Desty spread her arms out wide and opened her mouth.
“This world is evil and broken.” Desty’s—the Destroyer’s—voice was cut with high and low notes that made my brain crawl. The sounds were huge and thick and scary as hell, and they kept on playing in the air, even when she stopped talking.
Colt climbed out of the crater, holding that flaming sword.
I grabbed Mom’s wrist and almost tipped her off balance. She caught herself just in time and hauled me up.
My legs were fighting rigor mortis—one more benefit to being a stupid fucking vampire—but I forced myself to stumble into a stupid-looking run.
What’re you going to do, genius? You can’t talk. Even if you could scream, there’s no way she’d hear you over all this noise.
I kept running, trying to ignore my brain. If I didn’t do anything, Desty would destroy the world and Colt would send her to Hell.
Colt, can you still hear me? I tried to think-yell it at him. You got to wait. Please, just let me try to stop her first.
“Tough!” Sissy tried to grab me as I passed, but she wasn’t fast enough. “Tough, what are you doing?”
I shot past her, Ryder, Clarion, and a couple of Naomi’s fighters who had survived the battle. I hopped over bodies of people and NPs I had grown up with and ones I had never met before tonight.
The Destroyer’s eyes rolled over the blasted-out Dark Mansion, but it felt like she was seeing all of Halo, the whole countryside, probably everything in this whole shitty world.
“The sentence for your transgression is death,” Desty said in the Destroyer’s voice.
I skidded to a stop at the edge of the crater, and started clapping my hands and whistling, trying to get her attention.
Should’ve grabbed a gun.
Yeah, right, like a couple gunshots would matter to something like her. She probably wouldn’t even hear them.
I waved my arms over my head and jumped up and down, clapping my hands together. How was I supposed to get her attention? How could I get her to notice me?
Look at me, Desty, I begged deep down inside. Please just look this way.
She turned toward me. From that distance, I couldn’t see if her eyes even had pupils anymore—the whole things looked bloody purple-red and electric—but I felt it when they focused on me. She was looking through my skin, all the way down to the inside of my soul, to the worst parts of who I was and everything awful I’d ever done. She could see everything.
I didn’t know what else to do. I stood up on my tiptoes and stretched my arm over my head as far as I could, holding my hand out to her.
The image of her holding out her hand to Colt when he’d started to freak out popped into my head, then memory of how soft her palms had felt on my face while I was losing my shit over killing Jax. The things she’d been whispering in my ear came back with that, the lies about how everything would be okay, it was all going to be okay.
It’s not going to be okay, I thought, half wishing she could hear me, half hoping like hell that she couldn’t. I’m sorry. There’s no point to saving this shitty world. It never gets better, it only gets worse. But please don’t destroy it. I can’t stop Colt from coming after you if you do. I’ll try, but I won’t be able to and then we’ll both end up in Hell. Please.
For a long time, she just stared at me.
“You’re the reason,” she said.
That bloody purple-red halo of light around her sucked inward, then exploded off her skin.
Every fallen angel on and around the battlefield disintegrated into a cloud of black bugs that rained to the ground. None of them reformed.
I blinked my eyes, trying to get rid of the afterimages glowing in my field of vision. I was still standing—me and every other surviving human, crow, coyote, and soldier of Heaven on the battlefield that used to be my home.
About ten feet away, Desty sat on the crater’s rim of dirt and rocks with her face on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs. Naked, covered in human and angel blood, and shaking like crazy. But alive. Not in Hell and not destroying the world.
So that was something.
Colt
A burning hand clapped me on the shoulder.
“I knew you were the man for the job,” He said.
I sheathed the sword in Hell. The flames barely touched my hand.
“I’m just glad I didn’t have to fight Grace,” I said.
“Me, too,” He said. “You would’ve won.”
We watched Tough take a step toward where she was sitting curled in on herself.
“Is she going to be all right?” I asked, scratching my hand through my hair.
“She’s not one you can protect, Colt. She’s not your responsibility. Never was. She’s more like…the opposite side of your coin. Or a close relation.”
The memory of the way she had smiled at me back in the cabin flashed through my brain.
“Like a little sister,” I said.
He nodded. “Just like that.”
I took a deep breath. “So, I’m done here?”
“Forever,” He said.
I let the breath out in a rush.
At the other edge of the battlefield, Tiffani was standing alone, staring at the slice of red-orange sun coming up over the tree line.
“Go ahead,” He said. “We can talk later.”
I gave Him a smile, then picked my way back through the wreckage and corpses to Tiff.
She didn’t turn to face me, but she must’ve heard me coming.
“It’s been so long since I could look at it
