“That’s not true,” Gabriel said more to himself than anyone else.
“What did you say?” Sodom asked with feigned indignation.
“That’s not true,” Gabriel said louder, looking at Sodom with fire in his eyes. “We haven’t always been on opposite sides; we were brothers once.”
“We are still brothers today,” Raphael said.
A dazed look came over Gabriel as if he was discovering or perhaps remembering something long forgotten. He looked up at Michael and Raphael. “I’m with you. Mostly because we are brothers but secondly, I really want to kill Sodom and end his incessant talking.”
Ardat floated back a few feet, stunned. Never had she thought she would witness the day when Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades would unite and fight as one.
She wasn’t the only one who was surprised. Sodom’s mouth dropped open for a moment before a sneer covered his lips. “Then you will all die together!”
A scream like nothing Ardat had ever heard came from somewhere deep inside Sodom as he yelled orders to his soldiers while closing the distance between himself and the Archangels. “Kill the minotaurs!”
---
Alan couldn’t believe his eyes. Michael was back, Gabriel had agreed to fight alongside them, and for whatever reason, Ardat had made a change to her wardrobe and decided to wear something other than black. But there was no time to dwell on these events.
Already a lightning bolt as long as a spear appeared out of nowhere as Michael flung his weapon at the oncoming Sodom. Gabriel’s twin fire swords erupted from his hands, and Raphael was racing to meet Sodom with his trident extended. More than anything, Alan wanted to take to the air and help defeat the tyrannical demon leader. However, Sodom’s order to his men to kill the captured minotaurs was still ringing in his ears.
“Kyle, Kassidy,” Alan tried screaming over the sound of two armies racing to clash once again. His voice failed to reach them, but they did turn to him for direction. High overhead and still on their steeds, Kyle and Kassidy looked down at Alan. Alan waved wildly with his hands toward the spot where the minotaurs were held captive and motioned for them to follow.
Alan thought he saw his actions rewarded with nods. Regardless if they heard him or not, Kyle and Kassidy swooped toward Alan to follow, Kassidy looking like she had ridden a gryphon her entire life and Kyle already half falling off his phoenix.
“Tracy—” Alan said, but before he could tell her his plan, she was already urging her warhorse forward.
Alan ran like he had never run before. Every second counted. Like a flash, he was among the enemy, slicing his way to where the minotaurs knelt, with his sword and both bright-blue wings.
Overhead, crackling and booming erupted from the battle between Sodom and the Archangels. Alan couldn’t afford a spare moment to look. In seconds, Alan had reached the minotaurs and by the state of things, not a moment too soon.
The minotaurs were made to kneel, bound both hand and hoof with coils of thick chains. A contingent of dark-clad soldiers missing arms and legs stood ready to fulfill their leader’s command.
Already, weapons were raised over the minotaurs’ heads. Alan crashed into the first soldier, who carried a heavy axe poised and ready to strike the neck of a bound minotaur.
Alan hit the soldier so hard, bones broke and the demon was thrown yards deeper into the ranks of Sodom’s forces. Alan didn’t wait to see what happened. Instead, he allowed himself to be encompassed by the feeling that marked him as the Horseman of War. He allowed himself to tap into the strength and lose himself on the battlefield. Tracy, Kassidy, Kyle, and even Alan’s dogs of war, who had returned from dropping off Danielle, joined him.
Alan knew his first priority had to be freeing the minotaurs and second dispatching their executioners. The fact that most of these soldiers were missing limbs crossed Alan’s mind as strange, but he had no time to stop and think of what this could mean.
Almost faster than he could think, his muscles reacted. Blow after blow either crippled an enemy or struck a chain holding a minotaur as prisoner. Frantically, Alan hacked away at various minotaur’s bonds, searching for Cratos’s familiar face. Finally, after releasing almost two dozen minotaurs, he found his friend.
Cratos was bleeding from a multitude of wounds, but that didn’t stop him from straining against his bonds. Deep, bleeding rivets were already gouged into his wrists and neck where the chains met his skin. Furious streams of steam shot from his nostrils.
