Twenty-Eight
Michelle leapt through the trees and twirled, her wings forming an aerodynamic shape that let her spear through the air and arrive beside Derek before I could even react.
One slash of her golden blade was all it took to remove Derek’s head from his shoulders.
A red vignette interrupted the otherwise black-and-white world around me as Michelle plucked the crown from his limp fingers and turned back to me, a snarl crossing her face as she moved to place the crown atop her head. Derek’s body thudded to the ground behind her as she adjusted the gleaming halo and snorted.
“I’ll never understand what Gabriella sees in you disgusting mortals. Ta-ta for now, puny champion. I’ll be back with reinforcements,” she promised with a wink. Her empty hand came up and a golden light, which appeared as a very bright white light in our current surroundings, began building in her palm as she prepared to cast some kind of spell.
I drew my gun, sighted on her, and fired a perfect shot without even thinking.
My round clipped the crown and spun it right off her head.
Michelle blinked in surprise and glared at me. “How dare you!”
Leaving the crown forgotten, she rushed towards me. Little more than a gleaming afterimage and a slight blur were my only hints as to where she was going to go next as she dashed around faster than I could see.
I fired round after round through the trees, each time utterly certain that I was either aiming directly at her or aiming for where she was about to be. None of my shots connected. Once again I lamented my missing Roulette Rouges.
My pistol clicked as the magazine reached empty.
I’m getting real sick of my guns being useless.
Suddenly she was closing to melee range, her sword pointed my way and stabbing towards my heart with all the speed of a striking viper.
I brought Gabby’s mace around and managed to deflect her first two strikes cleanly.
Her third attack came way too fast, and the mace was out of position.
Dropping the pistol, I reshaped my left forearm into a blade and intercepted the blow.
Michelle’s sword cleaved right through my left arm, just below the elbow, and a searing pain I knew all too well returned to me. The same pain I’d felt two years ago.
A string of curses escaped me as I backpedaled, overwhelmed by an onslaught of pain and memories alike. I was too busy re-reliving the night of the accident to even notice Michelle remove the mace from my grasp and kick me to the ground.
The figure that dragged Hannah from the car was male. An angel, no less perfect than Michelle or Gabby, wielding what looked like a gilded sledgehammer. He hauled her out of the car while his partner, Michelle, slashed my arm off and left me to die. It had just been the two of them, both wearing those gleaming crowns that looked an awful lot like blazing headlights emerging from the forest. They’d knocked us off the highway and then followed us, ripping Hannah away from me and that perfect moment that we’d been enjoying.
Angels killed my fiance.
“You look familiar. Have we met before, or do all of you mortals just look the same to me after the first six thousand years?” Michelle wondered aloud as she held her blade to my throat and tilted her head slightly to one side.
My senses were awake, and I could feel the forest all around me. A thought was all it took to extend my new powers down into the soil and call upon all the floral life surrounding us. A slight flex targeted Michelle, and I gathered several different attacks together at once, amazed at how easily the forest responded to my call.
“We’ve met, Michelle. Two years ago. When you killed Hannah Montgomery.” I held up the stump of my left arm and affected a pained expression (it wasn’t hard). “Do you remember me now?”
Michelle’s eyes widened, showing off more of her black sclera as they flashed in recognition. “Ah, the boyfriend! Oh isn’t that cute. We strike down the real champion so she goes and names her himbo boyfriend the new chosen one. How deplorably, desperately… human of her. Ash will love this when I tell him of his oversight. No matter. A simple correction should suffice.” She drew back her sword, preparing to swing it clean through my neck.
My pained expression faded as I let all of my powers flow through me at once.
My left arm healed in the blink of an eye. Wings sprouted from each of my limbs. Scales and bark coated my skin. My ears and mouth both elongated. Fangs and talons grew in the place of teeth and fingernails.
Roots shot out of the ground and entangled Michelle’s legs, holding her in place.
Vines shot from the nearby trees and curled around her, holding her arms apart and squeezing tighter and tighter around her until her sword dropped from her grasp.
Leaves fell from the branches above and morphed in mid-air, growing razor sharp and picking up speed as they spun towards Michelle like a swarm of shurikens. Zipping through the chilly air. Though none of them left so much as a scratch on her impervious armor, the serrated leaves left scratches all across her face and arms.
She cried out in surprise and pain. Her wings tried to extend, tried to flap and carry her away from this floral prison I was constructing from her, but it was too late. Though she raised a few meters off the ground, I yanked her back down to the ground and pinned her into a kneeling position.
“Kinky,” she said in a calm voice. “What are you going to do, mortal?”
Plucking her sword from the ground, I marveled at how perfectly balanced it was and could not resist giving it a celebratory twirl before placing the tip up against her throat.
Real fear crossed her face.
I prepared to thrust the blade forward, just one shove and she would be done. Another face from my nightmare taken off the board forever, just like Kevin.
“Ryan, wait!” Shouted an impossible voice.
Derek sprinted out of the woods clutching the crown.
I unholstered my other handgun and leveled it at him. “You died!”
