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PLASTIC LIDS BOUNCED as the nurse wheeled the food containers along. The cart’s unfixed, gimpy wheel rattled despite the smooth floor, and she rescued another meal from tipping off its stack. It felt lukewarm in her hand. She sighed and wished the hospital upgraded their meal service, but food was food. Patients needed to eat. Room to room, she plastered on her practiced grin, repeated the same greeting, and left the platters. It was the same song and dance she played over fifty times a day.
She pulled the handle bar, stopping the cart’s momentum. “Okay, room 602.” She checked her clipboard, dragging a finger along the list. She picked a container from the top. “Poor thing. I hope she likes peas.” Her knuckles tapped on the doorframe. “Chloe, it’s dinnertime.” She walked in. “Chloe? Are you up?” No sooner did she pass the half pulled curtain, the nurse’s instincts kicked into high gear. She plopped the plastic container on the mini-table and hurried down the hall. “Hey, Philip! We need Dr. Boumont! Stat!”
***
The angels crammed around an old pay phone. Jediah concentrated hard and enabled his fingers to tap the metal box’s numbers.
Nechum, meanwhile, knocked the phone off the receiver and, despite being in angelic form, shoved pocket change in its slot.
Certain he wouldn’t have long to wait, Jediah began wrapping extra cloths around his palms. If he was going to protect Chloe while wingless, he needed to counteract Elazar’s force-fields. The idea Eran gave him was unorthodox. It was risky, but if a wallop of Alameth’s mist could do as much damage as they’ve just experienced, a smashed smoke pellet to Elazar’s hands might do the trick.
“You sure you got the right number, Nechum?” Jediah asked as he secured the knots.
“Yes, I’m connecting you with the desk clerk.” Nechum answered. “You sure you want to do this?”
Jediah nodded. “The phone lines are the surest and fastest way to Chloe.”
“Merging your energy with human conduits will disorient you for a while,” Nechum warned.
Jediah kept staring at the speaker where it swung. “It’s a risk worth taking. The rest of you, follow Eran and Laszio’s lead and stop Lucifer from freeing Apollyon.”
“Captain,” Laszio interjected.
Jediah expected objections such as ‘Don’t go alone’ or ‘Let us come with you’; all of which he prepared himself to dismiss.
But Laszio instead calmly placed a hand over his chest and bowed. “God be with you, brother.” As he spoke, the rest of them all did the same.
Soaking in the sight, Jediah radiated with a loving pride and smiled. He returned their bows. Then, tightening the buckle that kept his sword strapped to his back, Jediah said, “Leading you all has been an honor. Laszio? Eran?”
His wingmen raised their chins and stood at attention.
“Be strong and courageous.”
Their grey eyes alighted with swirling blues and greens and saluted. “Sir, yes, sir.”
Nechum dialed the numbers and offered Jediah the phone. “Be careful, Captain.”
It rang.
Touching the device, Jediah felt himself getting sucked into the speaker. Electrical currents smothered and stretched him thin. His head buzzed.
“Hello?” a voice boomed.
Jediah shot out of the desk clerk’s phone, and all he could do was roll around to his hands and knees. Sounds were muffled in his ears. Everything around him swayed and was bathed in blues and reds. He raised a hand to feel his way around, but his fingers were numb.
“Jack?” a distant voice called.
He looked up. Random shapes materialize. They enlarged, forming what appeared to be a disfigured face. He scrunched his eyes, urging them to correct.
“Jack, you shouldn’t be here.”
Jediah threw up a hand in defense, but missed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy. It’s me, remember?” The rest of his supposed assailant took shape.
Blinking hard, Jediah stood up as the stranger came into focus. “Y-you’re Chloe’s ministry angel. The one from before.”
The angel planted his hands on his hips. “And you’re the angel who visited Chloe as a human a few days ago. Care to explain what’s going on?”
Jediah fell forward and gripped the angel’s clothes. “Where’s Chloe? Where is she?”
“They’re taking her upstate for emergency surgery,” the angel replied.
Confused, Jediah tried looking around. Blue and red flashes intensified from the right hallway.
