by Tessa Cole
Just move.
Come on. Move.
The muscles in my arm twitched, but not enough to raise it.
Come on. Come on.
But the archnephilim was too strong and all his power was focused on me.
He rushed toward me and whipped a tentacle around my neck. “Stop fighting. Become what you’re supposed to be.”
“No.”
The tentacle tightened, choking me, and wrenched me up until my toes skimmed the floor. The fire in my back burned hotter, and I strained to breathe, my muscles still frozen, unable to raise my hands and grasp at the tentacle.
“We could rule this world. All would bow before us and our power.”
“You honestly think you can do what Michael couldn’t?”
“I control both light and dark power, and with my brand on you, I’m as powerful as Michael.” Another tentacle caressed my cheek, and his tone turned low and dark. “And when you accept what you are, I’ll be more powerful than him.”
“But you’d give that up and still kill me just to kill Gideon?”
“Release your wings and you’ll be more powerful than him.” The archnephilim’s face solidified in his smoke and he sneered at me. “I don’t need you sane to reap the benefits of your essence.”
The tentacle around my neck squeezed tighter, making me gasp, and the tentacle caressing my cheek plunged into my mouth.
“You might be strong enough to fight me through the brand, but you can’t fight me inside you.” His smoke poured down my throat, surging around my heart and up into my head.
Gideon yelled and wrenched one wing free, tearing feathers, the bits falling like oversized snowflakes and sticking in the blood pool beneath him. His weight yanked him down on his other wing and the noose jerked tight against his neck, making him gasp.
A red haze swept over my vision and all thought vanished, papers in a fire, leaving only searing heat, consuming power, and fear. Heart-stopping, utter terror as I helplessly felt myself burning away.
Gideon’s electricity went first. Then the buzz.
Something flickered inside me. A hint of light? Electricity? My soul? The archnephilim’s power devoured that as well. All that was left was a tiny, barely audible voice screaming in fear and agony and desperation.
Then a gunshot roared nearby and the archnephilim’s power shuddered.
Another gunshot and the smoke pouring into me vanished.
Strong hands grabbed me as I collapsed. My mind and soul jerked back into my body as those hands yanked me away from the archnephilim.
A barrage of semi-automatic gunfire thundered through the empty warehouse. The archnephilim howled, his form shuddering, and Kol leaped past me. His face was still disfigured and his hands covered in angry red scars from my divine light, but he held both of his daggers as if that didn’t affect him and slashed at the archnephilim, as fast and as powerful as I’d seen before.
“You’re a God damned fool,” Marcus growled, his voice close to my ear.
I glanced back at him and his hands on my shoulders tightened. His piercing green gaze was filled with fear and if my body wasn’t still on fire, I was sure the temperature in the warehouse would have plummeted.
“You’re not supposed to be here.” I tried to pull out of his grip but he held tight. “How are you here?”
“I know you, Essie. I knew you’d do something stupid. So I planted a tracker on you.”
“When did—? In the elevator, when we—?” That was the only time he could have done it. Had our moment in the elevator just been a ploy so I wouldn’t notice? As much as I craved Marcus, I didn’t really know him. Except that didn’t make sense. Everything he’d done had been to protect me.
“You made it too easy,” he said, and bolted toward the archnephilim. His body turned to liquid flesh, compacting, expanding, twisting, and within three quick steps, never missing a beat, he’d transformed into a massive black wolf, the magic of his lycanthropy permanently consuming his clothing. I’d only seen a shifter transform once before, and it was beautiful and horrific all at the same time. Marcus leaped at the archnephilim, snapping through tentacles, and Kol dove past to a concrete pillar supporting the roof and began to climb.
Behind me, Jacob, holding the HK416 assault rifle from the armory in Operations, fired another barrage of bullets. They sliced through the middle of the archnephilim, drawing a howl. Guess bullets enchanted to take down a greater demon did affect an archnephilim, but one shot, let alone four, still hadn’t been enough to bring him down.
The only sure way to do it was my original plan.
I tried to raise my hand, but couldn’t.
