Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:08:42 -0800 (PST)
From: CloseTheCellarDoor <closethecellardoor@yahoo.com>
Subject: Evil is a Man: The Angel Stretched Out His Hand -- chapter 11

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I love all feedback.  Send it to closethecellardoor@yahoo.com.



CHAPTER ELEVEN


"Introducing Gideon, the long-fallen hero, newly resurrected," Faith's
booming voice announced as he ushered me into the Cathedral's inner circle.
The five other Seraphim gathered around to gawk at me.  "And introducing
our new Fortitude," Faith added with a certain hidden sense of pride.

It was undoubtedly the proudest moment so far in my life.  I stood tall and
looked them in the eye boldly, not allowing myself any modesty despite
still being naked, my open wings and body covered still with wet angel cum.

The five of them gaped back at me, evidentially too shocked to respond.
Then Humility, always the most gracious one, smiled at me, bowed slightly,
and said, "Welcome, brother Fortitude."

That seemed to wake the others up out of their stupor.  Temperance bowed to
me as well with a knowing wink, then Charity as I walked past him.  When I
turned to Chastity, he looked back at me with unconcealed, horrified shock.
The tiniest, briefest bow that anyone had probably ever attempted was all
the welcome he could summon up.

And then I looked to Sam, and he looked at me, looked at my side, beautiful
white wings behind me, and he put a warm hand on my shoulder.  Those deep
blue eyes looked at me not with superiority, but for the first time as a
peer.  Those eyes welled up with moisture, and he smiled at me as he said,
"Welcome, brother Gideon," with complete honesty.

"He has much to learn," Faith said.  "He requires careful training and
instruction.  And each one of us has unique knowledge to pass along.  We
will all be at your disposal, Fortitude.  Seek us out as you may."

Sam put his arm on the back of my neck and led me away from the others.
"Come, Brother Gideon," he said.  "Let's get you cleaned up."

"Yes," I said, still not used to the new name.

I noticed as he held his arm against my skin something that I hadn't
before, something that bothered me.  That warm, soothing sensation that I
was used to feeling when he touched me was almost entirely absent.  I
supposed that this power of touch angels had was ineffective on other
angels, and that realization made this whole transformation somewhat
bittersweet.  I had always relied on Sam's soothing touch to ease my daily
anxiety.  What the fuck was I supposed to do instead?

Sam opened the bathroom door and went inside.  I tried to follow him in,
but my wings hit the doorframe, totally betraying the tough mystique I had
been projecting and making me look like a fool as I tried unsuccessfully to
fit through the door.  Fortitude was not meant to look like a clown.
Obviously, I was going to have to learn how to use these huge things.

I scrunched my wings up, marveling how easy it was to move around these new
appendages once I tried.  When my wings had collapsed as much as they
would, I carefully walked through the door sideways and into the bathroom.

"You seem to be adapting to those quite readily," Sam encouraged.

"I can adapt to anything," I boasted with the deepest voice I could summon.

I spun around to face Sam, but forgot momentarily about keeping my wings in
check.  In one quick turn, I stripped all the towels off the rack, knocked
most of the candles over, and dipped my wingtip into the toilet.  "Fuck, my
bad," I said, as any newfound dignity I may have had went straight to hell.

Sam laughed.  "We usually don't keep our wings out indoors for that very
reason," he said.  "You should put them away before you do anymore harm."

"But they need to be cleaned," I said, pulling at a feather or two with my
right hand.  They were all caked with dried cum.

"Amazingly, our wings clean themselves," he said.  "Put them away, and the
next time you pull them out they'll be as pristine as the moment God gave
them to you."

"Yeah?  So how the fuck do I put them away?"

"You just do," he said, an utterly useless comment.  "Trying to describe to
you how to do it would be like trying to describe how to curl your tongue
or raise an eyebrow.  You don't need instructions, you just need to do it."

Even before he had finished his sentence, I had done what he was asking of
me, it was just a matter of engaging these muscles in my back that I had
never sensed before.  With a loud swoop, my wings pulled back into my body,
knocking more things off the counter and hitting Sam hard in the face in
the process.  Even though these huge wings were being forced into these two
openings in my back, there was no pain or discomfort associated with the
process.

"Cool," I marveled as I felt the slits on my back close and leave behind
smooth skin.

"You see?  It's just as easy to pull them out," Sam said.  He put his hands
in front of his face defensively.  "Just please don't try it in such closed
quarters."

"I'll wait until later, thanks."

"Here, hop in the tub," Sam asked me.

I stepped into the porcelain basin as Sam turned on the water.

"Hey," I said as the water started to hit me.  "This is the first time that
I'm not totally freezing in this bath."

"And the water is just as cold as always," he said.  He started to wash my
skin for me.  "As an angel, you won't have to use this room very often.
You'll never again use the toilet.  And your body doesn't sweat or secrete
any odor of any kind.  Your skin no longer will produce oil.  You will only
need to bathe when you get dirty, as you have done now."

He brought his damp washcloth to my face and delicately started to rub in
clean as he looked into my eyes.

"Weren't you the one who told me I wasn't good looking enough to be an
angel?" I asked him with just the slightest note of bitterness.  "Now look
at me."

"Look at you," he said.  "You must know you were always beautiful to me."

He kissed me, kissed me as tenderly as he always kissed me, and it was
enough to placate my resentment, at least for now.

He started to wash my front, lathering down my chest over the cross around
my neck and then downward, reaching the base of my dick.  I thrust it
towards his hand.

"Impressive, huh?" I asked him.  "I'd say it was pretty much the same size
as yours now."

He laughed good naturedly.  "Not quite there, but close enough."

He finished washing me, then led me naked back into the great room.  "Come,
Gideon," he said.

Gideon.  He said the name out of love and familiarity while the others
would more formally address me as my new title, Fortitude.  But Sam and I
had always thrown formality to the wind, choosing to address each other by
our names, not our titles.  He used the name Gideon with tenderness, and
yet the name prickled painfully in my ears, reminding me of my many lies
and secrets.  Sam did not know that the Gideon he referred to had been
subsumed into my mind, that unlike all the other angels, it was the host's
soul who still possessed control over my body.  I was by no means Gideon,
Gideon was only that part of me that I could never, ever release from its
prison.  I was and always would be Bradley Wheeler, only I could never let
any of them know this truth, not now, not ever.

"Shall we investigate your new room, Gideon?" Sam asked, causing me to
wince unconsciously and then quickly cover it up with a smile.  He led me
to the room that I had only known as belonging to Amzi, the last Fortitude,
and his Delector.  "All of this is yours now," Sam said as we looked around
the room.

It wasn't much.  A standard bed, dresser, desk, chair.  That was it.

I opened one of the dresser drawers.  They were still filled with clothes
belonging to the dead.

I got the psychic sense of someone outside the room right before there came
a jaunty knock on the door.

"Come in, Fernando," I said, hoping to impress him with my new psychic
talents.

The door opened and Fernando pulled his skinny form through it, a tape
measure in his hands.  "Whoa!" he said when he saw me.  I puffed out my
chest and tried to look as angelic as possible.  "Charity asked me to come.
He told me you had lost all of your clothes and would need new ones, but I
figured you'd at least manage to put a towel on or something."

"I'm not a modest angel," I said proudly.

"If I could get your measurements real quick for your suit of armor," he
said.  He glanced at Sam for approval.  It was an unconscious diss to my
rightful authority.  "Unless this is an inconvenient time."

"Not at all, Fernando," Sam answered.  "Go right ahead."

Fernando traipsed over to where I stood and pulled his tape measure taut.
He glanced down at my dick with some intimidation.  "I'll just, uh, start
on your upper body," he said.

"Whatever, bro."

As he measured me and wrote down his measurements, he told me, "With these
I'll be able to buy you some new duds on my next trip out of here if you
want.  Till then, well, they burned Amzi's things out of respect, but some
of Sebastian's clothes are still here.  You can wear his things for the
time being."

"Fine," I said.

Some of Fernando's thoughts started coming through: A Delector turned
angel!  Mind blowing!  I wish it had been me instead of Brad.  No I don't,
not really.  I could never be happier serving Charity like I do.  Okay,
time for the lower body.

He bent down on his knees to make more measurements.  "Going for the inseam
now," he announced.

Umm, his penis is kind of in the way here, what should I do?

"Just move it, I don't care," I said.

He seem startled that I had read his mind, then nodded.  "Okay, just gonna
move this big thing over for a moment," he said.  He pulled my dick away
and got his measurement.

Fuck, why did the new angel have to be another hot blonde guy?  God, you
know blondes are my weakness!

"Okay, that's it!" Fernando announced as he gently let my dick go again,
his face totally red.  "We'll get that armor for you as soon as we can!
Later guys!"

He scuttled out of the room.

Sam gave me a smile.  "So, the guy's not exactly devoid of impure
thoughts," Sam said.  "We don't require that of our Delectors, we reserve
that expectation just for our angels.  The Delectors can think what they
want as long as they don't act on those thoughts."

I looked at Sam, remembering suddenly just how beautiful he was.  I could
feel my body's blood redirect itself to my dick as I reminded myself that
ever since I'd become an angel, I'd been more horny than ever, with more
than my share of "impure thoughts" passing through my head.

I prowled forward towards Sam.  "What about my desire to rip those jeans
off you, suck your cock, and then flip you over and have my way with you?
Would those be classified as impure thoughts?"

Sam blushed.  "No, actually."  He reached forward and grabbed the cross
around my neck, the only thing I was wearing, and the only item I never
took off.  "As long as you wear this, you belong to me.  Thoughts like
those towards your Domno can never be sinful."

"So, what you're saying is that God pretty much is rooting for me to fuck
you?"

Sam nodded.  "The Almighty supports and encourages all of our physical
unions."

"Fuck," I said.  "That makes God my first omnipotent wingman."

I pounced on him, knocking him to the ground as I kissed him.  He kissed me
back, matching my efforts on every level.  I grabbed his wrists and pinned
him down beneath me, using all of my strength to hold him to the ground,
loving my new angel might.

Laughing, Sam easily pulled out of my pin, spun me around on my back, and
pinned me down himself.  I struggled against his hold, but his grip was
like iron.  It frustrated and pissed me off that I was still so
comparatively weak.

Sam moved down to kiss me, but the moment was gone for me.  "Man, get off
me!" I snapped.

Sam jumped away, concerned.  "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, something is fucking wrong," I said as I got to my feet.  My dick
had totally gone soft.  "I'm supposed to be the strongest angel alive, so
why the hell am I so weak while you're as strong as a fucking ox?"

Sam laughed.  "Strength takes time to develop, Gideon.  Be patient."

"I don't want to be patient.  I want to get stronger.  Now, Sam.  Teach me
how to do that.  Train me to be as strong as you.  I've been through boot
camp, I can handle anything you throw at me."

"An angel does not get stronger by lifting weights or doing push-ups," Sam
told me.  "An angel's strength is mostly a matter of faith.  Come, let's go
up to the chapel, and I'll get you started.  Get dressed."

"In Sebastian's old clothes?" I asked, suddenly not liking the thought.

"Sure."

I opened the dresser drawer and looked briefly through the few clothes that
were left in there.  "Most of his clothes were taken with him when he was
killed," I told Sam.  I pulled out a hot-pink shirt.  "This shirt is
fucking pink!  I'm not wearing this gay ass shit," I complained.  "Can't I
just borrow some of your things?" I asked him.

He laughed mischievously.  "Wear my clothes?  It's unheard of for an angel
to wear another angel's clothing.  No, you most certainly may not."

I glared at him, smirking there at me with his arms crossed.  "You just
want to see me wear this faggy fashion shit."

"Maybe," he answered.

"Fine, well here's a black T-shirt, how could we go wrong with that?"  I
slipped the thing on.  "A little tight," I said, trying my hardest to push
my bulky arms through the sleeves.  Next I selected a pair of jeans and put
those on, which were even tighter on me than the shirt.  "I'm going
commando," I said.  "I'm not about to put on some dead guy's underwear, I
do have my limits."

Sam laughed at me when I had finished dressing.

"I know," I said.  "I'm not sure if I'm still getting any blood to my brain
with these things on."

"Not that you use that particular organ much anyway," Sam joked.  "Let's
go."

I followed Sam out into the great room.  Chastity and Cedric, who were
talking by their bedroom door, stopped to gape at me as I walked by.

We passed Temperance and Fernando nearby the kitchen on the way to the
stairs.  Temperance pointed at my shirt and nodded his head, half-grinning.
"Way to represent, man," he said to me.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Your shirt!" he said, and that was the first time I realized there was
something written on the front of Sebastian's tight black shirt.
Temperance read off what the shirt said: "`Queens aren't chosen, they're
born.'  I don't count myself as a queen, but I fully support queens like
you who just want to do their queeny things.  You go, girl!"  Temperance
winked at me.

I steamed as I read the shirt for myself, and then saw Sam looking back at
me, smirking.  He purposely chose not to warn me about the message on my
shirt.

"Hey," Fernando said as I passed him, pointing at my gay ass shirt.  "I
have that one too!" he yelled excitedly, in total honesty.

I ignored him and continued following Sam up into the Chapel.  Like usual,
Faith was the only one in the quiet space, dressed in his robes and
kneeling down at the alter.

Sam's voice rang through my head.  Faith, Gideon seeks to grow in strength.

As he should.  Faith stood up and turned to face us.  The path of the
strong is the path of the righteous.

Faith quizzically raised an eyebrow as he read my shirt.

"Yes, I know it says, `Queens aren't chosen, they're born,'" I said
shortly.

"Thanks dearly for enlightening me," Faith said with dry sarcasm.

 "But I was forced to wear this," I said defensively.

 "I greatly hope you have not come here to waste my time with discussions
of your choice in vestments."

"Of course not," I said, biting down on my frustration.  "Sam brought me up
here because he said you could help me get stronger."

"He wishes to know the secret to increase physical potency, so I figured I
should bring him to the most potent angel among us," Sam told Faith.  I
silently wondered if I would have to kiss Faith's ass like that to get him
to help me.

"Indeed," Faith answered.  "You want to be strong, Gideon?  Then you must
beg God for that strength.  For all of your gifts are His gifts to you.  If
you want to be stronger, then kneel here beside me, and like me, beg the
Almighty for His blessings, beg Him to grant you His power."

Faith kneeled again once more in front of the alter and clasped his hands
together.  Sam did the same.

"So, this is all I have to do to get stronger?" I asked, seeking
confirmation.  "I beg God for strength, and He will give it to me, just
like that?"  I was sure there must be some catch they were not telling me
of.

"Why do you think I am as strong as I am?"  Faith asked me.  "Simply
because I am so old?  No, I am strong because I have spent my Earthly
existence praying for God to grant me that gift.  Now, you must do the
same.  Spend your nights in pious prayer, and when you're not praying, read
the holy scripture.  Read it, read it again, and then read it once more.
Read it until you've seared it into memory.  Now kneel, Fortitude."

I kneeled in between Faith and Sam, and I did exactly what he told me to
do, I prayed.

*****

In order to prove to Faith and Sam that I was as dedicated as the next
angel, I knelt there unmoving for hours, my eyes shut and a steady stream
of prayers skipping through my head.  It was torturously boring, but I was
willing to do whatever it took to get stronger.  Only when Sam had told me
we should call it a night and both of us went back to his room an hour or
so before sunrise did I drop my composure as I complained to him that I
didn't feel any stronger.  Sam laughed and brushed off my comment with
assurances that it would take many, many more hours of prayer before I felt
anything.  I sighed, frustrated at that response, but I vowed to stick with
it.

I stripped off Sebastian's crap clothes as soon as we were alone in Sam's
room and jumped on Sam's bed, lying face up spread-eagled.  "There's no
angel rule that forbids me to sleep in the bed of my lover, is there?" I
asked him.

"Blissfully not," he said, looking down appreciatively at my body.

"What do you say you ditch those clothes and give me a taste of your cum?
I'm damn hungry for it."

He smiled, obviously approving of the idea.  "Hold that thought," he said
instead.  "First, I have a lesson to teach you about your new body."  He
headed for the door.

"You're going to leave me here naked and horny?" I asked.  "How could you
even manage to walk away from this stud in your bed?"

"It's taking all my angel willpower," he joked.  "I'll be right back."

He came back a moment later with an icecube in his hand.  He set it in the
center of my chest.  I wondered if this was some sort of new foreplay idea
he was trying out.  I hoped not, the last thing I needed was
foreplay. "Tell me what you notice," he said, pointing at the cube.

"I already learned this lesson without your help, man," I told him.  "I
can't feel cold, I know.  The icecube might as well be a smooth stone for
all the difference I can feel."

Sam shook his head.  "Wrong lesson," he told me.  "What else do you notice?
Keep watching the cube."

I stared into the icecube on my chest for a couple minutes, never able to
pick up on any other hidden meaning.

"It's not melting!" he said finally.  "Hardly melting anyway."

He was right, the icecube had just barely begun to moisten.  "So, what the
fuck is that supposed to mean?" I asked him.

"Keep watching the cube," he said as he disappeared from the bedroom again
and then reappeared with something else in his hand.  "Any change?" he
asked me as he came to the foot of his bed.

I looked at the cube carefully.  "Well, it's melting a little bit I
guess—ack!  What the fuck was that?"

I had felt Sam slip something hard into my ass, jumped up in surprise, and
now was reaching down with my hands, trying to pull whatever it was the
fuck out.

"Stop moving around, the icecube will slip off!" Sam scolded me.

"What did you just put into my ass?" I asked, annoyed as hell.

"A thermometer," he said matter of factly.

"A thermometer?" I asked angrily, squirming at the displeasure of having
this foreign object lodged in my anus.  "Fuck, couldn't I have just put it
in my mouth?"

Sam laughed.  "You could have, but this way is much more fun," he said.

"Not for me," I said.  "Take it the fuck out."

"It's not done yet, are you asking me to put it in your mouth to finish
getting a reading?"

"Hell no!" I said.  "That's fucking sick, man!"

He laughed again.  "It wouldn't matter, you know," he said.  "Angel asses
are as clean as mouths, maybe cleaner."

"I don't care, it's just the idea of the thing," I said.  "Just screw this
lesson and take it out already or I'll fucking take it out myself!"

"Oh, calm down, it's already got a reading," Sam said as he took the
thermometer out of my ass and showed it to me.  "What does it say?" he
asked.

"Um, like 60?" I said.  "Must not have been in nearly long enough."

"No, I assure you, that is completely accurate," he said.  "Your body, like
the bodies of all angels, now hovers around 60 degrees Fahrenheit."

I shook my head.  "That's impossible," I said.  "I've felt your skin a
thousand times and you always felt warm to me, you always warmed me up."

"Why do you think the icecube melts so slowly then?" he asked me.  "It
true.  Angel bodies are much, much colder than human bodies."

I reached my hand out and grabbed his arm.  "But even when I feel you now,
you feel warm to me.  No way you're just 60 degrees."

"I am indeed," he said.  "Angel flesh has an odd chemical property to it.
When it touches other living flesh, it creates the sensation of heat for
that living thing, and actually warms up the flesh it's touching.  So, a
person who is touching one of us angels will get the sensation that we are
warm when in fact our bodies are icy.  This is true for all parts of an
angel's body as well as his bodily fluids.  This chemical characteristic
fades away only if the angel dies, or if a portion of the angel's flesh or
fluids becomes separated from the body."

"So, if that's the case," I said, still trying to wrap my brain around this
idea, "then how come when I touch a human's skin, they don't feel like a
fucking red hot iron?  Shouldn't they feel hot since my equilibrium, or
whatever they call it, is so low?"

Sam smiled slyly.  "That is God's gift to us, so we don't get confused," he
said.  "In fact, before you had become an angel, if you had touched my skin
through plastic wrap, you would have felt how cold I was, as the plastic
would be enough to block any chemical reaction my skin would normally have
on you, but wouldn't be thick enough to block out the coldness of my
flesh."

"So what would have happened if I had tried to fuck you with a condom on
when I was human?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "I would have convinced you not to do so.  Or else it
would have felt very oddly cold for you."

"Sort of like screwing a corpse?"

"I can't say I know what that feels like first hand, but yes, I'd say it
would feel something like that."  He pointed towards his door.  "You know,
I believe I saw something being delivered to your bedroom that you may want
to investigate."

My curiosity piqued, I ran out of Sam's room buck naked and into my own.

Waiting for me sitting on my bed were my new robes and a white porcelain
mask.  "Kick ass!" I yelled as I put the robes on over my naked body.  "How
do I look?" I asked Sam once I had the mask fastened in place.

He smiled, looking me over.  "Red and white look good on you," he answered.
"Very regal.  Now that you have those new duds, you are free to leave the
inner circle.  Hold on, let me change into my robes, and we'll take a
walk."

Soon I was following Sam's brisk pace through the outer circle, white robes
swishing around my naked body.  We passed a small group of Cherubim and
their Delectors, who were writing in books and discussing some matter of
little importance.  I recognized among them the head Power of the
Cathedral, Shamir.  As soon as they saw us coming, all of them stopped what
they were doing and bowed low to the ground.

I stood tall, taking in the stark contrast between the majesty of my new
robes and the plainness of their ugly brown ones, which looked as if they
could have been knit from old potato sacks.  The mask too was empowering; I
felt it concealed all my blasphemous secrets and filled in my other
weaknesses, as minor as they were.

"Please, there is no need for such gestures around us," Sam told the
others.  "In the future, remain as you are and be at ease."

They rose up from the ground, the Delectors a little more hesitantly than
others, as if suspecting this might be some trick or test of their respect.
I felt completely disappointed that Sam had let these little folk off the
hook like that, after all, it seemed one of the best perks of being a
Seraph was having all the other members of the flock groveling to you.
Really, who ever said no to a little groveling?  It seemed a good enough
tradition to me, so why screw with it?

"My lieges," Shamir said, his dark eyes looking at me directly from
underneath his brown hood.  "We were merely working on strengthening the
Cathedral's defenses."  Was there some masked resentment in Shamir's eyes
that I was detecting?  Jealousy even?  I was certain he knew what I
represented to him.  I was his dream, newly destroyed.  Because of me, he
would never become what he would have if I hadn't intervened: the next
Fortitude.  He looked down my body, perhaps questioning Faith's decision in
appointing me.  "I am stronger than you," he seemed to say.  He was right.
But I would be stronger than him soon enough, I promised myself that.  I
hadn't forgotten who personally dragged me from the US back to the
Cathedral to my likely death.  That I would never forget.

"Do go on as you were," Sam said, continuing on towards the Cathedral
entrance.  I followed, feeling Shamir's envious eyes upon me until I had
turned the corner.

Outside, the dry desert-night breeze blew through my robes.  Sam looked
upwards at the canyon walls.  "I thought we might fly up out of here."

The idea of flying on my own thrilled me, and I felt the skin on my back
itch as my wingtips poked out excitedly from within.  I followed their
wishes, and pushed them out of my body, not even feeling the slightest bit
of pain at the gruesome process.

The Seraphim robes were designed in two pieces.  The skirt part of the
robes was tied around the wearer just under the armpits.  The top piece
included a hood and two sleeves, and hung down onto the waist.  But in
between these two parts of the robe was enough of a gap so that the
Seraph's wings could freely hang out without getting trapped in any cloth,
and this is how both Sam and I brought our wings out from under our robes.

Sam's wings beat slowly, and he rose from the ground smoothly and easily.

Now it was my turn to follow his example.  I looked up to the stars, took a
deep, excited breath, and beat my wings with enthusiasm.

And I went... nowhere.  Not one fucking centimeter off the sand.

Sam laughed as I continued to beat my wings.  "Having trouble?" he asked.

"Don't laugh at me.  This is a lot harder than it looks!"

"Don't make such a big deal about it," he said.  "You're equipment is
failing you.  It happens to all the angels at one point or another.  It's
perfectly natural not to be able to perform.  Just put those away for now
and hitch a ride with me like before."

"What?" I asked.  "Didn't you bring me out here to teach me to fly?"

He shook his head.  "No sir," he said.  "That's a long and involving
lesson.  One for a future date.  I just brought you out here so we'd have
some time to ourselves.  Now, put your wings away and get on."

Grumbling, I pulled my wings back into my body and jumped onto Sam's
waiting back as I had done so many times before.  "This may have worked as
a means for transportation when I was just a man, but as an angel it just
plain sucks," I said to him as we lifted up further and further off the
ground.  "There better not be anybody watching us."

"Just keep your wings inside your robes for the time being, okay?"

As we flew through the air, I felt a new, almost instinctive excitement
flowing through me, more than just a response to the thrill of the ride.
The air soaring passed my skin seemed to call out to me, seemed to invite
me to join it.  My wings once again itched against my back.  I was sure
that if I let them out, this time I'd for sure learn how to use them now
that I was already flying through the air.

I pulled my wings out, instantly feeling the air rush through my feathers,
feeling the air as I had never done before, detecting its contours and
folds and shifting currents.  I knew that this was the first and biggest
step towards flying on my own.

"Oh Lord," Sam said, suddenly losing control over his flight and swerving
around violently.  "Gideon, your wings!  You don't know what you're doing,
and you're screwing up my flight!"

It was true, my wings were doing less flying and more parachuting, it
seemed, acting as sudden brakes to Sam's quick forward flight.

He lost control, and we fell fast towards the ground.  We crashed hard into
the sand before I could even think of putting my wings away.  It was more
than enough of a fall to kill any man.

But we were not men, not any longer anyway.  After I pounded flat into the
ground, I felt a surge of pain through my body, which I knew must have
meant my body was badly injured, as that was the only time we angels really
felt pain.  But slowly, the pain seeped away, and I felt my body
reassembling itself.

"Ugh," I said as I sat up on the ground.

"Ugh is right," Sam told me as he set a dislocated shoulder back in place.
Both of us were covered in sand.  "I told you to keep your wings where they
belonged!  Almost got us killed!"

"Nah, we're fine," I said as I helped him to his feet.  "Anyway, I couldn't
resist."

He shook his head at me.  "Well, this place is as good as any, I suppose."
He pulled off his robe and laid it out on the ground, leaving him naked
save for the mask, which he was starting to remove as well.

He had me do the same, our robes together making a blanket in the sand for
us to lie upon.

Seeing him like that, proud in the silvery moonlight, naked with his white
wings stretched wide, his dick hard and dripping--it was easy enough to see
what he was planning for us out here.

And I was hungry.  I swallowed his cock, letting his precum splash into my
mouth as I went down.

"Easy," Sam said.  "There's no rush.  Take your time and enjoy it."

I didn't listen to him.  I sucked hard, like a baby on a bitch's tit: not
trying to pleasure, but eager for a meal.  It took much longer for that
meal to come than I would have liked, but it came eventually, pouring down
my throat.  I could feel my angelic strength increase as I swallowed all
Sam could give me.

Like usual, after I had finished, I was voraciously horny, and my dick was
so full of cum that I could not hold myself back.  I pushed him back on our
robes, lifted both his feet up and rested his ankles over my shoulders.

I hesitated before taking his ass, wondering if this would even be possible
with my increased dick size.  Sam seemed to read my mind.  "Go for it," he
said.  "You can't hurt me, and I won't feel pain."

I pushed into his tight hole, using my own precum as lube.  He smiled at me
lovingly as I started to fuck him, and he lifted his head to kiss me, but I
was too much in my zone to reciprocate.  I didn't want to kiss, didn't feel
romantic or tender or any of the things I knew he was feeling.  I felt raw
and powerful, and I used his ass until I shot my seed inside of him.

He was still smiling at me sweetly when I pulled out of him.

"That was a good fuck," I told him.

"I could stand to do the same," he said, pointing to his cock which was
hardening again real fast.  "I've never been allowed to make love to any of
my Delectors until now.  I want you so, so badly, Gideon.  I think you know
I've always wanted you in that way.  You won't feel any pain, I promise.
What do you say?"

I shook my head, realizing that nothing could turn me on less.  I just
wasn't a bottom.  "Look man, I want to," I lied to him.  "But I just can't
do it.  That night in your sleep when you forced yourself on me.  I still
remember how much that hurt.  How fucking scared I was.  I don't think I
can ever do that again."

His face went red.  He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of actions he never
committed.  "I understand.  I'm sorry for that, you know I am."  He took me
in his arms.  "Look, we don't need to do that.  We'll just continue things
as they are.  I'm totally satisfied this way."  My little manipulation
worked just as planned.  Sam's sense of guilt and responsibility were just
too easily taken advantage of.

"Thanks, Sam," I said, kissing him.  "You're so understanding."

After lying together for a few minutes, he told us we should be getting on.
He shook the sand out of his robe and began putting it back on.  I did the
same to my own robe, and he flew us both back down to the canyon floor.

"I have to be going," he said as soon as we landed.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"I have to catch a plane to Dubai," he said sadly.

"So suddenly?"

"I have to go before the night winds down."

I was suspicious.  "You leaving on business or what?"

"No," he said.  "Not on business.  I have to go find some willing man to
suck off."

"What?  Why?"

"It's been much too long for me without semen, Gideon.  I'm growing sick.
Starving practically.  It's been too long for me."

I raised an eyebrow.  "Yeah?" I asked.  "How many of these willing men did
you suck off while we were apart?"

"None.  None at all, I swear to you.  I knew you were out there somewhere.
We're sworn to each other.  I knew you weren't dead, and I wasn't going to
betray our vows no matter how sick I became."

"And now?" I asked angrily.  "What has changed?"

"Well, you have, quite frankly.  You are no longer the man I have been
promised to, not entirely.  We are angels now, brother, and angels are
God's miracles.  It is not in our liberties to mismanage the Lord's gifts
to us.  We must do what we must to stay alive, even if it means bending our
own dogma a bit.  You, an angel, should never consume my seed, and yet you
must do so or face death, so God will forgive you this.  Likewise, I cannot
starve myself to death in the maintenance of our Holy bond, I must go
outside of our relationship to find sustenance.  God forgives me this,
Faith himself has assured me."

"No, there is another way," I said.  "You could continue as we have always
done.  Drink my cum, Sam, and I will drink yours.  All we need is each
other."

He sighed.  "You know I want this.  It breaks my heart to go out there and
share this intimacy with a stranger when you are here waiting for me
faithfully.  But it simply cannot be.  I cannot ever drink your seed again,
Gideon, because to do so would be to invite a fatal addiction into my
body."

"But it's not like you'll fall over dead after the first BJ, Sam," I said.
"It takes many decades for this addiction to work its course.  That's so
far away, it's just not worth worrying about right now."

He laughed.  "A few decades may seem like an eternity to you, Gideon, but
for creatures for whom God intended to live forever, it is nothing."

"Oh well then, who gives a fuck?" I asked him.  "If our addictions kill us
before our rightful times, then so be it.  At least we'll have each other,
you know?"

He shook his head.  "I will not indulge this addiction.  I consider it
profane that an angel should be addicted and die after 40 years or so, that
then the angel soul should once again be forced into Purgatory.  It is
simply not a choice for me to even entertain, Gideon.  It is against God's
will, and therefore is not up for debate."

"And so you'll go out there on your own, constantly?  On the hunt for dicks
to suck?  That's not a pleasant image for me, Sam."

"I'll go as infrequently as I can get by with, once every couple of days or
so.  I will constantly be weak, but that is to be expected for any angel
who does not have access to his own Delector's seed.  I'm sorry, but this
is the grim reality you must face.  These are the difficult circumstances
we have been forced into.  Hey, this isn't any fun for me either."

"Yeah, I'm sure it will be absolute torture for you to go out there and
suck a bunch of hot guys off."

He shook his head.  "Don't brush it off like that," he said.

"Just get out of here, Sam.  Go get on your plane.  Day's on its way, and
we don't want you caught in the sun."  I turned my back and stared to walk
towards the entrance.

"I'll see you when I get back!" he yelled over my shoulder.  I could hear
his wings flap as he took off once more.

"I could give a fuck!" I yelled back as he went.

I strode through the Cathedral halls, my robes rustling around angrily as I
went.  When I came into the hall Shamir and the others were meeting in,
they flinched at my entrance, but then instantly resumed their work when
they saw who I was, ignoring me as Sam had requested they do.

I stopped, bristling with anger.  "Do not take my presence so lightly!" I
yelled at them.  "I am Fortitude!  Bow down to me and show me some
respect!"

"Forgive us, my liege," Shamir said as he and all the others bowed down
deep.

"It's about fucking time," I said as I walked on.  "Don't let it happen
again, any of you!"

*****

In the weeks that followed, the novelty of being an angel began to wear off
as I settled more and more into a routine.  With Sam spending half of his
time pulling the strings in his war between wolves and demons and the other
half taking these regular pleasure trips searching the Middle-East for
dick, he had very little time left to spend with me.

But that didn't matter.  I spent most of my nights in the chapel with
Faith, first listening to what would best be described as a personal
sermon, as he drilled into me as much religious knowledge as I could
possibly absorb.  These lectures were one-way affairs; Faith had zero
patience for being interrupted by even the slightest question or concern.
After these sermons, I stayed in the chapel for most of the rest of the
night, praying alongside Faith (and sometimes without him) for God to
continue to give me strength.  After a number of days, I could even feel
myself getting stronger.  It was a frustratingly slight change, but it was
noticeable, and that kept me at it.

The other Seraphim helped me learn the ropes when they could, either
because they genuinely wanted to help me, or because Faith had ordered them
to do so.

Soon after my entrance into the Seraphim circle, Charity came knocking on
my bedroom door with books in hand and a smile on his face.  "Thought you
might need some guidance in case you're at all lost as to just what the
hell it is you're supposed to be doing as Fortitude," he said as he came in
my room, already making me sick to my stomach with that annoying southern
accent of his.  "Me and Amzi Fortitude were a real team.  You may not guess
this from looking at me, but I'm pretty damn anal.  I keep records of
everything I'm personally involved in.  See?"  He flipped open one of the
books, and they were filled with handwritten logs.  "These are all the
occasions that Amzi Fortitude and I worked together.  Should give you an
idea as to what exactly Fortitude does."

"Uh, thanks," I said weakly as Charity put the huge stacks of books in my
arms.  I had absolutely no intention of even cracking one of these.

"Just make sure you give em back to me when yer done," he said, winking at
me.

"Of course."

"And there's actually a current situation that seems to warrant yer
attention," he said.  "I'm bout ready to ship out of here and head over to
Africa.  Ethopia, precisely.  We got more warlords causing misery for those
people.  Horrible conditions for innocent folks.  Children are starving."

I laughed to myself, an old joke popping into my head.  "You know how to
kill a thousand Ethiopians?"

Charity looked at me blankly.  I took that as a "no."

"Throw a biscuit over a cliff," I said, and then I bent over, laughing.  I
stopped when I realized the uptight fucker hadn't even cracked a smile.  He
was just standing there coldly, staring at me.  "I guess you already heard
that one," I said, ready to move on.

"I guess even with that shiny new angel soul, you still got plenty of dumb
in you," he said rudely, humiliating me.  "Now, listen to me.  I need you
to come with me to Ethiopia as soon as we can go.  You'll shake things up,
kill us some evil warlords, and I'll put the place back together again.
Sound fair?"

The idea of getting to maim a few dozen bad guys sounded like good fun and
a great way to release some pent up hostility, and so my initial reaction
was to say yes.  I had seen Amzi Fortitude take on one of these missions
first hand, and I longed to unleash my wrath upon the world and show them
how fucking strong I had become.

But the way this motherfucker had just insulted me was giving me second
thoughts.  "Why don't you just take Justice with you to do your dirty
work?" I asked him.  "You and him seem to get along just swimmingly."

"Justice is away, like he usually has been lately," he looked fucking
distraught about it too.

 "Ah, I see how it is.  Justice isn't around, and since you don't do your
own fighting, you come to me to do the fighting for you on this trip."

He smiled.  "What can I say?  I'm a lover, not a fighter, you know?" he
said, winking at me again.  Even though I knew he wasn't one, he had a way
of coming off as a sleaze sometimes.

"That just isn't the angel way," I said simply.

"My preference towards pacifism and my distaste for killing is a personal
choice I have made together with God," he said seriously, his voice almost
losing the hick accent for a moment.

"Well, sooner or later it's gonna get someone hurt," I said.

"I'd never let it come to that," he assured me.  "If I had to, I'd take a
life.  As long as I have a choice, however, I'll stick to my values."

I forced a disarming smile at the mustached angel.  "Look, Charity, let me
tell you something, and the reason why I'm telling you this is because I
like you, really I do.  I just don't think that your pacifist MO is working
out for this Flock.  And as much as I want to come and help you on your
missions, I just feel that doing so would be against your best interests,
and it's your best interests I have at heart.  I'd be a... what's the word?
An enabler.  I'd be enabling your weakness if I went along with this.  So
I'm afraid I'll have to say no."

His face looked visibly hurt for a moment.  He nodded.  "I understand and
respect your choice, Fortitude," he said, taking me at face value.

"And as long as I'm coming clean, there's one other piece of advice I have
for you that I hope you won't take the wrong way," I said.

"Of course not," he said.  "Lay it on me."

"It's your moustache."

"The soup-strainer?  What's wrong with the little guy?"

"Well, frankly, it's pretty much a porn-stache.  Seriously, no one wears
them that way nowadays except porn stars.  The rest of the inner circle
have been talking bout it."

"They have?"

"Sure they have, all of them," I lied.  "Talking about how it might be fine
on Tom Selleck if he started doing gay porn, but for men of worship, it
just is not appropriate.  Just thought you should know."

He rubbed his moustache defensively.  "Well, thanks for the heads up, but
the stache has never led me astray yet and I don't think it will in the
foreseeable future."

"Well, if you keep it, it's your mistake to make."

"Thanks for the candidness, Fortitude.  You take care now."  He left, still
rubbing his moustache with uncertainty.

My smile faded as soon as he left, and I realized the weakest Seraph had
absolutely nothing of value to teach me.  I threw the books he gave me in
the trash.

Temperance had little more to offer me.  Sam had asked him to join the two
of us one night in the desert for a little flight training.  Temperance and
I sat comfortably atop a boulder as Sam stretched out his white wings in
the sand in front of us, getting ready to give me a demonstration.

"I've invited Temperance along tonight because he is undoubtedly the best
flier in the Flock," Sam said, smiling at Temperance.

Temperance smiled and gave a little nod of thanks.  He was in no way
boastful, yet made no attempt to humbly deny Sam's claim, so I knew it must
have been true.

"Considering this, Temperance, if you want to take this lesson by the
reigns you may do so now.  You'd be better suited than me to teach
Fortitude flight."

"Nah," he said, pulling the white hood of his robe over his head.  On him,
the cloak took on more the look of a skater hoody.  "I'll just sit here on
this comfortable rock and observe quietly.  I brought my tunes."  He held
up his Ipod as proof.

"Well, you are free to interject as soon as I make any sort of mistake,"
Sam told him.  "Now Brad, come down here.  Stand beside me and get your
wings ready."

I jumped off the boulder and let my wings rip.

"Now, flying should just come as second nature to you.  You should already
perceive the air currents, the pockets of shifting pressure.  You just have
to learn how to manipulate the air with your wings.  We learn to do this by
spreading our wings and running, like so."  He began to run in a large
circle, his wings spread.  "Follow me."

I ran after him, both of us running in circles.

"Shift your wings so that they are parallel to the ground, cutting through
the air in front of you."

I followed Sam's instructions.

Sam stopped running to look at my form.  "Your wings look good.  Do you
feel the air currents around your feathers?"

"Not really," I said.

"Well, run faster!" Sam urged me.

I ran as fast as I could, moving into a tighter and tighter circle.  "It's
not helping."

"You need to go faster!"

"I'm going as fucking fast as I fucking can!  If I could still puke, I
would be by now with all these circles I've been running!"

"Okay, stop where you are," Sam said, and I stopped running, looking at him
with frustration.  "This time I want you to face into the wind and run
forward, into it."

I spun around a couple times, trying to feel for the wind.

"You have to face the wind!" Sam said.

"I'm trying.  There is no fucking wind out here!"

"There is but it's very slight," Sam said.  He stood beside me and turned
around.  "No, now it's gone.  Let's see if I can find some."  He started
trotting off out into the desert like a hunting hound on a scent trail.

"This is pointless," I said, sure I'd never learn how to fly in this
ridiculous manner.  It was like having to learn how to swim in a bathtub;
completely senseless.

Above me, Temperance pulled out his headphones.  "You know, there are
better ways to learn this than running around the desert like a chicken
with its head cut off," he said.

"Tell me how, please!"

Temperance smiled his half-smile mischievously.  "Nah, Sam wouldn't
appreciate it.  Let's just say it's the same way a chick up in a nest first
learns."

I pondered that thought for a moment before Sam's voice could be heard in
the distance: "I found a gentle breeze over here, Gideon.  Come here!"

Then I heard Temperance psychically broadcasting his voice: Well Justice,
you seem to have everything firmly under control.  I'd better go back to my
important Temperance duties back inside.

Temp winked at me as he got off the rock, and I knew that his important
duties probably consisted of nothing more than lazing about all night.

Alright, thank you Temperance.  Now Gideon, get out here before this breeze
dies down!

I grunted as I ran out to meet him in the sand.  Problem was, by the time I
got there, the breeze had evaporated.  Sam wanted to keep on trying, but I
was done with his lessons.  The one thing I had learned from Temperance is
that sometimes it's best to do things on your own in your own way.

Soon after the night I failed to learn how to fly, I moved to confront
Humility in his bedroom, catching him when he was in the middle of
spoon-feeding Yann.

"You haven't come to me since I became an angel," I complained.  "So now,
I'm coming to you.  What do you have to offer me?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, completely perplexed.

"I mean, Faith told everyone to teach me something valuable.  What do you
got for me, man?"

He laughed.  "I am a simple servant of God, Fortitude.  I don't have
anything of value to teach you, nothing that would not better be taught by
someone other.  Perhaps some simple counsel would suffice.  I've been
giving that to you since the two of us were introduced."

I shrugged.  "I guess that will do," I said, disappointed.  Advice was the
last thing I needed right now.

"I would ask you to always remember that all of your gifts, either inherent
or learned, are just that: gifts.  We are all children of God, and God
blesses us with all of our strengths to further His great plan.  Don't ever
let yourself fall into the trap of arrogance, don't ever believe that any
of your gifts were somehow earned by you, that you have some sort of
entitlement to them.  Just as God has blessed you, so will He rescind those
blessings.  Either way, you should be thankful."

"Alright," I said, not really letting the words in.  "Anything else?"

"Yes, actually," he said.  "If I may recommend it, I'd tell you to live as
close to poverty as you can.  There are several Seraphim among us who
believe that as long as they show charity to others, they may freely
indulge their material desires.  An Ipod here, a set of designer clothes
there, even an occasional fancy car.  Not sinful acquirements by any
stretch of the imagination, but remember that for thousands of years, monks
have served our Lord in the simplest of surroundings, with the least amount
of possessions."

"You sound like Chastity," I said to him.  "I don't even think that guy
owns a pair of pants."

He chuckled.  "Both he and I have very few material possessions, it's true.
But we are divided on what poverty means.  For him, poverty is about pain.
One more corporeal punishment meant to add misery to his life in the hopes
that God will forgive our sins and exalt us back to Heaven.  But I do not
seek to punish myself.  To me, poverty is not a curse, it's a blessing.  To
have nothing, and yet to find in that material void the pure love of the
Almighty, that resounds more strongly than any of the more primitive
physical possessions could ever offer."  He smiled at me.  "I like you,
Fortitude.  I've liked you even before you were Gideon, when you were just
a lost, confused child.  I wish you the best, and I dearly hope something I
have said has been of some value to you."

Humility.  I loved the guy, but he had a way of always being completely
inconsequential.  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that an old man
like him didn't have more to teach me.

Surprisingly, out of all the Seraphim, it was Chastity who taught me my
most valuable lesson.

He found me praying on my own in the chapel one night when Faith had been
called to his duties.  He came up to me at the alter, pulling his hood off,
revealing his nail-covered head.  "You pray for strength?" he asked me.

I nodded, not bothering to look him in the eye.  "That's right Chaz," I
said.

"Do not butcher my title, brother!  If I told you there was a method Powers
use to increase their strength with twenty times as much efficiency as
praying alongside Faith, would you believe me?"

I stopped praying and looked over at him.  He had my attention.  "Angels
cannot lie," I told him.  "So yes, I believe you."

He smiled.  "Then you'll believe me when I tell you that Faith refuses this
method, and although Justice has used it plenty of times himself, he seeks
to keep it from you as long as he can."

I seethed.  It was just like Sam to keep something like this from me.
"What do you know about strength, anyway?" I challenged Chastity.  "Faith
told me you're not as strong as either him or Justice."

"I know little of strength," he admitted.  "What I am familiar with more
than anyone, is pain."

I didn't know what he was talking about but I let him lead me out of the
chapel and into the outer circle, after both of us has put our masks on and
pulled our hoods over our heads.

Without a word, he led me to a part of the Cathedral I had never been in, a
part that was among the living quarters of the Cathedral Cherubim.  The
only sound I heard were the many "my lieges" as every brown-robed
inhabitant bowed down to both of us as we passed them.

Finally we entered a dark, hot room in which there were already two Powers
and their Delectors.

"Get out, now," Chastity told them as soon as they knelt at our entrance.

The four of them got the hell out of the room as fast as they could,
shutting the door behind them as they went.  Chastity and I were alone in
this new room, and what an odd room it was.  In the center was a large
stone slab, which looked to me to be an examination table of some kind.

"This room is our Worship Chamber.  Take off your clothes and get on the
table!" Chastity snapped.  "Come on, quickly!"

My desire for increased strength somehow overwhelmed the huge amount of
distrust I had for Chastity and his creepy looking table.  I took my mask
and robe off, leaving me totally naked and exposed.  I climbed upon the
table.

The table was set at a diagonal so that the head of the table was a couple
feet above the foot.  I laid upon it, my bare ass against the soft stone.

"That's it!" Chastity yelled out excitedly.  He walked up to a corner of
the table and fetched the end of a rope that was hanging from a stone axis
on the floor.  There was a loop around the rope, and it didn't take long
for me to figure out what it was for.  He tied the rope tightly to my wrist
before erupting into sudden, shrill, psychopathic laughter.  "Not too
tight?" he asked me.

