There were sounds of fighting behind me, but it was the blue glow that had just walked through the door that had me transfixed.

“Brielle!” Lincoln wailed. Each and every demon ceased its battering on the wall, and spun to look at the small army that had just arrived. It was hard to tell from so far away, but it looked like Michael was with them.

“Emberly!” the Archangel cried out, confirming my assumption as blue shards shot from his weapon, goring some of the demons in attendance.

Thank God, backup had arrived.

“I’m here!” she grunted, followed by the sound of knife hitting flesh. Peering back, I saw that the Monkshood demon was dead.

“Brielle, don’t drop your shield!” Lincoln rumbled, as clangs and growls rang throughout the space.

Easier said than done, husband!

“Die, you demon douchebags!” Shea’s Demon City accent roared from somewhere in the room, bringing a slight smile to my face.

She’s okay.

I couldn’t see much unless someone was really close to the shield or had glowing magic, but I could pick out voices when they yelled around me.

“Whoa, this shield is weird.” Chloe’s voice joined the group.

“Super weird Brielle magic,” Luke agreed, and it brought tears to my eyes to know that when I’d reached out, all of my friends had come back for me.

I was loved. I never wanted to forget that.

“I can’t hold it much longer!” I shouted when my arms shook yet again.

Dizziness threatened to overtake me. I was tired as hell, in pain, anxious, and damn near passing out. How much time had passed already? It felt like hours.

“You have to!” Lincoln shouted, and I peered through the shield to see a streak of dark hair had just entered the room.

“Scarlet?” Catia shouted.

“I’m okay!” Scarlet called out from behind our little pocket of safety.

My arms were quaking like they were holding a jackhammer, and the shield started to flicker.

“Chloe, look out!” Shea cried.

Luke let out a blood-curdling scream. The kind of scream you give when a beloved friend sustains a mortal wound. Under that type of stress, I could no longer hold the shield. The protection crashed to the floor like liquid jelly, leaving a physical mess behind and unveiling the full extent of the war before me.

My eyes scanned the room, horrified to see so much blood, but they only grazed the fight, stopping on Chloe’s limp form.

“No!” I cried, picking up my sword only to have it fall from my fatigued fingers. I was useless. Instead, I burst from the ground and let my wings carry me across the room to where Luke was holding Chloe’s lifeless body, wailing in misery as he rocked back and forth.

Her gut had been ripped half open; there was so much blood, I couldn’t even process what I was seeing. Yet, the blank way her eyes fixated on the corner of the room told me she was dead. I’d seen enough death in my life to know when a soul had left a body.

“Noah!” I roared, calling over the healing Celestial as he battled with a Yew demon. He killed the demon quickly, running to my side where I was already calling up my healing magic. An orange buttery glow left my fatigued hands and coated Chloe’s open guts, only to pass right through her and disappear.

Luke looked up at me in horror. “What does that mean?”

I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to guess. Noah was beside me now, working his own healing magic, brighter and stronger than mine. All around us, demons fought Catia, Shea, Michael and Lincoln to the death. A quick glance at the back of the room showed Emberly was protecting my students.

I’d messed up. I’d dropped the shield.

Noah’s light surrounded Chloe like a cocoon before dissolving. His hands shook as he set them on his thighs.

“Noah, why are you stopping?” I shook him. “Heal her!”

Noah turned to me with tears lining his eyes. “Bri, I can heal some pretty horrific injuries, but I can’t bring back the dead.”

No.

Luke’s wails twisted the knife in my heart even further.

“Raph?” I asked hopefully. Where the hell was the Archangel of Healing? If anyone could reverse this, he could. Right?

Noah shook his head. “Even he isn’t capable of that.”

“I can’t bring back the dead…” His words formed a crazy idea in my head.

“Luke, can you run with her?” I asked.

The bear shifter swallowed his sob and nodded. “Why?”

“I know someone who can bring back the dead.”

Nine

We burst from the gymnasium, Noah, Shea, and Luke with Chloe in his arms behind me. Noah had wrapped a hoodie around her abdomen to secure her wound.

“Brielle, this is insane!” Noah shouted, following us out into the moon lit night. There were still a few demons on campus, the sirens blaring, but I also made out the shadowy figures of Fallen Army soldiers fighting them. We’d been totally ambushed, but it looked like things were getting under control now.

