Everybody in the chapel sort of looked at one another and nodded, shrugged, let out a sigh of relief.

"We knew that," yelled Mavis. "Everybody knows that. That's not news."

"Oh, sorry," said the dead nurse. There was a pause; then, "Okay, then. Wally Beerbinder is addicted to painkillers."

"Wally's not here," said Mavis. "He's spending Christmas with his daughter in L.A."

"I got nothing," said the nurse. "Someone else go."

"Tucker Case thinks his bat can talk," shouted Arthur Tannbeau, the dead citrus farmer.

"Who wants to sing Christmas carols?" said Tuck. "I'll start. 'Deck the halls…"

And so they sang, loud enough to drown out the secrets of the undead. They sang with great Christmas spirit, loud and off-key, until the battering ram hit the front doors.

Molly slipped out the back door of the cabin and around the outside wall until she could see the tall figure standing before her picture window. The fallen wires had stopped sparking out by the street and the stars and moon barely cut through the darkness at all. Strangely enough, she could clearly see the man by her front window because there was a faint glow shining around him.

Radioactive, Molly thought. He wore the long black duster favored by sand pirates. Why, though, would a desert marauder be out in a rainstorm?

She assumed the Hasso No Kamae stance, back straight, the sword held high and tilted back over her right shoulder, the sword guard at mouth level, her left foot forward. She was three steps from delivering a deathblow to the intruder. The sword balanced perfectly in her grip, so perfectly that it seemed to weigh nothing at all. She could feel the wet pine needles under her bare feet and wished that she'd put on shoes before dashing out into the night. The cold rain against her bare skin made her think that maybe a sweater would have been a good idea as well.

The glowing man looked toward the opposite corner of the cabin and Molly made her move. Three soft steps and she stood behind him; the edge of her blade lay across the side of his neck. A quick pull and she would cut him to his vertebrae.

"Move and die," Molly said.

"Nuh-uh," said the glowing man.

The tip of Molly's sword extended a foot beyond the stranger's face. He looked at the blade. "I like your sword. Want to see mine?"

"You move, you die," Molly said, thinking that it wasn't the sort of thing you should have to repeat. "Who are you?"

"I'm Raziel," said Raziel. "It's not the sword of the Lord, or anything. Not for destroying cities, just for fighting one or two enemies at a time, or slicing cold cuts. Do you like salami?"

Molly didn't quite know how to proceed. This glowing sand pirate seemed perfectly unafraid, perfectly unconcerned, in fact, that she was holding a razor-sharp blade against his carotid artery. "Why are you looking in my window in the middle of the night?"

"Because I can't see through the wooden part."

Molly snapped her wrists back and smacked Raziel in the side of the head with the flat of her blade.

"Ouch."

"Who are you and why are you here?" Molly said. She snapped her blade back to threaten another smack, and in that instant Raziel stepped away from her, spun, and drew a sword from the middle of his back.

Molly hesitated, just a second, then approached and snapped her blade down, this time in a real attack aimed at his shoulder. Raziel parried the blow and riposted. Molly swept his blade aside and came around with her blade for a cut to the left arm. Raziel got his sword around just in time to deflect her blade down his arm instead of across it. The razor-sharp tashi took a long swath of fabric from his coat, as well as a thin slice of flesh down his forearm.

"Hey," he said, looking at his now-flapping sleeve.

There was no blood. Just a dark stripe where the flesh was gone. He started hacking, his sword describing an infinity pattern in the air before him as he drove Molly back through the pine forest toward the road. She quickstepped back, parrying some blows, dodging others, stepping around trees, kicking up wet pine straw as she moved. She could only see her glowing attacker, his sword shining now as well, the darkness around her so complete that she moved only by memory and feel. As she deflected one of the blows, her heel caught on a root and she lost her balance. She started to go over backward and spun as if to catch herself. Raziel's momentum carried him forward, his sword swinging for a target that a second before had been two feet higher, and he ran right onto Molly's blade. She was bent over forward; the blade extended back across her rib cage and through Raziel, extending another two feet out his back. They were frozen there for a moment — him bent over her back, stuck together with her sword — like two dogs who needed a bucket of water thrown on them.

From a crouch, Molly yanked the blade out, then spun, ready to deliver a coup de grace that would cut her enemy from collarbone to hip.

"Ouch," said Raziel, looking at the hole in his solar plexus. He threw his sword on the ground and prodded the wound with his fingers. "Ouch," he said again, looking up at Molly. "You don't thrust with that kind of sword. You're not supposed to thrust with that kind of sword. No fair."

"You're supposed to die now," Molly said.

"Nuh-uh," said Raziel.

"You can't say nuh-uh to death. That's sloppy debating."

"You poked me with your sword, and cut my coat." He held up his damaged arm.

"Well, you came creeping around here in the middle of the night looking in my windows, and you pulled a sword on me."

"I was just showing it to you. I don't even like it. I want to get web slingers for my next mission."

"Mission? What mission? Did Nigoth send you? He is no longer my higher power, by the way. This is not the kind of support I need."

"Fear not," said Raziel, "for I am a messenger of the Lord, come to bring a miracle for the Nativity."

"You're what?"

"Fear not!"

"I'm not afraid, you nitwit, I just kicked your ass. Are you telling me you're an angel?"

"Come to bring Christmas joy to the child."

"You're a Christmas angel?"

"I bring tidings of great joy, which shall be to all men. Well, not really. This time it's just to one boy, but I memorized that speech, so I like to use it."

Molly let her guard down, the tip of her sword pointed at the ground now. "So the glowing stuff on you?"

"Glory of the Lord," said the angel.

"Oh piss," said Molly. She slapped herself in the forehead. "And I killed you."

"Nuh-uh."

"Don't start with the nuh-uh again. Should I call an ambulance or a priest or something?"

"I'm healing." He held up his forearm and Molly watched as the faintly glowing skin expanded to cover the wound.

"Why in the hell are you here?"

"I have a mission —»

"Not here on Earth, here at my house."

"We're attracted to lunatics."

Molly's first instinct was to take his head, but on second thought, she was standing in the middle of a pine forest, in freezing rain and gale-force winds, naked, holding a sword, and talking to an angel, so he wasn't exactly announcing the Advent. She was a lunatic.

"You want to come inside?" she said.

"Do you have hot chocolate?"

"With minimarshmallows," said the Warrior Babe.

"Blessed are the minimarshmallows," the angel said, swooning a little.

"Come on, then," Molly said as she walked away muttering, "I can't believe I killed a Christmas angel."

"Yep, you screwed the pooch on this one," said the Narrator.

"Nuh-uh," said the angel.