We must coordinate our kills, Airel. The Seer must perish first; otherwise he will escape into the stone.
In our macabre dance, we had exchanged positions; the rocky cliff now stood behind the wild-eyed man. Maybe I can back him up and push him over. Will a fall of that height kill him? It might knock him out and drown him…
I swung the Sword powerfully, meeting the edge of his jagged dagger in a spray of sparks. The very tip of his weapon was cut, sailing off and splashing like a pebble into the lake below. He tried to counterattack with a quick jab, but missed. I swung again, bringing the tip of the blade in an arc up from the ground to the sky, pushing him back.
Stan twitched and cried out, slapping at new wounds on his body. He was limping, favoring the side where I had hit him and smashed his ribs. Evidently the healing power of the Bloodstone was not working fast enough. His ribs are still broken.
I pulled up and kicked him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over; I raised the Sword high overhead, and clubbed him on the back of his skull with the end of the handle. He slumped to the dirt in a wrecked pile. Unconscious.
I wasn’t even breathing heavily.
And then the Sword of Light vanished right out of my hands. It was gone.
Uh-oh.
***
THE ANGEL AND THE demon tumbled into the undergrowth, away from Airel. Kreios knew that he must be quick if he was to be victorious. An aspen tree broke their progress, snapping off three or four feet above the ground, the treetop falling with a shiver.
Kreios grunted, grabbing the Seer by the neck, ripping at it, feeling the black blood trickle and spray, and the smell that rode along with it.
Clods of dirt flew through the air. They struggled, Kreios climbing onto the demon’s back, but Tengu flung him off. Kreios rushed him, faking left but lunging right, and struck again at his neck with his left hand, using the hold to swing himself around onto the demon’s back. Kreios could feel his strength begin to fail, the demon soaking it out of him quickly now.
Kreios got a foot planted in front of him, shifted his weight, then forced Tengu forward mightily, sending him headlong into the dirt, the angel riding the back of the demon. The Seer choked and gagged, holding his ribcage. A gash appeared there, and Kreios could see the broken ribs jutting out. Airel was doing better than he had hoped.
Tengu tried to flop over onto his back, arching himself desperately, trying to extend the seconds, to weaken the angel. Kreios simply enlarged his grip on the neck of the demon, holding his head now in the crook of his elbow. He reached and dug thumb and forefinger into both of Tengu’s eye sockets, digging them in as deeply as he could reach.
The Seer screamed in total agony, blinded and bleeding from the damage, his eyeballs ruptured and leaking.
Now that the demon had been immobilized, Kreios changed positions. He wearily placed a knee on each shoulder blade, pinning him to the forest floor. Kreios then grasped with iron grip the horns of the Seer’s head that sprouted from the top of his skull and wrapped around in front of his face.
“You ceased long ago to be my brother,” he said. “The war of endurance is over. And I put an end to you at last.” With one powerful motion, Kreios wrenched Tengu’s head to one side, pulling upward, snapping the neck of the demon, killing him, ripping his head off.
Now like a scrap of discarded snakeskin, the body of the demon withered, shriveled, and became ash, blowing away in a strong gust. Kreios discarded the large head, letting it roll down the gentle slope a little way. It came to a stop, then exploded in a whiff of inky darkness, pitifully vanishing as vapors into the wind.
CHAPTER IX
I WAS STANDING OVER the crumpled body of Stanley Alexander when I heard the most awful wrenching sound, a scream that ripped at the heavens and was cut short, as if the soul of it had been torn right out midstream. I was still trying to figure out what was real and what was not—vanishing doors, then disappearing Swords—seriously, what’s next?
As soon as that unholy scream rent the air, Stan jolted wide awake in a spasm, lurching up from the ground. I jumped back defensively. I reached out in my mind to Kreios and got nothing. Is he dead? I didn’t know.
When Stanley Alexander opened his eyes, something was different. It was very bad and it was very new. She was sending me warning signals without words, and I understood that what I was looking at in Stan was unprecedented. What he had become, then, had never been seen under the sun before.
