Chapter 18 Wings Over Blood
Chapter 18 Wings Over Blood
The rooftop erupted the instant Thaddeus shouted “Now!”
Raziel and Malachi’s suits exploded outward in a shower of shredded fabric as their wings burst free — massive, golden, and radiant against the night sky. The wind howled louder, as if the city itself gasped at the sight.
Thaddeus didn’t hesitate. Following the Ledger’s command burning in his mind, he lunged sideways and grabbed the nearest armored guard by the collar. The man was heavy, all tactical gear and muscle, but Thaddeus yanked him close with desperate strength, spinning him around to use as a human shield.
Bullets immediately ripped into the guard’s back. Thud. Thud. Thud. The impacts jolted through the body and into Thaddeus’s arms. Warm blood sprayed across his face and chest — thick, coppery, and hot. Some of it splattered into his mouth. He tasted iron and salt. The guard screamed once, a wet, gurgling sound, then went limp, his body jerking with each new round that punched through Kevlar and flesh. Thaddeus kept holding him tight, feeling the man’s dying convulsions, the sudden slack weight as life left him.
This is what I’ve become, Thaddeus thought, horror and adrenaline mixing in his veins. A man who uses corpses as shields.
Above him, Raziel and Malachi had taken to the air. Raziel grabbed two thugs by their collars, lifted them screaming into the sky, and hurled them over the edge. Their bodies tumbled through the night, arms flailing, voices fading into the wind until they hit the street far below with sickening, distant crunches. Malachi was more precise — he swooped low, wings slicing the air, and slammed one guard so hard against the glass barricade that the man’s helmet cracked and blood sprayed in a wide arc across the transparent wall.
Thaddeus watched it all in horror and awe. Golden blood from the fallen angels mixed with the dark red of human blood on the concrete. The rooftop was turning into a slaughterhouse.
Tate fired his gun. The shot cracked loud, hitting one of Kane’s men in the chest. The guard staggered, blood bubbling from his mouth, then collapsed.
Kane reacted instantly. He snatched a fallen guard’s rifle, raised it, and aimed straight at Raziel, who was hoisting another thug high into the air, ready to throw him off the building.
Thaddeus’s blood ran cold. No. Not another one.
He remembered how he had choked Gregory — the raw, intimate violence of it, the feeling of life slipping away under his hands. He couldn’t just stand here. He wouldn’t.
With a roar that tore from deep in his chest, Thaddeus dropped the dead guard’s body and charged straight at Kane. His shoulder slammed into the man’s back just as Kane squeezed the trigger. The rifle barked, the bullet missing Raziel by inches.
Both men crashed into the glassy barricade at the edge of the tower. The glass cracked under their combined weight.
Kane twisted, snarling, trying to bring the rifle around. Thaddeus grabbed the barrel with one hand and Kane’s throat with the other. For a split second they struggled, faces inches apart, Kane’s eyes wide with shock and fury.
Then the glass gave way.
They fell.
Ninety levels of empty air rushed up to meet them. The wind screamed in Thaddeus’s ears. The city lights spun wildly below — a dizzying blur of neon and darkness. His stomach lurched. Visions swayed. The ground raced toward him faster than he could comprehend.
Is this the end? he wondered, eyes widening in pure terror. After everything — the fire, the Ledger, the saves, the murders — I die falling like this?
The wind howled louder. The lights blurred into streaks.
Then something powerful yanked him upward.
Strong arms wrapped around his torso, halting his descent with a jolt that rattled his bones.
“I got you, master!” Malachi’s voice cut through the wind, steady and fierce.
Thaddeus gasped, clinging tight to the angel’s bare shoulders as they soared in a wide arc around the tower. The wind roared past them, cold and biting, but Malachi’s golden skin radiated warmth. Below, the rooftop was chaos — gunfire flashing, bodies falling, Raziel still fighting in the air.
“We have to go back for Uriel!” Thaddeus shouted over the wind, voice raw.
“Raziel has him!” Malachi called back. “They’ll meet us at the rendezvous point!”
As they flew away from the tower, Thaddeus looked down at the chaos they had left behind. The rooftop was littered with bodies. Golden blood from the fallen angels mixed with the dark red of human blood in ugly pools. Kane’s men were still firing wildly, but the fight was breaking apart.
Then the Ledger flared in his vision — brighter and more triumphant than ever.
REAPER’S LEDGER – MASS HARVEST COMPLETE
Victor Kane – $780,000 claimed
Additional collateral deaths: 14
Total reaping: $1,240,000
New fallen bindings imminent — multiple innocents saved during chaos
Thaddeus hugged Malachi tighter, the wind whipping past them as they soared over the city. He knew what that meant. He had saved girls he couldn’t even count in the chaos of the fight. And because of that, many more fallen would come to him.
The army was growing.
The war was far from over.
But for the first time, Thaddeus felt something close to hope.
They flew into the night, the tower shrinking behind them, leaving blood and chaos in their wake.