Airel - Aaron Patterson [132]
I was seized with the most unimaginable horrors. My heart felt like it was being welded back together, patched and bolted, and I died a little more, seeing impossible things. I cried out in my distress.
James leaned forward quickly, with glowing eyes, and knocked the bloodstone from Michael’s hand, sending it skittering across the dirt, giving me a reprieve. I gasped and tried to gather myself together so that I could thank him, but he looked at me with extreme hostility. “Kill her, Michael! Redeem your mistake.”
Mistake?
Michael pulled back from me, intense sadness filling his empty eyes. He looked soulless, an automaton on a short leash.
“Take up your sword and strike her down!”
I still didn’t quite grasp the situation. I felt as if I had been blindfolded and handcuffed to a carnival ride. James’s harsh words were still not making sense to me.
Michael appeared to be severely distracted as he looked askance toward the weapon; he seemed to be suffering an internal civil war. With sagging shoulders set in the frame of purposeless behavior, Michael bent down for the sword, but stopped short of taking it up.
James growled like a dog. He was enraged; his skin fell away in shreds that looked like old newspapers and torn photographs. Smooth black wings unfurled from his back and enfolded us in a threatening semi-circle. He shook, his arms growing long; huge round paws with long curling claws emerged from his fingertips. The boy I had known as James burst apart from the inside.
“Love-infested innocent! If you lack the strength, allow me.” He snatched the sword from Michael’s limp hand as dark steam fell from his mouth. Michael stood there, completely whipped, and looked at me with sad eyes.
A single tear fell to my cheek as I realized the ultimate loss in the situation. I pleaded with him, screaming at him in my thoughts, Michael, don’t stand aside and allow this! “Michael,” I spoke, my voice choking me, “have you already left me?” Again? My eyes burned with tears. I didn’t see the demon. I didn’t see Kim. All I could see was he, my soul, my life—Michael. I would not believe that he didn’t feel love for me. He had killed his own father to defend me; there had to be something else that held him bound beside his own broken will.
The demon struck Michael in the face with contempt, sending him sprawling, then turning back to me. “Enough talk! You have been alive for far too long. Today you, Airel, daughter of El, shall die!” I was reaching up to Michael, trying in vain to sit up. The hideous demon leapt straight at me, colliding with such great force that I could feel my almost-immortal body begin to give in to what was becoming inevitable. We skidded off the top of the cliff in a plume of dirt and dust and stones, falling. The water, far below, was going to hurt.
I couldn’t fight, couldn’t breathe. All of the strength I once had deserted me. I saw Michael rush to the cliff’s edge, reaching out to me as I fell, his eyes shouting a love and sadness so deep, so stricken, that I thought for an instant that he was in more pain now than I ever was. Hate was life to him; he was bred, raised, trained to hunt us down, to kill us. Even as I fell to my death, I decided none of my injuries, be they physical or emotional, mattered. Michael…
The force of the water on impact further sapped my strength. My eyes instinctively closed as I went hurtling into the surface of the abyss, the demon astride my dying body, the water bubbling around us as we sank. The depths reached for me, to take me down, and down.
I opened my eyes for the briefest of an instant, searching the cliff top for a final glimpse of my lover, his love unrealized. We never really had a chance, did we? I realized how thickly a bitter rust had covered us, locking away lovely possibility beneath a hideous mask.
There was only one thing left to me that was in my power: Michael, I forgive you.
I saw him standing rigid at the edge of the cliff, grasping the black sword in his hands. The blade was inverted back upon his abdomen,