Beyond argument, Jen stumbled through the doorway, her expression dazed. Shell-shocked.
Alex met Seth’s grave gaze one last time and then turned to face Caim.
“Me,” she said. “You can have me.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Caim moved faster than Alex could blink, depositing Nina in a heap on the floor at Seth’s feet and grasping Alex by the throat so tightly that the very air itself scraped her windpipe. He dragged her away from the others and shoved her against the wall, ragged wings outspread behind him. Then he looked over his shoulder at Seth and lifted his chin in defiance. “Do what you’re thinking of doing and she dies before you can draw breath. Now leave us.”
Alex met Seth’s helpless fury and fought down the wave of panic that threatened to swamp her, to make her change her mind and beg for help. This was the only way, she reminded herself. All they could do now was prevent Aramael from triggering the unthinkable.
“Go,” she croaked. “Don’t let him win.”
Not until she heard the front door close and the car start did Alex breathe easily again. Or as easily as she could with Caim’s fingers digging into her throat. She tried to pull back from his grip a little, but stopped when his nails pressed harder.
His nails—or his claws?
His face swam into focus through tears of pain.
“Now, Naphil, before Seth is able to put your little plan into motion—” He paused at her involuntary start. “What, you didn’t think I could hear you?”
His face moved closer, until his cheek rested against hers. Until his lips moved against her ear, his breath hot and moist. “You truly have no idea the power you’re dealing with, have you? Your puny mortal brain just can’t stretch far enough to grasp what lies outside you, and anything of the divine in you is long gone, too dilute to make any difference. So what is it that he sees in you, then?”
Alex pressed her lips together, refusing to answer. Or to release the agony building in her throat. The claws pressed a little harder and she felt one pierce the skin.
“Did you know that I loved someone once?” Caim asked softly. “Not just someone. My soulmate. She didn’t follow when I left the One, and when I tried to return to her, Aramael stopped me. I lost her forever because of him.”
Alex swallowed against his grip. She could think of nothing more bizarre than discussing a demon’s love life right now, but she needed to keep him talking. Needed to give Seth time to find another Power. “But I thought soulmates were taken from all angels,” she rasped. “Even if you return, she won’t remember you.”
“But I would finally find the same peace that she has.” His face twisted. “Nearly five thousand years I have lived with the memory of her loss. Five thousand years of feeling my soul slowly bleed to death, because my brother denied my return. Denied my cleansing.”
Alex tugged in vain at Caim’s hand and struggled for air. She willed herself not to black out. Not yet. “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”
His hand left her throat, wrapped into her hair, and threw her to the floor. Her head cracked against a baseboard, and explosions of light and fire went off inside her skull. She clenched her teeth against the wave of nausea that washed through her and struggled to sit up. A foot shoved into her face, sending her to the floor a second time. Her nose shattered with an audible crack and a fresh jolt of agony ripped through her. She gagged on the blood flooding her throat and remained down, staring up at her captor through the tears streaming from her eyes.
Caim stooped and grasped her chin in a cruel grip, a yellowed feather dropping from a wing and brushing against her cheek in its descent to the floor.
“Never, ever think that your angel is any less merciless than the one he serves, Naphil,” he grated. “He knew. He knew, and he told me my memories would be just punishment. Told me I deserved to suffer for my actions against the One.” His eyes became like chips of black ice. “He knew, and now he will know more. He will understand what he sentenced me to with his betrayal.”
He grasped her hair again and hoisted her to her feet as if she had no weight, no substance. Then he slipped behind her, one hand at her throat, the other resting over her heart. “Call him,” he commanded. “I want him to see you die.”
“I can’t—”
He jerked her against him. “Call him.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Say his name!”
Alex thought of the torment she had glimpsed in gray, turbulent eyes during unguarded moments. Thought about the war that might be triggered by the pain of a Power’s loss, and what new level of agony would be added to that pain if he had to witness that loss. Knew that she could not allow that to happen. Would not.
