“Freaking fire demons,” I said, getting to my feet. The whole building shook, and I knew it had landed on the roof.

  I shifted, bunching my hinds and leaping to the gaping hole in the ceiling. I landed on the roof in front of the demon. It had a huge blade raised over its head, ready to bring it down into the church. A pair of angels stayed airborne behind it, letting it lead the assault.

  I closed my eyes and focused, willing myself to be stronger, pushing the focus so hard I thought my head would explode.

  The sword came down.

  I caught it.

  It was blazing with hellfire, but I had made the skin of my claws so tough that it couldn’t penetrate, and I didn’t feel it. Neither did I feel the bite of the edge. I heaved against the force, muscles flexing and threatening to pop, feet scratching along the roof to stay rooted. I focused even harder still, and pulled the huge blade from the demon’s hands. It was way too big for me to wield it, but I had another option.

  I pulled off the bracelet.

  It was useless right now. Even if he didn’t know where I was, he would soon enough. As soon as it had fallen down the hole into the church, I focused on the tremendous sword, pulling it around in a wide arc. The fire demon saw it coming, and it raised its arms to defend itself.

  It needn’t have bothered.

  The blade went right through the demon’s arms, and right through its neck, severing its head. It fell backward in the middle of a huge screech, one of its wings slamming into a waiting angel, the sharpness of it leaving a huge gash. The angel hadn’t attacked yet, so he hadn’t fallen. The demon’s poison killed him before the demon had even hit the ground.

  The bracelet gone, I focused on my Sight. I wished I hadn’t.

  If the church was an island, the enemy outside was the Pacific Ocean.

  I jumped back into the hole, grabbed the bracelet, and ran downstairs. I scrambled out into the main part of the church. I could see Obi with a knife in hand at the west entrance. The door had been blasted in, and a group of devils was trying to get past him. I found Thomas on the floor. He wasn’t moving.

  I turned around. Adam had drawn some kind of runes on the east door, and it seemed to be holding for now. He was on his knees in prayer.

  “Adam!” I shouted. Obi needed help. He didn’t respond. “Adam!”

  He was ignoring me. I ran over to him. I was reaching for his shoulder when he stood and turned. “Sorry, Landon,” he said. “I was just calling for backup.”

  “Backup?”

  I felt a rush of air, and then Fredeline, the Inquisitors, and Melody came down the stairs from the hole in the roof. The First was carrying the Deliverer.

  “It looks like you needed us sooner than you expected,” she said on her way by.

  She raised the blade and started yelling and running for the devils attacking Obi. It attracted their attention and his, and he watched dumbfounded while she tore into them with the sword. The devils in front crumbled to dust as the weapon dug into them, and those in the back started screaming and trying to run. She and the Inquisitors followed them out, while Melody stopped next to Obi.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nah. It’ll take more than those a-holes to put me down.” He looked over to where Thomas was laying. His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “We weren’t all so lucky.”

  “Thanks,” I said to Adam, before going over and kneeling down next to Thomas.

  He was dead.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to his corpse, reaching out and pushing his eyes closed with my hand. He hadn’t turned to dust, and I wasn’t sure why. I guess Purgatorians didn’t get such a clean end.

  “He died well,” Josette said.

  “For once you said something I agree with,” Ulnyx remarked.

  It didn’t make it any easier to take. I closed my eyes and grimaced, feeling the twisting of my gut from the balance continuing its slide. I closed my eyes and focused, using my Sight to check on our situation. I could sense the line of Inquisitors outside, digging into the mass of enemies around us, led by Fredeline and the Canaan Blade.

  “What now?” Obi asked.

  When I opened my eyes, he was kneeling on the other side of Thomas, looking down on him with his fist to the fallen angel’s heart.

  “We need to hold out until Charis and the harlequin are done. I just hope that happens before the balance tips.” I got to my feet. “I’m going to go check on Izak. Watch the stairs, they’ll be coming through there next.”

