Scarred (the Spellbound Series Book 3) (27 page)

              Michael reaffirms my judgment of him before my doubts can truly take root. After shoving me away, he fires a spell upward, and an angel passing overhead cries in pain as he falls to the ground. I cover my mouth to mask my surprise; it’s Tyrael’s limp body lying on the ground before us. Michael relieves Tyrael of his weapon, and pierces the poor angel’s heart. Much like Lucifer, Tyrael’s body splinters and bursts in a shower of light, leaving a scorch mark on the ground where he once was. Michael turns to face me once more, and holds his stolen sword in a defensive stance.

              This is problematic; we both know that Michael’s skill with a sword far exceeds mine. I can’t let him anywhere near me with a weapon in his hand. I pull at the molecules holding the sword together until they unravel, and it turns to dust in Michael’s hands. But it’s a futile effort; if he killed one angel, a close friend, to try and get an advantage, he’ll kill another. I have to get him away from the action. I blast him backward with a gust of wind, and use another to give myself a boost before taking flight.

              I consider leading Michael across the river into New Jersey, but there are still civilians there. I can’t endanger innocent people. I’ll have to stay within the city, but where? I’ll have to avoid leading him across Manhattan, there will be other angels there. Michael would just arm himself again. I make up my mind to lead him south, towards Staten Island. There, we’ll be entirely on our own.

              I check over my shoulder to see that Michael is following me, and put on an extra burst of speed as I fly above the river. I feel Michael’s power wash over the water, and a massive wave reaches upward, carrying an abandoned ferry ship with it. The orange painted metal rushes up to meet me, and I’m so surprised that I can’t react quickly enough. My head strikes the side of the ship, and I’m only vaguely aware of the pain as the world around me blurs, and gravity pulls me toward the murky water below.

29

              Slamming into the surface of the water feels reminiscent of running headfirst into a wall. The pain in my head is only magnified, and every inch of my skin burns with the impact. At least I’d had the sense not to cry out in pain; if I had, my lungs would be filling up with water right now. I’m already sinking and dealing with a possible concussion, I don’t want to add drowning to the list.

              I’m still foggy from my brush with the Staten Island Ferry, but my thoughts clear up before long, and I start struggling towards the surface. It’s no use; even if I were confident on which way is up, I realize that swimming to safety will take too long. I’ll run out of air before I can take another dry breath. So I push every single molecule of water from my body, and the river parts on either side of me. I find myself standing on the bottom of the river, completely dry, and yet surrounded by water.

I can see a clear sky above me, so I push myself upward with a spell, until I’m clear to continue flying towards Staten Island. But Michael slams into me from the side, and wraps his arms around me. Both of us flap our wings frantically, but neither of us can stay airborne for long entangled as we are. We crash into the roof of a building on Governor’s Island, and Michael is the first of us back on his feet. He kicks out at my face, but I use my hand to stop him in his tracks, and roll out of his reach. In a flash, I’m on my feet as well, and we circle around each other, each of us watching the other closely.

One look into Michael’s emerald green eyes tells me he’s no longer toying around; he’s ready to strike me down, if it means he’ll achieve his goal. I wonder if people see the same deadly determination in my eyes on occasion; do people see my tenacity the same way I see Michael’s? On a whim, I offer, “Last chance, Michael. Stand down. Don’t make me hurt you.”

              Michael lets out a chilling laugh, and asks, “What’s the matter, little girl? Are you scared of me all of a sudden?”

              The
little girl
comment snaps something within me, and I can’t help but tell him off. “I may not be willing to kill you… But this little girl will break every bone in your body if she has to.”

              “That’s it!” Michael grins, and says, “That, right there. Don’t you see? We’re not as different as you pretend. When it comes down to it, you have the same fire in you that I do. It’s in all of us. The only difference is that you choose to fight your very nature.”

              “No. I can’t accept that. We can’t all be violent, murdering sociopaths by default. And even if you’re right, I’ll fight that part of myself any day. We are what we choose to be, and I choose to protect this and every other world from the likes of you.”

