Dominic was a small timer. He had earned his ticket to hell by gutting a lost tourist for his pocket money in New Orleans. His trip out of the pit was purely as a favor to someone much more powerful. He was nothing more than a set of eyes for a crossroads demon. He was less than a worm in the hierarchy. But, when he walked into that abandoned house he knew that his luck had turned for the better.
And, Raphael knew that his luck had soured when he saw the black eyed Dominic leering at him.
A few excited phone calls and there were a pair of demons standing looking at Raphael with wide eyed glee. An hour later and they had carved a pattern of symbols around the circle of fire and the house was surrounded by over 100 demons who all stood staring as if the house were a cake with a stripper about to pop out of the top.
Another 3 hours later and the entire neighborhood was filled with demons soaking their meatsuits in the driving rain and lightning that the now impotent Raphael had manifested.
A couple of miles away, Zachariah threatened to wear a hole in the carpet of a nice little postwar home as the occupants, a devout Catholic family, looked on in reverent disbelief.
"There has to be something we can do." He kept muttering under his breath as he stared at the garish Persian rug underfoot and paced like a circus tiger.
Around the room several men and women stood at attention , all quiet and resolute in demeanor.
Zachariah paced even as the throng of demons continued to grow around Raphael as well as the house he occupied. The symbols they had painted on the walls would only keep the demons at bay so long, and the symbols the demons had painted outside would not let them leave.
Further still from where Zachariah fretted, a line of dark motorcycles raced down the wet asphalt. The loud thunder of the exhaust wasn't the lazy loping tempo of weekend barhopping bliss but rather the more excited roar of high revs and urgency. Their line went on in a fast parade that stretched on for nearly a kilometer.
The demons had already sealed off the area around Raphael against angelic interference and had begun the dark rituals that would strip him of his sword and his connection to heaven's fury. Raphael sat in the circle of fire and symbols in a disconsolate heap as the more important demons with ringside seats in the little house stood leering like kids tearing the wings from a fly.
The one who held the proverbial tweezers stood at the edge of the flaming circle holding Raphael's sword in front of him and studied it the way he might a glass of wine or a painting. He was an average sized man in a very nice dark blue suit. He wore a number of large gold rings on his fingers, His dark skin gleamed in the light of the flames that held Raphael captive. Large white teeth flashed when he spoke. An almost cartoonish Brooklyn accent walked on his words and nearly hid the smoldering hatred inside him. His calm demeanor was a slow fuse on a bomb that couldn't wait to blow.
"You know, Raphael. I had no idea when you banished me so long ago that I would have such a satisfying revenge. Oh, I've longed to see you helpless and at my mercy. But this..." He chuckled, waving a free hand to Raphael, "this is more than I would ever have imagined in my wildest dreams."
Raphael cradled his right arm as he looked up in silent misery.
"Lucifer promised me I'd have my revenge." He hissed at Raphael. "And, now that it's in my hands I can still hardly believe it."
Raphael dropped his head and sagged a bit more onto the floor.
The demon stepped away from the circle and went back to surveying the shiny sword he held.
"Let's get this over with, shall we Raphael?" He said, a broad grin creeping across his face.
In the small house where Zachariah and his fellow angels were holed up like Davy Crockett and company in the Alamo, things were becoming dire. Surrounded by demons now, they had no route of escape. And, now the demons were doing a ritual outside to blot the sigils painted inside that kept them outside in the stormy weather and away from the angels and believers.
"Oh no." Zachariah sighed, as he peered from a window in the front door.
"What?" Asked David, the youngest of the Buffalino family's children."Why do you looked scared?"
"We're all going to die." Zachariah said matter of factly.
"But, you're an angel." David said in a confused voice. "No one can kill you."
"That, young David." Zachariah sighed. "is not always true."
"The kid's right." A small woman said as a silvery blade slid from her sleeve. "Who do these things think they are holding us hostage like this and torturing Raphael?"
The meatsuit was a petite blond woman with an athletic physique that seldom tasted a latte' or cinnamon bun. In normal life, she was an elementary school teacher from a small Missourri town who went to church every time the doors were open. She never missed a yoga class, watched her diet, and did all the things she was supposed to do.
The angel Limael had taken control of her body a year ago when she agreed, just like Jimmy agreed to let Castiel have his body. Since then, she rode in the passenger seat watching Limael wage war on the demons and follow Zachariah's orders.
"Stand down, Limael!" Zach shouted.
Limael strode to the door, sword in hand. Zachariah's hand lay over hers on the doorknob.
Her blue eyes gleamed with anger. Inside Limael could feel the vessel's agreement and wasn't sure who was more eager to go outside and smite them, the angel or the woman inside.
"We have God on our side. What do they have? Lucifer?" She snorted, and turned the doorknob.
Zachariah backed off and she swung the door open to face the mass of black eyes looking at her.
As she stepped off the small stoop and into the rain they backed up just a bit, far enough in a semi-circle to stay out of range from her blade.
"What?" One of the shouted from the crowd. "You gonna stab us all in the heart?"
Laughter pealed through the crowd.
Her hair and clothes were already soaked through from the rain pouring down, but her sword began to steam and then smoke. Then, a dirty orange flame ignited along the length of the blade and quickly grew into a furiously burning white flame so hot the demons in front could feel the heat from it as it reflected in their eyes.
Limael had not a gram of mercy in her, and would have asked for none from the demons as she strode into them cutting and slashing them, burning their souls with holy fire.
