Angels of War Battle of Archangels (Book 3) (Angels of War Trilogy) Page 12

  Daisy slapped her hands on her thighs. “Uh…we are angels. We are fast enough to stop a few nukes.”

  “Then why didn’t we stop the one that blasted Houston?”

  Maria crawled away from Joan and sat on the dirt. She covered her head with her hands and cried in low sobs.

  Joan set her chin.

  Daisy Lane ambled up to Joan. “God made a mistake when he picked you. You’re worthless.”

  Joan stood from the ground. “Check yourself, Daisy Lane. I made the decision, and lots of people are dying. This is war.”

  “This is bullshit, something that could have been prevented eons ago. So now we all have to suffer because of it? The sooner Lucifer takes this swamp of a planet and does what he wants with it the better.”

  A burn flared up through the archangel. She stepped to Daisy Lane. “What did you say?”

  “You heard what I said, Joan. God favored you. He lost a great kingdom over you. And you have no remorse for all the deaths your existence has caused.”

  Joan slapped Daisy Lane. Hard. The blow cracked like a bullwhip and stung her hand. Daisy’s face remained turned to the right, reddening with a tiny palm print outlined against the flesh of her cheek. “You can go hide. The universe is large enough.”

  Daisy swung up her left elbow. The blow caught Joan in the jaw, lifting her off her feet and hurtling the archangel into a hill. Daisy’s hair turned white, her armor covered her body. She drew an axe and threw the Heaven honed weapon.

  Joan rolled from the weapon’s path. The axe plowed into the dirt hill behind her. Joan took to her feet dressed in armor, drawing her gladius.

  Daisy leaped forward, slamming an elbow against Joan’s armored chest, knocking the tiny archangel into the hill a second time.

  Daisy drew her sword, giving Joan little time to collect herself. The Seraph lifted her blade and struck down. Joan blocked the blow with her gladius, their swords locking. Their faces drawing close until Daisy shoved Joan away and kicked her. The archangel flew up and over the hill.

  Joan landed on her feet on the other side. Anger flashed inside her, white light bloomed from behind her eyes. Jason died. An unfortunate casualty and yes, he suffered. But death occurred when one happened to be born a mortal.

  She rounded the hill, twirling her blade in hand. Daisy Lane always questioned her leadership, either outright or couched in words filled with sarcasm. This time Daisy’s words struck harder.

  Joan stepped out into the open field. Daisy Lane stood with arms wide, sword in hand. Tobias knelt next to Maria. The Guardians stopped their work and huddled together with awe and shock spread over their faces.

  “You’re not done yet,” Daisy said. “I’m a Seraph now, more than you will ever be.”

  Joan ignored the words. To her Seraphim meant a special power to do one particular act, like knowing how to flush toilets with expertise. She took in Daisy’s brightening green eyes and glowing armor. Six wings spread out from her back. Magnificent but useless against the one trained by the archangel Michael.

  Daisy Lane charged ahead to meet Joan.

  Joan lifted her blade, hesitated just as Daisy Lane swung. She rolled forward. Daisy’s sword swept over her spinning body. Joan sprang to her feet and turned. Her blade flipped out from her hand and caught Daisy in the neck. Blood spurted from the wound. A spear appeared in the archangel’s tiny hand. She threw the weapon. The pointed tip caught Daisy in the right shoulder, knocking her off her feet and pinning her to the hill, another spear appeared and she threw again. The weapon’s spaded point plowed into Daisy Lane’s thigh.

  Joan sprinted ahead, retrieved her sword from Daisy’s neck and cut. Her sword tip opened a hole over Daisy’s larynx. Blood frothed up from the angel’s mouth, she struggled against the spears stuck in her like a fly pinned to a board ready to be dissected.

  “Wait.” General Black approached Joan with his hands lifted. “Please, Joan. Hear me out. We have to stick together.”

  Joan stopped in mid blow with the sword held over her head. She lowered the weapon and took a deep breath. Daisy grinned at her with a mouth filled with blood. “I’ll stop, Gerald,” she said.

  Black’s hands trembled. “We have to stick together.”

