Or fury.
I half-saw, half-felt my way through the darkness and blood to the door. I hit it. The cell’s padding muted the thud. I took a few steps back, felt the power zing through my body, ready to unleash hell. I rammed the door. Wood cracked and the padding on the inside split across a seam.
That door was the only thing standing between me and them. The only thing between me and revenge. I wasn’t going to be stopped by some padding and wood. I was the Destroyer. I rammed it again. The Godkiller. I was the answer to the prayers of every innocent who had been destroyed before me. A door was nothing.
On my next impact, the wood caved outward. The blood flowed through the rip in the padding. I dug my fingers into the tear and jerked the canvas and sound-proofing material away from the cracked door. Then I pulled my fist back and hammered the weak spot until I could force my arm through.
Metal bands had been riveted to the outside of the door as reinforcement, but they didn’t matter now. I felt around until my hand found the padlock and latch. I jerked the padlock. The screws ripped out of the wood.
I shoved the door open with my hip and stepped out into the basement.
Movement on the stairs caught my attention. I snatched the largest splinter of door from the dirty cement floor—a club about a foot and a half long, tapering to a jagged point in my fist.
But the body on the stairs was Tempie. She was slumped over about halfway down the steps, holding her head in her hands. She looked up at me. I lowered the door-club. Blood ran from her nose, down her chin, dripping onto the step between her feet. The drops sounded like rain.
Blood swirled around us like smoke in a burning house. Blood poured from Tempie’s nose, probably coming straight from her brain. Blood dried on my legs, on my body, on my lips, reminders of the bloody gashes and bite marks I’d healed.
Tempie reached one hand out to me. It shook as if she didn’t have the strength to sustain the pose for long.
Her hand started to drop.
I lunged forward and grabbed it.
The second our fingers touched, Temperance Joann and Modesty Blaine McCormick ceased to exist as separate entities. The fury bound us together. We became one in the knowledge of our purpose.
All this time Kathan had been lying to us. He told us that by becoming his familiars, we would be given power like no human had ever known—that when he was commander of legions, he would elevate us to Destroyer—but the enthrallment was just his way of wielding the greatest weapon ever created. It was we who would have elevated Kathan to commander when we became the Destroyer, not the other way around.
We were the weapon. We were the power. We always had been. With or without Kathan, we were the Destroyer of Worlds, the Godkiller.
Angels, NPs, humans—they had done this to us. By degrees, by turns, they had systematically destroyed us. They turned our minds and our bodies against us, used us against each other and against ourselves. They enslaved us, raped us, tortured us, trapped us. They broke us until there was nothing left to break.
The whole time, God sat back and let them do it. He watched us bleed.
As the Destroyer, we knew the truth. We were created not only to destroy this world, but all worlds. Earth, Heaven, Hell. No one and nothing would survive.
Blood must be paid for with blood. Rivers of blood.
Anyone who didn’t die in the first hemorrhage was going to wish they had.
Tough
The Dark Mansion’s front lawn had turned into a siege zone. Every now and then you could see a muzzle flash, but most of the fighting outside seemed to be our people hunkered down behind the fallen angels’ vehicles and piles of debris. That firelight I’d seen was coming from a ball of flame that used to be one of the helicopters.
Once I was on my feet and the shaking had worn down to a low hum, Clare’s girlfriend handed over her rifle.
“I’ve got a backup,” she said when she saw me staring at her. She pulled a pistol-grip sawed-off shotgun out of the holster on her hip. “Here’s where we are—phase one’s inside. You just saw phase two go in. Everyone who couldn’t operate a traditional weapon is dug in out here, covering exits. No one’s seen the sword or the foot soldier you said had it yet. Unless something gives in the next five minutes, I’m calling in phase three.”
I pointed at her, then at the Dark Mansion to ask whether she was going in with the last phase.
She nodded and held up her sawed-off shotgun. “That’s why I brought my little buddy. Much better for close-up work.”
Five minutes until the last phase went in. After that, they could retreat at any second and then it was TBG Time. I needed to find a way to get to Desty and get her out right the hell now.
I looked over the hood of the Hummer. Nothing directly between me and the Dark Mansion but bodies. I tried not to see who they were, but I thought I recognized Tawny Hicks’s clothes and the black hoodie and black jeans that a kid Scout’s age had been wearing.
The mansion’s stone siding had taken a beating—scorch marks, broken tiles, scratches, and a couple lines of blue-white alcohol fire burning out. Someone threw a Molotov cocktail, but not far enough. It hit the ground a few yards from the steps. The glass exploded and blue-white fire spread out in a halo
