Chapter 38

~~David~~

It would have been funny if they weren’t surrounded. Demons, killing machines, armed with claws, fangs, spikes, horns, and big metal weapons, afraid of zombies? But they were afraid. David was, too. They didn’t stop coming.

“Are they here for the unmarked?” Laoko asked, drawing her four swords.

“They’ve been cropping all over, unmarked or not,” Caera said, growled under her breath, and reared back like an angry cat. “Just kill them and keeping going.”

“Easier said than done!” The bat girl ran ahead and joined the other demons at the edge of the fog, cutting remnants down as they came. It looked easy enough. Demons were strong and remnants were weak, but as Ericia cut down a half dozen remnants in only a few seconds, a half dozen more appeared. Some walked in from the fog. Some climbed up out of the ground. All of them were free, not bound to Hell like they were supposed to be.

Laoko walked forward, and with military precision cut down each remnant that grew up around her hooves. Four swords did kind of make it easy, but required a level of ambidexterity that made David gawk. Two higher swords held out for emergencies, the two lower swords cut each remnant in half with a splatter, and she pushed forward, refusing to stop.

Daoka came up beside David, grinned at him, gestured at Laoko, and promptly cut down a remnant with her axe.

“Keep your brain on the task, Dao!” Jes yelled, coming up on his other side, Caera ahead of them. She traded a quick glance with David, including an annoyed eye roll.

Acelina scoffed, but kept her thoughts to herself. She moved to the back of the group and let the Las be her protection, like a squad of knights, or dogs, scurrying around her feet and squeaking as they cut down remnants growing underneath them. As long as the remnants didn’t get out of the ground, they were easy enough to handle. The moment they did, they moved like zombies, even groaned like zombies, and put the demons on edge.

David touched the strings inside him. Ow, ow. Nope, not doing that.

This was stupid. How the fuck was he supposed to be helpful if every time he made something happen with the strings, he hurt himself? And each time he did, it wasn’t really him that was manipulating Hell. It was whatever, or whoever, was in the vibrations listening to him that did. Hell herself, maybe, he couldn’t be sure, but it definitely wasn’t him.

He stabbed a remnant in the skull and pushed forward.

“They’re only remnants,” Laoko said. “Why they walk free, I do not know. Stay on your guard and continue on.” Only remnants, but the nervous look in every demon’s eyes told another story. They didn’t like zombies, true, but they also probably hadn’t seen remnants walking free, ever.

Continue on, they did. Their speed was cut in half, though, and frustrated growls joined the remnant screams. At least it was an easy fight with no danger. No pit to pull them into this time, and plenty of demons perfectly capable of slaughtering each remnant from all sides.

The issue wasn’t safety from the remnants. The issue was time.

A quiet, long, warm sound filled the distance, and Laoko threw up a hand. The group stopped. More remnants crawled up through the ground, from underneath tilted and cracked tombstones, and the endless swarms walked in from the fog like moths chasing flame. But a new noise had joined their moans.

“Uh, what’s that?” David asked.

The demons looked at each other, as if one of them might know, but no one did. The humming sound grew louder, until familiarity tingled up David’s spine, along with ice. That was a music horn.

Chaos erupted. The fog broke apart, split open by gold rays from above. Hell shook, tombstones cracked and fell on themselves, and the ones already broken on the ground shattered as more beams cut along the ground.

“Move!” Laoko yelled. “Spread out! Hide!”

An order for her crew, not for David and the girls. But they obeyed anyway. Caera ran at David, under him, and he grabbed her back spikes as she bolted around one of the golden beams. All the girls ran in random directions at first, but all turned, found Caera, and chased after her.

Another gold beam cut through the fog, split it, and exposed the burning sky above, and the white wings glowing gold.

“Angels!” Acelina yelled. That was enough. Every demon churned into a frenzy.

Half a dozen beams of gold, each five feet wide, zigzagged along the ground, and caught demons in their wake. A brute crashed into the ground, crushed by the beam, and exploded in a violent mist a second later. A gargoyle and her vrat friend screamed rage as another beam swung wildly and struck them from above. Other demons lost limbs, the death rays following random paths and hitting random things. Stones exploded. The ground burned. And remnants shrieked as they died by the hundreds.

