Bloodline Divinity: An Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 13), page 5
They lashed at him day and night. They corroded his sanity perpetually over the eons in which a part of him had been separated. It had turned him mad. Warped him so badly that he no longer cared about balance. Or free will. All he wanted was silence.
And nothing would bring that quiet but the destruction of everything. I blinked and the image changed. If only my dreams were made of more pleasant things. This dream showed me standing in the vastness of the Ley dimension. I clutched at my head, my body filling up with so much light it couldn’t be contained. My skin glowed like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
I staggered, unable to take the force of so much power. My skin broke and repaired itself in a deadly chase that reminded me of what Lucifer’s vessel had been like when he was still inside Xavier. Those serpentine green lines of angelfire putting me back together, only for them to break once more.
I let out the same cry of madness that Astaroth had given not so long ago. “Telochah!” I screamed in the demonic language.
Death.
That was exactly what I got. And in the wake of that command. Everything in the dimensions went dark. Including the Ley dimension.
Astaroth was going to use me to destroy everything.
5
The supernaturals went crazy. Even though the Sisterhood called them monsters, they were much more closely aligned with magic than the humans were. The idea that Astaroth would destroy everything sent them into an uncontrollable frenzy. They surged forward, not caring about any barrier, or the guns pointed at them.
“Wait!” Sophie cried. The shifters didn’t take any heed. Her influence over them through the pack link could only go so far.
They almost made it to the middle of the field before the Human League readied their weapons. Ignoring humans had become perilous. Whatever the Discarded Ones had done to Lucifer seemed to have also affected the field of magic. It was no longer keeping human inventions from backfiring.
The first bullet hit Matthew in the shoulder. It pushed him off course and made him collide with Angus, who was flying behind him to his left. The second bullet would have hit Dorian if something else hadn’t appeared right in front of him and tried to take a swipe at his head.
Dorian’s reflexes were lightning quick. He crouched and used his momentum to roll straight into the blockade. Caught in a killing frenzy, Dorian’s hunting skills were honed to precision. The thing about shifters was that they could lock onto a target and hunt until they ran that thing down.
The problem was that the thing in front of Dorian did not usually equal enemy. The angel smiled. Not one of the Discarded Ones, but a fully-fledged angel of the heavenly realm. The angelic, golden hair and otherworldly beauty was a dead giveaway. Dorian’s claws retracted where he was about to slice into her torso. The angel wasn’t anywhere near as hesitant.
Her angel blade would have cut Dorian in two if a silver rapier hadn’t caught the angel blade on the way down. Astrid had absolutely no qualms about hitting an angel. Her fist cracked against the angel’s cheek, sending the other woman flying backward.
The angel cradled her broken face. Her pretty mouth twisted. “Disgusting half-breed!” she spat, seconds before Astrid teleported in front of her and ran her through with the rapier.
“Shit!” Kai cried. He and I cringed at the same time, hoping desperately that there wouldn’t be an explosion. Somebody down there was looking out for us. Yes, down there. I was no longer under the illusion that the heavenly realm was on our side.
Astrid didn’t even bother to be contrite. She held the dead angel up by the scuff of her collar. “Fantastic,” Astrid said, breaking into a maniacal grin. “An angelic suit of armour.”
Andrei was definitely a masochist if this was the side of Astrid that got him going. Astrid wasn’t kidding, though. She threw the dead angel at Dorian, who proceeded to use the angel as a barrier, eating up bullets as they advanced on the humans.
Sinister magic rose up around me. “Arise,” Mayer said quietly. Up popped dozens of undead. Buoyed by Meyer’s example, the other necromancers waved their hands, too. Controlled by the necromancers, the undead went running straight into the humans. The first of them were cut down quickly. The necromancers didn’t care. It reminded me too much of the way Lucifer would throw everything away, as long as he got what he wanted.
