Fic: Rogue (Gabriel/M, Gabriel/F, PG-13) 33/36
For full notes and other chapters, please see the Masterpost.
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 3,458
Chapter Summary: The gate is closed! It’s time to party!
CHAPTER 33:
Celebrations and Lamentations
The workers finished laying the last rails two weeks before the fated alignment of the planes, a fact Gabriel welcomed with quiet relief. He was sitting in his tent, his head propped in his hands, trying to will away the throbbing headache that had been plaguing him for the better part of a month. The demons had started attacking his wards in earnest about ten weeks back, and Gabriel had spent practically every free moment holding them off. Each time he faced off against the demons, he prayed he wouldn’t recognize Cariel in any of them. So far, he had been lucky, and Cariel had always been mercifully absent. The demons who did come managed to break through in several places, but Gabriel had been quick enough to beat them back before they could damage the rails or injure any workers. Each time was harder than the last, though, and Gabriel could feel his grace struggling to recover so close to the Hell Gate.
Now that all five lines were in place and all five churches consecrated, Gabriel could finally relax. No matter how much the demons flung themselves at the rails, the trap would hold. It was strong enough to restrain Azazel himself. None of these lower level demons stood a chance, not even in their multitudes. The demons seemed to have realized the futility of their attacks, finally pulling back around midnight last night.
“Lie down.” Jane had been the one to bring Gabriel the news, her initial excitement fading as soon as she saw the exhaustion on her papa’s face. She had rushed out of the tent and returned now with a basin of steaming water. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t sleep,” Gabriel retorted, stretching out on his unused cot (for appearances only) for his daughter’s sake. Thorn yipped happily, hopping onto the cot and climbing over Gabriel’s legs to sprawl out across his knees.
“You know what I mean,” Jane chided as she knelt beside him. “Rest. When was the last time you rested?” She soaked a cloth in the water and wrung it out before laying it across Gabriel’s forehead.
The angel hissed at the dampness against his skin, but the water was hot, close to boiling, and the heat was soothing. He closed his eyes and sighed as Jane repeated the process with a fresh cloth, removing the old one as soon as it started cooling. “It’s been a while.”
“I told you, you needed to stay in the best condition,” Jane scolded. “If Beelzebub attacks now…”
“He can’t get in.” Gabriel slowly relaxed under Jane’s ministrations. “Just get everyone over the lines, and they’ll be safe.”
“That’s all well and good most days, but there’s going to be a shindig tonight next town over. They’ve got a band, and I heard they’re laying out a dance floor.” Jane set the bowl aside as the water inside cooled too much to help Gabriel and just sat beside him, lightly stroking his hair. He smiled faintly, turning into her caress. “We won’t be able to keep the men close enough for the trap to protect them.”
“You’re a good girl, Jane,” Gabriel murmured.
“I try,” she answered, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Even to my stubborn papa.”
“Are you going to this shindig?”
“I am.” There was a guarded tone to Jane’s voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and Gabriel cracked an eye open. “Samuel asked me to accompany him.”
“It’s Samuel now?” Gabriel hadn’t been blind to the burgeoning affection between his daughter and the hunter, but Jane was clever herself, and had often found ways to slip off without letting Gabriel follow her. He couldn’t veil himself completely from her, so she always knew if he was spying. In the past couple of months, though, he hadn’t had even an hour to spare to keep an eye on the two. Who knew what they had gotten up to in that wealth of privacy! “Do you let him call you Jane?”
“He calls me Miss Jane, so I suppose that’s a yes.” Jane rolled around to sit beside the cot, her back to Gabriel, and she drew her knees up. “I accepted his invitation, Papa. I like him. He’s absolutely brilliant, and he likes me too.”
“He doesn’t know what you are,” Gabriel warned, sitting up and putting his hand on Jane’s shoulder. Thorn grumbled at the movement, shifting off to lie beside the angel.
“Why does he have to?”
“Jane…” Gabriel sighed, drawing Jane onto the cot with him and enfolding her in a hug. “Angel, I love you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Samuel wouldn’t hurt me. He couldn’t.”
“Even with his fancy, improved gun?” Gabriel tucked one of Jane’s curls behind her ear and shook his head. “That’s not the type of hurt I’m talking about, sweet. You would be lying to him, every day.”
“So?” Jane asked sullenly, trying not to let Gabriel catch her eye.