Angels swooped in, and the fog parted around their wings. Each flap of white feathers exposed more of the burning sky, fog churning and twisting around the endless remnants, and the holy warriors of Heaven swung swords and stabbed spears through their bodies.

“The unmarked!” one angel yelled. “I knew it! Get him!”

Oh no. Not her.

A dozen pairs of wings flapped, dispersing the nearby fog entirely, and the White Lands became clear for all to see the battle. A dozen angelic weapons got to work, mowed a path through the remnants, and cut down the demons too slow to get out of the way. Four had spears with titanic shields. Four had swords and medium shields. Four had bows and arrows.

One set an arrow on David and fired. It whipped past his head, and a snap of pain told him it’d nicked his ear. The ground flew by underneath him, and only his grip on Caera’s spikes kept him from falling off.

“The angels want the unmarked as well?” Laoko asked, and she brandished her four swords at the closest one with a sword and shield. She crouched, aimed her head forward, and growled. Unlike the other demons, shrieking like banshees or roaring like tigers, she snarled with a quiet chuckle. “Azailia will want to see him for sure.”

Of all the reactions David expected from the demons when they realized angels were here to kill him, that was definitely not it. Give him over, or use him as a human shield, sure, but double down on fighting?

Moriah didn’t even bother negotiating, and dove for the biggest target: Laoko.

The angel collided with Laoko’s swords. The sound was deafening, metal on metal, and Laoko stumbled back from the impact, while the angel continued forward against her, flapping her wings. Laoko didn’t fall, and she brought her two lower swords up in an arc the angel had no choice but to jump back to avoid.

The angel with David in his sights lined up another arrow, but a brute charged him over. A seven-foot angel in light armor, relative to his companions, while the brute was over eight feet tall, all muscle and dark skin. But the angel spun with the tackle, grabbed the arrow, and stabbed the brute in the shoulder with it. The demon roared but didn’t relent, and the two went down.

Remnants swarmed them. The zombies fell on them, pushed through the teeming mass of dead remnants around their feet, and others crawled up from the ground and got their bleeding fingers around the angel’s and demon’s limbs. They weren’t strong enough to give the angel and demon more than a moment’s delay, but that was enough for more demons to jump the angel and rip and tear.

The angel burst out from underneath four demons, set his wings alight with a gold glow, and rained arrows from above. Each arrow glowed gold, almost blinding bright, and the arrows cut through flesh before exploding with small pops on the ground.

It wasn’t going much better elsewhere. An angel with a great shield stabbed a demon in the chest with her spear. Another angel did the same with hers. The angels with swords were more aggressive, and they threw themselves at the demons, all on a charging path toward David.

A mikalim broke free of the chaos and dove for David. Her wings glowed, and she swung her sword. An arc of yellow energy shot from it, and David’s stomach flattened into his gut as Caera jumped over the shining beam.

She landed behind a broken tombstone, dashed around it, and came up behind an angel approaching Acelina. Somehow running silent, she bound off another tombstone, landed on the angel’s back, and tore into the man’s wings. A roar of pain mixed into the unending screams of the remnants, and the angel spun, only for Acelina to bring her axe down on him.

The angel was too smart for that. He brought his shield up, and stabbed forward at Caera with his sword, forcing her to back off. The man was small compared to Acelina, but he knocked her axe aside, spun, and took another swing at her. Caera stopped him, biting at his wings again.

Acelina saved. Mission successful. The angel spun yet again and came for Caera, and Caera ran off, bouncing off broken tombstones and weaving circles in the chaos. All David could do was hold on and ignore the chaffing against his thighs.

He squeezed her back spikes as hard as he could.

“We have to get out of here!”

“I know, but we can’t do that if Laoko’s demons are dead! The angels will run us down!”

Fuck. Fuck fuck! How’d the angels even find them?

This was David’s fault. Fighting the rider and causing insane amounts of damage, probably visible to angels scanning the fog. Then the remnants now, screaming as a thousand-man choir, drew the already nearby angels.

If they survived this, David couldn’t use his powers again, not like before, not if they wanted to survive. But surviving the moment was a little more important.

