Rage and Ruin by Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,184

to save humankind were half-assed if they’d thought I could do this, and maybe...maybe God had washed His proverbial hands of the whole mess.

If not, how did they think I could defeat an archangel?

Gabriel slammed me into the ground with the force of a fall from a building.

Bones shattered everywhere.

Legs.

Arms.

Ribs.

I saw something white jutting from my leg as my vision winked in and out. Pain came in a flash of bright light. A thousand nerves tried to fire all at once, attempting to send communications from my brain to my arms and legs, to my pelvis and ribs and spine. My body jerked as something went loose inside. I couldn’t move my legs. The terror that poured through me filled my veins with icy slush. I struggled to get air into my lungs, but they felt wrong, as if they couldn’t inflate.

“I need you alive, at least for a little while longer,” he said.

Sure didn’t feel like he needed that. “Is it because you find me...endearing and lovable?” I rasped words that sounded off, as if half the letters couldn’t be pronounced.

Gabriel knelt beside me, his cruelly beautiful face blurring in and out. “More like I need your blood hot when it flows. I told you I could make this easy and peaceful. I would’ve let you have your heart’s desire. You would’ve enjoyed what time you had left, but you chose this fate. To suffer. So stupidly human.”

Blood spewed from my mouth as I coughed and my breath wheezed. “You...talk a lot.”

“I was the voice of God.” Gabriel’s hand folded over my throat. Air immediately cut off. He lifted me, my feet dangling several feet above the ground and my body loose like a pile of rags. “The messenger of His Faith and Glory, but I am now the Harbinger, and I will usher in a new era. Retribution will be pain with the cleansing power of blood, and as Heaven crumbles into itself, those who remain will have a new God.”

“She’s right. You do talk too much.”

Gabriel turned toward the source of the voice. I managed to turn my head only half an inch, if that, but enough that I could see Roth.

“And you know what?” Roth said, standing without Sulien. His arm hung oddly, but he was standing. “You sound an awful lot like someone I know. Does this sound familiar? ‘I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.’”

“Do not compare me to him,” Gabriel growled.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Roth replied. “It would be an insult to the Shining One.”

Several things happened at once. Gabriel let out a roar that shook the world as he threw out his arm. Something must’ve left his hand, because I heard Roth grunt and hit the ground, laughing—he was laughing. Gabriel’s sneer faded.

“Idiot,” gasped Roth. “Egotistical idiot. I hope it eases you to know that you were right.”

“You will be here for the death of your son.”

My gasp at the sound of Zayne’s voice was swallowed in Gabriel’s shout as he turned again.

Zayne stood behind Gabriel, his arm around Sulien’s neck as the Trueborn struggled, his grace flaring from his right arm, forming a spear that could kill Zayne even if he hadn’t been weakened. A different kind of fear crowded me.

But Zayne was fast, so incredibly fast as he gripped the side of the Trueborn’s head and twisted.

Gabriel screamed, his rage thundering through the cavern like an earthquake as Zayne dropped the Trueborn and then shot forward, slamming into the archangel, breaking Gabriel’s hold on my throat. I started to fall, but Zayne caught me. The burst of pain from his embrace threatened to drag me under, and I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew I was lying on my back and Zayne was rising in front of me, his wings stretched out on either side of him.

And I saw him.

Numerous nicks and grooves scarred his back, and his wings didn’t look right. One hung at an odd angle, and below the left wing, there was a deep cut, exposing bone and tissue. That wound was...

Oh God.

How had that happened to him? How had he been wounded? He just got here. He just...

Summoning everything I had left in me, I managed to shift onto my side. I