Cam stared at the cup in front of him. He sat outside a coffee shop around the back of Trinity College, opposite Sean who was trying not to stare at him.

They had been sitting in silence for some time. Balthiour’s notebook lay in Cam’s lap, feeling heavier than its weight. The sun was high over the building beside them but they sat in shadow, a cool breeze blowing over them. Cam couldn’t help but notice the temperature had dropped, and saw it as a symbol of their losses today.

Sean had suggested going to the other group of angels in town, but Cam rejected that idea. Their hideout had been hit, and he couldn’t deny the possibility that one of their own had betrayed them. Last year, the demons were one step ahead of them because of Balthiour. Cam couldn’t take that chance again. They were on their own.

Using Bath’s mobile, he had called someone he trusted. An angel who abandoned the fight a long time ago. Barrattiel was one of their strongest fighters, but the never-ending war became too much for him, and after he lost his lover and recovered from a demon infection himself, he decided to turn his back on the angels and all they fought for. The last they had heard was that he was living in Dublin. Somehow, for someone who didn’t want anything to do with their war, Barrattiel had a way of always being near the action.

Sean sipped his coffee, using the moment to look at Cam. He lowered the cup and said, “So this guy, Barratt, you guys have never mentioned him before.”

“We wouldn’t have,” Cam said.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Almost fifty years, I think,” Cam said. He didn’t have to think. The angels had the capacity to learn and remember a great deal more than a human, spanning millennia of knowledge. “Some see and hear about him from time to time. We always keep track of our own. But, most importantly, he can be trusted.”

“Ah, you’re sure of that?”

Cam sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I’m sure of, any more.”

Sean stared into the distance. “I should have been there with them.”

“No,” Cam said. “Then you’d be dead alongside them.”

“This fight gets to us all, eventually. Doesn’t it?”

Cam regarded Sean, not knowing what to say. The man had come a long way in the nine months he’d been with them. From the soft family man he once was, working in a tech company, he had been hardened, broken down, and re-shaped into the man he was now.

Sean looked over the passers-by, chin resting on his fist. His cool grey eyes were narrowed, tense with worry, telling Cam he was thinking of his wife and children. When Cam and his brethren failed to save them during a particularly explosive battle with the demons, shortly after moving to Dublin, Sean had somehow ended up joining their cause, having nothing else left to live for. His red-brown curls and round face had been replaced with short-cropped hair, a heavy beard, and pronounced cheekbones. He looked like someone who had been through a war or two and had to live with the memories.

Balthiour’s notebook called to Cam.

Bath had annotated some pages in red pen, adding a few thoughts and sketches, some of which Cam did not understand. Among her notations he saw a note that said, ‘A child has two parents.’ He thought on it but couldn’t determine what she had been thinking. Maybe she was on to something before she was killed.

One passage spoke about seeing the truth of the world with the demon’s power. Cam still remembered what Bal said to him. I started to see things differently. Feel things. Things that felt right; and had somehow felt right all along, but I just couldn’t see it before. He called the demons the personification of our holy origins, and that the angels were the tainted ones. Words of a madman, infected by darkness. But something about them… Cam had never been able to forget them, wondering what Balthiour saw… what he really knew.

If he could just understand.

“Cam,” Sean said urgently.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Cam snapped out of his thoughts. Sean was looking at him with a concerned expression.

“You look like you’re facing down Death himself,” Sean said. His expression lightened and he added, “Actually, do you know Death? Is he a real guy, like you folk?”

Cam managed a smile. “There are many angels and demons associated with Death. Some that have been described like the stories of the Grim Reaper.”

Sean nodded.

“I don’t know him personally, though,” Cam added.

Sean chuckled heartily; a laugh that nearly reached his eyes. Cam almost saw the man he once was in that laugh. Sean’s tone darkened when he said, “We’ll get them for what they’ve done. We’ll make them all pay. For your brothers and sisters, and for my family.”

Cam eventually met his eyes. “I know.” “I’ll make sure of that if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Ah, you sound like me a few months ago. That’s the spirit.”

Cam finished his coffee and looked over Balthiour’s notebook some more. Sean brought his phone out and said he’d check the news for any possible demon sightings or suspicious activity in the city.

