by Riley Mason
Chapter 122
The sound of my handle hitting the floor was still rolling around the room as I charged at it and it charged at me. I brought my knee up the second I hit the air but it was stronger than that and much faster than I was and the knee that it brought up smacked into my face and threw me off my momentum and forced me to hit the ground and slide hard.
Blood filled my mouth and I went to spit it, when I opened my mouth to pull in air, I could feel the metallic liquid in my mouth hugging my teeth as I turned to spit it out.
I step towards him, he steps towards me and I begin to throw my hands and legs at it. It’s quick, I can’t deny that, it’s pushing back everything I throw at it with an ease that I haven't’ seen before.
I’m pushing hard. Throwing my hands harder than I did against the guardian but still their easily pushed out of the way. It’s frustrating and its causing a panic to come alive that shouldn't be there right now.
I break and I give it an opening and it throws two punches into my stomach and then kicks out my right leg and then as I’m in the air, it pushes an elbow into my face pushing me backwards again, now blood is running from my nose.
As it strolls towards me, I kick myself up, on one hand, throw two kicks to its midsection and push it back far enough where I can stand up.
My face is bloodied and I can feel the skin there tighten, it’s starting to swell but I charge at it again anyway. I cut down four sets of elbows, three are blocked one makes it through, it’s enough to create a small opening that I run to take, I bend and then throw a hard-short punch right into its center.
It comes back at me, we’re swirling around one another, most of the footwork keeps us at an even distance to one another. As it throws punches and kicks, I block them but as I do, it does the same only harder. I try throwing a series of kicks but all of them are stomped out the second that my foot leaves the ground and its foot is pressing down hard on my ankle.
The wraith comes at me, anger inside of its calm face, it lands two punches again, quick, so fast that I see nothing more than a blur as it’s doing it, then another knee this one to my ribs which is enough to send me back again.
I get up, spit out the blood again that's pooling inside of my mouth and move towards it. Our exchange is different this time, it's not that he’s slowing it’s that I’m getting faster, my arms have reached a point of numb that they're moving faster without worrying about the pain that’ll touch them. I wrap him up in a lock that should hold him but he spirals his body and flips out of it and puts another elbow into my jaw.
I know that it's looking at me differently, the small expressions in its face that I can manage to see tell me that much. It wants to know how I’m able to hold my own ground with it. It doesn’t matter that blood is seeping out of my face, all that matters are that I’m still alive and it hasn’t been able to take hold of my soul. That it hasn’t ended the war. It doesn’t matter to it that I killed the nine that it created, what matters is that I haven’t died yet myself now that I’m standing with it.
There’s a break in our fighting. It wants to assess me, it’s good because I want that same chance with it. I want to look at the damage I’ve done. I’ve hit it more than a few times, almost as many as its hit me but my damage shows more than its flesh would. I have what it wants, it’s here, it knows it’s here, it can kill me now but I’m not letting it kill me. I know I’m strong and it will fight cautious because of that but it wants me dead and it wants that part of me for eternity.
The wraith steps closer to me and I come just as it calls and I throw my hand out again, this time with a new ferocity, one that I don't know if Azrael put into me, if Syllis, the Angel, or if this was something that came out on its own. My eternity is at stake and I won’t let this thing take it because once he has his hands on that part of me, it won’t be able to fight back the same way that my body will.
It’s on the defensive now. My arms are moving so fast that I can see its eyes solely in contact with my eyes, watching the direction that my arms take my, watching the sway of my body, in my eyes he has a way to track my moves but I don’t care, I’m moving my body faster than it should be going and I see a distress work over its face.
Every time my arm is blocked, my other arm is moving and if that one is stopped I’m moving the blocked arm again. It's enough to push him backwards, keep its own footing in my control and navigate it to where I want it to go.
I’ve killed thousands of demons, hundreds of other creatures, this one is no different, this one has some power to it that’s all.
The wraith breaks my stride, stops both my hands at the same time, kicks up so high that the heel of his foot nearly crushes my jaw if it made contact, I use it, the second that it's given me and as the foot comes down I throw a combination of punches so elbows into him so hard and so fast that the skin below my shoulders seems to blur and then I push my knee into its sternum enough to send it back now, not on its back, but it forces it to stumble to regain the footing that it wants.
In the break between us, I see Syllis, the glow of his eyes isn’t there anymore and his skin looks colder and greyer then it did. Whatever they’re doing to him is taking his strength away. I see the fire burning, spreading orange tendrils into the air and sparing the room from any smoke at all that could vent from the fires heat. It’s angel fire, the one thing that could trap a demon as powerful as Syllis.
I look at it, study it, and then I reach out my hand and call the handle to my hand from across the room and it comes with ease.
The wraith looks at me, it’s figured out what I want to do.
Chapter 123
Bash's’ face is smothered in sweat and water as the clouds above began to spill an ocean from its clouds. The blood that was running from his body is still going despite wounds constantly being sealed, it's enough to pull more than his body should spare from him.
