by Lan Chan
As the shifters fought off the advancing tide of demons, Cassie ran out in short bursts to drag the bodies of the unconscious inside Professor Mortimer’s circle. I never noticed just how quick she was. If I blinked, sometimes I missed her. She was almost as fast as an actual teleport. Speaking of which, I cocked my head to the side as I watched Astrid shove her rapier through a demon’s throat. She flicked her wrist and the blade came out the side of the demon’s neck, splashing its green blood on her dress.
Nephilim used teleportation as part of their defences. Pushing myself up, I spotted Kai at the very moment where he went to slice the neck of a demon. Grabbing it by its stubby hair, he tore its head clean off. He tossed the head aside to repeat the same motion twice more in the blink of an eye. His angel blade was capable of cleaving through skin and bone. Inside the bond, I felt his burning need for retribution. He just wanted to kill things with his bare hands. Not once did he teleport.
“Professor,” I asked, hoping it wouldn’t distract him from his incantation. “What’s wrong with the magic?”
He huffed out a frustrated breath. “The closer we get to the Hell mouth, the more of our energy is drained.” The muscles in his neck strained as he poured as much of his power as he could into keeping us out of Hell.
In a battle of skill and strength, the supernaturals would have crushed any opponent. But even they had a tipping point and the demons of Hell had always held the numbers. As quickly as the supernaturals could dispatch one demon, three more arrived to take its place. Kai had held a defensive line against Hell for hours until help arrived, but that was when he didn’t have anyone left to protect.
The sneer that broke out on Jacob’s face as Kai inched closer and closer filled me with dread. “Your spirit is commendable, Malachi,” he said. “But the master is right. Your line is an insufferable pain in the neck.”
He made a fist and swung his arm in a punching motion. Something collided with the side of the arcane circle, throwing me back down onto the ground. Twice more he hit us. Each time Nanna and Nora screamed and huddled closer together. I rolled onto my back, my vision overlayed with the Ley sight once more. The sweep of Jacob’s energy was a red-streaked grey that denoted mastery of necromancy. A metaphorical fist scraped at the sides of the purple arcane circle, scooping up whole sections of magic and converting it into energy. This he directed back into the circle itself. Professor Mortimer gasped with the effort of keeping both the circle and the Reverse in place.
“Let go!” Sophie yelled at him. A moment later Jacob struck again, and Sophie had erected her own circle. “Max! I need blood!”
Wondering how he heard her over the sound of demons baying, Max relieved a demon of its head and lobbed it through the circle at her. The hideous thing came to a thudding halt just two feet away. Using the demon’s blood, Sophie drew a circle in the grass and waved her hands in front of it. The words of power that spat from her mouth were barbed. When she was done, her circle was reinforced by a ring of red. A blood circle. When had she learned to do that?
I snuck a glance at where Nora and Nanna stood clutching each other’s hands. There was a disapproving frown on Nora’s face, but she said nothing. How could she under the circumstances?
When I tried to help Sophie reinforce the circle, she screamed. “Don’t touch it!”
Reeling, I retracted my power. “Why?”
“Just don’t!”
I was about to push it when an anguished cry broke out at the front of the defensive line. Getting to my feet, I was just in time to watch Durin’s body sinking beneath an avalanche of demons. Yolanda surged forward, snatching demons away as quickly as she could. For the first time, it wasn’t quick enough. I gasped, my feet trying to move forward when she went down too.
“Don’t move,” Basil yelled at me. “You’re unstable.”
It would have held much more authority if sweat weren’t pouring down his sideburns and his face wasn’t a sickly green. In the bond, Kai cursed up a storm. Giving up the inroads he’d made to get to Jacob, Kai backtracked and went about hacking demons to pieces. Max landed with a booming crash beside him. Before he touched the ground, I caught a glimpse of his chest. Etched there in a glowing primordial script was the Angelical word I had written. It pulsed like it was alive. Between the two of them, they managed to free Durin and Yolanda.
