“One of Tau’s army,” Reed says, diving lower to avoid the broadsword that just about cut us both in half. Chaos has erupted in the air as both fallen and divine angels are flying around, engaging in a fierce battle.
Glancing behind us, I watch as Valerius shapeshifts again, growing wings from his arms that resemble a pterodactyl’s while he has reduced in size to roughly fifteen feet in length.
“HE’S BEHIND US!” I shout a warning to Reed, but Valerius dives at us, striking Reed in the back with his fists and forcing us to spiral toward the ground below. Managing to gain control from the spin, Reed spreads his wings wide, gliding between buildings in a zigzag pattern as we near the snow-covered street below.
Valerius swipes at Reed’s legs, causing him to lose balance. We plow into the ground, tumbling and skidding on the snow and ice. Landing softly beside me, the Ifrit hauls me to my feet by the scruff of my sweater, pulling me up to his eye level.
Reed picks up a parked car and swings it into Valerius’ back. The roof of the car caves in around the Ifrit, but the monster barely notices the impact. Shrugging off the car, the Ifrit turns and breathes a stream of scorching breath at Reed, burning his chest and searing his left forearm as he brings it up to shield his face. Reed doesn’t make a sound, even when I know he’s in agony. Instead, he rushes the Ifrit, skewering it with a steal rod from the smashed car.
Valerius merely looks annoyed but little else. The monster ignores Reed, instead turning back to me. “Did you enjoy Valentines death?” he hisses, while holding me up a little higher with his arm extended in front of him. Reaching back with his other hand, he plucks Reed from his back, dangling Reed by his neck next to me.
“Is this your aspire?” he asks me of Reed, his eyebrows drawing together in a sneer. Desperately trying to pull energy to me, I feel it burn. “Answer me!” Valerius demands between gritted teeth, while shaking me roughly.
“YES!” I shout at him. “He’s my aspire!”
Scowling at me, he growls, “Then he will be payment for Valentine.”
Releasing pent-up energy, I whisper, “Ice like fire, cold and true, Freeze him quickly, through and through…”
Cracking ice streams up Valerius’ forearm, stiffening him and covering him, so that in seconds, he resembles a fifteen-foot ice sculpture. Reed smashes his fists into Valerius’ hand, cracking the ifrit’s limb off. He drops to the ground, landing on his feet. Using his fist, Reed shatters Valerius’ snowy hand that still has me suspended in air, breaking it off. When he catches me in his arms, he holds me to him in a death grip.
“You can kill Ifrits, Evie,” Reed whispers in my ear, sounding like he’s in awe. “That was a test. The Fallen wanted to see if you could kill it.”
“You don’t think the Ifrit was sent by Brennus?” I reply, feeling like I might go into shock at any second. Pulling back from me gently, Reed lets me go.
“I think Brennus is losing control. The Fallen want you, too, and he’s not here to stop them. Larken and Hail, the two Fallen back at the bar, were attempting to capture you before Brennus arrives. They may also be preventing him from getting here,” Reed says as he looks around, surveying the area.
He trudges through the snow to the smashed car and plucks a steel bar from it. Reed uses the bar like a bat, swinging it at the icy statue of Valerius and shattering him into a thousand pieces of ice.
“Brennus does want ye, Genevieve, and we’re right: da only ting ye can trust about aingeals is dat dey’ll turn on ye whenever it suits dem.” Lonan says from near the street lamp twenty yards away. “Brennus is obsessed wi’ ye. He was willing ta take dis risk ta get ye away from yer aingeal—ta kill him and erase him from yer heart.” Turning to Reed, Lonan says, “He wants ye dead,” his gaze shifts back to me, “and he wants his queen. We’re ready ta see whah all da fuss is about…give us a taste of ye and we’ll let ye be one of us again.”
Stepping in front of me, Reed blocks me with his body from Lonan, Cavan, and Alastar. Click, click, click, Lonan and the fellas engage their fangs.
“Don’t be a crackhead, Lonan,” I plead with him as they spread out in front of us.
