by Vicki Keire
“I would give back the pain you gave me. She”―he indicated me with a nod of his head―“is valuable to me.”
“You won’t touch her,” Ethan growled. The fingers holding his sword tightened until they turned white.
“Give her to me, and I will spare these people. Keep her from me, and I will kill you all, and take her still,” Belial responded in a disturbingly even tone.
I stood there getting rather irritated that I was the topic of conversation. They were discussing me as if I wasn’t right there, capable of defending myself, possessed of Shadows which could harm the Fallen and the Light alike. Shadows I could feel just beneath my skin, pulsating and eager to get out. I vowed to ignore the icy waves through my fingers, and turned my attention back to the unfolding drama.
“The Light is coming to crush you,” Ethan told Belial.
The near-mirror image laughed. “And you as well, Brother.” He nodded toward me. “They come for your human’s head.” The eerie calm that had been cloaking Belial slipped for a minute. For a moment, I saw a being as mad as Asheroth, and just as angry. Loss and rage swam in the depthless void of his eyes. “As you came for her, so many years ago.”
Ethan bowed his head. “I was only doing my job. What I thought was right. It was certainly better, for her, anyway―“
Belial cut him off with an angry wave. “Enough. No matter how much you fight me, the Light is on its way to do the same thing. You’ll be fighting on two sides, and she’ll be the target for both of them. At least, if you give her and the other Azalene to me, they have a chance of being on the winning side.” Belial smirked. “I would treat her well, you know.”
“This is what you want?” Ethan asked, unbelieving. “This is what you dragged us out here to say?” He snorted. “You may as well go back to hell, Brother.”
Belial regarded Ethan with a kind of disbelief as if seeing his brother for the first time while Bain chuckled to himself. I was too smoldering mad to do anything but stand there and try to stifle the Shadows. I didn’t want to start a war by attacking the other side’s leader first.
Then, in the distance, but still directly behind us, the martial beat of drums pounded, coming closer. They were in perfect unison, and soon a horn joined them, its notes crystal clear and strong as they rang out across the horizon. The steady march of footsteps could be heard, just barely, above the music.
I spun to see what was approaching. Neither Ethan nor Belial turned from facing each other, but the demon’s guards were a different story. They spun away from their leader’s side, their focus wholly on protecting Belial. Bain and I both waited on our side of the meadow.
Golden armor gleamed in the sun. Light refracted off sharp blades and ornate bows. They wore the old style of breast plate, the kind that looked like it hadn’t evolved in over a thousand years. I clutched what had once been Ethan’s jacket to me fiercely, rubbing the folds of the tough fabric between my thumbs. Since he first gave it to me, it had become like a second skin, and I wanted it near me now. I needed the comfort every bit as much as I needed the protection.
I spared a moment to be glad that the Earth-bound angels, whether Fallen or merely performing the business of Messengers, had already adopted their armor to modern fashion. I much preferred the leather jackets that had replaced breastplates here on Earth. And they were just as protective. Would they keep me safe once the fighting started? I could only hope. Ethan stood beside me wearing Jack’s armor, the one that had come wrapped around Azazel’s Blade, the deadliest weapon we had, so he was far from defenseless, especially given his immunity to magic. But even with the combination of a deadly weapon, his own unique status as an Immune, and impenetrable armor, I still worried for him.
He was only human, after all. Even if that humanity was what made a future for us possible, I would always worry.
I couldn’t count all the soldiers the Light had sent against us. Unlike Belial’s army, they seemed uninterested in displaying the size of their forces. Instead, bright figures hung back in the trees, hugging the meadow’s edge, making it impossible to get an accurate idea of their numbers. I could only assume their army was larger than ours; it had looked that way the night Jack and I had gone spying.
A small group broke from the cover of the trees. One of them was clearly in charge. His uniform was more ornate, and he carried two massive swords crossed over his back. Like Belial, he had extended his wings to an impressive expanse. They towered even above Belial’s, but unlike the demon’s abyss, the leader’s wings were made of radiance and blinding Light. His surrounding guards also had their wings extended, and they were almost as blinding to look at as their leader’s. I caught myself taking a small, involuntary step backward as he advanced on our group.