              “Then you have chosen the path of the fool. You will not stop me from ascending the throne, not even with the aid of my brothers.”

              “We’ll see about that.” I unleash a gust of air meant to knock Michael from the rooftop, but he deflects it with a spell of his own, and dissolves the ground we stand on. Together, we fall through the roof, and land hard on the tiled floor of what looks like a prison. Michael recovers before I do, and blasts me backward before I can stop him. I teleport to the other side of the brick wall behind me just a second before making contact, and spread my wings before I fall to the ground. If Michael wants to hurt me, he’ll have to do better than that.

              The building’s brick façade crumbles under the force of Michael’s power, and he stands watching me as I circle around the building. We shouldn’t fight here; there’s too much history on this island to let it get caught in the crossfire. But Staten Island is too far, and Manhattan occupied by angels, so I banks towards Brooklyn in the end. Michael leaps from his perch on the prison’s fourth floor, and follows me across the water.

              Evidently, Michael doesn’t enjoy being led further from Manhattan. A crackling ball of white flame passes right by me, followed by several others. I whirl around, and shoot fire from my very fingertips, a disc of white flame larger than my entire body. It seems like Michael is engulfed by the flames, but he flies under them, and hits me with a powerful undercut. My spell dissipates, and after the second blow to my face, I fall out of the sky in a dizzying spiral.

              I right myself just in time to avoid slamming into the street, and fight to gain more altitude. But Michael throws an empty bus into my path, and there’s no way for me to avoid it. I bring my feet forward, spring off the roof of the bus, and spin around to fire a spell back at Michael, but he’s nowhere to be found. I land on the ground, and hurl the bus into the air in frustration. Where the hell
is
he?

              When I finally spot Michael on the roof of a building, I teleport to his location, careful to end up a few feet away in case he’s prepared for my arrival. He spins around to face me as the bus slams into the ground below. He rushes towards me, and pulls back his arm, his intent to punch me clear as day in his body language. When I step out of his way, however, he hops into the air, and hits me with a high enough kick to land right in the center of my chest. I back away, clutching at my sternum, and lift Michael into the air with a spell. Try as he might, his strength isn’t enough to free him from my grasp. I throw him clear across the street, and he crashes through the window of an office building.

              I glide across the street, and soar through the very same window Michael shattered before landing. He’s ready for me, though, and throws a desk at my head. I rip apart the molecules holding the desk in one piece, and sail through the dust without incident. When I land, Michael aims another kick at my chest, which I grab onto before it hits home. I bring down my elbow on his knee in the hopes I can break his leg, but Michael’s bone structure is just dense enough to withstand the blow. I release his leg, and punch him in the nose before sweeping his ankles out from under him.

              I go to bring my foot down on Michael’s face, but he rolls out of the way in the nick of time. He grips me with a spell, and throws me to the side, where I crash into a sheetrock wall. In an instant, he’s by my side, and has his fingers around my neck. He punches me in the face once, twice, over and over until I can feel blood rolling down my cheek, and spots cloud my vision from the lack of oxygen. I dissolve the support beams holding up the Jay Street side of the building, and seconds later, the ground beneath us tilts far enough that Michael slides towards the windows, and finally releases me.

              Time seems to slow down in the few seconds before the building slams into the ground. But the moment it does, I land on top of Michael, and both of us groan in pain and exertion. He roughly shoves me to the side, and runs for the nearest window that isn’t pressed to the pavement. He knocks out the glass with a spell, and runs onto the street as I scramble to my feet. He must be on his way back to Manhattan. I can’t let that happen; he’ll only kill another angel, grab another weapon, and become a threat once again. But no more. The killing ends here.

