Angel of Death (book 2) by Adrian Brooks chapter

Chapter 28 1

Kerra was, of all things, a pixie. When Cam told her he wasn’t aware of how pretty pixies had become these days she giggled sweetly and red and gold dust shifted from her skin like fine powder. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and grinned. I fought a smile and turned away. 2

Then something occurred to me and I turned back. Something on my face must have warned him because he slid as far away from me as he could and went over to hide behind Tray. If it had been his wolf, his tail would have been between his legs. “Who are you Cameron?” He looked indignant. 3

“An upstanding citizen is who.”4

I growled. “No. Who do you work for?” He blinked slowly at me and suddenly those bright green eyes of his were too wide and too innocent for me to take seriously. 5

“Cameron.” I spoke slowly so he’d be sure to understand. “Wolves can’t commit suicide by jumping out of a tree.” I was a little ashamed it had taken so long for me to add two and two and get sixteen, but I’d never claimed to be particularly sharp now have I. 6

He shook his head as if exasperated with me. “Of course they can’t. They would have to throw themselves to…” His voice trailed off as I continued to glare. Then he sighed.7

“Remember when we first met?” My mind flashed to the almost killing Sinclair fiasco and Cameron shook his head at me. “Not then dummy. In the alley.” My eyes widened as it came to me and my hand clamped over my mouth in horror. 8

“You tried to eat me!” 9

His jaw dropped. “I did not. I like my meat fresh thanks.” He turned to Tray and confided. “At the time our Miss Trenton here smelled like a drowned rat in a sewer.” My face flushed when Selia snorted and the others coughed into their hands. 10

I looked at Cameron out of the corner of my eye. Before I could speak, Sin beat me to it. “You’re stalling wolf. Get to the point.” Cam wrinkled his nose and straightened his spine.11

“Fine. I was not trying to eat you, that’s giving you too much credit. I was saving your skinny ass.” Since I could actually believe this, I shifted nervously but didn’t back down. 12

“Explain.” 13

He huffed, “How do you think you made it to the alley in the first place? There was word going around about the chance that the Duke of Erington would be getting himself a new go between. A spy. I did some sniffing and followed his lackey to newgate and then to you. I wanted to talk to you, maybe pull you over to our side so I waited outside the Erington’s place for you to come back out. You appeared out of nowhere by the way, scared the shit out of me. But you were hurt, badly, so I drug you into the alley until you could wake up.” He paused and I tried to ignore the fact that Sin was glaring into the side of my head. I hadn’t told him about Erington or the meeting with Cameron’s other half in the alley that same night. 14

Alec and Tray, along with everyone else stared at us in fascination. Cameron shook himself and met my eyes, something in his face had my skin tightening and my mouth going dry. 15

“You didn’t have a smell while you were unconscious Gab. Other than the obvious you didn’t smell like anything.” He hesitated, “Then you woke up. You smelled like an animal who’d had his leg caught in a trap and was gnawing the damn thing off. You stunk of…madness. Sickness.” He shook his head and leaned towards me and my breath began to come in ragged pants as I met his gaze. 16

“I was going to put you out of your misery. It would have been the kindest thing I could have done.” My eyes dropped and I glanced away. Trying to control my breathing and the pain that was screaming through my head. I knew what Cam had been talking about. For an unknown time after my mother’s death and my incarceration I had gone…well insane would be a kind understatement. I’d gotten better. Or at least I’d learned to push the madness back. To bury it. 17

I wasn’t sure if that was the same thing as getting better but I could pretend it was. The shooting pains in my head seemed to be warning me that ignoring this as well as I was doing was not going to make anything better, and I’d pay for it later. I forced a tight smile for Cam and ignored Sin. I’d pay for that later as well. 18

“So killing me was your way of saving my ass huh wolf?” He opened his mouth, closed it again and finally frowned. “Yes”19

“That makes no sense.” Rhett muttered and I nodded. 20

“Neither does suicide by tree.” I raised my eyebrows at Cam and rested a shaking hand over my stomach to steady myself. 21

“I saw you, remembered you, and wanted to keep my eye on you. It was all I could come up with at the time.” 22

I shook my head at that, “Don’t think real quick on your feet now do you?” He grinned at that and everyone laughed. “I’m pretty, I don’t need to be quick.” With those words of wisdom he finally came from behind Tray, angling his head to some spot just beyond me. “But it looks like you might not be so lucky.” 23

I turned my attention to what had caught Cameron’s eye. My jaw tightened. He leaned forward from behind me and spoke against the shell of my ear. “Remember, never turn your back on an opponent during a fight”24