  Obi gave me the thumbs up, and he and Melody joined Adam by the stairs up to the demolished belfry.

  I moved through the nave and out the back doors to where Izak was sitting, cross-legged on the floor. He had scratched a bunch of demonic runes in front of the doors, and it looked like so far none of the other demons had tried to pass it.

  “Having a nice rest?” I asked him.

  He turned his head, and shrugged.

  “Keep doing what you’re doing,” I said, starting to turn to go ask Charis for a time estimate. I felt a wave of heat blast towards me, and for a split-second I thought it was my Sight, but then the doors of the church exploded inward behind a blast of hellfire.

  I dropped flat onto my stomach as the splintered wood and flames roared overhead, threatening to melt the skin right off my back. I could see Izak stretched out on the floor too, and he didn’t look very happy. As the flames subsided, a new demon joined the party.

  She was without a doubt the most attractive creature I had ever seen, with long, shining black hair, olive skin, and crystal eyes. She was wearing only slightly more than nothing, a sheer dress that only barely covered the important parts, that shimmered and changed colors as she moved, and gold bracelets that ran up perfectly shaped arms and legs.

  She walked into the church, stepping onto Izak’s runes. They exploded in another round of light and heat, the blast so strong I had to look away. When I turned my head back, the stone walls of the church had started reducing to slag, but the woman was still standing there, unharmed.

  “Mephistopheles,” she said. “It’s been a long time. Still as predictable as ever, I see.”

  He rose to his feet and stared at her. He wasn’t impressed by her beauty. In fact, he looked like he wanted to rip her face off with his bare hands.

  “And you are?” I asked. I could see a swarm of demons beyond her, and the glow of the Deliverer at its center. She didn’t seem to care about the angels at her back.

  “Ardat Lili,” she said. Her voice was as sultry and appealing as her body. I could feel myself reacting, despite any of my best intentions.

  “Keep it calm, meat,” Ulnyx said. “It’s a bunch of crap. She’s a succubus. Actually, she’s the succubus. The original that all the other designs are based on. He must have brought her out of Hell. She is something else, though.”

  Even with his warning, I could tell he was succumbing to her power too.

  Izak wasn’t. He charged towards her and threw a heavy punch. She slipped to the side, grabbed his arm, and planted her knee in his gut. Then she threw him backward, sending him sliding along the floor.

  “Where is she?” she asked.

  She had to mean Sarah. I swallowed, feeling my body building up to some kind of freakish ecstasy, and my tongue moving almost of its own volition, ready to tell her what she wanted to know.

  “Landon,” Josette shouted.

  It snapped me out of it. I reached for Ulnyx’ power, to shift and go on the offensive. I found myself cut off.

  “Ulnyx?”

  “So beautiful,” the Were replied. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  She started walking towards me, her hips rocking from side to side, every action causing an equal and opposite reaction. I swallowed again, fighting against the waves of attraction and passion that were pouring out of her.

  “Where is she?” she asked again. “I’ll make it very worth your while to tell me.”

  I felt my mouth moving again. Then another shot of hellfire slammed into her, knocking her away. It didn’t burn her though. It just made her more sexy, the shadows of the flames enhancing every perfect curve.

  “Landon,” Josette shouted again.

  I shook my head to clear it. The succubus was on her back, smoke pouring off her. She started to get up. Izak walked towards her, his hand out, ready to launch another round of fire.

  “Stop,” she said to him, a Command so strong it almost made my ears pop. Izak stopped moving.

  “This is bad,” I said to Josette.

  “He’d have to send a demon that could stand up to Izak,” Josette replied.

  “Mephistopheles, help me up.”

  He reached out with his good hand. She took it, and he pulled her up. She turned and looked at me, and I felt her power reaching out.

  “How do I stop her?” I asked. I could feel my body reacting again, and my mind returning to its sexy woman mush state.

  “Let me in,” she said.