What the necromancers wanted was something to draw the fire of the humans. The undead created the perfect shield. They felt no pain and would keep going until they were too damaged to function. The added protection allowed the supernatural to inch forward enough to meet the front line of humans.
“Wait!” Giselle shouted, a fraction of a second too late. Dorian dropped one of the Human League with a right hook like the man was kindling. He took two bullets to the right ribs as collateral, but Dorian didn’t care. Giselle’s distress was the only thing stopping the humans from getting their heads ripped off.
That and the fact that she was systematically stunning them with her telepathy.
Sophie inhaled sharply when Max’s low grumble signalled that he’d been shot too. She didn’t even have time to throw a protection circle around him before he stomped across the field, yanked the weapon from the human’s hands, and knocked the man unconscious with the butt of the rifle.
“Guess what?” Max said. He lifted the rifle and pointed it back in their direction. “Ever heard of a thing called Dimension Integration?” A pink magic circle drew around him. Sophie flinched each time the bullets that would have taken out Max hit her circle.
“Sophie!” Max barked. Sophie let go of the circle.
She and I screamed at the same time as Max opened fire. Did I know they taught the shifters to shoot guns in Dimension Integration? Then again, Max’s family were in the protection caper. It was a reasonable leap to make that they would train in the use of human weapons.
Thankfully, he wasn’t angry enough to take kill shots. Yet. Max opened fire at the human’s feet. They scattered, leaving behind enough of a gap that it allowed the other shifters to charge through.
The humans went down, but more and more angels poured from the portals. They deadlocked with the supernaturals. The Nephilim flew to meet the beings that had technically birthed them.
Though the Nephilim were deadly loyal to their bloodlines, they had fought with their elite guard units for a long time. They had survived a lot, and that kind of loyalty beat out a theoretical one. Matthew clocked an angel that was about to stab Angus in the back.
The angel teleported behind Matthew, readying for another assault, only to be set upon by Durin and a group of shifters. Low growls rent the air before blood burst. Kai landed just shy of the splatter zone. He snatched the angel’s blade.
“Clear!” he screamed. The shifters jumped aside. In his distress, the angel’s wings had popped out. The bones had been broken and carved up by claws. Kai paused for a second. He blinked, and his jaw locked.
The angel raised his arm that was dislocated at the elbow. “Malach–”
Kai beheaded him. Angelfire speared around Kai in a bright green globe that pushed the other supernaturals back. I could tell what he was doing from a mile away. If there was an explosion, Kai was trying to contain it.
His expression didn’t change, but in the bond, I felt him sighing deeply. He was so tired of killing things that were meant to help us.
The weariness didn’t stop him from regrouping for another strike. He turned, ready to throw himself at his next target. There was a distinct push from the supernaturals in a particular direction.
Oh jeez. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were making a beeline for Astaroth. The thing about hubris was that you didn’t know it had a hold of you until it was too late. There was something to be said for doggedness. We’d gotten in some little wins for once, and they were fighting as though this war was won.
The grisly smile on Astaroth’s face made my throat lock.
Lucifer didn’t share my worries. “Really?” he said. “Is this the best you can do? Are these sub-insects meant to make us quiver?”
The archdemon snickered along with him. All these celestial beings were insane. Clearly, immortality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “The job market is a bit sparse at the moment,” Astaroth said. “But don’t worry. I’m expecting an economic upturn any day now.”
It concerned me that he was so familiar with human expressions. It concerned me even more when I caught a flash of something uneasy in the bond. A fleeting memory of faces so perfect it sucked my breath away. A garrison of soldiers perfect in every way.
They were lined up across the edge of the field that spread into a garden filled with Arcana trees. The only thing that gave away their status as demons was the way Lucifer reacted to them. As though they were hideous and beneath him, even though each one was objectively perfect.
Archdemons, my mind suggested. It made sense that there was more than one. After all, there were seven archangels.
“You will never get to them,” Lucifer assured him.