“Yet another party I did not invite,” Bain said.
The angel ignored us, striding to a place that was equidistant between us and Belial. The knot of us stood there in the middle of the meadow, glaring at each other. The leader of the Light was the first to speak. “We will give you one chance to surrender your Nephilim to us. Our intelligence tells us both sides harbor them.” He looked at me, quick as a flash, as he spoke. So he had already marked me as a target. Great. His face was devoid of any visible emotion. His eyes seemed to look through rather than at me.
“To be tortured and murdered?” Ethan asked. His grip on the sword was very tight indeed.
“You would know, E’than’i’el,” Belial said flatly. “You’ve done it all before.”
Ethan refused to be baited. He ignored the demon’s barb and stared straight at the angel of the Light. “Do you expect me to believe you’ll stop there?” he asked calmly. I already knew the answer to that one, and it was a big fat “no.”
But this time, the radiant angel spoke to the demon alone. “We will defeat your army, as well,” he spoke with the same calm conviction he might use to announce current weather conditions. “How foolish to think you can challenge the Realm of Light. Did you not get enough of defeat at our last encounter?” He turned to me. “Then we will wipe your kind from the face of the Earth, just as we did all those centuries ago.”
I should have held back, but it had been a long time since I had met anyone who could so instantly press my buttons. “Newsflash,” I announced. “You failed before. There are still enough of us Nephilim left to kick your ass.”
He only paid me enough attention to give me a serene, blank look. Then, he swiveled to face Ethan. “And E’than’i’el. They told me they had turned you mortal, but I did not believe. How far you have Fallen.”
“Not so far as to be unable to defend myself.” He pulled Azazel’s blade loose from its scabbard with a ringing sound heard all the way across the clearing. “Or to meet you in battle, In’ri’el.”
The angel betrayed the slightest bit of emotion as soon as the sword gleamed free in the sunlight. There was an almost imperceptible tightening of the skin around his eyes and mouth. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was. His companions wore similar expressions. It was clear they both knew what the blade was too, and feared what it could do to them. As they should.
“More abomination,” the angel named In’ri’el said. His own hand went to the hilt of his sword. “Just when I think you can’t Fall any further, E’than’i’el.”
The angel surprised us by pulling his sword free as well, gripping it as he took a battle stance in front of us. I was shocked at first; we were just supposed to be here to talk. But as the soldier of the Light brought his blade up, then sliced downwards toward Ethan in an arcing motion, I found myself reacting almost without thought. It was as if I was an observer stuck somewhere outside my body, watching my reactions in growing disbelief.
Ethan swung his blade upward to meet the Light’s attack. In’ri’el’s sword met it in a shower of red-hot sparks. The angel’s golden breastplate gleamed in the sun, and thought again of how Ethan was mortal now. Breakable.
My hands were in motion before my brain knew what it was doing. Some de
eply buried, ancestral instinct took over, and my twin daggers were unsheathed and in my hands in seconds. The angels of the Light didn’t notice me, so focused were they on Ethan and Belial. They had no attention to spare for a seemingly helpless Nephilim girl standing mute on the fringes of her group. But the demon noticed me, and took a small step backward at what I wielded.
That disembodied feeling had me again; I don’t think I could have done what I did if I’d been able to think it all the way through. My body leaned sideways and carried me into a half-crouch, my blades extended before me. I whirled to the side and found myself right between Azazel’s Blade, and a gleaming angelic sword that looked too perfect to be a real weapon.
In’ri’el saw what I held at last. I watched the look of disbelief play across his face, and then my arm was up and blocking the swing he leveled at me. Any doubts as to the sword’s power were immediately erased by an immense blow to my forearm. The leather of Ethan’s jacket blocked some, but not all, of the impact. I staggered, taking several steps backward and into Ethan’s waiting arms. I couldn’t figure out how he had anticipated my movements, but I was glad beyond measure that he was there to haul me backward out of striking range. He held my forearm with one hand, and raised the sword in a blocking maneuver with his other one.
