The Infernal didn’t stand a chance. He wore a thick leather vest, gauntlets of the same material, sturdy pants and boots, and was armed with an antiquated spear. The shaft was six feet long and made of wood with an Infernal Iron head. The hell-creature thrust the spearhead at Ava’s heart in a last ditch effort to put some space between them.

It didn’t work.

Ava lightly sidestepped the thrust and lopped off the top third of the weapon with a flick of her wrist. She left the Infernal with nothing but a stick to defend himself. To his credit, the man was brave. He raised the four foot shaft like a sword and took a swing at her. She crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, easily caught the wood, and took the man’s arm midway between his elbow and shoulder. His scream drowned out the dull thud of the spear shaft she dropped to the ground. It kicked up ash on impact.

Ava and her team had ambushed a group of Infernals three times their size who had attacked a group of human soldiers. The humans were trying to take refuge in an armored personnel carrier when the Infernals started butchering them. Camouflaged limbs littered the ground and blood was splattered across the dented, tan armor of the APC. The machine gun on top of the vehicle had been bent at a ninety degree angle by the Infernal’s leader, who now lay headless a few yards away thanks to Bart. The Infernal Ava had just made a lefty was the only opposition remaining.

She repositioned for a killing blow, but the man dove away. Blood squirted as he tucked his head and hit the ground just below the shoulder in a textbook combat roll. His remaining hand darted out and snatched a pistol lying idly on the asphalt. He came out of the roll with the weapon raised and squeezed off two shots before Ava was on top of him. Both bullets impacted her Divine Steel armor and flattened against the superior metal. They didn’t even leave a scratch. With a final lazy swipe she removed the Infernal’s head before becoming insubstantial.

“Clear.” A chorus of replies answered her as her team reassembled. “Report.”

“We are making inroads,” Bart deployed a map of the city that showed the positions of their Guardians.

The deployment of their noose had been executed perfectly, and minute by minute it was tightening around the Infernal interlopers.

“We have casualties,” Bart informed with a sigh. “A pair of Guardians were overwhelmed here, and another here.” Two points glowed subtly on the map. “I’ve ordered troops away from the sectors with the least resistance to investigate.”

“Good.” Ava’s heart was heavy from even more death, but she knew the angels sacrificed their bodies for the good of the humans they protected. They would live again. Maria’s smiling face flashed in her vision for a moment before she banished it back to the dark sections of her mind where she kept all that pain contained. Unlike the Guardians, Maria would not see another sunrise on Earth.

“Where can we do the most good?” She needed anything to take her mind off the past.

“Here,” Bart answered instantly. Another Guardian’s light went out as they looked at the map. “We should hurry.”

The small party took to the air, and was at their destination in a few seconds. It was hard to miss. A giant serpent steed was tearing apart a city block while skeletal soldiers, with skin sloshing off their bones, jumped from its back and through the windows of nearby buildings. The screams of cornered humans nearly overshadowed the hiss of the beast.

“Into the buildings. Protect the people.” Ava ordered her small command into action, but she did not join them. Instead, she landed a hundred yards away from the rampaging beast.

It was a giant ugly, creature. Its tongue flicked out and grabbed a young man trying to run for the protection of a nearby building. It wrapped him up and snapped back into the snake’s jaw lightning-fast. Ava saw the man’s face smash into one of the fangs as it passed, but the great creature’s maw snapped closed before she could see if he survived the impact. Not that it mattered. The acid juices in the snake’s digestive system would eat through his flesh in minutes.

Ava took a deep breath and raised her fist.

The Hand of God had been steadily gaining power throughout the operation, and now seemed the appropriate time to use it. She lined up her shot and became substantial. The snake saw her instantly and lunged. She saw the sentience in its eyes as its large, coiled body sprang toward her. This was not some mindless brute thrashing about for maximum destruction. It knew what it was doing.

That made what Ava was about to do a little easier. A bright golden light flared in her palm and blasted outward in an eye-watering beam as thick as a pickup truck. The giant beast had its jaws open and ready to gobble her up when the beam sliced into its open maw. It bypassed the thick armor designed to protect the creature from heavy attacks, and exploded out its ass.

Momentum carried it forward, but the Hand of God had already killed it. Its smoking corpse split in two with a sickening hiss while physics carried it forward on either side of Ava. Digestive enzymes splattered across her armor, and half-digested people cascaded around her. It only took a brief glimpse to tell they were all dead. They had suffocated in the innards of the snake, were melted by the stomach acid, or had been mercifully disintegrated by the Hand of God. Whatever way you sliced it, it was an unpleasant death.

