It hit me right inside my shattered soul, just like it had when Colt got resurrected. All I could do was put my face on the ground and cry.
“End him!” Kathan yelled over the music. “Rian, end him!”
I lifted my head. With the vamp sight, I could see Rian moving in fast-motion, ripping the Sword of Judgment out of the thin air next to his hip. He leapt over the charred bones that used to be Lonely and the cooling bodies that used to be the team I’d handpicked.
“Now!” Kathan’s voice almost cracked.
Rian’s wings blurred, giving him an extra boost of speed. He was moving so fast that his body became a smear of color cutting through the light. My eyes would only focus on one thing—the sword.
The blade whistled through the air toward my back. I tried to shove myself out of the way, but even with the vamp speed I wasn’t fast enough.
Someone jumped over me and smashed into Rian’s chest. The body and Rian rolled end over end, skidding across the ashy dirt. Rian came to a stop with one wing bent wrong under him and Colt kneeling on his stomach.
I was so excited to see him that I forgot I couldn’t yell. Colt!
Rian angled the Sword of Judgment back and rammed it into Colt’s stomach.
Nothing happened. No greenish-black wailing darkness from Hell. No change in that white heavenly music.
Colt grabbed Rian’s wrists and pulled, forcing the sword out his back until the cross-guards were flush with his stomach. He head-butted Rian. Rian’s nose flattened, shooting angel blood out both nostrils. Rian tried to kick Colt off, but Colt grabbed Rian by the face. He dug his fingers and thumb into Rian’s eyes and mouth. Rian scratched and bit. Colt dug in harder. One of Rian’s eyes popped. Colt wrenched Rian’s head to the side, snapping his neck. Rian’s arms and legs went limp.
Colt staggered to his feet, grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands, and pulled. The thing was so long that he had to work his way up the blade to get it all the way out.
“No!” Kathan shoved two of the closest foot soldiers at Colt. “Get the sword!”
One took off toward Colt. He spun around. She tried to pull up at the last second, but Colt laid her open from her shoulder to her stomach.
Greenish-black light swirled through the whiteness like smoke. The wailing of tortured souls came in waves. It wasn’t loud enough to overpower the music, but it filtered through like a radio through a truck window.
The other foot soldier wasn’t having none of that. He stumbled away from Kathan, shaking his head.
Behind Colt, Rian rolled onto his hands and knees. His eye had healed back into its socket, and his spine must have grown back together. He started to push himself up.
Colt turned around. He saw Rian getting up, raised the sword, then stabbed it down through Rian’s back, pinning that fucker to the ground.
That greenish-black smoky light intensified. They flooded out of Hell. Rian punched the sword, kicked at Colt, trying everything he could to get away from them.
Colt didn’t fight them like he had when they came for Mikal. This time, he got out of the way and let them do their job. Some of them went after the foot soldier Colt had laid open. Some went straight for Rian. They dragged him kicking and screaming into the Pit.
One of them made a weird, almost-human head motion at Colt. Colt nodded back.
Behind me, somebody giggled. All the hair down the back of my neck stood up.
“Sunshine Saves Baby Boy’s Ass: Round Five Million and Ten,” Ryder said. “Just like old times, huh, Tough?”
“Less talk, more Judgment Day.” Sissy. That was Sissy’s voice. I thought I’d forgotten what she sounded like, but the second I heard her, I remembered.
“You got it, Bossy,” Ryder said.
“That’s enough, kids.”
My chest hitched up. If Dad had used any other tone, I probably wouldn’t have realized it was him. Or maybe I would have. But I was so used to hearing him get onto us like that, that even though I hadn’t heard him in fourteen years, I knew right away.
“They’re going to try to scatter,” Dad said. “Get to the perimeter and drive them back in.”
Ryder, Sissy, and Tiffani ran past me. They were all packing swords that shined like that living, musical whiteness of Heaven concentrated into a blade.
Sissy sliced through an enforcer’s tar-covered wing, right through feather and bone, with her shining sword. Ryder hacked off a foot soldier’s leg at the calf, then arced up and peeled the meat off its arm. Tiffani ran a foot soldier through, then kicked him off her sword.
Colt came through batting clean-up with the Sword of Judgment. They—the ones in charge of dragging the Judged angels to Hell—flew along behind Colt like buzzards, waiting for him to mark their next victim.
“Disperse!” one alpha yelled.
“No, to me!” Kathan yelled, launching himself upward. “Rally to me, brothers! Attack from above! Get the Sword of Judgment!”
All around, black blurs shot up into the sky, leaving ashy-looking spiral slipstreams in the music and white light. Only one or two of the ballsiest flew toward Colt, but they all pulled up and darted away the second he turned their direction.
Something moved in my peripheral. The vamp senses were so messed up by the Destroyer blood that I hadn’t noticed the sound of footsteps closing in on me until it was too late. I tried to push myself up, but the healing still couldn’t kick in.
Shining hands grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me over onto my back. Dad was crouched down next to me, sitting on