“So, that sort of lying wears on a person. You will hate that you can’t tell him everything. You will ache with the desire to confess everything and hope he still accepts you. It will eat you up inside, and when you have to let him go, you’ll be consumed with wondering what if you had only been honest from the start.” Gabriel smoothed his thumbs over Jane’s cheeks, waiting for her to finally look up at him. “I lied to your father, Jane, for thirty-two years, and I still wonder if I could have saved him had I only been honest.”
“Well then, maybe I’ll be honest from the start! I’m not like you, Papa. I can make different choices.”
“He’s a hunter, Jane. He kills people like you, and you know it.”
“But he likes me.” Jane’s voice was small, and her posture was sagging.
Gabriel wrapped Jane in another hug, rubbing her back like he had when she was a child. “Then enjoy what you have now. Go to the dance with him. Let him love you for tonight, and when we leave his life, cherish your memories of him. But do not try to create a life with him. He can only break your heart.”
By the time the party rolled around, Gabriel had managed to put a smile on Jane’s face by snapping her up a new dress, one of blue taffeta and black lace that bared her shoulders and hugged her curves. She would look beautiful for her night with Samuel, and she rewarded Gabriel with a kiss on the cheek before Samuel arrived with his carriage.
Gabriel opted to walk to the party, letting the fresh air clear his head a little. The nearest official town was about half a mile away to the northwest, though you could hardly tell from all of the people who had settled in tents around Colt’s Folly, as the five railways were already being called. The men had come for work, but the women had followed, and merchants seeing the potential for profit from all of the laborers with fresh wages in their hands. The five churches had fairly quickly turned into functioning houses of worship, each with a genuine angel feather in a gilded reliquary, and Gabriel could tell that little villages would soon spring up around each one. The first church already had a couple wooden buildings around it: a general store, a post office, and a doctor’s office. There was talk of hooking the Folly up to a rail line back east to allow better transportation… but that was all for someone else to worry about. As long as the original five lines remained in their current layout, the men could do whatever else they wanted to them.
As soon as Gabriel crossed the completed trap, the crushing weight of the opening Hell Gate vanished from his grace. He still felt wrung out from his prolonged exposure to the concentrated evil, but his mood was rapidly improving. His strength would return in a couple days; no permanent damage had been done. Perhaps he would even be able to enjoy himself at this celebration.
The evening was calm as dusk slowly stretched across the land, the sun setting to the west in a beautiful display of pinks and purples, streaking the clouds with brilliant colors. They seemed to be purely natural clouds, with no demonic taint. The angel was searching for any sign that Beelzebub might be crashing this party, but he couldn’t feel the demon’s vile presence anywhere around.
Gabriel smiled and nodded at the workers he passed on their own way to the party, exchanging congratulations and shaking hands of anyone who offered one. The party was in full swing by the time he arrived, with a six piece band playing a reel and a crowd of dancers spinning and stomping on the dance floor. He could make out Jane in her blue dress in the middle of the crowd, hand-in-hand with Samuel Colt, both of them with eyes only for each other. Gabriel smiled at their happiness, though it was tinged with sadness, and he headed toward the refreshments table to get himself a cup of whatever they were offering.
Gabriel himself was pulled into many dances as the celebration wore on. He waltzed and capered and promenaded with anyone who offered and any woman who was looking on longingly. Jane spotted him twirling an eighty-year-old woman around and laughed brightly, clapping at him. The woman, Elizabeth, had to stop dancing before the song ended, apologizing profusely for being out of breath so soon. “I haven’t danced like that in ages!” she exclaimed, squeezing Gabriel’s hand tightly as he helped her find a seat where she could watch the dancing. “I hope you do forgive this old woman for cutting your fun short. I certainly did enjoy it while it lasted!”
“Nonsense, my fine lady,” Gabriel assured her, bending over her hand to kiss her knuckles. “I assure you, age is but a number, and tonight you are a thousand times younger than I.”
“You are far too kind,” the woman laughed, pressing one wrinkled hand to her flushed face.
A gunshot rang out over the crowd, and Gabriel twisted around sharply, his grace catching on a discordant rot that was suddenly exploding through the town. Beelzebub! The dancers were screaming and running for cover, and Samuel and Jane were trying to herd them without becoming trampled themselves.