"Maybe a little too tight," I responded.

"No.  Never too tight!"

He danced around the table, taking the other three hanging ropes and tying
my other three limbs down tightly, leaving me spread eagled on this stone
table, and very, very nervous.  "Now what?" I asked, realizing for the
first time that I was tied up to some sort of medieval rack-like torture
device.

"Now, you find out why we call this our Worship Chamber," he said happily.
"Start praying!" And I took his suggestion literally, praying to God that I
would survive this experience.

Chastity walked over to a large stone wheel that all of the ropes were tied
into.  He twisted the wheel, and the ropes pulled my limbs completely taut.
I grunted as he did this.

"I'm switching on the mechanical tightener," he said, flipping some switch
of some sort.  "Even without my twisting, this device will slowly tighten
the ropes, so slightly and so slowly you won't even perceive them
tightening."  He grinned wide.  "But they will be," he hissed happily.

He came over to where I was tied.  "Are you starting to feel the wondrous
pain?" he asked me almost sexually.

"Oh yes," I said, straining against the ropes.

He smiled ear to ear.  He traced a finger along the taut muscles under my
arm.  "Yes, I can feel the tension," he said.  "A gift from God, this pain.
Oh how I wish I could share it with you.  Wallow in the pain that God
inflicted on His own flesh for the betterment of all eternity!"

I knew of course that Chastity was the ultimate masochist, and that to him
this was a sacred gift to me, that I was supposed to enjoy his punishment.
I, however, was not a lover of pain.  I never had been.  I hated the stuff.

But I had learned as a young boy not to let pain rule me.  Learned to stand
there and take it, learned to choke back those shameful tears so nobody
could see my weakness.

I despised pain, but I would not be ruled by it.

"Pray now!" Chastity continued.  "Pray that God gives you the great
strength it would take to break through these ropes before it's too late.
For if he denies this to you, it will mean your Angelic life comes to a
quick and oh so delightfully messy end!"

He cackled, and started walking towards the door.

"Hey, wait!"  I said.  "You're not gonna leave me here alone, right?"

His answer was to cackle and slam the door shut as he went out.  I would
have to deal with this challenge on my own.

Straining against the ropes seemed completely futile; although the twine
ropes were relatively thin, any rope would have been too durable for me to
break.  The answer was to not panic or to struggle futilely.  The answer, I
knew, lied in God.

I shut my eyes and prayed.  Prayed that God would grant me the strength to
save my own life.

I prayed and I prayed.  As the hours past, the ropes increased their pull
on my limbs.  The discomfort had turned into pain, and I knew that was a
bad sign.

But I knew I had the constitution to prevail.  As I pulled at the ropes, I
realized how much stronger I felt now than I did just hours ago.  God was
granting me this gift!

I prayed harder and harder as another hour slipped by.  My strength
increased, but so far it was not enough.  And now my limbs were stretched
to their horrible limit.  My whole body felt about ready to rip right down
the middle.

Knowing I was almost done for, I prayed harder for God's gift.  Once again
I felt my strength increase.  I could feel the ropes straining and
weakening.  Fibers loosening.

The door was kicked open from the outside.  A cloaked and masked Seraph
came in, though I knew immediately from his psyche that it was Sam, just
back from his latest trip to Dubai.

He ran towards me, his sword unsheathed.  He sliced with his sword; within
moments he had cut through all four of the ropes.

My limbs snapped back into their rightful places as the pressure went away.
It was such a sudden change it was almost an uncomfortable shock.

"Fuck, man!" I said.  "Why'd you do that?"

Sam pulled off his mask.  "I just saved your life," he huffed.  "Any longer
and you would have been in pieces."

"Uh, no I wouldn't have!  I was about to break the ropes myself.  You
screwed it all up, man!"

"No," Sam said, looking over at the stone wheel.  "You couldn't have
possibly been strong enough."

I guffawed.

"Besides, you shouldn't be using this sort of contraption, it's too
dangerous," Sam said.

"You use it!" I said.  "That's how you got so strong so fast, isn't it?"

"Sure, I've used machines like this," Sam said.  "But never were any of
them set to self-tighten.  With that setting, no new angel could have ever
survived.  It was reckless of Chastity to show you this, and even more so
for you to go along with it."

Apparently my increased strength had worked itself down to my fingers as
well, as I found it easy enough to untie all of the tight binds on my
wrists and ankles.  "Chastity is a fuck," I said, knowing of course that
the guy probably had intended to kill me.  "But believe it or not, I was
overcoming his sadistic little trap, and gaining strength from it as well.
The only one who deserves blame here is you, Sam.  If it wasn't for your
boy-scout need to rescue me from every little problem I'm in, I would be
much stronger than I am now."

He shook his head.  "I don't want you to use this again," he said.  "Not
without my supervision, at least.  This contraption will kill you
eventually."

"I'll do whatever I damn well please," I said as I put my cloak back on.
"I'm your equal now, not your slave."

"Gideon, please.  I'm begging you here."

I didn't respond, I just walked out on him.

A couple days later, when he was off to Dubai again sucking off one of his
conquests, I was back on the rack, having one of the Cherubim tie the ropes
on me before leaving.  Once again, I prayed for the strength to rip through
my bonds.  It took all fucking night, but this time, finally, FINALLY, I
broke through the ropes.  I yelled in victory as I jumped off the table,
laughing at the heady, sudden surge of power I felt through my body.

I smiled.  It seemed I had found my new favorite pastime.

*****

I peered down at the rack that I had by then used so many times it had
started to feel more comfortable and familiar to me than my own bed.  Now,
there was something new and different, something the Cherubim Powers had
installed just for me.  It was like an old lover surprising you with a new,
naughty negligee.  As I stared, mouth-open at the difference, goosebumps
appeared on my arms and my wings popped out involuntarily.

The difference: thick, professional grade mountain-climbing ropes.  So much
stronger than the twine version; a new level of challenge for me to break
through.

The Powers who installed the new ropes for me told me that only the
strongest angels should even attempt such a feat.  Only the best would
survive the ordeal by having the God-granted power to break through the
ropes.  Only a dozen or so angels would be able to do this, angels like
Faith, Shamir, and Justice.  Well, they said, at least Justice as he used
to be.  It was common knowledge that he now possessed just a mere fraction
of the strength he used to have.

It had been a bittersweet moment the night that I realized I had surpassed
Sam in strength.  Before I had become an angel, when he and I exchanged
fluids every night, I knew that he was getting stronger from my seed while
I would only deteriorate from his.  Now, those positions were seemingly
reversed; every load that I sucked out of him made me stronger, while his
strength suffered from not being able to drink the cum of his Delector.

Even though he still held his head high, he had become weak and vulnerable,
telling me repeatedly that he was relying on me for my strength should he
need it in order to strike any guilty party down.  He even continued to
submit to me turning him over and fucking him almost on a nightly basis.
Every man knows fucking somebody is a way of showing dominance over them.
That's all it signifies in prison, and even sometimes in the Marines.  When
Sam let me fuck him, he willingly let me demean and abuse him.  I couldn't
respect Sam for letting me shame him like that, no matter our long history
together.  He was turning into nothing more than a weak, pathetic bottom.

The angels asked if I was sure that I wanted to go through with this when
they tied the new ropes around my limbs.  I told them to turn on the
machine and get out.

I prayed to God once again for the strength to survive.  I was His greatest
creation, after all.  Certainly He would give me the strength to break free
from these bindings, as the only other option would be to let His greatest
creation die.

This time, it didn't even take me the whole night.  I broke the ropes with
my sudden swell of strength.  It was almost disappointingly easy, and I
wished there was some harder challenge for me to face next.

*****

Another night, another annoyance, as I once again had to listen to Sam
whine and complain about his time management problems after I had fucked
the hell out of him.  Seems between all of the time he was spending
overseeing his Holy War, and all of the trips he was taking to Dubai to
find dick to suck, he was just oh so tired and stretched thin and at his
breaking point.

The thing was, he wasn't even complaining out loud.  He was just thinking
about it, and because of my new psychic "gift" I could hear every little
detail.  Every anxiety and concern came through loud and clear.

It wasn't like this with the other angels.  For psychic beings, thinking is
just as used a form of communication as talking.  But all of the angels
kept up a constant psychic shield which prevented every random thought from
being broadcasted to any surrounding angels.  Instead, they only let
certain thoughts slip through their shield; that's how they communicated.
Not that any of the angels had anything to hide.  At certain times, all
angels would drop their psychic shields completely and give everyone
complete access to all of their thoughts.  But if all of the angels did
this all the time, there would be just too many random thoughts being
broadcast all over the place.  It was bad enough for an angel to be around
so many human Delectors who did not have the ability to shield their minds.
So angels as a rule only broadcast certain communicative thoughts to each
other to keep things clean.

Sam followed this tradition with all the other angels, but because of our
special relationship, he completely let down his psychic shield when the
two of us were around.  Which meant complete access to Sam's less than
thrilling train of thoughts.  Never did the dude have the slightest immoral
or indulgent idea.  He was all virtue.  All total love for me.  And way too
many of his thoughts were devoted to his mind-numbingly dull Justice
duties.  It would be okay to hear a little about what he had going on.  But
when you hear every single fucking detail, it drives you a little insane.

Of course, another part of this that irked me was that he was trusting me
totally by opening himself up to me.  And he was proving himself worthy by
the lily-white cleanness of his mind.  At the same time, I was still unable
to open up myself in any similar way to him.  I was living a lie.  And just
in case I had ever suspected that Sam's righteousness was all some sort of
act, hearing all of his thoughts proved all of this false.  And it made me
feel like absolute shit, knowing I would never, ever live up to his
standard.

There was a time, not long ago, when I would have loved the validation
hearing Sam's thoughts would have provided me.  That was when Sam was the
center of my universe, my rock, my reason for existing.  He was all that
got me through all of my weaknesses, and back then, the thought of not
being emotionally intimate with Sam filled me with terror.  But those days
had been back when Sam could read my thoughts, back when he wouldn't let me
get away with a lie.  When he accepted all of my faults totally.  Those
days were long gone.  If he again knew all my secrets, he'd probably have
me killed.

So, for many reasons, it was more and more irritating to be around Sam.

"Gideon, if I was a man I'd have had a nervous breakdown long before this
point," he said to me out loud for a change.

"So, if you're overworked, then do something about it," I said exhaustedly.

"You're absolutely right," he said.  "Living this way is simply
unacceptable.  I'll consider my options and find some sort of reasonable
alternative."

Only when he told Faith the alternative he thought up, the elder Seraph
didn't exactly find it reasonable.

"Move to the Ensis?" he asked after we had approached him in the chapel.
"That flies in the face of a thousand years of angel precedence!"

"I know, but I think it's prudent that we make an exception here," Sam told
him.  "I need to be in a center of angel activity where I'll have free and
quick access to Cherubim forces."

"Yes, so you can more easily fight this little war of yours, Justice,"
Faith said.  "For all of my existence we have avoided direct confrontations
with the werewolves and the blooddemons, killing them when the chance
arose, but not drawing them into battle."

"Our Holy Scripture tells us that the Almighty wants us to eliminate the
werewolves and blooddemons, does it not?" Sam challenged him.

"It does," he said.  "But what chance do we hope to have of success?"

"God will side with the Righteous if the Righteous chooses His mission,"
Sam replied.  "As long as our aim is true, I know God will see us through,
no matter the odds."

"And all I can do is pray that you are right and I am wrong," Faith said.
"And this is why you must go to the Ensis?"

Sam nodded.  "Also, unlike the Cathedral, the Ensis is located in a major
population center.  I can keep myself fed with very little hassle, leaving
all my free time to devote to more important matters."

"And Fortitude has agreed to go along?" Faith asked.  "Even though his
training here has been so beneficial?"

I nodded silently.  I had agreed to go with Sam mainly because I figured
moving to the Ensis would give me more of a chance to see some real action.
I hadn't seen a fight since I had become a Seraph, and I was damn
bloodthirsty.

"Yes, he did," Sam answered.  "He'll continue his training at the
facilities there."

"I find this course of action highly inadvisable," Faith said.  "But I
cannot ban either of you from leaving, so if you must go, then be safe."

Sam nodded respectfully.

"But before you go, Fortitude," Faith told me.  "You might want to see
what's just been delivered to your room.  I designed them myself, just for
you."

Excited, I ran downstairs and went into my room.  There, lying on my bed,
were two shiny new suits of armor, absolutely stunning.  White silver base,
metallic red and black linings, holy symbols and inscriptions all along the
surface.  I knew Seraphim were buried in their armor, and I had waited so
long for my own set to arrive.

"I hope you feel blessed," Sam said, coming into my room behind me.
"Cherubim only get one suit of armor.  All of us Seraphim are given two."

I lifted up a piece of the armor, a breast plate.  "Will you teach me how
to put them on, Sam?" I asked, knowing absolutely zero about old fashioned
armor.

"How bout I'll show you before your first battle?" he asked.

I nodded, then picked up the best part of this gift, my new sword and
sheathe.  Matching the armor, but with inscriptions of my name in Latin on
the blade, it was this that I would most cherish.

"Every angel's most important possession is their sword, second only in
importance to their Delector," Sam said.  "Be very, very careful with it."

I laughed to myself, already looking forward to when I would be able to see
what my new sword looked like covered in blood.

*****

"We're approaching Moscow now, my liege.  We've already begun our descent."

"Open the hatch," I said, engaging my psychic cloak.

"My liege," the Delector said, "We'll be landing in a few moments."

"Do it, and hurry!" I barked.  Sam had gone to the cockpit but would surely
be back any moment.  I knew he would try to stop me if he knew what I was
doing.

Like everyone else, the Delector was frightened of me and would obey
without question.  He went to his control panel and soon the hatch started
to open.  Wind filled the bay.

I pulled out my wings and looked down into the dark landscape below.  I had
been planning to do this with my robes on, but suddenly they felt
constrictive, so I began pulling them off.

"Turn around and face the other way or something," I told the Delector,
knowing full well that he was not allowed to see me naked.  I left the mask
on as my only piece of clothing.

Looking down into the blue/black hole beneath me, it almost looked like
water to me, an ocean dive.  I couldn't stop myself from taking a deep
breath and holding it in.

I jumped.  Fell down through the hatch of the plane into the open air.

I yelled, exhilarated and terrified at the same time.  This is exactly what
Temperance implied I should do to teach myself to fly, and I was positive
it would succeed.

At first, I free-fell through black space.  Then, kicking myself into
action, I started to manipulate my wings, trying to slow my descent.

I concentrated on the air currents flowing around me.  I felt every muscle
in each of my wings, flexed them individually, trying to discern what each
of the muscles had an effect on once I was in the air.

It was working.  I was starting to get used to the sensation, starting to
get to know my wings.

But it wasn't working quickly enough.  I looked down, and suddenly
regretted having my new angel night-vision.  I could now see the ground
beneath me in perfect detail.  It was coming so quickly now.

I couldn't afford to let that bother me.  I went back to the wings,
refusing to panic, instead spreading each feather, desperately trying to
slow my descent.

I swooped to the left.  Did an involuntary barrel roll.  No, this wasn't
working.  Obviously I was off balance here.  I tried to concentrate on
using both of my wings equally.

But now I was just a couple hundred feet off the ground.  With my last
move, I did everything I could to turn my wings into some semblance of a
parachute.

I almost had it, but it wasn't slowing me down enough.  I was about to
crash into the ground.  This time, I knew it would kill me.

When I was just a couple of seconds from impact, I shut my eyes, hoping my
death would be painless.

Instead, I felt arms encircle me from behind, and the sudden jerky pull
upwards and forwards.

I opened my eyes.  We were just a few feet from the grass underneath us
now, sailing forward at incredible speed.

I turned my head to see Sam above me, his wings effortlessly carrying us
along.

"Why'd you do that?" I asked him.

What do you mean, why did I do that?  Why did I save your life?  Isn't that
what I'm here for?  To save you in the nick of time?  Why'd you jump out of
a plane without first knowing how to fly?

"I almost had it," I said.  "I was so close."

He beat his wings, and started to fly upwards until we were once again high
above the earth, taking a course towards Moscow.  I could see the Ensis
already, a huge beacon of light among the darker buildings of the city.

I was so disappointed in myself.  I had been sure I would master flying
before I hit the ground.  It was never my intention to fall back on Sam
saving my ass from splattering.

I was so infuriated, and yet still sure I could do better, that I had to
have another go at it.

"Let go of me," I said to Sam.

What?  No chance, I'm not letting go of you!

I wasn't going to argue with him.

Instead, I wiggled around and punched him hard in the sternum.  He buckled
over in pain, losing his grip on me and temporarily stumbling with his
flight.  I pushed out of his arms and once again was falling through the
air.

This time, I worked my wings, urging them to succeed with every last
thought.

I fell quickly towards the ground underneath me.

But, with all my effort, I began to glide before I hit the ground, sailing
horizontally forward and holding my elevation.

"Wooo-hooo!" I shouted, knowing that I had done it.  "The wind, the
air... It feels fucking amazing!"

Well, I'll be damned!  Not literally, of course.  Alright, you're gliding.
But be careful not to try anything else or you might lose control.  Keep
that low altitude, that way if you fall, you won't kill yourself.

"Fuck you, Sam," I yelled as I started to beat my wings as hard as I could.
I almost did lose control, but then I recovered it, and I started to rise
into the air, until I was well beyond a dangerous level.

There you go again, always taking needless risks!

"But I have the hang of it, Sam," I boasted excitedly.  "I'm fucking flying
like it's first-fucking-nature!  And it feels soooo good!"

Well, good for you, Icarus.  Just try and come to a safe landing in front
of the Ensis, would you?

Yes, the Ensis was coming up quickly ahead of us, it was amazing just how
fast we were flying up here.  Sam was worried that I would slam into the
ground and kill myself, but I showed him not to doubt me, landing smoothly
and easily as my bare feet made contact with the pavement.

Soon after we had landed in front of the Ensis, we found a car driven by a
Throne and his Delector pulling away from the entrance, clearly meant to
have been our chauffeurs.

Even if the car had found no passengers to pick up, it did bring our
things, and as soon as the car came to a stop, the Throne immediately began
to unload them.

As soon as the Throne saw us, he got out of the car and bowed down.

"Please, at ease," Sam said, beckoning the angel to his feet.

"My liege, I'm supposed to escort both of you to Nathaniel's office as soon
as you arrive," He glanced at the two of us, both naked, stifling a wince.

Sam chuckled.  "Do not worry," he said.  "We don't intend to disrupt the
propriety of the Ensis.  Fortitude, put on a robe."

He pulled a spare robe out of his bag while I did the same from mine.  I
put it on, careful not to disturb the mask I had on.

"I'll have someone fetch your belongings into your room," the Throne said.
"It would be my great honor to show you to Nathaniel's office."

"No need, buddy," I told the man.  "We know our way there already."

"You do?" he asked, surprised.

"Course we do," I said.  "It's the only room on the top floor of the
Ensis."

"Of course you do," he said, stammering.  "Please excuse my foolishness.
Of course it must be common knowledge in the Cathedral that the great
Seraphim know all."

As we left him there and walked towards the Ensis, Sam hit me on the arm.

"What was that for?" I asked sharply.

"Faith would be disappointed in you," he said.  "You're breaking the
mystique of the Seraphim.  Most of the Cherubim have no clue that many of
the Seraphim were once Cherubim themselves, or that this is a conceivable
possibility.  When a Cherub is turned into a Seraph, it is expected that
they will break off any ties they once had to the Ensis Cherubim.  It is a
symbolic rebirth.  Since all Cherubim know that no Seraph has ever stepped
foot into the Ensis, it is expected that we too have never seen the inside
of these walls.  We cannot let on that we know this place or any of its
inhabitants."

"Hmph.  Are you asking me to lie, then?" I challenged him.  "Angels cannot
lie."

"I would never ask you to lie," he said.  "Just try to not be so
forthcoming with the truth."

"What about Luke?" I asked.  "After you had turned, you were more than
forthcoming with him."

Even with the mask on his face, I could tell that Sam was pained at the
mention of Luke's name.  "Luke was a special circumstance," he said.  "I
brought him along to rescue you because he was a strong fighter and would
be a good ally.  At first, I tried to hide my identity from him, but I
suppose the two of us were too close in my former life for that to be
effective.  He saw right through me and called me out, and I had no choice
but to tell him the truth."

"Uh-huh," I said.  "So we won't tell anyone about where we came from.  I'm
cool with that.  Does this go for Nathaniel as well?"

"Yes, indeed," he said.  "Nathaniel must be kept in the dark."

We stopped our conversation as we reached the entrance to the Ensis.  The
huge doors were always open during the night, no matter how cold the winter
air became.  On either side of the large 15 foot gap, two armored Powers
were posted like normal, their Delectors sitting nearby.  All four of them
bowed low as soon as we walked in.

As Sam insisted they stand, I looked again at the grand interior of the
Ensis, a building that seemed to me to be made out of light; and not a
glaring harsh white, but a pearl white that I supposed was meant to imitate
what the light of Heaven must look like, or perhaps to give the angels a
true facsimile of the shining light of their long-lost daytime sun.  The
pyramid-shaped interior main hall of the Ensis had only one elevator
spanning its huge height and no staircases. Those angels who didn't want to
take the trouble of waiting for the elevator simply flew up or down in
between the many stories of the building, carrying their Delectors on their
backs with them.  At any given point there were dozens of pairs of angel
wings catching the perfect white light all through the interior of the
Ensis, and the sound of flapping was a comforting constant.

I looked up at the bronze statue of Gabriel, an absolute giant above.  Many
stories above me, I could see the top of his head, but the statue didn't
end there.  His arm was upraised, and in his hand, a giant sword spanned
more and more stories up, until the point of the sword seemed to touch the
pyramid-like interior-axis of the Ensis at a level so high it made me dizzy
just to look at it.  Up there, that was where Nathaniel's office was.

As Sam and I walked towards the elevator, more and more Cherubim and
Delectors began to bow for us, and after awhile, Sam stopped trying to tell
each one to be at ease, letting them instead just do what they thought was
proper.

We hopped in the glass elevator and took it to the top.

When we walked into Nathaniel's office, Sven, Nathaniel's good-looking
Delector and personal assistant, was behind the front desk, talking
politely into his headset phone.  As soon as he saw us walk in, his eyes
bulged and he politely got off the line, straightening up his trendy suit
as got up off his seat and began to kneel, his knees landing on the
circular glass portion of the floor that allowed one to look down and see
the main Ensis Hall beneath.

Nathaniel, dressed in a more traditional suit, didn't need to be told we
had arrived; he knew.  He bowed as soon as he came in.  "Welcome, my
lieges," Nathaniel said.

Looking at the head Dominion of the Ensis, I realized that I had already
forgotten the features of his face, even though it hadn't been that long
since I had seen him.  I supposed this was because he looked rather
average.  Not average in comparison to the common mortal man, of course.
No, compared to the average man, he was, like all the angels, stunningly
beautiful.  But among the pool of the angels, Nathaniel was by no means the
most attractive.  Not the least attractive either.  Just rather average.

I realized that was why he was so hard to remember.  It wasn't just his
looks that were average, it was his whole being.  Average height, average
angel-build, neither loud nor soft-spoken, neither comical nor too serious,
neither witty nor dull.  I realized that I tended to remember people based
on their idiosyncrasies, and quite frankly, Nathaniel had none.  Searching
for something to distinguish him from the other angels, I realized he sort
of had the look of a handsome Tibetan monk, like a dalai lama in a suit,
yet even this comparison seemed like a stretch.  No, the only thing
remarkable about Nathaniel was his lofty position among the Flock, a
position I was sure he didn't win with my favorite tools: guile and
quick-witted cunning, but instead the boring way: lot's of hard work,
level-headedness, and plain old longevity.

"Please, there is no need to show us such deference," Sam told him,
beckoning both Nathaniel and Sven to stand.

As Nathaniel got to his feet, there was a passing quizzical look on his
face, and I wondered if perhaps he thought he recognized Sam's voice behind
the mask.  Quickly, though, Nathaniel regained his composure and smiled
warmly at us instead.  "You must be travel-weary.  Following your
instructions, I've assigned only a single apartment for the both of you.
You'll be staying on the only apartment on the floor below this one.  It is
the largest and nicest accommodation we can offer here at the Ensis, with
brilliant views in all four directions.  I can vouch for its excellence
because it is, in fact, my own quarters."

Sam shook his head.  "Please, just put us in an empty, standard apartment.
We would never dream of having you move out of your own living space."

"Well, it has already happened," Nathaniel said.  "I am out of it.  If you
prefer, of course we can find you another room.  But I suggest you stay in
my apartment, as it is by far the most isolated of any of the apartments
here.  Since I told the Cherubim that you would be coming here to stay, the
whole flock has been bouncing with curiosity and excitement.  I'd hate to
put you anywhere where you feel your privacy has been compromised."

"Alright," Sam said.  "That will be fine."

"If I could have just a quick word with you about the security of our great
Ensis."  His eyes darted back and forth between the two of us.  "I don't
know if you know this already, but not too long ago our Ensis was subject
to a lone werewolf attack.  The Ensis Dominions have always prioritized our
monument of Heavenly devotion as being open and welcoming to all the angels
who come and go.  This openness is a symbol of our Ensis as a holy
sanctuary.  I would never think to betray this value, thus during the
nighttime hours, when our Powers are on guard and all of our kind are alert
and active, our doors will remain open.  Our enemies know we cannot be
attacked at this time.

"However, the wolf intruder attacked us during the day, when all of our
Flock was sleeping and unable to fight back.  Because I value the lives of
my fellow Cherubim, I realized I must work to reinforce the daytime
security so that this hazard never presents itself again."

He walked over to a panel behind his desk and lifted the cover off of it.
Underneath was a large steel keyhole.  From under his suit, he pulled out a
beaded rosary, the only piece of religious paraphernalia that seemed to be
on the guy.  "My lucky rosary," he said.  "I've carried it with me for over
a century."  He showed us a large key connected to the end of the rosary,
then inserted the key into the keyhole, but didn't turn it.  "Every night
before dawn, the last thing I do before retiring is turn this key.  Once I
do, a buzzer will sound throughout the building.  That is our queue to move
safely inside.  After a moment, the buzzer will stop, and the daytime
defenses will kick in.  The front door will be encased in impenetrable
steel.  Every window, the entire glass surface of the exterior, will also
be covered with a steel shield.  No weapon will breach this security, and
no enemy will again strike us during the daytime hours.  At dusk, the first
thing I do is to come to this office and turn the key back the other way,
releasing these defenses once more."

I nodded, impressed by the much needed security.  It was about time that
these angels pulled themselves into the 21st century.

"Very appropriate," Sam told him.

"Although, I must admit, there is one place where I found it necessary to
build in such security not just for the day but for the night as well,"
Nathaniel said.  "That is the Spine, the room where a hundred of our
Thrones keep this Ensis cloaked every hour of the day.  This is our most
vulnerable section, as the Thrones are unable to fight back in an attack as
they must never stop cloaking the Ensis from the common man's eye.  The
wolf that attacked us unfortunately found his way into this dangerous spot
and could have caused major damage there, perhaps revealing us to the
world.  This must never happen again.  Now, the entire room is reinforced
in steel and closed off to the rest of the Ensis.  The steel doors are
indestructible, and are programmed to open only twice a day, when the shift
changes, and even then the doors can only be opened from the inside.  A
safeguard that I hope you will find as necessary as I did."

"Yes, of course," Sam said to him.

"Now my lieges, let me personally show you to your quarters."  Nathaniel
led us to the single descending staircase in the room.  "This leads
downstairs one level, where your quarters are housed."

Sam and I followed Nathaniel down the staircase and back onto the top
portion of the main Ensis hall.  From this point, we could look down over
the banister of the hallway and see the main hall fan out below us, throngs
of angels on every floor beneath us, all of them seemingly looking at us.

"Forgive the Flock, my lieges," Nathaniel said, motioning towards the
hundreds of angels who had all some out of their apartments to get a view
of us.  "They are merely excited to have the Seraphim present.  I think
they are hoping for some sort of sermon."

Sam looked down at the army of angels and their Delectors, all looking up
at us with absolute adoration.  I for one felt like fucking Elvis.  And
they must have gotten to Sam as well, because he raised his hand and waved
to them all.  He raised his arm with regal elegant power, and it looked to
me like the gesture of an adored king.

"If it a sermon they want," Sam said to Nathaniel quietly.  Then, much
louder, so all could hear: "I've never seen our Flock stand so proud in the
light of God."

Silence overcame the mammoth hall in an instant, and all eyes looked up to
Sam, their leader, and undoubtedly up past him to God Himself.  A powerful
electricity charged through the air, and Sam was going to take advantage of
it.  He was going to inspire.

"Some of us would have us remain in the shadows of this world," his
powerful, steady voice began. "Passively choosing inaction for fear that
any action misplaced would further degrade us in the eyes of our Lord.  To
simply pray for His forgiveness while around us His human children turn his
back to him or are slaughtered like sheep.  Yes, I know this is not the
world we were meant to inhabit.  But while we are here, I would not have
this world rot in decay, nor let it fall any further into the devil's
grasp.  I believe most of you share this desire of mine."

There was a wave of cheering among the flock, a verbal agreement.  It
occurred to me then that it was totally unnecessary in this case to give
inspirational speeches.  Angels were meant to obey without question, no
matter how much they disagreed with whatever course of action their
superiors were choosing.  It was like the fucking Marines, authority was
absolute.  It was not a democracy where grand speeches were needed
constantly to buy the mass's allegiances.  Angels would obey whether they
respected you or not, so why was Sam even bothering?

"We have already won our first battle," Sam continued, "and the
angel-murdering men and women of the Bridge have been judged and sent back
to their maker.  Now we are the puppet masters of the war against the
blooddemons, a battle we are sure to win, and it is my hope that we will
permanently eradicate the last vestiges of the demons without losing a
single angel life.  Only then will the angels have to take arms and kill
off the last threat to humanity, the wolves, those vulnerable pawns who
none of us should fear.  And then... and then this world will be ours to
mold freely in God's will."

As another wave of cheers overtook my ears, I figured I knew why Sam was
giving this speech.  It wasn't because he needed the flock's obedience, he
knew that he had that.  No, he did it because he wanted to be adored, to be
worshipped.  I could certainly empathize with that desire.  I had always
wanted to be feared, to intimidate.  But this sort of total adoration was
really almost as wonderful as intimidation.  I had to admit that I was a
bit jealous of Sam at that moment, to be able to inspire so much passion in
so many people.

"A shining theocracy, where no living soul is left untouched by God.  Where
the Holy Word is ingrained into the framework of our lives, where sacrilege
and sin have been snuffed out.  We angels would naturally oversee this
world, keep it as organized and orderly as we have kept our Flock all these
centuries.  And justice, while justice in the hands of men is coarse and
disorderly and subjective and biased, justice in the hands of angels will
be true justice, because unlike men, angels can, with the knowing eyes of
God, look into the souls of God's children and know their truths.  Absolute
justice will create absolute order, absolute peace for the first time on
this planet since man was cast out of Eden."

As Sam ended his speech, as the roar of the crowd almost swept us away,
there was something in Sam's body language that confused me.  Instead of
pride, he held himself with polite modesty.  It made me second guess my
earlier assumption that he had given this speech just to feed off of all of
his adoring subjects.  No, this wasn't the least bit about pride, I
realized.  Sam wasn't made like that.  This whole speech was completely
earnest, and that totally fucking confused me.  If he hadn't done it for
the sake of his ego, why the hell had he done it?  And, more importantly,
was it even ever really possible for me to understand Sam, how he operated,
and why he did things?  Something told me the answer was no.

Nathaniel had to step in and ask all of the Flock to stop cheering and
please get back to their duties before the Ensis turned back to normal,
only now there were a thousand hyper-motivated thoughts floating through
the air.

"Now, without further ado, your quarters," Nathaniel said as he led us to
the apartment door.  "I pray that you will find them satisfactory."

*****

Our quarters were more than satisfactory, they were as ritzy as any
apartment I had ever been in, complete with multiple sitting rooms and a
jacuzzi.  The room was so nice, I had a hell of a time stopping Sam from
insisting that Nathaniel put us up in another, more modest room.  But in
spite of Sam's guilt, it wasn't long before we were unpacked and settled
in, even finding places for our Seraphim armor in our massive bedroom
closet.

Living at the Ensis was like being at a 5-star resort compared to living at
the dusty and dreary Cathedral.  Being at the Cathedral was essentially
like living in some Monastery, dark and quiet, slow and dull.  The Ensis
was bright and beautiful and bustling with activity.  It offered a
multitude of ways to pass the time, my favorite of which had to be the
Crystal Baths, not to mention all sorts of games and sports facilities.

And if I ever did get bored, the city was right outside the Ensis walls,
and now that I had learned to control my cloaking and mastered flying, it
was easy as hell to seamlessly come and go between the city and the tower
of angels.

Of course, that was the whole point of us coming to the Ensis, wasn't it?
So that Sam would have easy access to a large population of people.  It all
came down to dick.  Sam wanted more dick, and needed a fucking metropolis
to satisfy his urges.  It kind of put a taint on all the fun I was having,
thinking about that crap.  Thinking about whatever guy he was out sucking
off that night.  It irked me to the core, in fact.

One evening, not long after I gotten up, I decided to try and flex my
psychic muscle to see if I could hone those skills a bit.  I stalked
through the halls of the Ensis in my Seraphim robes and mask looking for
human prey that I could practice my skills on.  I found a 30-ish Delector
who I decided to target, his Throne standing nearby.  The overweight
Delector bowed with his Domno as I approached, and managed to utter "my
liege."

I stopped cold and looked down into his face, concentrating on listening to
his mind.

What does he want with me, what does he want me to do?

The Delector was rightfully intimidated by me.  But I wanted more than
that, I wanted to be able to get the information out of him that I desired,
not just the random thoughts that happened to be running through his head.

"Is there anything I can do for you, my liege?" the scared Delector
stammered.

"Just stay right where you are," I told him.  "Don't move!"

This only upset him more, it seemed, as his thoughts turned more and more
anxious.  And try as I might, I couldn't pull any other information out of
him, not even his name.

"Fuck, you are no fucking help!" I yelled out at him in frustration.

"I'm sorry, my liege, I'll try to do better next time," the man stammered,
but I was already walking away.

I passed more Delectors, dozens of them, but all that emanated from them
was intimidation and fear.  These strong emotions were keeping me from
reading them properly, I decided.

I found myself in the library then, and I sniffed, wrinkling my nose at the
musty old book smell that I always hated about libraries.  Nearby was an
old man Delector sleeping in a chair, snoring obnoxiously while his
Dominion Domno sat on a desk nearby, pouring through a large stack of
books.  Yes, this is what I needed.  I approached the sleeping man, waving
the Dominion off as he started to get to his feet, and then listened to his
mind.

Bizarre combinations of images and emotions came into my head, and I
realized that I must have been psychically picking up the man's dream.  I
tried to probe into his mind, forcing some other information out of him,
anything relevant at all.  Instead all I got were abstract fragments of his
dream.

"Fuck!" I exclaimed, beyond frustrated.  The sleeping man woke up with a
start.

"You can't breach the sleeping mind, Fortitude."

I spun around to see Sam there watching me.  He was wearing street clothes
with his Justice mask on, so I couldn't see if he was laughing at me.

"Why the hell not?" I asked him.

"Because it only works on the conscious mind."

"I tried it on plenty of conscious minds, it didn't do shit," I said.

"That's because your technique was off," he said.  "You should have asked
me to train you.  Walk with me now and I'll show you."

I followed him out of the library and into the hall before he said, "In
terms of psychic abilities, I am one of the strongest there is."

I laughed at him.  "Is that pride I detect, Sam?"

He shook his head.  "No, it's not pride.  My gift doesn't belong to me.
None of my abilities do.  They all belong to God, and only He can decide
what to bestow on me.  I trust Him to know what gifts I need to accomplish
His work, and I trust Him to know when He wants to strip me of all my
strengths."

Sounded like a load of shit to me, but I knew Sam was being earnest.
"Alright, so teach me how to be a better mind reader."

He looked down at his street clothes.  "I will.  When I return.  I was just
on my way out, actually.  I'll come back with strength renewed, and then I
will help you."

"Oh, I know what that means," I said, suddenly angry.  "You're doing what
you always do.  You're going out to get more dick, isn't that what you
want?"

"We've talked about this.  You know our situation isn't easy for me, isn't
some fun pastime."

"Well, you could have fooled me.  Since we've been here you've been out
there for hours almost every night."

"Out of necessity."

"Then why do you stay out so long?" I challenged.  "Why would you unless
you were enjoying yourself?"

"It's not that easy to find what I'm looking for," he said.

"Not that easy?" I asked.  "We're in huge city here.  There are millions of
dicks out there for your pleasure, and still it takes you hours to find
one?"

"Why don't you come with me tonight?" he said finally.  "Come with me and
see what I do."

"I thought you preferred to be alone?"

"No, I'd rather have you with me," he said.  "You could even join in.  We
could do it together, anytime you like.  I just want to take the mystery
out of this whole process."

"Fine, I will go with you," I said.  "Just let me change into street
clothes."

"While we're out I can show you how to fish."

"What is that, some kind of gay pick-up lingo?" I asked him.

"Hardly.  It's a psychic process.  Now, come on, let's get going."

*****

I changed my clothes to match Sam's club clothes, and then followed him out
of the Ensis, both of us ripping off our masks as soon as we had left the
building, along with our shirts so that our wings could come out
unobstructed.  Sam led me though the air, both of us cloaked of course,
until we landed in what I assumed was the gay neighborhood.

"One of my favorite bars is nearby," Sam said as he put his wings back in
and his shirt back on.

I followed suit, looking around for some a person I could target
psychically, but all I found in the alley we had landed in was a scruffy
stray dog going through the trash.  Well, it would have to do.

I walked towards it, knowing that if I hadn't been cloaked it would surely
have bolted.  I opened my mind to its psychic presence.

It was an odd sensation.  I could pick up the psychic presence of the mind,
though it felt different somehow than a person's mind.  But I couldn't pick
up any thoughts or emotions that the dog experienced, not even the senses
the dog was experiencing.

"Am I doing something wrong here?" I asked Sam.

"No, it's a hopeless endeavor I'm afraid," he replied.  "Animal species, at
least the ones with complex enough minds, we can detect psychically.  I can
feel the animal's presence and distinguish between different species.  But
that's as far as we can go.  Animal brains are too different from human
brains for us to read them.  I'm afraid you'll have to stick with humans."

"Oh well," I said.  "I never was much of a dog person anyway."

"More of a cat person, then?" Sam teased.

"More of a no fucking pet kind of person, actually."

Sam led us into what was I guessed was his favorite fag bar, and it was
very typical of Sam's refined taste.  Instead of the dive bars that I
preferred (did they even make gay dive bars?  It seemed to me like an
oxymoron), Sam's favorite was sleek and fashionable, with attractively
dressed people all sitting around the posh, sleek settings.  It was the
kind of place that routinely made all cocktails with only the most
expensive brands of alcohol, and charged you fucking twenty bucks for a
beer with a straight face.  I already hated it here.

"Isn't it nice?" Sam asked me, having to yell over the synth-beats that
rich Europeans somehow always mistook for music.

"Let's just find a guy and get the hell out of here as soon as we can," I
said.

Sam had a smirk on his face and I couldn't figure out why.  "Well, do you
want to do the honors of picking up the guy?" he asked me.

"No problem," I said.

I scanned the bar's occupants, trying to find someone who interested me.
There were a lot of straight-looking females here, what they called fag
hags, I assumed.  I was a lot more used to hitting on the ladies, I had to
admit.  It flew against my natural instincts to instead pick out a guy.

I picked the one guy who looked the most masculine, a muscular if not
exactly lean guy in his 30's whose mean face and disposition didn't mesh
well with his trendy club clothes.  But that was the best I was going to do
in a yuppie bar like this.

"That's my target," I said to Sam, pointing the guy out.

"That one, are you sure?" he asked, his face twisted.

"What's the matter, he's not your fucking type or something?  Well, too
bad, man.  I'm the one picking him up, I'll choose whoever I want."

"You sure he'll go for you?" he asked me.

I looked over at Sam, dressed in a designer pair of jeans and a nice black
shirt.  Then I looked at myself, dressed in pair of baggy jeans, a white
wife-beater, and a baseball cap.  I didn't exactly fit in with the other
guys in here, but maybe that would give me an edge.

I uncloaked, and sat at a table about ten feet from where the dude was
sitting at the bar, right in his line of sight.  Sam uncloaked as well,
sitting at my table and watching me, amused.

"Sit back and watch a pro at work, man," I told Sam.  "It's all about body
language.  You gotta be cocky, unafraid."

I took the body stance that I had with countless hos in my time, and it had
always worked before.  I slouched back in my seat like I didn't give a
shit, I sat with my knees wide apart so that the guy would think about my
package, and I flexed my developed arm muscles to impress the dude with my
strength.

"See how I sit?" I asked Sam.  "So much better than the strategy you are
trying to pull, sitting straight up like that.  What are you trying to
convey with that preppy stance, man?  That you'd rather be shopping at
J. Crew?"

"I have no strategy, no manipulations," he answered.  "I am just being
myself, just being comfortable."

"Yeah, well bitches like guys who look intimidating.  It's like a
prehistoric instinct, man.  They want to know you can protect them from the
wild beasts, and that you can throw them around and own them and shit, them
bitches get off on that stuff, man.  And you just look mostly harmless."

"Well, I don't have to worry, not with Cassanova Fortitude as my
co-conspirator.  Do your worst, I'll just sit over here and admire your
talents."

I nodded.  "And once you got the body language down, then you have to make
eye contact.  You gotta meet the bitch's eye and stare them down, let them
know in a look that you want to fuck them.  Bitches eat that shit up."

I caught the butch guy's eye finally, and he locked glances with me.  I
stared him down, lowering my eyebrow and opening my mouth just slightly.
He matched my look, staring back down at me.  Not the sweet smile the girls
usually sent my way, but this was the first time I had done this with a
dude, and dudes didn't laugh and giggle when they liked you, they acted
tough and puffed out their chests.

"See Sam?  It's working beautifully."

"Yes, clearly," Sam said as he lit up a cigarette.  "So which one of you
makes the first move?"

"Me, of course.  I always make the first move."

"Well, too bad, because your mark has gotten off of his seat and is coming
this way.  I guess you've cast your love-spell on him a little too well."

"No, I want to make the first move!  That sets the tone for the entire
encounter."

I jumped out of my seat and hustled over to the guy.  He continued to stare
me in the eye, and I wanted to be sure that I would be the first one to
speak.

Before I could say, "Hey man, can I buy you a drink?" the butch guy shoved
me angrily.

"What the hell's your problem?" he asked me in Russian, though I understood
him perfectly.  "You want to start a fight in a place like this, I'm
ready."  His red-hot anger psychically made itself known.

Before he could push me again, I sidestepped him and cloaked.  "What the
hell is up this guy's ass?"

Behind me, I could hear Sam laughing heartily.

"Yeah, go ahead and laugh, you insensitive prick.  You weren't the one
getting attacked.  I should beat down this guy's ass for that."

"That would be very un-angel-like, Gideon," Sam said.  "Do you realize your
mistake yet?  I took you to a mixed bar.  Only some of its patrons are gay,
your friend here not included."

"So what, the dude knows he's in a mixed bar but he's totally homophobic?"
I asked angrily.

"He's not homophobic in the least," Sam answered.  "He just didn't know you
were gay, didn't know you were hitting on him.  You were acting tough, so
he thought you wanted to start something, and he wasn't going to back
down."

"Damn, the Russians, your people, Sam, they are fucking off their rockers."

"Well, if you have fished the guys mind, you would have known he was
straight as a sword and you would have let him be."

"Fine, I'm ready.  Teach me what you know about fishing."

Sam took a puff off his cigarette before extinguishing it.  "Fishing is a
simple trick to learn, Gideon, though you may find it difficult to master.
As you have experienced, normally us angels can only be attuned to what
people are thinking or sensing at any given moment, which is great if they
happen to be thinking about everything you want them to know about them at
that specific moment, but that happens almost never.  Instead, we fish in
their minds to bring forth specific information.  It involves psychically
implanting a question or image or thought into their mind, and then
listening to the person's train of thought switch courses in order to
answer your query.  Take your love connection, for example."

Sam pointed out the butch character, who had long forgotten about us and
had gone back to his barstool.

"Listen to his train of thoughts."

I shut my eyes and tried to shut out all the other psychic voices in my
head, concentrating exclusively on the butch guy.

"He is thinking about, well about football, I guess.  Soccer, rather, or
whatever these backwards Europeans call it."

"Good," Sam said.  "Now, listen carefully as I fish his sexual orientation
out of him.  All I am doing is imprinting the question of his sexual
orientation on his mind, just as if he had thought it himself."

After a moment, the football thoughts went away, and the guy was thinking
about his sexual preferences.  I'm straight.

"See?" Sam asked.  "I can pretty much get any information from him using
this method.  Sometimes, the suggestion is conscious, sometimes it's not,
it depends on the person.  But even if it is conscious, they never realize
what is being done to them, they just might question their own sudden shift
in their train of thought."

"Alright, will you stop rambling on and on already and let me fucking give
this a try?"  I walked over to another random dude at the bar.  Shut my
eyes and concentrated on fishing for his sexual orientation.

"You have to imprint it in his mind--"

"Shuttup Sam and let me do this, I'm getting it."

I concentrated harder, and then it came.  Really it was so easy once I had
gotten the hang of it.  I asked him for his sexual orientation, and he
responded in his head.

"Great, another straight guy," I said.  "Are you sure this is a mixed
crowd?"

"Positive," Sam answered.  "Keep on trying."

I cruised around the bar, looking for another guy that I found at least
reasonably attractive.  I found a good-looking blonde kid, skinny but with
a tough punk look.  When I got to him, he was thinking about what drink
he'd like to order.  But almost immediately, I had him thinking about his
sexual orientation.

I'm gay.

"Sam, we've got a winner over here!"

I uncloaked right then and tapped the confirmed gay guy on the shoulder.
"Hey sexy," I said.  "How bout I buy you a drink?"

