Tainted Legacy (YA Paranormal Romance) (37 page)

“Where’s the demon’s snare?” Ava asked, her eyes searching for it.

“We’re
standing
in it,” Gabe told her in a pained tone.

“Grier!” Ava cried as she took Gabe by the hand. She pulled him to the front of the church, up the step so they were near the altar. “Is that better?”

Gabe nodded but refused to meet her eyes. He was afraid that if he did, she would be able to see inside of his soul…if he had one. He did not want her to be afraid. He did not want her to know what he was about to do.

“I don’t see it,” Ava told Grier who had joined them.

“It is not meant for you to see,” Grier explained. With a wave of her hand a bejeweled blade appeared in her palm. The stones were unusual vibrant shades of violet and cerulean. Ava wasn’t entirely sure that they were even from this world.

“Come here, Ava,” she commanded. “I need to mark you as a precaution. Azael may still be able to take you if you are marked with my blood but it will make it harder for him.” She reached for her hand but Ava withdrew.

“Wait!” she said, turning to Gabe and finding herself folded in his arms. She knew once she was marked, if it were enough to keep Azael away, it would make Gabe miserable, at the very least. “When this is over, promise we’ll be together.”

“I promise to love you forever,” he said instead. He was trembling as badly as she was. If he could only hold on to hy h>

“You love me?” Ava asked, feeling needy and childish that she was asking for confirmation here and now when so much was at stake.

“I love you more than you can possibly imagine.” He leaned forward and kissed her then. Afraid his words would give him away.

“Ava, he is here,” Grier grimly announced. “I can feel him. I need to mark you now.” Grier took the blade in her hand and swiped at her fingertip. Golden blood began to swell and a droplet fell to the floor.

Gabe was the first to let go. He gently nudged Ava toward Grier. Grier handed Gabe the dagger. She quickly marked Ava with her blood, smearing it on the back of her neck and across her palms. Ava had been expecting this. She knew it was just a precaution. One that Gabe had begged Grier to provide. Ava had been surprised that she’d relented as she did not have explicit permission to help in this way.

“Finally, we meet!” Azael boomed as he strode into the center of the church.

Immediately, the floor beneath him began to blaze allowing Ava to see for the first time the etchings that she knew Grier had so meticulously carved into the floor. A circle enclosed a
hexagram, two interlinked triangles. An archangel’s sigil was etched into each of the six tips and the sigil of the archangel Gabriel was at the center.

The demon’s snare pulsated, emanating a brilliant gold. A web of thin, burning gold strands connected each tip to each of the other tips. Ava could now see what Gabe had been trying to explain to her the night before. The snare looked like a giant, golden, glowing spider web.

“Gabriel, you decided to carry on with this charade, did you? I warned you, this will not hold me.” Azael glanced at Ava and his lips curled into a frightening smile. “Oh, I see. You need to keep up the façade of your plan. Very well,” he sighed. “Here I am. But like you, I am no stranger to discomfort.”

Ava’s eyes frantically flew to Gabe’s. He was watching his father, his jaw set. Her gaze swung back around to Azael. She was not sure what she had been expecting. Perhaps a corpse-like creature whose appearance would correlate with his detestable nature. Or perhaps a man with horns protruding from his skull and hooves adorning his feet.  Surely, she had not expected a demon to look like the creature that stood before her.

He was nearly as tall as Gabe and the resemblance was like a dagger to her heart. The same chiseled features, the perfectly symmetrical face and the flawless skin. He had a beautiful face that would be so beguiling to the covetous, superficial likes of the human mind. A beauty, as Grier had claimed, that could be used as a weapon to draw you in.

Azael’s hair was like Rafe’s, an unnatural shade of red. It shimmered atop his head, like liquid flames. It was his eyes that made Ava’s breath catch painfully in her throat. They were bottomless pits of darkness.

An aching, biting fear began to course through her. She tried to ignore it, to push it away. She knew that Gabe could feel it and she did not want him to have to deal with her fear when he was already fighting his own.

Have faith
, she told herself. She concentrated on those words, willing them to edge out the paralyzing fear that she felt rising, building, pushing outward, weakening her body.

Have faith
.

“I knew you would understand,” Gabe finally said, “how important it is to keep up pretenses.”

Ava realized that Azael had not been surprised the demon’s trap was there. It sounded like he had
known
. How could he have known? Had Gabe told him and then kept that from her?

Her gaze ricocheted from Grier to Gabe but neither looked concerned. Gabe did, however, look ill. Ava knew the sigils were taking their toll on him. She felt a senseless yet intense rush of guilt as her own markings seemed to emanate a phantom heat that she imagined twisting around Gabe.

“Such a primitive idea and yet,” the threads of the snare flared brightly as he tried to move forward within the confines of its circle, “perhaps a little stronger than I had imagined. But sadly for you, not nearly strong enough,” he said as he strode forward, coming closer to the edge.

Azael looked at the three of them in turn. Ava thought it was too much to hope that he hadn’t noticed the sheen of sweat that covered Gabe, or the way his hands were shaking. Ava imagined the uncontrollable heat sliding its way through his veins, leaving a torturous path in its wake. Yet he was here with her. By her side despite the obvious pain he was in.

Her heart lurched in her chest. She wanted to hold his hand, to be close to him but that was not an option right now.