Reed reaches for a wrought-iron streetlamp and tears it out of the ground. Giant flashes of light and the sizzle and pop of electricity emits from the base of the lamp as the light extinguishes. He swings it effortlessly in front of us, grinning deviously at Lonan. Lonan grins back, pulling a whistle from his pocket and bringing it to his lips, he blows it loudly. Goose bumps form on my arms as Reed straightens and lowers his streetlamp. In moments, fallen Power angels and Archangels begin landing on parked cars and under shop eaves all around us.
My racing heart beats faster than the thoughts in my head as we’re becoming outnumbered by more than a hundred-to-one in the space of ten seconds. Feeling my world spinning out of control, I go down on one knee, watching as a bright-white clone of myself pushes its way out of my body. Seeing it fly from me, I’m shocked by the direction it takes…it goes straight up.
Reed and I back up slowly, sheltered by the dark, closed shop front behind us. Lonan raises his hand, melting all of the snow between us. A brazen fallen Power angel with dark, falcon-like wings approaches us first. Pulling energy to me, I whisper hushed words while directing my spell at him.
As my magic hits him, he shrinks in his clothing; his shoes flop off him and his sweater becomes like a dress as he reduces in size to no taller than a garden gnome. He looks at me in panic before Reed swings the streetlamp at him, connecting with his abdomen and swatting him out of the park.
Growls of disbelief come from the Fallen who witness my magic work on an angel. I turn on them, throwing energy and whispering the “inside out” spell I’d made up myself. I hit several of them with it, causing the fallen angels to drop to their knees as they begin heaving their insides out through their mouths.
But, seconds after that, a fallen Archangel turns his automatic weapon on Reed and me, spraying the air with bullets. Blocking the projectiles from me, Reed takes several in the chest, stumbling back and falling to the ground in agony. He could’ve shapeshifted to avoid the bullets, but he didn’t because I would’ve been hit. He took them for me. Panic steals my breath, seeing Reed struggle to rise to his knee.
As I look up, the Archangel aims his gun at me; his eyes squint in satisfaction when two bullets rip through my right side just below my ribs. The impact propels me backward and I expel most of the energy I was holding. With the little I now have, I manage to raise my hand and hurriedly erect a magical wall between my enemies and us, which stops the bullets like flies on a windscreen.
Gasping and holding my side, I reel backward, struggling to keep on my feet in front of Reed. Warm blood seeps between my fingers, bringing heat to their numbness.
Several Fallen advance on us immediately, but they find that they can only get within a few feet of me before they run into the wall I have created with my spell. A few fallen angels pace around us, looking for a weakness in my defenses. I growl at them, hoping to deter them.
Then, my skin prickles with quivering energy as Lonan tries to pull energy away from me in an attempt to dissolve my sanctuary. Quickly, my eyes go to his while I pant and fight for every ounce of energy to keep them all at bay.
Reed stumbles and falls beside me and then rises to his feet. His blood oozes out of his chest from the myriad of bullets he has taken for me. Seeing him struggle to stay on his feet, something within me feels like it’s tearing—frayed by the sight of Reed in pain. I straighten up slowly, while this thread of pain inside of me grows more and more taut. Then, when this pain reaches an excruciating level, the thread snaps; it feels as if my heart is being torn from my chest. Without thinking, I find that I no longer need to strain for energy, it comes to me willingly. I don’t whisper rhyming words, because I don’t need them, they’re just words, meaningless in this visceral state. Instead, I exude pure, raw, human rage.
A bright beam of light, intense enough to bleach the sky white,
rolls out from my hands, creating a white-hot path straight through the Fallen and Gancanagh. It incinerates some of them so completely that all that is left behind are shadows of their corpses on the ground. Seeing ashy flakes of charred Angels billow like clouds and mix with the newly fallen snow, I sway on my feet. Before I realize what is happening, I’m on the ground.
Cold drifts of snow collect near my cheek as Reed pulls my battered body toward him. Cradling my head on his lap, he strokes my hair as he leans against the door of a Polish shop. The flutter of more wings surrounds our position. I can’t lift my head to see the angels. Reed growls a warning to someone approaching us, but all I see are his black boots and the bottom portion of his crimson wings.
A deep, masculine voice says, “Evie sent her messenger to me…she is my daughter.”