“Funny,” Astaroth quipped. “Wasn’t that what Gabriel told you about your angel blade one time? And yet, look at where we are.”
Astaroth’s will brushed over me again. Every hair on my body stood erect. A disgraceful somersault in my gut begged me to run.
“Pull back!” I screamed. My voice was too quiet amongst the racket of gunfire. I didn’t like how calm Astaroth was one bit.
“What’s he doing?” I whirled on Lucifer. The devil’s face was ashen. He took short breaths.
Lucifer only managed to bleat out a single word, but it was enough. “Death.”
I almost lost control of my bowels when Lucifer took my hand. It wasn’t for comfort. He was making sure Astaroth didn’t get to me. His strength had been weakened by the Discarded Ones and physical contact was necessary.
Trying desperately to find a way to connect with the supernaturals, I scraped around for my magic. All I got was a flash of the Ley dimension before I came up with nothing. Dammit!
“What’s happening to me?” I whined.
Astaroth laughed heartily. “I see you’re having a bit of a power problem, Alessia.”
There was nothing in this dimension quite as terrifying as a portal opening. Correction. The thing that was scarier was two portals opening. Or three. Scratch that, it was six.
All around us, great gaping mouths of silver-laced portals sparked in the air. They began to expand. One of them opened in front of where the supernaturals were racing towards Astaroth.
The edges of the portals were ringed with magic and runes that made my eyes water. But it was the portals themselves that stole my breath. As a low-magic user, and a hedge witch at that, I was used to the feedback that life produced. Always in the background, I could feel the soft sigh of seeds germinating in the earth. Of roots wicking up water, of dew collecting in the air.
Nothing of the sort occurred inside the portals. Heck, even when Hell dimension portals opened, my bone magic sensed the destructive keening of the demons. These portals emitted nothing. No life. Period.
Eugenia hissed. She stood inside an arcane circle to my right. “There’s nothing there!” she shouted. The entire army of supernaturals contracted to get away from the dead perimeter of the portals.
Somebody let out a sigh. My head whipped around to the left, where the necromancers were huddled inside their sinister-magic circle. Mayer’s hand suddenly gripped my shoulder again.
We both watched as Drew slumped to his knees. He fell over into the foetal position, cradling his head in his hands.
As soon as Drew went down, so did Jakob and the necromancers around him. They all turned into supernatural pill bugs, rolling into balls on the ground. Suffice to say, they lost control of the undead.
Without leashes, the undead went crazy, killing anything in sight. The Human League cried out as rotten teeth and brittle claws came at them. It hadn’t occurred to me that until now, even the necromancers were trying to hold back against the humans. Mayer groaned. He slumped onto my shoulder.
He was trying to catch all the undead, but there were too many. Especially as he was still focused on keeping the demonic circle around us intact.
The groan of a shifter permeated the air too.
No.
“Lucifer!” I shouted as I watched one of the shifter Sentinels revert from his wolf form and literally tuck his tail between his legs.
“Alessia!” Lucifer shot back at me.
“Help them!”
Lucifer shoved consternation at me in the bond. Kai’s angelfire welled up between us, creating a buffer in case Lucifer decided to do something to hurt me. The devil’s irritation hit the metaphorical ceiling.
I could feel him take hold of the bond and attempt to extract Kai from the connection. Angelfire snapped back at him, turning the bond into a livewire of power. The prickling itch of it was shoved aside by something else far more distracting. The moment Lucifer had lost part of his concentration, I felt the sharp snap of something. No, it was more of a click.
Like something was trying to click its fingers. Astaroth’s grinning face appeared in my head, only for Lucifer’s golden silver light to snatch it away.
Lucifer, I whispered in my head.
He didn’t have the wherewithal to reply. All that I got was a feeling, and my stomach sank. They were at loggerheads. Every second of every minute, of every hour, Lucifer was locked in a battle of wills with Astaroth. The archdemon wanted to snap his fingers and annihilate us all. The archangel was the only thing stopping him. Had this been going on since the beginning?
