Angels and Demons

Kratzer coughed and stumbled to his feet, spitting out blood. Boomslang raised a hand to Sieben, who lowered his weapon; James was right. Now was not the time.

"Sie legen eine Hand auf sie, Sie werden es bereuen, mein Herrin oder sonst," ((You lay a hand on her, you will regret it, my master or otherwise.)) Kratzer rasped before hacking up more blood. Godd**** his son was a good shot.

Boomslang gazed at him dispassionately. "Ich werde mich später mit Ihnen befassen. Ich rate dir, dass du kein zweites Mal einen solchen Stunt ziehst, Engel Jäger." ((I will deal with you later. I advise that you don't pull any such stunt a second time, Engel Jäger.))

"Ich rate dir, du machst mich nicht." ((I advise you don't make me.))

James let out a quick sight as they put their weapons down. He couldn't understand their language, but it wasn't important. He'd have to keep an eye on them, but he hoped they understood their situation.

He turned back to Grim and Maahes. He gave the following instructions reluctantly.

"Maahes. You lead the angels as you take to the skies. Make sure everyone at least goes in pairs. They'll search for Boris and Damascus from above while we cover the ground. If one of you with wings finds them first, retrieve them and fly back to us immediately. If us on the ground find them first, then just keep an eye out for us and return immediately. And again, I emphasize: do not go alone. Have at least one other person with you, if not more. And for those of us on the ground, we'll all stay together. It may be less efficient but it's simpler in the long run. The more we split up the easier it is for whatever brought us here, if it does have evil intentions, to take us out or whatever it may be. Now let's go," he said, breaking away from the building and into the forest, where the two would've headed if they were looking for Schadel at first. "And let's hope that the two are merely lost, and not something worse. And whoever is still wounded -" he gave a glance back to Kratzer. "-stay with me."

I flinched at the suddeness of the splash, initially, but when I'd had a moment to register, it actually felt rather nice.

"Ach!- Damascus, you rascal- heh, alright."

I grinned, and moved to take off my boots, but froze at the sound of four harsh, loud cracks, in the not too far distance.

"Were those- gunshots?" I said, quietly.

Schadel's eyes had widened when she heard and saw the first gunshot being fired; she hadn't expected Kratzer to shoot at Boomslang. She wanted to say more to Boomslang and to Kratzer, too - who seemed to have forgotten that she couldn't die like a human would have - but James had a point. She took a deep breath and clamped her mouth shut, walking over to where the angel named Maahes was standing. Maahes appeared more than a little startled by James suddenly giving him control of the situation, but he did seem like he was doing his best to be an impromptu.

"Hopefully we won't have to split up into pairs," Maahes said, looking over the group. "We should get a better view of the ground when we're flying above it, and we'll be able to see more - even if we're only a short distance up."

Grim nodded.

Schadel hesitantly gave a nod of her own, then glanced back at Edward. She really didn't want to leave her friend. It wasn't the same with her other brothers; they rarely saw each other, and their bond was formed from a single childhood experience and the time they all got drunk in a bar. Her and Edward's connection was different. They had bonded over spending day after day after day with each other and the rest of Schadel's Necromancy Agency. They hadn't been together that long, but her agency was like another family to her.

And the thought of splitting up with Edward - even though they had done stuff like this countless times during their cases - made her now very existent heart skip a beat.

"I'll be okay, Schadel," he reassured her, seeming to notice the worry flickering across her face.

"But you're not...you're not a ghost anymore," she pointed out. "You could hurt or even killed!"

He walked over to her and gave her a hug. "I won't. Liz is fine doing dangerous things, right?" Schadel reluctantly gave a nod. That wasn't the real reason for her concern; she just didn't want to see him die again, and didn't want to lose one of her closest friends. "And if I do die, then I'll just become a ghost again."

He pulled away, and she gave a little smile. "Liz and Claire would be very confused if you showed up with devil horns and a tail," she commented.

He smiled back. "I bet I could scare the living daylights out of Claire," Edward schemed, a mischievous glint to his eyes. "She'd deserve it, after shoving me into that rack of blood."

"Gunshots?" Damascus went pale and pulled his feet out of the water, glancing back the way they had come. A strong tide of guilt washed over him, and he stood quickly.

"Oh, Boris... we- we need to get back. Anything could be happening- I don't-" he glanced over, his eyes wide with fear and distant compared to their mirth only moments before.

"If someone has been-" he let out a groan of agony, bringing his hands up to his face.

Rose clamped her mouth shut to keep the flow of words back. She instead looked up at the sky. Suddenly laughter filled her head and she glared at the trees.

"oh, shut up."[i[/i] She said to them.

Boomslang put a hand to her head where the hole was, frowning. Shadows coalesced around it and when they drew away it was good as new. Kratzer, on the other hand, had no such speedy regeneration, and fell back against a tree, the blood still flowing quite freely.

God- god damn it. Our brothers- our brothers, any one could be shot, and just this once, this one goddamned time, I had been transported unarmed.
A horribly familiar bolt of fear shot through my body. This couldn't happen again. Not, not again, we had to get to them. We had to get to them, even if there was little I could do, I could not let them wait, our brothers, if one, if just one-

No. I couldn't, I couldn't panic. Damascus needed me to hold us together. He was in shambles, with the same fear as I, and I had to hold it together. For him.

My voice was not devoid of urgency, but it held strong well enough for our needs.
"If we flew, we might get back to them faster- but we're unpracticed- we'd only worry them further. Let's run."

I led us back down the creek where we had came, cursing every root and stone between us and our brothers. We could not afford to let them wait. Not now.

