We walked along the shoulder of the road. Snow had begun in earnest, and had accumulated about two inches. It showed no signs of abating, and slowed our progress. Alex had wanted to make it farther before dark, but I felt the night fast upon us again.
I was weary of the dark. I was weary of jumping at shadows, of the terrible things that hunted in it. Part of me was ready for God to simply take us, to sweep us off the face of the earth and wait for the end to come, whether in ice or in blood. I wanted this suffering to be over.
Maybe God heard me.
There was a sudden revving of engines in the distance, muffled by snow and mud and the hissing trickle of water in the drainage ditches.
Alex and I exchanged glances.
"Do you think it's the trooper?"
"Not unless he's got friends. That's a lot of engines. Smaller ones."
A thin, tinny scream sounded.
I grimaced. "I hope that's not what I think it is."
We crept to the edge of an overpass, stared down into the darkness. I could see more than a dozen lights, like headlights, but trained on a patch of the road where a car had stopped. The tiny car had slid sideways in the slush.
"Bikers," Alex said. His fingers tightened on the rail. "And it looks like they've got supper."
Men were climbing off their motorcycles, descending upon the car. They were dressed in leather, their hair as long as Samson's in the Bible. The chrome on their bikes gleamed in the low light. So did their eyes.
I saw people moving inside of the vehicle. The engine choked, struggled.
"They will kill them!" I said.
"I don't think that there's much we can do to stop it," Alex said.
Horace's ears twitched, and Fenrir's tail slapped my skirt.
"We can't let it happen." I reached into my right pocket for the Himmelsbrief. I pinned it to my coat breast with shaking hands. I reached into my left pocket for one of the fireworks.
"We're gonna get killed," Alex said, gripping my elbow. "I don't want that to happen."
A shriek echoed below, and I heard glass breaking.
He knew what I knew. "We can't lose our humanity in this," I told him.
I stood up on tiptoes to kiss him.
He sighed in resignation. "There's a saying in rock-and-roll. 'Better to burn out than to fade away.'"
He released me and reached into his pocket for a lighter. He shared the flame with me, and I lit the fuse on my firework.
We hurled the fireworks down to the underpass. The bikers turned from their task of rocking the car and tearing out the broken windshield, startled by the fire that slipped down from the sky like falling stars. Gleaming red eyes turned to us.
We threw the fireworks overhand in glittering arcs. Sparks cascaded down upon the gathered knot of Darkness, exploding in brilliant arrays of yellow, red, and blue. It was beautiful, the whistle and the flash and the sizzle. More than one shadow ignited and ran hissing into the blackness. One redoubled his effort to peel open the car like a can. Others climbed on their bikes, gunned the engines, and turned onto the road.
Coming for us.
I reached for more fireworks and one of my makeshift stakes. We had only a few left. Not enough to battle the dozen men moving toward us in the cacophony of engines and headlights. The army of night had come for us at last.
Alex peeled off his coat and his shirt. His breath steamed, and I could see his gooseflesh under the tattoos. His silver knife glinted in one hand, a firework in the other. I stood beside him, holding one of the last gleaming fireworks in one fist and a sharpened tree branch in the other. Fenrir growled beside us.
One of the bikers gunned the engine. They bore down on us, spooking Horace. I forced myself to hold my ground. I lobbed the firework at one of the bikes. It swerved. I jammed my stake into the chest of one of the bikers that passed. It snapped off-I wasn't sure if I caught meat or just spokes. Something ripped, and I cried out when I discovered that it was the Himmelsbrief, tearing away from my coat.
My firework whistled and exploded. It was a beautiful gold, the color of sunshine drizzling across the pavement. It was too close. It nearly blinded me.
I heard growling beside me, Fenrir gnawing on a biker writhing on the ground. A line of bikes gathered opposite us for another pass, a deafening game of Red Rover. Alex threw his last firework at them. Red. With some kind of corkscrew spiral that caused them to hiss.
I stood up straight. My hands were open. I was without weapons. I could see the Darkness converging, coming for us, passing before their headlights, past the fire and the light.
I thought I was ready. Ready for the end.
I lifted my chin. The last scrap of my Himmelsbrief scraped under my chin in the cold breeze.
I saw, beyond the Darkness, something in the hillside. Something that glowed like the mannequins in the department store. My brow wrinkled before I could resolve what they were, both in my eyes and in my brain.
People. People that shone with a green light like foxfire. I could see their outlines coming over the hills.
My indrawn breath scraped my throat, and I whispered:
"Angels."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The angels came down from on high to fight the Darkness.
This truly was the end of days.
The vampires hissed at the sight of them, at their light and their loveliness. They moved to attack the angels, seething toward them. But the vampires could not touch them. Their skin smoked and singed where they tried to lay hands on the angels.
The angels held out their hands to drive them back.
And one of them had a gun.
I think it was what is called a flare gun. It shot a lurid red light across the air and embedded itself, burning, in the chest of the vampire nearest me. The creature fell to his knees and tried to tear it out, but the red light scorched his hands so badly that he could not grasp it. He howled like a piteous beast.
The angel reloaded the flare gun and fired again, at a vampire astride a motorcycle. The red light slammed him off the bike, and the motorcycle careened across the road, sliding into the concrete berm with a crash.
The others began to flee as the flares arced into the air. I saw Alex pick himself off the pavement and hurl a broken headlight after them.
Trembling, I fell to my knees. I laced my hands together and prayed. Tears of gratitude streamed from my eyes. Salvation was at hand.
The pale green glow stopped before me. I could not look up. I was too overwhelmed.
An angel reached down for me. as Honey, get up.