My vision became dark. My senses no longer worked. Something thumped at my chest and I thought for a second that I had stopped breathing. And then the first malachim was purified. Blood spurted from my mouth as the others kept going, but now light was shining from me too. Before it left, the malachim detached a part of its essence and planted a command in my head.
Be well. It overrode my senses and made me function on autopilot. My soul ceased trying to come apart from my body.
Moving through instinct, I transmuted Lex’s blood into power of my own.
The alchemy lashed out at the same time Apollyon grabbed hold of Kai’s head in a wrenching motion. It shaped itself into a thin blade. The blade I saw in my nightmares, the thing that frightened me most in this world. And it shot straight through Apollyon’s essence.
The angel-turned-demon screamed. He let go of Kai. In the real world, Raphael must have fallen on his knees.
Another malachim was cleansed. It slid silently out of my body through my mouth and disappeared into the aether. With Apollyon here, I hoped that it would find rest with Azrael.
The last one was taking longer to dispel. I was almost out of alchemy.
It cut out before the malachim could be freed. I heard her mournful wail in my head but could do nothing as my body collapsed.
Max’s growl filled the air. He held me to him, the warmth seeping through my skin as the mating link transferred his strength into me. When my eyes flicked open, it was to the sight of a world gone completely mad.
The high-magic users were constructing circle after circle around Kai in an attempt to keep everything away from him. Where they could, the Sisterhood were doing the same. The supernaturals had formed a ring around us, fighting off the malachim, the undead, and the demons trying to get to us.
And on the ground not far away, Raphael’s body was in a heap. He didn’t stay that way for long. The blow was a slight hindrance at best. I wouldn’t be able to use my alchemy again. Heck, I was having trouble staying conscious. The only thing keeping me from slipping at the moment was Max feeding me through the mating link.
When Raphael stood, a shroud of evil settled over him. Apollyon’s black gaze landed on me. The look in his eyes was beyond fury. It was something so despicable that it made Max push me behind him. He took a few steps forward, halted as Haniel’s light took hold of him, and then for some reason he started moving back towards the destroyed Sanctuary.
The malachim still inside me quivered. She took refuge inside the chamber of my magic, still searching frantically for a hint of the alchemy that might free her. The part of her that was still connected to Apollyon was not big enough to overcome my will, but it was enough to have me curling into a ball with the knowledge of what he was going to do to me when he decimated the supernaturals.
At Raphael’s full height, Apollyon towered over the courtyard. He sneered at me. “You are less than nothing,” he said. “A prize that I grow weary of. But your great-grandfather made a promise, and I would hold him to it.”
He stepped forward. The first obstacle in his way was the supernaturals trying to keep the demons away from me. Apollyon raised his hand and waved. Basil and Professor McKenna clutched at their stomachs. A demon smacked its spiny tail into Angus’s ribs as he groaned with the same ailment. Next to him, Andrei spat blood and couldn’t evade the undead that latched into his shoulder and bit down hard. One by one, the supernaturals all keeled over.
I couldn’t work out what was happening until Kai gave a groan and also passed out. Raphael, I thought. His connection to them furnished them with health. And now Apollyon was taking it away. My heart felt like it was going to burst when Charles stumbled and landed beside me. He held the demon blade again. Probably went to retrieve it as soon as Kai passed out. Shifters were so one-track minded. I grabbed his hand like I was going to somehow keep him from falling ill like the rest of them.
Apollyon waved a hand and the denizens of the Hell dimension stood down. As easy as that. Rings of black fire circled around the necromancer’s hands. They enveloped the undead and kept them from their endless ravaging. The malachim hung suspended like black demonic kites swaying in the non-existent breeze.
Apollyon approached us.
“You see,” Apollyon said, “this was all an illusion. You were all dead the moment my master return–”
His sentence was cut off rudely by an angel blade being shoved through his chest. Apollyon screamed.
“Hate to break it to you,” Max’s voice cut through the fog of my mind, “but some of us aren’t dead.” He twisted the blade again.
Apollyon’s arms lashed out at where Max was pushing Ariel’s seraph blade through him. It was such an impossible sight that Charles was making a choking sound beside me. Max’s whole body throbbed with Haniel’s essence. While it was impossible for a human or a supernatural to wield a seraph blade, it was not so for the malachim. Nor was it so for Apollyon. Though he was screaming as he did it, Apollyon grasped the end of the seraph blade and wrenched his body sideways. The blade seared through Raphael’s underarm, causing Apollyon to groan.
Max saw what was happening and drew back. When he swung the blade in a wide arc that would have sliced Raphael clean open, the blade was met with the serrated edge of
