Page 49 of Camael
"Bullshit." She cut him off and met those ice-blue eyes. They had captured her soul, and she wasn’t about to lose him now. "Jace! We need you here." Her voice carried across the cathedral to where the healer worked on the worst cases. "Camael has a wound that needs to be healed so he can hunt his brother."
Jace materialized beside them less than a second later. "It's about damn time. I’ve been waiting for someone to talk sense into his stubborn ass."
Camael growled but stayed still as the healer's power seeped into his wound. Their gazes locked in a battle of wills that made the air crackle. Jace snorted and continued working. “Alpha males are all the same,” Jace informed Amelia. “It’s our one major flaw. We would keep going until we dropped.”
Amelia chuckled and shook her head. “It’s stupid. You will be no good to anyone if you die. You’ll leave me and everyone else unpr...” Her words trailed off as the Key blazed at her throat. Her senses expanded outward. Her hybrid magic flowed through her like eager hounds on a scent. She hadn’t realized she was actively trying to track Jeremiel until she picked up traces of his corrupted grace.
"Holy shit! I’ve got him,” she told Camael. “He’s at Old Sacred Heart." She couldn’t explain why she believed that. She had only gotten a direction. "It’s been abandoned since Katrina."
Camael's wings mantled, white feathers catching what little light remained. "You're sure about this?"
Amelia nodded. "Positive. Get the fledglings safe. I'll-"
"I know you're not planning on going without me." His frame vibrated with a protective instinct that made her want to simultaneously kiss him and kick his ass. "We do this together or not at all."
"Then get healed, and let's move." There was no room for argument in her tone. "These kids are evidence of what your brother's capable of. We can't let him keep experimenting."
His curse could've stripped paint off the walls. Jace chuckled as his hands blazed with healing power, burning out the rest of the corruption that would've killed lesser beings. "Done. Try not to get stabbed again, yeah?" Jace told Camael.
Camael inclined his head and turned to his AORs. "Move out," he barked. His wings snapped wide as he gathered Amelia close. "Rami, coordinate with the Dark Warriors. Keep these fledglings safe until we're back."
The Angels of Retribution launched skyward in perfect formation. Their wings cut through early morning sky.Amelia's arms locked around Camael's neck as they soared over the French Quarter. Below them, the streets still bore scars from earlier battles but a lot of the mess had been cleaned. The Dark Warriors were miracle workers. Amelia had no idea how good they were at what they did.
Turning those thoughts off, she tuned into her magical senses to make sure she wasn’t missing anything. From what she could tell, nothing changed, and they hit Old Sacred Heart like a wrecking crew. The AORs wings created thunder as they landed. The abandoned church loomed before them. The energy coming off of the structure made Amelia sick to her stomach.
The church's facade was a nightmare of profaned sacred space. Rotting plywood bore corrupted sigils that pulsed like open wounds. Thick vines choked the bell tower. Each tendril was twisted by dark energy. The wrongness had nothing to do with neglect. This deliberate desecration was one more item Amelia added to the list of reasons Jeremiel needed to die.
"By all the gods," Pema muttered as her power recoiled. Amelia hadn’t seen any of the angels pick up the Rowan sisters. She was grateful to have them there to help with this mess. "The corruption is in the foundations," Pema continued. “What kind of monster does this to consecrated ground?"
"The kind we put down," Malachi replied as his blade blazed to life in his hand. "Permanently."
Inside was worse. Jeremiel had turned the sanctuary into a nightmare version of a lab. Chains hung from the ceiling like perverted wind chimes. They pulsed with captured agony. Each link bore marks that spoke of torture refined to an art form. Blood was splattered across every surface, courtesy of the knives piled on a table.
"Sweet mother of fuck." Remi's wings drew tight against his back. "Those chains are made from fledgling grace."
"He harvested it." Camael's voice could've frozen hellfire. "He fucking used their essence to forge tools for his... experiments." There was no doubt about what Jeremiel had been doing in the structure.
“How did he do all of this in a few hours?” Amelia blurted as her stomach recoiled.
There were ritual circles carved into floors. The altars were covered in stains that would never wash away. They were a testament to suffering beyond imagination. Ancient grimoires lay scattered across workbenches. Their pages had been defaced. Amelia walked over and studied symbols she didn’t fully understand, but her hybrid magic did. "He was forcing light and shadow to merge. He was using fledglings as test subjects for some kind of transformation."
“I bet he was trying to create his own key,” Jo remarked, “since there was no way to get to you, Amelia."
Camael’s eyes hardened, and his sword appeared in his hand. "He was perfecting his own fall." Her archangel’s massive body vibrated with barely contained rage. "Each 'success' brought him closer to his end goal and complete corruption. He has been at this a very long time. The fledglings he took today weren’t the first. He's been conducting sick experiments here for a lot longer. The sick fuck has been kidnapping our children."
Toxic and hungry power surged through the church. Amelia went alert at the same time as Camael and his angels. Jeremiel's ‘experiments’ burst from hiding with unnatural speed. Some had multiple sets of pinions dripping shadow like acid rain. Others bore growths that pulsed with malevolent energy. Their bodies were caught between states of being as if they were fighting the process. Amelia hoped that was the case for their sake.
"That is just nasty," Jo blurted as she swiped her flaming sword through the closest minion. "These aren't fresh converts.”
Amelia shook her head. “They're as close to successful as he is ever going to get."
The fight exploded like someone had uncorked Hell's finest vintage of violence. Amelia's hands blazed with hybrid power as she launched spells to blow shit up, melt flesh, or freeze the minions in their tracks. Her hybrid magic created projectiles that cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Each of her blasts turned experiments into ash. They didn’t have the luxury of trying to save them while they were actively trying to kill them.
"On your six!" Camael's warning had her spinning around. She was already gathering power. The corrupted angel coming at her died screaming as she wrapped it in bands of twilight energy that compressed until nothing remained but goo.
The Angels of Retribution carved bloody swaths through the chaos. Jo moved like death's favorite dancer. Her blade took heads while she spun between enemies. Three experiments rushed her at once. That was a big mistake. Her first strike split one from crown to groin. Ugh, Amelia nearly heaved the contents of her stomach. The second lost its head before the first half of its partner hit the ground. The third tried to flee but caught her blazing steel through its spine.
Az had her back. Centuries of fighting together was evident in how they moved. Where Jo went high, he went low. They were poetry in violence and left trails of destruction in their wake.