“Now, now, now, where are you all running to?” More possessed men filtered out of the shadows, blocking the exits and corralling the panicking humans back into the center of town. Beelzebub himself, still in his droopy-mustached meatsuit, strode slowly through the middle, tucking his gun away. “Do you have any idea what you’ve DONE?” He bellowed the last word into the night, and the sky answered with a flash of lightning and a loud crack of thunder. “You’ve been messing with Hell, kiddies! Every last one of you has been tainted!”
“Stop scaring them.” Gabriel didn’t shout, or even raise his voice, but he touched his grace to his words to let them echo over the crying of the trapped humans. He stepped away from Elizabeth and stalked toward Beelzebub, wishing he didn’t still have his headache from earlier. The crowd parted before him, exposing him to the demon’s view. “That’s not very nice.” He was hardly at full power right now, but Beelzebub was no match for an Archangel, even a weakened one.
Or so Gabriel hoped.
“You,” Beelzebub hissed, drawing his gun again and pointing it at Gabriel. There was no Rite of AshkEnte inscribed on this weapon, nothing more than cold steel. Gabriel didn’t even flinch. “You died.”
“Me,” Gabriel agreed. “And I’m afraid not. Bit harder to kill than you might think. Have to use wood, you see, specially prepared.” At least, that was Loki’s vulnerability. A wooden stake, dipped in the blood of one of his victims. “Let them go. This was all my idea.”
“Let them go?” Beelzebub looked around at the hundreds of humans penned in by his demons. “Oh sure, Loki. Because you came back from the dead, I’ll let them go, just for you.”
“Wait, don’t-!” Gabriel threw out his hands, hurling Loki’s power at Beelzebub, but he was a fraction of a second too slow to stop the demon from firing his gun into the air. Every demon howled in laughter and lunged toward the nearest human, their hands closing around fragile necks.
The sound of fifty spines snapping in unison was one Gabriel knew would haunt him for the rest of his immortal life.
Gabriel’s scream was drowned out by the fresh wave of panic gripping the humans, all trying to run as the demons surged into the crowd, rampantly killing. Gabriel charged Beelzebub, ripping his knife from his sheath and flinging it ahead of him. It buried itself hilt-deep into Beelzebub’s throat with a spray of blood, and the demon staggered back, snarling in pain.
Snarling.
Not falling over dead.
Well, shit! Gabriel hadn’t made the blade strong enough to take out Beelzebub (which meant it would be useless if he ever encountered Azazel). He’d have to draw his sword or burn the demon out using his grace, both of which were risky. There were too many demons around. If even one of them escaped, Gabriel’s identity could be revealed in Hell.
Beelzebub yanked the sword from his throat and flung it back at Gabriel, aiming for his head. Gabriel snatched the knife out of the air without breaking his charge, twirling around and shouting Jane’s name. “Catch!” He let the knife fly before he was facing Beelzebub again, tackling the Knight of Hell to the ground.
Lightning illuminated the night, the screaming barely being drowned out by the rolls of thunder. Someone-Colt?-was shouting for people to pray, dammit, pray like their lives depended on it! Gabriel could just make out the sizzle and spark of dying demons as Jane ripped through them with the enchanted knife, punctuated by gunshots, but he was a bit distracted by the demon trying to snap his own neck.
Gabriel and Beelzebub wrestled across the dance floor. They were fighting for control of Beelzebub’s gun, but while Gabriel managed to shoot the demon once in the heart, Beelzebub got him in the stomach.
Neither wound was fatal.
Gabriel snapped Beelzebub’s neck, but the demon kicked him in the groin, which definitely hurt a lot worse. The screaming had stopped, but there was still some crying in the background, and someone throwing up. Beelzebub slammed Gabriel into the ground, then slammed him again. Gabriel could feel his skull crack and split, and he almost laughed at the thought that this might release some of the pressure inside his head. He shoved at Beelzebub, kicked a foot beneath the demon’s chest and tried to throw him off. Beelzebub snarled, pressing down against Gabriel’s leg, blood from his injuries dripping onto the angel’s face. Dad help him, but this needed to end!
A shot exploded at point-blank range, and Beelzebub’s expression shattered over Gabriel, the demon sparking orange within the dead man. The angel retched, shoving the body off him and twisting over to spit blood and brains out of his mouth.
“Papa!” Gabriel barely heard Jane’s cry over the ringing in his ears, but he did feel her hands on his back, her fingers slipping through the blood on his face as she caught his head between her hands and made him look at her. “Are you hurt? Did the bullet hit you? Answer me!”