The four of them retreated, their chests heaving. Still the demons came. With little choice, they jumped back into the fight. How long until they would be overwhelmed again?
A cold feeling settled in my chest. It was the same feeling that had permeated my heart down in the cavern in the Fae forest all that time ago. Despair wrapped in helplessness. Biting the inside of my cheek until it drew blood, I forced the unhelpful thoughts back. Even if I wanted to revel in despair, Kai could surely feel it in the bond. The last thing he needed right now was to see that I was giving up hope.
Jacob’s distant blue eyes searched the field until his gaze landed on me. I’ll never understand why he chose a human, he spoke in my thoughts. Especially when it’s so easy to do this.
He snapped his fingers. The humans left in their ranks took aim with frightening efficiency. In their unpossessed state, they must have been military. Rifles clicked all around. Without warning, the humans opened fire. Bullets ripped through the clearing, tearing into demons that didn’t have the wherewithal to try and duck. A normal bullet didn’t do much besides piss a supernatural off unless you managed to unload a whole magazine into one’s brain. When Charles’s shoulder jerked and he gave a pained roar, my stomach felt like it was filling with lead.
“Silver bullets!” Charles yelled in warning. It didn’t come soon enough. Yolanda shuddered as bullets bit into her chest. Jacqueline appeared beside her. The headmistress held her cuffs up, moving as quickly as the bullets did to deflect them. She grabbed Yolanda and carried her back inside the arcane circle.
Jacqueline set Yolanda down roughly. My nostrils filled with the bitter scent of rotting flesh. The silver was already beginning to poison Yolanda. Her golden skin around the bullet wounds were bubbling up with pus and blackened blood.
“Pull back,” Durin ordered. A fiery boulder clogged my throat as Charles deliberately put his back to the bullets and took a couple dozen hits so he could shield the other shifters racing to get inside the circle. His legs collapsed just shy of the barrier. Max barrelled into him, pushing them all inside.
I didn’t have time to worry about how Sophie was managing to maintain a circle for so long and against such frightening odds. Basil and Professor Mortimer retracted their magic from the dimensional rift to help reinforce the circle. As a result, the Reserve slipped farther into the Hell dimension. Another minute and half the Reserve would be swallowed.
“Interesting,” Jacob said, his attention fixed on Sophie. I stepped in front of her, my legs barely able to keep me standing.
“Kai!” Max screamed. If Kai heard, he gave no indication. While everyone else had pulled back, he continued to move forward. I didn’t need the bond to tell me Kai had calculated the odds of us getting out of this alive. Even if we did, the dimensional rift would swallow the Reserve and everyone in it. Bullets firing shattered my concentration. Every time one went off near him, it was like my brain spasmed and I couldn’t think straight. Forcing the Ley sight around me, I begged it to slow down time so I could breathe.
Though the Ley dimension complied, that didn’t mean it changed reality. I saw Kai’s mission as plain as day. Jacob was the missing piece that denied him closure from the massacre of his family. Jacob was going to kill everyone else he cared about. So no matter what, Kai was going to get to the rogue mage. It was that unrelenting determination that had forged him from a sensitive, sheltered child into the man he was today. But formidable as he was, Kai wasn’t impervious to bullets. Even if he could teleport, there were too many guns.
The first bullet hit him on his left shoulder. It ripped right through tender muscle, the exit wound sprouting in
a blossom of red. Kai jerked imperceptibly, ignoring the pain and continuing to cut down demons. Behind me, Cassie let out a sob. My head throbbed with the rust brown of the thousands of demons that swarmed him. I felt the swipe of claws against his right ribs as a demon got too close. My heart strained not to burst with fear. Always when I had been helpless, the only thing that stopped me from breaking was action.
If we were going to die, I wanted to do it by the side of the man I loved. My legs wobbled but I borrowed some of Kai’s determination and took a step forward.
