Within a few seconds, the wide-eyed MP had sawed through the plastic ties with the blade, and Tom’s wrists were free. He took the knife from the MP and disarmed the rest of the crewmen. Still keeping a pistol trained on the guards in the back, he moved toward the cockpit, where the pilot remained oblivious to the quick turn of events.
Through the cockpit’s glass, Tom could clearly see flashes of explosions continuing to light the horizon toward Angel City.
Tom tapped the pilot on the shoulder. He turned around, annoyed.
“What?” he asked in a grunt, but soon came up short.
Tom’s gun barrel met his gaze.
“I’m sorry. But we have an unscheduled stop.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Demons had begun to hurl themselves like live bombs into the Immortal City. They dropped down and curled up into balls of black fire and smoke, exploding violence and bedlam in the buildings and streets below. Fires blazed all across the Immortal City, roaring up from buildings into the dark night.
“Press harder!” Jacks shouted to his fellow Angels. A demon-bomb soared across the sky, and, launching himself with amazing precision, Jackson flew straight up and swung his sword at the exact right moment. A blinding light flashed off the blade as it cleaved the demon into two neat halves.
Mitch spotted another demon, this one flying lower, heading past their defenses to the palm-lined Halo Strip. He gave a cry and hurled himself toward the beast, setting his wings hard behind him as the dark wind ripped along their sharp feathers. Intersecting the Dark Angel from the side, Mitch smashed it against the enormous billboard of a beautiful Immortal that hung over Sunset Boulevard. As Mitch and the demon ripped through the advertisement and hurtled down toward the concrete below, they struggled in midair, smashing each other by turns into the luxury apartment building at their backs. Mitch launched himself against the demon, and they crashed into the atrium of the building across the street, where they grappled in the middle of the once-glittering Halo Strip. The demon managed to trip Mitch and fling him down to the ground, but Mitch used his wings to jump back up immediately while also drawing his sword.
Mitch drove the sword’s point into the heaving chest of the Dark One. The Divine Sword flashed brilliantly. The demon squealed and then was silent as it flopped, dead to the ground.
“And stay out of my city!” he spat at the demon corpse at his feet.
Suddenly Mitch felt a blinding pain in the back of his head as the clenched claw of another demon clubbed him. He dropped to his knees and spun around as fast he could, but the demon had the advantage. It was bigger and somehow more menacing than any Mitch had seen yet.
Mitch managed to stand up, but he couldn’t defend his right side in time. He groaned in agony as the demon’s burning claw reached out and clutched his right arm, the one holding the sword. The Divine Sword dropped to the ground with a clatter as the claw began crushing through the battle armor, which was melting under the flames. In disbelief, Mitch looked into the demon’s hellish face, which was framed by huge horns and two smaller heads on either side. The whole thing appeared to be shifting and shimmering, as if its actual skin was on fire. The beast drew its other powerful arm back to grab at Mitch. And rip him apart.
Clatter-crash. The unmistakable sound of someone smashing a window out, the glass shattering to the ground below. The demon still grasped for Mitch.
Chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk.
The report of a heavy-caliber machine gun rose over Mitch’s scream. The bullets blasted into the demon, knocking it first one way, then the other. A team of citizen soldiers had leveled the machine gun in the second floor of what remained of an exclusive Angel hotel. Floor-to-ceiling windows had been smashed out, and the muzzle fire lit up the night as they continued to shoot at the demon.
Stunned by the burst of machine-gun fire, the demon dropped Mitch to the ground as it swatted at the bullets. Even before he hit the ground, Mitch was rolling to his right, ignoring the excruciating pain in his arm, and he picked up his Divine Sword. He launched himself directly up from the ground, aiming the blade at the belly of the demon. Noxious vapors spewed forth as Mitch pressed the sword in to the hilt, skewering the demon’s gut. The Divine Sword sent a blast of light into the night as the demon quivered to its grisly death on the end of Mitch’s blade.
Mitch turned to the civilians in the bombed-out building across the street and nodded in appreciation. Then he was off, and the ragtag army began reloading for the next Dark Angel who would cross their path.
They would not have to wait long.
• • •
Five of Jacks’s Battle Angels had already fallen to the enemy. They’d been taking demons with them as they went out, sending them back to hell with a final slice of the Divine Sword. But there were just so many of them. They could only hope to hold out a little while longer.
The forces were getting pushed back into Angel City too quickly, and Jacks knew they were going to have to make a full stand before his ranks of Battle Angels got too thin. The demons were ruthless and efficient. Jackson wondered if they’d see the head demon before long, the leader who seemed to be so relentlessly leading the Dark Ones. Jacks grimly imagined the head demon personally making an appearance to gloat over its victory.
“Jacks!” an Angel voice shouted from somewhere behind him.
In desperation Jackson saw that the Angel was looking at a scene worse than anything he could have ever imagined.
Moving rapidly toward them from the heart of Angel City was a thick, dark cloud, teeming with demons. An entire battalion had somehow flanked them and was getting ready to ambush. Jackson cursed bitterly.
The battle was going to be over before it had even truly begun. It was now the end, and they would be torn apart with no mercy. At least they would go out fighting.
“To me! Prepare to close ranks!” Jackson screamed. The patch of destroyed, smoldering asphalt before them seemed as good a place as any to make their last stand. Gritting his teeth, Jacks started drawing his fellow Battle Angels around him, looking to the phalanxes of demons advancing on the ground, and then the numbers forming in the sky behind them. Through some kind of trick the Dark Ones had been able to get around to their other side. How, though?
Then, out of the blackness of the demon battalion, with a wave of rising joy, Jacks saw white glinting on the underside of wings. White glints kept flooding the sky, and suddenly Jackson and the Immortals beside him knew that the cloud formation in the sky was not made up of demons after all.
Miraculously, the rest of the Angels had arrived.