CHAPTER 12
Dreamy Drew
My warm breath floats in swirls like smoke around me, mingling with the icy air. Drip...drip...blood falls from my fingertips to spatter the snow covering the frigid sidewalk by my feet. The Crestwood clock tower calls out a warning to me in the darkness: BONG...BONG...BONG...it intones, but it sounds more like: RUN...RUN...RUN...
Quiet voices, speaking in musical, lilting tones, interrupt the vicious death knell tolling in my dream. Waking with a lurch from the nightmare, I clutch my side, while trying to get on my feet to defend myself. A strong hand pushes me back down, forcing a growl out of me. Grasping the restraining hand, I try hard to focus my blurry vision on the faces above me.
“Get off,” my lips curl in a snarl, while I push the hand away again. Unfamiliar faces of angels with searching eyes hover over me. Arching my back, I look around at the room behind me. It’s a vaulting, ancient brick room decorated with medieval armor and tunics with black crosses—some sort of medieval tower.
The hand on me slowly lifts, allowing me to slip off a table and get to my feet. Stumbling back and coming up against a cold wall, I scan the rounded, medieval windows lining it. My eyes shift back to the five Powers in front of me and they narrow at the angel holding a scalpel. Killing scenarios pulse through my mind and now I just have to figure out which way I want to fight.
One of the angels speaks to me again in his musical language.
My head snaps in his direction and as my wings spread wide. I whisper, “This isn’t a sing-a-long…I’m about to kill you…” Picking up a wooden chair, I smash it against the wall, before grasping splintered wood in each hand. As I adopt a defensive posture, they read it, looking at each other with uncomfortable expressions.
“Where am I? Where’s Reed?” I demand, raising my hand like I’ll stake the first one that moves, which I will. I inch toward the door on the far wall and see them watch with perplexed expressions.
“You are in the Brama Mostowa. You must lay back,” one of the Powers answers, speaking in a soft tone, while gesturing toward the table again.
“Are we in Crestwood?” I ask. I have to make sure, even though the architecture still looks like Poland.
The angel frowns. “No. Torun,” he states.
My eyes slip out of focus again. Reaching a hand up to rub my eyes, I notice that my palm is burned, like I touched it to fire. Disoriented, I try to remember how I got here and the nightmare I just had. The quiet voices of the angels speak to each other again in their language, causing me to stiffen.
“Whatever you have in mind…don’t,” I warn them, seeing they have a plan.
“You have broken ribs and you have been shot,” the Power with the scalpel says, gesturing at me with the blade. “You will tear open what I have labored to mend.”
Reaching down, my fingers brush over the gauzy bandages that cover my breasts and torso. Realizing I’m only wearing bandages and underwear, I growl, “I hate waking up half-naked.”
This elicits a smile from one of them. Throwing one of my stakes at him, he catches it easily, but his eyebrows knit together. “Where’s Reed?” I repeat in a stern tone, still brandishing the other stake.
“Fighting,” the one with the scalpel replies, before setting it on the table. He flicks his wrist toward the wall behind me. Inching toward the windows again, I peer out. We’re near the river, in one of the tower gates that line the city. I can just make out the medieval streets of Torun because of the snow.
My fingers curl on the window frame while snow-covered angels take off and land on the ancient fortification above. Flashes of light burst over the city, but they’re obscured by the blizzard. Smelling the distant magic on the wind, my pulse beats painfully in my chest. Pushing away from the wall, I streak toward the door.
Wrenching it open, I plow into the angel on the other side. Phaedrus’ arms wrap around me, clutching me to him. Feeling the downy feathers that cover the mantel of his owlish wings, my eyes open wide.
“Phaedrus! What are you…” I trail off when he pulls back from me and holds up some clothes. “I LOVE YOU!” I exclaim.
“I know,” he says, his black eyes staring into mine and I remember that he can hear my thoughts. “It’s good to see you,” he adds in a quiet tone. He holds up his hand to the angels behind me. “I will speak to her.”
Reading his face, I can tell that he’s remembering the last time we were together. It was on the road outside the church where the Ifrit, Valentine, held Russell and Brownie captive. Phaedrus had to leave me there as I went into the church alone. The guilt of that moment is still there, in his expression. He’s a Virtue angel, he performs miracles, but that mission was for me alone and it’s still haunting him.
