by D. Fischer
Ironically, the beat at our sleeve is supposed to remind us we have an obligation. These angels have forgotten compassion. It burns my gut, their betrayal, their need for revenge. Their insistence on blood over a matter of a love they don’t understand. My nostrils flare as I watch the life leave the angel’s eyes, and sympathy sheds from my skin.
A wolf barrels past, a blur of fur, and the rest of the pack quickly after.
“Aim for the right wrist!” I shout.
Upon my instruction, the pack changes their approach of attack. They move as one, as though they’re one body - one mind. Clamping the necks of angels, they use their weight to take them to the ground. Throats are shredded, blood sprays, and then their teeth clamp their wrists.
A stream of fire engulfs neighboring trees at the back end of the opposing group, followed by shrieks and bodies raining from the sky. Branches break as flaming angels hit each one on their way down.
I smile as Kat’s dragon flies over the tree branches above me, her size impressive. The angels who are still in the sky attempt to take her down. Bolts sore after her. She spins her body, tucking her wings to miss them before she’s completely out of my sight.
My heart thuds in fear. She’s fine, I reassure myself, killing another angel with emotional disconnect. I break her wrist, the bone severing the heart and slicing through skin. Expanding my wings, I turn abruptly and sever another’s head using my sharp feathers. Both angels drop at my feet at the same time.
She’s fine, I think again, but this time it rings completely false to my own conscience. I grit my teeth and grip Ire tighter. My wings beat once, twice, and then I’m weaving between branches. The fresher air greets my skin once above the canopies, sending a sliver of freedom, of pure, undiluted delight through my chest. Until I get a look at what we’re really dealing with.
Several angels pepper the sky, an impressive number still traveling this direction. They’re originating from the Angel’s ground off in the distance. I’m sure of it. My delight evaporates with a gust of breath passing my lips like I’ve been punched in the gut by shock alone.
The Angel’s Ground has been overtaken by the fallen. Can I blame them? No. We all but abandoned it at the first hint of hostility, and something was bound to happen in our absence. Still, this is a well conducted attack, and something of this magnitude needs a leader. This leaves one question: who’s the mastermind, the General, behind this? Who convinced this many angels to rival against us? I think I already know the answer to that.
Hovering, I harden my determination and then take immediate action. I pick off the angels in flight, one by one.
Kat is up ahead, dealing with her own hoard of white wings. Each one is eventually consumed by a stream of fire. A sure death wish, I imagine. They’re not in their right minds, attacking a creature they can’t win against. Even their arrows fail to penetrate her scales.
She roars, deafening, the sound waves crashing into my chest.
To catch up with her, I ride a stream of strong wind. As I travel, another arrow releases from my bow, then another, then another. I grab the wrist of an angel passing by who is swooping toward the village. There are children huddled in the safety of the teepees, and our purpose is to keep those who can’t defend themselves safe. No enemy is meant to reach the village - a simple order by Erma and Mitus.
I whip the angel’s body underneath mine, wrap my legs around her torso, and drive a bolt into her arm before she notices I’m her enemy.
ELIZA PLAATS
GUARDIAN REALM
Death and fire’s smoke taint the air. With all the battling bodies blocking the wind, there’s nothing to sweep away the stinging smell. I breathe through my mouth, desperate for fresh air. My huffing lungs cry for untainted oxygen, and the chill burns my teeth with quick inhales.
The enemy was driven out once, but it hasn’t taken long for them to find a way back in. Teepees are on fire. Children scream. Women rush to aid their young. Men drive arrows into chests.
Aiden’s skin almost glimmers, a black substance rippling beneath his skin. It’s as though he’s fighting to hold on to his own body, to keep the demon in check.
He is the demon, I remind myself. A shiver trembles up my arms and settles in my tight chest.
This reminder is driven home when he punches his way into an angel’s gut, his hand going all the way through the body cavity. I can hear the crunch of spine from where I stand and the slick slosh of organs. Dumbfounded, and unsure how to help without tipping Aiden over the edge, I gulp the bile burning the back of my tongue.
