18. Colt

Colt's demonic power surges as the wards fall and he steps forward. Beyond is Mercy Academy, his home, and the Grigori have once again tried to strip him of the most important things in his life.

He realizes there will be no negotiations. No attempts to lure the Grigori out.

Now is the time for battle.

He turns, looking back at Gabby as she helps Lydia to her feet. His stomach drops, looking at the witch. The price of what she's done might be greater than she ever could have imagined, and Colt worries about what implications that might bring.

"It's time to fight!" Gabby shouts, still supporting Lydia. "Let's take back the academy!"

Everyone rushes forward, angels and witches, humans and otherworldly creatures. Colt watches them surge toward him. His blood pumps, adrenaline injecting through his veins. It's time to fight, for real, at last. And he's more ready than he's ever been.

He turns as his friends and allies pass him, letting his wings unfurl slowly until they're stretched as far as they can go. In each hand, hellfire swords appear, sizzling and crackling in the night air. The hellfire seems just as eager to destroy as Colt is.

"Are you ready?" Gabby asks beside him. Someone else has taken Lydia, and Gabby is his mirror opposite. Her white wings brush his black ones, an unconscious display of affection as the Spear appears in her hand and glints.

"I've never been more ready in my life, my heart," Cole says with a smile.

The blush that crawls up Gabby's cheeks is so unlike a warrior facing battle, and Colt wishes he could take a picture of her at this moment and always remember his avenging angel blushing on the precipice of war.

"Fiancé," Gabby whispers, but she stands on her tip-toes and kisses Colt gently on the lips.

"Wife." Colt grins wildly.

A scream peals through their sweet moment and Gabby and Colt turn to face the academy. In front of them, a group of cultists face their own forces. The lead cultist's sword is sticking out of the back of the woman who screamed. As her body shudders and goes still, he rips the sword free, spraying blood all over the grass.

"Go," Colt snarls, looking with relish from the blood splattered to the man. "Find the secret entrance. I'll finish these vermin and meet up with you inside."

Gabby hesitates, worry creasing her features, but nods. She tucks her wings close to her back and with a small leap, propels herself into the air and over the chaos.

Colt mutters a spell, cloaking her from all eyes above and below, and then turns back towards the enemy. He spins his hellfire swords in his hands with a flourish and crosses them before him. His lips spread into a dark grin.

"Kill them!" he roars to his companions, and the fight begins with a clang of metal.

Colt leaps towards the leader of the group, but he's ready. The man's face contorts in some sick kind of glee as their swords cross and sparks fly between them. "Was she important to you, demon?" he hisses.

"They're all important to me, you bastard." Colt pushes forward with all his might, his wings boosting the motion. Man and demon fly across the open yard of the academy and bash into a brick wall behind them. Dust flies, broken bits of brick exploding into the air at impact.

"Too bad," the man coughs. "They're all going to die today!"

Colt grinds his teeth and pulls his right hand back, his infernal sword shortening to a dagger. "The only ones dying today are your forces!"

The man cackles with demented laughter, but the sound is choked off as Colt's dagger pushes through the gap between ribs and plunges into his heart. The laughter becomes a gurgle, and the enemy's eyes bulge.

"This can't be… The Grigori promised immortality!" he says, spitting blood.

"The Grigori lied, you fool," Colt growls, yanking the dagger out of his chest and watching the man's body fall to the ground, dead.

Colt turns to face his forces just in time to see Gabriel's angels flying in from above. For a moment, Gabriel and Colt's eyes meet and there's a grim understanding between them. They will never get along, but for today, angels and demons fight on the same side.

"Lydia? Lydia!"

Colt's attention is jerked back toward the fight as Kenna's voice splits the air. The ground is littered with bodies, mostly cultists, but a few of their own. Colt's eyes scan the battlefield, looking for Kenna, and see her running forward with another small contingent of Order members. She falls to her knees in the blood-soaked mud and pulls Lydia from the arms of a woman Colt hadn't realized had joined the fight.

"What have you done?" Kenna whispers as Colt walks up to them. She wipes Lydia's hair from her blood-stained face as tears drip from Lydia's eyes.

"There was only one choice to be made," Lydia whispers, her pale hand shaking as it covers Kenna's.

"But the cost?" Kenna whimpers.

