I threw my arms up over my face.
“Tough?” Dad said.
Tears soaked into my t-shirt sleeves. I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but I was sucking in huge, shuddering breaths that hurt my chest and stomach. I wished I could curl up and hide. I wished I could disappear. I wished I’d died fourteen years ago, back when I was still young and good.
Dad touched my elbow. “Tough.”
If I could’ve talked, I would’ve told him how sorry I was. For not trying harder. For not being a better man. For fucking up everything I touched.
“Go ahead, love,” Mom said. “I’ve got him.”
Dad squeezed my arm once, then he was gone. His footsteps ran off to my left. A coyote barked. Dad whooped back.
Mom was still there. I could feel her watching me.
Swords clashed, guns shot, human and inhuman voices screamed. Pain and death and anger all wound together like the endless hook for a song of war. Any minute now the bass riff would come rolling in like a tank and the distorted lead guitar would scream in agony.
“Get them out of the sky!” Clarion yelled, his voice turning into a growl by the end.
“Too fast!” a crow crawked from overhead. “Too fast!”
Tongue-clicking. Then Ryder hollering, “Fuck yeah! Nice one, Sunshine!”
“Are you all right?” Colt yelled.
“Fine,” Tiffani said. “Behind you!”
“Tough.” Mom took ahold of my wrists.
I wrapped my arms tighter, sure she was going to try to pry them open.
“Tough?” Mom said, drawing out my name like she used to when she woke me up to get ready for school. “Wakey, wakey. Open those beautiful Whitney blue-greens.”
By then I was hiccupping from bawling so hard. All she had to do was put a little pressure on my arms and they would’ve slid right off my face.
She let go.
I let my arms fall and opened my eyes.
“There’s my baby boy,” Mom whispered.
She was smiling at me.
Colt
Dad, Ryder, Sissy, and Tiff fanned out through the battle in front of me, cutting paths to the perimeter.
One alpha started to fly away, but Sissy took a running jump off a twisted chunk of metal that used to be a Hummer and chopped off his right wing. He veered to the side and hit the ground in an unbalanced hop like an injured bird. I sprinted after him and sliced open his side. The Gatekeepers grabbed him before he even realized he’d been cut.
Ryder clicked off to my three. A hamstrung foot soldier. She saw me coming.
“No!” She threw down her rifle, dropped to her knees, and held up her hands. “No, please! Please don’t!”
It was too late to beg. I was the executioner, not the judge.
I brought the sword down on her shoulder. The blow cut to the bone. The foot soldier screeched and scrambled in the dirt, trying to get away. The Gatekeepers descended. A second later, she was gone.
“Dad, your six!” Sissy called.
I spun around just in time to see another foot soldier flying away, carrying a coyote by its broken leg. The coyote yelped and tried to bite, but he couldn’t pull himself up.
Dad was out of reach. He took a second to consider it, then launched his sword in a straight-arm throw at the foot soldier’s back. It stuck in the base of the foot soldier’s skull, severing his spine, and dropping him like a rock.
“Hot damn, what a shot!” Ryder yelled. He couldn’t help it.
“Ryder, that’s enough.” But Dad was smiling.
I got to the paralyzed foot soldier a few steps ahead of Dad, stabbed it, then pulled his sword out of the soldier’s neck. I flipped it around and handed it to him hilt-first.
“Thanks,” Dad said.
“It really was a good shot,” I said.
Dad smiled again. You can’t imagine how good it is to see your dad smile when all your earthly memories of him are either worried, stressed, or out of his mind with grief.
The heavens exploded.
I hit my knees and opened my mouth out of habit. Beside me, Dad had done the same. The concussion hit the ground, then spread out in a wave of dust and ash. All around us, mortal combatants were knocked to the ground. Fallen angels who’d been thrown out of the air touched down, then pushed off again, beating their wings as hard as possible to get out of reach before one of us could get to them.
A scream like a hawk about to strike cut through the air, rattling the molecules and setting off cracks of thunder. Bloody red streaks burst through the heavenly tear in the sky. On the ground, the wind kicked up, swirling around us, and picking up debris like a tornado.
My eyes locked on Kathan. He had his back turned to the battle and was watching those bloody red streaks with a wide smile on his face. The center of the streaks was growing into a core so dark that it glowed purple-black.
A body appeared inside the purple-black core. Arcs of electricity and bursts of sparks rolled around its arms and legs like a downed powerline.
The Destroyer.
“Be ready to do whatever you have to,” Dad said.
“She used to be someone else,” I said. “Grace.”
This time the name wasn’t the product of a half-corroded brain. It was right. The Destroyer was Grace.
A muscle in Dad’s jaw tightened and the lines around his eyes cut deeper. “Whatever you have to do, Colt.”
I clutched the hilt of the Sword of Judgment.
If the Destroyer wasn’t with us, she was against us.
Tough
I stared at Mom. She looked exactly like I remembered, but completely different. She didn’t just have the
