by Lan Chan
The closer Raphael moved towards Kai, the thinner the thread of the bond became. Almost as though they were opposing forces. All at once, I heard Haniel’s voice in my head through the mating link.
Stop him, the malachim gasped. Raphael cannot be unmade or your world will die.
I hadn’t the slightest clue what he was on about. Not until Apollyon raised Raphael’s hand and pinned Kai flat against the wall so that he couldn’t move at all. In my mind, I saw the thread stretch to its absolute limit. At the same time, the tiny essence that Raphael became started to recede.
In a single blinding revelation, I knew that if Kai died, Raphael would too. I screamed when the pressure Apollyon exerted on Kai began to crack his skull. Max was already running. Though he was fast, even Max wouldn’t be able to make it in time. His sudden agitation snapped the rest of the supernaturals into action. That in turn caused the demons and malachim to react.
Bile rose in my throat. Cassie let go of me and bolted. So did Jacqueline and the professors. None of them would be fast enough. Thought was no longer a possibility. All I could do was react. The first thing I thought of when I was frightened these days was Lex. Her blood was pouring from the vile into my cupped palm before I knew what was happening. It didn’t matter that the Sisterhood wouldn’t be able to stitch me back up this time. It didn’t matter that I would die. All that mattered was that Kai had to be saved.
Max pivoted, sensing what I was about to do.
I funnelled all of my fear into a blade of magic. Max appeared beside me. A force like a tornado whipped around me as Haniel’s essence fanned out of Max’s body. Dozens of malachim rose up from the earth. Max grabbed at them, scooping up their essences. They struggled against him but Haniel’s voice echoed though the clearing.
Fight, he thought, fight his hold, my friends.
One or two stilled. The others continued to thrash. Holding tight to the ones that reacted, Max turned to me with blazing white eyes.
“Sophie,” he grunted.
I opened up my mind and tried to push reassurance at the malachim. When Haniel shoved his hand inside me, I screamed and doubled over. It was too much. The mating link attempted to cocoon me against it, but there were too many malachim. At least three. They snatched at the alchemy, sensing freedom for the first time and becoming greedy for it. My whole body felt like it was lit by the fires of Hell itself.
My vision became dark. My senses no longer worked. Something thumped at my chest and I thought for a second that I had stopped breathing. And then the first malachim was purified. Blood spurted from my mouth as the others kept going, but now light was shining from me too. Before it left, the malachim detached a part of its essence and planted a command in my head.
Be well. It overrode my senses and made me function on autopilot. My soul ceased trying to come apart from my body.
Moving through instinct, I transmuted Lex’s blood into power of my own.
The alchemy lashed out at the same time Apollyon grabbed hold of Kai’s head in a wrenching motion. It shaped itself into a thin blade. The blade I saw in my nightmares, the thing that frightened me most in this world. And it shot straight through Apollyon’s essence.
The angel-turned-demon screamed. He let go of Kai. In the real world, Raphael must have fallen on his knees.
Another malachim was cleansed. It slid silently out of my body through my mouth and disappeared into the aether. With Apollyon here, I hoped that it would find rest with Azrael.
The last one was taking longer to dispel. I was almost out of alchemy.
It cut out before the malachim could be freed. I heard her mournful wail in my head but could do nothing as my body collapsed.
Max’s growl filled the air. He held me to him, the warmth seeping through my skin as the mating link transferred his strength into me. When my eyes flicked open, it was to the sight of a world gone completely mad.
The high-magic users were constructing circle after circle around Kai in an attempt to keep everything away from him. Where they could, the Sisterhood were doing the same. The supernaturals had formed a ring around us, fighting off the malachim, the undead, and the demons trying to get to us.
And on the ground not far away, Raphael’s body was in a heap. He didn’t stay that way for long. The blow was a slight hindrance at best. I wouldn’t be able to use my alchemy again. Heck, I was having trouble staying conscious. The only thing keeping me from slipping at the moment was Max feeding me through the mating link.
