Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  The water my left began to churn and it took me a second, and I had to move myself backwards a few steps. A massive circle erupted at the water and began to spin there so fast and loud it sounded like a localized hurricane finally making landfall.

  I didn’t know if it was another vision, another hallucination. I had to move. Something somewhere inside of me was screaming instructions at me, it was telling me to move into the portal.

  I couldn't’ do it, not without Bash. Bash had to be there with me. I limped forward, splashing water as I dragged one of my feet, the taste of blood flooded into my mouth. I could feel swelling in my face; small ponds of blood were sticking out my skin all over my body.

  By the time I got to Bash I had to turn to see if I could still see the portal, I couldn't hear the massive winds attached to it anymore. There was blood leaking down the center of his face, he hit his head hard when the entity had sent him back.

  I used the wetness of my hand despite how disgusting it was, most of the water was done dripping off me and just left me soaked at this point and I washed the blood off the center of his face.

  Pushing my two fingers into his throat, I felt a pulse touch my fingers back and saw the peak of an eye open. “Bash,” I said shakily.

  “I’m going to fucking kill that thing.”

  I show him the seal. “How did you get it?”

  He must’ve seen the blood after his vision refused because the never mind he said told me that I really didn’t need to explain myself. “That opened up though,” I told him and turned my head to the portal of spinning blackness that was still there.

  “Where the hell does that go?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied back to him, my eyes still focused hard on the portal.

  The growl forced me to react and I had my gun trained on the crawler that was propped up upside down in the pipe that was leaking above us. I fired a series of shots but it wasn't long before I heard another growl roll down the tunnel.

  “Come on,” I said, a small panic was starting to dig around inside my chest. “Let’s go, come on.”

  Bash was heavy, it wasn’t fat, it was the muscle that weighed him down and without him in full consciousness it was hard to drag him especially when he was soaking wet. “Bash come on,” I said. My gun was still training and now it was firing shots almost at will. There were five crawlers by my count and despite the aim, it wasn’t easy to kill them. It depended by the inch where the bullet landed when it was shot.

  I turned back to see how far the portal was from me. It was at least five or six steps, especially dragging Bash, I had to be sure about the energy I was about to use and compare that to what energy was left after I had fought the spirit.

  Another fifteen shots spat into the darkness, growls erupted and some whines came through as the bullets dug through skin and bone and did their work.

  “BASH!” I finally screamed, the ammunition was getting low and the crawlers were down in the water with us now.

  I saw his eyes come to life and I helped him up to his feet. He pulled his weapon quick and started shooting, his handgun in one hand, the assault weapon firing at automatic in the other, balancing out his shots with whichever crawler was closer.

  “We need to get into the portal, there’s to many of them,” he screamed.

  “We don’t know where it goes,”

  “Fuck cares where it goes, I’m out of ammo in the next two minutes,” he retorted.

  It didn't’ matter what the decision was, we had gotten to close and the portal swallowed us, my eyes closed, I’m not sure if they did for Bash as well but I can’t remember anything that happened after that.

  Chapter 118

  I slam hard enough on the ground that it knocks the wind out of me. I blow all the air that’s tied inside of me out into the open. Everything hurts and I can feel the new cuts that scraped my hands from where I landed, the same one that are on my knees.

  I can hear the other thud of Bash as he hits the ground too. The footsteps are coming near me before I even realize who's walking.

  If its Gabriel I’m dead or about to be converted to a slave for him again. I don’t know how my body is going to respond once he whispers into my ear. When the face comes down to me, I realize it's not him.

  “Give me the seal,” the voice says to me. It’s Azrael.

  He grabs my arm and helps me to my feet, my eye immediately goes to Bash, I have no idea if Azrael knows that his sister switched sides and is possessing Bash.

  Carefully, I keep an eye on him as he goes to wake Bash up and to help him to his feet.

  “Where are we?” I ask, the gun is back out and I have it aimed at the center point of Azrael’s head.

  He raises his hands his face is calm but his eyes shift colors. “Think about that for a second. That seal is a seal but it was also cursed. The wraith knows where you are now, the second you put your hands on it. That army of theirs, Gabriel, his generals, everyone is coming down on you, you don’t think that you could use some of my help.”

  “Syllis took care of what you changed,” I tell him.

  Now a smile spreads. “The demon archangel?” he asks.

  I shoot once in his shoulder, light explodes where blood should come out of and his hand goes to cover the wound and I aim it back at his head. “You don’t want to help us.”

  “Yes he does,” a shadow passes out of Bash in a vomit of white that floods out of his mouth and takes shape, hovering above the ground before she sets herself down. “He wants to survive this no matter who wins.”

  “Hi sis,” Azrael says checking the hole on his shoulder and then removing his hand from it once he was satisfied that it closed.

  “That’s what you want isn't’ it, survival?” I say.

  “Don’t we all?” he mocks back at me.

