scent of piss when this angel in front of me loses it.
I let my claws rake over his face, scarring it, shocked at how easily his skin shreds, almost like he was human.
The other angel was right. We’re stronger. Unless they have their Center near, they shouldn’t be quite this vulnerable. We shouldn’t be this strong in comparison. This should have been a much harder fight.
My eyes travel across the room to see if my brother demons have noticed the same thing.
Zolroth, one of the least violent of us, hands the halo humper he’s facing off against—a tall thin guy with light brown hair—a vase that looks like it’s carved from diamond, swiping it from a side table. The angel starts to smack himself with it.
“I need it! I need it inside me!” he screams as he bashes himself in the head. “Diamonds! Diamonds!”
Zolroth glances over at me, and we exchange a look. He’s been able to distract angels during battle before, make them chase after “shinies,” as he puts it. But this? He’s never done anything like this.
“It’s her,” he mouths.
I press my lips together before I turn and punch a new angel who’s just darted in, a fool with hair red as flame. He flies backward as though shot from a catapult.
Fuck.
Zolroth’s right.
Katrina makes us vulnerable.
But she’s also made us ten fucking times stronger somehow.
Enough to kill angels and demons without their Center present.
Guilt surges like a tidal wave through my chest, memory sliding around like dirty debris in a flood and tainting everything.
We’ve always been told Centers are vulnerabilities. And if we hadn’t all fallen in love with her… If Raz hadn’t been in love with her before we all even saw her… I can’t finish the thought.
Partially because a new wave of angels burst through every doorway nearby, all of them carrying ice swords.
Two leap at me, and I lower my head and charge. The ice swords slice at me—one pierces my upper arm, while the other skins my wing—but I ignore the cold burn and ram my thick blue horns into one of the angels, latching onto his waist with my hands and shooting a wave of mindless, furious vengeance magic into him.
I let go and leap back as he starts swinging his sword wildly at those around him. He gouges a hole through another angel’s abdomen, before one of his own leaps on his back, crying, “Moxonius! What are you doing?”
I let the wild red angel attack his own kind and turn back to the fray. Akor’s jumping in glee, flapping his wings and screaming, “Broken bone for you, and one for you, and you get a broken bone, and you get a broken bone! I’m the Oprah of pain, bitches!”
He brings a smile to my face as I backhand a female angel and stomp closer to Zolroth, who has his hand raised as he speaks to two dazed-looking angels. “Pluck every jewel from the sidewalks outside. Go!”
They race off, possibly to do what he commands, I can’t be sure. They smell of cowardly piss, so maybe they’re using the excuse to run…nope. I see one bend and scratch at the glittering ground.
Zolroth giggles in glee, turning toward me. “This is the best battle we’ve ever—”
His words cut off, and his eyes go wide. I spin around to see three archangels, men larger and far more dangerous than myself. Their white wings are so wide that they cast shadows. Lightning crackles beneath the palms of one, water threads between the fingers of another like a ribbon. The third has a buzzing set of insects circling his head like a halo.
Their appearance sucks the air out of the room.
These are God’s henchmen. The fuckers who let plagues rip through the mortal world. The gangsters who mess with Lucillania.
The assholes who stalked me…one dark night, ten years ago, when I was too preoccupied with my own hunt to notice them.
My throat dries out, and my dick shrivels, the battle lust receding. I ball my fists and try to stare up defiantly, hoping they don’t know how my confidence just checked out of Heaven and blasted off towards the nearest galaxy, ready to cower a million light-years away.
I try to snuff out this feeling, try to choke it. But it’s impossible. Animal-level fear creeps into my brain and takes control.
The largest one gives a slow, evil grin, the kind I’ve often felt across my own face. But there’s no humor in his dark grey eyes when he