From a crouch, Molly yanked the blade out, then spun, ready to deliver a coup de grace that would cut her enemy from collarbone to hip.
"Ouch," said Raziel, looking at the hole in his solar plexus. He threw his sword on the ground and prodded the wound with his fingers. "Ouch," he said again, looking up at Molly. "You don't thrust with that kind of sword. You're not supposed to thrust with that kind of sword. No fair."
"You're supposed to die now," Molly said.
"Nuh-uh," said Raziel.
"You can't say nuh-uh to death. That's sloppy debating."
"You poked me with your sword, and cut my coat." He held up his damaged arm.
"Well, you came creeping around here in the middle of the night looking in my windows, and you pulled a sword on me."
"I was just showing it to you. I don't even like it. I want to get web slingers for my next mission."
"Mission? What mission? Did Nigoth send you? He is no longer my higher power, by the way. This is not the kind of support I need."
"Fear not," said Raziel, "for I am a messenger of the Lord, come to bring a miracle for the Nativity."
"You're what?"
"Fear not!"
"I'm not afraid, you nitwit, I just kicked your ass. Are you telling me you're an angel?"
"Come to bring Christmas joy to the child."
"You're a Christmas angel?"
"I bring tidings of great joy, which shall be to all men. Well, not really. This time it's just to one boy, but I memorized that speech, so I like to use it."
Molly let her guard down, the tip of her sword pointed at the ground now. "So the glowing stuff on you?"
"Glory of the Lord," said the angel.
"Oh piss," said Molly. She slapped herself in the forehead. "And I killed you."
"Nuh-uh."
"Don't start with the nuh-uh again. Should I call an ambulance or a priest or something?"
"I'm healing." He held up his forearm and Molly watched as the faintly glowing skin expanded to cover the wound.
"Why in the hell are you here?"
"I have a mission —»
"Not here on Earth, here at my house."
"We're attracted to lunatics."
Molly's first instinct was to take his head, but on second thought, she was standing in the middle of a pine forest, in freezing rain and gale-force winds, naked, holding a sword, and talking to an angel, so he wasn't exactly announcing the Advent. She was a lunatic.
"You want to come inside?" she said.
"Do you have hot chocolate?"
"With minimarshmallows," said the Warrior Babe.
"Blessed are the minimarshmallows," the angel said, swooning a little.
"Come on, then," Molly said as she walked away muttering, "I can't believe I killed a Christmas angel."
"Yep, you screwed the pooch on this one," said the Narrator.
"Nuh-uh," said the angel.
* * *
"Get that piano against the door!" Theo yelled.
The bolts on the front door had completely splintered away, and the Masonite buffet table was flexing under the blows of whatever the undead were using for a battering ram. The entire chapel shook with each impact.
Robert and Jenny Masterson, who owned Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines, started rolling the upright piano from its spot by the Christmas tree. Both had been through some harrowing moments in Pine Cove's history, and they tended to keep their heads in an emergency.
"Anyone know how to lock these casters?" Robert called.
"We'll need to brace it just the same," Theo said. He turned to Ben Miller and Nacho Nunez, who seemed to have teamed up for the battle. "You guys look for more heavy stuff to brace the door."
"Where did they get a battering ram?" Tucker Case asked. He was examining the big rubber coasters on the piano, trying to figure out how to lock them.
"Half the forest has blown down tonight," said Lena. "Monterey pines don't have a taproot. They probably just found one that they could lift."
"Turn it on its back," Tuck said. "Brace it against the table."
The ram hit the doors and they popped open six inches. The table hooked under the heavy brass handles was bending and beginning to split. Three arms came through the opening, half a face, the eye drooling out of a rotted socket.
"Push!" Tuck screamed.
They ran the piano up against the braced table, slamming the doors on the protruding limbs. The battering ram hit again, popping the doors open, driving the men back, and rattling their teeth. The undead arms pulled back from the gap. Tuck and Robert shoved the piano against the door and it shut again. Jenny Masterson threw her back against the piano and looked back at the onlookers, twenty or so people who seemed too stunned or too scared to move.