When Raphael stood, a shroud of evil settled over him. Apollyon’s black gaze landed on me. The look in his eyes was beyond fury. It was something so despicable that it made Max push me behind him. He took a few steps forward, halted as Haniel’s light took hold of him, and then for some reason he started moving back towards the destroyed Sanctuary.
The malachim still inside me quivered. She took refuge inside the chamber of my magic, still searching frantically for a hint of the alchemy that might free her. The part of her that was still connected to Apollyon was not big enough to overcome my will, but it was enough to have me curling into a ball with the knowledge of what he was going to do to me when he decimated the supernaturals.
At Raphael’s full height, Apollyon towered over the courtyard. He sneered at me. “You are less than nothing,” he said. “A prize that I grow weary of. But your great-grandfather made a promise, and I would hold him to it.”
He stepped forward. The first obstacle in his way was the supernaturals trying to keep the demons away from me. Apollyon raised his hand and waved. Basil and Professor McKenna clutched at their stomachs. A demon smacked its spiny tail into Angus’s ribs as he groaned with the same ailment. Next to him, Andrei spat blood and couldn’t evade the undead that latched into his shoulder and bit down hard. One by one, the supernaturals all keeled over.
I couldn’t work out what was happening until Kai gave a groan and also passed out. Raphael, I thought. His connection to them furnished them with health. And now Apollyon was taking it away. My heart felt like it was going to burst when Charles stumbled and landed beside me. He held the demon blade again. Probably went to retrieve it as soon as Kai passed out. Shifters were so one-track minded. I grabbed his hand like I was going to somehow keep him from falling ill like the rest of them.
Apollyon waved a hand and the denizens of the Hell dimension stood down. As easy as that. Rings of black fire circled around the necromancer’s hands. They enveloped the undead and kept them from their endless ravaging. The malachim hung suspended like black demonic kites swaying in the non-existent breeze.
Apollyon approached us.
“You see,” Apollyon said, “this was all an illusion. You were all dead the moment my master return–”
His sentence was cut off rudely by an angel blade being shoved through his chest. Apollyon screamed.
“Hate to break it to you,” Max’s voice cut through the fog of my mind, “but some of us aren’t dead.” He twisted the blade again.
Apollyon’s arms lashed out at where Max was pushing Ariel’s seraph blade through him. It was such an impossible sight that Charles was making a choking sound beside me. Max’s whole body throbbed with Haniel’s essence. While it was impossible for a human or a supernatural to wield a seraph blade, it was not so for the malachim. Nor was it so for Apollyon. Though he was screaming as he did it, Apollyon grasped the end of the seraph blade and wrenched his body sideways. The blade seared through Raphael’s underarm, causing Apollyon to groan.
Max saw what was happening and drew back. When he swung the blade in a wide arc that would have sliced Raphael clean open, the blade was met with the serrated edge of a demon blade. It appeared in Apollyon’s hands out of nowhere. The clash of the two blades made sparks jump into the air.
In another lifetime, Haniel must have been a warrior. He met every one of Apollyon’s thrusts with the graceful movements of a dancer. As Charles squeezed my hand with a crushing tightness, the malachim in my body poked her head up in alertne
ss. She blinked and it felt like someone brushing a feather on my insides. Something in the fight in front of her triggered a long-dead emotion in her mind.
I could feel her coming into awareness when something cold grabbed me by the shoulder and lifted me up into the air. I cried out as nails sliced into my skin. Charles tried to hold on to me, but his strength wasn’t up to what it had been.
I found myself in the grasp of a humanoid demon with abrasive skin and noxious breath. It made me want to throw up just being close. It grabbed me by the throat and held tight.
My distress caused Max to lose his concentration for a fraction of a second. At any other time, it might have been insignificant. Against Apollyon, it was a fatal mistake. But rather than slash back at Max to hurt him, Apollyon slapped his hand on Max’s chest, his smile full of demonic satisfaction.
