‘Sandra!’ Macy screamed. ‘Sandra, keep running!’

But she heard no reply as her hearing returned. Nor did she hear any rapidly retreating footsteps. The tunnel was silent and still.

The Nephilim blasted energy bolts back across the cathedral at their attackers. Most hit stone, shattering the fallen rocks with explosive force, but that was enough to knock down the Chinese soldiers behind them. One man made a dash for better protection as his hiding place blew apart—

Another bolt caught him mid stride. He burst into a wet red haze.

The horrific sight filled Wu with fury. ‘Smoke!’ she shouted, readying another grenade, this one cylindrical. She threw it to land slightly short of the Nephilim front line. A sickly orange fog gushed from it, obscuring everything beyond. More canisters clanked down. The swirling curtain cut the chamber in half.

The qigun barrage slowed, but did not cease, some Nephilim still firing blind through the smoke. Wu sent shots of her own at their source, then gave another order. Two men responded, bringing up weapons much larger than the MP7s.

M2010 sniper rifles – equipped with thermal sights.

The scopes cut through the obscuring mist, revealing what lay beyond in stark digital white and grey against cold black. The guns had an effective maximum range of twelve hundred metres; this close, it was a turkey shoot. Heads exploded, blood sprayed from gaping exit wounds as rounds punched straight through armour. The two snipers maintained an even fire, the sharp retorts of their weapons echoing deafeningly around the chamber. Find target, shoot, confirm it was down, find another—

The Nephilim finally overcame their shock and dropped behind whatever cover they could find. ‘They’ve ducked!’ shouted one sniper, sweeping his scope from side to side and finding nothing.

‘Finish them off with grenades!’ Wu called back, readying another of her own. The chamber was large enough that the enemies near the far exit would be beyond the reach of a thrown bomb. She signalled to a man unshouldering a new weapon: a Chinese-made but untraceable copy of the American China Lake pump-action launcher that could fire forty-millimetre grenades over hundreds of metres.

Another barrage of hand grenades flew over the smoke as the soldier rapidly swept the China Lake’s four rounds at the room’s far end. Three of the charges hit the end wall and sent deadly debris over those hiding near it.

The fourth shot straight through the archway onto the bridge. It whipped past Gadreel and the warriors who had left the cathedral, glancing off the floor without triggering its detonator and angling back upwards—

Into the towering crystal space within the pillar.

Sidona had climbed higher inside it, but the priestess Gadreel had summoned was still at its foot. The grenade exploded just behind her, tearing her apart.

The thrown grenades all exploded a moment later. More warriors in the cathedral were dismembered by razor-sharp steel fragments.