Hell on Earth was the best way to describe the scene in front of us. Buildings burned. Car alarms blasted across the city. People screamed. And the stench…the smell of burning bodies filled the darkened skies. Creatures flew over our heads, some of them Lucifer’s and some of them belonging to God. Wraiths darted throughout the chaos, feasting on the poor souls running for their lives.
“This is worse than I thought,” Stefan whispered beside me.
I had to agree with him, even though I knew it would be bad. The screams of terrorized humans filled the street, many of them covered in dust and ash and carrying ghosted looks on their faces.
“We have to get out of here! We have to run!” A middle-aged man grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me. “It’s the end of the world. Everything is lost. Come, come with me!” Pulling me forward as he tried to run away, I stumbled over my feet and we both fell to the ground together. My knees scraped against the pavement and when I rolled to my side, the man’s body shifted and pinned my arm to the ground.
It took me a moment to yank myself free. When I was finally able to stand, I bent forward and held out my hand to the man. “Let me help you,” I said.
Wide, terrified eyes stared back up at me. Slowly, he lifted his arm, as though trying to decipher how a woman running around in a tee shirt and thongs would be able to do anything for him. But he trusted me enough to get him to his feet…until the wraith tore through his body.
“No!” I screamed. Blood splattered across my face when the wraith darted through the man’s back and out of his chest. His lifeless body tumbled to the ground at the same time Stefan jumped on my back and pressed me into the pavement.
“Stay down,” he shouted.
A rush of air surrounded us and Stefan trembled as something sliced across his body. Mumbling against my ear, he squeezed me tighter when we were attacked again.
“We should run!” I yelled into the ground.
“The wraiths can’t kill me,” he groaned a moment before another one came after us. “They’ll figure that out soon enough—ah!”
We tumbled to the side with the force of that last attack. Stefan rolled off me and immediately jumped to his feet. Facing the oncoming shadow demon rushing toward us, Stefan lifted his arms out to the sides and screamed at the wraith. With no face or shape, it was hard to interpret what a shadow was thinking. But the moment Stefan challenged the other demon, it shot up into the air and dodged in between the skyscrapers until it was out of sight.
Stefan turned toward me and smiled. “See, I told you that—”
An angel with mostly gray wings picked him up off the ground and carried Stefan down the street and toward the water.
“Stefan!” I ran after the two, doing my best to keep up with the flying beast and trying to follow Stefan’s cursing. As they pulled further and further away, I could see my friend doing his best to fight against the angel. But when they got over the river, and something metallic in Stefan’s hand caught the light, the angel dropped Stefan.
I watched in horror as he fell several stories and disappeared underneath the black water. My demon friend was tough, and it was hard to kill us. But a fall like that could have knocked him out, and that meant he might be sinking to the bottom of the river right now. Most demons weren’t a fan of water. In fact, I knew Stefan had a healthy fear of the element and wasn’t able to swim.
I did my best to run toward him. I was only a few blocks away but a hoard of humans was coming straight at me. I wasn’t going to make it. I couldn’t get to him. I couldn’t get to Stefan and save him like he’d saved me.
Tears and frustration built behind my eyes, and the next human that slammed her shoulder into mine, ended up getting knocked into the side of the building. Someone punched me in the jaw and I stumbled forward. The movement of the crowd pushed me back, but I tried to fight against the wave. Covering my head and staying as low to the ground as I could, I waited for them to pass. It felt like hours—how many people decided to run down this particular street? But when the last of the feet had trampled over me, I was finally able to see the reason. There, burning at full force, every building in Lower Manhattan lit up the sky in a series of oranges and reds. Not a brick was spared in the destruction, and as I watched, one of the buildings crumpled to the ground.
How many humans had just lost their lives? How many more would survive this night? Creatures with dark wings circled the rubble high above and I wondered, again, why anyone would have supported this kind of destruction.
A bright light creeping out from a nearby alley caught my eyes. The screams and sounds of flames drowned out most noise, but I still thought I heard someone…praying? I ran toward the light, doing my best to ignore the cuts on my bare feet. As I rounded the corner, my heart stopped with the sight in front of me.
There, kneeling over a human sprawled on the ground, was my angel. Jericho muttered his prayers while he tried to heal the dying woman. Her arm was almost severed and her white dress shirt was now stained red where she’d sustained some kind of injury to her chest. I would have written her off as a lost cause, but not Jericho. His ability to heal might one day be the death of him. He cared so much, he’d waste energy on someone who was beyond saving. It was what made him special.
It was what made me fall in love with him.
“Jericho?” I said, not wanting to sneak up on him.
His green eyes found mine, and despite the ash covering his face, the matted hair, and the increasingly gray wings jutting from his back, the smile he gave me confirmed that we had something special between us.
“They found you,” he breathed.
Still trying to heal the woman, he let the light flow from his hands. I stepped closer and looked down at her. Young, maybe in her mid-twenties, this woman had probably just started her career. With a beautiful face and a nice suit, it was a shame to see her life taken from her now. But she had succumbed to her injuries and I feared Jericho might be unwilling to accept this.
He sat back on his heels and rubbed his hands over his face in defeat. “I tried to get as many out as I could,” he whispered. “She’d almost made it when the building started to fall.”