And then we froze as thick, ichor poured from a puncture in the angel of the Light’s midsection. A dagger stood embedded deep in In’ri’el’s stomach. My dagger. I stared in shock at my empty palm. I had done that. It had happened so fast, I had barely been aware. But there it was―the undeniable evidence. I was an angel killer.
I had drawn first blood.
As In’ri’el dropped to his knees, shouts began to ring out around us. The forces of the Light, content until now to wait just beyond the tree line, surged forward. I had been right about their numbers; they had about as many soldiers as Belial did. But every single one of them was blessed with super strength and super speed. It didn’t seem fair; how was Whitfield supposed to compete with that? They rushed across the stubbly field, swords extended and bows strung, as they let loose with a string of mighty war cries.
Belial’s forces saw them coming. It was the signal they had been waiting for. They left their positions at the edge of the forest and charged forward as well, dark abyss-wings extended and weapons gleaming. Only the Gifted Nephilim stayed where they were. I had to wonder what purpose Belial had in mind for them. For now, I was just glad they were out of the immediate fighting.
Unlike the three of us, who stood in the middle of everything like dumb sheep awaiting slaughter. Bain had been silent throughout the whole proceedings. As we found ourselves in the middle of rushing armies, he grabbed the two of us by our sleeves and hauled us closer to him. He handed me my dagger, hilt-first. I hadn’t even seen him retrieve it, so great was my shock.
“Oh no,” I moaned, transfixed by the approaching slaughter. “What have I done?”
“You just started the war,” Bain snapped. “Congratulations. Now hold onto me; I might be able to fix this.” He grimaced. “For a little while, anyway.”
He yanked me next to him while he muttered a string of words together under his breath. His strength surprised me; I would probably have bruises from his grip. But that was one of the least of my worries. He muttered something unintelligible, and a transparent bubble-like structure rose up around us. I shook myself free of Bain’s crushing grasp. He didn’t try to stop me, now that his bizarre protection was in place. I reached out and touched its shiny, clear surface, only to discover it was a bit bendable, but it felt like steel.
It was true that the original plan had been to act as bait while Whitfield’s forces prepared to attack, but this had all happened so soon. I was only one half the equation; we needed Jack to be the other half of the Azalene offense. And Logan was supposed to lend us his super-strength and speed. The attack had happened too soon, and here were in the middle of clashing forces. I drew closer to Ethan.
At least my brother would be safer, since he wasn’t on the front line with us. I hoped.
“It’s too soon for us to be bait now,” I whispered to him, watching as a big horned creature wearing black and silver attacked an angel of Light with an axe.
The angel countered effortlessly with his sword, and the two crashed to the ground together, rolling and hacking at each other.
“It’s too late to be anything else,” Ethan answered, sadly. He had his sword at the ready. I slipped into a defensive position, back to back with him, with my daggers, anticipating the moment when Bain’s shields failed us, wondering all the while how we were going to escape with our lives.
felt horribly exposed, standing there in the middle of the fighting with nothing but what looked like a transparent soap bubble to protect me. A really strong soap bubble, but still, its see-through qualities weren’t something I wanted to stake my life on. But Bain seemed to have every confidence in his barrier, or whatever it was. He appeared more fascinated than frightened with the battle raging around us.
That wasn’t the case with me. Every clash and clang, every scream of battle, shook me to my core. I had never been in a battle of such a scale before, and to see it unfolding around me was the stuff of nightmares.
I had caused this.
When Ethan had been threatened, I hadn’t stopped to think. My body just reacted. I hadn’t meant to start anything. But that didn’t matter now. The struggle surged on around us.