The guy looked at me up and down.  "Um, I'm gay," he said carefully, as if
the news might upset me.

"Yeah man, no shit," I said back.  "Why the fuck do you think I'm hitting
on you?"

All patience seeped out of the guy's face, leaving only incredulity.  "I'm
not a man!  I'm a chick, a lesbian!  Asshole!"

Shocked, I took a step back and looked this person up and down.  Upon close
inspection, I could see the wider hips, the slight breasts, the lack of an
adam's apple.  My face went red with embarrassment, and I cloaked
immediately so I wouldn't have to apologize to this chick.

When I turned around, Sam was behind me, laughing his ass off.

"Shuttup man, I checked to see if that one was gay!"

"Yeah, well maybe you should also check to see if they have a vagina or
not.  That might be useful information."

"I don't see you landing any guys yet," I said.  "You couldn't do any
better."

"Is that a challenge, my friend?" he asked me, his eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, consider yourself challenged."

Sam carefully walked around the bar, looking at the various dudes and
scanning their thoughts.  He finally settled on a black-haired, skinny
pretty-boy who was so obviously gay it certainly didn't require me fishing
it out of him to know it.

"How about this one?" Sam asked me.

"Ugh, are you serious?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's just so... well, just so faggy."

"Nonsense," Sam said, and he quickly uncloaked.  He grabbed the guy's
shoulder and the guy spun around to look at him.  "Hi, I'm Sam," he said,
flashing his beautiful smile.  God, that fucking thing was his most
dangerous weapon.

The dark-haired guy smiled back at him, his body disposition switching from
stiff to practically melting.  "Oh, nice to meet you, Sam."

"He's already in love," I yelled out, still cloaked.  And how could the guy
not be?  Sam was one fucking beautiful dude.

"Normally I don't condone alcohol abuse, but since we are in a bar, and I
am trying to send you a signal that I find you desirable, I suppose I
should offer to buy you a drink."

"Damn, is that really the best pick-up line you can think of?" I asked him.

I'm just trying to be honest here, Sam thought.

"Well, I already have a drink," the guy said, picking up his fruity gay
cocktail to prove it.  "Maybe there's something else you can give me."

Sam raised an eyebrow.  "What would that be?"

"Your digits?  I'd love to call you sometime."

Sam's smile faded.  "I'm afraid I am not looking to talk to you beyond this
evening."

And then the guy's smile faded.  "So, what ARE you looking to do, Sam?"

Sam gritted his teeth, then answered in his typically honest fashion: "I
was hoping you would let me and a friend of mine give you oral sex and
consume your semen."

The dude looked completely blank for a moment, and I wondered if he was
going to agree to Sam's bald proposition.  Then the guy's face twisted into
disgust.  "Get out of here, you filthy pig," he said in his shrillest,
gayest tone possible.  And then he threw his fruity cocktail into Sam's
face.

I was laughing at Sam as he came back to where I had been standing, wiping
the drink off his face.  "Not so faggy, huh Sam?" I teased.  "Does it get
anymore gay than tossing a drink in someone's face?  Not fucking likely."

"You may find it hard to believe, but it's certainly not the first time
I've encountered that reaction to my... requests."

"That's just because your technique is all wrong," I said.  "You can't be
completely upfront about your intentions, you have to lead them on more.
Make them think that if you fuck them tonight they'll be yours forever.
Watch and learn, man.  Watch and learn."

I picked out another dude, this time fishing to make sure he was gay and
had a dick.  Then I went up and introduced myself, bought him a drink.  I
was making some minor progress with the guy when I realized Sam had left me
to hit on another target of his own.

Gideon, I found one, came Sam's projected thought.

Damn, already?  I excused myself from the guy I was talking to and walked
towards the other side of the bar, where Sam was standing with some guy I
hadn't seen before.  The new guy Sam had found didn't look too unlike the
last one he had picked out, a dark-haired obviously gay pretty-boy type.
If there was any question this guy was head over heels after seeing the
big, sloppy grin plastered on this guy's face as he looked at Sam, the tent
in his slacks totally gave the moron away.  In his head, he kept on
repeating Sex with the hottest guy I've ever seen.  Dude was fucking gone.

Sam waved me over excitedly when he saw me coming, and pointed me out to
Lev (yes, I fished his name out myself).  "This is the other guy I
mentioned," Sam said to him.

The moment Lev's eyes looked over at me, his goofy smile went cold.
Apparently I didn't match up to the bar Sam had set in the looks
department.  "Haven't I seen you working the corner a few blocks from
here?" Lev asked, lowering his voice discreetly.  "How much did you pay for
this one?" he asked Sam.  "Not too much, I hope."

"I'm not a fucking street-whore, man!" I said to him.

"My mistake, must have confused you with someone else," Lev said to me, but
his tone of voice made it clear that he didn't believe me.

Sam led both of us outside into a nearby abandoned alley, and that's where
the action started.  Lev tried to kiss Sam, and I almost punched the guy in
the nose, but Sam gently put his finger to his lips.  "Just oral, that's
all that we want, I'm afraid."

"Fine," Lev said, and he started to unbutton his pants.  Then he stopped
and pulled a condom out of his back pocket.  "I like to be safe," he said.

"For oral?" I asked him, shocked.

"Yes, for oral," Lev answered.

"You want to wear a fucking rubber for oral?  Seriously?  Has there ever
been a man in the history of the fucking world that volunteered to wear a
condom during oral?  What are you, some germaphobe nutjob?"

"Hey, you two are the ones who won't let me kiss you or touch you.  Why
else would you do that unless you had some disease?"

I shook my head.  "We are clean, man.  We're just a couple with set rules,
that's all."

"Yes?"  Lev said.  "Then forget the condom."

He put the contraceptive back in his pocket and opened his fly, pulling out
his hard dick.  After being with Sam for so long, this guy's dick seemed
fucking unattractive in comparison, but I didn't complain.

Sam got on his knees and started to lick Lev's member, and when I saw that
it made me feel like shit.  But Sam was quick to pull me towards the guy.
"Come on, brother.  This one is for both of us."  He was trying his
darnedest to make this about both of us, and I tried to make it work.

I dropped down on my knees beside Sam and he kissed me, closing his eyes as
he did.  God, Sam knew how to kiss.  Then he pulled both our mouths onto
the tip of the guy's dick, and the two of us started licking down his
shaft, one of us on each side of him.

Sam tried to make it sexy for both of us, and I tried to play along, but
all the while all I could think about was how much I wished that this third
fucker would just disappear, that it would just be the two of us again.

Apparently Lev was enjoying the sex much more than I was, because he was
moaning like a chick getting gang-fucked, and it wasn't all that long
before he came.  When he did, I was thankful that it was so quick, the last
thing I wanted was to prolong this any further.

He started to shoot, and Sam opened his mouth wide and swallowed some of
his cum before pulling my lips onto the guy.  I drank some of Lev's load,
and sure it tasted good and nourishing, but it just felt wrong to me.  I
pushed his cock back towards Sam and let him finish the rest of the load.

I started walking away, needing to get the hell away from Sam and Lev.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked me.

"Home."

"Let him go," Lev said.  "If you need a place to stay, you can sleep in my
bed tonight.  Heck, you can sleep in my bed for the next month if you want
to."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Sam said as he started to chase me down.

"If you ever want to do this again, you know where to find me!" his pleas
were sounding more than a little desperate.  "Don't be a stranger!"

"Thank you again!" Sam called out, and then cloaked as he chased after me.
"See Gideon?  That wasn't so bad."

"Fuck you," I snapped, not looking back, just walking on quickly.

"You're upset," he said.

"No shit," I said, cloaking as I saw we were approaching a few pedestrians.
"How did you ever guess, Sam?"

"I must admit that now that I can no longer read your mind it is more
difficult to know what's running through your head.  But trying to ditch me
and cussing at me, it gives me a little bit of a clue.  Aww, you know what
this sort of reminds me of, my love?  The first time we met properly on the
beach in California.  I almost hope you start punching me again for old
times' sake."

"You keep joking around like a dufus and you'll get your wish," I said.

"You're right, I don't mean to make light of your anger," Sam said.  "Just
tell me what is wrong."

"I shouldn't fucking have to, you should know," I said.

"I'm not a mind-reader you know," he said.

"Yes, you are."

"Well, not when it comes to you I'm not.  Does this have to do with that
guy?"

"Don't say `that guy' like you don't know his name perfectly well.  Don't
pretend that you aren't into him."

"What are you saying, babe, I'm not the least bit into him."

"Oh, stop fucking yourself, Sam.  He's your type exactly."

"I do not have a type!"

"Yes, you do.  And if you don't realize that, well then you're a bigger
idiot than I thought."

"First of all, you're wrong if you think I have any feelings for this guy
or any of the others, honestly I'm barely attracted to any of them.  And
secondly, you should temper your emotions, Gideon, they aren't angel-like.
Brad could have gotten away with these outbursts but you cannot.  Don't
forget that anger is a sin.  So is jealousy."

I began crossing the street on a pedestrian crosswalk, then stopped and
turned around, my face fierce and hot and my finger pointed at Sam.  "Don't
fucking lecture me about emotions, Sam.  Weren't you the one who almost
fucked up as an angel because you couldn't shake your depression?"

He took a quick step back at that, almost as if I had physically hit him.
"That only happened when I lost those that I loved, and I've learned to
control it."

"Well, don't forget about the other sin you are guilty of.  Lust.  You lust
after men who are not your own, and you are willing to betray your
betrothed in order to satisfy that lust."

"You know it's not like that."

"Don't fucking lie to me Sam!  You went back on everything you promised me!
Every night you are out here sucking dick, you are pissing all over the
vows we made to each other!  Don't pretend--"

BAM!!

One second I was yelling my guts out, the next I was flying through the
air.  A fucking car had hit me, dead on in the middle of the street!  And I
almost lost consciousness as I landed hard on the road, rolling on the
pavement.

"Wake up, Gideon!"

I opened my eyes.  Sam had dragged me to the sidewalk, and was shaking me
back to consciousness.  Even though angels weren't supposed to feel much
pain, somehow pain was coursing through my blood, my whole body ached.

"Fucking crazy driver, I was in the fucking crosswalk!" I yelled as I sat
up.  "And he didn't even stop to see if I survived?  I hope he fucking
burns in hell."

"Babe, if you're going to stand in the street again, I suggest you de-cloak
first."

"Oh fuck, I was cloaked?" I asked, feeling like a dumbass.

"I'm afraid so."  He started to help me up.  "Come on, we've had enough
drama for one night.  Let's go home."

"Agreed."

*****

In the next week or so, I spent a good portion of my evenings in the Ensis
practicing my newfound psychic strengths, using the great number of
Delectors as my unaware test subjects.  While most of them consciously
thought only about being uncomfortable due to my intimidating presence,
with the fishing talent Sam had taught me their obvious line of thought
meant nothing to me.  I could always pull out more information, as intimate
as knowledge may have been.

"Gideon, you're coming with me," Sam said to me one night.

"Uh, in case you forgot, I'm not just your Delector anymore, I'm a Seraph.
I'm not going to just follow your orders."

Sam snorted.  "You didn't follow my orders even when you were just my
Delector.  But you are right, I wouldn't have assumed Amzi Fortitude would
come and assist me, I would have asked him.  So Gideon Fortitude, will you
accompany me tonight?"

"I've had enough of your fag-bar excursions, Sam."

"I'm not going out to the city tonight.  I'm going to meet the leader of
the wolves.  Last night I gave him instructions to meet me in the
countryside.  I'd like to have you with me," he said.

"Fuck, why didn't you say who you were going to see in the first place?
Hell yeah I'll go.  It will give me a chance to test out my new mind tricks
on the bastard."

Sam arranged for the wolf leader to meet us in a cemetery on the field
outside a modern church in Moscow in the middle of the night.  Two
motorcycles announced the wolves' arrival, and soon two figures came
crunching through the snow towards us, their biker helmets in hand.

I stood tall as they came.  The last time I had met the wolves, I had just
been a weak man, a pawn.  I had relied not only on Sam, but on the strength
and baddassness of Amzi Fortitude, who was the blunt instrument of our
group, killing a wolf without mercy just for being present when he didn't
have permission.

This time, things had changed.  I was now the muscle of this partnership,
and I would make my dominance known.

"You have a thing for churches," the leader sneered at Sam as he came
within ten feet of us.  This I knew to be Rick, the young, pretty-boy
Latino who wore a full-body, tight black-leather biker get-up.

"They have a calming effect on me," Sam answered.

Rick's companion, who was standing close to Sam, sniffed the cold air
around him.  "So that's what you mates smell like," he said with an
Australian accent.  He was the larger one of the two, not Rick's usual
back-up, Case, but a white man I had never seen before.  He was big, but
not as big as Case.  He looked just as tough, with a hard face, cleft chin,
squinty eyes, and dressed a bit more down to earth in blue jeans.  He
looked just as confident as his leader, though definitely more relaxed as
well.

"Good to see your bitch-boy is still alive and well," Rick remarked snidely
to Sam.  He sniffed the air a couple of times.  "Is my nose playing tricks
on me, or is he one of you now?"

"That's right, babyface," I yelled at Rick.  "Where's your normal
butt-buddy, the black guy?  You two have a lovers' quarrel or something?"

"Case is just fine," Rick answered, not letting my fag taunts get to him.
"You'll see him again soon enough."  He turned to face Sam, and snickered.
"Staying as he is, isn't that what you told me?  Not getting any stronger?
I knew this would happen.  I warned you not to turn him into one of you,
didn't I?  He will become stronger than you know.  If you think you can
control him, you are a fool.  Or has this already happened?  Has he already
overtaken your power?  You should have let me kill him when I had a knife
to his throat.  It would have only saved you heartache in the end, believe
me."

I pulled my sword out of its sheathe and pointed it towards Rick.  "You
want to kill me so bad, pretty-boy, why don't you give it another go?
You'll never know just how strong I've gotten unless you do."

He smiled condescendingly as he grabbed the tip of my sword and held onto
it tight.  "It'll take more than a little blade to take me down,
bitch-boy."  He twisted the end of my sword, and I struggled to keep
control of the thing.  He was so strong.

But I knew I was stronger.  I knew I could kick his pretty little ass.
"You talk a big game, princess, but inside you're nothing but a weak,
scared, pathetic little unloved nerd-boy.  You'll never have what it takes
to bring me down."

Stand down, Sam urged telepathically.  I ignored him; he couldn't order me
around anymore.

"Wanna bet?" he said, pushing hard against the sword, forcing me backwards.
His face turned aggressive as he prepared to attack me, but then he stopped
suddenly, smiling at me.  "You win," he said, letting the end of my sword
go.  "I don't want to fight you."

"I don't blame you, pretty-boy," I said, sheathing my sword again.  "We
both know you'd be facing your death."

Rick rolled his eyes, but didn't disagree with me.  Clearly he knew he was
outmatched.  He looked instead at Sam.  "I'm hoping you didn't bring me
halfway across the world just so I could get into a pissing contest with
your lover."

"No, I certainly did not," Sam answered.  "Let's get down to business.  I
take it the last few attacks you've made on the demons were fruitful?  More
territory won for your side, largely due to the intelligence I've provided
you with?"

"I guess that is true," Rick said.

"Well, I have new information and new battle assignments for your little
army."

Sam and Rick started to discuss the details of Sam's new instructions in
their war against the demons, and I tuned out, completely bored with these
mundane details.  To save myself from boredom, I figured I'd flex these new
psychic muscles some as long as I had two hapless victims right in front of
me to practice on.

I looked at Rick's bodyguard, listening to his thoughts.  He was
attentively listening to the discussion at hand, thinking his boring
thoughts in his trash Australian accent.  I tried what I had learned about
"fishing" his mind, first psychically suggesting to him his name, to which
he thought, Watts.  I suggested that he think where he lived, and he began
to think about his den in Brisbane, which he was the "alpha" of, and that
Rick was housed there as well.  I suggested he think about exactly how to
get to this den, and he did.

I almost laughed out loud, knowing I was on a roll.  I continued my psychic
assault on this fucker.  I fished how strong the guy was.  In his mind, he
was one of the strongest wolves alive, perhaps the second strongest behind
Rick.  Still, I knew I could take on either one of these pussies on my own,
possibly both at once.  I was an angel, and these two were just fucking
wolves.  I made him think about why he had been brought along as back-up
for Rick instead of Case, and Watts thought about how Case was just fine,
but that he knew something that Watts didn't, something that Rick didn't
want us angels to read from his mind, though Watts didn't have a clue what
that was.

I got bored with Watts all too quickly, knowing that this fishing was just
too easy.  I turned my attention towards Rick and began the same assault.
Only, frustratingly, Rick didn't respond to any of my psychic suggestions.
He seemed to hear my suggestions inside his head, yet somehow knew they
were not his thoughts and didn't fall prey to them.  It was impossible to
get from him anything that he wasn't actually consciously thinking at that
moment, and to make matters worse, his stream of thought was erratic and
odd, jumping from idea to idea, repeating nonsense over and over, and in
general giving away very little.

It pissed me off, being rebuffed like that, and I again got the urge to
take this clown down.

"And that covers what I need you to do," Sam was finishing.  "You must
follow my instructions completely if this is to be effective."

"And again, if I refuse to be your pawn, you will retaliate by killing my
two brothers?" Rick asked Sam.

"Yes, that has not changed," Sam told him, his tone melancholy.

"And yet, even if I follow your commands completely," Rick said, "I will
never see my brothers again.  You will kill them either way sooner or
later, isn't that true?"

Sam hesitated, but he could not tell a lie.  He was an angel.  "That is
true," he said.  "They are killers, and as such, I am forbidden by God to
ever let them go.  But I can promise you that they will have merciful
deaths."

I winced.  Sam was horrible at this bargaining because he was just too
virtuous for his own good.  He was unable to leverage his hostages into a
dominant position because he was unable to bargain with their lives.  With
Sam's angel sense of moral black-and-whiteness, it was impossible to
inspire fear in the eyes of his enemies.

I looked at Rick, and I could see all of Sam's legitimacy in his eyes
fading away fast.

Sam must have realized this too, as he quickly added, "And without my help,
in all likelihood, the demons will best you in this war."

"That is open to debate," Rick said.  "But you know what I think, angel?  I
think your allegiance to us wolves only will last as long as the demons are
still alive.  Once we have done away with them, then you will turn on us,
isn't that right?  Take advantage of us when we will be at our weakest, our
lowest population after our long war with the demons?  Can you deny that,
angel?"

Sam did not respond.  Rick was calling it was it was, and Sam could not
speak an untrue syllable.  He had lost the game, all because he had lost
the intimidation factor that had been our biggest asset against these
wolves.

I remembered our last visit, how Amzi Fortitude had so easily inspired fear
in these creatures.  That had in no way been Sam's doing.  No, these
motherfuckers only responded to random, cold violence.

With a yell, I ran towards Watts, unsheathing my sword.  Watts, surprised
at first, quickly responded, taking a combative position.  He was ready to
fight to the death against me, and I was too willing to kill him.

"Stop, both of you!" Sam yelled out, coming between us and pulling us
apart.

"But Sam," I argued.

He looked at me firmly, and I backed down, knowing he was making a huge
mistake, knowing he was too weak to handle the situation himself.

"Back down," Sam said.  "We are supposed to be allies here," Sam said.

"Look at that!" Rick was saying to Sam.  "You angels have been reduced to
trying to kill my kind for no reason, even as we conspire together against
the demons!  Your boy came at my brother, completely unprovoked."

Sam nodded.  "It won't happen again.  I want you to know that as long as
you cooperate with us against the demons, their will be no aggressive
gestures by my kind against yours.  I can promise you that."

"Fine, I'll guess I'll have to take what I can get," Rick said.  "Come on,
Watts, we're leaving.  I'm sure you'll be in touch, angel."

"That I will."

Watts gave me a victorious little grunt before the two of them turned
around and walked away.

 *****

I paced our apartment again as those familiar thoughts attacked me once
more.  Sam was gone again, back out into the city like he had done every
other night so far this week.  Out there sucking some hot guy's dick.  Like
always, he had claimed that leaving me was the last thing in the world that
he wanted to do.  Like always, he asked if I would come with him, thinking
that would make things easier for me.  But I wasn't going to go with him, I
wouldn't give him that validation.  And I knew even if he didn't have the
nuts to admit it, the fucker was glad I wasn't coming along.  That way he
was truly free to enjoy himself.

Goddamnit, I had to get out of my own head.  Had to find a way to let some
steam off.

I left our apartment and instead of taking the elevator, I flew down the
dozens of stories through the Ensis's hollow interior until I was on the
ground floor.  I found the staircase leading to the underground levels of
the building, and I went down.

As if God led me there himself, I soon came upon the Ensis's Worship
Chamber.

The Cathedral had one rack in its Worship Chamber.  Here there were two, on
opposite corners of the room, manned by a group of Thrones and their
Delectors.

Yes, this is what I needed.  If I couldn't have Sam's love, couldn't have
his cum with me whenever I wanted it, there would always be this.  The
pleasurable satisfaction of forcing God to make me stronger.  I could never
be too strong, that was for damn sure.

I was just about to approach one of the racks when I saw something
different, something new.  It was what the Thrones were huddled around.
They bowed and beckoned me towards them.

"Do you have something more challenging than the rack?" I asked them.

"Yes, my liege," one of them answered.  "But it is too dangerous for any
save the strongest few angels to attempt."

"I am Fortitude, strength incarnate," I said.  "Show me how it works.  Show
me now."

They pointed towards a hole in the ground, about 8' by 3', and 3' deep.
Beside this hole was a carved stone with exactly the same dimensions.

"Lie in the hole, my liege," one of the Thrones said.

I tugged self-consciously at my Seraphim robes.  They were just too bulky
to wear them through this.  I asked the Delectors to leave the room if they
could or look away.  Then I stripped naked, leaving on just the mask.  It
was so much easier accomplishing physical feats when I didn't have any
clothes on.

I lied down in the coffin-sized hole in the ground, positioning myself like
a corpse on my back.  It took all ten of the Thrones to push the huge block
over the top of my hole, and they warned me beforehand that once the stone
was in place, they wouldn't have the strength to lift it off of me.  Only I
would be able to do that from underneath.  As it covered more and more of
the opening, blocking out the light, I thanked God I wasn't claustrophobic.

Suddenly, the stone block was perfectly aligned with the hole I was in, and
it slammed down upon me.  I put my hands and feet upon it to keep it from
crushing me, but its mass was unbelievable.

I tried with everything I had to hold the block in place, but it very
slowly slid down towards me.  Soon, it was plastered against my body,
crushing me.  I knew I couldn't survive this situation indefinitely.

Taking a deep breath and calming myself, I stared to pray to God for the
strength to lift this rock.

Minutes passed in this war between me and gravity.  Then hours, and still
the rock had not budged.  I was no closer to freedom, but at least I was
still no closer to death.  I found I needed to breathe very little under
this rock, which was lucky, or else I would have suffocated long ago.

Come on, God.  We both know you're going to give me what it takes to lift
this rock.  Because if you didn't, I'd die under here, is that what you
want?  For your strongest angel to die that way?  Okay, maybe not the
strongest angel yet, but you know someday I will be.  I know you got big
plans for me bro, or else why the hell would you make me so friggin strong?
So stop teasing me here.  Give up the joke and let's get on with it.

It took perhaps another hour of serious prayer.  But then, suddenly, the
stone started to inch upwards under my thrust.  I hadn't done anything
differently, I had been pushing at the thing with all of my power since the
first minute.  It was my strength that had changed.  I had become stronger.

Struggling, I pushed the stone up and out of the hole, using my hands and
my feet.  Then I pushed it up and to the side.

Panting, I stepped out of the hole, my naked body covered in sweat.  The
Thrones in the room were all bowing, in total shock that I had made it.

"Never underestimate a Seraph," I said as I put my robes back on and left
the room.

It was late, almost dawn, and when I got to the apartment I expected to
find Sam there, probably already asleep in bed, tired from his long night
of sucking dick.  But when I opened our apartment door, a quick psychic
scan was enough to tell me that Sam was not there.  Irritated, I tried to
calm myself enough to perform a wider psychic sweep.  After a few minutes,
I managed to scan the building for Sam's familiar psychic presence.
Nothing.

And then the metal shielding that encloses the Ensis during the daytime
shut the pale morning light of the early morning out of the room.
Nathaniel must have engaged the daytime defenses upstairs, which meant the
sun was about to move above the horizon.  If Sam was still out there, then
he would no longer be able to get into the building, not with the security
enhancements Nathaniel had recently put into place.  He'd be left outside
to burn.

Sam, where the fuck are you?

Worried, anxious, and pissed beyond belief, I thought for sure there was no
way I'd be sleeping this day, not with all sorts of gruesome scenarios
about what could have happened to Sam running through my head.

But then the sun must have climbed over the horizon, for suddenly I felt
that overwhelming sleepiness that the daytime hours bring.  I threw off my
clothes and fell into the bed and quickly fell asleep.

*****

I woke up at sunset as the daytime shields pulled away from the windows,
leaving just the last traces of orange light coming into the room, and as
soon as I had shook off the drowsiness, panic set in.  Sam had never been
gone all day before, not without at least telling me where he'd be.  This
was so unlike Sam I was sure the worst had come to take place.

I put on my robes and mask and paced the apartment, trying to figure out
what to do next.  I decided I'd have to go up to Nathaniel's office.  Tell
him that Justice had gone missing and that all available angels should be
sent out to search for him.

I left the apartment and found the staircase that led upstairs into
Nathaniel's office when a distant psychic tingle stopped me cold.

It came from downstairs, and it was Sam!

I jumped off the balcony and let my wings out as I flew as fast as was safe
down to the ground level.

My fear turned into sweet relief as I saw him there walking into the Ensis
with his robes and mask on, carrying his street clothes in his hand.  I
couldn't see the expression on his face, but I imagined it was pretty damn
sheepish.

And then my fear quickly turned into red hot anger as I realized there
wasn't an excuse on Earth that would make me forgive him for being gone all
day.

"Where the fuck have you been?" I demanded of him, almost giving into the
urge to shove him in the chest.

"You're angry," he said.

"Damn right!"

"Can we talk about this upstairs?" he asked me, nodding towards the two
Ensis front door guards and their Delectors who were in earshot of us.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said.  "We talk here.  I don't give a
fuck who can hear us."

"It was just a moment of stupidity," he said.  "I was having such horrible
luck out there finding a guy that I almost gave up and came home.  Then, I
finally found someone who was into me.  It took a lot of talk to get him to
agree to my proposal, and then he refused to let it be in public, he
insisted on going back to his place."

"You went to his fucking house?" I asked, fuming.  "You actually slept
over?"

"I didn't intend to, Gideon," he said.  "But after he had given me what I
needed, the sun was close to rising.  I had lost track of time, and there
was no way I would have made it back to the Ensis in one piece.  So, I did
what I had to do.  I asked if I could stay in his cellar for the night, and
he thankfully obliged without any difficult questions."

"It was Lev, wasn't it?" I demanded.  "I know it was him!  He was just your
type, a dark haired, pretty little twink.  He told you that you should
contact him again, didn't he?  You've been out there sucking him off all
these nights, haven't you?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Gideon," he said to me.  "I haven't spoken to that
man since that night we were together."

"Don't lie, Sam!" I yelled.  "Angels can't lie!"

"My love, I am not lying about any of this, I swear.  Read my mind, it's
completely open to you.  Tell me if there is any trace of deceit in it."

I did as he told me and read his mind, and he was right.  He was being
totally upfront with me.

"You see?" he said to me.  "None of these guys mean anything to me because
none of them are you, my love."

I shook my head and turned away from him, feeling hopelessly defeated.  "I
just can't deal with it anymore.  The jealousy, the pain.  I want you all
to myself, Sam.  Why can't you give me that?"

"You know why," he said sadly.

"No, I don't," I said.  "Because I am willing to give all of myself to you,
to let no one else have a piece of me, even though I know it means I will
die prematurely.  I don't give a fuck if your cum takes away my eternal
life.  I don't care about dying if I know it's by your side.  And
you... you've never been able to give me the same promise, the same
sacrifice."

He shook his head.  "Because it would be a profane act in the eyes of God
if I did," he said.  "To throw away the gift of immortality is to spit in
His face, even if it meant dying happily with you. Above all I serve Him."

"And that's what it all boils down to, isn't it?  You love me, I know.  But
you've always put God before me, and you always will.  You will always love
Him more than me, and I just can't fucking live with being number two."

My train of thought was interrupted by an odd psychic tingling whose source
I could not place, but it nonetheless itched at my brain with some
familiarity.  Not a thought I was picking up from Sam or any of the angels
or men in the Ensis, but something else.  I cocked my head in confusion.

Then I realized when I had felt this sensation before, and I knew exactly
what I was sensing.

"Are you picking that up too?" I asked Sam.

"Picking up what?" he asked, and I inwardly smiled as I wondered if my
psychic gifts had gotten stronger than Sam's.

"Does someone here own a dog?" I asked Sam.  "I sense a dog.  Some Delector
here must have a pet or something."

"Yes..."  Sam turned around, picking up that fuzzy psychic signature of a
dog as well, and then his eyes darkened with anxiety for some reason.

I followed Sam's gaze to the Ensis entrance; oversize double-doors which
stayed open during the day.  There, directly in between the two armored
Power guards and their Delectors who stood to the sides of the entrance,
came trotting a dark brown, shaggy dog, a bright colored parcel in its
mouth.

"See Sam?" I said.  "There IS a dog in here."

"No..." Sam said, and stepped toward the entrance worriedly.

The dog dropped its package in the middle of the Ensis entrance, in between
the two gaurds, and then ran inside, heading along one of the Ensis walls.

As the dog got closer to us, I realized it wasn't really a dog at all, it
was a wolf.  A fucking wolf!

Both Power guards had seen the wolf quickly run past them, and they moved
towards the package that had been left behind.

I tried to scan the wolf's mind, but I could not, just as it had been with
that dog out in the city.  Sam was already running aggressively towards the
wolf.

Oddly enough, I could make out a military chain with dogtags on it around
the neck of the wolf.

BOOM!  An explosion rocked the Ensis and surprised the fuck out of me.
That package left by the wolf near the entrance exploded into orange flame,
a bomb.

I could see the Power guards brace for impact, but both of them were blown
apart by the explosion.  Behind them, their Delectors suffered a similar
fate.

The explosion was much bigger than just the doorway of the Ensis.  It
enveloped the nearby elevator as well, though luckily the flames did not
reach where Sam and I were standing, directly under the feet of the statue
of Gabriel.  And, of course, the running wolf had put enough distance
between it and the bomb to be totally safe.

The tremor knocked Sam forward, onto the ground.  I would not be so easily
humbled, keeping my balance and standing firm.

When the smoke cleared, I looked at the damage.  The doors of the Ensis
entrance had been permanently blown off, and the elevator door was damaged.
Only four casualties sustained.  Second fucking werewolf that came in here
and fucked things up on my watch, and I was fucking pissed.

Through the smoke, I quickly found that bastard wolf again.  Right before
my eyes, it was undergoing that hideous transformation into its monster
form, growing into a furry, fierce werewolf, still wearing those dogtags
around its neck.

Immediately following this change, I could read its mind again, as its
thoughts were no longer obscured from me inside a canine brain.  Although
not entirely human, this giant creature's brain was human enough for me to
scan it.

A werewolf, of course, that was confirmed psychically.  And it was fucking
strong too.

He had a name, and that was Russ.

He was looking for prey, hunting.  Clearing out this ground floor of the
Ensis before the "others" came.

For the first time, I noticed paint on his face, camouflage.  Since we were
a long way from the fucking jungle, I assumed that the paint was more
decoration than anything.  No, I realized when I scanned his thoughts.  For
intimidation.  Well, I would not be intimidated.  If anything, this super
strong wolf presented me with a fun challenge.  I was thirsty for blood.
Wolf blood.

Besides Sam and myself, there was one other angel on this floor, a Throne
watch-angel that currently had no Delector.  He was against the wall of the
room, far away from where we were.  Other than that, the massively huge
room was empty.

This Throne reached for something hanging from his belt, and at first I was
sure it must have been a weapon.  But it was not.  It was a gilded horn.
He brought it to his mouth and started to blow.  A deep, loud wail
reverberated throughout the Ensis.

But the werewolf, this Russ, noticed this Throne and immediately ran over
to him.  With a slash of his claws and gnash of his teeth, the Throne was
dead, and the horn fell to the ground, silenced.

The werewolf sniffed the air, and I could tell from his thoughts that he
smelled Sam and myself.  He turned to face our position.

I would meet the challenge head on.  I started towards him, but Sam pulled
me back.

"Cloak yourself, quickly!" he said.

"I'm not gonna hide here while that monster runs loose!" I yelled back.
"I'm gonna fight!  That's what Fortitude is supposed to do!"

Sam was already cloaking, and I could sense the werewolf starting to forget
about him, singling me out instead.  He started towards me.

"Cloak now, and we'll sneak upon him and kill him instantly," Sam said to
me.

I shook my head.  "I don't need to resort to magic tricks, Sam," I said.
"I can kill him face to face."

I smiled at the werewolf as he approached me, beckoning him forward.

But then, he stopped coming, instead looking around, confused.  From his
mind I realized that he had started to forget about me.  What the fuck?  I
knew I hadn't cloaked!

I looked down to see Sam's arm around my chest.  The fucker was cloaking me
against my will!

"Get off, Sam!" I snapped.

Before I could wrestle lose, I noticed another intruder coming through the
blown apart entrance of the Ensis, a figure I was all too familiar with.
Case, with his dark leather and sunglasses on, carrying a bag in one hand
and an automatic pistol in the other.

For the first time, I could read this wolf's mind, and it sank in how
strong this wolf was, even stronger, it seemed, than this other one, this
Russ.

Upon seeing this, his "brother," the werewolf Russ turned into his man
form, a late thirties-ish, tough as nails tan white dude with a brown crew
cut, the camouflage still covering his face, dogtags around his neck.

"Area is secure," Russ said as soon as he had finished his transformation.
"At least, I think it is.  Can't shake this bad feeling that one of those
bastards is hiding from me.  Playing with my mind."

"Good work," Case said, tossing the green duffel bag he was holding to
Russ.  "Here's your things."

Russ opened up the bag, pulled out a pair of camouflage pants, and pulled
them quickly on, barely covering his nakedness, and I realized from his
thoughts that this Russ had been a Marine, just like me.  That would
explain the dogtags.  I knew then he must really be a tough-ass.

Case inspected the damage to the elevator, jamming hard on the button.
"Damn," he said.  "Elevator's still operational, but the call button's
blown off.  Guess we won't be using it."  He held up a walkie-talkie to his
mouth and pressed the button.  "Zakhar, Alvaro.  All is clear."

Two more men came into the Ensis, their minds quickly telling me that they
were wolves, and that, like Case and Russ, these were the strongest of the
strong, and both leaders.

Otherwise, they couldn't be further apart.  Zakhar was Russian, from
St. Petersburg.  Alvaro was from Barcelona.  He had a pony tail and
pretty-boy good looks, almost good looking enough to be up to angel
standards.  Zakhar, on the other hand, was no beauty queen.  He was a huge
hulking muscle bear of a man, real mean looking, with red-brown hair, who
wore nothing but a loose-fitting black leather vest.  Alvaro was lean and
sinewy.

Case pointed out the two stairwells leading underground on the first floor
of the Ensis, one on each side of the room.  It was down there, in the
lower floors, where most of the non-residential parts of the Ensis were.
"I want you two to lead your packs underground, along with Leung and his
pack.  Leung, where has Leung gone off to?"

"I'm right here," a new wolf said in an Asian accent.  An Asian wolf
stepped through the door with a couldn't-care-less look upon his face,
along with an intricate tattoo.  He had some kind of mechanical pack
strapped to his back, but I couldn't make out its purpose from where I was
standing.  I searched into his mind.  He was a leader from Hong Kong, and
he was a total badass.  He was strong, stronger than any of the others
here.  In fact, I pulled from his mind that he considered himself the
strongest wolf alive.  An excellently skilled fighter.

I pulled against Sam and let out a little growl.  This was who I wanted to
fight, this wolf who was the most lethal of their kind.

"I want the three of you to lead your packs underground," Case said.  "Take
out everyone down there."

"Understood," Zakhar said in a Russian accent that was much harsher than
Sam's.

A moment later, a swarm of wolves came into the room.  I realized that all
of them either belonged to St. Petersburg "pack" or Barcelona's.  None of
them were as strong as the first five wolves who came in, not even close.

Zakhar began to transform into his werewolf form, fast becoming a huge
monster as big or bigger than the one who had stalked me and my cousins in
Tucson.  While most articles of clothing on these fuckers seemed to rip off
when they transformed, the black leather vest Zakhar wore was loose enough
to stay intact on the monster's ever expanding chest.  The other wolves in
his pack followed his lead, all particularly beefy guys, and the troop of
monsters headed down the left stairway.

Alvaro took a different approach.  He turned into a lean black wolf,
immediately making it impossible for me to read his thoughts.  His pack
turned into a literal pack of dogs, and they trotted off down the right
stairway.

Case nodded at Leung.  "Where is the Hong Kong pack?" he asked, frustrated.

Leung smiled.  "They fall behind," he said.  "Don't need them.  Am a one
wolf pack, can do anything alone that would take any other pack to do
together."

"Fine, go then," Case said.

Leung sneered at Case, then went strolling down one of the stairways.

Case looked at his brother again, this Russ.  "You know what you must do,"
Case said.  "You have all the explosives you should need."

"Yes, I am fully prepared," he said, holding up his bag.  He nodded
respectfully at Case, and then started off through the back corridor, out
of the Main Hall.

I got from Case's mind that he was assigned to lead some assault on the
Ensis from this point, on the bottom floor.  He walked over to the entrance
and started to beckon others in, more werewolves.  Very quickly, our home
was being penetrated by more and more of these scumbags.

I let my mind drift outside of the Ensis, and I realized that there was a
whole army of wolves out there, just waiting.  They could only come in a
couple at a time through the hole in the wall, but each one wanted a chance
to fuck our home up the ass.

Of course I knew that Sam and I could not take on an army of wolves
ourselves, cloaked or not.

Ever since the first explosion, Sam had been broadcasting a psychic
distress call which, if tuned in, all of the Ensis angels should have been
able to hear.  And in fact, that horn that the Throne had dutifully blown
until his death had confirmed for all of the angels in the building that
something was awry.  Sure enough, a moment later an armored angel glided
down to the ground, having jumped up one of the balconies of the dozens of
floors above.  He had a sword in his hand and an armed Delector on his
back, and he was cloaking both of them.

"Thank the Lord," Sam said.  "It's Lamech, the head Power at the Ensis.
He's Shamir's Ensis counterpart."

I looked into the face of this angel, and I realized I had seen him before.
A Filipino stud.  At the Cathedral, he had been one of the five Powers that
had come to challenge Faith in combat.  He had performed second best in his
duel with the Seraph, with only Shamir outperforming him.  It was logical
that the second best Power in existence would be the head guard of the
Ensis.

Immediately upon landing, Lamech started psychically broadcasting a
message: "All Powers to the Ensis ground floor immediately.  Come armed and
ready to fight."

Soon enough, dozens of Powers started flying into battle from their
apartments above.  Some were armed, others went immediately into the
armory, which was on the ground floor on the back end of the massive hall.
They reappeared soon enough with armor and weapons and joined the rest of
us, and more and more Powers were slowly appearing.

"Angels!" Lamech yelled out to his little army of Powers.  "Stay cloaked,
and spread!  Let them come through us!"

The angels spread themselves out, each one with a hand on their Delector,
cloaking him.

Meanwhile, Case had gathered more and more wolves through the entrance of
the Ensis until there were at least a hundred werewolves gathered, all of
them ready to kill.

"The ground floor is secure!" Case told his werewolf army.  He was the only
one who hadn't transformed, presumably so that he could still issue verbal
commands.  "Move forward, with caution!"

The werewolves moved slowly into the hall, spreading themselves out,
looking around suspiciously but not seeing a single one of us.  A wolf was
obliviously headed straight towards where Sam and I were standing, and I
sure as fuck wasn't gonna get out of the way.  "Let it fucking walk into me
if that's what it wants," I said.

Sam pulled me out of the way just before the werewolf would have collided
with me.  Lamech is leading this battle.  When he's ready for us to fight,
he'll tell us.

When the wolves had spread all through the base of the Ensis, Lamech
yelled, "Angels, attack!"

All at once, each Power raised their sword and struck at the nearest
werewolf.  Since I had no sword, I just reached out and punched the
werewolf in front of me.  Many wolves were killed after the first sword
hit; most others were at least badly injured.  The wolf in front of me,
however, was just slightly annoyed.

Of course, now all the wolves could see through the cloaks and they fought
back, but that didn't matter to the Powers, as the angels outnumbered the
wolves and were well armed.  But for me, dealing with a werewolf in hand to
hand combat was tricky.  A werewolf was so strong that an angel couldn't
really afford to take any serious hits from them.  One bite on the throat
and an angel would have been dust.  So, I read the wolf's mind, staying on
my toes.  It's impossible to hit a target when the target knows each attack
you're planning to throw before you even start to move.  That's the
frustration this werewolf was feeling after throwing a few punches and
having me dodge each one.  Yeah, unless I got sloppy, there was no way this
fucker was going to even make contact with me.

Problem was, there was no way I could kill the bastard either, not with
nothing but my bare hands.  Luckily, a nearby Power came over and killed
the fucker for me with his sword.  I thanked the guy, but I was already
pissed that I was weaponless and unable to do any sort of real fighting.  I
looked around for a dropped weapon somewhere.  There were a lot of bodies
on the ground, but they were all naked men; the werewolves turned back into
their human form when they finally bit it, and none of the werewolves were
carrying any weapons beyond their teeth and claws.

Good work angels!  It was Lamech yelling a victory cry when the last of the
wolves had been exterminated.

But no, it was much too soon for celebration.  That was just the first
wave.  Case had survived our last assault, and the fucker was standing out
of harm's way by the entrance.  More wolves were coming through the
opening, gathering together into a second force.

The Powers created a front line, standing firm throughout about two thirds
of the base floor of the hall.  The other third, on the entrance side, was
quickly being filled up with more and more of these pain in the ass
werewolves.  How many of them would we have to slaughter before they turned
tail and ran?

I noticed that no more Powers were coming to join the fight, and knew they
must all be collected.  We had quite a contingent around us, with the front
line holding up their shields defensively.

"How many Powers does the Ensis have?" I asked Sam.

"About two hundred," he said.

"Well, I don't know of that's going to be enough," I said.

As more and more werewolves gathered, they started to fill up their third
of the room, and began threatening to reach our front line.

"Powers, cloak once more!" Lamech said.

Everyone cloaked, myself included this time.  Immediately the wolves were
looking around, confusedly sniffing the air, but not picking up any scent
of us.

I laughed.  "This fight should be a cakewalk if we keep cloaking and
surprising them," I said to Sam.  "I almost feel sorry for the mutts."

Sam frowned.  "Nothing is ever that easy," he said.

Sure enough, instead of the typical werewolf coming through the entrance,
they started appearing in their human form, carrying many different kinds
of weapons.  Automatic rifles, mostly.  Some other more elaborate automatic
guns, and a frightening amount of ammo.

The gunmen took their aim right at our army, though to them it appeared as
if they were aiming at empty space.

I chuckled.  "Bullets may sting, but they won't kill an angel!" I boasted.

"Angels, keep your Delectors safe from enemy fire!" Lamech yelled, and all
the Delectors crouched behind their Domni.

"Don't think for a second that I'm hiding behind you, Sam," I told him.
"Regardless of this!"  I held up the cross on a chain around my neck.

Before Sam could respond, the gun-wolves began firing on us.  None of the
Delectors were hit, the bullets hitting the angels instead.  One bullet
even hit me in the shoulder.

"Fuck!" I said, more from annoyance than pain.  I began to dig the bullet
out of my body.

"There they are, brothers!" Case shouted at this force of werewolves, which
was starting to outnumber the Power army.  "Charge them!"

I realized that the angels who had been hit by bullets, although not
seriously injured, were unable to cloak.  That included myself.  Ahead of
me, I realized that four massive wolf-monsters had spotted me and were
running my way.

"Fuck!" I yelled again, this time with much more anxiety.

I had to get this goddamn bullet out of my shoulder so that my body had
enough strength to cloak.  My nervous fingers were not being too effective
here, and those wolves were coming at me fast.

Luckily, Sam was on the case.  He grabbed me and started cloaking me
himself.  The four wolves moved on to other targets.

I looked around.  About a third of the angels had been shot, making them
unable to cloak, and now the wolves were attacking the front line of the
forces.  Our ability to cloak no longer seemed an asset.  For the first
time, Powers were starting to die.

"Full on attack!" Lamech yelled, letting the Powers all know that the time
for cloaking defensively had come to an end.  Half of his army had been
shot by this time anyway.

The hall erupted into complete chaos.  The two lines of forces became
blurred as everyone seemed to attack at once.  The two armies seemed about
as numerous, yet I was sure the angels would continue to have the
advantage.  The werewolves had us more than beat in the strength
department, and they sure were able to take a hit better than we were.  But
we were just a bit faster than them, and most importantly, we could read
their minds.  That alone made it almost impossible for a werewolf to land a
hit against any of us.

Up until this point, Sam and I had stayed out of the main battle as well as
we could, knowing that we were essentially useless because we weren't
armed.  Now that the front line had dissolved, more and more werewolves
were getting close to us, threatening us.

"Should we arm ourselves and start killing some wolves, my love?" Sam asked
me.

"I've never heard you say anything more romantic," I responded.  "Should we
fly up to our apartment and get our swords and armor?"

He shook his head.  "Nah, it's too far.  Let's just go to the armory."

He led me away from the battle, towards the back of the Ensis hall, through
the back door and into the corridor that led to the armory.  Sam stopped
suddenly, and though the mask he had on kept me from reading his emotions,
I could feel them psychically; he was worried about something.

It hit me then as well.  Trouble up ahead.  The wolf kind.

Let's hurry.

