Shadow Train (44 page)

Raphael helped Zhai get Maggie to her feet.

“You okay?” Raph asked, and Maggie waited for the rush of feeling and the rapid heartbeat she always felt whenever he touched her—but it didn't come. It was kind of sad, she thought. But it was also a big relief.

“Yeah, I'm good,” she said. “What now?” She looked from Raphael to Zhai.

“I'm not sure,” Zhai said.

“I don't suppose we can just grab the ring and shut the portal?” Raphael suggested. They all looked at the ring. The altar was made of rose quartz and carved with all sorts of strange symbols. The ring sat perfectly in a circular groove that had been carved into its center.

Zhai reached for it, and then stopped. “I don't know,” he said. “It looks like this is where it belongs—where it's supposed to be. Where it should have been all along.”

Raphael nodded. “Shen is telling me the same thing. Anyway, Maggie said the army was already through the gate, right?”

Maggie nodded.

“No point in taking it out of its rightful place, then,” Raphael said. “It's probably safer here, anyway.”

He looked up, and Maggie noticed that there was a spiral staircase leading upward from the altar where the ring sat. And it was made of pure light.

“What do you think is up there?” she asked.

“Beats me,” Raphael said. “But I don't think now is the time to explore it and find out.” He gazed out of the bell tower. Off to the northwest, they could see the U.S. troops forming up in the field behind Spinnacle, as if preparing to march. Downtown, several large Obie helicopters had landed on building rooftops. Black-clad snipers were positioning themselves on the corners of buildings while the rest of the Chinese troops streamed down fire escapes to the street below, where they moved toward Middleburg United like columns of swarming ants.

“I guess we go back down and get ready for the war the Magician warned us about,” Raphael said.

“A war to end all wars,” Zhai agreed darkly. He headed toward the steps, but Raphael stopped him.

“Hey, Zhai,” he said, and his rival turned around. Raphael stared at his shoes for a second before raising his eyes to meet Zhai's. “Before we do this . . . in case something happens to one of us . . . I owe you an apology. While I was gone I traveled through time. I was in Middleburg, the day that my dad died in your father's factory. I saw what happened. It wasn't an accident. Oberon and Jack killed him.”

“Oberon and Jack?” Zhai repeated.

Raph nodded. “I made a mistake when I accused your family of being responsible for his death. I was just so angry . . . I guess I had to blame someone. But I was wrong, and I'm sorry.”

Zhai took Raphael's outstretched hand and shook it.

“Apology accepted,” Zhai said.

“Good, then let's go,” Maggie said impatiently. “Those armies are coming fast.”

When they'd reached the bottom of the bell tower's staircase, Dalton appeared from the crowd and grabbed Raphael's arm.

“It's about time you got here!” she exclaimed joyfully. “Your little brother or sister is about to be born—right now. Come on!” And she pulled him toward Lily Rose's temporary delivery room.

* * *

Minutes later, Raphael was holding his mom's hand, and between contractions she was kissing it and telling him how glad she was to see him. It wasn't long before Nass came rushing in.

“Hey, Raph—whoa,” he said, averting his eyes when he saw Raphael's mom lying on the delivery table, her knees up and one of the church's white linen tablecloths draped over her lower half.

“Come on in, Nass,” Savana joked. “Pull up a chair.”

“Yeah,” said Emily Banfield. “The more the merrier.”

“No,” said Lily Rose, serious. “Say what you came to say and then get on out of here. I need room to work.”

“We've gotta go,” Nass said, still embarrassed. “Come on, Raph. They're back.”

Raphael followed him out to the church's courtyard where Chin and Aimee were waiting. The four black horses Zhai had given Chin for his last birthday were there, fidgeting nervously as two fighter jets streaked past overhead. Three large black steamer trunks sat on the ground, and Master Chin was throwing them open.

“Time is short!” he said. “Assemble everyone now. We must protect the church and the Staircase of Light. Get the others.”

