He forced a smile, giving me a glimpse at an Asher I’d never really known before, someone who was uncertain, maybe even frightened. “Fight with the others. I’ll do what I can here.”

  Raziel pointed past the circle.

  “He comes.”

  28

  The white light of Durandal had returned, and along with it, Roland. His horse, Veillantif, looked somewhat different, though. White fire was streaming from his skull now, too, the very picture of a supernatural nightmare. Veillantif pawed at the ground, then broke into a full gallop.

  “He’s charging the barrier,” I shouted.

  But just feet from the circle, Roland tugged on the reins, turning Veillantif sharply until he was running along the outside of the barrier’s edge. I turned in place, my eyes locked on Roland, on the curious, crooked grin on his face.

  “What’s he doing?” Florian said.

  Round and round Veillantif went, stamping huge, skeletal hooves into the earth, trampling the grass and setting it aflame with white fire. Pale green sparks fizzled and flew from the circle every time a plume of white fire made contact with its edge.

  Ah, crap.

  “He’s degrading the barrier,” Asher said, his voice mournful.

  My heart crept up my throat when I understood what was happening. If Roland couldn’t force the fight out of the circle, he was going to break it. But it wasn’t only our barrier coming down. This meant that he’d be breaking the seal on the underworld, too. The last thing we needed was a stream of zombies pouring into Valero, hell, eventually the rest of California directly from the bowels of the many lands of the dead.

  Veillantif’s hooves thundered in my ears, my chest, the pit of my stomach. We had to do something, but we were all out of options. What do you do with a gun when you’re all out of bullets? I looked down at my hands, my arms, hating that I didn’t have something better planned. I could make as many bombs as I wanted, lob them into the fray. But Roland’s hundreds would only keep coming. I curled my fists, my glyphs glowing with the light of my frustration.

  My glyphs.

  “The only course of action is escape,” Raziel said. “Between the three of us, we can carry Asher and Florian to safety. We must abandon the seal. All is lost. But perhaps we will find some other way to – to fight the undead millions that will pour forth.”

  “Raziel, we can’t run.” I held my arms up, showing him my glyphs. “You have to do it. Unseal me. Give me the gift of smiting. If I can’t use the Vestments, then maybe I can help this way at least.”

  He stared at me grimly. “If you insist, Mason. But remember this. Have you not realized that all your powers at present vastly outstrip what piddling little you could do with the Vestments? Your various gifts hold so much more potential. You were merely sneaking weapons out of the armories. You were a child, borrowing books again and again. No. You are done reading. Now you must write. Now you must create.”

  “This isn’t the right time for a lecture,” I said. “I couldn’t possibly create anything big or powerful enough to stop them all. Raz, we have to do it. I’ll create later. Right now, I have to smite.”

  Samyaza clasped me firmly by the back of my neck, rubbing reassuringly. “Raziel isn’t wrong. You know that. This is what you’re supposed to be doing, not just nicking stuff from the people upstairs. But are you sure about this? I warned you about the unsealing.”

  I swallowed thickly, but nodded. It was either that or risk the lives of innocents to the slavering undead. “In no way do I think I’m ready for this, but we’ve run out of options. Let’s break the seal.”

  Samyaza gestured. “Fine. Now, come on. Take your shirt off.”

  I blinked at him. “I was just getting warm again.”

  “Stop complaining, Mason,” Samyaza said, using what he probably thought was his dad-voice. It kind of worked, honestly. “This is serious,” he added.

  I nodded, shrugging off my shirt again, firmly reminding myself of how serious the stakes were. We were standing directly on top of a seal to the underworld, the stopper to a bottomless pit of horrors.

  “Right,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “Excellent,” Raziel said, grasping me by the shoulders firmly and turning me around to get access to my back. His fingers flew across my skin, each symbol and sigil he drew leaving a trace of unexpectedly pleasant warmth.

  “This isn’t so bad,” I said, pushing a little laughter into my voice, too awfully aware of how I sounded like a frightened kid at the dentist.

  “Shush,” Samyaza said softly. “Let Raziel work.”

