All the mills and refineries were vulnerable. He didn’t know which one Sij would target.

Without the wheat and maize stored in the granary, a quarter or more of the population would starve. But attacking one of the refineries would have a larger and more immediate destructive impact.

He flew north, wondering which one to check first.

A hint of something caught his eye as he flew. A black aura was gathering over one of the buildings along the old concourse, where the Moulin Rouge had been repurposed into a manufacturing district. The darkness was concentrated over the steel factory.

It was as if Sij had hung a huge arrow in the sky to attract his attention. The fiend is calling me out.

She wasn’t trying to hide from him. Good. He didn’t want to put off this fight either, but he needed to be ready. The old bitch was up to something diabolical.

His hands were tight fists as he shouldered his way inside the main doors.

A blast of heat greeted him as he stepped inside. Ash blinked, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light. This place always reminded him of Hell. Despite the lights, the room was dark. Most of the illumination came from the molten metal pouring into a clay molds. Today, they were laying out the pieces for a construction truss.

Ash winced, his retinas burning as he watched the white-hot liquid spill down just a few feet away from a worker in an asbestos-lined suit. He scanned the factory floor. Nothing looked out of place. All the refinery workers were going about their business, completely unaware that at this moment a cursed time bomb was about to go off. Whatever Sij was up to, she had stayed away from the main operation room.

“We’re closing up for today!” he shouted in a loud voice, before pulling the nearest workman aside. “Tell Christophe, the manager. I need you to wind up operations as soon as possible.”

“Is there a new Firehorse? I didn’t hear the klaxon,” the man said. Ash could hear the panic in his voice.

“This is preventative,” he assured him. “But don’t waste time. Turn this off and go home. Now.”

The man hurried to obey. He scrambled to the catwalk above the manually powered conveyer belt. Fixed to the handrail was a hand-crank attached to a siren. The workman climbed up the rail next to it, turning the handle.

A sonorous wail filled the room. On cue, all the workman began to shut down operations, pouring what was left of the hot metal into thin clay molds. Those cooled faster and could be re-melted easily.

Ash made a mental note to commend Christophe for the internal siren addition. Without it, the noise in the factory could drown out the city-wide alarm. He waited until the men finished covering the cooling metal before reaching for a pry bar from the tool shelf.

On impulse, he dipped the bar into the liquid metal, shaking off the excess into the mold.

A crawling sensation on the back of his neck signaled he wasn’t alone anymore. He began to pivot, only to feel a blow to the back of his neck. Someone had jumped on to his back.

He felt a blade rebound off his armor as he flipped the creature off his back. Sij landed on the floor, rolling on her feet with the grace of a cat. She smirked from her crouched position on the floor.

No crone that age should move like that. And how had she caught him unawares? He should have sensed her presence from a mile away.

“Where were you hiding, you demon-loving bitch?”

Sij tsked and straightened. “Do all angels have such terrible potty mouths?”

The rotten stench that came from her mouth had a hint of brimstone.

Ash’s lip curled. The thought of this creature being on such intimate terms with Kara turned his stomach. “You are a full-blooded demon. How did you hide that from me?”

Nothing about her was reading right. The crone’s nose wrinkled as she cackled, exposing a mouth full of half-rotting teeth. “Are all angels such idiots?”

She hopped up on the table, indicated her body with an all-encompassing gesture. “How quickly your kind forget that a demon can possess a human. We didn’t all choose to take our physical forms back after the Collision. There are many advantages to staying in a human host. The anonymity for one. Those mewling, clueless humans were so fun to tease.”

To tease? Ash couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You socialized with them?”

“So the fallen are the only ones who can mix it up with the meatsacks?” She sneered. “My favorite thing in the world was to join them in a bar or brasserie for drinks after I’d murdered one of their nearest and dearest. I would keep a bit of the victim’s blood in a flask, and spike my glass of wine. How I loved it when they would toast with me! It made the taste so much richer.”

Ash pictured driving the pry bar straight through her rotten mouth. It was the only thing that kept him calm enough to ask his questions. “That doesn’t explain how you could mask your true nature from me. A human possessed is like a beacon.”

An angel couldn’t see a human soul, but they could certainly see a demonic one, no matter what kind of shell it wore.

Sij was almost jiggering with glee. “True, true…unless, of course, that human is a witch.”

Merde. That was too much of a coincidence. “Let me guess…a Delavordo witch?”