“You got it,” Nass said and headed off. “Hey, guys!” he shouted as he went. “Come out here!”

Zhai had found his way out to the courtyard, too, and Raphael walked over to the open trunks with him. One was filled with weapons—swords mostly, with some clubs, maces, knives, and other assorted weapons, and even a few guns mixed in. There were also sais—pointed metal batons with curved prongs attached to the handle. The second trunk was full of what looked like a bunch of white T-shirts, except they were made of shiny cloth that Raphael guessed was satin or silk.

“Put one on and grab a weapon. We got your swords, too,” Chin said, handing Raphael the samurai sword he'd taken from the creepy dead samurai warrior he'd vanquished in Maggie Anderson's house a couple of months before. Chin handed Zhai a medieval hand-and-a-half sword that Raphael knew he'd pilfered from the four knights he'd conquered in the locomotive graveyard during that same strange battle.

Zhai was pulling on one of the weird T-shirts, and Raphael noticed that Chin and Aimee had already put them on. “What are these?” he asked, pulling one on over the shirt he was already wearing.

“Lily Rose made them. They'll protect you,” Chin said, adjusting one of the horse's saddles. Raphael remembered how Dalton had survived the collapse of Middleburg High's gymnasium while wearing a dress Lily Rose had made for her. He wasn't sure if her shirts would stop a bullet or a supernatural sword, but it sure wouldn't hurt to be wearing one.

By then, the rest of the Toppers and Flatliners had assembled in the courtyard, and they had all picked out weapons. Benji had a pirate cutlass and Beet was holding a spiked mace. Josh grabbed a bow, a tomahawk, and a pair of brass knuckles. The Cunningham brothers each took a massive bastard-sword, while Michael and Dax picked out a couple of guns and hunting knives. Nass grabbed a pair of sais that he thought would work well with his capoeira fighting style. Kate took a shotgun.

“I don't know if I can use this thing,” she quipped. “But I wouldn't want to take a sword to a gun fight, to be sure.” She also found a satchel of hand grenades and slung it over her shoulder. Maggie was hanging back, and Raphael smiled as he watched Aimee approach her.

“Here, Maggie. I swung by the school and got this for you,” Aimee said as she took something from a backpack. It was the Middleburg High homecoming crown that Maggie had worn twice before—once at the dance and once when she was fighting off the terrifying Black Snake God of the Obies. “I thought you might like it better than a bazooka or something.”

“Thanks, Aimes,” Maggie said, placing the crown on her head. Instantly, she was bathed in a glow that was beautiful—and a little scary.

“We'd better get ready,” Nass said nervously. “I can feel all three armies getting close.”

Chin nodded to Raphael. “Raphael, you, Zhai, Maggie, and Aimee will ride the horses and lead the charge. The rest of us will follow you.”

“Me?” Aimee asked, incredulous.

“Have a little confidence in yourself,” Zhai said. “I've seen you fight. You're good.”

“And you rode horses at that boarding school of yours, didn't you?” Dalton asked.

Aimee shrugged. “Almost every day but . . .”

Raphael stepped close to her and squeezed her hand. “You can do it,” he said. She smiled up at him, and it was all he could do not to grab her and kiss her again. She took the reins of her horse and climbed on.

They were all ready to ride out when Chin turned to Dalton. “One last thing,” he said. “We can't have the people inside the church panicking when this all goes down. Dalton, maybe you can sing them a little lullaby to keep them calm and safe?”

Dalton smiled. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'll sing until I sing 'em through to the other side.” And she headed back into the sanctuary.

Raphael mounted his horse and glanced from Aimee to Maggie and finally to Zhai as they rode to the front of the small column of soldiers.

“The Army of Light,” Chin declared proudly when they were all in place.

Raphael tried to give him a confident smile, but his heart was thundering in his chest. Weapons or not, they were just a bunch of teenagers. But if they didn't fight, who else would? “You guys ready to do this?” he shouted.