He got to his feet wearing a wicked smile. “‘We’ is now me.” He moved so quickly that I couldn’t do anything. Before I knew it, he had stabbed me in the heart. I felt overwhelming pain dashing against my chest. He stepped forward, pushing with the blade, deeper. I heard Kim scream from a long way off.
He pushed harder, the black blade digging in further, and I fell to my knees. I gagged, wrapping my hand around the blade to try to stop it from going farther. I felt a pumping, gushing, leaking sensation in my chest that was all at once hot and cool, and my strength faded rapidly.
Stan pulled the dagger free and walked slowly around me as my wound gushed, blood running down my skin and soaking my clothes. He stood behind me then, with his dagger raised. I sensed what he was going to do, heard the voice of She screaming out in agony and grief, and searched with all my heart for the mind of Kreios, but I couldn’t move. My heart had been pierced. I was mortally wounded.
In the background, I heard Kim screaming, footsteps running toward me, but her voice sounded distant and vague. Somewhere deep within, I knew she would be killed—it was inevitable—but I was now bound to my fate, and a prisoner of the events of my life. So short. I turned to face the unspeakably evil thing that had stabbed me, that would finish my life and end it. His eyes had become livid—death had skinned them over. I fell to the earth on my side and rolled to my back, my legs askew.
Stanley turned to face me, crazed and twitching, his muscles stuttering as if fighting rigor mortis. He raised the dagger for the final blow, the severing of my head from my body, and all I could do was wait for it.
The sound of tearing flesh, a sloshing wet sound, filled my ears. I couldn’t tell what was happening, if the sound had come from inside my body as my heart tore itself apart on the line that had been cut into it, or if the sound had come from somewhere else. I wondered abstractly how long a person stays conscious after they’re beheaded.
I now longed for the end. My life had been so very confusing. And filled up with pain. And short. It made, all of it, no sense to me. The most random bits of memory flashed into my mind and skipped right out again. Things I would have sworn I had forgotten, things that did not exist to me anymore. Memories of my mom canning apricots in the kitchen, old classmates from kindergarten, a lonesome bike ride when I was seven, an old book I had loved, a doll I used to play with. Everything around me was becoming hazy.
A garbled exclamation broke the silence. My eyes flew open. From the open mouth of Stanley Alexander, protruding like an obscene black tongue, was the broken tip of a sword. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and blood dripped from the tip of the blade.
The immense and crushing drain on my strength stopped—but I was left with a shattered heart, the violence done against it now complete and total. I both felt and believed that my life had now run its course, the time left to me now a handful of moments.
But Stanley Alexander had already found his own end. The line he had drawn finally ran out. He fell to the earth and shattered like crystal on impact, the shards metamorphosing into vermin and creeping things that fled to the undersides of rocks, there to hide from the light and warmth of the sun. The Bloodstone, in the dirt, rested alone and unpossessed, glimmering a deep and blinding red.
I tried to find my bearings, fluttering my eyelids and struggling to sit up. Was it Kreios? Who had killed Stanley?
“Airel. You’re hurt.”
It was the voice of the one who had struck down and defeated my treacherous foe.
Michael.
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The black sword that he held dropped with a dull clang to the ground and he rushed to my side, falling to his knees. “Airel.” The sound of my name on his lips warmed me completely.
He had come back. He had struck down his own father to … emotion flooded me, drowning my senses.
“Airel, I’m so sorry…”
I looked into those eyes once again, and instantly I knew the truth. Michael Alexander did love me. He had never wanted to hurt me. He had been forced to betray me, and was probably as confused about all of it as I was.
Michael’s face was weathered. There was a muted look of horror there underneath it all, and as I searched him with my eyes, I noticed James was with him, looking like he had just arrived, standing just behind Michael in his varsity jacket. He had a strange look on his face.
Kim was at his side, saying, “James, what’s going on here?” I turned back to Michael, a million questions popping up, and saw something else: fear.
