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Asura was clearly a little more integrated in the demonic world than I’d given her credit for.
The demons came in waves. I’d never seen so many before in my life. It felt like for every demon we struck down, more came. Micah’s sword cut through demons with precision. He wasn’t a born fighter the way Nathaniel and I were, but he’d been training for thousands of years. He also had the archangel fear factor going for him.
Joriel was the one I was most worried about since he didn’t have his axes on him. They were locked away on the thirteenth floor of my building. But he didn’t seem to mind. I watched him rip into a demon with his bare hands and teeth and decided he was doing just fine.
I turned my attention to the demon charging me and slammed my club into him, watching as he dissolved into red smoke.Home run.
Demons kept coming, and I fell into an easy pattern of cutting through them. At least they didn’t seem to be as well trained as the ones Asura had been recruiting before I took them out. Every few minutes a claw would make it past my defenses, forcing me to draw on more of the fire in my blood.
The air was thick with red smoke, making it nearly impossible to see more than a foot in front of my face. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been fighting, but it didn’t matter. The fact was we couldn’t do this forever, and Asura didn’t seem to be running out of demons.
How long could she do this summoning thing?
Another demon claw raked down my wing, and I hissed at the pain. Golden blood was dripping from what might have been hundreds of cuts and slices. Even my advanced healing couldn’t keep up. I’d never really cared if I lived or died before—it was one of my greatest assets in a fight—but now I had Siren to think of. I had a future waiting for me if I could find a way to get her to forgive me. I was going to marry that girl and give her a life that wasn’t haunted by my past.
“We need to stop her,” I shouted to my unseen companions.
“Any suggestions, genius?” Micah called back.
I wasn’t losing like this, not to Asura when I was on the cusp of getting everything I wanted. But I didn’t have a clue how to stop her. If I had time to researchSheolishpendants or could brainstorm with Micah somewhere where our energy wasn’t going into staying alive, maybe we’d have a chance.
“Why can only a demon stop her?” Joriel asked, his question punctuated by a high-pitched demon scream.
“ASheolishpendant is used to give certain demonic power to a being with a soul,” Micah shouted. “But when it’s in use, the pendant creates a kind of shield that no one with a soul can cross. Technically we can physically cross, but to do so is to open the soul up to darkness.” It was a risk that would never be worth taking. If Asura’s demons killed us tonight, our souls would move on to the next stage of life. If our souls were claimed by darkness, we’d be cut off from Heaven, forever lost in the abyss.
There was nothing we could do except pray that Asura ran out of demons to summon before we ended up dead.
I cut through demon after demon, fighting against the weariness that was sapping the strength from my body and slowing my reactions.
A figure with black skin instead of pink pushed through the cloud of red fog that hung over everything.
“I can stop her,” Joriel said, his voice low.
He was a mess of torn skin, leaking blood such a dark gold it was nearly black. Dark red demon blood coated his hands and forearms and dripped from his fingers. As a demon got close to us, he thrust his hand into the demon’s chest, relieving her of her heart. I guess that explained the excessive amount of blood on his hands.
The demon collapsed into red vapor, and Joriel turned his attention back to me. “Look at me, Sam.” He yanked his shirt over his head to reveal a nearly completely black chest with a circle of fair skin about the size of a dime in the center. “I have minutes.”
“What are you saying?” I growled. If Jor turned on Micah and me, it was all over.
“I’m about to lose my soul. I can stop Asura’s summoning.”
None of us knew exactly what would happen when Lucifer claimed Joriel’s soul, but we were out of options. We had to hope that Joriel would still be himself enough to strike Asura down.
“Let’s get you closer to her,” I said.
Together we cut a path through the demons while the circle of normal-colored flesh continued to shrink on Joriel’s chest. It was closer to the size of a freckle by the time we made it to Asura.
“Stay back. I don’t know how this is going to go down.” Joriel grabbed my hand and pulled me into a one-armed hug. “I love you.” And then he was pulling back and turning his attention to Asura.
I watched as the pinprick of original skin was eaten up by the blackness a second before Joriel’s blood-soaked hands grabbed Asura. The ground cracked open, sucking both of them down into darkness.
It was all over in a grand total of five seconds. Joriel and Asura were both gone. The split earth repaired itself as if the crack had never been there. After weeks of my watching the darkness slowly spread over Joriel’s skin, he was just gone.
Thirty
Samuel
It wasafter eleven by the time I made it to the Amatos’ house. I was pretty sure I looked like hell and I certainly felt like it, but I couldn’t wait another second to see Siren. I needed to know that she was safe, that she was okay. And then I needed to bury myself in her until my chest no longer felt like it was splitting apart.