I followed Sam again through the corridor.  When we neared the armory
doorway, I could hear signs of a struggle, and then I saw what the
commotion was about.

A Power and his Delector had been tardy for battle, this much I had read
from the Delector's mind, and like Sam and myself, they were headed to the
armory for battle weapons.  Before they could get in the door, though, they
were intercepted by a wolf coming through the other side of the corridor.

Now the Power, a dark-haired white guy, was fumbling around hand to hand
with the wolf while the inexperienced Delector anxiously watched from the
sideline.

I knew who the wolf was before I ever saw his face.  Russ, the Marine.  The
sonofabitch who blew the front entrance to hell.  He was here, naked except
for his camos, his face paint, his dogtags, and his black bag slung over
his shoulder.

Instead of fighting properly with weapons and werewolf teeth, the two were
struggling in hand to hand combat, which seemed to me unlikely to result in
the death of either one.  And though your average angel should have been
stronger than your average wolf in his relatively weak human form, this
rather weak Power was losing the fight.  Russ's bare upper body showed his
superior muscle mass, and the fur covering his chest and lower abdomen
glistened with sweat.  The wolf adeptly used a series of wrestling
techniques to put his opponent in a lock.

That's when Sam and I intervened, running over to the wolf and physically
pulling him off of the Power.  Russ looked us over with a scarily intense
stare.

Who are these two masked freaks?  Can't take on three at once like this, no
sir.  Damn.  This is my last pair of pants.  Guess I'll just be running
around with my johnson swinging free.

He started to transform into his werewolf form, ripping through his pants
as he grew.  Now I knew we had a fierce competitor to face, one of the
strongest wolves alive.

The three of us angels surrounded him, and although he would swipe, charge,
and bite at us, we could read his mind and avoid all of these attacks.

I sighed, frankly getting bored by this.  "We can't finish him off without
weapons," I said.  "You two keep him busy, I'm gonna go get armed."

I turned my attention towards the open armory door, trying to think about
what kinds of weapons to choose from.

BAM!

I was hit violently, so hard that I slammed dangerously into the wall.  I
slumped forward, feeling broken bones throughout my body.  That wolf had
fucking charged me the second I had let me guard down.  Well, that wasn't
going to happen again.

I got to my feet and stumbled away before the wolf could hit me again.
"Fuck you!" I yelled at him.

He only growled in response.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked, worried.

"Fine, just need a minute," I said, already focusing on mending my broken
bones mentally.  "Don't you let your guard down as well."

I could see Russ start to swing punches at Sam, which Sam narrowly avoided.
Behind him, the young Delector bravely started hitting the wolf with his
bare fists.

Russ turned around and looked at the Delector like an elephant looks at a
mosquito.  He picked up the Delector off the ground into the air, and I was
sure he was going to rip the poor guy's head off.  Instead, I could sense
feelings of pity from this monster.  He was impressed by the Delector's
futile courage, and decided he would try and save this poor guy from us,
the angels.

The Delector struggled, but Russ suddenly ran off down the other side of
the corridor, carrying the Delector away from us.

"No!" the Power said as he realized what was happening and started towards
the corridor, but was stopped suddenly when he started to scream in pain.
His Invisible Harness was kicking in, and the pain was too much for him to
operate through.

Down the corridor, Russ thought nothing of it when the Delector started to
scream himself, he thought the kid was just being stubborn.  Then there was
a sense of total shock as suddenly Russ realized the Delector was dead.

Russ turned back into his human form, again naked, holding the dead
Delector before letting him drop, his mouth agape.  He looked back at us in
the corridor, turned around, clutched his bag, and ran like hell.

"Don't let him get away!" I chastised Sam.

Sam shook his head.  "In his human form, the wolf is just as fast as we
are.  We'll never catch him."

I looked over at the Power.  The pain had stopped; apparently an angel's IH
shut off once their Delector had died.  But the emotional pain was just
beginning.  His eyes were misting over.

Sam grabbed his shoulder.  "There will be time to grieve later," he said.
"Right now there is a battle raging and all of us need to fight.  Come and
arm yourself."

The Power nodded, just barely managing to stammer, "Yes, my liege."

The three of us stepped into the armory.  The Power knew exactly what he
needed; he picked up a sword from the table nearby the entrance, then went
to pick out a suit of armor from the back wall, taking his time putting the
suit on carefully.

Sam and I approached the swords.  "None of these are as cool as my own
personal sword," I complained.

"We'll have to make do," he picked out a broadsword, and I picked out one
that was nearly identical.  We put the sheathes on and put the swords away.

When we had started towards the back wall to join the Power in putting on
armor, I started to get that odd tingly psychic sensation of an unreadable
canine presence.  Sam must have felt it too, because he looked towards the
armory entrance.

A wolf came running through the door, and this time I knew from the face
paint on the animal that it was again Russ.  He had another bundle in his
mouth.

Quick as lightening, the dog dropped the bundle under a table and then ran
out of the armory and down the corridor.

Sam yelled out, "It's a bomb!"  As if I needed him to tell me that.  "Get
out, fast!"  And I didn't need him to tell me that either, as I was already
sprinting towards the doorway.

When you're running from an imminent explosion, time seems to slow down,
making you aware of every passing second before the bomb blows you apart.

It's a good thing Sam and I were fucking fast, because we got out the door
and around the corner of the corridor before the bomb exploded.  When it
did go off, we took cover against the ground.

That Power putting on his armor wasn't as fast as us, and never made it
out.

The explosion shook the whole building.  The armory blew apart, and
everything that was the least bit explosive in that room went off as well,
which was a whole fucking lot.  The whole room was obliterated, and the
fucking thing caved in on itself, the floor sinking into the levels below.
One thing was for damn sure: no other angel would be arming themselves for
battle.  That's what that fucking Marine wolf had accomplished, and now he
had run off again to safety, with more explosives in that bag of his, I was
sure.

Sam was upset about losing that Power in the explosion.  I could tell by
his thoughts that he blamed himself somewhat, that he felt responsible for
the guy.

I shook his shoulder.  "You said yourself, Sam, we don't have time to mourn
here.  Suck up your tears and let's get back to the battle.  We may not
have any armor, but we have what's important, we have swords.

Sam shut his eyes momentarily, reaching out somewhere psychically.  "The
tides may have turned in battle," he said.  "We need to get back there to
help, immediately.  Come!"

The two of us ran down the corridor and reappeared in the Ensis hall,
wonderful swords now in hand.

Sam had been right.  Things had changed.  That much was obvious from first
glimpse, as fifty or so Powers and their Delectors were now dead on the
floor.

Sam and I spotted Lamech nearby, trying to take on two wolves at once, and
doing better than expected with the task.

"Ready for battle?" Sam asked me.

"Fuck yes," I said.  "I've been waiting my whole life for this."

Sam had me follow him to Lamech, and Sam killed one of Lamech's attackers
by decapitation.  I ran up behind the other werewolf and did the same
thing, loving the ease at which my blade cut through flesh, loving even
more the powerful feeling of the kill.

"Thanks to my lieges for the assistance," Lamech told us.  "I could have
killed them on my own, but I always welcome the help."

"What happened here?" I asked him.  "Why are so many Powers dead?"

He shook his head.  "We fight bravely, but their numbers just keep on
increasing," he said.  "An angel can take on a single wolf and kill it
without bringing harm to oneself, using ones power of thought reading.  If
two wolves attack one angel, the same can be done if the angel is skilled
with their mind.  But when there are three or more wolves attacking at
once, thoughts become impossible to read, and without this aid, we are
hopelessly outmatched."

Nearby, a Power took a grave blow trying to fight two wolves at once.

Lamech saw this and shouted to him: "If you be hurt, take to the skies!
Fly up into the canopy of the Ensis and heal yourself, cloaking until you
have the strength again to come down and resume the fight!"  He looked out
at all the other Powers struggling to maintain control of this battle.
"That goes for all of you!  We will not have another casualty if we can
help it!"

Immediately, angels started pulling back and flying into the air, their
Delectors on their backs, many stories up, to land on one of the balconies
of the upper floors.

As Sam and I started to fight the wolves nearest to us, it seemed that this
retreat, recover, and attack approach was paying off in our favor.  We were
losing less and less Powers, while the wolves were continuously being
chipped away.  And yet, I saw the wolf leader Case, near the entrance of
the Ensis, fighting off angels more skillfully than any others in his army.
His expression never turned to worry.  I could read enough of these wolves
minds to realize that they still had an ace up their sleeve.

I realized Case was again talking into his walkie-talkie, and although I
couldn't hear the conversation due to all the battle noise, I narrowed my
telepathy, shutting out all the minds of these wolves and Delectors, and
focused on him.  And so, I heard his conversation through his mind.

"Watts, are you and your packs in position?"

"Yup, we're ready," Watt's Australian accented voice came back.

"Your team has been given the most important task out of any of the wolves.
Don't let Rick down."

"I won't, mate.  Promise you that."

Seconds later, a Power fell to the ground, his wings rendered suddenly
useless as he slammed to the floor.  Both he and his Delector died on
impact.

The Powers that had retreated to the Ensis canopy to recover now came
flying down as quickly as they could.

"They've got wolves positioned all over the upper stories!" one of the
Powers announced.

"How is that possible?" Lamech asked.  "They haven't been able to use the
elevator, and God never blessed them with wings."

"We don't know how they came, but they are there," the Power said.
"Everywhere up there, and they keep appearing.  They are shooting their
guns randomly into the air, making it impossible to fly upwards, even while
cloaked."

"Alright then," Lamech said.  "All of you, stay here!  We will fight
together until we die together."

And then I heard Case on his talkie again, only this time it was Russ's
gruff voice cracking through.

"Inadvertently found a weakness of theirs," Russ said.

"Go ahead," Case said.

"If their human subordinates are pulled away from their angel superiors,
the men will just up and die, and the angels will be incapacitated with
physical pain for a moment."

"Alright, thanks Russ," Case said.  And then he was shouting instructions
to all the fighting werewolves to pull the men away from the birds, to
separate them.

Soon Delectors were dying left and right as werewolves picked them up and
ran with them.

Lamech quickly realized what was happening.  "Keep your Delectors close!"
he shouted.  "Keep a hand on them at all times!"  And that seemed to stop
the death of the Delectors, though keeping a hand on their Delectors
impaired the angels' fighting a bit.

As the war waged on, as more and more wolves kept on coming in from the
outside to replace their dead kin, I realized that this war would be slowly
lost to us unless we changed our strategy.

Sam, it seems, noticed the same thing.  "I realize now why the wolves must
be attacking at night instead of in the daytime," Sam said.  "We know they
sent one of their wolves to spy on the Ensis because we caught him in the
act.  Perhaps before we captured him, he passed on to them the fact that
our defenses only kick in during the day."

"Yeah," I said.  "And now, thanks one little pain-in-the-ass Asian fucking
wolf, we have the whole motherfucking wolf army up our ass."

"But it doesn't have to stay this way," he said.  "We don't have to be so
prone."  Inspired, he ran over to Lamech, and I followed.  "The wolves are
obviously coming through our windows in the upper levels, but we have the
power to stop their intrusion," he said.  "If we can just engage the
daytime defenses, the windows will be impenetrable.  The wolves would no
longer be able to come through at any place besides the damaged entrance,
and we'd just have to kill the ones that remained inside and seal off the
front."

"Yes, my liege," Lamech said.  "We just need to fly up to Nathaniel's
office and engage the defenses."

"No," Sam said, shaking his head.  "It's not that easy.  Nathaniel has the
only key that will engage those defenses.  Without that key, we would be
powerless."

"And yet, surely Nathaniel must not be in his office or else he would have
turned on said defenses immediately," Lamech said.

"Yes," Sam said.  "He must be somewhere else."

"If he still lives," Lamech said.

Sam shut his eyes.  "I will know soon enough."  After a few moments, Sam
opened his eyes.  "He is here.  He is alive.  Fortitude, can you sense
him?"

I shut my eyes as well, let my mind reach out for Nathaniel.  "Yes!" I said
seconds later.  "He is... I think he's beneath us.  He's alive."

"But he is in distress," Sam said.  "He is calling for help in his mind,
yet for some reason he cannot read anyone else's.  He cannot respond to my
psychic query about his location."

"But he is definitely beneath us," I said.

"Yes."  Sam looked at the nearest staircase going down.  "But there is so
much that is beneath us.  No matter.  Fortitude, you and I will find him,
and once we have, we will escort him to his office so he can use his key
and commence the defense system."

"I will go with you," Lamech said.  "This is the most important task any of
us face now, as it will surely mean the difference between a win and a
total defeat in this battle."

Sam shook his head.  "No, your place is here, leading the fight against
these men.  You are the strongest Cherubim this Ensis has, Lamech, and
these Powers need your strength more than we do."

Lamech nodded gratefully.  "Thank you for your confidence, my liege.  But I
will not send off two of our cherished Seraphim on this task without
protection."  Then, psychically, he added: Paran, Cedron, and Barnabas,
come!

Three Powers and their Delectors stopped their fighting and came to where
we were.  I realized that these three Powers were the other three who
challenged Faith and lost besides Lamech and Shamir.  Lamech pointed to the
first one, my blonde Adonis, who had so let me down by losing his fight
with Faith so quickly.

"This is Paran," Lamech said.  "My number two.  He will lead you through
this task.  With him, are the next strongest Powers we have, Cedron and
Barnabas."

Cedron was a strapping black American angel, while Barnabas was a beautiful
dark-skinned Latino.  All three bowed down briefly and saluted us.

"The five of us angels, then," Sam said, "must go downstairs and find
Nathaniel.  Once we have done that, we must find a way to get him upstairs
to his office so he can engage the security.  Understood?"

"Yes, my liege," the three Powers said in unison.

"There," Sam said, pointing out a stairwell.  "The wolves seem to have
gotten control of the other staircase, so we'll go down there.  Be careful.
We know for certain there are wolves downstairs.  Stay on guard at all
times."

"Yes my liege," the three Powers and their three Delectors said.

"God bless all of you!" Lamech said.  Then, he and his Delector charged
back into battle as our group hurried down the stairwell.

Compared to the battle upstairs, the downstairs corridor was eerily silent.
Sam and the three Powers looked both directions as soon as we got down the
stairs, making sure the hallway was clear.

Sam pointed to the left, towards the back of the building.  "Nathaniel's
somewhere this way," he said, leading our group in that direction.

"We'll take the lead, my liege," Paran said to Sam, and he and his Delector
made their way to the front of the group, with Cedron and Barnabas flanking
him.  That left Sam and I to bring up the rear.

"We go onwards, shall we?" Barnabas asked.  He had a Desi Arnaz sort of
accent and tone of voice, which I knew would get annoying if he was the
talkative type.  Lucky for me, it seemed he wasn't much of a talker.

As we walked carefully down the hall, I took the opportunity to check out
our new accomplices.  The three Powers seemed a bit cookie cutter to me,
all wearing the same Ensis armor and carrying nearly identical swords.  The
Powers may have had differing physical features and varied skin tones, but
each one was as beautiful as any angel was supposed to be.  And mentally,
they were like all the other angels; every part of who they were was
defined by their faith in God.  Like usual, they were perfect beings.

And also like usual, it was the imperfect Delectors that were more quirky.
All of them were armored in a more modern way than their Domni, wearing
Kevlar vests and holding handguns, with various other weapons attached to
their belts in case they should need them.  Paran and Barnabas both had
white European hard-ass middle-aged Delectors named Irving and Augusten,
respectively.  Both looked like they had seen plenty of battles before this
one, and I could tell from their minds that neither one of them was scared.
The third one, though, he was a different story.  He acted tough, but
really was green and a bit of a pussy, I got that much from his mind.  He
was much younger than the other two, about my age, I guessed, a skinny
Morrocan kid they all called Flea because of his thick, bug-eyed shaped
glasses and small stature.  He stood closer to Cedron than the other two
did to their Domni, for protection and security.

"We're approaching the Medical Ward," Paran said, motioning towards a
double door coming up on the right.  "Is Nathaniel in here?"  Paran opened
the door, took one step inside, and then exclaimed, "Blessed be God!"

The other Powers and their Delectors stepped in to look, and Sam stood in
the doorway behind them, gawking.  "Christ save us," he said.  "It's
terrible."

I tried to look in the doorway as well, but Sam was blocking my path.  "I
want to see," I said.

Don't.  It's much too horrific.

"I'm Fortitude, for Christ's sake," I said, pushing my way past him.  "I
can handle it."

I walked into the medical ward, and when I saw the bloody mess that was
left inside, I couldn't help from swearing.  "Holy fuck," I said.

The area was completely torn apart, as if a pack of werewolves had come
through here and destroyed all the hiding places, trying to get at all the
victims they could.  And they must have succeeded, because I could already
count a good twenty bodies, some angel and some human, strewn about the
room.  There was no sign of life left in here, but the worst was the way in
which these people died.

Charred black, all of them, as well as much of the room.  Once their skin
was burned through, they were gouged, slashed, and disemboweled with teeth
and claws.  Some of them had their limbs ripped off.  The walls of the room
were streaked in red blood, as if some of the victims had been thrown
against them.

I felt Flea's discomfort at seeing this gory sight quickly change into
nausea, as he bent over and emptied the contents of his stomach out onto
the floor while Cedron comforted him.  "Jesus esta conmigo," the boy said.

"Was it the Russian pack or the Spanish one?" I asked Sam, looking angrily
at the damage.

"Neither," Sam said, shutting his eyes, reaching for some psychic signature
that I wasn't picking up on.  "It was the Hong Kong wolf, Leung.  He did
this on his own."

"On his own?" I asked.  "How is that possible?"

"He has a flamethrower on his back," Sam said.  "He's using it to clean out
these rooms."

Looking among the dead, I saw a pair of familiar faces: the angel doctor
and his Delector nurse who had operated on me on my first trip to the
Ensis, putting in my harness.  I had hated that passive aggressive nurse,
but not even he deserved this.

"Let's get the sonofabitch before he fries anyone else," I said.

"That's not why we're here," Sam said.  "We need to find Nathaniel before
it's too late."

I didn't argue, but I swore to God that I would see that Leung fucker die
before the end of the night.

Paran led us further down the hall, moving straight towards the back of the
building.  Occasionally we'd hear screams coming from corridors leading to
the left or right, but Sam kept us firmly on task the whole time.

It wasn't long before we came to a hallway leading off to the left.
"What's around this corner?" I asked.

"Just the Ensis holding cells," Paran answered.  "The jail."

Then I heard something.  Something in my mind.

"Wait, don't go any further," I told Paran, who was just a couple feet from
the side corridor.

"What is it, my liege?" Cedron asked me.

I could feel a presence.  One of the wolves, just around the corner.

They lock the door of their prison, and I'll just blast the goddamned door
apart.  I know what they're keeping in there.

It was the same wolf who had blown up the armory, the wolf called Russ.  He
was setting another bomb.  I looked up at Sam's face, and I knew he could
hear it too.

Malcolm and Cougar, I'm coming for you, you little shits!

Moments later, another bomb went off from somewhere around the corridor,
shaking the building.

As soon as I could hear the blast, I could see the flames coming from the
corridor, engulfing the hallway we were standing in.

The Powers were trained for this situation.  Paran, in front and closest to
the flames, was the first to turn to stone, turn around, and cover with his
stone body his Irving, who had huddled into a protective ball on the floor.

As the flames licked safely over Paran and his Delector, Cedron and
Barnabas both turned to stone and covered their Delectors, keeping them
from burning.

In front of me, I could see Sam turning to marble as the flames started to
engulf us.

What the fuck about me?  I couldn't turn to stone, and the flames were
coming so fast there was no chance to run and hide.  I shut my eyes,
praying to God that he would turn me to stone.  He had answered so many of
my prayers before.

Instead, I felt Sam's marble hands pulling me down to the ground, his stone
body covering me as the orange flames soared over us both.

I felt unbearably hot, I knew I had suffered a few minor singes, but I was
alive when the flames past.

"Thanks for that," I said to Sam as he got off me and turned back into
flesh.  It made me ashamed to thank him for saving me from what was an
obvious and glaring weakness of mine.  All the other angels were capable of
turning to stone except for the so-called strongest angel, Fortitude.

"That's what I'm here for," Sam said, trying to be charming but just
pissing me off more.

"Good thing we weren't any closer to that bomb," Barnabas was saying as the
other three angels helped their Delectors to their feet.  "Any closer and
the explosive force of the bomb would have blown us to pebbles.  We were
far enough away from the explosion so that we only had to deal with the
fire."

I could hear Russ's thoughts again as he investigated his bomb's handywork
and entered the jail for the first time.

Damnit, not here!  Place is empty!  Must have them locked up somewhere else
in the building.

He started to move down another hall, away from us.  I didn't want to let
that happen.  "Come on, let's go after him!" I said.

"It's unwise," Sam said.

"But it's one little wolf against eight of us!"

"No," Sam said.  "Keep your eye on the prize here.  Before we go
gallivanting around getting into fights, we need to ascertain Nathaniel's
safety.  And he isn't far ahead now, his psychic presence is getting
stronger the more we move in this direction."

So we kept moving down that hall, ignoring the fucking USMC werewolf who
thought it would be a fun idea to blast holes in our fucking home with
homemade explosives.

Soon Paran had stopped again, pointing to a large set of doors on our
right.  "The dining hall," he said ominously.

Terrified souls psychically wailed in torturous agony; there were men in
there, Delectors who were so out of their minds with horror that they
overwhelmed my thoughts.  I had to suppress their psychic outbursts in
order to feel the latent cries for help from their frantic Domni, also in
the room and also in great pain.  Only once I subverted the angels' psychic
calls could I identify the source of a problem: a sadistic son-of-a-bitch
who thought in fucking Cantonese, which I could now amazingly understand as
well as if he was speaking in LA street slang.

Paran, Barnabas, and Cedron all grabbed their Delectors and cloaked as we
looked in the door of the dining hall.  Sam and myself had already done so.

"Fuck," I said as I looked at the large room before us.  "Flea, you have
anything left to puke up?"

Flea was beyond any funny response, in fact, all he seemed capable of doing
was muttering "Jesus esta conmigo," over and over again almost as if the
phrase would magically protect him from harm.

"My God," Sam said.

What had once been a beautifully decorated dining hall filled with white
was now saturated in red blood and charred black.  Countless bodies of our
people were as mutilated as in the previous room, only this time the
culprit was still doing the mutilation.

It was that wolf motherfucker Leung.  He stalked around the room, his
werewolf face furious as he aimed his flamethrower towards the last group
of cowering Thrones and Delectors in the far corner of the hall, the last
ones left standing, though they were already severely burned.

Leung cooed as he pulled the trigger on his flamethrower, a streak of
orange light flying out in front of him a good 10 yards.  It incinerated
the pack of victims who yelled out in pain as they caught fire.

I stepped forward to help.

"We can't fight this battle," Sam said to me, holding me back once again.

"We have to make him pay for what he's done," I pleaded.

"In due time, my friend.  Not before."

When the victims had burned just enough to cause them incredible pain but
not enough to kill them, Leung stopped his attack and set down the
flamethrower.  I could glean from his mind that he wouldn't be satisfied
until he could get a lot more personal.

The werewolf ran towards the burnt angels and men, and ripped into them
viciously with his razor-sharp claws and teeth.  He wanted to taste their
blood, I knew, taste it before they died.

When they let out their last painful breaths, he lifted their bodies and
dragged them along the last clean wall left in the room, streaking the
white wallpaper in red, for no other reason that to leave a personal
signature, a way to mark his handy work, a way to mark his territory when
pissing all over everything seemed so common.  He wouldn't leave this room
until he had smeared the blood of the dead on all of these walls.

Sam, the three Powers, and their Delectors were all just as unsettled by
this display of complete cocky sadism as I was, yet unlike me they kept
their eye on the ball and moved on with our mission.  It took all of my
fucking resolve to do the same and leave that werewolf behind, still alive
and still able to kill so many more.

We kept moving through the halls, getting closer and closer to Nathaniel's
psychic pleas, seeing nothing but the not so occasional dead angel or
Delector.

Finally, Sam stopped, putting a hand to a wall and closing his eyes.  "He's
in here," he said, and I could too sense it then, Nathaniel's psychic calls
for help, his Delector Sven just barely registering psychically.  I knew
Sven was moving towards unconsciousness.  My instincts told me soon enough
the guy would be dead.

"The Library," Barnabas said, nodding towards the doors that would lead us
into the room ahead.

I went forward into the Library, and found the reason for Nathaniel's
distress.  The room was completely caved in; there was nothing in front of
me but massive rubble, absolutely no trace of what used to be a room except
for an apparent book or two.

"Looks like the ceiling gave out," Cedron said.  "The Library's completely
destroyed."

"Blessed be God, what a tragedy," Paran said.

"The Armory is right above this room," Sam said.  "The explosion the wolf
set off must have destroyed this room as well."

"Any other signs of life in there?" Flea asked.

"No," Sam said.  "Just the two of them, they were the only survivors here."

"But how in Heaven should we go about digging them out?" Barnabas asked.
"They are so far buried in that rubble, it would take a bulldozer to
extract them."

This is where Fortitude came in.  This is what I'd been waiting for.

I rolled my robe-sleeves up and grabbed the first piece of rubble I could
get my hands on, lifting the heavy piece of metal and flinging it out of
the way.

"Uh-oh," Sam said to Barnabas.  "You shouldn't have said that.  Now it'll
be proven to you that an angel can be as strong as any bulldozer, right
Fortitude?"

I just grunted as I threw another piece of rubble out of the way.

Sam came up beside me and started to help.  I motioned for him to get back.
"Stay out of the way, Justice.  You're not strong enough to help me here.
I can do this on my own."

"Whatever you say, Brother," he said, backing off.

On my own, I quickly dug a tunnel thought the rubble, heading right for
where I knew Nathaniel to be.

My efforts finally paid off when I dug a stone foot out of the rubble, the
first sign that I had reached Nathaniel, the rest of his leg still buried
in the debris, but at least he was still standing.

"There he is!" Paran said.  "Must have turned to stone to survive the
cave-in."

"That would explain why we were able to hear his thoughts but he has been
unable to answer ours," Sam said.  "Our psychic gifts are unavailable to us
once we've gone from flesh to stone."

As I continued to dig more of Nathaniel out, bad memories surfaced in my
mind.  First, those of when I had to dig my cousins out of similar rubble
and discovering both of them were badly injured.  Also, I was reminded of
the time Sam and I had dug out Luke out of the collapsed Bridge base in
Denver and us finding him mortally wounded, in spite of him being in his
stone form.  I wondered if Nathaniel would be intact or how many pieces of
his body would be broken off.

Amazingly, when I continued to dig him out, it seemed like he was okay.  As
soon as he saw that he was being rescued, his thoughts turned into
statements of pure gratitude.

Thank God you've come.  Please, I'm alright.  Just do what you can to save
my Delector.  He's under my legs, and he's quickly suffocating.  I kept the
building from crushing him to death when it collapsed by standing atop his
form, but I fear it wasn't enough, as I could not get us out on my own.

"It's okay, Nathaniel" Sam shouted.  "We'll do what we can."

The other four angels helped me then dig the Delector Sven out from under
Nathaniel's stone legs.  Sam pulled him out of the dust and debris and set
him down on his back.

"Sven, wake up!" Sam said, lightly slapping him on the cheek.

The guy coughed, coming to.

Thank the Lord!  Nathaniel thought.

Nathaniel pulled himself out of the rest of the debris himself, changed
back into his flesh form, and shook the dirt off of himself.

"I'm alright," Sven told us, his voice gravelly and rough.

"Can you walk, Sven?" Nathaniel asked him as he helped the guy to his feet.

"Yeah, I think I'm fine," Sven said.  "Let's just get out of here."

"Nathaniel, I assume you're aware that our Ensis is being breached," Sam
told him.

"Yes, my liege," he said, shaking his head sadly.  "Sven and I were in the
Library when they started to come, and with the knowledge that the Powers
were defending our home, here we remained until the room suddenly fell on
top of us.  It was only through my transformation into stone that I
survived, and from that point until now, I have been unable to use my gifts
to divine what has been taking place upstairs."  He shut his eyes
momentarily.  "Oh my.  The Powers are losing, aren't they?"

"They inevitably will, yes," said Sam.  "Unless we can get you up to your
office so you can engage the security system.  You have the key with you,
don't you?" Sam asked hopefully.

Nathaniel pulled the rosary with the key on it from under his shirt collar
and showed it to us.  "I most certainly do."  All of us breathed a
collective sigh of relief.  "Yes, then let us make our way to the top floor
as quickly as our wings can carry us."

"What is the best way up there?" I asked.

"We can access the elevator that the wolves damaged above from this floor,"
Paran said.  "It's on the other side of the Ensis, so it may take a while
to get there, but it's the only way we can get up there safely considering
the wolves are murdering any who fly from the first floor up."

"Yes," Sam said.  "Take us to this elevator."

"Follow my lead, my liege," Paran said, leading us back out of the library
and down a new hallway.

And so, our little search unit was up to an even ten members.  Most of us
looked battle-ready, though Sam and I only had swords but no armor on.
However, our two newest members looked completely unsuited for battle.
Nathaniel and Sven had no armor or weapons on their persons, just
completely filthy dress suits.  In spite of his lack of protection,
Nathaniel seemed constantly calm and composed, and if he was afraid on the
inside, he certainly didn't let on about it.  But Sven projected his
anxiety to all of us angels.  He had spent his whole life as a secretary,
never seeing a single battle.  Having the Ensis invaded was a complete
shock to him, and he feared any conflict we were likely to get into down
the road.  It was a good thing he hadn't been around when we saw Leung
massacring all the others.  Flea, inexperienced as he was, only puked at
the sight of countless bodies eviscerated.  Sven was of such fragile
disposition I was sure he would have fainted, if not completely gone into
shock.  Even then, as we moved through the hall, Sven prayed we would get
to the top floor safely and easily, without any unwanted meetings with the
wolves.

Soon it would be apparent that Sven's prayers were seemingly completely
ignored.  I got a funny tingling sensation of a presence nearby, or rather,
presences.  But there were no sentient minds to read.

Immediately, a pack of furry wolves came bounding down the hallway, led by
a slender black wolf, its mouth open and its pink tongue hanging out.

Somehow, I knew this was Alvaro, recognized these dogs as the Spanish pack.
There were at least ten of them, and they were running right for us down
the hall.

Sven and Flea thought about running, but clearly it was too late for us to
try and outrun them.

"Just let them go," Paran commanded fearlessly.  "Stay cloaked.  They can't
see us and they don't know we're here."

All of us pushed ourselves against the edges of the hallway, each Domno
keeping a hand on their Delector to keep themselves invisible.

"Just let them go right by us," Paran said again, as if he was worried
someone would try and deviate from his first command.

He was right, the wolves couldn't see us, they apparently had no idea we
were there.  But as they got closer, I noticed that they had spread
themselves out as they ran, and moved erratically from side to side, biting
in random directions as they past.  This seemed to be a strategy to pull
any angels that they happened to pass out of their cloaks.  As they were
almost upon us, I figured the best we could hope for was that they would
not happen to run into any of us and would just keep running down the hall.

Alvaro and the rest of the wolves passed by me with little more than a
brush of a furry tail against my robe.

The others were not so lucky.  In front of me, one of the wolves randomly
bit into Paran's leg, finding nothing to sink his teeth into but the steel
of Paran's armor.  Nathaniel and Sam, however, were armorless.  Behind me,
I saw both of them take bites to the ankles.  I didn't know if anyone else
had been bitten.

But I suppose it didn't matter.  Whether the wolves had discovered our
presence or not, they were moving on, running around the corner.  They were
no threat to us.

Paran turned to face us and looked the rest of us up and down.  "One of
them tried to bite me."

"Me as well," Cedron said.

"In my case they were successful," Nathaniel said.

"What does it matter?" I asked.  "The bites aren't serious.  Look, Justice
and Nathaniel's wounds have already healed."

"That's right, the bites aren't serious, for an angel," Paran said.  He
looked down at his Delector Irving's hand.  "Blessed be God, you're
bleeding," he said.

"Am I?"

Paran lifted Irving's hand to look at the small wound.  "Teeth marks."

The Delector's face stayed stoic, but all of us psychics could feel
Irving's heart sink.

"Damn, I've been bit too," Augusten, Barnabas's Delector said.  He pulled
up his pants to show us, and sure enough, there were bite marks on his
ankle.

"God have mercy," Barnabas said.

I laughed.  "Oh well, so they're cut a little," I said.  "It's just surface
wounds, it's not like they'll bleed to death."

"But it's a wolf bite, my liege," Cedron told me.

"So?  Look, I promise you, as soon as we get done here I'll disinfect those
things myself with a little hydrogen peroxide and slap a couple a bandaids
on them, they'll be good as new.  Now let's go!"

But the others were not going.  Augusten and Irving soon had released
themselves from their Domni, meaning they would be without any cloak, and
sidestepped away from the rest of the party.

"What are you doing?" I asked them.

Both of them had this sad look of intensity on their faces, this heavy sort
of resolve.  Paran and Barnabas looked at their Delectors with such sad
eyes for no reason that I could discern except that all of them were making
a big fuss over such superficial wounds.  If they thought a couple dog
bites were enough to get misty over, they should have seen some of the
wounds that had been inflicted on me in the past few months.

Then those two Delectors did something that I was not at all prepared for.
Both of them reached down and pulled a hand grenade off their utility belt.

"What are they doing?" I asked, not being able to make any sense of their
thoughts.

Both of them pulled out the pins, and held the grenades against their
chests.

"What the fuck are they doing?!" I demanded.

"Goodbye," Augusten said to Barnabas.

"May God lead all of you to victory," Irving said.

The grenades went off simultaneously.  The explosions pretty much
decapitated both men, splashing the rest of us in blood.  The remains of
their bodies fell silently to the floor.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, beyond angered.  "What kind of total
idiocy was that?  Why would they just go and blow themselves up?"

Sam put an arm on my shoulder.  "Because they had been wolf-bitten,
Fortitude," he explained.  "They would have turned.  It's better this way
for them, and they were extremely brave to do what they did."

I shook my head, still in complete shock.  Sven trembled nervously, gasping
for air.  Flea was beyond scared, double checking his body to make sure he
was bite-free.

Barnabas's tears were racing down his cheeks.  He put his hand to his
mouth.  "Such a tragedy," he said.

Paran seemed for a moment to succumb to the sadness of losing his lover as
well, but then quickly shook himself out of that state.  "We must go,
Barnabas," he said.  "We must accomplish what we set out to accomplish."

Barnabas nodded in agreement.

"Let us move on with caution," Paran said to the rest of us, and we
followed his lead.

We had only gotten about 20 yards before Barnabas turned back suddenly.  "I
have to go back," he said.

"Barnabas, keep with the group!" Cedron urged.

He wasn't listening.  "I have to go back and get his cross.  I need his
cross."

The rest of us stopped while Barnabas ran back to inspect what was left of
the body of his lover.  Crying, he took the dead man's cross in his hands,
thought on it for a moment.

He must have not been as attuned to the psychic presence of canines as I
was, because he didn't notice the pack of wolves come running back around
the corner towards the bodies.  They must have heard the explosions.

Crouching down, the wolves were for once at level with Barnabas's face,
which, unlike the rest of his armored form, was totally uncovered.  All it
took was one hard random bite by one of the wolves into Barnabas's neck,
and he uncloaked from the shock.

By the time he had cloaked again, it was too late, the wolves knew where he
was and they completely encircled him.

That skinny black wolf, Alvaro, was the first of them to transform into his
werewolf form, but the whole pack soon followed their leader's precedence.

Barnabas fought them bravely, but even though in their were form he could
read their minds, with their large numbers this meant nothing, and Alvaro
simply reached forward and bit into the angel's throat, not letting go.
Barnabas struggled, but he could not free himself from this attack.

I pulled my sword out of its hilt and made to run towards them, but again
Sam stopped me.

"Come on, we have to help him!" I yelled.

"They don't know we're here.  You go and help him, and our cover will be
gone.  They'll kill us all, Fortitude."

I couldn't believe Sam was just leaving this angel to die like that.

"Hurry, let's move forward!" Paran urged, taking the lead again.
"Barnabas's mistake was to let his emotions get the better of him.  Now,
his soul will be at God's mercy."

All of the others seemed to agree.  I was the one dissenting opinion, and I
knew it was pointless to argue, so I went along with the others and ran
away.

We hadn't ran long when Paran stopped us, looking at Sven.  "What is that?"
he asked.  "I just noticed it."

"What?" Sven asked, looking at himself.

"On your thigh," Paran said, pointing.  "The leg of your pant."

We all looked at what Paran was pointing out, a small shredded rip on
Sven's left thigh of his suit pants.

"That?" Sven asked.

"What is it?" Nathaniel asked, looking down and inspecting his Delector's
pants.

"Is it not a bite?" Paran asked.

"I think it may be, yes," Nathaniel said, his voice heavy and sullen.

"A bite?" Sven asked, anxious.  "But it didn't go through my pants, look.
I don't feel anything, and there's no blood or anything.  The creature must
have just ripped my pants some."

"It certainly looks clean to me," Nathaniel said, relieved.

Paran gestured, his eyebrow raised.  "Have him take down his trousers just
to ascertain."

Sven now added embarrassment to his anxiety as he opened his belt buckle
and pulled down his pants.

Nathaniel bent in to look at Sven's bare white thigh, and I was close
enough that I leaned in to look as well.

"See any mark, my liege?" Nathaniel asked me.  "Looks pretty good to me."

I was looking a little more at Sven's outer thigh from my position.  "No,
look at this," I said, pointing out a small mark.  "Teethmarks."

"No, really?" Sven asked, his fear escalating as he looked at the wound
himself.

"And there's blood," Nathaniel said as he traced a finger gently across the
tiny wound of his loved one.  "Those wolves be damned!"

Paran turned to Cedron.  "Look over your Delector.  Make sure he is
completely bite-free."

Cedron and Flea began to carefully inspect his body.

"I am truly sorry, my boy," Sam said to Sven with remorse in his voice.

Sven shook his head.  "No, that's barely a bite at all," he said, trying to
negotiate.  "Nothing to be concerned about."

"Wrong," Paran said.  "That wound is plenty sufficient for you to turn.
It's an inevitability now."

Sven's heart rate swelled and he began to tremble.  "No, it's not.  I'll be
okay, really.  I swear I'll be okay."

"Flea's totally clean," Cedron reported.  I could sense that Flea was
highly relieved.

Paran nodded towards Flea.  "Give him your grenade, Flea."

Sadly, Flea pulled his grenade off his belt and handed it to Nathaniel, who
in turn held it out for his lover, tears now welling in Nathaniel's eyes.

"No," Sven said, pushing the grenade away.  "No, I won't do that.  You
can't ask me to do that.  I'm fine, I'm sure.  I'm sure I'm fine, you'll
see."

"You have to take it, child!" Paran ordered.  "Do your duty as Delector!"

Sven shook his head and backed off.  "No, I won't.  You can't make me kill
myself!"  He was getting more and more hysterical.

"Do it!" yelled Paran again.

"It's no good," Sam said.  "He's not as battle-hardened as a Power's
Delector.  He knows rationally what must happen if he suffers a wolf bite,
yet he will never have the strength to do it to himself.  It's foolish to
expect anything more."

"Then you must do it," Paran said to Nathaniel, handing the Dominion his
sword.  "You must do your duty."

Nathaniel looked down at the sword in his hand with what I can only
describe as absolute hate at the instrument.  He was still crying as he
looked back into Sven's eyes.

Sven looked back at Nathaniel, shaking his head.  "You can't do this to me,
Nathaniel, not after all I've done for you.  After all we've been through."

Nathaniel did not make a move towards Sven, clearly too emotional to kill
the man.

"You can't kill me!" Sven yelled out hysterically.

The Delector seemed to be right, as Nathaniel was unable to make a move
towards Sven.

Frustrated, I stepped forward, my hate for all of wolf-kind getting the
better of me.  "Don't you get it?" I asked Nathaniel, angry.  "If you don't
kill him, he won't be Sven anymore.  He'll be something evil.  He'll be one
of those monsters.  You can't let that happen."

But still, Nathaniel did not budge.

"Then if you cannot kill him, I will do it for you," I said, drawing my own
sword.  "It's unfair to keep him hanging like this, torturing him."  I
lifted my sword, ready to kill the frightened man in front of me.

"No," Nathaniel said, pulling back my upraised weapon.  "No, you cannot do
this.  It is my duty, and I must."

I nodded, stepping back as Nathaniel stepped forward toward Nathaniel.

Sven jumped back as he cried hysterically.  "Please no, Nathaniel.  No, no,
no, no, no!  You cannot do this.  If you love me, you won't do this!"

"It is because I love you that I must do this," Nathaniel said, his own
voice shaking.  He put his hand on Nathaniel's cheek, willing the contact
to calm his Delector.  "Slowly," Nathaniel said hypnotically.  "Slow down."

But the skin to skin touch wasn't enough to calm Sven, not by a lot.  "No,
my love, don't do this, please, please."

"Shh," Nathaniel said.  Suddenly, and surprisingly, Nathaniel was unzipped
his suit pants and pulled his angel dick out of it.  "Kneel now, Sven.
It's your feeding time, that's all."

Sven let himself be pushed down to his knees by his Domno, shut his eyes,
and let his mouth find the dickhead of lover.

"That's it," Nathaniel said.  "You know what to do.  Slow now."

Whatever precum Nathaniel must have been leaking was working its magic on
Sven, as his mind started registering pure pleasure.

"That's it, that's it my love," Nathaniel said as Sven continued to nurse
his cock.

The Dominion raised Paran's sword then, and with one last regretful look at
his lover, he swung the blade, very quickly and very accurately.  He forgot
about the sexual pleasure he was feeling at the end as he realized what
Nathaniel was doing to him.  His face twisted in pain at the end and his
last thought was of pure hatred at being betrayed.

Sven's head was severed at the neck and his body collapsed beaneath him.
His face, still impaled on Nathaniel's hard cock, was forever locked in an
expression of shocked, sad pain.

Nathaniel dropped the sword and pulled Sven's head off of his dick, crying,
mumbling a mixture of prayers and condolences.  He took Sven's cross from
the body and put it in his pocket.

"There, I am ready now," he said, handing Paran his sword back and zipping
up his fly.

"Then let us go."

And that was how that Spanish motherfucker Alvaro and his pack easily
killed four of our group, leaving us at a measly six.

Paran again urged us to stay cloaked and ready to sneak past any wolves we
came across as he led us in the direction of the elevator.  I was just
plain sick of cloaking and running and hiding.  I was sick of this little
covert mission to escort Nathaniel to the top of the Ensis.  Any weak
angels could cloak and hide and run around like rats.  I was Fortitude, and
my gifts were being completely ignored.

"I'm going back upstairs to rejoin the fight," I announced.

"What?" Sam asked.  "No, you'll stay here with us."

"No, I won't, Justice.  I don't think you are in the position to give me
orders now, are you?  We are brothers, after all.  Equal in rank."  I
turned around.  "You have Nathaniel.  You don't need my help getting up to
the top floor.  You all go on, but I'm going back upstairs."

"Fine, you make your own judgment calls," Sam said to me.  "Should I go
with you?"

I held back a laugh.  "I don't need you, Justice.  You go on with your
little mission and in the meantime I'll be working on holding back the
entire wolf army."  I looked around at the many hallways around me.  "If I
could just figure out the fastest way to the stairs."

Paran gestured to Cedron.  "Cedron, you go with him and show him the way,"
he said.

"Right," Cedron said, nodding as he and Flea came with me.  "First we'll
have to go down this hallway, my liege."

"Good luck to you!" Sam called out as we parted.

"I don't need luck!" I yelled back as my small group turned a corner.  I
could already feel Flea's fear at the idea of going back to his first
battle upstairs, but I didn't care.  He would learn how to fight, or he
would die, it was that simple.

Cedron was leading us down the shortest route back to the stairway, and we
were passing by rooms that I had never seen before, each one of them either
empty or littered with dead bodies.  I had to hand it to the wolves and
their efficiency, they fucking knew how to kill.

Before long I realized that we were back in familiar territory.  We had
come to the Ensis's Worship Chamber, the room that had been training in
before, and from here I knew the way back to the stairs.  But instead of
passing the Chamber, I stopped cold.  I felt the psychic presence of a wolf
inside the room and inched towards it, curious.

"Be cautious," Cedron said, gripping Flea's forearm tight.

I nodded and made sure to continue cloaking as I peered through the doorway
into the Worship Chamber, seeing the stone slab tables and the pit and the
stone block I had bested earlier this evening.

I had wondered what had become of the Thrones that had manned this room
when I was in it, and now my question was answered.  Dead, all of them,
with severed throats, their bodies stripped naked, stripped of any dignity
they may have once had.  Their Delectors had similarly been stripped naked,
but no wounds appeared on their dead bodies.  I could tell from the loose
way their heads were hanging that they had all had their necks broken.
These kills were fresh, only a few minutes old.

And one of the killers was still here, a wolf in his man form, a naked
white man from the Russian pack.  He had his last victim up against the
wall, a Throne, perhaps just killed, the blood of his ripped out throat
running down his naked body.  But I hadn't just walked in on a routine
killing here, no, this asshole was so much sicker than that, I realized.

The dead Throne was held up by the wolf with his front against the wall.
Behind him, the much larger naked wolf was pressed against the Throne's
backside.  I could tell by the back and forth thrusts of the wolf's hairy
backside that the wolf was fucking, and the angel carcass was the one
getting fucked.

I felt more disturbed at this sight than any of the gruesome gore that
Leung had unleashed in the other rooms.  All of us killed, it was human
nature.  But you had to be one sick motherfucker to rape your enemy on the
battlefield before you offed them.  Even worse, this wolf had killed his
victim in the middle of the fuck and kept on going, his mind only
interested in blowing his wad in this dead guy's dead ass.

I used my psychic powers to discern that this wolf was number 8 in his
pack, that the others had already moved on after they slaughtered and
fucked this entire room, and then it sunk in with sickening gravity why
exactly all these dead angels and Delectors were naked.  This wasn't an
isolated incident either, these Russian motherfuckers fucked all their
enemies as a rule before they killed them.  I sniffed the air, and I
realized that though it was the smell of blood that was most prominent, the
air was also thick with the smell of sex.

