Firstborn (The Legacy Series) (17 page)

She had Abigale in the air, constricting her neck with just one hand – just like she had done with me.

Amaymon bolted towards her and his foot lashed around. Her stomach absorbed the strike and crunched. Ribs tore from her torso and splattered against the walls.

But the Sin remained unfazed.

Her body sealed itself together in a disgusting series of squelches. Her free hand was a cross between a paw and a bird’s leg. She swatted at Amaymon, sending the demon staggering away.

No wonder she mes
sed me up so badly. Amaymon was a powerhouse − to swat him away so casually was no easy feat.

Normally
, I wouldn’t stand a chance but I felt more powerful than the both of them combined. I could destroy her. I had to.

“Hey, bitch!”

My yell made everyone in the room freeze and look in my direction. I must have been quite the scene – a shadow-clad, trench coat wearing figure holding a glowing, blue sword.

Admit it
− that’s damn cool.

I channeled my power into the sword and slashed. A crescent
-shaped energy beam streaked towards Lilith that tripled the size of my previous versions. The attack was so fast it actually warped the space it passed through. The metal walls around us crunched as the attack shot forwards and into the Sin.

The spell enveloped Lilith and sent her flying. Her arm - the one constricting Abi – was torn off. Abi c
rouched and retched on the floor as she ripped away the dismembered arm from her neck.

“Get your own succubus.”

Lilith emerged, every inch of her skin charred and steam-hissed.

“You,” she snarled. Her body began repairing itself. “I killed you once already.”

I shrugged. “No rest for the wicked. Or maybe it’s you who’s impotent.”

“Ouch. Nice burn.” Amaymon gave me a thumbs-up.

“This time I’ll make sure you stay dead,” she snarled. Her arm had regenerated into a weird tentacle with hooks at the end.

I felt pressure around me. She was trying to enter my mind again. Yeah, right. Like anyone can handle Dark Erik. I unleashed a burst of power and the shadows soared. Lilith was sent staggering.

“Gonna have to try much harder than that.”

“Fine,” she spat.

She reached down and grasped the head of a dead man next to her. He looked like a passenger. Maybe he was accidentally transported with her. It could happen if the angels transferred her without bothering to deflect her hold on others first. Or maybe they just transported the corpses, too.

Lilith ripped his head off and reached down his neck cavity.

I don’t want to describe the next two seconds. It’s bad enough I had to suffer that nightmare – trust me, I’m doing you a favor.

Let’s just say there was a lot of crunching and slurping and chewing
. And once she was done, only a handful of hollow bones remained which she chucked away.

I realized what we were to her – spare parts. That’s how she fueled her transformations. She sucked out minerals, chemicals and tissue from her victims and transmuted that into whatever she needed.

Must be how she created demons.

But that power was also Life Magic. No one can use Life Magic – no one can just create things. They can transmute, modify and twist
, but never create. And yet, there she was, using magic privy to gods.

Was she really a god? Could she really create life itself?

A sudden movement snapped me out of my haze.

Lilith appeared a few feet away from me. I took a step backward and lifted my sword. Her arm shot out and a pair of oversized jaws clamped on my shoulder. The shadow absorbed the brunt of the damage and I slipped away.

I flicked Djinn and severed her arm. But Lilith gave no quarter – she morphed her other arm into a pair of long, curved claws and swung at my face. A panel of metal magic had clearly torn from the hull came in between the claws and my eye, hitting her squarely in the face. At the same time, I slashed and enhanced Djinn with energy. There was a blast that sent the Sin backwards.

Amaymon appeared to my right. “Sup?”

“Oh, nothin’ much,” I replied. “Died, had a life changing revelation and came back even more awesome than before.”

Amaymon raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like a lot of work. Meet anyone down there?”

“Nah. I may have hugged my subconscious, though.”

“Y
our so gay.”

Lilith was back up. “How dare you jest in the middle of our confrontation?”

“Cause you’re a joke,” replied Amaymon.

Our fists bumped. Lilith let out a shr
iek of frustration and her body exploded into a different shapes. It was as if there was a cage fight inside her skin.

“Y
ou got a plan?” whispered my familiar.

“We hit it hard and fast. Your priority is to get the girl out of here. Then
, come back to help me out.”

Amaymon grinned wickedly. “Hard and fast. Just the way I like it.”

The demon blurred as he rushed at Lilith. He swiped at her legs, causing her to stumble to one side.

A goat leg shot out and kept her from falling. The Sin spun and a crocodile tail whipped at Amaymon. He jumped above the tail
and both his hands smashed into the side of her head. Lilith’s ears became ram horns but Amaymon’s raw strength was just too great. Her head flattened slightly.

But
she wasn’t down. A thick rhino’s horn stabbed forwards.

I was at her side and grabbed the horn
, pulling her upwards and slamming Djinn down on her neck. I gave a violent twist and heard her neck break, then drove her to the ground and kicked her side. Djinn’s blade elongated to broadsword size and I stabbed down.

She rolled away, trailing blood and guts.

By this time, Amaymon had disappeared together with Abigale.

The Sin snarled and lunged for another dead body. But I wasn’t
just going to let her resupply. I took a step and Lilith fell face forwards. Her fingers morphed into a nest of snakes and I hacked them away but it was too late. She was inches away from the body.

I instinctively reached out with my free hand and grabbed. A shadow
-hand shot out and grabbed her outstretched arm. I jerked her away from the body and the shadows followed the motion. Lilith was wrenched away from the corpse. I sent an energy wave at the poor, dead bastard − reducing the body to ash.