I’ve never been squeamish to injury, but I’ve also never witnessed an injury occur. Not in this manner and certainly not on this realm. I was only the one who stitched them back together again inside the four walls of a hospital’s surgical room. The sharp light, which made the body seem less gory despite excessive blood loss, helped to dislodge my thoughts about a life’s vitality under my trained hands. There, it was a job and easier to focus on patching them back together. Here, this is war, and death isn’t prejudice. It comes for us all, no matter the side you fall on.
The angel looks to him, eyes wide. His once ferocious features are now fearful. Aiden feeds from it. I can see the hues and shimmers transferring to the predator.
Prominent crease lines above the angel’s blond eyebrows stand out within his shadowed face, shrouding the finer details. The bright yellow halo beaming above his shaved head shines against the smooth skin and sluggishly pulses to a retreating heartbeat.
Without a second thought, Aiden grabs his wrist and breaks it in half. It crunches like a thick stick bent in two. A shuttered breath racks my joints. My hands clench in sympathetic-pain while I watch in horror.
The light leaves the angel’s eyes, and the halo disappears in on itself.
I lift my head to the grey puffy clouds spitting snow and use their chill to force the vomit back into my stomach. The clouds’ shrewd edges are lined with an orange hue. It’s reflected by streams of fire the dragon makes as it flies by, attacking those in the sky. I observe flakes as they come into view and notice they mesh with sprinkles of bright red. Both substances pepper my cheeks, one cold and the other ash-like. At first, I think it’s a trick of the mind, the orange tinged clouds the cause. Or perhaps, ashes of body and feather. With the guardian’s different make, possibly an unknown chemical substance entirely, I can easily hypothesize why their ash is red instead of grey. Plus, the flames aren’t traditional either, coming from a dragon and all.
Both float to the ground, and I watch as some gather inside a sticky substance – a black puddle - the blood of dead angels surrounding Aiden. They’re bodies are skewed at nauseating angles, their wounds feeding the puddle. I lick my lips upon examination, my theory quickly probable.
I hold out my hand, allowing Aiden to keep the enemies from me for the moment. Not that I have a choice. I’ve been ordered to do nothing and let them protect me. Having been told using my magic could call Kheelan to my whereabouts, I reluctantly obliged.
The tiny red specks capture in my palm while the snow quickly melts against the warmth of my skin. I lean forward, watching, and examine the substance with a medical eye.
Gathering a pinch with my other hand, I rub it together, and it smears like chalk. “Interesting,” I whisper to myself.
I don’t have time to draw a more definitive conclusion, however. The enemy angels surround the love of my life, and his roar brings me to the present.
Panic patterns my heart first, a moment of tense muscles. But an internal wave soothes them, a rush of power which calms my fear. It’s automatic, uncontrollable.
Heat floods my chapped cheeks. My vision focuses. Blood rushes my ears. Every nerve pricks like my limbs are awaking from sleep. And then, a wave of intense adrenaline. Anger - white hot and utterly consuming - dries the saliva pocketed in my cheeks. The smell of electricity tickles my nose and zaps the lymph nodes inside.
An angel punches Aiden’s jaw. Aiden’s hea
d whips to the side. He swings back, connects, and then another enemy jabs his thigh. Driven to one knee, Aiden grunts.
No, I scream in my head.
Hand still open, a bolt of bright blue tamed lightning slithers sporadically across the thin lines of my palm. I close my fingers around the bolt, lift my arm up and over my head, and throw it forward, a lashing whip that extends across the distance. It latches around the nearest angel and curls around her ankles. Once firmly gripped, I yank with all my strength and hurtle the angel over the flaming teepee tops. Her cries of surprise are cut off when a thud shakes the ground, her body hitting a tree trunk.
Again and again I do the same with the others, my bolting whip faster each time, until Aiden’s surrounding enemies are manageable.
Heavy huffs of breath whistle through my nostrils and my chest heaves with the exertion. I look to my hands in amazement, twisting them this way and that, while leaving Aiden to his own devices. I swallow with an effort to quench my dry throat and stiffen as a prickling sensation raises the hairs at my nape. It’s greasy, this feeling, like oil sloping down a paved driveway. I turn, slow, knowing who’s standing there. And knowing why. I used his power, called it to me, in fact. Of course he would come. He’d been waiting for it.