Number 8 was fucking the dead guy not out of some sick responsibility to
his breed, but with genuine lust.  He owned this dead ass, and he was gonna
fuck him, leaving behind his seed just to mark the dead guy as his kill.
He grunted and yelled out Russian obscenities, words that I understood now
as if they were in English.  "Fuck, yeah baby, take it," and the like.  He
spoke to the dead guy as if he was some willing participant in their
screwing.  Sick, sick, sick.

I moved closer, taking the sword out of my hilt.

"My liege," Cedron said behind me.  He and Flea had come into the room as
well.  "It is advisable that we keep on."

"You'll listen to me for a change," I demanded.  "And I say we fucking kill
this psycho."  And now that we had separated from Sam, nobody could disobey
me.

I walked up behind the naked wolf, who in his man form was much larger than
me.  I lifted my sword up.

"Fuck yeah, I'm cumming," he said in Russian.

As his naked ass cheeks clenched, I thrust my sword into the back of his
neck, and the pleased groaning he was making as he orgasmed turned into a
sick sort of gurgling as he began to die.  I twisted the sword, delighting
in the pain I could psychically read from him.

The other wolves came so fast through the doorway I hadn't even heard their
thoughts until they were well in the room.  Reacting to their den brother's
screams, they had moved in with the intent of saving him and killing their
brother's attacker.  Too bad for them, their number 8 was already dead by
the time they came to his rescue.

I thought I was safe as long as I was cloaked, I forgot about how they
would be able see me as long as my sword was cutting through their friend.
This mistake was clear instantly, as the large group of naked wolves in
their man shapes came barreling at me with malice on their scruffy faces,
surrounding me.  I tried to fight back, but there were so many of them, and
it was impossible to read all of their minds and try to predict all of
their attacks at once.

They hit me repeatedly, and my strikes against them just weren't enough.
Soon they had me by the arms and legs, twisting the sword out of my hand
and throwing it away.

Cedron and Flea came to my aid immediately, giving up the safety of their
cloak to attack the large group of wolves.  But they were so outnumbered
that their attempt to free me just ended with both of them being captured
by the enemy as well.

There were eleven of them in their pack, ten living and one dead and
bleeding on the ground.  They were all burly, Russian men, some younger
looking and some older, but all tough and thick with knotted muscles.  No
scrawny wolf among them.  Each one of them was known more by their number
than any other name.  Numbers 2, 5, 6, and 11 were holding onto me as I
thrashed and struggled against them.  3, 7, 9, and 10 were holding onto
Cedron, and it only took number 4 alone to hold Flea in place.

In front of us, near the doorway, stood the biggest and tallest member of a
more than strapping pack, the one known as "Number 1" or "Alpha" or by his
fist name, Zakhar.  "Heh, heh, heh," came his big-bellied laugh.  "Looks
like we got ourselves three new toys, eh boys?"  The fucker still wore his
black-leather vest as his only piece of clothing while none of the other
wolves had a strap of clothing on.

Number 2, who was holding onto my right arm, piped up.  "Should we do `em
quick?"

"Nah," Zakhar said, grinning his big toothy grin.  "Not when these three
just killed our brother.  No, we're gonna do em nice and slow, boys."

I heard Cedron's broadcasted psychic voice in my head: If anyone is out
there, please, we need your help.

Zakhar grabbed Flea by his hair and lifted him up off his feet, causing the
poor kid to scream out in pain.  "Which one of these bats does this little
morsel belong to?"

"The black one," Number 4 said, pointing at Cedron.

Zakhar pointed out the two table slabs in the room, the sorts of tie-down
racks that I had become more than familiar with as of late.  "Look at
these, boys!  Must be some sort of dungeon these bats got here!  Take the
black bat and tie him facedown here."

The four wolves holding Cedron dragged him over to the nearest slab and
began to tie the ropes on his limbs.

"Wait!" Zakhar said.  "Take off his clothes first!"

Cedron shook his body rebelliously, but could not stop the four wolves
ripping off every piece of his armor and pulling off his underclothes until
the angel was left bare, save for the leather strap tying his big black
angel dick to his thigh.

"These bats is freaks," Number 3 said, pointing at the strap Cedron was
wearing.

"Slice it off him!" Zakhar ordered.

"You keep your hands off me, you filthy heathens!" Cedron yelled in perfect
Russian as Number 3 grabbed a knife from among Cedron's dropped possessions
and thrust it under the strap without any care for the safety of his
captive's equipment.

"Don't worry, you little whore," Zakhar said.  "If you like your straps,
you'll love being roped down to the slab."

Number 3 cut through the strap, and Cedron's massive but totally flaccid
member spilled down towards the ground.  Then they turned him upside down
and set him against the diagonally tilted table.

"Tie the pig down," Zakhar said.

Though he struggled against him, the four of them tied the four ropes
around his wrists and ankles, and Zakhar had already found the control
wheel, tightening the ropes until Cedron grunted in pain when the rack
locked in place.  Instead of putting him sprawled evenly over the table,
the wolves had pulled his body down so that the bottom edge of the table
was about to Cedron's waist.  His legs were pulled tightly down under the
table, so that his body formed a right angle at his waist.  This position
left his black muscular ass exposed in the air, totally vulnerable.

I noticed that the four wolves who had been holding Cedron started to
stroke their hairy dicks in their hands, and I knew from their minds just
what exactly they were planning to do to the poor Power.

"Don't you touch him, you sick fucking faggots," I said, surprised that my
outburst came out in Russian.

Zakhar rubbed his red scruffy beard and smiled at me.  "Don't you worry
your pretty little head about it, blondie," he said.  "No need for
jealousy.  You'll get plenty too, just wait your turn."

I knew Cedron was struggling to break the ropes with all the strength he
had.  I could hear his psychic voice praying to God for strength.  But he
just wasn't strong enough, I knew.

I looked down across the room.  About 40 feet away was the only other table
rack in the room.  Cedron might not have been strong enough to break these
ropes, but I knew I was.  They would never guess that I'd be able to break
through the restraints, and when I did, I'd get the jump on them and do
some real damage.

I looked at Zakhar in the face, challenging him.  "You should tie me down
too before I break free of your bitches here."

He shook his head.  "No, you're staying where you are."  He pointed at
Flea.  "Take em down and tie him to the other device.  Strip him down and
do it tight."

Number 4 smiled happily and dragged the kid down to the other table.

"No, please don't!" Flea said in Spanish, his fear betraying him as his
tone of voice turned pleading.  Although the wolves didn't understand
Spanish, it was more than obvious to them that he was begging.

"Don't worry, sweetie, you may like it," the wolf said, kissing him on the
forehead demeaningly as he dragged him along.  "What better way to die than
to get impaled by my cock?"

Flea shut his eyes and invoked his Lord once more.  "Jesus esta conmigo,
Jesus esta conmigo."  He repeated the phrase over and over as he tuned
everything else out, looking like a small child trying desperately to awake
from a nightmare.

And fuck, that was the last table they were pulling Flea towards.
Apparently they didn't intend to tie me down at all, and I knew that as
long as four of them held onto me, there was no chance of escaping.  I just
wasn't strong enough to shake all of em off.

As Number 4 dragged Flea farther away, both he and Cedron started to react
painfully, their Invisible Harnesses kicking in.

Zakhar watched as this formerly stoic black angel began to convulse
painfully on the table, grunting and cringing.  The Russian laughed.  "I
love it when they do that," he said.  "Keep them this distance apart,
boys."

Flea was shrieking in internal pain as Number 4 roughly tied him to the far
table, in the exact same prone position they had put Cedron in, and
tightened the ropes.  Now, both of them were stretched so far and in so
much pain that they were right on the edge of passing out, only faintly
aware of what was going on outside their own bodies.

Zakhar grinned at me.  "Now for the one who killed our Number 8."

They didn't have another table to tie me to, so they just held me in place,
one wolf on each of my limbs.

"You jealous of your girlfriends, little bitch?" Zakhar asked me.  "You
wish you were as naked as they are?  That can be fixed."  He stepped
towards me.

"I'm warning you now," I said.  "You lay one of your fat, faggot-y fingers
on me and I promise you will regret it sooner or later."

He smiled, unfazed.  "Dead angles don't usually make good on threats."

"Even if you kill me," I continued, "You will pay in the end.  I'm the
fucking king here, man.  Kill me and the whole fucking angel army will be
on your ass."

"Let them come," he said.  "I'll fuck each and every one of their angel
cunts before I chew their fucking throats out!"

"It'll be hard to fuck them when they've ripped your fucking cock right
off, motherfucker."

"Sonmeone shut the bitch up!" Zakhar said, and one of the wolves came over,
stood behind me, and covered my mouth with the crook of his arm.  All of my
threats turned to muffles, and I couldn't even manage to bite the wolf's
flesh.

"That's better, bitch," Zakhar said.  "Unless you're begging for our cocks,
you'll stay fucking silent.  Now, bitch, let's do something about that
pretty red dress you're wearing," he said, grabbing my robes and ripping
them off me with his bare hands.  "Ah, so much better.  A bitch looks best
when she's naked for her master."

He looked down at my dick, disappointed that I wasn't wearing a strap that
he could cut off, that I was just freeballing it.  I seethed with anger at
being stripped, though my string of curses were repressed.  I glanced
sideways over at Flea, knowing that angel propriety stated that I was not
to expose myself to others' Delectors.  Flea was so out of it because of
his pain that his eyes were glazed over, obviously completely unaware that
I was naked 20 feet from where he was tied down.

"Let's take this mask off too, bitch."  Zakhar reached up and pulled my
porcelain mask off, tossing it onto the floor.

This made me shake and struggle like never before, as anger set fire to all
of my flesh.  My mask was a part of me, it was what made me Fortitude, it
hid what I never wanted the others to see.  Now I felt truly naked, and I
bucked and screamed with everything I had in me.

"Aw, don't worry, bitch," Zakhar said.  "You don't need a mask, you got
nothing to be ashamed of.  You got a real pretty little face.  Turn this
one over so her pussy's in the air."

The five men who were holding me turned me around so that I was looking
down into the floor with my ass up in the air.

"Alright boys," Zakhar said to his pack.  "We got three flavors to choose
from: chocolate, caramel, and vanilla."  I felt a hand slap my ass.  "Right
boys, you know the order.  11, you're up."

Number 11 was holding down my right arm, but Number 3 came over to me to
trade spots with him.  As Number 11 let my arm go, I tried to make the most
of it and hit Number 3 in the face.  Too bad for me Number 3 was so damn
strong, he easily wrestled my arm down under his control.

Number 11 looked between the three of us victims, indecisive.  Although all
of the men were muscular, he was the scrawniest of the group, and clearly
was the most subordinate.  So, it didn't make any sense to me why he was
getting first dibs in this twisted, fucked up selection.

"Damn boy, never can decide nothing for himself," one of the other wolves
said.

"Which one is the prettiest?" Number 11 asked.

Number 7 pointed at the one he was standing nearby, Cedron.  "The black
one's prettiest, no contest."

Number 3 walked over to Cedron, "Yeah, you're right.  The dark meat's
always the juiciest."

Cedron glared at Number 11 defiantly as the wolf ran his hands over his
naked body.  "God will punish you for all that you do," he yelled through
the pain of his IH.

"Shut the fuck up," Number 7 said, coming over to Cedron's head and
muffling the angel's mouth with his arm.

I turned away when I saw Number 11 spread Cedron's asscheeks and spit into
his crack.  This was definitely not something I wanted to see.

But I couldn't shut my ears.  I heard 11's pleasurable squeaks, his
"uh-uhs," and "yeahs."  I heard Cedron taking quick, sharp, painful
breaths, that poor motherfucker.  I heard all the other wolves laugh and
yell taunts to Cedron.

And once again I was damn glad that I could hide my thoughts from the
angels, because all I could think about through Cedron's long rape was how
glad I was that it wasn't me.

Once Number 11 shot his wad loudly and obnoxiously into Cedron, Zakhar
called Number 10 forward.

"Which one should I choose?" he asked while the others all laughed.

"You gonna hit the black one too?" 11 asked 10, and I prayed to God that he
would.  Afterall, Cedron had already been fucked once.  Better they all
chose him and spare myself and Flea.

"Nah," 10 said.  "He's too big for me.  You know I like the smaller ones."

I cringed.  Then it would be between me and Flea.

"So, which one will it be?" 10 asked himself.  "The littler angel or the
little man?"

As he thought it over, I prayed to God that he would choose Flea.

"I'll do the little man," he said finally.

Thank you God!

Once again, I couldn't watch as Number 10 walked over to Flea's table and
mounted him.  I knew Flea was mostly unconscious from the pain of the IH,
but when he felt an unwanted backdoor intruder, I could feel his mind
snapping to life.

All Flea could do was repeat his mantra over and over again, "Jesus esta
conmigo."

He stopped muttering the phrase when 10 climaxed and got off him, only to
start up again when Number 9 immediately took his place for some sloppy
seconds.  Thankfully for Flea, Nomber 9 couldn't last long and came pretty
quickly.

Number 7 went back to Cedron, and once again and I thanked God that none of
them were picking me.

After 7 had finished his molestations, Zakhar stopped Number 6 from coming
forward.  "Now, if I may make a few suggestions, I'd say we stop amusing
ourselves with the black one.  He may be the prettiest, but he's not the
one with the most spunk.  Look at the way he lies still, resigned to his
fate.  This one over, this white boy, now he's got a whole lot of fun in
him just waiting to burst free.  Plus he's the one who killed our brother.
So, I say, before we kill him, we should fuck him like a bitch until he
learns to beg for more."

He began flicking his huge hardening cock up and down with his right hand,
the tip only inches from my face.  "You want a piece of this prick?  Bet
you do."

"Get your filthy ass cock away from me, motherfucker!" I yelled, but the
other wolf's arm muffled my words into more mumbles.

Zakhar smiled, not hearing exactly what I was saying but knowing damn well
what the gist was.  "Don't act like you don't want it!" he teased, his
callused hands rubbing my asscheeks.  "But you'll have to be patient,
bitch.  It's not my turn.  Number 6, who will it be?"

Number 6 came forward toward me, and something about the slow speed of his
thoughts going through his head told me he was the dumbest wolf of the
pack.  He was tan, with the slightly dented, mishappen face of a veteran
boxer, and thick, curly black fur that just covered his legs and the front
of his torso.  His uncut, brown dick would have disappeared in his thick
black bush if it had been normal sized, but as big at it was it looked
downright scary. "That's the puppy I want," he said, gesturing towards me.

"He's all yours," Zakhar said, taking a step back as Number 6 began looking
at my white flesh, stroking me in admiration.

The big guy was sweating profusely already, all of the black hair on his
body matted down and wet, and sweat dripping off the tip of his dick.  He
smelled of fucking rank BO, and I wanted him to step a few hundred yards
back.

"You're all mine, sweet thing," he said to me, and as he did, he reached
forward and caressed me, putting his arms around my torso and rubbing his
sweaty dick against mine.  He started to rub all over me, almost tenderly,
and his dick got rock hard as he rubbed against my flaccid one.  I wondered
if the dumb fuck actually cared for me for a moment as he hugged me.

Then, I realized what he was trying to do.  He was rubbing his wet fur all
over me for his fucked up wolf purpose, not really wanting to hug me at
all, just trying to get me covered with his sweat.  It was sick beyond
words, and I prayed to God he would get off me.

He finally did get off me, then he leaned down and took a big long sniff of
my body, now smelling his sweat on me.  He seemed to like that, as his face
lit up and he seemed satisfied.  I prayed he would leave me alone then, but
he had more planned for me.

"Now that I've marked you as mine with my sweat, how about you give me the
best fucking blowjob of my life?" Number 6 asked me, and the others who
were holding onto me took that as a cue to flip me around so that my face
was right at level with Number 6's sweaty, densely hairy crotch.

There was no way in hell I was going to put that uncut, huge dick in my
mouth.  Who knows how long it had been since he washed the thing.

In front of me, he pulled the brown skin down his thick shaft, exposing the
dark-pink head of his cock, then pushed it against my lips.  I jerked my
head back hard in reaction to his dick flesh on my skin, and he took his
hands and held my head tight, locking me in place while he once again fed
me his dick.

"Open up, cunt," the wolf said to me as he poked me in the lips with his
sweaty dick-tip.

I glared up at him and shook my head no.  There was no fucking way I was
letting him put that in my mouth, it just wasn't an option.

"You know you want to suck on my dick, faggot," Number 6 said to me.

The wolf who had been gagging me slipped, and I had something to say: "Why
don't you let me free and fight me wolf to angel," I said.  "We'll see
which one of us is really the faggot."

But it was my fucking mistake to open my mouth for any reason, because as
soon as I said that, he used the opportunity to stick his hand in my mouth.
Suddenly I couldn't pull my head back off of his fingers, and I couldn't
manage to bite down on his hand in any way that seemed to cause him any
pain.  And his fingers tasted fucking rank too.

Zakhar looked over at me, smiling, and he came over and grabbed my head and
held it in place.  "You got one helluva big mouth," he said.  "All it took
was one little bitty insult, and you couldn't even keep your mouth shut
long enough to keep his dick out of your mouth.  Well, big mouths are good
for only one thing, and that's for stuffing a whole lot of cock in em."

Number 6 twisted his hand sideways in my mouth, forcing me to open wider.
Then he stuck his other hand in my mouth until all ten of his fingers were
inside me.  He used his hands like pliers, pulling my jaw open in spite of
all my efforts to clamp shut.

When he had my jaw all the way open, he slid his dick into my mouth in
between his hands.  The tip of it hit the back of my tongue, the taste of
gross dick sweat assaulting my palate.

"Alright, pull out your hands while I clamp him shut," Zakhar told Number
6.

Number 6 nodded, and pulled his hands out of my mouth.  At the same time,
Zakhar pushed down with his right hand on the top of my forehead and up
with his left hand under my chin.

The result was my mouth completely enclosing the large uncut dick of Number
6, my tongue completely pressing against the guy's brown foreskin.  The
pungent taste of old, dried up sweat mixed with the salt of new sweat, and
combined the taste was so amazingly terrible that it made me gag.  If I had
eaten a lunch I sure I would have lost it at that moment.

"Yeah, you like that, cunt?" Number 6 said as he started to hump my mouth.

Pissed, I did the only action I had left at my disposal.  I bit down as
hard as I could into the flesh raping my mouth, I bit down until I tasted
blood.

"Fuck, he bit me!" yelled Number 6 as he pulled out of my mouth and turned
away from me, his hand moving down to cover his erection.

"What, you can't take a little nibbling?" I asked him.

"This one ain't playing nice," Zakhar said, holding my head tighter.  "Give
em the claw, boys!"

I don't know where the thing came from, but suddenly there it was, shoved
into my face by one of the wolves.  It was a steel device that was meant to
wrap around the back of one's neck and then pull one's mouth and lips open
with four very large sets of rusty metal claws.  It looked to me like some
tool a dentist from hell would use, and I pulled my head away from it as
soon as its cold metal brushed my cheek.

It took two wolves to hold my face in place and insert the four metal claws
into my mouth, and when they had finished, the device pulled at the four
corners of my mouth, forcing both my jaw and my lips to stretch wide open.

"He won't bite now that he's good and muzzled," Zakhar said.

"My cock's healed just in time," Number 6 said.  While they were putting
the claw on me, he had stood off to the side, convincing his then limp dick
to heal.  Once the bleeding had stopped, he started to stroke himself to
life again.

He came at me again, madder than ever and rock hard once again, and this
time I had nothing left up my sleeve.

"This time you're gonna give me the blowjob of my fucking life," he said to
me.

He gripped my head in place and thrust his hips forward until the head of
his dick was past my lips.  With the claw in place, it was impossible to
resist him, but I managed to pull my head back as far as I could so that no
more than his head invaded my mouth.

"Hell no, asshole, you're not gonna get away that easy.  All the way down
on my dick.  Now!"

My hair was cut short, but Number 6 still managed to find a way to grab two
handfuls of it on both sides of my head, locking my head in place and
preventing me from pulling back.  Once he had a firm grip of me, his shaft
pushed its way slowly into my mouth, until about half of his dick was
inside me and his cockhead touched the front of my throat.  I closed my
throat to this invader and hoped that would stop him from pushing any
further.

"Uh-uh, my dick ain't gonna be happy until it's all the way inside your
warm, pretty, tight, wet little mouth of yours," the wolf said.

I saw his whole body tense up, then he put all his strength into one
fucking powerful lunge.  With that kind of power behind it, his rockhard
dick would have poked a hole through a brick wall; my throat didn't have a
chance to stop it.  Suddenly I was deepthroating his member, his coarse,
smelly pubes scratching my nose.  I gasped for air, but that only served to
push more of his meat down my throat, gagging me.

"Yeah, fucker, choke on my big fucking meat," Number 6 said, showing no
mercy.  "Hey, someone hand me his belt!"

One of the wolves gave came forward, and soon Number 6 had a leather belt
in his hands, grinning.  I hoped he was going to whip me with the thing,
knowing full well that by angel insensitivity to pain would mean his hits
couldn't hurt all that much.  Too bad for me, he had a much more
humiliating plan for the belt.  He placed it around the back of my head,
took one end of the belt in each hand, and yanked it hard forward, forcing
my head deeper onto his prong.

Then, he started to fuck my mouth, and everytime that fat dickhead slammed
against the back of my throat, I wanted to fucking murder the bastard.

Zakhar came up behind his wolf and gave him a sportsmanlike slap on the
ass.  "Yeah, screw that mouth just like it was a damn wet pussy," he said,
urging Number 6 to thrust faster and faster into me, paying no attention to
my chokes and gags.

I looked around at the other wolves watching this humiliating display with
looks of satisfaction on their faces, and it made me want to kill each of
them all the more.  The pervs who had yet to take their turns in this
gangbang from hell played with their thickening cocks as they watched my
mouth get used.

It seemed like he fucked my face forever, and I prayed that he would stop,
that he would pull out and give my throat some relief.  Almost as soon as I
though that prayer, I regretted it, as I knew I was about to get what I
asked for plus a whole lot more.

He started to groan like crazy, and I knew what was about to happen.  The
filthy motherfucker was planning to shoot into my mouth.  I tried to buck
my body, but the four wolves held on firm.  I tried to bite through the
device in my mouth, but that didn't help either.  I tried to pull my head
away from his hands, but he held my skull with his steel grip.

He pushed his member all the way into me, and then held it there in place.
Soon, I could feel his burning jism shoot all over the back of my throat,
coating everything in his sticky slime.  I couldn't breathe as his load
completely obstructed the top of my throat, and I started to cough.
Coughing just made things worse, however, forcing me to swallow most of the
huge load of cum.

When he finished cumming, he started pull his dick out, and the
semen-covered head completely coated my tongue in his jism.  I got a good
taste of Number 6's cum, and I realized how un-angel-like this cum was, not
sweet and smooth and pleasurable like Sam's was, but sour and thick and
totally unappetizing.  It was nothing more than wolf filth, and I wanted so
bad to spit it back out onto the wolf in front of me, but this fucking
device kept me from being able to do that.

"My balls are drained dry," Number 6 said as he backed away from me.

Zakhar nodded towards another one of the assholes.  "Number 5, get in
there."

Number 5 gave Number 6 a friendly punch on the shoulder as Number 6 left
the the spotlight, his dick still dripping the last of his load.  "Thanks
for greasing up his mouth for me!" Number 5 said to Number 6.

Fuck, that meant he was going for me.

Number 5 stuck his big nose against my skin and inhaled.  "Man, that's some
rank sweat you got him smelling like, 6!" he said.  "Don't worry, bitch,
I'll get that stink off of ya!"

He motioned for the four wolves holding onto my limbs to flip me over onto
my back.  I tried to break out of their grip when they moved me, but again
it was no use.  I ended up a couple feet off the ground, my front side
facing up.

Number 5 grabbed the hair on the top of my head and pulled my head
backwards, my back arching and my neck craning back until my head was
upside down and my eyes were at Number 5's crotch.  He grabbed his hard
dick and offered it to my face.

"Here's some more cream-filled dick for you, cunt!" Number 5 said to me as
he forced my face into his dick and started again where Number 6 had left
off.

Number 5 was the most clean cut of the group.  Instead of facial hair,
there was just a thick layer of stubble on his chin.  Instead of a thick
mat of body hair all over his body, a dark-blonde swirl covered just his
lower pecs and then ran between his six-pack into his bush.

But it seemed that clean-cut didn't necessarily also mean clean, at least
not in the case of a wolf.  Number 5 bobbed his dick in front of my eyes a
couple of times, just so I could get a good look at it, a thick, uncut
member whose foreskin looked painfully pulled tight.  Then, he forced it
into my mouth, and I got the unwelcome taste of a dick that probably hadn't
seen water or soap for a week, even worse tasting than Number 4's meat.

Number 5 must have seen by the look on my face that I was disgusted by the
taste of his dirty dick.  "You wish it was clean, little bitch?"  He
asked. "Well, you get to clean it then.  You're gonna lick every fucking
inch till it's polished and shining!"

I wanted to so fucking bad to just fucking bite down and rip his dick clean
off his body, but the claw kept me from doing that, and Number 5 screwed my
face and continued to use me.  The worst part was, with my face upside
down, Number 5 kept on slamming his rank, sweaty balls right into my nose.

Number 4, who so far had stayed on the sidelines jerking his hefty meat,
getting off on watching me be tortured like a fucking perv, finally got so
excited he couldn't wait any longer.  Not waiting for Number 5 to finish
with me, Number 4 stepped forward, looking straight into my eyes.

I could tell Number 4 apart from the others because he was slightly more
built than most of the wolves in his pack, was mostly bald on the top of
his head, and had an old-fashioned, blonde handle-bar mustache that clashed
with all of the modern tattoos that covered his body.  Also, the fucker had
a very pronounced tan-line, the sun-darkened tone of most of his body
contrasting with the whiteness of his hairy ass.

"I'm about to turn you into a fag-whore, you little bitch," Number 4 said
to me, looking at me in the eyes as he approached me from the rear.

No, no fucking way was I gonna stand to let some dirty fucking diseased
wolf stick their fuckstick up my ass.  I hated fucking bottoming even with
Sam, and Sam's body and clean dick turned me on infinitely more than this
greasy fuck.

As two of his wolf brothers held my legs apart and pivoted me up, the dirty
fuck spread my cheeks apart and touched my pucker with his finger as I
tried to clamp it shut.

"Oh shit, I can't wait to dick that twat," he said, an excited smile on his
stupid face.

He leaned his head in closer to my ass, his mouth open and salivating as he
neared my asshole.  Opening his mouth, he stuck out his long, wet tongue
and gently licked along my hole.

"Oh yeah, so fucking clean tasting," he said, and I was again reminded of
the grossest fucking taste imaginable in my mouth at that moment, Number
5's dirty dick, still plunging in and out of me.

Number 4 continued to lick my hole, getting rougher and rougher with each
swipe of his pink tongue.  Then he wrapped his lips around my hole and
started trying to French kiss the thing, sucking on me and then forcing his
tongue inside.

He licked and plunged for what seemed like forever, totally getting off on
what he was doing.  Then, suddenly, he got up off of me.  "Get off of him,"
he told Number 5.

"What the fuck, man?" Number 5 complained, still thrusting his dick into my
mouth.  "I'm kind of in the middle of something here."

"Get off!" Number 4 screamed at him.

And against all of his animal instinct that just wanted to fuck away at my
mouth, Number 5 forced himself to listen to authority and pulled his now
glistening dick out of my mouth.  I gasped for air, praying that his dick
would not again find its way back past my lips.

Number 4 stood right over me, his face about a foot above mine, looking
down at me with crazy in his eyes, and I had no idea what he intended to
do.  Then, he spit as he held my head in place.  The huge wad of spit
descended slowly from his mouth, and I wanted to shake away from it as it
got nearer and nearer to my face.

It landed right in my open mouth, and Number 4 smiled wide.  "Yeah, you
like that taste, huh bitch?"

I tried to swear at him, but could only mumble.

"What's that, baby girl?" Number 4 asked me.  "You wanna taste you some
more?"

I screamed out in pain as suddenly I felt him plunge a finger deep into my
ass.

"Goddamn!" he yelled, starting to finger-fuck my hole.  "This angel ass is
tighter than any fucking pussy I've seen.  Yeah, I'm gonna love popping
this cherry."

"This isn't the first time I've been fucked, you motherfucker!" I tried to
say, but once again only mumbles came out.

"What's that?" Number 4 said.  "You want to taste it again?  Well, here ya
go."  He pulled his finger out of my ass and ran it across my stretched
lips.  "Taste yourself, bitch?  Taste your fucking pussy?  You got a nice,
tight little pussy, and I gotta big fucking cock, and this fucking big cock
is about to rip your tight cunt wide open."

I tried to struggle, but the wolves held me in place, and almost
immediately I felt him spit again, this time into my asshole.

"You've been begging for it for long enough," Number 4 said.  "Well, here
ya go."

Without the slightest trace of tenderness, Number 4 shoved his dirty dick
into my hole.  I could feel my ass being probed and pushed by his enormous
cock.  I yelled out in pain as he got half of it in with the first thrust,
and when he thrust again and roughly forced himself all the way in, I
wanted to fucking kill myself from the shame.

"Yeah, tight little cherry," he cooed as he started to fuck me.  "Goddamn!"
he yelled out in pleasure as his big furry balls started to slam against
the bottom of my ass, starting a loud, rhythmic slapping sound.

And then to make things worse, Number 5 came back on me, holding my face in
his hands and forcing his dick back into my mouth.  I was getting it from
both ends like a fucking pig on a spit, like a filthy fucking slutty whore,
and I hated every split second of it.

Both men were sweating profusely as they fucked me, and their dirty,
stinking sweat started to drip down on me, covering me in their filth.

Number 4 put my legs over his shoulders and looked into my eyes and he
fucked me with that huge cock, letting me know with every second of it that
I was his bitch.  I could not swear at him with cock stuffed deep into my
mouth, but I would not look away from him, I stared him right back
defiantly.

Thank fucking God us angels had a dampened sense of pain.  As it was, pain
shot out from my ass and spread out through my body, torturing me.  The
other times I had gotten fucked, it had been by angels, and their angel
precum had loosened me up and eliminated the pain.  Getting fucked by a
wolf was a completely different experience, much more rough and painful.
Fuck, it felt like Number 4's cock was ripping me apart from the inside.  I
shuddered.

My pain only excited Number 4 more, it seemed, as he just savagely rammed
his member in and out of me with more force than ever.  "You love this
fucking huge tool popping your cherry, don't you?" he asked me.  "Fuck,
this may be the tightest cherry I've ever popped!"

I clamped my eyes shut and prayed for these horrors to end.

"Damn, I'm getting close," Number 5 said, still pumping away at my
mouth. "You're gonna milk my cum, bitch."

"Feed him some hot nut oil, man!" Number 4 cheered on his comrade from the
other side of me.

He let his load loose with a moan, and my mouth started flooding with the
rank taste of his cum.

Just then, Number 4 shouted "Motherfucker!" and pulled me tight and hard
against him as he started to unload in my ass.

So much fucking wolf cum, coming at me from both ends at once, and I prayed
these would be the last loads I would be subjected to by these fuckers.

"Swallow it!" Number 5 ordered, and even though he had already shot a
generous load into my mouth, he still had a couple more shots coming,
somehow managing to beat the amount of semen the last guy had dropped in my
mouth.  Then, finally, he got up off me, slapping me in the face with his
dick, then shooting the second part of his massive load all over my body.
When he was finally done, as his dick softened, he rubbed his cum all over
my flesh, then stuck his nose down and took a smell of it as it dried.
"That's right, this one's mine now."  I couldn't smell his cum on me, as
angel's didn't have a heightened sense of smell, but I knew that this
fucker could smell it, and it smelled just like him.

I started to understand what they were doing.  They all had wolf senses of
smell, so that sweat and cum smelled stronger to them than to me.  And just
like I could taste the difference between each man when I tasted their cum
with my super angel sense of taste, they could smell distinctly who the
sweat and cum belonged to.  And if something smelled like a particular
wolf, in their sick minds it was as if it belonged to them.  These fuckers
were taking turns marking me with their scents, and therefore marking me as
their object, as their bitch.  That's why they abused me in reverse order
of rank, because the wolf who went last would have the greatest chance of
leaving their smell on me, and therefore having me "marked" as their bitch
in the end.

Number 4 held onto me longer, enjoying the feeling of his cock softening
inside my ass surrounded by his cum, caressing me with his arms with
perhaps the slightest hint of tenderness.

"Get the fuck out of that hole, man," Number 3 said.  "We got some hot
plans for that cunt, and you've had your turn."

No, it still wasn't fucking over, I knew.  Still another one of these
fuckers was gonna choose me.

Finally Number 4 pulled out of me and back off as Number 3 stepped forward,
slapping Number 4's hand like it was the some perverted tagteam.

"What is that look on your face, little bitch?" he asked me.  "You thought
we were done with your hole?  Nah, not quite.  This asshole belongs to us
now, we'll fuck it all we want."

At first I had assumed that when Number 3 said "us," he meant the pack.
But reading his mind, I quickly realized that he meant something else
entirely.

Number 2 stepped out of the crowd, and if looking back and forth between
Number 2 and Number 3 for the first time gave me suspicions, reading their
minds confirmed them.

These guys were brothers.  And I didn't just mean pack-brothers.  No, these
two fuckers were twins.

They looked fucking identical, two large, stout men with pale skin, thick
heads, broad noses, thin lips, and dark hair.  Both had a thick layer of
muscle and a bit of flab as well, both had dark fur covering their legs,
torsos, forearms, and chests, with the same identical dark triangles of
hair between their pecs that was so thick they almost like cavernous holes
in the center of their ribs.  They seemed to have the same tattoos on their
arms, and their ample dicks were the same size and shape (both of them were
stroking their units to life).

There were only a couple differences between them.  One had a beard and was
shaved bald.  The other was clean shaven but with short black hair.  And
oddly enough, there was one more glaring, surprising difference: the guy
who had a beard was uncut, and the other was cut.

I probed their minds, coming to know that the two strongest wolves in this
pack besides the fucking gargantuan Zakhar himself were pretty much each
others' matches physically.  While none of their wolf underlings had ever
won a fighting challenge against them, the twins fought each other
frequently in bouts of dominance, and constantly switched positions in the
pack pecking order with each other.  They rotated so regularly in fact that
the rest of the pack often could not keep track of which one was 2 and
which was 3 at any given moment.  To the other wolves in their pack, the
two even smelled identical.

They approached me together while the others held me in place.  The
circumcised one with short hair took a long whiff of my body and looked
displeased.  "Damn, Number 5, his body smells your jizm," he said.

"Smells good, don't it?" Number 5's voice came from the crowd.

"Well, it won't smell like that for long," the cut twin told him.

Meanwhile the other twin, the bald, uncut one, was coming up on my lower
half and pulling my backside into the air. "Whew," he said, wrinkling his
ugly fucking nose.  "His pussy smells like Number 4's cum rag."

The cut twin motioned to the four wolves holding me in the air.  "Lift him
up straight," he said.  "I want him upright."

The wolves holding me repositioned themselves so that they could hold me
upright directly in front of the cut twin.

"Now, get his feet where they belong, with his ankles by his ears," the
twin continued to command.  "I want him folded up like a bitch."

The wolves holding my feet forced my legs up and forward, into a sitting
position, and then they kept on pushing until my feet and legs were up in
the air as high as they would go, leaving my ass pulled tight and
vulnerable beneath me.

That's exactly what the cut twin wanted.  He came up to me with lust in his
eyes and took me in his arms roughly, the front of his body in between my
legs and pressed against my torso.

He reached beneath me and stroked my asscrack a few times, then he lined
his dickhead up against my butthole.  "At least you got his cunt lubed up,
Number 4," the twin said.

Quickly, he forced his dick all the way into me, grunting hard as he made
his intrusion.  I closed my eyes and prayed that this would be the last
time, that it would be over soon.

"Baby, you feel so fucking good," the cut twin purred into my ear as he
held onto my front while he fucked me.

The cut twin dug his hands into my back as he drove into me, but suddenly I
felt another pair of hands on the top of my ass.  It was the uncut twin,
coming up behind me.  "Is there enough room for one more?" he asked.

"Not hardly, but that's never stopped us before, has it?" the cut twin
asked his brother.

Then panic set in as I realized for the first time what the second twin was
about to do.  He lined up the underside of his shaft with the same part of
his brother's dick and pressed his knob against my already strained
asshole.

"Fucking tight," the uncut twin said.  "You think I can get it in without
splitting this bitch in two?"

"I don't know, but either way it'll be a fun fuck," the cut twin answered.

I tightened my body and clamped my eyes shut as the uncut twin started to
force his dick in my ass alongside his brother's, and I could not fucking
believe the thing was going in.  My asshole burned so fucking bad I
wondered if I was bleeding on them.  Fuck, if I was, it wouldn't stop them;
they'd just thank me for the added lube.

The twin pushed all the way in, and the pain was momentous, the feeling of
utter fullness making me sick to my stomach.

"Fuck yeah," the cut brother said to his twin.  "I can feel your cock
sliding up against mine in this tight twat."

That seemed to excite them both, as they both fucked me at once, timed to
an opposite rhythm, with one twin always at the height of his thrust while
the other was at the start of it.  It was fucking torture, being
jack-hammered like that, and I once again wished that they would kill me
just to have this humiliation at an end.

"Yeah, I love it when we double-dick a pretty little slut like this," the
uncut twin said from behind me.  I felt fucking sorry for every poor fucker
that had come before me.

They fucked me like that for a few minutes while the others cheered them
on.  Then, the cut twin stopped fucking me and just stayed inside of me.
"Someone get me a strap," he said.

A few moments later one of the wolves handed the cut twin a slim leather
strap.  What the hell was that for?

"Yeah, just what I was thinking," the uncut brother said as he stopped
fucking me as well and just held his dick inside me.

The cut brother reached down and used the strap to tie the base of his dick
against his brother's.  Clearly this was not the first time they had tied
themselves together like that.  Yes, clearly these two were the sickest,
most perverted twins to ever walk the Earth.  Then they started to fuck me
together in unison, as if their two dicks had combined into one super huge
dick.

It fucking hurt more than any of the screwing any of the wolves had put me
through before.  They fucked me slowly at first, then built up steam,
eventually pounding me with their fierce, fast jabs.

Then, after a few minutes of their assuault, I felt both the brother who
was holding onto the front of me and the brother who was holding on from
behind start to shake.  Both of them started to howl loudly, wolflike, and
then simultaneously they exploded their loads, bombarding my insides with
the huge blasts of their gushing hot jism.

"Hell yeah brother," the uncut one said as their orgasms wound down.  "Now
we got our scent sticking like glue to all his insides.  Can't fucking
smell Number 4's wad in there anymore."

They pulled out of my hole, at last ending my torture.  My butthole still
burned from their double-attack, and was stretched so wide now that I could
feel their loads dripping out of me, sliding down my leg.

The cut twin smelled my body as the uncut twin unbound the strap from their
softening dicks.  "His skin still smells like Number 5's slime," he said,
unhappily.

"Well, there's only one way to clean him up and mark him permanently as our
bitch," the uncut twin said.

Fuck, I didn't want to know what that was.

"I like how you think, brother!" the cut twin told him.

They both stood in front of me, looking down at me from above.  They both
held their now only semi-hard dicks in their hands and pointed them at me.
"Bitch looks like she needs a good washing," the uncut twin said, and then
yellow streams of liquid shot out of both their dicks and started pouring
all over me.  It was absolutely humiliating.

"Yeah, how do you like being hosed down?" the cut twin asked me while he
aimed the spray at my head.

I turned my face away so that I wouldn't get any of the rank piss in my
mouth, but that didn't stop them from hitting every other part of my body.
They both had full bladders and pissed like race-horses, and they seemed to
enjoy coating all of my skin almost as much as they had enjoyed fucking me.

When their tanks finally emptied, when their stream turned into just a
dribble, they both looked down at me, now covered in urine, and they were
both so fucking proud of themselves.

The uncut brother took a satisfied whiff of me.  "Now he smells like us and
nobody fucking else," he said happily, and both the twins stepped back into
the circle.

 "Not if I have anything to say about it," came a deep, booming voice.
Zakhar stepped forward, the Alpha Dog, the last one to have his way with
me.  The one whose sickness and perversion had infected this entire pack.

Zakhar was a big motherfucker, that was for damn sure.  Short hair, scruffy
but short beard, murderous eyes, and powerful rounded muscles all
throughout his body.  Dude was fucking hairy too, and like the other
wolves, his body hair was damp with sweat.  One of the oddest things about
him was that his body hair and beard were brownish red in color, while the
hair on his head was pure brown.

He wore that ridiculous black leather vest, as if surrounded by wolves who
didn't have a scrap of clothing, that one garment would make him stand out
and proclaim his superiority.  Dude might as well have worn a fucking gold
crown on his head.

And then there was his dick, the other way he stood out from the others.
His huge uncut dong had a Prince Albert on the tip of it, one with a
larger, thicker ring going through his flesh than I had never imagined they
put in.  Made me wince just to look at it.  Then I noticed that instead of
some polished bead at the end of it, Zakhar sported a spiky sphere, clearly
not meant to give any chick sexual pleasure unless she got off on having
her pussy ripped to shreds.

"Hold him on his back!" Zakhar yelled, more forceful and in command than
any of the asshole wolves that had come before him.

The four wolves holding onto me positioned me on my back with my crotch in
the air.

Zakhar came up to me, put his nose to my hole, and too a good long whiff.
"Smells like a fucking used condom," he said, not happy about it.  I hoped
whatever rank smell he was detecting would be enough to leave me alone, but
it wasn't.  He pushed a callused finger against my hole.  "Look at his
creamy white ass, just begging to have a real wolf's cock open it up."

He grabbed my left ankle in his right hand and squeezed until it hurt,
pushing away the wolf who had been holding onto my leg.  "You too, go, I
don't fucking need you," he said to the wolf who had been gripping my right
leg as he grabbed that ankle with his left hand.

Fuck, this was my chance!  While before it had always taken four of them to
hold onto me, now there was only three.  I whipped my legs back and forth,
trying with everything I had to break out of his hands on my ankles.  I
thought I would have been able to at least pull one leg free, but
goddamnit, he was just too strong.  The more I fought him, the more he just
laughed at my useless efforts.  He proved to me in the most humiliating way
possible that he was one of the most physically strong wolves alive.

While the other two wolves held my arms behind my back, Zakhar used his
huge, muscled arms to pull my legs apart and open.  He pulled them as far
as they had ever stretched before and then kept on pulling them apart,
until he had me doing the splits, grunting in pain.

Then, when I was stretched so far that anymore pressure would have surely
ripped me apart, he pushed his dickead against my hole.  He rubbed against
my sensitive skin there, purposely trying to scrape me with his spiked
piercing.  I was determined not to let him see the discomfort he was
causing me, so I kept my face angry and stoic.

Then his dick rocketed inside of me, his spike scraping away at my insides.
He held my legs apart as he fucked me hard, the cum of his wolf brothers
sloshing out of me everytime his huge dick plunged all the way inside.

Yes, his dick was probably the biggest of all of his pack.  And yes, the
piercing scratched inside me.  But he wanted so bad for his rape to be the
most painful of all the wolves, for me to cry hot tears from the pain his
dick was causing me.  Truth was, I had already been opened up by the other
wolves.  Fuck, I had just survived getting fucked by two dicks at once.
After that assault, this one felt much less painful, as big as his dick may
have been.  In fact, I laughed to myself, knowing that in this small way, I
had overcome him.

Just when I had convinced myself that the pain was manageable, I felt a
strange new sensation.  My ass was on fire as it filled to the brim with
hot liquid.  Zakhar had a newly pleased look on his face.

"Fuck, Alpha's found his urinal!" one of the other wolves said.

And I realized what was happening.  I realized that this motherfucker had
the audacity to fucking piss in my hole.  Suddenly, I was getting a piss
enema, and piss started pouring out of me as he hosed more and more of it
inside me.

Worst part was, he continued to fuck me as he pissed inside me, his dick
not even softening in the slightest.  Each thrust ejected more yellow
liquid out of my hole and onto my body.

Finally, he pulled out of me, but there was still more piss shooting from
his dick, this time washing down my chest and neck.  Fucker must have had
downed a 12-pack of beer for all the piss he sprayed on me.  Finally the
flow stopped, a trickle of yellow still dripping from his dick.  He leaned
down and smelled my hole, satisfied.  "This cunt is clean now," he said.
"Now it's fit to be fucked."

Isn't that what you've been doing to me already, you stupid motherfucker?

 "Let him go," Zakhar ordered, and the wolves who had been holding my arms
dropped me, my head and upper back landing hard on the ground.  Zakhar let
go of my ankles then, and I was free at last on the ground, almost too
shocked at this sudden turn of events to react.

That stupor didn't last long, however.  I jumped up to my feet and started
to spring towards the door.

Trouble was, before I could go a couple feet the wolves were on me, beating
into me with their fists.  I was stronger than any of them in their man
forms, but there were so many of them, and as soon as I pushed one off me,
three more would come.

In spite of all my willpower and aggression, it wasn't long before I was
knocked to the ground, dazed.  They had beaten me down.

As soon as they knew they had won, they backed off.  Apparently none of
them had the guts to finish their kill.

I saw a huge shadow come up behind me, and knew there was more than a man
at my back.  I craned my neck around to see Zakhar's brownish-red werewolf
form right at my back, a furry monster, all sharp claws and slobering
fangs.

He put his huge werewolf hand around my neck and lifted me up off the
ground.  As he snarled behind me, he hit me in the back with his other hand
and slammed me hard into the wall.  Then he started to beat me with his
left hand as he held me up against the wall with his right hand, beat me
until the pain left my body and I almost fell into blackness.  This monster
was fucking STRONG.

If the man had towered over me, the monster seemed twice my size.  He held
me like a doll, pulling me off my feet and a good yard off the ground, all
the while holding me impaired against the wall.  He put a furry arm around
my throat, putting me into a powerful headlock from behind.

