'I need to curse you Gabriel,' Death said as he appeared in front of the Archangel.

Gabriel gave a twisted look at Death's impassive face. 'Curse me?'

Death nodded. 'Only you are strong enough to carry this curse, you and you alone are strong enough to get close to the beast. It is only you my friend who is honourable enough to die for Him.'

Gabriel looked up to the sky and sighed. 'Thy will,' he said, then kneeled.

Death grasped Gabriel's head between his hands. 'Your curse is to become mortal. On death your mortality will transfer to your slayer and so the curse will travel on. I am Anubis, the last of my kind and I curse you Gabriel, never again to walk the Halls of heaven as an angel.' He kissed Gabriel on the forehead and disappeared.

Gabriel struggled to his feet in the ash, mortality weighing heavy on him. With a roar that shook the heavens he ran at Belial, sword pointed forward.

Death watched from above as a car swerved round mounds of rubble, cutting a path to York Station. As an old man coughed into a tissue, glanced at the fallen angel seated beside him briefly, and adjusted his glasses. As a man dodged Belial's sword and cursed. And he watched an angel use his last breath to shout as he charged the demon who sliced him open and bled away his life. Oh Gabriel, so noble.

A myriad of Johns charged Belial, but some fell in the Dark John's wake. Death counted twenty-three, no four. No, twenty-eight, if you counted robotic arm John and the three Johns already dead behind the Dark One. 'Shit, John,' he mumbled standing atop the building.

John, the first John--or the last, if he got things right--leapt out of reach of Belial's sword just as it slammed into the rubble. Two stray bullets ripped open John's chest in the next breath and Death cringed. Had the kiss worked?

Pale, John looked at the bullet holes, felt his own blood with shaking fingers.

'Come one, come on.' Death frowned. Behind John the Dark One froze, his hand still stretched to blast another collapsed John to smithereens. Could John ever become such a dick? Well, the evidence was there. Death hoped John could fix this before it was too late.

A spattering of bullet shards poured from John's wounds and the blood disappeared as the wounds closed. It had worked. 'My gift, Johnny,' Death mumbled smiling, then turned his attention back on Semila as John picked up his sword.

The old man with Semila, there was something about him. Death couldn't place who exactly he was. The man was not what he seemed, but was he one of the enemy? A rogue angel? A demon? The car screeched to a stop at York Station's collapsed roof, and Semila tumbled from the door mumbling thanks. From a distance Death could see the sallow green of her skin. Wild ride, even for her, the untameable fallen angel. Huh.

Voices, thousands of them, called to Death with their dying moans, screams cut short, and he distorted, pulled in many directions at once. Death could not miss a human's passing, and now thousands died in minutes, stretching him thinner than he'd been stretched since the Second World War. With a sigh, he gave in. Time to do his duty, but he was tired. Oh so tired. In a flicker of air he was gone. He had done what he could to help, but the world's fate rested in John and Semila's hands now.

'God, I know I'm not supposed to be doing this, but I...I pray. That you will help John and Semila.'

#

Semila stumbled up cracked stairs, stepped around mounds of rubble. The darkness grew deeper. No people walked the destroyed station. A light flicked and tinged, then buzzed to a stop, another patch of darkness. The sound echoed. She walked past the entrance halls into the station proper and gasped at the great domed skyline, the glass shattered. A great ball of rock the size of a mutant wrecking ball trailed smoke into the sky through the shattered panes on the domed roof, a train crushed beneath it steaming. Flames danced further into the murk behind the wrecking ball, trains ablaze with the fire poured from heaven.

The silence shattered as a metal screech pierced the air. Semila cringed and grabbed at her sword, but it was only one of the trains yielding to the fire. She coughed and tugged her white shirt up over her mouth. 'Let's get this done,' she said through the shirt. Felt strange with the material straining against her mouth, but she breathed better. A clang sounded ahead, perhaps a pipe falling from roofing or a bird loosening some rubble. Deep down she knew that wasn't it. She crossed the railway tracks, boots crunching through the track ballast, eyes on everything searching for movement. A scream came from the darkness deeper into the tunnel. A woman by the sound of it, in her dying throes. As Semila lunged up to the platform on the other side, she heard another screech behind her and shrugged it off. Time was running out. She ran past the Starbucks, empty and dark, and saw the mail lockers ahead to the right. 'Thank you,' she said as she ran up to them.

Something hit her shoulder, and she gasped as she turned, the shirt falling from her face. A fucking demon. She should have known. Blood gushed from the wound, staining her shirt, but she ignored it. God's Justice hissed out of its sheath and she sliced the air, blocking the demon's sharp nails. 'Fuck...off!' she screamed as she pushed against it with all her weight, advancing. The demon's jowls dripped black saliva onto the ground, and it swung a hoofed leg at her body.

She dodged the kick, but lost some of her momentum, and the demon pushed with renewed fervour. Her back hit the lockers loudly, cracking. The pain throbbed through her skull and down into her feet, but she grit her teeth, closed her eyes for a split second, and regained composure. This piece of shit fucking pestilence was going down, and now. No time to dally. She gathered her strength, breathed in deep, and shoved with everything she had. The demon flew through the air to her surprise and slammed against the concrete, coming to a sliding stop with its head touching a Starbucks chair. She smirked and tugged her shirt straight, then launched herself with one leap onto the thing's body, slicing with God's Justice even as the thing screeched its wrath. ichor splattered, and she jumped back to the lockers without a second glance. Time this was done for good.