Gabriel pried Jane’s hands away and turned to cough and spit again, eventually wiping his arm over his mouth and looking back at his daughter. Jane was pale beneath her prairie tan, her perfectly coiffed hair was a flyaway mess, and the dress she had loved so much was completely ruined, stained with mud and blood and torn in several places. Still, her eyes were focused only on Gabriel, the worry etched in every line of her face. “I’m fine,” he assured her, taking a shuddering breath. “Messy, but I’ll live.”
“Oh Papa!” Jane flung her arms around Gabriel’s shoulders and he held her tightly, pressing his face against her hair as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Colt cleared his throat after a minute, standing beside the pair. He was looking shell-shocked himself, still holding his fantastic gun in his hand. Gabriel would never speak a word against that magnificent thing again. Sure, his life hadn’t been in danger from Beelzebub, but Colt had managed to end the demon without revealing Gabriel’s identity. Gabriel knew how to recognize miracles when they happened right on top of him.
Jane pulled away from Gabriel, wiping her face with her hands. “Samuel, I…”
“They’re dead.” Colt looked around the town slowly, then back down at Gabriel and Jane. “Everyone. This town. It’s… dead. They’re all dead.”
“No…” Jane shook her head, clenching her hands into fists against her chest. “No, no, no! No, we were doing so well! We hadn’t lost a single worker, not one, not one! No! They were all supposed to live!”
“This is my fault.” Gabriel pulled his legs out from under him, sitting in the blood pooling from Beelzebub’s body and not caring about the state of his trousers. “I shouldn’t have assumed they’d stay away. I should’ve protected this town too…”
“That’s not what you were being paid to do, Mr. Lucas,” Colt admitted. “Defend the trap, not the town. Mr. Lucas?” Colt rubbed his hand over his mouth, looking up at the moon before turning his attention back to Gabriel. “Loki?”
“Heh.” Gabriel pushed himself to his feet, squeezing Jane’s shoulder on the way up. “Hoped you hadn’t heard that.”
Colt pointed his gun at Gabriel’s heart, and Gabriel held up his hands. Could Colt’s gun kill him? The angel didn’t know, and he didn’t want to test it. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Samuel, no!” Jane leapt to her feet, planting herself between Gabriel and the gun. “He’s not an enemy, Samuel. He’s not a monster.”
The gun’s aim swung down a little, pointing now at Jane’s heart. “And you?” Colt asked quietly. “You called him ‘Papa.’ Explains a lot.”
Gabriel’s hand lashed out, quick as a snake, and he slapped the gun out of Colt’s hand. “You do not get to point that at her,” he snapped.
Colt stepped back, fisting his hands at his sides and glaring at the pair. “Are you Loki?” he demanded. “The god Loki? Of tricks and mischief?”
“Yes.” Gabriel stepped around Jane, putting her behind him. “And Jane is my daughter, a demi-god in her own right. Half human, Samuel.” He released his posture, letting his whole body show openness to the hunter. “We don’t stand against you. We fight on humanity’s side.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“We haven’t lied.” Jane didn’t try to get in front of Gabriel again, but she did stand beside him. “Samuel, aside from our true identities, we haven’t lied to you about anything. Hell was trying to open here. Surely the presence of these demons alone is enough to corroborate our story.”
“I like humans,” Gabriel added. “Once,” he glanced at Jane as he spoke, “I loved one. I don’t want humanity to die out. I don’t want Hell to rule. I like Earth the way it is.”
Colt gave a jerk of his head, swallowing thickly. “All these people,” he finally said, gesturing around them. “All these people died because of what we did.”
“What I failed to do,” Gabriel corrected, shouldering the blame for their deaths. What were several hundred more souls weighing on his conscience, after all the thousands he had already failed as an angel? “May their souls find peace.”
“Will they?” Colt looked between Gabriel and Jane. “Will they find peace? Or are they going to Hell, like that demon said?”
Jane looked to Gabriel for an answer, and Gabriel shook his head. “Proximity to the Hell Gate doesn’t taint your soul. They were all working against Hell. That’s a big white mark for them. I don’t think anyone working for us was so corrupt as to end up in Hell despite all that.”
Colt nodded shortly, still looking suspicious. “You’re gonna help me bury them,” he finally declared. “Good Christian burials, for every last one. You’re gonna help me find their names, and we’re gonna put up tombstones for all of them. Every damn one.”
“Of course,” Jane assured Colt. “We would have done that anyway.”