My eyes meet the hems of black robes and travel up the length. I stare squarely into Kheelan’s pinched eyes which mischievously glint fire’s light. The gaze we share immediately sucks away my freewill, a compulsion of sorts, and renders me completely hostage. Blood roars in my ears, and time feels sluggish under it.
His lips move. Though I can’t hear what he’s saying, I can read my name slowly crossing his lips. The tip of his tongue touches his top teeth on the second syllable. A shiver trembles my body, waiting for his command.
The black orbs of his eyes glint again, and I’m sucked into their pits. My feet move of their own accord, each footfall measured, perfect in distance.
A wide, wicked smile extends his face, and when I’m mere feet from him, a grey ball of fur leaps in the air from my left. Before contact, Kheelan disappears in a wisp of smoke. It’s almost as though he was never truly there in the first place, like a mirage.
My limbs break free from his invisible trance, and I plant both feet back in the snow. The wolf spins, snarling and searching for Kheelan.
“Dyson,” I whisper, my voice harsh and parched.
The wolf whips his head to me, ears pinned. He approaches, crouched, a bloody paw smearing the white snow, and sniffs the air. A feral growl rumbles his massive chest when he scents Kheelan’s power wafting from my charged hands.
For a moment, his ears flick forward, and his eyes look past my right hip. The growl deepens, and he stalks forward low to the ground.
“No,” I gush, breathy, to the wolf. “Dyson, please!”
Fear spikes the rapid rate of my heart, pricking each chamber, and I scream when he lunges. I duck and cover my head. The grey wolf soars over me. A paw’s claw catches my hair and rips a lock from my scalp. I grunt in pain and clutch my head. A thump vibrates the soles of my shoes, and I pivot in my bent position. Dyson’s sharp teeth sink into the flesh of the enemy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DYSON COLEMAN
GUARDIAN REALM
“Where is she?” I ask, my voice booming through the devastated village. A growl tinges each word.
I slip my shirt over my head and the collar smears a glob of black blood down my cheek. My stomping is muffled by packed snow while I approach Erma, Erline, Aiden, and Tember. They’re huddled at the end of the village where the last attacking angel was killed moments before.
I had quickly shifted back and dressed when the fight ended, knowing mine is only just beginning. Fear coils in my gut. Fear for my mate who I have yet to see.
Tember lifts her head from their circle and watches on with a deep frown. She turns toward me, crosses her arms, and widens her stance, preparing to fend me off against her lover. I sneer at her protective display. The angel can’t hide her affections from me. It’s plain as day, and I’ll call her out if I must to get what I want.
“Where is she?” I yell again, more frantic this time.
“Dyson,” Evo commands, hot on my heels. His wider frame plods, crunching the snow, quite the opposite of mine. But his alpha command holds no weight over me anymore.
Tember’s chest puffs as she takes an extensive breath. She unfurls a hand from her middle to rub the back of her neck. When I stand before her, she surveys the destruction, her face crumpling with stress-etched eyes, anything to keep from meeting my gaze.
“She headed into the woods,” Tember divulges with weighted emotion. She finally shifts her eyes toward mine. “I saw her land in them.”
I turn on my heel, an easy feat in the slick, blemished snow. When she grabs me by the arm, I snarl, a deep sound I’ve rarely made before today.
Mates can change a wolf, even mates who want nothing to do with the other. This thought alone twists my gut further, and my growl muffles with the pain it causes.
“Dyson, listen to me,” she begins with urgency, and her call beckons attention from Aiden and Eliza down the well-beaten path. “She’s not herself.”
“She’s my mate!”
Tember opens her mouth to say something else, but Evo shakes his head at her, trying and failing to be subtle. She licks her bottom lip and tries again. “I cannot protect her. Not anymore. She’s far beyond my capabilities.”