Kai’s annoyed grunt told me he’d seen it too.
We wouldn’t be getting any favours right now. A favour we so desperately needed with the death portals contracting around us.
Astaroth’s beaded gaze lingered on me. “Well, Lightbringer,” he said. “Your maker is currently preoccupied. Your move.”
There was absolutely no need for Kai to clamp down so hard on me in the bond. I had no intention of doing something stupid.
My inaction drew a chuckle from the archdemon. “This is slightly anticlimactic,” he mused. A pointed, red tongue stuck out of Astaroth’s mouth. It reminded me of a red slug, crawling over the left corner of his mouth, leaving a trail of slime in its wake. The physical action was heinous enough. What he did inside me was far, far worse.
A desperate chill permeated my chest. Primordial fear snapped at my feet, causing my darker half to curl in on herself. She imitated what the supernaturals were doing. She was cowering in the face of something too bad, too terrifying for her to comprehend.
My insides seized. The bond blared at me, but I couldn’t seem to break out of my reverie. Distantly, I heard screaming in my head, urging me to fight the archdemon’s hold. Like every nightmare I had ever dreamed, my body wouldn’t connect with my thoughts. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t act.
I was helpless.
6
A long-suppressed part of me whined. I couldn’t be helpless. Never again.
“But you are, scion of mine,” Astaroth assured me. “You are so very helpless.” If he hadn’t been inside my head, I would have thought the use of the nickname was just to put me off-kilter. He succeeded. But not as much as the other deadly notion. I was a product of him. All humans were. So were all the supernaturals, immortal or not. We were all his scions.
Lucifer’s rage bubbled in contradiction in the bond, but it didn’t manage to break through.
Astaroth gave a withered chuckle. “Let me show you just how helpless you are.”
My feet drew me forward a few steps without my consent.
“Lucifer!” Matthew urged. What he couldn’t feel was Lucifer’s indecision. To reach out for me could mean losing footing in his battle of wills with Astaroth.
It was always a risk to do something to bring attention to yourself in the heat of battle. Matthew teleported in front of me. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the one with wings. If Astaroth despised me, the Nephilim were just below me on that ladder.
Unable to reach Kai, Astaroth decided to go for the next best thing.
Darkness blotted out my vision in tandem with my desperation to reach out for Matthew. My jaw clicked from where I was clenching my teeth so hard. Still, I couldn’t move.
Matthew appeared in front of me, the picture of Nephilim duty. There had been no time to change into his battle armour today. I had a notion that he had teleported the second Astaroth had snatched me. His navy T-shirt was frayed at the collar and right sleeve from his brush with the portal. He had a deep cut diagonally along the front of his throat from a too-close encounter with another angel blade.
There was a single moment when our eyes locked. I saw his intention to stop me from reaching Astaroth.
If only he could see Astaroth’s intention for him. If only I could see it. The shadow of flapping wings blocked out the red sun above us. Green angelfire bathed the sky, only for Kai to be intercepted by angels as he tried to teleport to me. Even with his speed, Kai couldn’t match the will of an archdemon.
We didn’t get to Matthew in time. He tried to teleport away, but not before one of the angels caught hold of his shoulder. There were too many of them to simply throw off. The teleport cut out abruptly. Using their bodies as a barrier, the angels forced Matthew backwards. Right into the clutches of a sentient undead. Timothy raised his arm. Ropes of grey magic lashed themselves around Matthew.
“Bring him to me,” Astaroth urged.
Feathers exploded in the air as Kai’s angel blade sliced through the angels in his way. The other Nephilim charged with him, along with the Fae. Light magic blared against the red fog, but unlike demons, it didn’t have the same effect on supposedly heavenly beings. Light wasn’t all Angus had at his disposal. As an angel came close, Angus snatched at the angel’s wing and crumpled it with his bare hands. Bones and tendons snapped, causing the angel to cry out. His scream became a gurgle as Angus shoved a blade right through the angel’s throat.