“So you’re not a stupid as you look,” she said, beaming at him like he’d won a prize. “I took this old crone back before the Collision. She was a beautiful young thing back then. Fancied herself a real black witch. But she was an inexperienced pea-brain, one with untapped resources. Even she didn’t know the power she had…not until I showed her. I offered to possess her, to teach her all my secrets. She jumped at the chance, and truly enjoyed our partnership, at least up to the point she realized she wasn’t getting control of her body back. Her spirit still wanders purgatory as a wraith.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. Demons can’t possess a human for so long.”

Those poor unfortunates always died quickly. The human form simply couldn’t handle the strain.

Sij preened. “But a witch lasts so much longer if you’re careful. This body was the last in an extensive line of practitioners I burned through. Once I used her up, I was going to go out and get another, but then you angel scum labeled witches the enemy, hunting them all down. The ones your lot missed went into hiding.” She broke off to spit in his direction. “The few who remained were so much harder to find.”

This explained why she attached herself to the band of survivors. “You were going to possess Kara.”

Sij rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe his stupidity. “Kara wasn’t even born when I first came to Bastille! I was trapped here after the Collision, just like you were. If I’d been warned, I could have reclaimed my true form first. But since the powers that be did not deign to share the information with the lower ranks, I didn’t get a chance to make the necessary preparations.”

“And so you were stuck.”

She shrugged her bony shoulders. “I presented myself to Amducious, as was his due as king. He accepted my claim to serve him, and history was made. I became a great favorite of his,” she bragged.

“But you didn’t serve him openly.” If she had, he would have known her face or heard some tale of her—a demon possessing a human. There were no new cases after the Collision. Why when a demon could walk openly and at full strength in their true forms?

He’d forgotten the ones that had been here before the Collision. Never in his wildest dreams would he have guessed one would survive in their vessel for so long.

“And after I killed him, you sought out the only surviving Delavordo witch.”

“Unlike Amducious, I always knew where the family was. He had lost track of them long ago, but I had a much closer starting point from which to search. As long as one of the members lived, I didn’t worry about it. And I never told him in case the rumors were true—that they were of his blood.”

“You didn’t find confirmation of that until he was gone, and you joined Kara in the wasteland.”

“True again, winged freak,” she jeered, her claylike hands tapping a staccato beat on the wooden table. “I saw what her blood could do, and I realized I could never take her as my host.”

“What?” That wasn’t what he’d expected to hear.

Sij rolled her eyes. “Amducious wasn’t my sire, but as my liege, he earned my respect. He rewarded my service and relied on my counsel. After he was gone, I couldn’t kill or possess Kara without undoing our greatest work together.”

His stomach twisted. “The Firehorse curse.”

The bitch actually started clapping. “Finally caught up, poor boy. Yes, I helped him cast the spell. My knowledge of the craft was greater than his own. Together, we created something truly diabolical. It made Lucifer so proud.”

“No doubt,” he muttered, wishing he could smash his older brother’s face in. “What the hell did you mean about undoing the work?”

The crone was almost vibrating with excitement. “You know when I first saw you, I feared you would learn the truth and act. But now I know that either way, I will win, so I’ve decided to tell you!”

Ash felt ill. He knew what Sij was going to say. He’d always known. “Kara has to die to break the enchantment.”

Sij hooted, hugging herself to keep her bony body together against the spasms of harsh guttural laughter. “She doesn’t just have to die—she has to willingly sacrifice herself on the altar over runes drawn in demon blood. So you can see why I wanted you as far from her as possible in the beginning. I thought you would order her to do it, and to end the curse—selfless idiot she is—she would do it. And then to my shock, you fell in love with her. The whole town is talking about it. If the rumors are true, you even bedded her, sacrificing your place in Heaven for a mortal. It’s just too perfect. Now you can’t end the curse without ripping out your own heart!”

She got up on the table, throwing her arms into the air. “Kara kills herself and ends the curse, but you are doomed to an eternity without her. Or she lives… and the two of spend the rest of your lives in a Bastille that continues to topple around you. Even if I lose, I win!”

She laughed again, brown spittle flying from her foul mouth.

“What’s to stop us from continuing as we are, holding off the curse with Kara’s blood?” he asked. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but with enough preparation, they could mitigate the worst of the curse’s effects—as long as Kara never learned how to end it for real.

Sij held up a finger. “You could try that, but I don’t think the good citizens of Bastille will go along with it. You see, after a lifetime of lying, I finally discovered how powerful the truth can be. I’ve made certain interested parties privy to the secret of how to end the curse permanently.”

Putain. “The cabal learned the angel trap spell from you,” he spat.

