wings. From a tree branch, Deyva leapt through the air, catching two of the hellbats in her arms before she landed running on a rooftop, tearing the creatures apart and tossing the pieces back over the gate like gory confetti.
It was messy and vicious. Hellbats were dropping from the sky and Georgie, our elderly line chef with a long, white braid swinging down her back, was skewering them into the ground with a sharp rake. The hellbats swarmed centrally above us and Az did his best, burning off the line of them at the edges without flying too close and risking getting himself snapped up in those ugly little fiery jaws.
Finally, distantly, I realized that I could relax. Yes, we were in a new kind of battle, nothing had ever gotten so close to us like this. But my people were fighting back, holding their own. They weren’t frightened, and while we might’ve been underprepared, we knew what we were up against. This wasn’t like the frontlines in the early days. Every man, woman, and child alive knew what Hell brought in war, and was prepared to match it.
“There’s a small cluster aiming for the gate, wash ‘em out!” I barked over the howl of the hellhound and the screeching of the bats.
Heather, and a couple of the other women armed with garden hoses, aimed up at the bats by the gate.
“Cover them!” I shouted to Zach and Jason and the others.
Deyva was getting caught by the water spraying up at the hellbats, but she leapt back and forth from roof to tree, snatching hellbats out of the air.
“Here, Father Kais.” I spun and blinked at the young man behind me, holding out a handful of crossbow bolts. “We’ve been pulling them out of the hellbats on the ground.”
I nodded my thanks and turned back to the fight, relaxing into the rhythm of aiming and firing, barking an order, and checking on my people. The hellhound paced in aggravation on the other side of the gate, and I lifted my voice to the air where Azariah was circling.
“Will these rodents back off if we take down the general?” I called.
“Maybe some. It’s the hound’s howl that controls them,” Az answered.
From the gate, a wild scream sounded, and Az and I both rushed forward. A hellbat that had broken free of formation was on Heather McCann’s back. Deyva landed at the gate first, tearing the creature off the young woman and then grabbing the gushing hose out of her hands, tossing it to Az.
“Get up in the air and fire it right down the hound’s throat,” I snarled, joining Deyva.
Az jumped into the sky, wings beating as the town covered him against the hellbats. I knelt with Deyva as Heather McCann crumbled, her back twisting as we both braced her by her shoulders and arms, keeping her from clawing at the wound on her spine.
“Holy water,” Deyva snapped at the woman to her left, who quickly turned the hose on us all.
I watched as the blackened bite from the hellbat sizzled and spat out a murky, brackish fluid before slowly rinsing red. Heather moaned and relaxed in between us.
“We need to get her back from the gate before anything else reaches her. Jeff was an EMT, he can patch her up,” I said.
And sure enough it only took a second of searching through the crowd of late arrivals to find Heather’s partner running for us. Deyva scooped the woman—who was at least Deyva’s size, if not a little bigger—up off her feet and marched her through the townspeople who closed in around us.
“Almost there, Azariah!” someone cheered from the ground.
I turned and looked back to see the angel beating his wings hard against the onslaught of smoke and hellfire. Az had the hose turned up to full blast, holding it up at chest level with one hand as he directed holy light into the stream with the other. I stumbled a few steps back, stunned by the smoke and the sight of the hellhound on its hind legs, tossing and flailing, it’s howl garbled by the sizzle and steam of the holy water rushing down its throat. It took a moment for me to realize its rider was nowhere to be seen, and I scanned the smoke-covered landscape in a panic.
There! Yellow eyes with no pupils shone like a pair of headlights near the hellhound’s feet. The demon general had dismounted and its dark and expressionless face was turned in our