by Lan Chan
“Try again,” I snarled. I would die today, but it wouldn’t be because some asshole would steal my soul. There was nothing more terrifying than the thought of being unmade. At the end of all this, I had bet on joining Azrael for eternity. No way was I going to allow Lucifer to take that away from me as well.
Jacob’s face twisted. Light like molten lava itself trickled from his left eye and slid down his face. I would have thought he was crying had his whole face not warped slightly out of focus. “You might find comfort in my brother’s presence now,” Lucifer said. “But it will turn to boredom.”
I groaned with irritation. “Jeez you talk a lot. It’s no wonder the other archangels wanted to kill you!”
There it was again, the tiniest twinge of something unpleasant over his features. It was almost as though being inside Jacob was slowly stitching some humanity into him at the same time he was destroying Jacob’s body.
Ignoring the fact that I was literally falling apart, I took a single step towards him. And that was when my knees decided that I was too heavy. Agony shot up my thighs as I crashed onto the marble floor.
Lucifer smiled. “Release me, Alessia. It’s the only way.”
“Shut up!” I screamed, tears stinging my eyes. Demons began to amass in a circle around me, not daring to touch me just yet because they hadn’t been given permission. A slimy demon with a dozen tentacles for limbs but no discernible face slithered closer. It reminded me of an unholy lovechild of a slug and an octopus. One of the popobawa demons banged into its side as they scrambled past.
The thing whipped out with a suctioned tentacle and grabbed the demon. A slash opened up on its side to reveal razor-sharp teeth in a sluggish mouth. It chomped down on the popobawa’s head, searing it clean off.
Behind this monstrosity, three of its friends were pressed up against the soul circle. They climbed up its invisible sides. One of them slithered up the circle and stayed there. A beat of brown magic shone where it touched the circle, the throb of energies warring with each other.
Distantly, I heard Matilda groan.
“So tiny,” Lucifer said. “If that’s the best Gaia can do, it won’t be a challenge at all.” The side of Jacob’s face wobbled. “I grow impatient. Finish it!”
What was left of the cathedral erupted in a cacophony of rapturous wailing. The demons redoubled their efforts. A dozen leviathans crammed themselves through the windows causing that wall to crumble. Red-tinged light saturated my vision. The Sisterhood wailed as the demons hammered into the soul circle, going for a single critical hit. I sensed it the moment the circle broke, a wave of such terrible sorrow sweeping over me like the earth itself weeping.
No! Clutching at my chest, I pulled every bit of power I could from the Ley dimension around me and used it to grab on to the demons close by. With a very practiced tug, I snatched their essences and ripped them apart. It wouldn’t be enough. Why was nothing ever enough?
Sophie screamed. My head felt like it was exploding. And then the floor pulsed with pent-up energy as I released the demon essences. The dispelling of energy caused a ripple to fan out, destroying everything in its wake for a three-metre radius. It would give them two seconds of reprieve. Just enough time to teleport if they had a brain cell between them. Giselle howled an enraged war cry in my head. Nope. Brainless.
“Very good,” Lucifer praised, like he was some kind of mentor. “You’ve held out much longer than any other human could. The fact that you didn’t break after the first Angelical word is a testament to what you could be if you restored me.”
I was about to spit in his face when green-laced black smoke sizzled in the air between us. Goodness no! Kai would keep his promise no matter the cost.
The jackass appeared in a billow of angelfire poisoned by the atmosphere of Hell. He landed in a crouch and unfurled, the deadly set of his features more frightening than anything I’d seen on Lucifer.
“Let me show you the reason why she didn’t break,” Kai said, blistering rage spitting from his angel blade. Angelfire licked down the blade’s tip, a beam so bright against the red sky that I thought I was going to go blind.
And then the sky itself opened up in rainbow hues of orange and purple. Great gaping portals appeared all around us and spat out elite guards.