Inside the house, David ran to the window and watched the demons panic, scatter, and die.
"Holy crap!" He shouted. "She's got a fire sword! Sweet!"
The other angels looked nervously at the door and then at Zachariah for orders.
David's mother, Gina Buffalino, carped at him to come away from the window.
Zachariah cupped his forehead with his hand and pulled a phone from his pocket. Outside the door the screams increased as Limael waded through the demons. Zachariah looked at his phone for a moment and put it back in his pocket.
Outside the demons had backed off to twice the range of Limael's sword and stood looking like a pack of wolves waiting for a lone prey animal to run out of the will to fight. The priestesses that had been working to dispell the sigils the angels had painted on the house were severed in bits now and scattered around the front yard like grisly lawn ornaments.
She stood with the sword in front of her, feet planted shoulder width apart waiting like a rain soaked statue in front of the door to the small house where the angels and the Buffalino family cowered.
No one moved as the lightning lit up row after row of black eyed antagonists.
The crowd of demons began to part from the back as a dark figure moved from up the street through them. As he came closer, she could see he was a tall man who looked more like a pro wrestler except for the broad sword he carried over his shoulder. His bare skin the color of coffee with two cremes steamed as the rain down his thick arms and shoulders.
He towered over Limael as he walked confidently into the circle made by the onlookers, the big sword still laying across his thick trapezius muscle.
She moved her left foot in front of her to point her toes at him and her right behind her perpendicular to the left and swung the flaming blade from in front of her to beside her face where it lit her porcelain skin but didn't burn her wet hair.
Inside the house David gasped the word "whoa." as he saw the big demon with the sword.
"He's like The Rock, only bigger. And with a sword too."
Zachariah breathed "Oh no." as he looked out the window with David.
David looked up at Zachariah and asked "Does he have a fire sword too?"
"No." Zachariah said. "He doesn't need one."
David's mother carped at him again to come back to her.
"What's her name?" David asked Zachariah.
"Limael" Zachariah croaked as he reached for his phone that began to chirp in his pocket.
The big demon grinned like the cat that ate the canary as the others gave them plenty of room like the two toughest kids at school about to rumble.
In a flash the sword was off his shoulder and whipping through the air at her head. She ducked as her white hot sword flashed out at him. His blade ripped through the corner of the house behind her like nothing was there. Inside David ran away from the window and back to his mother's arms as the house trembled.
Zachariah backed up a few steps, his hand went back to his bald head again as he read a text and began to thumb a reply.
The big demon stepped back and looked down at his midsection where a short gash sizzled across his fist thick abdominal muscles. Limael saw a big lock of wet blond hair on the ground beside her and tasted a copper flavor in her mouth as a trickle of blood made its way down her face and past her lips.
"That was close," he chuckled in a vaguely German accent. "But close doesn't get the job done, does it?"
A steady rumble of thunder rolled off in the distance and lightning lit the world up in blue making him look even more hellish.
He lashed out with the big sword again and she parried the strike with her blade, but he followed it closely with a right foot to her sternum that sent her flying through the door and into the house.
He bellowed laughter as the rain blew through the front door and like any good audience, the crowd of demons laughed with him as if an applause sign had been lit.
David drew closer to his mother and she hugged him tighter as Zachariah and his fellow angels stepped to the back of the living room, drawing their swords but looking too petrified to do anything.
Limael stood, brushed the blood away from her eyes and spat a mouthful of blood onto that bargain basement Persian rug in the Buffalino family's living room. While the big demon stood laughing with his head back, she put her own foot in his chest with a superhuman speed. He flew through the neighbor's home and through the one behind it before he stopped and came clawing his way out of it like a kid in a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. Blood ran from his mouth now and a number of cuts on his body. The cut from her sword was now a bloody black gash that oozed black blood down his crotch and left leg.
He leapt over the neighbor's home and landed up to his knees in the Buffalino's grassy front lawn where Limael stood en garde.
Now too angry for strategy and cunning, he climbed out of the sod and swung the sword in hard angry arcs, the first of which she deflected and then reached out to give him another shallow wound in his left thigh. But the rain and grass betrayed her as he swung again and she fell barely holding his blade away from her neck with hers as it crashed down on her.
And once she was down he put that enormous meatsuit to work wailing on her from above in a ceaseless onslaught of brutal hacking that was the diametrical opposite of the martial poetry she exhibited with her sword.
Tears ran down her face that no one saw for the pouring rain that pelted the world around her and she vaguely heard David shouting "Stop it! You're not 'upposed to kill angels!" in his angry little boy voice.
The thunder roared all around them and the sky lit again in blue as the lightning crackled in the clouds.
He swung hard once more straight down and then followed with a quick swipe to the left and her sword skittered across the grass. Its flame extinguished instantly. The thunder had stopped, but the lightning still flashed. The only sound was their breathing and the rain pelting the ground as he raised the big sword. The angels, the Buffalinos, and even the demons watching the combat all seemed to hold their breath. Winding his abdominal and dorsal musculature up tightly, he swung down. She dodged death once and then twice as sod and dirt and mud flew into the air. He put his foot down on her chest pressing her into the wet ground as he raised the big sword. His bloody teeth beamed red and ivory at her as he leered down, mirroring her own red tinged teeth bared in a defiant snarl as she struggled to break free. Leaning on her until her breastplate and ribs snapped and popped and she sank further still into the ground, he raised the sword again as Zachariah and his angels and the Buffalino family all watched in wide eyed horror.