Michael struggled, looking tortured. I looked to James.
Michael reached quickly on the ground for the piercing bright Bloodstone and brought it closer, holding its dangerous and intense light between us, not far from my chest wound.
I was seized with the most unimaginable horrors. My heart felt like it was being welded back together, patched and bolted, and I died a little more, seeing impossible things. I cried out in my distress.
James leaned forward quickly, with glowing eyes, and knocked the Bloodstone from Michael’s hand, sending it skittering across the dirt, giving me a reprieve. I gasped and tried to gather myself together so that I could thank him, but he looked at me with extreme hostility. “Kill her, Michael. Redeem your mistake.”
Mistake?
Michael pulled back from me, intense sadness filling his empty eyes. He looked soulless, an automaton on a short leash.
“Take up your father’s sword and strike her down.”
I still didn’t quite grasp the situation. I felt as if I had been blindfolded and handcuffed to a carnival ride. James’s harsh words were still not making sense to me.
Michael appeared to be severely distracted as he looked askance toward the weapon; he seemed to be suffering an internal war. With sagging shoulders set in the frame of purposeless behavior, Michael bent down for the sword, but stopped short of taking it up.
James growled like a dog. He was enraged; his skin fell away in shreds that looked like old newspapers and torn photographs. Smooth black wings unfurled from his back and enfolded us in a threatening semi-circle. He shook, his arms growing long; huge, round paws with long, curling claws emerged from his fingertips. The boy I had known as James burst apart from the inside.
“Love-infested innocent. If you lack the strength, allow me.” He snatched the sword from Michael’s limp hand as dark steam fell from his mouth. Michael stood there, completely whipped, and looked at me with sad eyes.
A single tear fell to my cheek as I realized the ultimate loss in the situation. I pleaded with him, screaming at him in my thoughts, Michael, don’t stand aside and allow this. “Michael,” I spoke, my voice choking me, “have you already left me?” Again? My eyes burned with tears. I didn’t see the demon. I didn’t see Kim. All I could see was him, my soul, my life—Michael. I would not believe that he didn’t feel love for me. He had killed his own father to defend me; there had to be something else that held him bound beside his own broken will.
The demon struck Michael in the face with contempt, sending him sprawling, then turned back to me. “Enough talk. You have been alive for far too long. Today you, Airel, daughter of El, shall die.”
I was reaching for Michael, trying in vain to sit up. The hideous demon leaped straight at me, colliding with such great force that I could feel my broken Immortal body begin to give in to what was becoming inevitable. We skidded off the top of the cliff in a plume of dirt and dust and stones, falling. The water, far below, was going to hurt.
I couldn’t fight, couldn’t breathe. All of the strength I once had deserted me. I saw Michael rush to the cliff’s edge, reaching out to me as I fell, his eyes shouting a love and sadness so deep, so stricken, that I thought for an instant that he was in more pain now than I ever was. Hate was life to him; he wasn’t born and raised, he was bred and trained, trained to hunt us down and kill us. Even as I fell to my death, I decided none of my injuries, be they physical or emotional, mattered. Michael…
The force of the water on impact further sapped my strength. My eyes instinctively closed as I went hurtling into the surface of the abyss, the demon astride my dying body, the water bubbling around us as we sank. The depths reached for me, to take me down and down.
I opened my eyes for the briefest of an instant, searching the cliff top for a final glimpse of my love, his love unrealized. We never really had a chance, did we? I realized how thickly bitter rust had covered us, locking away lovely possibility beneath a hideous mask.
There was only one thing left to me that was in my power: Michael, I forgive you.
I saw him standing rigid at the edge of the cliff, grasping his father’s black sword in his hands. The stunted blade was inverted upward back upon his abdomen, and just as I began to sink beneath the spray of the water of the lake, he drove the point of it home, crying out in pain, doubling over. The demon jerked suddenly, releasing me, roaring in fury and pain.
I could feel the water pour into my lungs, relentless.
MICHAEL. NO, MICHAEL.