“Easy there, Cratos, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Alan said, feeling a sense of relief at finding his friend.
“Little brother,” Cratos roared in greeting as Alan severed his chains with a single blow.
Cratos rose to his hooves, disregarding the need for a weapon or time to give his wounds attention. He searched the battlefield. “Queen Baymore, we must find her.”
“There,” Alan shouted as his eyes fell on Kassidy. She was breaking the chains off a minotaur, who much like Cratos, roared with the sense of freedom and wasted no time in entering the fight, regardless of her lack of weapon.
“Good,” Cratos huffed. “These enemies, little brother; they do not die like regular demons.”
To prove his statement, Cratos pushed Alan out of the way and lowered his horned head, impaling a charging demon through the chest with both horns. The demon continued to struggle even with Cratos’s horns protruding out of the back of its armor.
Cratos gave one colossal shake of his massive head and sent the writhing enemy flying through the air. It crashed with so much impact its body left an indention in the ground. As if nothing happened, the figure rose and charged forward again without the slightest hesitation or noise.
“What are they?” Alan asked, bringing both his wings together in front of him to block a battle hammer and send out a strike of his own, decapitating his enemy. He watched in horror as the headless body rose again, stumbling blindly.
“They are born out of some kind of dark magic,” Cratos said.
“Hey, any way to stop these zombies from getting back up?” Kassidy said, fighting her way to Alan and Cratos. Her gryphon soared above, grabbing enemies two at a time and dropping them from dizzying heights.
Alan raked his mind for a solution. Short of chopping them into bite-size pieces, he was coming up with a blank. Then the last person he would have thought to find a solution swooped down beside him.
Kyle landed with a less than graceful thud. “Hey, I think I know of a way we can defeat them.”
Upon hearing his proclamation, the phoenix he sat on shook furiously, making Kyle grab onto its crimson feathers to stay seated.
“Okay, okay,” Kyle said, pointing to his phoenix. “By ‘I’ I mean him.”
“You can hear your phoenix talk?” Alan asked, sidestepping another attack and blasting away his enemy with a forceful blow from his wings.
“Yeah,” Kyle said, jumping down from his steed’s back with a grimace. “His voice is in my head though. Wow, hearing myself say that out loud kind of makes me sound crazy.
Alan thought for a moment what it would be like hearing all three of his own dogs of war speak. As he saw them ripping apart the zombie soldiers with glee, he was glad he didn’t have to find out. That many voices in his head would be overwhelming.
“Well, enlighten us,” Kassidy said as she absorbed a blow, thanks to the protective shell of tiny yellow comets that shielded her from any attack.
“We need to gather them all together. I mean, we need them in one spot. The phoenix said he can do the rest,” Kyle said.
Alan caught Tracy’s eye to make sure she had heard the plan. The Horsewoman of Disease was still atop her unicorn, stabbing with her spear. She gave Alan a quick nod.
Likewise, Cratos lifted his head and shouted a deep rumbling bellow. All the minotaurs left in the fight swung their massive horned heads to receive direction. Without words, Cratos lifted a hand, pointed to an enemy, then closed his fist and slammed it into his opposite palm.
>
If we survive this, we need hand signals, Alan thought as he and the other Horsemen joined the minotaurs in gathering Sodom’s enchanted warriors and herding them into a mass of wriggling bodies. The task was not easy. Every time Alan threw one of the ebony-clad warriors into the area where they were all being amassed, it would stand back up and charge once again.
Alan was sweating under the strain of catching, then pushing back the never-ending force of enchanted soldiers. Kyle was right beside him, his phoenix nowhere in sight.
“How exactly is this supposed to work?” Alan asked, trying to sound optimistic.
“You’ll see,” Kyle said as he wiped perspiration from his own brow. His eyes lifted to the ominous sky above. “Here he comes now.”
Alan looked up but instead of a phoenix, all he saw was a comet. A ball of fire raced toward the withering mass of soldiers the Horsemen and minotaurs had caught and gathered together.
Alan did a double take when he realized that wasn’t a meteor; it was Kyle’s phoenix racing to the ground. “Can he survive that?” Alan asked.
