Worlds War One

xlviii [Badia]

Private Ramírez stepped forward. Bad put a firm hand on his chest. The enemy was clever, resourceful, and ruthless. Bad had led her troops into an ambush. Rotten had outflanked her, and now he could overpower her. Angels. Like bringing nukes to a sword fight. And he had a hostage. He'd hijacked Private Golden's empty vessel.

"Let her go," Private Ramírez hollered across the distance between the two groups.

The man dressed exactly as the Changeling—covered in skins of dead things, black hat, and cowboy boots like some evil land baron from an Eastwood classic. Same grizzled gray beard hanging down the front of his jacket in a hairy bib. But he didn't smile. He might have never smiled before in his long, endless existence.

"This is not her anymore, soldier," Rotten sighed, the sound of his whisper dry as dust, a static that struck Bad's nerves. "Would you evict a new tenant simply because they had settled into a house after the last owner had moved already on?"

"Maybe she isn't in there right now," Private Ramírez said with hatred in his eyes, "but she wasn't done with it yet."

"She could be," Rotten threatened. "I can make sure she finds her way Beyond."

Saanvi stepped forward. The undead Angels watched the Demon. How fast could they move? They seemed to shift the world around them, so would they strike the princess down before she could even speak? Could a Demon stand up to an Angel? There was too much about the Wider World that Bad didn't know.

She didn't know what to do.

"You made these Angels into your children," Saanvi said.

"Humans and their more mortal ilk suffer a breakdown in biology. Fauna, Magi, E.T.s, Genii, Demons. You all suffer from being meat," Rotten lamented. "But Angels are a heartier medium. Ghosts, Golems, Wicked, Cogs, Angels. Those are the future of my offspring."

Bad had her hand on Private Ramírez's chest. She held him back. The soldiers had to step away from the confrontation. The battle wasn't going to be won by force. Let the princess take care of it diplomatically. Maybe Saanvi could manage to sweet-talk their way out of this...

"I'm going to wipe you from the Wider World, Rotten," Saanvi promised, "even if it means walking across a feathery carpet of dead Angels."

Or not.

Rotten didn't smile, and he didn't chuckle. He regarded the Demon as no more than a bluster of wind, and he was calculating whether to put on a windbreaker or simply turn up his collar. Rotten decided on the windbreaker. He sent an Angel to do the breaking.

The Angel was Sandalphon.

The Angel was Sandalphon. No longer. They were now an Angel possessed by the undead, a child of Mot who had dissolved Sandalphon's essence and taken control of the empty vessel. The zombified seraphim moved the world, then Saanvi and Sandalmot stood staring eye to eye. Great wings reached out on either side, but instead of glorious and heavenly, the winged entity more resembled the harbinger of a horrible death.

"Angels can die like anyone else," Saanvi said, to Sandalmot, to Rotten.

"I'll give you one free shot to try it," Rotten replied.

Sandalmot nodded and stood still. Saanvi drew her blade and swung it. The knife struck the Angel right in the chest, the tip chipping, then the edge breaking into bits. Shattered green steel scattered across the ground of the Court on High.

Saanvi stared at the broken blade. A Demon wasn't strong enough to penetrate the Angel's skin. Neither were any of the Humans. Probably not Penina, either. Just Seaman Choi. Maybe Seaman Choi. One against dozens.

Sandalmot backhanded Saanvi and sent her pinwheeling across the Court's field, skidding in a limp pile thirty feet away. Then the Angels attacked.

"Seaman Choi," Bad barked, "do we have Magi shields?"

As soon as Bad turned toward the nephilim in their ranks, Private Ramírez broke ranks and drew his blade. He went directly for Private Golden. Before his first foot fell in advancing toward the hostage, Sandalmot snagged him up with one hand, lifting the private by his neck until he was dangling a foot off the grounds. The Angel could have snapped the soldier's neck, but instead, Sandalmot let Private Ramírez struggle and strangle.

"No," screamed Penina, launching forward, her arm turning into a marble lance, looking like a knight in a fairy tale jousting against a deadly foe.

Sandalmot dropped Private Ramírez and grabbed Penina's long lance, breaking it off at her elbow. The marble turned into dust, a fine powder that swirled and blew away in the rush of the wings of the attacking Angels. Penina, dismembered, fell back, screaming.

Bad and Private Ramírez arrived on either side of the Golem. Seaman Choi and Airman Fox were right behind. The nephilim gripped his SIG-Sauer, the gun glowing with golden energy. A soldier's magic wand. After all, Seaman Choi had managed to manufacture an enchanted shield, a magical force field that separated the Misfits from the Angels. But not for long. The undead Angels battered the magic shield, light stuttering like it could crack at any moment.

Penina was dying. Missing an arm, it acted as a mortal wound for a Golem. There was no blood, no gruesome injury, only a jagged end where a limb used to be. There is nothing to staunch or cauterize, nor stitches or salve to save her life. It would be a neat death.

"Can't you heal yourself?" Private Ramírez asked, tears running down his face, cupping a handful of Arcadia soil. "Like your leg?"

"Alreadyyyy lost too much of myself saving Jiiii," she sighed so softly. She was fading fast.

Seaman Choi, concentrating on holding back the angry Angels, demanded, "Take the leg back. I can survive."

"It doesn't work like that," Penina whispered. "Once given, forever gone."

"Please, don't die, Nina," Private Ramírez begged. "I just found you."

"Death is meeeerelyyyy another place in the Wider World, Quest. You can find meeee again."

"I want you to stay."

"Maybeeee the universe has other plans for meeee."

And her last breath issued from stone lips. Private Ramírez leaned over her and sobbed. The shield protecting them from killer zombie Angels wouldn't last for even another minute.

Bad made a fist. She'd lost another member of her squad.

Then the world beneath them shifted. Thrummed. Like the heartbeat of a planet thumping, a sudden tremor of a quick quake. Bah-Thump! Then again. Bah-Thump! Even the undead Angels had to pause and steady themselves, or the quaking world would have sent them reeling. Bad checked to see if it was Saanvi's doing, but the Demon was still motionless, maybe dead, certainly not saving anyone.

Then the Golem sat upright, marbled eyes wide and roaming, Penina's gaze sweeping across the army of undead Angels. The soil from Arcadia replaced her missing arm, the limb fused with the ground beneath them like a stem rooted in fertile soil.

"I am awake." The words came out of Penina's mouth, but it wasn't Penina's voice.

Avalon itself was speaking through the Golem.