  She’d never asked to drive before, because unlike Ulnyx, she respected that my consciousness was mine. I gave it up to her easily, feeling the soul of her rising up and taking control.

  The demon seemed to know it, as soon as it happened. “I can make it worth your while too, my innocent darling,” she said. I could still feel her power. If Josette did too, she didn’t show it. “No? Izak, kill them.”

  Izak took a step towards us.

  “How was this a good plan?” I asked.

  “Izak,” Josette said. My lips moved, but the voice that came out was hers. “Izak, don’t.” The fiend paused.

  Ardat Lili grabbed his shoulder, turned him and looked into his eyes.

  “What?” she said. “You fell in love with an angel? You?”

  “Izak,” Josette said. “She wants to hurt me. She wants to take Sarah. You can’t let that happen.”

  “No,” the succubus said. “Mephistopheles, we have a past. You know what I can offer you. Kill her, kill the diuscrucis, and help me take the girl. I can give you everything you need, in his new universe.”

  Izak turned his head, looking back at us.

  “Izak,” Josette said. “You-“

  Before she’d even finished speaking, the fiend’s hand came up and wrapped around Ardat Lili’s throat. He lifted her off the ground, while her eyes filled with fear.

  “Izak, no,” she said, her voice little more than a croak. “Think of the pleasure.”

  He smiled and nodded. He squeezed tighter, the palm of his hand igniting in hellfire as it sunk into her neck. She screamed in pain and anger, her body frantic to fight him off. He held on tight, pressing harder and harder, until she stopped moving.

  He never let her go, and she turned to ash in his grip.

  Chapter 24

  We spent the next two hours trying to keep the Beast’s forces from getting into the church and claiming Sarah. All the while, I could feel the balance twisting and rocking, like a glacier moving towards an inevitable end. It seemed as though the Beast had convinced half of Hell to join his cause, by the number of creatures that kept pouring into the area through an unseen rift, joining with a much smaller cadre of fallen angels. If it hadn’t been for the Inquisitors and the Deliverer, I don’t know that we would have lasted ten minutes.

  We were still spread out at the different entrances, with Izak and I manning the gaping hole in the front of the church while Adam, Melody, and Obi took the rear. The angels roamed the streets, cutting a swath of destruction through the hordes, but it was all they could do to keep a small enough number from coming at the church that the rest of us could hold them back. I kept waiting for reinforcements from Heaven, or for the archangels to get themselves involved and the true meltdown to occur. It seemed they were willing to wait it out, as long as the balance didn’t go too far.

  “Landon!” Charis and Alichino came running through the doors behind us. The demon had the Box in his hand. I knew from a glance it didn’t look any different.

  “Good news?” I asked. I was tired, dead tired, having spent more of my time in Ulynx’s skin than I would ever have wanted to. It was an unfortunate side effect that using his power made me overly arrogant and lustful. I had to fight against the bad thoughts that seeing her put into my head.

  “I haven’t figured out the conversions yet, no,” Alichino said. “But I have done some calculations on the energy output. There’s a way we can pump enough strength into the Box to make it the most power dense prison ever constructed.”

  I liked the news. I didn’t like the way he gave it.

  “But?”

  “You have to inject it with the Beast’s own energy.”

  I put my arm up to block the sword of an incoming devil, then brought my claws around and severed its head. I would have thought after killing a couple hundred of them, that they would have tried a different tactic. It was no wonder Hell hadn’t won this war yet, despite vast numbers.

  “So we have to trick him into powering the box?”

  “Not exactly,” Charis said.

  There was only one other source of the Beast’s energy I knew of.

  “We have to power it?”

  “Yes,” Alichino said. “Both of you. You need to mix his pure energy with that of the true diuscrucis. It has to be a balance of all of the forms. Based on my calculations, that should get you a ten thousand percent improvement over Avriel’s original design.”