He struck the strings inside him, and bit down a scream. It was like sticking his real fingers into a fire, and the searing pain shot out through his limbs. Attempts to focus backfired, and he clenched his eyes shut as he squeezed on Caera’s spikes.

He did it again. Again, the pain hit him. He hit the strings again, and the pain wracked his body. Like playing the guitar when the fingertips were literally worn down to the bone, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t play them loudly, but he could play them.

Two of the angels with bows broke free of the fight, aimed their bows at David, and fired. He summoned a wall. No voice within the ocean of vibration heard him this time. He didn’t even reach the ocean this time. He might as well have been a stone skipping on the surface of a small lake. But there were ripples in the water, and that was enough for something small.

A tombstone shot up from the ground, smaller than the others, thinner, but it was enough. The two arrows collided with the white stone, and shattered it with small explosions of gold. More arrows followed, and David summoned another tombstone. Making the strings vibrate enough to affect the world under his own strength meant he had to play hard every single pluck, every single pick.

It didn’t matter how much it hurt. Twelve angels were slaughtering remnants and demons alike, and the only angel that was having any trouble was Moriah with Laoko. And Laoko was on the defensive. The ten-foot-tall bolstara tetrad hopped back, hooves sliding over white stone as she swung her four blades down at the angel rapid fire, only for the angel to block each one of them. Moriah was faster. Moriah was stronger. She screamed up at the demon, and used her white wings to drive herself forward, each flap pushing her up into Laoko’s close range, and forcing the demon back more.

There weren’t many demons left. Mikalim tore through them as if they didn’t exist, swords slicing through flesh and claws with no trouble. Their swords didn’t cut through demon armor, but whenever a mikalim’s sword bounced off meera metal, it glowed gold, and their next cut had no trouble dismembering every demon in their path, armor or no armor.

The demons threw themselves at the angels, but this was no battle. David and the others pulled back from the fight as best they could, collapsing on the same position with some big tombstones between them and most of the carnage, but the fight was almost over. All the demons were dead or dying.

No, Ericia was still alive, Laoko’s bat girl, and she threw herself at Moriah’s back.

In a single blink, Moriah turned and cut her in half. The little bat woman split apart, head to crotch, and her blood coated the angel’s wings.

“No!” Laoko shrieked at the angel and brought all four swords down, but the drenched angel was unphased. She blocked and pushed herself back into close range, and again forced the much bigger woman back into the defensive.

And the other angels closed in. They took their time, spears pointed at Laoko, but several pointed David’s way as well, and the three free mikalim flew up, over, and behind David and the group in seconds. Trapped. Acelina and Jes turned and snarled at the angels, but just the presence of Heaven’s warriors was enough to force them back until David and the girls were all grouped up. The Las hissed and snarled, but stayed behind the spread wings of Jes and Acelina, axes and swords aimed at the angels. They were trembling.

David played the song as hard as he could. It was barely enough to summon a couple tombstones around the group.

“Don’t ... make me kill you,” he said, glaring at the angels.

They raised their swords, took a step toward the pitiful barrier, and stopped. They looked behind them. The remnants stopped screaming long enough to glance the same way. A quiet clink in the distance filled the sudden silence, and most of the angels spun and faced the sound.

Something bronze slowly trotted in from the edge of the cleared fog, tinted with lines of gold and slabs of red. First the goort’s armored face, and then the rider on its back.

A silent gong rang through the fight. The angels froze. The remnants didn’t, but the angels cut them down with less effort than a scythe to a wheat field. Everyone stared at the man on the armored goort as he came into view, and the angels lowered their wings. The clink of his armor hitting armor from the gentle trot of his horse was inaudible once the remnants began screaming again, but David swore he could hear it. Clink. Clink.

Remnants, trying to kill everyone. Angels, trying to kill David. The rider, trying to kill David. Would this ever end?

“The rider!” he yelled. He almost said something, like ‘run’ or ‘get away’. He clenched his teeth, and said nothing.

Moriah snapped her glare at him, pointed her sword at him, and unleashed a death scream. Whatever she wanted to say disappeared under a grunt as Laoko threw herself at the angel, and Moriah jumped back, blocking four swords with the shining metal of her shield. The battlefield erupted into the sounds of combat again.

