Page 35 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

I collided hard with the one who’d yelled, and he was only just able to block my attack with his own angelic sword. Heat blazed around us as the flames fed off each other, and I shoved the angel backward to adjust my stance .

“Simiel!” Xathanael called out, and I turned just in time to see him chuck an angel in my direction.

Holding up the sword, I let the asshole impale himself on it.

The wet tearing sound of flesh versus sword filled the area around me again along with the fresh scent of ozone that leaked out along with all the asshole’s silver-threaded blood.

Mad glee roared through me, making my chest bloom with vengeful agony.

Can’t let me enjoy this without a good sting, huh?

But who cared? After millenia of suffering, of walking the deserts and cities of earth with no end in sight, these assholes could go bloody and slow.

The three of us had been living on the fringes of the universe, struggling to survive with stolen bodies that still held the scars where our wings had been torn from us.

Before we grew new ones, dark ones, corrupted ones.

Damn, I hated these fuckers. Xathanael’s old goddamn battalion, and Cadriel’s and my old bosses.

They’d demanded I kill them. These pieces of shit had demanded that I kill Cadriel because he sympathized with Xath—a test of my commitment.

Well, assholes, I’ve always been devoted to them, not you .

Blood gurgled up and out of this one’s mouth as my stolen sword protruded from his chest.

“Oh, what was your name again?” He sputtered and coughed, crimson spurting from between his teeth as he barely got out some Bs. “That’s right. Borael. Because you’re a boring, non-thinking monkey in a trench coat who does whatever he’s told. How’s that working out for you now, fucker?”

More sputtering, more garbled last words no one could hear around all the blood in his mouth.

More bullshit that I didn’t give a fuck about, and then I shoved the asshole off the blade until he flopped onto the floor with a slick thud.

The sword was still burning, a thick layer of magicked-up blood clinging to it.

Holding up the blade, I locked eyes with the two other angels across the room, my fellow fallen fully ready to take care of them. The winged pissbuckets stared at me in utter horror and disbelief, and all I did to answer them was drag my tongue through the pretty ooze slicking up my new toy.

“Hmm, tastes like sweet, sweet revenge.” That terror on their faces doubled down. Yeah, I’m sunshine and roses on the top, dick for brains. But underneath it's all trauma and the compulsion to kill as many angels as I can. Then eat ‘em for breakfast.

“Holy shit,” Faith mumbled, shaken by the display, and her stare focused on me.

“I can assure you, darlin’, there ain’t nothing holy about it.”

In the distraction, one of the two remaining, Glacael, if memory served, broke free of the line between him and Faith.

He sprinted the handful of feet right toward her, and I wasn’t going to get to her fast enough.

Xath snatched the last one by the throat before he could get past, driving his corrupted sword through the asshole's heart. It would take a hair more to down him, and Cadriel summoned his smaller blade and rammed it through the back of that one’s head.

I started for Faith, throwing myself across the room. She didn’t have a hang of her powers yet. This was going to be?—

Glacael reached her, and in the exact moment, his hand grabbed her bicep, fingers digging into her flesh hard enough to bruise, a massive crack of energy rebounded through the room.

It was like breaking the sound barrier: a shockwave of power launched out from Faith, a detonation of white light that blinded everyone in the room.

I expected to see Glacael thrown clear across the room when my vision returned, but that wasn’t the case.

Faith held her arm outstretched, her hair blowing wildly in the spectral wind of angelic power.

She gripped the asshole’s throat, the light from her glowing gold eyes spilling on his face.

Silver streaks, like oozing mercury, dribbled from Glacael’s eyes.

Fucking hell. She’s…pulling him out.

Exorcising an angel from its host was nearly impossible.

They could leave of their own free will, but as soon as a human vessel agreed to be the meat suit, it was pretty much over after that.

The rides weren’t pretty and nearly every angel-housing mother fucker was dead by the time it was over, only kept alive by the angel grace inside them.

Rode hard and put away wet. You think demonic possession is bad? Just wait until the fucker in your head is justifying it to you .

And pulling Glacael out definitely cemented the assumption that Rhymael had been Faith’s father.

Only archangels had power over other archangels.

Big ol’ chain of command. Archangels could fuck with those below them, seraphim and shit.

Seraphim could only rumble with their own or the cherubim.

Lowest ranking assholes who were basically everyone’s bitch.

All that other bullshit written about? Nonsense. They’d just seen enough of us that looked different, so their poor, widdle human brains needed to differentiate. You know, the same way they seem to lump people into stereotypes.

Ugh, humans really can suck. And now we were getting an arch- nephilim ? So damn hot.

“Let go!” Glacael shrieked, his voice barely audible as more of his grace was shunted from the human in the form of silver tears. “How…Ugh!”

His corporeal form sucked in on itself. Faith was pulling out the stuffing, and the human body got more and more emaciated—a mummy made in bullet time.

“You go back and tell them all to fuck off.” Faith spoke with her mind, and we could all hear her, which was a fucking trick.

Lucy managed that shit, maybe Rafael? But a nephilim doing it?

Cool as fuck. “If any of you assholes so much as looks at me again, I’m going to find each and every one of you and crush your fucking grace between my fingers. Go!”

With that, the last of Glacael’s grace was yanked from the vessel and sent upward. The body collapsed to the floor, long dead and now without any angel juice to keep it running. The ball of luminescence around Faith eased off, and then she sank down to her knees, breathing hard.

It was suddenly so damn quiet, and the three of us slowly shifted closer to our little nephilim time bomb. After a moment, she looked up at us, her eyes wide even as the exhaustion began to claim her.

She licked her dry lips before saying, “Holy…”

With a laugh, Cadriel nodded and offered, “Fucking...”

I leaned on them, clapping my hand down on their opposite shoulder. “Shit.”