Page 11 of Till Death

A Halfling’s piercing cry cut through everything else and I gasped, chest heaving as it came at me almost immediately. I lifted Bertha and sliced through a creature crawling toward me on six legs with drool trailing down from an oversized jaw. One down and abillionmore to go. This was going to be fun.

Despite my exhaustion, I hacked and I sliced. I cut and I stabbed. I did whatever I could to get through the crowds of demons and send them to their final death. As though each one of them were the ones responsible for taking Cole away from me. These were the grunts. They had no information about him, anyway.

My heart dropped to my toes with each new demon I killed.

Blood covered every inch of me. Only vaguely aware of Eli at my side—that faithful Guardian of mine—we made it to the harbor and I stopped in front of water turned crimson. A warning niggle zipped through me and I straightened. Something wasn’t right.

“Over there.” Eli used his chin to gesture toward an empty patch of street.

I glanced over to see Michael standing there with three of the other Archangels beside him.

It took work to get over to them and, when we finally did, my arms were shaking and the rest of me didn’t fare much better.

“Michael,” I called out. He turned at my approach with those blue-gray eyes inevitably finding mine although he could not see. His handsome face lifted in a warm smile. He was still as striking as the first time I’d met him, his skin glowing with a golden hue and his blond hair perfectly tousled.

“Jade. You’ve returned.”

No longer completely clean shaven, he wore a pair of slacks and no shirt. The same kind of outfit he’d been in before. He clenched a golden spear in his hand. The consummate warrior. Ready to command his army.

Only he wasn’t in charge: I was.

Fate could be such a strange bitch.

Someone must have told him what I’d done. If I didn’t have time for pleasantries then I definitely didn’t have time to feel sheepish about his scrutiny.

“Update me,” I said instead.

He turned toward the north as the other Archangels gathered closer to him. Oh yeah, outnumbered was an understatement. “Hell has broken loose in several more places throughout the city. The harbor has been hit the hardest, but Eli has been fighting in your stead. Your team is spread along the lines and so far the bulk of the fighting has remained here, in Fairport.”

I knew better than to feel even the tiniest shred of exhilaration at his statement. If the gravity of the situation hadn’t been clear before, it certainly was now, and no amount of wallowing in self-pity or regret or doubt would help us win.

Still didn’t seem quite fair.

“So we’ve managed to contain things,” I said weakly.

“Barely,” Michael corrected. “The veil has been shredded completely but it seems most of the original sin demons have been content to send their armies ahead of them. Not one has made an appearance since you defeated Wrath.”

“They’re waiting until we are too weak to fight back,” one of the female Archangels snapped back.

Tell me about it.

I liked the fire in her eyes. Under different circumstances, we might have even been friends. I appreciated her piercing glare that made me want to swallow my optimism right back down.

“There are too many of them for us to stay ahead of; Hell is overpowering us. The longer we fight, the more exhausted we become, and it is only a matter of time until we are decimated completely,” Michael finished.

“Then we become nothing but demon breeders,” the female replied.

Oh, great, I needed more nightmare fuel.

I met her gaze head-on but said nothing.

The noise around us did seem to intensify the longer we stood there talking. I whirled in time to see a demon with tar-like skin approaching only to have the nearest female Archangel slice through the beast before it had a chance to reach me. White light exploded and when I blinked again, it was gone. My pulse thundered in my ear at the close call.

Well, damn.

“I want to see Kay,” I told Michael. “Where is she?”

I had to make sure that she and Zach and Lawrence were all right. Kay was definitely stronger than she knew, and a powerful necromancer in her own right, but against the swarms of demons spilling up from Hell?

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