defended her. There were others protecting her as well, Fallen whose names I didn’t know. I saw Raziel by the door then, cutting down the horde as they poured into the building, wielding a sword of biblical proportions. The noise was deafening: the screams of the dying, the clash of metal, the unearthly howls of the Nephilim as they set upon their prey.
A blade slashed, and I felt blood and bile spray me, hot and stinking of death. The Nephilim were everywhere, and I watched in horror as the madness surrounded me.
Something grabbed my ankle and I screamed, looking down to see one of the women lying on the stairs, grasping at me for help. Poor thing, she was well past help of any kind, but I sank down, pulling her ravaged body into my arms, trying to stanch the endless flow of blood. “You’ll be all right,” I murmured, rocking her, trying to hold her broken body together. She was going to die, but at least I could comfort her. “They’re going to stop them. Just hold on.”
To my amazement, the woman reached up and touched my face with one bloody hand, and she smiled at me, peace in her fading eyes. A moment later, she was dead. Blessedly so, given the horror of her wounds. I let the woman go, setting her down gently on the stairs, and looked up.
I could try to run. Back up the endless, blood-soaked flights of stairs, through the torn pieces of what had once been living flesh. Or I could face the bastards.
One of the Fallen lay across the bottom of the stairs, his torso ripped almost in half. One arm was gone, but the other still held a sword, fighting to the end.
I stepped down and took the sword in my shaking hand, then turned to look for Raziel.
One of the Nephilim must have spied me on the stairs. It turned away from the men defending Sarah, advancing on me with its hideous disjointed shuffle.
It was too late to run, even if I wanted to. The thing had seen me, caught my scent; and when one of the Fallen attacked it, the creature simply tossed him away, and the body flew across the room, landing on a table that collapsed beneath him.
I wanted to scream for Raziel, but I kept my mouth shut, gripping the sword tightly in my hand. If I was going to die, then I was going to die fighting, and I wouldn’t distract Raziel from his defense of the portal. Maybe death wouldn’t hurt, I thought, still backing up, the screams of the dying belying my vain hope. It hadn’t hurt the first time. It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be here, I’d been drawn down here, and if I was going to be torn apart, then so be it.
The Nephilim rose up over me, so close I could see the maggots living in its skin, and the smell of blood and death was enough to make me gag. If I was lucky, it would rip off my head—it would be quick, rather than having my stomach and intestines clawed out—and I wondered if I could get away, run far enough up the stairs to jump, as I’d promised Raziel. Maybe that was what I was supposed to do, land on a Nephilim or two and crush them.
The creature had a hideous open hole for a mouth, and the double sets of teeth were jagged, sharklike, made for tearing flesh, and I wasn’t going to scream, I wasn’t, even when it reached me. Its hands were deformed, more like pincers, razored and bloody, and I slashed at it, blindly, severing one of them. It didn’t react, coming closer, and its remaining claw made a horrible clacking sound. I clutched the sword, prepared to fight to the death.
And then the hideous head disappeared, simply vanished, and I stared in shock. The monster collapsed in a welter of bones in front of me, and Raziel stood behind it, a bloody sword in his hand, the sword he’d used to decapitate the creature.
I almost didn’t recognize him. He was covered with blood, his eyes dark and glazed, and I half-expected him to yell at me. But he simply turned around, keeping his station at the foot of the stairs, protecting me as Azazel protected Sarah.
Some of the Nephilim carried swords, knives, spears—primitive weapons. Others simply relied on their claws and teeth and superhuman strength.
They fell beneath the fierce onslaught of the Fallen, making no sound as they went. Their howls had been screams of hunger, and that had been assuaged by the torn bodies that littered the hall. They died in silence.
We were going to survive, I realized with sudden shock. I’d come downstairs prepared to die, certain I was going to, and now everything had shifted.
Only one Nephilim was left standing, a thick pole in his claws, out of reach of Azazel’s blazing sword, and I felt the pull of Sarah’s gaze from across the carnage.
I turned to look, and Sarah gave me a sweet, loving smile—almost a benediction —a second before the heavy pole pierced her chest, slamming her against the wooden door behind her and impaling her there.
I heard Azazel’s scream from a distance. I scrambled past Raziel as if he didn’t exist, climbing over corpses and twitching victims, pushing past Azazel himself to reach Sarah’s side.
Someone had wrenched the pole free, and Sarah slid to the floor, her eyes glazing as I caught her, lowering her carefully. That sweet smile still clung to her mouth, even though her blue eyes were filled with tears. “I’m . . . so glad . . . you’re here,” she managed to gasp. “You’ll help . . . Raziel.”
