Chapter 33

CHAPTER33

Their wings gleaming white, they slammed down on the ground, one after the other, like some sort of coruscating missiles. Not missing a beat, they attacked Lucifer’s forces within seconds. All over the place, angels engaged in combat with demons and hellhounds, pushing them back and drawing their attention away from the humans.

The devil himself, for his part, seemed invigorated by the prospect of fighting Heaven’s army. Diabolical joy mixed with grim-faced hatred tinged his expression as he threw himself into the battle, using both his powers and his sword to massacre his way through the ranks of angels.

And it couldn’t be called anything else. It was mindless butchery as he slashed and hacked off the limbs of angels, who were no match for him, skewering them with spikes of dark power, burning their wings with hellfire.

They fell like flies around him, bursting into embers of light.

What had seemed like a force of superior numbers now dwindled down more and more, the angels taking significant losses.

And ever more demons streamed from the still open hellgate, an unending flow of reinforcements. Many of the new arrivals spread out through the nearby streets, pushing the battle toward the rest of the city.

Toward a population of millions.

My heart sank. So many. So many people whose lives would end today, caught in the fray of a supernatural war where they were little more than pawns and collateral damage.

My chest tight, I looked up as more streaks of light illuminated the dark maelstrom of the sky. About half a dozen angels landed with earth-shattering impact, their power giving me goosebumps on my ghostly skin.

Glowing gold energy wafted from them like mist on the water, their white wings shot through with gold and silver filaments. Their landing blasted nearby fighters to the ground, stirring the ash-flecked air into whorls of smoke.

“Archangels,” Azazel murmured, pressing me back against the stone wall once more.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” I whispered back. “They’ll be able to take on Lucifer, right?”

Azazel’s wings twitched. “Only if the archdemons don’t join the fight.”

“They’re not here yet?”

He shook his head, his expression grim. “You’d know it if they were.”

As one, the archangels advanced on Lucifer, going straight for the biggest threat. His black eyes glowed with an inner fire as he met the challenge, his teeth bared in a grimace of a smile. The fight was a blur of black and white, silver, gold and red, the movements too fast for my eyes to follow as the deadly dance of archangels and Lucifer lifted into the sky.

Lucifer’s power drenched the air, clashing with the magic of the archangels. The ground trembled, buildings shook. With a mighty crack, the asphalt of the street split. The quake that followed rattled everything around. In the surrounding buildings, the glass in the windows shattered and rained down to shower the ground in glistening shards. The middle arch of the library’s entrance collapsed, the roof giving in and crumbling down.

Screams echoed from inside the building.

Up and down the street, in the air and on the ground, angels kept fighting with demons and hellhounds.

“We should go,” Azazel said at my ear, his voice tight and urgent.

“But—”

“There’s nothing we can do here. We can’t help. The archangels are the only ones who could possibly bring Lucifer to heel, and when they do, you don’t want to be anywhere near. What you’ve seen so far is nothing against the destruction they’ll wreak to subdue him. We need to get away, find another hellgate or some safe place, and sit this one out.”

“Okay,” I whispered, my heart clenched in fear.

He extended his wings as if testing them. “I’ll try to fly us out.”

I nodded and let him pick me up, my hands trembling when I grasped his neck to hold on. Checking the way out, Azazel waited for a moment, then he launched us into the air.

His mighty wings had only beat a few times when something rammed into us. The impact made us careen wildly, and though Azazel tried to right his flight path again, it was no use, the impulse of the crash too strong. We slammed to the ground, Azazel grunting in pain, me being hurtled a few feet away.

My landing was a far less painful one than his, seeing as I didn’t truly feel the impact in my ghost form. I raised my head to see Azazel already engaged in combat with an angel—probably the one who’d rammed him in the air.

Never mind that, technically, Azazel wasn’t on Lucifer’s side—he was a demon, and as such, all the angel saw was an enemy to be taken out. And it wasn’t like Azazel could simply explain to him that he wasn’t part of the killing brigade sent by Lucifer.

While Azazel battled it out with the angel, several dark shapes flashed past overhead. I craned my neck to watch how they dove for the tangle of powers that was Lucifer’s fight with the archangels. Magic exploded from the newcomers, midnight lightning and hellfire flames searing the edges of the ring the archangels had built around Lucifer.