I swallow thickly, and my aching fingers and biting nails unfurl from my palms. I didn’t even realize I had fisted them, not until her words extinguished my hatred. She didn’t exactly say it, but I can read between the lines. Kat’s mind is gone, and mine instantly finds someone to blame.
“Did you know?” I pin a glare to Erline behind Tember, watching on distractedly. When she realizes I’m speaking to her, she tilts her chin up defiantly and slips her ego back in place with a straighter spine.
“Did you know Kheelan was here?” I add.
A frown settles over her features as she thinks of how to respond, but her silence gives me the answer to my question. I make a disgusted sound at the back of my throat. Turning once more, I push off to the woods at a jog.
Someone has to retrieve Kat, and I know this lot won’t lift a finger to do it. They’re frightened of her.
“Come up with a fucking plan,” I shout over my shoulder. Sandy passes me at this moment, children dragging him along by his large hands, and he lifts a chiding eyebrow to me, gesturing with his head to the children’s sensitive ears. It’s not like they understand me anyway.
“I’ll go wrangle my beast,” I add quieter to myself.
I slow to a walk once I hit the trees. I don’t know how far in she is, but I also don’t want to rush to her side. That could have the opposite effect of what I want.
The hike through the trees is quite a distance. As I pass dead bodies, I close the eyes of a few and grip the shoulders of the ones I knew. The village will be along for them shortly, I’m sure, but I can’t pass them with a blind eye. They deserve compassion for their sacrifice.
My muscles cramp from overuse, and I limp despite my best efforts to soothe the knots. Shivers rack my body and chatter my teeth, my coat forgotten at the village. I eventually dismiss the discomfort, distracting myself with the hunt instead, with the pull to my mate. The acrid aroma of burning wood doesn’t obscure her sweet scent. It left an invisible trail lingering in the brisk wind, and after a while, I spot her and stalk as stealthily as I can.
I’m as close as I dare though, one hand pressed firmly to a tree’s rough trunk, steadying my wobbling legs.
She stands on all four scaled limbs, her head bowed, and her chest heaves excessively. She’s still, statue-like, almost as though every ounce of humanity is gone, except the twitch at the tip of her tail. It curls and uncurls soothingly like a content cat.
Flexing my jaw, I gingerly push off the trunk and quiet my limping by moving at a slower pace.
“Kat?
” I quietly call when I’m inches from her tail. I watch the sleek glint of her scales, each outlined with the underlying fire beneath the surface. The snow comes to a final rest along them and instantly melts and sizzles.
She doesn’t respond, her dragon lost in deep thought. Or perhaps her mind is gone entirely. I don’t know which, but I can’t do nothing. I won’t do nothing.
My nose twitches, hope making it itch, and against self-preservation judgments, I reach forward and touch the smaller scales along her tail. I can feel the heat, know it’s flaming hot, but it doesn’t burn my skin.
Before I can marvel and speculate to this anomaly, her body stiffens under my cool fingers, and she whips around to face me. Her tail hits another tree in doing so, and the whoosh of wind her large body’s swift movement created ruffles my shirt. The intimidating orange orbs of her eyes portray murderous thoughts as she stares back into mine. They don't soften with recognition like I had expected them to. A shiver hardens my muscles.
A roar rumbles in her chest, fire inflating within, and smoke curls from her nostrils. The heat from within fans my cheeks and brings feeling back to my numb cracked lips. It burns the slitted, chapped wounds.
She’s prepared to kill me, I realize. And if I don’t act soon, she will.
“Kat,” I whisper again, my hands loose and limp at my sides.
Something flickers in her eyes, a fleeting shadow in the dilation of her irises, and I slowly turn my palms out.
“I see you.” My voice is hoarse as her heat steals the moisture from my mouth, and my vision blurs with unshed tears. She’s in there; I know she is. She has to be.
I lift my arm cautiously, and the dragon’s eyes narrow before characteristically chomping the air between us. The hairs rise along my skin, and my conscience screams to halt my actions.
“I see you,” I repeat, putting as much emotion behind the words as I can. My heart pours out my feelings for her, begging her to see reason. New saliva pools in my mouth. I swallow with much difficulty.
