Heaven and Hellsbane (8 page)

“I have to at least see what happened. See if there’s any way to track them. And I have to…I have to see if Eli’s okay,” I said. I could’ve lied, but Dan deserved better than that. “He’s my magister, my teacher. If it were me lying hurt somewhere, he’d come to me.”

Dan looked away for a second, thinking. Then his gaze shifted to Liam. “Keep your guard up. They know Eli’s down. He’s vulnerable. They might show up again to finish the job. Watch her back.”

Liam gave him a solid nod. “Aye. I will.”

I lunged across the bed, and Dan flinched at my inhuman speed. I kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back. I’ll come right here as soon as I make sure everything’s okay.”

“I know. Come back when you’re finished.” He kissed me hard, and a fresh wash of desire heated my veins, muscles tightening. His hands cupped my face and he broke the kiss, holding my gaze with his. “Finish this, Em. Understand? Finish whatever this is.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure if there was more to what he was telling me. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to face what I understood deep inside. Instead I pushed to my feet and grabbed the belt and sheath hanging on the headboard of my bed, then strapped it on. I’d left the hilt downstairs. I’d get it on the way out.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Liam stepped up beside me. “New York.”

“Right. Let’s go.”

Chapter Eight

Central Park. I’d never been there so I followed Liam. Our first step was on a weathered blacktop path that led over an old stone bridge. The trail wound along a wide stream disappearing into the night, the faint light of the moon crowded out by the dark forest that seemed to stretch for miles.

I stopped, peering into the darkness with just enough ambient light to see the large, uneven stones on either side of the bridge. In the distance, the soft glow of a streetlamp twinkled. But there was nothing nearby, only looming darkness. “Where are we?”

“Huddlestone Arch,” he said. It meant nothing to me. Central Park was hundreds of acres. I couldn’t even hear the city, let alone see it to get my bearings.

I turned in circles, trying to force my eyes to adjust. “Well…where is he? Where’s Eli?”

Liam stepped in front of me, his hands up as though he was about to talk a jumper off a ledge. “Calm yourself, lassie. I told you, yer magister will live. But ya need to prepare yourself. He’s been hurt bad. It looks worse than it ’tis, but in all my days I’ve never seen such carnage.”

“Dammit, Liam. Just take me to him.” The delay was making it worse. My hands were shaking, and my heart was racing in my throat.

“Aye, I will, love, but it’ll do him no good if he wastes what strength he has worrying over you.”

I sighed, cupped my hands to my face, and tried to get a grip. He was right. Eli needed me to keep it together. I dropped my hands to my hips. “How did this happen?”

“There were two gibborim with—”

“Gib-what?”

“Gibborim,” he said. “Your Eli named them—the nephilim bastards who turn their illorum gifts against us…and God.”

“But these gibborim aren’t any more powerful than we are,” I said.

“Aye, unless they’re wielding one of their stolen angelic swords,” he said. “Then they be mighty ones indeed.”

“They had angelic swords? Did they… I mean, you said Eli was all right.” An angelic sword was the only thing that could harm him and my heart was suddenly in my throat again.

“That he is. That he is. But it was a battle to be sure,” Liam said. “His wounds slowed him, weakened him, and…in the end he…he had no choice. Eli, the sorry bloke, had to end the half-human bastard where he stood. I think that more than the psychical pain wounds him deepest.” Without a word he turned on his heel and walked to the end of the old bridge. He stepped off the path, climbing over the huge boulders that spilled down the hillside, and disappeared into the inky blackness beneath.

“Where’re you going? Where’s Eli?”

“Where do ya think?” he called up from the dark abyss. “He’s here. Now get your arse movin’ and help me. The bloody angel weighs a ton.”

I snapped into motion, gingerly climbing over the same boulders. My feet slipped on the damp stones, my hands clutching fists of weeds, nails digging into moist dirt. Finally, I found my footing on another blacktop path at the base of the hill. This one was narrower and edged by the babbling stream that flowed under the bridge. “Liam?”

“Here. We’re under the bridge,” he said.

Footsteps splashed in the black water beneath the bridge and I rushed forward. The nearer I got the more I was able to see. “Eli.”

He sat slouched against the wall of the bridge, one hand limp in his lap, the other between his leg and the wall. His long legs stretched across the path, dress shoes dangling in the stream. Everything clung to him, wrinkled and wet, his suit, his jacket, even his black hair dripping, curls plastered against his forehead.

I dropped to my knees beside him, stirring the cloud of fog surrounding him. It was so thick I could almost feel it slipping between my fingers. I waved it away and felt for a pulse. Eli didn’t stir at my touch, but his skin was warm. He was alive, and my heart found a steady beat again. Then my attention shifted to the body lying next to him.