“Why are you here?” the angel demanded. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’ve gotta leave with her.”
Jediah clung to him harder. “Take me with you.”
“What?”
“Just do it!”
“Okay! Okay.”
The angel guided him closer to the flashes. The pulsing lights strained Jediah’s bleary eyes. They were mounted on a mammoth box with sharp-lined letters decorated on its side. By then, Jediah guessed it to be an emergency truck. Green clad workers attended to a wheeled bed and lifted it into the truck’s cargo hold. Whether from instinct or logical deduction, Jediah knew it was Chloe.
The ministry angel sprinted Jediah forward, getting them both inside before the doors locked shut.
Jediah knelt by the bedside. There laid Chloe, more pale and frail than ever. A clear, nozzled mask attached her to a box. It seemed such a device would smother her, yet he could hear her breathing. Jediah found little reason to relax, however. Her Mark of the Trinity yet remained incomplete. Still, Jediah let out a breath. She was at least alive.
“You see, brother?” the ministry angel said. “She’s fine.”
“Yes,” Jediah replied. “She will be.” He unsheathed his sword and plunged it deep into the angel’s chest. Glowing red stained the blade.
Astonishment and rage contorted the angel’s face as he coughed up more red.
“Just like God said,” Jediah said as he glared back. “Darkness can’t comprehend the light.”
Clenching his teeth, Elazar relinquished his disguise.
“You know me, demon,” Jediah admitted. “But I know you too, and I knew you couldn’t resist letting me near her just so I could watch her die.”
Elazar sneered. His shaking hand gripped the blade, never minding the razor edge. “Well? You still came, didn’t you? So let’s get this over with.” Elazar raised his other hand. Red colors raced up his arm, but Jediah smashed a grey smoke pellet into his fingers before the shield could materialize.
Elazar screamed. Acidic smoke ate his palm just as Jediah hoped it would, and the cloth he had strapped to his own palm protected his hand from similar damage.
Elazar ripped himself from Jediah’s blade. “Curse you!” He raised the other hand, only for it to be ruined in the same way.
“There!” Jediah remarked while poising his sword. “Our odds are even!”
Elazar pulsed a brief shield from his chest, knocking the sword out of Jediah’s hand. The two locked arms, tumbling and wrestling inside a tight box that traveled at eighty miles per hour.
***
Deep within the caves so familiar to them, Laszio and Eran scurried about in front of the Abyss’s entry tunnel. Laszio added another log to a woodpile; one of many they’ve gathered on their way back. He had no idea why Eran insisted upon it at first. It seemed absurd and a waste of precious time. Even after his friend shared the full scope of his plan, it still sounded crazy. But Lucifer wouldn’t expect it, which for Laszio actually gave credence to the old saying ‘crazy enough to work.’
Laszio did worry, though, if they’d be able to set it all up in time. It required plenty of wood. Plus, they needed to inform the rest of Jediah’s battalion about Lucifer’s impending attack, as well as Eran’s defense plan. Thankfully, with Nechum to brief the other soldiers and Alameth’s ability to lift a forest’s worth of timber, both tasks were swiftly met. Everything and everyone were in place.
Laszio lugged another branch and clunked it atop one of the stacks. “You sure this is enough?” he asked.
“It’ll have to be.” Eran replied. “We can’t risk fetching more. It’s miraculous enough Lucifer has taken this long as it is.”
At that moment, a slight rattling caught their attention. The two angels looked at each other, and their eyes spelled out the same message: Lucifer had arrived. They plated their wings across their chests and faced uphill toward the other end of the corridor.
The clattering of steel echoed louder. Flickering shadows expanded and climbed the tunnel’s throat until the rusted browns of the stones were consumed by black silhouettes. Lucifer’s tall figure arose first. He loomed at the top of the hill, fanning all six wings. A second demon joined him. Then five. Then twenty. Then fifty. Hundreds more crawled along the walls like spiders or flocked in the air like crows. Their unanimous laughters and jeers were thunderous.
Lucifer raised a hand. The throng silenced, and he lingered there, sneering at Laszio and Eran like they were gnats.