The ring broke apart. Three of the archangels faltered in their flight, one hurtled down toward the ground, followed by a shadow-shrouded figure. When they landed on the street, the archangel scrambling to her feet, I could finally make out the exact shape and appearance of one of those newly arrived warriors.

Wings of red-streaked obsidian, his skin misted in dark power, the demon exuded such superiority and might that I had not a single doubt I was looking at one of the archdemons.

So they had come to join the fight.

I glanced back at the battle raging in the air. I counted about half a dozen archangels, including the one on the street, and maybe five or six archdemons. It was hard to tell, their movements so fast I could barely keep track.

Plus Lucifer.

I gulped. Those odds were not good. Lucifer alone equalled several archangels in power, from what I’d just seen. He’d held his own against all of them for quite a while before the archdemons showed up. Now that they were here? Chances that the angels would win this just got a lot smaller.

The air shook, the pressure of the magic so strong, it bent lamp posts and dented the sides of entire buildings. Metal screeched, stone cracked, and more glass shattered as the buildings started to collapse under the strain of the powers at work here. Wave upon wave of magic pulsed outward from the clashes, each of them causing ever more damage.

They would destroy the city if this kept up. Already, I could see skyscrapers a block or so down from here shaking amid the pulsing waves of power. The buildings nearby crumbled more and more. Flashes of winged warriors—demon and angel both—zoomed through the sky, over and in between the buildings, fighting in the air above New York. I could only imagine what the situation was like on the ground in the surrounding streets. How far had the battle already spread? How many human lives had been lost?

This kind of destruction was eerily reminiscent of the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, except back then, it had been a singular attack that had caused the chaos. As disastrous and deadly as it had been, it had been one strike—with two planes, of course—after which no new blows had come.

Now, though, it was an ongoing battle, with potential for so much more devastation… I had no idea how long this war would last. Days? Weeks even? Or maybe…months? When I’d learned about the original war between Heaven and Hell, I’d never heard anyone mention a timeframe.

What if this was just the beginning? What if from now on, the world would burn and burn, while the angels and demons fought for supremacy, the humans merely a blip on their radar, an afterthought?

With Lilith gone and the deal with Heaven canceled, Lucifer had no reason anymore to hold back. He could go full force against his old enemies, and there were apparently many, many demons seemingly all too eager to finish what had started millennia ago.

As I watched, reinforcements came out of the hellgate, and I had no doubt that the same was true for the other hellgates across the city. Lucifer had probably sent out some sort of general mobilization order through Hell, calling all of his demons to the fight.

And this time, they wouldn’t let up until they’d either won the war, or Heaven defeated them soundly.

Likely killing countless humans in the process.

My stomach turned over. Despair ate at me from the inside, desolation crawling across my soul.

A thought struck me at that moment. The deal with Heaven canceled…

Azazel landed next to me, whirling up dust and smoke and ash, apparently having won the fight with the angel. His landing was a far cry from the usual graceful touchdown he was capable of—a further sign of his injuries. I pivoted to him and threw my arms around him, relieved to see him in one piece, and for a brief moment, he folded his wings around us as he hugged me back.

“Let’s go,” he muttered. “Flying might be too dangerous right now. We may have a better chance of evading and hiding down on the ground.”

He moved forward and pulled at my hand, but I remained where I was, frozen by the idea that had just occurred to me. An idea that might just be our salvation…

“We need a new deal,” I said, voicing part of my racing thoughts.

“What?” Azazel paused and turned to me, flames and swirling plumes of smoke in the background.

I blinked at him, refocusing my gaze on him as I struggled to corral my mind into coherent ideas. “The only thing that can stop this war now is a new deal, one that holds as much leverage over Lucifer as the old one. Lilith is gone”—I had to fight down the wave of shell-shocked grief about her sudden and violent death—“but what if there was another person who means so much to Lucifer that a deal could be struck with her wellbeing in mind? One that could force Lucifer to halt all fighting and agree to a new truce because he cares more about her than about winning against Heaven?”

“Naamah,” Azazel whispered, his eyes wide.

I nodded. “For all we know, Lucifer never sent that letter. Heaven doesn’t know that he wanted to ask for a pardon for her.” I squeezed his hand and stepped closer, my spirit form brimming with urgency. “But what if they knew? What if that would change everything? They’re all fighting right now, yes, but what if that’s just out of necessity, because Lucifer attacked Earth and they need to respond? What if most of them want to end this war just as much as we do? They just need a chance to broker a deal. This could be it.”

