessly forgotten just then beginning to sink in.
And the power inside him rested, satisfied.
Sated for now.
The hot orange flames burned higher and fiercer as they fed upon the corpses of the Powers’ soldiers. Aaron could not pull his gaze from the sight as the unnatural fire consumed them, any chance of them sharing information about Stevie’s fate silenced in a moment of gratuitous violence.
“What’s wrong with me, Camael?” he asked as he watched the bones of angels burn to powder. “I didn’t even think of Stevie,” he said sadly. “It was like he didn’t even matter.”
“The power that is inside you can be a selfish thing,” the angel said coldly. “It cares only to satisfy its needs. It is a wild thing and must be tamed. There must be unity between the human and angelic, or there can be only chaos.”
A skull popped like a gunshot as it collapsed in upon itself in an explosion of fiery embers.
“I thought that when the power awakened in me … and when I talked to it that…”
“That was only the beginning of a much longer and difficult process,” Camael said as he brushed the flying ash of his brethren from the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Unification must occur or…”
The angel trailed off, and Aaron finally looked away from the burning remains of the creatures he had killed. “Or what?” he asked, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.
Camael met his gaze with eyes as cold as an arctic breeze, and Aaron felt the hair at the nape of his neck stand on end. “Or it will make you insane, and I will be forced to destroy you.”
Aaron found he couldn’t breathe. As if he didn’t have enough to concern him; now he had to worry about losing his mind and being killed by someone he’d grown to trust. The angelic nature inside him was awake again and it cared very little for Camael’s words. It wanted to be free, to confront Camael’s threat, but Aaron struggled to keep it in check, defying its need for violence.
“Do you think I’m going insane?” he asked the angel.
Camael said nothing, averting his gaze to the stars. Aaron was about to press the question when Gabriel began to bark.
“What is it?” He looked down at his dog, whose hackles had risen ominously upon his neck.
“I think we’ve got more trouble,” the dog growled menacingly, padding past them in a crouch.
Aaron and Camael turned to see two figures standing before the tree where the Powers’ original prey had been pinned by an arrow of fire. In the mayhem of battle, they had forgotten about the fallen angel, and now it appeared as though he had some friends after all. There was a man, dressed as though he had just walked off the set of a spaghetti western: cowboy boots and hat, black denim and a long brown duster that flowed around him in a nonexistent breeze. The woman, in denim as well, but wearing a more contemporary style of dress, stood out in darkness, for her long, flowing hair was the color of freshly fallen snow.
“Who are …?” Aaron began as the cowboy reached out and began to pull the arrow from the fallen angel’s shoulder.
“Fallen,” Camael announced, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air. “And the girl is Nephilim.”
The angel cried out in pain as he was released, falling to his knees at the edge of the clearing.
“Looks as though they’ve come to rescue their friend,” Aaron said, and then stopped.
The fallen angel that had removed the burning arrow from the Powers’ victim had flipped back his coat, and from somewhere on his person had produced a pistol that would have been right at home in the old West, but this one seemed to be made of gold. He stepped back, aimed at the kneeling angel, and unmercifully shot him once in the forehead.
“Oh, shit,” Aaron whispered, watching as the angel slumped to the ground, dead.
“I don’t think they are his friends,” Camael voiced, the echo of the single gunshot gradually fading.
Gabriel immediately began to bark, and the two newcomers spun to face them.
“I’d quiet that animal,” said the cowboy as he turned his aim toward them. He was tall, his weathered features lined with age, long gray hair streaming out from beneath his Stetson. “Wouldn’t want to make me nervous and have my gun go off accidentally,” he said with a snarl.
“Who’s he calling an animal?” Gabriel asked, barking and lunging forward threateningly.
“Quiet, Gabriel,” Aaron said, placing the tips of his fingers reassuringly on the dog’s rump.
A sword of fire ignited beside him, and he glanced over to see that Camael was preparing himself, just in case. He felt his own inner essence exert itself, and the strange markings again seared the surface of his flesh. Reluctantly he let the power come.
“We want no trouble,” Camael’s voice boomed. He held his sword at the ready. “Allow us to go our way, and this will be the end of it.”
The two were silent. The woman casually combed the fingers of one hand through her long white hair, and Aaron realized that she probably wasn’t much older than himself.
“Were they Verchiel’s?” she asked, pointing to the still-smoldering remains behind them.
“Yes,” Aaron answered. His wings had emerged and he slowly unfurled them, giving the potential attackers a glimpse of what would be in store for them if they started any trouble.
“Imagine that.” The angel with the pistol squinted at them. “The likes of you taking down two of Verchiel’s soldiers.”
“I think we should bring them in,” said the woman coldly.
She was a Nephilim, and Aaron felt a certain kinship with her, but he didn’t care for what he was hearing. Bring us in? Like we’re criminals, or specimens, or something.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Camael warned. “This can end in one of two ways—and one is not at all in your favor.”
The angel with the pistol chuckled. “Not in our favor,” he said. “I like that.” And then he looked to the woman. “Lorelei, take ‘em down.”
“Right you are, Lehash,” she said, and spread her arms, a strange guttural language spilling from her mouth.
Aaron heard the words and immediately knew that things were about to turn ugly. She was casting some kind of spell, calling upon the elements. He tensed, a sword suddenly in his hand.
“Camael, we have to—”
The air roared, like the largest of jungle cats, and jagged claws of lightning dropped down from the sky upon them. There was a brilliant flash, and then everything was black.
Aaron didn’t even have a chance to finish his sentence.
CHAPTER THREE
Malak’s arrival was heralded by a tremble of the very air. It shook years of accumulated dust and dirt from the heating pipes and ducts spreading across the ceiling of the dormant boiler room in the sub-basement of the Saint Athanasius Orphanage. And then there came a tearing sound as a rip in the fabric of space appeared in the room and grew steadily larger to allow the servant of the Powers access to his place of solitude.
The fearsome figure, clad in ornate armor the color of drying blood and carrying a dripping sack, forced his body through the laceration in the flesh of reality. The armor, forged in the fires of Heaven and bestowed upon him by the chieftain of the Powers host, allowed him this fantastic mode of transportation. In an instant he could follow a scent wherever it might take him. As his feet hit the concrete floor of his dwelling, the hovering wound behind him revealed a place of frigid, howling winds, covered with ice and snow. Gradually it healed and soon, was no more.