There was nothing around to use for a bandage, so I simply mashed together an armful of my full skirts and held it against Sarah’s ruined chest. “It’s going to be all right,” I said desperately, refusing to admit it wasn’t. “Hold on.”
I’d said the same thing to the girl on the stairs, the girl who’d died in my arms. Just as Sarah was going to.
“Try to help Azazel,” Sarah whispered, trying to gather her ebbing strength. “He’s going to be in trouble. Raziel can help him. You can help Raziel.
Promise.”
“I will,” I said helplessly. “But you’re not going to die.”
“Yes, I am,” she whispered. “I’ve known it for quite a while. You must . . . stop the one who betrayed us. You must . . .” Her voice faded, but her eyes sharpened, grew warm with love.
Someone picked me up and forcibly hauled me away from Sarah—Azazel, who handed me off to Raziel and sank down beside his wife. When I resisted, just for a moment, Raziel simply used force, putting an arm around my waist and carrying me out of the building, which was knee-deep in bodies and blood.
He dumped me on the beach, not even bothering to tell me to stay put. “I’m going to seal the wall,” he said. “Azazel and Sarah need to be alone to say good-bye.”
I sank down in the grass just above the sand and put my face in my arms. The tall, oddly shaped bodies of the Nephilim littered the beach, and the smell in the night air was thick and poisonous. I tried to muffle the stench, but all I could smell was Sarah’s blood that had soaked into my dress. Her life’s blood, draining away.
My own blood as well. I hadn’t even realized that I’d been hurt. There was a rip down my arm, a shallow slice from shoulder to wrist, made by a talon of that hideous creature. It had begun to throb, and I ought to find something to stanch the flow. I could use my skirt, already soaked with Sarah’s blood, but I didn’t touch it. There was already too much blood everywhere.
I looked around me, dazed, when I saw Tamlel lying at the edge of the water. He must have staggered down there and then collapsed.
I managed to pull myself to my feet, picking my way carefully through the carnage toward him. He was lying facedown in the surf, and his body had been scored by the claws of the Nephilim. I remembered how they’d taken Raziel into the ocean to heal him. Perhaps Tamlel had sought the same healing power.
“Help . . . me . . .” he gasped. I knelt beside him. “Do you need to go into the water?” He was already soaking wet, and still he was dying.
He managed to shake his head. “I need . . . my wife is dead. She was one of the first. I need Sarah.”
I froze. “Let me get some bandages. Is there a doctor here? Your wounds will heal.”
He shook his head again. “Lost too much blood. Need the Source. Find . . .”
I couldn’t tell him. There must be some other answer, some other way to help him, but he wasn’t listening. “I’ll go find her,” I said simply, rising. The water couldn’t hurt, and there must be someone back on the littered battlefield that had once been the grand hallway, someone who could help.
By then the moans of the dying had faded into background noise. I moved like an automaton, past tears, past grief, past horror. I’d made it to the open door when someone grabbed my skirt, pulling at me, and I stared down at another of the Fallen, one whose name I didn’t even know.
“Help me,” he choked.
“I’ll try to find someone,” I said patiently, looking back toward Tamlel where he lay in the surf.
“No.” His grip was strong on my dress. “Save me.”
My heart was breaking for him, for them all. “There’s nothing I can do,” I cried. “I can’t help you.”
Still he clung to me, and without thinking I sank to my knees beside him, feeling the tears start in my eyes, and I dashed them away angrily. Tears wouldn’t help. Tamlel was so close to death nothing would help him. This one was almost as bad, and all I could do was hold him, as I’d held the woman on the stairs, until he was gone.
He closed his eyes, all color draining from his face as he began to shudder, and I brushed his hair away from his bruised, bloody face. The blood from my arm, my own blood, smeared his lips, and I quickly tried to wipe it away; his eyes flew open, and he somehow managed to catch my wrist with sudden, unexpected strength, twisting it painfully as he tried to bring it to his mouth.
“It won’t help,” I started to say. It had to be the blood of his bonded mate or the Source, and Sarah was dead or dying. And then I stopped fighting. If he thought it would help, if it eased his passing, then I wouldn’t deny him. I let him bring my torn flesh to his mouth, felt his mouth clamp onto me; and I pulled him into my lap, holding him as he drank from me.
Slowly the shudders stopped, and he lay very still. The fierce sucking on my flesh stopped, his hold loosened, and my arm fell away, free. He was dead, I thought, brushing the
