In another lifetime, Haniel must have been a warrior. He met every one of Apollyon’s thrusts with the graceful movements of a dancer. As Charles squeezed my hand with a crushing tightness, the malachim in my body poked her head up in alertness. She blinked and it felt like someone brushing a feather on my insides. Something in the fight in front of her triggered a long-dead emotion in her mind.
I could feel her coming into awareness when something cold grabbed me by the shoulder and lifted me up into the air. I cried out as nails sliced into my skin. Charles tried to hold on to me, but his strength wasn’t up to what it had been.
I found myself in the grasp of a humanoid demon with abrasive skin and noxious breath. It made me want to throw up just being close. It grabbed me by the throat and held tight.
My distress caused Max to lose his concentration for a fraction of a second. At any other time, it might have been insignificant. Against Apollyon, it was a fatal mistake. But rather than slash back at Max to hurt him, Apollyon slapped his hand on Max’s chest, his smile full of demonic satisfaction.
The malachim inside me became so frightened she rattled against my magic chamber. It made me shake as though I was trying to break the hold of the demon. The thing constricted its hand, making me choke. I clawed at its fingers, but I had zero strength.
Max’s fury was like an inferno in the mating link. Every muscle in his body twitched, but he couldn’t break Apollyon’s hold on him. The problem was, it wasn’t actually Max that Apollyon was targeting. It was Haniel.
The air in the courtyard began to turn cold. It dropped to such a freezing temperature that my jaw felt like it was frozen shut.
“Remember what you are,” Apollyon said. He shot a blast of black magic laced with red into Max’s body. The scream that whipped through the courtyard was only a fraction of a lion shifter’s roar. The rest was the agonised screaming of a malachim who was being dragged back into the confines of the Abyss.
Max began to struggle in earnest. His features distorted into a being with a long face and eyes the colour of fresh snow. The malachim in my chest went absolutely still. Through the mating link, I saw what it was that Haniel was experiencing. The complete and absolute closing off of all connection to anything angelic.
The death of all those who he had been charged with protecting. The empty cold of the Abyss where he would be used to bring pain to innocents. And then his own pain was heaped on top of it. Pain that transcended a physical body.
I screamed with him just as Max did. The sound of their anguish would have brought me to my knees if the demon wasn’t still holding on to me. “Stop it!” I screamed. “Please!”
Apollyon chuckled. “Stop it,” he mimicked in a perfect imitation of my voice. Close to my feet, I saw Angus attempting to get up. His black wings were half bent. One of the squat popobawa demons kicked him back down.
The low growling from Durin and the pack was an undercurrent as Max roared with a pain that made me burst into uncontrollable tears.
“Don’t cry, Sophie darling,” Apollyon cooed. “Tell you what, pick one of them to spare.”
“Max.” It wasn’t even a consideration. I tried to make him a counter-offer. “Take my soul instead.”
Apollyon inched forward. “That wasn’t ever in dispute.” He glanced sideways where Max was now bent over, silently screaming as Haniel’s light began to dim. “I wonder, though, how long he would survive without you. Seems a bit pointless to me.” Apollyon paused. His claws bit into Max’s chest where he’d been holding on for the transfer. “Why don’t we do this?” He grabbed hold of Max by his short hair, still not short enough not to be used as leverage, and slapped his hand on Max’s forehead. A flare of red descended like a cloud over Max’s face. It crawled into his eyes, nose, and ears.
“Stop!” I shrieked, seeing what he was making Max witness with his vile magic. The magical half of Max tried to throw off the illusion. He did well for the first few seconds, but while the man could be logical, the lion was a creature of instinct and emotion. Already weakened by the torment of what Haniel had and would continue to go through, now the lion was suffering the sight of me being torn apart by the demons.
When he’d had enough fun with that, Apollyon changed things up, and instead of the demons ripping my limbs off me and feasting on my blood, it wrenched my legs apart and...I threw up in my mouth at the image. Max let out a roar so full of loathing it busted my eardrums. Blood trickled down my nose.
Max’s mouth opened to emit a lament that shot through me and sank into the malachim in my chest. She cried along with me. Before my very eyes, Haniel was dragged out of Max’s body by the magic of the Abyss. What was left behind was a creature of boiling muscles, of skin turning to fur and nails rippling out into claws. Max’s eyes were a solid black. But rather than release him, Apollyon held Max in place even as he opened up the portal to the Abyss and tossed Haniel inside.
The malachim inside me whimpered. I had no care left for anything else but the way Max was snapping and scraping at the ground in front of him.
Through the mating link, I felt the shifters sink into the pack link and attempt to hold on to him through their bond. Apollyon twisted the telepathic knife once more, this