“Good,” Samuel grunted. “Then let’s begin.”
Next...
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 3,458
Chapter Summary: The gate is closed! It’s time to party!
CHAPTER 33:
Celebrations and Lamentations
The workers finished laying the last rails two weeks before the fated alignment of the planes, a fact Gabriel welcomed with quiet relief. He was sitting in his tent, his head propped in his hands, trying to will away the throbbing headache that had been plaguing him for the better part of a month. The demons had started attacking his wards in earnest about ten weeks back, and Gabriel had spent practically every free moment holding them off. Each time he faced off against the demons, he prayed he wouldn’t recognize Cariel in any of them. So far, he had been lucky, and Cariel had always been mercifully absent. The demons who did come managed to break through in several places, but Gabriel had been quick enough to beat them back before they could damage the rails or injure any workers. Each time was harder than the last, though, and Gabriel could feel his grace struggling to recover so close to the Hell Gate.
Now that all five lines were in place and all five churches consecrated, Gabriel could finally relax. No matter how much the demons flung themselves at the rails, the trap would hold. It was strong enough to restrain Azazel himself. None of these lower level demons stood a chance, not even in their multitudes. The demons seemed to have realized the futility of their attacks, finally pulling back around midnight last night.
“Lie down.” Jane had been the one to bring Gabriel the news, her initial excitement fading as soon as she saw the exhaustion on her papa’s face. She had rushed out of the tent and returned now with a basin of steaming water. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t sleep,” Gabriel retorted, stretching out on his unused cot (for appearances only) for his daughter’s sake. Thorn yipped happily, hopping onto the cot and climbing over Gabriel’s legs to sprawl out across his knees.
“You know what I mean,” Jane chided as she knelt beside him. “Rest. When was the last time you rested?” She soaked a cloth in the water and wrung it out before laying it across Gabriel’s forehead.
The angel hissed at the dampness against his skin, but the water was hot, close to boiling, and the heat was soothing. He closed his eyes and sighed as Jane repeated the process with a fresh cloth, removing the old one as soon as it started cooling. “It’s been a while.”
“I told you, you needed to stay in the best condition,” Jane scolded. “If Beelzebub attacks now…”
“He can’t get in.” Gabriel slowly relaxed under Jane’s ministrations. “Just get everyone over the lines, and they’ll be safe.”
“That’s all well and good most days, but there’s going to be a shindig tonight next town over. They’ve got a band, and I heard they’re laying out a dance floor.” Jane set the bowl aside as the water inside cooled too much to help Gabriel and just sat beside him, lightly stroking his hair. He smiled faintly, turning into her caress. “We won’t be able to keep the men close enough for the trap to protect them.”
“You’re a good girl, Jane,” Gabriel murmured.
“I try,” she answered, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Even to my stubborn papa.”
“Are you going to this shindig?”
“I am.” There was a guarded tone to Jane’s voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and Gabriel cracked an eye open. “Samuel asked me to accompany him.”
“It’s Samuel now?” Gabriel hadn’t been blind to the burgeoning affection between his daughter and the hunter, but Jane was clever herself, and had often found ways to slip off without letting Gabriel follow her. He couldn’t veil himself completely from her, so she always knew if he was spying. In the past couple of months, though, he hadn’t had even an hour to spare to keep an eye on the two. Who knew what they had gotten up to in that wealth of privacy! “Do you let him call you Jane?”
“He calls me Miss Jane, so I suppose that’s a yes.” Jane rolled around to sit beside the cot, her back to Gabriel, and she drew her knees up. “I accepted his invitation, Papa. I like him. He’s absolutely brilliant, and he likes me too.”
“He doesn’t know what you are,” Gabriel warned, sitting up and putting his hand on Jane’s shoulder. Thorn grumbled at the movement, shifting off to lie beside the angel.
“Why does he have to?”
“Jane…” Gabriel sighed, drawing Jane onto the cot with him and enfolding her in a hug. “Angel, I love you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Samuel wouldn’t hurt me. He couldn’t.”
“Even with his fancy, improved gun?” Gabriel tucked one of Jane’s curls behind her ear and shook his head. “That’s not the type of hurt I’m talking about, sweet. You would be lying to him, every day.”
“So?” Jane asked sullenly, trying not to let Gabriel catch her eye.