Putting my arms gingerly around him, I whisper in his ear, “You always appear when I need you.” I let go of him and start to shrug into the clothes he has given me. “Were you sent here for me?” I ask, wondering if I’m his miracle mission again.
“Yes...of a sort,” Phaedrus says. “I came with Tau.”
“Tau? He’s here?” I mumble, feeling a lump immediately lodge in my throat.
“He brought you in from the street, but then he went back out to fight. Reed went with him,” he explains.
I panic, “But, Reed was shot—”
“It takes more than bullets to render a Power unfit to fight,” Phaedrus says in a soothing tone.
“Russell and Anya?” I ask with fear building in me.
“Reed went out to search for them,” he explains.
“Do you know where they are?” I ask urgently.
“No, but you do,” he counters, taking my hand. I cringe in pain because it’s still blistered with burns.
“Evie!” Phaedrus says, seeing my hands. “What—”
“I…think I burned them when I killed Lonan,” I reply grimly. I killed Lonan—turned him to dust—don’t think about that now, I warn myself.
With his hand on my shoulder, Phaedrus turns me down the hallway, leading me to another room. It’s somebody’s office with a desk and a few chairs. Phaedrus goes to a beautifully ornate rug spread out on the ancient floor and sits. Following him, I sit cross-legged, facing him stiffly because my side is aching.
“We need a controlled clone,” Phaedrus advises me. “One that will follow Russell’s energy to him and then be able to ask him his position so that you can send a different clone to Reed and direct him there.”
“You taught Russell to do this…when I was with the Gancanagh?” I ask, trying to breathe steadily so that I can fight the adrenaline that just flashed into my system. I need to remain calm.
“I helped,” Phaedrus replies in his modest way.
“Okay…so a clone,” I murmur, taking another cleansing breath. “I should have practiced these more.”
“Survival was more important,” Phaedrus replies, “and you’re weak right now so you’ll need to concentrate.”
Attempting to reach a meditative state, the first clone that juts from me is gone in an instant. Brushing my hair back from my face, I try again.
Another clone appears from me, bathed for a moment in a golden glow. Sweat breaks out on my forehead as I
attempt to control her. I fly her through the wall of the tower gate and into the cold, softly illuminated city streets beyond. Her wings spread out as she soars, moving faster than I could in my body because there are restrictions on me: gravity, mass, force, to name a few.
As I gaze around through her eyes, it’s like a lesson in quantum physics. Everything is energy and everyone and everything has its own signature and way to manipulate it, but it’s all basically connected. In those terms, it’s not too surprising that my clone knows exactly where Russell is on this vast tree of one-consciousness.
One-consciousness aside, my presence is agitating the Fallen. My clone is being noticed, and I’ve picked up a couple of trailers violently pursuing me. Slowing for a moment, I hover in one spot, letting them catch me. I don’t want to lead them to Russell.
Not having the same need to flap my wings as they do, I seem to be disturbing the fallen Archangel with the streaming dark hair as a frown twists his lovely face. The Power with him swings his sword at me, hacking through the air that my image occupies.
“Give up,” I say to the fallen Power, watching him continue to thrust his sword at me with the same result.
But, it is the fallen Archangel that speaks to me, “How do I surrender?” he asks.
The earnestness of his question makes my eyes snap to his face.
“Please…” he trails off, his expression tortured.
“I don’t know,” I reply, feeling tears prickling my eyes in response to the sadness I see in him.
“I want to go home,” he admits with the kind of weariness that I know well.
“Me, too,” I breathe.
When the fallen Power angel swings his sword at me again, this fallen Archangel with the sad eyes defends me. He uses his sword to hack the other’s head clean off his body. A spray of blood slips through me as the dead angel’s body freefalls away toward the ground in what seems like slow motion.
Howling wind and snow blow the Archangel’s hair back as I stare into his eyes. I see something I’ve never seen in one of them before: regret. “Tell me how I’m to submit,” he begs me, his face awash with pain as he searches my image for answers.
Incendiary (The Premonition Series (Volume 4)) Page 17
