I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on his, which were starting to spark.
“I heard them talking; they said you were one of theirs. I thought it impossible. But your blood…”
He moved in a little closer, drawing in an overtly long breath. “I shall have my retribution and I shall take away the Devil’s creation. Payment for two centuries of servitude that I didn’t owe!”
The pain in my forehead hit me quickly; I reached for my temple, a terrible shadow filling my mind. It took all my will to replace it with an image of the land upon which I stood. My thoughts were released just in time for me to feel Ethan’s blade jabbing under my collarbone.
A gust of wind blew across the clearing. I let the wave of flakes collect on my eyelashes.
I was out of time.
“I am truly sorry, Ethan.”
The blade sliced my skin, making its way as far down as my hip before it left me. It bounced off the rock and fell into the snow. Ethan was falling. My eyes flew open as I stumbled to the lake’s edge. I saw that he had been knocked from his feet and wrestled to the snowy ground by Jonah.
They both stopped and flashed their amaranthine orbs as the drops of my fresh blood dripped into the white below me. Ethan rushed toward me, but Jonah was fast, throwing him high in the air and pouncing on him ferociously.
“No, Jonah! Don’t hurt him!”
The slash running down my skin stung and I toppled into the shallow gray water. It only cooled my body for a second before the fire relit. The damage was hardly life-threatening, but the slice sizzled through my flesh nonetheless.
“Let me in.” Gabriel’s voice floated, his soft words parted the fierce wind.
Scrunching my eyes shut and shaking the snow from my lashes, his figure appeared next to me.
“Y-you shouldn’t b-be here,” I stuttered.
“Where else would I be, but by your side?” Gabriel said, his expression stern.
Feeling the land shaking beneath me, I peered around the rock to witness Jonah and Ethan in the distance, still embroiled in a terrible battle.
“Gabriel, please, help them!” I couldn’t bear to be responsible for more loss.
I fell to my palms as I struggled to get to my feet. Gabriel shifted my weight from behind and swept me from the shallow beginnings of the lake, propping me up against the rock’s face, my shoes still dipping into the freezing water.
“Then will you let me help you?” he insisted.
“Yes.” I didn’t have time to argue.
Gabriel hesitated, but then in an instant he was gone from my side.
The wind and snow were brutal now. I scrambled around the rock just in time to see Jonah hit Ethan hard, knocking him into the snow. He was by far the stronger of the two.
“Ethan!” I screamed.
Panting for breath, I desperately tried to clamber past the rock across the deepening snow. A hundred feet away, none of them could hear my cries because of the wind ripping its way through the trees.
Gabriel came into view, taking up position next to Jonah. I watched helplessly as Jonah withdrew a flask from his jacket and soaked Ethan’s body in a clear liquid. His foot was on Ethan’s neck, pinning him to the snow. Gabriel forced Jonah back, and Jonah placed a cigarette to his lips defiantly. He reached in his pocket for his lighter.
As if in slow motion Ethan, now free from restraint, launched his body from off the ground, bolstering himself behind Jonah. I looked on as Jonah flicked open the metal clasp, and as the end of the cigarette glowed orange with his first puff, he flung the open flame behind his shoulder.
“No!” I screamed.
Ethan’s body erupted into flames.
It wasn’t a quick end. He circled insanely, falling, as his body melted.
As the flames reached deeper than his flesh and bone, he seemed to explode, becoming nothing more than swirling ash, dispersing in the blizzard.
I crumpled in a ball. Ethan was gone and I was to blame.
“Lai.” Gabriel was immediately at my side.
“Why did you come? You sought my end, and I was giving it to you. But instead Ethan’s gone and he didn’t have to be!” I cried, clutching my aching chest with my hand, blood trickling through my fingers. “I owed him.… He was the only one.… It’s all my fault!” I gasped, bent double, trying to take the deepest of breaths.
Gabriel turned my chin up to meet his eyes. “Breathe, Lailah, calm down.”
His pretense of concern for my well-being only filled me with resentment.
I responded by flinging my body toward him, smacking his chest with my fists, but it was hopeless.
Everything seemed so hopeless now.
I sank back into the snow, my hands covering my face. Gabriel sat down beside me. “The Arch Angels sent me to take your life; I don’t deny it, and I didn’t question why. Not until I met you. I thought you were mortal, Lai, and still I fell in love with you. And so I rejected them. We were going to run and I would have protected you.…”
I wrapped my arms around my knees, squeezing them in to my body. “You told Ruadhan that you killed me…?” I whimpered.
“I blamed myself. I took too long.…”
“You didn’t influence Ethan.…” I stuttered, finally looking up to meet his eyes.
“No. I came to take you away, but instead I found you lifeless. I thought they’d discovered my plan and had sent another to claim your soul. I spent a hundred years searching the in-between—a prison—thinking they had hidden your essence there. I nearly lost myself seeking you out; I started to hear your voice echoing in my mind. I returned to Styclar-Plena and they told me that you were alive, that I had to find you again and complete the task they had passed to me. I refused. I didn’t believe you were still alive. I was tormented.… I hadn’t been able to save you.…” he rushed on.
“You didn’t fall?” I asked. “Even after you rejected them, they let you keep your immorality, along with your abilities?” It seemed illogical.
“I didn’t understand why either, not until these last weeks. Then it became clear; I was the only being from our dimension who could find you. That’s why they would not grant my request, they wouldn’t allow me to fall.” Cautiously he stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “And I am so glad that they didn’t.”
“Perhaps they thought that when you did find me, you would understand and you would change your mind.” My thoughts crept back to Azrael and his revelation that I was harboring some terrible evil inside of me. And that I had the potential to end all the worlds.