Still standing in the entryway, senses fanning out through the building like a spider’s web, he was able to trace their movements. There were six of them, spread out, investigating every apartment, probably trying to pick up the scent of the general’s stinking body.
Francis opened his eyes, and pulled his knife from inside his suit coat pocket. Squinting from behind his dark-framed glasses, he found a weak point in reality, and swiftly cut a passage that would take him to the first of the home invaders.
The first of his prey.
The angel Montagin looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment.
“We’re dead,” he whined, as he nibbled on a fingernail. “Might as well just accept our fate.”
“I’m not accepting anything,” Squire said. “What I am gonna do is what Francis asked me to.”
The angel watched him.
“You’re going to hide the body?” he asked. “What’s the use?”
Squire turned at the door. “You have a better plan, Mary? Gonna stand here and wait to be slaughtered? I don’t fucking think so.” Squire stopped, eyeing Heath and Montagin. “Are you coming or not?”
It didn’t take Heath long to make up his mind. “Your plan is better than no plan,” he said, walking as if drunk, still experiencing the effects of the Bone Master’s poisonous bullet.
Squire continued to stare at the angel. “I’m not gonna ask you twice.”
“So what, then?” Montagin asked as he strode over to join them. “We hide Aszrus’ body, and then what of us? Are you going to hide us, too?”
Squire led them down the hall to the living room where the angel general’s corpse was still waiting.
“One thing at a time, Tinkerbell.” Squire stopped in front of the dead angel’s body. “Now help me move this furniture around. I’m gonna need the biggest shadow we can make.”
Taking down an angel of the Lord was all about surprise, and capitalizing on their sheer arrogance. As far as angels were concerned, nobody was as badass as they were.
Francis begged to differ.
He stepped from the rip he’d cut in the stuff of time and space, and quietly darted for a patch of shadow in the upper corridor, just as one of the angel soldiers rounded the corner. The angel was armored, what light there was on the abandoned floor glinting off Heavenly forged metal. In one hand he held a sword, and it glowed as if just pulled from the heart of the sun.
This guy had
Francis put away his knife and drew his pistol, waiting for the angel to come closer. He stepped from the shadows, striking at the soldier of Heaven. The angel did not even have the opportunity to raise his fiery sword before Francis drove the butt of his weapon into the angel’s forehead.
Wings of chocolate brown flecked with white erupted from behind the warrior of Heaven like a parachute. Perhaps it was to startle his attacker, or maybe to provide a means of escape, but either way, it didn’t work. For Francis stuck to him like glue, hitting him again and again, until the angel crashed to the floor and remained still.
The blood was flowing freely from the fissure that Francis had put in the angel’s forehead, but at least he was still alive. How easy it would have been to slip the knife from inside his pocket and end this being’s life permanently, or fire a single shot from his gun into the unconscious soldier’s heart, or skull.
But that wasn’t what this was all about. Instead, he stifled his urge to kill, and used the knife to cut another passage to his next encounter.
Besides, he didn’t want to have to listen to Remy complain about his use of excessive force.
Montagin watched as the hobgoblin and the sorcerer moved the furniture, using what little sun was coming through the window to create a particularly large patch of shadow.
“Thanks for the help, Precious,” Squire said as he finished moving the recliner.
“You’re welcome,” Montagin responded, before realizing that the little creature was being entirely sarcastic.
He had never encountered one of these hobgoblin creatures before, and now figured it was probably because they had all been slain for their infuriating, antagonistic ways.
At least that was why he would kill one.
“Now, what should we do with this patch of shadow?” the angel asked.
“
The hobgoblin’s words were like a blow to the heart, but Montagin managed to suppress his anger at the creature’s lack of respect.
“You’re going to put him in the dark,” Montagin said, going to Aszrus’ corpse, and kneeling down beside it.
“Yeah, it’s pretty dark there on the shadow paths.”
Montagin wasn’t a particularly emotional being—most angels were not—but during his time upon Earth, he’d found that certain human characteristics had begun to rub off on him. He’d developed quite the affection for the general over the course of his service to him.
For a being that had once burned with the light of divinity, to now be stored away in darkness . . . it just seemed so incredibly sad.
“Do you want to say a few words?” Squire asked. “Y’know, before the angel apocalypse rains down on our fucking heads.”
Montagin turned his gaze from his former master.
“Just do it, you foul thing,” he said with a snarl.
“Only because you asked nice,” Squire said with a crooked grin as he cracked his knuckles.
The hobgoblin squatted at the edge of the shadow, reaching out and allowing just the tips of his fingers to brush against the floor where the darkness lay.
“That should do it,” he said, tilting his head to the side like an artist admiring his canvas. Then he turned to the angel. “Help me drag him over.”
“No,” Montagin said. “I’ll do it myself.”
The angel placed his arms beneath the body of General Aszrus, and lifted the corpse with ease. At the edge of the shadow, he stopped and peered down into the darkness. It reminded him of a pool of oil.
“What should I do now?”
“Lower him down,” Squire explained. “This particular passage looks as though . . .”
The shadow exploded upward in a geyser of liquid black. Montagin recoiled. Stumbling back, he lost his balance and fell to the floor with the stinking body of the angel general atop him.
“What is this?” he managed, rolling the body aside to see a giant tentacle, its underside covered in what looked to be hungry mouths, waving in the apartment air before them like a cobra waiting to strike.
“I hate when that happens,” Squire said, watching the monstrosity.
The tentacle lashed out, its movement a blur as the muscular appendage wrapped around one of Aszrus’ legs, dragging the corpse toward it.
It was bad enough that the general was going to be put into the darkness
The fiery sword cut a crackling swath through the air not far from Francis’ face.
“Fuck,” the former Guardian growled as he leapt back from the blade’s path. He hadn’t hit this particular soldier of Heaven hard enough.