              When I follow Michael out onto the street, I have trouble finding him for a moment. But I see a dark shape soaring through the skies, and give chase. He’s too fast for me to catch with my wings alone, so I surge through the air with a spell, with my hand in front of my face to protect it some from the wind resistance. By the time I’m close enough to Michael to stop him, we’re over the Brooklyn Bridge. I allow gravity to drag me down, and land hard on Michael’s back. He lets out a startled shout, and the two of us tumble over each other on our way down to the bridge below.

              Michael lands on top of a cab, and I in turn land on top of him. Michael lets out an incoherent yell as he blasts me onto the bridge itself. He extricates himself from the crushed metal, and hurls the cab at me. I throw the cab to the side, and it veers off into the water. Michael lifts another car he’d like to throw at me, but I ram my shoulder into him before he can, and the little Ford slams back into the ground. I punch him in the face a few times, but Michael flings me into a minivan, and the sliding door caves inward from the impact.

              I allow myself just a second or two to feel the pain, but quickly dive out of the way of a fireball that consumes the minivan entirely. Michael hurls another fireball at me on the ground, but I put a shield around myself at the last second, and the white flames curve around me before fading out of existence. I pick up the door of a car Michael intended to throw at me, and hold it out in front of me as I charge towards Michael. Seconds later, I have him backed up against the bridge’s metal railing. Michael forces me backward with a spell, then vaults over the railing, and flies toward Manhattan.

              The moment I throw the car door to the side, I leap over the railing and follow suit. I try to halt Michael’s progress by firing concentrated jets of water up from the river below, but he dodges my every attempt to slow him down. I put on an extra burst of speed, and slam into him from behind just as we pass over City Hall. Michael spins around, and grabs me by the throat at the same time I wrap my fingers around his.

The two of us hurtle to the ground, but Michael tosses me onto a patch of grass before spreading his wings, and sliding along the grass to a stop. “This has gone far enough,” he remarks as I rise to my feet. “You and I both know that you’re too weak to keep me from my goal. So either kill me now, or submit before it’s too late.”

I wipe some blood from the corner of my eye, and spit a mouthful onto the grass. “Never.”

“So be it.” Michael charges towards me, and wraps his arms around my middle, but can’t push me onto the ground. I punch him in the kidneys a few times, but he barely seems to feel my fists pounding against his skin. Michael slams me onto the ground, and holds me there for just a moment before releasing me, and standing up to his full height. There’s something shiny in his hand that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and I realize with horror that it’s the sword he gave me, without its usual flame. He must have pulled it out of its scabbard when I wasn’t paying attention. The hand wrapped around the hilt sizzles and smokes, as if the souls within the blade are trying to force him to let go, but Michael won’t give up, not now that he thinks victory is within his grasp.

I worry that destroying the sword will also disperse the souls giving me strength, and I’m going to need their help if I have any hope of subduing Michael. So I roll onto my feet, and avoid the furious slashes aimed in my direction. The fire in Michael’s eyes blazes brighter than ever as he pursues his prey with deadly precision, his lips drawing tighter every time I step clear of his attacks. I stumble over a rock hidden by the overgrown grass, and that’s all the opportunity Michael needs. I can see the point of the sword homing in on my chest, and I can tell it’s all over.

              The blade pierces my flesh with little resistance, and I can feel it graze my spine before coming out the other side. I fight back a scream, and bite my lip hard enough to draw blood in the process. Michael looks down at the sword in his hand, and both of us watch as my blood leaks out, and drips onto his skin. “I’m sorry, Heather,” he says with a surprising wealth of sincerity. “I only regret that this is the price I must pay… The life of my ungrateful child.”

              I spit blood in his face, too full of rage and in too much pain to respond. I can’t let him win. This man, who thinks the answer to life’s problems is destruction… I can’t let him become a god. The universe can do far better. As my life fades, I think of the universe I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of. In particular, I think of the night sky. I think of galaxies, colliding and coalescing and spinning through the universe. I think of stars, bursting with energy at the end of their lives, only to provide the materials needed for a new star’s birth. Nothing ever truly ends. Nothing can ever truly be destroyed. And that’s something Michael will never understand.