by Lan Chan
“Dammit!” Winnie said. “He’s coming! What do we do?” and then, “What the heck is happening?”
Another explosion shook the courtyard. Harlow shrieked. My eyes flicked open to the sight of Kai, black-eyed now, charging towards me. A second before he could have smashed right through the soul circle, something heavy collided with him and pushed him aside. And then I lay back in relief as shifters, Fae, and para-humans raced through the hole in the force field that Max had torn open.
50
Max and Kai rolled for a moment and then came to an abrupt stop. Max’s golden skin rippled with the instinct to shift, but the sight of his best friend short circuited some of Max’s thought process. I didn’t blame him. The dead stare that Kai gave off was enough to make me want to burst into tears. Those eyes that had always been watchful and kind were now devoid of all emotion.
I knew Max understood that the thing in front of him didn’t recognise him, but inside the mating link, I felt the fragile heart of a nine-year-old boy stutter as he grasped for something to save his best friend.
But the moment Kai came at him, Max’s rage kicked in and they went for it. Always before when they had fought, both of them held back out of love. Now Kai was a wraith without emotion and Max was overwhelmed with it. They traded deadly blows that broke skin and drew blood. When Kai swung his fist at Max’s head, I winced and curled into a ball. I wasn’t even sure how Max evaded it and slammed his knee into Kai’s gut, but then Harlow was in front of me.
All around us, supernaturals were fighting with undead. Giselle broke the circle and Harlow helped me to my feet. “Where are the necromancers?” I hissed. A quick scan of the field yielded no results.
“They disappeared when the wards were broken,” Harlow said. I didn’t like the sound of that one bit.
Somebody else grabbed me and I looked up into Noah’s yellow-eyed gaze. “How,” he said, his mouth full of sharpened teeth, “do you manage to always get stuck in the middle of things?”
“Lucky, I guess.” I allowed him to help me over to the outer wall of the ballroom where Doctor Thorne was administering aid. Noah sat me down as other supernaturals picked up the Sisterhood.
My attention would not waver from where Max and Kai were still beating the living daylights out of each other. A year ago, Max would have been at a disadvantage because he couldn’t teleport or fly. But something had gone terribly strange since his ascension and now he rippled with a kind of unearthly stamina. The problem was, Kai didn’t have a soul. No matter how many time Max beat him down, Kai would get back up, until his body was broken. And in his heart, Max wouldn’t be able to kill Kai. Unless he posed a direct threat to me, Max would just keep beating him down until eventually, Max would tire.
A groan drew my attention away from them momentarily. Basil rubbed at the side of his head as he staggered into consciousness. He blinked a few times and his face slackened at the sight in front of us.
Max threw a deafening blow at Kai that had the crack of bones splintering across the courtyard. When Kai opened his mouth and roared, another ball of golden hair shot out from the side and impaled him through the chest. Charles sank the demon blade in so deep it came out of Kai’s back.
The smell of charred flesh filled my nose. Kai’s wound began to smoke.
I screamed. So did half the courtyard. Despite the fact that he no longer possessed a soul, that was still Malachi Pendragon with a demon blade lodged in his chest. I had thought the first time I’d see that would be when Lex lost her tempter with him.
Ignoring the distressed wails around him, Charles steamrolled forward until he hit the brick wall of the ballroom. He head-butted Kai as he sank the demon blade into the brick. When he jumped back, reluctantly letting go of the demon blade for the first time in months, Basil sprang to his feet. So did the professors who were now also conscious.
They darted around Kai and began to draw Angelical wards in the brick, in the ground around him, and in the air. An arcane circle in purple, orange, and gold flared in the brick behind Kai’s back. Their magic hummed with a simmering strength that laced around Kai’s body. Threads shackled him by the forehead, by his throat, and all the way down his body so that he was basically a magical mummy.
Somebody pressed a glass to my hand. I looked over to find Sandra squatting in front of me. She lifted up my eyelid with her thumb. “Drink.”
