But it was her blade that came for the Brethren with the most ferocity. With the first slash of her knife into a priest’s throat, the blood spattering across her face covering, she felt on fire. As she ducked from another priest’s attack, just like they’d practiced, he became wide open for Diel to rip apart.
Noa herself became a tornado of death and desolation.
Gurgled sounds of priests choking on blood, agonized screams of organs being slashed, and cracks of bones being broken spurred her on. Pushed her to kill and kill until her hands were drenched with blood and the blade of her knife was hot from overuse.
They cut the Brethren down. But for every priest killed, more seemed to appear. There were so many—too many.
Noa looked up at the sound of clinking metal. Every muscle in her body stilled as she laid eyes on a boy on a raised wooden plinth. Her stomach rolled and her heart squeezed when she saw what was wrapped around his neck.
He was in a collar and chain. Just like Diel. Just like … Noa shook her head, trying to focus on the priests before her, on the task at hand. She had to keep focused; she couldn’t be distracted until the priests were all dead.
She sensed Dinah on her left, Diel unwavering on her right. In her peripheral, she saw him fighting, snapping necks and slicing his long blades into hearts. She saw Uriel choking priests with his bare hands and gouging out eyes; she both saw and heard Bara laughing manically as pushed twin knives into Brethren skulls. She saw Michael slashing at throats with the metal claws on his fingers, his slashes perfectly hitting arteries every time, a master of sanguine anatomy.
Raphael wrapped chains around priests’ necks and pushed knives straight into their hearts. Then Sela. Sela moved as if he were the element of water himself. There was an almost poetic grace to his fighting that Noa had never seen before, his artist’s hands slicing body parts from the priests as if every death he made had to be a masterpiece in his mind.
Dinah and her sisters kicked and punched, funneled the Brethren into the path of the Fallen murderers.
It was working.
Despite the numbers they faced, despite only knowing one another for a couple of months, the Fallen and Coven were a unit—they were destroying the Brethren in their own sacred place.
Then Noa heard the clinks of metal again, the sound piercing her brain. Her attention was yanked back to the collared boy. He was thrashing on the plinth, trying to pull his bound hands from the wooden pole behind him. Suddenly, Dinah blocked a knife that almost hit Noa’s face. Noa met Dinah’s eyes. “Focus!” Dinah shouted, then moved to the next priest, rolling him over her shoulder so Noa could stab him with her knife.
It was carnage. Blood and screams and death permeated the air.
Noa brought her knife high, readying to strike another, when she saw a familiar face move from behind the boy on the rack.
She opened her mouth to warn her sisters and the Fallen. But someone growled out the priest’s name before any sound could leave her lips.
“Auguste.”
Sinking her knife into a priest’s leg, straight through his artery, as Beth threw him directly into Noa’s path, Noa risked a glance behind her. Sela. Sela’s dark eyes had focused on his older brother, who was watching them from a safe distance, a general watching his foot soldiers trying to bring the enemy down. Noa frowned, wondering why he was raising his hand as if to signal, when the doors to the back of the barn burst open and a river of Brethren priests came pouring in.
More. There were even more of them. Noa looked back at Auguste and saw a smug, victorious smile stretch on his face. Reality hit her then, as hard as the priest’s fist that barreled into her face as he took advantage of her momentary distraction.
The Brethren had expected them. They had prepared for them.
The Fallen and Coven were outnumbered.
They were fucked.
“There’s too many,” Noa heard Dinah shout over the din of rushing priests. “We have to pull back.” Noa’s heart pounded as she watched another blur of red and black rush through the doors. “We have to pull back!”
“Pull back!” Gabriel said from the rear of the group, echoing Dinah’s command. Noa continued to fight. They all fought, priests falling at their feet. But not