36. Medusa

E verything changed when Benji decided to take out Jeqon. I got why he did it, but those knives were no joke. Guns were a pretty new invention in my long lifespan. For a very long portion of my life, if you wanted to take someone out from a distance, you used poison.

I’d been trained on poisons since I was very young and then Athena taught her priestesses. I kept up with it because people were always finding new ways to kill each other. I’d seen what happened when someone used a poisoned blade before, but I’d never seen anything like this.

The angels who had been stabbed with it were already dead and the ones who had been nicked were nearly there. They were on the ground convulsing and foaming at the mouth. The ones that were still standing were trying to fight anything that moved.

My shield wasn’t going to hold much longer. Pax and I had used a lot of magic and couldn’t help Benji. Cas would have to run through all those knives to get to him. I wanted to protect Benji, but there was a horde of deranged angels with those awful knives between us and him.

I focused on my shield and turned to Yahweh.

“Like it or not, this is your circus and your monkeys. Some of those angels were only willing to keep going because they were scared of Jeqon, but some of them legitimately wanted to kill you. I’m pretty sure we figured out who is who when they stopped to help their friends instead of trying to kill you. The furies only infected the ones who kept going.

“You can save the ones who can probably be saved and you can save my mate who is trying to end this by breaking out that smiting power. Shit, it’s self defense and it would go a long way with making friends with everyone here to not let Benji get killed. Because if he dies, I’m going to pick up one of those knives and stab you myself for doing nothing.”

I let him sit with that and watched Benji. I meant it. If Benji got hurt when he could have smote all these angels, I was going to kill him. Dionysus would hold him down for me because Benji meant a lot to both of us.

That fucking knife. Benji pounced just when an angel slammed into my shield, and it shattered. It had been battered to all fuck, and it was just a matter of time. A dazed angel who was foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the eyes stood up and realized my shield was gone.

He roared and ran at us. Cas got the jump on him from behind and ripped his head off.

“I’m out!” Pax yelled.

“So am I!”

Pax and I were down for the count. Even with the ambrosia, we’d used way more magic than we ever had in our lives. If we used any more magic, we were going to pass out and probably die.

The archangels were protecting us in the air, but we were vulnerable on the ground. Benji and Hephaestus had taken several of those knives out of the equation, but there were several of them in play and the angels still had their magic. I was down a shield and Pax couldn’t make them powerless anymore.

There were about eighty angels left and I’d imagine sixty of them could be on our side if we needed them to be. It was the other twenty and Jeqon that I was worried about. The other sixty weren’t going to fight for us unless we gave them a reason to. We needed a show of power and that was either Benji killing Jeqon or Yahweh breaking out the smiting.

I was out of magic, but I wasn’t totally helpless. I had the blade Hephaestus made me strapped to my thigh. I whipped it out and braced myself.

“Cover your ears!” Jezebel yelled.

That was my bitch. Anyone who wasn’t fury addled would know better. Jezebel launched into some kind of furious song and anyone who hadn’t covered their ears just kind of…exploded.

“Gross,” Pax said.

“But effective,” Dionysus said.

“Where’s Benji?” Cas demanded after he shifted back.

I looked around. There was gore all over the front lawn. Angels were dead or exploded. The ones that were still alive were wingless or in the process of dying.

Benji and Jeqon were nowhere to be found.