The call came at four in the morning—a scrambled burner phone, a voice I didn't recognize, and news that changed everything.
"Three dead," the voice said. No pleasantries. "All werewolves. All burned from the inside out."
I sat up in bed, careful not to wake Bela. "Location?"
"Seattle. Industrial district. The bodies are... wrong. No chemical trace, no weapon marks. Just ash where their hearts should be."
"Who is this?"
"Someone who thinks the Monster King needs to know what's hunting his kind." The line went dead.
Two days later, I stood in a condemned warehouse in Seattle's Sodo district, examining what remained of the third victim.
Ruth had accompanied me—her tracking skills and detachment made her ideal for investigation work. The local supernatural community had given us access after word spread that the Monster King himself was looking into the killings. Fear opened doors that diplomacy couldn't.
The body—what was left of it—told a story I didn't want to believe.
The werewolf had been male, early thirties based on the intact portions of the corpse. Strong, healthy, in the prime of a supernatural life that should have lasted centuries. Now he was ash and bone, his chest cavity hollowed out as if something had reached inside and burned the life from him.
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE] [ENERGY SIGNATURE: NON-DEMONIC, NON-HUMAN] [CLASSIFICATION: ANGELIC INTERVENTION — 94% PROBABILITY] [THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME]
I read the notification twice. Three times. The words didn't change.
Angels.
"What do you see?" Ruth asked, circling the body with professional detachment.
"Nothing good." I crouched beside the corpse, studying the burn patterns. They radiated outward from the heart—not fire damage, not acid, but something that had consumed the victim from within. "No weapon I recognize could do this. No creature I know of operates this way."
"Demon?"
"No sulfur. No residue." I stood, wiping my hands on my coat though I hadn't touched anything. "Something else."
The witness waited in a back room—a vampire named Sarah Chen who'd been feeding in the area when the attack occurred. She'd hidden when she heard the screaming, watched from shadows as her world got considerably more dangerous.
"Tell me what you saw," I said.
"A man in a suit." Her voice trembled slightly—unusual for a vampire old enough to have survived in Seattle's competitive territory. "Just... a man. Business clothes, neat appearance. Nothing unusual except—"
"Except?"
"Light came from his hand." She wrapped her arms around herself. "White light. And Johnson just... burned. From the inside. I could see it through his skin—his veins lighting up, his eyes going white, and then..." She stopped, unable to continue.
I waited. Pushed. "Then what?"
"Then he was ash. The man—the thing—it looked around like it was searching for more. I stayed hidden. It walked away." She met my eyes. "I've been undead for forty years. I've seen demons, hunters, other monsters. I've never seen anything like that."
Neither had I. But I knew what it was.
The System had confirmed what meta-knowledge already suggested: angels were real, active, and apparently interested in cleaning house. Not demons, not hunters—Heaven itself was killing monsters.
The question was why. And why now.
I left Ruth to handle the local politics—reassurances, information gathering, the diplomatic work that maintained coalition influence even in territories we didn't control. I needed space to think.
Seattle rain didn't stop. I stood in it on the roof of a parking garage, watching the city go about its business below. Humans walking, driving, living their lives without any awareness of the forces moving around them.
In my previous life, I hadn't believed in angels. I'd barely believed in anything beyond what I could see and touch. Now I was a monster leading other monsters, and the soldiers of Heaven were burning my kind in the streets.
Faith was irrelevant. Survival was everything.
[QUERY: ANGELIC ACTIVITY PATTERNS — REGIONAL ANALYSIS]
[SEARCHING...] [THREE CONFIRMED KILLS: SEATTLE AREA, PAST 14 DAYS] [ADDITIONAL REPORTS: POSSIBLE ANGELIC INTERVENTION IN PORTLAND, TACOMA, VANCOUVER BC] [PATTERN DETECTED: SYSTEMATIC ELIMINATION OF SUPERNATURAL ENTITIES] [RECOMMENDED ACTION: MAXIMUM CONCEALMENT]
The pattern was clear once I looked for it. Angels weren't targeting the coalition specifically—they were eliminating monsters across the Pacific Northwest. Random killings, no apparent discrimination between species or threat level. Just extermination.
But why Seattle? Why the Northwest specifically?
[ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS: CORRELATION WITH SEAL ACTIVITY] [HYPOTHESIS: ANGELIC PREPARATION OF TERRITORY FOR UPCOMING EVENTS] [PROBABILITY: 67%]
The seals. The Apocalypse machinery that meta-knowledge told me was already beginning to turn. Azazel's special children, Dean's eventual deal, Lucifer's rising—all of it connected, all of it accelerating toward a conclusion that would reshape the world.
And angels were apparently getting ready by clearing the playing field of inconvenient supernatural bystanders.
The Monster Nation had just become a lot more important. Not because we could stop what was coming—we couldn't—but because survival required understanding the forces at work.
I called Jenny on the drive back to Montana.
"Emergency council meeting," I said without preamble. "Tomorrow morning. Everyone who can be there in person. Malik on dream-link."
"What happened?"
"Angels," I said. The word felt strange in my mouth. "Angels are real, and they're killing monsters."
Silence on the line. Then: "You're serious."
"Three confirmed kills in Seattle alone. More suspected in the wider region. I have a witness, physical evidence, and System analysis confirming the threat category."
"Silas..." Jenny's voice carried something I rarely heard from her—genuine fear. "Angels are supposed to be—"
"Benevolent? Protective? Merciful?" I watched the highway stretch ahead, rain streaking the windshield. "They're none of those things. At least not to us."
"What do we do?"
"We adapt. We hide. We survive." The same answer I'd given to every challenge since this began. "But first, we understand what we're facing."
The road home felt longer than usual. By the time I reached Haven, dawn was breaking over the mountains, and the weight of what I'd learned pressed down like physical burden.
Angels. Heaven's soldiers, operating in the mortal world with lethal intent. Another threat to add to the list—demons, hunters, now celestial entities with power that made everything else look manageable by comparison.
But we'd face it. We had to.
The coalition was counting on me to find a way through whatever was coming. And I would.
Even if it meant navigating between Heaven and Hell while both sides prepared for war.
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