Page 38

Two eyes were sunk deep in all that ruined flesh. They were weeping dark fluid that ran through the clusters of boils. Where a nose should have been, there were just a couple of ragged holes punched into the mess. They flared with each breath. The mouth hung wide open beneath it all. What passed for lips were rimmed in more of the same pulsing boils.

Those eyes swung toward Sarah the second its head cleared the ground. They locked on with a precision that made something cold drop straight through the center of Abraxos. "It's not a scout," Abraxos announced as he put himself between Sarah and the Titan. "It’s focused on you."

"Yeah, I noticed." Sarah's hands were already glowing violet-green. The light climbed her forearms in ropes that hummed loud enough to hear. "It's not even looking at either of you. The one in the cemetery lashed out without really fixating."

"This one's smarter," Abraxos observed as he conjured his blade. Flame licked up the holy metal. "Or it's been told exactly what it's hunting for."

The Titan surged forward so fast that it almost blurred. Abraxos met it head-on, driving his blade into the meat of its foreleg to buy Sarah room to work. The impact rang up through his arm hard enough to numb his fingers. The creature barely slowed. It swung one massive limb in an arc meant to sweep him aside like an insect.

Swiveling, he ensured he took the blow across his good side this time. Pain still whited out the edges of his vision as he hit the ground and rolled. He immediately came up on one knee with his side screaming in protest. The Titan didn't follow, though. Ignoring him, it stepped past him entirely. It bore down on Sarah with a singular focus that made his vision turn red.

"Sarah, move!" He shouted as he waved his sword.

"I'm not moving." She planted her feet in the dead grass. Her chin came up, and her magic climbed higher up her arms until the light turned white at the edges. "The only way to weaken these things permanently is to meet them head-on with the seal."

The Titan's arm came down toward her. Abraxos didn't think, just threw himself the last six feet and prayed his body would cooperate with the plan his brain hadn't finished making. He caught the blow across his shoulder instead of finding her. The impact folded him sideways. Bone gave somewhere deep in his arm with a crunch he felt more than heard. Bright, tearing pain stole the breath right out of him, but millennia of taking hits had taught him a few things about staying on his feet when his body was screaming at him to do otherwise. He planted his boots and held his ground.

Jace was there a half second later, sliding into the gap between the Titan and Sarah like he'd been waiting for exactly this. He darted in low with his blade flashing as he opened up two of the boils along the thing's forearm. The healer danced out of range before the Titan could retaliate. Dark fluid sprayed where his dagger had been.

"You're giving away your grace faster than you're losing blood," the healer clipped, throwing the words over his shoulder at Abraxos without ever taking his eyes off the Titan. He darted in again to carve another gash before retreating. "Every hit you take for her instead of finishing what you started is a hit you can't afford. You're pouring everything you've got into keeping her safe, and none of it into actually making her strong enough to survive."

"I'm not leaving my mate vulnerable," Abraxos ground out, cradling his ruined arm against his ribs as he shifted his stance to keep himself between Sarah and the Titan's next swing. He refused to glance down at the wreckage of his own shoulder. "Not for anything. She stays protected until this thing is dead, and that's the end of it."

"You need to finish the mate bond so our power flows both ways." Sarah's voice cracked with fear now. It was clear that it was the kind that had nothing to do with the fight in front of them and everything to do with watching him take hit after hit meant for her. "Every hit you take hurts me, too, Abraxos. We can't keep doing this halfway."

"Fucking hell." He drove his blade up into the Titan's exposed underside as it reared back for another strike. The creature screamed and staggered sideways into the magnolia tree hard enough to split its trunk. "I've known since the alley."

"Then why haven't you said anything?" She was beside him now with both hands raised. Her magic was gathering into something dense enough to bend the air around her fingers.

"Because a full bond isn't something two people walk into casually, Sarah. It's not a decision I get to make for both of us in the middle of a fight." He caught her gaze for one heartbeat. He let everything he felt for her sit at the surface of his eyes where she couldn't miss it. "I need you to choose it. Not have it forced upon you because you ran out of other options."

The Titan pulled itself upright again. One of its arms was hanging uselessly where the split trunk had finished what Abraxos’s blade had started. It turned back toward them with its face locked on Sarah as if nothing else in the yard existed.

"I'm choosing it." Sarah's hand found his. Her fingers threaded through his even as the Titan closed the last of the distance between them. "I choose you, Abraxos. I want all of you. Not half."

His grace answered before his mind caught up to the decision. It poured down through the point where their hands met. This time, it didn't stop at the surface of her skin. It sank in deep, found the raw edges of the mark he'd left on her throat in the alley, and completed something that had been left open and bleeding for hours. Her magic answered and reflected it back.

Sarah's whole body went rigid, a cry tearing out of her that was equal parts pain, pleasure, and something closer to relief. The light spilling from her palm turned from violet-green shot with white to a color he'd never seen her magic take before. It was violet, green, and gold woven together as if they'd never been separate things at all.

She thrust both hands toward the Titan, and the ground beneath its remaining good leg swallowed the limb whole. Stone, root, and packed earth closed around it in a lattice of light that spread up the creature's body faster than either of them could track. The Titan let out one final scream. It was lower-pitched than the one in Angel's Alley and cut off mid-note as the earth finished closing over it.

"That felt different." Sarah stared down at her glowing palm. The black mark there pulsed steadily and had a golden sheen. "That’s how it’s supposed to feel."

"Because our mating bond is no longer a door cracked open." Abraxos reached for her, ignoring the protest from his shoulder, and pulled her against his chest with his good arm.

Jace reached them a moment later and placed his hands on Abraxos’s ruined shoulder. Abraxos grunted when the healer’s warmth flowed into him and began knitting the bone back together. "Sit down before you fall down. I don't care what just happened between you. I'd like to take care of this before it starts healing wrong. It’s harder and more painful to deal with if that happens."

Izzy vaulted the collapsed section of fence with her sword drawn, two junior angels close behind her. "Where are they? We heard screaming."

"We already beat the Titan and sent it packing," Sarah told her, as she leaned into Abraxos.

Izzy's gaze dropped to the black scorch circle where the Titan had gone under, then back up to the two of them. Something sharp moved behind her eyes. "Damn. A Titan got that close to the mansion? Camael's going to want a full report."

"It came for her," Abraxos told them as he kept his good arm around Sarah. "It wasn’t here for any of us. It ignored every hit Jace and I gave it. Whatever's under this city is hunting my mate and pissing me off."

Izzy's mouth flattened into a line that had none of its usual humor in it. "Then we've got a much bigger problem than a scout demon feeding information to the devil."

CHAPTER 16