“Awesome.”
We talked it over with Lonely and Clarion and decided it would be best to send over everybody who didn’t want a part in the war, along with one of Clarion’s packs as guard dogs.
Once that was settled and the non-fighting refugees were out of the way, you could breathe in the tattoo parlor again. About sixty-eight humans stayed to fight, including Cris and Harper. Without the guard pack or the messengers, Clare was down to fifty-one coyotes, and Lonely figured he had about nineteen crows, give or take twenty-seven, depending.
Things got kind of intense for a while in the after-midnight hours. The crows and coyotes passed out what was left of the guns and swords they’d brought with them. Talitha and another crow had found one cache of weapons out near the cabin, but it looked like Colt had set it up before Mikal enthralled him, then forgot about them—all the guns needed to be stripped, cleaned, and oiled. Since there was almost one primal to every human, the coyotes and crows all picked a buddy and went to work showing them how to operate the weapon they’d gotten stuck with.
I mostly just paced. All the guns and training in the world weren’t going to do much against fallen angels. They hadn’t earlier. And if that explosion was because of Desty being the Godkiller, then guns and training weren’t going to do anything against her, either. Even with the Sword of Judgment, if she saw us coming, she could just nuclear blast us off the Earth.
We were basically fighting twice the war Dad had fought. Not just one kind of thing you couldn’t kill, but two.
Harper was sitting with a coyote girl, learning how to load a shotgun. She kept forgetting how to open the bolt. Once it was open, Harper kept dropping the shells because her hands were shaking from all the tequila she’d drank over the last couple days.
The look on her face never changed, not even when her eyes teared up and she had to go to the bathroom for a minute. When she came back, her face was red and puffy, but she sat back down, picked up the shotgun, and opened the bolt. The coyote girl didn’t say anything, just gave Harper a handful of shells. Harper tried to load them. She dropped a few, but she managed to slide one in.
Fight and die or live and cry.
We were on the same page there.
Colt
The Gatekeepers watched me struggle toward the trap door at the entrance of the Pit. I tried to brace myself for the fight. I didn’t know how I was going to bring Tiff out while fighting them, but I was going to have to. They were the last obstacle to her eternal happiness and safety.
“The soul you hold is not sanctified,” the Gatekeepers’ leader said. “She cannot leave this place.”
I swallowed back another wave of acid vomit and shifted Tiffani in my arms. Protect her, fight them off, get her out…somehow get her out… I’d moved on shakier plans than that before.
“You’ve made it as far as our fallen brother,” the Gatekeepers’ leader said.
“Mikal?” I croaked.
“She was an infinitely stronger warrior than you, and we returned her to the deepest recesses of the Pit. We will continue to do so every time she tries to escape. How do you think you will pass us with that soul you carry?”
Please, God, help me. The prayer wavered in my mind. If I couldn’t bring Tiffani out, what would I do?
“Will you take her place?” the Gatekeepers’ leader asked.
“No,” Tiffani said.
Please, God, I’m scared. I used to pray that when I was little and I saw lights moving in the dark where there shouldn’t have been anything, and later during the war when it felt like I was so scared I would puke. Please help me, God. I’m so scared. Please help me.
“Your soul has already been ransomed,” the Gatekeepers’ leader said. “If you passed your sanctification to her, she could go to eternal rest.”
“No, Colt! You can’t—”
“The choice is his, vampire.”
“Colt, don’t do this!” Tiffani started fighting me. Every fist felt like a lead pipe to my face and neck.
I couldn’t hold her anymore. I dropped her. She shrieked in pain when she hit the floor, but I couldn’t look away from the Gatekeepers’ leader. It was watching me. Waiting for my answer.
My body shook like crazy. This time it wasn’t from the pain, it was from the fear, from the weight of what I was accepting. I’d been in Heaven. I’d felt that peace and comfort. I’d been free from pain and fear and insanity and the responsibility for the fate of the world. It’d been so perfect and so wonderful. I didn’t want to lose that, but if this was the only way to save Tiffani from an eternity of torture—
I stepped forward. “I’ll take her place. I’ll stay here instead of her. Let my sanctification pass to her. Let her go.”
The glow faded from my skin and the full weight of Hell crashed down on me. I fell to the floor on my hands and knees, screaming.
Tiffani reached for me, her hands bright with that Heavenly light, but they were immediately jerked out of my field of vision.
At the edge of my screaming, I heard Tiff yelling for me. Her voice was getting farther and farther away. Darkness crushed me.
Then light brighter than any I’d ever seen—even brighter than what I had experienced in Heaven while standing face-to-face with the Burning One—filled my vision. That light sung with the music of Heaven, forcing away the pain and agony of Hell, drowning out the wailing of tortured souls, and surrounding me like loving