  Joan sheathed her sword and took another breath, stilling her rage. She gazed at Daisy Lane who remained defiant despite her precarious situation. “I’ll deal with you after this war, Daisy Lane.” She turned away and approached Maria.

  Tobias looked up at Joan, his eyes filled with sorrow. “Joan, I understand.”

  Joan nodded. “I know you do, Tobias. Maria, I am truly sorry for your loss.”

  Joan walked a few feet from the crowd and turned to face them. Maria, Juggernaut, and Daisy Lane who started to unpin herself from the hill stared at her. Joan led them through horrific battles. She realized they could handle earth on their own. She decided to save Heaven, her true home.

  If Heaven fell, her family tucked away behind its great white walls would perish. And this she could not allow.

  Loneliness crawled inside her belly like a stomach virus, trying to take root with hollow claws. Her family made her whole, but they resided in a place she could not quite get to despite it being two strides away.

  The archangel steeled herself against the deep emptiness in her stomach. For a delicate moment she considered the battles a waste. She forced those weak emotions aside and set herself on a higher plane. Not an arrogant place, but a place where she became protector.

  Joan saw the angels and Guardians and mortals as frightened children with nerves frayed from battle. Heaven first, family, and then the others, Joan decided. She rallied her emotions and flushed the emptiness from her soul, replacing it with love. She solidified her purpose in her mind like God’s law etched into stone tablets.

  Joan spread her wings and shot up into the gray clouds. She demanded answers from Michael. The ones on earth would have to fend for themselves.

  31

  Johnny Chang flew into LAX aboard a C130 cargo plane. His thirty-man team, dressed in black jumpsuits with 666 stitched in red across their backs, shrugged on their rucksacks and checked their weapons.

  The plane taxied to a stop and the rear cargo ramp dropped open with a hydraulic hum. Hot diesel fumes blasted into the C130 cargo bay. Armand gave Johnny permission to create his own hit squad to take out family members related to the angels.

  It took him weeks to collect the information about what he considered God’s pit bulls. Their personal lives sat in data banks acquired through social security numbers and driver’s licenses. Members loyal to Satan who worked as computer hackers dug up the information he needed.

  Johnny managed to gather addresses on Daisy Lane, Maria, Tobias Green, Okura, and Joan. He scratched three names off the list. Joan’s family died in a plane crash in the Florida Everglades, Okura fell to become a black archangel, and Tobias’s family roasted within the nuclear fires from the Houston, Texas blast.

  Daisy Lane and Maria’s family remained alive and somewhat well. The angels suffered from one problem. No privacy. Their secretive lives became open to anyone with a computer and some common sense. He couldn’t understand why Armand took so long to eliminate their family members.

  The Satanist ambled down the black C130 back ramp and onto the tarmac. Two huge AN-225 transports sat not far away surrounded by troops clad in black. The Black Army battalions prepared themselves to enter the Los Angeles battleground. From where he stood the battered city took on an apocalyptic feel. Glass towers, once tall and beautiful, rose in battered ruins. Smoke and flames plumed from their shattered windows. Black helicopter gunships hovered in the smoke laced air like wasps.

  Explosions and gunfire echoed throughout the city. Firefights for the west coast bastion continued to play out in violence.

  Johnny inhaled the cold air redolent with pungent fumes. His men unloaded six black machinegun mounted SUVs from the cargo plane. He approached a team leader and pulled out a handheld GPS devi
ce and punched in the coordinates for Daisy Lane’s home.

  “We have to go through the city. All the freeways are useless,” Johnny said.

  “Yes sir,” the man responded and saluted with his left hand.

  “Get the team in their trucks, Jose.”

  Johnny waited for his team to load into the trucks. He boarded the lead vehicle while studying the GPS. The tiny screen flickered. A blue cartoon like car blinked on the screen. A red line stretched out from the blue car and entered a maze meant to represent Los Angeles streets.

  The convoy moved out from the airport towards the city. Johnny attempted to relax in the front passenger seat and took in the scene. The Black Army amazed him. The troops dressed in black and the vehicles painted in black sent a delightful shiver down his spine. Pride swelled his chest. Johnny enjoyed the new power he acquired as a colonel within the Black Army.

