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BLOOD AND ASHES

CADE

Hawk's body lay still on the ancient stone floor, blood pooling beneath him like spilled wine. The church felt colder now, as if his death had stolen all the warmth from the air.

Sterling knelt beside his fallen friend, his weathered face a storm of fury, grief, and a quiet devastation that was worse than any shouting could have been. His hands trembled as he pressed them against Hawk's chest, an instinctive gesture to stop bleeding that had already slowed to nothing. There was no life left to save. Sterling's jaw clenched, muscles working beneath his beard as he fought for control.

“I'll take care of him,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. The words carried the weight of a ritual he'd performed too many times over too many years. His eyes, wet with unshed tears, lifted to Cassiel. “You take care of that demon.”

The simple request contained multitudes—grief, rage, a lifetime of hunting that had cost him almost everyone he'd ever cared about. But also trust. Trust that we would finish what Hawk had died for.

Cassiel stood apart from us, his normally perfect posture now slightly hunched from his injuries. His wings, partially visible in this liminal space between life and death, hung at awkward angles, singed at the edges where Asmodeus's power had burned them. He didn't speak, perhaps understanding that no words could touch Sterling's grief.

Sean turned on the angel, fury barely contained. Blood still trickled from a cut above his eye, and his left arm hung at an odd angle that suggested a dislocated shoulder. But pain wasn't slowing his anger.

“You knew you were going to lose,” he accused, voice sharp, edged with disbelief and rage. “We lost the Heart because of your damned deal, Cassiel. And now Hawk's dead.”

I recognized the tone. It was how Sean processed grief—by turning it outward, into anger, into action. It was easier to be furious than to acknowledge the hollow ache of loss. I understood the impulse all too well.

Cassiel's silver eyes flickered with something unreadable. “I had to take the risk.”

“Bullshit,” Sean snapped, taking a step closer to the angel. His hands curled into fists at his sides. “You gambled with his life.”

“No,” Cassiel corrected quietly. “Hawk was a loophole. And Asmodeus knew it.”

The implication hung in the air between us. Asmodeus had never intended to let Hawk live, deal or no deal. The realization did nothing to ease the weight of failure pressing down on my chest. We had lost the Heart. We had lost Hawk. We were failing at every turn.

Cassiel suddenly crouched, pressing his fingertips to the blood-streaked ground where Asmodeus had stood during their duel. His eyes flashed white for a moment, illuminating thedark corners of the church. “He bled,” he murmured, a note of surprise in his voice. “I can track him.”

I exhaled sharply, fingers tightening around the Heavenly Lash still coiled at my side. The weapon hummed faintly in response to my emotions, a sympathetic vibration that traveled up my arm and resonated with the mark on my chest. My mind felt fogged with exhaustion and anger, but one thought cut through the haze with crystal clarity: End this.

Cassiel rose to his feet, his movement stiff with recent injury. He turned toward Sterling, who was still kneeling beside Hawk's body, one hand resting on his friend's forehead in a gesture of tenderness few ever got to see from the gruff hunter.

“You shouldn't be here for this,” Cassiel said softly. Not a command, but a kindness—an offering to stay with Hawk, to begin the hunter's rituals of farewell.

Sterling didn't respond immediately. He brushed a hand over Hawk's cooling forehead, smoothing back hair matted with sweat and blood. The silent farewell was an agony of its own to witness. When he finally looked up, his eyes burned with a ferocity that belied his age.

“Then finish it,” he said simply. The command of a general who had seen too many soldiers fall and couldn't bear to lose the war they'd died for.

With no further words, we followed Cassiel's lead, leaving Sterling to his grim task. The angel moved with certainty, tracking something invisible to human eyes—the trail of Asmodeus's blood, he explained, burned like embers against the spiritual darkness. It led us out of the church and through the surrounding woods, to a place where ancient stones stood in a broken circle.

The remnants of a temple, older than the church, older than the colonial settlement that had once stood nearby. A placewhere the veil between worlds stretched dangerously thin. The perfect location to break the final seal.

As we approached, I felt the mark on my chest pulse with increasing intensity, responding to whatever power waited within those weathered stones. The night around us seemed to hold its breath, as if the very air feared what was coming.

The air inside the stone circle vibrated with unnatural energy, making my teeth vibrate and my skin crawl. Moonlight illuminated symbols carved into the cracked stone floor—an ancient ritual diagram that glowed like molten gold against the darkness. At its center stood Asmodeus, the box containing the Heart open before him.

He turned as we entered, his perfect face splitting into a grin that was all predator, no humor. “You're late,” he said, voice carrying easily across the distance between us.

The blood from Hawk's murder still stained his hands, drying to rust against his pale skin. The sight of it hit me like a physical blow, grief crystallizing into rage so intense it made my vision tunnel.

“You're going to pay for what you did,” Sean growled beside me, the Colt raised despite knowing how little good silver bullets would do.

Asmodeus laughed, the sound like glass breaking. “Am I? Or have I already won?” He gestured to the ritual circle, where the Heart pulsed with unnatural light, veins of darkness spreading across its surface like cracks in glass. “The final seal breaks tonight, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.”

My jaw locked tight. Without hesitation, I uncoiled the Heavenly Lash, letting the weapon slide through my fingers to its full length. At my unspoken command, the whip ignited with celestial fire, golden light searing through the oppressive darkness of the ruin. The glow cast harsh shadows acrossAsmodeus's perfect features, revealing for a moment the monstrosity beneath the beautiful facade.

“Let's see if you still bleed, Asmodeus,” I said, voice low and dangerous.