Excerpt: After the Rising: Raze and Ruin

The skyline was on fire, and Gabriel watched it burn. A chorus of eerie voices rose above the distant crackle of fire and wove into a cacophony of ultimate lamentation. The city was dying. The Wall had fallen and everything that Gabriel had known and loved was gone. Now he watched, motionless, noting the progress of the blaze and the scent of bitter ashes with a scholar's detachment and how it presaged the utter end.

Despite all his best efforts, it had still come to this.

"An eye for an eye, then," a grating familiar voice jarred over his nerves as Gabriel stood and watched the skyline slump into molten slag. "That's how you'll play it."

Gabriel whirled, suffused with righteous rage. "If we die, then so do you!" he shouted in response to Granac Bowen. Behind him was only the specter of the man, a tall weedy shadow in a suit that glittered like a constellation of darkness. The hollow-cheeked man gave him a sardonic smile and stepped backward, vanishing with a soft whoosh into the bank of fire that wreathed the other side of the bridge.

Behind Gabriel, Long Island had been plunged into fire as well.

"My merciful God," Gabriel groaned, falling to his knees. His hands clenched only dust - the remains of his protectors or his enemies, there was no way to tell at this point.

Above him, an immense black cloud took shape, swelling into the semblance of a human face. It shook this way and that like a dog shedding excess water, and clouts of black sand sprayed out in a dark corona. When it lifted its face, a pair of crimson coals gazed at him, approximating eyes to meet his. Gabriel regarded the figure with utter despair, something deep within his psyche recognizing the appearance of this smoke-like wraith.

*You called,* the creature told him, expressing its words directly into his skull. *I answer.*

Gabriel's shoulders hunched in the semblance of a bow, though he wasn't paying obeisance to this creature. He was weighted by the enormity of what he was about to do. "I need your strength," he answered.

*And your sacrifice?* The words cleaved across his consciousness as though written in meter-high letters of flame.

Everything hung suspended on this single moment and Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut against the horrors of flame and smoke, seeing the silhouettes of friend and foe vanish into the distance with helpless cries. "Yes, I'll give you--"

The being's cruel laughter cut him off. *Your choice is as nothing,* it informed him. *You will surrender your nearest and dearest. This is the sacrifice.*

As Gabriel watched, the great black visage grew larger and larger until it was a swollen cloud, no longer conforming to human proportions. It burst and streamed off in all directions, blanketing the land between the bridge and the fire-ridden land that comprised Granac Bowen's demesnes. Gabriel watched the dispersement, dread freezing his insides in counterpoint to the unbearable heat that raged around him.

In the distance, he saw two figures that he never would have expected to see.

"No," Gabriel said hoarsely, throwing himself forward into a run.

Cedric and Roman stumbled toward him, tattered and bleeding, smudged with grit and ashes, but alive.

"Gabriel!" Cedric called, lifting one hand in a brief feeble gesture.

"Boys," Gabriel cried out, seized with sudden conviction. "Hurry! Come on, hurry!"

Before he could propel his limbs faster, before he could issue a denial, a whirl of blackness converged on his brothers. He could hear their screams, the rending of flesh, and before his eyes the black cloud spun red with blood.

"No. NO!" Gabriel ran faster, until he was jerked to a halt. Strong arms embraced him from behind.

"This is the end," a deep voice informed him, laced with regret and boundless emotion. Cold metal pressed to Gabriel's temple, a bright spark of sound and heat cut through him, then everything went dark.