Aerie’s citizens were still milling about the street, their gazes haunted.

“They can sense it as much as you and I,” Belphegor said, gesturing at the crowd.

He stopped in the middle of the street and closed his eyes. With a soft grunt of exertion, his wings sprang from his back, sad-looking things of dingy gray and missing feathers. “Join me for a moment,” he said, motioning for Camael to follow as he launched himself into the air, the wings, surprisingly, having the strength to lift him.

“Wait for me here,” Camael told Gabriel, his own mighty wings sweeping from his back and taking him heavenward.

“Like I have a choice,” he heard the dog mumble as he ascended.

It was early morning, the sun just starting to rise above the horizon, illuminating the dilapidated neighborhood below.

“Take a good long look, Camael,” Belphegor said, gesticulating with a hand to Aerie beneath him as his wings pounded the air. “For soon, it’s all going to change.”

Camael looked below, at the run-down houses, the cracked and untended streets, the high barbed-wire fence that encircled it, and felt the pangs of something he had not experienced since he first left heavenly paradise on a mission of murder. He had not had a home—a true place of belonging—in countless millennia. The troubling thought of losing this one filled him with great sorrow.

And then, hovering above the neighborhood, the former leader of the Powers suddenly knew what was required of him. It was his way of giving thanks to those who had accepted him into their community, despite his loathsome past.

Camael would do everything within his strength to see that Aerie lived on, and may Heaven have pity on any who dared try to keep him from his task.

Aaron had recognized Vilma’s location in the vision almost immediately: the red metal lockers, the cracked plaster walls painted eggshell white, a handmade poster that should have been taken down months ago asking for canned donations for a Thanksgiving food drive. He opened his wings to an empty parking lot, for it was still quite early in the morning, and gazed at Kenneth Curtis High School. A pang of nostalgia spread through him; memories, both good and bad, flooded his thoughts.

As he crossed the lot to the redbrick-and-concrete building, his wings receded and the fearsome marks upon his flesh faded. As an afterthought, he willed himself invisible, not wanting an early riser to see him going into the building, and call the police. He climbed the steps leading to the large, double doors, thinking of how much his life had changed in such a brief amount of time. A little over a month ago he had been a student here, a senior, preparing to graduate and begin the next phase of his life. The next phase happened all right, but not how I would have planned it. He reached the top of the stairs and pulled on one of the doors. It was unlocked and his flesh tingled with the sensation of caution.

The smells of the old building wafted out to greet him. He remembered his first day at Ken Curtis. He hadn’t wanted to return for a second, but he did, and each day he went back, it got a little easier. He also recalled the first day he had seen Vilma, and with that recollection came the realization of how much was now at stake.

He stepped into the school, and the door closed gradually behind him. Ahead, standing near the doorway of the principal’s office, stood an angel. He was clothed as Aaron had come to expect: dark suit, trench coat—as if he’d just come from a funeral—and in his hand he held a flaming sword.

Expecting a fight, Aaron created a weapon of his own and felt the strange symbols return to his flesh. It was amazing how easily the transformation came now. Maybe I’m finally getting the hang of this thing, he thought absently.

Instead of brandishing his weapon, the Powers’ soldier turned away and approached a set of swinging doors. With his free hand he pushed one side open and bowed his head.

Aaron cautiously proceeded down the hallway toward the doors, the angel watching, quelled anger in his dark eyes. But he remained silent, still holding the door for him. Aaron strode through defiantly. He could feel the angel’s stare upon his back, cold and murderous, but did not give him the satisfaction of turning to meet his gaze. More angels emerged from the classrooms along the hall, motioning with a flourish of their flaming blades for him to proceed past them.

At the top of the stairs leading down into the basement, another angel waited and gestured for him to descend. Of course he had to descend; his brain raced. Wasn’t that one of the first things he had learned in freshman English? That the protagonist must always descend to confront what plagues him before his victory and eventual ascension.

As with the others in the corridor behind him, the angel warrior at the stairs said nothing as he passed. Aaron went down the steps to the first landing and chanced a look back. The angel was watching him, a cruel smile on its thin, bloodless lips. “Catch you on the way back,” Aaron called. He had no idea what the Powers had in store for him below, but he wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of believing he was afraid.

He continued down into the basement, the illumination thrown by his flaming blade lighting the way. The air below was thick with the smell of chlorine, and at the foot of the stairs he stopped, trying to decide if he should head toward the school’s pool or the gymnasium.

It didn’t take long for another of Verchiel’s soldiers to appear and motion him toward the gym. Aaron had never particularly enjoyed phys ed, and found it strangely fitting that the Powers would summon him there. His teacher had been a jock from way back and didn’t much care for anyone who wasn’t on the football team. “Abandon hope all ye who enter,” the Nephilim muttered as he walked through the door and into the gymnasium, the strange and disturbing vision of angels playing a game of shirts-versus-skins basketball running through his head.

But those images were soon dispelled. The room was dark, red exit signs and the swords of the angelic army that awaited him providing the only light. Aaron felt his heart sink, even with the essence inside him. How can I ever hope to fight so many? They were everywhere: on the bleachers, perched atop the basketball rims, and up above in the girder-latticed ceiling. They reminded him of pigeons, only these birds were far more dangerous.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” said a voice that made his flesh tingle as if covered with ants.

Immediately Aaron felt the wings on his back begin to stir. On cue, a group of angels atop the bleachers stepped aside to reveal Verchiel. He was reclining in the wooden seats, as if watching a game, the unconscious Vilma lying beside him. Aaron was disappointed to see that Stevie was not there as well. His pulse quickened as his wings sprang from his back. This is it, he thought, and the power inside him writhed in anticipation. The Powers’ leader watched him with eyes like shiny black marbles, and Aaron noticed that the angel’s face still bore the angry scars from their first confrontation back in Lynn.

“Let her go, Verchiel,” he said, raising his blade of fire. “She’s done nothing to you. It’s me that you want.”

The Powers’ leader gazed with disgust at the unconscious young woman. “That is where you are wrong, animal,” he said in a voice filled with contempt. “My problem has grown far larger than you.” He touched Vilma then, a gentle caress with fingertips that glowed like white-hot metal, and she cried out in pain.

Aaron surged forward, wings spread wide to lift him into the air, but something moved in the periphery of his sight, something that was beside him before his brain even had a chance to react. It lashed out at him, a gauntlet of metal connecting with the side of his face, sending him crashing to the slick wooden floor in a heap.