My heart and mind screamed out at the one I loved, ripping against the grain. The waves crashed in upon me, and as they did, my eyes met with unspeakable horror: Michael drew the blade out and then plunged it back in, again, again, again. My heart burst asunder inside my chest as I watched.
The demon James writhed and flopped on the surface of the water as I sank below. I could hear his ungodly shrieking through the boiling and squalling waters as I sank. Still, I looked to the cliff’s edge, holding out hope as a candle to the hurricane, begging God for mercy—and I saw Michael deliver his last blow before becoming limp and falling from the cliff, tumbling end over end, the sword pulled out and away, tumbling wildly. Michael hit the water with a sickening smack as I sank.
Blood and water mixed in a drink of death.
CHAPTER X
THE SUN BLAZED OVERHEAD, warming the forest glade unseasonably. Kreios could feel his strength returning slowly. His heart stuttered in his chest and he cocked an ear to the disturbance: a scream. His body stiff and wooden, stubborn, he nevertheless jumped to his feet and began to run toward the cliffs.
He reached out but could not find Airel. He sprinted, forcing his body to wake up, straining it.
He arrived at the top of the cliff in time to see Michael toppling over its edge. Kim was there, standing still, dazed and in shock. Kreios was at her side quickly. He laid her down on the earth before she could hurt herself.
He then noticed the Bloodstone nearby. It was shining in a constant, piercing crimson light that called to him like the fondest memories of his childhood. He did not dare touch it. There were more important things—he would not lose another fair young princess in his family line.
He rushed to the precipice, looking down. Beneath him were Michael and James. The demon was struggling as if injured, and Michael was sinking quickly. He was injured as well. But Airel?
Water was a difficult element. It posed a singular set of challenges for one like Kreios. Flight through the air was effortless, second nature. Moving in water slowed everything, made difficult what would be easy in the air; it was like thousands of grasping hands pulled against whatever course of action was decided upon. And drowning was a mortal risk, especially for an angel.
He searched again in his mind for Airel, and could not find her. He cursed what his eyes beheld: two of the Brotherhood. And though they were far below, struggling and thrashing in the water, quite possibly even at that moment moving toward their eternal damnation as the jaws of hell opened wide to receive them, Kreios could not just
ify simply watching the boy die. He could not separate himself from this chain of events.
Michael was beginning to sink beneath the surface. He doesn’t have much longer. Kreios leaped into the air, and far from giving himself over to mere gravity, he shot on a bullet’s trajectory into the water; his body stretched out, punching a hole in the surface at impact that yielded the smallest splash.
He was deep before his momentum was checked. There was blood, and the fume of cursed demonic detritus filled his nostrils even here. He looked, and in the distant darkness, a chance ray of sunlight played off the dark brown hair of his Airel, the last in the line of his heirs. No. He moved quickly to her side and looked into her face; he feared it was too late. He took her anyway, pushing hard off the muddy bottom, carrying as much speed and momentum as possible in the molasses, aiming directly for Michael, who was now sinking toward them. Too late for both of them.
Kreios did not slow as he intercepted the boy. He simply ran into him, gaining speed skyward, a limp body hanging over each shoulder, and when he broke the surface of the water, it erupted upward, outward, droplets and mist, Kreios flying right out of the center of it.
When he had reached the edge of the cliff, he dropped the body of the boy with contempt, allowing him to land clumsily in the dirt. To his shock, Michael rolled and coughed, sputtering, gasping. Kreios landed gently at the lookout point where the whole drama had unfolded and laid Airel on the ground alongside Kim, whose eyes were closed. He looked from one to the other. Michael was nearby, coughing up blood and water.
Airel was limp, her mangled heart not beating. Kreios began CPR.
Michael dragged himself over to her side, leaving a blood trail behind him in the dirt. “Airel. Is she dead? Will she be okay?” His voice cracked. Kreios filled Airel’s lungs with air, not looking at him.
The Airel Saga Box Set: Young Adult Paranormal Romance Page 31