Another one comes, a fist and a slash form the blade sends it flying into the rest, enough to take three down with it as they all hiss and howl into a night that disturbed by the explosions of thunder every few seconds.
A swipe to his left and then one to his right takes out another two demons. The rage inside of him is bubbling over. They nearly got to his neck. One of them had dug his hands so far in that he touched the bone and the base of his spine. If he hadn’t cut through both the arms and pulled the fingers out of his body, they would’ve pulled his head off. He could feel the heat from all the blood that showered down his back then.
Another came, a high kick to the face, another and a hard kick to the chest both of them bouncing backwards. Another came, a low spinning back kick just enough to take the day off their feet and throw the blade into its chest and tug it out before the momentum was over.
One of them tried to throw a punch at him he caught the arm on his shoulder and stabbed three times into its armpit.
Then he stopped. Dirt and blood that was on his face was too thick and to stuck to his heated skin to fall off from the sheets of rain that were raining down around him. It was enough to stop him; his chest was having a hard time managing the air in and out of his lungs. His heart felt like it was nearing the point where it was going to explode.
In and out his stomach moved and caved as he tried to get a hold of his breathing. It forced his eyes to look around at the scene around him. All this to bring Lucifer back into the fight. This wasn’t like last time at all. Last time there was fear, there was a certain strategy that had to be followed and planned, no one was as big as they are now, few had abilities like this and the fighters had to learn to trust. Now there were things in control with abilities like he had never seen before.
His eyes looked up the fighting and he caught sight of Gabriel, standing there, moderating the fight still having yet to join it. The army surrounding him was doing what they were needed to do, be a soldier, fight a war again.
It wasn’t enough, the dead wanted more of him. They knew that he was alive, he was the one that they re
ally wanted but standing in this field in the wide open was doing nothing. If the dead were still on the move that meant that the wraith was still alive and he still had Arinna to worry about. The fact that she could be dead found its way into his head and refused to move an inch in any direction other than the front of his mind.
He was going to have to keep fighting. No matter what he did he was going to have to push until the war either came to an end on her front or his because sooner or later, Gabriel was going to enter the fight and once he did, the rules of the game were going to change the second he stepped foot on the muddied plain to join his hand in it. Bash was only grateful that he was the only one that could be changed the second that Gabriel spoke. The dead couldn't, they only had one voice, the one voice to control them.
As he turned, he pushed his blade into another one, this time through the skull that was missing the skin that once covered it. There was some energy left inside of him, he wasn’t sure how much more was there though. There was adrenaline and then there was the body’s ability to use and harness it for a time. It was moving slower now. He could feel himself slowing down and it was harder to keep control of his breath.
Blood slid up his arm as he killed another, that black filthy blood that slid along his soaked skin. He was going to kill them all or he was going to die in the process.
Chapter 124
I walk to the circle of fire that's enclosed around Syllis and I’m surprised that the wraith lets me. I can feel its eyes on me, they’re staring because I’m fairly sure he has no idea what I intend to do either. I’m not sure if it will work, its’ just a hunch, hunch don’t always pan out either. That’s especially true since Syllias had told me that I’ve died more than once in the past.
I’m at the fire. I can’t feel the heat from it but I can see it, my mind, what I know about fire forces me to respect it but it doesn’t act like fire. It seems to move with intention and passion and it doesn’t emit any smoke at all. I turn back at the wraith, its standing there, arms at its side, patience in its face.
I reach my hand down and touch the flames, I don’t feel anything as my hands pass through the waves of orange that dance over my skin. When I pull my hand away, it stays on fire but it doesn’t burn either.
Igniting both blades, I dress one of the blades with the fire on my hand until it itself is lit and then do the same to the other blade before I snuff the flames on my hand out. I admire both ends of the weapon now, both of them are burning with the same intensity and the same behavior as the one surrounding the man sent to protect me.
Now when I turn to the wraith, it doesn't have patience in its face anymore. That patience, that curiosity is all but gone. It's a smart creature, it’s figured out what I wanted to do.
I see it stretch out its right arm and hear the smashing of wood and metal as it breaks one of the melee weapon shelves on the wall and a long pike flies into his hands. I recognize them. The melee weapons are used in the streams that Gabriel creates. The interrogations that he wants to keep for memory even when the person that he alters leaves a piece of their own mind inside of it, he needs to see more, their expressions, their fear, that part is never captured when he changes them.
The pike slide into his grip and he slowly close its pale hand around it. The pike is at least twenty feet long and its flexible as the wraith stands it straight up at his side, its much longer then he is with an angled steel blade at the top rooted in a black ruffle of hair that stops as the wood starts.
It walks towards me levelling out the pike in its hand it comes. It has reason to look at me differently now. It's no longer how I move my hands or how I’ve maintained myself in a fight that should’ve killed me, now it’s about stopping what I intend to do. For the first time, in its crisp blue eyes I can see that it knows that I want to send it back and I’ve just given myself a way to do it.
