No. Alexi screamed in her mind, NO! A bright light in her mind exploded outward shattering the visions and extending out in a shock wave. The demon flung her ruined body from his hand. She flopped against the ground, her ruined body rolling to a stop. She had no strength to move. She wanted to move, to fight, but nothing would respond. Her lidless eyes stared helplessly as he stomped toward her.
You will make a fine addition, vampire. No soul I have ever taken has had a will like yours. I shall drink from your soul for countless ages. His foot lashed out. He crushed her arm snapping the bone. Her pelvis ground together as he punted her through the air. Her body, still struggling to regenerate from the fire, couldn’t help her as she crashed into the third-row stands. Plastic chairs shattered. She wanted to die. In her mind, she almost begged for it. Almost. The visions were gone, but one thing remained. The clear memory of what Savanna would go through if he took her. Alexi couldn’t let him take her. She couldn’t. No new injury assaulted her and with a few seconds she was able to heal her insides, wounds closing, skin growing back, if not her hair, she felt some of her strength return. She also knew she was done. She had nothing left in the tank. Her stomach growled with hunger and she found it hard to focus through the fog of pain.
She pulled herself up with her regenerated arm to stand shakily. She held onto the metal railing for balance unable to trust her own legs.
“We’re not done yet,” she yelled through shattered teeth. She punctuated it by spitting a gob of blood on the ground. From her vantage point, she could make out the portal he came through, hanging in the air fifty feet behind him. The circle of hellfire separated the Earth from Hades. The screams of the damned wafted up.
He flexed his mighty wings and flew through the air with incredible speed to land in front of her. The ground shook and Alexi barely managed to retain her feet. Her body had hit the limit of what it could regenerate without feeding. She growled as she leaned over and picked up a piece of steel piping from the blasted chairs.
“Last chance to surrender,” she said with as much force as she could muster, “Let her go and leave and I will let you live.” She had nothing else. The most she could hope for was to make it angry enough to kill them both.
Laughter filled her mind as he reached out to snatch her. She beat against his hand. The metal pipe slagged as it touched his scales. She screamed as it squeezed her. More bones and joints popped. Her mind wavered on the edge of unconsciousness.
She felt herself slide through the air as he turned and walked for the portal. The sound of unfurling leather filled her airs and she could feel the air reverberate as he beat them. The heat and screams of the portal loomed. In seconds, Savanna would be lost. Alexi had failed.
A crack of thunder blasted the sky around her. A bolt of brilliant blue lightning slashed down from the sky, leaving a violent after image, and exploded against the ground in front of the portal. The force of the explosion jogged her mind and she looked up. The clouds above the stadium swirled in a tempest of lightning and thunder. A column of light, the purest white light she had ever seen, shot through the sky to splash against her. Warmth flooded through her. The demon screamed as if it had been burned and flung her away. She crashed into the ground, rolling several times before coming to a rest.
The light followed her. Centering her in its brilliance. She should have been blinded by it, instead, it invigorated her. Bones snapped back into place, skin healed, her hunger vanished and in seconds she stood in the circle of light.
It didn’t stop there. Her hair unfurled behind her, long and beautiful as ever. Her feet left the ground as the intensity of the light increased. Her back itched and Alexi felt a sharp moment of pain as white wings, each twice as long as she was tall, sprang into existence. Their white feathers ruffled in the breeze. Alexi’s mind reeled at what was happening. The wings sparked a memory in her of the moment she dropped the sunstone. She had seen them, curling about her, protecting her. She thought it had been a trick of the light, and imagination conjured by her brain. They were real.
Her clothes were long gone, burned to ash along with her skin. The light swirled around her, tracing her body and leaving in its wake brilliant silver armor outlined in gold. Her metal clad feet touched the ground at last. From her toes to her head she was encased in platemail armor like some kind of glowing, winged knight.
Her hand flexed out on its own accord, white fire leaped out from her palm to form a burning broadsword. The blade hissed as drops of rain evaporated upon contact.
