Phoebe released Agrat, aware that the hideous sensation of fear had receded and an intense, potent energy had replaced it. Lively and fierce. Moving her hands over her arms, she rubbed them, watching as a warm glow hovered over where she'd touched herself. "Look at me. It looks like an aura."
"My beautiful princess. You have no idea what you really are. Conserve your ancestor's gift of energy. It is poison to those who wish to harm you."
A crack of thunder followed by fierce rumbles sounded near the house. "Hurry. We must prepare for attack. Galaden's entities have located us." He took her hand and led her to the bedroom. Grabbing his wrist guards with the secreted daggers, he strapped one on to each of her wrists.
Agrat kissed her face, her eyes, her mouth. "You have courage, so intense, so vital. I knew it from the moment you rebelled against my father. If anything comes near you, stab it. Entities cannot withstand the magic of the daggers."
"And you? What are you going to do?" she asked, practicing swinging her arms so that the daggers slid from her wrist guards down into her hands. Her reflexes were quicker than they'd ever been. Phoebe marveled at her strength. Although she was stronger than the average woman due to her work as a sculptor, this sudden ability was something else altogether. She couldn't believe she had this sort of power.
"We are moments away from night. I must recharge."
"I want to fight, too," she said.
"No! I won't risk you. I've helped you draw up the energy into your body in the way of my ancestors, but you are not trained as a warrior. I don't know how much of the goddess's energy your human body can take and there is no time to test it. One fireball from a demon could kill you."
"But I know more. It's like I have memories on how to fight that I've never had before. Look at this. See that painting of the flower on the far side of the room?" She took her dagger and threw it. It sailed across the length of the room and imbedded itself in the center of the flower. She turned to Agrat, elation bubbling inside her at her new-found knowledge of battle skills.
Agrat gripped her by the shoulders and drew her to him, his dark gaze intense. "I did not spend three thousand years trapped in a statue so that you could risk your life. The thought of you, your very essence, kept me wanting to live. I beg you, Phoebe, do not join the fight. The land surrounding the house is charged with protection. Lightning could strike you by mistake. I have not introduced my ancestor to your energy and even if I did, I would not trust your life to Lightning. Use the daggers to save yourself if anything gets past me and enters the house."
Agrat released her, strode over to the painting, extracted the dagger and returned it to her.
Before she could protest, he walked to the bedroom window and looked out. A sheet of lightning struck something outside. An eerie shriek followed the blinding white flash. "They have come, but they will be no match for the Lord of Lightning." He raced into the hall and she heard him moving from room to room.
Wind shrieked, swirling around the house. Overhead thunder rumbled like cannons. She stared out of the window, watching as the last of daylight faded. The green landscape took on an eerie hue and wind whipped the trees so they swayed like ghosts.
She heard Agrat's footfall. When he returned, his face was grim as he stripped off his shirt and jeans. Although he stood naked and magnificent, there was something different about his stance. He appeared drained, his broad shoulders stooped. "I have set seals on all walls, windows and doors."
She nodded, her mouth too dry to speak. She grabbed a glass from the bedside table, filled the glass with water from the bathroom tap and gulped it down to moisten her throat. "You've drained your powers."
For her protection.
"It is moments until nightfall. I will beseech the Lord of Lightning for his blessing and take what he offers."
"Beseech?" Oh, shit. This was bad and he was determined not to let her fight. "Since when do you beg anyone for anything?" Phoebe clutched his hands.
He looked down on her, his gaze strained. "The Lord of Lightning is the beast of the sky. I heard the legends from my nursemaid; my people rarely called upon him because he could not be counted on to serve us in the faithful manner of our other ancestors. I pray my noble liege will deem to protect me and strike my attackers as I recharge."
"What if you're hurt?" How could she get to him without being fried?
He gripped her arms. "With you by my side I am able to charge faster and more efficiently than ever before. I have to take the risk because I cannot protect you and fight a whole army without the extra energy. Do not fear. While I still breathe, no being will harm you."
The depth of his love hit her with heart-wrenching pain. "I wasn't thinking about me. What about you?" She didn't want to lose him. Love. What she felt for him was love. With danger about to strike she barely had a moment to think about it, yet the emotion was intense, life-altering.
He swooped low and kissed her. "I have never had anyone care about me, except you. Rest assured, I will come back."
He knew how she felt about him. She was certain if it. Just the assured way he looked at her told her so. "I'll be here." This time she didn't deny what she felt for him. Love surged up inside her, filling her heart. This was her man.
Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw a shadow move near the window. Every muscle in her body clenched, ready for action, but before she could react, Agrat pulled her behind him. A swirling mass of black energy stirred in front the window. It started to form a shape.
“Phoeeebe…”
Phoebe tensed, her gaze darting to the shape as the source of the disembodied voice moved forward.
Agrat sent a pulse of red energy through the window, not shattering the glass, though it found the shape. The being exploded in a flash before it found form.
A sheet of lightning followed, the fork dividing into white spears, sharp and deadly. Sulfurous scent rose in the air. Several high-pitched shrieks rent the peace as the spears found their prey. Agrat smiled grimly. "I welcome this battle. I will destroy Galaden's army while he is too weak to fight himself and then I shall go to annihilate him. He does not have our father to protect his worthless hide now."