“I don’t know,” Kyle said with a shrug. “I told him it was a bad idea but he insisted.”
Alan’s jaw dropped as the plummeting phoenix made contact with Sodom’s zombie soldiers with enough force to shake the ground itself. An inferno of flames erupted, consuming the horde of enemies. Alan and Kyle were thrown to the side with all the power a bomb would have, blasting them back in the aftermath of its detonation.
Smoke filled Alan’s lungs, making him cough violently. His head was buzzing and his eyes were streaming as he fought his way back to his feet.
“Are you okay?” Alan heard Kassidy’s voice as she grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.
Alan coughed again, forcing an answer out through dry lungs. “I think so.”
To his right, Tracy was helping Kyle. Alan turned his head back to the spot of the phoenix’s impact, where a crater now marked the spot. Around them, dark ash fell from the sky like confetti. All of Sodom’s zombie soldiers had been destroyed in the inferno.
Mintoaurs were struggling to their feet, roaring their approval. The war with Sodom himself and his normal demon force was still waging, but it was a small victory for the Light, nevertheless.
“He says he’s all right,” Kyle said, trying to clean his face from ash but only smearing it in worse. “Why did I have to get the suicidal one?”
No one had a chance to answer him. A rush of wings and a roar that made Alan’s heart vibrate in his chest filled the next few seconds. Rolf was walking toward the Horsemen through the smoke and ash, a large monster of a dragon following in his wake.
Chapter 20
“White is not a fitting color on you, Ardat,” Gabriel said as he rested and gathered his strength.
Michael and Rafael were both battling Sodom. Michael sent lightning bolts at his enemy like arrows from a bow, while Raphael got in close with his trident and tested for a hole in Sodom’s defenses.
“Shut up and fight,” Ardat said as she raced once again into the battle. Thus far, the Archangels and Ardat had held their own; however, Ardat had a sick sinking feeling Sodom was only toying with them.
Something between a sneer and a smile was plastered across his face as he maneuvered around attacks and sometimes allowed their strikes to hit with no apparent damage taken to himself.
With a motion of his hand, Sodom blasted Raphael back, striking him with a stream of dark energy. Michael’s lightning bolts were on target, but Sodom had erected some kind of shield around him that was absorbing the blows.
Ardat set her jaw and hammered Sodom with the strongest attack she could muster. It was a skill she had used many times before. Increasing the gravity around Sodom a thousand fold would send him careening straight into the ground below, forced down by an invisible crushing weight. To her horror, her attack did nothing except draw Sodom’s ghostly white eyes toward her.
“Ardat, Ardat, Ardat,” he repeated in a stern voice as he drifted toward her. “If I thought at all you would consider joining me, I would offer. However, I understand the bonds of love run deep between you and Michael.” A wicked gleam crossed his face. “That gives me an idea. You should have a front row seat to Michael’s death.”
Sodom extended his right hand in a vice-like grip as if he had Michael by the throat. To her horror, Michael began to choke and gasp under the act. Michael stopped hurling lightning bolts and instead lifted both hands to his throat and fought with the invisible hold.
Ardat screamed in rage. She looked to the ground below, gathering weapons of every kind; maces, swords, axes, clubs, whatever she could find.
In the brief moments it took her to marshal her attack, Gabriel appeared by Michael’s side. He extended both hands forward and let out a stream of channeled fire. At the same time, Raphael appeared and sent a similar force of blue energy at Sodom.
Michael gasped, sucking in long draughts of air. What his brothers were doing was enough to draw Sodom’s attention from his attack on Michael. Now their enemy was forced to concentrate his energy on holding the shield around him.
“We could use the help, if you’re ready,” Gabriel breathed. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”
Michael nodded as a small yellow ball of electric energy grew in his hands. When it was basketball size, he launched his attack, sending a constant force of lightning at Sodom.
There were so many colors and so much energy now hammering against Sodom’s shield, he was lost to sight. All Ardat could see was the spot of impact as the immeasurable amount of supernatural power battered against Sodom’s shield.