Derek shook his head emphatically. With a snap of his fingers he created a magical copy of himself that waved cheerfully before dispersing. “Prank spells, remember? Decoys were like the third spell I ever learned.”
“That’s great! I’m really happy you’re still alive. But if you’ll excuse me, I have an angel to kill,” I said, returning to what I was doing.
Michelle glared up at me and spat out, “Do it, human! What are you waiting for?”
“Ryan, stop!” Derek shouted again, rushing up to me and interposing himself between me and Michelle. The scratches she left all over my body were really starting to sting, and the sharpened memories of her involvement in Hannah’s death had me ready to shove my friend aside and plunge my blade into this bitch’s heart. But Derek held up his hands placatingly and tried a different tactic. “Please, just trust me?”
I took a deep breath and compromised. “You have ten seconds to explain.”
Derek gulped. “You killed Boris. He was a powerful demon. Killing a warrior angel will paint a target on your back. There are forces at play in Paradise and Purgatory that would love an excuse to come to our world and pick a fight with our champion. If you prove you’re already powerful enough to defeat an angel, they’ll send war parties out to find whoever’s dared to get so powerful. But if you imprison her, they’ll only send out a search party. Much weaker.”
I tried to listen to his words, but all I could see was the sneer on Michelle’s face when she chopped my hand off and told me to say goodbye to Hannah. A sneer which the modern Michelle was mimicking perfectly.
“Search party, war party, it doesn’t make a difference to me. Either way, we’re in for a fight. Why risk her escaping? I’m just going to end her now!”
Derek tried to intervene, but I picked him up with one hand and set him aside.
A flutter of wings announced the arrival of Gabby, who landed a short distance away and held out her hand. Her golden mace flew into her grasp and she strode towards Michelle with a dark look upon her face.
I could not help but notice Derek surreptitiously stuffing the angelic crown into his satchel. He knew more than he was saying, and for some reason he did not want either of these women to get their perfectly crafted hands on that thing. I decided to defer to his magical expertise and trust his instincts.
“You bested her?” Gabby asked me, incredulous.
I nodded, still not moving. “I did. And that’s not all. . Michelle said that she was the original mortal champion and that I was chosen to replace her. She’s the one who killed Hannah, right in front of me. I’m going to take her fucking head off!”
I swung Michelle’s own sword towards the angel’s elegant throat, intent on cleaving her head from her shoulders.
Gabby’s mace intercepted the blow.
“Ryan, wait. She has the answers to some very important questions. Answers we need.”
“Oh, we need them, do we? Will these answers stop the phantoms?”
Gabby shook her head. “I will help you return the restless spirits back to their proper places, the answers I seek are less immediate but no less important.”
Derek moved forward and, though he did not speak, I could see that he was intent on urging me to listen to what Gabby had to say.
Growling in frustration, I moved away from them all and formed my empty hand into a fist. Behind me, the vines and roots holding Michelle in place tightened around her so powerfully that cracks began appearing all across her flesh. Golden light seeped through some of these cracks, making her look like a human-shaped vase that someone had stuffed a flashlight inside of (though crude, I would later come to learn that this was not a terribly inaccurate description of an angel).
“Ask your questions, then! Be quick about it. We still have a mission to complete.”
Gabby inclined her head respectfully. “As you wish, your majesty.” Without wasting another second, she bashed Michelle across the jaw with her mace, allowing light to spill out of a wound in her temple. “Who do you serve, traitor? Whose will led you to betray your oaths, to strike down a mortal champion in our hour of need and -”
“Oh save it, Gabriella! You know damn well who I’m working with.”
“Why, sister? Why do you betray all we stand for?”
Michelle made a noise of pure disgust in the back of her throat. “We stand for nothing but empty promises. We protect a status quo that serves no one. Mortals suffer. Gods languish in their hallowed halls. Demons meddle. Monsters run amok. Your precious pantheon would never dare lift a finger to fix anything that falls outside of their narrow guidelines. The Heralds, on the other hand, are willing to cure the very root of the disease.” Her eyes lingered over Derek and me, and that damn sneer ruined her pretty face once again. “Look at them. Pitiful apes lumbering around in their own filth, calling themselves enlightened even though they’ve barely conquered a mere handful of planets! Pathetic! Think of what they could have achieved with our help, Gabriella. Think of the species they could have been if we had been allowed to nurture and guide them from the start!”
Gabby shook her head. “Humans are primitive. They require time to work through their flaws before they are allowed to grow beyond these shores. We’ve learned this already with the Primals. Direct interference is forbidden!”
Michelle hissed in pain and frustration. “You’re so blind! All of you are! You don’t know what’s coming. You’ll never learn!” She zeroed in on me and seemed to come to a decision. I lacked the context to even hazard a guess at what her decision was or what it meant, but the next thing I knew, she was speaking to me and me alone.
“You know what sound your girl made when Ash split open her fragile skull? The most pathetic little whimper you could ever imagine. Probably the same sound she made when you stuck your pathetic little ape dick in her -”
She never finished the rest of her sentence.
I darted forward and slashed with my stolen sword, and a flash of golden light burst out through the forest.