Phoebe fought the urge to hold him back, knowing he was not a man to be contained.
Agrat strode out the bedroom, into the hallway and out onto the front yard.
Hands pressed to the window, Phoebe saw his silhouette planted like a crucifix, his face turned upwards to the heavens. Lightning struck around him, illuminating the scene.
Then she saw them. The sculptures. The forms she'd created from her dreams moving like an army toward Agrat. The hideous faces she'd once thought harmless but had worked on obsessively in the way of artists. She'd been recreating her nightmares, she realized, to get them out of her system. The trouble was these beings were real. Ghoulish eyes. Multitudinous shrieks rent the air as lightning blazed around Agrat, the sharp forks jabbing the ground followed by explosions of rock when the forks hit their targets.
"Lord of Lightning fill me with your power," Agrat cried out, his voice sonorous. He raised his arms high.
Lightning struck like a spear, violent and greedy. It flared so brightly through Agrat that, for a heartbreaking moment, Phoebe lost him in the intensity of the light. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to reopen them to search for him, though the brightness almost blinded her.
Agrat's body arched, his arms flung back like a helpless doll as lightning held him in its savage grip. Fire scorched the grass, several trees exploded into flames. In the distance, Phoebe saw the entities freeze, their grotesque faces spotlit as they stared at Agrat. The prince's body rose off the ground and became horizontal, rigid with electrical energy so intense that a huge well of horror gripped Phoebe by the throat.
She watched, impotent, her hands gripping the windowsill. Her prince; her love.
A crash exploded above and behind her. Fear, rich and raw made her swing around, her dagger in her hand. Envy towered over her, his hid
eous severed head under one hand, the mouth gaping with fire. Don't look in his eyes, she thought. All she wished for would not come true. Instead, her worst fears would become real. She'd go crazy. She didn't know how she knew that but she did. The strange déjà vu sensation rose over her like a wave. Perhaps it was too late for wishes because the worst was happening. She wanted Agrat. Loved him, but Envy, the monster she feared from her dreams was real. Above him a hole in the ceiling, wide and littered with broken edges, showed her where he had broken through.
"Phoeeebe..."
He had found her. Backed up against the window with nowhere to go, Phoebe surged forward, knife extended. "You want me? Well you'll have to fight to get me."
Envy seized her wrist and squeezed. The bones crunched but she refused to drop the dagger. Phoebe grit her teeth to prevent herself from groaning as sheer, sharp agony leapt from her wrist up her arm. Once she would have been on her knees begging for release. Not now. Part of her couldn't believe that this form that she had spent months carving hosted something so evil. The thought made her mad. Furious. Dangerous. With a surge of energy, she flicked her other arm down releasing the other secreted dagger and slid it home. It glided in like a knife to bread, despite the demon's stone carapace.
The demon screeched and released her.
As she did so, a roaring sound hit her ears and everything around her seemed to disintegrate. Her body began dissolving, fading so that her form no longer mattered. She stared at Envy. The demon was disappearing before her eyes. Looking down, she couldn't see her body. A fork of lightning hit the ground where Envy had been standing and the house caught fire, but the flames did not touch her because everything around her seemed fluid. The walls of the house vanished and everything went black.
Her last thought was of Agrat, his body horizontal, suspended like a sacrifice to an unstable and merciless power.
How could he survive?
Chapter 12
The roaring sound continued in Phoebe's ears. A swirling sensation inside and outside had her reeling. She landed hard on a polished concrete floor on her hands and knees. Glancing up momentarily, she saw she was in Rachael's apartment and she wasn't alone. Her head swam. Her stomach heaved as she dry-retched, fighting not to eject the little that she'd eaten that night onto Rachael's living room floor.
She flopped onto her stomach and groaned, but she still had the wherewithal to slide her one remaining dagger back into its wrist guard. Sweat broke out on her face and body with the effort that it took to concentrate. "How the hell did I get here?"
A sweet scent came to her nostrils along with the slight hint of decay.
"The first time you dematerialize and rematerialize is the hardest. You feel as if the pieces of you will never come back together. Rest assured, the unpleasantness doesn't last long."
That voice. She knew it. On looking up, she saw Galaden coming toward her, but he wasn't the pristine angel she remembered from her encounter with him in her studio. Instead his face was stern and bruised, his body battered. One of his wings was bent at an awkward angle, its formerly spotless feathers stained with blood oozing from the wound and the ends of the wing dragged along the floor as he stopped in front of her.
A deep groan sounded behind her. She rolled onto her side and the world swam but even so, when she saw Envy, his clod-like hand gripping his side where she'd embedded the dagger, she exulted.
"Go!" the angel ordered.
The demon staggered through Rachael's living room door.
Galaden raised his hand and the door shut behind the demon.
A seal appeared covering the door and windows so that she could no longer see them. There was no escape. She would have to fight for her freedom. She had one more dagger in her possession and she intended to use it.
"Where is Rachael?" Galaden asked her, his voice demanding.
