with bolts, causing the room to light up like fireworks. Temporarily blinded, I felt rather than saw him move and teleported. Slowing down, I watched him move around in circles, searching for me. It wouldn’t be long before he sensed my energy.
I rematerialized behind him and brought the dagger down on his back, aiming for the base of his right wing. The dagger cut deep. Instead of blood, light poured out of the wound, blinding me.
Next thing I knew, his other wing slammed into me like a ton of bricks and sent me flying across the room. I hit the table, pain radiating up my side. I scrambled to my feet and searched for my dagger.
“You dared to cut my wing?” he bellowed.
Where was my dagger?
He closed in on me. I zapped him with bolts of lightning but they bounced off him like ping-pong balls off a table. He had a shield protecting him.
Instead of the Goddess, Remy appeared beside me and shoved a sword into my hand.
“Find Grampa,” I told him.
“No, I’m not leaving you with him.”
Raphael swung his sword wide arc and brought it down fast. Remy blocked and turned, but the archangel had already disengaged his blade and attacked again. I came at him from the other side, but he was fast and a better fighter than both of us put together. Nothing we did seemed to slow him down. In fact, I had a feeling he was toying with us.
Remy swore. “Damn, he moves like…,”
“A dancer,” I griped.
“Like his sword is a freaking extension of his arm,” Remy said.
“Starting the party without me?” Sykes asked, appearing behind the archangel.
Raphael smiled without looking his way. It was a cold smile. Cruel. Mean. “No, waiting so I can to dispatch all of you to Tartarus with one blow.”
“We don’t go to Tartarus, bonehead,” Sykes said.
While Remy kept him busy, his sword changing shape every few seconds, I slammed the archangel’s right side with lightning bolts while Sykes pelted him from the other side with energy balls. The bolts and energy balls didn’t hurt him, and I realized why. His wings were wrapped tight around him and acted like a shield. They were protecting him.
Remy noticed too and upped the ante of the attack, hoping to give me an opening, but he miscalculated. Raphael turned, his injured wing slanting at a weird angle. The tips caught Remy across the chest and he went down, bleeding.
Pissed, I telekinetically lifted Remy’s sword and mine and continued to attack Raphael. At the same time, I tried to zap him again. He redirected my lightning bolt toward Sykes. The force threw Sykes across the room, where he hit the wall and came crashing down with a sickening thud. If the fall hadn’t kill him, I was afraid that the burn from the light had.
“If you killed them…,” I warned, lifting my hands.
“It will be your fault,” Raphael said. “I gave you an offer, which you turned down. Now, it’s just you and me. No more of your friends to distract me.”
“That’s where you are wrong, Raphael,” Grampa said from the doorway and he wasn’t alone. Bran was beside him. Both of them had bruises on their faces and torn coats. “It’s over. Stand down.”
“I have my orders,” Raphael said.
“We’re summoning the Tribunal. You and your warriors must stand down.”
“Until I receive different orders…”
Grampa and Bran teleported at the same time. They reappeared behind Raphael, each of them grabbing a wing. Raphael tried to shake them off, his wings whipping up and down, left and right, but his injured wing slowed him down.
“Now, Lil,” Grampa yelled.
I willed all my power, mine and the Kris Dagger’s, from deep inside me. Heat rose and suffused my body. My body tingled and started to glow. Not just my arms. My whole body. I raised my arms, redirecting the powers. Above the glow, my eyes met Raphael’s. He couldn’t protect himself with his wings trapped. Fury distorted his flawless face as a flood of bright light shot out of my hand and hit him square in the chest.
“You are going to wish you agreed to our deal, young Guardian,” the archangel bellowed just before he exploded.
The force flung me across the room. Disoriented, my ears ringing, I just lay there, waiting for my breathing to slow down, wondering how many bones I’d broken. My body felt like I’d been stepped on by an elephant.
Slowly, the pain ebbed. Were Grampa and Bran okay?
I turned my head and saw Bran getting up, his back feathers singed and reduced to stubs. Grampa, already standing, offered him a hand, and the two walked toward me. The lights were back on, the broken bulbs repaired. Way to go, Earth Guardians.
I sat up and grinned. It was over. We had won.
“Stop whining. You’ll both be fine,” Cardinal Hsia’s voice reached me and I turned.
She held a hand over Remy, sparks leaping from her palm to his chest, and the other over Sykes. Remy was busy grimacing at the gaping wound on his chest, but Sykes smirked when our gazes connected. I looked at his chest and my stomach roiled. His entire upper torso had deep burns. It was hard to tell where his singed clothes ended and his charred skin began. Still, I was relieved they were okay. I looked at my arm. The wound inflicted by the archangel’s wing was already healed.
How many Guardians had survived?
“They’re not going anywhere,” Izzy said, and once again I turned and sighed with relief. Her face and hair were a mess, but she didn’t appear injured. Then again, as a healer, she self-healed faster than most Guardians. She and Solaris were setting crystals around Solange and her minion. “You can interrogate them now.”
“Are you okay?” Grampa asked.
I stood and hugged him tight, tears stinging my eyes. Bran gripped my hand, his emerald eyes searching my face for visible signs of pain or maybe he was worried about the archangel’s threat. Raphael’s words still rang in my ears, but I didn’t want to think about them. We’d won, and that was all that mattered.
“Are we really going to summon the Tribunal?” I asked.
Grampa stepped back and patted my cheek. “We have to, because Raphael will keep this up until he accomplishes his mission.”
“Which means he’ll bring back more archangels,” I said, feeling tired just thinking about fighting him again. We had barely managed to send him and his tribe home.
Grampa nodded. “And we’ll keep fighting them. You did great tonight, but you should have contacted us as soon as Raphael cornered you. We were searching for you when we heard his bellow.” Grampa shook his head and chuckled. “You nearly chopped off one of his wings.”
Nearly wasn’t good enough. “What happened to his warriors?”
“We clipped a few wings, injured some.”
“How many did we lose? Will they ascend?”
Grampa’s expression grew sober. “Quite a few, mostly SGs, a few Cardinals. And yes, they will ascend, but we are more united now than we’ve ever been. Guardians. Demons. Neutrals. All fighting to protect you. When the archangels come back, we’ll be ready for them. In the meantime, help your friends, then join us. We must start the summoning. Solaris, we’ll get all the information from those two later.” Grampa teleported.
Left with Bran, I studied the bruises on his face, his wings. I reached up and touched the cut on his forehead. The bruised skin disappeared.
“Your wings,” I mumbled, touching a stubby feather. It slowly filled out.
He gripped my hand, then placed it on his cheek, his gaze on my face. “My wings will be okay. Why didn’t you telepath me when he attacked?”
“You were busy and I didn’t want you distracted.”