“No,” she whispered. Please let Seth have found someone. Please let him be on his way back...please.
“The Appointed was right, you know. I can make you.”
Caim’s voice had roughened and the texture of his skin against hers had changed. Alex did not want to know why. She stood tall, closed her eyes, and braced for the worst.
“No,” she said. “You can’t.”
“Poor, naïve mortal,” Caim whispered in her ear. “You really don’t understand, do you?”
Three distinct, icy-cold points dug into Alex’s chest over her heart and her eyes flew open. Heat followed the cold, as the points raked across her, shallow at first and then deepening, gouging, tearing through tissue and bone alike. Agony pierced through to the very core of her sanity. The next time Caim’s voice growled its command to call Aramael, she did so—obediently, instinctively, mindlessly.
***
Aramael stood at the edge of a roof, thirty-four stories above the streets, and watched the city come to life below him. Hundreds of thousands of mortals beginning their day, going about their business, all oblivious to the drama playing out in their midst.
Oblivious to an angel’s torment.
He raised his head and glowered at the morning sky. Damn it to hell and back, how he ached to be with her. Ached for this hunt to be over, so he could return to her. Hold her, feel her presence mingle with his, discover how complete the melding of their energies might be.
His mouth twisted. But as much as he desired the end of this hunt, he dreaded it, too. It would only be a matter of time before he was cleansed as the others had been; before his recognition of a soulmate was removed from him and she became nothing more than a distant memory. There, but without context. Without meaning.
Aramael bit back an oath and he turned to pace the roofline. Froze in mid swivel. His head snapped up and he stared out at the sunrise, focused, rigid, waiting. A long moment slid by, then another. He frowned. He was sure he’d felt—yes. There. A ripple along the edge of his consciousness. The stirring of an awareness that he’d almost missed amid the chaos of his thoughts. An awareness he’d almost forgotten, it seemed so long since he’d felt it.
Caim.
Savage exhilaration filled him. Head high, he tensed, centered himself, willed himself to stillness. Caim’s energy surged through the air, bold, vile, and entirely traceable as he transitioned to his demon side. Sudden thunder rolled overhead, a low, ominous growl that signaled Caim’s interference in a universe he had no business toying with. The city’s sounds faded into the background. The fire of the hunt licked along Aramael’s veins, kindling the cold rage he carried in him. The rage that was him.
Satisfaction snarled through his center.
I’m coming, Brother.
But on the verge of increasing his energy vibration to give chase, he went still. Something was wrong. He fought back the fury, struggled to control the instinct that would overtake him. No, not wrong. Missing. His center turned to ice.
Alex.
He could feel Caim, but where the hell was Alex?
Aramael forgot to breathe. Forgot, for a moment, how to think as his heart collapsed inward, drawing every fragment of his attention, every atom of his energy. He felt no Alex.
The impossibi
lity of failure loomed in his mind, all encompassing, all consuming. Then, even as agony began to rip him apart from the inside out, a scream of anguish tore through his mind. Pierced to his core.
His name.
Alex’s voice.
***
Aramael arrived in a whirl of feathers and fury, taking in the scene before him, missing nothing. Caim, half changed to demon, holding Alex’s limp body; the gashes across her chest spilling a frightening amount of blood over her captor’s withered arm and curved, deadly claws.
A haze of red descended over Aramael’s vision and he fought to see through it. To see the truth, and not to lash out mindlessly. Brutally. Alex wasn’t gone yet. As soon as he’d arrived here, he’d felt her presence again. Weak and thready, but clinging to its earthly vessel. He could still save her.
If he maintained control.
He tamped down the ferocity that boiled in him, demanding release. He flexed his wings. Inhaled deeply. Felt his nostrils flare.
“Caim.”
“Aramael,” his brother rasped in return. “Glad you could make it.”