I did so without considering what was in the glass. Luckily it was ambrosia. The Sisterhood were doing the same. Doctor Thorne was patching up Matilda’s hand. A semi-circle of para-human guards were now scattered around us. Some of them had wings, others were decorated all over with scales that reflected the red of the sun. All of them were buck naked. I really couldn’t complain about modesty in the middle of a war but stored it up for later. Lex would get a kick out of it. The moment I thought about her, I knew my mind was trying to latch on to pleasant things to stop myself from drowning in hysteria.
But it was impossible not to want to throw up every second I watched Max clawing his way through the ranks of the undead that just kept coming.
A wall of Fae stood behind the fighters. Their arrows were deadly accurate, but even then, the numbers of undead were not being whittled down. What they needed to do was locate the necromancers. The undead would just keep coming until their masters were taken out.
Our own high-magic users who had some skill at necromancy were trying to stem the tide of the undead. They patched the ground up to attempt to stop the undead from coming. I saw Professor Flint’s grey magic shimmering over the ground while it bulged and undulated.
For a second, I thought it really was too bad that we hadn’t tried to cultivate this field of study. I knew why it was forbidden, but right now, it would have been nice to have some sinister-magic users on our side. It was like I had selective memory and forgot about the things Hugh and Agatha had done. I rationalised it as fear beginning to take over.
I was just about to see if I could do something to help when a loud crunching sound filled the air. The fighting paused for a fraction of a second. I kidded myself that it might be something in our favour. What it turned out to be was the sound of undead teeth and hands as they sacrificed themselves to break the blood wards that had been set up.
The warding was steeped in words of light and Angelical. The first undead that went anywhere near them were instantly disintegrated. But the magic wouldn’t last forever and there were undead to spare. As their bodies turned to ashes, more undead clambered forward until the magic was clearly slowing in its backlash. The first undead to reach the wards intact managed to claw at them before being destroyed. The next ones got a bit farther. The ones after that farther still. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the wards broke and the malachim would be upon us.
In the distance, the red sky was becoming blotted out by a wall of flickering darkness. Somebody swore. Or it might have been so much swearing that my distracted mind couldn’t take the input right now.
My heart was in tatters as Max reached the front of where the undead had gathered. Charles was close behind on his heels. The Nephilim were a blaze of glory in the sky, their angel blades flashing at the ready. When the first blood ward broke, the malachim surged forward, only to be torn to pieces by Max and Charles.
All around us, the high-magic users who were alert enough to do magic were pushing themselves to their feet. Giselle hissed as she did the same. The Evil Three were huddled in a group on the ground close by. They shuffled until they sat in a formation where their knees formed a triangle. When they slapped their hands on the ground in front of them, a white barrier appeared that cut the malachim off in their tracks.
“It won’t hold for long,” Harlow gritted out. Beads of sweat were already pouring down her temple. Blood trickled out of the corner of Winnie’s mouth.
The keening of the undead reached a critical mass. No matter how quickly the high-magic users attempted to repair the wards, the undead wouldn’t be dissuaded. The wards and the
soul barrier broke at the same time. It started as small cracks that caused hairline fractures to run across the barrier. I could feel the collective inhale of the supernaturals close to it as they braced themselves for the assault. In the air, Astrid’s white wings were unstable and still bandaged, but stubbornness radiated from her.
If Astrid was here then...I scanned the perimeter around her. Sure enough, I spotted that idiot vampire not far away. He had a circle of undead standing protectively around him. Andrei never did the dirty work unless he had to.
“Work smarter,” he always said to me. He was just lucky that his compulsion was so strong. That one time he had drunk Lex’s blood had done something irrevocable to his strength. And I suspected he might have snuck a drop or two from the vials when I wasn’t aware. Right now, it didn’t matter.