He pushed his furry chest against my back so hard it knocked the breath out
of me.

And then the worst indecency of the whole gang-rape happened.  I felt the
familiar spiked metal against my asscrack.  He lined his dickhead against
my hole once more, only this time his dick wasn't just large man-sized, it
was monster-sized.

While the other wolves cheered their Alpha on, he pushed his dick against
my hole.  It would not go in easily, as it didn't seem like my ass could
possibly take this fucker's cock even an inch within.

But he forced himself into me, stretching my hole to new levels of pain as
I was forced to take this beast's dick inside.  As he slowly pushed more
and more in, my façade broke down.  Tears stung my eyes and I started to
cry out in pain.

That only made him more ferocious, as he slammed all the way to home and
held me there, totally impaled by his cock.  He growled happily and I felt
his excited slobber drip down my back.

He clamped down his jaws onto the back of my neck, hard enough to make me
wince, and then he started to really fuck me.  Back and forth, in and out,
my limp body bouncing up and down on this impalement, each thrust more
painful than the last.

He bit down harder as he fucked me, and dripped more and more saliva down
my back.  He gave out a low growl as he tightened his headlock, squeezing
my throat with those powerful arms until I could barely breathe.

He continued to fuck me, and he was so damn excited then that he started to
foam at the mouth.  Eventually all the slobber ran all the way down my back
and into my asscrack.  Although it certainty wasn't planned that way by
Zakhar, his saliva became lube in my hole, at least giving me some respite
from the painful intrusion in my ass.

Trying to get my mind off the pain, I started to make a list in my head of
the fuckers who I had a personal vendetta against, my own personal "Kill
Bill" set of names who I swore I would see to their deaths, preferably in
my bloody hands.  It consisted of four individuals.

First there was the leader of the blooddemons who had betrayed us in Denver
and almost caused my death; just because the blooddemons weren't the enemy
I was fighting on this day didn't mean I forgot what that little monster
had done.

Then Rick, the leader of the wolves who now were massacring my entire
Flock.  I had been looking for a chance to fight the fucker, and if I did
he would die a painful death after he had been totally bested by my
superior fighting strength.

There was that sadist Leung who may have been the most powerful wolf alive;
I didn't give a flying fuck, I would kill him either way.

And now, newly added to my list was the pig Zakhar, the first person to
violate me in every possible way all at once.  Oh, how I wanted him to
suffer.

As Zakhar continued to build up a steam, he fucked me with faster, deeper
strokes.  At the same time, he bit down on the back of my neck harder,
eventually drawing blood, and squeezed tighter on his headlock.  Soon, he
was pushing all of his weight against me, crushing me against the wall with
his sexual fury.

His arm around my throat had constricted so hard that I could no longer
breathe in the slightest.  His body crushed me so hard that I felt like I
was about to break.

He fucked me harder than ever, so hard he was doing it at superhuman
speeds.

He started to howl and he thrust all the way inside me as he flexed every
muscle in his body, crushing me against the wall.  Spurt after spurt of
monster cum started to unload in my ass.

And then I started to painfully fade away, crushed by his strength as I
realized that had been his plan all along, to crush me to death as he came
inside me.  That was how he ended each of his fuckings, by killing his
victim, smothering them with his own weight.

It was the worst fucking conceivable way to die, nothing could have been
more embarrassing, and that was how it was gonna be for me.  At least the
humiliation would finally come to an end.

But then all those wolf thoughts in that room, all cockiness and lust and
dark violence that whole time, those thoughts turned suddenly to surprise,
and it was so stark a difference that it made my eyes flick open again with
life.  Lucky I did, for I was able to see once again my lover coming to
save me.

It was Sam, and he had Nathaniel and Paran behind him, and all three came
rushing into the room.  All three had swords drawn; it seemed Nathaniel had
found one of his own somewhere out there and was putting it to good use.
They took the Russian pack by surprise, splitting up and surrounding the
group.

Paran was living up to my expectations, he was strong and a skilled
fighter.  He made short work of the werewolves who came at him, using his
telepathy to keep him out of harm's way.

Surprisingly, Nathaniel was nearly as strong and skilled as Paran himself,
clearly displaying a long history of battle.  He dispatched of the wolves
who came ate him with ease.

It was Sam who was sorely disappointing.  He underestimated how low his
strength would be now that he essentially was Delector-less, and although
he was greatly skilled with the sword, he used that skill as a crutch when
what he really needed was more strength.  Frankly, he just wasn't worth
having around, managing to kill only one werewolf on his own before Paran
had to bail him out of getting swiped by another, and finally committing
the worst offense yet: accidentally letting Zakhar and the twins run off
scott free.  After the alpha werewolf landed a blow to Sam, Sam was so weak
he could not stop the Russian pack-leader as he morphed into a wolf and
slipped out of there and to his freedom, the twins right at his heel.
Damn, the worst offenders had gotten away.

Finally freed from my captors, I lay on the floor, urging my body to heal.
Sam looked down at me, those deep blue eyes showing bottomless compassion
even through the eyeholes of his mask.  He could see the rank fluids all
over my body, he could probably see the tears on my cheeks, he knew
instantly what had happened to me.

"Oh Gideon," he said to me, kneeling down to embrace me.  As if after all I
had been through, all I needed was a fucking hug to make things all right
again.  Fuck that.  The only thing that would heal this kind of pain was
the taste of wolf blood in my mouth.

"I'm fine," I said, shoving him off me and forcing myself to stand upright.
I would not be weak.

"You are anything but fine," Sam said.

"My mask," I said, as I realized that the others, the Cherubim, were
looking at my face.  Funny thing how I couldn't give a fuck about my
nudity, but being without my mask at that moment felt like I was more naked
than ever.  "Give me my mask!"

"Take at least a moment," Sam said to me.

"Give me my goddman mask!" I yelled with all of my available volume, not
caring if I spit in Sam's face in the process.  All the others were looking
at me, concerned.

Sam seemed perturbed, but he reached down and handed me my mask.  I put it
over my face, and immediately felt a million times stronger.

As I recovered my other possessions from the floor, the others untied
Cedron and Flea.  The young Delector had to be slapped by his Domno before
he regained consciousness and was able to keep moving.

"Forget about rejoining the fight for now," Sam said to me.  "The wolves
have only been able to best us when we are few in number.  Standing
together, we will complete the task at hand.  There's no other way."

"Fine," I relented.  "I just want to get out of this fucking room."  The
smell of blood and sex and sweat was heavy in the air, and all the wolf
bodies were a constant reminder of what they had done to me here.  "Lead
on, Sam."

Our company left that room and drove quickly through the halls, moving in
total silence, not because the wolves could hear us while we were cloaked,
we knew they couldn't.  But the silence would let us hear if any of them
were approaching.

Eventually, we approached the base of the Spine, the vast, extremely tall
room that always housed a horde of Thrones, using their cloaking powers to
keep the Ensis invisible.

Thankfully, the steel doors were still locked and unharmed.

But I knew they wouldn't stay that way for long.  Standing outside the door
was that Marine wolf Russ.

He gazed up at the large doors with an intense desire to destroy by force
anything that otherwise seemed impenetrable.  He "just knew" that behind
one of those locked doors his two brothers were trapped inside.  He didn't
have much C4 left in his bag.  Besides the amount he had put aside to save
for later, there would just be enough to blow down a massive pair of doors
like this.

He attached his mass of explosives to the door of the Spine and ran off
quickly down the hall away from us.  We all knew it was only a matter of
seconds before he set off the bomb remotely.

"This will be the end for all of those Thrones inside," Nathaniel lamented,
his voice as controlled as ever.  "And with it, the end of more than a
thousand years of being veiled from the graceless eyes of man."

Nathaniel and the others thought about what conclusions this would bring to
our kind, when Russia could see for once the most magnificent building in
its midst.  This was one room that could not be breached, and yet here it
was about to be blown apart by one single wolf.

Not if Cedron had anything to do about it, apparently.  He did something
far nobler than I ever would have been able to do.  He ran towards that
bomb on the door as fast as he could.  He picked the bomb off the door and
kept on running around the corner.

BOOM.

The blast went off, not so far away from where our party stood, but luckily
Cedron had taken the bomb around the corner, removing us from the brunt of
the blast, and we were all completely out of harm's way.

So was the door of the Spine.  He had succeeded!

Down the hallway, Russ's thoughts were livid.  Damnit!  Winged bastard
botched my bomb!  Now I don't got enough C4 left to open that damned door!

But though the Spine seemed once again safe, we had lost a good angel in
the process, and I wondered if his sacrifice was worth the exchange.

Flea's sad anxiety made me turn to look at him.  He knew that his life was
over before that Invisible Harness clicked something off in his brain.  He
didn't even get to finish the phrase "Jesus esta conmingo," before he
convulsed for a moment, and then fell to the ground, dead.  Apparently, if
a Domno predeceased his Delector, the flock would not let the Delector stay
living, and their IH's would kill them with a minimal amount of pain.
Better to die that way, I knew, than to die a slow painful death from the
worst kind of withdrawal known to man; to go without your Domno's cum.

And then there were just four of us left, all angels.  Two Seraphim, a
Power, and a Dominion.  Nobody said anything to anyone.  Cedron had been a
good Power and had proven in his death to be real fucking heroic as well.
None of us needed to point out the obvious with words.

This time, Paran didn't even have to urge us to continue, we knew what we
must do.

We got to the elevator without anymore shit going down, and I pushed the up
button.  We were all more than relieved when the elevator doors opened,
brightly lit and clear of any intruders, and our ascent seemed to imply our
imminent success.

Things in my life were never that fucking easy, it seemed.  Next to me, Sam
put his head to his temple in concentration.  "The wolves know we're on
this elevator," he said ominously.  "They're planning an ambush above us.
They've already pushed the button.  This elevator won't be going to the top
floor without stopping at the 20th, and when it does, there will be a whole
cadre of wolves with guns aimed our way."

"Then this elevator is useless to us," Nathaniel said, jamming the 15th
floor button.  "We'll get off here instead and find another way up."

I wasn't one to run from a fight, but it was a wise course of action.  The
elevator doors stopped with a chime at the 15th floor and opened up to an
empty, wolf-free hallway.  We stepped out triumphantly knowing that the
wolves would be more than a bit confused when the elevator opened up on the
20th floor in a moment, completely empty.

We walked along the 15th floor, the railing to our left leading out into
the center of the Ensis.  From here we were looking straight across about
at Gabriel's thigh.  I leaned over the railing and looked down to the
bottom of the Ensis.  The war raged on between the armored Powers with
their big shields and the beastly werewolves.  From here, it looked like
the wolves were clearly winning; in fact, the number of Powers left seemed
depressingly low.  It made me want to jump the railing, fly down there, and
join the fight.

Above us, on the 20th floor, we could hear the gathered wolves around the
elevator shooting into the open elevator doors.

"But there's nobody in there!" one of them said in an Australian accent.

"They're in there, they just are godamn invisible.  Keep firing til you see
something bleed!"

I laughed as we moved safely along the hallway of the 15th floor.  "Well,
how do we get up from here?  Take the stairs?"

Paran shook his head.  "Aren't any," he said.  "Only two ways up.  That
elevator, which obviously is out of the question.  And to fly through the
middle."

I looked up at the dozens of stories still left to climb.  Various wolf
gunners were stationed at different balconies on the floors above, shooting
randomly into the air.  They'd make flying up a dangerous prospect, but
there was no easier alternative.

"Shit, let's fly up then," I said.

Just after the others agreed, a psychic call came from downstairs, on the
ground level.  I knew it belonged to Lamech, the leader of the Power
guards.

Most of our Power brothers have died honorably on the battlefield, but the
enemy still surges.  The time has come for the Thrones to die for their
Lord as well.  All Thrones, arm yourselves as best as you can and come into
battle at once.

Our resolves sank as we heard Lamech's cry.  If he was in need of the
Thrones to fight, then the Power army must have been all but dead.
Three-hundred soldiers, gone so quickly, and the Thrones weren't nearly as
capable fighters.

Soon, Thrones and their Delectors began appearing from everywhere.
Apparently they had been hiding in their apartments during the battle, and
now they left their cover and flew down to the ground floor, carrying their
Delectors with them.

"Never have I witnessed the need to call Thrones to arms," Nathaniel said.
"This is indeed a sad day for our kind."

I gazed out into the hall, amazed at the number of white-feathered figures
flying down.  "There must be more Thrones heading into battle than the army
of Powers that went earlier," I said.

"More than twice as many, my liege," Nathaniel answered.

"Then perhaps that number will be sufficient to turn the tides against the
invaders," I said.

"Not likely, my liege," Nathaniel answered.  "Our numbers are high, but
those aren't warriors flying down there.  They haven't been trained for
battle, and many of them are dragging physically and mentally ill Delectors
into battle with them."

"Let's at least use this distraction as an opportunity to ascend," Paran
said.  "We'll fly in a tight line, with me in the lead.  Whatever happens,
remember to avoid the gunfire and stay cloaked."

Paran threw his wings out and jumped over the balcony into the open air of
the interior of the Ensis.

"I'll go second," I said, not wanting this Power to show me up.  I ripped
my wings out from under my robes and leapt off the balcony, following the
long-haired angel in front of me.

Nathaniel took flight behind me and Sam brought up the rear.  Paran led us
upwards in a circular pattern, our line repeatedly cycling up the statue of
Gabriel.  Paran flew fast, deftly moving to the left and right to avoid any
gunfire that the wolves were shooting into the air.  Being new to flying
myself, it took all of my effort to just keep up with the guy.

We rose just about ten stories before trouble struck in the form of a stray
bullet landing in Sam's thigh.  Looking back, it became apparent that Sam
was no longer cloaking.

"Cloak!" I shouted back at him, noticing the gun-wolves noticing him for
the first time and running around for a better shot.

"I can't, not with this bullet in my leg!" Sam yelled back.

Now our whole line had slowed down to allow Sam to catch up, and more and
more wolves aimed their automatic weapons at him and started to fire.

"Pull out the goddamn bullet, pull it the fuck out!" I yelled, knowing he
wouldn't have long before he was showered with bullets, and if his wings
were taken out, that would be the end of him.

As we flew on, Sam tried to dig the bullet out of the bloody wound on his
thigh with his bare fingers.  "I can't get it out!" he shouted.

Panic erupted inside me as I became more and more convinced that my lover
was about to face his death.

Instead, Nathaniel pulled back in our line until he was along Sam's left
side, in between Sam and the wolves shooting at us from the outside.  At
first I thought he intended to take the bullets instead of them hitting a
Sam, but then I realized he was doing something far more practical.  He
reached over and grabbed Sam's left hand, and as soon as he did, Sam once
again cloaked, Nathanial cloaking him through touch.

The wolves once again were blind to us, but this time they weren't going to
forget about us.  "Keep shooting!" ordered Watt's deep voice from some
floor above.

They kept on shooting, more urgently than before Sam had been shot yet less
focused and directed.

"Faster, we must rise faster!" I yelled.  "It's only a matter of time
before we all are covered in holes."

"We're going as fast as we can, my liege," Paran told me as we continued to
fly.

We went up several more stories before one of those random bullets finally
hit one of us, this time hitting Nathaniel in the right arm.

"Damn!" I said as soon as I realized that the bullet had been embedded in
my ally's flesh.  Sam and Nathaniel's shared cloak vanished, leaving both
of them extremely vulnerable.

All of the gunmen took notice at once, setting their sights on the two of
them.

"Evasive maneuvers, Nathaniel!" Sam shouted as the two of them, hands still
clasped, read the mind of every gunmen around them and shot left then
right, up then down in the attempt to avoid as much gunfire as they could.

It seemed to be working for them, as a few bullets grazed them but none
landed in their flesh.

We were moving so fast, none of us took notice of one of our biggest foes
approaching a nearby railing.  Perhaps none of us expected that he would
have made his way all the way up here from downstairs, but he had.

A stream of fire shot outwards from one of the nearby railings we were
passing.  This was not a mere barrage of bullets, this fireblast turned out
to be completely unavoidable.

Sam was on the inside, so the blast of orange light hit Nathaniel instead
on his right side.  Leung was shouting gleefully as Nathaniel's right wing
went up in flames, and this sound soon was echoed by Nathaniel's painful
screams.

Part of his right wing disintegrated alarmingly fast, turning charred black
and then falling into grey ash.

Destroying his wing wasn't enough, and Leung kept at it, aiming his
firestream into the man himself.

Natheniel, thinking fast, did the only thing he could do: turn into stone.
The fire burned through his clothes but did not burn his flesh.

But even Nathaniel knew this was a shortlived victory.  Immediately,
without his wing and now turned to stone, the angel began to fall.

It all happened so fast, there was nothing any of us could do.  It was all
the rest of us could manage to do just to avoid the fiery blast as well.

Nathaniel's stone form fell down into the hazy chaos below, and when it
landed unseen, his psychic presence snapped off.

We all knew he had crashed to his death, probably breaking into a million
pieces.

Leung, cheering to himself, tried to take down Sam as well, but the three
of us were already well above his range.

"Keep forward!" Paran urged us, flying up more steeply that ever.

But more and more wolves with guns were firing at Sam.  Copying Nathaniel,
I fell back in my flight and grabbed Sam by the hand, cloaking him with my
touch and hoping that would be the end of the bullets.

It wasn't.  Before long, Sam was randomly hit with a few bullets in his
left wing.  He fluttered uselessly in the air for a moment before starting
to fall.

I wouldn't let him die like Nathaniel had.  I reached back, grabbed him
around the waist from above, and carried him up with me, cloaking him all
the while.

"Don't worry, I've got you," I said, and his thoughts were extremely
grateful.

Thing was, I hadn't had much practice flying while carrying someone as
heavy as Sam was, and it was messing up my flying to the point where I
could barely ascend.  Paran had to slow himself down.

"Should I carry him, my liege?" Paran asked, a bit exasperated.

"No, I have him!" I snapped at the Power.

"We need to move faster than this," Paran said, commenting on my glacial
upwards pace.

"We'll be fine at this pace as long as we are cloaked," I said.

As soon as I had said it, another stray bullet hit me in the ribs, making
me cry out with shock.  Immediately I lost my cloak.  Sam and I had just
become sitting ducks.

Ahead of us, I saw a nearby wolf aim his automatic right towards my face.
The bullets all missed me, instead hitting Paran head on.  A bullet hit him
in the torso, a couple pierced his legs, and several more went through his
wings.  Suddenly the Adonis Power could no longer cloak or even fly
unassisted.

Before he could fall, I dived forward and grabbed onto him, using just my
left arm to hold onto Sam and my right to grab the feathers of one of
Paran's lame wings.  I could not hope to fly properly holding onto both of
them like that, but did manage to glide the three of us down a level and
over the railing onto the floor of the hallway.

Safe on the floor, the three of us piled together in a mess of bloody
wings, I heard Sam thank the Lord in a quick prayer for our lives.

"But what do our lives matter when we have lost Nathaniel," Paran said,
"and with him, the key that is our only chance of victory."

Beneath Sam's mask, I knew he was smiling.  "You have more reason to be
thankful to God than you realize, Cherub," Sam said.  He raised his hand.
Clutched in his white fingers was Nathaniel's rosary and the key.

Paran closed his eyes and said a little prayer of his own.

"How'd you do it?" I asked Sam excitedly.

"I did nothing," Sam said.  "Nathaniel was the one who gave it to me before
he fell to his death.  We have lost an invaluable ally in that one."

"Then we must continue on, so that his sacrifice will not be in vain,"
Paran said.

I looked at the remaining fifteen or so stories above us.  "There's more
gunmen than ever up there, and all three of us are wounded.  There's no way
we'll make it if we keep flying in the middle like this.  Not unless we
wait here for our wounds to heal so that we may cloak again."

"There is another conceivable way up," Sam said.

Limping, Sam went through an open apartment door, and Paran and I followed
him through.  Sam hobbled through the living space towards the huge tinted
windows at the back of the unit.

"We could go on the outside," he said.

He pulled out his sword from its sheathe and struck against the window, but
all he left was a scratch.  Unfazed, he raised the weapon high up and came
down with as hard a blow as he could manage.  Still, the window remained
unbroken.

Standing nearby the kitchenette of the apartment, I got an idea.  "Stand
out of the way," I said to Sam, purposefully a bit demeaning in tone.

I picked up the refrigerator, yanked it out of the wall, and hurled it
towards the windows.

That would do it.  The fridge broke a huge hole in the windows as it went
through, falling down towards the ground below.

"Fortitude proves himself worthy," Sam said, impressed at my strength.

All three of us looked through the smashed window out into the night
beyond.  "If we just wait until out wings heal," Paran said.

"Then we could fly up on the outside of the building and go back in once we
had reached Nathaniel's office," Sam said.

Our discussion was interrupted by the whoosh-whoosh of a nearby helicopter
that suddenly made itself known outside, flying up from the ground beneath
us towards the top of the building.

"Fuck!" I said.  "They got an M-8!  How'd the wolves come by one of those?
And looks like it's fully armed, boys.  Those are machine guns and S-5
rockets."

"What's its purpose?" Paran asked.

Sam shut his eyes.  "It's transporting wolves," he answered, obviously
coming by this knowledge psychically.  His psychic reach seemed endless
sometimes; I was picking up nothing from inside the helicopter.  "The pilot
has been taking trips with loads of wolves up here and getting them
through.  That's how the wolves have been appearing from the top of the
Ensis, it's all due to one busy little helicopter."

Because the outside walls of the Ensis had a gradual Pyramid-like slant, it
meant we could see the floors beneath us quite easily while we would have
had to lean outside and crane our necks around to see what was above.  We
watched down from our vantage point as the copter stopped at some floor
beneath us, hovered for a moment, then fired a rocket into a glass window.
This blew a hole in the building, and the copter turned sideways and moved
close to this hole.

Soon a group of armed wolves were leaping from the copter into the hole in
the glass window, where they would surely move through the apartment they
had landed in and start shooting into the air from the floor they were on.

The helicopter descended again.

"It'll be back," Sam told us.

"We can't face an M-8," I said.  "We'll just have to wait out our wounds
and go up through the middle once we can cloak again.  Let me just lock
this front door."

I walked over to the front of the apartment, wincing at the pain in my
torso and feeling the bullet under my skin.  It would have to be cut open
and removed.

When I reached the open door of the apartment and looked out into the hall,
I was surprised to see a familiar face looking right back at me.  Somehow I
had missed his psychic signature until I was nearly on top of him.

There in the doorway of the apartment, sniffing the air for traces of his
prey, was Watts, the Australian wolf who Sam and I knew was almost as
strong as Rick himself.

"Hello, mate," he said grinning.

Knowing we could not face a battle with one of the strongest wolves alive
in our injured condition, I quickly shut and bolted the door.

"Watts is right outside!" I told the others as I threw every piece of
nearby furniture onto the door, creating a makeshift barricade.

Before I had finished, Watts already started pounding against the door.

"Watts!" Sam said.  "We can't go out that way now."

"And it won't be long before he busts that door down," I said, running back
over to Sam and Paran by the window.

"Then we have no choice but to go up through the outside," Sam said.

"But how?" I asked.  "We can't just fly out of here.  Both of you have
injured wings, remember?"

Both Paran and Sam were looking at me expectantly.

"What?" I asked.  "No, you don't expect me to carry both of you and fly us
up to the top of the building?"

"I would be able to do it," Paran said.

"Yeah, well too bad you got about a fucking hundred bullets inside you
then, isn't it Paran?" I asked him.

"Come on," Sam encouraged me.  "You're Fortitude.  You can handle this."  I
had to hand it to Sam, he knew better than anyone how to work my fucking
ego.

"Aight Justice," I spat, "I'll fly both you motherfuckers, or at least give
it a shot.  Each of you grab a leg and hold on.  But you can be damn sure
that if we just sink, I'll be kicking both ya'll off me before I let you
pull me down with you.  Got it?"

Standing through the broken window, I flapped my wings and started to hover
a couple feet above the floor of the apartment.  Sam quickly twisted his
left arm around my right thigh.  Paran grabbed onto my left leg with more
hesitation.

"You can do this," Sam said.  "Just flap like hell and don't listen to your
body when it tells you it's tired."

I nodded, saying a quick prayer to God to see me through this.

I flapped upwards, beating as hard as I could, and lifting both angels off
the floor and into the outside Moscow air.  I successfully ascended a good
fifteen feet before coming to a stop.  As much as I tried, all I could
manage was to hover in place.

"You must flap harder, my liege!" Paran snapped.

"I'm trying here!" I yelled.  "It's taking all I got just to keep us from
falling!"

My wings soon became pained with exhaustion.  Not knowing what else to do,
I moved against the outside glass wall of the Ensis, pressing my hands and
feet against the glass.

It seemed that the wall was slanted just enough and the glass provided just
enough friction to allow me to take some of the weight off of my wings by
pressing against the glass.

"Yes, we'll use the glass as a support if we must," Sam said.

"We must, trust me," I said.  "Both of you plaster yourself against the
wall and try to slow yourselves from falling as much as you can."

Sam and Paran did as I asked, and although I was still holding up most of
their mass with the beating of my wings, staying against the glass gave me
enough strength to actually continue ascending.

"Yes, good, you're doing it perfectly!" Sam cooed as I lifted them foot by
foot up the glass.

"But there's so much fucking more to go," I complained.

We rose slowly but steadily.  After I had gone eight stories, I stopped for
a rest, using only the strength needed to beat my wings enough to hold us
in place.

"Better not stop, my liege," Paran said, pointing down.  "This wolf who is
supposedly one of the strongest alive.  He has broken through the locked
door of the apartment we just vacated and has just spotted us through the
hole in the window we left."

"Well big fucking deal.  He's a wolf and wolves can't fly, can they?"

I looked down at Watts in the hole of the window, looking up at us
spitefully as if he had heard me mocking him, though I knew that was
impossible.  In response, he pulled out two large hunting knives, one in
each hand.

"What is he going to do with those from all the way down there?" I asked
arrogantly, laughing.  "Toss them at us?"

"I don't think that's his intention, Fortitude," Sam told me.

No, it was not, in fact.  Instead, after transforming into his monster
form, he took his right arm and, with all his werewolf might, stabbed the
knife into the glass above him, holding it there.  Then he took the knife
in his left paw and stabbed it a couple feet above the first one, holding
that one in place.  Next, he yanked the knife in his right hand out of the
glass and then stabbed it in again a couple feet above the left one.

Fuck.  He was using the two knives to climb up this glass wall.  Worst part
was, he was doing it a good bit faster than I was capable of.  Before long,
he'd reach Sam and Paran's feet, and in their injured states, I didn't know
if they would be capable of fighting him off.

"Shall we continue up?" Sam asked me urgently.

"I'm going," I said, beating my wings fast again and starting to rise.

Even at my fastest pace, Watts was gaining on us, close enough then for his
thoughts to enter my mind, making it very clear that he would stop at
nothing to eliminate us.

But it seemed clear that I would reach the top of the Ensis before Watts
could close in on us.

As if a murderous werewolf stabbing his way up towards us wasn't bad
enough, once I got us just three or four stories from the top, the
helicopter returned again suddenly, drowning out all the sound around us
with its fucking loud noise.

The chopper seemed to be searching for something, and as it rose towards
us, I was sure that it was seeking the three of us out.  I thought of
cloaking, but the bullets in my body prevented me from hiding as the
mechanical beast came to our level.

I looked through the windshield of the copter as it neared us and saw the
first time the wolf who piloted the thing.

It was Rick, the leader of wolves who held a pretty fucking high place on
my "Kill List."  He looked me in the eye as soon as I recognized him,
seeing his enemy looking back maliciously.

I tried to read his mind, but it was difficult.  All I could glean was his
intention to kill the three of us and save his Australian brother, and that
he had only recently learned how to pilot a chopper after his comrades
insisted he take this less risky position as a transport pilot instead of
fighting the battle firsthand with the others.

His lack of experience with the M-8 was humorously evident as he tried to
shoot his vehicle's guns at us, but only managed to shoot the wall above us
as he took the chopper too far upwards unexpectedly and failed to come back
down, only managing to hover near the top of the building.

Keep flying, my liege, the wolf isn't far beneath us now!

I took us up as fast as I could, but was stopped on the third highest
floor.  Rick was hovering on the second highest, shooting his guns as soon
as I made any movement to climb up any further.

"We're stuck here, unless you want both of my wings to be shot to shreds,"
I shouted at my two passengers.

Forget about trying to climb anymore, this is high enough.  It was Sam's
voice in my mind.  Take your sword and bust us through the glass wall right
here.

We were looking into some unknown apartment, and there was just a pane of
glass between us and the safe ground inside.

I withdrew my sword, lifted it above me, and thrust it down upon the glass.
Not even a crack, just the slightest chink in the window.

I struck again, and again nothing.

"Fuck!" I yelled.  "That werewolf can stab his knives into this glass, but
I can't bust through without the help of a refrigerator!"

No angel could break this glass with just their sword, my liege.

"So what now?" I asked.  "We can't go in, we can't go up, and we can't go
down.  Any other suggestions?"

My liege, you may be interested to know that God has smiled down upon us.
It seems my wings have recovered in just the nick of time.

Paran beat his wings, demonstrating how they did indeed function again as
he pulled away from me and hovered on his own.  It was a relief to no
longer have his weight on me.

I am known for my strength in fighting, that much you know, my lieges.  But
what you perhaps do not realize is that my strength in flying is just as
advanced.  I will take care of this burdensome machine keeping us from
rising to where we need to be.

Paran darted outwards, gliding away from the building, before flapping up
and grabbing ahold of the foot of the helicopter.  He climbed to the door
and tried unsuccessfully to open it.

"It's locked from the inside!" I yelled.  "You'll have to break through the
windshield!"

But the noise from the helicopter drowned out my voice.

"Sam, tell him!" I urged.

Sam relayed my message telepathically.  Paran looked over at us and bowed
down slightly in acknowledgement.

He flew to the front of the chopper and thrust himself upon the windshield.
Taking out his sword, he swung through the glass, breaking it.

But Rick, surprised at this armored angel's sudden intrusion into the
copter, took quick action.  He swung the chopper violently up and down as
Paran started to move through the hole in the windshield and into the
vehicle.

Paran obviously was not expecting this, as he fell out of the chopper,
downwards fast.  He grabbed on, however, to one of the S-5 rocket
launchers, keeping him attached to the chopper as it continued to swing
around like a wild bronco.  Holding on firmly this time, he was close
enough to Rick now to be a real threat.  He stabbed his sword at the
windshield, destroying what was left of it and leaving Rick totally prone
to his next attack.  He raised his sword, and inwardly I cursed my luck
that it would not be me who would Rick personally but this angel who I
barely knew.

Perhaps God once again answered my prayers.

Before the blade of Paran's sword could pierce his throat, Rick's hands
found the fire button for the S-5 rocket launcher that Paran was
straddling.

The rocket lit up and shot out towards the wall of the Ensis.

Paran was stuck on the rockets tip, blown away from Rick and the chopper
and towards the building.

BOOM.

The wall of the Ensis erupted into flames, sending heat and shattered glass
pouring all over Sam and myself.  Paran was completely incinerated, gone
and dead, just like that.

But Rick was still moving the copter around erratically, not getting
control over the thing back in time to finish off the two of us.

Beneath us, Watts the werewolf had caught ups to Sam's feet, and Sam was
trying to kick the beast away but something told me that if we were to wait
any longer Sam would get one of his legs pulled out of its socket.  With
Paran's weight off of me, I could support Sam without using the glass wall
as a crutch, and I moved out into the open air away from the werewolf.

I didn't dare approach the wildly bucking copter in an attempt to finish
off my enemy inside of it.  I knew there was no way I was going to get in
as long as Rick kept on swinging around like that.

I headed the only direction I could, up to the second highest story of the
Ensis, where Rick's rocket had conveniently blown a large hole in the glass
wall.  I flew through the hole and dropped Sam into what I realized was our
penthouse apartment.

"Come on, Gideon," Sam said, taking my hand and pulling into the apartment.
"We have only a few seconds before that abomination catches up to us, and
it seems unlikely that we're prepared to take him on riddled with our
injuries as we are."

"But where can we hide when we can't cloak and our pursuer can sniff us
out?" I asked.

Sam pulled me into the lounge and threw the lid off of the jacuzzi.  "He
can't smell us if we're submerged," Sam said.  "Get in and hold your
breath."

As I stepped into the warm water, I knew from his thoughts that Watts has
successfully climbed through the hole in our apartment window and was
looking around for us.

Sam climbed in the warm water behind me, grabbing the lid of the jacuzzi
and fastening it in place over our heads.

I took a deep breath and made sure I was completely submerged in the water
as Watts came into the lounge, sure we were around somewhere but not being
able to find our scents.

Don't move a muscle.  If we make the slightest splash, he will hear us.

I remained totally still, something that actually took a lot of focus, as I
had always been one of those constantly active, always moving kind of guys.

Watts looked around for us, trusted his nose which told him we were no
longer around, and then convinced himself that we must have run out of the
front door of the apartment.  He ran off through that door, looking for us.

Sam pushed the lid off of the jacuzzi and we both took in huge lungfulls of
air.  "Finally, a moment of rest," he said as both of us got out of the
tub.  He looked over his wings, running his fingers through the white
feathers stained red with blood.  "My wings have healed enough for me to be
in flying shape again," he decided.

"Then let's not sit around here on our asses," I said.  "Let's get that key
upstairs and turn this fucking war around.  Enough angels have died
already."

"Agreed," Sam said.  "But first, let's armor up."

I had forgotten that both of our suits of armors were stored in this
apartment.  Mine so far had been untouched.  It would feel good to finally
have some bodily protection.

"You have to help me put my armor on," I said as we went into the bedroom
closet where we had both stored our pairs of suits.  "Which one do you
think should I wear?"

I looked between the lighter suit meant for flight, speed, and quick
combat; and the heavier suit that was more durable to attack and yet much
too massive to fly in.

"The lighter set, no question," Sam said as he started pulling down his own
light set from the closet shelves.  "We need functionality and flight-ease
right now.  The heavier suit feels like wearing a tank."

I raised an eyebrow.  "I'm picking the heavier set," I said defiantly.

"What?  Why subject yourself to its immobility?"

I shrugged.  "I always wanted to learn how to drive a tank in the armed
forces but never got to."

"Why did you even ask my advice if you had already made up your mind?" Sam
asked, annoyed.

"It was a rhetorical question," I said.

He did not look amused.  "That was not a rhetorical question.  You don't
even know what rhetorical means, do you?"

"Stop your whining and let's get our armor on, Sam.  Every second we waste
up here another angel dies down there.  Just show me what the hell I'm
supposed to do with these pieces."  I lifted up a shiny silver rounded
piece of my own armor out of the large pile.  "I can't fucking tell if this
is supposed to be my helmet or my codpiece.  Seriously."

Sam laughed.  "Neither, I'm afraid," Sam said.  "That's your culet.  It's
to protect your pretty little ass."

"Good place to have some protection," I said, thinking of what those
fucking Russians did to me downstairs.

"Strip off your robe and toss away that inferior sword you've picked up,"
Sam said.  "Our own swords are so much more durable."

After I had stripped naked, Sam went on to show me the rest of my armor,
telling me the name for each of the pieces.  My cuirass, my helmet, my
pauldrons, my vembraces, my couters, my gauntlets, my tassets, my cuisses,
my poleyens, my greaves, and my sabatons for my feet.  He showed me how to
fasten all of this onto myself and helped me put all of it on me, until I
was completely surrounded by a mound of metal.  Then, he strapped my shield
to my left arm and attached my sword sheathe to my right side.

When I had finished, while I was moving my body around trying to get used
to the stiffness and added weight of my cumbersome new armor, Sam put on
his armor much more hastily.

Sam's light armor was much skimpier than my own.  A gold collar covered
most of his vulnerable neck but he wore no helmet, leaving his head bare
except for his mask, which he continued to wear.  He wore a beautiful set
of large pauldrons to cover his shoulders, but his upper arms and elbows
were bare save for tight red armbands which covered his large biceps.  He
wore silver gauntlets (gloves of sorts) and matching vembraces (covering
his forearms).  He wore no cuirass or any covering of his chest, back, or
ass, leaving his tan skin bare in those areas except for the red
criss-crossing straps of cloth that held all of his armor in place and
pulled hard against his bare flesh.  His ass was bare except for more of
these red straps which hugged his cheeks like a jockstrap might, connecting
to a small golden codpiece in his front which only covered his pubes and
the base of his dick, but to the bottom of which was attached a silky white
loincloth of sorts that draped over the rest of his cock, hanging down past
his knees.  The red straps, the cod piece, and the loincloth were the only
protection most of his body had.  Below them, his massive thighs were
fitted with gleaming silver and gold cuisses, which connected to poleyns
covering his knees.  He wore no greaves, leaving his calves bare, but had a
pair of sabatons similar to my own to cover his feet.  On his right side he
attached his own sword sheath, and attached to his left vembrace was his
smaller shield, beautifully inlaid with a silver cross.

All in all, Sam looked seriously hot in his armor, leaving little to the
imagination and showing off his well-developed muscles, but certainly he
was much more prone to injury than I was in my metal cocoon.  Of course,
Sam's armor left his back totally open and his wings were constantly
fanning out behind him, framing him in their white gloriousness, while my
own wings were pushed firmly inside of me, my own armor not allowing any
space for me to let them out.

"Now, let's finish this cursed mission before it kills us both," Sam said,
marching towards the front of the apartment.

I stumbled awkwardly after him, clanking loudly with each step, hoping he
wouldn't look back to see how clumsy I looked.

"Once we leave the front door of this room, we'll be back in the interior
of the Ensis, but the stairway up to the top level and Nathaniel's office
won't be far," Sam said.

I nodded, and Sam opened the door.  The second highest story of the Ensis
appeared to be empty except for the two of us.  We headed around the tight,
circular hallway towards the stairway up, and I couldn't resist stumbling
over to the railing on the inside of the circle and look down at the Ensis
Main Hall below, trying to see what was happening in the battle that raged
on the first floor.

"See anything down there?" asked Sam.  "Or can you even bend your neck down
in that thing?"

"I can bend my neck just fine, but all I can see is the tip of Gabriel's
sword," I said.  We were directly over the top of the statue from here, and
Gabriel was one big fucking dude, making it impossible to see much other
than his body.

It was also impossible from this vantage point to see any of the floors
beneath us, because of the pyramid shape of the Ensis.  I turned back to
face Sam.  "Can't see anything of the battle down there now."

"And it's too far down now for me to get any sort of handle psychically on
what's going on," Sam said.

I felt something clank against my shoes (or sabatons, rather).  I looked
down to see two thickly muscled human arms reaching under the railing from
down below, both having hooked two very large hunting knives behind the
back of my feet, their blades pressing firmly into the metal of my armor.

Suddenly I realized a psychic presence was so close it shamed me that I had
missed it until it literally reached out and touched me.  "Watts," I said
out loud, seeing the human face of the man looking through the lower part
of the bars of the railing, his body hanging down unseen.

Before I could even lift my feet up to shake him off of me, the naked
Australian bent his body backwards, bringing his feet back and upwards
while his back arched painfully tight.

He lifted his feet up into the air, his bare ass pressing against the bars
of the railing, and then, bending his knees, he kicked me hard with his
bare feet as they plummeted over the top of the railing.

I was thrown back from the impact, and my body automatically tried to keep
its balance by taking a sharp step backwards.  Of course, this was what
Watts had expected, and was why he was holding both my feet in place with
his two knives.  Not being able to step back, I fell backwards instead,
landing with a loud clank on my metal ass.

Immediately Watts had jumped over the railing and was looming down at me, a
huge knife in each hand but otherwise totally naked.  "Need some help up,
mate?" he asked, stressing that last word just to be sure I knew he was
being ironic.  "Let me give ya a hand."  He reached out the blunt end of
one of his knives, thrusting it into the small space in between my right
pauldron and my right couter, sticking the blade an inch into my upper arm.

"You've helped well enough, wolf!" Sam said as he ran towards us much more
nimbly than I was capable of in my armor, his sword in his hands.

"Sam, don't!" I said.  "I don't need you to come to my rescue here!"

"Yeah, Sammy," Watts teased him.  "Your little cocksucker here's all grown
up.  He don't need your help, do ya mate?" Watts twisted the knife in my
arm, causing a burning pain.

"Get upstairs, Sam!" I told him.  "You know what you have to do!  I can
handle this."

I pushed Watts off me hard with my shield, and he almost fell flat onto his
back, that's how fucking strong I was now.  I got up and withdrew my sword
from its sheathe.

Only then did Sam turn away from me, looking at the staircase in his
sights, grasping the key on its rosary in his hands.  He knew what he had
to do as he started to make a run for it.

As soon as I refocused onto Watts, he had finished transforming into his
monstrous form, teeth bared and saliva dripping as he held up his two
knives threateningly.

"Let's see how much damage you can do now that I'm covered from head to toe
in armor, you ugly motherfucker," I said.

He made a deep barking sound, as if to tell me he accepted the challenge.

I reminded myself to keep myself psychically focused.  That was how I'd win
this fight.

I made the first move, slicing my blade at his left side.  He, however,
avoided my blade by dodging to his right.

But I knew he was going to dodge to his right before he even started to
move, and in his monstrous form, he wasn't significantly faster than I was
in my armor.  I raised my shield hard and hit him square in his hideous
face, knocking a stream of slimy drool out of his canine jaw and
disorienting him.

I laughed at him.  "That's right," I said.  "Feel just how fucking strong I
am?"

Not as strong as you are cocky, you little shit.  You're too stupid to
realize how much stronger I am than you.  You are nothing.

I reeled at his thoughts, fuming in anger.  How fucking dare he think those
thoughts about me.  I was nearly the strongest angel alive, couldn't he see
that?

My burst of anger made me lose my focus, and he spun around without me
realizing what he was about to do, as lost in my own emotions as I was, and
he brought both of his knives together hard with my right arm in between,
piercing the joint in my armor right above my gauntlet.

I screamed out as he pierced my wrist twice, one knife in the front and one
in the back.  He stuck his knives together into my flesh until I was sure
they nearly touched each other inside of me.

Of course, I dropped my sword as he did this.  I tried to hold on, but a
wrist cut to pieces could not hold onto anything so heavy.

After I had lost my sword, I did manage to hit him with my shield and shake
him off of me.

You've lost your sword now, Angel.

The monster kicked my sword away with his huge paw/foot.

Weaponless now, it seems.  Impotent.

I looked over at my sword, now a good twenty feet from where I stood.

Watts charged me, his knives swinging, but once again I knew he was coming
before he made a movement, and I knocked him aside with my shield.  But I
could not hope to win this fight without my sword.  I fixed my vision upon
it and started to run towards my one salvation.

Only, I moved so awkwardly in this heavy suit of armor that instead of
swiftly running to my sword, I instead clamored slowly towards it, feeling
more like the rusty Tin Man than an angel warrior as I went.  Damn, Sam had
been right about which suit of armor to pick.

I concentrated on controlling this suit and moving with more graceful ease,
and as I went forward, I started to get the hang of running and figured I'd
pretty much master it by the time I retrieved my sword and finished my
enemy off.

My enemy, it seemed, had other plans, and apparently my inexperience with
armor had given him the edge he needed to catch up with me before I reached
my sword.  He lifted me off the ground in spite of the armor's huge weight,
and slammed me hard down into the floor.

Dizzy from the blow, I couldn't properly manage to fight him off when he
started sticking me with the points of his knives, jabbing them into every
gap or slit my armor provided him.  Each time he cut into me, he kept me
incapacitated a little more, and I couldn't heal my wounds as fast as he
was creating them.

I was losing.  I was going to lose and I was going to die.  It was s
sickening realization.

He was about to stick one of his knives into the eye-slits of my helmet and
mask, blinding me, when suddenly his furry body was pulled hard off of
mine.

The monster was carried off into the air above me as he struggled against
his winged captor.  I realized instantly that my savior was none other than
Sam.

"You came back for me!" I yelled as I reached over and finally retrieved my
sword, feeling my wounds heal at the same time.

I couldn't leave you to die.  I realized the only way to deal with one this
strong is with flight, and your armor prohibits you from doing that.

"You shouldn't have come back!" I yelled.  "You were supposed to have
finished our mission!"

While Sam struggled with the monster in his arms, flapping his wings
vigorously, he managed to toss a small object my way.

I caught it and looked into my hand.  The key on the rosary.

Go yourself, and hurry!  I'll take care of him!

As I got to my feet and started to run towards the upward staircase as fast
as my armor allowed me to, Sam flew the wolf over the railing, holding him
nearly sixty stories above the ground.  He obviously intended to drop him.

But Watts was fighting back, struggling with all he had to hold on.

I reached the staircase and started to ascend it as I continued to watch
Sam try to shake the wolf's huge form off of him.  I couldn't believe that
he could even manage to keep afloat with so much deadweight attached to
him.

But just as Sam pulled free, just as the wolf started to fall, the worst
thing imaginable happened.

Watts somehow reached his thick arms around, plunged his two knives into
Sam's unarmored back, and held on tight.

This was not the sturdy Sam that I had once known, this was the new, weaker
Sam, and I knew he could not hope to outfight this incredibly strong enemy.

My gut was proven right as Sam's wings started to falter and become useless
under the physical stress he was under.

When Sam's wings stopped beating, he began to fall, the limbs of that wolf
wrapped around him, pulling him down.

I was too far way to do anything for him, I knew.  Especially not in this
limiting suit of armor I was in.

They fell out of sight, to what I knew would certainly be both of their
deaths.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!  Fuck!  No!" I shouted.

You knew this would happen, you fuck!  You knew you'd die taking out that
wolf, Sam, and you did it anyway, you traded your life for mine!  Well,
fuck you, that was not your decision to make!  How am I supposed to even
survive in the long run without you, you stupid piece of shit!

And fuck you too God for letting this happen!  Damn you to hell!

I couldn't stand here and fume; I didn't have time to cry about it.  I had
to accept Sam was gone now and keep going on my own.  I had to finish what
all of us had started.  I was the only motherfucker left alive to do it.

I clasped the key in my hand and went upstairs, going through the door into
Nathaniel's office.

