Every inch of her tentacles could feel the angel's might; this was nothing like the desecrated angel she'd faced in the cafeteria—that fight felt like it was years ago. A lifetime ago. She gnced at Susan, feeling her pain, tasting her blood in the air. And her tentacles picked up on something else. A grotesque, ugly sensation. The cloth around Azra'il's waist was different now. It was made from Human skin instead of that of the tarnished angels.

  Her tentacles shuddered, and mentally she did a count. She had six. She had all six of them. They'd come out so readily, so easily, she'd almost forgotten she'd been without them for so long.

  Azra'il wiped his chin. He picked Susan up by the bottom of the cross, holding her upside down so that her chest fell slightly away from the wood, causing her face to distort in pain as another scream moaned out of her throat. The sound was wrenching Jenny's heart open.

  She took a step forward, anger and hurt cshing like a thunderstorm inside her. "Let her go!" she shouted, knowing it was futile, knowing it was exactly what Azra'il wanted.

  The angel grinned again, a big toothy grin, and shook the cross instead as though he was trying to flick an insect off a stick. That was more than Jenny could stand.

  She stomped forward on one foot, unching her hatchet with all her might. Savage throw! The obsidian face fshed in the bright light as the hatchet spun faster than it ever had, hurtling toward Susan.

  Azra'il raised an arm to block it, nonchantly, as though it was as harmless as a mosquito, but Jenny activated her new skill instead. She only had one chance to make this work.

  She fshed to where the hatchet was, the world ripping and coming back together around her, pcing her inches from Azra'il's enormous body. His serpent eyebrows went up slowly in amused surprise.

  Bracing herself with her tentacles, and carefully keep them out of his reach, Jenny roared with Ignite, screaming into the angel's face with a burst of orange and blue fme.

  He ughed heartily, raising a hand to block the fire. But he wasn't her goal. She bounced off the floor, spping the stones with her tentacles, and swung again, apologizing silently as she sliced through Susan's ankles.

  The hatchet cut through the wood, freeing Susan's legs. Before her severed feet hit the floor, Jenny tossed the hatchet away, to the opposite side of the chamber, and grabbed her best friend by the thighs, by her torso, praying this would work. Susan's face was wide with shock, full of tears and spittle and snot, and then, just as Azra'il realized what was happening, Jenny, holding Susan, fshed back to where she'd tossed her hatchet.

  Susan's hands tore through the nails—a horrible scream swirled around Jenny—and then the two of them were colpsed on the floor, on the other side of the room, littered with polearms and great swords and shields made of sapphire.

  It had worked! She could use Instant Swap and take whatever she was holding with her. Susan y on top of Jenny, bleeding all over, from her torn hands, from the stumps of her legs, shaking and crying, and Jenny held her tightly. "I got you. I got you now."

  Her heart was pounding. She was banking on Susan's soul to heal itself, just as Miriam had from being eaten. Just as the other souls had from being torn apart by angels. And a moment ter, golden sparkling light shimmered across the wounds, repairing the flesh and regrowing her feet. Susan was whole again. All that was left now was opening a passageway and somehow getting Susan and the cross out of this world.

  But a deep, ugly ugh rumbled through the chamber. Jenny sat up, holding firmly to Susan, who was resting her head on Jenny's pted chest, both of them breathing hard. Susan's feet were finished growing back, pink flesh expanding from the ankles.

  Azra'il hadn't moved. He was still holding the cross where bits of flesh stuck to the sides. Where the broken bit y on the floor with Susan's feet still attached.

  "Do you really think she can go anywhere?" asked Azra'il with a cackle. He clutched his belly and tilted his head back and ughed. "She's mine forever. Till the end of time. There is nothing you can do about it!"

  Jenny grit her teeth as Susan shook in her arms. She almost wanted to ask Susan to find some armor and weaponry off the floor to fight with her. But Susan was in no state to fight—and then she remembered how hungry Yeshua had been after coming off the cross. Did she have to feed Susan? Would Azra'il even allow her to?

  Her desecrated flesh wouldn’t work anyway. It had only made Yeshua sicker. All she could do was get back to Yeshua and get help.

  And didn't even seem like Azra'il was taking this fight seriously. So far all he'd done was ugh and boast and py around. Like this was all a big joke to him. He knew that Jenny posed no threat at all.

  He knows I can't do anything to him.

  But the rage… the rage burned so hotly inside Jenny, she didn't know what to do. Kill. Kill. Kill. She wanted to cut his smug head off. She wanted to rip every single snake from his scalp and tear off his skin and-

  A part of her considered what Azra’il had offered. To become his human bride. To py it safe until she could get away.

