As the flames died down, I breathed in sharply. Shemyaza stood in the triangle, his silver eyes burning in the deep sockets of Amadi’s skull. It was hard to believe that only a few months ago, Amadi had been laughing and joking, cooking pancakes, and making love to me. Now, he stood there with his muscles wasted, his face gaunt, and his skin tone a dark, muddy grey rather than a rich dark brown. Even his tattoos glowed a different colour, a murky blue rather than the clear azure of tropical waters.
My heart broke to see what had happened to him physically. I couldn’t bear to think about what had occurred on the inside. I watched as he reached out and small bursts of power sparked as his fingers brushed the edges of the magical barrier. He laughed, looking at Cain.
“You really think this is going to hold me? A Circle of Solomon conjured by one fallen angel, a shifter, and…” He brushed his fingers against the barrier again then swung around, his eyes flaring brightly as they flickered over me and settled on Alex. “Or maybe that was the idea… Alexei?”
I slipped my hand into Alex’s.
“Yes… I think that might be it. I think maybe you’ve missed me, haven’t you, Alex?”
Alex squeezed my hand, but he didn’t respond. His eyes were fixed on a spot on the wall just above Shemyaza’s head. His silver eyes watched Alex closely as his lips spread in an unnerving smile, revealing pointed silver teeth.
“Maybe you’ve summoned me because you want something from me? Is that it, Alexei? Even if his soul is gone, you know you can still feel his body. Is that what you want? Because I can do that. Just let me out, and you can take him to your bed and feel his body against yours again.”
I swallowed hard, my stomach clenching at hearing Amadi’s voice. Alex’s jaw was clenched, and I could see tears in his eyes.
“Don’t listen to him, Alex,” I murmured. “It’s not him, it’s not really Amadi.”
He took a deep breath and nodded before looking down at me. “I know. We should go.”
“So soon? Without feeling him in your arms again? I know you want him. I can sense your lust from here. I can sense his. He still wants you, Alexei. I feel it. He wants your hands on his body, your cock in his mouth…”
Alex turned away, biting his bottom lip so hard he drew blood. “Let’s go,” he said to Cas. Cas nodded and turned to create a doorway in the circle to allow us out. He and Cain moved through it, and I pulled Alex towards it.
“Alexei!” Shemyaza called. Amadi’s voice sounded desperate, pleading, and Alex hesitated. “Alexei, please! Don’t leave! You can’t leave me, not like this.”
I sucked in a breath and pulled Alex’s hand. “Alex, we need to go now.”
“No, Alexei, you can’t. Please. I need you like you needed me, remember? All those years ago in Russia when I saved you, and you begged me not to abandon you, even though you thought you were a monster. You begged me and I stayed. Now I’m begging you, Alexei. Stay with me. Don’t let him destroy me. Let me out. Don’t leave me in here!”
Tears fell down Alex’s cheeks and he closed his eyes, his face screwed up in pain. Anger flared within me, and I let go of his hand. Pushing past him, I stormed through the circle until I stood just inside its protection, staring into Shemyaza’s eyes barely a foot away.
“Shut up! Just shut up! You should be thankful you’re in there, not trying to get out. It’s not a prison, it’s protecting you from me.” I could feel the fire of my fury race through my veins, and I felt my wings begin to materialise.
“Jealous, Faith? There’s no need to be. I know how you like us both.” He smirked at me, and I fought the urge to hit him. Physical contact from one of the ones who had formed the circle could cause the protective barrier to shatter, and that would put us all in danger.
“It’s not going to work on me, Shemyaza. I know you. I’ve seen you in my dreams long enough to know it’s you. There’s no way you can fool me into thinking that Amadi is talking to me.” I turned on my heel and began to walk away.
“They’re going to find out what you are, you know.”
This time, I turned back to face him. “Oh yeah? And what am I, exactly?”
He grinned, the candlelight glinting off rows of sharp silver teeth. “A monster. A creature of nightmares. Or so they will think. You know they’ll damn you to hell as soon as they find out. You’re one of us, you belong with us.”