The malachim inside me became so frightened she rattled against my magic chamber. It made me shake as though I was trying to break the hold of the demon. The thing constricted its hand, making me choke. I clawed at its fingers, but I had zero strength.
Max’s fury was like an inferno in the mating link. Every muscle in his body twitched, but he couldn’t break Apollyon’s hold on him. The problem was, it wasn’t actually Max that Apollyon was targeting. It was Haniel.
The air in the courtyard began to turn cold. It dropped to such a freezing temperature that my jaw felt like it was frozen shut.
“Remember what you are,” Apollyon said. He shot a blast of black magic laced with red into Max’s body. The scream that whipped through the courtyard was only a fraction of a lion shifter’s roar. The rest was the agonised screaming of a malachim who was being dragged back into the confines of the Abyss.
Max began to struggle in earnest. His features distorted into a being with a long face and eyes the colour of fresh snow. The malachim in my chest went absolutely still. Through the mating link, I saw what it was that Haniel was experiencing. The complete and absolute closing off of all connection to anything angelic.
The death of all those who he had been charged with protecting. The empty cold of the Abyss where he would be used to bring pain to innocents. And then his own pain was heaped on top of it. Pain that transcended a physical body.
I screamed with him just as Max did. The sound of their anguish would have brought me to my knees if the demon wasn’t still holding on to me. “Stop it!” I screamed. “Please!”
Apollyon chuckled. “Stop it,” he mimicked in a perfect imitation of my voice. Close to my feet, I saw Angus attempting to get up. His black wings were half bent. One of the squat popobawa demons kicked him back down.
The low growling from Durin and the pack was an undercurrent as Max roared with a pain that made me burst into uncontrollable tears.
“Don’t cry, Sophie darling,” Apollyon cooed. “Tell you what, pick one of them to spare.”
“Max.” It wasn’t even a consideration. I tried to make him a counter-offer. “Take my soul instead.”
Apollyon inched forward. “That wasn’t ever in dispute.” He glanced sideways where Max was now bent over, silently screaming as Haniel’s light began to dim. “I wonder, though, how long he would survive without you. Seems a bit pointless to me.” Apollyon paused. His claws bit into Max’s chest where he’d been holding on for the transfer. “Why don’t we do this?” He grabbed hold of Max by his short hair, still not short enough not to be used as leverage, and slapped his hand on Max’s forehead. A flare of red descended like a cloud over Max’s face. It crawled into his eyes, nose, and ears.
“Stop!” I shrieked, seeing what he was making Max witness with his vile magic. The magical half of Max tried to throw off the illusion. He did well for the first few seconds, but while the man could be logical, the lion was a creature of instinct and emotion. Already weakened by the torment of what Haniel had and would continue to go through, now the lion was suffering the sight of me being torn apart by the demons.
When he’d had enough fun with that, Apollyon changed things up, and instead of the demons ripping my limbs off me and feasting on my blood, it wrenched my legs apart and...I threw up in my mouth at the image. Max let out a roar so full of loathing it busted my eardrums. Blood trickled down my nose.
Max’s mouth opened to emit a lament that shot through me and sank into the malachim in my chest. She cried along with me. Before my very eyes, Haniel was dragged out of Max’s body by the magic of the Abyss. What was left behind was a creature of boiling muscles, of skin turning to fur and nails rippling out into claws. Max’s eyes were a solid black. But rather than release him, Apollyon held Max in place even as he opened up the portal to the Abyss and tossed Haniel inside.
The malachim inside me whimpered. I had no care left for anything else but the way Max was snapping and scraping at the ground in front of him.
Through the mating link, I felt the shifters sink into the pack link and attempt to hold on to him through their bond. Apollyon twisted the telepathic knife once more, this time showing Max the image of Charles stabbing Kai in the heart. Except this time, Kai was Kai and Charles had gone rogue.
Max’s lion lifted its head into the air as it sniffed out scents and tried to discern reality from lie. I turned towards the mating link, only to see it encased in the same poisonous black-and-red filth.