53
Distantly, I was aware of Professor Mortimer and Basil erecting another circle around themselves and the Sisterhood. The steel of the Nephilim guards’ blades met with claws and teeth, spine and venom. A thunderous roar cracked through the cathedral as the world’s biggest Kodiak bear lumbered through a portal and cut its way past the demons to snatch a leviathan right out of the air.
All of it was secondary to the flash of Kai’s sword as it clashed with Lucifer’s demon blade. No, not Lucifer’s, Jacob’s. The glow around the mage’s eyes had dimmed a little. Proof that the seraph had relinquished control of Jacob’s body in order to allow the mage to resurface. The serpentine smile on Jacob’s face was his own. A sickly thing that spoke of a demented mind.
“Let’s see how much you’ve learned since last time,” Jacob said.
Kai slashed out at the mage, his angel blade moving so quickly I could hardly keep up. My vision doubled as the Nephilim appeared in two places at once. Or at least I thought that was the case until I realised he was so fast that what I was seeing was the place where he had been and then the place where he truly was. Never one to stick to honour in a fight, Jacob called more demons to his aid.
Kai spun around as a demon whipped its spiny tail in his direction. The clang of the angel blade as it hit bone made me wince, but Kai continued to bear down, forcing the blade right through and out the other side. The demon bellowed as its limb was severed. While it was wasting time screaming like a baby, Kai chopped its head off. Demons swarmed him and his skin sizzled with prolonged contact with the Hell dimension. Still he pushed forward, wrath making him blind to anything but his quarry.
Somebody grabbed my arm. I was in the middle of trying to fight them off when Tyler’s voice spoke in my ear. “Easy,” he said.
“No!” I shoved at him.
But he wasn’t listening. I suddenly found myself inside Professor Mortimer and Basil’s circle. Beating at Tyler even though he had already let go of me, I tried to get to my feet and move back in Kai’s direction. Somebody latched on to my arm. Jessica’s blood-caked face appeared in front of me.
“Don’t be daft,” she said. “You won’t last a second out there.”
“Why isn’t the teleport working?” I heard Jacqueline shout. Outside of the protective circle, the supernaturals were battling with the demons, doing what I had always feared: throwing their lives away in a ridiculous bid to save me even though I would die regardless of whether we made it out today or not.
“Something’s dampening the magic,” Professor Mortimer said. He made a gripping hand gesture. Purple magic shot from his fist, scooped up a demon, and crushed it like a tin can. Sweat glistened across his brow.
A lion in the distance shook demons from its mane, stomped on them with one great paw, and roared his discontent. The earth shook as though it was quivering from Max’s fury. A demon jumped on his back. Max rolled, flattening the demon with the sheer weight of his body. Mid-roll, he snatched at a few more demons around him, battering them against the earth as he got back to his feet. Not losing any momentum, Max opened his jaw and clamped down on the torso of another demon. He shook it like a doll, the crunch of the thing’s bones making a frightening rattling sound.
Past his shoulder, Angus flipped his rapier in the air, snapped a demon’s neck, and then caught the blade on the way down. The elegance of his movement was so fluid I would have thought he was dancing if not for the fact that the front of his shirt was covered in blood. He’d draped demon guts around his neck like the laurels of a gruesome battle. The beatific smile on his face was more terrifying than any demon I had ever seen.
It was the tall figure with the bloodshot eyes to the right of Angus
that had me blinking as though I might already be dead. Andrei’s arm whipped out as a demon came close. He grabbed the thing by the throat and pulled it closer. Ignoring the fact that the demon was lacerating his skin, Andrei stared into the demon’s eyes.
The demon stopped struggling. Its limbs grew limp. That was when Andrei released it. Instead of trying to rip his face off, the demon sprang at another demon that was about to claw at Andrei’s shoulder. A smile slashed across the vampire’s face as he turned to compel another puppet. Trust Andrei to come to a fight and get demons to do his dirty work.
As much as the supernaturals were holding back the tide of demons, they would continue to come. My Ley sight furnished me with an unending wave of them, called to the battle by their master’s presence.