And nothing would bring that quiet but the destruction of everything. I blinked and the image changed. If only my dreams were made of more pleasant things. This dream showed me standing in the vastness of the Ley dimension. I clutched at my head, my body filling up with so much light it couldn’t be contained. My skin glowed like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
I staggered, unable to take the force of so much power. My skin broke and repaired itself in a deadly chase that reminded me of what Lucifer’s vessel had been like when he was still inside Xavier. Those serpentine green lines of angelfire putting me back together, only for them to break once more.
I let out the same cry of madness that Astaroth had given not so long ago. “Telochah!” I screamed in the demonic language.
Death.
That was exactly what I got. And in the wake of that command. Everything in the dimensions went dark. Including the Ley dimension.
Astaroth was going to use me to destroy everything.
5
The supernaturals went crazy. Even though the Sisterhood called them monsters, they were much more closely aligned with magic than the humans were. The idea that Astaroth would destroy everything sent them into an uncontrollable frenzy. They surged forward, not caring about any barrier, or the guns pointed at them.
“Wait!” Sophie cried. The shifters didn’t take any heed. Her influence over them through the pack link could only go so far.
They almost made it to the middle of the field before the Human League readied their weapons. Ignoring humans had become perilous. Whatever the Discarded Ones had done to Lucifer seemed to have also affected the field of magic. It was no longer keeping human inventions from backfiring.
The first bullet hit Matthew in the shoulder. It pushed him off course and made him collide with Angus, who was flying behind him to his left. The second bullet would have hit Dorian if something else hadn’t appeared right in front of him and tried to take a swipe at his head.
Dorian’s reflexes were lightning quick. He crouched and used his momentum to roll straight into the blockade. Caught in a killing frenzy, Dorian’s hunting skills were honed to precision. The thing about shifters was that they could lock onto a target and hunt until they ran that thing down.
The problem was that the thing in front of Dorian did not usually equal enemy. The angel smiled. Not one of the Discarded Ones, but a fully-fledged angel of the heavenly realm. The angelic, golden hair and otherworldly beauty was a dead giveaway. Dorian’s claws retracted where he was about to slice into her torso. The angel wasn’t anywhere near as hesitant.
Her angel blade would have cut Dorian in two if a silver rapier hadn’t caught the angel blade on the way down. Astrid had absolutely no qualms about hitting an angel. Her fist cracked against the angel’s cheek, sending the other woman flying backward.
The angel cradled her broken face. Her pretty mouth twisted. “Disgusting half-breed!” she spat, seconds before Astrid teleported in front of her and ran her through with the rapier.
“Shit!” Kai cried. He and I cringed at the same time, hoping desperately that there wouldn’t be an explosion. Somebody down there was looking out for us. Yes, down there. I was no longer under the illusion that the heavenly realm was on our side.
Astrid didn’t even bother to be contrite. She held the dead angel up by the scuff of her collar. “Fantastic,” Astrid said, breaking into a maniacal grin. “An angelic suit of armour.”
Andrei was definitely a masochist if this was the side of Astrid that got him going. Astrid wasn’t kidding, though. She threw the dead angel at Dorian, who proceeded to use the angel as a barrier, eating up bullets as they advanced on the humans.
Sinister magic rose up around me. “Arise,” Mayer said quietly. Up popped dozens of undead. Buoyed by Meyer’s example, the other necromancers waved their hands, too. Controlled by the necromancers, the undead went running straight into the humans. The first of them were cut down quickly. The necromancers didn’t care. It reminded me too much of the way Lucifer would throw everything away, as long as he got what he wanted.
What the necromancers wanted was something to draw the fire of the humans. The undead created the perfect shield. They felt no pain and would keep going until they were too damaged to function. The added protection allowed the supernatural to inch forward enough to meet the front line of humans.