Caim shifted his grip and Aramael heard a tiny gasp from Alex. Her eyes opened, met his, clouded with pain and regret. Aramael’s heart contracted.
“You’re here,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I tried not to call.”
Her words ended on a groan as Aramael’s twin gave her a rough shake. Pain spasmed across her face and her eyes drifted shut again. Aramael’s rage threw itself against the prison he imposed on it.
“How touching,” Caim drawled. “A mortal trying to protect the great Aramael. Have you become that weak, Brother?”
Aramael unfurled his wings and struggled to hold onto his temper. “Release the woman,” he snarled in return, “and let’s find out.”
Caim’s own tattered wings flexed wide at the challenge and, for an instant, he seemed to consider the idea. Then he shook his head and smiled. “Oh, I’ve no doubt you can still overpower me. You carry the full force of Heaven behind you, after all. But there’s more than one kind of weakness, isn’t there?”
He forced Alex’s chin up and back, exposing the curve of her throat. His claws extended, reaching their full, deadly length. His skin drew tight and thin over the bones of a body that had lost its substance as he became fully demon—a living, skin-clad skeleton, his flesh consumed by the evil and hatred that had eaten away at him since his downfall. The same hatred that burned in his eyes now.
“Even now you hesitate, Power. You can stop me, but your feelings stand in your way. What do you call that, if not weak?”
For the first time in Aramael’s existence, impotence held him immobile. He felt the truth of Caim’s words like a blow to his gut and struggled for words that would buy him time. That would buy Alex time. “You don’t even know this will work,” he said. “And even if you do succeed, you’ll never be allowed to stay.”
Weak as the words were, momentary doubt crossed Caim’s expression. Then he shook his head. “She’ll understand,” he said. “If I can just talk to her, I can make her understand what it’s like in that prison. The emptiness. The nothingness. An eternity with no touch, no thought, nothing but the memories of all that I have lost.”
Caim straightened and his claws slowly sank into the skin of Alex’s throat. “I’ll make her understand what she sentenced me to. I’ll make you understand.”
“Caim—”
“Oh, please do, Aramael. Please beg. I’d like that.” Caim’s hand tensed and began to pull back. “Beg as I once did, when I asked to return and you refused me.” His claws ripped through Alex’s flesh as if through an overripe plum.
Alex’s eyes went wide, and air and blood gurgled in her throat. Shock reverberated through Aramael, carrying with it a horror that shot through to his core. He extended a hand to his brother. “Caim, no!”
Caim regarded him calmly. Sadly. “I never wanted this, Aramael. I wanted only to go home. To go back to the way it was. But none of you would let me.” He shook his wizened head. “You may be right that I cannot succeed, but whether I do or not, I will find a certain peace in knowing that I leave you suffering as I have suffered. That I have taken from you what you denied me.”
Aramael felt Alex’s life force waver, her presence fade. The red haze he’d fought turned black and slipped between him and his brother. Between him and reason. With a speed he had never known, an iciness he had never encountered, Heaven’s wrath swelled in him, strained against the confines of his control, and demanded release.
His wings lifted high with a thunderous crack, and the feathers that wrapped them burst into flames. Their golden fire turned bloodred, streaming along his limbs and setting his body alight. Aramael clenched his fists at his sides, straining for control over what threatened to consume him. Then he raised a hand and sent a blast of divine energy across the room, knocking his brother into the wall, startling him into releasing Alex’s throat—but not Alex herself.
Caim’s eyes widened, but he recovered quickly and dug his claws into Alex again. Aramael sent a second surge into him, this time tearing Alex from his grip. Her body slid to the floor and didn’t move. A third blast left his hands, trailing flames in its wake. Then a fourth. Fire licked along the walls and baseboards, and a pool of Alex’s blood sizzled in its heat.
Alex’s blood.
