“Who is it?” I asked.

“Merodach.”

My stomach dropped. As the demonic reaper faced us and marched closer, Will’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until the leather whined. He hadn’t gotten out of the car yet, and I realized that I wasn’t sure if either of us was ready to face Merodach yet—and I was positive we weren’t ready to fight him on an insanely busy seven-lane street. There were just the two of us against him this time, and if the demonic reaper favored his odds, then he wasn’t likely to retreat again.

Will kicked the door open and stepped out onto the pavement. “Merodach! I’m going to—”

The demonic reaper vanished in a blur and Will’s back slammed into the hood of the Audi, crunching steel and pushing on the car so hard that the nose ground into the pavement and the rear tires lifted into the air with me in it. Merodach’s hand had clamped around Will’s throat as his form refocused in a burst of shadowy power that drenched his body and shoved Will harder into the hood.

“To what?” Merodach crooned. “You’re going to what, Guardian?”

It was hard to hear the reapers’ voices over the noise of evening traffic and the panicked cries of pedestrians. I fumbled with my seat belt, rattling metal and plastic, until it sprang free. I pushed open the door and Merodach looked up at me as I jumped to the ground, breaking his concentration just long enough for Will to overpower him. He grabbed Merodach’s wrist and squeezed until the demonic reaper hissed in pain and released Will’s throat. Will’s sword shimmered into existence in his hand and plunged into Merodach’s gut, spilling red. Will shoved the demonic reaper away and kicked him hard in the chest, forcing his body to peel off the sword and to stagger back. With a roar, Will lifted the enormous blade and swung it through the air, marking a shallow slice through Merodach’s clothes and skin in a flying sheet of blood.

Will poised his sword toward the demonic reaper. “Not going to run with your tail tucked between your legs again?”

“When I walk away tonight,” Merodach said, “my footsteps will paint the ground with your blood.”

Will launched himself at the vir, but Merodach’s own blade slashed across Will’s abdomen. Will doubled over, clutching his wound, and Merodach turned on me. My sword caught his, stopping it, but he spun the double blade and evaded my second sword. Merodach swept the sword toward my chest and I made a sharp intake of air, unable to raise my weapons quickly enough to stop him. I whirled out of his way, but he followed me and sliced again. Will threw an arm over my chest and knocked me out of the path of Merodach’s blade, and the silver cut deep into Will’s arm instead of mine. He hissed in pain, but he didn’t remove himself from between the demonic reaper and me.

Merodach backed off, whirling his double blade, daring us to come for him. Will charged and leaped into the air, sword striking high, but Merodach grabbed Will’s foot and swung him hard into the busy road. I screamed as Will slammed into the door of an SUV, crunching metal, and both of them spun into more traffic with a deafening crash as vehicles collided. Cars in all seven lanes fishtailed to screeching stops, some drivers exiting their vehicles to run toward the overturned cars, others staring at Merodach and me. Others screamed.

“Will!” I darted toward the carnage, but he was already climbing out of it.

Before I could see how badly injured he was, I sensed a darkness that made my stomach turn and my throat close up. I halted in my tracks and turned back to Merodach. The air behind the ancient demonic reaper took on an elastic form, disrupting paths of light from their sources as shapes took form—no, slipped through the Grim. Demonic reapers, at least two dozen of them, emerged into our world, the seam between planes pulling at their limbs like tendrils of shadows and ink. There were so many, and they kept coming. It was no wonder why Merodach seemed so cocky tonight. What a coward he was to fear fighting Will and me unless he outnumbered us several to one.

Will returned to my side and I called my swords. My angelfire flickered and flared in the darkness and I watched Merodach’s wounds close up. “Will,” I breathed. “What are we going to do?”

“Kill all of them,” he said.

I wanted to ignore the frightened people in the street with us and the cars slowing down to gawk or to help the injured escaping the wreckage. But there was no chance. People already had their phones out to call for ambulances and police, and I was suddenly more terrified of that than I was of the reapers. We’d gotten lucky in the fight against Orek in Detroit when neither of us could be identified in the grainy footage caught by onlookers. Playing dodge-cars with reapers in the middle of Southfield Road and 10 Mile wasn’t likely to put fortune on our side tonight. The authorities would arrive in minutes. We had very little time to either eliminate these reapers or relocate to a more secluded area.

The demonic vir grew closer, weaving between vehicles or hopping over them, but I wouldn’t wait. We met in a flurry of swinging swords and gnashing teeth. I cut open the throat of a reaper and kicked his body away, but another appeared at my side and I barely saw the flash of her eyes before I cracked my elbow into her jaw. She stumbled into her comrades and I slashed a sword across her chest, splitting her wide open, and she was dead before she hit the ground.

I buried my blade into the heart of another reaper and looked around wildly for Will to make sure he was okay. He had one of the vir skewered in the street, but an eighteen-wheeler roared right toward him, its airbrakes screaming. He ripped his blade free of the reaper’s body and sprang into the air. His wings burst through his shirt and beat, taking him out of the path of the truck’s grill. Its tires screeched as the trailer swung out of control and smeared several of the demonic reapers across the pavement. Will landed heavily, wings spread, and a horn blared behind him. He turned just in time to slam a hand into the car’s fender and shove his power as hard as he could, caving in steel and sending the car spinning away. Before he could recover, more reapers descended on him, blocking him from my view. A wall of vir came toward me, drawing me away from Will—separating us. As soon as I realized this, I felt Merodach’s hot breath in my ear.