We picked our way over the debris until we reached the doors at the back of the throne room.
“This way,” Gabriel said, and led us through into a hallway. A number of other doors opened off the hall, and at the end of it was a wide staircase.
Everything was silent and still. I’d expected more activity—that Azazel would be gathering troops and making plans to destroy us. But there was no noise behind all of the doors that we passed, and there was no movement in the hall.
Gabriel still had his arm slung around me, propping me up. I was so tired I could barely lift my feet. Beezle made a concession to my extreme exhaustion by letting Samiel carry him instead. The wolves scouted ahead. J.B. and Samiel brought up the rear.
Wade and Jude stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited for us to catch up. I looked up the flight, and then at Gabriel, and saw that he was thinking what I was thinking.
If we got caught on the stairs, we were dead.
“I had better carry you,” he said.
He put his arms under my shoulders and knees and held me like a baby. It was pretty much impossible to piggyback on an angel. The wings get in the way.
The wolves bounded up quickly, lightly, skipping steps. Gabriel extended his wings as far as he could and flew, carrying me with him. Behind us J.B. and Samiel followed suit.
We landed at the top and faced another long hallway with doors leading off it.
“This is just like Amarantha’s castle,” I muttered. “What does he need all these rooms for?”
“His projects,” Gabriel said. He put me down. The hallway was too narrow for him to carry me.
“What projects?” I asked.
“I was never told,” Gabriel said. “I was a thrall. But I assume that at least one of the projects was the creation of the memory-extraction technology.”
I stared at the doors, sorely tempted.
“No,” said J.B. “We don’t have time.”
“Gods know what he’s got behind there,” I pleaded. “We could destroy his research, stop him from unleashing some other horrible thing on the general population.”
“We don’t have time,” J.B. repeated. “I’d like to go home to my cat tonight.”
“I didn’t know you had a cat,” I said.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” J.B. muttered.
He was right. It seemed that whenever we talked it was always about me—the problems I had, the family politics, the monsters trying to kill me.
“I haven’t been a very good friend, have I?” I asked.
“Why do you feel compelled to have a heart-to-heart when we are in danger of losing our lives at any moment?” Beezle snapped.
“Because I’m human,” I said angrily. “And I’m trying to remember that I’m more than just some monster- killing machine.”
The wolves stopped abruptly, whining, at the end of the passage.
“Gods above and below,” I said. “What now?”
I hurried forward as quickly as I could on my unresponsive legs. Gabriel cursed softly and ran after me, catching me just as my right ankle buckled and my leg folded underneath my body.
I stared up the second flight of stairs. The wolves growled, their hackles raised.
Two creatures stood on the steps, one behind the other. Both of them were more than seven feet tall, with the raw red skin of exposed muscle, wicked-looking claws and protruding fangs.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
They were nephilim.
18
“MEAT,” THE FIRST ONE CROONED.
My mind went blank with terror. I had no magic with which to fight these creatures. And the last time I’d faced a nephilim, I’d died. I’d managed to come back, but it was a traumatizing experience nonetheless.
“Azazel loosed the nephilim?” Beezle said. “He’s totally lost it. He can’t control those monsters. No one can.”
“Meeeeeeat,” the second one said.
All of the nephilim had been locked up in the Forbidden Lands for centuries. The cages that bound them were magically enspelled so that when the nephilim touched the bars, they would be burned or shocked. The cages were just small enough that there was no place for the nephilim to go to find relief, no way to avoid the magic that bound the cage together. Essentially, the nephilim had been tortured for almost the entirety of their existence. It had made already cruel creatures even crueler, and rather single-minded.
“Meeeat,” they said together.
I pulled Lucifer’s sword from the scabbard.
“Do not even think about attempting it,” Gabriel hissed. “Let Samiel and me manage them.”
“I’m not helpless,” I said.
“You are doing an excellent impression of it,” he replied.
There was a clatter of leather and armor in the hall. I turned to see several soldier-angels filling the gap behind our party.
“Now it doesn’t matter,” I said grimly.
We were trapped at the end of the corridor with the nephilim above us and the soldiers behind us and only about ten or fifteen feet with which to maneuver. The tight quarters meant it would be difficult for Azazel’s troops to fight as well, but that wasn’t going to be much comfort when the nephilim tore our heads off.
J.B. and Samiel engaged the soldiers. Spells shot everywhere in the hallway, bouncing off walls and doorknobs.
Wade and Jude howled and bounded forward toward the nephilim. Gabriel cursed aloud and followed after them. I chased after him, alarmed. I knew that he didn’t want to throw spells that might accidentally harm the wolves, but what was he going to do without magic? Engage the nephilim in hand-to-hand combat?
The wolves reached the first nephilim. Jude leapt for the monster’s neck, jaws open. The nephilim swatted him aside with one giant hand, but Jude seemed to expect this. He went boneless and twisted in midair, landing on his paws.
Jude’s purpose had been to serve as a distraction for his alpha. Wade closed his fangs around the nephilim as the creature was absorbed with Jude. The nephilim screamed as Wade tore a giant chunk of flesh from its side.
Gabriel reached the first nephilim and blasted it in the face with white fire. The monster lashed out with its fists, blinded by the blast but not particularly hurt. Nephilim are very resilient, and every nephilim responds to the same magical spell differently. What is fatal to one can be nothing more than an itch to another.
The white fire that represented Gabriel’s nephilim magic had barely harmed this one, but Gabriel was already ducking underneath its elbows to go after the second creature.
Jude leapt into the fray again, latching onto the nephilim’s arm and clamping it between his jaws. The nephilim smashed him repeatedly against the wall to try to dislodge him, but the wolf held on.
Wade sprung into the air, slashing the monster across the face with his claws. It felt like it was intruding on the functioning of a well-oiled machine, but I figured the sooner the nephilim were brought down, the better.
“Wade!” I shouted.
The alpha seemed to understand immediately. He squeezed between the nephilim’s leg and the wall and moved on to help Gabriel. Jude released the creature’s arm as I raised the sword high and plunged it into the nephilim’s chest.
The monster screamed. Then, rather horribly, he just kind of…disintegrated. Blood and bone and muscle seemed to melt into long sticky strands that flowed over the steps and made my boots hard to lift. Jude whined