  Johnny never liked the military. He grew up surrounded by books. While other kids lost themselves in sports he kept to his studies. Armand adopted Johnny at six years old and trained him to become a Satanist, not a soldier. He disdained the American military for its constant affection towards God. He never understand how the United States government combined the two.

  He fired guns at shooting ranges and his physical fights occurred in the dojo. He never fired a rifle in anger or fought someone in the street for self-defense. His world remained sanitized and isolated from general society until Armand sent him as a delegate to General Temeculus. The experience opened him up to a new world filled with power and violence.

  The convoy turned on a street littered with debris. They swerved around burnt out vehicles, rolled over dead and decaying bodies bloated close to bursting, and slipped by the wing of a 747 spanning the rooftops of two buildings. Shattered tanks and the empty husks of crashed fighter jets gave the city a surreal quality he enjoyed.

  The destruction amazed him, and it amazed him even further for he helped create the madness he rode through.

  He gazed at the GPS in his hand and attached it to the center dashboard. The small square screen flickered several times. The tiny blue car on the display turned into wiggly lines before the screen went dark. The entire convoy rolled to a halt.

  “Sir,” Jose said. “I don’t know the Los Angeles streets well enough to keep going without the GPS.”

  Johnny nodded. Now, his leadership skills would be put to the test. His assignments never involved combat or last second decisions. He always made meticulous plans and controlled every action he committed himself to. He did not expect the GPS to go on the blink.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Johnny leaned towards the tiny black box and pressed a few buttons. The screen came on, but the picture remained frozen.

  “The cloud cover, sir.”

  Johnny opened the glove box. He expected a map to drop out into his hand. Miscellaneous papers fell to the floor instead. “Go up the street. I see a 7-11,” he said.

  The convoy moved ahead for a half mile and parked in the 7-11 short lot. Johnny dismounted from the truck along with his team. “Make a perimeter, and ten men follow me.” He walked into the store with shattered windows and empty shelves.

  Johnny followed as glass crunched underneath his booted feet. Urine and feces filled his nostrils with its combined stench. His stomach flinched and he fought to keep from vomiting. Ash powdered the floor and he could not have imagined where it came from.

  “Look for a map,” he said and went behind the counter. He faced an empty cash register with its drawer open. Underneath the glass counter covered with cigarette stickers sat some California Lottery tickets bundled in a tight roll.

  He dug around in a few cabinets, pulling out a folded Rand McNally map. “I got a map, stop searching.” He pushed aside the cash register, it crashed to the floor and he unfolded the map and spread it out on the ash-dusted counter.

  Jose approached Johnny and the two poured over the map. Several explosions erupted in the distance, several low thumps seeming to trail each other. The two ignored the noise and continued to search for the Lane residence.

  Johnny tapped his finger onto the map. “We are here,” he said and trailed a finger along the street.

  “And the Lane residence is there,” Jose said. “We’re about ten miles away.”

  “Ten long miles,” Johnny said. “We can make it though. Our fighters control the city up to this point. A mile further east we reach the Lane house.”

  Jose nodded. “We can make it, sir.”

  “I appreciate your confidence, Jose. Let’s get to work then,” he said. Johnny folded the map, tucking it in his pants cargo pocket. On his way out he glanced at the Slurpee stand and licked his dry lips. He missed the Blueberry Coke flavor.

  Jose slipped behind the steering wheel and his team mounted their vehicles. Johnny climbed in the front passenger seat in his lead truck and slapped the dashboard. Jose put the truck into gear and headed out.

  The team drove onto Rodeo Drive, a once shiny attraction filled with expensive cars painted in metallic hues. Tourists no longer thickened the street with their lazy stroll. The locals annoyed by their temporary guests no longer rushed about.

  Johnny often visited Los Angele before the attack. The streets filled with crumbled masonry and death lost its artificial facade. All the plastic noses and plump lips fattened with chemicals and their owners, either died or fled the city. The few people he did see scattered amongst Rodeo Drive’s once exclusive storefronts appeared starved and crazy or stretched out dead. He eyed the stores with their shattered windows and naked mannequins. Garbage clogged the street in tremendous piles as if the sanitation workers went on strike and dumped their foul workload onto the city streets.