I bent forward and wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my head against his bare chest. “You did what you could. You aren’t going to be able to save everyone.”
“This isn’t right. This isn’t fucking right!” Slamming his fists on the ground, Jericho shouted to the sky. “Why did they do this? Why?”
I sobbed with him. The humans would never recover from this reveal. The demons and angels wouldn’t recover from this reveal. There would never be peace between the species again, not after today.
“They’ve hit every major city in the world,” Jericho finally said. “It was coordinated but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“What do you mean?” Being trapped underground for a few weeks had left me in the dark.
Jericho held me tight and kissed the top of my head. He didn’t answer my question. “I’m so glad you’re safe. I wanted to go in with them, but Mammon wouldn’t let me.” His chest bounced with a bit of laughter. “She called me a cherub and told me to get lost. Even after I’d found you.”
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah, sounds like her.” Crawling into Jericho’s lap, I wrapped my body around his. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”
“Never.”
“And I’m sorry about the woman.”
I could feel Jericho look down at her before he shuddered. “So much death,” he whispered.
We held each other close as more explosions erupted throughout the city. The end of the alley lit up with orange when the nearby buildings got caught up in the flames. But I didn’t see a single human running past anymore. I closed my eyes, knowing what that meant. I wasn’t entirely sympathetic to that species, but I did appreciate my time living among them. They had been good to me. Good enough that I spent most of my years walking up here with them. Good enough that I felt the pain in my gut when I thought about what tomorrow would be like for them. How many will survive? How many will then understand their place in the hierarchy? Knowing humans as well as I did, they would take their time to grieve…and then they would plot their revenge. Today was only the first day of the long and painful war to come.
“I was hoping it wasn’t true.”
Mammon’s scratchy voice had me jumping to my feet and facing the end of the alley where she stood with Echo by her side. He had his head lowered as though guilty of something, and from the way she glared at Jericho, I guessed Echo had figured out the extent of my relationship with the angel. And my sire wasn’t pleased.
“Mammon,” I acknowledged.
“You were supposed to kill him, not fuck him,” she growled.
I heard Jericho push to his feet and stand behind me. It was comforting to feel him at my back and it gave me the strength I needed to have this confrontation. “You shouldn’t have bargained with my life,” I said in response.
Mammon laughed and sauntered to us. “You are mine to do what I want with.”
Echo looked at me and mouthed his apology. A gas line exploded on the street behind them and the Under dropped to the ground as Mammon stood still, duster flying up around her with the force of the explosion. She looked like a badass and it reminded me that I still needed watch my attitude with the archdemon.
Jericho stepped around me and faced my sire. “You can’t believe this,” he waved his arms around to highlight the burning buildings and the body near our feet, “is a good idea. Right?”
Mammon narrowed her eyes at Jericho, focusing on his graying wings. “Don’t speak to me.”
He took one step forward, but I grabbed his shoulder. “We don’t have time to fight with each other, Mammon. What can we do to stop this destruction?” As if on cue, the distinct sound of another building falling to the ground echoed through the brick walls of the alley. A cloud of dust rushed between the narrow buildings, forcing all of us to cover our faces for a moment. Jericho wrapped me in his arms, protecting my head and holding me tight. It felt so natural for us to be together. I’d never been able to trust someone so completely as I did with him. And in this time of pure disaster, that fact helped me find the strength I needed.
When the dust cleared, I stomped over to Mammon. “You might not be the one burning this city to the ground, but you let this happen. You’ve helped destroy the life we’ve built up here.”
“Watch yourself,” Mammon warned.
“What are we supposed to do now? Our businesses are gone. Our homes are gone. The humans will never work with us again. We won’t be able to—”
Mammon shot her hand out and I flew backward to the far side of the alley and slammed into the brick building. The force of the blow knocked the breath out of me, so as I slid to the ground and saw Jericho making a move toward my sire, I couldn’t get out any words to stop him. His wings expanded and he ran toward Mammon. But just when I thought he would attack, he pushed her to the ground and shot a stream of light out behind her and directly into a wraith that had suddenly appeared in the street.
Mammon cursed when she hit the ground. Echo did his best to try and comfort her. Yet Mammon was pissed. She whipped her duster around, stood, and marched directly toward Jericho. I thought she was going to kill him—she could, after all. But instead, she flung her arms to the left and right, shattering Lucifer’s demons into pieces without ever laying a hand on them.
Echo crawled over to me and helped me off the ground. I thanked him, even though I kind of hated him for telling on me. Yet at the same time, I understood that he did what he thought was right and I had been the one to break all of the rules. “Your angel is tough,” Echo said, watching Mammon and Jericho fight off a group of demons.
“He is,” I agreed.
“I can’t believe Mammon hasn’t killed him yet.”
“I know.”
Echo squeezed my hand. “What’s going to happen to us now?”
His voice, so tiny and frail, scared me. Echo wasn’t as powerful as me or our sire, but he was a hustler. He never showed true fear or let others know when he was frightened. While he’d spent most of his years sucking Mammon’s ass, he was still a demon whose whole life had changed the instant Lucifer decided to take over the world. “We’ll figure something out,” I finally said.
And as we stood, huddled together in the alley while Mammon and Jericho fought side by side, I had no idea what the something might be.