Aramael loosed a fifth surge, this time hurling Caim through the wall into the room beyond. Every fiber of his being wanted him to follow, but he fought grimly through the agony of denying his purpose. He would finish the capture and tear Caim from the mortal world, but not until he had checked on Alex. Furling his wings, he staggered across the room to the broken, bloodied body of the woman who was the soulmate he should have never had, the mortal who had completed him. He groped desperately for the fragile spark of her life’s presence somewhere in his awareness—but even as he found it, even as he centered himself to steady it, the spark dimmed. Guttered. Disappeared.
For long, awful seconds he could do nothing but stare down at the empty vessel that had been the other half of the whole he’d never known he could be. A void stretched before him, brittle and vast and waiting to swallow him. He drew a shuddering breath that raked his throat like shards of broken glass. The anguish of defeat felled him to his knees at her side. He had failed. He had promised Alex he would protect her, and he had failed, and now—now, as if from a great distance, he watched Caim lurch through the hole in the wall to stand over him, swaying, gloating, triumphant.
“I guess you were right,” his brother croaked. “It didn’t work after all. What a shame. But not a complete loss, I think.”
He crouched down until he was on a level with Aramael, Alex’s body between them, the skin below his eye swollen and split. Blood trickled down to the corner of his mouth. He licked it away. “I’ve taken her from you, Aramael. Taken away the only thing you’ve ever loved. The way you took my life from me. How does it feel?” He reached across Alex and touched the center of Aramael’s chest. “Do you feel it here, the way I did? A great, gaping hole where your heart is no more?”
Aramael flinched from his twin’s touch and tried to shake his head, to deny the words. The truth. The hatred he had seen in Caim found purchase in his own belly. He swallowed against it and searched desperately for his connection to the One. It slipped in his grasp. He tightened his hold.
Caim reached out and stroked a single finger down the curve of Alex’s cheek. Aramael’s hand shot out and encircled his brother’s wrist, snapping it like a twig.
Unflinching, Caim smiled. “Go ahead,” he said. “Send me back. Not even Limbo will be unbearable now. Not with this memory to sustain me.”
Aramael didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Not past the coldness he felt rising in his soul, the blackness that belonged to a part of him he didn’t recognize. He looked down again at the lifeless woman before him and felt the emptiness engulf him.
Alex.
He allowed himself one last moment of awful, agoniz
ing grief, and then he rose to his feet, fluid and powerful, and yanked Caim upright. It was time—past time—to do what he had come to do. What he should have done from the start. He cleared his mind, focused his thoughts, and tightened his grip on his brother. He drew the power of Heaven into himself, readied it, balanced it—
And then a barely discernable whisper of air escaped Alex’s lips.
A single breath.
Life.
Caim went stiff and raised startled eyes to Aramael. For the barest instant, their gazes locked and neither moved. And then, before Aramael could raise a hand to stop him, Caim dived toward the woman between them.
Deep within Aramael’s soul, the last fragile connection to the One snapped. In a single, massive surge he could never have hoped to control, his full power slammed outward, and Caim’s body shattered into a million fragments. They hung, suspended in the air, as if startled to find themselves there. Startled to find themselves separated from one another and their host. From a distant, broken place, Aramael watched the bloodred flames flow from his outstretched wing tips to engulf what remained of his brother, unable—unwilling—to halt them. The shards turned to blackened bits that fell to the floor, and the flames found the tiny shimmer of Caim’s immortality at their center. Greedily, they enveloped it. Destroyed it.
And just like that, Aramael’s brother ceased to exist.
Aramael barely had time to register the thought when a rush of other wings filled the air, fanning the flames that licked their way toward Alex. He struggled against his kin, but only briefly, because he knew he could not escape their hold. Could not go to the woman who had been his soulmate, the woman who was still alive. Would never go to her again.
His arms and legs pinioned by his captors, he was torn from the human realm.
Chapter Thirty-six
Hot.
Sins of the Angels: A Supernatural Thriller (Grigori Legacy Book 1) Page 28