A soft hand touched my cheek. Sophie knelt down beside me, her pink magic soothing the pounding in my head.
An explosion of green light in the near distance made my insides clench. Scrambling to my feet, I shot Jessica a dirty glare when she tried to snatch my arm to keep me still. Sophie helped me to stay upright as we moved to the edge of the circle closest to where Kai was still trying to get to Jacob. Chicken shit, I thought in my head.
The mage turned his gaze towards me, his eyes glowing madly. Five more demons descended on Kai. I flinched as one raked its claws down his back, leaving a trail of blood and black poison. Kai spun around, flipped his sword in his wrist without taking his eyes off the demon and swung. It clipped the demon on the side of its ribs. Kai’s teeth clenched in brutal satisfaction as he cleaved his way across the demon’s torso, cutting the thing in two. With barely a breath, he turned back around and refocused on Jacob.
Smoke was billowing from Kai’s body in earnest now. His limbs seemed a bit heavier as his movement slowed. As formidable as he was, the Hell dimension was slowly sapping his energy. Unless we could find a way to get out of here, the demons would overwhelm us.
The source of the blockage had to be Jacob. His magic was keeping the supernaturals from teleporting. If Kai was able to kill him, they might have a chance to get out. The problem was, Jacob was currently housing a seraph in his body.
The only option then was to get the seraph out.
Forcing myself away from the edge of the circle, Sophie and I backtracked to where Lucifer’s mortal body still lay. There were stab wounds to his chest and neck. Arching a brow at the Sisterhood, I saw Rachel shrug.
“It was worth a try,” she said. I nodded. Right now, anything was worth a try. Just like the thing I was about to do.
I reached out a hand, palm up, between us. “Knife.”
She produced a hunting knife from the holster on the side of her boots. Leaning down beside Lucifer’s body, I picked up his hand and resisted the urge to whimper at the blast of ice that stabbed me in the chest. My nose was suddenly so cold I could no longer feel it. My teeth chattered but it didn’t stop me from slicing the blade down in a line close to the soft flesh of his thumb.
An awareness pressed down on my mind. Lucifer’s consciousness detached from Jacob for a moment to watch curiously. Making the same incision on my own palm, I bit my lips together to stop from exclaiming.
When blood began to trickle from my palm, I mashed it together with Lucifer’s and sank into the Ley dimension.
Another roar feathered over me, this time coming from right above us. Somehow, Max had found himself scrambling over the top of the domed circle. My suspicion was that something had gotten too close to Sophie.
And then I pushed it all away as something brushed up against my magic. The little tug of a soul link that told me Kai was close and that he needed me. In my mind’s eyes, I watched his knee buckle as he crashed down just a few feet in front of Jacob. The mage swept out an arm and a bolt of lightning chased through the air, striking the demons around Kai and then whipping around to hit him in the chest. I wanted to scream but knew that my distress would scatter his focus. Especially since I knew he had done it on purpose. He’d given up an advantage so he could get closer to his prey. The jolt of lightning felled the demons, leaving the path in front of him clear.
In a feat that was almost impossible for any mortal being, Kai got up and lifted his angel blade once more. Jacob grinned.
“You see why I had to do it?” he said. “Pendragon blood is too unpredictable.”
No! Don’t let him get to you. I threw up a buffer as the spark of unrelenting rage tried to snatch at Kai’s heart and make him lose control. He paused mid-step from the charge, his muscles bunched without an avenue for release.
Blue. A single word that threatened to undo everything. Despite all of his fury, his terror, his chagrin, when he said my name, all I felt was the soul-deep love.
Kill him for me, I ordered, my own fury at the unfairness of everything sinking tentacles into my heart. Kai smirked.
As you wish.
At the very same moment that Kai struck out with his angel blade, I grabbed at Lucifer’s essence through the Ley dimension and hauled him back out of Jacob’s body. He resisted, of course, but I gripped his bleeding palm and used the blood he had shared with me as an anchor. In the Ley dimension, I held the thread of our blood tight, commanding it to release him from Jacob. If he was at full power, there was no way I could have done it. But he wasn’t. The mage roared at the painful separation. It hurt so much he didn’t notice when Kai’s angel blade pierced him through his chest. Lucifer screamed in my head at the same time Jacob let out a howl.
