“You aren’t still mad at me, are you?” Marcus asked as he came down the steps.

I let out a breath and walked up to him. “No. Just remember what I said.”

He grinned playfully. “I remember everything.”

Ava landed to my right, making me jump. She must have stepped off the roof. Her long hair was tied into a ponytail, and she matched Marcus in the same sleek black outfit as the other night. “Do you have any preferred method of patrolling?” she asked, her gaze lingering on my leggings. There was just no making her happy, I decided.

I stared at her. “Method?” I looked at Will.

“We’re on combat patrol,” he explained gently to me.

We’d never discussed terms to describe our hunting habits. We went out, looked for reapers, maybe killed one, and went home. I didn’t know there were other ways of doing it. “Which means we go out looking for bad guys, right?”

Will turned to Ava. “We don’t practice advanced tactics.”

Ava’s brow flickered and she said nothing.

“Don’t give them such a hard time,” Marcus said. “They get the job done, obviously.”

“If they were more organized, then the Preliator would have a better track record of staying alive.”

That stung. My jaw tightened and I tried to smile. “Well, maybe I’ll just leave you to show me how it’s done, then. Staying alive, I mean. Best of luck.” I turned toward Will and lowered my voice. “I really don’t want to be criticized the entire time I’m trying not to die.”

“I understand,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have us work with them if I thought we didn’t need it. We don’t really know what we’re up against, and we can use all the help we can get.”

“I just—”

“And I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think you could prove her wrong,” he said. “I believe in you, and I know what you can do. She doesn’t, because she doesn’t know you like I do. Teaming up with them will be worth it if we can stop Bastian.”

His expression was filled with conviction, and for a moment I believed him. And then I felt like I didn’t want to disappoint him. And I wanted to prove Ava wrong. I was useful. I was strong. And I knew what I was doing. My soul was thousands of years old and I was an angel. I was Gabriel. Ava had nothing on me and I’d already proven that. If I had to kick her ass again to make a point, then I would.

I must have been thinking too hard again, because Will grinned at me the way he did when I made funny faces—which was often. “Shut up,” I said.

“I didn’t say a thing.”

I gave him the stink eye. “You were thinking it.”

“Are we ready?” Ava asked behind me.

I turned around and marched down the street. “We sure are.”

Marcus laughed. “I told you I liked this girl.”

A black shadow passed over my head, and the world swelled with the thick odor of brimstone.

“Ellie! Swords!” Will’s voice shouted from behind me.

My eyes shot to the sky. The nycterids had arrived.

I threw off my coat and summoned my swords just as one of the nycterids dived at me. My vision filled with the reaper’s sunken, bony face, her jaws stretching and jagged teeth gleaming. Angelfire erupted, and I sliced one blade through the air. The nycterid lurched left, but my sword ripped deep through her leg. I spun on my heel and sliced the second sword through her leg again, this time through bone. The limb flung free in a spray of blood, and the reaper let out an earsplitting shriek so shrill that I fell to my knees. I groaned as my skull felt like it was about to implode. Forcing my eyes open, I watched the nycterid spiral through the air and crash through a decrepit apartment building across the street. Her body slammed hard through the steel and concrete and made half the building collapse on top of her in a deafening roar.

I bounced to my feet and shot toward where the nycterid had vanished. Will called my name from somewhere around me, but I kept going. The nycterid was wounded, and I had to finish her off now. I leaped through the rubble and climbed into a hallway. I could hear the beast’s cries from deep inside, below me.

The floor exploded in front of me, and the nycterid’s horrible face burst through wood and carpet. I slid to a stop in shock, my angelfire dancing off the reaper’s skeletal face in a sinister way. Her wings struggled through the hole, hooking her talons every place she could to drag her body up and forward. Her teeth snapped at me in between her shrieks.

In a wave of certainty, I climbed to my feet and let out a cry as I swung my sword at her long neck, but she twisted away. My blade made a fiery, shallow gash and the reaper screamed and thrashed her head, slamming my body through a wall and into one of the apartments. I crashed through the wreckage and hit the floor of a kitchen. My head spun and swam with chaos. My ears felt as if they were underwater; the cries of the nycterid and Will screaming my name were so far away. Both my swords were still in my hands, and I climbed to my feet, reigniting the angelfire. Beyond the hole in the wall my body had made, I could distantly hear the colossal reaper struggling, no doubt breaking more and more of the floor beneath her weight.

My pulse slowed, and time slowed with it, as I waited for the reaper to appear. I exhaled and steadied my blades.

And then her body exploded through the wall, the ceiling crashing down on her head like a waterfall of dust and debris. She fought forward, and I tightened my grip on my helves. Her gnarled snout shot at my face, fangs gnashing, pale orbs for eyes gleaming and staring into mine without seeing me. She chomped and I twisted. She swung her neck back around, and I screamed as I plunged my sword into the side of her skull. Angelfire engulfed the reaper’s head, spreading down her long neck to the tip of her tail until the flames swallowed her massive body and wings. She vanished in seconds and left only falling bits of flame and ash behind.