A sword, gleaming silver even in the darkness, was sunk at least four inches deep into the dead man’s blood-soaked chest. His lower half lay in the water, his upper body stretched across the path. Blond hair clumped in places as though something thick and wet had splattered over him. The clumps were dark and my mind jumped to the only explanation—blood.

His pasty, white face was frozen in a grimace of pain, and he lay with one hand clutching the blade in his chest, the other arm reaching out toward Eli. I saw the mark I’d heard described—so much like mine with the crossed keys over the long blade of a sword. But the sword was broken and red stains streaked down his forearm as though the mark had been bleeding.

He’d been a tall man, thin, and beside him were a broken and twisted pair of wire-framed glasses. “Is that…?”

“The bastard who killed me magister?” Liam finished for me. “Aye, it was. And that be the poor sap he killed before the eejit turned on Eli.”

My gaze flicked past him to a second body lying facedown on the path, odd for its lack of a head. And then I saw the missing body part stuck against a rock in the stream less than a foot away—water lapping into the open mouth, eyes wide beneath a tangled mess of brown hair.

Eli lifted his head, blinking at me through dark, wet strands of hair. “Emma?” He turned to Liam, head wobbling as if the weight was nearly too much to bear. “You brought her here?”

“Aye. Told you I’d be fetchin’ her.”

“I told you not to.”

“Did ya now?” Liam said. “Huh. Can’t say as I recall that.”

Eli’s head lulled back, and his eyes closed. “
Pog mo thoin
.”

“What’d he say?” I asked.

Liam glanced at me, a mischievous smile flashing across his face. “Told me to kiss his arse.”

“I thought so.” Being half angel came with its benefits. One of them was that I could speak and understand all languages. That didn’t mean I always believed my own ears.

“Where’s Amon?” Liam asked. “Told the feckin’ princess to stay with you.”

“He’s a demon,” Eli said.

“That demon helped you keep your head.”

Eli sighed, swallowing hard, eyes closed. “Yes. He did. I sent him to find transportation. I won’t be traveling at top speed for a while.”

“Grab his other arm. Help me get him to his feet.” With one foot in the stream and the other on the path next to Eli, Liam leaned down and looped Eli’s arm over his shoulder. “You’d think creatures made of air would be lighter.”

“I’m fine,” Eli said, suddenly animated again. He leaned away, jerking his arm free from Liam. “Just give me a blessed minute. I’ll walk on my own.”

“The bloody hell you will. Least not soon enough. That feckin’ demon and his gibborim pet could be back any minute to finish the job they started. I’d rather be gone by then.” Liam reached for him again and Eli pushed him away making him stumble deeper into the stream.

“So go,” Eli said. “I can handle them. I’ve got a score to settle now, don’t I? Just retrieve my sword and I’ll be ready.”

Liam pressed his lips, shoving a hand through his tangle of red frizz. He stomped forward, but I raised a hand to stop him. “Wait.” I looked at Eli. “What score? Liam said you were hurt, but I…I don’t see any wounds. I don’t see any blood.”

“I’m fine. I’m…I’m nearly healed,” Eli said, but his voice was too soft, too weak.

“No blood?” Liam scoffed. “What are ya, blind? Yer kneelin’ in it.”

I jerked back, trying to see the dark blood anywhere on the damp blacktop under my knees. It was useless. I could hardly even see the pavement through the stubborn fog congealing around us. I touched the cool ground, but there was nothing except the strange sensation of that fog—like silk gliding through my fingers.

“Look at his leg, lass.” Liam waved a finger at Eli’s thigh and only then did I notice the jagged tear in his pants above his knee. “Why do ya think he can’t walk?”

“Silence, boy,” Eli snapped. “I’ll walk. I just need a minute.”

I pulled at the ragged edges of his slacks to see the flesh underneath and winced. The cut was brutal, straight through with only a raw band of meaty flesh holding the lower half of Eli’s leg to his body. But there was no blood.

And then it hit me. Eli wasn’t human; he was spirit. His body had been molded from borrowed molecules to house that spirit. And spirit doesn’t bleed—it escapes. I looked at the fog that surrounded us, fanning it away from Eli’s leg. Within seconds more oozed up from his open wound, spilling over his thigh, rolling along the ground and flowing out into the stream. There was so much—too much.

“Grab his arm, lassie,” Liam said. “The demon prick and his newest lackey could be back any minute.”

“But he’s bleeding—I mean, he’s losing…”

“It will stop…eventually,” Eli said, grimacing. His hand slid to his thigh and squeezed. He swallowed hard. “I just don’t have much…strength until it does.”

“Could you, I don’t know, bleed out?” I asked, not sure what to call it.

Eli’s lips turned up in a weak smile. “No. My spirit is endless, but without an intact vessel, it’s difficult to manifest my strength.”

