It was a lull the Las took advantage of, and they ripped the remaining Cainites apart. They ran on all-fours and went for the calves, slashing Achilles tendons and the throats of falling souls. And the Cainites were so consumed with trying to either reach the angels flying above, get back into the cathedral to get the angel in there, or take a swing at the closest big demon, they were barely aware of the little ladies running around on the ground.
“You… killed the other unmarked?” Moriah asked, sword pointed at David, shield aimed in Caera’s general direction as the tiger prowled around in circles underneath her. “There was another?”
“You didn’t know?” David lowered his hands and turned to face the archway. “You came here and slaughtered… what, over a hundred souls, just to get me? What the fuck did I do!? Why would you–”
The rapholem — the angels in thicker armor with bigger shields, according to Caera — landed in the center of the cavern, and drove her spear directly into the head of the last Cainite. Not a battle, a slaughter, at least for the angels. All David’s girls were beat up, bleeding, panting, groaning, and clutching wounds. Jeskura landed near Dao and David, holding her side, and she half limped, half walked over to her lover.
“You okay?” Jes asked, looking at them both.
Dao clicked a few times, nodding.
“The unmarked was in there,” David said, nodding toward the archway of blackstone. “He was… a fucking sociopath narcissist, far as I can tell. Then that other angel broke in, and started killing all the Cainites, and they tried to kill him and–”
“Shaul!” Moriah flew up to the windows of the cathedral, but her armor and wings were too big. “Shaul, where are–”
A flash of gold filled the cathedral, and a pair of wings sped through the archway tunnel entrance. Something shined within.
A blur of gold, white, silver, and menacing eyes came at David. Blue eyes, glaring, shining, and cutting through the darkness as they came at him a million miles a second.
He froze. Brain stopped computing. A freight train was coming at him, bright lights at the end of the tunnel.
Someone hit him. His feet slid against the stone and stumbled over the surrounding bodies. The world turned upside down as giant white feathers covered the air, and something metal struck past him.
Daoka clicked once. Jeskura screamed.
David turned around in time to see someone with red skin standing where he’d been standing. A man with beautiful armor and a sword stood in front of her. The sword was inside her stomach.
“Death to sinners. Death to demons.”
The angel tried to swing the sword to the side so it’d cut his target nearly in half, but Jeskura jumped him, pushing him back instead. The sword slipped free and forward out of Daoka’s stomach, and a wave of blood came with it.
The satyr fell to her knees. Other people ran to her and David. Caera attacked the angel, too, and the angel roared with satisfaction as he pushed them back with his shield.
“Kill them!” the angel Shaul yelled. “The council demands their death!”
The other two angels paused, but only for a moment. They dove into the fray, and only Acelina and the Las charging forward gave them a barrier to stop them from killing Jes and Caera.
David looked at Dao. She looked at him with her eyeless gaze, smiling, only to cough up blood as she rolled onto her side and clutched the hole in her stomach.
This wasn’t happening.
“Fuck you! Fuck you!” Jes’s voice.
David couldn’t see her, his eyes locked on Dao and the liquid leaking between her fingers. He crawled closer to her, over the corpse between them, and got on his knees beside her.
“No no…” Someone’s voice came out, quivering and weak. His voice. “No no no.”
Put it in a box. Compartmentalize. Intellectualize. Don’t feel. Think. How to handle. How to fix this. Daoka had been stabbed. Daoka was dying. Hearts! He needed to give her hearts, multiple, right now.
He lifted his head up. Caera had a new stab wound in the leg, and was limping out of range of the rapholem angel. Shaul was trying to kill Jes, and only her grappling kept him from cutting her in half. Moriah couldn’t get close, not with the Las and Acelina all trying to hit her, and she stayed hovering in the air.
One of the Las came for the rapholem’s back, trying to help Caera, but the angel spun to face her and raised her spear. Lasca, the first of the Las who’d talked, bravest of her group, was trying to attack a holy warrior of Heaven, someone a hundred times stronger than any imp. She wasn’t as fast.
She was going to die.
David’s useless little mental box shattered.
He grabbed the strings inside him and plucked them so hard they felt like they’d break, like any musician did when they were livid. He hit them. He hit them as hard as he could.
The strings that flowed through him vibrated. It created something, and it wasn’t an aura.
Searing heat poured through his veins, blinded him, wiped away every thought, every stupid worthless fucking thought, and left nothing but heat in its wake. He plucked the strings inside him harder, much harder, hard enough to break, hard enough to shatter mountains.
The sound flowed through him, a deep bass that rumbled, blocked out his thoughts, blocked out everything. He pulled on the strings harder, until the sound became pure vibration that buzzed through him. It was like he’d latched onto a giant whale, and it was singing to him as it guided him through the currents. All he could do was hold on, and play the strings as loud as he could, creating no aura, but something else, a sound that echoed throughout… Hell.
Use me as thou wilt.
He pointed a finger at the rapholem.
A black spike shot up from the ground, right under the angel. It was several inches thick, barbed, and amber veins ran along its sides. It pierced up through the angel’s underside, between her legs, through her armor, and up into her torso. She didn’t get to yell, not with a giant spike up through their diaphragm. Raising her several feet into the air caused the spear she’d stabbed forward to only graze the top of Lasca’s head, and the impa squealed as she fell back on her ass, staring at the carnage before her.
Everyone stopped, and stared.
David stood up, and flicked a single finger at the angel. The barbs on the huge spike inside her that’d ripped her insides into mulch on the way in, shot outward, in all directions, for several feet. Acelina and Lasca both jumped back with a shriek as angel armor exploded outward, and blood followed. And then body parts.
The angel’s spear, shield, and broken armor all vanished in a quiet poof of useless gold.
“Tzipporah!” the flying target said.
David looked up at her, and reached for the strings inside him, but a shriek drew his attention. The killer with blue eyes had thrown Jeskura to the ground, and was about to stab her. No, he was about to chop her in half, head to crotch, like chopping wood. He hadn’t even bothered to look at his newly dead friend.
He deserved to die, in a worse way than the other angel.
David reached out, aimed his palm at the killer, and drew it upward. Another spike shot up from the ground, but it was bigger, fatter, and covered in more barbs. It ripped through the angel’s armor, same as the other one, skewering him on it like a body on a pike. But didn’t get deep enough to penetrate the diaphragm. The angel could still breathe. Still scream.
“Aah!” The angel shrieked a death cry. It joined the music flowing through everything.
David aimed his palm at the angel again, and spread his fingers wide, like opening the world. The barbs growing out of the spike didn’t explode like in the other angel. That’d be too quick. Too merciful.
The amber veins inside the spike broke, like cracking glass, and the lava within poured into the angel’s guts.
The cavern filled with the screaming, gargling sound of the angel, burning from the inside out. David didn’t want to watch, but he did. It was the music he created, and it had to be listened to. It had to be seen.
“Shaul! No!”
David looked up at the remaining angel again, and held out his hand.