Laszio’s chest tightened. Not but twelve hours ago, this infamous demon thrashed their captain, and here they stood to try and take him down. Laszio leaned to Eran. “You think we can do this?” he whispered, sounding a tad more nervous than he wanted.
Eran’s brow creased, but he looked Laszio square in the eye with a hint of a smile. “No.”
Laszio laughed with a touch of apprehension. “Good. For a second I was worried.”
They together whipped out their chorded sticks and tapped them against their energized wings. Light filled the sticks’ etched patterns. The brilliance bled into their taut strings, and the strands burned golden flares, illuminating the angels' faces and their righteous anger.
Lucifer roared loud enough to cow a leviathan. “The battle has ended, little ones! Your captain has fallen, and the key is mine to bear.”
“No,” Laszio countered. He stepped forward to emphasize his point. “Let me tell you how this ends, Lucifer! With your humiliation! You will not fall to the mighty, oh fallen morning star—oh former son of the dawn! But to God’s meekest and weakest! You hear me? The least of His shall crush your neck today!”
Raising his chin, Lucifer scoffed and led the charge. They all rushed as a single black swarm down the slope.
Laszio and Eran harnessed spheres to their strands and aimed toward a single point. For a few seconds, they waited. The thundering hoard advanced closer.
“Now,” Eran signaled.
They snapped their strings. The spheres whizzed high and collided together in a loud ‘pop.’ The demon frontline paused, as the resulting white residue powdered them. They weren’t impressed in the least. That is, until the floor broke.
A smoking fault line cracked open before them. Lucifer, who was undaunted by this, flew across the widening divide, but before the others could follow or retreat, the ground collapsed entirely, swallowing their first legion whole.
Laszio chuckled as Alameth’s fog billowed from the increasing pit. Those demons were in for a horrible time. The demonic back line scrambled to escape the increasing cataclysm. Defiant shouts and terrified whines mounted as the angel of death rose to greet them atop the towering plumes, with eyes pulsing bright.
Some five hundred demons, however, weren’t near as skittish about facing a Destroyer, and shot sparking arrows at Alameth. What they didn’t expect was the thick curtain of light beams that erupted from the foggy pit below, snuffing out every shaft.
The demon army stared in confusion.
Alameth lifted the veil. A hundred wings flared like small bonfires, and Jediah’s troops flew out. Though they were outnumbered, each angel waved and fanned their wings in fierce challenge.
Laszio and Eran shouted the soldier’s war cry proudly with their comrades, as the two armies crashed into each other. “The Sword of the Lord we are!”
Unperturbed, Lucifer enlarged, sprouted seven heads, complete with dragon maws, and torched the closest angels. Jediah’s battalion retaliated with their own light barrage. Lucifer, however, dismissed such feeble assaults.
Alameth amassed his mist, and Laszio held his breath. He wasn’t sure how Alameth’s attack would go, but he was the most powerful brother among them. If his assault didn’t faze the Devil, he and Eran would have to resort to plan ‘B’.
Alameth sent a tidal wave big enough to cover the highest of Lucifer’s heads, but Lucifer rose high on his haunches. His wings, the size of sails, stirred a hurricane. The gales dissolved the fog and hurtled airborne angels to the ground.
“Guess it’s Plan B!” Laszio shouted. He hurried with Eran to their positions behind the dragon.
A hellish glow grew in the back of all seven of Lucifer’s throats. Orange flames lined in red poured out against the angelic forces, but a sudden, blue blockade turned the flames back on the fire breather himself. Only after the heat died did Lucifer see the glistening barrier that cut him off. The Devil spun around but released an angry roar to find that a whole dome had caged him in.
“Way to go, Nechum!” Laszio thought. He and Eran gave Nechum a thumbs up as he watched and maintained the shield from the outside.
“Watch it!” Eran pulled Laszio by the collar. They ducked out of the bellowing dragon’s way. Breaking slab rumbled under his reptilian feet as he thrusted himself at Nechum. Having no luck, Lucifer scraped the shield like mad. His gigantic talons carved a slit and dug, chipping the slit wider.