Alexi, stunned looked up to the demon. His gnarled face showed as much shock as she felt. A chorus took up around her. The words were undecipherable, but the melody uplifted her spirit and filled her with hope. She scanned the bleachers, at the top, with their own column of light shining down, were twelve robed and hooded figures. Their hands clasped in front of them as they sang.
Alexi narrowed her eyes at the Alatum.
“I believe you were laughing at the improbability of me defeating you? Tell you what, let’s roll those dice.”
***
Alatum flung Savanna aside to counter Alexi’s sword as it arced through the air at him. His own blade appeared in a flicker of fire. They crashed together sending sparks and burning rock flying in every direction. The ground beneath the demon burst into flames as its feet tore huge furrows in the ground.
“Sing, save her!” Alexi screamed. She brought her blade down again in a savage blow against the demon’s sword. Power coursed through her. She didn’t understand where it came from, but what else was new?
Their blades clashed again. He pushed back, using his height to leverage himself against her. Alexi pushed her blade to the side, deflecting his to strike the ground in an explosion of burning mud. She slashed hers upward along his arm. The holy sword drew a bloody line up the demon's arm. It howled in pain and spun to slap her.
Where he had been as fast as her, now she had the edge. Time slowed down as his hand came blasting through the air at her. She leaped, with her legs, and her wings. Alexi shot into the air. The claws tore through the space she had just occupied. She came down with her sword in both hands, blade aims straight for its head. The demon lunged to the side—he was too slow. The burning blade missed the skull but lopped off one of his gigantic horns. It fell to the ground and dissolved into a puddle of black goo.
He recovered quick, slashing out with his hellish sword. Alexi dodged backward, with a single flap of her glorious wings she landed twenty feet away from him. She swung her sword around to hold it in front of her.
The demon hefted its free hand with the palm facing her. Alexi braced herself. Fire erupted from his hand. Molten flame roared from him as he blasted the ground leading up to her in a straight line. Instinctively she knew her sword would protect her. She held it upright in front of her. The hellfire blasted into the blade. The fire blasted the ground around her, disintegrating the dirt down to the bedrock. The blade cleaved the column in half. The fire burned everything around her. When it finally abated she stood on the only whole ground. Everything else had been turned into molten rock.
The demon dropped to one knee as if the effort to fight her was exhausting it. She cast her eyes about, looking for any sign of Savanna… Movement drew her attention. Sing’s head and arm were poking out of the tunnel. He waved and gave her a thumbs up. Her hands flexed on her hilt. It was time to finish this.
The witch and I had a bargain, Angel. You can’t interfere. Alexi didn’t have time to ponder why he called her an ‘angel’. She certainly fit the bill, white wings, glowing armor, burning sword, all she was missing was a halo.
“So sue me,” she said. Her wings beat the air and she lunged toward the massive creature. The landscape turned to a blur as she shot through the space between them at unimaginable speeds. He brought his sword up to block.
He was too slow.
She slashed her blade along his ribs, spread her wings wide to halt her momentum, spun, and slashed him again. He roared in p
ain, brought his own blade across in a wide arc.
She slapped it aside and plunged her own sword into his side. Black blood sprayed out of his torso. It burned her armor and melted the metal where it touched. Pain ran up her arm as her armor failed and the blood burned her. A massive clawed foot kicked her full in the chest. The blow sent her flying to crash against a cement barricade.
He charged after her. He screamed in fury as he rained blows down on her. She brought up her sword to deflect each on. The impact of the blades made her arms hurt and the cement beneath her feet crack.
He batted her sword up and swiped his blade across her stomach. Metal sparked as his sword cut through her armor to burn a line across her alabaster skin. She screamed as he grabbed her head in one meaty hand. He lifted her up by the head and slammed her down into the ground.