It was much quieter in the office, surrounded by glass windows to the night
outside, and I might have thought I had gone into another, safer world if
there wasn't that big circular glass portion of the floor which now showed
me glimpses of the Ensis's chaotic main hall below and reminded me of the
urgency of my mission.  There was no sign here that the enemy had breached
this area; everything was neatly in its place as always.

I didn't have time to dwell on the eeriness of the quiet in this room, not
when I was so close to accomplishing my task.  I quickly looked around and
locked my eyes on Nathaniel's desk across the room, just past the elevator.
I clutched the rosary and the key in my gauntlet and headed in that
direction, my armor clanking with each step.

DING.

I stopped cold.  Malicious thoughts in Cantonese heralded the opening of
the elevator door and the most fearsome of the enemies on my "Kill List"
stepped into the room, taking a big sniff of the air until I knew he had my
scent.  There was no way I could cloak with the injuries I had sustained in
my fight with Watts.

Leung was in his man-form now, naked except for the flamethrower he wore.
He held a walkie-talkie to his mouth.  "I've got him here on the top
floor," he said in a thick Chinese accent.

"Are you sure it's him?" Rick's voice crackled in.

"Positive.  I could smell that stink anywhere."  Sniffing the air, he
turned towards me and made eye contact.  "There's the pretty birdy," he
said to me.

Immediately he was transforming into his monstrous form.

I took stock of my situation.  My sworn enemy, a villain who
single-handedly killed so many of my brethren in a stomach-turning manner,
was right in front of me, just begging to be taken down.  I was fully
armored and had just gotten settled in to the feel of this metal weight
around me.  If there were no other factors to consider, I wouldn't have
hesitated to draw my sword and cut this motherfucker all the way back to
Hong Kong.

But I had the key in my sword hand, and the desk lay in front of me.  And
in between me and Nathaniel's desk stood this beast.

I heard the click of Leung's flamethrower starting up, and I decided not to
run down this bull head on.  I may have been arrogant as all fuck, but I
wasn't stupid enough to let myself fall into a fight that would only
distract me from what was really important here.  This Chinese monster
could wait for me to kill him until after I engaged the building defenses.

Lucky for me, this room was one big circle.  I turned around, away from my
enemy, and trotted off in the other direction, intending to go the long way
around and approach Nathaniel's desk from the other side.

If this fucker was smart, he would turn around as well and cut me off on
the other side before I got to Nathaniel's desk.

Stupid fucker did no such thing, instead choosing to follow behind me,
having no idea what my true purpose was for running away from him and just
thinking I was doing it out of fear.

Funny thing was, with me in my suit of armor I was just as slow moving as
this guy was in his beast form, which at the moment wasn't a concern to me,
since it still meant that he wouldn't catch up to me before I got to
Nathaniel's desk.  I wasn't even within range of his flamethrower.

Then I heard the whooshing of a distant helicopter come suddenly closer.
Annoyed beyond all hell, I looked out the large window to the outside.

The chopper ascended fast and then leveled out at about my eye-level.  I
could see Rick in the pilot's seat, staring me down, his eyes piercing
through my helmet, even through my helmet.

I know who you are, you angel son-of-a-bitch.

He fired an S-5 rocket right towards me.  My stomach lurched, instinctively
thinking it was over for me before remembering the thick plane of glass
between the copter and myself.

The rocket exploded against the glass, leaving a huge hole in the office
window, but never putting me in any danger.

Then Rick began shooting at me with his chopper's rifles.  I covered myself
defensively with my shield and clamped my eyes shut, but the bullets hit my
armor and bounced right off of it, failing to penetrate it.

Right then, I wished I had my helmet off so that Rick could see my gloating
smile.

Let's see if this bounces off you too.

He shot another S-5 right towards me, only this time there was no glass
protecting me from its explosion, and I knew that kind of explosion head on
would kill any angel.

Instinctively, I half rolled, half fell out of the way of the rocket.  It
zoomed past where I had been standing and impacted instead harmlessly out
of my way, hitting the circular glass portion of the office floor, cracking
it but not breaking through.

Now, I was no longer in the shooting range of the chopper, at least not
unless Rick blasted through more of these windows.  I was safe.

I looked at Nathaniel's desk just ahead of me, and then felt my heart sank
as I looked at my empty gauntlet palm, right where the key should have
been.  Fuck, must have lost it when I was rolling away from that fucking
rocket.

I turned back around, ready to retrace my steps and retrieve my fallen key,
but only turned around to face that hairy beast Leung holding up a rosary
and inspecting the key on it carefully.

What is this?  Must be something important.  Well, if he wants it, he'll
have to come and get it.

The werewolf put the rosary over its head and around its thick neck.

With that, all other options disappeared.  I'd have to kill this
motherfucker to get my key back, there was no other way around it.

Leung put both paws on his flamethrower and aimed towards me.

He's in range now, he's in range.

I again had to throw myself out of harm's way as he pressed a button and
sent a streak of fire flying in my direction.

Instead of the fire landing right on me, a leather couch right by where I
had just been standing when up in flames.  I had flipped to safety onto the
glass portion of the floor, and as I got up onto my feet, I looked down
through the cracked glass, seeing the pointed tip of Gabriel's sword
beneath me and a blurred battle raging a dizzying sixty stories down on the
ground level.

As I got to my feet and steadied my metal sabatons into the glass beneath
me, I drew my sword and readied myself for Leung as he turned to face me
and started to come at me.

I heard the faintest crackling sound, and looked down to see that the glass
floor underneath me that had been initially damaged by Rick's rocket was
further cracking under my weight.  Fractures spread out around me
throughout the glass, and I realized that this was no better than standing
on thin ice over a frozen lake.  If I didn't get off this glass fast, it
would break and I would have a sixty story fall to look forward to.

Very carefully, not wanting any sudden movement of mine to finally cause
the glass to break, I walked backwards, away from Leung, until I was off
the glass entirely.

I had a brilliant thought.  If I could trick Leung into walking onto the
glass himself, perhaps his beastly weight would be enough to crack the
glass and send him crashing to his death.

I looked at Leung as he stalked towards me, approaching his side of the
glass-edge, and I waved my sword.  "Come and get me, you scared fucking
yellow chink."

I felt his thoughts go red with anger at those words and the beast growled
at me, lurching forward, but then he too noticed the cracked glass and
stopped himself from stepping onto it.  Fuck!

But I wasn't moving, not as long as I was out of flamethrower range.  He
would have to come for me here, and maybe I could find a way to throw him
down through the glass floor.

That plan was interrupted by the sound of an exploding rocket and
shattering glass behind me.  I spun around to see Rick's chopper hovering
outside, just waiting for the smoke to clear before aiming his next rocket
through the hole in the window he just made, right in my direction.

Fucking sneaky little rat!  I was forced to run out of the way, putting
myself out of the chopper's unobstructed line of sight, and I knew that
standing still or trying to hide was simply not an option with that fucker
circling around me like a fucking vulture.  I had to keep moving, or I'd
end up on the end of a rocket, just like Paran had.

Leung came at me, and I dodged his ribbon of fire as he engulfed Sven's
desk, a potted plant, and then a large chair, while I skillfully avoided
the flame.

Then, I heard another loud hiss as Rick suddenly fired another rocket, only
now I had lost track of where the chopper was and which direction that
rocket was flying towards.

I dug my heels as soon as I realized that the slimy bastard had aimed the
rocket right in front of me, knowing that if I continued running at the
same pace, the rocket would intercept me, and that would be my end.

No fucking way I was about to let that happen.  I stopped running and even
took a couple stumbles backwards as the rocket hit the wall in front of me
and exploded.

But it always seemed to be out of the frying pan and into the fire with
these two.  Leung had caught up to me from behind, and this time I only had
time to turn around and face him before he let the flamethrower rip.  My
deft dodging had come to a deadly end.

Instinctively I raised my shield, then I flinched and clenched my muscles
as the flames covered me.  To my surprise, I didn't melt as soon as the
flames engulfed me.  In fact, my armor was taking the brunt of the fire,
much of it landing squarely on my shield.  I laughed to myself, tickled
that I was surrounded in fire and yet totally unharmed.  This was some
fucking fantastic suit of armor I had on.

That is, except for the fact that my armor was heating up fast, real fast.
Soon the armor would be red-hot and would likely burn through my flesh on
its own.  I would not sit there and let that happen.

I lurched forward, towards Leung, surprising him.  I was the first angel he
had ever fought that had been able to weather the heat.

I took another step forward, the flames now covering every part of me, even
spilling in through the eye-slits in my helmet and forcing me to clamp my
eyes shut.

Even though I could no longer see my target, I psychically knew where he
was, just as Humility could see as long as there was at least one pair of
eyes connected to an open mind for him to read.  I stepped forward again,
then once more, my armor so hot now it was starting to sear my flesh.  I
knew from experience that angels couldn't withstand much heat before it
turned deadly.

With an animalistic shout, I jumped forwards into the flames and thrust my
sword at my target.

The flames stopped.  I opened my eyes again.

There was Leung, right in front of me, shaking his flamethrower, which now,
thanks to me, was sliced in two.  The hose portion fell uselessly to the
ground, the whole thing beyond repair.

My armor was already cooling and my flesh was once again restored as Leung
swore something fierce in his head in Cantonese as he angrily ditched his
flamethrower entirely, standing before me completely naked, this hairy
beast now daring to take me on weaponless.  With my sword in my hand and my
armor unharmed, there was no way I was going down now.

I could see Leung's left arm's muscles flex under all the fur and knew from
his thoughts that he was about to hit me with a power left.  This time, I
wasn't going to run, not when I was covered in metal and he was just made
of flesh.  I was going to be as stalwart as the fucking Great Wall of
China.  I hardened myself against intrusion, sticking my shield out in
front of me and bracing for impact.

Giving it all he had, he rammed me with his powerhouse left, slipping his
fist to the right of my shield and hitting me square on my silver plated
chest, right in the sternum.

The impact knocked me back on my ass, hitting me with a much stronger force
than I expected.  I sucked in air painfully and went hazy, wondering how it
seemed this guy could be so much stronger than me.  It seemed my armor,
though perfect for protecting me from knives and fire and even bullets,
really couldn't do much to lessen the impact of such a powerfully blunt
blow.

Now that I was down, he didn't let off; he pounded me with his paws, over
and over and over again, my armor doing little to protect me.  I was too
dizzy and disoriented to defend myself.

Summoning everything I had, I rolled out from under his attack and out of
the way.  I forced myself to my feet, taking a deep breath and shaking off
that dizziness.  I clutched my sword firmly in my hand as once again Leung
came at me.

While we were fighting, Rick remained an annoying distraction; hovering
around in his helicopter, shooting S-5 rockets to destroy more and more of
the glass windows.

No more standing there taking the hits.  This time, I would use my mind
against him, just as Sam had taught me.

In Leung's head, he figured he'd swing another left powerhouse.  When he
followed through, I was ready to jump to the right.  His paw came into
contact harmlessly with the edge of my shield.

He spun around and tried to surprise me with a right jab to the face, but
there was no surprising someone who can read thoughts.  Even before he had
finished turning, I was already ducking, and he jabbed into empty air.

Angry, he tried to kick me in the nuts with his hefty left leg.  I merely
jumped back, out of his way.

Furious now, he tried once more a powerhouse left, trying to hit me as fast
as he could before I would have a chance to dodge.

But he misjudged my ability to react quickly.

I spun around, avoided his swing, and then, coming up behind him, I swung
my sword around as hard as I possibly could.

There was the sound of blood gushing from his neck, and then the thud of
his head falling onto the floor.

His body transformed back into its naked human form as it folded onto the
ground, dead and defeated.

I screamed out in victory, jabbing my sword into the air victoriously.  I
had fucking done it!  I had outfought this filthy fucking werewolf, the
strongest and meanest wolf alive.  It had been a fight of strength and
skill and I had won decisively, meaning I was more badass than the most
badass werewolf out there!

I wished that a rematch with Watts would have still been possible, knowing
now that he had only beat me because he took advantage of my inexperience
with a full suit of armor.  And I wanted to kill Rick once and for all,
certain that the kid wouldn't put up much of a fight at all.

I kicked Leung's severed head, knocking it like a soccer ball, like my
plaything, into the wall.  I never felt so good about myself.

Remembering my mission, I reached down and retrieved the key on the rosary
from Leung's gory stump of a neck.

Sheathing my sword, I put the rosary around my neck this time, not trusting
my clumsy gauntlet to hold onto it anymore, and started again towards the
security panel on Nathaniel's desk, which throughout the battle had luckily
remained unharmed.

Outside, I noticed that the chopper had once again gotten a clear line of
sight to my position through the expanded hole in the window.  It pulled
back, far away from the building, and then I could see another S-5 was
launched towards me.

No matter.  I had dodged these rockets before, when the copter had been
much closer to the building.  Now that it was so far away, it would be much
easier to dodge this new S-5.

Then I realized with dread that it was no S-5 shooting towards me this
time.  No, this projectile was much larger and differently shaped, an S-8
probably, and one with massive amounts of explosives attached to its head.

I wasn't sure if I was hearing Rick's thoughts then, or if it just finally
dawned on me what that fucker was planning out there.  This whole time,
shooting bullets and those pussy S-5s, first at us outside as we tried to
climb, and then at me in here, he had been holding back.  He had been
trying to keep his brothers out of harm's way, Watts and Leung.  That had
been his primary concern, their safety.

Now, both of them were dead, and I was all alone here.  I knew he only had
one of those S-8 rockets, but one was enough.  That one little rocket would
land with enough explosive power to take out a small building.

There was no dodging here.  No hiding behind furniture or trying to outrun
the thing.  This entire room was going down in the couple seconds it would
take for that rocket to fly from the chopper to where I was standing.

Holy fuck!

It was one of those moments where you need to do something immediately,
something profoundly brilliant, and yet you have no time whatsoever to
think things through.

Not able to come up with a better solution, I ran as fast as I could
towards the cracked glass floor.

As the rocket approached the building, I skidded onto the glass floor on my
back, and slammed my shield against the glass underneath me, once, twice, a
third time, and then...

The glass shattered, and I fell through, shards falling all around me as I
started plummeting down towards the ground sixty floors beneath me.

Looking up through the glass hole as I fell, I saw the rocket rush over me
and collide with Nathaniel's desk in his office.

BOOM!

The sound blasted me as I fell, shaking me as the explosion tore through
the upper part of the Ensis.

I fell just fast enough to escape the explosive fire, which now covered the
top few floors of the building.

As the flames subsided, as I continued to fall, now accompanied with
massive amounts of rubble, I could see through the smoke and the dust and
what I saw amazed me.

Stars.  There were stars above me.  Rick's rocket had not only destroyed
Nathaniel's office, it had taken out the top few floors of the Ensis's
apartments in their entirety.

Now, where there once was the top of the Ensis, the top of the structure
was totally gone.  The bright light of the Ensis was bleeding out into the
dark night above.  Gabriel's sword, blackened by the blast, was now the
highest point of the Ensis, sticking stories above the wrecked top of the
building that surrounded it.

Rick had destroyed a good portion of the Ensis, including the parts that
controlled the building's security system.  That meant that the key around
my neck that so many had died to protect was completely and utterly
useless.  There was no way the security system would ever engage again.  I
had failed my mission, I knew.  I had more than failed.  It was a
disastrous outcome.

And now, fittingly, I was falling to my death along with the rubble, my
wings unable to help me under all this armor.

I almost broke my back landing much sooner than I anticipated, landing
right on the hilt of Gabriel's sword.

Realizing that I had a chance to save myself, I grasped for something to
hold onto, and stopped my descent by clutching Gabriel's knuckles.

But my smooth armor didn't provide me with enough friction to hold on for
long, and I began again to fall, this time swinging around madly for any
surface to grab onto as I did.

My left arm found something to grab onto around Gabriel's neck, and I again
stopped myself from falling, this time almost pulling my arm out of its
socket as I did.

Once again, I couldn't hold on, and I fell again, this time landing hard on
Gabriel's waist.  I rolled off his hip, tried to hold onto his thigh to
stop myself, but mostly just slid down it in spite of my efforts.  But I
knew then that I had slowed myself down enough for me to survive this
enormous fall.

I eventually landed hard on the ground floor, going black from the impact.

"Awake, my liege, awake!"

I was lying on something hard and lumpy.  Around me were loud noises of
battle; action noises.

"Ugh," I moaned, opening my eyes.

Lamech was looking down at me with concern.  His Power armor had many
scrapes and scuffs by this point as well as being covered in copious
amounts of blood, but otherwise he looked no different from when Sam and I
left him to lead this battle alone.

"Lamech," I said.  God, it was good to see that he still lived.

"Yes, my liege."

"What happened to me?" I asked, feeling the hard rubble I was lying on.

"You half slid, half fell down along Gabriel's leg, my liege," he said.
"You landed in wolf territory."  He pointed to a part of the battlefield
that was dominated by wolves.  "It was no easy undertaking for me to
retrieve you from their side and drag you back into ours."

Still in my full suit of armor, I tried to stand up, but realized that my
body was not yet ready for that.  I was in pain; it seemed I had multiple
fractures that were still working to heal themselves.

"Do not try to do anything but rest, my liege," Lamech said, and I knew
even though I wanted to get up and join the fight, I needed a few minutes
before I could be anything but a liability.  "I must return to battle."

I looked out at the battlefield here on the groundfloor of the Ensis.
Across the room I could see Case in the corner by the entrance, leading his
werewolf troops while simultaneously being more destructive than any other
wolf in his ranks, fighting our kind with deadly might.  His wolf forces
seemed to number less than before, and looking around the battlefield, one
could see what seemed like thousands of dead wolf carcasses, easy to
differentiate from the angel and Delector bodies because the wolves were
always naked and the others clothed.

But I would have been deluding myself if I thought that the much greater
number of wolf losses was leading to an angel victory in this battle.  Our
forces were seriously dwindling, and those who were left looked battleworn
and demoralized.

There were just a small handful of Powers left, dressed in their full
armor, out of the three-hundred strong force that it had once been.  These
were the best fighters we had, and Lamech was clearly a head above the rest
in his ability to kick serious wolf ass.

Most of our army consisted of a few dozen Thrones, most of whom weren't
wearing a single piece of armor.  They fought bravely, some with more skill
than others, but none were trained warriors.

I could see no Delector left alive at this point, not even Lamech's.

Clearly Case's forces still outnumbered us by more than double, and our
numbers were falling faster than theirs, mostly at the hands of Case
himself.

Lamech quickly dispatched two attacking beasts before stopping to take heed
of the situation.  There was desperation in his eyes before he clamped them
shut and issued another psychic message.

All Dominions to the front lines.  Repeat, all Dominions are needed in
battle.  Arm yourselves if you can and join us at Gabriel's feet.

Within seconds, angels started appearing from their hiding places above,
carrying their Delectors into battle and providing our army with much
needed reinforcements.  Having the Dominions fight was Lamech's absolute
last resort, I knew.  It meant that every angel left alive in the Ensis was
now fighting in battle, save for the hundred Thrones and hundred Delectors
locked away in the Spine, still cloaking us from Moscow.

But there were only around forty Dominions left alive at the most.  Just
forty angels, doubling what was left of our army, but not nearly enough to
match the couple hundred wolves that were left.  Angels were better
fighters than wolves; one angel could take out several wolves before going
down.  Would our number of troops now be enough?

I could see Case renegotiate his management of the wolves in response to
our increased ranks.  Then all chaos broke out as the new Dominions took
the offensive against their werewolf enemies.

I would not lie there and pray that this battle would go our way any
longer.  Feeling recovered, I stood up, readjusted my shield on my left
arm, and pulled my sword out of its sheathe with my right.  I was ready for
some ass-kicking.

I ran towards the frontline of the wolves, giving my best battlecry as I
went.  When I reached the first wolf, I didn't wait for him to get his
bearings, I sliced my sword and cut off his left arm, his bloody limb
landing on the ground as he howled in pain.  Taking advantage of his
surprise, I cut off his head, then immediately spun around to the next wolf
who was nearest to me, distracted from beating up one of the Dominions, and
quickly cut his head off as well, yelling fiercely as I did.

Another nearby wolf thought he'd be a fucking sneaky fox and surprise me
from behind, but I heard his thoughts before he could strike me, and I
thrust my sword backwards, piercing his ribs and cutting straight through
his heart.  Turning around to face him, I pulled out my sword and cut off
his head just to make sure he wouldn't recover.  "Don't fuck with me!" I
yelled.

I went on, ripping through the wolves as quickly as I could, always dodging
their attacks with the help of my telepathy, cutting off arms and legs and
many, many heads until I was covered in their blood.

I absolutely loved it.

I sliced open another wolf's stomach, wanted to feel what it felt like to
disembowel an enemy as I slashed away at his insides before finally cutting
off his head to kill him.

Fuck, I was a fucking god.  These audacious little mutts didn't stand a
chance.

But goddamn, it wasn't fucking enough that I was as strong as God.  The
other angels were still falling fast.  Case had killed at least a dozen
himself, at a pace almost as fast as I was killing the angels.

I stopped fighting and looked around.  All of the Thrones were dead now,
and Lamech was the only Power left alive.  Only a handful of Dominions
still stood fighting, and it looked to me like none of them had Delectors
left.

We were going down.  We were on a sinking ship here.

I looked over across the room at Case kill another one of our precious few
Dominions with ease.  He was too strong to let live any longer, I knew.

Another wolf was stupid enough to attack me, trying to bite me on the arm
in spite of me being covered with armor, and I killed him for it, violently
and without mercy, loving the feel of my blade effortlessly ripping through
his flesh.  Another couple of wolves nearby looked at me funny, and I went
at them with my full aggression, taking both of them on at once, careful to
keep track of both of their thought-lines.

By the time I had killed those two as well, I noticed that Lamech was at my
side, fighting with just as much skill as I was, killing our enemy just as
quickly, but always trying to do so mercifully, not relishing the violence
like I was.

"It is just you and I, my liege," Lamech said to me.  We were back to back,
both of us swinging our swords and trying to hold off our attackers.

I looked around us.  Lamech was right.  There were only two of us left, two
lone angels left to defend the entire Ensis, and at least a couple dozen
left of them.

"If we go down, Lamech, we go down together," I said.  "And we take as many
of these fuckers with us before we do."

"You know it, my liege," Lamech said sadly.  "It's been a true honor to
fight with an angel as strong as you."

The two of us continued to fight back to back, taking the defensive now and
just trying our best to survive.

I realized that on the other side of Lamech, Case was parting his wolf
troops, coming to join the action.

"I'll take their leader down," Lamech told me.  "You try and keep my back
covered, my liege."

I nodded, pissed that it wasn't me who would be killing Case, but knowing
it was only fitting to have the general in charge of our angel army face
off against the general of the army of our enemies.  Lamech ran forward at
Case, and he seemed more than open to the battle invitation.

The two titans moved together, were-beast against armored angel, and as far
as I could tell, they looked about evenly matched in strength.  I turned
away from their fight, determined to kill off some more of these wolves
myself.  I was positive that Lamech would in fact prevail.  It seemed that
God had smiled upon Lamech; he was so far incapable of dying, and I was
sure that trait would remain.

After fighting three or four wolves myself in sequence and killing them
brutally, I felt Lamech's psychic self turn off, suddenly and violently.
Concered, I turned around.  My only ally left was dead, his sword uselessly
on the ground, his helmet removed, and his throat in the jaws of Case, the
wolf's teeth having ripped the last bit of life from his body.

Case threw Lamech's body down to the ground, and I bristled with pure
anger.  I was alone now, horrifyingly alone, and along with Lamech's life,
Case had taken away most of my angel resolve.  I was suddenly inwardly
terrified of death.

But I couldn't let them see that, not when all I had left was my battle
valor.  I let my anger take over, cutting into wolf after wolf, slicing one
limb off, then the next limb, knowing there were less wolves than ever to
kill, less than twenty now around me, far fewer left than I had already
dispatched.  I could do this, I could manage this on my own, I didn't need
anybody else; I was fucking Fortitude, strongest angel alive.

I fought back full fledged, making some good progress against them and
feeling for once that this might actually work, that I had a good shot of
beating them.

I felt the annoying psychic sense of someone who was purposely trying to
confuse his thoughts from me enter the fray, and I turned to see Rick
sauntering into the Ensis, apparently having ditched his helicopter duties
by this time.  I snickered, figuring that the asshole was too afraid to
fight his wars along with his troops, waiting until only one angel was left
alive before even coming inside the fucking building.

Well fuck, if he was going to join the battle, he would be the one to die
by my sword the soonest.

Unfortunately for me, tailing Rick was a whole other battalion of wolves
coming in for support.  There must have been around a hundred of them
swarming in from the outside.

Fuck, that would be it for me.  I didn't have a prayer against that huge
number.

They were closing in on me all around fast, and I couldn't possibly keep
psychic track of all of their moves at the same time.

Fear took over, and now that there were no angel brethren to see me be
afraid, I was ready to make a run for it.

Feeling desperately claustrophobic, I ripped off my armor as quickly as I
could, hurling each peace at my approaching enemies, until I was totally
naked, my only possessions being the sword in my hand and the cross around
my neck that had been given to me by Sam. (Sam!  How cruel it was to be
reminded of his loss now!)

I felt my wings release from my back finally, extending them out, feeling
as if I had just taken my first wonderful gasp of air after what seemed
like an eternity of holding my breath.

I bat my wings and flew up, away from the grasping paws of the wolves, into
the open air of the Ensis.

The wolves who were perched on various floors of the main hall with guns
pointing started to shoot at me, but I kept in close to the statue of
Gabriel, using his leg as a shield to block the gunfire as I continued to
fly up and up, many stories high.

But soon, the bullets became too many to avoid as the gunmen became more
dense, and a bullet hit my left wing-tip, bloodying it and making me unable
to fly.  I had flown up under Gabriel's Romanesque battle-skirt right
before I had lost my flight, and to keep from falling, I grabbed hold of
anything I could up there in Gabriel's crotch.  If I ever questioned
whether angels would carve their giant statues with anatomically correct
genitals or, instead, benign ken-doll non-lumps, that curiosity would be
put to rest right then.  Yes, this statue did have a dick and a ballsack,
both up to angel proportions, which meant that given the scale of this huge
angel, I was positive that this was the largest fucking cock in existence.
It was so big, that I could easily tuck myself into the space above the
base of his dick, nestling myself against Gabriel's carved pubes,
effectively cutting myself off from all of their attacks.

They could never catch me here, I knew, not unless the wolves suddenly
sprouted wings.  I was safe here.  But the second I left this little
alcove, they'd shoot me down.

I could hear the gun-wolves angrily yelling at each other, trying
desperately to find a clear shot, but not discovering any.  One of them
walkie-talkied to Rick that it was no use.

I heard through the walkie-talkie what sounded like the voice of Russ, the
Marine werewolf who unfortunately must have still been alive.  "I've got
just enough C-4 left to take care of that problem, boys.  I'll be right
up."

Well, what was he going to do, throw the explosives at me in here?  I was
completely surrounded, there was no way he could get to me.  I wasn't
worried.

A bit later, I heard Rick's voice on some walkie-talkie: "All wolves take
cover on the ground level!"  I still wasn't sure what the fuck they were
planning to do.

After several minutes, I wondered if it would be safe again to fly out of
Gabriel's nuts.  I tried to weigh my chances of getting out of here intact.
I remembered that thanks to Rick, there was the biggest fucking skylight
ever blown out of a building, right above me.  I just had to fly up and
out, and the wolves wouldn't be able to fuck with me further.  Too bad my
wing hadn't healed yet.

Instead, I wondered if my cloaking would get me out of this one.  Problem
was, I hadn't been able to cloak since one of those bastards had shot a
bullet in my chest back when Sam and Paran had still been alive.

I looked at my ribs where the bullet had hit.  I could feel the lump under
my skin that I knew was a squashed bullet, yet my skin had completely
healed, trapping the bullet under my skin.  It was that tiny piece of metal
that prevented me from cloaking.

I took the tip of my sword, and clenching down to prepare myself for the
pain, I cut into myself, performing an on-the-spot surgery.  I cut a big
enough hole in my chest for me to fit my two fingers under the skin.  I
reached for the bloody bullet lodged between my ribs and pulled it out,
tossing it angrily down.  Moments later, I could feel my wound heal itself,
my body now restored enough for me to cloak.  If only my wing would follow
suit.

I tentatively leaned out over the base of Gabriel's dick, sliding over
where his dick started to curve downwards, and looked towards the ground.
I could see Russ, distinguishable among the others because of the
camouflage paint on his face, fiddle with something on Gabriel's left
ankle, then moving away.  Russ starting gesturing to the others to move
back, and all the wolves spread themselves out.

Then Russ hit a button in his hand, and there was an explosion.  No, not
just one explosion, but two of them.  Dual explosions covered Gabriel's
ankles in fire.

Fuck, they were trying to bring down the statue!

I felt Gabriel shake under me, and I prayed to God to let their explosions
fail, to keep Gabriel standing tall.

Instead, Gabriel started to crack, both of his ankles totally severed, and
then the statue started to fall back with a sharp jolt.

The sudden shaking was enough to knock me out of my hiding spot, and I fell
down, gripping around Gabriel's thigh, completely exposed, using my wings
to steady me, trying not to fall.

Looking way up, I could see the wobbly tip of Gabriel's sword make contact
with the edge of the inside of the building as Gabriel tilted backwards.  I
hoped that would be enough to steady Gabriel and keep him up.

Instead, Gabriel's sword ripped through the side of the Ensis, moving
outside as Gabriel fell harder and faster, with me struggling to hold on.

Gabriel's sword ripped further and further through the building, cutting a
gash that went lower and lower as the statue tilted.  Then, suddenly his
sword was completely outside the Ensis, and his hand continued to push
through and out, then his arm as Gabriel further tilted.

His upper body slammed against the edge of the Ensis, a dozen stories of
the building instantly being ripped apart as more and more of Gabriel moved
outside the building

Gabriel soon fell totally backwards, ripping entirely through all floors of
the Ensis as he fell, with me hitting the ground and then rolling
desperately to keep myself from getting crushed under Gabriel's weight as
his legs came to rest against the ground of the Ensis.

As Gabriel stopped his descent, I looked at the damage, a sickened awe
coming over me.  The statue had taken out a good fifth of the whole
building as it fell, slicing through the round Ensis like a knife would
carve out a piece of pie, and now the statue lay in tatters mostly on the
ground outside of the Ensis.

That was it.  They had damaged the building before, but now they had
completely destroyed it.

As soon as I had landed, the wolves were upon me, grabbing me and pinning
my wings down with their paws.

"Contain him, but don't harm him!"  It was Rick's voice yelling the order,
and I didn't like his tone of voice, like he had something worse in store
for me than a quick and simple death at the hands of all these wolves.

Though I fought against them, they pinned my arms behind me.  It took
several large werewolves to submit me, but they did it, and they held me
up, completely contained as Rick came forward.  He passed Russ on the way,
and grabbed the Marine on the shoulder.

"Do you have good news for me, Russ?"

He nodded.  "He's the only survivor as far as we know.  All rooms of their
fortress have cleared, save for one which will take large amounts of
explosives to blow open.  And I'm all tapped out of explosives, I'm
afraid."

"If you go into the city, how long will it take you to get more of what you
need?" Rick asked.

"Couple hours should do it."

"Go for it," Rick said.  "That last room is the only place Malcolm and
Cougar could be, if they are even here at all."

Russ nodded and ran out towards the outside.

Rick briefly looked down at me with quiet resentment.  He started to remove
his black-leather biking suit, the clothes a reminder, I gleaned from the
minds of the other wolves, that he was the only one left who had not yet
entered the physical battle, as every other wolf under his command was
stark naked.

He threw his clothes aside and looked around at his brothers.  Those few
who had remained downstairs came up to join the others.  I saw Alvaro, the
murderer of Barnabas, and his Spanish pack join the crowd.  Somewhere among
the faces, I saw Zakhar, the Russian wolf who had violated me, and I wanted
to rip that knowing grin off of his face.

Rick looked around at all of them, and I knew then that there were a great
many other wolves who had not been sent on this mission against the angels,
and that these wolves here had been handpicked as the strongest and most
influential of them all.  They were the heart and soul of the larger wolf
community.

"This day has been a long time in coming!" Rick said.  He tried to project
his voice, tried to come off like a natural speaker, a natural leader, but
there was a strand of artifice there, a strand of weakness that could
barely be detected in his voice.  But once I detected it, I knew it ran
deep through those secret inside places of his soul.  Rick caught my
piercing glance, and he must have seen his own weakness reflected back to
him, because the rest of his little speech came out clear and confident.
"Tonight will always be remembered as a victory for the wolves.  A turning
point in our history.

"Our enemies, the vampires and angels, their weapons of choice are
subterfuge, deception, and trickery.  Remember how many wolves were
brutally betrayed by the vampires after we took their word that they would
honor our standing truce while we aligned ourselves against the humans of
the Bridge.  Remember how many wolf bodies lay rotting on the ground after
that night was through.  But let us not forget who twisted our arm into
aligning with the vampires in the first place.  Yes, my brothers.  The
angels, the greatest manipulators of all.  Both these races prefer to run
and cower when we stand tall against them, yet both come to strike us the
moment our back have turned.  They resort to these petty ploys out of pure
desperation.  They could never win over us otherwise.  Neither one can hope
to match the pure physical strength of the wolves.  The angels know they
can only beat us in fights by screwing with our minds.  Neither one of
these weak races has earned the right to continue to exist.

"We know what the world would be like if one of our enemies was to win this
war.  Vampires want to rule and enslave the humans.  The men would likely
be rounded up in human farms, raised to be slaughtered.

"Angels would have their religion rule, would have the world bow to their
theocracy.  A bleak, colorless world, where men would be forced to swear
allegiance to a stupid, antiquated, out-dated book.  A book!  A book
written by fools, worshipped by fools.  We've seen these kinds of
theocracies before, know what kind of evils they bring.  Those who would
dare to deviate from the status quo are stoned for it.

"I know what wolves have always wanted for this world.  I know how the
world will be when the wolves inevitably destroy their enemies and rise to
the top.  Chaos would reign.  The laws of the jungle would once again be
re-instated upon humanity.  No large bodies of power.  No police.  No
military.  No politicians.  Just individuals.  Just families.  Just packs.
Trying to survive.  A world where all anyone has to rely on is their own
resilience.  Where no man or woman can afford to be weak.  Because we know
all to well that unearned power corrupts.  There will never be an organized
body of power that doesn't exist to exploit its people.  So why even try?
This is the one thing all wolves know for certain."

Rick addressed them silently with his eyes for a moment, challenging them.
Then, he spoke: "I've heard the rumblings among you.  I'm not stupid, I
know what many of you are saying.  That I'm afraid to get my hands dirty.
That I spend too much time pontificating on my soap box and then hiding out
while the rest of you fight.  You wonder if I'm as tough as I claim to be.
Wolves have whispered that I achieved my position more out of luck than
strength.  That it wasn't me who defeated Leung, it was my co-alpha.  That
my defeat over Watts was more a manipulation of a twisted battlefield than
of pure combat prowess.  That my defeat of Hadrian was most likely only due
to the assistance of my pack.  That I avoid combat because I fear my
weakness will finally be exposed.  That some bold wolf should challenge me
and teach me a lesson.

"Right here, right now, I will show all of you whisperers how foolish your
suspicions have been.  And once I have, I never want a single one of you to
doubt my muscle again."

He turned and pointed at me.  "You, angel.  You who just massacred dozens
of our wolves in battle without so much as a scratch to show for it.  You
who earlier defeated Leung when none of the variables were stacked in your
favor.  You are the angel leader, isn't that right?"

I hesitated for a moment, but my ego got the best of me.  "I am of the
highest order," I said.

"Are you the strongest angel as well?  Strong in battle?"

I considered.  I knew certainly Faith was stronger than me.  I thought
perhaps the same was true with Shamir.  "I am Fortitude, a position my kind
considers to be the strongest among us.  Quite frankly, I am a god."

Rick smiled, and I wondered if I was playing into his hands.  "I will fight
this opponent, wolf style, one on one."

There were grumblings among the wolves of surprise.

"You can't do this," Case said, coming behind his leader.  "It's too
dangerous, and much too pointless."

"Our brothers need reminding why it is I who leads them," he said.

"A leader can do no good to us if he's dead," Case argued.

I could tell from Rick's face that dark thoughts were running through his
head, dark memories perhaps.  But he would listen to nobody.

"We'll fight with no frills," Rick said. "I'm free to change form as I
wish, he will be able to fly and use his mind tricks.  I will allow him to
keep the sword in his hands to fight with.  Otherwise, we will both be
naked.  And this time, there will be no props to abuse or traps to avoid.
Just a clean and simple, down and dirty, wolf style rumble.  Got it angel?"

I nodded.  "Do we fight to the death?" I asked.

"Would I ever want it any other way?" Rick asked.

"Then I will enjoy killing you," I said.  "But you must order your wolves
not to harm me after you've been slaughtered.  They must let me go."

"Yes, agreed," Rick said.  "You heard him, brothers.  If he kills me in
combat, you must let him free.  And angel, don't even think of trying to
make a run for it as soon as you start to lose.  If you try to fly out of
here, my wolves will shoot you down, and we'll kill you as soon as you
land.  Understand?"

"Don't worry, I won't run, not before I've had the pleasure of decapitating
you, Rick.  Rick the Spic."

He gave me a defiant stare.

"Wolves, form a circle," Rick ordered.

The naked men all around us tightened into a circle about 60 feet in
diameter.

"This is our battlespace," Rick said.  "Neither one of us can leave this
circle.  And imagine this space to be three-dimensional, half of a sphere,
with the topmost point as tall as this circle's radius."

"Come again, Einstein?" I asked, totally lost.

"Let's just say that if you fly any higher than 30 feet, you will be
considered forfeit.  My wolves will shoot you down, and you will be killed.
Let's go."

The wolves who were holding onto me let me go.  Glad to be free of them, I
walked to join Rick in the center of the circle.  I looked down at my
wingtip; the damage was gone and I'd be able to fly normally.  I was
completely whole and ready for the fight of my life.

I looked at Rick in front of me.  I smiled disarmingly.  "A lot at stake on
this fight, yeah Ricky?"

He nodded.  "Not just our lives, but the symbolic dominance of an entire
species over another.  I'd say so, angel."

"Good thing I've always been great at performing under pressure."  I
flicked my cocky smile in his direction.  "What about you, Ricky?  Good at
keeping cool when things get hot, or are you more likely to blow your load
prematurely?"  Of course I already knew the answer.  He could hide his
anxiety from the rest of them, but I could still feel it.

Rick just rolled his eyes at me, refusing to be drawn into my mindgames.
He looked me over, sizing me up, his eyes stopping on my dick.

I chuckled.  "First time you've seen an angel dick up close, isn't it?" I
taunted him.  "Pretty fucking huge, huh sweetheart?"  My soft cock leaked a
glob of precum.  I looked over at Rick's much more average sized dick.  "I
know that look in your eyes.  Big dick envy.  All the small-dicked guys get
it.  You think you're man enough to take me on, Little Ricky?  Because from
the looks of it, you ain't exactly a whole lotta man there."

Rick frustratingly looked back at his wolves.  "Will someone please start
the fucking fight already?  I can't stand idiots who run there mouths off
in battle."

Case stepped forward, apparently officiating.  "Fighters ready?" Case
asked.

Rick nodded to him as he leaned forward and flexed his arms, taking what
looked to me like a wrestling stance.

I was sure as fuck that this was about to be the most important fight of my
life, and I quickly recalled everything I had ever been taught about
combat.  The most important thing they teach you in the Marines is to know
yourself and to know your enemy.  The way I saw it, Rick had four assets in
this battle.  Rick's ability to take three different shapes had no purpose
here, as there was no reason why he wouldn't just turn into his strongest
form and stay that way.  I wasn't counting his shapeshifting as one of his
assets.  He had his teeth, those were certainly deadly.  He had his sharp
claws.  Then there was his massive size.  Finally, there was his great
strength, which I guessed was just slightly superior to my own.

But I had four assets as well.  My groundspeed was at least a little better
than Rick's.  I could read minds.  I had my sword.  And most importantly, I
could fly, and when I was in the air, I was lightening fast.  Comparing my
strengths to Rick's, the scales seemed to be tilted in my favor.

I nodded to Case as well, holding my sword in front of me with both hands.

"Go!"

As soon as Case uttered the syllable, I charged forward into my opponent,
my sword held out perpendicular to my body.  Getting the surprise on Rick,
my swordtip ripped into his chest and pressed against his ribs, blood
running down his torso.  He grunted, but kept his cool, digging his feet in
the ground and locking himself in place.

I pushed hard into the sword, trying to move the steel past his ribcage,
but his bones would not give, and try as I might, I could not get more than
an inch into his body.

Immediately, Rick's body started to its transmutation into its large,
fearsome beastly form.  As this happened, the flesh the tip of my sword was
invading became somehow more dense and resilient, actually ejecting the
steel from within it.  The wound healed over quickly, and I knew if I were
to wound him again, I'd have to aim my strikes for his fleshy bits, as I
just wasn't strong enough to easily pierce his bones.

I moved back as he started to swing those claws at me defensively.  I
considered briefly trying to cloak, but discarded the idea, knowing that
cloaking wasn't effective in close combat.  I tried to listen to his mind,
tried to force it to spill its secrets, but just like before, his mind was
effectively closed to me.  I could hear the sound of Rick's voice in his
mind, I could sense that he was a wolf and that he was fucking strong, but
all else was blocked off, apparently by the same mindtrick that used to
keep the human members of the Bridge safe from our minds, only Rick had
somehow learned this technique without it being taught to him.  No, my
greatest asset, my ability to foretell what moves my opponent would make,
was useless to me here.  I'd have to win this fight on strength and combat
skill alone.

Rick charged me again, and to avoid being mauled, I flew up into the air,
far above his reach.  I still had my wings, I told myself.  They would lead
me to win this battle.  As long as I could fly out of reach of him, I could
retreat to safety anytime I needed, coming in to strike on my own terms.  I
would lead in this little dance of ours, and Rick would have to follow.

Priming my sword in front of me, I swooped down towards Rick and cut his
face before pulling back up into air just before he could grab me with
those claws.  This, it seemed, was the safest mode of attack available to
me, relatively low risk.  I turned back and swooped down at him again, this
time slashing Rick's furry upper-arm before returning to the air.  Then I
swept down again, cutting him once more.  Again and again, I swept down and
slashed my blade into him.

Problem was, those cuts were healing faster than I could create them, and
although this mode of attack was certainly safe, at this rate dawn would
come before either one of us was victorious.  I wasn't fucking much known
for playing it safe anyway.

I remembered back when I was still human when Sam had told me the easiest
method an angel can use to kill a wolf, and figured I'd give it a shot.  I
swept down towards Rick once more, but instead of cutting him with my
sword, I flew up behind him, stuck my hands under his arms, and lifted him
hard.

He was as heavy as a fucking fat-ass cow, and I wondered briefly if I was
strong enough to fly with him, remembering suddenly how Sam had dropped out
of the air like a stone as soon as Watts had turned into his werewolf form
while holding onto Sam.  But it seemed I was stronger than Sam, because I
managed to lift the massive form of my enemy straight off of his feet.

"Let's go for a little ride, buddy-boy," I said.

I pulled him up into the air, only able to make a slow ascension with my
still novice wing-skills, but as long as I rose steadily, I was satisfied.
Rick struggled against me, even bit into my arm with those teeth of his,
but I didn't give a fuck, I wasn't letting go.  Not yet, anyhow.

I would have flown higher than thirty feet, but I knew that if I even
carried this fat-ass bitch 31 feet off the ground, I'd be shot down by
about 50 gunwolves at once.  So, I flew to what I guessed what must have
been 30 feet, and I let the heavy motherfucker fall.

"Oh, clumsy me, did I just drop you, bro?  Well, fuck."

I guess werewolves aren't like cats, they weren't fucking designed to land
gracefully on their feet.  Rick fell fast and landed flat on his back, the
marble floor cracking underneath him as he landed.

He went still, and there were several gasps among the crowd of wolves.  But
then, the wolf opened his eyes and looked up at me.  Damned if the wolf
wasn't fucking smiling then somehow.  No, not smiling, leering, taunting
that the 30 foot drop wouldn't be nearly enough to take him out.

Well, fuck his cockiness.  I drew my sword and divebombed down from my 30
foot height.  And this time, I wasn't fucking pulling back up like a pussy.
This time, it was all or nothing.  I stretched my right arm as far as it
would go as I pile-drove into him with every ounce of angel strength God
had given me.  This time, the force of my sword was so strong, I felt it
rip through the wolf's flesh and pound into the ground on the other side,
causing me to lose my grip on the hilt as I smashed into the ground as
well.

When I pulled myself up to my feet, I was treated to one of the most
beautiful sights I had ever seen.  There was my ultimate enemy, Rick, the
king of the wolves, completely impaled by my mighty sword.  The blade had
gone through his stomach and had planted itself deep into the marble floor
underneath his body, the hilt of the sword standing proudly in the air
above him.  Blood and what looked like stomach fluids gushed out of the
monster matting his fur and covering the floor in red.

Again, the other wolves gasped and grumbled at seeing their proud leader
reduced to a fucking piece of meat on a skewer.

But the fucker was still alive, that much was obvious.  He must have been
in some pain as he struggled and convulsed and cried out.  I smiled at his
misery, delighting in that it was my doing.  His wolf eyes rolled back into
their sockets and foam was pouring out of his mouth, but still he would not
take his last breath.

As much as his torture was amusing to watch, I wanted to finish this fight
and revel in my victory.  Weaponless now, I started punching him in the
face with my bare fists.  I hit him faster than any human boxer could ever
hit an opponent, but still he showed no sign that my hits were having any
effect.

No, I needed something stronger than my fists, but I didn't have any weapon
at my disposal.  Instead, I tried giving the wolf a taste of his own
medicine, biting into his throat with my bare teeth and trying to cut
through his jugular.

His sweaty, greasy fucking fur tasted like shit, especially with my
heightened angel sense of taste.  But that wasn't what made me quit biting
him, no, it was the fact that no matter how hard I bit, I couldn't do
anything more than make the fucker bleed a little.