Damascus ran along, his bare feet carrying him over the undergrowth. His shoes had been forgotten in his urgency, and he hardly felt the obstacles that marred his skin.

Following only a foot behind Boris, he tripped on a root and caught himself, wasting precious time.

Out of instinct, he reached out enough to grab Boris' hand, telling himself that it was to keep them from getting separated.

I held on, and led Damascus through. "Don't worry," I told him. "We'll make it."

We emerged from the clearing to discover Boomslang, blood covering the intact skin of her forehead and chest, and Engel, bleeding profusely from his ruptured heart.
The sight of my brother, slumped back into the tree, in agonising wait, was just... wrong. Even when I did remember that he could not be killed by such humble means, it did nothing to abate the numbing grief that clawed inside my chest.

"E...Edward!" I cried out. I switched names at the last second, and dragged my gaze from Engel to Edward, praying that Boomslang had not caught on. Despite the fact that distress was the normal response to violence, it felt foolish to hope that her suspicions were not riled. Yet all I could do was hold my act together, regardless.

Engel was in great pain, and the best I could do for him was to ignore him.

"Edward, what happened here? Who fired the shots? Is- is that Schadel?"

I'm sorry, Engel. I thought, imagining that he could hear me, somehow.

I'm sorry.

Rose was hard put to not start punching people.

/Mortals are so weird/ The trees whispered. Rose grimaced.

Melkyael stepped out of the background for the first time since his appearance, quietly making his way over to Engel. Cornyx watched but didn't intervene, instead glancing towards Boris, who had come running out of the woodland. Seemed the search and rescue was off.

Engel pushed himself off the tree as the now-demon approached, unsure of what his intentions were. They were enemies, after all. Melkyael paused as the vampire tensed.

"I can heal you," he said. "Your being injured isn't advantageous to anyone at the moment, whether we are enemies back home or otherwise."

Engel studied him for a few moments, debating the truth of these words. He wasn't quite sure what Melkyael could do if he did wish him ill, however, and he had a point. The group needed to be mobile. Slowly, he nodded.

Melkyael stepped forward and put his hand on the assassin's chest, fingers beginning to glow as the wound began to regenerate, blood slowing and stopping as his heart sealed and resumed beating.

As soon as the gunshots began, Siren had tackled the two people closest to her to the ground.

After a few minutes had passsed, she looked up, swiveling her head sharply like a meerkat.
"Hmmmm..." she wheezed suspiciously.
She looked back down at Stan and Sevy, both of which she was still on top of.

"Does it look safe to you?" she whispered hoarsely.

Damascus let out a strangled sound at the sight of his brother, and would have called out if it wasn't for Boris' own quick save. He could only look on in remorse as Engel was attended to.

"S- Schadel?" He tore his gaze away from Engel and looked around, slowly getting over shock. " I knew I heard your voice! "

~~~

Sevy hardly had time to react to all of the gunfire and drama that was going down before he was flung fluidly to the forest floor. He thought he'd been assaulted for a moment before realizing that the aquatic bird creature had tackled him.

Struggling to lean up on his elbows, he let out a little gasp for breath, mouthing the word 'ribs' in pain.

"I don't know," he whispered back avidly when he had finally composed himself "I can't exactly see anything from here. The gunshots stopped, though, so yay that."

Schadel's tense shoulders relaxed when Boris and another man who could only be Damascus emerged from the woods - she hadn't recognized the latter at first, seeing that his eyes were bizarrely not red for once. "It's me," she confirmed. She cast a worried glance over in Engel's direction. She didn't know who had just healed him, but she felt uneasy; the man had admitted they were foes, so why would he help him out when the people of Engel's world tended to be on the crueler, harsher side?

Edward knew that he wasn't supposed to draw attention to his connection with Engel, but it had become too hard to after that man had approached him with the offer to heal his injury. He was worried for the same reason as Schadel. It was only when he realized Boris was asking him a question that he turned his attention to the returning member of their group.

"He shot Boomslang when Schadel was getting into an argument with her," he said. He raised a finger and pointed at Engel's son. "And then he shot Engel."

A short distance away, Maahes - grateful that the two missing members of their group had returned - had come to the decision that he couldn't avoid Kratzer like everyone else seemed to be doing. His friend had been severely injured. And even though he knew he would be okay because of his powers, Maahes couldn't help but worry about his friend. He walked over to him and stood next to the man who had just healed Kratzer.

"Are you all healed now?" he asked, looking Kratzer over. It looked like he was from the cursory look, so he sent a thankful glance in the healer's direction before turning back to Kratzer. "You really shouldn't have done that," he said, his voice dropping down a bit as he spoke. "What if...What if there hadn't been someone here to heal you?"

A little further away, Aquarius and Zephyrus both sent worried glances in Rose's direction when they saw her reacting to things neither could hear. "Rose?" Aquarius asked, his voice high with nervousness. "Are you...Are you aright?"

Grim stood off to the side, watching the scenes unfold around him as his wings hesitantly enveloped his body. Aquarius had found company in Rose and his brother. Sevy was preoccupied with Siren, and Damascus when he was there. He couldn't risk talking to anyone else; they could easily figure out his secret if he let so much as a suspicious sentence slide.

His gaze lingered on the formerly injured man. He wanted to get a glimpse of his status, but he was terrified of what he would find if he checked it. The man was supposed immortal from what he had overheard, but if he wasn't...

No. He wasn't going to check, even though his curiosity was trying to get the best of him. The newest of the group, too. He couldn't check her status, either, especially when it meant looking at the soul that revealed exactly what she was. She wasn't human in the slightest. The embrace his wings made tightened.

She was one of the shadow monsters he had seen lingering around people that died.

And if they clung to death, wouldn't they cling to him, too?