I felt him coming before he appeared in front of me. Zadkiel dropped from the ceiling of the little apartment in battle mode. His hand held a blazing sword of fire, and his armor flared a bright shade of gold. “Reapers,” Zadkiel whispered as he watched the front door.
Cherubim summoned the fire, and formed it into a battle axe as he stood beside Zadkiel. “How many?”
Zadkiel didn‘t look away from the front door, “A lot.”
Jacob slowly stood as he recovered from my blow. The man continued to lay unconscious on the floor. Both would be easily destroyed by the Reapers.
I grabbed the man on the floor and dragged him to a closet in the room. I opened the closet and quickly shoved him in, before turning to Jacob, “Your turn.”
He stood next to Cherubim as if ready to fight. I opened my mouth to speak, but Cherubim beat me to it. “No Jacob, you must join our charge in the closet. You must protect him if any Reapers get past us.”
Jacob stared at Cherubim for a moment before bowing his head and walking into the closet with the man. I closed the door, took off my silver cross I wore around my neck and wrapped it around the doorknob of the closet. It wouldn‘t keep the Reapers out, but it would slow them down.
I turned and stood beside Cherubim. The angel looked down at me with concern. “Maybe you should join Jacob in the closet? You need to survive to find Lailah.”
“Yeah, and I need the only two angels on earth I trust to survive long enough to help me find her. We‘re in this together old man.”
Cherubim laughed. “You are definitely Major General Ariel.”
Since my birth in this world, I‘d tried everything to erase who I was, but as I stood waiting for battle, Ariel flared up inside of me again, and she craved combat.
I felt the fire building in my flesh, as it flowed from my center, all the way to my right hand. I unleashed the blaze, as I mentally molded it into a sword.
We stood there, the three of us, weapons in hand, waiting for the battle to begin. I felt a serge of excitement rush through me. Ariel missed the battle. She missed the sensation of facing down her enemies in a fight to the death.
