The Brightest Embers

by Jeaniene Frost

  “We will see each other again one day.” My voice was ragged from my throat closing off. “I know we will.”

  He set his jaw and his hands closed into fists. I kept backing away, feeling my heart break with every step. This was the right thing to do; I knew that. Yet it didn’t lessen the pain, and when Adrian’s gaze began to brighten from unshed tears, I missed a step and stumbled.

  He started forward to grab me, then stopped, fists clenching again until his bones strained whitely against his skin. I steadied myself, holding out my hand in silent plea for him to stay where he was. No matter what I knew to be right, if he touched me again, I didn’t trust what I’d do.

  To give myself strength, I looked away from Adrian and at the object at Brutus’s feet. It paid off. That single look felt like a shot of adrenaline to my body. The power in the object tightened its hold on me, moving me toward it with greater speed. Right then, I knew I couldn’t turn back and go to Adrian even if I wanted to. It had me now.

  The sky, which had been a hazy blue before, was filling with dark clouds. They grew thicker and higher, until they choked off the rays from the sun. Their darkness matched my pain at the knowledge that I would probably never see Adrian again, until I was sure that I was the cause of the abrupt change in weather. My emotional wounds had activated the staff enough to make it rain inside a hotel hallway; it made sense that the heartbreak I was feeling now had manifested into the roiling, pitch-colored clouds that now covered the sky.

  “I’ll always love you,” I said, but I didn’t dare turn around. I couldn’t bear to see if his face mirrored the agony I was feeling. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed across the sky, causing Brutus to growl. He might like the new darkness, but he obviously wasn’t fond of the coming storm.

  I wasn’t, either. It signaled the end of my relationship and probably my life. I took a deep breath, and another round of thunder boomed across the sky.

  “This is the right thing to do,” I whispered, and though I still knew it to be a fact, it felt less true.

  Then, before I abandoned everything just to feel Adrian’s arms around me one more time, I reached down and grabbed the long, thin object at Brutus’s feet.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THIS ISN’T IRON.

  That was my first thought when I touched the object, immediately followed by an internal screech as power shot up my arm. It rocked me back on my heels, but it didn’t drive me to my knees like the staff had. Nor did that feeling of power grow like it had when I first wielded the slingshot. Instead, it seemed to settle inside my bones with a low, uncomfortable hum that reminded me of the aftereffects of an electrical shock.

  This wasn’t the spearhead. It was way too long, not to mention that if it was, I’d be comatose at best and dead at worst. Not picking the object up and cocking my head as I examined it while I wondered what it was. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a long stick, but that made no sense. The only famous stick I was aware of was the staff that was still embedded in my skin... Wait. That’s right. Embedded.

  “Adrian,” I called out, and felt the rush of air from how fast he ran to me. “This isn’t the spearhead, but I think it’s the pilum that the spearhead used to be embedded in.”

  A first-century Roman javelin was no more than a long wooden stick with a nasty iron shank fastened at the end of it. A simple weapon, but deadly enough to impale someone right through their armor, let alone through vulnerable flesh.

  This part of the weapon shouldn’t still exist. Zach had told me that the spearhead was all that was left of the weapon, yet here it was. Had he actually been lying to me?

  Adrian looked at the wooden shaft but wisely made no move to touch it. If holding it felt like getting repeated electric shocks to me, it might really injure Adrian.

  “The base of the holy lance,” he said with a surprising amount of awe in his tone. Then he let out a harsh laugh. “No wonder Zach sent us here. Most hallowed objects are reduced to mere fragments because of the passage of time. Those pieces might be powerful in and of themselves, but they’re nothing like what they could be if the objects were reassembled again.”

  I stared at him in understanding. “Now we have half of the lance, so if we find the spearhead and put it back together—”

  “Boom,” Adrian said succinctly.

  As charged as this was, the shaft was the equivalent of an accessory. But putting it back together with the spearhead would turn it into the equivalent of a supernatural bomb, and we all knew what happened to anyone in the direct path of a bomb.