Squinting against the growing light that was coming from the point of impact, Ardat screamed as she sent her own attack into the mix. Hundreds of steal and iron weapons raced toward Sodom, striking with as much force as she could muster.
A flash of bright light blinded everyone on the battlefield as an explosion rocked the area. The Archangels and Ardat were heaving with exertion. Smoke and steam from so much energy in one concentrated location was obscuring their vision of where Sodom had just stood.
“I think, I think we beat him,” Raphael said, flying to the group.
Ardat let hope fill her for the briefest moment. Could that have been it? she asked herself. Had they managed to defeat Sodom?
“Ugh, I knew I should have sided with him,” Gabriel’s voice said, shattering the growing joy Ardat was beginning to feel.
Ardat followed Gabriel’s line of sight. As the smoke, steam, and snapping energy dissipated, a figure was beginning to form, gliding toward them from the fog of war. It was Sodom. Steam rose off him in waves. The smile that played across his thin lips a moment before was gone. “How dare you think you could ever defeat me,” he screamed, spittle flying with every word. “I will kill you all!”
Then he was gone. Vanished only to appear among them the next moment. There was no way anyone could be that fast. Sodom was disappearing and reappearing at will. One millisecond he was behind Gabriel, sending a crushing strike to his skull, the next moment he was beside Raphael, tearing at his wing with black matter that streamed from his hands as if they were on fire.
It was a nightmare. There was no time to react. In seconds, Ardat had suffered multiple strikes to her face and abdomen. Blood was streaming from a mass of wounds that covered her and the Archangels. The most frustrating part was they had no chance to return the strikes.
Just as soon as it began, it was over. Sodom appeared behind Michael, raising both fists over his head and bringing them down on Michael’s shoulders. The force bent Michael’s armor and sent him plummeting to the ground below, unconscious. Without a second’s hesitation, Ardat raced after him.
Using her ability over gravity, she caught Michael before he hit the ground and drew him toward her. Her feet hit the earth as his body safely touched down beside her.
He was breathing. Ardat let out an exhale of air she didn’t know she was holding. Beside her, Rapha
el slammed into the soil and right beside him Sodom appeared, holding Gabriel’s limp body by his ebony hair.
The mad demon threw Gabriel’s unmoving form away without a second look as he focused on Ardat. Insanity was clear in his eyes. He stalked toward her. Ardat stood over Michael’s body and for the first time in a very long time, she said a prayer. Help me, don’t let Michael die. I’ll do anything.
Lightning struck the ground between Ardat and Sodom. Sodom paused as he studied the figure of the old man that appeared out of thin air in front of him. Ardat’s heart caught in her throat.
“See to Michael,” the Shaman said to Ardat without turning his back on Sodom. “I will handle this.”
“Handle me? Will you, old man?” Sodom sneered.
The Shaman raised himself up to his full height, extending the walking cane in front of him. “You have no authority here, demon. Accept your place and move aside. There will be no mercy if you choose otherwise.”
Sodom, who seemed to find the old man comical at first, now roared with rage at being addressed in such a way. Dark matter formed in Sodom’s right hand. He wasted no time in hurtling it at the Shaman.
With a wave of his staff, the Shaman blocked the attack as if he were swatting a fly. A loud snap echoed in Ardat’s ears as the Shaman battered away yet another attack.
Sodom screamed in frustration as he threw more and more assaults at the Shaman. Again and again, they were swatted away with practiced ease.
Seeing that his current course of violence was getting him nowhere, Sodom disappeared for a moment. Ardat shouted a warning to the Shaman but her words were unneeded.
As soon as Sodom appeared behind the Shaman and struck, his fist met empty air. The Shaman was gone, disappearing even faster than Sodom.
“Show yourself!” Sodom roared into the empty air.
The Shaman reappeared right in front of Sodom, striking him with his cane across the face. Blood dripped from Sodom’s nose. The tyrannical demon brought a hand to his face and then examined the black blood on his fingers with a mix of rage and wonder. “You, who are you?”
Alan Price and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse Page 16