“I am nothing like you,” I spat at him, but deep down inside, his taunt hit its mark. Maybe I was. Maybe this was what I would become. A dark, sick, twisted creature.
Shemyaza seemed to sense my thoughts, because his grin dimmed to a knowing smile. “One of us,” he repeated. “Don’t worry, they will give you a warm welcome. Did you know they all still have their bodies inside Tartarus? I had to leave mine behind to escape, but the rest of them still have theirs. Oh, they don’t look human anymore. Thousands of years in the dark, being tortured and maimed, will leave anyone looking somewhat… twisted. But there’s enough left to make you feel very welcome. Enough to share their pain and suffering. You seem to like the company of several men, Faith. What do you think thousands would feel like? Cutting holes deep into your body for their cocks to slide into…”
Fury and fear rose inside me like bile, and I took two steps towards him before Cas’s arms fastened securely around my waist, his lips pressing against my ear. “Faith, I’ve got you. You’re safe. And we’re leaving now.”
He glanced up at Shemyaza. “You’re pathetic. A schoolboy bully, nothing more. Hell, the body you’re in can’t even stomach you, and you’re too weak to even keep it alive. We’re done.” Keeping his arms wrapped around me, he moved us away, turning our backs on Shemyaza.
“Pathetic, am I? You won’t be saying that when I wear my new body, when I take him!”
I saw Cain’s eyes widen slightly, his hand already on the door handle to let us out of the apartment.
“Yes. Every cell in your body will scream in agony when I take you, Cain, son of Adam. I will make you suffer like never before, and I will dominate you completely. Your will means nothing against my strength.”
Cain opened the door and stood back to let Sam push Alex into the hallway. He ignored Shemyaza, and Cas nodded to him as we walked past.
“You will writhe in pain and despair when I take you. I shall make it hurt all the more for you having trapped me in here!” Shemyaza hissed. “Together, we shall go forth, and you shall watch as we commit the most atrocious horrors.”
Slowly, Cain turned back into the room to face him. He walked towards Shemyaza, moving with the dangerous air of a wolf stalking its prey. “I have lived on this plane for thousands of years. I have walked alone for most of them amongst the human race, and I have seen horrors most wouldn’t believe.” He looked Shemyaza up and down and sneered at him. “What more could you possibly show me that I haven’t already seen them do to each other?”
He pivoted and stalked across the boundary of the circle. His foot knocked against the quarter candle on the floor, causing it to roll towards the triangle where Shemyaza stood.
“Cain!” I called out in alarm. The room seemed to shimmer around him, and he glanced up at me then back down where the candle now dripped flaming wax into the carved sigils. I breathed a sigh of relief as the barrier seemed to hold and Cain strode towards me. Suddenly, with no warning, he whirled around and grabbed the bottle off the desk, hurling it at Shemyaza’s feet. The bottle shattered, and green flames leapt up from the wooden floor as the fire took hold. In a few seconds, the curtains had caught ablaze.
Cain rushed towards the door and pushed me out into the corridor, causing me to collide with Cas who was just coming back inside.
“What in Sheol…” His eyes widened at the fire now burning away, the greenish smoke starting to collect on the ceiling. His eyes darted to Cain then to me. He grabbed my hand. “Let’s get going. Now!”
I glanced back into the room as Cas pulled me away. Shemyaza was just a solitary figure, cloaked in gold and green flames. They lit up his face, and I watched as a cold smile spread across Amadi’s features. Then, we were gone, and Cas was pulling me through the doors to the stairway. I ran to keep up with him as he took the stairs two at a time.
“Lift?” I puffed out.
“Too risky. If the fire alarms go off, they might kill it. Hurry!” He darted down, and I could see Sam and Alex a flight below us. Cain brought up the rear, though he kept hesitating and looking back to see if Shemyaza was following.
We burst out onto the street in front of the building, coming to a halt as we reached the metal barrier that separated us from the main road. It was fully dark now, and the traffic had thinned a little, but there was still the odd taxi or truck flying past. I clamped my hands onto the railing and leaned over, breathing hard.
“What the fuck happened up there?” Alex asked.
