Unnatural Souls (15 page)

Right, I’ve got your
attention now, don’t I?
I thought, nearly
grinning. It was time to show him what I really could
do.

I PULLED ON
the banks, envisioning exactly what I wanted, and
threw them toward each other so that they were stacked into a
pile—a barricade that shielded Kali and Ash from his
sight.

“
Grace!” Ash yelled, his
voice shaky. I knew he was scared to death. I could hear the tremor
in in his voice, but he would be safer with Kali, and I really
didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t get to him, but I could protect
him. I could get rid of the demon, and I didn’t want Ash anywhere
near us while we fought. I didn’t want the monster to have any
chance of getting to Ash. No risk of him slipping by me.

If the demon somehow succeeded in
killing me—which, judging from the fang-baring, scrunched features,
was exactly what he wanted to do—Kali would take him out. She would
protect my brother.

“
Kali, get Ash out of
here!” I shouted.

I couldn’t get to him, and
Kali couldn’t get to the demon. Exactly the way I’d planned it. And
I was fairly certain the demon still didn’t see me as a real
threat. So I would have the drop on him when it came to
hand-to-hand combat. I was counting on him letting his guard down,
thinking he could get rid of me quickly; to make the mistake I’d
made in not realizing how strong
he
was.

It was risky move, but I didn’t see
any other options.

“
Leave! Keep him
safe!”

The demon growled and glanced at the
lockers blocking his way. Then he turned his attention back to
me.

“
You had your year,” he
howled. He never took his eyes off of me, the sound of his voice
like a rumble of thunder. I had no doubt Ash heard him, despite the
layer of metal separating them. “I’ll take your sister, and then
I’m coming for you.”

Not if I take you out
first.

On the other side of the lockers, I
could hear the sound of running footsteps moving away from us, and
a door closing in the distance. Then silence. Thank God. I felt a
small amount of relief knowing they weren’t so close to us anymore.
Kali should have just teleported him out of there, but I hadn’t
given her specific orders. And I trusted her, as surprising as that
was. She had protected me all this time. Plus, I’d drawn a
connection between her and Ash by comparing their
predicaments.

Yes, she’d keep him safe. Which meant
I just had to take care of the demon.

“
You’re going to have to
go through me if you want to get to him,” I told the monster with a
snarl of my own.

The demon laughed, which only fueled
my anger.

“
That shouldn’t take
long,” he replied.

At his words, the edges of my vision
went black, my head throbbing with anger. This thing had ruined the
last year of my life. He had destroyed the boy my brother was,
leaving him an empty shell of the person I knew, and was here to
kill Ash and take his soul to Hell. He’d ripped me from Heaven, and
was responsible for me being stuck on Earth, a lost angel. An
unnatural soul. For nine months, I’d thought I was losing my
mind.

All because this demon took advantage
of my brother’s guilt, and manipulated him into giving up his life
for me.

I wanted to tear him to pieces for all
the pain he had caused me and the ones I loved. And I was going to
stop him from doing that to anyone ever again. I reached down,
grasping my powers and willing my weapons to appear. A moment
later, the blue light glowed softly around my hands.

I gripped my blades tightly and
motioned him forward with one hand, ready to get on with it. He
didn’t wait for a second invitation, and leapt toward me. I assumed
he would have to come out of the force field to kill me, and I was
right—he was coming without it, only two feet from me
now.

I readied my blades and swung
out.

BEFORE MY BLOW
could connect, the creature disappeared into a
black mist. The shapeless darkness scuttled in every direction …
then vanished into the natural shadows along the edges of the hall,
and the cracks in the wall. I spun around in slow circles, my eyes
wildly taking in every inch of the hallway and my blades in front
of me, waiting for him to pop out again. This wasn’t as bad as the
shield, but it wasn’t good either. How the hell was I going to
fight something I couldn’t
see
?

“
You’ve never dealt with a
demon like me, little girl.” His voice came suddenly from behind
me, and for a moment the fear that he was right trickled through
me.

Because I
hadn’t
dealt with a
demon like him. And I just had to pray, now, that I was up to the
challenge.

I spun toward his voice, blindly
thrusting my weapons out, but by the time I had turned, his shadow
was disappearing again. Damn it. I had to find a way to attack him,
not just spin around all night on the defensive. I tried to study
the changes in the shadows, to guess where he would be next, but it
was so random. His silhouette kept flashing across my vision, and
the moment I turned to see where he was going, he was already
vanishing back into the darkened edges of the hall. His movements
were impossible to keep up with. One second I had the shadow in my
sights, the next it was slipping into the darkness
again.

“
I’ll die before I let you
touch him!” I yelled, praying that wouldn’t be the case. I wasn’t
prepared for this to be my end. But this monster wasn’t going to
take my brother—and I’d do whatever it took to make sure of that.
Even if that meant sacrificing myself.

“
And even if you kill me,
you won’t get through Kali.”

“
I think you put too much
faith in the wrong people,” he taunted.

Again his voice had come from behind
me. But I paid no attention to his jab, not about to let him get
into my head. I couldn’t allow him to have the upper hand just
because I was distracted.

I had to focus.