  “That’s why you killed Courtney’s sister?” I spit.

  “To stop the wraith from getting power for just a little bit longer, I’d think you'd’ thank me for that.”

  I see Bash's’ eyes open and I see the black blade come out of his jacket as he twists it in his hand and hides everything but a sliver of the handle. “What can either of you offer us?” Bash cuts in.

  “What do you mean?” Azrael asks.

  “Both of you are entities, we’re flesh and blood, were the most vulnerable in this fight,” Bash replies.

  “They want our souls,” I answer for them. “One above and one below.”

  “Smart girl,” the demon says. “Very clever.”

  “You know when Syllis reversed what you did in my head, he taught me a trick, at least one that can serve us our purpose.”

  “Yea and what’s that?” Azrael asks.

  My gun is still up and level in my arm, I walk but casually towards the demon. Bash takes my que. I reach out my other hand, the free hand and it ties some force around the demon’s throat and I can see him start to struggle. Slowly, the blackness inside of him is dragged out of his body, ripping skin as it passes out of his windpipe. I can feel his sister watching me but something else happens. My head dives into Bash’s somehow I’m in control of both bodies at the same time.

  From Bash's’ hand I take the blade and slide it right into her abdomen and then cut out sideways through her ribcage.

  They both are gone, even Azrael’s body, the vessel that he was occupying vanishes along with the spirit that was exhumed from his insides.

  Chapter 119

  We both vanish and reappear in the acres outside of Gabriel’s mansion. It’s a sight that I won't’ ever forget. The pillars that surround his property. To slopes to the landscape that sways through the distance. That and the army that’s waiting there for us, standing at attention just in front of the balcony that he sits on.

  By the time I turn around, the bodies of those fallen Chasers are standing behind me too. I turn around stunned to see them all patient and eager all at the same time, standing there ready to go into another war.

  I already know
that my bullets won't’ work and I tuck the gun back into my waist and pull out the staff that’s against my shoulder and slide open the blades. Bash pulls out the short black sword.

  I twirl the staff in my hands, saliva is building up in my mouth, my heart is working the rounds in my chest but my mind is at ease.

  There are two targets, only two that I care about, Gabriel and the wraith standing there in the distance over the swarm of the dead that they’ve pulled to help them win this war, to help them call Lucifer to the surface of the planet.

  I know Syllis is in that house and I look at Bash and that face that’s on him is so serious that it looks like he’s already started fighting. “I need you to lead them,” I say to him. “I need you to take them into this fight.”

  “Syllis?” he says back to me.

  “He needs to survive, I need to get him, find him, and bring him back to this.”

  Bash looks at me and I can see a shimmer of light move across his eyes, he held some of what the angel left inside of him. His hands pass my shoulder and I put my hand over his.

  Before I left him do it, I turn and look around at all the people behind me and everything that they’re about to face. It doesn’t matter that they’re gone, what matters is that we never let them sleep. That the second we needed them to sacrifice again, they were called back to fight a war that already killed them once to stop the same thing from happening. To stop what I started from happening the second Gabriel took possession of me. This was my fault and this was something that I needed to make right.

  The army waiting for them had the same struggle, it's not all demons versus men at this point. Now they’ve pulled demons, wraiths, and the dead to come back and to push their side to a victory.

  I want them gone, I want the dead to finally rest for both sides. I am going to kill Gabriel and I am going to make sure that Syllis survives this to make sure that I can too.

  “Do it,” I tell him.

  Chapter 120

  I’m transferred to a room I’ve been to before. The room where Gabriel records his interrogations. A massive stone room decorated at the walls and the pillars that stand along the length of the room, three on each side.

  I can feel something inside of me changing though, like being moved like that did something to me. It's the sensation that I felt when Azrael changed me before he set me loose on that Watcher. It’s like my mouth is bleeding and my head is about to explode and I can feel something crawling around my throat.

  It’s not like before though. While the pain is there, the sensation that it puts inside of me is entirely different. It's more comfortable in my skin, more soothing beneath there, almost as if it belongs right where it is.

  I can sense them around me before I see them. All nine of them, different than the others. They were closer to Gabriel, I don’t know what it was but it was like I could smell Gabriel on them. Even though they were dead, even though I could see the paleness in their faces, the greyness of their eyes showing that they were inhabited by demons, stronger demons then were out there, I could sense Gabriel on them.

  They appeared ahead of me, standing there in a line all of them with a pair of short swords in their hands, curved and angled like the angel blade that Bash had with him.

  All their eyes touched me with that displaced look, that simple attitude of something that held such a magnitude. Gabriel didn’t want me dead, he wanted me very much alive for this seal and he wasn’t about to kill me now. Nine of them were sent to make sure that they could take me alive.

  I was different, I wasn’t the one that had taken on the guardian of the seal, I was the one that massacred an entire bar of demons that’s what I was now and that’s what they were about to witness.