“That’s what I want to know,” Cas growled, a hard edge to his voice. “And then we need to get out of here. As soon as that fire burns through all the charged sigils, Shemyaza will have nothing holding him.”
“Well, except that he’s in a room full of flames,” Cain pointed out. “It was an accident. I turned and knocked the candle over and it rolled over to the triangle. I didn’t want to get close enough to pick it up.”
“You did it on purpose,” I said quietly, straightening up and turning to face him. The others looked at me.
“No,” Cain replied slowly. “You saw me. I knocked it over and it rolled. I couldn’t have done that on purpose.”
“Why would he do that knowing Shemyaza could escape? Considering he was the one who suggested we trap him,” Alex asked, sounding bemused.
“Because that was his plan all along,” I said. I walked up to Cain, looking him straight in the eye. “Summon him, trap him so you could get him here quicker, and then release him when you were ready.”
“What? That’s crazy. You were there,” Cain insisted. “You saw me try to put it out. I threw a bottle at it.”
“It was absinthe. I recognised the bottle, Cain. You can’t work in a bar as long as I have and not recognise bottles of liquor at a glance. You knew it would go up in flames as soon as it touched a spark. It’s one of the most flammable spirits there is.”
“I don’t… Why on earth would you want Shemyaza to escape knowing what he wants to do to you?” Cas questioned, completely bewildered.
“Cas.” Sam’s voice was low and urgent. We followed his gaze and my heart dropped. The double doors to the building had swung open, and Shemyaza stood there, almost silhouetted by the electric lights of the foyer. His clothes were in smoking tatters, and there were vivid red burns up his legs. His silver eyes gleamed, and ghostly silver wings stretched out behind him, not quite materialised.
I tore my eyes away from the slowly advancing figure and stared at Cain. He just stood there with a strange smile on his lips. “Because Cain was never planning to run,” I stated.
Cain glanced at me and shook his head. “Trying to run? No. That thing there can give me what God never would—peace.”
“He’ll burn your soul,” Cas argued, shaking his head in disbelief.
Cain smiled. “Exactly. My body cannot die, but if he destroys my soul, I won’t have to continue this torment anymore. It will end. It will all end. Permanently.”
Crack. I gasped in surprise as Cas’s fist connected with Cain’s face. “You selfish motherfucker. You’ll damn the whole world if you do this.”
Cain straightened and took a couple of steps backwards, rubbing at his jaw where Cas’s fist had collided.
“The world can go to hell,” he snarled. Twisting around, he put one hand on the railing and leaped into the road, right into the path of an oncoming truck.
ALEX
The world seemed to slow and stop, like I was watching it in slow motion. One moment, Cain was standing in front of Faith, rubbing his face, and the next, I saw him turn away as she reached for him. His hand clamped down on the metal barrier next to the road, and in a single leap, he was over it, landing on his feet right in front of a fast approaching semitruck no one else had noticed coming.
The brakes screeched but there wasn’t time for it to stop. It hit him head-on with a crunching noise that made me shudder. It sounded like Sam’s body when he shifted, every bone in his body snapping and cracking back into place, but that was natural, this was not.
The truck lurched forward, but the impact of an immortal being like Cain had thrown it off balance, and it went up on two wheels before crashing back down and skidding along the road on its side for several metres. When it finally came to a stop, it’s wheels spun in the air. A taxi that hadn’t been far behind hit it, its bumper crumpling as it shunted the truck and presumably Cain’s body farther along the road. Then everything was silent for a moment.
Cas jumped over the barrier, and I followed him as a dark shape stumbled ahead of us, moving in a strange, jerky, unnatural way with the limbs of the man I loved. He disappeared around the side of the truck, and by the time we got to him, Amadi’s body lay sprawled across the mangled mess that was all that was left of Cain. Cain’s eyes moved over to us, but he couldn’t speak. Nearly half of his head seemed to have been obliterated, though as I watched, the bone began to grow back and the muscles reattached in moments. I felt like I was going to hurl, and for a second, I wondered how many times this had happened. How many times had he died, or tried to die, only for his body to heal itself?
