by Hanna Peach
* * *
Jordan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He felt sticky blood smear across his forehead. His right arm was starting to show signs of fatigue from fighting with his sword and his magic was drained. The only thing keeping him going was Cleo’s presence behind him. The air was filled with the rank stench of blood and spilled intestines. The clanging of swords around him was so loud, like mismatched bells. Across the valley and the mountains, the desert sand and patches of grass turned a sticky dark brown.
The last of the Seraphim from the three cities poured into the battle. The two sides were almost evenly matched now, the black against the white.
“Jordan,” Cleo cried, her voice breathy with exertion. “We can’t win.”
“We can. We’re evenly matched now.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Cleo let out a cry causing Jordan to turn his head. She was on her knees, a bright angry gash across her right arm, her sword lost to the earth somewhere. A Seraphim in black was towering over her, ready to cut her down with his sword.
Jordan unsheathed a dagger and threw it at her attacker. It struck him dead in his heart. He ran to her and held out a hand. She grabbed it and he helped her up. Their eyes locked. For a second the battle faded around them. She smiled and it filled his chest with warmth. How strange that he could find a heartbeat of happiness among all this bloodshed.
“Thanks.” She pulled her hand away to draw another sword and the moment was broken. They both turned back-to-back again to clash with oncoming attackers.
“We can win,” Jordan said. “We just have to keep fighting until Alyx defeats Michael and stops the Gate from being open.”
“And when she succeeds…how does she stop all of us from killing each other?”
A cold realization fell upon Jordan like a shroud. The two armies were evenly matched now. They would both just keep killing each other until there was no one left.
No one would win.
Chapter 39
We won, Alyx thought as she dropped the dagger, now with Michael’s blood on it. She swayed on her knees. She let her torso slump forward to the floor and her forehead fall onto the carpet, as if she were praying. Her body ached when she moved. She thought she might like to stay like this forever.
“Alyx,” yelled Sparrow. “The Gate!”
Alyx’s head snapped up. Israel’s blood had oozed around the engraving in the floor and now the two ends had met, completing the circle. An eerie light shone around the edge of the Gate as if it were a light slipping through the crack under a door.
The ground began to shake. The lanterns hanging from the ceiling began to rattle like bones. Pieces of grit and rock fell from the mosque ceiling and the air immediately smelled dusty. Hot air exploded up out of the Gate, ripping apart the entire ceiling of this mosque. Dust, sand and large pieces of plaster swirled around her. Above her the sky twinkled with stars. She saw the two armies pause collectively at the explosion.
The inner point of the circle engraving started falling away, revealing a black tunnel going deep into the ground. Michael’s arm fell into the hole, then his shoulder. He was going to fall into this Hell hole.
“The Amulet!” Alyx realized.
Alyx pushed herself up from the ground and launched towards Michael as his body tipped over the widening edge. Her hand found the leg of his pants just as his torso tipped in, his body hanging partially from the edge. She stared into the hole, a black and swirling portal extending right into Hell. In the distance she could see figures advancing.
Michael’s body was getting heavier as it was being pulled into the Gate. Alyx yanked him back with all her might and grabbed for the Amulet against his shirt. She caught it, the chain twisting painfully around her fingers. The weight of Michael’s body pulled against it. The chain snapped and his body slid into the abyss.
Alyx scrambled back from the widening hole. She shoved the cursed Amulet into her pocket. When this was all over she would find a way to destroy it. No one, not even she, could be trusted to use a power as great as this.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Alyx shuffled back from the edge. The hole widened until it reached the thick circle of Israel’s blood that flowed around and around the edge of the Gate like a circular river feeding itself. The Gate was fully open.
“How do I close the Gate?” she screamed at Israel over the noise of roaring that rose up from the smoking hole.
“You have to break the circle of blood,” he yelled back.
Alyx grabbed her fallen sword and flew to the edge of the portal. She fell to her knees and lifted the sword by its handle using both hands. She slammed it down into the stone across the edge of the circle as hard as she could, a scream tearing out of her mouth as she did.
The blood rushing around the circle sprayed up against the blade. Then it seemed to calm. It stopped rushing, its path now broken by the sword that stood across the engraving. The ground began to shake again, but this time the pieces of stone reassembled across the Gate as it closed up.
“It’s working,” Sparrow cried.
Through the closing hole Alyx could see the faces of approaching demons, their snarling, twisted features becoming clear. They ran towards the closing Gate, trying to get through before it shut.
But they were too far away. Thank God. Alyx didn’t think she could lift up another sword. Nor did she want to use the Amulet to command them. A demon got close, but only his clawed red hand made it through before the Gate closed with a bang, separating the hand from its owner forever.
The wind around them just dropped away. All of the dust and pieces of the destroyed mosque hung for a mere split second in the air before they rained to the ground in a wide circle.