Azazel’s eyes darted between mine, the movement lightning quick and likely echoing the speed with which his mind ran through all the possibilities and ramifications of my suggestion. “We’d need to find a high-ranking angel who would be likely to support a truce.”

“Gabriel?” He was the one who granted the pardons, after all.

“Maybe. Or Raphael.” His gaze swung to the side, his brows drawing together. “From what I’ve gathered, he’s always been a voice of reason.”

“Is either of them here?”

“I think I saw them earlier, yes.”

We both looked up toward the cataclysmic seeming battle between archangels, archdemons, and Lucifer that still raged in the air above the street. They’d spread out some, with pairs of archangels and archdemons splitting from the main fight to duel it out alone, while at least two archangels were currently taking on Lucifer.

It was hard to make out individuals among the warriors, but somewhere up there were the two archangels we needed to inform about the pardon plans. They were our only hope. Sure, they needed to stop Lucifer from going ballistic for long enough to offer the new deal, but if anyone could do it, it was them.

Azazel’s determined expression morphed to one of concern when he looked down at me again. “Zoe,” he said, his voice tight, “I can’t take you up there.”

I pressed my lips together, scrunching my brow.

“I need to be able to maneuver fast through the air,” he went on, “and that’s harder to do when I’m carrying you. Not to mention I’ll be distracted by trying to keep you safe, but in order to reach one of the archangels, I need to be able to take risks. That aside”—he framed my face with both hands, his eyes glowing—“I don’t want you anywhere near those fighters. You’ve felt the waves of their power when they clash. I won’t expose you to forces like that.” His thumbs stroked over my cheeks. “I need you to stay down here, find a good hiding place and wait for me until I come find you again, all right?”

“How—how will you find me?”

“This here,” he said, grasping my hand and laying it over his heart, “will always lead me to where you are.”

Heat burned behind my eyes.

“Just make sure to hide well and far away from the fighting. Crawl into a wall if you must. Anything to stay out of sight, understood?”

I nodded frantically, my heartbeat stumbling in my chest. “Come back to me,” I rushed to say, refusing to entertain the possibility that this might be the last I saw of him. “I’ll haunt you if you don’t.”

“I promise.” His eyes burned a path through my soul. “I’ll come for you.”

He gave me a quick, harsh kiss that spoke of the fear ravaging us both, and then he launched into the air. I watched him head for the clash of powers, worry fizzing inside me about how he could possibly make it through to one of the archangels without simply getting pulverized.

But standing here and stressing about him wouldn’t help. The only thing I could do, the only thing I was supposed to do, was hide my ass. Evasion 101. I could do that.

Glancing around, I flattened myself against the wall of the building behind me. Could I not simply glide through that wall? Hadn’t Azazel said as much? I was pretty much a ghost, after all, and I’d been walking through walls for a year now. Chances of me being spotted and vaporized by either an angel, a demon, or a hellhound inside a building were probably lower, right?

While fire raged across the street in front of me, the sky full of wings and blades and blows of power, I concentrated on moving through the wall. A heartbeat later, I was inside the building. Looking around, I recognized the shelves and aisles of a convenience store, completely deserted. Okay, good, I could work with that.

I gingerly walked around in search of an even better hidey hole further inside.

Overturned shelves and spilled groceries indicated there’d been a struggle here. My gaze fell onto the floor—bloody tracks hinted that someone had been dragged around here, bleeding from a likely fatal wound. A moment later, I saw the source.

There, sprawled on the ground next to a shattered shelf, lay the broken body of a man. His stomach gaped open, intestines not just pulled out but more like entirely carved out. His head was missing.

I stood there, with such eerie calm, so detached and unfeeling, one might have thought I was shopping for groceries and couldn’t decide which bag of potato chips to take home.

It was one of those moments again. Those disassociated moments when my mind apparently subdued my emotional response.

While unsettling, it helped me focus on what I needed to do. Find a better hiding spot, because obviously, this store here wasn’t safe from attacks.

After a quick search, I hid inside a storage closet. Classic, I know. It was the best I could do for now.

I’d just settled in to wait when a shockwave like nothing I’d felt before rolled through the air, followed by a mighty roar. My spirit body trembled wildly, as if I was a leaf on a tree rattled by a mighty gust of wind. The earth shook, the shelves in the room crashing down. Cracking, rumbling, snapping filled the air and my ears as the walls collapsed right over me.