I didn’t wait for the flames to disperse before I burst through, looking for Sammael once more. But instead of him, I saw his army of demonic crawling toward the bottom of the hill.

“Madeleine!” I screamed, praying she would hear me. “Engage!”

Almost immediately, our army rushed forward. The demonic front line, confused as I’d hoped, halted their march. They lifted their swords, turning their offensive strike to defensive, as the angelic forces cascaded down the hill and collided with the demonic. There was a tremendous sound, almost unidentifiable. voices grunting and bodies thudding and sword strikes and dying…There was so much of everything that it was like a relentless white noise. The overwhelming numbers of demonic reapers began to pour around the edges of our center and I glimpsed a few attempting to climb the hill.

I pointed at them and called to Will, “Take care of them! Don’t let them find Cadan’s forces!”

Will nodded and took off like a shot, cutting through the overflowing demonic reapers. As the enemy force began to weaken and thin its front, I looked for Ava and Marcus, who waited with their troops, watching the battle intently.

I hopped onto a rock ledge so that I could be seen and heard by my army. “Left and right flanks, engage!”

The answering battle cries were deafening; boots thudded the earth as the remainder of my front line swept both sides of the demonic forces and closed in. Amidst the metallic shrieks of clashing swords, the guns belong to Ethan Stone’s mercenaries flashed and popped like hundreds of small fireworks. Bodies were cut down as the angelic reapers pushed and carved into the demonic troops, squeezing them tighter into one another.

With a manic grin, I turned around to signal for our sky infantry. “Cadan!” I called, letting the wind carry my cry. “Engage!”

My voice echoed into oblivion. There was no response of battle cries and rushing of soldiers. There was nothing. He didn’t come.

Oh, God. Oh my God. Where was he? Where was Cadan?

My heart pounded faster and heavier, like a train rocketing toward me. I didn’t want to believe that he’d abandoned me, betrayed me. Cadan, my friend. He told me that he loved me. I’d even…I’d even what? Had feelings for him? Loved him, maybe?

“Cadan!” I screamed. “Cadan!”

The demonic reapers I believed came to fight for me, believed could help us win this battle….

They were gone.

I was wild with fear, spinning, looking in every direction, staring up at the sky, hoping to see them diving down to engulf the enemy and finish them off.

My eyes returned to the battlefield. I could no longer see Marcus. I watched Berengar fall, crumbling to stone. Madeleine was taken down by an ursid reaper and then I lost her position. And Ava. oh, Ava. A demonic reaper opened her throat and slashed again, taking her head with the second strike. I felt my human soul wither and tears came through my eyes, running into the blood on my cheeks. I looked for Will, but I couldn’t see him. There were too many bodies struggling above more bodies on the ground.

I turned, unable to bear the sight of the carnage, and I turned right into Lilith. I took in a sharp, painful gasp.

“Oh, did someone leave you high and dry?” she asked as if speaking to a child with a skinned knee. Then she punched me right in the face, making my head snap back. “That can’t possibly help your abandonment issues, can it?”

I snarled and sliced my fiery swords toward her. She flicked a wrist and my body went soaring through the air. My back slammed into a stone wall between a row of crumbling ruins. With another wave of her hand, I zipped through space again and the front of my body hit the wall opposite the narrow path. I moaned in pain as her power smashed my body into the rock and mortar. She flung me across the road again and this time through a wall. I landed in a heap of crumbling stone, dirt, and earth crushing my body. Lilith lifted me, every part of me shrieking in agony, through the mountain of debris covering me and I didn’t realize my swords were missing until I was high in the air and frozen by her power coiling around my limbs. I thrashed as much as I could, but she held me too tightly. Then she hurled me over a rock ledge and into a pit. My body slammed into the enormous sacrificial altar so powerfully that the stone foundation erupted, leaving me in a crater of my own making and my broken wings sprawled out beneath me. It was all too much for me to even stop and notice the irony of my situation.

I was unarmed, beaten to a pulp, and abandoned by Azrael and Cadan. As I stared up into the black, starless sky, catching Lilith’s silhouette at the top of the ledge she’d thrown me from, a tear slid down my cheek.

No. I couldn’t feel defeated already. I’d come so far, through thousands of years of torment and war to get here. I couldn’t give up, but I needed help.

“Azrael,” I whispered as I slowly pushed myself off the ground, closing my fist around a handful of pebbles. Blood ran down my arm and dirt clung to my hair and clothing. “Azrael, please. I need you, Brother.”

Lightning cracked across the sky, over and over, crisscrossing each strike and never fading. The atmosphere grew heavy and low, pulsing, hammering with thunder. I stared, perplexed, as the clouds parted as if a knife were being drawn through them, carving a gash a million miles long.

And then the angels poured in through the hole in the sky.

33

THEY WERE SO BEAUTIFUL, THE ANGELS, AS THEY dropped from the sky like pearls swinging off a broken necklace, bright and gleaming and tumbling through the air. The angels descended on the demonic reapers as Cadan’s forces had been meant to do. one of them came straight toward me, shooting like a fireball. He slowed and I recognized him. His silvery wings reflected light off his armor and his dark skin was luminescent, russet eyes streaked with gold. I had to blink. He seemed a little human in his corporeal form.