“Lex!” Sophie shouted. Someone grabbed my arm. A demon snapped its jaws against Sophie’s circle. She shuddered involuntarily, her circle mimicking the action by cutting out temporarily. In that second, the demon managed to shove its arm through the circle. I grabbed it with my bone magic before Max sliced the arm off with his claws. The demon bellowed its rage, but it wasn’t the amputated arm that caused it to thrash. It was because my bone magic was sucking its essence away.
“Professor,” I breathed. “I can steal demon aura.”
There was a moment of startling silence.
“Of course,” he said, revelation soaked in his voice. “You are Lucifer’s creation. I never even considered it but –”
I was already working. As quickly as I could, I snatched up demon essences and funnelled them into power. Soon, I was standing without hunching. Jacob’s attention shifted from amusement while he watched Kai struggling towards him, to the flare of demonic energy that I had become. Alarm sprang to life in the bond, its distress evident when it couldn’t break through the demonic barrier. Without giving myself time to think, I shoved at the bond, forcing my way past the dissonance, and grabbed Kai’s soul.
“Blue!” he roared. And then his body flickered as it made the transition from flesh into wraith. Bullets and claws whipped right through him, hitting targets that would have been protected by his body. Rather than glee, Kai’s emotions became frantic. “Blue!”
Jacob let out a chuckle. “You can’t stop it, Malachi. Nobody but the master can now.”
I was tired of listening to him talk. I was tired of him breathing. As Kai launched himself in phased form towards Jacob, I snatched all the demon energy in the clearing and braced it against the dimensional rift. The earth around us groaned as the Reserve came to a shuddering halt. A bomb had started this. A bomb would end it.
Kai materialised into physical form as I let go of him to concentrate on pulling the Reserve back to its original position. He reappeared, his angel blade swinging out at Jacob’s neck. The rogue mage opened up a portal with deadly efficiency. He used them as his own way to teleport, disappearing and reappearing as quickly as any Nephilim. While they fought, I filtered demonic energy into the rift, muddying its beautiful essence with browns and blacks. One by one the demons fell to their knees. Blood trickled down my nostrils as heat licked my skin. I was no longer aware of anything around me besides the brightness of my aura and the demonic energy flowing through my veins. Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more heat – Boom!
The dimensional rift tore apart. The explosion pushed the Reserve clear of the opening. It spat Kai and Jacob aside. The last of my wherewithal was spent phasing Kai so he wouldn’t be crushed by the pressure. White light filled my vision. I fell to my knees and threw my arms up to protect my head. Screams rent the air as Sophie’s circle broke.
A shadow appeared beside me. My hope that Jacob would be destroyed was thwarted. Still, I took the win of blood pouring down the right side of his head where his skull was now concaved. Even in that state, Jacob’s flicking features smiled at me.
You’re almost there, Alessia, he said in my head. When he reached out, it was to place his palm on my arm. The heat of it was unexpected. My eyes rolled back in my head.
For a moment, my sight turned inward. The magic inside me spasmed out of control. The blue tones intermixed with the black to create a sludgy blend of colours that tarred everything they touched.
Worse still, it was beginning to leak from the chamber where it had always resided. My organs were covered in unstable magic. My body was a nuclear reactor with cracked pipes. Magical radioactive waste dripped from the vessel of my heart. It pooled in my gut, bubbling and boiling.
The only bright spot was where the bond burned bright. A few months ago, Kai’s angelfire had intersected with my magic. After I’d made him promise to back off, I was on my own and growing sick the way Jacob had intended. A sensation of wrongness coated my tongue. I knew then that I was broken at a cellular level.
The Angelical? I couldn’t help asking.
Afraid not, he mused. The Angelical is just a part of it. The strength of your power comes from Lucifer. You’re not Nephilim. Your frail human body can only sustain that much power for so long. You need him to fix you. Without it, you’ll break down and die.”
He touched my temple and everything receded.
