Gabriel (37 page)

Padraig searched behind me, perhaps awaiting a signal. And then it came—a moment later, he was charging toward Fergal, seizing him from the ground and thrusting him against a tree.

I blinked. I was
able
to blink.

I needed to find my light through the poison. I thought of Gabriel, singing astride Uri, and the memory ignited a spark within my chest.

I thought of Gabriel again and once more the white flame flared, but the poison overran it, and the light was extinguished.

As the Pureblood roved ahead of me, the material of his cloak brushed my ear. He extended his clawed hand, which clutched a black crystal.

Malachi had been right. The Purebloods were using the crystals to command the doorways between the third and the second dimension.

Still unable to move, all I could do was watch Fergal struggle as Padraig twisted his arm around Fergal's neck.

A black ribbon of ink began to spill from the crystal in the Pureblood's palm, feeding into the most prominent rift, which had opened up a few meters away from the tree that Fergal was pinned against.

Black liquid oozed from the crystal and hooked through each rift like thread on a needle, until all the rifts were joined by a dark circle. The pattern repeated, creating a cone shape above us, so that we were all sealed inside this circle of death.

Just then, Jonah and Brooke appeared. They slid to a stop only a few millimeters from the rings of dark matter.

Jonah's eyes met mine. He couldn't pass through. The darkness was seeping from the third. He would be ended if he touched it—his form would dissolve and the darkness that made up his soul would be pulled in.

Jonah's eyes flickered to the largest rift, which was fueling the black spiral around us. His expression was the same one that he'd worn on the day the Vampires descended on the Hedgerley house. The same one he'd worn the night Zherneboh had appeared on the mountaintop. Fear. Fear for me.

Jonah's fear ignited another spark in my chest, but this time the spark didn't die. It roared into a white-and-blue flame until an unstoppable fire burned within me, consuming all the poison. Jonah was the air the spark needed to grow.

Brooke screamed for me to help Fergal. Even if I could have traveled by thought, I couldn't use that ability to get away from here. I would still pass through the twills, and my form would bleed into them, and I would be stolen away to the third. As I glanced from Brooke's desperate face to Fergal's, I knew that even if I were somehow able to escape, I couldn't abandon Fergal here to die despite what he had done. Brooke and I might have a difficult relationship, but it was one I had come to value, and she would never forgive me if I didn't help him.

I rose to my feet. The ground beneath me trembled as a tumultuous noise rumbled through the forest.

The Pureblood's Second Generation Vampires were swarming.

They were outside the barriers, and I snapped my head to see the first of an army stampeding toward Jonah and Brooke, who jumped high in the air. As they did, Gabriel appeared in a bright white blur, not far from where they had stood only moments ago.

I didn't have time to exchange even a quick glance with Gabriel; the gurgle of Fergal's blood as Padraig fed on him demanded my attention.

Within a moment, I had Padraig by his neck, ripping him away from Fergal with such force that as the Vampire met the dirt, the ground opened up, making a crater.

Fergal slumped down the tree's side, and the Pureblood hissed behind me. I tore Fergal's T-shirt from around him and used it to apply pressure to his broken skin. My fangs cracked in reaction to the coppery smell, and it was obvious by Fergal's blood drenching through the shirt in a matter of seconds that Padraig had caused too much damage.

In my peripheral vision, sheets of white flashed in succession as Gabriel wielded his light in short sharp bursts, ending wave after wave of Second Generation Vampire outside our cage.

Brooke had made her way around the dark rifts, ducking as a Vampire flew over her head. “Lailah, behind you!”

Padraig had me by the arm, and as he snapped it backward, my bone dislocated from my shoulder. But a second later the injury had repaired.

“Don't hurt him,” Fergal said as I spun around to face his brother.

The Pureblood was stalking toward me now, and Padraig was already lunging for my neck.

I clenched my hand into a fist and then opened it away from my body, in the Pureblood's direction. I willed a pulse of light to form. It did.