* * *
Behind his permanent darkness, Israel heard the sound of metal biting into wood. He felt the ropes around his arms loosen and he slipped forward. He fell into Alyx’s arms and her scent enveloped him. He couldn’t help but smile. “It’s so good to see you again, Alyx.”
“Are you… Are you making jokes? At a time like this?”
“At a time like this, I think jokes are all that keep us from going mad.” He was blind and would always be blind. He would never get to look upon Alyx’s face again.
She lowered him down to the ground. “Sparrow,” he heard Alyx say, “help me bind his wounds.”
He heard tearing of cloth, then he felt fingers at his wrists. Israel lifted his head to look, out of habit more than anything. “Did you just tear off your clothes into strips?”
“Um, yes.”
Israel sighed as he lay back down, letting them work at his wrists and his head. “Oh to have sight again. Sparrow, make sure you don’t let your eyes stray where they aren’t supposed to.”
Israel felt the blood cease to flow from his veins. But he felt so very weak. A cry called from somewhere in the night and Israel remembered the war that had been raging around them. Horror seized him as he let the sounds of fighting and dying resonate in his ears. “What’s happening out there?” he asked.
“We can’t worry about that now.” Alyx’s voice was strained. “We need to get you out of here so you can rest and heal.”
“We can’t leave them. My father is out there somewhere fighting.” And Vix, Cleo…even Jordan, that obnoxious ass. “They don’t know Michael is dead. They don’t know they have no reason to fight anymore.”
“We… We can’t do anything for them.”
Israel knew she was right. But he had to see what was happening. He couldn’t slink away with his life and not face the sacrifices that were made so that he could be saved. If he couldn’t save them all, then at least he could honor their memories with an acknowledging look from him.
Israel went inside Alyx’s head to use her eyes. But what he saw wasn’t a sea of black and white matted with red. She had opened her Soulsight and was staring at a sea of souls, moving, shimmering, then fading as one by one the
y were extinguished.
They look like candlelights, Israel thought.
Candlelights.
A sudden realization struck him. All his lessons with the Elder with those damn candlelights…first the lessons on blowing them out, followed by more lessons on control and precision. He thought back to his final lessons where the seraph taught him to breathe into the flames…
That old mad seraph was really trying to guide him, more than he knew.
His aunt’s words came back to him. “Your mother chose to die so that you may live. So that you might save a race that would all but destroy themselves.” When he’d heard his auntie say this, he thought he was here to save the human race; after all, they were the ones that Michael was planning to exterminate. But Israel had been wrong. It wasn’t the human race that he had a chance to save.
The Prophecy had been convoluted. But it had been right. Israel did have the power to both destroy them by opening the Gate or to save them…
Israel knew what he had to do.
Chapter 40
Alyx, having slipped into Israel’s mind, saw what he meant to do at the same time.
“No,” she spoke, her voice trembling with horror. “You’re too weak. You can’t use that much magic right now. It’ll kill you.”
“It’s what I was born to do,” he said. “It’s why my mother sacrificed her life, so I could be born.”
“You are not sacrificing yourself.” Alyx gripped Israel’s shoulders so hard that her hands shook. “I didn’t come all this way to defeat Michael just to lose you.”
“And if I don’t? If I live and I let thousands of Seraphim die? If I waste this opportunity to show them what they can’t see? What will you think of me then?”
“You’ll be alive.”
“I’m mortal, angel. I’ll die one day.”
“I know.” Through their mental bond, Alyx shared with him her demon-induced vision where she watched Israel as an old man dying. “I was preparing myself for that. If I could live a full life with you, then maybe, maybe I could let you go. But…” she choked on a sob.
His hands came up to find her arms and hold her lightly. There was barely any strength left in him. “You have to do this with me, angel. I can’t do it without you.”
She knew what he needed from her and she wouldn’t. She could stop him from sacrificing himself. “I won’t do it.”
“Do you remember when you told me that you would do anything for me?”
For a moment she didn’t, but then the memory resurfaced. It had been the night before she left for Atlantis. It had been the last night they had spent together. “I love you. I love you so much. More than my own life. I would do anything for you.”
“I…remember.”
“Did you mean it?”
Alyx squeezed her eyes shut, hot tears pressing out from between her lids. She knew where he was going with this. “No. No. Killing you is not part of it.”
“You wouldn’t be killing me. I am offering them my life for theirs. It’s the right choice.”
Deep down, she knew it was. But she still couldn’t accept it. “It’s not fair! We didn’t get enough time together.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “Even if we had forever, it wouldn’t be long enough.”
“You would kill me too?”
He froze against her. “What are you talking about?” She had never told him about the fatal catch to their Guardian bond.
“It’s part of the Guardian bond. If you die, then…I die too.”
Israel was silent.
Alyx hated the selfish part of her for blurting this out aloud, for blackmailing Israel with her own death, a death she knew he could never be a part of.
“You never told me,” he said.