  The gentle lilts and musical tones of the celestial tongue streamed from Raziel’s lips. I could almost feel them against my skin, as warm as the glyphs he was tracing there. But suddenly he stopped, the cool of night washing across my skin once more.

  “Mason,” Raziel said. “Do you remember how horribly you felt after the first time you learned how to fly?”

  “Y-yes? Why?”

  Raziel ran his finger downwards one last time. “You are going to hate this so much more.”

  I threw my head back, and screamed.

  It began with a sound like metal being torn apart, like chains snapping free. It began with the sound of my sigils breaking, of the seal upon my power being shattered by the pure light of divinity. The heat rushed first from my back, then my hands, then from my very skin.

  The world around me became plunged into searing amber light, as if the sun itself had fallen straight onto Latham’s Cross, like I’d been dropped into a vat of pure, molten gold. The problem was that it felt that way, too.

  My body was on fire, my cells shrieking in agony as flame burst out of my pores, out of my mouth and eyes and nostrils. And I screamed along as the pain scorched me inside and out, my blood turned into boiling oil, my bones like white-hot steel in a forge, cooking my flesh from within, killing me.

  I could hardly make out the voices of my friends, or the sight of the horde gathered around us. But time and place had ceased to matter. All I knew was pain. Pure light and fire poured out of my very soul, and like a candle, like a dying star, I knew that I was only moments away from guttering out.

  And then, silence. I fell to my knees, wincing when my hands touched wet grass, when cool air rushed across my skin like a layer of soothing balm. I heaved, panted, my throat sore from screaming, my lungs still burning from a fire that was never there.

  My hand trembled as I reached for my hair. I was surprised to find that I even had any left. Good, I was still hot, then. In multiple senses of the word, technically, since it really, really still felt like my skin was burning.

  That hadn’t been true fire, but it definitely hurt just like it. Was it always going to hurt? The light of divinity, huh? Overrated, very painful. Would not recommend.

  I shuddered as I forced my head to look up, to see if my torture had been worth it.

  Latham’s Cross was empty.

  “You did it,” Asher breathed. He collapsed, flat against the earth, chuckling and snorting as blades of grass stuck to his cheek. “You actually did it, you crazy bastard.”

  I winced when a hand landed gently on the back of my neck. It was familiar now, Samyaza’s touch, and welcome. It was a father’s reassurance.

  “I couldn’t be prouder,” he said quietly.

  My knees were still too weak to help me move, but I managed to fold myself and sit up cross-legged. I blinked, rubbing circles around my wrists, appreciating being in a physical state that didn’t feel like being submerged in a volcano. I stared blearily around the graveyard, still in disbelief. The zombies had just vanished, or more accurately, had disintegrated into dust and ash, incinerated by divine light.

  Only Roland was left, he and his horse. They lingered outside the circle, watching. Roland’s mouth hung open, just as shocked as I was.

  “My legions,” he said, his voice thick and dusty. “My horde.”

  Raziel stepped towards the rim of the barrier, standing just inside its edge so he could address Roland. “Enough is enough, old warrior. Return to your rest. Your sword is with you now. This is over.”

  Roland blinked, his eyes black and glassy as he gazed down at Durandal. “The abomination,” he mumbled. “Must cleanse.”

  “It’s not as simple as that, old knight,” Samyaza said. “It’s never as easy as black and white, good and evil. We’ve done nothing to deserve your wrath, and this world has done nothing to earn constant terror and destruction. Send away the last of your revenants. Go to sleep. Leave the world to the living.”

  There was something sad, and certainly very lonely about the way Roland’s eyes lingered on the edge of his blade. Some distant piece of him still longed for battle, for the completion of what he believed were righteous deeds. But angels, nephilim, Grigori, we all of us had a right to live, to exist. Wordlessly he brought his sword close to his hip, carefully aiming its tip into its scabbard as he sheathed the blade.

  And then came the woman’s voice. It spoke a single word.

  “Mine.”

  29

  Durandal flew out of Roland’s grasp, a silvery-white streak gliding through the air as its new mistress beckoned. There, standing not far from a crumbling mausoleum, was Leviathan.