  I kicked a devil out of the way, and turned to him. “Did you say ten thousand?”

  The demon hopped up and down, excited. “Yes. Impressive, no? It’s a combination of the power source and the Templar script. I can show you the math downstairs if you’d like?”

  “Just make it work,” I said, looking at the Box. “You haven’t changed anything.”

  “Landon,” Charis said. “There’s a catch.”

  Of course there was. There was always a catch. “What?”

  “The Beast’s power has to be pure. We need to find a way to empty our souls.”

  I shifted back to my human shape. “Izak, I need a few,” I said. He looked over at us and nodded as he put his hand to a hell hound’s forehead and crumbled it with a thought. I took Charis’ hand and pulled her back to the nave.

  “When you say pure, you’re talking about-“

  “Extraction,” she said. “We have to get our absorbed souls out.”

  “Extraction isn’t possible.”

  “Lylyx said there was a djinn in Moscow,” Ulnyx said. “If you can get me back into my own meat, I’d kiss you.”

  I didn’t know what to think, or how to react. I’d been carrying both the Were and Josette around with me for more than five years. I didn’t know if I would have lived any of those without the power they had brought. I couldn’t imagine what Charis was feeling. She’d had Vilya’s soul for longer than that.

  “It has to be,” Alichino said. “There’s no other way. I can show you the math?”

  I shook my head. “Lylyx said she had heard there was a djinn in Moscow who could do it. I don’t know where she heard it from, or how reliable the intel is, but that’s all I’ve got.”

  “Then we go to Moscow,” Charis said. “The slimmest thread is the strongest we’ve got right now, and let’s face it - we can’t stay here.”

  I had stuck Malize’s bracelet in my pocket. I pulled it out now, and put it back on. Charis followed my lead.

  “Go set up the rift,” I said. “I need to round up the troops. It’s time to retreat.”

  Charis and Alichino headed off to the basement. I ran back out to the front and got Izak’s attention. “When I come back, head for the basement. We’re getting out of here.”

  He responded with a short nod. I looked through the hole in the front, finding the glow of the Deliverer in the distance. Then I ran to Father Tom’s office.

  The priest was still at his desk, his head in his arms, a wet spot spreading from the arm of his vestment. He hadn’t stopped praying and crying since the fighting had started. Sarah was there too, her head straight forward, her body stiff. I imagined she was watching as much of the battle as she could through Izak’s eyes.

  “Sarah,” I said. A slight tremor in her form, and then she turned her head.

  “Get down to the basement. Charis and Alichino are there. We’re leaving.”

  She got up and ran out the door.

  I walked over to Father Tom, knelt down, and took his arm.

  “Father, it’s time to go. The demons are going to take the church.”

  He lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy.

  “I could have been Touched,” he said. “There was an angel once, she was such a beautiful lass. She offered to give me the power, because of my piety and faith. I turned her down. I said I couldn’t continue to touch humanity with His word if I wasn’t fully human myself. If I had been Touched, I think I could have saved this place.”

  I put my other hand on his back, and started lifting him from the chair. “You saved something a lot more important, Father,” I said.

  His eyes caught on mine. “Only if you win. Otherwise, we’ll all be nothing more than a blip in time. A quickly forgotten blip in time.”

  The games of gods. It was a game I was determined to win. “Come with me,” I said. Plain, old mortals couldn’t go through the rifts, so I would need Adam to get him out of here.

  I led him out into the nave, where Adam, Obi, and Melody were doing their best to hold off the hordes of demons pouring in from all sides. The altar of the church had been desecrated in the fighting, crucifix shredded by angry Hell spawn. I heard Father Tom gasp beside me, and I had to grab his arm to keep him standing.

  “Time to go,” I shouted from the back of the nave. Obi turned to acknowledge they had heard me. I couldn’t help but wince when I saw the deep cut across his face. I couldn’t be sure if his left eye was still functional or not beneath the torn flesh. “Adam, I need you.”