roof, followed by another. Then silence.
The madam’s wings splayed. She narrowed her eyes and hissed, “Angels!”
“Here?!” Samiel hissed, tearing from Severn’s grasp.
A section of roof splintered and exploded inward. An angel in full battle armor plunged inside, her wings spreading behind her to slow her descent. Her angelblade flashed in her hand.
Another section of roof collapsed.
“Run!” The madam whirled, but without a weapon, she’d last seconds.
“Konstantin!” Samiel’s cry rose. “Run!”
Severn bolted toward the angel. The beat of her wings kicked up dust and trash, whipping it about the warehouse. He caught a glimpse of more angels pouring in. So many. Fuck. But angels… they were predictable. This one with her silver-white hair and gleaming armor looked like something from nightmares, but she had a weakness.
She pointed her blade at Severn as he made his charge, tucked her wings in, and dove forward.
There was a moment when he looked her in her silvery eyes and she knew, the same as he did, that only one would survive what came next.
Severn deliberately dropped, skidding across the smooth warehouse floor. Her blade slashed inches from his face. He reached up, sank his fingers into the joint of her armor, and yanked her out of the air.
She tumbled, struck the floor in an explosion of silver feathers, and briefly lay, stunned.
Severn stamped on her wrist, making her fingers burst open, and snatched up the blade. She saw her death in his eyes seconds before he plunged the blade through the slit in her helmet and through her skull. Maybe he’d known her, maybe he’d fought with her, but she would have killed him now as surely as she’d kill every demon here.
Samiel hauled Severn into a run. Outside, the gray streets churned with angels.
“Get down!” Samiel shoved Severn forward, almost sending him sprawling.
An angel soared over their heads, dipped his left wing, and circled back. A demon-blur shot from the clouds above and slammed into the angel, punching it into the road, where it lay still but for its twitching wings.
Angels tore unarmed demons from their houses and cut their throats. Blood ran in the gutters.
This wasn’t a battle; it was a fucking massacre.
A demon lunged for Severn—mistaking him for the enemy—but Samiel caught him and swung him around before shoving him back into the fray. “That angel is mine!” He grabbed for Severn’s arm. “We have to get you out of here.”
An angel slammed into Samiel’s side, knocking him clean off his feet. The warrior-angel roared and lunged to finish his attack.
In the confusion, the angel had mistaken Severn for an ally, thinking he was saving Severn from Samiel.
Severn plunged his stolen blade into the angel’s back. The angel’s wings flew out, and he fell to his knees.
Violence sang in Severn’s veins, ether from the killing lust lifting his soul up, making his hungry heart sing, but the chaos on the street sickened him. He knew both sides, had fought for both sides, loved both sides. A chilling sense of wrongness wrapped around his heart.
An angel tripped into Severn, recoiling from an attacking demon—the madam. She thrust a short dagger up, under the angel’s armor, sinking the blade into his gut. Severn stumbled backward, into the reach of another enemy. He whirled and cut them down, panting around the taste of blood on his tongue.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was demon ground. Their ground, their home. These demons were unarmed and unprepared.
He lost himself to the melee, drinking ether, breathing in its heady mix, until the attacking angels suddenly, as though by some silent command, retreated into the fog.
Severn stood, panting and dripping blood among dead and dying.
Angels lay at his feet, wings broken and bloody. He hadn’t wanted this. If he looked too closely, he’d probably recognized the fallen. Spilled angel and demon blood mixed. It all ran red in the end.
Samiel wiped blood from his face with his sleeve. He staggered over a fallen angel, raising his lips in a snarl. The two short blades in his grip dripped gore.
A jagged memory flashed inside Severn’s mind; Samiel beside him, his prowess on the killing fields both lethal and precise. He’d been a vision of killing, and next to Konstantin, they’d been unstoppable. Until Mikhail. And then, in the memory, Samiel had turned to Severn and smiled, but the smile seemed twisted.
The memory shattered, fragments ripping through him, surrendered years ago. He clutched his head and staggered on the spot.
“We need to go…” Samiel pulled on Severn’s arm. “Now.”
Go.