Blood Redemption (Angel's Edge #3) (21 page)

I didn’t stop backing up until the stone railing bit into my back. I fumbled for one of my daggers, still clutching the jacket to my chest like the armor it was.

“That’s close enough,” I said, and my voice shook more than I liked. I wanted to sound strong, sure of myself, but inside I was quaking. I stabbed at air. Belial laughed.

“Come inside before you damage yourself, little one,” he purred. “If you behave, I won’t hurt you.”

I shot a quick glance sideways to the other balcony. Still no Asheroth. Still no Jack. I began to panic even more when I realized enough time had passed that they should be back by now. Unless something unexpected had happened. I could only hope that it wasn’t bad, and that they were having better luck than me.

A strong stone hand, so exactly like my Ethan’s had been once, shot straight out and grabbed my wrist. Belial moved so fast I could barely see him; one minute I was holding up my dagger in a shaky hand, and the next I was pinned, pulled right up against the demon. His body pressed against mine. If he wasn’t taller than me, we would have been nose to nose.

Long pale fingers tightened around my wrist, and squeezed. Slight at first, so it was just uncomfortable, but when I began to pull against him, Belial tightened his hold. My hand convulsed, and almost dropped the dagger, but I held on. My bones ground together, and it brought tears to my eyes. I bit down so hard on my lip that it bled, determined not to cry out.

“Let it go,” Belial said through clenched teeth. “It will do you no good here.” Behind him, one of the Fallen angels grinned. I recognized his snakeskin jacket. He was the one who had grabbed me in the forest, the night I first came here to the Twilight Kingdom. Beside him, the Hellhounds paced, flicking their tails. I wondered how long Caroline could hold them, and what they would do to me if she couldn’t.

A blur of white and red leather shot past my left ear. A loud crack
boomed
like huge rocks grinding against each other as if the very earth was crying out. Belial jerked backward, pulling me with him. I started to fall forward when a leather-clad arm shot out.

“You don’t want to do that,” Asheroth said in an almost conversational tone. I watched as he clenched his fist tightly around Belial’s arm. “Trust me. You really don’t.”

And then he turned to me and winked. He was actually grinning. I don’t think I had ever seen him look quite so insane.

Belial only increased his hold. My skin turned white, then deep red. My bones cracked. I couldn’t help it; I screamed.

“I warned you,” my mad Fallen angel said, still grinning like a maniac. The dagger at my back moved, slipping free from its sheath. I was screaming; my hand was breaking; the world was whiting out at the edges, its center a darkening mass of pain.

Then Asheroth drove my dagger straight into Belial’s eye, all the way up to the hilt.

The demon roared, shouting a long string of syllables in a language I didn’t understand. He let go off my wrist and stumbled backward, clutching at his eye. Asheroth stood there, panting, grinning, holding my blade that now had black ichor dripping from its tip. As Hellhounds and Fallen angels crowded forward to fill the gap left by their leader, he turned and threw the dagger over my head. I watched it spin, end over end, expecting it to fly right over me and off the balcony.

But it didn’t. A tattooed human hand shot out at the last second, somehow managing to grab it by the hilt. A Hellhound leapt at Asheroth; he punched it in the face.

“That’s our cue to leave, Cas,” Jack said, slipping an arm around my waist.

I barely looked at him. Belial’s forces were closing in around my mad guardian angel. More Hellhounds prowled the edges of the group, and Fallen ones flexed their dark wings, adjusting their leather jackets as they swarmed around him. Asheroth stood in a closing circle, surrounded on all sides by Belial’s army. With a cry, he launched himself at the closest Fallen angel, going down in a flurry of kicks and punches.

I struggled to get free of Jack. “We can’t leave him!” I shouted, starting forward to the group with my single remaining blade. “They’ll kill him!”

“We have to,” Jack insisted. “He’s doing this for you.” He spun me so that I faced him.

I couldn’t see the fighting anymore, but the howls and screams coming from behind me told me all I needed to know. There was no way Asheroth could win against that crowd. He’d just stabbed their leader, and they were after his blood.

Jack shook me by the shoulders. “You have to, Cas,” he insisted, dragging me further out on the balcony.

I started to protest again, to point out that neither one of us had the power to transport ourselves out of the Dark Realms, when I saw the gaping dark hole hanging in the air just over the edge of the balcony.

“Oh no,” I said, looking at the hole cutting through space. “Oh, hell no.”

“We have to. He made it for us. He’s sacrificing himself
for us
,” Jack implored, his hold on my waist still strong. “You have to jump.”

“No. Way.” The sounds of fighting rose to a crescendo behind us.

