The Angel of Death (The Soul Summoner Book 3) (38 page)

For what felt like hours, but could have only been minutes, my eyes scanned the layers of the knotty pine trunks in front of me. I could only see about fifty feet beyond the tree line before the brush became too dense and the shade of the trees became too dark. There was no movement except for the pine needles that were rustled by the breeze.

The loud crack of a rifle rang out over our heads, followed by angry men shouting in a language I was becoming more and more familiar with—Katavukai. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and ground the toes of my boots into the earth. There was a second blast from a rifle, and after a moment, another one. More shots crackled through the woods, overlapping each other as the assailants in the woods returned fire. Then,
pop pop pop…pop pop pop…pop pop pop…pop pop pop!

“They already switched from long range to assault rifles,” Nathan said. “That’s not a good sign.”

There was commotion behind me, and Nathan opened fire. I spun around in time to see a man—a wicked human—dressed in all black, go down sideways in a trench. His light eyes bulged as he cried out in pain. The life extinguished in his expression as he fell backward into the leaves.
 

There was another explosion from a mine closest to Enzo’s post, followed by more shots from the assault rifle and gunfire on the ground. My heart was pounding so loud it seemed to harmonize with the sound of the gunshots. Azrael sent a fireball into the woods, sending everything in its path up in flames.

Another demon—a woman with short brown hair—came through the trees where the first man had fallen. She extended her arms and two trees uprooted themselves. She flung them in our direction. Azrael caught them in midair, but gunfire on my other side caught my attention.
 

I turned in time to see Enzo fly backward off his feet amid a shower of bullets.

Before Azrael or Nathan could stop me, I sprinted toward him, my helmet clanging against my skull as I ran.

When I dropped onto the ground at his side, blood was gurgling out of his mouth as he struggled to breathe. A crimson stain spread from under his left arm where a bullet had caught him between the plates of his body armor.

“Stay with me, Enzo,” I shouted, shoving my hand into the bloody cavern on his side.
 

As my healing power swelled at my fingertips, two more men, one human with a huge gun and one demon with empty hands, ran through the tree line toward me. I collapsed over Enzo’s chest, and a sharp crack sailed through the air. A bullet caught the human directly in his right eye socket, exploding his skull in a shower of blood and bone as it knocked his body sideways onto the ground.

The demon kept charging like an angry bull until another bullet caught him in the knee. He faltered but kept coming.

Just before he collided with me on the ground, a brilliant white light exploded in every direction. The demon flew backward, feet over his head, taking out two small pines as he skidded into the woods.
 

When the light dissolved around us, a figure cloaked in what appeared to be fabric made of the night sky turned to face me. “You called for help?” Samael asked, his golden eyes dancing like flames.

“Sloan!” Azrael shouted.

I looked to see him pinning the brunette demon against the ground. Enzo gasped for air underneath me. “Can you breathe?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes. Go.”

I leapt from the grass, and Samael followed me to Azrael. Nathan was firing into his side of the woods. “Is that Phenex?” I asked as we ran up on them.

Azrael shook his. “No, but kill her anyway. She tried to club me over the head with an oak tree.”

The woman’s throat was caught under Azrael’s hand, but she was cackling anyway. “This bitch can’t kill me,” she croaked out.

I opened my fingers and a bright light burst to life in my palm. “Wanna bet?” I slammed the light down right into the dead center of her chest.

The light splintered through her body quickly before it detonated with the force of a nuclear warhead. Azrael, Samael, and myself were all blown back by the explosion. The ground shook like an earthquake and shattered the rocks around the waterfall. Dazed and deaf, I sat up and looked around. The blast had leveled everyone on the field. And the spot where the brunette had been was black and covered in something that looked like shiny salt.

Azrael and Samael looked as shocked as I felt as they struggled to their feet.

An arm scooped me up around the waist and hauled me up. I turned to see Nathan, blinking like he was dizzy.
 

“Are you OK?” his lips asked. My hearing was slowly returning, but he sounded hollow and muffled.

I nodded. “Are you?”

He gripped the side of his head. “I think so.”