"How the hell should I know?" She pushed herself to a sitting position. The living room swam and she thought she was going to vomit again. For a brief moment, she closed her eyes, trying to settle her stomach. She should have been frightened. Terrified. But she wasn't. Instead, goddess energy surged within her and she felt it mingling with her own, pumping her blood around her body, flooding it with much needed strength. She wanted to fight.
Worse.
She wanted to kill.
Lives were at stake. Agrat needed her. She forced her mind to flick from the hideous image of him suspended in midair surrounded by demons wanting to rip him apart. Focusing on that would distress and distract her from her immediate goal of taking the angel down.
Galaden's crystal blue eyes darkened. He held up his hand. White energy left it and streamed toward her.
An energy slap across Phoebe's face left her gasping.
"There is no time to waste. Tell me where Rachael is. The demon prince has shielded her energy." His proud face was drawn with desperation.
Phoebe struggled to her feet, sucking in a gasp of air as she did so. "You drained her dry. Maybe you killed her." She muttered a prayer hoping it wasn't so. If she could break free of Galaden she'd be searching every hospital to find Rachael.
"No. I would know if she were dead. I know what it is to lose her." Misery flickered across his face. His glow had dimmed to a dismal glimmer.
Fury built up inside of her. "Don't act like you care. You took what you wanted from my friend. You're nothing but a leech. A filthy sucking energy masked as an angel. What did Rachael ever do to you? You go near her and something bad happens." Her heart contracted with worry at the thought of her best friend languishing in one of the city hospitals. It would only be a matter of persistence and phone calls before she found where Rachael was and she hoped that the angel couldn't tap into her mind and work that out.
The angel didn't react to her insults like she expected him to. Instead, silver tears glistened at his eyes. "My love. My beautiful wife."
Phoebe wished she were sure enough of her powers to throw a dagger right through the angel's heart, but she didn't dare waste the only weapon she had. Did Galaden think she was idiotic enough to believe he loved Rachael? "Agrat found her close to death in my apartment. You did that to her, so if you think you can order me into helping you find her, think again."
Galaden groaned. "It cannot be so. What did the demon prince do with her?"
"He said he tried to get her to drink and she couldn't even manage that, so he called for help. You left her for dead and I hate you for it." Vertigo made her grab onto the lounge chair closest to her. The moment her balance returned, she'd attack. "Rachael is not your wife."
"An angel's marriage is forever. It is Rachael's wish too."
Phoebe thought of her friend's obsession with the angel, the delight in her eyes when he'd come to life. She'd never known her best friend to be mistaken about anyone but Phoebe was certain the angel had her friend charmed and she wasn't going to let him get away with it. "Rachael never hurt anyone. You didn't have the right to use her like you did."
"The weak winter sun of your country does not charge me fast enough but I will not leave and recharge in another dimension until I have killed the demon. Rachael offered me her life-force. I took it. Too much. Help me return her life-force back to her."
Phoebe braced herself, certain that he would attack her. "Steal what's left of it, you mean."
"No. Never. I love Rachael. I always will. She is all that is honorable in the world."
"Then it was an unlucky day she met you." Phoebe took her hand from the lounge chair, relieved the dizziness had gone. With one flick of her wrist, her knife would slide from her wrist guard into her hand. Thanks to the goddess energy, memories of fighting techniques resonated in her mind. Whether they would work for her or not, she didn't know. There was no time for practice. She tightened her stomach muscles, preparing to leap at the angel and drive her dagger home.
He glared at her and the air around him seemed to crackle with intensity. "Where is she?"
She met his gaze and didn't back away.
Instead, she moved from foot to foot, checking that no residual vertigo remained from the shift from Salem back to New York. The angel stood a few feet away. She'd one chance to get this kill right.
Or she'd die.
"I told you, I don't know."
"You trusted me in your past life. Thanked me every day for the life I gave you." A shadow flickered across his pale face, which was too perfect, too beautiful to be that of a merciless killer and yet, that was what she was dealing with.
"Trusted you! Like hell I did. You're here because of a curse. You intend to kill me, too." The image of Galaden putting his wing around her came to mind. There was something important from their past life and no matter how hard she tried, the image wouldn't expand or give her more information.
"So Agrat explained the nature of the curse." Galaden turned and walked to the window, which looked over the Hudson River.
"It's true, isn't it?" she pressed.
"Yes. I gave my father an oath and an angel must act upon a vow sworn to his creator. Had I known what you were then, I would never have uttered the vow. To take revenge on Agrat will be my pleasure, but to take your life from this dimension gives me no joy."
"I don't understand."
"You are descended from a goddess of the northern people. Whoever owns you is enhanced by your power. In times of peace you bring creativeness, joy and love to your owner. In times of war, you bring healing and strength."
"I won't let you use me."
"You have no choice. Your presence is enough to restore my energy. When I owned you after the death of my father, no one could defeat me. You were special and although it was said you would not come into your full gifts until you reached five and twenty, it was well worth the wait."
She was turning twenty-five next month, but she kept her mouth shut and her dagger hand ready.
Her Demon Prince (Forbidden Fantasy) Page 14