I felt the lurch of blood alchemy when the barriers crumbled to dust and the blood blade appeared in Andrei’s hand. The first malachim to come near him was speared in the chest, its body flickering to become corporeal. A flash of silver sliced through its neck a second later as Astrid dived and attacked.
They followed a similar pattern repeatedly. Andrei struck and Astrid finished them off. There was a quiet symmetry in it that made me think they weren’t a lost cause.
All of that was shunted to the side when I heard a furious roar from farther afield. Charles was grappling with a malachim. When he was down, a dozen undead swarmed him. Without the demon blade, he had to rely on his as-yet-unascended magic and his fists. He was doing very well for himself until another malachim floated up and swiped its claws all the way through his chest.
It got halfway through before Max nabbed the malachim and yanked it away, allowing Charles a second to breathe and shake the undead off him. The world fell to pieces around me but all I could see was Max holding the malachim by the throat. His eyes were a tear-inducing white. I wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but the lion was no longer in control.
Max’s face contorted a second before he flexed his grip and snapped the malachim’s neck. A jerk with his other hand and he tore the malachim’s head right off its neck. In the second before the malachim was completely ripped apart, Max’s face softened into an expression of sorrow. Haniel grieved for his fallen friends.
Through the mating link, I felt Max’s understanding. Haniel had tried to reach out but the malachim was too far gone. Too twisted to be saved. The sorrow that sliced through me didn’t know where to go. On the one hand, the malachim were hurting the supernaturals. I sat shuddering as angel blades winked out one after another as their wielders died. On the other hand, the malachim were monstrous echoes of their true selves. It was a hard one to call.
On and on again, Max sliced through the ranks of the malachim. With Haniel’s presence inside him, he gave each malachim a second of mercy before breaking them apart. Every time he did it, a flash of regret stabbed him in the heart.
But he kept going.
As they all did. Fear was the only thing holding me together at this point. I felt ill sitting here protected while Harris and Jeremiah, Noah and Amy threw themselves at the undead, even though they were too well trained not to know the inevitable outcome of this fight. It didn’t hold them back one bit.
While adult mages were still feeling the effects of the soul bomb, the younger ones were substituting for them. Luther levitated in the air enclosed in a ball of fire that burned blue in the core and flickered out in licks of red and orange. He snapped his fingers and fire engulfed a group of undead. They screamed through broken and decomposed throats before crumbling to ash.
The first moment I got an inkling that something was wrong was when the goblin guard closest to me squeezed his puce buttcheeks tight. A murmur rippled through the battlefield. Standing to get a better look, my whole body locked. Beyond the buildings in the entertainment area, the spires of Seraphina rose into the air. To the left of that were a huddle of beautiful marble buildings surrounded by evergreen garden beds that were always blooming with spring flowers. Sanctuary.
That was where the sound was coming from. I raised myself on my toes but couldn’t see over much. “What’s going on?” Jacqueline shouted. The Nephilim were too far away but one of the winged para-humans took flight. He levitated above us. The longer he hung there, the more speckled with brown his mint-green skin became.
“The necromancers,” he said. “They’re gathered at the front of Sanctuary.”
“Why?” Basil asked.
Almost as if in response, the building exploded.
51
Every Nephilim in sight teleported from the field of battle. They had been conditioned from birth to protect Sanctuary at all cost. Basil let forth with the string of curses.
Professor Mortimer turned to him. “You don’t think?”
Before Basil could voice the thing that was making my whole body wrack with fear, the flying para-human shouted. “Black light is coiling around the necromancers! They’re doing some sort of ritual and –”
His voice cut out as a wave of sinister magic ripped through Seraphina. I heard Astrid screaming so loudly it was like she was right beside my ear. The Nephilim that had been floating high up enough in the sky for me to view went crashing down to earth. All around us, every single one of the Nephilim lost consciousness.
All except Kai who was still groaning and snapping his teeth trying to get out of the hold of the magic circle.