“I was born ready,” Maggie said.

“I guess,” said Aimee.

“Let's do this, my brother,” Zhai said. And the Army of Light rode forth.

Chapter 30

Zhai took in the battlefield
at a glance, and he felt like his heart would turn to lead inside his chest. To their right, northward, a caravan of Humvees and U.S. troops on foot swept south down Golden Avenue, heading toward them. Straight ahead, a battalion of Obies and Chinese soldiers was leaving the downtown area and moving down Church Street—which dead-ended in the churchyard where he now sat astride Chin's black horse. From his left, or southern flank, Zhai could hear the sounds of the approaching Dark Territory army, their gut-thudding drums rattling, their earsplitting trumpets braying into the impending dusk. As he looked, he began to see glimpses of red snapping banners and glinting swords as the force made its way through the woods, and then up a small embankment from the railroad tracks that ran behind the church.

Zhai looked at Raph, Maggie, and Aimee, their heads high as they rode forward, and then he glanced back at the rest of his small battalion: Michael, Dax, D'von, Cle'von and Benji, Beet, Josh, Nass, and Kate.

Finally, there was Master Chin, wearing the samurai helmet Raphael had given him as a birthday present. Their sifu was standing firmly at the front of their little phalanx. Fourteen of them, against who knew how many trained soldiers and demonic fiends.

It was to be a clash of four armies, and theirs was by far the smallest. Still, Zhai would not allow himself to be afraid. If there was ever a moment that his years of training had been meant to prepare him for, this was it, and he forced his hands to stop shaking.

Raphael's horse stamped impatiently, and he pulled back the reins, keeping the beast steady. “Should we split up and each of us take a flank?” Raphael asked Master Chin.

The old teacher shook his head, drawing the ancient-looking Chinese sword that hung at his side. “No. We'll all stand and fight together,” he said. “Wait until they've crossed through the gates of the churchyard, then charge. No matter what, we must not let them get the ring—or ascend the Staircase of Light.”

Everyone nodded solemnly; there was no more time for talking. The Chinese and U.S. forces were already exchanging fire and sweeping toward them. Zhai's eyes found Kate's and he gave her a reassuring smile, then gripped his sword tighter and stared out across the grave-filled churchyard, waiting for the battle to come.

* * *

Raphael watched with admiration as his
sihing
, Zhai, with his usual nerves of steel, was the first to charge into the fray. He galloped into an advancing phalanx of Obies and Chinese soldiers, his sword flashing. Kate was a few steps behind chucking grenades, and the rest of the Toppers plunged into the battle, too, fearlessly following their leader into the storm of bullets. Raphael had been bracing himself for a bloodbath, but as he'd hoped, the shirts Lily Rose had made them seemed to have some sort of protective properties. The raking streams of bullets seemed to have no effect; they passed right through the charging Toppers as if they were ghosts.

“Raph . . .” Nass said nervously, and Raphael looked in the direction he was pointing. The Dark Territory army had made it up the hill faster than expected and was already swarming through the wrought-iron gates of the churchyard, led by a flock of scary-looking half-women half-birds bearing swords, which Raphael guessed from a couple of books he'd read could only be harpies.

“Charge!” he shouted and kicked his horse into a gallop, hacking the wings off the first two bird-women as he went. Immediately, a sea of sickeningly deformed demon-men in rusty body armor surrounded him. They lashed at him with everything from pole axes to bullwhips, broken bottles to stumps of table legs. He hacked at them furiously and managed to get free of their swarm, but not before his horse had suffered a few serious wounds. As he circled for another charge, he saw that his comrades were all battling with everything they had.

Beet, who was a head taller than any of the deformed soldiers, was swinging his mace in wide arcs, mowing them down like bowling pins. Josh was picking the harpies out of the air with his bow, until one swooped in from behind him and tackled him with her talons. Benji got to him quickly, though, slashing the harpy with his cutlass and helping Josh to his feet.