I nodded. 25

There was a call from among the soldiers and together the lot of us scrambled to one side and pressed our faces against the bars, staring as men and women who practiced as mages along with their other duties were called to attention before the Commander and Lhire. The commander addressed all of his men. 26

“We’ve successfully picked up the last of the cargo and we’re now free to return home.” There were cheers, “However,” he continued, and every prisoner within hearing distance stiffened a little. “Our newcomers are unaware of our…boundaries.” The older prisoners shrank back and the new ones glanced among themselves in confusion. 27

My own eyes were glued to the mage/soldiers who had…done what they had done to me earlier. Each face was seared into my brain. A memory of what had happened to Kensington came to me suddenly and my eyes sought out Sin. 28

He grinned a little and turned away. Selia jabbed me in the ribs. “What the hell are they talking about”29

I turned away from her and looked back at the assemblage. “Watch and you’ll see.” 30

She grumbled something rude but settled back beside me and watched. Hamilton continued. “Since we still have enough materials to last for the rest of the trip another harvest will be unnecessary.” Vienna seated on a large white mare looked disappointed and laughing Lhire patted her thigh in sympathy from where he stood on the ground. I growled at the sight of brother and sister, the sound soon joined by Cam, Sin, little Tray and even Alec and Patrick. Some soldiers glanced uneasily at us but the rest ignored us. The mages smirked, bumping shoulders and cutting their eyes my way and grinning. My hands tightened around the bars. 31

“What I want right now,” Hamilton was saying, “Is a demonstration for all involved on what the collars do exactly. The consequences as it were if they were to try and act against the boundaries imposed.” 32

He snapped his fingers and the Mages quite conversing long enough to pay attention to what was going on. “Bring me the girl and the Fallen.” Sin and I were jerked, not through, but between the bars. 33

We hit the ground with a jarring thud that had my teeth rattling around in my skull. We were jerked as if by some invisible rope along the dirt and grass to lie at the feet of the mages, Hamilton and Lhire. I turned my head enough to glance at Sin and he rolled his eyes at my impatience. 34

Lhire spoke.35

“What we have here are the two controlling the majority of your collars. The majority meaning everyone but the new shipment of today.” There were loud complaints at being referred to as shipment but Lhire merely waited until they had tired themselves out. The veterans, the original group, said nothing and began ever so carefully to put visible distance between themselves and the newcomers. Lhire and Hamilton turned toward us as Sin and I made our way to our feet. 36

Two mages came up to us and tapped the backs of our collars with their index fingers. 37

A burst of hot orange pain.38

Not sure how pain suddenly had color to it but it did. Sharp and leaving a tangy taste in the back of my throat. Bu there was more. I felt something important click back into place and knew without a doubt that every power I possessed was now turned back on to full capacity. When the zap was over I smelled burning hair. I shook my fried and now wildly curling hair from out of my eyes. I glanced at Sin and made an impatient sound when he shook his head. 39

Damn him. 40

Hamilton spoke to Sin and Lhire in turn spoke to me. The orders were the same, direct and simultaneous. 41

“Kill her”42

“Kill him” 43

I saw Sin’s eyes darken and turn black, an ocean of green ink swimming out from the iris to drown out the whites of his eyes. He snarled at me, the tops and bottoms of his teeth lengthening to deadly points. I felt some strand; a tie binding me to that command of Hamilton’s tightening around my throat like a noose until it sank past my skin and wove in dense tangles around my will. I felt myself wink out. 44

I lowered my head like a bull about to charge and felt my own face and body changing in the way that would have amazed me if I were capable in that wild moment of feeling amazement. I snarled back at him and charged. 45

Chapter Fifteen 46

Sin met me halfway and we didn’t so much as run at each other as fly at each other. My foot shot out and my body twisted. I was off the ground before he could blink, spinning and landing my bare foot against the side of his head. He flipped, somersaulted as the force of the kick drove him back. On his hands he pushed off from the ground and spun. Coming up into the air beside me, grabbing my thighs and forcing my body beneath his knees as he forced his weight to obey the laws of gravity with me beneath. 47

I hit the ground so hard the horses around his reared and I could feel the force of his knees crack and then break the ribs in my chest like toothpicks. There was an unholy silence after that, then I bared my teeth at him and laughed. The ribs rotated back into place, fine filaments knitting back together and bone marrow regrouping in seconds. Reaching back somewhere inside of my body I found a soul coming groggily awake on the shore of my black ocean. I grabbed it and brought enough of it to the surface so that I could change my shape to match it but not enough that it’s natural will imposed over mine.48