She shrugged. “It would be more correct to say I led them to it. Too bad they screwed it up. But having failed that, the surviving council members will be good for something—telling the citizens of Bastille the truth. And I don’t think the people will thank you for sparing Kara, not after today’s destruction.”

His grip tightened on the pry bar tightened. “The curse bomb.”

“So you figured that part out on your own…” She pulled something out of her pocket. It was a bundle of leather thongs, with empty vials at the end. The blood had been poured out.

Sij swung the vials in a circle. “I’ve been planning this for a long time. I admit it was fun watching the curse do its work. Even watching Kara occasionally hold it off was fascinating in a way—it’s certainly something Amducious never planned for. But this body is decaying faster and faster, and my time is running out. Once you broke free of the council’s trap, I knew the time had come. I even sent you and Kara the message tipping you to my plan.”

His head was spinning now. “The note wasn’t from Claire?”

The crone rolled her eyes. “The child can’t even write. But Kara doesn’t know that.” She stopped to tap an imaginary watch on her wrist. “By my calculations, you have mere minutes to stop the curse bomb, but since you have to kill me, you won’t have time.”

This was too much. “You want me to kill you?”

What the hell was she thinking?

Sij bowed with a little flourish. “Of course. You kill me, and my spirit returns to Hell. One of the perks of possession.”

Was she kidding or just stupid? “If I kill you, your evil soul dies here. It’s the end of the line,” he corrected.

Sij waved that away. “Not without a true angel sword, like the one you used to kill my liege. And that one is rusting away at the bottom of the Seine. You’ll never find it.”

Unbelievable. Also wrong. “You forget I was one of Heaven’s first swordsmiths. Any sword in my hands is an angel sword.” He flicked his wrist, mouthing a quick incantation.

A network of glowing lines appeared on the pry bar just below his fist. They raced down the metal lengths, forming runes and holy sigils.

The spell polished the dull metal as it went. By the time it reached the tip, it was gleaming silver white. The end was still blunt without a hammer to hone it, but that didn’t matter.

The demon’s head drew back, and she smiled manically. “Oh, well…you can’t win them all. That’s why I planted dynamite in the basement.”

She did what?

Ash lunged for the demon, but Sij hopped over the table.

She moved faster than that body had any right to. He threw the table aside, running full speed after her, but she didn’t try to get away. Instead, she made for the crawlspace under the stairs.

He only caught a glimpse of the twisted, rotting grin on her face when she lifted a box and twisted a dial on it.

The roar of the explosion was deafening. All around him, walls began to buckle. He lost his sight, his head pounding as it reverberated with the force of the blast.

Ash squeezed his eyes shut, using his wings as a shield. He wrapped them around his torso, protecting himself from the flying rubble.

Small bits of molten metal shrapnel peppered the length of his wingspan. It stuck to his back and feathers, drying into misshapen clusters as it cooled on the spot. Swearing viciously, he pushed at the trestle crossbar that had landed on his wing, only to realize the damn thing had pierced it. He’d been pinioned.

Ash tried to tuck his wings in, but with the broken joint, he couldn’t magically meld them to his body. Swearing, he let the broken wing drag across the uneven floor, digging below the stairs to find Sij half-buried in a pile of rubble.

The bitch may have been an expert in spells, but she didn’t know dynamite or old-world construction. The explosion hadn’t been as well planned as the one by the politicians. The blast should have killed her, but the thickness of the floor had weakened its intensity.

Heaving a rock aside, he reached over and pulled the demon imp toward him.

“Just let me die,” she gurgled, black ochre blood oozing from her mouth.

“Not without my help,” he said, lifting his weapon.

It hurt like the devil. His arm muscles were screaming. Every move exacerbated the pain of the broken joint in his wing, but he didn’t stop. Using both hands, he lifted the bar, burying it in Sij’s middle with a grunt of pain and frustration.

She died without a whimper. All he heard was the snap and crack of the demon’s soul. It burned in the holy fire created by the runes on the metal.

Ash pulled out the makeshift sword, turning for the exit, but the door had been obliterated. Forced to climb and push his way out of the mess, he made for the exit, dragging his broken wing behind him.

He reached open air just in time to see a bolt of lightning streak across the sky. It was followed by three more in quick succession.

Merde. Negative ionization. Ash turned, tracking the lightning to its target.

It was all hitting the same place—Montmeurtre. The demon tower was the tallest point in the city, and despite his best efforts, the heart of Bastille. As he watched, three lightning bolts converged, striking the top of the tower all at once.

It was starting.