Aimee seemed to be everywhere, stabbing an Obie with the slender blade of her rapier one moment and then the next, slipping to a spot thirty yards away and slashing a harpy out of midair.

So far things were going okay, but when Raphael looked out in the direction of the tracks, he saw trouble coming. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of onyx-skinned or ash-colored beings with black wings were flying toward them, wielding flaming swords. They advanced on the churchyard in numbers large enough to nearly blot out the southern sky.

Raphael had seen creatures like this before.
They look just like Oberon,
he thought.
They're fallen angels.

“Oh, crap,” he whispered as their army winged toward them. “Chin! Zhai!” he shouted, his voice cracking with fear.

He turned to see a series of explosions (probably from the grenades Kate was lobbing at the Obies). A moment later, Chin appeared from around the southwest corner of the church, with Zhai and Maggie in tow. They all hesitated when they saw the cloud of Irin approaching, then Maggie's eyes narrowed. The homecoming crown on her brow pulsed, and she leaned back like a baseball pitcher winding up. When she threw both hands forward, a typhoon of pinkish fire exploded from them. It decimated everything it touched, snapping treetops and setting them aflame, leveling tombstones, and sending scores of fallen angels tumbling from the sky.

The whole Army of Light cheered, but Maggie fell to her knees, spent from the effort of her mighty Shen attack. And the Irin were still coming.

* * *

Aimee understood the situation instantly, and she knew that if they didn't do something fast, the fallen angels were going to overpower them. Instinctively, she slipped to a spot just above a wicked-looking Irin, teleporting into just in the right spot to fall on top of it and impale it with her slender sword. The dark angel gave a piercing scream and fell from the sky, and Aimee rode it down to the ground, ramming her sword in deeper as they fell. The moment they struck the earth, the Irin burst into flames, and Aimee had to step back fast to avoid being torched. In seconds, the fire completely consumed the winged body, leaving nothing but an outline of fine gray ash. Aimee stared at it for a second, trying to understand what had happened.

Then she remembered something Orias had told her: the Fallen were not permitted to touch consecrated ground. It wasn't Aimee's sword that had burned the evil Irin; it was the churchyard!

She looked up and saw Raphael battling two of them. Both hovered two feet above the ground as they flapped their massive wings. “Raphael!” she shouted. “Pull them down! They can't touch consecrated soil!”

“Right!” he yelled back, ducking one flaming sword and parrying another as a third Irin came up behind him. Aimee watched it happen as if in slow motion: the flaming blade ramming through Raphael's chest and coming out the other side. A scream died in her throat, and she slipped over, stabbed the Irin behind him in the throat with her sword, and pulled the flaming blade free of Raphael's chest. When he spun to face her, however, his eyes were not glassy with the shock of a mortal wound—he looked fine. There was no wound there. He smiled.

“I'm fine,” he said. “It's Lily Rose's shirt. Stuff just passes right through it!”

But there wasn't time for another word. An Irin swooped down on him from above and he managed to parry the strike, grab the angel's forearm, and yank it toward the ground. The moment the Irin hit, it was engulfed in flames and in seconds there was nothing left but ash.

“Army of Light! Pull them to the ground!” Raphael shouted. “They can't touch the ground!”

Instantly, two other flames sparked as first Beet and then Zhai each managed to drag one of the hellish creatures down low enough to touch the sanctified soil of the churchyard.

But, Aimee soon realized, reaching the door of the church wasn't really the Irin's strategy anyway. Most of them were flying over it, entering the bell tower and swarming up the Staircase of Light that rose from it, all the way into what had to be outer space.

“Raphael! Master Chin!” she shouted. “Look up—they're getting up the stairs!” She expected Raphael to take some drastic action, but he stood frozen in place, staring away from the church, out across the churchyard. She followed his gaze and understood. Leading the Irin army were Oberon and Azaziel, and they were wearing wicked-looking black armor and holding swords of simmering red flame. And they were moving toward Raphael and Aimee.