I took its powers and kept myself. 49

My body dissolved under Sin and sunk into the ground. I kept a steady leash on all of my parts so that as I swam through the rich earth I wouldn’t loose and arm or an eyelid or something important like that. I rose up out of the ground from behind him and reshaped my arm to a point as sharp and finely made as bone. 50

I drove it into his back.51

I slashed open his back until I could see the blood and other things that lay hidden. The wings he’d somehow folded under the smooth surface of his skin burst out in a fountain of black feathers. The unfurled, glinting brilliantly in the sunlight and with a wild cry I cut into them. The moved once, twice and a gale of wind lifted me from my feet and drove me back against the bars of a cage. I knocked the wheels off balance and the entire thing rocked over onto its side. I ignored the panicked screaming and changed again. 52

My claws dug deeply into the earth, looking for and finding traction as I scrambled on all fours back across the distance separating me and Sin. He saw me coming and the green flames of his eyes bathed his face in sharp angles. 53

He gave a command and the earth erupted as the dead buried beneath my feet, animals and people alike answered him. I dodged one grasping maggot encrusted head that screamed silently as it forced its rotting body out of the weight and darkness of the earth and into the light of day. Dozens and dozens of them rose up. 54

Some having to claw from so many feet below the surface that they broke up in sections and only pieces of them reached me at a time. I dodged left, right, threw myself through the air and locked jaws around the neck of one zombie who’s veins hung through patches of dead meat like streamers. I sent a small part of my awareness into his body. Found the space that used to house his soul. I kicked aside the maggot like wraiths that lived there, found a likely spot and kindled a fire in him. Back in the material world he gasped as if coming up for air after a long dive. 55

I grinned panther like into his neck and tore into the veins that suddenly pulsed and writhed between my jaws with life. As his life left him again, I caught it kicking and screaming and used it like a whip to attack the other dead things that stalked me. 56

Since his soul was still warm it did the job nicely, the zombies screamed and something green and sluggish fell from the wounds he gave them. Falling into the earth and jerking until they crawled to the next zombie and buried into them. They were like parasites. They ate into their hosts until they writhed and screamed on the ground. I turned towards the Fallen that watched dispassionately and laughed. With my jaws and teeth bloody I panted out in language no human ears could understand. 57

“Raise more of your army dear heart. I’ll bathe in their blood as well.” Sin’s eyes blazed and he grinned. Then without so much as a twitch to betray him he shot across the distance separating us and grabbed me by the muzzle, claws digging deep into muscle and bone, and ripped the bottom half of my jaw apart. 58

A grunt of pain was all I allowed myself as I jerked away and shifted back into the familiar form of my human body. I grabbed the ripped panthers jaw from the ground, and naked, bloody and snarling I twisted to one side and attacked him with the side of it that gleamed with ivory teeth longer than my forearm.59

I cut a slice across his neck that sizzled and burned and sent black blood spraying across my face and chest. He kicked me in the stomach and the breath rushed out of me, something important ripped up as he sent power along the line of his leg and into my gut. As if he’d taken knives to my insides and gone insane with them. I roared my throat widening as I worked to heal the damage, turned the jaw and jerking so that teeth ripped across the muscles of his ankles and up into his hamstring. 60

He fell into me with claws extended and slashed open my throat. I spit fire into his face and rolled away. I knelt on my hands and knees, my hair, somehow longer now after the change into panther swinging past my shoulders. He was across from me and when he lunged I punched him, when his head jerked to one side I used my other hand to backhand him, claws extended as I did so so that they sliced through skin and left the white sheen of bone gleaming under the sun and black stain of blood. 61

As we tired our wounds were taking longer and longer to heal so that as I pulled back for another attack I was pleased to see the four slices on his face still gapping wide like open mouths. That’s when he roared from somewhere deeper than his chest and lifted me straight into the air. At first it was only his will alone that sent me flying and then I heard the pumping of wings as he caught up with me and wrapped strong arms around my waist.62

Then he was twisting and we were suddenly pointed upside down, more than a hundred feet above the camp. 63

He tucked his wings in and let us fall. 64

I screamed and struck out at him panicked and unsure. We were going too fast, so fast in fact that I saw strands of my hair crackle blaze. I drew a sharp breath to scream as he drove us straight into the ground and deep into the dark bowels of the earth. 65

