Page 30

THE LAST SEAL

CADE

I was still feeling the weight of Sean's glare when Hawk called us over, cutting through the thick silence that had settled between us.

The air in the abandoned warehouse seemed to vibrate with unspoken accusations, the concrete walls absorbing our tension like a sponge.

I could still feel the phantom weight of the gun in my hand, the lack of hesitation when I'd pulled the trigger on possessed civilians.

The emptiness inside me made it too easy to dismiss Sean's anger as unnecessary sentimentality.

But beneath that emptiness lurked something worse—the dawning realization that Sean was right to be horrified. That the old Cade would have been horrified too. That whatever crawled out of Hell wearing my skin wasn't fully me anymore.

I followed Hawk's beckoning hand, deliberately keeping space between myself and Sean. Better to focus on the mission than dwell on what might be broken beyond repair.

The war room was dimly lit, the scent of gunpowder and sweat lingering in the air.

Strategic maps covered the makeshift table—an old door balanced on sawhorses—while weapons of various origins hung on the walls in methodical arrangements.

Bullets of different calibers were sorted into labeled containers, and ancient texts sat in precarious stacks beside modern surveillance equipment.

Hawk leaned against the table, arms crossed, eyes sharp as his namesake.

Blood from a shallow cut along his forearm had dried to a rusty streak, but he hadn't bothered to clean it.

His lean frame radiated the particular tension of a lifetime hunter—someone always ready to move, to fight, to kill.

The fluorescent light above cast harsh shadows across his face, deepening the lines of exhaustion and highlighting the strange intensity in his gaze.

“You held up your end,” he said, voice like gravel against stone. “Now, here's what I know.” There was no gratitude in his tone, no relief at our success. Just the flat acknowledgment of a transaction completed. Business as usual in the hunting world where survival was payment enough.

Sean stayed tense beside me, shoulders rigid, jaw working silently.

He stood close enough to fight alongside me if necessary but far enough away to make his displeasure known.

The silent treatment wasn't Sean's usual style—he preferred direct confrontation, heated words, even physical altercations.

This cold distance spoke volumes about how deeply my actions had disturbed him.

Hawk's eyes flicked between us, noting the tension with a hunter's observational skills. His expression remained neutral, but something shifted in his stance.

“Problems?” Hawk asked, the single word laden with meaning.

“Nothing that affects the job,” I replied before Sean could speak. The lie tasted stale on my tongue.

Hawk didn't look convinced, but he didn't press. In our world, personal drama was irrelevant against the backdrop of impending apocalypse.

“What do you know about the seals?” Hawk asked, shifting seamlessly from observer to interrogator. He pulled a leather-bound journal from inside his jacket—the pages yellowed with age, the binding reinforced with what looked suspiciously like sigils drawn in blood.

“Only what Sterling told you,” I said, the lie sliding easily from my lips, smooth and practiced despite the omission of Cassiel, of my own mark, of the visions that still plagued me.

Half-truths were safer than full disclosure. Hawk was Hallow-trained, after all, and Hallow hunters were notoriously black-and-white in their approach to supernatural beings. If Hawk knew about the mark, about my demonic connection—well, I'd seen how Hallow hunters “dealt with” such complications.

Hawk studied me for a long moment, eyes narrowed in silent assessment. I met his gaze evenly, refusing to flinch under the scrutiny. Finally, he nodded once, apparently satisfied—or at least willing to proceed regardless of his suspicions.

“Then let me fill in the blanks,” he said, flipping open the journal to a page marked with a red ribbon. “You're gonna need it.”

Hawk exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face.

The gesture momentarily disrupted his composed demeanor, revealing bone-deep exhaustion beneath the professional facade.

His fingers trembled slightly—stress, exhaustion, or something worse—before he steadied them deliberately against the table's edge.

“Since that demon gate opened, it's been a goddamn free-for-all.” His voice carried the weight of months spent tracking increasingly dire omens. “Asmodeus—whoever is behind breaking the seals—has been gathering every ounce of firepower he can get his hands on.”