“No meal breaks for you.”

She snarled in response and raced towards me.

“Surround it!”

Gil’s shrill order was accompanied by two bulky rockets of light. The two angels grabbed Lilith savagely. Light and sound exploded like a million flash bang grenades had gone off at once. My powers shielded me from lasting damage.

The celestial beings massacred Lilith
and she visibly became scarred and scorched as parts of her fell off and were reduced to ash before they hit the ground.

They were winning – the angels were kicking ass in an awesome display of angelic badassery.

“Not like this.” Darkness rose from Lilith and it began surrounding the angels. “I will not die by the hands of two from Heaven. Perish and nourish me.”

Her darkness pulled them close to her and she
ate
the angles. There was a scream of pure primal ecstasy and she morphed again.

A pair of enormous wings spread from behind her. They were angelic in shape but were coloured an ashen black. Instead of the majestic, pristine wingspan, hers were mangled and misshapen.

The rest of her body resumed a humanoid shape with dark coloured scales covering every inch of her skin. Bony spikes and quills jutted out from her as well as her wings.

“Die.”

Her quills shot out towards Gil and me as we -stood there − still in shock that she could just eat up two angels. Gil’s reaction was much quicker than mine.

“No
!” she yelled. Her small frame was in front of me and I felt her magic take effect.

And I could swear that for the briefest of seconds
, she was surrounded by white light and smoke. Her wind spell deflected most of the spikes, but some had made it through. I pushed Gil out of the way and felt two of them enter my side and thigh.

Lilith yelled and turned to face the ceiling. She morphed her wings and claws grew from them. She ripped the roof open, exposing the starry sky above. With a powerful flap of her wings, she escaped through the hole she had just made.

“I’m going after her,” said Gil as she ran towards the stairs.

“No
, Gil. Wait for me.” I took one step and fell down. My leg had gone numb. Those spikes had some kind of poison in them.

“I’m not going to let her escape
, Erik. Get yourself healed and then come join. I’ll keep her occupied until then,” she replied without stopping.

She disappeared and I was left there with a numbing sensation. I gritted my teeth, grabbed the first quill and pulled.

22

I cringed against the pain as I wrenched those bolts out. Shadows coagulated around the wounds and I was able to walk straight again. My strength soon returned and I followed after Gil.

She can be so stubborn at times.

She was the brains and I, the brawn – that’s been our dynamic ever since we were kids. She wasn’t one to lose her cool and chase after her hunt. Whoever pressured her into capturing Lilith must have gotten deep in her head.

And that was definitely not a good thing.

The door was open and I was standing on a large, open plain of metal. Just as I made it through the door, I saw Gil’s petite form shoot straight into the wall. There was a sickening crunch as her head smacked against the metal and she crumpled down, unconscious.

Lilith screamed from the other side of the prow.

She was about five feet off the ground and spread out ten feet wide like a grotesque canvas. There was an arm there, then a few feet away, her ankle, then her head, and tail and torso and wings. It was all spread out. The air around the limbs swirled and I immediately recognized my sister’s space distortion spell. Lilith wasn’t damaged − the space she occupied was divided into little chunks and jumbled up at random.

In short, the bitch wasn’t going anywhere.

I knelt by my sister and felt a tingle of magic. White fog gently wisped around her. It swirled around my black shadows like a Yin Yang and the resulting static was like a small shock.

I filed the event away and made a mental note to ask my sister what
was going on with her. But for now, I focused on bringing her back to the real world.

I reached inside her pocket, where I knew she kept an old fashioned silk handkerchief and tied it around her head. That stopped the small trickle of blood and I felt her stir.

“Please, be gentler with my head,” she said groggily. Her hand reached up and she frowned at me. “You ruined my favorite handkerchief.”

“You sent a thug after me and had my office demolished,” I replied as I helped her up.

She smiled. “Bill me.”

“I intend to.”

Lilith screamed again. I felt her power rage against the spell binding her and she began to break free. The distorted space began shrinking and shrinking, until she was starting to come together again.

Gil grunted in effort as she grabbed the air in front of her and twisted. The space distortion spell twisted into a shredding vortex. The Sin looked like she was being sucked in a garbage disposal unit.

Only a little was left.

Just a little more.

Then, Gil buckled, her energy gone. Lilith was suddenly released and she burst into a flock of swirling bats that clustered into each other. And after some flapping, there she stood, hunched over and looking like she’d been run over by a truck.

“She can use Life Magic,” wheezed Gil.

“I figured it out.”

“It
’s her original power, Erik. Not the Sin.” Gil sat up. “I need to come up with a plan. Could you keep her occupied and listen at the same time?”

I nodded and spun Djinn around my finger. Shadows surrounded the glowing blue sword as it spun using the ring as its axis. My magic increased its speed. The short sword spun so fast that it emitted a faint buzzing noise.

I flicked the weapon at Lilith. A tendril of darkness connected the spinning buzz saw to my hand, allowing me complete control over my channel. I willed the weapon to slice at her. The sword zigzagged through her, leaving her in shreds but flying far off before Lilith could swat it away.

All she could do was stumble, scream
, and burn through her resources.

“She’s originally capable of Life magic,” said Gil. “The Sin is just a mantle of power, a boost.”

“Meaning?” I kept my focus on Djinn, controlling it through the tendril of darkness.