Mostly, she wanted this over. They were so close. Remove Azael from their lives and Gabe would be free to be with her. She ached, all the way down to her soul, for that moment to come.

Close
. They were so close. What were they waiting for? To see if the cage would hold? That was the question Gabe had feared the answer to.

“A
simple
demon’s snare could not stop you,” Grier agreed as she spoke for the first time. “But one in the form of a hexagram…a symbol of perfect geometric opposites…Male and female…The sun and the moon…Good and evil…Angel and demon fused as one. Opposites that cannot exist in the same entity without one canceling the other out, yes, created properly this particular snare ought to be enough to stop you,” Grier said calmly.

Ava breathed a soundless sigh of relief. Grier sounded so confident.

Yet she noticed that Gabe was still trembling. The stones embedded in the dagger he held twinkled as the flames of the snare reflected of off them.

“
This
?” Azael asked, the smile crawling back onto his face.

Ava could see him pushing subtly against the invisible cage that was holding him. The gold etchings on the floor flared. Possibly it was her panicked mind seeing things that couldn’t be but it seemed to her that he was making a small progression outward.

“You think
this
can stop me?”

He was laughing now. She knew for sure that she hadn’t been wrong. He was pushing the boundaries. Did that mean the snare would not hold? Ava’s heart slammed painfully against the wall of her chest again and again.

Gabe’s body twitched, as if her fear had collided into him with a force too strong to ignore. She had to fight being afraid.

“You, all of you, overestimate yourselves. I’ve been around for millennia,” Azael reminded them. “You think I have never encountered a demon’s snare forged in the blood of an angel?”

Both Grier and Gabe moved to stand in front of Ava.

Azael’s laugh was chaotic now. Despite Gabe and Grier’s calm, Ava felt her panic rise. She struggled to quench it. Gabe turned to look at her, his face filled with heartache.

His gaze bore into his son, snapping his attention back to him. “Gabriel, surely you aren’t thinking of defying me. We had an agreement, you and I.”

His voice was so frigid it chilled the blood in Ava’s veins.

Gabe turned to Ava again. His eyes flooded with so many emotions she could not begin to translate them all. He looked at her as though he were trying to memorize her face.

He held Grier’s dagger in one hand and he reached for her with his other. His hand rested on her shoulder as he leaned forward and placed the softest of kisses on her lips.

Ava fought to keep her blood smeared hands at her sides and not lift them to rest on Gabe, where she felt they belonged.

When he stepped away from her, he turned to Grier and gave her a pleading look that Ava did not miss.

Azael laughed and the sound was like shards of ice shattering and embedding themselves into her soul.

“Its Nean"as liks time!” he shouted.

“I know,” Gabe whispered as he raised the dagger.

In the next moment Grier touched her hand to Ava’s forehead and her body was frozen. If it hadn’t been, she would’ve lunged at Gabe the moment she realized what he was about to do. He stepped away from the altar and into the snare as he plunged the dagger into his heart.

Ava screamed, her body frozen, the sound never leaving her mouth but resounding inside of her skull, tearing at her throat. She thought of those patients, prepped for surgery, seemingly unconscious but awake to feel every stroke of the surgeon’s blade. She felt like this as Grier’s blade pierced his heart.

The pain, whether physical or emotional was so intense he may as well have impaled
her
heart. Another silent scream tore through her thoughts as she fought to break free of the angelic restraints. She watched, helpless as Gabe fell to his knees and then slumped to the floor. She silently screamed his name over and over again, a terrified, endless loop that went unanswered.

“I believe you have underestimated your son,” Grier calmly declared, pulling Azael’s attention back to her and away from Gabe, whose body lay motionless on the floor. Her voice had changed, become more powerful. “As you said, a demon’s trap, even one forged in angel’s blood may not be strong enough to hold you. But one sealed in the blood of a demon will eradicate you.”

As the first droplet of Gabriel’s tainted blood trickled into the etchings, mingling with the blood of the angel it caused a synergistic effect. The hazy glow erupted into a vibrant blue inferno.

White-hot silver and blue flames—a blue so like the color of Gabe’s eyes—instantly began snaking their way through the intricately carved markings on the floor until the entire snare was aflame.

Ava knew Gabe was in there somewhere but his corpse was indiscernible behind the conflagration. Every cell in her body was straining to run forward, into the blaze to pull him out. With sudden clarity she knew then that this was all part of the plan. This was why Grier had bound her in place.  

She did not have a future with Gabe.

I promise to love you forever…
She had rejoiced at hearing those words. But they were a shield to cover the truth. He had not promised they would be together.

He had known.

This
was the plan.

He was sacrificing himself to save her.

Ava did not want it to be this way. She wanted him to take it back!

The entire foundation of the church shook. Azael screamed, whether in outrage or agony Ava couldn’t tell, nor did she care. As the fire burned, the ground began to crumble beneath them. Chunks of it fell away, the outer circle of the snare first, leaving the core standing inexplicably on its own.

She caught a glimpse of Gabe, his lifeless eyes seeming to bore into her soul for a fraction of
an instant as he tumbled into the dark abyss the gaping hole had created.

Ava had expected his body to be charred, burned beyond recognition from the intensity of the inferno. But it wasn’t. He was whole and untainted and beautiful and he was…gone.