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“No thank you.”

“But I’m done with it.”

“Are you sure? You might want to turn around.”

I look over my shoulder just as an armored angel swoops down at me, his Gladius raised to take off my head.

I roll onto the marble floor and back onto my feet. The winged bastard misses Samael by a few inches, but Samael doesn’t move. Always the show-off.

By now the others have dropped their kitten and bunny chatter and noticed me fighting for my fucking life.

“Sarosh!” shouts Alice.

Sarosh. Now at least I know the name of the guy who’s going to relieve me of the misery of eating organic mu

ffins forever.

The angel makes a sharp turn and shoots back at me. I shout some Hellion hoodoo and it has about as much effect as reading cupcake recipes to a lobster.

You’re in Heaven, dumb-ass. Hell magic isn’t going to work here.

While I’m trying to improvise some Sub Rosa hoodoo, on the off chance that Heaven allows us magical types any leeway at all, Sarosh lands. And runs at me like Toshiro Mifune in full samurai mode. At least if I had a na’at I might be able to put a little distance between us. But I have nothing other than the amber knife, and I’m really trying to not start out in Heaven by killing an angel. Of course, there is another angel in the vicinity and she’s not the shy type.

Alice hits Sarosh boots first at about a hundred miles an hour. The blow smashes him into the marble floor hard enough to bury him a good six inches. But the prick gets up. He’s bloody and his nose is a little off center, but the hit hasn’t slowed him down much. That doesn’t faze Alice. She lands and smashes her Gladius into his, knocking him back a few feet. That just pisses him off. He shouts and charges her. Sarosh swings his blade, but when she goes to block him, he slips under and tags her in the belly. It doesn’t stop her, but I can tell that it hurt like hell. Then Sarosh is on her, raining one chopping blow after another onto her Gladius. Wounded, Alice can’t take the crazy ferocity of the hits and goes down on one knee.

I look at Samael and he shakes his head. He’s still Death and Death can’t take sides. But I’m sort of Death now, too, so I rush Sarosh from behind.

When he raises his Gladius high for a killing blow, I grab his armor and shove the amber blade straight through the back of his holier-than-thou skull.

So much for a quiet entrance Upstairs.

His Gladius goes out and now he’s the one who drops to his knees. Alice gets up and shoves her Gladius into his chest, bringing it up sharply and splitting him neatly in half. He blips out a second later.

I run to Alice and grab her.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But part of the blow slipped between two armor plates and tagged me. I’ll be fine, but I need to sit down for a few minutes.”

The others come over. I let her down slowly and kneel next to her.

“That was a hell of a shot at the end, splitting him like that.”

She does a grimacing smile.

“I thought you’d like that. It’s the kind of thing I’ve seen you do.”

“You’ve seen me fight with a Gladius?”

“What? You think I haven’t been looking in on you when I could?”

“Very sneaky.”

“It’s no fun watching movies all the time without you.”

“So, I’ll just hold this forever, shall I?”

It’s Samael. He’s holding the drapes out as far from his body as possible.