41
Trying to argue with an uncooperative seraph was like trying to reason with a child. It was both pointless and frustrating. Yet I wouldn’t be dissuaded. “I just want the truth,” I seethed at Raphael through gritted teeth. He stood at the base of my bed in sanctuary, his features serenely calm.
“You already know too much,” he said.
“I have a right to know!”
“As I have the right not to tell you, little one.”
I was going to throw something at him. Raphael took a step back. My frustration hit the ceiling. “The more you skirt around it, the more I know I’m right.”
“Whether or not you are right doesn’t change the fact that I cannot convince Malachi to break the bond. His free will is more important to me than most.”
“This isn’t about free will anymore!” I’d woken up in Seraphina with Jacob’s threat ringing in my ear, but it was the other reality that scared me more. I had been sick with power poisoning for a while now and Kai was masking it by funnelling it through the bond. At first, he had probably thought he alone would take the brunt of it. But his connection to Raphael and Raphael’s corresponding connection to all life had put a spanner in the works.
Effectively, the bond was making all the supernaturals sick. It started off with those closest to him. The sicker I became the more it would spread until I would poison all of supernaturaldom.
Raphael’s expression softened. “It will always be about free will.” I was going to burst a capillary. “You must concentrate on getting well.”
It was a poor choice of words that spoke to how disturbed he truly was by the situation.
“Getting well at this point involves freeing the Prince of Darkness.”
“There is another way. If Michael seals you again, you won’t have access to your power. If nothing else, we can hold the sickness at bay indefinitely.”
I didn’t have indefinitely. At the rate at which I was declining, I wasn’t sure if I would see out the semester. And then there was the other thing. What Jacob had done to the Reserve was just a warm-up. Just before I’d passed out, Jacob’s thoughts had been a mirror in my mind. He would continue to attack supernatural cities, knowing that I couldn’t help interfering. He would push me until he thought I had no choice but to release his master. Or died. Whichever came first.
“I want to see Lucifer.”
“To what end, little one?”
“Because I’m tired of running away.”
Unlike all the other times we’d teleported into the containment cavern, I actually took note of our surroundings. My breath immediately came out in big puffs of condensation when we entered the icy enclosure. Outside the door on my left, Ariel and Uriel’s presence was a constant, reassuring presence.
“Do they know we’re in here?” I asked casually.
“Of course,” Raphael said. “They know all that goes on in containment.”
Hmm. I catalogued everything about the room. Where the icicles hung the densest in the top right corner, how the light from the small window behind Raphael slanted
into wide beams that illuminated Lucifer’s golden hair, and how there were always white puffs of clouds floating past. I etched the scene into my memory, feeling the location cement in the sudden warmth of Gabriel’s Key on my finger.
Swallowing hard, I forced myself to step up to Lucifer’s altar. Raphael moved with me, closing the distance between us so that I felt the sweep of his cloak against my shoulder. Even comatose, Lucifer was too devastatingly beautiful to behold for long. I blinked away the moisture from my eyes. A riot of emotions collided in my chest, fighting with each other for dominance. Just like that one time Nanna had taken me to the art gallery, the urge to touch the masterpiece was too strong. I reached out a trembling hand and placed it on the icy skin on the side of his neck. My fingers turned numb, their trembling caused a ripple to dance across Lucifer’s cheek.
“There is no reason to fear him in this state,” Raphael said. Fear. Was that what this burning sensation in my gut could be? Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t all stupid. The pants-crapping terror that clamped around my throat and threatened to make me accept Raphael’s solution was certainly at the forefront of my mind.
But as I stood there touching Lucifer’s mortal body, acid dripped from the chamber that held my heart. As each drop hit my gut, it turned into bile. Loss swelled up inside me and crushed the fear with rage. It was his fault I was now backed into a corner with my hackles raised. The bars of the cage solidified in my thoughts. Kai’s love that could never bear fruit. My friendships that would wither when I died. My life that had been one episode of misery after another. As each bar slid into place, I found myself staring into his ethereal face. My nails dug into his neck.