"Worth it," Lydia gasps and her vibrant eyes slowly go dull.

"No, no! Lydia!" Kenna gasps.

Colt sinks to a knee next to Kenna and lowers his wings around both women. "She knew the cost, her sacrifice is one of great honor."

"We could have found another way…" Kenna grinds out, her body vibrating with fury. "There would have been another way!"

"Lydia is a hero, Kenna. Without her, we'd never?—"

"I know!" Kenna snaps, but as she turns to look Colt in the eyes there's no hatred in her own. "I know…"

A horn sounds somewhere deep in the academy grounds and Colt and Kenna look towards the sound.

"The second wave is coming!" someone cries.

Colt rises to his feet as people come to claim Lydia's body. He helps Kenna to her feet and puts a supportive arm over her shoulder. "Let"s give them Hell!" Colt snarls.

"For Lydia, for all innocents that have fallen and will fall if the Grigori succeed," Kenna agrees.

"Let"s go save the world," Colt whispers, and lunges back into battle as wave after wave of armed men run out of every door and window in the academy like an oozing miasma of death.

The battlefield grows with dead and dying as spells and hellfire are cast over the earth. From above, the angels strike with heavenly swords and pikes, each with celestial fire glimmering on the blades. The battle seems to be in their favor, the cultists dropping like flies, when Colt hears an ominous whoosh.

Almost too late, Colt looks up and propels himself backward as a large boulder plummets from the roof of the academy. With a curse, he shields his eyes from debris and the plume of dirt that comes with it.

"Another! Here comes another!" someone screams.

Colt looks up as stone after stone is rolled off the roof of the academy and his forces are crushed into the dirt. There isn't enough time to sound a retreat, the boulders just keep coming.

"Demon! They're demolishing the school itself!" Gabriel roars from above.

Colt steps closer to the boulder that almost took him out and sees the gargoyle that once stood sentinel on the tallest tower of the academy. Colt's blood boils, his fists clenching. The Grigori don't care about this world, because if they have it their way, none of this will have ever existed. He wouldn't exist. Gabby…

Hellfire sparks in Colt's eyes as he looks up toward the roof.

"I will not allow you to destroy my world!" he roars up at them as if screaming at the Grigori themselves. His wings spread wide, his hands rising towards the roof as his eyes blaze with hellfire.

"Witches, protect us!" he orders, and a shield of magic blooms and spreads over their forces, propelling the boulders away from their people or disintegrating them all together.

"We need to end this!" Gabriel warns as he throws a spear and impales a target on the roof. The man he struck clutches the spear in his chest and then topples forward, landing on the witch's shield and exploding into a mist of blood and bones.

"I will end this," Colt whispers. His fingers splay towards the roof, his eyes glowing so brightly now that his face is hidden by the green glow. He mutters a spell under his breath, each word gaining volume as his fists slowly begin to clench. All around him the ground behind to shake, to split, and his forces warily back away from him.

"I call upon the kings of Hell, the infernal power of the deep." Colt's eyes flick toward the ground as it cracks, and an ominous green glow seeps from deep inside. "Aid me, fight this self-righteous good, or cease to exist with the rest of us."

Keening wails of the tortured and damned peel from inside the cracks as green fire licks the ground all around him. Spirits of the damned crawl out of the earth, moaning and screaming in pain, and shoot into the air towards the roof. Colt grins as the dead and damned begin ripping the cultists from the roof. Tearing them limb from limb, and in some cases devouring the enemy whole.

"Never again," disembodied voices say into Colt's mind. "Never summon the powers of Hell again, this is your one chance. Kill the Grigori, or we shall return as one and drag you back to the cells you never should have left."

The kings of Hell speak in unison, a combined force of fury. What they don't realize is that if Colt and Gabby fail today, none of them will exist to take his soul back for retribution.

A hole explodes in the wall of the academy and opens a passage for Colt's forces. With a dark grin, he steps forward. The human hostages in the gym are about to be freed. Every other soul who sided with the Grigori is about to pay the price for their error.

He steps over the rubble, his shoes landing on the marble floors of the Academy. He's flanked by his hellish minions, the guild members, and the angels who have come to aid them.

"Let's finish this," Colt snarls.

He leaps into the air with a deadly spinning motion, then spears through a line of cultists who are waiting for them inside.