"Fuck!" I yelled as I spat his fur out of my mouth.  This sucker just
wasn't dying, and I came to the realization that the impaling just wasn't
enough to bring down a beast like this, and clearly without my sword I was
totally useless.

It dawned on me what I would have to do, and I was cursing God in my head
for not letting the wolf just die.  Instead, I grabbed the hilt of my sword
with both hands.  With all my strength, I pulled it out of the ground, and
out of my enemy as well as I lost my balance and stepped backwards.

Instantly, his wound was healing, and the fucker had come to.  Before I
could take advantage of his disorientation with an attempt to behead him,
he was back on his feet too and attacking me with those claws again, this
time cutting me hard and deep all the way down my left side.

Nope, it was back to the fucking air as I retreated to the only place I
could heal without him coming at me.  Beneath me, I could see the Rick's
stomach wound heal completely now, and I knew this fight was back to square
one.  Only this time all of my clever ideas had already been used up.

Instead, I went back to my swoop, slash, then retreat strategy that I
fucking hated pulling but didn't see much alternative.  Maybe I would get
faster at this whole flying gig, and maybe I would start cutting him faster
than he could heal.  Right now, that was my only way to victory, and the
last thing I was going to do was go back to the ground and left him take
control of this fight.  No, I would stay in the goddamn driver's seat.

I swooped down again, only this time he did more than just stand there and
take it.  The fucker jumped upwards and to the side, out of the way of my
sword.  I hadn't even realized before that wolves could jump like that.

"Fucking A!" I yelled as I felt a sudden pain in my wing, and realized that
the bastard wasn't just trying to avoid my attack, he was going for my
right wing.  And his teeth chomped down through my feathers and into my
flesh, and he was pulling me down to the ground.

I hit the marble floor hard as the wolf landed beside me, tugging and
twisting at my wing in his mouth before I went after him with my sword,
almost managing to behead him.  Instead, he let go of my wing and jumped
back into safety.

Problem was, he had left my wing completely fucked.  There would be no more
flying, at least not for a couple of minutes while my wing healed.  I
readied myself to fight this one out on the ground.  I gripped the hilt of
my sword tight, knowing full well that it was the only tool I had left at
my disposal.  I held tight to my only remaining chance at life.

I held my sword straight ahead, the monster looking down from a few feet
away, snorting like a bull.  Fuck, these things looked so much bigger on
the ground.  As the beast made a feint towards me, then stopped cold, I
suddenly wished I had been trained how to swordfight strategically by
someone so I could do more here than just hack and swing with all by
strength.  I wish I had been taught to study body language so that I would
know to fucking react when I wasn't able to read my opponent's mind.  Well,
fuck regrets, I was here and I would have to make a quick study of this
kind of combat now.  Either I'd pick it up or I'd die, simple as that.

Just when I started to watch how Rick was holding his left side toward me
and tried to discern what I could predict from that stance, suddenly it
guessing-game didn't matter anymore.  I don't know how it happened; I
thought perhaps in my stress I grew another step in power when I needed it
most.  Instead of the jumbled mess that had previously made up Rick's
thoughts up to that point, I started getting clear ideas coming through the
rest of the noise.  Excited, I attuned my mind to them, trying to filter
out the static and concentrate on what mattered.

I'll fake right, then swing around him to the left and surprise him from
the side, came Rick's thoughts bright and clear.

I tried not to let myself crack a smile then, tried to give him no sign
that anything had changed.  Because I knew that God had given me the power
to break through Rick's psychic bullshit just when I absolutely needed it
most.  This would win me the fight, I knew.

When Rick made a sudden fake towards his right, he expected that I would
turn to my left to face him and protect my body with my sword.  Then, he
would spin around to his left and coming into my unguarded right side.

But I did just the opposite of what he was expecting.  When he faked to his
right, instead of turning to face him there, I turned my body to my right
and readied myself for his attack on that side.

You brainless white trash little moron, I can't believe you took the bait,
can't believe you would actually think that you could trick me when all I
have to do is think about doing exactly the opposite of whatever it is I
planned on doing.

As he thought those thoughts, as anger burned into my body like acid, as I
suffered the humiliation of being so swiftly duped, Rick did not fake to
his right like he had led me to believe.  No, there was nothing hesitant or
half-assed about his motion to his right at all, he came at me with
everything he had, and like a motherfucker I was bracing for impact in
totally the wrong direction.

He hit me so hard on my unblocked left side that I felt like a semi had
just hit me dead on.  I flew through the air I don't know how many feet
before landing awkwardly on the ground, my vision black.

The last thing I felt was shard teeth ripping into my throat, finishing me.

Looks like this little spic just effortlessly took down a god! came Rick's
annoying voice in my head.  What a weak, pathetic little nothing you turned
out to be, Fortiude!

And then the blackness of what I knew was my death consumed me.

*****

"Wake up, little mate," came the voice through the blackest part of my
subconscious.

A hot liquid pouring down my face.  Angel cum?  What I desired more than
anything, what I needed to recover my wits?

I opened my mouth reflexively and lapped at the liquid, eager for its
sustenance.

I quickly spat the liquid back out.  This was no angel cum, it was bitter
and acrid and foul.  Piss, I knew, and from the taste of it, a wolf's piss,
the most foul piss of all.  And this piss wasn't running down my face, it
was running up my face.

I opened my eyes.  Through blurred vision, piss stinging my eyes, I tried
to make out where I was.  All I could see was an upside-down, pissing dick
filling up my entire field of vision.  More of the hot urine got into my
mouth, and I wretched and spat it out.

The dick moved up and a face appeared, a face I didn't fucking like too
much.  It was Watts' face looking me over, and it was upside-down.

I must be in hell, I thought.  Watts was dead, I knew, and the bastard
wouldn't ever have been let through the gates of Heaven.  And apparently,
God wouldn't let me in either.  I was in some upside down hell with Watts,
a cruel punishment for losing a fight to a wolf.

As my mind cleared itself of its delirium, I realized how much pain my body
was in.  I knew then I was not dead.  I was alive, and from my futile
attempts at movement, it seemed I was thoroughly bound.

"Well, well, it took a good hosing down, but the ugliest angel finally
awakes," upside-down Watts said to me in his annoying Australian accent.
Every time I heard this fucker's stupid way of talking it made me want to
rip out his vocal chords.  His chosen method of rousing me from my sleep
notched him a couple of spots up on my Kill List as well, not to mention
him kicking my ass in our little scuffle upstairs earlier.  Worst of all,
he was responsible for the death of my lover.

"How come you're not dead, Crocodile Dundee?" I asked him.

"Ha!  Funny!  And so original, that one.  Rick!"

Watts' naked body walked out of my field of vision, and for the first time,
I could see my surroundings.  I was on the ground floor of the Ensis, or
what was left of the Ensis, at any rate.  Only, the whole place was
disorienting flipped upside down.  I figured I must have been hanging
upside down.

My upper body was wrapped in chains, I realized, which kept me from moving
my arms or releasing my wings.  And it seemed the thick rope that bound my
feet together had been attached to some hook on the wall, which left me
hanging a few feet off the ground.  I struggled against the chains to see
if I could squirm free.

"It's no use, I've been squirming for the hours you've been out and I
haven't dislodged myself one iota."

What?  I turned my head to the right to towards the direction of his voice,
and I swear I almost cried at the sight.

Sam was next to me, alive and smiling, those deep blue, loving eyes
soothing me in spite of our predicament.

"You're alive, Sam!" I yelled excitedly.  "How the fuck did you manage
that?"

"I should be asking you the same question," he said.  "I thought for sure
you wouldn't recover from the mortal wounds inflicted on you by Rick in
battle.  And yet, here you are, awake again."

Sam looked right-side-up to me, so I knew he really must have been upside
down.  Like me, he was cocooned in chains and hung upside down, bat-style,
from a hook on a wall.  I didn't care what state he was in, though, I was
just overjoyed that he still lived.

"You should be dead," I told him.  "I saw Watts stab you when the both of
you were flying.  I saw you lose control of your wings and start to go
down.  You should have been just a puddle on the ground floor by now."

He smiled.  "I guess God had my back, as you say," he said.  "Before I hit
the ground, I was able to snap to attention and regain control over my
wings, in spite of the two knives lodged deep into my back.  I flew Watts
and myself to a soft, safe landing.  Well, relatively soft, anyway.  Of
course, as soon as I landed, Watts was all over me and soon had me subdued.
But he didn't kill me.  Rick ordered that I remain alive, for reasons I can
surely guess.  He wanted you similarly to be kept alive, and they've been
waiting for you to awaken for hours."  He nodded out into the distance.
"Damn, here they come again."

Among the many wolves hanging around the area searching through the debris,
Watts and Rick emerged from the crowd and moved towards where Sam and
myself were contained.

"Keep looking for survivors," Rick said to the other wolves.  "I want all
wolves rescued and every last one of the enemy killed."

"It's not easy to find the living among all these corpses," Alvaro, who was
nearby Rick throwing bodies around, complained.  "Our wolf sense of smell
does not help us here as it cannot distinguish between the living and dead,
and there are so many more bodies to check."

"That is why we must keep working at it," Rick said.  He and Watts came
over to where Sam and myself were hanging.  "Give me your knife, Watts."
The Australian handed Rick one of his hunting knives.  "Do you see what I
see, Watts?  The mighty, indestructible angels, who told us that we didn't
have a prayer against them in battle, have fallen at our hands.  Now they
face extinction for their mistakes."

Sam shook his head.  "You have chosen the path of darkness for your people.
You've betrayed your promises to us, thrown your honor to the wind, and
given up on any hope for moral redemption."

"Shut the hell up!" Rick said to Sam, flicking his knife in his direction.
"Not another useless word!  What, do you think you can guilt me into
letting you and your lover free?  Ha, yeah right.  Does the slave feel
guilt when he finally frees himself from his oppressors?  You think you can
paint yourself the victim now?  You are the villain here, angel, not me!
Our grievances with your species are very real and long overdue for
redress.  You angels claim to be in an alliance with us wolves, yet you
choose to fight this war against the vampires by sitting arrogantly on your
thrones and letting so many wolves die in your stead.  Well, I think it's
time for a regime change, don't you?"

Sam shook his head.  "Look what your arrogance has cost you.  You've
destroyed your ranks in order to defeat us, and with them gone you have no
hope against the demons' vast armies."

"I know that," Rick yelled.  "I know what the consequences of my actions
are.  But you must have been a complete moron if you thought I wouldn't
realize the true aim of your plan: force us wolves to kill off the
vampires, then when we come limping victoriously out of the last battle,
you swoop in and kill us off at our weakest like the cowards you are.
Well, you are an idiot to think that I would let that happen to my kind.
That I would ever really submit to being the underling of some wanna-be
hegemon.  Us wolves would rather die at the hands of the vampires than as a
part of the manipulations of a species as deceptive as yours.  At least the
vampires fight us man to man instead of through under-handed exploitations
which is clearly your preference.  I warned you, angel, not to
underestimate my cunning, and you failed to do so, and now you will pay.  I
just have one use for you, one sole reason for keeping you alive."

Rick walked over to Sam and put the knife threateningly against his throat.
"I know both of you know where my two brothers are being held.  The only
reason you still live is because so far I have yet to find them.  Now, you
will lead me to them, or you will die."

"Then I will die," Sam said.  "You cannot force me to divulge secrets I
would gladly give my life to keep."

Rick rolled his eyes.  "I knew you would say that.  I knew no amount of
torture could ever make you talk.  I know how strong you are.  But your
lover over there," he said, pointing his knife right at me.  "He isn't
nearly as strong."

"Don't underestimate him," Sam said.

"No?" Rick said.  "You give him more credit than he deserves."  Rick
grabbed Sam's blonde hair and held his knife against Sam's taut throat,
challenging me with his look.  "How bout it, lover-boy?" he taunted.  "You
willing to give up your secrets in exchange for this one's life?"

Sam ever so slightly shook his head as he looked at me sadly, and I knew he
had faith in my resiliency.  Perhaps before I had become an angel, before
Gideon took over this host body, then perhaps I would have given in.  But
now I was an angel, and angels never gave in.

What Sam did not know is that Gideon's soul was not making decisions for
this body.  Bradley Wheeler's soul was, and Bradley Wheeler was as weak as
Rick had guessed.

I couldn't possibly let Sam die, I would do anything to prevent it.
Whether it was out of love for him, or whether it was because I knew
without him, I would soon die of starvation, that I could not answer.  All
I knew was that I was willing to lie, cheat, give up all our secrets, and
even kill innocents in order to save Sam's life.  I would of course give
in.

But Rick never let me say uncle.  "It's a moot point," he said before I
could say anything, pulling the knife away from Sam's throat.  "I already
know that he cannot be trusted.  You say that angels cannot lie, but I have
a feeling that he is the exception to that rule.  So, I never meant to use
your life as leverage against him.  No, I intended just the opposite."

Rick quickly moved through the space between Sam and myself, now holding
the knife to my throat.

"Lead me to my brothers, angel, or your lover will die," Rick said.  "I
have threatened his life before, I know that.  You may want to believe that
this is just an empty gesture.  But let me assure you, this time I will
follow through with my promise.  Tell me right now what I need to know, or
you'd better make room for this boy's cross on that chain of yours."

I looked at Sam imploringly, and he tried to remain stoic, but for once I
could see the terror in his eyes.  He knew he was about to lose me.

"Tell me, angel, or I'll do him right now!"

Finally, Sam spoke: "I am sorry, Gideon, but you know I cannot say
anything.  Do not fear, they will kill me moments after they kill you, and
we will go to the other side hand in hand."  Then, looking at Rick, "I will
never give what I know."

"Then I guess I have no more use for this little tyrant," Rick said.  "I've
kept him alive far longer than I have preferred already.  Say goodbye,
lover-boy!"

Rick made to slice the knife through my throat, but as he did, I convulsed
my body, bouncing my head upwards so that instead of Rick's knife landing
against the flesh of my throat, it forced itself against my lips.
Immediately, I opened my mouth and bit down onto the blade of the knife,
clamping as hard as I could.

Please God give me the strength to break through my bonds.

"Damn, he actually bit down on the knife!" Rick said.

Rick tried to wriggle the knife free of my jaws, and although he couldn't
manage it, he did cut deep incisions through both sides of my lips, driving
deep into my cheek muscles, as well as slicing my tongue open.  It was
totally gruesome, but I would not let the knife free.

"Every dog needs his chew toy," Watts joked.  "Let him have that one,
then." Watts pulled out his second knife.  "I'll do the honors, if I may."

Watts came towards me fast with the clear intention of finishing me off
with his hunting knife.  With my mouth full of steel, I had no other ace up
my sleeve to keep Watts from slicing my throat open.

Please God give me the strength to break through my bonds, please God give
me the strength to break through my bonds.

Finally, God must have heard my prayer, as I felt my footropes crack under
the pressure of my feet pulling them apart.  The rope unraveled itself as I
suddenly fell to the ground, landing hard on my face, but at least free
from the grasp of Watts's overly large knife.

With the chains still tied hard around my torso, I jackknifed off the
ground onto my feet and started to run away from the two of them, not sure
where I was headed, but welcoming any change of scenery.

"Don't worry, Watts," Rick said when the Australian went to catch me.
"I'll eliminate him."

I ran harder at those words, struggling at the heavy chains holding down my
arms and wings, but I knew that I would never be able to get these off, not
without someone's assistance, at least.  And without my wings out, I
wouldn't be able to fly out of the Ensis.

I immediately engaged my cloak and looked around.  There were wolves
blocking every exit, no way for me to escape.

If you can't run, you must find a way to hide.

I scurried over to the stairwell that led down to the floors below and
jumped down the steps.  I knew that they would look for me down here, as
this was the only logical escape route open to me, and Rick would be right
on my heels.

I ran into the only room in the area that I knew well enough to be certain
that I could find a hiding spot, the Worship Chamber.  Signs of my
traumatizing encounter with the Russian pack of wolves were all over the
place here, not least of which included a good number of beheaded corpses
on the ground.  I jumped over these naked bodies, though, and instead
headed toward the block weight on the other side of the room.

Using my full strength, I pushed the massively heavy stone block over most
of the opening in the floor, leaving just a small enough slice for me to
slip through.  Once I had pulled myself inside the dark hole in the ground,
I set myself on my back and put my feet in the air, bracing them against
the underside of the block.  I pushed up on the block with my legs and just
managed to pull the block completely into place over its hole.

As soon as it was in place, of course, it fell down upon me with its full,
crushing weight, and I had to use my feet and my legs to keep the block
from pounding me to my death.  It was like the fucking leg-press machine
from hell.  And then, once I had steadied the damn thing, I had to hold it
in place, completely still, for as long as it took for the wolves to leave.
I was damn sure this block would keep them from getting to me as long as
the sun didn't rise.  But once it had, I'd be totally SOL, as the daytime
hours would strip me of my strength and the block would certainly crush me
to death at that point.

I just had to pray that the wolves would leave by then.

I heard a low, steady growl coming from the entrance of the room, and knew
there was a werewolf coming in.  Moments later I sensed the odd thought
patterns that seemed completely impossible to read, and knew of course that
my pursuer was Rick.

The beast came into the room and searched around, sniffing the air.  But I
was cloaked, and so the beast's nostrils picked up no trace of my presence.

Yet, he must have seen the large block sticking halfway into the hole in
the floor, because he came closer to inspect my hiding spot.  I tried to
hold the block perfectly still to avoid his suspicion, but it was beyond
difficult to hold such a weight in place, unwavering.  The block shook in
spite of my efforts, and Rick perked up, snarling a little as he stood
above me.

Let him see the block tremble, I didn't give a fuck.  He couldn't lift the
block out of its hole anyway, nobody could.  I was barely strong enough to
push this thing out from underneath me with my leg muscles.  I could never
lean over from above and pull the thing out of the hole with my arms and
back, I wasn't nearly strong enough for that.  Not even the old, dead Amzi
Fortitude could have done that, and he had been the strongest angel ever
alive.

I could sense Rick putting his thick, knotted wolf arms around the block
above me.  "Yeah, just try to lift the thing, fucker," I said to him,
knowing that he couldn't hear me because I was cloaked.  "I'll be the one
cheering when your spine breaks in half."

As Rick held onto the block, he started to make a sort of sustained
wolf-grunt, and then, miraculously, the block started to lift!
Motherfucker was pulling it up!

I pulled my legs back down, away from the block, and the second I removed
their support, the block fell down a bit towards me, as if Rick was
suddenly overwhelmed by the increased mass of the thing.

Then, another grunt or two and the block started to lift again.  Fuck!  How
could he be so fucking strong?  How could he be stronger than any fucking
angel who ever lived?  It wasn't fucking right, it wasn't right of God to
let these abominations get so powerful.

Rick lifted the block clear of the hole, steadied against his chest for a
moment, and then, moving his whole body, hurled the block across the room,
where it slammed against the wall, causing much damage.

Rick the werewolf refocused his attention back into the dark hole, looking
right down at me.  He knew I was down there, somewhere, even if he couldn't
see me.

Thank God I was still able to cloak.  Rick was standing at my feet, peering
down from that side of the hole.  I sat up, pulling my body against the
opposite side of the hole as he continued to stare vacantly into the hole
where my legs had just been.

"Don't try too hard, fucker, you'll never be able to catch me if you can't
sense me!"

I started to stand up on my side of the hole.  I would just climb out on
this side and to make a run for it, and that stupid wolf would still be
staring down into the hole after I had made my escape.

Unable to use my arms because of the chains around them, I still managed to
jump out of the hole and onto the ground.

I heard a snarl, and felt a pair of furry arms encircle me from behind.  I
struggled to get free, but he was holding me much too tightly.  I felt hot
slobber against my throat and the pinpricks of a whole row of teeth
threatening me.  How the fuck had he known I was there?

Rick's thoughts momentarily came through with crystal clarity: Never be
able to catch you, huh?  What the fuck do you call this, angel?  You think
I haven't learned by now to see through your tricks?  I could sense you
from the moment I came into the room.  There's no hiding from me anymore!

I felt his teeth clamp down against my throat and knew he was going to kill
me.  I had nothing left up my sleeve, no means of escape.  I was completely
overpowered and at his mercy.

Well, I still had ONE asset still at my disposal.

"Wait, you can't kill me, wolf!" I protested.  "Not when I know where your
brothers are being held."

He stopped his teeth from ripping through my neck, but did not remove my
throat from his mouth.

Where are they?  TELL ME!

"Malcolm and Rick, I think their names are," I teased.  "I can show you to
them if you let me live."

Are they somewhere in this place?  Somewhere we have missed?

"No," I answered.  "They are at our other super-secret location.  I could
take you there, and you could find them."

He considered for a moment whether to listen to me or to kill me.  I could
tell by the pressure his jaws were making in my throat that he really
wanted to go for the latter.

"You'll never see those two alive again if you don't bargain with me," I
said.  "Think about them, man.  Think about their welfare.  If you listen
to me, they can be free again."

Tell me what you want in return, angel!

I smiled, knowing his mind was already made in my favor.  "Just let me and
my friend go, let us live.  That's all I ask.  In return, I'll lead you and
your men to our other location."

You swear to me that you will lead me to this place?  That there will be no
tricks or surprises coming my way?  That I will have my two brothers
without the loss of anymore of my men?

"Yes, I swear it," I said.

Swear to God!  An angel cannot lie to God, isn't that right?

"Yes, I swear to God," I said, knowing full well that I was lying.  That
was nothing new for me.  "An angel oath cannot be broken.  We cannot lie."
Words that were true for all angels save for myself.

After a moment, the wolf opened his mouth and let my throat go.  His bloody
teethmarks melted away, and I was more than thankful to be free of his
bite.

I will not let either of you go until you have led me to them.

"Fine," I said, going over in my mind exactly what my plan would be from
here on out.

Rick didn't let me go, didn't trust me to walk on my own.  Instead, he held
me with his arms and dragged me out of the room, leading me back towards
the stairwell.

On the way, we passed the entrance to the spine, which was the only room
left not breached by the intruders.  That status was soon to end, however,
as Russ, having returned from the city with more explosives in hand, now
was setting the charges against the massive doors.

"Should have these open momentarily," he said as Rick dragged me past him.

Fuck.  Soon enough the last hundred Ensis angels would be massacred,
probably none of them even moving down from their cloaking stations,
carrying out their duties to the end.  The Spine thrones wouldn't even be
able to put up a fight, instead being slaughtered as soon as their only
protectors, their Delectors, were easily offed.  And then, the whole city
would be able to see this landmark that had been hidden to their minds for
so many years.

Rick dragged me upstairs on the ground floor of the Ensis, over the debris
and the dead bodies, and pulled me back where Sam was still chained upside
down with Watts waiting nearby.

"Get some chains for this one's legs!" Watts shouted at some of the other
wolves as Rick and I approached.

Sam was frowning, disappointed as he saw my recapture.  You were very brave
to attempt to escape, at least.  I'm so sorry to see that you weren't
successful.

The wolves brought forth a thick chain like the one that held my upper
body, which they tied tight around my feet, and then they turned me upside
down and hung me once again by my feet.

There was a loud explosion from underneath us.  I knew exactly what it was
before Rick's walkie-talkie went off.

"I've got the doors off," Russ's voice came through.  "I'll need some
wolves down here, ASAP.  We've got a spiderhole full of spiders down here."

"Alright," Rick said into the thing, now back in his man-form.  "I'll come
down there myself."

Rick motioned for Watts, and the two of them moved away from Sam and
myself.  I knew it was only a matter of moments before all two hundred
souls down there would be slaughtered by the wolves.

Before they ever got to the stairs, Rick stopped with what looked like
surprise and looked upwards.

"Do you hear that?" he asked.

"Hear what?" Watts asked.

Rick didn't answer, still looking up.  I tried to listen to whatever had
stolen his attention, but nothing penetrated my ears beyond the sound of a
hundred wolves rummaging through debris.

"What is that?" Rick asked.

"What?  What the fuck are you looking at?"  Watts strained himself but
could see nothing, same as me.

But then, looking up though the open hole in the top of the demolished
building, I could see a large plane flying low over top of us, there just
for a moment before flying out of site.  Just barely, I could make out
little shapes falling from the plane, shining white dots floating
downwards.

"You don't see that?" Rick demanded of his subordinate.

"What?" Watts asked.  "The stars?"

The shapes, which at first were just floating white dots, now appeared to
be paratroopers to me, men with billowy white parachutes.  A second plane
flew quickly by overhead, and another large contingent of these
paratroopers came floating through the sky.

As the first group of parachuters fell down closer towards us, I could see
now that what I had taken as billowy white parachutes were no such thing at
all.  They were clear, brilliant white angel wings.

Angels!

"Wolves, listen!" Rick screamed suddenly, making himself heard throughout
the floor.  "The angels are coming in from above, looks to me like several
dozen."

"We don't see anything!" one of the wolves protested.

"Because they are invisible to you, but I can see them plain as day!" Rick
said shortly.  "Get to your guns and start shooting!"

Sam looked at me, his beautiful smile back on his face finally.  It's the
Cathedral, they must have been alerted as to what was taking place here!

The wolves scrambled to find their guns and start shooting, but the angels
were descending fast, and all were well within the Ensis before any bullets
started to fly.  Not able to see their targets, the wolves failed to hit
any save for one or two Cathedral Powers, who fell to their unfortunate
deaths.

"Let me have at them," Rick said, taking an automatic rifle from one of his
men and shooting down at the angel who had descended the fastest.

He was in a suit of armor made light for flying, similar in design to Sam's
set, only with subtle aesthetic differences between the two.  This
identified him to me as a Seraph.  Although he wore a mask, I knew exactly
who it was: Temperance.

My prayers went out to Temperance then, that he would survive Rick's
firing, though it seemed unlikely that he would.  All it would take was a
single bullet wound to one of his great white wings and the Seraph would be
gone.

Temperance must have seen or sensed the danger Rick posed to him, because
he began flying evasive moments before Rick's first shots ever were
unleashed.  He flew with such grace and precision, in fact, that I
literally lost my breath looking at him with awe as he twisted left and
right, turned on a dime, and even did an upside down loop, all to evade
Rick's fire.  I had been told that he was the best flier among us, but this
was the first time that I had seen him in brilliant action.  His maneuvers
were very effective, and by the time he landed on the ground, sword in
hand, Rick had only hit him with one bullet, right on the chest, exposing
him finally to the others' senses.

Temperance quickly began fighting, and although his fighting was not nearly
as deft as his flight, he was still a force to be contended with, and he
killed the first two wolves straight away, slicing open their throats and
letting their blood spray all over himself.  As he fought the other wolves,
I realized that he loved fighting as much as I did, loved slicing his foes
open and delivering painful kills without any pity.  But as I continued to
watch him fight, I knew there was a subtle difference between the two of
us.  While my viciousness in battle was based on rage, on knowing how
powerful I was as I ripped through the flesh of my opponents, Temperance's
was more about bloodlust: he savored the wounds he was inflicting, took
some sort of almost sexual pleasure out of harming others.  Well, he could
only continue his brutal attacks for so long before the other wolves
managed to surround and gang up on him.

But before they could close in on him and finish him off, the other angels
were landing all around them.  Shamir, in his Cathedral robes, was the
second to come down, and he fought bravely and earnestly with a skill that
far outweighed Temperance's skill in battle.  I looked on jealously as he
fought while simultaneously directing his cadre of Cathedral Powers, who
were landing in more and more numbers.  He was a much more distinguished
fighter than myself, in spite of me being Fortitude and him being only the
runner-up.

Like a bolt of lightning, another armored angel came nosediving towards the
battle straight-down.  I was sure he was going to kill himself, but before
he did, he pulled back, stopping his fall with his wings, still coming in
hard upon his feet.  This suicidal, painful entrance, it seemed, was his
preferred method of flight.

I didn't have to see the nails pounded into every bare bit of flesh on his
body to know that he was Chastity.  Who else could it possibly be?

Chastity emitted the highest, shrillest, most-deafening, angriest
battle-cry I have ever heard in my life as he raised his sword, then hacked
his way into battle, his skill being surprisingly on par with Temperance's,
who stood nearby.  But while Temperance was fighting with an almost
alarming degree of viciousness, killing with a streak of malice and sadism
that I never knew he possessed, Chastity seemed to prefer being struck more
than striking.  While Temperance basked in the blood of his wolf victims,
letting it cover him delightfully with a violent glee that I knew all too
well, Chastity seemed to almost let his attackers get in their hits,
moaning and shuddering with each hard blow taken, each cut sustained.  It
was hard to tell whether he was groaning at his injuries more out of pain
or of delight, but maybe there was no real difference for Chastity.  One
thing I knew for certain was that he loved battle as much as Temperance
did, loved sustaining brutal, painful injuries, before fighting back with
precision and killing off his foes.

I noticed then that Charity had landed, he too in his Seraphim armor, and I
couldn't help but scoff as he started to fight the wolves, clearly the
least adept with his sword among the Seraphim.  It wasn't that he was
particularly weak or unskilled, I realized.  He was neither of those.  It
was that he refused to kill his attackers, using up most of his energy
trying as best as he could to incapacitate them without deadly force.  He
was such a waste, and I wanted to yell out to him that he should have just
stayed on the fucking plane for all the good he was doing.  As if he wasn't
useless enough already, he suddenly stopped fighting all together and
looked stupidly towards the sky, leaving him open to attack.

"He's not tryin' to fly down on his own, is he?" Charity asked Chastity,
who was nearby.  "Someone should help the ol' rascal."

"Leave him!" Chastity sniped back.  "He'll manage with or without your
interference!"

I looked up to see an armored descending figure that I knew could be no
other than Humility.  He was flying without any trace of grace, which was
easy to understand since he was unable to see where he was going.  I
surmised that the old man must have been using the eyes of the wolves
looking up to psychically figure out where he was going, but whatever
method he was using, it was barely working, as he glided here and there,
getting off course and then overcorrecting himself.  Anyway, after more
than a couple near-collisons with various walls, he finally came in for a
clumsy landing, misjudging the closeness of the ground and ending up
falling forward onto his face.  It would have been damn funny if I didn't
feel pity for the guy.  He was a fucking cripple, after all, and whoever
thought it would be a swell idea to bring him along and shove him into
battle should've been skinned alive.

The wolves apparently sensed this angel's weakness, because they quickly
surrounded him, and he had landed in an area where no other angels were,
amidst enemies.  But just when my heart sank as I was sure the wolves were
ripping him to shreds, Humility sprang up, his sword now in hand.  He
fought what must have been ten wolves off effortlessly.  The old guy had
some wicked sick moves!  Not only did he seem strong physically, the man
used his sword as ingeniously as if the thing was an extension of his body.
Those kinds of precise, controlled gestures only came after centuries of
practice, I realized, and Humility was by far the best swordsman out of any
of the angels, killing wolf after wolf after wolf, all the while using the
wolves' own eyes to see with.  After he felled each foe, he would stop in
contemplative remorse, gesture the sign of the cross, and say a little
prayer for each lost life.

On the wolf side of the battle, their forces seemed stronger than ever.
There were still far more wolves than there were angels, and almost all of
their strongest players were present and throwing down.  Russ had come
upstairs, changed into a werewolf, and now was the only wolf fighting with
camouflage paint on his face.  Case and Watts were both fighting.  Alvaro
and that motherfucker Zakhar, and those Russian twins were fighting
together.  And, of course, Rick was there, changed into his werewolf form,
fighting with more deadliness than any other.  There were so many of these
beasts, most of whom looked the same to me, that the only way I could
reliably tell them apart was psychically.  If I was asked to put a wager
then on which side I thought would have won out, I would have put my money
on the wolves, who had us angels trumped in the strength department.

And then, as if an answer to my pessimism, Faith himself slammed down into
battle, the last to arrive to the battle as if he had planned himself the
best entrance.  He drew his sword as he looked around him, and if he wasn't
the tallest on the battlefield, he undoubtedly carried himself with the
highest stature.  As wolves swarmed around him, he let his true might be
known, having no problem facing a dozen opponents at once, he was that
strong.  Only once had I seen someone stronger, and that was Amzi
Fortitude, now dead and gone, that meant that Faith was the strongest angel
alive, and damn, did he show that strength well.

Just as it seemed like Faith would finally be overwhelmed, his skin turned
from dark black to shiny black stone, obsidian.  And then he was truly a
monster, the teeth and claws of his wolf foes not even managing to scratch
him.

It was then that I noticed that the others were changing into their stone
forms as well.  Humility was now some deep brown stone, Temperance beside
him was stone as well, a lighter shade of brown rock.  Chastity underneath
all of his nails had turned into a pure white shade of stone, and Charity
had become some grey rock.  Even Shamir had turned to stone.  I knew the
only weakness they had in their stone forms was blunt weaponry, and with
most of the wolves fighting with their bare hands, they didn't have a
chance of penetrating the rocky flesh of their enemies.  Even Watts, who
fought with his two knives, was having a hard time with it.

I looked on at this group with jealousy, for I was the only one among them
who could not turn myself into stone.  This, I reasoned, would have made
all the difference for me this night.  How could I have lost to Rick if I
had been encased in stone?  I looked at Rick then, and he was struggling
against a Power who had turned to stone, finding that even his strongest
hits could do no more than toss around the angel.  I laughed at the wolf's
frustration, praying the Power would have what it took to finish him off.

Unexpectedly, Rick dug around in the rubble underneath him and pulled out a
large steel bat, which probably used to belong to some Delector who fell
here long ago.  The beast raised the bat high and swung at his stone
opponent mightily.  The steel crashed upon the angel's head, shattering it
instantly, stone bits flying everywhere.  Rick looked down at his dead
enemy, stunned.

He transformed quickly back into his man shape it seemed purely so he could
communicate with the others.  "If you hit them with something hard enough,
they'll shatter!  Find something to hit them with!"

Then, the wolves all around were stopping to dig through the debris and
dead bodies, looking for anything big and hard enough that they could use
as a weapon.  Some random wolf found a metal pipe in the rubble and used it
to shatter the chest of another stone Power, killing him instantly.

After that, all the other angels turned back into flesh, knowing that
staying in their rock forms was just too dangerous in a battle this
chaotic.  It didn't matter, I told myself.  They could still fucking win
this battle in spite of their new limitations.

As more angels and wolves were killed and the battlefield started to thin
out, the powerhouse fighters naturally started to face each other one on
one.  Russ, one of the craziest, most manic fighters among the wolves, saw
Shamir nearby and tackled the angel, knocking him over and trying to rip
his throat out at the same time.  Shamir pushed him off, however, and got
to his feet, and the two started a proper fight.

Temperance took on Alvaro while Charity went for the biggest wolf in this
battle, the fucking red-furred Zakhar.

As Watts engaged Chastity in battle, holding up his two signature hunting
knives threateningly, the Chaste Seraph practically licked his lips as the
sight of those two blades before engaging the Australian wolf in battle.
Humility, who was clearly the second strongest fighter behind Faith (he
might not have had quite the power of Shamir but his skill in combat made
up for that), seemed to intuitively know his match: Case, who was clearly
the second-in-command of the wolf forces.  As he approached the black
beast, Humility gave a little bow of respect before attacking.

And of course, this left Faith and Rick to fight head-to-head, leader to
leader, as the other remaining Powers and wolves fought amongst themselves.
Rick acted cocky as he approached Faith, but I knew that Rick's cockiness
was little more than an act, covering up a more core layer of self-doubt.
His opponent, Faith, had no doubtful bone on his body, no vulnerable part
of him that needed to be covered up.  He was a being of pure confidence,
and, unlike the other angels, completely and utterly cold, not letting
emotions get in the way of his efficiency because the dude never fucking
had any emotions anyway.

Rick and Faith fought, and though Faith knew he could no longer safely turn
to stone, he was still positive that he could outfight Rick.  But Rick hit
him hard with a couple beastly punches, and it was enough to knock Faith
off of his feet.  All the other combatants around them kept an eye on this
most crucial fight as they continued to fight, and many of them were
surprised to know that even the strongest angel was not on par with the
wolf leader in brute force.

Faith got to his feet again, determined that even if he could not match his
opponent's physical power, he would outfight him.  He swung his sword, and
the two began a fast-paced battle for dominance that seemed totally evenly
matched.  The longer it went on, the more it seemed to me as if a victor
would never be declared.

Meanwhile, it seemed that Temperence had gotten the best of Alvaro and
instead of killing the wolf off humanely by cutting off his head, he was
attempting to choke the beast to death, though his hands could barely get a
grip on the monster's thick, furry neck.

Chastity seemed to be doing less well against Watts, as the Australian wolf
was using his two knives to slice through Chastity's flesh perhaps more
than even that masochistic son-of-a-bitch could handle.  That duel was far
from decided, however.

Charity had somehow gotten the leg up on Zakhar, but just when the beast
had fallen, just when Charity should have struck without mercy, the angel
instead seemed to idiotically decide the best course of action would be to
try and lecture the wolf on the error of his ways, agreeing to let him live
as long as he would no longer carry on in this fashion.  As if a stone-cold
killer could be suddenly rehabilitated with just some simple sermonization.

 Well, obviously this attempt failed, for after a moment of recovery,
Zakhar rose again, surprising Charity with his dishonor, and attacked the
angel harder than ever.  Soon, Charity was on his back, and it seemed a
certainty that the fool of a Seraph would die.

I looked towards Shamir fighting Russ, and though it seemed the Marine wolf
had an early head start in his battle against the Indian Power, at some
point things must have drastically turned around, for then Shamir had
forced so many grievous wounds upon the wolf with his sword that Russ was
lying unconscious in a bloody heap on the ground, his body automatically
resetting into his naked man form.

Case, who had been locked in a battle with Humility just as even-sidedly
relentless as the one between Faith and Rick, saw his brother fall and
immediately ran from his fight, leaving Humility the victor by
technicality.  Case turned back into his human form and used his relatively
smaller body to run in between the various combatants surrounding him,
reaching Russ's body just before Shamir had an opportunity to decapitate
him.  He shoulder-slammed the Power, knocking him back, and then pulled the
naked marine in his arms and dragged him back.

Russ awoke then, still wounded and half-delirious.

"I've got you, brother," Case assure him as he carried the man backwards.

Russ finally seemed to get his bearings and realize what was happening to
him.  "You do no such thing," he demanded.  "I was never meant to be
dragged off into a cowardly retreat.  Let me go, let me go out with a blaze
of glory, let me take as many of them out as I can!"

"No, Russ, it's not gonna happen like that!" Case told him.  The Marine, in
turn, began to struggle against him.

Then, Shamir was after them again, this time going after Case, who could
not hope to defend himself while dragging Russ's squirming body out of
battle.  All he could hope to do was to dodge the swipes Shamir made with
his sword, and he did that a couple times, but then took a serious cut on
his upper left arm.

"Rick!" Case cried out, still trying to evade Shamir's attacks.  "Russ is
dying here, and I can't hold em off on my own much longer!  We need to get
outta here, fast!"

"Don't listen to the boy, Rick!" Russ screamed back.  "I don't need your
help!"

Rick, who was still in his werewolf form fighting a heated battle with
Faith in which he had only slowly seemed to be losing ground to the
superior fighter, could only grunt in response.  But the wolf made no sign
of leaving his battle, determined himself to kill the leader of the angels,
or, more likely, be killed trying.  He was more than ready to lay his life
down for the cause.  But the real question was, would he lay down the life
of his brothers, those he cared about most?

"I know you heard me, Rick," Case screamed as Shamir cut into him again.
"We need your help here, and we need to get out of here!"

Still Rick didn't answer, still he fought on blindly against his enemy.

"Goddamnit, Rick!" Case yelled as, with his own arms wounded, he dropped
Russ to the ground once more with Shamir raising his sword to kill the
fallen Marine.  "Rick, what the fuck have you become to leave one of your
brothers to die?  What the fuck do you think you're doing?  This is Russ
we're talking about here.  Russ!"

Rick roared in angry frustration, then slipped off away from Faith and
towards Case and Russ, transforming back into his man form as he went.  He
pulled Russ back away from Shamir, lifted him into his arms and started to
back away.

"Damnit, boy, don't do this!" Russ yelled.  "Don't walk out of this fight
like a bitch, lemme get back in there and die like a man!"

"Shuttup Russ!" Rick told him.  "Everyone, retreat!  I repeat, I'm calling
a retreat!"

"No you don't, you coward!" Russ said, starting to actually punch Rick in
the face.

"Russ, shuttup and calm down!" Rick said, but after the wolf punched him in
the chin, he reached down and knocked the wolf hard on the head, knocking
him unconscious again.  After that, the two of them slipped out of the
Ensis entrance.

Case stood tall again, issuing orders for all of the wolves to move
immediately towards the exit.

Watts, so close to beating his enemy Chastity, swore, spit at Chastity's
masked face, and then ran off towards the exit.  Zakhar, however, wasn't
going to run until he was sure Charity was dead.  At least until Humility
stepped in between himself and the wounded Seraph, and the Russian wolf,
intimidated, ran off.

Temperance, who had choked Alvaro so severely the wolf had been forced to
revert back into his naked man form, was still choking the guy sadistically
when their retreat was called.  Something about seeing Alvaro in his man
form changed his disposition, and he looked down at the lithe, beautiful
wolf in his hands.  He smiled his half-smile and licked Alvaro's cheek, one
long, slow, delicious lick.  "You're too pretty to kill, aren't you?" he
said.  "But this will not be the end, beautiful."  He threw Alvaro back,
and the Spanish wolf, stunned, got his bearings and ran out of the Ensis.

Only after all of the wolves left alive ran out did Case follow them,
leaving a battered, but victorious, small group of angel warriors once
again in control of their territory.

"Would somebody be so kind as to cut the two of us down, please?" Sam
called out to them.

When the others took notice of the two of us hanging naked and upside-down
from hooks, the Cherubim present quickly averted their eyes so as not to
disrespect us Seraphim with the knowledge of our faces.  Humility and
Chastity removed both of us from the chains.

While Sam picked up his light armor where the wolves had left it in a heap
nearby and replaced his mask, there came a sudden excited shouting from
Charity on the battlefield.

"I've got a survivor here!" he cried out.  "There must be more than this
one as well."  He pulled from the pile of bodies on the ground one form who
was still alive, still conscious.

"Nathaniel!" Sam yelled excitedly and walked towards him, helping Charity
to help steady him.  "It's good to see you alive," he said.

"Same to you, my liege," Nathaniel said, his voice raspy.  He looked
disoriented and intensely somber as he faced the reality of the situation,
almost as if he was disappointed by his own survival.

"How did you manage it?"

Nathaniel thought about it.  "When I fell earlier, I should have died," he
said.  "But I suppose the vast pile of carcasses I landed upon cushioned my
fall enough for me to survive..."  He took a step forward and fell on his
unsteady legs, needing Charity and Sam to lift him up again.  "...barely."

*****

Later on, Nathaniel led us through the ruined building, briefing us
Seraphim before we were set to return to our planes and head back for the
Cathedral.  He motioned towards the few angels who were attempting some
sort of clean up.  "Already the angels are beginning to return.  I've
called back all the Powers we have posted out there on reconnaissance and
the many Guardians, asking them to leave those in their care for the time
being.  Once all of these angels have been flown home, I'll ask the Thrones
who man and operate our transportation networks to step down and help here.
All hundred of the Thrones in the spine of the Ensis were salvaged, thank
God, and we'll have enough angels to keep this place cloaked night and day.
Beyond that, there will be enough left of us to clean up this disaster, to
retrieve the dead and give them proper burials."

"What about Gabriel?  Did the abominations lay a hand on him?" asked
Chastity.  I realized he was not speaking of the obliterated statue of
Gabriel, but the tomb of the angel buried somewhere underground.

"Blessedly no, my liege," Nathaniel answered.  "They invaded his tomb in
their mindless searches, but they did not destroy his remains.  Obviously
our main purpose here is to continue guarding his resting place.  We cannot
just leave him to scavengers, even if our location has been discovered by
our enemies."

"What hope is there that you will be able to rebuild the Ensis?" Humility
asked.

"Honestly, my liege," Nathaniel said, "without significant reinforcements
in our numbers, it would be highly questionable if we'd be able to
undertake such a goal.  And as long as the wolves know where we are, it
seems quite unlikely that we will be able to allocate our resources towards
anything more than securing and fortifying our Holy territory.  Surely they
will attack us here again, and when that happens, we need to be prepared."

"Thank you, Nathaniel," Sam said.  "May God be with you here."

Nathaniel bowed respectfully and walked off somberly.  The silence was
thick as the seven of us marched towards the airplanes, where Shamir and
the Cathedral Powers were waiting for us to board.  Not long before, I had
dug through the rubble and the bodies until I found my sword, shield, and
my entire set of heavy armor, and I carried that with me as I left.  Sam
carried his light set of armor as well, but both of our other sets had been
destroyed along with the rest of our possessions.  Faith had already
promised us that he would have replacements crafted for us.

"Well, fuck," Temperance said as we walked, finally breaking the silence,
apparently unable to take it anymore.  "At least we won."

It was just what I would have said if I had been in Temperance's
shoes—that is, if I hadn't been there for the wolves' initial massacre
of many hundreds of angels.

"If you believe that then you are a fool, Temperance," Faith said
commandingly.  "We may have won the battle, but in the process, the
abominations have destroyed our home, defiled hallowed ground, and murdered
ninety percent of our Flock.  This is no victory for us, don't make that
error.  This is a whole-hearted success for the wolves."  He glared angrily
towards Sam then.  "This, Justice, is what your fool-hardy little games
have wrought.  The flock is mortally wounded."

I expected him to argue back, to defend his actions.  But Sam said nothing
for once, lowering his eyes in silence.

"This, we have never faced before," Faith went on.  "This, we will never
recover from.  What use is a battle won when the price is everything you
are and all you were meant to be?  No, this is no victory for us.  This is
unequivocally a success for the wolves, and in turn a triumph for the
demons.  Satan smiles this day for his progeny, while the Almighty weeps.
If anything what we angels have won here tonight is quick and inevitable
death at the hands of our enemies.

"Brothers, when the wolves soon close in on us with all of their numbers, I
will pray for your souls."


TO BE CONTINUED