  Only it wasn’t, really, not the Prince of Envy in her ideal form. Somehow she had scraped together enough of her leftovers to regenerate a vaguely humanoid body. It was roughly the same build as the Leviathan we’d encountered at the abandoned mall, and certainly the same height. But it’s hard to recognize someone’s features when they’re completely missing all of their skin.

  Durandal came to a complete stop, hovering in the air above Leviathan’s head. This was just the one sword, and if we worked at it and avoided conjuring any more weapons, there was an excellent chance that the guys and I could take her down.

  The first problem was whether it was already safe to step out of Asher’s protective circle. The second problem was how the ground was shaking the way it might during an earthquake, a respectably terrifying 6.0 on the richter scale.

  I scrambled to my feet, hardly finding my balance, clinging onto Florian’s shoulder for support. “What the hell is going on?” I shouted. The earth itself was groaning, but so was Roland. His jaw had unhinged itself, his head turned to the moon as he let out a horrible, rattling cry.

  “They’re coming,” Asher said, breathing heavily, his eyes glowing green as he looked past the veil. “More of them. More than before. And they’re coming all at once.”

  Hands were bursting through the earth, reaching gnarled fingers for the night sky. No. Not this again. We couldn’t possibly fight any more than we had already. Roland stopped screaming, but the earth carried on shaking. He clenched his bony fingers and groped at the air, croaking in his death rattle of a voice. “Return the sword, demoness. Return it.”

  She would return it all right, whether or not she wanted to. I’d had enough of Leviathan’s bullshit. I was going to get it back.

  “Mason, no,” Raziel cried out.

  Too late. I’d already called on the least of my talents to materialize. Feathers sprouted from my shoulders, warm and delicate against my skin, but strong. A single, decisive beat of my wings was enough for me to leave the circle. My friends called my name, which was sweet, but we needed to end this ridiculous battle. Things had gone on long enough. I had to cut the head off the snake, perhaps even literally.

  Leviathan’s laughter rang out, as expected. Not two seconds later came the zipping, zinging sound of something sharp and powerful in flight. I turned over my shoulder, heart pounding triple time as I caught the whitish gleam of Durandal’s blade. I was barely outflying the thing, and one false move meant I’d end up skewered like a spit roast. So I turned my attention to Leviathan instead, her still-skinless body, her goggling eyes. I flapped my wings and flew directly towards her.

  It was a gambit, for sure. It was stupid, foolhardy, risky – very me, in short. I roared a battlecry into the wind, rushing head-on to meet her. Leviathan laughed, the ruin of her face twisted in cruel mockery, but when I was only feet away, the laughter turned into confusion, then anger. I stretched my arms out in front of me, my arms poised as if to grab at her throat. Leviathan bared her teeth, then her talons, ready to shred me when we met in mortal combat.

  We never did. With the last of the essence left sloshing around in my gas tank, I focused on the palms of my hands, the tips of my fingers, and unleashed a concentrated blast of divine radiance. Leviathan screamed.

  I missed her neck by several inches. Decapitation would have been nice, but I settled for the happy accident: a round hole blown straight through her torso.

  That worked. I didn’t have to turn my head to know that her command over Durandal had faltered. A short distance behind me, I heard the sword fall and clatter as it struck a cobblestoned path. Finally.

  But I hadn’t accounted for the speed of my flight. I tumbled and rolled painfully into the dirt, a tangle of limbs and wings, basically eating shit, in skating terms. I had the wind and the last of my angelic essence all knocked out of me. Very bad landing. I groaned as I pushed myself off the ground, staggering to my feet. Leviathan was standing between me and Durandal. She was clutching at her torso, trying to put things back together, back inside of her. All I had to do was land the killing blow.

  Samyaza had the same idea. Like father, like son.

  He broke into a sprint, making a dive for Durandal, and smoothly springing off his feet as he brought the sword swinging in a horizontal slash. Samyaza roared, the air whistled. He had better aim than I did. Durandal cleaved through Leviathan’s neck in a single, hacking slice. Hell yeah. Father and son demon-punching duo, each sold separately.