A whirling ball floated above my palm. I thought of it growing, and it obeyed my imagination. It flashed once, twice, then on the third pulse, it projected and spread, producing a sheet of light, in a similar way I had seen with Gabriel. The light held the Pureblood back. I swept my foot across Padraig's ankles, causing him to plummet back to the dirt. I pressed down on his chest, immobilizing him. He was no match for my strength.

Somehow I needed to command the largest rift to dissipate. If the darkened crystal had opened it, then it could close it, too. But the crystal was still in the Pureblood's possession.

A fierce battle weaved its way through the trees surrounding us. The screech of Vampires being incinerated by Gabriel's light filtered through gaps in the rings.

Jonah was now to my left, behind Brooke. I felt his emotions as he tore out the throats of his attackers. He wasn't struggling, and I wondered if it was my blood in his system that made him more powerful than they were.

The sound of gunfire marked the arrival of the Sealgaire as they took aim at the demons. Ahead of me, a silver-speared arrow sailed through the air, narrowly missing a Vampire as he darted out of the way. It glided to the middle of a ring. Instinctively, I raised my available hand to protect my face, but as the arrow glided through the ink it simply disappeared.

That settled it. We couldn't get out, and nothing could get in.

I had to end Padraig. I exchanged a silent glance with Fergal. He knew what I was about to do, and he shook his head, pleading with me to let his brother live.

My sheet of light was still up, maintaining a wall between the Pureblood and us. Padraig's eyes blazed and his lips spat fire as he thrashed below my foot. He might have been Fergal and Iona's brother once, but there was nothing of who he was left now.

“I'm sorry, Fergal,” I apologized quietly as I bent my knee back, allowing Padraig to spring into the air.

The Vampire cricked his neck, but his snarl faded to a surprised whimper. My fist had already broken through his chest, and I coughed back the bile rising in my throat as I spread my hand wide.

The Vampire's eyes drifted to my arm, and then, with a look of incomprehension, they rested on mine. Black lines crisscrossed up his fair skin. They grew up his neck and over his face like branches and then stemmed into blotted thorns. I tore my hand from inside his chest, and he fell backward. The ink seemed to seep through his form, like layers of barbed wire, and his body separated into tiny pieces. So close to the rings, Padraig's remains were pulled inside.

“Lailah!” Jonah's voice dipped in and out, but I was so horrified by the sight in front of me that I smelled the melting silver and lead a fraction too late as a bullet nipped the skin of my lower back.

I reeled around; Fergal was slouched against the tree stump, barely managing to keep his shaking arm steady as he lowered his gun.

My hands fell, and I searched my back. There was a hole in my shirt, and my flesh burned. Pain was all I knew in that moment. I choked, blood rushing up my throat, and the metallic rust seeped in between my teeth.

The protective sheet of light had evaporated, and though the Pureblood was stalking toward me, I fell to my knees, dizzy.

The flashes of light outside had ceased, and Gabriel shouted, powerless to stop what would come next.

“Take the bullet out,” Ruadhan commanded. He was straight ahead of me, crouched down outside my cage. His determined gaze locked to mine. “Reach in and take it out, now.”

I dug my fingers into my own flesh, feeling for the origin of the searing heat.

The tip of my thumb burned as I found the bullet, and I swallowed back my blood as I dislodged it from my back.

My distorted thoughts reformed as I panted. My skin was mending, but the Pureblood already had me by the scruff. He spun me around to face him, and his fangs ripped through my neck easily. He pumped venom through my system before I could try to defend myself.

I had never felt the sting of this kind of venom. The poison that they had used twice to immobilize me was different; it acted as an anesthetic, freezing me. He held me suspended above the ground, and my legs flailed beneath me.

Gabriel glowed from behind the Pureblood's form, where he was now striking the formation of rings with bouts of white light, but it had no effect on the deadly twills.

If Malachi was right, then the third dimension was purely a state of cold dark matter from which the black ribbons were originating. Gabriel's light might hold back the darkness, but here in the second dimension, it couldn't overcome it.

The Pureblood's venom invaded me.

I was defeated.

The Pureblood cracked his jaw. Fighting was useless, and my heavy head fell forward. But then, I saw: There was no mark above this Pureblood's eyebrow. Zherneboh hadn't come himself; he had sent another. Why?

