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Another shade lashed out at me, and this time it almost managed to make it past my guard. The momentary lapse allowed another shade to reach past my shield and drag its claws along my arm. I screamed from the sudden shot of pain, but with a quick thrust of my sword in return I was able to impale something solid.
The way that creature shrieked as its skin sizzled and burned was satisfying enough to dull the pain I was feeling, but there were too many of these things to count.
“Abaddon!” I yelled. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”
“Abaddon isn’t going to do anything,” said Lucifer. “This big oaf thinks he can hurt me, all of a sudden. He should know by now that he can’t.”
Abaddon wasn’t deterred by Lucifer’s confidence. I felt him push away from me, his wings propelling him toward the first angel like a bullet from a gun. I turned around and followed, flaring the Light between my wings to try to keep the shadows at bay while I kept pace with Abaddon.
Lucifer moved out of Abaddon’s way, his body swishing to the right to avoid Abaddon’s attempt at grabbing him. A powerful light pulsed, flashing into the space between both angels and sending the shadows scurrying into the deepest corners of the chamber we were in.
Light didn’t usually affect me, but this was difficult to see through. I heard a scuffle, I could see vague shapes moving, cutting hard lines of shadow into the beacon shining right in front of me. I wanted to help, but I knew this wasn’t my fight.
So, I waited with my shield held up and my sword at my side while the two angels in front of me did battle. It was a whirlwind of grunting, of whooshing, of whipping wind and brilliant light, but it didn’t last long. When the Light dimmed, only Abaddon remained. I could tell just by looking at him, though, that he was hurt. There were cuts and bruises all over his skin, his lip was bleeding, and he had a gash on the side of his head… but he was alone.
Abaddon fell to his knees, sticking one hand out to stop from collapsing entirely. I rushed up to him, my Light dimming as I reached him. I took his bleeding face in my hands and looked at him. “Abaddon!” I breathed. “Are you alright?”
He looked up at me, if only for a moment. Then he glanced down at his other hand. His nails were sharp, and black—like claws—and in the palm of his hand there was a pool of blood that also coated his fingers.
“Yours?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t about to tell me he had been run through with a sword.
But Abaddon shook his head. “His,” he said, and I remembered Hekata’s words, and my chest filled with something heavy and light at the same time.
If he bleeds, we can kill him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Abaddon was weak, almost too weak to fly. Almost. Battling Lucifer had taken it all out of him, and he could barely hold himself aloft. I wasn’t exactly built to carry him around, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I had to try to keep him upright, to keep him flying, because if we stopped… we were dead.
Once again, I found myself impossibly lost and without direction. I had never needed to wander the Earth, navigating by the stars alone… but it wasn’t like the bastion of Helena was pointed out on any maps.
So, we wandered.
Flying day and night and using my Light to keep my own body from giving up on me. Abaddon didn’t have the same luxury, though. Only Lightbringers had the ability to regenerate their Light like I could, and I was having to use it to keep him from suffering the effects of extreme dehydration too by giving him a portion of my own power.
Nothing about this was easy, and with no end in sight, I was starting to get desperate… and Abaddon was starting to get heavy.
I could tell he was fading. Whatever Lucifer had done to him was beyond my ability to fix. He needed rest, real food, water, and Light, and we weren’t going to get any of those as long as we were in the air hoping against hope that we would find the way to Helena.
Abaddon all but lost the ability to gain altitude, leaving me to have to keep us both in the air somehow. I needed to land, but I knew Helena was in the water somewhere, and so we had made a move towards the water. There was nowhere to go, nothing but a sparkling blue horizon as far as the eye could see and the blazing sun over our heads.
We were going to die out here.
Or, at least, he was going to die out here—and there was nothing I could do about it.
That’s when I felt it. A surge, a pulse of power that came from somewhere else. I wasn’t sure what it was, or who it was that had caused it. I could feel the ripple all the way across the water, a ripple caused by some kind of shockwave that moved through the air.
Then I saw it.
I saw her. She was dark, little more than a dart zipping through the sky at speed. For a moment, I thought I saw Gadriel—black wings, black hair, pale skin. There was something of her left in the demon who now called herself Hekata, but Gadriel wasn’t there anymore. What I was seeing was little more than a mirage, an echo of the angel I remembered.
Then the echo yelled.
“She’s over here! Whatever you’re going to do, Cherub, do it now!”
“Gad…” I croaked. “Gadriel?”
“Not quite,” said Hekata as she flew in close to me. Close enough that I could see her face, her wings, the scales along her arms. “You owe me one now, Lightbringer.”