I growled and whipped my body around,
shooting my hands out with every ounce of my force, swinging my
blades high. Decapitation was the easiest way to dispatch a demon,
though right now I was just trying to hit him anywhere. But this
time he didn’t shift into the shadows, and I almost whooped. This
time, I had been quick enough. I was sure I was going to hit my
mark. I was going to win.

I should have realized then that there
was a reason he didn’t disappear.

He grabbed my right wrist when I was
still centimeters away from making contact with his neck, stopping
my attack, so I hit out at him with the second blade. I just had to
injure him badly enough to slow him down—then I would think of
something else. But once again, I wasn’t fast enough. A glint of
light bounced off the shiny surface of an object in his hand, and
in that moment I realized my mistake. He had a knife of his own,
now. Didn’t expect that.

And before I could move, his blade
pierced my chest.

My lungs felt like they had popped and
stopped working right the second his knife sliced into my body. The
pain was unbearable. I tried desperately to inhale, but nothing
happened. At least it didn’t happen the way it was supposed to. My
last full breath, with what little oxygen I had in my lungs,
rattled out of my open mouth. Drops of warm liquid—blood, I
realized—dripped down my chin, and my chest felt like it had been
set ablaze, like it was being ripped open, the pain so intense that
I felt a wave of dizziness flood through me. That was my brain was
trying to make me pass out, I thought—anything to protect itself
from the agony that was overwhelming me. My lungs burned, begging
for oxygen that I couldn’t give them, and I struggled to take
another breath, barely succeeding.

Then the demon twisted the
knife, and I let out a silent scream as my blades dropped from my
hands and disappeared into a soft blue light. Was I dying? Was this
how it was going to end? The talisman, Ash’s pendant, heated up
around my wrist, now glowing a dull blue, and I stared at it,
horrified. Was the angelic magic trying to protect me? No, I needed
it to save
Ash
.
This pendant wasn’t for me. It couldn’t save me when it had been
designed for him.

Oh God, I thought, panicked. What if
something went wrong? What if Michael had been wrong about each
pendant being unique, and this one sucked my soul in when I died,
and saved my life instead of his? My legs gave way as the
horrendous questions raced through my brain and I crumpled in on
myself, my arms flopping out to the sides. My muscles twitched, my
brain unable to control them, and I wondered if I was going into
shock.

But I went to the ground with one
over-riding thought: I had to get the talisman off so it didn’t
save me. It had to be open, or whatever the right terminology was,
for Ash. I attempted to grab it, but my fingers were cramping up.
And then the monster’s face came into view.

“
I’ll send Ash your best,”
he snickered, kneeling down beside me.

Ash,
I thought. I needed to save him. I needed to get the pendant
to him. I just didn’t know how I was going to do it. The idea that
I might die hadn’t really made its way into my mental narrative
before the fight.

I didn’t have a Plan C.

As if hearing my thoughts, the demon
ripped the talisman off my wrist. I attempted to take it back,
putting everything I had left into trying to grab it from him, but
my arm only made it an inch or two off the ground before falling
back down.

“
Though he will be joining
you very soon,” he laughed.

No he wouldn’t. I hoped. The demon
would have to get through Kali to get to my brother—and I didn’t
think he’d be able to do that. But then another bout of panic
spread through me. Kali might kill that demon … but without the
talisman, Ash would be fair game.

I watched in horror, unable to move,
as the demon sent an invisible wave of power into the lockers,
shoving them to the side like they were made of paper. He twisted
his body toward me for just a moment, threw the talisman in the
air, and snapped his fingers. And, with a puff of black smoke, the
talisman vanished. Along with any hope of saving Ash.

He smiled cruelly, his red eyes
intensifying in color before he turned his back to me.

I stared after him as he sauntered
down the hallway, until his body once again blurred, turning into a
shadow that moved down the long corridor in fits and starts. His
figure slipped through the darkness, moving further and further
away from me, and closer to where I thought my brother might be—and
I was unable to stop him. It wasn’t until his silhouette clouded
the entrance to the auditorium that I knew for sure where Kali and
Ash must have gone.

And that the demon was following
them.

I had failed my brother, I realized
with a gasp. Even if Kali killed the demon, they didn’t have the
talisman. And without it, any other demon could come for him. Even
if he was lucky, and managed to live his life without another demon
collecting that debt, his soul was still tainted. When he died, it
would go to Hell.

But that didn’t mean I could just lay
here, dying, and let it all happen. I had to do something. I had to
warn Kali what had transpired. If she killed the monster, maybe she
would have enough time to get to Michael and tell him Ash needed a
new pendant. Maybe it would still be okay.

I hoped now that
Kali
hadn’t
teleported out of there—because I would have no chance of
finding them if she had.

I didn’t have to try to draw on my
power to know that I was fading quickly. I would only be able to
pull off one jump.

I reached deep down inside myself,
though I could already feel my powers diminishing. They were almost
impossible to grab onto, and it was like trying to pull up an
armful of Jell-O, but I put everything I had left into it … and was
able to grasp the power long enough to do what I needed to. I
pictured the aisles of the room the last time I’d seen it, and,
with the little energy I had left, I teleported into the auditorium
… praying they were still in there.