Fallen Angel of Mine (47 page)

"Justin!" someone shouted. "Justin,
look at me!"

My body paused. Sniffed the air. Looked
around for the commanding voice. A familiar voice. And spotted
Elyssa.

Devour.

Her soul spiraled like a shimmering
halo around her body, dark wisps mixed with creamy strands of
white. My demonic stomach growled. I wanted to consume her soul and
fill the bottomless void of my hunger. My lumbering stride turned
to an agile gait. I flashed toward her. She made no move to get
away. My hand closed around her frame. Lifted her. Electricity
surged through my body. I shuddered. Roared. The wall between my
intellect and control of this body weakened.

Stop!
I commanded myself.
She's the one you
love!

Elyssa's hands touched my monstrous
face and gazed into my soul with glowing violet eyes. "Justin, you
have to stop Vadaemos. You have to, before he kills
everyone."

I looked to the side. Templars lay
scattered like black-clad dolls while the blue form of Vadaemos
fought a small group of them. There was no doubt as to who would
win the fight. A Templar slashed Vadaemos's leg open. The brute
hardly slowed, snatching up his attacker and opening his jaws wider
than looked possible. The Templar screamed as the whitish gray mist
of his life force was torn from his body in a vortex and drawn into
the gaping maw.

I felt warm lips press against my cheek
and looked back into the eyes of the girl I loved. The creature
inhaled deeply through its nose, drawing in the familiar scent of
spring flowers mingled with oil and leather. It burned through my
lungs and buried itself in my heart. The hunger subsided. I pressed
hard against the barrier separating me from control of this
monster. Something snapped. My vision blurred and righted itself.
And suddenly, my body responded.

"I love you," I said in a deep voice so
alien it frightened me.

Elyssa's eyes widened in shock. I set
her down and fixed my eyes on Vadaemos. Already, I felt my control
slipping. For some reason, contact with her made me stronger. I
didn't have time to figure out why. I was on a timer before my body
resumed its mindless rampage. If I threw myself against the real
enemy, maybe I would continue to fight him even if I lost control
once more.

Vadaemos knocked aside his remaining
attackers and reached for a struggling form on the ground: Thomas
Borathen. I slammed into the other demon spawn's back as he reared
to deliver a deathblow to Elyssa's father. With a grunt, Thomas
fell to the ground. Vadaemos bellowed and tumbled forward, smashing
into a sapling at the edge of the parking lot and splintering it
into a thousand toothpicks.

He sprang to his feet with a roar,
ripping the broken pine tree free and hurling it at me. It speared
through my thigh, branches and all. I screamed in agony. A blue
streak slammed into me. I hit one of the Templar cars in the side,
crushing it like an aluminum can. Vadaemos punched me in the face.
His spiked fist deflected off one of my horns. I threw up my hands
as he rained relentless blows down on me, hammering so hard, I felt
bones cracking and stabs of pain from the black spines on his
fists.

A hellhound's corpse nailed him in the
back. He staggered. Pressing my shoulders back against the crushed
ruin of the car, I swung my good leg up hard as I could and
connected. I honestly hadn't had time to find out if I had a
monstrous pair of incubus gonads dangling between my legs or not,
but I figured there was a pretty good chance I had something there.
And if I did, so did Vadaemos.

He howled and the flames in his black
orbs seemed to go cross-eyed. I snapped off the bit of pine tree
protruding from the back of my leg and pulled the rest from the
front of my thigh, thundering in agony as I did.

Whatever pause I'd bought myself with
the cheap shot to Vadaemos's daddy bags expired before I could
stagger back to my feet. I rolled to the side, blue blood from my
thigh wound dripping and steaming on the ground.

A fist slammed into my back. Breath
whooshed out in a gale. Another blow connected to the back of my
head. The ground rushed to meet me. Only my horns saved me from the
knockout blow, slamming so hard into the pavement they left cracks.
I rolled left out of pure instinct. His fist crushed the asphalt
where my head had been. Elyssa appeared, sword in hand, and slashed
his hamstrings. He dropped to his knees. She dodged away, but his
backhand delivered her a glancing blow and sent her skidding across
the pavement.