  I spread my hands out in front of me and threw all of them off their feet and regained my footing just as they collided with the things that stopped them, walls, floor, pillars, all of them slammed hard enough to crush impressions into the stone.

  Twirling the staff in my hands, I started to run, I needed to find Syllis before the war got into full heat on the outside. I needed to make sure I found him before Bash came close enough to the wraith or to Gabriel.

  One of them came at me I spun the blade through its midsection and then again using the other end of the blade to slash across its face and saw the explosion of black burn out beneath its skin as the vessel fell to the floor.

  I spun the blades hard, jumping up into the air to add a reservoir of strength to them and then slid them down cutting through one and then another sparking the inside of them, the demon mist to erupt into black flames.

  Ahead I saw one of them turning finally bringing themselves up from where they hit the wall, I charged at him and drove a knee into its midsection and then drove one end of the staff’s blades down hard splintering the stone and then tearing it out.

  Another one turns to me and I stretch out my hand lift it up and slam it hard against the wall, charge it, and cut its head off hard enough to leave a streak of the blade drenched with blood in the wall as another of them erupts into fire.

  The rest of them charged at me, spinning the blade around, I slammed my elbow and blade hard into one, turned and caught another that was flying at me with a kick that sent it flying backwards.

  One charged and I brought my heel up to its chin and as it flew back I sent my hand out into the air and dragged it down to the ground where I speared it with the blade. That’s it, they were all gone, all nine of them had the demons burned out of their bodies. That’s when I turn and see the wraith standing there looking at me from the other room, standing about twenty feet in front of the barrier that’s containing Syllis.

  It stands there but says nothing to me. It’s waiting, it wants me to come to it. I turn the blade and sheath both curved plates of metal inside the handle and drop it to the floor. My hand rolls into a fist and the other one matches it as I start to walk towards the thing that I created.

  Chapter 121

  Black blood covered Bash’ face as he took the blade and sliced through one of the demon’s faces. Sweat covered him from head to toe, the army that Arinna had brought with her, the men and the woman that he remembered were doing well.

  He stepped over the carnage of one of the demon vessels that had his entire midsection torn out with hooked blades grabbed another one of them and then slid the blade through its throat.

  A set of claws reached out and ran across his face, the pain tore through his body and he turned and then jammed the blade through the things face and pulled it out and the skin at his face closed again.

  There were too many of them. The wraith had to resurrect at least a thousand if not more demons and he wasn’t even entirely sure this was the full force. By his count, the quick one that he had done, he had at least a hundred give or take a few and he had no idea how Arinna was managing. He had seen nine of the men standing around Gabriel had vanished the second that Arinna had vanished.

  A kick ran to the side of his head and blood trickled down his face as he fell down hard to the floor. One of the things smothered on top of him, its face was contorted, half decomposed, most of its body was still fresh, only one of its eyes were white and only some of the bone under its skin was showing.

  The squeal that was falling out of it was horrible, it moved fast and the strength behind it was incredible. It pinned down both of his arms and moved its head so quick to try and snatch some skin from Bash from anywhere on his body that he could find. Even with struggling, pushing all his strength against it, his body was good enough to heal what the thing was trying to cut but it wasn't enough to get him out of it.

  He screamed, the muscles and the veins inside of his arms and chest were about to sever and pop.

  Blood streamed across his face as one of his own pulled their blade back that had just cut through the things skull and forced the reanimated body to go limp on itself. When he pushed it off, there was a hand waiting there for him. He took it by the forearm and the return hand took his
as well and brought him back up to his feet.

  “Thank you, brother,” Bash said, it was Blades that had done it, both of the cleavers in his hands were filthy with blood and skin etched into the sharp edge of it. Blades looked at him simply and removed before he turned back into the fight.

  Bash turned, confused for a moment but letting go of the thought before it took hold anywhere that matters. He was still in a fight, he still had to come out of this alive. He turned to the head of the battle, where the screams and the sounds of metal running its way through flesh and bone didn’t surround him. Gabriel was still there, still holding his position on the balcony, the wraith wasn't, the wraith was gone.

  Suddenly, a blade chewed through his right thigh and put him down on the ground, he hit his knee hard on the hardened dirt and his hand had to shoot down or keep his face from planting. An anger erupted out of him.

  Lifting himself back to his feet, he looked at the demon that had done it, a wicked smile stained across its face, his eyes a ghostly black as Bash grabbed it by the back of its neck and shoved the blade through it nine times before he let the body fall back to the floor.

  Then he felt the brittle fingers tearing at his neck. One of them had gotten their fingers underneath the skin at his neck and was trying to peel it off his body. He turned and killed it but then another two were on him trying to tear flesh and muscle out of his body like they were ripping leaves off a stalk.

  A few of his own soldiers seemed to have caught it and ran to him, his neck sealing the seconds after the fingers were removed but they had given themselves a game plan. They were trying to rip his head off.