To my left, several feet from our dome of protection, two angels wrestled on the ground; they fought too closely to use their massive swords. One wore the black and silver uniform of Belial’s forces, and another clanked in his golden metal breastplate. It would have been easy to tell which was Light and Dark, though; their wings extended behind them as they fought. Every so often the abyss wings would touch the glowing Light ones with a shower of brilliant red sparks being the result.
The fury of battle grew uncomfortably close. Above all the other noise, I heard the sound of metal ringing against metal, and realized that another pair of angels fought just behind us. I whirled to see a sword so massive it looked more like a small battering ram come crashing down on a Fallen angel’s shoulder. He fell to his knees under the force of the blow, but his leather jacket didn’t tear or rip at all. From the ground, the Fallen one swung out at the angel of the Light’s knees, sweeping his legs out from under him. Then, they too were rolling on the ground, pummeling each other, their closeness making their weapons irrelevant. Furrows and fissures appeared in the ground underneath them as they punched and pulled and swung at each other. Their display of strength terrified me. How was I supposed to last against that?
But I didn’t have time to watch them for long. A creature I had never seen before barreled straight toward us, a mean looking axe raised in his fist. Its skin was scaled, the colors a mish-mash of dull browns and yellows. Sharp pointed teeth drew back into a grimace, surrounded by a face that was more reptilian than human. As it drew closer, I could see its eyes were slitted like a cat’s. The creature leapt over the angels fighting behind us and continued on toward us.
“What the hell is that?” I asked in horror. Ethan seemed frozen beside me, but snapped back to reality at the sound of my voice.
“It’s a lesser kind of demon,” he said, stepping in front of me, maybe to shield me from it. I wanted to protest that I didn’t need him to protect me, but I also found the gesture comforting, so I said nothing. “They populate the wastelands deep in the Dark Realms. It must have answered Belial’s call to arms.”
But my instincts had already taken over almost from the moment I saw the threat. My blades were already unsheathed and in each hand, and my body sidestepped Ethan in a sudden whirl. I grounded myself and prepared to release my dagger straight into the oncoming demon’s throat.
“Wait!” Bain shouted. “Not inside the shields! We’re only safe for as long as they hold. Don’t do anything to penetrate―”
But my daggers were already in the air, ripp
ing a hole in the transparent shield. One of them sank right into the demon’s throat, while the other embedded itself in its upper arm―the one holding the axe. The strange-looking demon from the wastelands of the Dark Realms collapsed just a few feet from where our shields protected us.
Or used to protect us, that is. I could see what Bain had been yelling about. The hole in the transparent structure didn’t seem to be repairing itself. In fact, the entire thing looked less substantial somehow, like the soap bubble was beginning to thin. Both Ethan and Bain eyed it warily while I suppressed a fresh wave of guilt. Here was something else I’d managed to screw up.
“How long?” Ethan asked tersely. None of us needed him to clarify.
Bain shrugged. The gesture looked ridiculous on him in this time and place. “Minutes? Seconds?” He flexed his long fingers and rolled his neck. “I don’t really know. But you’d better be ready.”
I noticed he said “you,” and not “we,” deliberately separating himself from us. So Ethan and I were on our own. Great.
Then Bain began to transform.
It was a subtle change. If I hadn’t been keeping such a close eye on him because he creeped me out so much I might have missed it. His eyes took on a darker, redder tone. His posture changed, becoming more angular as if the bones underneath his skin had grown suddenly sharper. His hands spasmed until they resembled claws, and his nails took on a cloudy, milky-white color. I could have sworn they lengthened as I watched. But most chilling of all were his teeth. His canines, always overly large, lengthened until they protruded from his mouth. And they looked sharp. Like, razor sharp. I wondered if his other teeth were that sharp too, now.
The bubble surrounding us had all but disappeared, and the creatures around us were noticing. An angel of the Light stood only feet from us, holding a sword dripping with blood. A crumpled heap of black trimmed with silver lay at his feet. I couldn’t make out who, or what, the dead creature was. The angel saw us, and started running in our direction.