He turned the journal toward us, revealing pages dense with notations: coordinates, dates, death counts. Newspaper clippings were pasted alongside hand-drawn symbols, creating a chaotic but methodical record of escalating supernatural activity.

“Demonic possessions up three hundred percent,” Hawk continued, tapping the page. “Ghost manifestations, poltergeist activity, even werewolf transformations outside the lunar cycle. The barriers between worlds are thinning. And it's happening faster than predicted.”

His eyes locked onto mine, and for a heartbeat, something like accusation flickered across his features. As if he knew my role in starting all this. As if he could see the mark beneath my clothing, burning like a beacon to forces better left undisturbed.

I felt my jaw tighten, a muscle jumping along the sharp line of it.

“And?” I kept my voice deliberately neutral, refusing to rise to the unspoken implications in his tone.

The emptiness inside me made it easier to maintain the calm facade, to suppress the anxiety that should be clawing at my insides.

Sean shifted beside me, a subtle movement that spoke volumes.

Unlike me, Sean's tension was visible—in the rigid set of his shoulders, the whitened knuckles of his clenched fists, the barely contained energy that made him seem larger than his already imposing frame.

Sean wore his emotions like a second skin, always had.

I used to envy that honesty. Now I felt nothing but a distant appreciation for its tactical disadvantage.

Hawk's gaze flicked between us again, reading the dynamics with practiced ease. His mouth tightened, a microscopic tell that suggested he was about to deliver news that would make our interpersonal tension seem trivial by comparison.

“The fourth seal was destroyed a couple of days ago.” Hawk said.

He turned the journal again, revealing a map with four locations circled in red.

Three were crossed out with thick black lines.

The fourth now bore the same ominous marking, the ink still fresh enough that I could smell it—metallic and wrong.

Blood, not pen. A hunter's record, written in the currency of sacrifice.

“Outside of Prague,” Hawk elaborated, tapping the fourth location. “Cathedral of Saint Vitus. Four hunters dead trying to protect it. Didn't even slow Asmodeus down.”

The names of the fallen were written in the margin, tiny crosses beside each one. Hawk hadn't known them personally—his handwriting was too steady for that—but he'd recorded their sacrifice nonetheless. In our world, it was the closest thing to a proper memorial most hunters would ever get.

I exchanged a look with Sean, the tension between us momentarily suspended in the face of greater threat. Fuck. The word wasn't spoken aloud, but it might as well have been. Four seals broken. The world balanced on the edge of a knife, and we were running out of time to prevent catastrophe.

Sean's anger had transmuted to something sharper, more focused—the cold calculation of a hunter assessing a deteriorating situation. His eyes met mine with grim understanding. Whatever personal issues lay between us would have to wait. The mission came first. It always did.

“How much time do we have?” Sean asked, voice clipped with professional urgency.

Hawk shook his head once, a sharp negative. “Not enough. Asmodeus is moving faster now. The barriers are weakening with each seal. Makes the next one easier to breach.”

A domino effect, each seal's fall accelerating the collapse of the next. The metaphysical equivalent of an avalanche gaining momentum down a mountainside. And we were standing directly in its path with no shelter in sight.

“That only leaves one,” I said, voice low.

The hollow space inside me seemed to expand, a void where fear and urgency should be.

I could understand the direness intellectually, could process the strategic implications, but the emotional weight remained distant, muffled. “What do you know about the last seal?”

Hawk rubbed the back of his neck, the exhaustion finally showing through the cracks in his composed exterior.

For just a moment, he looked older than his years, worn down by decades of fighting battles most of humanity didn't even know were happening.

The weight of knowledge hung heavy on him, visible in the slight stoop of his shoulders, the tightness around his eyes.

“That's the thing,” he said finally, his voice softer than before. “The last seal isn't a place, or an object. It's—” He exhaled, as if the words themselves were difficult to speak aloud. “The heart of a Fallen Angel.”

He turned the journal so we could see the page, revealing an intricate illustration of what appeared to be a human heart surrounded by feathers.

Enochian symbols circled the image, the script so ancient and esoteric that even I, with my extensive knowledge of supernatural languages, couldn't decipher it completely.