I hated not being able to confront lesser angels.
I hated worrying about a mortal.
Two miles to go. The mortal slowed down, no doubt tiring, no doubt pushing until she collapsed and I’d have to carry her, because the angels above us wouldn’t tire. Arrows flew all around us, and I used the bit of telekinesis I possessed to slightly tweak the trajectory while at the same time attempting to drain the angels above, channeling their life energy into the mortal so she’d pick up her pace. I felt like a conduit, as I often had been for my armies and the Command Fleet.
I pumped Nevaeh’s muscles with energy. The little mortal was growing on me. Against orders, she’d fed me. Disobeying Michael was a sure death sentence, and if he found her out, he’d make an example of her. She did it anyway, and I had to know why.
She tripped and fell, scraped her knee, got up, and kept running with short breaths, blistered feet, and a sand-beaten body. Her endurance made me proud, a strange feeling I’d question when I had a second to reflect.
The line I held on one angel’s energy snapped and released him from me. I snatched back his limbs. Too late. He fired an arrow. If I were alone, I’d dodge it. Actually, if I were alone, I’d kill them already and not worry about myself. But I wasn’t alone.
I let the arrow hit my shoulder. Flesh tore, pain exploded, and I grunted but kept moving, yanking out the arrow so I could heal the wound. At the tip, yellow liquid lingered. I sniffed. Damn it. Ariel’s Honey, a poison that slowed natural healing. If the arrowhead was left inside the wound, the immortal wouldn’t be able to heal at all. There were worse things than death.
Another arrow hit the back of my thigh. My knee folded and brushed the ground. I must’ve made some noise, because the mortal turned and rushed back to me, trying to pick me up.
“Keep moving,” she said.
She tried dragging me, and when she couldn’t, she threw my arm over her shoulder and tried lifting me. Extraordinary. And ridiculous. How far did she believe we could go on limping while angels hunted us with arrows from above?
I yanked the arrow out of my thigh and spread out my senses, discovering a pride of mountain lions. They hid in a cave not fifty feet from here. The sandstorm had died down, and we were sitting ducks, as the mortal would say. Behind us, I sensed the pair of angels had landed.
I grabbed the mortal by her wrist and tugged. Her pretty face, covered in sand and dirt and tears, still looked determined to fight. She held her stick steady.
“There’s a cave,” I said. “West. Fifty feet. Wait for me there.”
The mortal opened her mouth, but I gave her my best Michael glare, the one that sent people scampering.
“Yes, Commander,” she said.
The mortal took off, and I felt when her body entered the cave. She shivered from the cold, and through her, I scented animal droppings as well as the pride deep inside the dwelling. They lifted their heads, heard her come in, but weren’t moving to investigate. They were hiding too.
The angel who had shot me assumed his hand-to-hand combat position, twirling a pair of spears. The other, a few feet away, readied three arrows dripping with poison and aimed at different points of my body. Head, chest, groin. Even I would struggle to heal those injuries, since removing an object prior to healing the flesh around it would prove difficult with a hole in my head. It would be a terrible inconvenience to walk around with an arrow sticking out of my groin, but that one I could manage. I hadn’t yet been wounded there. Perhaps today would be the day, since I’d committed to reserving my power for growing my wings and couldn’t spare any more on these two idiots.
“Ariel wants to see you,” the archer said.
I laughed. “You say that as if you’re speaking to a foot soldier at her service. May I remind you she’s one of my lieutenants, not the other way around.”
“The Court of Sunder has fallen. Come with us, or we’ll drag you to her.”
My control over the power reserves I’d been collecting for months in the keep snapped, and my power burst forth, hitting the pair. Their brief screams of agony rang against the mountains surrounding us, then died away as if they never were. Dust settled over their broken bodies, shattered bones protruding every which way.
I approached the archer and crouched beside him. His brain intact, he’d lived through the pain, and now lay with his eyes wide open. I stroked his cheek with my claw. “Molis, isn’t it? Blink once for yes.”
The angel blinked.
“The Court of Sunder fell, you say. I am the Court of Sunder, and I will water my gardens with the blood of my enemies.”
He looked up at me, struggling to speak. I helped him by patching up some of his airways.
“Those still loyal to you are dead,” he said. “Even you can’t heal the dead.”
I bent and whispered at his ear, “Are you sure about that?”
I stepped back, smiling at the fear in his eyes. Necromancy was taboo, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t dance with death. Death was another form of energy, after all.
Chapter 5
Lord Raphael walked away from the two angels that had pursued us for miles. He hadn’t battled them or seemed to expend any effort in killing them in the worst imaginable way. They were now immortals trapped inside broken bodies.
Standing, I dusted off my shirt and pants and wiped my dirty face with a sleeve, wincing at the pain of cuts and bruises. Sand had beaten my face as I ran for miles. With Julia, the commander’s mate, around the House, we all got up earlier and trained longer into the night with limited vision. It sure served me in the sandstorm. I had run blind.
Stepping out of the cave, I descended the rocky terrain to reach the road where Lord Raphael waited.
“You need a bath and new clothes.”
“Thank you for pointing that out.”
“Sarcasm?” He spun and walked away.
I grunted, rushing to catch up with his long strides when his fine ass caught my eye. I slowed down. At about six-five and with long, muscular legs, Lord Raphael was broad shouldered with a tapered waist. His ass was his best asset. When he visited our Court, he’d come wearing black leather pants, and the entire female population of the Court of Command would pause when he’d prepare for liftoff, because when he flared out his wings, he’d uncover the sight of his leather-clad ass.
“The bones will soon become wings,” he said.
He thought I was looking at the bones sticking out of his back. The wings would cover his ass, and that was too bad. I kept the thought to myself. “I have a question,” I said as I caught up with him. “If you can do that…” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder, indicating the pile of bones, skin, and blood that was all that was left of the pair of angels, “why did we have to run in the sandstorm?”
“Training exercise.”
I nodded. “Got it. You’re testing my endurance now that we’re partners out in the field.”
He stopped and turned to me, shaking his head. “Testing your endurance in these dreadful conditions would endanger your mortal existence. Only your commander would test you in such conditions. I am not him. I enjoy mortal existences and the energies that circulate because they exist.”
“But you had it in for Julia.”