Vadaemos lunged. His huge black-clawed
hand caught my huge throat and squeezed. He lowered his face to
mine, a smile lighting his demonic features and showing his pearly
black rows of sharpened teeth.

"
Xhe nevudi budo ceanas dahna. Xhe budi
jakinis
," he rumbled in that alien tongue.
Somehow, I knew what he meant.
No one will
help you now. You will die.

He squeezed. My throat muscles went
taut. I clawed at his face, at his eyes. We both had long arms, but
his were a little longer. He was stronger. Older. And he had
experience with his demon form. The light faded from the world.
Screams echoed in my ears from a million miles away. My struggles
grew weaker. Slower.

"Justin!" a female voice screamed. Was
it Elyssa? Mom?

Darkness fell like a curtain of silk
but it wasn't because I'd passed out or died. If anything, I felt
oxygen wheezing through my throat where before there had been none.
Jagged sparks of black lightning speared into Vadaemos, blistering
his chest and blasting him off me. Before him stood a petite form
made larger by ultraviolet wings unfurling wide behind her. Jagged
bolts of furious energy raced along the seemingly insubstantial
appendages. I rolled to my knees as my body shifted and shrank,
gasping greedily for air through a throat still tight from
injury.

Somehow, I staggered to my feet. Fell
to a knee. Pushed myself back up. Vadaemos lay unconscious, his
mass shrinking and retreating back into his human form. Nightliss
spun to face me. The anger in her eyes softened and her unfurled
wings of dark energy dissipated into the ether like puffs of smoke.
She took a step forward, but another pair of hands reached me
first. I stumbled back into that warm embrace and looked into
familiar eyes. Elyssa.

"Are you okay, Justin? Can you
talk?"

I gave her a thumbs-up, my throat too
raw and tight to force words through. She peppered my face with
kisses while Nightliss stood at my other side and smiled. She
looked so cute and innocent. But the raw power she'd shown was
amazing. Frightening. Vadaemos had wilted like a delicate flower
before her wrath.

"They're all dead or fled," a deep,
male voice told Elyssa. "I still don't know how Vadaemos got
free."

I took a step, holding my hands out for
balance as dizziness swept over me. Michael gripped my arm to
steady me.

"Daelissa," I said in a hoarse whisper.
"She was in his room." I sucked in another breath, desperate for
air. My supernatural healing wasn't its normal self after the
trauma I'd been through. But it needed to hurry up because I had a
lot to say and ask.

Michael grunted. "Pokito told me about
her." He spared a glance at Nightliss and for once, I thought I
detected a hint of fear in his eyes.

"Casualties?" Elyssa asked.

Michael's grim face turned grimmer as
he knelt to secure Vadaemos's body with diamond fiber straps and
sleepers. "It's bad." He looked away. I followed his gaze where
Templars were lining up bodies.

Elyssa drew in a sharp breath. "No. Oh
god no. No!" She ran and sank to her knees next to a body with a
shock of black hair. She moaned, pressing the body to her chest as
tears cascaded down her face. I made my way over fast as I could
and recognized the fallen Templar. Her brother, Jack.

"Elyssa," I said, my voice still
hoarse. "I'm so sorry." I knelt behind her and hugged her tight.
Her tears soaked my torn shirt and her sobs wracked us both. She
hugged the body of her brother, forcing me out of the loop. But it
was okay. I understood. And there was nothing I could do to make it
better.

Another scream of agony sounded in the
night. I saw Stacey bent over a form beneath a hellhound. I
staggered to her. She was bruised, battered, and obviously weak
from the fight. The huge hellhound corpse resisted her attempts to
move it. I put my back into it and shoved, rolling it off the
unmoving body of Ryland. Tears welled in my eyes. And then I
noticed two more familiar bodies face down on the ground near the
hotel. My knees collapsed.

