CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I WHIRLED, THE TENSION of the situation causing me to hurl a stone even though I’d recognized his voice. Thankfully, the rock bounced harmlessly off Zach’s chest, proving that hallowed weapons can’t harm Archons. Zach looked at the stone, then at me, and a single dark brow arched.
“You could have simply said hello.”
I also could have hugged him. Demetrius had stopped his advance from the river as soon as he saw Zach. Getting his ass kicked by the Archon once before had been an experience that Demetrius clearly didn’t want to repeat, and seeing it made me so happy that I got cocky.
“What’s that about me being doomed?” I taunted Demetrius.
If Demetrius was rethinking his attack, Blinky wasn’t. “You hesitate because of one Archon?” he asked him with open scorn.
“He is no normal Archon,” Demetrius replied darkly.
“I am a seraph,” Blinky hissed, more to Zach this time now. “No Archons were greater in power, and I have even more power now. Who are you to think that you can stand against me?”
Zach pulled off his faded blue hoodie, which made me blink because I had never seen him do that before. I barely had time to notice the plain T-shirt he wore underneath it before that was thrown aside, too. Then he reached behind him, and when I saw the skin around his face bunch up while light burst from the back of his head, I knew what was coming next and flung my arm over my eyes while squeezing them shut.
Not even that blocked out the explosion of light as Zach discarded the human suit he wore and revealed his true form. I didn’t look because I’d seen him like this once before. From the few glimpses I’d caught, Zach’s true form looked like someone had stitched together lightning bolts and blindingly bright solar flares to form a winged, vaguely humanoid shape that, like the sun, was impossible to look at for more than a few seconds.
I heard shouts in Demonish, then splashes, and guessed that at least some of the demons in the river were beating a retreat.
“Michael,” I thought I heard Blinky say, but his voice was drowned out by all the other shouts in Demonish. Then I heard him again, far more clearly this time, and that same name was echoed by other voices, as well. “Michael. It’s Michael!”
“Michael.” Hatred dripped from Demetrius’s voice. “I should have known when you muted my shadows in the desert. Only an archangel has that power, yet I couldn’t believe you’d lower yourself to masquerade as a mere errand boy to mortals.”
“I do what I am commanded,” Zach replied, still in that mild tone. “If you had, you would never have fallen so low.”
“Michael,” Adrian said, shock in his voice. I risked a glance in his direction, although I still used my arm as a shield. It was hard to see Adrian through the dazzling bursts of light that continued to erupt from Zach, but from the glimpses I caught, he had backed away, too.
“You’re not only a secret archangel, are you?” Adrian continued, his tone turning accusing. “The archangel Michael is also supposed to be the general of heaven’s armies, right?”
“Yes,” Zach—Michael—said. “And that is why none here can defeat me.”
That seemed to be the overall opinion, judging from the tiny glimpses I caught between squints. Adrian wasn’t the only one who’d backed up at this revelation. All the other demons had, too, and I didn’t even see Brutus anymore. All that light bursting out of Zach must have looked like his worst nightmare.
But maybe it wasn’t just Zach’s newly disclosed, archangel-plus-general status that kept them back. It might also be the light shooting from him in a wide enough circle to encompass me, too. Light hurt demons, and Zach had all the watts going off.
“Leave the Davidian and get Adrian instead,” Demetrius suddenly said. “Wherever he goes, she will follow.”
“Stop them!” I told Zach when Blinky and the rest of them began to converge on Adrian, who was well out of reach of Zach’s light show. His shadows weren’t out anymore, either. They’d gone from resembling a cluster of terrifying tornadoes to no more than a dark outline around him. Zach’s explosion of light had muted Demetrius’s shadows once before, too. Adrian had nothing left to fight with except his fists, and against over two dozen demons, that wouldn’t be enough.
“Zach, hurry!” I said. “You need to get Adrian under your light, too!”
But Zach made no move to include Adrian in the bursts of light that were keeping the other demons away from me. He also didn’t walk toward him so that Adrian would be safe within the dazzling glow around him. Worse, from their triumphant bellows, the demons realized that. Zach was leaving Adrian on his own to fight them. Again.
Well, I wasn’t about to stand back and watch Adrian get beaten and abducted by demons. I started to run toward Adrian, my sling out and spinning, when an unbreakable grip on my arm hauled me back. I struggled against Zach with everything I had, but I soon found out that it was useless. I’d have a better chance at ripping my own arm off than at breaking an archangel’s grip.
“I was not sent here for him.” The calmness in Zach’s tone lit my every fuse as he confirmed his refusal to help. “I was only sent to ensure your safety.”
“Now your boss wants me alive?” I asked bitterly. That would’ve been great under other circumstances, but not if it meant leaving Adrian behind to get kidnapped.
“At the moment,” he replied with infuriating casualness.
“You can’t do this, Demetrius!” I shouted, switching tactics and trying to appeal to the demon’s love for Adrian. “They won’t stop at trying to kidnap him. They’ll kill him!”
“Then I’ll raise him,” Demetrius shot back coldly. “This isn’t like before, when I expended too much of my power spilling a realm into your world. I can bring him back easily now.”
I’d forgotten that a select number of powerful demons could raise the dead the same way Archons could. If memory served, Demetrius had even told Adrian he’d already done that after Adrian’s former drug addiction caused him to overdose. But that only increased the danger Adrian was in. They’d tear into him without concern for consequences.
Zach might be able to watch this happen, but I couldn’t. The demons had manipulated the weather enough to form a sun-blocking barrier. I could use the staff to tear it down and flood this area with light. We had an hour left before night fell. It should be enough.
The first horde of demons jumped Adrian. I dropped the sling, pulled my sweater off, grabbed the staff tattoo with both hands and then yanked on it as hard as I could.
The staff came out of me with a burst of pain that brought me to my knees. I didn’t care, so I didn’t pause before holding the staff over my head and pointing it at the sky. Then I let all that lovely, agonizing energy pour through me as I screamed out one word.
“Clear!”
Power blasted through the staff before boomeranging back into me. An even more intense pain knocked me all the way over and also left me blind and dazed. A new, echoing sound reverberated everywhere, and I wasn’t sure if it was a sonic boom from the staff’s explosion of energy, or something else, but it was loud enough to deafen me. Then another surge of power knocked me completely out.