“Wait!” Giselle shouted, a fraction of a second too late. Dorian dropped one of the Human League with a right hook like the man was kindling. He took two bullets to the right ribs as collateral, but Dorian didn’t care. Giselle’s distress was the only thing stopping the humans from getting their heads ripped off.
That and the fact that she was systematically stunning them with her telepathy.
Sophie inhaled sharply when Max’s low grumble signalled that he’d been shot too. She didn’t even have time to throw a protection circle around him before he stomped across the field, yanked the weapon from the human’s hands, and knocked the man unconscious with the butt of the rifle.
“Guess what?” Max said. He lifted the rifle and pointed it back in their direction. “Ever heard of a thing called Dimension Integration?” A pink magic circle drew around him. Sophie flinched each time the bullets that would have taken out Max hit her circle.
“Sophie!” Max barked. Sophie let go of the circle.
She and I screamed at the same time as Max opened fire. Did I know they taught the shifters to shoot guns in Dimension Integration? Then again, Max’s family were in the protection caper. It was a reasonable leap to make that they would train in the use of human weapons.
Thankfully, he wasn’t angry enough to take kill shots. Yet. Max opened fire at the human’s feet. They scattered, leaving behind enough of a gap that it allowed the other shifters to charge through.
The humans went down, but more and more angels poured from the portals. They deadlocked with the supernaturals. The Nephilim flew to meet the beings that had technically birthed them.
Though the Nephilim were deadly loyal to their bloodlines, they had fought with their elite guard units for a long time. They had survived a lot, and that kind of loyalty beat out a theoretical one. Matthew clocked an angel that was about to stab Angus in the back.
The angel teleported behind Matthew, readying for another assault, only to be set upon by Durin and a group of shifters. Low growls rent the air before blood burst. Kai landed just shy of the splatter zone. He snatched the angel’s blade.
“Clear!” he screamed. The shifters jumped aside. In his distress, the angel’s wings had popped out. The bones had been broken and carved up by claws. Kai paused for a second. He blinked, and his jaw locked.
The angel raised his arm that was dislocated at the elbow. “Malach–”
Kai beheaded him. Angelfire speared around Kai in a bright green globe that pushed the other supernaturals back. I could tell what he was doing from a mile away. If there was an explosion, Kai was trying to contain it.
His expression didn’t change, but in the bond, I felt him sighing deeply. He was so tired of killing things that were meant to help us.
The weariness didn’t stop him from regrouping for another strike. He turned, ready to throw himself at his next target. There was a distinct push from the supernaturals in a particular direction.
Oh jeez. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were making a beeline for Astaroth. The thing about hubris was that you didn’t know it had a hold of you until it was too late. There was something to be said for doggedness. We’d gotten in some little wins for once, and they were fighting as though this war was won.
The grisly smile on Astaroth’s face made my throat lock.
Lucifer didn’t share my worries. “Really?” he said. “Is this the best you can do? Are these sub-insects meant to make us quiver?”
The archdemon snickered along with him. All these celestial beings were insane. Clearly, immortality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “The job market is a bit sparse at the moment,” Astaroth said. “But don’t worry. I’m expecting an economic upturn any day now.”
It concerned me that he was so familiar with human expressions. It concerned me even more when I caught a flash of something uneasy in the bond. A fleeting memory of faces so perfect it sucked my breath away. A garrison of soldiers perfect in every way.
They were lined up across the edge of the field that spread into a garden filled with Arcana trees. The only thing that gave away their status as demons was the way Lucifer reacted to them. As though they were hideous and beneath him, even though each one was objectively perfect.
Archdemons, my mind suggested. It made sense that there was more than one. After all, there were seven archangels.
“You will never get to them,” Lucifer assured him.
“Funny,” Astaroth quipped. “Wasn’t that what Gabriel told you about your angel blade one time? And yet, look at where we are.”