Nechum recoiled, shocked and terrified, but just as Lucifer mounted up to smash the entire barrier, Nechum shot the Devil with the harshest scowl Laszio ever saw. He slapped both hands on the shield. The rippling azure thickened to an opaque aqua and resealed the hole.
Laszio and Eran cringed as Lucifer’s claws screeched against the shield like knives on glass and his chomping fangs chipped at their tips. He carried on like that for a while. Then he calmed. All seven heads laughed, “You three really think you can trap me here?” Lucifer’s massive tail swept the air above Laszio and Eran’s heads as he faced them.
“We just did, sunshine,” Laszio joked.
Lucifer roared, and a torrent blasted from his nostrils.
“Wings!” Eran ordered.
The heatwave they captured in their feathers propelled them straight up. Fire curved back. It ignited the surrounding wood piles and burned the great dragon, smelting his iron scales into a thinner layer of molten ore. Soot and smoke from the smoldering timber filled the dome, smothering everything inside in pitch black.
***
Jediah and Elazar’s hands were blurs in their punches, blocks, and throws. Millennium's worth of combat experience burst from both of them with animalistic instinct—vicious and rapid, yet accurate and precise.
Elazar stabbed at Jediah. Jediah grappled his wrist and twisted it. The knife clanged to the floor. Jediah then spun Elazar around by the neck and slammed him against the window. Orange highway lights flashed as the ambulance sped along. “There’s nothing left in you,” Jediah remarked. “Nothing but hate!”
“It’s all that’s left of me,” Elazar grunted. “You made me, after all.”
“Oh, save it!” Jediah nearly tore Elazar’s clothes from how hard he shook him. “You made your own choices! I spent centuries convicting myself for inciting your downfall while you played the victim. Well, guess what? I’m not playing your game anymore!”
Jediah grabbed Elazar’s hair to bang his head, but Elazar phased right through the door. Left alone, for however briefly, Jediah picked up his sword and watched every angle. His eyes darted faster as the inactivity prolonged. He drew close to Chloe and held her small hand, hoping she’d somehow feel his presence.
On an inkling, Jediah spun around.
Elazar’s eye glowed outside the front windshield. He seized the steering wheel, and veered the ambulance into a busy lane, terrifying the driver.
Jediah launched himself through the glass and knocked Elazar off the windshield. Car horns honked as the ambulance swerved back into its lane.
Elazar, who got a secure foothold on the ambulance grill, seized Jediah’s tunic and repeatedly punched him in the jaw. Dizzy from the flurry of blows and emergency lights, Jediah thrust his head into Elazar’s, stunning him. Jediah then broke free from his grip, flipped around, and kicked Elazar right off to be crushed under the tires. He heard thuds fade down the highway, but Jediah took no confidence in it. Elazar would journey to Hell if he were there.
***
Amidst the suffocating black, Laszio listened with Eran under the cover of ashen sparks. Heat wafted near as two of Lucifer’s heads came close. In unison, the two soldiers flicked their feather darts and blinded all four eyes at once.
Lucifer’s tail and legs thrashed in mad attempts to crush them. Laszio flew straight through the twisting necks as they writhed. His wings burned brighter and sliced small cuts across three throats as he passed. The necks clustered together. Then all seven jaws snapped in his direction. Laszio swerved left in a downward angle and heard the heads thud against the wall. Unfortunately, he misjudged his distance from the ground and scuffed his hands and knees in a near crash landing.
Lucifer stomped one of his feet. The resulting shockwave threw Laszio off and smacked him into the wall. His back numbed, he slumped near senseless.
“No. no. no,” Eran repeated as he hoisted Laszio up. “Come on, brother. Stay with me.”
Stretching his tingling back, Laszio grinned. “Always.”
The black smoke lightened to a grey as the ash settled.
“Hang tight,” Eran urged, as he pulled Laszio to a stand. “End of phase one. Prepare for phase two.” He took off and flapped his wings as hard as ever, stirring the black flakes and re-stoking the fires.