“So, that sort of lying wears on a person. You will hate that you can’t tell him everything. You will ache with the desire to confess everything and hope he still accepts you. It will eat you up inside, and when you have to let him go, you’ll be consumed with wondering what if you had only been honest from the start.” Gabriel smoothed his thumbs over Jane’s cheeks, waiting for her to finally look up at him. “I lied to your father, Jane, for thirty-two years, and I still wonder if I could have saved him had I only been honest.”
“Well then, maybe I’ll be honest from the start! I’m not like you, Papa. I can make different choices.”
“He’s a hunter, Jane. He kills people like you, and you know it.”
“But he likes me.” Jane’s voice was small, and her posture was sagging.
Gabriel wrapped Jane in another hug, rubbing her back like he had when she was a child. “Then enjoy what you have now. Go to the dance with him. Let him love you for tonight, and when we leave his life, cherish your memories of him. But do not try to create a life with him. He can only break your heart.”
By the time the party rolled around, Gabriel had managed to put a smile on Jane’s face by snapping her up a new dress, one of blue taffeta and black lace that bared her shoulders and hugged her curves. She would look beautiful for her night with Samuel, and she rewarded Gabriel with a kiss on the cheek before Samuel arrived with his carriage.
Gabriel opted to walk to the party, letting the fresh air clear his head a little. The nearest official town was about half a mile away to the northwest, though you could hardly tell from all of the people who had settled in tents around Colt’s Folly, as the five railways were already being called. The men had come for work, but the women had followed, and merchants seeing the potential for profit from all of the laborers with fresh wages in their hands. The five churches had fairly quickly turned into functioning houses of worship, each with a genuine angel feather in a gilded reliquary, and Gabriel could tell that little villages would soon spring up around each one. The first church already had a couple wooden buildings around it: a general store, a post office, and a doctor’s office. There was talk of hooking the Folly up to a rail line back east to allow better transportation… but that was all for someone else to worry about. As long as the original five lines remained in their current layout, the men could do whatever else they wanted to them.
As soon as Gabriel crossed the completed trap, the crushing weight of the opening Hell Gate vanished from his grace. He still felt wrung out from his prolonged exposure to the concentrated evil, but his mood was rapidly improving. His strength would return in a couple days; no permanent damage had been done. Perhaps he would even be able to enjoy himself at this celebration.
The evening was calm as dusk slowly stretched across the land, the sun setting to the west in a beautiful display of pinks and purples, streaking the clouds with brilliant colors. They seemed to be purely natural clouds, with no demonic taint. The angel was searching for any sign that Beelzebub might be crashing this party, but he couldn’t feel the demon’s vile presence anywhere around.
Gabriel smiled and nodded at the workers he passed on their own way to the party, exchanging congratulations and shaking hands of anyone who offered one. The party was in full swing by the time he arrived, with a six piece band playing a reel and a crowd of dancers spinning and stomping on the dance floor. He could make out Jane in her blue dress in the middle of the crowd, hand-in-hand with Samuel Colt, both of them with eyes only for each other. Gabriel smiled at their happiness, though it was tinged with sadness, and he headed toward the refreshments table to get himself a cup of whatever they were offering.
Gabriel himself was pulled into many dances as the celebration wore on. He waltzed and capered and promenaded with anyone who offered and any woman who was looking on longingly. Jane spotted him twirling an eighty-year-old woman around and laughed brightly, clapping at him. The woman, Elizabeth, had to stop dancing before the song ended, apologizing profusely for being out of breath so soon. “I haven’t danced like that in ages!” she exclaimed, squeezing Gabriel’s hand tightly as he helped her find a seat where she could watch the dancing. “I hope you do forgive this old woman for cutting your fun short. I certainly did enjoy it while it lasted!”
“Nonsense, my fine lady,” Gabriel assured her, bending over her hand to kiss her knuckles. “I assure you, age is but a number, and tonight you are a thousand times younger than I.”
“You are far too kind,” the woman laughed, pressing one wrinkled hand to her flushed face.
A gunshot rang out over the crowd, and Gabriel twisted around sharply, his grace catching on a discordant rot that was suddenly exploding through the town. Beelzebub! The dancers were screaming and running for cover, and Samuel and Jane were trying to herd them without becoming trampled themselves.
“Now, now, now, where are you all running to?” More possessed men filtered out of the shadows, blocking the exits and corralling the panicking humans back into the center of town. Beelzebub himself, still in his droopy-mustached meatsuit, strode slowly through the middle, tucking his gun away. “Do you have any idea what you’ve DONE?” He bellowed the last word into the night, and the sky answered with a flash of lightning and a loud crack of thunder. “You’ve been messing with Hell, kiddies! Every last one of you has been tainted!”