“Have fun,” Apollyon said. He snapped his fingers and Max was free. In Max’s mind, I was now Apollyon. And I was holding onto me and rattling me like a leaf. In my head, I heard his words clearly. If I die protecting you or the people I love, then it will be worth it.
In Apollyon’s black eyes, I saw that he would reap my soul as soon as Max killed me. And then he would let Max live with the torment for the rest of his life.
“Max!” I screamed. For a fraction of a second, I thought he heard me because his head lifted. But then he was charging towards me without any brakes. A moment before he was about to collide with us, Charles pushed himself up, the demon blade held out in front of him. Max was moving too quickly to avoid it. The demon blade pierced him right through the heart. He rolled over both of us and the demon that was holding on to me.
The demon blade sizzled as it gobbled up Max’s blood. Sapphire blue light spiralled down the blade’s edge and sparked across the tattoo Lex had given him. It lashed out in a forcefield that smashed into Max like lightning. The tattoo throbbed as the demon blade stole Max’s life.
I screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
But it did nothing. All of my pleading did nothing. My body became this obstacle that was holding me back from the mating link and was utterly useless as his soul fled.
If you accept the mating link, he will die. But I had been too selfish, and I hadn’t listened.
52
Max
I always knew that Charles would be the death of me. When I came to in a field that reminded me of a nightmare Lex had once conjured up, I was confused for a moment. Pain thumped in my chest and I looked down to find the demon blade sticking out of me. That little shit had stuck me with the demon blade.
And then I remembered the sound of Sophie’s voice. She was screaming my name, but I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t do anything besides watch her crying as the demon blade snatched the life from me. Was this what the afterlife was meant to be? The old gods had promised us a world overflowing with the bounty of battle. Screw all of that shit. I had been mated for all of ten minutes. No way was I going to stick around here like a useless piece of shit while Sophie was still in danger.
I scented water and moved towards it without really understanding why. As I drew closer to what turned out to be a river about ten metres wide that stretched out well past the horizon, the sky began to darken. Storm clouds gathered together and knitted themselves into a stark ceiling cracking with the kind of magic that ruffled the hair of the back of my neck. I didn’t give a damn if I was half high-magic sorceress. High magic was a nuisance. I could, however, use some of it now to open up a portal.
What the hell was
this place? Actually, Hell seemed like a good bet. If Heaven was this boring, I wanted a refund.
I was standing there staring into the depths of the water when a face materialised in the stream. “Shit!”
Jumping back, I crouched down and tried to grab whoever it was. When my arm hit the water, a feeling of lethargy washed over me. Hmmm. I guess this wasn’t so bad. The water was kind of nice. I saw now that there were heaps of people swimming in it. They were all just floating, but it seemed peaceful.
Couldn’t hurt to give it a try. Without taking my clothes off, I stuck my right foot into the water. It wasn’t even cold. Weaklings. They could have splashed around a little. Even a backstroke was better than lying there like dead…shit.
The Sea of Souls. When I tried to drag my leg back out, it wouldn’t lift. I was about to try and really yank, when a body slipped past in the water and everything turned cold all at once. Kai.
Without a second thought, I dove into the water. The moment my face hit the surface, weights laced around my arms and legs, making it harder to propel myself through the water. My head filled with a quiet that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid. That giddy anticipation that you felt when you woke up before dawn with the promise of a new day stretching out in front of you.
Relax, the quiet seemed to say. There’s no more need for rushing.
That was right. There was no more need. I was dead. There wasn’t anything more that I could do. Except...when I tried to close my eyes and let my body float up to the surface, I heard Sophie screaming my name. I felt something jolt in my chest beside the demon blade. The apathy dissipated. I cut through the water and reached out. Even in here that Nephilim idiot glowed green. It made things easier. A perfect target. When I grabbed at his T-shirt and tried to haul him out of the water, Kai resisted.
He tried to snap my fingers away. “I’m tired,” he said. I punched him in the head.