***************************66

Selia screamed as the ground beneath the camp shook and rumbled. It moved in violent waves as if they were on the prow of a ship instead of on what should have been solid ground. Her eyes were wide as she took in the soldiers who were the only thing between everyone else and the terrible battle that raged beyond the barrier they created. Each one of them had sweat pouring down their faces and one or two bled freely from the nose. They just kept muttering though. Selia recognize mages when she saw them. Especially strong ones. But apparently these weren’t strong enough to negate enough damage away from the bystanders. Even now a man fell and began to twitch on the ground. 67

His comrades didn’t as much as glance at him before he was kicked aside and replaced. Outside of their range Selia watched as the trees around them began to…melt. It didn’t burn or ignite, the heat and power surrounding the forest was too great fro that. The trees melted. Her mouth tight she glanced to one side at her charges huddled together. The boy Tray was clutching little purple monsters against his chest. Their oddly shaped eye sockets darted in and out from between the bars and they growled and whimpered in confusion as if unsure of what action to take. Selia could understand perfectly. 68

Her job hadn’t prepared for a threat like this. She drew her charges close and put them behind her. The air rippled and power slammed into them like a ton of bricks. Screams were cut short as the power wrapped around them lifted them up and crushed them against the bars of the cage and against the horrible wax like substance of the tress until bones creaked or they slid past where bark should have been. 69

Selia scrambled across the floor as fire rained down and explosions filled the air. Wiping blood from where it ran from her ears and down her neck, she grabbed up Kerra and began to work at pumping the brown melted bark and boiling sap from the girls gasping mouth. Robert jerked Tray to him and helped settle the purple rats until their fur settled down and they stopped screaming. The wolf had dug nails into the bars and refused to move, even under the barrage of power. Instead he stared at one particular point in the distance, muttering over and over. 70

“Come on. Come on.” 71

“What the hell are you looking at mutt? Come over here and help me.” He turned blank eyes on her. 72

“There’s no point. If they don’t end it soon they’ll take us all out. You want her to live,” He inclined his head towards Kerra. “Then you need to get those things out of here.” Selia’s eyes fell on the purple rats that huddled against Tray and without a word she snatched them from the boy. He screamed, they screamed and both of them attacked her simultaneously. Scratching and biting until cursing she was able to force all three of them through the bars and onto the trembling ground. They sat there, eyes wrapped around each other, shaking and whimpering in fright. 73

Then the earth fell silent. 74

No sudden waves of power, the ground fell still, and no one even dared breath. Then with a roar a tree to the far left of them exploded outward. A screaming ball of flame spun and twisted from the split remains of the tree. It landed on all fours, jaws of fire open wide and its long limbs spread for balance. It was in the shape of some beast. 75

A bear or panther, wolf or lion. Never keeping one shape it flickered and darted to all of them, and always the jaws gaped with wide teeth of twisting blue white fire, tongue black and boiling. Flames of red black heat shot from it mouth, causing the air around its head to quiver and then explode in bursts that rendered Selia’s world temporarily deaf. Then...sound. 76

“…Prince of Death. Where do you hide? Why does my Knight of Darkness hide from me?” The beast’s voice rose and rose, each word throbbing with rage and something that rang in Selia’s female heart that sounded suspiciously like hurt. Each word was heat and pain that stabbed through the skin and boiled the blood.77

A deep rumble was the only warning they all had before a second tree exploded and there standing before the beast of fire was a naked man. Wings rising like a black storm from behind his broad back. A halo of glowing black hovered above his head, small darts of white like stars winking in and out of existence in the blackness. Horns made of thorn rose from either side of his head.78

Sinclair seemed larger than he had before, wider, stronger. His bronzed, lean muscled skin seemed to glow from within with light and his eyes were a greenish black so dark, and pure that it hallowed his cheekbones, thinned his lips, and sharpened his jaw and nose. As he regarded his enemy the green orbs split in the middle where the iris would be so that he suddenly had the eyes of a cat. 79

He spoke and his voce was darker and thicker, softer and crueler than anything Selia had ever heard before. It was the voice that you screamed to for help as some dark creature of its creation clawed your insides out. It was the voice you forgave even as that selfsame creature fed your bits and pieces to it as sacrifice. 80

“Why won’t you lay down and die little one. You cannot defeat me.” A spiked black tail whipped into view from somewhere behind him and slashed the ground. Lightening erupted in reverse. Exploding from the crater he’d made in the dirt to shoot into the sky. The mass of flame seemed to cock its head to one side as it regarded him. Then it sat back on its haunches and laughed. 81