“Stop the rider!” Moriah screamed, and back on the offensive, forced Laoko back. “He’s here to help the unmarked! Kill him!”

The four rapholem disengaged from nearby remnants, and dropped themselves directly in front of the rider, between him and the rest of the battle. They aimed their spears at him, and their shields glowed gold.

“Begone,” an angel said, and the four slammed the base of their giant shields against the stony ground in unison.

The rider paused, goort and his skull helmet pointed directly at David. He didn’t look left. He didn’t look right. He slowly unsheathed his axes, and the goort trotted forward without so much as a nudge from the man in armor.

All the rider had to do was say he was here to kill David. All he had to do was open his mouth, communicate, and David was absolutely fucked. But people in Hell didn’t like explaining themselves. The rider trotted forward, and to anyone watching, it looked like he was riding toward the four angels and their shields and spears, not toward David.

The angels slammed their shields down again, the giant slabs of metal pointed straight at the man on his goort, and a gold wall erupted in front of their spears, reaching far to the sides and high above, but see-through enough David could see past them to the rider. The rider was smaller than the angels, with armor just as bulky as the rapholem, armor that made the other two types of angels look like they wore silk. But the rider didn’t slow for a moment. He trotted forward up to the spears, stepped off his horse, and aimed an axe.

“Get out of my way,” he said. The dullness of his perfectly normal voice drowned the battle in sheer indifference. He didn’t care.

“I said begone, ancient creature. You are not—”

The rider brought his axes down on the gold wall, and it shattered. Again, the battlefield went silent, even the remnants going still as an enormous crack shot across the barrier. It exploded and unleashed a sound like a gunshot as gold shards flew in all directions. The four rapholem fell back, wings flapping and failing to keep their heavy bodies from colliding with the ground.

The rider walked forward.

The mikalim, save Moriah, abandoned their post around David and joined the rapholem. All seven were back on their feet in a moment, as if a single man hadn’t just trivialized their special powers. They dashed back and put distance between them and the rider, and David sucked in a breath. If the angels didn’t attack the rider, they might—

The four gabriem, flying above, unleashed their arrows upon the rider, and each struck home. Loud echoes of metal on metal preceded small explosions of gold, each strong enough to give the rider a moment’s pause. He didn’t fall over. He didn’t stop walking.

The rapholem again put themselves in the rider’s way, and stabbed at him, but the result was predictable. One spear collided with his arm and slid to the side. He knocked the three others aside with his axes. But over the four rapholem, the three mikalim dove, swords pointed forward.

Why were they so willing to fight the rider? They didn’t even consider that maybe he wasn’t here to help David.

The rider swung his axes out and knocked all three oncoming angels to the side. They blocked his axes at the last moment, only when they realized the rider wasn’t going to bother blocking their swords, and the three went down, rolling. Sparks exploded when enchanted metal hit holy metal, burying the area in tiny embers that faded on the ground.

If the rider wanted to add anything else to his original order, he didn’t. Silence was his answer, and he charged forward. Again he brought down his axes, but the rapholem had no gold barrier this time, and his fire crashed against the metal of their shields.

His axes cut through the metal. Not in one swing, but he brought the axes down in rapid succession, putting lumberjacks to shame with the onslaught, each collision sending more sparking flames out until the battlefield looked almost like fireworks.

“You will not stop us!” a rapholem said, got back up, and charged.

The rider sidestepped their spear as if he weighed nothing, and brought an axe down on the angel’s head. Seamless. Instant. The axe half crushed, half penetrated the angel’s helmet. The rapholem died without so much as a grunt.

The mikalim and rapholem collapsed on the rider, and their battle disappeared behind white wings. But David could hear the clang of metal on shields, and the scream of angels dying.

“Caera,” Jes whispered. “Go, while they’re busy.”

David shook his head. “Those four gabriem will shoot us if we try. And even if not, the rider will just find us later. Maybe we should help.”

“They think the rider’s here to help you, David. And I get the sense they want him dead for their own reasons. Either way, it’s a great opportunity to get the fuck out of here! We have to go!”

