“No, not yet,” Torrent said through the comm unit. “Look. They're going inside.”
We had assumed the Host would set the church on fire to drive us out, but Torrent was right, the Angels drew their shining swords, blessed with the power of Jehovah, and strode toward the church doors. Feathered wings in a multitude of colors spread aggressively and even from a distance, I could see their eyes glowing with magic.
“Fire in the hole!” Torrent cried.
Seconds later, just as the Angels were about to enter the church, it exploded. Shrapnel flew and fire billowed like dragon's breath, sending the Angels blasting backward. Even though the ward had contained the sound of the explosion as well as the shrapnel, the woods went eerily silent. Not because of the horrifying gore of Angel pieces but rather the lack of it. The bomb hadn't worked. Well, not entirely. The Angels had been blown into the ward with enough force and smacked with enough debris to render them unconscious, but they weren't dead. They weren't even damaged.
Bullets don't hurt gods but if a bomb is big enough, it could. We had thought this bomb was big enough, but we'd forgotten that the Wild Magic makes gods even more resilient. I know, I know; I had thought the Commander of the Swiss Guard foolish for forgetting that even missiles couldn't hurt Azrael. But Az was a special case; I didn't expect these Angels to be just as hard to kill.
“Damn,” I muttered. “They're practically invincible.”
“No, they aren't. We may not have killed them, but they can still be killed. Lower the ward.” As the ward fell, Az shouted, “Take their heads!”
Gods and demigods popped into visibility and rushed for the comatose Angels. Just as we reached them, a great roaring came from above us, and more Angels revealed themselves—so many squadrons that I couldn't count. Blessed steel was already in their hands and with holy fury, they dove for us.
We had all taken our bites of apple before tracing over so, I didn't have to protect our people this time—the Wild Magic would. But, as we'd just seen, it would also protect the Angels. Maybe they wouldn't be invulnerable, but killing them would still be difficult. The last time I'd fought some Apple Angels, normal fey magic had done nothing to them.
This time would be different. The second wave may have surprised us, but we were prepared for anything. Our people pivoted to direct their attacks upward instead, shooting fire, lightning, blasts of sunlight, and glowing streams of magic that I couldn't name. It was as if another bomb had gone off. The smell of burning feathers saturated my nose as Angels began to fall from the sky.
Shocked, the Angels fell back, or up, rather. More and more of our people poured out from the treeline while others launched attacks from the branches. Lions, bulked up beyond belief, leapt into the air, soaring impossibly high. Their jaws closed on wings and necks, and when they came back to earth, they brought their enemies with them. One of them breathed fire as he roared—something that even I can't do.
And my lions weren't the only ones pulling Angels from the sky. Magic-suppressing nets were thrown via catapults, and, thankfully, they worked. Angels fell wrapped in glowing cords, their wings struggling to break free.
Then I stepped forward. As I walked, the fizzing rush of Wild Magic responded to me and began to lift me off the ground. It was like walking up stairs except that there were no stairs, only air. My hair whipped back, the starlight stripe shining as if lit from within, and all of my magic seemed to be laid out before me like a buffet. I chose Lunacy again. Sometimes it's best to go with a sure thing.
Except that it wasn't such a sure thing after all. Nothing happened.
I paused on an invisible step.
“Did you think we came completely unprepared for you, harlot?” a voice rang out.
I looked toward the sound. Several yards before me was what appeared to be a teenage boy with wings, hovering in midair. His bright, youthful face wore a sneer, and his golden-brown curls sparked with magic—stolen magic.
“Gabriel!” I hissed.
“So we meet again,” Gabriel said, his sneer turning into a smirk.
“Seriously? That's the line you're going with?” I rolled my eyes. “How sad.”
“You can't touch us with your insanity this time,” Gabriel, my Angel nemesis, declared even as the battle raged below us. “Jehovah himself has laid a protection on our minds.”
“Yeah?” I mentally ran through my options. Angels handled fire pretty well, and I didn't want to get my Love magic anywhere near this asshole, but there were other elements and one of them went well with my Moon Magic. “I don't give a shit about your mind, Gabriel. In fact, I'd prefer you to have all of your senses when I kill you.”
I called upon Water, not to summon the element but to alter the balance of it inside the Archangel. I didn't have to switch magics because lunacy is achieved by controlling the balance of water inside someone's body. All I had to do was change my goal.
Gabriel's eyes widened as he peed his pretty white pants. No, that wasn't my intention, just a bonus. I pulled the water out of him in a matter of seconds, through every available orifice and his pores. Instead of unbalancing Gabriel's water and hurting him mentally, I took every drop he had, dehydrating the bastard like a piece of beef jerky.
A mummified Gabriel screeched and launched himself at me, feathers falling with every beat of his wings. I jerked back, not out of fear but in shock that he could still move in that state. His sword lifted and it might have even found its target—I was that shocked—but before it could fall, a bolt of lightning hit it. The electricity ran down the steel and into Gabriel's arm. Without water to conduct it, it didn't go far, but it didn't have to. Gabriel's dried-up arm caught fire like kindling. His shrieks instantly turned into whimpers as the rest of him went up in a blaze. He fell from the sky like a meteor.
As Gabriel hit the ground, the Angels who'd been knocked unconscious by the bomb rose into the sky, nearly in unison, looking like a bunch of dust bunnies stirred up by a giant broom. They screeched in anger as their leader fell, mere minutes into the fight. But Gabriel wasn't dead yet.
I looked down, watching Gabriel's body plummet. Thor stood below me, waiting with his Viking sword. He brought it down on Gabriel's burning neck, and the whimpering abruptly stopped. Then he looked up at me and nodded.
I grinned back.
Several yards away, Azrael, in his Faerie God form, shot into the sky and shouted, “You have thirty seconds to surrender!”
The Host looked at each other, then at Az. I saw the answer on their faces even before they began to fly. At him. Once again, Azrael was their main target. Azrael, the only one who couldn't take a bite of magic apple for fear of losing himself to the Faerie God. But then again, he was already full of Wild Magic.