“Stop scaring them.” Gabriel didn’t shout, or even raise his voice, but he touched his grace to his words to let them echo over the crying of the trapped humans. He stepped away from Elizabeth and stalked toward Beelzebub, wishing he didn’t still have his headache from earlier. The crowd parted before him, exposing him to the demon’s view. “That’s not very nice.” He was hardly at full power right now, but Beelzebub was no match for an Archangel, even a weakened one.
Or so Gabriel hoped.
“You,” Beelzebub hissed, drawing his gun again and pointing it at Gabriel. There was no Rite of AshkEnte inscribed on this weapon, nothing more than cold steel. Gabriel didn’t even flinch. “You died.”
“Me,” Gabriel agreed. “And I’m afraid not. Bit harder to kill than you might think. Have to use wood, you see, specially prepared.” At least, that was Loki’s vulnerability. A wooden stake, dipped in the blood of one of his victims. “Let them go. This was all my idea.”
“Let them go?” Beelzebub looked around at the hundreds of humans penned in by his demons. “Oh sure, Loki. Because you came back from the dead, I’ll let them go, just for you.”
“Wait, don’t-!” Gabriel threw out his hands, hurling Loki’s power at Beelzebub, but he was a fraction of a second too slow to stop the demon from firing his gun into the air. Every demon howled in laughter and lunged toward the nearest human, their hands closing around fragile necks.
The sound of fifty spines snapping in unison was one Gabriel knew would haunt him for the rest of his immortal life.
Gabriel’s scream was drowned out by the fresh wave of panic gripping the humans, all trying to run as the demons surged into the crowd, rampantly killing. Gabriel charged Beelzebub, ripping his knife from his sheath and flinging it ahead of him. It buried itself hilt-deep into Beelzebub’s throat with a spray of blood, and the demon staggered back, snarling in pain.
Snarling.
Not falling over dead.
Well, shit! Gabriel hadn’t made the blade strong enough to take out Beelzebub (which meant it would be useless if he ever encountered Azazel). He’d have to draw his sword or burn the demon out using his grace, both of which were risky. There were too many demons around. If even one of them escaped, Gabriel’s identity could be revealed in Hell.
Beelzebub yanked the sword from his throat and flung it back at Gabriel, aiming for his head. Gabriel snatched the knife out of the air without breaking his charge, twirling around and shouting Jane’s name. “Catch!” He let the knife fly before he was facing Beelzebub again, tackling the Knight of Hell to the ground.
Lightning illuminated the night, the screaming barely being drowned out by the rolls of thunder. Someone-Colt?-was shouting for people to pray, dammit, pray like their lives depended on it! Gabriel could just make out the sizzle and spark of dying demons as Jane ripped through them with the enchanted knife, punctuated by gunshots, but he was a bit distracted by the demon trying to snap his own neck.
Gabriel and Beelzebub wrestled across the dance floor. They were fighting for control of Beelzebub’s gun, but while Gabriel managed to shoot the demon once in the heart, Beelzebub got him in the stomach.
Neither wound was fatal.
Gabriel snapped Beelzebub’s neck, but the demon kicked him in the groin, which definitely hurt a lot worse. The screaming had stopped, but there was still some crying in the background, and someone throwing up. Beelzebub slammed Gabriel into the ground, then slammed him again. Gabriel could feel his skull crack and split, and he almost laughed at the thought that this might release some of the pressure inside his head. He shoved at Beelzebub, kicked a foot beneath the demon’s chest and tried to throw him off. Beelzebub snarled, pressing down against Gabriel’s leg, blood from his injuries dripping onto the angel’s face. Dad help him, but this needed to end!
A shot exploded at point-blank range, and Beelzebub’s expression shattered over Gabriel, the demon sparking orange within the dead man. The angel retched, shoving the body off him and twisting over to spit blood and brains out of his mouth.
“Papa!” Gabriel barely heard Jane’s cry over the ringing in his ears, but he did feel her hands on his back, her fingers slipping through the blood on his face as she caught his head between her hands and made him look at her. “Are you hurt? Did the bullet hit you? Answer me!”