  Gunfire echoed off walls once cleaned bright by high-pressure washers. He slipped on shades and took a deep breath as the dismal scene sped by him.

  Johnny wanted Armand to live forever. The Satanist became a father to him. He taught Johnny the black arts and how to give proper praises to Satan. He hated the angels and found it difficult to comprehend God’s eagerness to protect mortals who despised him.

  The lead truck turned a sharp corner. On a side street stood several hundred men grouped together dressed in blue and red clothes with handguns, rifles, and baseball bats in their hands. His driver jammed his foot on the gas pedal and the truck lurched ahead, its big V8 engine revving to high scream.

  “Jose, what’s happening?” Johnny gripped the dashboard with his right hand.

  “Ambush, sir. We caught them by surprise.”

  Johnny turned his head to look at the convoy trailing them. Through the back tinted windows tracer rounds crisscrossed between the convoy and the ambushers. The gunner above him put the machinegun into operation. The gun’s heavy chatter hurt his ears. A white stream shot from the ambusher’s side and the last SUV burst into flames and flipped into the air.

  Anger flared through Johnny. He picked up the radio mic. “Keep going and don’t stop,” he said. He switched channels on the radio and unfolded the map with one hand. “Command LAX, I need a gunship at Rodeo Drive, look for the smoke and fire and my convoy.”

  “Keep going, sir?”

  Johnny frowned. “Stop,” he said.

  Jose pulled the truck to the side once the convoy cleared the ambush two hundred yards out.

  Johnny stepped out the armored truck and into the street. His men did the same and formed a perimeter around their colonel.

  The Satanist stared up at the gray skies. Six Apache helicopters, all painted black, soared from the gloom spread out above them. Soon rockets raced ahead from underneath the gunships, joined by heavy caliber bullets. Flames and smoke rolled into the air down the street from the convoy, men screamed and Johnny smiled.

  Johnny marveled at the firepower the helicopters unleashed on the ambushers. Men engulfed in flames ran out into the street, their cries turning to agony filled moans. He waited until the enemy retreated back to where they came from.

  “Mount u
p,” Johnny said and twirled a hand over his head, a motion he always wanted to perform. “We have more killing to do.”

  32

  Oni sat on a high hill overlooking the dismal siege. Beneath him laid the Hell Force, a black and agitated mob spread out over once green fields. Black banners snapped in the jasmine scented wind above the massive camp filled with millions.

  The black archangel swept his eyes over the field. Siege towers, catapults and battering rams, built from trees chopped down in Heaven’s forest dotted the landscape. Harsh voices reached his ears along with the constant hammering and sawing from soldiers deep in work who meant to dismantle the kingdom.

  The walled city, unblemished from the Hell Force steady work, glowed like a crystal beacon. Gold and silver glints sparkled within the city. God’s palace shone the brightest, perched atop a hill overlooking the scene. The palace commanded all below, the pearlescent kingdom and the black clad enemy camped on its outskirts stood in vast contrasts to each other.

  Oni thought about hate and God. How could Jehovah allow his pets to die not just in the thousands but millions? Oni knew this. He watched with his own eyes the souls drifting into the kingdom like fallen cherry blossoms.

  Oni didn’t feel remorse for those who died and entered the kingdom. He lived there once, obedient, on his knees in prayer and toe licking. God could end the war with just half a breath. He could revert the universe to a time when humans walked the earth naked and ate sweet fleshy fruit right off the tree. Back to blue birds, baboons and breathing brain-dead beings. Baboons, he thought. Simple primates who swung in high branches and threw shit at each other, better shit than bullets, bombs and spears.

  Oni checked his black heart again. He missed his wife and son. Joan would pay along with God for their callousness.

  “Vengeance is mine,” he said and stood to his feet.

  He made a noise in his throat and his warhorse galloped up to him. A horn blared from the camp and Satan emerged from his tent. The army rose to their feet cheering their dark lord. The soldiers lifted their weapons into the air, beating them upon their human hide covered shields.