God damn it.
I gritted my teeth. The archnephilim’s smoke wasn’t in me any more, but the power from his brand was still strong, still threatening to rip me in half.
Kol reached the rafters and ran to Gideon, who flapped his free wing, trying to raise himself enough to unhook his other wing or, in the very least, not choke on the noose, but his flaps were uneven and yanked him against the hook and noose.
The archnephilim swept out a tentacle to hit Kol, but Jacob fired another short barrage, slicing through the smoke, making it vanish before it struck.
Kol cut the rope securing the noose to the rafters, and Gideon jerked up, above the rafter, and yanked his wing from the hook. He hit the ceiling with a boom and crashed, stomach first, onto the girder. My pulse stuttered with a fear for him that I shouldn’t have. Kol grabbed him and steadied him then cut the rope binding his arms.
The archnephilim howled with a rage that made his fire within me burn brighter. He shot two more tentacles at them. Jacob hit one of the two tentacles but didn’t completely sever the second one. It bashed Kol off the rafter. Gideon threw himself after Kol and grabbed his arm, but Gideon’s wings couldn’t get enough air or were too damaged and they crashed to the floor.
The electricity within me flared and yanked on my essence, pouring it into Gideon. I shuddered, my muscles weakening, and fought to maintain what little control I had on my body.
Jacob fired again into the center of the archnephilim’s writhing form. The smoke whirled, caught up in a wild wind I couldn’t feel, and his fire within me stuttered. Marcus tore into him, and Kol scrambled to his feet his daggers ready, while Gideon groaned and pulled his wings into his body. The electricity from his brand flared again, jagged spikes under my skin, weakening me even more as he stood, swaying.
“Get Gideon out of here,” I yelled. I didn’t care who did it, just that it was done.
“You can’t protect him,” the archnephilim said, and a massive tentacle slammed Kol across the warehouse, sending him crashing through the debris littering the floor. “You can’t protect any of them.”
Dozens of tentacles shot at Marcus, who twisted and snapped at them, but two sliced deep into his side, making him howl. Gideon half lunged, half staggered toward the archnephilim, his sword of light forming in his hand. He slashed at the archnephilim, but a flurry of tentacles batted the blade aside.
Another barrage of bullets cut through where the archnephilim’s head would have been, and Kol barreled toward him, daggers raised.
The guys slashed and tore and shot the archnephilim, but it was like the fight in the cafeteria, and for every hit they made on him, the archnephilim gave them two.
I mentally heaved against the archnephilim’s control.
Marcus was speared again with another tentacle and his blood splattered on the floor. The archnephilim heaved him up and Gideon took that moment of distraction and rammed his blade into the archnephilim’s side. The archnephilim slammed Marcus against the warehouse wall, and Gideon twisted and wrenched the blade through the archnephilim’s smoke, drawing a howl of pain.
The fire within me weakened again and I jerked my hand up. My thumb with the divine light ring swept through a stream of weak sunset light and flashed brighter than it should have.
The archnephilim burst out laughing as he sent a tentacle t
hrough Kol’s chest and tossed him at Marcus.
“You brought a toy,” the archnephilim said. “How cute.” He whipped a tentacle around Gideon’s chest and squeezed what had to be already broken ribs. Gideon screamed and his electricity sliced through his brand. More power rushed out of me into him.
I staggered, trembling, my head whirling. I fought to keep standing, then realized there was no point. I could end this on my knees.
I sagged to the floor. My hand shook. I still had control, but barely. The words of the light strike raced through my head, over and over again, and the new power, the one I recognized as mine, built within me. I squared my shoulders and embraced that power.
“You’re not powerful enough,” the archnephilim sneered. “That won’t kill me.”
“Not directly.” I rammed the ring against the archnephilim’s brand and released my power. It poured into the ring, turned to divine light, and exploded into my arm with searing white agony.
Gideon jerked toward me. Marcus yelled my name.
The archnephilim howled. His smoke burst apart, revealing his angel form, and white light blazed out of his eyes.