He grit it his teeth. She wasn’t wrong. He didn’t want to kill the angels, but they were trying to stop him, kill him, and kill the girls with him. Maybe it was better this way.

Acelina cut down a few remnants and gestured out toward the fog.

“Quickly. Make up your mind,” she said.

“David?” Lasca asked. “What do?”

Fuck. Fuck fuck. He looked back to the group, to the angels surrounding the rider, and to Laoko still fighting Moriah.

He shook his head. “We can’t keep crossing Hell if everyone we run into turns into an enemy.”

“Yes we can,” Caera said. “We just stay low and—”

“It’ll backfire, eventually. We’re talking about angels, Caera. They’re hunting us, and they can fly all over Hell. We have to find a way to stop them, to get them on our side. Something!”

“You spared that bitch’s life before, David! And look what happened!”

“That ... That...”

A shriek drew their eyes. Moriah stood over the tetrad demon, sword dripping with blood, and Laoko held her side, bleeding over the white stones.

But a second scream stopped the angel. An angel scream. Moriah spun, burning ruby eyes setting on David, but the cries of her companions drew her gaze to them, and she dove into the air with a battle cry.

“Everywhere I go, the past haunts us!” She landed behind the rider, and the angels with her backed off. Three lay on the ground, and the rider’s dripping axes steamed, blood bubbling and boiling on the metal edges. “You have plagued our doorstep for too long, rider!” If rage could kill, the area would have incinerated.

She brought her glowing sword down on the rider, and the man twisted at the last moment to block it with an axe. The angels now behind stabbed with their spears, while the gabriem flew down and helped pull the injured and dead angels to safety. Moriah didn’t slow down. She screamed death at the rider and swung fast, each hit crashing against his axes. But the rider retaliated smoothly, motions perfect, direct, without a shred of emotion or hesitation, and Moriah blocked an axe and disappeared under an explosion of fiery embers.

The next axe came down harder, and smashed through her shield. It shattered, and Moriah fell on her back around disappearing shards of mirror metal. The other angels went for his back again, but he turned and swung with both axes, caught spears and swords, and the angels recoiled. He came at them instead, spinning, almost dancing, and another went down, axe to the side of their helmet. A gabriem went to help the fallen, and got an axe to the chest for her trouble. The rider’s burning weapon had no trouble piercing the breastplate and into the angel’s insides.

There wasn’t enough time for Moriah to get back up and get out of the way, and the rider came for her.

Save her? No. Don’t save her. Let her die. She was psycho and had it out for David. That’s what the girls would have said. Just let her die and probably let the other angels die. Turn and run, right now, use this opportunity to put some distance between yourself and the rider. Go. Get out of here.

Fuck.

David pointed a hand at the rider, and summoned the song. Every pluck was agony, but it didn’t matter. He had to do something, anything.

He summoned a tombstone. A single one, not big at all, but he summoned it between the rider and the downed angel. It shattered, embers scattering over the battlefield. But it was another moment Moriah could use to escape.

She didn’t. She dove through the explosion, straight into the rider, body almost fully pointed forward in a lunge. An axe collided with her wing, but she didn’t care, and as her right wing erupted in flames, she drove her sword through the visor of the rider’s helmet.

She screamed and fell to her knee as her right wing half disintegrated. Sword still lodged in the rider’s face, she stared at the body in front of her, and her wing reduced to a measly stump with some bone exposed. Only hellfire destroyed things that fast.

But she got him.

Laoko sucked in a breath, rolled onto her knees, and pushed herself to her feet. She didn’t get far. Red liquid trickled down her side, and she clutched it tight, but the blood didn’t stop. She hobbled away, looked David’s way, and froze.

They all looked at the angels. They weren’t moving. Seven stood — Moriah knelt — around the rider, and stared down at the man and the angel sword still sticking out of the slit of his helmet.

Snarling like a demon, Moriah forced herself back to her feet, yanked her sword free of the rider’s face, and stared at the blood on its tip. Holy shit, she’d killed him?