She braced herself, preparing to watch the duel that was about to take place. Chin tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked around to see that his face was smeared with blood from a deep gash on his forehead—but he looked as determined as ever.

“They must not be allowed to ascend the staircase,” he said quickly. “Teleport us up to the bell tower, Aimee. We have to get the ring.”

* * *

Raphael glanced to his right, where Zhai was locked in what seemed to be a death battle with his sister, Li. To his left, Beet was fighting side by side with Michael Ponder. Benji and Josh were saving Dax Avery from an Irin and a swarm of harpies. The Cunningham brothers were standing back to back, swinging their swords wildly at the tangle of Irin and deformed knights surrounding them. Maggie was using what was left of her Shen energy to blast a series of pinkish fireballs at Rick, who bounded toward her, his mouth full of jagged, gaping teeth, like some kind of demonic shark. Raphael took all this in just seconds and then turned his attention back to the two supernatural beings coming toward him.

Oberon grinned in recognition as he approached Raphael, and Raphael saw that there were strange, translucent, glowing eyes hovering in his scarred eye sockets—which was somehow even creepier than the empty spaces would have been. The fallen angel who was with him—an even taller, more beautiful being who wore a strange black crown—seemed to be fixated on Raphael as well, but he stood back at the edge of the woods outside the churchyard, apparently happy to let Oberon do his dirty work.

“An eye for an eye, they say!” Oberon shouted at Raphael. “But I think I'll take much more than that from you. And as for that pretty shirt of yours, it won't protect you from my ancient Irin weapon.”

With an evil laugh, Oberon charged.

Raphael didn't hesitate. As soon as Oberon drew close, he snarled and attacked, clashing swords with him, dodging a slice from his flaming blade, then striking back, settling into the flow of combat.

He wasn't thinking of the fight blow by blow. The whole thing was one great, fluid motion. Each strike, each block, like the crashing and receding of the ocean, was part of the same unending flow. Oberon's flaming weapon crackled and hissed like a lightsaber as it whooshed toward Raphael in a seemingly endless series of strikes and feigns—and he was good with a sword. In the first two minutes of the duel, Raphael's leg was scorched and his left arm slashed and burned. Still he fought on, even more furiously than before, ducking a wild strike and countering with a slash to Oberon's face.

Now that the fallen angel was wounded, Raphael redoubled his effort, driving him all the way back to the iron fence. He threw a feint and got his enemy to overcommit, then managed to nick his hand with the tip of his samurai sword. Oberon's flaming blade fell to the ground, and Raphael cocked back to give him the deathblow.

But at that moment there was a massive change in the air, and Raphael looked over his shoulder to find that the staircase leading up from the church spire had now disappeared, as had the beam that shot into the tunnel. Someone must have moved the ring.

The distraction lasted only an instant, but when Raphael turned back to Oberon, he saw a black bar speeding toward his head and recognized it as part of the churchyard fence that Oberon had pulled free. He heard more than felt the metallic thump as it connected with his head, and the next thing he knew he was on his knees, his vision blurred, and his head spinning. Raph's weapon fell from his numb fingers. He felt hot blood flowing down his face and looked up to see a flaming sword raised above him.

And then it came down.

Raphael tried to throw himself backward, out of the way of the strike. He managed to avoid the head blow that Oberon was attempting, but when he tried to shield himself from it he felt a sharp, paralyzing pain in his forearm as a flaming blade slashed him to the bone.

He lay on his back now, scrambling backward as the fallen angel advanced toward him, the fiery sword in his hand poised to deliver a final strike.

There was the sound of an impact on Raphael's left, then another on his right, and both were followed by bursts of flame. He realized with a shock that the Irin were falling from the sky. Somehow when the staircase disappeared, it must have stunned them or something, because they weren't using their wings, they were just plummeting to the ground like huge black raindrops.