Oh god no. Not Meghan. Not
Adam. Not Ryland.
I couldn't speak. I
couldn't move from the sheer weight of guilt and grief pressing
down on my shoulders as the agony of loss tore into my stomach and
blinded me with hot tears.

Ryland groaned.

It was a faint groan, but a groan
nonetheless. Stacey's cries of anguish turned to
delight.

"You're alive, you bloody fool. Oh
thank god you're alive!"

I looked up and saw Meghan tending to
the wounded, Adam at her side. The two bodies I'd seen still lay
where they were, a blonde female and a male with dark hair. In my
grief, I'd jumped to conclusions. Or perhaps my oxygen-starved
brain was hallucinating. My heart grew strong at the sight of my
friends, but worry quickly replaced it. I motioned Meghan to me and
pointed at Ryland.

"Are you okay, Justin?" she asked as
she jogged over.

I nodded and croaked,
"Ryland."

She glanced down. "I'll make sure he's
okay."

Adam clapped me on the shoulder and
tried to smile, but his face was grim. "We lost a lot of people,
Justin." His fists tightened around his wand. "I hope Vadaemos
burns for this."

I nodded again and jabbed my thumb over
my shoulder. He knelt to help Meghan with Ryland. Scanning the
area, I found Bella sitting on the sidewalk curb in front of the
hotel. Alejandro wrapped his arm around her as she shook with sobs.
When I got closer, I realized why. Pokito, eyes closed, lay on the
ground not far away. Part of his throat was gone.

Curtis had a bite wound on his arm, but
otherwise seemed okay. "Meghan told me she slowed the infection and
can cure it," he said, scratching his arm and examining the
yellowish skin around the wound. "Told me she had some kind of
vaccine left over from something you did."

She probably still had the serum she'd
made from my blood to help Stacey, I figured. Hell, if it worked,
I'd offer up more of my blood so long as it didn't hurt so darned
much the second time around.

Bella gripped my hand and squeezed. I
knelt and kissed her on the cheek. Hugged her and wished I could
tell her everything would be all right. But one, I could hardly
speak, and two, I had no idea if this was the end or the beginning
of something even worse. Judging from the look I'd seen in
Daelissa's eyes, this little battle was just a skirmish. True war
with the minions she controlled would be immeasurably
worse.

I looked across the warzone. Smashed
cars lay everywhere, on their sides, their roofs. The one Vadaemos
had knocked me into was hardly recognizable as anything except a
mess of wires, fluids, and metal. Two Templars laid the last of the
bodies in neat rows. This hotel was remote, but if the clerk had
called the police, they'd swarm it in no time.

A black Cadillac screeched into the
parking lot right in front of the clerk's office. Two men in dark
clothes rushed inside. I tensed, thinking another battle was about
to start, but a hand on my shoulder pulled my attention to its
owner.

Thomas Borathen's blue eyes looked into
mine. For the first time, I detected no malice, only determination.
"Don't worry about them," he said. "They're a Templar special task
force assigned to interdict emergencies and prevent the public from
finding out about the Overworld."

"Are they mind-wiping the clerk?" My
words emerged a little clearer and my throat felt marginally
better.

"Only helping him forget the incident
and determining if the police are on the way. It would be of no
small concern if the mortal authorities gained wind of our
existence."

I glanced down the row of rooms and saw
a frightened face peeking through the blinds where the prostitute
was staying. "They may have to go room-by-room."

He nodded. "They leave nothing to
chance." He looked at Elyssa where she and Michael sat next to the
body of their brother. A third figure joined them. Her tear-stained
eyes met mine and I recognized their mother, Leia.

Thomas's eyes looked troubled. But this
man was hardened by the centuries. He'd probably seen more horrors
than most people combined. I felt sure he was grieving in his own
way. He and Leia exchanged a long look and I had the feeling there
would be hell to pay between these two at some point in the near
future, and fortunately, not by me.

"I'm sorry about your son," I said, my
heart filled with sadness more for Elyssa than anyone
else.