The smoke takes shape into the Pit lord we fought in hell.

He looks worse than I remember. Although the pieces I sliced have grown back, his wings still look like old charred leather, now covered in layers of scars. There’s a new chunk missing out of one wing, and he has a gnarled gash through his lips that makes him look like he has two mouths.

He leans over to Raffe in midair as the Watchers bristle and form a protective line near Raffe.

After that, I can’t watch anymore. The sixers are attacking around me.

For a while, I’m lost in the screams and sprays of blood from the massacre. Bullets fly everywhere, but I don’t have time to worry if I’ll get hit by a stray as I slash at a sixer’s head with everything I’ve got.

The screams intensify. At first, I assume people are getting slaughtered. But there’s something about the pitch that sounds inhuman.

The sixer that I’m fighting suddenly gets hit with three whip heads.

I have to blink to make sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing. Are those the Consumed whip heads from the Pit? I look around, trying to see what’s going on.

Under the spotlights, the shiny sea is covered with the Consumed propelling through the bay. They converge on the sixers that are still in the water.

Heads shoot up out of the water, screaming with their razor hair shooting out in front of them.

Their teeth latch onto the sixer in front of me and immediately begin chewing their way in.

The sixer writhes in pain, trying to scrape off the heads. More land on its shoulder and burrow.

Everywhere, the sixers are being attacked by whip heads. They’re ignoring the people around them as we huddle in the center.

I look up. The Pit lord with the charred wings looks down at us with a satisfied look on his face. He’s very pleased with himself.

Beside him, Raffe watches me. I can’t read his expression. What did he do to make this happen?

‘Are you all right?’ he shouts.

I nod. I’m covered in blood and cut up, but I can’t even feel the pain, not with all this adrenaline flowing through me.

All around, the whip heads are chewing their way out of the sixers. The sixers’ living heads are being chewed off and are thudding to the concrete. In their place, the whip heads sprout, taking over the bodies.

Their screams turn into shrill laughter. Mad. Intense. Gleeful.

The possessed sixers lumber off the bridge and into the water.

It occurs to me that if the real apocalypse ever starts, these Consumed sixers might come back from the bloody sea as the real beasts of the apocalypse.

Chapter 68

68

‘A pair of archangel wings and a new army,’ says the Pit lord.