  Boom, indeed.

  I set my chin and refused to feel sorry for myself. I’d done too much of that already. Yes, dying young sucked. Yes, losing Adrian would suck even worse, but if nothing else, the combined power of the shaft and the spearhead rejoined meant that I had a real chance to save those people. Reassembling it should blast that lethal power out through me and into every demon realm. I’d die, but I’d die knowing that I was delivering a knockout punch to every demon in existence.

  They might get back up eventually, since—as Zach reminded me—the final fight was between Archons and demons, not humans and demons. But unlike what I’d been afraid of before, my death wouldn’t be in vain. Instead, with the ultra-amped, reassembled final hallowed weapon, it should allow countless humans to escape a fate worse than death.

  Hey, if I was going to die, I might as well go out with the biggest bang possible. Maybe I’d tell Zach to have my headstone read “Suck on THAT, demons!”

  “Okay, one piece down, the other half to go,” I said, carefully setting the lance back down. “The spearhead’s got to be at one of the five remaining places on your list...”

  My voice trailed off as I stared at the tattoo on my right hand, then looked at the sky. I wasn’t in an emotional frenzy anymore, so the sky shouldn’t be as eerily black with clouds as it still was. And my tattoos shouldn’t be activating, but the one in my hand was turning a lighter shade of brown and starting to throb, as was the other tattoo in my body.

  I cast a new, horrified look at the sky. It hadn’t been the staff altering the weather because of the pain I’d felt at leaving Adrian. I hadn’t caused any of this. And if I hadn’t, then I could think of only one creature that would have the ability—let alone the desire—to darken a sunny afternoon into midnight-like darkness.

  Demons.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d figured it out. “Ivy.” Adrian’s voice thrummed with intensity. “Get on Brutus’s back and have him fly you back to hallowed ground. Now.”

  “What about you?” I protested.

  He shoved me toward Brutus. “I’ll hold them off until you’re safe.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” I began, but stopped as something in the sky caught my eye.

  At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Then ice felt like it blasted through my veins as memory pieced together the impossible image and gave it context.

  “Too late,” I whispered. “None of us can fly out of here.”

  Adrian spun around. I knew the instant he spotted the thing, and he figured out far quicker than I had what it was.

  “Blinky,” he hissed.

  Such an innocuous-sounding nickname. Mocking, in fact, considering that Adrian had called his former demon captive that due to the dozens of sets of eyes covering him. Blinky had them because he had once been a seraph, one of the highest levels of Archons. In addition to his freaky sets of eyes that covered his entire upper body, he also had three separate sets of wings. Blinky was now using all of those wings to fly toward us with the speed of a proverbial bat out of hell.

  “No one holds a grudge like a demon,” Adrian muttered.

  “Especially one you tortured and imprisoned for years,” I added, yanking at my tattoo. I kept yanking until the sling was all the way out of m
y arm, then I notched it with one of the rocks I’d stuffed into my pockets. As soon as it was armed, I began to spin the sling.

  “Back away from me, Adrian. One clean hit—”

  “He’s not alone,” Adrian interrupted.

  I squinted, but I couldn’t see anything except the darkness around Blinky. It radiated from him as if he were a black hole that sucked in all the light around him. Still, I took Adrian at his word and got more rocks at the ready.

  He stripped off his shirt and used it to pick up the wooden lance. Even with the layers of material between him and the hallowed object, he still winced as if it hurt him to touch it. Then he stuffed it between the leather belts of Brutus’s harness while saying something in Demonish to the gargoyle.

  “No matter what, we can’t let them get this,” he told me, switching to English. “If it’s a choice between me or it, you save it, Ivy. Otherwise, we’re all dead anyway.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed, but we had to live through this in order to fight about it later. Blinky was only about a hundred yards away now. Close enough for me to see his brown hair, his pale skin and, worst of all, his eyes. One look into them, and revulsion hit me like a splash.