After some time, Barrattiel approached them. At over seven foot, he towered over their table. His hair was cut short with specks of white and grey, and stubble covered his broad jaw.

“Good to see you, brother,” Barratt said, shaking Cam’s hand firmly.

“And you,” Cam said. “It’s been too long. I see you finally got rid of those big mutton chops.”

Barratt laughed. “How the times change, aye.”

Cam introduced Sean and Barratt sat with them

“This day always comes, does it not?” Barratt said wistfully. Having spent several centuries stationed in European cities, he had developed a muddled lilt to his speech, although his voice was gruff and low as always.

“It comes for us all,” Cam said. He paused, remembering that Sean had said something similar earlier. He turned to Barratt and added, “So what does one of Us do after retirement?”

A broad smile crept on Barratt’s face. “Lots of things. And nothing. It’s a tiring job, still.”

Cam had suspected a vague answer like that. “Faced any Others, lately?”

Barratt shrugged. “I do my part, still. You have not to worry, brother.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So tell me, why did you call?”

Cam paused, gathering his words, before telling Barratt everything. The attack on their hideout, the deaths of Bath-Kol, Haziel, Duma, and Nathanael. Lahabiel missing and unaccounted for. Barratt was frozen for some time, lost inside himself, physically shaken.

“What horrors,” Barratt whispered. “Brother, this is a deep tragedy. I had not realised the Others have become such a strong and adept force.”

“They have a new leader now,” Cam said. “Sephiaza. You know of her rise to this world?”

Barratt nodded.

“The demons—the Others—have become stronger and more efficient in the last year, under her rule. And not to mention whenever they summon another pure… Other.” Cam shook his head. He had somehow never become accustomed to using the code word for the demons in public.

“I understand,” Barratt said. “This is a dark day, for such a bright one. I have to tell you, Camael, that my situation has not changed. I will not re-join the war.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Cam said. “But I have no one else to turn to. An attack on our hideout means the possibility that one of us is working with the Others.”

“You suspect someone else has turned?” Barratt asked gravely.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Cam said, shaking his head. His shoulder throbbed quietly.

“You have another team in town, right?” Barratt asked. “Why not go to them?”

Cam sighed, leaning back and looking around a moment before locking eyes with Barratt. “I don’t know if I can trust Us any more.”

They stared at each other until Barratt said, “Careful of the path you tread, Camael.”

“Something is not right,” Cam said. “We don’t know enough about Sephiaza, or her plans, or how they bring pure Others to earth. And…” He paused, finding his words. “There is a new kind of demon.”

They gave him questioning looks.

“I…” Cam began. His shoulder prickled with a dull pain. That was one thing he would not reveal to them. “I learned earlier today that I have a son. He appears more like an angel, but has the demon’s darkness within him.” He raised a hand when Barratt opened his mouth. “I don’t know how he came to be—his existence or how he is a grown man after a year. It’s just more that we don’t know. But he is on their side. And he is very strong.”

“I see,” Barratt eventually said. “This is very unprecedented.”

“Alyssa,” Sean said. “Your one that became Sephiaza. You guys got… biblical, right?”

Cam nodded solemnly. “Somehow her human form and her dormant demon genes allowed her to carry a child of an angel.” He looked away, feeling hopeless. People walked around him, somewhere someone laughed. A dull chill ran through Cam, and he suddenly felt cold. Maybe the demons already owned the world, and they’d all been deluding themselves…

“So we go to Zuriea’s team,” Sean was saying.

“Zuriea,” Barratt said. “A good woman. Tough, but well-meaning.”

Unfocused, Cam looked over a building beside them. In a window several floors up, a figure was watching them. His son stood there, looking down at them.

Cam stared blankly for some time, unable to look away from his son. He became conscious of Balthiour’s notebook in his lap, but that somehow didn’t concern him.

Eventually Cam stood up, not fully aware of his actions. “I’ll be right back. Just have to check on something.” He gave Sean the notebook, and added, “Hold on to this for a bit.” He didn’t think his son was there for the book, but he wasn’t going to take it straight to him either.

“Cam,” Sean said, taking the book with a confused look. “Are you all right?”

Cam paused and managed a half shrug, ignoring Barratt’s searching gaze. “Yep. I’m fine. I’ll be right back.”