Astaroth’s will brushed over me again. Every hair on my body stood erect. A disgraceful somersault in my gut begged me to run.
“Pull back!” I screamed. My voice was too quiet amongst the racket of gunfire. I didn’t like how calm Astaroth was one bit.
“What’s he doing?” I whirled on Lucifer. The devil’s face was ashen. He took short breaths.
Lucifer only managed to bleat out a single word, but it was enough. “Death.”
I almost lost control of my bowels when Lucifer took my hand. It wasn’t for comfort. He was making sure Astaroth didn’t get to me. His strength had been weakened by the Discarded Ones and physical contact was necessary.
Trying desperately to find a way to connect with the supernaturals, I scraped around for my magic. All I got was a flash of the Ley dimension before I came up with nothing. Dammit!
“What’s happening to me?” I whined.
Astaroth laughed heartily. “I see you’re having a bit of a power problem, Alessia.”
There was nothing in this dimension quite as terrifying as a portal opening. Correction. The thing that was scarier was two portals opening. Or three. Scratch that, it was six.
All around us, great gaping mouths of silver-laced portals sparked in the air. They began to expand. One of them opened in front of where the supernaturals were racing towards Astaroth.
The edges of the portals were ringed with magic and runes that made my eyes water. But it was the portals themselves that stole my breath. As a low-magic user, and a hedge witch at that, I was used to the feedback that life produced. Always in the background, I could feel the soft sigh of seeds germinating in the earth. Of roots wicking up water, of dew collecting in the air.
Nothing of the sort occurred inside the portals. Heck, even when Hell dimension portals opened, my bone magic sensed the destructive keening of the demons. These portals emitted nothing. No life. Period.
Eugenia hissed. She stood inside an arcane circle to my right. “There’s nothing there!” she shouted. The entire army of supernaturals contracted to get away from the dead perimeter of the portals.
Somebody let out a sigh. My head whipped around to the left, where the necromancers were huddled inside their sinister-magic circle. Mayer’s hand suddenly gripped my shoulder again.
We both watched as Drew slumped to his knees. He fell over into the foetal position, cradling his head in his hands.
As soon as Drew went down, so did Jakob and the necromancers around him. They all turned into supernatural pill bugs, rolling into balls on the ground. Suffice to say, they lost control of the undead.
Without leashes, the undead went crazy, killing anything in sight. The Human League cried out as rotten teeth and brittle claws came at them. It hadn’t occurred to me that until now, even the necromancers were trying to hold back against the humans. Mayer groaned. He slumped onto my shoulder.
He was trying to catch all the undead, but there were too many. Especially as he was still focused on keeping the demonic circle around us intact.
The groan of a shifter permeated the air too.
No.
“Lucifer!” I shouted as I watched one of the shifter Sentinels revert from his wolf form and literally tuck his tail between his legs.
“Alessia!” Lucifer shot back at me.
“Help them!”
Lucifer shoved consternation at me in the bond. Kai’s angelfire welled up between us, creating a buffer in case Lucifer decided to do something to hurt me. The devil’s irritation hit the metaphorical ceiling.
I could feel him take hold of the bond and attempt to extract Kai from the connection. Angelfire snapped back at him, turning the bond into a livewire of power. The prickling itch of it was shoved aside by something else far more distracting. The moment Lucifer had lost part of his concentration, I felt the sharp snap of something. No, it was more of a click.
Like something was trying to click its fingers. Astaroth’s grinning face appeared in my head, only for Lucifer’s golden silver light to snatch it away.
Lucifer, I whispered in my head.
He didn’t have the wherewithal to reply. All that I got was a feeling, and my stomach sank. They were at loggerheads. Every second of every minute, of every hour, Lucifer was locked in a battle of wills with Astaroth. The archdemon wanted to snap his fingers and annihilate us all. The archangel was the only thing stopping him. Had this been going on since the beginning?
Kai’s annoyed grunt told me he’d seen it too.
