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 eyes, 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.
If this was the bag filled with Adrian’s blessed communion wafers instead of manna, I was a dead woman.
Fireballs erupted inside my chest. I cried out and got in the first full breath of air I’d had since the seraph plowed me deep into the earth. My vision also cleared with the suddenness of a light switch being flipped on, and the ringing stopped, too. I had gambled on eating the manna because all my injuries were internal instead of external, and that gamble had paid off. Even my broken arm stopped throbbing, and when I took in another deep breath, the pain in my lungs and ribs was gone, too.
Then new sounds filled my ears with the same volume and intensity as that threatening, you’re-about-to-pass-out ringing. They were shrieks, and they were coming from up ahead.
I turned as much as I could manage while still being clutched to Brutus’s chest by one of the gargoyle’s massive arms. He used the other as a club to pummel any demon who got close to us, but there weren’t that many of them anymore. Once I found the source of the shrieks, the reason why was clear. I stared, unable to believe what I was seeing.
Adrian stood about twenty yards away. Like Brutus, he was covered in demon blood, his blood and multiple injuries, but that was not what had me staring while my mind froze with shock. It wasn’t even the seraph on his knees in front of Adrian, his wings being ripped off while his many eyes were being strafed with countless thin, dark knives that went all the way through.
It was the shadows surrounding Adrian. At first, I’d thought they were part of a dark fog, or maybe even a case of the demonically formed clouds descending until they covered the ground around him. But when I saw those shadows form into knifelike shapes that kept tearing into the seraph until nothing remained of him except a pile of smoldering ashes, I knew what they were. And I totally understood why the seraph I’d killed had looked terrified.
He hadn’t been afraid of me. He’d been afraid of Adrian, and he’d had damned good reason to be.
“You have Demetrius’s shadows.”
My voice was raw from more than my recent brush with death. Adrian’s head snapped up, and I gasped. Even his eyes seemed to have a dark haze over them, as if the shadows weren’t just emanating from behind him like a living, malevolent cloak, but were inside him, too.
Then he looked up, and I followed his gaze to see Blinky hovering about fifty yards above him. The demon looked back and forth between me and Adrian, his expression reflecting equal parts rage and frustration.
“You still live,” he said to me with naked hatred.
I squirmed until Brutus put me down. I wanted plenty of room to hurl a stone at him, if he came any closer.
“I would stop looking at her if I were you.”
Adrian’s voice was light, yet it vibrated with all the unexpected power that caused me to stare at him in continued disbelief. I knew his half-demon side had gifted Adrian with unusual strength, speed and agility, making him by far the deadliest Judian to ever walk the earth. But I had never thought he’d inherited the ability to manifest Demetrius’s deadly, infamous shadows. I hadn’t even known such a thing was possible.
Neither had Blinky, from the way he regarded Adrian with a wariness he’d never before displayed. He also made sure to keep well out of reach of those dark, lethal swaths that could form into whatever weapon Adrian wanted.
“Why do you continue to fight us?” Blinky asked, his demeanor suddenly changing from hateful to conciliatory. “Never has it been more clear what side you belong with, Adrian.”
“I belong with her,” Adrian said, his shadows starting to flare and swirl. “And you nearly killed her.”
“It wasn’t me,” Blinky began.
“Yes, you!” Adrian roared while his shadows struck out like soaring knives. Blinky flinched even though he was out of reach, then he stopped trying to win Adrian over and looked at me.
“Don’t you wonder how I found you, Davidian?”
Actually, yes, now that he mentioned it. I hadn’t had time to ponder that before, what with getting my insides pureed by the pile-driving seraph, but it was a good question.
“How did you?”
“Remember when Adrian repeatedly lashed me with the cloths that had covered Moses’s staff?” he asked in a silky tone.
Adrian smiled. “Good times.”
I wouldn’t have said that. I was still trying to forget what happened to an eye-covered demon when you keep flinging a highly hallowed object onto him. Gross, gross, gross.
“The damage left scars,” Blinky said, briefly extending all six of his wings before flapping them to stay aloft again. That glimpse revealed hardened, burned-looking patches all over him, and I mean all over.
“Nasty,” Adrian said with obvious pleasure. “Remember why I did that to you? Because you were tormenting Ivy. Guess how much I’m going to hurt you now that you tried to kill her?”
“But if you kill me, then you’ll never know how we were able to find the Davidian,” Blinky all but purred.
What was Blinky up to? Yes, I wanted to know how he had found me, but why would he tell us? It wouldn’t cause Adrian to show him mercy; he couldn’t have been blunter about his desire to kill Blinky. The demon wasn’t trying to kill us at the moment, either. He couldn’t risk getting closer. My slingshot and now Adrian’s shadows were lethal to demons, as one very dead seraph could attest. Yet Blinky wasn’t running away so he could regroup and attack with reinforcements later. That would have made the most sense, and Blinky wasn’t dumb, yet here he was, gabbing away like we were all girlfriends at a slumber party...
“He’s stalling,” I said, looking around in quick, jerky glances that still allowed me to keep one eye on Blinky. “Other demons must already be on the way.”
“Look who isn’t as stupid as I’ve always believed her to be,” a hated and familiar voice drawled from the river.
I spun around, already hurling a stone. It sailed true, yet Demetrius was out of its range. It splashed into the water several feet in front of him, and he glanced at the ripples it made with contempt.
“Once again, you fail, Davidian.”
Then he looked at Adrian and his expression changed, mirroring the same shock I’d felt when I first saw those shadows haloing him with tangible, deadly darkness. Finally, a slow smile spread across Demetrius’s features.
“I have never been more proud of you.”
The compliment didn’t sway Adrian. His new shadows flared. “Come closer and tell me that.”
Demetrius responded to the death threat with his smile sliding into a smirk. “No, thank you, my son. Tell me, how long have you been concealing that magnificent power?”
“Didn’t know I had it until today,” Adrian replied, his voice becoming tight. “The shadows burst out of me when one of the seraphs said he’d killed Ivy.”
“Ivy.” Demetrius spat my name out as if it tasted foul. “She ruins everything, including this father-son moment. When will you give up on the little Davidian? She is doomed.”
Adrian’s shadows grew and began to swirl faster, until they resembled a group of tightly clustered tornadoes behind him. It reminded me so much of Demetrius when he’d been at full power that it was stunning. Adrian no longer looked half-demon. He looked one-hundred-percent demon, and the sight of it shook me.
“I’ll never give up on her,” he growled to Demetrius, that dark haze over his eyes changing until the silver rings around his irises flashed. “Never.”
And screw how scary he looked! He was still Adrian. That meant he was mine lock, stock and now shadow-loaded barrel.
Demetrius sighed again. “My strong, foolish son, even with your glorious manifestation of my powers, you have no chance to save her. You are completely outnumbered.”
I looked behind us toward the outskirts of the city, but no one was there. No one else was in the sky except Blinky, and Demetrius was all alone in the river... Aw, shit. No, he wasn’t.
At least two dozen more heads broke the water to line up behind Demetrius. Some were human looking, but Demetrius wouldn’t have brought regular humans as backup. If I had any doubts that he’d brought a demon horde with him, the misshappen and horned heads among them cleared that up.
“As I was saying,” Demetrius continued. “You are completely outnumbered, and the Davidian is doomed.”
“No,” said an unexpected voice behind us. “She is not.”