Jack jerked me forward and lifted me, depositing me on his bare inked shoulder. For the second time in a day, I found myself being carried like a sack of potatoes. But I had no way to protest as Jack wrestled me up onto the railing. There was a moment when we were airborne, and I knew we were going to fall to our deaths. But then the familiar feeling of portal sickness took me, turning everything black and cold.

I landed flat on my back with Jack’s weight crushing down on me. The world spun as I tried not to be sick. I kicked and pushed, but my fellow Azalene was a dead weight on top of me.

Then, suddenly, Jack was gone, snatched away as if he was as light as a leaf. The ground felt rough underneath my cheek, and the sun was high in the sky above me. I was free to breathe, so I took quick desperate gulps of fresh air.

Only to look up and see Ethan’s long shadow cast in the grass right beside me. He looked like murder itself. Fury etched his otherwise gentle features. He threw Jack backward like he didn’t care if he lived or died, and squatted down beside me so that I could see the fire buried in his blue-green eyes.

“What the hell have you done?”

stared into Ethan’s angry eyes, shocked to my core. He had never looked that furious with me―never in the whole history of our relationship. I was still sick from portal travel. My arm throbbed where Belial had grabbed it; I was half afraid it was broken.

Worst of all, I’d lost Asheroth. I could see it all again without having to close my eyes: my mad guardian angel going down in a crowd of the Fallen, rogue Nephilim, and Hellhounds while Jack dragged me away.

He’d done it for me. A half-strangled sob escaped my throat. He’d sacrificed himself for me. I tried to communicate this to Ethan, but words failed me. Instead, I propelled myself backward and away from him using my elbows, feeling the sharp pricks of newly mown grass as I went.

Something else crept into his eyes as I struggled to get away from him, something I unfortunately recognized. Fear. And hurt.

He paled. “Caspia, wait. I… I’m sorry. It’s just that you disappeared when I had just gotten you back, and things have happened so quickly…”

A strong shove sent him sprawling sideways before he could complete his sentence. A dark form blocked out the sun, standing over me with clenched fists. Jack. Muscles flexed along his back and upper arm. He had fresh scars. They resembled claw marks. I winced.

“Don’t. Do. That. Again,” he growled, looking more than ready to pounce on Ethan.

I wondered if he meant himself, or me. It didn’t matter, though; Ethan sprang to his feet, body angled forward toward Jack, already poised for a fight.

The back of my neck prickled, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that we were being watched. Sure enough, when I jerked my head around, I saw that the front porch of Blackwood Lodge had filled up with people. Their expressions ranged from mild curiosity to shock to outright horror.

Great. Now we were a spectacle.

They circled each other, fists raised, their eyes fixed. I sprang up and stood between them, feet planted and arms outstretched like a referee at a boxing match.

“Stop it!” I shouted. “There’s been too much fighting already.” I blinked back tears as I thought, again, of Asheroth. “And there’s still more to come. We don’t need to do this to ourselves.”

Ethan was the first to lower his fists. Jack followed, but I could tell he didn’t like it. I let my arms drop, exhausted. The events of the last few hours caught up to me all at once, and I wanted nothing more than to sink back down into the grass and cry.

Ethan was at my elbow in seconds, all traces of anger gone. His arms, when they reached for me, were firm and supportive, and I leaned into him. He pulled me tight against him as I inhaled the scent of clean cotton and juniper aftershave, the kind I had gotten him for Christmas. I let him support most of my weight; warm fingers, so different from his once angelic heat, stroked my hair.

His gentleness undid me. I fisted his t-shirt in my hands and sobbed into his chest. Fingers moved from my hair to the small of my back, rubbing small, soothing circles into my aching flesh. I don’t know how long I clung to him, crying it all out, but he didn’t once question me. He just stood there and held me while tears soaked the front of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m so, so sorry. For all of it.”

My fists became claws that twisted and pulled. “He’s gone,” I managed to choke out. “He stayed behind… he fought them off so we could make it out.” I rubbed at my tired eyes and flesh raw from weeping. “I don’t think he made it, Ethan. I don’t see how he could. There were so many, and we couldn’t do anything… he sacrificed himself. For us. For
me
.” I sobbed harder.

Ethan held me, rocking me gently. “He would want you to be okay,” he tried to assure me. “It’s
all
he wanted, Cas.”

I knew that, and I hated myself for it.

Jack cleared his throat behind us. Loud.

“I hate to break up this reunion,” he said, in a voice that made me think he didn’t mind at all. “But we can’t have much time before one side or the other, or both, decide to attack.”