When their doom came for them it was not heralded by the shrill calling of trumpets. There was no great flash of light, no boom of thunder, not even a stunning burst of power like the one that had demolished the door to Elliot's apartment. In the end the only warning shot their enemy ever fired was the single sound of a creaking floorboard beneath a heavy foot.
That was all it took, one low, brief creak, for Elliot to spring into action; he'd been dozing, not deep enough to call it sleep, and the sound spurred him into motion without hesitation. He woke Olivia with a hand over her mouth and a finger pressed to his lips, asking for quiet. She must have read the fear in his eyes; her gaze flicked to McKenna, and then to the little closet on the other side of the room, and Elliot understood what she wanted at once. He scooped McKenna up, shushing her gently, and dashed across the room on silent feet, laid her down on the floor of the closet, and it broke his heart, really it did, the way she looked up at him, small and frightened, wrapping her little white wings around her body as if in comfort.
"It's going to be ok," he lied, speaking as quietly as it was possible for him to do. "Just stay here, and stay quiet."
She nodded, and he closed the door on her, thinking to himself that he had just looked upon the angel child for the last time; there was no way he was going to survive this. Death had come for him.
It might as well be like this, he thought, as Liv tossed him a gun - safety on - as the pair of them dropped into a crouch, one on either side of the bed. They were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, making their final stand, facing impossible odds but too proud to run. There had always been something reckless, something wild about the pair of them together, him and Liv; he'd always felt invincible when she was by his side. Maybe she had cause to feel that way, given what she was, but he was only a man, and his number was up. At least he'd die with her beside him; if he had to go, he'd never want to go without her.
The doorknob twisted slowly, slowly; whoever was out there, they were trying to be stealthy, had made almost - not quite, but almost - no noise as they approached. They'd had to pass every other room in the house to get to this one, and so must have known that the quarry they were searching for was waiting inside, trapped. Fish in a barrel, Elliot thought, adrenaline coursing through his veins like a current through copper wire, lighting his nerves up like a Christmas tree.
He could only see Liv's head, poking up over the side of the mattress, but that was enough; he could see her face, her eyes trained on the door. Elliot had pulled the old wooden dresser in front of it, knowing it wouldn't stop their attacker indefinitely, hoping it'd slow him down. She was watching, waiting, and she was beautiful. Beautiful, and fierce, throwing herself into harm's way, confronting near certain death, for the sake of one little girl, and he loved her for it, for her selflessness and a million other things besides.
This is the end, he thought. It wasn't the best plan, the trap they'd laid here; there would be no escape for them now. There was a window above the bed; he could've grabbed McKenna, vaulted through it, made a mad dash for the car, but neither he nor Liv had entertained the possibility, and he knew why. If Liv wasn't able to stop Michael he'd just come after them again, and they'd be fucked without her; their opponent could fly, and bullets would not slow him down for long. Elliot could've sent Liv with McKenna, but that would mean almost certain death for him, and there wasn't enough time for all three of them to escape that way. Besides, they both wanted this to end, not drag their flight on and on. He knew that, same as he knew the color of Olivia's eyes; she ran from love, ran from commitment, ran from anyone who wanted to hold her down, but she never, ever ran from a fight.
It took maybe three seconds, from the moment Elliot closed the closet door to the moment when Michael's patience ran out. He blew threw the doorway like a wrecking ball, propelled by some momentum, some furious power Elliot didn't understand; the force of his body charging forward left the door in pieces, but he stumbled over the ruins of the dresser, and Elliot and Olivia took the gift that providence had given them, and attacked at once. They fired, both of them, again and again, their ears ringing, the smell of gunpowder in the air, and Michael screamed each time their bullets struck him. He wasn't too far away and Elliot and Olivia had both been trained well, and almost all of their bullets found their mark, and Elliot never so much as blinked, and Jesus, he would remember that moment for the rest of his life. He hadn't gotten a good look at Michael back in the apartment, had been tucked behind the couch covering McKenna, and so he had not really been prepared for the sight of him. Michael was tall, and his wings were vast, bigger even than Liv's. His hair was dark and his eyes were blue, and he seemed almost to glow, as if he radiated his own ambient light. And he was in agony; his body twisted this way and that, blood dripping from a dozen different wounds, a gun clutched in his hand though he seemed to lack the strength to raise it as each bullet only sent him careening away. He couldn't find his footing as long as they were hurting him, but their magazines wouldn't last indefinitely.
We're fucked, he thought.