“If it brings back Chloe, then I’m insane. I don’t care!” I shouted, cutting down a drunken Mugwort demon who lunged from the shadows. Lincoln, Emberly, Catia and Michael were still fighting the demons in the gym, but at better odds now. When I’d shouted to Linc that I was going to see my mom to bring back Chloe, he’d just looked at me like I’d grown two heads, then barked for Noah and Shea to escort me.

We raced across campus, time ticking away as Chloe’s soul detached more and more from her body.

“Chloe, stay here! Stay with us!” I shouted to the night like a madwoman. “We’re going to bring you back.”

Noah and Shea exchanged a look, one that said they might be planning to sedate me. Yet, Luke looked determined, brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line, and I knew he would be my partner in crime.

The second we reached my car, I was relieved to see the parking lot was crawling with Fallen Army. They’d just come back from the raid to find their home was also raided. Now they could rid the campus of demons. We gingerly helped Luke in the back, his limp redheaded best friend in his arms.

“Let me close her up quickly, or she’ll lose all her blood,” Noah instructed, pulling a little surgical stapler from his pants pocket—all of the healers and medics carried them in the war zones.

Noah lifted the hoodie to reveal an open abdominal cavity, and both Luke and I looked to the side, unable to see our friend in that condition. The snapping sound of staple after staple set in place, made Luke wince as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Noah was right to do this. If my mom reanimated Chloe without all of her major organs inside of her, she wouldn’t survive. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to see, or hear.

“All right,” Noah announced, chucking the bloodied stapler into the back of the car. We all climbed inside, Noah driving, Shea in the middle row, and me in the passenger seat.

“Drive like hell to my mom’s apartment,” I told Noah, and he obliged, even burning rubber.

I dialed my mom, who picked up on the first ring.

“Tell me you’re safe,” she answered.

“I’m safe, but Chloe’s not. I need you to prepare to reanimate her. You still have your supplies, right?”

My mom gasped. “Chloe? Oh, honey.”

My throat tightened at my mom’s emotional voice. When I’d been taken to Hell, she had started weekly dinners with all my friends. Chloe had become part of the family.

“Mom, do you have your supplies or not!” I snapped.

“Honey, I can’t reanimate her. It’s against Angel City rules.”

Is she serious right now? She’d been dating Raph for all of a month and now she was Miss Rule Follower.

“Mom, it’s only been like seven minutes, eight tops. We can do a soul infusion and—”

“A soul infusion! Where did you learn about that?” she questioned me.

So it is real.

“I overheard Master Burdock saying it when I worked with you at the clinic.”

He’d been talking to a woman on the phone, telling her if they could get the deceased to the clinic within twenty minutes of death, she could undergo a process called a soul infusion, where you called them back from Heaven, Hell, or wherever, and it was like being alive again. I remembered wondering why we hadn’t done that with my dad, but he also mentioned the body needed to be in good shape. Getting hit by a bus did not leave my father in any sort of good shape, and he’d been dead too long when we’d received the call, so I’d never even brought it up to my mom.

I sure as hell was bringing it up now.

“Honey… that’s a taboo process. You’re talking about cheating death here, and you’re asking me to play God.”

Yeah, I was, and I would expect her to do the same for me.

“Mom. It’s Chloe. She looked for me with Shea when Lincoln and Noah couldn’t go into Hell. Would you really deny her this chance at life again?”

Okay, I was being shitty, and totally planned on making her feel bad about it until she said yes. She’d ‘played God’ and reanimated thousands of bodies for Demon City, so how was this different?

She sighed. “I’ll need family consent, and I won’t do it unless I could fully bring her back. Reanimation isn’t—”

“I know, Mom. We’re downstairs. Get ready!” I hung up just as we pulled into the parking space. I knew what reanimation was and wasn’t. I didn’t want a robot Chloe who spaced out every five minutes, and didn’t have the same personality. I wouldn’t do that to her. But if this soul infusion thing was real, then we had to try.

“Luke.” I swallowed hard, hating what I had to ask of him next.

He looked over at me, and the desperation in his gaze gutted me.

“I need you to call Donnie and get him over here. He needs to give consent.”

Luke had to call his own boyfriend and tell him that his beloved sister was dead, and then have Donnie give permission to reanimate her. It was shitty, but I knew Donnie wouldn’t be as receptive to anyone else.