Ezra threw the first punch. After wrenching his arm free from the demon on his right, he broke the nose of the demon on his left. He tried to travel, and the demons clung onto him.

They landed five miles away, hitting the ground hard and rolling down a cobbled street that was thankfully empty. Ezra scrambled to his feet, ready to travel again, but a demon clutched his ankle and shoved him to the ground.

They wrestled, punched, and kicked. But Ezra was always stronger. He punched harder, pushed them harder, and he would have kicked them harder if he hadn't been smacked in the head by a loose pebble. Several boots embedded into his ribs as he curled up to protect himself.

He felt the blood oozing down his face, and his right eye started pulsing in pain.

He managed to get himself onto his knees and punched one of the demons between his legs. While he had fallen to the ground in searing pain, he attacked the other one until he hurt enough to leave of his own accord.

Ezra leaned over the one clutching between his legs and said, "Go, or you'll regret it."

The demon left, and Ezra lumped against a brick wall, sinking down until he was sitting on the cold pavement. Pain rippled through him. With every breath, it was like a thousand knives stabbed deeply into his ribs. He wiped blood from the side of his face and got it all over his jeans.

He sat in the quiet, dark street, until the cold seeped in and his limbs stiffened. But his heart had calmed, and the ringing in his ears had died down. Jevlo could have sent more demons after him, but he didn't.

Ezra knew a part of him really listened to what he had to say. Jevlo had been interested, which meant he had also noticed something.

Ezra sat quietly until the sun turned the black sky into a dark blue. When the bin lorry made its way down the street, he got up and travelled to his next location.

Moving was hard when he was bruised and aching. But he had to press on, no matter how much he longed to be tucked up in bed with Tom's breath on the side of his face, and his soft fingers in his hair.

I have to spread the word. I have to warn the demons, Ezra thought as he moved to a town that was sixty miles away from Wileshire village. He knew a demon here, an old demon who was one of the very few to be respected by humans in her community.

She lived as though she was a human, how demons used to do in the past, before the violence made a simple life too dangerous.

Ezra knew exactly where to go. He walked through empty streets, steep both up and down. He passed a postman who stopped to gawk at him. Ezra knew he was covered in blood, and had a nasty bruise pooling under his eye. His black hoodie was ripped at the shoulder. He looked a state, but he had to keep going.

Melonisa's house was tucked away on the corner of the neatly kept street of bungalows. Hers was a well-kept little house, with flowerpots along the window ledges, and neat bushes lining the trimmed grass. Climbing plants laced one wall with big white flowers that tilted towards the floor. The uneven path had been recently washed, judging by the difference in colour to her neighbours.

Her comely house was on the edge of the street, right before the woods that lead to a large park and an even larger fishpond.

Ezra stared fondly across the road, and down the woodland path. He had once played with the towns children when he was just a child himself, many years ago. The kids trusted him then, when he was an angel. Not much had changed, except the trees had grown tall and full, and he had a barbed wire tattoo choking him.

He knocked on Melonisa's bright yellow door and waited. He heard shuffling inside, and was patient as she yelled that she would be only a moment.

She struggled to unlock the door and pull it open. She was a small woman, leaning heavily on a zimmer frame. Her glasses were wide and thick as she peered through sunken eyes to see who was at her door.

"What in the world!" she looked at his bloody clothes, and his bloody skin. "Yes?" she asked, beginning to frown.

"It's me, Ezrakhell."

Melonisa stared for a long uncomfortable moment, until her frown melted into surprise, and her mouth hung open. "It can't be," she said in astonishment. "But you're a demon."

"I am." Ezra felt his cheeks redden with embarrassment. When he was a young angel, Melonisa had been a young adult. She used to make him lemonade and they used to sit by her front door to watch the world go by.

She stared for longer. "And I am an old woman. Are you coming in or are you going to make my knees crumble?"

Ezra awkwardly stepped around her. She had always been small, but her old age had curled her spine. Her head only came up to his ribs.

Ezra avoided hitting his head on a long light fixture and stood awkwardly in her living room.

"Sit," Melonisa said when she eventually made it into the room. "And explain to me where you have been all these years. One moment, you were visiting frequently, the next you were gone. And I never heard from you again."

Ezra sat down and fidgeted with his hands. "I was wrongly accused of something. I was turned into this, and I was too ashamed to come back."

"Ashamed? Have you forgotten that I am also a demon?"

Ezra shook his head to say no. "I thought you might suspect I had done it."

"Done what?"

Ezra explained what Othrowan had done to him all those years ago, and how he was punished over something he knew Ezra didn't do. He explained about how he was shunned out of everywhere he used to know and love visiting. So he had to started fresh, the furthest south he could get.

"And now?" she asked, not interrupting him once. "Now where do you live?"

"Back in Wileshire village."

"Back there?" she asked, gripping her knees with surprise. "After all the horrors that went on for you?"

"Yes, I've-" Ezra paused. Being back, and sitting with Melonisa, sharing things . . . it was hard to believe that any time had passed at all. Until he glanced at her, and her old face, telling a thousand tales with her wrinkled skin. "I have someone worth staying for."

Melonisa didn't smile, she didn't frown, but she did knit her brows together in a way that leaked her pity. "What happened to you? You're a mess."

Ezra scraped at the dry skin on his thumb. "I'm here to talk to you about something," he said quietly. He could tell that when she looked at him, she was comparing the sweet angel boy to this rough demon man. "Something to do with the rise in violence against demons."

Erza told her everything in great detail. Melonisa listened deeply, nodding along, and frowning when he started to accuse the angels and their choirs.

"I may be old now, but I know my own body very well. I have noticed a change in my anger. And I have noticed a change in how this loving community have always treated me. And I have also noticed the angels have been singing at strange hours of the night." She got up and disappeared into the kitchen. Ezra listened to her mumbling to herself and rummaging around. She returned with an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel.

"For your eye," she said before sitting down. "Who did that to you?"

"Other demons," Ezra mumbled.

"Why?"

"It's a long story."

"I'm not dead yet."

Ezra smiled, feeling pain in his right cheek.

When he offered no explanation, she asked, "And who is this person that's making you stick around in a place that must cause you so much pain?"

Ezra thought of Tom and checked the time on his watch. He would still be in bed, and his heart longed to lie with him, to kiss him, to hug him tightly. He hoped that no more nightmares disturbed his dreams again. "Someone very special," Ezra said. "I'm doing this to protect him. If he wants to be with me, I cannot have this violence following us around."

Ezra suddenly remembered that he wouldn't be a demon much longer. His heart jolted with relief, and then doubt, and then fear that Othrowan would someone take it away from him.

"He's not a demon, is he?" she asked.

"No. He's a human with a good heart. He wants to stop the violence as much as I do. Demons don't deserve this. I'm worried that riots are coming, and I'm worried that's exactly what the angels want."

Melonisa nodded slowly. "I hope you're not right about this. If the angels are behind it all, stopping them would cause more chaos. They are our good in a bad world."

"No," Ezra disagreed. "I've seen more good in a single human than I have in a group of angels. They will save us, if all else fails."