"Olivia!" he bellowed above the sound of the gunfire. They needed to get the jump on the angel, needed to avoid giving him the opportunity to recover while they reloaded. They needed to act, fast, and Elliot had a plan, but no time to tell her what it was.
She didn't need the words, anyway.
They stopped shooting, both of them, and Elliot lunged forward, and Michael, his face caught in a horrible snarl, swayed towards him, struggling to lift his gun with an arm not yet healed. Olivia used the diversion to dive for the knives she'd stashed in the bedside table. Michael started to raise his gun, and Elliot fired, hit him square in the hand, heard him shriek, a wretched, miserable, unholy sound, as the gun bounced away from him.
"You!" Michael growled, and surged forward; Elliot managed to shoot him once more, in the belly, before Michael's powerful body plowed into his, and they both went crashing back against the floor.
There was something in the air, something crackling with heat, something that made the hairs stand up on the back of Elliot's neck, something like the seconds before a lightning strike. Something was coming; Olivia had told him angels had powers nephilim lacked, but she had not told him what those powers were, and he didn't know, really, what to expect. Not that it mattered; for the moment Michael seemed content with battering him, and they rolled across the floor together, fingers clawing, knees jabbing, trying to hurt each other any way they possibly could though they were too closely bound for either of them to get a punch in. Michael was going for his neck, murder in the angel's eyes, and Elliot faught valiantly, trying to kick him off, and then -
He and Michael grunted together as Olivia jumped on the angel's back, the sudden addition of her weight knocking the wind out of Elliot and Michael both, and Michael stopped trying to strangle Elliot as he diverted his attentions to Olivia, screeching and clawing, trying to buck her off as she did something - Elliot didn't know what, but something - to him with those knives that made him half-feral with desperation. Elliot couldn't let Michael stand, couldn't let him throw Olivia off balance, and so he began instead to try to hold Michael down on top of him, hooked his legs over Michael's and tried to lock his arms around Michael's back, and probably if he could have seen the three of them caught in this bizarre clinch from the other side of the room probably he would've said they looked ridiculous. There was nothing funny about it, though; he was fighting for his life, for Liv, for McKenna, for the world that he loved and the future he dearly longed to see.
The sounds of agony from Michael were unceasing, and Elliot was just beginning to hope that maybe, just maybe, they had a chance, when the building sensation of disaster erupted all around him. Michael had been working his way up to something; a powerful burst of energy radiated out from him, as if he'd carried a bomb in his chest, hot and quick and unstoppable, accompanied by a blinding light, and the force of that blast left Elliot's ears ringing, threw Olivia across the room where she landed in a heap.
"Liv!" her name tore from him in desperation as he struggled to rise, but every muscle in his body seemed to have seized up, and his head was spinning, and his heart shrieked in horror, seeing that there was blood at her temples, that she wasn't moving.
Michael rose slowly to his feet; the bullet wounds had healed themselves, but what Olivia had done to him was far more grievous. Elliot could see the truth at once; while she'd been on him, she'd been hacking at the joint of his right wing, attempting to sever it from his back. She'd nearly finished; it was hanging at a horrible angle, blood pouring everywhere, and there was a look of madness in Michael's eyes that was terrible to behold. He turned his back on Elliot, and began to advance on Liv.
"Time to die, little one," he said in a voice made monstrous by rage.
"No!" Elliot cried, and with the kind of hysterical strength he'd never really believed he possessed he scrambled for his gun abandoned on the floor, and rose up, fired the last of his bullets into Michael's shredded and bleeding back. There was no thought behind it; he didn't make a choice. There was no choice, for him. It was always Liv.
His attack had the desired effect; Michael was on him in a moment, hands tight around his throat before Elliot even had the chance to defend himself, and Jesus, the fucker was strong, so strong he lifted Elliot clean off his feet, and Elliot tried, really he did, to fight back, tried to kick and claw, struggled in every way he could to escape, but to no avail. The world started to go dark around the edges, and this is it, he thought. This is it.
But even as the life began to fade from his body he could see salvation; he could see the bright glow of white wings, not shredded and bloody like Michael's but beautiful, beautiful. Not like the demon Michael had become, but like an angel, welcoming him into heaven.
"NO!" Olivia roared in a terrible voice, and flew into them. She flew, like she'd told Elliot she could, like he hadn't really believed she could, not until he saw it for himself. She flew, and when she collided with them Michael lost his grip, and Elliot fell to his knees, and as he did she landed beside him, and wrapped him in her vast, glorious wings, surrounded him entirely and caught him in a warm and comforting darkness that felt like home.