Azrael took in Zeke with a faint lift to his upper lip. He saw what Zeke was. A deserter in Heaven’s eyes. Not fallen, but not right with all that is holy either . . . far from it. Then he saw Griffin and the disdain turned to disgust. Repulsion. Hatred. Eden House, if they rebuilt in Vegas, would never take Griffin back—I should’ve known that sooner or later Heaven would find out. I’d thought Eligos would whisper it to them. I hadn’t thought an angel would be the one to give him up. That an angel would recognize the difference in Griffin between his former undercover body and the one he had now hadn’t seemed likely. They looked identical and the human in Griffin now wasn’t fake as it had been before. But this wasn’t your ordinary angel we were talking about. This was an archangel. Where a lesser angel might be blind, he could see. “What is this? This is not sanctioned by Heaven, never would it be. It’s an abomination.” A sword sprung to life in his hand, one of flames. A fiery sword—with an angel, that was a given.

Peris Heaven tolerated. But the first ex-demon peri? Fallen was fallen in their eyes and that would never change.

“Don’t say that,” I warned, my finger already on the trigger. “Angels can die the same as demons, and if you call Griffin that again, you will.”

“I don’t think we should kill angels,” Griffin protested beside me, his shotgun barrel lowering slightly. “I think in the grand scheme of things that could be construed as not so much wrong but as not especially right either.” It should stop boggling me that I heard these things from Griffin, who had many reasons not to care for angels, but it didn’t. I had to cure him of this saintlike quality, because as everyone knew . . . the quickest way to sainthood was martyrdom. And as martyrdom came from a painful agonizing death, that was best avoided.

“It’s bad enough what Eligos says about you,” I told him. “I won’t hear it from someone who is supposed to be about forgiveness and redemption. If he says one more damn word . . .” But he didn’t have to. Someone else had already made up their mind; somebody had already pulled the trigger.

“He started it.” Zeke pumped another round in his Remington, still aimed at what was left of my window. “Asshole. I hate fast assholes. They’re the worst.” There was no denying that Azrael had been fast in disappearing before the slug reached him. I was swinging back and forth between whether that was a good thing or not. In Zeke’s mind—hell, in my mind too, he had started it. Zeke and Azrael were former comrades. Zeke didn’t remember it, but he knew it. He knew he’d been an angel, used by another angel because of his comparative lack of free will, a pawn, and that history wasn’t winning him over to Heaven’s side. What had actually pissed him off though was Azrael calling Griffin what he had—an abomination. For that, the pigeon did deserve to be shot. As the man said, the angel had started it. Not that it wouldn’t, again, complicate things and, truthfully, I’d never killed an angel before. They hadn’t given me quite enough reason.

Azrael reappeared, this time with some friends. Two more angels, but these had the traditional white wings that marked them as your average angel, no more archangels. That was a good thing, although neither of the new ones looked in the delivering-messages-of-love-and-guiding-us-to-the-Promised-Land mood. They were more of the cast-ye-into-eternal-hellfire frame of mind from the sword in hand and the rage in their faces.

It had never been quite enough reason before, for me to kill an angel . . . Then again, there was always a first time.

“You let Cronus kill Hadranyel. You fight side by side with that creature once a demon, now worse than any demon. One that wears the skin and flesh of a mortal. One who doesn’t know its place in this world. Which is not in this world or any world. The demons are enough. Now there is this atrocity—we will not add more monsters to this world of our making. We leave that to you.” Azrael pointed the flaming sword at me.

“Are you calling me a monster or saying I make them?” Sticks and stones were nothing to me and neither were words full of prejudice and hate, because I had the solution to those. I might not have used it on my behalf, but what Azrael had just said about Griffin, that was more than enough motivation. I shot the angel to Azrael’s left—aiming for the head. This was the kill shot I used with demons. They were one in the same long ago after all, angels and demons. “Could you be more specific?”

The angel I’d shot at lowered his sword as a warning hole appeared in the wall just to the right and another to the left of his head. I gave Griffin a quick approving nod for his shot that paired mine. He was not an atrocity, and he wasn’t taking this lying down—his face, much less forgivingly calm and reasonable than it had been seconds ago, said as much.

Zeke, however, had not gotten the memo and neither had the angel to the right of Azrael. Not as quick as his fellow angel and not as wary of our abilities, he lunged at us. Then there was the sound of a shotgun firing, followed by that of bells as glass cascaded, touched here and there with gold, downward to the floor. Church bells—those that rang mournfully for the dead. Attacked, Zeke took the head shot. It was justifiable to him; he had a clarity of vision in this area that Griffin and I lacked. He held angels accountable to the same standards as everyone else, and who was I to say he was wrong? You make the wrong move—attack, and if you end up as a heap of margarita salt, you have only yourself and your tiny angelic brain to blame.

“Thou shall not kill. He should’ve known that. I know that. Thou shall not kill—unless it’s in self-defense, for protection of the innocent, exterminating demons, or someone taking the last donut. That’s the rule.” Zeke finished reloading with a speed that would make a drill sergeant dab his eyes joyfully with Kleenex and went on to accuse. “You order us around as if you matter. You expect us to eat up your heavenly commands like fucking candy. Now let one more of you sons of bitches call Griffin an atrocity. Just one goddamn more.” Zeke grinned and it was a grin that never would fit on the face of an angel. He aimed at Azrael again. “Because if there’s any here, it’s you, and since you don’t like them all that much, I’ll be happy to blow the rest of them apart for you. Really fucking happy. An eye for an eye, a bullet for a bastard.”

I didn’t know if Azrael heard that. He was lost in the sight beside me. “An angel. You killed an angel,” he said as he knelt to sift a perfect hand through flakes of crystal. I saw disbelief and outrage as his hand clenched into a fist, but mourning? That I didn’t see anywhere. Brothers-in-arms, but there was no camaraderie, no affection, no personal loss. As with learning free will from humans, some angels learned how to care as well . . . most often the ones who went on to retire as peris. Azrael had learned free will, but not how to care. That didn’t make him the flip side of a demon at all—it made him worse.

“You might think because Zeke was only an angel, not a high and mighty archangel, that it doesn’t make a difference that he was used as if he were nothing, ordered about like a slave by one of your kind.” I extended my shotgun and tapped Azrael on the shoulder. “But guess what, doll? That don’t fly, no matter how many wings you stick on it. It matters, Prince of Heaven. If you treat your own as expendable, they will treat you the same.” I tapped harder. “As for trying to kill us, it’s not only boring, but a waste of time. Cronus killed your other angel, and if you think I have any control over Cronus, you need to check out if they have a heavenly rehab, because delusional doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“Zeke’s right. You are no better than demons and I should know,” Griffin said, and suddenly his wings were there and as bright and blazing gold as Zeke had described. They were brighter than when he’d first become a peri. Of everything and anything that was in this room, they were the only truth and purity that there was. No matter what he said or believed, Griffin didn’t have an ounce of demon in him.