His fire in my body surged, fighting the divine light, and my hand with the ring trembled. I gritted my teeth, keeping it in place while my body was trapped in the center of a sun, burning up from the inside out.
Tears filled my eyes, and the divine light overwhelmed the archnephilim’s fire, consuming it and everything it touched.
“He’ll betray you,” the archnephilim hissed in my head, dropping to his knees. I could feel him fighting to control me with our mental connection, using his words to dig himself deeper into me.
The agony in my arm was all-consuming. It was too much. I had to stop. Except I couldn’t. If I survived, then the archnephilim did. The choice had been made for me the moment the archnephilim had branded me. I was already dead. And I hated that. I hated that I’d spent my childhood scared and hiding. I hated that my mother had given up the semblance of a normal life because of me. And I hated that the one thing I wanted, a normal life, would never be possible.
Even if I survived this, even if I wasn’t Gideon’s mate, I’d never have a normal life. I wasn’t even sure if I could get close to having one. If I got too close to a friend, even a human one, they could become suspicious. Eventually someone would notice and question my temperature issues. And there wasn’t any way I could have a romantic relationship. How could I let myself get close to someone when I had to lie to them about who I really was?
“He’ll kill you,” the archnephilim said. “That’s what angels do to our kind.”
“You’d kill me, too, and then you’d kill others, innocents.” At least if I couldn’t have the life I yearned for, my death could mean something.
“I’m not killing the innocent. They slaughtered babies.”
And that was the true horror of what Michael had done with his war. Forced good people to make the choice between themselves and unnaturally created babies that would, in a matter of months, be mindless, monstrous soldiers. “So vengeance is the answer? Killing in kind without mercy?”
“It’s the only answer.”
“No. It isn’t.” A seizure jerked me. The ring jumped away from my arm. The divine light dimmed and I yelled the light strike spell again and rammed it back in place.
The light in the nephilim’s eyes burned brighter. He screamed and divine light poured out of his mouth and nose. I could feel his pain. It was my pain, consuming both of us down to our very essence. It would be over soon. Please let it be over soon. I needed to last just a little longer. Please.
But I was weakening and so was the light pouring from the ring. I wasn’t going to hold out long enough. I was going to fail and then Marcus and Gideon and the others would be in danger. The archnephilim would torture and slaughter them. I could feel his rage through our connection. He despised Gideon, and all those who’d fought in the war, and he hated me with a consuming fury for turning my back on my own kind.
Except I wasn’t anything like the archnephilim, I hadn’t been made in a laboratory, and I didn’t have his blood lust.
I threw what was left of my essence, the strange power within me, the gnawing buzz grating in my mind, always present, even what little of Gideon’s electricity I could feel, into the ring. All of it. All of me. Every bit, every miniscule flicker of magic, every hope and fear and heartache. Everything I had. It went into the ring, and poured through me into the archnephilim in a ferocious inferno a thousand times stronger than the archnephilim’s fire.
Cracks snapped through his body, blinding white light slicing out, slicing through me. I fought to see past the blaze, to hold on, and see it through to the end. One of the cracks erupted and the light roared out of him.
He howled and writhed as it consumed him, and collapsed in a smoldering black heap.
The weight of his brand, a weight I hadn’t realized had been there before, shattered, and the divine light, with no place left to go, surged back into me.
I screamed as it devoured me, unable to move or stop the power flowing from me and the ring into my body, knowing I’d end up a smoldering black heap like the archnephilim.
But that had been the plan. To save the guys, to save everyone, and sacrifice myself.
Chapter 22
The buzz returned to my senses first, snapping under my skin at pre-nicotine levels and grating against nerves that had been burned raw with the archnephilim’s power and divine light. The damp musty smell that had filled the warehouse was gone. So too was the chilly evening air.
I couldn’t hear the guys and panic seized me. I must have failed, passed out before killing the archnephilim. Surely if they’d survived, they’d be talking, regrouping, trying to figure out what to do next. But I couldn’t hear anything—
No, that wasn’t true. I could hear the gentle whoosh of air, the kind of steady, low hum that came from the heating-cooling system of a big building. And the temperature was consistent with being indoors.