  It was a chain reaction. The earth stopped trembling before Leviathan’s head even hit the ground. Her body disassembled into a pile of sludge and flesh, collapsing into the familiar ooze that demons regressed to when defeated. I knew there was no getting up from this one as I watched the pinkish slime slip and dribble into cracks in the pavement. She’d need to retreat all the way back to her prime hell to reform her corporeal body.

  All the revenants that had threatened to break through the earth had retreated, leaving no trace in the grass where their hands had lingered before. Samyaza slashed Durandal once more, flicking away the demon blood on its blade before giving it a cursory wipe in the grass. I jogged up to him as he strode over to Roland, handling the sword carefully by the blade as he offered it to the paladin.

  Roland bowed his head as he accepted. “You slew a demoness with my sword. It is an honor to wield a blade that has cleaved the head of a demon prince. You, Grigori and nephilim, have proven these old bones and this old brain wrong. Perhaps the world has changed. Perhaps.”

  Durandal’s light glimmered, then faded as Roland returned it to its scabbard. The clouds lifted, and under the light of the moon Roland, in all his armor, astride his steed, looked very much the part of an ancient knight. Terribly misguided, maybe, in his initial dislike for me and my kind. Like Samyaza said himself, things were never, ever quite so black and white.

  When Roland smiled, this time it was with an eerie, quiet tranquility, like he had accomplished something in his short time on the surface. He nodded at us, then raised his head to the sky. A beam of light fell from somewhere among the clouds, bathing Roland, Durandal, and Veillantif – the very stuff of legends – in a pillar of silver radiance. The light cleared again, and they were gone.

  “We did it,” Samyaza said.

  My knees buckled underneath me, and I let them, stretching my legs out in the grass and groaning. “It’s finally over.”

  I caught the whiff of cigarette smoke first, and a second later, Royce’s body materialized out of thin air, delivered by teleportation. “How nice for you,” he said, glowering. “For some of us, it’s just beginning.”

  30

  The light of arcane energy pulsed in isolated bubbles throughout Latham’s Cross as more and more of the Lorica’s staff arrived, popping into existence. From a distance, they nearly looked like very small and faint fireworks going off too close to the ground. Every mage’s power had a different signature, after all. Maharani’s was subtle, like the warping of air, or a mirage. The image of her body wavered and shimmered into physical form.

  “I did my job,” I explained to her and Royce. I waved a hand across my ragtag crew of friends and comrades. “Look, we all did. It’s over. And where the hell were you exactly, Royce? We could’ve used the Lorica’s help in this. I thought that we were going to get overrun.”

  Rani sighed. “You would not believe the amount of work we had to put into quelling the undead presence within the city itself. I suspect it wasn’t nearly as bad as the population you had to deal with, but imagine revenants running free through Central Square.” She shook her head solemnly. “All those poor people. Imagine going out for dinner and running into the walking corpse of your grandmother.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Royce said. “The point is, we, on behalf of the Lorica and the Heart, need to know that this is settled. That this is finished, once and for all. Can you tell us if it is, Mason Albrecht?”

  Something sharp was getting ready to launch itself from my tongue, but Samyaza stepped between us, his chest and his muscles puffed up. He was at least as big as Royce, but something about his presence made him stand even taller. Kind of kingly, if you ask me. I could see it, finally.

  “Yeah,” Samyaza said. “It’s over.”

  Royce narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Don’t I know you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said hurriedly, having a hell of a time shoving Samyaza out of the way since he was apparently very intent on having a staring match with what, by all appearances, was some dude in a trench coat trying to bully his kid. “We returned Durandal and Roland has returned to his eternal slumber, or whatever. It’s done. No more zombies.”

  Royce scowled. “But plenty of zombie leftovers to deal with. This is a damn nightmare.” He lifted his fingers to his temples, then barked. “Make sure every corner of this place is spotless. And once we’re done here, we’re all going to make a second pass of the city. Nobody goes home until every last zombie tooth and toenail has been scrubbed from existence.”

 

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