The thing twists the pike and slams it down hard, the wave runs through the wood of the blade as it bends and adds an extra momentum to the blade at its end that I catch with the base of my staff. I twist to push it out but the wraith is sliding the pike through his hands stabbing the blade at its end at me and I’m forced to swing my bow wildly in hard turns to make sure that that the end of the blade stays away from me.
The pike is moving fast, there is a new energy inside the wraith, it wants its life just like I want mine.
We move with one another, spreading out our strikes and blocking what the other one is throwing. It was smart to choose the pike, it keeps it at a good distance from the flames that are still engulfing both blades.
It's on the offensive though, it’s limiting what I can do with it, keeping the strikes coming from all different directions, keeping the flexibility of the pike in control as it uses it to try and intensify the swipes that its throwing.
My hands burn in trying to turn this weapon fast enough to keep up and the swipes are coming at me hard enough that its sending shocks through the joints in my wrist and that pain is running up my arm now. Some of them aren’t fast enough either, I have marks were the blade is touching my skin, it's hot enough to puncture and catalyze the second has branded me.
Finally, I see the last opening, I move ahead jump and spin, drop my knee hard enough on the concrete to have it bend to the shape of my knee and split the wood of the pike, stand and then cut another strand off of it.
The weapon falls to the floor, it's useless and in three pieces and a sprinkle of sticks from where I cut it. I twirl the blade in my hand again and as I spin it, the wraith waits for me, I swing it, swiping it across the chest, hard enough to open it up to the blackness that's under its clothing and its skin.
It falls to its knees but I can’t let it stop there. There’s something else, something entirely different, a sensation, a motivation that I haven’t felt before now.
I step closer and bend down, on my own knees, on the stone and cradle its neck in my hands like a mother would do for a child that's been hurt. I can see pain in its eyes, something dangerous, too dangerous to be left alive suddenly feeling the pain that’s going to bring it death. I lean it closer to me and sink my teeth into its neck and pull out the fluid that's keeping its body alive and forcing into my body.
Chapter 125
It happened suddenly. All the dead that were fighting for Gabriel just stopped moving. All of them froze in their spots before all of them erupted into thousands of small dots and fell to the ground as if their bodies, what was left of them at least exploded.
The field was bare and barren as he stood there with the few of his own soldiers that still remained.
When Bash turned, he realized that they were gone too. Nothing, no evidence of them having ever been there showed itself. Both armies had disintegrated, dissolved into nothing.
“This changes nothing,” Gabriel said across the field to him. “Come here.”
Bash did, started the walk just like normal with no goal or aspiration other than the one that Gabriel had given him. It was a like a man walking home after a long day at work and he was eager to get there.
His head stayed straight, his arms barely swayed, and despite the fatigue that was attacking his body like a disease, he didn't’ really need to pay all that much attention to it. It was over, all that was passed, it was part of something that didn't matter.
When he got to the balcony, walking up the stairs. “We’re going to go see your friend,” Gabriel says to Bash. “Where’s your gun.”
Bash pulled it out obediently to show it, Gabriel never asked for it so it stayed in his hands.
“Let’s go.”
Bash was walked back into the house, Gabriel at his side, Bash looking around trying to hunt around for anything that came near to Gabriel, he felt protective of him, eager to please him and he wanted to use his gun because he knew that Gabriel had expressed an interest in it.
They walked down three separate levels of the mansion, down to the sub-basements below until they came into the room where Arinna was. The secon
d he saw her, he wasn’t happy that she was alive, he was angry that she was, his body quickly filled with a hatred that seemed to be rotting him from the inside out.
The scene ahead of him was simple, it was her standing there over the mutilated remains of the wraith, the thing that Gabriel loved, the thing that he was going to use to free Lucifer.
“I want that gun trained at her head,” Gabriel ordered and Bash brought the weapon up and aimed it just as he had been told too.
There was something in him now that wanted to stop. That he would give anything to not be in this situation, to turn the gun on the person that was in structuring him. He didn't’ want to aim this gun at her, he cared for her, he didn't’ want her dead but he couldn't stop it. No matter how hard he tried to persuade his hand to lower, to drop the gun to the floor, no impulse in his body listened to him because it was already locked on a different directive. Some other part of his brain that was stronger than the rest had insisted that this was what it wanted and it did that instead of listening to any other part.
Bash watched as Gabriel walked out ahead of him. “I think we were here before,” he said to her.
“I think we were too,” she said back, her eyes on the remains of the wraiths corpse.
“You were the strongest of all of them, the one that should’ve been at my side.”
Bash could see her, covered in blood and sweat and bruises all over her face and body. The blood that lined the inside of her lips, the soft swelling that was starting to puff up on her face and jaw.
“You wanted me as your slave,” she said. “You took me as your slave and for two years I did what you wanted.”
“What an amazing two years that was,” he says back.
“It nearly made me kill myself,” she said in reply.
“I could've made you kill yourself if I wanted too.”
“You could’ve then, you can’t now.”
Bash watched a filthy look crawl across Gabriel’s face. “Sebastian,” he called out.