Recognizing those two details tripped a switch in my brain, and I realized I lay on my back on something soft, instead of being crumpled on a wet concrete floor, and was covered with a blanket.
I cracked my eyes open and stared up at a white ceiling cast in partial shadow. The fluorescent light above me was off, but, given the way the illumination and shadow painted the ceiling, a light to my left had to be on.
I let my head slowly fall to the side, afraid to discover just how injured I was underneath the biting buzz, not yet ready to take stock of the damage I’d taken from the archnephilim or the divine light ring, but nothing screamed in pain.
My gaze followed the light, stalling on an IV bag with a line trailing toward me. I didn’t look to see if it was hooked up to my hand. If I was alive and in a hospital, I was hooked up to the IV. Beyond the bag was a small reading lamp turned away from me, shining on Kol.
He slouched in a chair, one leg up — ankle on thigh — his head bowed, reading whatever was in the folder in his lap. My pulse stalled, but I didn’t know if it was desire because he exuded sexual grace — and a hint of danger — or fear for what I’d done to him.
His black hair had fallen forward, veiling most of his face, and I couldn’t tell if he was still horribly scarred or not. His body language was loose, not tight with pain, suggesting that whatever had happened with the archnephilim, he’d managed to recover from his injuries. Had Marcus?
My pulse stuttered again and my right forearm ached, but not enough for me to know what that meant. Had Gideon survived?
Gideon didn’t have the same kind of self-healing that Kol did, and I couldn’t sense his electric power within his brand or the pull of strength from him to me. Of course that might have something to do with the strength of my personal, torturous buzz and that I was too weak to offer him any strength.
No, if I was in the Joined Parliament Operations Building, then I had no doubt Amiah would have taken care of Gideon and Marcus before she’d t
aken care of me… if they’d lived.
My throat tightened. They had to have lived. All of them. That had been the whole point.
I must have made a sound because Kol’s head rose, his warm brown eyes capturing my soul, making my thoughts flicker — and not fully stutter like they had the last time. I wasn’t sure what that meant, either.
He was still breathtakingly beautiful. His face was perfect, as if I hadn’t badly burned him with divine light, but there was a tightness in his eyes as if he were worried, or holding back, or something.
God, it’s bad news. It has to be bad news.
“Is he alive?” I asked, my voice rough, barely a whisper.
“The archnephilim, your mate, or your wolf?” he asked, the tightness melting into relief edged with a hint of wicked sensuality.
“All of them. And Jacob, too.” Please tell me everyone made it and it’s over. I didn’t know if I could burn the archnephilim’s brand again, especially if I needed to hold out longer to make it work.
“The archnephilim turned to ash when you passed out. He’s well and truly dead. Everyone else is alive.” The sensuality vanished, his relief the stronger emotion, but his eyes turned glassy.
“Thank God.” Thank God, thank God, thank God.
“Tell me you’re okay. Tell me Gideon’s brand protected you and you’re all right,” he said. “We all hoped it would, but Amiah said we wouldn’t know until you woke up. And you’ve been unconscious for days,” he said.
“Days? How many?”
“Five.”
“Five days?” No wonder the buzz was going insane. I’d been without nicotine for five days.
Kol grabbed my hand with both of his, holding it tentatively between his palms, careful not to touch the IV needle.
“Tell me you’re okay.” His gaze flickered to my left biceps and realization flashed through me.
The archnephilim was dead. I wasn’t. That meant the outcome for me was insanity. Except I felt fine, or as fine as I could be with the God damned buzz in my body.
“I—” Would I even know if I was insane? Except I didn’t feel as if my life had been shattered… I mean, I did and it had been. I had feelings I couldn’t ignore for Marcus and wore Gideon’s mating brand, both situations risked revealing my secret and endangering my life, but I wasn’t heartbroken to hear about the archnephilim’s death. I didn’t feel any of the things the textbooks said I’d feel when someone I was bonded to died.