Ava turned her attention behind her as the snake’s bisected corpse finally skidded to a halt with the assistance of a stout, brick building. The snake and the deceased humans weren’t the only thing that had impacted the war-torn street. A hundred yards from where Ava stood, a twenty-foot-tall Infernal was getting to her feet. She was armored from head to toe in Infernal Iron, but Ava could see no other weapon.

Then the Infernal roared. It was a cry of pain and anguish, not injury. It was the cry of someone who’d lost something dear to them, and as she turned to survey Ava, the angel could tell there was pure hatred in the Infernal’s eyes. She didn’t waste any time. She advanced towards Ava as dangerous-looking blades extended from her knuckles while circular aegises sprung from her armored forearms.

Ava considered raising the Hand of God to finish the job, but she could feel it was depleted. It would need time, and time was something she didn’t have. The towering Infernal woman would cover the distance between them in seconds, so Ava did the only thing she could do. She rose to the occasion…literally.

Ava exploded upward as she let the æther fill her until she matched the woman’s height. That was the rule of thumb in combat. Without knowing the enemies capabilities it was best to match them. If you were too big, you would lose speed and potentially open yourself up to a quick killing blow. If you were too small, then the enemy would overpower you. In addition, Ava was still new to her Power status, and using too much æther could lead to even more destruction than what the serpent steed had caused. One look at the full-body armor the Infernal was wearing and Ava could tell she was not someone to be taken lightly. She was at least an Infernal Knight, and maybe more.

Ava didn’t wait for the Infernal to make the first move. She slashed out with her sword. The Infernal raised her aegis so she took the blow at an angle. Ava’s sword glanced off the rounded shield, and the woman took advantage of the opening. Her powerful legs propelled her forward, inside Ava’s guard, where she let her daggered fists fly with furry.

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Ava commanded her own armor in the heartbeat before the first fist landed, and a small shield deployed from her own forearm. It caught and deflected the Infernal’s fist jab, but forced Ava to duck under to follow-up haymaker. A sonic boom rocked the surroundings as the Infernal’s fist broke the sound barrier, and Ava danced back to try and get out of close combat range to use her sword.

Despite the danger, the Infernal kept pressing. She knew Ava would cleave her in two with the sword, so she tried to set the tone of the fight. Ava dipped, ducked, and dodged as the Infernal’s fists lashed out like charged pistons in combination after combination. If Ava had one weakness in combat, it was hand-to-hand fighting. This Infernal was her kryptonite.

She tried to bring her sword up in an upward slash, but the Infernal kicked it aside before she could get it far off the ground. Ava’s attempt opened her up, and the Infernal capitalized. A powerful blow landed on the side of Ava’s head. The force of the blow rung her bell and sent her flying through the building next to them.

She coughed, shook her head to clear the stars, and waved her hand in front of her face clear the dust. She’d gone completely through the ground floor of the building, destroyed everything in her path, and only come to a stop in an alley when she hit the steel-reinforced wall of the bank building behind it. She smelled piss, hoped it wasn’t her own, and tasted blood. She was sure that was hers along with the concussion. Her helmet had held against the attack, but the punch had rattled her brain.

She heard the Infernal approach before she saw her. It sounded like an artillery shell about to come crashing down on her already throbbing head, so she rolled away.

A knee made contact with the ground where she’d been laying. The force of the impact cratered the ground several feet, and started a chain reaction that ended in the building Ava had careened through imploding inward. Ava didn’t have time to be concerned about the screams of the humans getting buried alive as the Infernal got to her feet. The knee that had impacted the ground had a wicked looking spike sticking out from where her kneecap should be, which the Infernal was quickly retracting back into the armor as she turned to reacquire Ava.

Ava lashed out with the sword she miraculously kept a hold of. The edge of her blade caught the Infernal just above the ankle, and sparks flew as Divine Steel met Infernal Iron. As always, Divine Steel prevailed. The Infernal roared as Ava’s blade parted flesh. She stumbled backward when her injured ankle refused to support her armored-weight. Now, it was Ava’s turn to press the advantage.

She did a push up to get up from here she’d been lying prone after her slash, and got into a sprinter’s starting position. She curled her wings in close to become more aerodynamic, and pushed with all her strength. Aether pulsed out behind her to add momentum, and she collided against the Infernal’s gut with a thunderclap that would leave any human deaf that survived the building’s destruction.

The Infernal folded over Ava’s shoulder as they plowed through a corner of the rubble and back out into the street. Brick and mortar flew everywhere as they cascaded in a heap back into the open, which created even more mayhem and destruction. Skeletal soldiers and Guardians jumped away as their two commanders battled into their midst.

Ava and the Infernal hit the ground hard, but Ava’s landing was cushioned by the Infernal’s bulk. Ava could feel the wind go out of the other woman, and scrambled to her feet. Even battered and with a seizing diaphragm, the Infernal jumped back into the fray. It was just a half-second too slow. Ava’s fist rocketed up in an uppercut that caught the Infernal squarely below the chin. The blow picked the woman up off her feet and snapped her head back with a sickening pop.