An electric charge surged through me as a hand closed around my arm. It was Azrael, and he spun me around toward the woods. “He is here,” he said, his voice so calm it made me shiver.

In front of us, there was an explosion of a different kind. Shards of broken earth shot up and speckled the sky as the sound of splintering wood and crashing trees reverberated through the forest. I needed no explanation. Like Azrael said, they called him The Destroyer for a reason. And he was coming.

I inhaled and stretched my fingers as trees toppled like bowling pins in front of us. A land mine detonated under the force of a fallen tree, erupting the timber into a blaze. Fiery napalm showered down onto Abaddon, clinging to his clothes and skin as it burned. Still, in the firelight, I saw him walking toward us with so much power the woodland floor vibrated with each step. The flames cast wicked shadows of his figure dancing among the trees.

Abaddon’s hands shot forward, sending me sailing backward into Nathan. I toppled him over, landing hard on the solid earth. Pain radiated through my bones. I rolled onto my side in time to see Abaddon cross over the dismembered tree line into the clearing. All I could think of was The Incredible Hulk, except Abaddon wasn’t green…he was black, charred by the napalm which still burned in some places on his massive frame.

A gun shot cracked through the sky and knocked him sideways, but he regained his footing quickly and charged me. I threw my hands toward him, sending up an invisible wall that knocked him completely off his feet.
 

I seized the moment and leapt to my feet as Azrael lifted Abaddon’s stunned body into the air. He slammed him into a nearby tree, causing the demon to bounce like a giant pinball back to the ground. Without pausing to recover, Abaddon waved his arm toward the blaze behind him, sending a wave of fire over his head and through the clearing straight at us.

I shielded my face in time, but my hands were burned and the smell of burning hair turned my stomach. Samael’s arms reached toward the stars, and a shower from a cloudless sky rained down and extinguished the flames.

Abaddon was on his feet and barreling toward us. More bullets sailed through the air in bursts from Nathan’s assault rifle, but the demon wasn’t deterred. Azrael sprinted toward him, then dove at his legs. The two collided and tumbled together into the woods, sending dirt, leaves, and brush flying like shrapnel.

Out of the corner of my eye, Kane was tackled to the ground by the demon Samael had knocked into the woods moments earlier. He outweighed Kane by at least a hundred pounds. With fists flying faster than I could see, the demon pounded Kane’s face. My hands rose in their direction, the sizzling charge of light dancing at my fingertips, and I hurled the death blow into the demon’s torso when he rose up to slam Kane again.
 

Another blast like before knocked everyone back again, and Kane’s broken body was showered with electrified, glowing ash.
 

I scrambled toward him as Nathan and a bloody Enzo aimed and fired their weapons into the woods. Kane was wiping blood from his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I’m OK,” he said. “Thank you.”

He may not have been dying, but he was far from OK. Had I not known who he was, I wouldn’t have recognized him. I gently touched the sides of his face.

“The rocks,” he choked out.

My head whipped toward the waterfall. Another demon was standing on the rocks, dangling Cooper over the side by his vest. When the inhuman man caught my eye, he laughed.

Then he dropped the soldier.

I screamed, throwing my hands in her direction. Cooper froze in the air, inches above the jagged rocks in the bottom pool. I exhaled so heavily, I almost collapsed. On the far side of the field, Samael seemed to vaporize into a cloud, then the cloud sailed through the air and collided with the demon on the rocks. The two of them disappeared into thin air with a crack.

“Sloan, look out!” Nathan shrieked.

Before I could react, my body sailed into the air, the force of gravity against the power holding me, nearly ripped my body in two. I cried out in pain as I hung suspended fifteen feet off the ground, my arms plastered against my sides, immovable. All I could think of was my baby.

There was a loud explosion from one of the mines in the distance followed by a fireball that rose through the trees. Azrael was nowhere to be seen.

Beneath me was Ysha.

“You don’t want me to drop her,” he said, daring Nathan and Enzo with his wild eyes. His hand that was stretched toward me, bent my body to an excruciating degree.

My piercing scream echoed around the woods.

They cautiously lowered their weapons.