I glanced at his leg and then at Liam. “Gimme your shirt.”

“What? Why? You heard him; he’ll heal,” Liam said.

“He’ll heal faster if we can stop the flow,” I said, wiggling my fingers at him.

Liam sighed and shrugged off his faux-leather vest, then yanked his whitish T-shirt over his head and handed it to me. “Not likely to do any bloody good.”

“Shut up,” I said, tying the cloth around Eli’s thigh as best I could. I sat back, waving a hand at the wound to clear the ghostly fog, and waited. After a second or two, only a faint mist seeped out from beneath the T-shirt. “It’s working.”

I looked at Eli. His face pale, his lips parted—he looked like he might pass out. But he met my gaze and a smile trembled across his lips that seemed too weak to be real. “Better.”

“Why were you even here, Eli?” I asked. “Why were you fighting? You’re forbidden from interfer—”

“No,” he said before I could finish. “These gibborim have turned their swords on my brothers, on me. I can defend myself. I will.”

My mouth snapped shut at his harsh tone and an awkward silence settled over us for a moment.

“Beautiful,” Liam said, stepping close to take Eli’s arm and looping it over his shoulder. “Good to know that’s settled. Now grab his other arm and let’s go.”

I pushed to my feet and reached for his right arm lying in shadows beside his leg. My hand on his elbow, I grabbed for his wrist. It wasn’t there.

My brain froze. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing—or what I wasn’t seeing. “Eli, your hand…”

His arm tensed and somewhere in the back of my mind I felt him pull away, but I didn’t let go of his elbow. I couldn’t.

“It’s worse than it looks,” he said. That strange, thick fog poured from the ragged stump inches above where his wrist should have been. “It’s my own fault.” His gaze fell to the dead man lying nearest him, the sword still stuck in his chest. “He went for my sword. I should have known he would. But he was faster than I’d expected, stronger. It was the sword.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Eli looked at me. “The sword enhanced his powers and protected him from me. Once he’d taken my hand and sword, I had no choice but to use my power on him. I tried to crush his heart, stop him cold. But nothing happened.”

“How’s that possible?” Dread settled like a ball of wet newspapers in the pit of my stomach. My instincts seemed to understand what my brain was fighting to deny.

Small beads of sweat formed across Eli’s forehead and above his lip. He was exhausted and in pain, but he answered. “Seraphim can’t use their powers against each other. It just doesn’t work. That’s why we have the swords. But in the hands of a gibborim, the sword seems to transfer some sort of immunity. I think that’s why they’ve been able to kill the magisters once they’ve taken possession of their swords. The magisters are defenseless and too surprised to react swiftly enough.”

“Then how did you survive?” I asked.

“Luck,” he said. “The gibborim didn’t feel the need to trade the angelic sword he had for mine, and I was able to move fast enough to retrieve and use it.”

The image of Eli lunging for his severed hand still gripping the hilt of his sword played out in my mind and I pushed it away, fighting against a gag.

“Aye, ’twas a wicked smart move to be sure. Finally the bloody bastard didn’t get away,” Liam said. He struggled to pull the taller angel to his feet, prompting me to loop the wounded arm over my shoulder and help.

“It may have been better if he had. Now they’ll be no denying what’s coming,” Eli said, then hissed in pain when he put weight on his leg. He lifted it almost instantly. It couldn’t hold him, the broken limb dangled uselessly from his thigh. “My sword. I need my sword.”

Liam stretched away to reach for the sword, forcing Eli to lean more heavily on me. I gritted my teeth, refusing to let the strain of the angel’s weight show on my face. An instant later Liam was under Eli’s arm again, slipping the sword into his hand. The moment the handle met his palm, Eli’s sword vanished, reuniting the separated molecules with his body.

“How could it possibly be better to have that gibborim out there free to kill more illorum and their magisters?” I said, carefully pivoting in unison with Eli and Liam to head out from under the bridge.

“It’s not. I missspoke, mourning the bliss of ignorance. If the gibborim are working under the direction of a Fallen, as it would seem from their knowledge of weaponry they are, then their attacks on magisters have broken the truce. Now there’ll be no ignoring the events that have come to pass. The ensuing destruction will only be a matter of degrees,” Eli said. We walked slowly and Eli hopped to keep up.

“So that’s it?” I said. “The war in heaven has started again?”

Eli glanced at me, pain etching deep creases across his face as we slowly made our way along the lower path to where it merged with the one over the bridge. “Not yet. There’s still hope. If we can prove the gibborim are working on their own or perhaps working for a rogue demon rather than a Fallen, then we will be free to act without igniting an all-out war.”

“What difference does it make? Illorum and their magisters are being killed,” I said. “Forget about the stupid politics. Something needs to be done regardless.”