We wouldn’t be getting any favours right now. A favour we so desperately needed with the death portals contracting around us.
Astaroth’s beaded gaze lingered on me. “Well, Lightbringer,” he said. “Your maker is currently preoccupied. Your move.”
There was absolutely no need for Kai to clamp down so hard on me in the bond. I had no intention of doing something stupid.
My inaction drew a chuckle from the archdemon. “This is slightly anticlimactic,” he mused. A pointed, red tongue stuck out of Astaroth’s mouth. It reminded me of a red slug, crawling over the left corner of his mouth, leaving a trail of slime in its wake. The physical action was heinous enough. What he did inside me was far, far worse.
A desperate chill permeated my chest. Primordial fear snapped at my feet, causing my darker half to curl in on herself. She imitated what the supernaturals were doing. She was cowering in the face of something too bad, too terrifying for her to comprehend.
My insides seized. The bond blared at me, but I couldn’t seem to break out of my reverie. Distantly, I heard screaming in my head, urging me to fight the archdemon’s hold. Like every nightmare I had ever dreamed, my body wouldn’t connect with my thoughts. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t act.
I was helpless.
6
A long-suppressed part of me whined. I couldn’t be helpless. Never again.
“But you are, scion of mine,” Astaroth assured me. “You are so very helpless.” If he hadn’t been inside my head, I would have thought the use of the nickname was just to put me off-kilter. He succeeded. But not as much as the other deadly notion. I was a product of him. All humans were. So were all the supernaturals, immortal or not. We were all his scions.
Lucifer’s rage bubbled in contradiction in the bond, but it didn’t manage to break through.
Astaroth gave a withered chuckle. “Let me show you just how helpless you are.”
My feet drew me forward a few steps without my consent.
“Lucifer!” Matthew urged. What he couldn’t feel was Lucifer’s indecision. To reach out for me could mean losing footing in his battle of wills with Astaroth.
It was always a risk to do something to bring attention to yourself in the heat of battle. Matthew teleported in front of me. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the one with wings. If Astaroth despised me, the Nephilim were just below me on that ladder.
Unable to reach Kai, Astaroth decided to go for the next best thing.
Darkness blotted out my vision in tandem with my desperation to reach out for Matthew. My jaw clicked from where I was clenching my teeth so hard. Still, I couldn’t move.
Matthew appeared in front of me, the picture of Nephilim duty. There had been no time to change into his battle armour today. I had a notion that he had teleported the second Astaroth had snatched me. His navy T-shirt was frayed at the collar and right sleeve from his brush with the portal. He had a deep cut diagonally along the front of his throat from a too-close encounter with another angel blade.
There was a single moment when our eyes locked. I saw his intention to stop me from reaching Astaroth.
If only he could see Astaroth’s intention for him. If only I could see it. The shadow of flapping wings blocked out the red sun above us. Green angelfire bathed the sky, only for Kai to be intercepted by angels as he tried to teleport to me. Even with his speed, Kai couldn’t match the will of an archdemon.
We didn’t get to Matthew in time. He tried to teleport away, but not before one of the angels caught hold of his shoulder. There were too many of them to simply throw off. The teleport cut out abruptly. Using their bodies as a barrier, the angels forced Matthew backwards. Right into the clutches of a sentient undead. Timothy raised his arm. Ropes of grey magic lashed themselves around Matthew.
“Bring him to me,” Astaroth urged.
Feathers exploded in the air as Kai’s angel blade sliced through the angels in his way. The other Nephilim charged with him, along with the Fae. Light magic blared against the red fog, but unlike demons, it didn’t have the same effect on supposedly heavenly beings. Light wasn’t all Angus had at his disposal. As an angel came close, Angus snatched at the angel’s wing and crumpled it with his bare hands. Bones and tendons snapped, causing the angel to cry out. His scream became a gurgle as Angus shoved a blade right through the angel’s throat.