  I didn’t know how his eyes seemed to pour evil onto everything they looked upon, but they did. Then he smiled, and gooseflesh rippled across my skin with the speed of the lightning flash that finally showed me what Adrian had already seen: half a dozen demons flying behind Blinky. Three were covered in eyes and had those extra sets of wings, letting me know that they were seraphs, too. Wherever they flew, the darkness around them thickened until it felt like it had tangible form.

  “Go for Blinky and the other seraphs first. They’re the most dangerous,” Adrian said, pulling out two long knives from a weapons satchel that Brutus also had attached to his harness. He couldn’t kill the demons with those, but he could slow them down, and then I could finish them.

  But I couldn’t risk a strike with the sling until they were close, and letting seven demons get that close was almost suicidal. Still, we had no choice. I spun the sling faster.

  Two of the seraphs broke formation and disappeared into the clouds that kept all sunlight at bay and thus allowed them to come out before nightfall. Adrian said something in Demonish to Brutus, who turned his back to us and thrust his wings out in chop formation. Now our backs were guarded.

  Adrian took point to the left several feet away, giving me ample room for my sling. I kept spinning it faster, my gaze darting around as I waited for one of the demons to get close enough to attack. Strangely, I wasn’t afraid. Maybe it was because I hadn’t come this far only to get killed by demons. If anything was going to kill me, it was going to be that damn spearhead!

  With a speed I didn’t believe possible, two of the seraphs suddenly torpedoed into Adrian with such force that it left a hole where he’d been standing. The hole was so deep that I couldn’t see him anymore, but I saw the madly flapping wings and hideous numerous eyes of the seraphs. I was in the process of hurling a stone at them when agony exploded in my body. The last thing I remember was seeing dirt explode all around me while a third grinning, eye-covered seraph filled the rest of my vision.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE PAIN WAS so ferocious, it must have briefly knocked me unconscious. That was all I could figure when I looked up and the hideous seraph was gone. Instead, all I saw was dirt. It covered me so much that I had to blink several times to see anything else. Then that ominous black sky met my vision. I was in the hole that had been made when the seraph used the force of his attack to plow a deep furrow into the ground. If I didn’t have a supernatural lineage that made me far tougher than the average human, I would be dead twice over.

  Apparently, the seraph thought I had been killed. I caught a glimpse of him dancing around the perimeter of my hole, his wings reminding me of three sets of eye-dotted elephant ears.

  “Dead!” the seraph howled in glee. “Dead, dead, dead!”

  Not yet, although I’d never felt worse, and that was saying something. My head rang, and my spine and ribs felt like they had been replaced with razors that shredded me with every breath, yet I was still alive. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that Adrian didn’t know I was alive, and if I called out to tell him, the demon would finish me off. I had to take him out first, yet right now, I didn’t know if I could move.

  “No!” Adrian roared, followed by an answering bellow of rage from Brutus. Then all I heard were the awful sounds of a fierce battle that I couldn’t see.

  I’m coming! I silently swore to them, biting my lip to keep from screaming as I tried to sit up. Blood gurgled from my mouth, my breathing cut off and I collapsed almost instantly. After I managed to take a few searing breaths, I realized my ribs were definitely broken, and from the fresh agony shooting through my left arm, it probably was, too. This was very, very bad. How could I save myself if I couldn’t even sit up?

  Then I saw the sling, slithering toward me through the dirt like a golden snake. It gave me the courage to force myself to ignore the pain and try to sit up again. That crushing feeling returned and I hemorrhaged more blood out of my mouth. One of my lungs must be punctured or collapsed, but there was manna in the satchel Adrian had strapped onto Brutus. If I could take the seraph out, I had a chance to get it and heal myself.

  But first, I had to kill the seraph, and I couldn’t spin the sling to release one of those lethal stones without sitting up. It wouldn’t work if I just lashed him with the sling. Yes, that would hurt him, but I needed the seraph dead. Not wounded.