What number had the Collector said it was? Box seventy-two. She slid from locker to locker, eyes dancing to each number until she found the right one. Blessedly, its door had been knocked askance with the fire rain, and inside she glimpsed white-bordered squares. Photos. 'Yes!' She grabbed one--a young girl with blonde pigtails stared at her, eyes wide with terror, blood streaking down her temple. The background a blur. Her heart clenched. Charlie. She would recognise that face anywhere. There were photos enough of her in John's house. She looked at the back of the photo, a date and time was scrawled there.

'3 May 2008. 4pm.'

A smear of dried blood caked the edge of the photo. Horrid. But this was the right box. She scraped all the photos into her hands, made a neat stack of them, and started flipping through them as fast as she could. John had said the first photo was the key in the letter. And the first murder had been when? She growled her frustration, flicking photos dated too recently to be the first at the ground angrily. Nineteen eighty something or ninety something, had to be. Blake had been old as fuck, and Marty had said the killings had been going for many years. At last she resorted to keeping any photo dated before 1998, and then whittled it down to a few dated in the nineteen eighties. At last she found it. The first photo. A young girl she didn't know, brown ponytail, dark blue eyes, her lip obviously trembling, tears streaming down her face. In this picture Semila could see the girl's brown school dress and shoes. She was tied to a chair, and in the background indistinct shapes. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Semila bolted through the ash that had been the demon, pelted over the tracks, vaulted up the side and onto the opposite platform, and ran through the entry hall. The old man was still there in his car, frowning at a map he held upside down. What was he up to now? She was shocked a man like that could survive in this city. How had he not realised the world was ending yet? With a giggle despite the dire situation, she ambled closer, pocketed the photo.

'Sir, are you alright?' she leaned into the window, trying to hide her smile.

'Ah, young lass, you done with your exploring? Your parents must be worried.' He grumbled, trying to fold the map he'd been holding back down, the edges were stubborn, resisting, crunching into odd shapes instead of folding back into place, but eventually he managed. 'Now, I suppose you'll be wanting a ride home?' He shifted his glasses as he met her eyes, his old lips puckered.

'Ehm, yes Sir, if you could manage?'

'Well now,' he blustered, 'what do you take me for child? I couldn't be leaving a young'un like you to the wiles of the world. I'm not some low life. Got morals. You best get in' --he popped the lock open for her-- 'weather's turned for the worse I'd guess by those rumbles.'

Semila stifled a laugh and bit down hard on her lip as she opened the door and settled in.

'Buckle up,' he said eyeing her through his spectacles pointedly. She clicked the seatbelt in place, and soon they were speeding through the rubble again, her pointing and screaming directions while the man dodged and swerved round obstacles and corners. A wild gleam in his eyes made her think, for a moment, he might know more than he alluded to, but the impression fled as a streak of drool slid on his cheek then out the window.

As they neared the battle scene, the car slowed, the old man looking sombre all of a sudden. 'Listen lass, be careful out there. He patted her knee and she jumped out the car then as fast as she could. Things were getting a bit too weird.

#

As she ran into the cloud of smoke surrounding the towering demon torso, the old man smiled. 'La-dee-da, eh?' he chuckled to himself, pulled his glasses off, and polished them with his shirt, replacing them and blinking into the smoke. 'Got my own hands dirty,' he mumbled. As he had hoped, the fallen angel turned back a last time and met his eyes. He waved amiably, and in the next instant, he was gone.

#

First John had thought to distract the demon so Death could get close enough to take the mortality from Belial, however he did that, but then Dark John had appeared and convinced Death to leave. Lucky for him, by some stroke of luck he couldn't die either. Did that mean all the Johns were immortal now? He hoped not, because he was aiming to kill Belial and Dark John in one go, if he could get them together. Jitter John flashed in and out of the scene, a constant distraction for Dark John who blasted at the air each time he appeared and was gone again. Ash floated everywhere, and few demons were left alive. Semila cut down the last one besides for Belial, and John rolled his shoulders, screamed, and charged Belial, running up his knee and stabbing into his heart with a great leap. He hung from the sword, and thank god, the monster fell. John leapt out of the way, but Dark John was too late. Belial's head fell on him, crushing him. If only it could kill him, but no, Death had said Dark John was more powerful even than Belial, and Belial would stand again in a heartbeat as his body recovered. John leapt onto Belial's head and stabbed into his ginormous neck, carving chunks away.

His eyes widened. The chunks of rocky meat turned to ash, floated in the slight breeze. What? John looked down and realised the giant demon was slowly decomposing to dust from his fingertips and legs. What?

'Yeaaaaahhhhhhh!' he shouted with all his might, his voice echoing off buildings. He had killed Belial. Him. With just a sword. How was it possible?

P.S. What a sacrifice *tears*

© Steve Ford and Joy Cronjé 2018