All the other supernaturals raced forward. Max was a golden streak across the courtyard. He dove to catch Astrid. Other shifters changed and caught hold of more Nephilim. The Fae sprouted wings and held on to as many Nephilim as they could.
I ran behind all of them, too slow to help but unable to stop myself all the same.
“Why?” Professor McKenna asked. She was inspecting the field. “Why just the Nephilim?”
All bombs that had been set off thus far did not discern between the species. You would think that would have been a blessing, but the more she saw, the tighter her brow furrowed.
The first howl that went up was a warning. It cut out mid-way as though caught by surprise. Over the heads of all the supernaturals, I saw a figure throw off the rubble of Sanctuary and walk forward. Raphael.
For a second, my heart soared. And then I took in his less-than-graceful gait. His cloak that hung around him in tatters that didn’t move with an ethereal breeze. But worst of all, I saw his eyes that had always looked at me and been so soft and gentle. They were now soaked in the darkness of the Abyss. Apollyon.
The air was a taut bubble unable to burst. More than one howl became lodged in the throat of the shifters as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing. When three other eight-foot-tall figures materialised in front of Raphael, my legs almost buckled in relief. The reality of it then slammed into me like a freight train. None of the other seraphim were glowing either. Michael’s sword was limp in his hands. It was almost as though his strength had been whittled down in the same way as the Nephilim.
Cassie grabbed me as I fell. I held on to her hand because I could no longer comprehend what exactly was happening. Somebody sobbed close by.
“Brother,” Michael said, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Raphael’s head turned up, his smile chilled. “You are not my brother, Michael. You were the one who chained me to the Abyss.”
Despite his back bowing, Michael stood firm. “You know why it had to be so, Apollyon.”
Of all the things that were happening, I couldn’t get over the way Raphael’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. It felt too casual. Too mundane for a being of eternal grace.
“Just as you know why this has to be so,” Apollyon said.
Ariel tried to lift his sword. No seraph fire lit up its blade. Never before had I seen Raphael’s expression marred by anything but kindness. But the thing that crawled over his face was steeped in unyielding hatred. Apollyon flicked his hand and Ariel went crashing into the garden beds.
One of the para-humans in f
ront of me smacked himself in the head to dispel what he must have thought was an illusion. I didn’t quite believe it myself.
“How does it feel now to be chained?” Apollyon asked. “To be handicapped and unable to perform the thing you were made for? Watch as I destroy the world you attempted to save.”
As he got closer, his steps unhurried, the demons still on the field shrank down to the ground in supplication. The necromancers did the same. Like the malachim, Apollyon had once been an angel. He was only one step below Lucifer. And he was walking right at us.
The supernaturals moved to protect the fallen Nephilim. Something about the situation had them on edge.
Without knowing why, I grabbed the Ley sight and threw it around me. There was a reason I never did this in the presence of the seraphim. It was hard enough not to be blinded when Lex was around. I was bracing for an assault of my third eye, when I blinked at how dull their auras were. I couldn’t even see any of Raphael outside of the depthless black that belonged to Apollyon.
My sight couldn’t see much beyond the bonds of love, but what I saw made me inhale. All of the bonds around the other seraphim were waning. They were barely visible, and I had to boost the sight with alchemy and kitchen magic in order to make them out. When I feathered my gaze over Raphael, I saw only a single bond that was a breath away from snapping. There was also something else shrouded in the thick smog of the Hell dimension, but no matter how hard I tried to amplify it, I couldn’t see past the feeling that there might be another thread there.
The mystery was shunted back as Raphael dematerialised in front of the supernaturals and reappeared so close I wanted to run away. Cassie’s body was a comforting heat around me, but she was shaking too. The glowing fire that she had tried to contain before was leaking out of her pores again. Her muscles tensed when we saw at the same time that Raphael was making his way towards where Kai was stuck like one of those petrified insects on corkboards for display.