  But the other souls had had their minds warped. They were... just like the harpies, their free will had been taken away. They were his py things. Nothing more.

  Revulsion made her stomach twist.

  She wouldn’t let him do that to her. Or Susan. And if she could find Miriam... then... Her tentacles shuddered, all six of them, an ugly realization traveling through their lengths. Her eyes went to Azra'il’s loincloth and realized where the skin had come from.

  "I will make the offer one more time," came his voice, low from the other side of the room. He knelt and picked up the piece of cross that Jenny had cut off. It looked like a broken pencil in his giant hand, but he held it to the rest of the cross and with a burst of golden light, it reattached itself. The cross was whole again. He tore the feet from the wood and held them up, eyeing them like they were a snack he'd picked up from a ptter.

  Then, with a red-eyed gnce at Jenny and Susan, he popped Susan's old feet into his mouth. Loud crunching noises filled the chamber, and he swallowed.

  "You can't set her free. Not as you are," he said. "Join me instead. Why fight? What do you hope to achieve?"

  Jenny didn't respond.

  "You can be my bride," he said. "My princes and princesses will serve you, as you will be their queen. And I will let you keep your toy as well."

  "She's not a toy," Jenny hissed between clenched teeth.

  Azra'il smiled again, a sickly-sweet smile, and he raised one of his serpent eyebrows. "But she was my toy all this time."

  Heat fshed in front of Jenny's face. She burst forward with instant acceleration, anger burning so hot in her body she thought she'd explode—and that's what she did. She used a full-bodied Ignite. Blue fmes erupted from her chest and arms and head, and she smashed into Azra'il’s broad chest with the full force she could muster. She felt like a comet colliding with a pnet.

  And she'd hoped to have just as big as an impact, something cataclysmic. But Azra'il didn't even budge.

  She bounced off his chest. Her tentacles catching on the floor and her fire sputtering out as she realized he was completely unfazed. An instant ter, his foot was above her, and if she didn't roll away on her tentacles, she would've been crushed. His heel smashed through the floor.

  But he wasn't done. He lunged forward and grabbed two tentacles and swung her against the wall so quickly, so suddenly, she didn't even get to scream. Her exoskeleton-covered head, her back and her legs, smashed into the thick wall, burrowing into the stone.

  She came to a stop, buried halfway through the wall. Dust and debris raining down around her, the weight of the castle pressing against her. Before she could inhale, Azra'il's hand, his fingers like enormous worms, dug through the wall and grabbed her.

  Jenny activated Ignite again, but the fire didn't faze him one bit, and in the next moment, he'd flung her into the floor.

  Another crater blossomed, as a scream died in her throat. Blood sprayed out of her mouth, and she colpsed, lying there like a crumpled piece of cloth.

  Pain erupted all over Jenny. Her exoskeleton had cracked open, her tentacles fttened against the broken floor.

  Azra'il straightened up. He spoke solemnly. "Cease this. I am the Conqueror of Mortality. I bent the Demons to His will. It was me!"

  He knelt, resting his arms on his knees as Jenny y there in the crater, too hurt to move. He brought his face closer to her so that she could look right into his burning eyes, so that several snakes could dart forward and flick the blood off Jenny's face with their tongues.

  "I will have you, interloper. I always get what I want. And when He descends upon the mortal pne, you will be by my side, conquered and bent to His will, the pride of the underworld, ready for what is to come. "

  Jenny couldn't move. Was the fight over so quickly? Her arms and legs felt broken. Her ribs snapped inward. Blood was filling her lungs, gushing through like a bursting dam. There was pressure from all around; was she drowning? Every breath sounded raspy; every breath was strained—she couldn't breathe. What was she supposed to do? What was the point in all the bravery if she couldn't fight?

  She needed a potion. Several potions. She had so much Energy. What could she make to even the odds? What could she do? Her mind raced as Azra'il gloated on top of her. As his snakes licked her face. As he looked into her eyes with a look of maddening glee—like he was so happy, so happy to see her broken like this, so happy to take her as his own, to add her to his collection.

  Everything inside her recoiled, repulsed. It was too much like the look she'd seen sometimes on her mother's face, when Jenny was young, when her mom was so angry, when anything Jenny did was an affront.

  A voice crackled through Jenny's mind, and she wheezed for breath. You have to open the passage way. NOW. We cannot defeat this angel. I have created a distraction.

  Azra’il's face changed. His nose curled. He looked like he'd smelled something rotten, snorting with fred nostrils. He looked up, sniffing as smoke swirled through the light.

  "Demon scum," he hissed. "Why do I smell a demon in my halls?"