The white fire that represented Gabriel’s nephilim magic had barely harmed this one, but Gabriel was already ducking underneath its elbows to go after the second creature.
Jude leapt into the fray again, latching onto the nephilim’s arm and clamping it between his jaws. The nephilim smashed him repeatedly against the wall to try to dislodge him, but the wolf held on.
Wade sprung into the air, slashing the monster across the face with his claws. It felt like it was intruding on the functioning of a well-oiled machine, but I figured the sooner the nephilim were brought down, the better.
“Wade!” I shouted.
The alpha seemed to understand immediately. He squeezed between the nephilim’s leg and the wall and moved on to help Gabriel. Jude released the creature’s arm as I raised the sword high and plunged it into the nephilim’s chest.
The monster screamed. Then, rather horribly, he just kind of…disintegrated. Blood and bone and muscle seemed to melt into long sticky strands that flowed over the steps and made my boots hard to lift. Jude whined and slipped around the mess to help Wade and Gabriel.
Beezle landed on my shoulder. “That is disgusting. That’s even grosser than the spider goop.”
“Like I needed you to rank the quality of monster fluid,” I said. I lifted my boots out of the muck and ran up the stairs as fast as I could, which was not very fast. The nephilim’s remains were hardening quickly and it was even more difficult to get through them as they changed consistency.
“J.B. and Samiel aren’t getting a break back there,” Beezle said. “For every soldier they kill, Azazel sends three more.”
I didn’t have to look to know that. I could tell by the unrelenting pitch of battle that things hadn’t eased up. “We’ve got to get rid of the other nephilim. Then we can help them.”
I reached the top of the stairs. Gabriel, Jude and Wade had managed to back the second nephilim into the hallway. This one wielded some kind of magic that looked like purple paintballs, but wherever it splattered, the walls were cut through as if by lasers.
“If that stuff touches any of them, it will take off their limbs,” I said to Beezle.
Worse, the nephilim seemed entirely unfazed by either the attacks of the wolves or Gabriel’s spells. Gabriel’s shoulders were set in grim determination, and both the wolves panted from the effort, but they were getting nowhere.
“I’ve got a plan,” Beezle said.
“Really,” I said, looking for an opening.
“Really,” Beezle insisted. He quickly outlined it to me.
“If this works, you get all the doughnuts you want for the next month, no questions asked,” I said with a lightness I did not feel. Beezle was an old gargoyle, and the place I usually liked him to be was somewhere safe, away from battle.
He flew toward the nephilim, but close to the ceiling so as to avoid detection. Beezle is so small that the monster could hardly have perceived him as a threat, even when he landed on the nephilim’s head. He clung to the back of the monster’s skull with his legs like a tiny demented monkey.
Then he jammed his claws into the nephilim’s eyes. The nephilim screamed and reached to grab Beezle, but my clever gargoyle had already let go and flown up to the ceiling with the monster’s eyeballs sticking off the ends of his claws like some grisly cocktail snack.
I ran into the fray and tackled the nephilim to the ground. It still screamed and thrashed. I gagged from the smell of sulfur coming off its body, then pushed away to my feet and beheaded the thing.
It stopped screaming immediately.
Beezle flicked the eyeballs off his claws and then flew down to Gabriel’s shoulder. He’s learned to tolerate Gabriel, but my husband is still not his favorite person, so I was surprised. At least, I was surprised until Beezle used Gabriel’s coat as a napkin to clean the gore off his fingernails.
Gabriel shook his head in resignation.
“Let’s help the other two,” I said, and we backtracked down the passage to the stairs.
J.B. and Samiel were holding on, but barely. They had been pushed up the stairwell by the steadily increasing throng.
“Where the hell does Azazel keep all these soldiers?” I asked incredulously.
“Have you seen how big this house is?” Beezle said. “He could store them in the basement and never even know they were there.”
We grimly reentered the battle, but it was quickly apparent that all we were doing was tiring ourselves out.
“We need to distract them and make a break for it,” I told Gabriel.
“I have something appropriate,” he said.
He threw another blast of what looked like nightfire, but actually was a gigantic cloud of sulfurous smoke. The passage quickly filled up and everyone was coughing and groping.
Gabriel grabbed my hand and pushed at Samiel, and we all ran up the stairs. A couple of soldiers followed us but J.B. leveled them before they had the chance to get too far.
Gabriel was the only one who knew where Azazel’s quarters were, and he led us unerringly down the hall to the room at the very end.
The door was unlocked, and we poured in, slamming the door shut behind us.
I half expected Azazel to be waiting there, but there was no one.
The portal spun in the corner. It was inside a glass case to protect the room from the constant force of suction that was generated.
Bodies crashed into the door outside.
“No time to celebrate,” I said to the others. “Let’s go.”
I strode to the portal, pulling open the glass case. Lucifer’s tattoo wriggled in warning.
“Yes, I know we’re in danger,” I said to my hand. “Thanks for the update.”
Gabriel nudged me aside. “I will go first.”
“We’re going home,” I said. “What difference can it possibly make?”
“I will not take chances with your safety,” Gabriel said.
“Will the two of you just hold hands and jump together so that we can get out of here already?” Beezle said. He’d switched to Samiel again.
I took Gabriel’s hand firmly, thought of my backyard covered in snow, and we went through. I hoped the others would follow quickly.
Gabriel squeezed my hand tight as we emerged into the early-winter night.
I turned my head to smile up at him, and that was when I saw the sword protruding from his chest, and Azazel standing behind Gabriel with a look of malicious glee on his face.
Gabriel released my hand and fell forward into the snow.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed, and I turned on my father with a fury I had never felt before.
I slashed at him with Lucifer’s sword, and a long cut formed across his chest. He narrowed his eyes and swiped back at me, the longer reach of his sword slicing into my arm. Blood flowed down the sleeve of my shirt—my jacket was long gone, caught on fire and discarded in the throne room.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except killing this monster called my father. My magic still lay quiet inside me, and I knew it would not wake. I had depleted myself too thoroughly at Azazel’s.
I swiped at his face with the sword and gave him a cut to match the one on his other cheek. I felt numb inside, a machine with no purpose except to destroy this man. He seemed to realize this, and in any event he’d gotten what he came for—Gabriel.
Azazel swung with his fist and punched me in the face. I saw stars and blackness spinning before me. I tried to hold myself up, tried to keep fighting. But my body was half-mortal, and it betrayed me.