Gabriel pried Jane’s hands away and turned to cough and spit again, eventually wiping his arm over his mouth and looking back at his daughter. Jane was pale beneath her prairie tan, her perfectly coiffed hair was a flyaway mess, and the dress she had loved so much was completely ruined, stained with mud and blood and torn in several places. Still, her eyes were focused only on Gabriel, the worry etched in every line of her face. “I’m fine,” he assured her, taking a shuddering breath. “Messy, but I’ll live.”
“Oh Papa!” Jane flung her arms around Gabriel’s shoulders and he held her tightly, pressing his face against her hair as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Colt cleared his throat after a minute, standing beside the pair. He was looking shell-shocked himself, still holding his fantastic gun in his hand. Gabriel would never speak a word against that magnificent thing again. Sure, his life hadn’t been in danger from Beelzebub, but Colt had managed to end the demon without revealing Gabriel’s identity. Gabriel knew how to recognize miracles when they happened right on top of him.
Jane pulled away from Gabriel, wiping her face with her hands. “Samuel, I…”
“They’re dead.” Colt looked around the town slowly, then back down at Gabriel and Jane. “Everyone. This town. It’s… dead. They’re all dead.”
“No…” Jane shook her head, clenching her hands into fists against her chest. “No, no, no! No, we were doing so well! We hadn’t lost a single worker, not one, not one! No! They were all supposed to live!”
“This is my fault.” Gabriel pulled his legs out from under him, sitting in the blood pooling from Beelzebub’s body and not caring about the state of his trousers. “I shouldn’t have assumed they’d stay away. I should’ve protected this town too…”
“That’s not what you were being paid to do, Mr. Lucas,” Colt admitted. “Defend the trap, not the town. Mr. Lucas?” Colt rubbed his hand over his mouth, looking up at the moon before turning his attention back to Gabriel. “Loki?”
“Heh.” Gabriel pushed himself to his feet, squeezing Jane’s shoulder on the way up. “Hoped you hadn’t heard that.”
Colt pointed his gun at Gabriel’s heart, and Gabriel held up his hands. Could Colt’s gun kill him? The angel didn’t know, and he didn’t want to test it. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Samuel, no!” Jane leapt to her feet, planting herself between Gabriel and the gun. “He’s not an enemy, Samuel. He’s not a monster.”
The gun’s aim swung down a little, pointing now at Jane’s heart. “And you?” Colt asked quietly. “You called him ‘Papa.’ Explains a lot.”
Gabriel’s hand lashed out, quick as a snake, and he slapped the gun out of Colt’s hand. “You do not get to point that at her,” he snapped.
Colt stepped back, fisting his hands at his sides and glaring at the pair. “Are you Loki?” he demanded. “The god Loki? Of tricks and mischief?”
“Yes.” Gabriel stepped around Jane, putting her behind him. “And Jane is my daughter, a demi-god in her own right. Half human, Samuel.” He released his posture, letting his whole body show openness to the hunter. “We don’t stand against you. We fight on humanity’s side.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“We haven’t lied.” Jane didn’t try to get in front of Gabriel again, but she did stand beside him. “Samuel, aside from our true identities, we haven’t lied to you about anything. Hell was trying to open here. Surely the presence of these demons alone is enough to corroborate our story.”
“I like humans,” Gabriel added. “Once,” he glanced at Jane as he spoke, “I loved one. I don’t want humanity to die out. I don’t want Hell to rule. I like Earth the way it is.”
Colt gave a jerk of his head, swallowing thickly. “All these people,” he finally said, gesturing around them. “All these people died because of what we did.”
“What I failed to do,” Gabriel corrected, shouldering the blame for their deaths. What were several hundred more souls weighing on his conscience, after all the thousands he had already failed as an angel? “May their souls find peace.”
“Will they?” Colt looked between Gabriel and Jane. “Will they find peace? Or are they going to Hell, like that demon said?”
Jane looked to Gabriel for an answer, and Gabriel shook his head. “Proximity to the Hell Gate doesn’t taint your soul. They were all working against Hell. That’s a big white mark for them. I don’t think anyone working for us was so corrupt as to end up in Hell despite all that.”
Colt nodded shortly, still looking suspicious. “You’re gonna help me bury them,” he finally declared. “Good Christian burials, for every last one. You’re gonna help me find their names, and we’re gonna put up tombstones for all of them. Every damn one.”
“Of course,” Jane assured Colt. “We would have done that anyway.”
“Good,” Samuel grunted. “Then let’s begin.”
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