“Come out! Come out!” Ysha called. “Warren, I know you’re up there! Drag your friends out here too!”

A moment later, at the top of the waterfall, Warren in a ghillie suit walked out to the edge with his rifle raised over his head. Lex walked up beside him.
 

“Drop your guns!” Ysha told them.

Warren and Lex slowly slid their rifles off the edge of the rock they were standing on and they clattered down the side of the mountain.

There was another loud crash of trees somewhere in the distance.

With a satisfied nod, Ysha lowered me a few feet, then he let me fall. I crashed to the ground, my leg crumpling at an awkward angle underneath me. I screamed again. The blistering pain rendering me helpless. I looked down to see bloody bone poking through my pants.
 

Nathan lunged toward me, but Ysha flung his hand towards him, knocking him off his feet.

Ysha grasped hold of my hair, tearing strands from my scalp as he ripped me off the ground. Somehow, through my hysterics, I managed to conjure up a flicker of my killing power, but before I could touch him with it, Ysha slammed me into the ground again.
 

He jerked my head up to look at him. “Did Azrael tell you what happens if you kill me?”

I could hardly see him through my blinding tears, but I could feel his hot and sticky breath on my face.

“If you kill me, Taiya dies instantly,” he hissed. “I suggest you come quietly.”

Without another word, I was dragged by my hair across the terrain. Jagged rocks from the creek bed ripped through my clothes and into my flesh. The lower half of my leg slapped against every surface it hit like dead fish. The icy water burned instead of numbed my skin as Ysha jerked my body through the stream. With one hand I fought against him while the other covered my belly. His merciless stride didn’t slow as he ascended the mossy rocks. Where he was taking me, I wasn’t sure, but my skull clanged against every rock he climbed.
 

Halfway up a huge boulder, the blast from a gun sounded over our heads. Ysha’s grip went slack as he fell backward, taking me with him. Over his shoulder in the middle of our free fall, I caught a glimpse of smoke rising from the barrel of Warren’s discarded rifle and, through the haze, I saw Sharvell Silvers holding it.

28.

We crashed into the shallow pool, Ysha’s full weight on top of me. My tailbone snapped and the back of my skull smacked against the rocks. Somehow I didn’t die.
 

Ysha thrashed until he got his hands on me. My face broke the surface at the same instant his hands closed around my throat. Before he submerged my head again, I saw that half his skull had been blown away by the gun shot.

It didn’t stop him from drowning me.

I had no other choice.

My baby and I would die if I didn’t act.

This was my only chance.

My power surged into him and detonated.
 

The blast knocked me unconscious.

Nathan’s face was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes and inhaled for the first time since I’d gone under the water. He was hauling me out of the icy pool by the front of my body armor. We fell in a heap with my broken body landing across his lap. Inside my chest, bones were broken. I coughed and a shower of blood splattered back down onto my face.

“Can you breathe?” he asked.

Sort of.
I nodded.

“The baby…are you cramping at all?”
 

I shook my head, gingerly touching my fingers to my stomach. “I think she’s fine.”

Sharvell sloshed her way through the water toward us. “What can I do?” she asked, dropping to her knees beside me.

“Someone has to put my leg back together and hold it,” I said through my sobs.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“Please,” I begged.

Warren jumped down from one of the rocks. “Move,” he said to her.

Sharvell crawled back out of his way as Warren pulled a knife from his vest. He knelt down next to my leg and cut my pant leg off.
 

“Don’t look,” he said.

I was struggling to breathe. “Warren, you have to put the bone back in. It can’t heal like that.”

“We need to get you to the hospital and let them—”

“Do it!” I shouted.

Warren unvelcroed his vest and dropped it on the ground. He peeled off his camouflage shirt and tossed it to Sharvell. “Here. Cut this up. I need something to bind her leg.” Warren looked at Nathan. “You’ll have to hold her still.”

Nathan pulled me back against his chest, wrapping his arms around me as tight as he could.

My blood-curdling scream pierced my own eardrums as Warren grabbed the dangling piece of my lower limb. When he shoved it back in place, the world went black again.