Kai smiled, eyes gone forest green as he twisted the angel blade and yanked it upwards, slicing clean through Jacob’s chest, up his neck, and through his skull. Kai had literally split him in two. The seraph’s thundering rage was something to behold. He lit up the red sky in a burst of such startling white light that I thought the sun had burned itself out.
Kai threw his arms up to shield his eyes. Lucifer tried to advance but I was holding on too tightly. Even if I died now, I wouldn’t let him go.
Alessia, he said in my mind. And then, of all things, he screamed. He’d broken their first rule, and it came back to bite him in the ass. So the free will thing wasn’t just a stubborn part of seraphim code. It has consequences. Lucifer’s grace retreated, disappearing into his mortal vessel. I held the heavenly blade in my flaccid grip.
Somebody placed a hand on my shoulder as the light returned to a sickly red glow. All around us, demons stood frozen, unsure exactly what had happened.
I looked up into Simone’s smiling face. She had one hand on my shoulder and the other on Sophie’s arm. For some reason, her smile grazed a finger of ice down my spine. Behind her back, Jessica was holding onto Simone’s waist. I glanced down at her hand where Gabriel’s Key was now firmly lodged.
“Time to go,” Jessica said.
“What the hell?” Giselle leaped towards her friend.
I didn’t have time to inhale before Jessica teleported us away. The last thing I saw was Kai’s disbelieving features before I was sucked through the Ley dimension.
54
We landed on the other side on the lawn of a building that I knew too well. Terran Academy. Darkness settled over us once more, lit up only by the small lights around the borders of the garden beds. In the distance, I heard the sonorous crash of waves against the rocks and beach. I let go of Lucifer’s hand in order to push myself up to sitting.
The presence of the seraph’s body made my skin crawl. Though not as much as the fact that the Sisterhood had teleported us away from the Hell dimension the second after Jacob died and his wards had lifted.
Soul magic blew a chill over my skin as the sky around us crackled with the appearance of the domed soul gate. It added a layer of illumination to the darkened sky. No wonder it had taken so long for them to rebuild Terran Academy. They weren’t working on the building. They were resurrecting the gate. Looking up was a bad idea, and yet once I saw the dimensional rift floating in the air just below where the moon hung, I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
And then my att
ention became locked to the figure that teleported just above the edge of the soul gate. Kai and a fleet of Nephilim guards appeared. His left cheek was still bruised from the fight with Jacob. Having been in the Hell dimension for too long, it would take a little time for him to regain his full strength. The crazed look in his eyes as he spotted me said none of that mattered.
On his command, the Nephilim charged. Unfortunately, the soul gate had kept them out once before. Their angel blades hit the edge of the gate and bounced off, sending sparks skirting across the lawn. The gate retaliated with its own magic, striking the supernaturals with lightning and hurling them across the sky.
Other portals opened up as more supernaturals spilled out. Having grabbed on to Jessica at the last second, Giselle came through the teleport unbalanced. She rolled expertly to her feet, a scowl darkening her features. “What do you think –”
A figure stepped out from the shadows around her and clubbed her across the head with a baseball bat. Her eyes went wide for a second before they rolled back in her head and she crumpled. Not before I registered the shock that had made her too slow to anticipate in the first place.
Declan braced the baseball bat in front of him. His gaze settled on me first, swept over to Sophie, and then landed on Lucifer.
“Get them ready,” he said.
I reared. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I screamed. My gut roiled. When I tried to get up onto my feet, my body wouldn’t cooperate. I was out of time. Declan crouched down in front of me, his eyes penetrating. He tipped my chin up, his face expressionless.
“I’m doing what we should have done from the beginning,” he said. “What you were too weak to do because of your love of the monsters.” Beside me, Sophie yelped.