“I am not so great a fool as that.” It growled and mages screamed as flesh heated and began to melt from bone. “We will fight dear heart. I have missed the feel of a challenge. To have a worthy opponent in battle is a fine thing.” It laughed again, “Even if that opponent fights me in vain.” 82

“Fine.” More screaming, his indifference so cold, so sharp, it sliced organs, froze blood. “Let’s finish this.” 83

******************84

I threw fire at him. He dodged it and flew at me. We collided again, a force so great that a deep crater exploded in the earth beneath us and trees I could hardly wrap my human arms around groaned with the effort of staying upright. I called power, energy, light, life from every living thing around me and centered the heavy weight of it my hands and legs as we fought. Hand to hand, rising slowly into the air. Hand to hand combat is a beautiful thing. I’d changed back into girl form somewhere in the middle of it. 85

My hair still danced in flaming tendrils around my naked bloody body and my face was wild with glee as I moved. Darting in and out, hands moving lightening fast past defenses to crush and kill what flesh and power I came in contact with on his body. He parried my attacks with ones of his one. As strong and as quick as I was so that I pushed myself harder, letting the bright heat of the sun soak into my body, wrapping it and warping it to suit my needs. We were violence in beautiful motion he and I. We complimented each other in this as we had in everything else. 86

And still the command of kill him strangled me. Led me, defined me. Gave every muscle and bone and molecule in my body and spirit a driving purpose, a painful intensity, an all encompassing, paralyzing need. Everything drove me towards that one goal. 87

Kill him. 88

So we danced. A deadly dance, graceful and fluid like air and water. When my hands grabbed his hair and drove his head into mine, he changed so that thorns covered every inch of his skin. When I drove my head into his one last time the thorns drove into my skin and lengthened like knives. I drew back screaming, threw my body into the air high enough that I could wrap my thighs around his neck. Then with a smooth twist of muscles I moved and broke his spine, concentrating so that I ripped the bones ligament by ligament out of line. I tore that pretty skin apart piece by piece until his blood rained from the air in a black mist that burned. 89

Oh how it burned.90

I threw back my head and rejoiced in it, hands running along my body so that I bathed in his blood. I was so distracted that I didn’t recognize at first the little balls of fuzz that flew through the air at me. I threw up a hand to block them but their fur slid along the runes etched into my neck where the collar had sunken in. 91

Something flared and I fell to the ground. Staring, enraged at my pale shaking hands and pale white hair that covered my breasts. I looked up snarling and shot flame from my mouth, chemicals from my lungs igniting with the air and igniting on a shining path towards the rats. 92

They screamed and darted away.93

They’d moved something in the spell, something was…wrong. I snarled as Sin’s body regrouped and he grabbed me by the hair. Swinging me around by one hand and then letting me go to collide into the side of a panicked mage. 94

Sin was on me before I could raw a good breath, his claws going through my body, and ripping out organs. 95

Confusion and madness had me laughing into his face, my body healing just as quickly or faster than he could attack. He just tore deeper, grunting in fury until his nails came out of the back of my body. That’s when he snagged something good. Something important that resided between my physical and spiritual forms. The thing that separated my real self with the masks I put on as easily as some people changed clothes. He grabbed my flame. The one buried beneath that dark ocean of pain and hatred and madness, held it in his clawed hand and squeezed. . 96

My eyes widened as the compulsion forced on me, the spell, slackened, grew weak, and snapped. I would have said something but blood bubbled up out of my mouth and fell down my chin. I saw his eyes lighten and shrink, his horns recede. He looked at me and finally saw me. 97

I saw my Sin again and an odd sound escaped him as he watched me dying. I put blood stained hands on either side of his face and looked down at him for he still had me off of my feet, claws embedded deep. I watched with dazed eyes as my blood rained in flaming splatters across his face. 98

I smiled.99

“We burn together?” 100

He laughed and pressed his mouth against mine and I opened my mouth for him so that blood sizzled and burned down both of our faces in thick hot waves. I never knew I could bleed so much. 101

The pain of it was almost comforting. 102

He laughed. 103

“Together or not at all.” I nodded and before I could change my mind I tightened my hold on him just as I screamed into his open mouth. Sending flames, so hot they melted bone on contact down his throat. I sent it through his body and into organs. Bursting them and frying him from the inside out. Just as he died that claw of his clenched and he smothered my soul. 104

He killed me, and we burned together. Down to hell, soaring over heaven and darting in every place in-between. 105