  The seraph was still dancing around what he thought was my grave. His back was to me, but he had eyes all over that, too. Right now, they were looking away, but when I tried moving again, they suddenly shifted in my direction. I stilled, hoping the dirt I was having a hard time seeing through concealed me enough to hide the fact that I was still alive.

  “Davidian is dead, dead, dead,” he chanted in a singsong voice. “Dead, dead, dead!”

  My relief that he still hadn’t spotted the error of his assumption lasted only a second. Then the sound Adrian made tore through me with the same impact as the seraph’s crater-making blow. It wasn’t merely of rage, pain or grief. It was something so far beyond the three, it chilled me as if I were in the belly of a blast freezer. It also caused the seraph to look away from me with all his dozens of eyes, which then widened in what could only be called fear.

  I didn’t know what had freaked out one of the most powerful creatures in existence, but this was my chance. I grabbed the sling, feeling a familiar jolt as soon as I touched it. My agony was already so intense, it didn’t even hurt like it usually did. Instead, it filled me with a welcoming surge of energy. I drew upon that while digging one of the rocks from my pockets. Then, with a breath that I held instead of exhaled, I forced myself into a sitting position.

  Pain stabbed through every inch of my torso. My chest felt like it was being crushed. I fought to quell the crippling aspects of my anguish and the instinctive panic that came with not being able to breathe. If I did this right, it wouldn’t take long. I notched the sling and spun it as best I could while in a deep ditch with a broken arm, broken ribs, lots of internal bleeding and nonfunctioning lungs. The sling flopped around awkwardly, not having enough circulation or torque to hurl the stone. It was enough to get the seraph’s attention, though. All those eyes on his back shifted my way, widened in surprise and then narrowed with murderous purpose.

  “You’re dead!” he shouted as he spun around.

  Not yet! I thought back defiantly, and found the strength to spin the sling fast enough to hurl the stone at him.

  I’d always wondered if the supernatural power that had made the sling unbeatable when I first wielded it meant it also couldn’t miss its target. When my badly flung stone still hit the seraph between his many sets of ey
es, I got my answer. The sling didn’t need me to be skilled at wielding it, apparently. It only needed me to have strength enough to try, and then it could take things from there.

  The seraph exploded into embers that shone brightly for a moment before fading into ashes. Seeing it reminded me of a fireworks display burning out, but I didn’t pause to savor the image. I slumped down long enough to get in some desperate breaths of air and got more stones out of my pockets, too. I was notching one into the sling when a roar filled the air.

  “Ivvvvvyyyyy!”

  That couldn’t be Adrian. It sounded inhuman, as if the thunder that had been booming in the stormy black sky had been given a voice. Yet who else would scream my name? Brutus couldn’t talk, and the demons always called me Davidian.

  The ground shook, then a form was hurled over the top of my ditch. It happened so fast, I couldn’t see who or what it was. Then more dirt began blasting me from every direction and the ground shook even harder.

  I sat up and tried to spin the sling as fast as I could. Then I lowered it and let out a wordless cry as Brutus appeared above the ditch. Dark demon blood spattered him as if he’d been showering in it, and I saw deep tears in his wings, body and arms, too. Unbelievably, his gorilla-like face looked happy, and he gave me a joyous lick before hauling me out of the ditch.

  The movement drove what little breath I had out of my lungs. It also caused such new agony that my vision started to darken and an ominous ringing filled my head. I tried to reach the satchel attached to Brutus’s harness before I passed out. If that happened before I got the manna, I might not wake up.

  By the time I grasped the satchel, my vision was completely black and that ringing had deafened me to everything else. My mind was starting to go, too, but with the last amount of mental clarity I had, I felt around inside the satchel. Knives cut into me, telling me Adrian had left some weapons behind, but I ignored that and kept blindly searching for the cellophane bag of manna. When I thought I had it, I grabbed a handful of its contents, stuffed it into my mouth and swallowed.