“For thousands of years, this ... beast, has preyed on one and all. How many angels have we lost to this mad dog? How many...” Her burning eyes glared down at the rider through the t-slit of her own helmet, and she slowly raised her death glare to David and the girls. “You. You thought the rider—”

David put up his hands. “The rider’s been trying to kill me for weeks!” He almost added ‘and my sister’.

The two living rapholem kept their shields and spears pointed at the rider’s corpse, but everyone else pointed their weapons at David and the girls. Moriah took another step toward David, and re-summoned her shield in a gold poof.

“You lie.”

“I’m not! You lot dropped in on us to kill me, right? And you found me probably because of all the destruction you saw nearby, right? The rider and ... and me did that. Fighting each other.”

Moriah flared her wings. Wing. She screamed in agony, aimed her glare at her burnt, half stump, half bone wing, and again pointed her sword at David.

“You caused all that damage, as I suspected. The other unmarked did the same.”

“Yes I did, to stop the rider!”

“The other unmarked killed hundreds of angels!”

“I ... what?”

Moriah came closer, and her helmet disappeared, fading away in a gentle glow of gold that didn’t match her rage at all. She had tan skin, long black hair flat and smooth, and large ruby eyes that would have been beautiful if not for the death-stare she wielded.

“The unmarked girl has killed hundreds of my kind! The girl who looks just. Like. You.”

Fuck. Well, that cat was out of the bag.

“Mia would never do that! She’s the nicest—”

“And you killed Tzipporah and ... and Shaul.” Her gaze fell the moment she said his name, but reset and stabbed daggers through David’s chest. “And you expect me to listen to a single word you have to say, unmarked? The council has decreed the unmarked must die, and you have given us plenty of reason to agree!”

“We should have run,” Jes whispered, shaking her head.

Acelina hissed. “We cannot outrun angels, not out in the open.”

“Acelina,” David said. “Can you help Laoko? If we want to get through this province, we need her help.” So far, she was the most cooperative demon they’d run into.

“What difference does it make? We’re doomed.”

“Please.”

Again she hissed. He used the p word, knowing full well she’d probably never heard it before. Sighing, she marched over to the tetrad and stood by her, though Laoko stood on her own. But at least she’d have some help if some angels went for her.

“Moriah,” David said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why my sister did what she did, but I can guarantee it was probably in self defense or to save someone’s life. She can barely hurt a fly.”

“Lies!”

One of the gabriem lowered their bow. “Yosepha—”

“Silence!” Moriah pointed her shield at the gabriem, but kept her eyes on David, not so much as glancing Acelina’s way. Laoko didn’t matter to her. “We have our orders. The unmarked must die.”

A rapholem turned, the other one still watching the rider’s corpse. They didn’t think he was dead, either.

“Galon died for these unmarked, Moriah.”

That got her. She didn’t turn, but she did flinch.

Another angel spoke up. “Yosepha and Galon—”

“Galon is dead!”

Another gabriem lowered their bow. “And whose fault is that?”

“I—”

“We came here,” the rapholem said, “on orders from the council. We joined this squadron, because you promised a swift result. But if the rider is chasing—”

All the angels spun and faced the rider as the man sat up and got back to his feet. Even dressed in armor thick enough to survive a wrecking ball, he wasn’t as big as the angels, but in that moment, he looked huge.

The angels stabbed him. Spears drove into his armor, and some slipped in between the joints to get whatever was hidden beneath. Arrows crashed against him, each unleashing little gold explosions. Moriah and her fellow mikalim dove for him, both with glowing swords, dashed between rapholem shields, and brought their weapons down.

The rider’s back erupted with wings of pure fire, sending all nearby fog away in a burst of wind. He brought his axes down, and both mikalim’s swords went down with them, both angels landing on the ground at his sides. He flapped his fire wings, and launched forward toward the rapholem. They blocked with their shields, but the rider came at them too fast, too hard, and his axes broke through the shining metal. The spears lodged in his joints didn’t slow him down.

“Get out of my way.” He ripped his axes free of their bent and broken shields, and with his fire wings, drove his weight forward and brought his axes down on their heads. Demons were fast. Angels were faster. The rider went from a slow monolith to a borderline blur, and both angels died, axes embedded halfway through their skulls. Unbelievably thick armor, split like a wood axe splitting logs.