“I never wanted to burden you.”
He pulled her close and buried his chin in her neck. “You can’t die. I won’t let you,” he said fiercely. “Let them burn. Let all the world burn if only you get to live.”
Alyx felt the fight slipping from her bones; as it did, a shade lifted from her eyes. Suddenly she could see clearly. Here was a crossroads before two futures for the Seraphim: one that looked bleak but with Alyx and Israel still alive in it; the other, bright and full of hope but missing their presence.
She thought of the first possibility − of them both leaving here alive and getting to live a life together. A life, yes, but a life full of guilt, of all this potential unfulfilled, until finally, Israel would die a mortal death and she would be left without him.
But if they both chose the other path and gave up their lives, they could both go, wherever it was that souls go when the body has given up, together. Alyx thought of the thousands of souls around them and their potential, unknown to themselves and each other. She knew Israel was right in what he had to do…in what they had to do together.
There came a kind of peace over her. Where he went, she would follow. “We have to do it, Israel,” she said.
“No. You must live.”
“No. We can’t. You were right.”
“But you just−”
“Don’t you know it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind?” she joked on a sob. She opened up her understanding to him and he stilled.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s do it.”
“Together.”
Chapter 41
Through Alyx’s eyes Israel saw the ferocious battle still raging on pointlessly around them. Show me their souls, Alyx.
She opened up her Soulsight and his world burst into light. Through Alyx’s eyes he saw every Seraphim around him as who they are really were underneath, a soul of purest light. He felt a deep love rush up through him and become a part of him. He no longer felt pain in his body. No anger cloaked his heart or tainted his vision. It was the greatest power this universe would ever know.
Because Alyx was joined to him, she felt this too. They were part of one another now, a single breath of complete understanding.
He took all of this and he pushed it out into the air towards every single soul around him as the Elder had taught him. He didn’t extinguish their flames − although he knew his power would have let him do just that − but he “breathed” this into the very center of every single Seraphim across the valley.
All at once he heard a collective gasp. Immediately the clang of swords stopped and the valley grew quiet. Israel knew instantly that they could all see what he saw and feel what he felt. They all knew. The hush grew as each Seraphim, black or white, Castus and warrior, Society and FreeThinkers, saw each other, truly saw each other for the first time.
As the Seraphim stood in collective awe, Israel did one more thing. Using his magic like thousands of tiny fingers, he removed all of the white scarves and armbands, all the superficial marks that made them all “different”, and sent them all to the earth where they would lie in pools of blood to soak up the spilled life and turn red, a symbol of what their collective “blindness” cost them all.
A single thought echoed through the valley, a single thought across a sea of souls.
Look at us. We are all the same.
Chapter 42
We could only get here this way, Alyx thought as she gazed across the sky, souls hanging suspended like a thousand floating stars. Elder Michael was necessary. He was the reason we all collected together, either for him or against. He, in a weird way, allowed us to become unified.
She felt a strange snapping force. She catapulted out of Israel’s mind and all she was left with was the sensation of her own body, bruised and exhausted. She tried to touch his mind again. Israel?
But Israel didn’t answer.
Israel had slumped against her. Alyx pulled back from him so she could see his face. His lips had gone pale. His breaths were shallow and noisy. He had given away everything he had left. “I love you, angel,” he whispered to her. “In this life and the next.”
“I love you too.” In this life and the next. Alyx closed her mouth over his in their last k
iss on this Earth, tasting salt and copper. Their blood and tears were mixing together. Soon their souls, freed from these two bodies, would too.
She slipped her hand under his shirt to find his heart. She felt it slow under her fingers, then finally it beat its last beat, and all that was left was the echo of her own racing heart. She kissed the very last breath from him as his body slackened in her arms.
Around her a cheer rose up across the valley as the Seraphim discarded their swords, filing their hands with each other instead. It didn’t seem fair.
The Earth was saved. But she didn’t care. All she loved in this world was gone. She couldn’t wait to join him. She laid Israel’s head on the ground and lay alongside him, her head on his chest. In her nook. That very spot that she felt she had been carved out of.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Alyx closed her eyes and waited for the Guardian bond to take her too.
Chapter 43
“Alyx.” A male voice called her name. It was familiar. Was that Raphael? Or God? This must be Heaven.
Her eyes flicked open, struggling to adjust to the dim light. There was a figure standing before her. As the figure kneeled, he came into focus.
“Elder?” she said.
She could hear the sounds of singing and laughing around her. She could feel the throb of her aching body. And the stabbing empty echo of a true love lost in her broken heart.
Which meant she wasn’t dead.
She pushed herself up from Israel’s chest and looked down at him. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. Why wasn’t she dead?
Her mind flung itself along an endless eternal life without Israel. Every minute would be spent missing him and everything she did would just be a distraction from remembering how much she wished he was with her. This forever without him snapped back into her body, lashing her with anguish.