34. Medusa

W e had to change everything about our strategy, but we could still work with this. When we found out about the knives, we told the other angels not to engage and to protect Yahweh from the air. Several of us were built-in long-range weapons and we could use that.

Pax usually had to touch things to transfigure them, but could do it from afar with enough concentration. It would just drain him faster. The ambrosia would keep him going longer. Hopefully long enough to do what we planned.

The archangels and the angels we stole took to the air and started throwing magic at the other angels who took flight. We didn’t need that anywhere near us, so I threw up a shield. A shield this big that was sustaining that kind of damage would drain me faster, but I’d also been eating ambrosia, so hopefully, it was enough.

They knew too much about us and what kind of magic we were working with. We still didn’t know the extent of their powers because we were trying to figure out if they had something capable of killing a god. But they knew we had several people here capable of messing with their minds, one that could turn them to stone, and another who could essentially make them human.

They were gunning for us harder than they were the gods. I braced myself because their magic was slamming into my shield. They weren’t rushing us with those knives. They were creeping forward and trying to take out my shield so they could get us with their magic first.

Which was both smart and stupid. They’d need to get my shield down to get to us, but I guess angels didn’t have that ability. They had speed and wings and I guess when they were self actualized, no one thought they needed it.

They were fast, but it wasn’t enough. Benji was poofing in front of them, stealing their knives, and coming back to us to give them to Hephaestus to destroy. Dionysus and I were both connected to the Earth, so we called roots from the ground to bind the angels for the furies and Pax to get them.

I could literally see the divide among the angels. Some of them stopped to cut their friends loose from the roots because if the furies didn’t get them, Pax did. Obviously, they could get their wings and power back because their friends did, but I didn’t know if anyone could restore their minds once a fury got ahold of it.

Adolf Shitler was having a meltdown that some of his troops were helping their friends instead of fighting us. Which was fucking up because he wasn’t even fighting. He was standing on the porch barking orders.

I started focusing my earth magic and gaze on the angels that weren’t detained or didn’t stop to help and so did everyone else. I could tell when the furies did their thing because some of the angels turned on each other with those knives.

After I saw what those knives did, I knew no matter what, I couldn’t let my shield down. It was like the blade was poisoned. If it broke the skin in any way, the wound started festering and turned black.

It wasn’t safe for Benji to get in between two fury-crazed angels with those knives, even if most of his body was shadows. He had to solidify his hand enough to grab the knife before he disappeared and I couldn’t risk him.

Instead of using my earth magic to bind people, I started calling vines to yank those knives out of their hands to make it safe for Benji. Dionysus started doing the same thing.

I was pretty sure the magic the angels were flinging would have utterly fucked me up. It probably would have just pissed Dionysus and the other gods off. It only seemed to cause minor damage to the angels, which was surprising because it could blow a hole through a house and incinerate a Jaguar.

I’d sent everyone a message through the mate bond to get the knives away from the angels who were fury crazed, which was the majority of them. The only angels who were still of sound mind were either bound with roots, trying to cut them loose, or Pax had turned their wings to sand and taken their magic.

The armed angels who were fucked in the head were the most dangerous right now. After they were done fighting each other, they’d turn on us.

But I couldn’t find Benji anywhere and none of the knives we’d taken were disappearing off of the ground. Some of the angels were picking them up and going after their friends with them again. I didn’t want to risk yanking them back here with a vine and cutting anyone with them.

“Where’s Benji?” I yelled hysterically.

What if he got nicked and was dying in a bush somewhere? As a green witch, I knew the antidote to most poisons, and the blade acted like a poison, but it wasn’t. I wouldn’t know how to treat it. And since the weapon was self actualized to kill a god, I doubted a god could heal an injury for it. This might even be above vampire blood when it came to healing.

I felt panic through our bond coming from several different directions and then I felt Benji.

“Adolf Shitler is going down. It’s the only way.”

Jeqon was out of Pax’s range. Pax probably could, but he’d expend so much magic, he’d faint. The rest of us were throwing everything into keeping the rest of the angels away from us, so we couldn’t get to him. Benji was right that if Jeqon was dead, the remaining angels that weren’t fury touched would probably stop fighting and we wouldn’t have to wipe out almost an entire choir of angels.

But I didn’t want Benji anywhere near that knife and I already knew he was going to do this, anyway.