The Infernal collapsed on her back, flattening a group of skeletal soldiers who were too slow to get out of the way. A groan escaped the other woman’s lips. She wasn’t dead, but she wouldn’t be alive for long. Ava held out her hand and her sword exploded out of the rubble and into her outstretched hand. She raised her sword and plunged it into the Infernal’ s chest.

The woman didn’t even scream as the Divine Steel blade sliced her through the heart. She just died.

Ava retracted her sword and extended an arm to brace herself against the second story of a nearby building. Flashes of light shone through the glass as half a dozen humans sat slack-jawed with camera phones snapping pictures and ignoring the danger they were still in. If her head wasn’t throbbing so much she would have cared more.

“Finish them off,” she commanded her troops in Enochian. They went to work hacking the skeletal warriors until they were nothing more than scattered bones.

Ava’s healing would handle the severe concussion soon enough, so she sucked it up and pushed off the building. There were more flashes and then a collective gasp as she became insubstantial and vanished from the humans’ sight.

Bart walked up beside her, also insubstantial, and just stood there. He was a good soldier, and had a good understanding of her. This was the first big fight since she’d lost her daughter. He was showing he was there to talk if she wanted to.

She didn’t. She only wanted to get the job done.

“Report,” she asked when her head finally stopped throbbing.

“This was the last big block of resistance. Without the Infernal and her serpent steed the skeleton warriors are being rounded up and dismantled. I’ve passed on what happened to Michael. It is worrisome. The armored Infernal and the snake were Lilith’s creations, but the skeletal warriors reek of Cain’s curse. Having soldiers of two Infernal Lords working together is cause for concern.”

Ava didn’t snap at him for going over her head. She was busy fighting for her life, and Michael needed to know that information. “Good job,” she praised him instead.

“As for Seere’s troops, we have a few pockets of resistance remaining, but they will be dealt with soon enough. I also heard from our investigators searching the sight of the two dead Guardians. I think you need to check it out.”

Ava nodded. She shrunk back down to her normal size, and cracked her neck. The pain and exhaustion from the fight had already been wiped away by a fresh surge of æther, but she was still tired. The day had worn her down mentally, and it wasn’t over yet.

The flight over to the location only took a minute. With the serpent steed dealt with, and the powerful opponents removed from the field of battle, they had complete freedom of movement. From their altitude, she saw small groups of Guardians providing air support to her ground forces sweeping up the few remaining enemies.

She touched down right outside the front door of a dilapidated house in a rundown neighborhood. She wouldn’t have been able to tell this home apart from any other on the street aside from the large bloodstains covering the front. She could tell from the splatter pattern exactly where the two angels had been standing when they’d been killed.

There was also a smell in the air. She identified the scent. It was always present at sights were a great amount of power was used. The street where she’d used the Hand of God would smell for weeks. A large part of the city of Charlotte was still imbued with the odor after Michael and Satan’s battle.

An angel was standing near the epicenter of the carnage chanting. Ava stood back and waited for the woman to finish her assessment. Wards carved into reality around her pulsed with energy until the chanting stopped.

The woman was a little unsteady on her feet as she stepped away from her ritual site and Bart lent a helping hand.

“Thank you, Sir,” she nodded to him. Despite her smile she was clearly exhausted. Her eyes had dark circles around them and her face looked like she’d hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. The pallor was quickly fading as her healing took over, but it was clear she’d had to put a lot of her essence into the short ritual.

“I can sense runes inside the home.” She pointed through the open door, past more blood, and into a room at the end of the entryway. “The Guardians lost the element of surprise here, and the enemy killed them quick.”

“What kind of enemy could kill two Guardians before they could cover a dozen feet?” Ava asked. She wondered if the Infernal she’d just defeated had been her before, but two kills that quick would have been beyond her capabilities.

“I don’t know, Ma’am.” The woman looked ashamed at her failure. “I’m getting Divine essence, Infernal, human, and more all mixed together. The site is too contaminated. There may even be warding at play. I just can’t narrow anything down. I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

“It’s ok,” Ava pushed down the frustration so it didn’t leak into her tone. “Do what you can.”

she sighed as she turned away and looked out at the still-intact skyscrapers poking over the trees.

She felt a new zeal fill her and mentally revitalize her spirit. There was still a powerful enemy at play, and she needed to find and deal with them. “Close the noose. Finish off the Infernals, and then find who killed our men. I want squads deployed by grid square, recon in force, and call me when you find who did this.”

Bart heard the iron in her tone, and hurried to obey her commands. She kept her eyes on the trees as they softly swayed in the wind. she told herself.

That’s what she needed to get the job done.