“It would’ve been so much easier if you’d taken after your father.” She swiped her thumbs across my face, wiping away the tears, and I realized the blue-black tattoo sleeves I’d spent most of my childhood taking for granted were gone. She rested her hand against my cheek. “I wish I could’ve been there to make it easier for you, to tell you what not to do…but you wouldn’t have listened. I never did, either. People like you and me, we have to learn the hard way or not at all.”
A brain-rattling screech shattered the air. Mom looked up. Dark red streaks had started to leak through the white rip in the sky. The wind picked up, whipping Mom’s hair around her face. Ash and dust swirled around the armies of Heaven and Hell.
“Well, kiddo, I think your babymama’s back,” Mom said.
I stared at her.
“Oh, come on,” Mom said. “You think you can just have sex with anything that moves and never have an oops-baby?”
Are you serious right now?
“Don’t you look at me like that, Tough Isaiah Whitney. At least when I was self-destructing, I knew to use a condom—alive or undead.”
Holy shit. I have never wanted to talk about something less than this.
Mom sighed like she used to when I was little and driving her crazy. “Whatever. Just listen. That Destroyer up there is partly your fault. You helped make her into what she is. If she goes berserk and tries to destroy the world, you’re going to have to stop her.”
I threw my hands up. How am I supposed to do that?
“I don’t know.” Mom looked across the battlefield at something I couldn’t see. “But you’d better figure it out. If you don’t find a way to stop her, Colt will. And if he has to…” Mom glared down at me. “She’s pregnant with your baby, Tough. They’re your responsibility now. Man up and protect them.”
Colt
Grace streaked down through the sky toward Kathan.
I clutched the Sword of Judgment until the grips creaked in my fist. It didn’t matter who she used to be; if the Destroyer sided with Kathan, then she had turned on God. Grace or not, I would have to send her to Hell.
Kathan opened his arms as if to embrace her.
I got down, crouched like a sprinter waiting for the gun. She might be able to destroy the manifestation I’d been sent back to Earth in, but that didn’t matter. God could send me again. He could send me however many times it took to finish the job.
Grace sped up as she got closer to Kathan. When she hit his chest, the sound cracked across the solar system. On the horizon, a red-orange sunrise flickered and dimmed.
They shot toward the ground in the front pasture, moving so fast that jet streams of fire burned the oxygen around them.
I dug my fingers into the dust and braced myself.
Their impact threw up dirt, rocks, debris, vehicles, weapons, and bodies. The shockwave rippled through the ground, tearing up the concrete parking lot and breaking apart the burned-out foundation of the Dark Mansion. My hands and feet scratched long lines in the dust as the concussion shoved me backward.
As soon as the shockwave had passed, Dad yelled, “Colt!” But I was already in motion.
Faster than I’d ever been while I was alive, I sprinted across the ruined parking lot, hopping over debris and bodies. I could hear the Gatekeepers of Hell—their entire legion—following along behind me.
At the lip of the crater, I stopped. Grace was at the deepest point, pinning Kathan to the ground. Her arms were embedded to the elbows in his chest. He roared and shifted—from his angelic manifestation to an enormous horned beast and back again—but he couldn’t break free.
I slid down the slope and ran for them.
Inhuman squealing and screeching sounds filled the crater like sludge, slowing me down. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move any faster through the noise.
“Father of Lies,” Grace intoned, her voice carrying through his shrieking. “Lawless serpent. Corrupter of innocence. Arrogant, unrepentant, blasphemous creation. Your Judgment has come today.”
As I got closer, I raised the sword over my head. I brought the fiery blade down with every ounce of strength in this heavenly body, an all-or-nothing killing blow. Kathan shifted back into his angel form just as the strike landed. The head of his earthly manifestation rolled away.
Grace pulled her arms out of his chest.
Kathan’s headless body shifted into the beast again. Black flames roared from his nose and mouth as he bellowed.
The Gatekeepers closed in. He pawed at the scorched dirt of the crater and spun in a tight circle, trying to keep them from surrounding him, but there were too many. He fought them, goring and tossing and howling with fury.
It took every single one of them to drag him to Hell, and it was going to take every single one of them to keep him there.
Tough
When the wailing and roaring and screeching died down and the greenish-blackness of Hell finally burned away, Desty—what used to be Desty—rose up out of the scorching crater and hung in the air. She looked around, her body shooting off sparks like fireworks. That bloody purple-red light around her swelled until it took up half of what used to be the sky.
Fallen angels scattered, flying off in every direction, trying to get away. Dad, Sissy, Ryder, and Tiffani