The Pureblood's claws scraped down my arm, creating streaks of my blood, and then he punctured my wrist as he lifted it to his vile maw.

And as venom slowly traveled down my veins, my arm began to blacken. Tattoolike markings formed across my skin.

He was trying to resurrect the girl in shadow. She was different from me. They thought she would abide them with no question, with no moral conscience of any kind. They thought she would be their weapon to wield. He didn't know that if my soul was painted black, I would be ended.

In the background, Jonah shouted, “Emery!”

The Gualtiero Emery.

This was Jonah's maker.

That name made my eyes flare red. This was the Pureblood that had changed Jonah, who had stolen his life from him.

That name was like an anchor, weighing me down.

That name made me want to fight.

Jonah's words returned to me:
Embrace all that you are, and you will be untouchable.…

It had been easy to embrace the light, but I hadn't wanted to embrace the darkness. Because I was too afraid that what I would gain would pale in comparison with what I stood to lose. But I had absorbed the sun and taken the dark energy from Jonah's blood. I was now fully loaded—all I needed was the courage to fire.

Grabbing me by my T-shirt, the Pureblood lifted me higher into the air and drew me back toward his body. His split tongue spat over his bottom lip as he licked my neck, tasting my skin, preparing to finish what he'd started.

I needed to be brave.

I had to stop living for Gabriel and start living for me instead. Or I wouldn't live at all. I was finally ready to embrace what and who I was.

I closed my eyes. I stopped fighting the dark venom and simply welcomed it. I inhaled, locked in concentration, encouraging it not to overrun my soul but instead to dilute and merge with my gray being. My inner storm grew as the darkness formed with the rest of me. I let my body absorb it, and with all my will I commanded it with the power of thought to reach a natural balance.

I flashed my eyes open.

“No,” I said coolly.

The Pureblood withdrew; he was a millisecond away from splitting the skin above my collarbone. He looked to my arm, and his huge black orbs grew even wider as the tattoo markings disappeared from my skin.

An upsurge of power exploded, coursing through my entire being, wonderful and wicked.

I was unbreakable. Unstoppable.
Untouchable
.

Emery released me, but I didn't clatter to the ground; I remained levitating in midair and I parted my lips slightly, growling in a low hum.

“Zherneboh didn't come for me himself.” I paused, listening to the sound of Fergal's chest barely rising and falling. “Because he knows what I am capable of.”

I gestured to the darkened crystal still held in Emery's palm. “Close it. Now.” I tipped my chin toward the most prominent rift.

A sinister hiss sounded through Emery's pointed fangs. I anticipated his next move as he slinked away, preparing to jump back through the gateway. Within a blink, I had my hands at the top of his cloak, holding him to the spot, still several feet from the cold ground.

Suddenly, it was no longer enough to simply escape. No—I wanted vengeance.

“I would tear your heart out for all you've done, but I doubt you have one.” I rolled the tip of my index finger over Emery's chest, bringing it to his chin and forcing it up so his eyes were unable to escape mine. “Throw it in,” I commanded.

This time the Pureblood obeyed me, and as the crystal flew through the air, the rift pulled it inside. Once swallowed up, the black spiral started to uncoil from the top down. The sun broke through and shone onto Emery's deformed face, making him flinch.

The Second Generations halted, witnessing their Master answering to me. They shrieked and began to scatter across the landscape. The Sealgaire capitalized, firing rounds of shots. I tightened my lips into a hostile, hateful grin.

I didn't need to close my eyes to witness the storm across my vision. The sky above had transformed into a canvas of white and black bolts that electrified the sky.

Lightning streaked and forked into three.

I ascended high into the air, and with one hand I dragged Emery up with me.

The Pureblood's shrill cry fell against the stillness. There was no wind or rain, but I could see in the distance a flock of ravens flying away from his desperate hysteria.

Inside my palm, I willed my essence, and it came in the form of a plume of smoke, only this time the smoke was not black. Instead, it was the color of my soul. It was gray. The Pureblood snapped his jaw closed, so I willed the smoke to travel to his orifices instead.