Perhaps three thousand years ago this battle would have gone differently. Your kind has been gone too long. We have grown in your absence, and soon we shall—
Alexi plunged her blade up through his wrist. He dropped her as he stepped back and roared in agony. She ran at him. He whipped his sword around at her. Alexi took all her rage, her pent up anger, and frustration and let it out in one savage scream. Her cry echoed through the stadium as she brought her blade up to strike his. The hellfire sword exploded in a rain of fire. When it cleared Alexi held a sword, the demon didn’t. She lifted her sword to the sky. Lightning cracked through the heavens to strike her blade. The fire burning within grew to unbearable brightness.
“Get your arrogant ass off my planet.” The demon didn’t hesitate—it ran. Alexi charged after it. She flipped her sword around in her hands and brought the blade down with all her strength. The point penetrated in the middle of his back where his wings met. The angelic blade punched through his torso. The force of her blow drove him to the ground. His hand reached out for the portal, mere inches away.
No… no!
“Believe it.”
She pulled the blade out of his back and brought it down one more time. The heavy broadsword split his skull in half.
The body shook as fire burned from every orifice. She leaped into the air, her wings flapping on their own to protect her. The demons body burst into molten rock and flowed away.
The magic the demon used to channel hellfire died with him. The circle of flame leading to hades faded and was no more. The rain began to win. Water hissed around her as the storm soaked the molten rock. A thick formed on the surface of the field.
Alexi glided over to the almost untouched tunnel to stand. The light from the heavens faded as did the chorus. Her back ached as the wings retreated to wherever they came from.
She looked up to the stands, wanting to thank the chorus, to thank whoever had helped her. Only one figure remained. His face hidden in the shadows of his large hood. Alexi smiled and raised her hand to wave.
The figure, a massive man closer to a statue than a—
The hood came off. Victor smiled at her from beneath. Alexi’s heart stopped. He placed his hand over his chest. His lips didn’t move, but she could clearly hear his voice.
“I told you, you’re not a monster.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Alexi closed the door leading to Savanna’s room. The poor girl was beside herself. Connors death impacted her in ways she couldn’t imagine. She had been forced to kill two people she loved. Alexi hoped the witch would come through it. Alexi wouldn’t leave her side until she had. After all, the vampire, or whatever she was, had nothing but time.
Light erupted in the hall behind her. Alexi pushed herself against the door to block whatever it was from hurting Savanna. The light coelesced into a bright point. It swept through the air in a large circle. The view before her shifted as the space in the circle no longer showed her house, but a white marbled hall. The light from the portal splashed against her skin and she was flooded with peace, and warmth.
“Alexi,” a melodic voice said. A man, tall and lean, dressed all in white robes stepped through the portal.
“Who are you?” she asked. She was surprised she could say even that much.
“Alexi, it’s time to come home, my seraphim.”
Alexi and Savanna’s story continues with Wreathed in Flame, Faith of the Fallen: Book Three, Available December 2016. Sign up for my mailing list on cassandraskywest.com and receive a FREE original short story titled: By Silver Light. It’s an original adventure that will only ever be available for signing up on my mailing list. If you liked Blood Sacrifice, please consider leaving a review, they’re amazingly helpful to authors. Thank you for reading, until next time!
-Cassy
Cassandra is an award-winning journalist, veteran of the armed forces, and jane-of-all-trades. She lives in Idaho with the love of her life and their three kids. After writing day in and day out for ten years, her spouse strongly encouraged her to try to make a living out of it. Since then, she's written under various pen-names and sold several stories of werewolves, witches, and the arcane. She plans on writing until the day she dies. Possibly after, if that's allowed. Learn more about her on Facebook.com/cassandraskywest.com.
Thank you to Kindle Press for publishing my first novel, I couldn’t have done this without them. Megan, you’re the best. To my beta readers, your help has been invaluable. A big thank you to Ruth, for last minute help. Most importantly, to the love of my life. Without whom I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Blood Sacrifice (Faith of the Fallen Book 2) Page 24