A dark, glutinous mass began to flow from Amadi’s eyes, nose, and mouth, his ears too, and seep across his skin before dripping down into Cain’s closing wounds. Unable to prevent it, we stood there in shock, and I felt my heart grow cold. Amadi’s blue eyes faded and stared off into the darkness as the last drop of Shemyaza’s soul left his body.
I lurched forward. Cas tried to grab me, but I was too fast, and in an instant, my hands were under Amadi’s arms and I was dragging him away from Cain. I hadn’t realised I was screaming Amadi’s name until Faith came up and grabbed his feet.
“Cas, help us!” Cas was next to me in a moment, suddenly realising what we were trying to do, and he slid his arms under Amadi’s body, taking the majority of the weight.
“We’ve got him, we’ve got him, Alex. Now lift.” I swallowed, forcing my screams of desperation down deep inside as we carried his bulky frame away from the crash. We laid him as gently as we could on the grass verge and kneeled down next to him. I began to check him all over, begging, praying for a pulse, a breath, something, but his blue eyes, pale and washed out, simply stared off into nothingness.
“Move.” Faith shoved me out of the way, and I growled at her with a primal need to protect my lover. I couldn’t bear to let him go now that I had him back. If it had been anyone but Faith, I might have gone for their throat. Her strength surprised me though, and when she shoved me again, I nearly toppled over.
When I straightened up, she had her mouth clamped over Amadi’s, and I realised she was blowing air into his mouth. CPR. She was doing CPR. My chaotic mind started to clear as comfortable, familiar logic returned. I moved to the opposite side and began chest compressions, leaving spaces in between for her to breathe. I pushed down hard, willing his heart to beat again. Even if there was nothing of him left, I just needed to hear his heartbeat again. I pressed down once more, feeling his ribs crack under the pressure.
“Alex, stop!”
I ignored her, straightening my arms to press again.
“Alex, stop, he’s breathing!”
I froze, my hands linked over his ribcage, and then I felt the smallest flutter against my palm. It was weak but there all the same. I looked up at Faith, tears filling my eyes. “We’ve got him back,” I whispered.
She just stared at me, her eyes wide for a moment, and then she closed them and nodded.
“Alex, Faith.” Sam’s voice was flat as he murmured our names. We turned back to the wreckage to see Sam and Cas moving backwards away from it. Faith scrambled to her feet, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up. We didn’t move far from Amadi’s barely living form, as though we could protect him from worse than he had already experienced.
In front of us, Cain’s body had nearly rebuilt itself. He staggered to his feet, his skin and muscle knitting together as the bones cracked and melded into formation. Faith turned her head away, pressing her face into my arm as his skull, which had been almost completely caved in on one side, began to right itself in a rather grotesque resemblance of a balloon being inflated.
With the tearing of skin and muscle, new and additional humerus bones began to grow from his shoulder blades, and within a few moments, he was covered in stretched grey skin. The silver, maniacal light that shone in Shemyaza’s eyes fixed on the four of us, and he grinned, revealing sharp silver teeth and a black tongue. He took an unsteady step forward, and I moved in front of Faith as Cas and Sam came closer to us. Cas slowly reached for his gun, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Cain’s body would absorb bullets in a moment.
Suddenly, a bright white light spilled across his face and body and the ground between us. Shemyaza threw an arm up to shield his eyes and then glanced up into the sky. With a hissing roar, he turned and clambered jerkily across the embankment, disappearing into the darkness on the opposite side of the road. Time froze, and not the slightest breeze or movement of small animals disturbed it. Cars stopped, and faraway sirens were quietened.
We stood in silence, all perfectly aware that there was no point in running as the host of angels descended. The group of one hundred angels, all clad in golden armour, their white, silver, and golden wings perfectly preened, touched down on the road surrounding us, their angel blades blazing in dazzling uniformity.
A small group parted, moving in complete unison, their perfect faces blank as two figures stepped forward. One of them I didn’t recognize. He was tall, with silver-grey hair and keen, stormy grey eyes, a square jaw, and a cold, emotionless expression. The second figure I recognised straightaway, and I knew instantly why they were here.
My heart shattered.
