Shadows in the Silence
Page 5

I cut through the wall of reapers, my skin splitting against sharp nails, and my ears filled with animalistic screeches and snarls. Hot blood dappled my face and arms, caked my clothing, smeared through my hair. I split a reaper from navel to neck and caught Cadan’s eye through the flames. He yanked his sword out of a vir’s heart and kicked the body away from him. At his feet was an ever-increasing pile of rubble.
A hand closed around my neck and jerked me around. More hands grabbed my arms, halting my sword strikes, and they yanked the Khopesh swords from my grip. I thrashed against them, but at least three reapers had hold of me—there were just so many bodies, so many that I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. I could only move and throw myself around. Gabriel was coming, I could feel that part of me swimming to the surface from black depths. I could see the reflection of my face in the glossy black eyes of the demonic reaper choking me. My own eyes were filling with white as I began to lose myself to my power, but I couldn’t let that happen. I tightened my entire body, straining to keep hold of my sanity, to stay here. If I let go, I was sure I could destroy every last one of the reapers in the room—but that included Cadan.
Cadan.
He was there, appearing out of nowhere, slicing the head off one of the reapers holding my right arm. Now that I was partially free, I locked my gaze with the reaper squeezing my throat. I slammed my hand into the weak point on her arm, right into her elbow joint. Bone snapped and she released me as she threw her head back and screamed in pain and rage. I smashed my palm into her face, shattering her nose, driving bone and cartilage so deep into her skull that she turned to stone immediately—dead.
I turned to the last reaper holding my other arm and I buried my knee in his gut, making him double over with a grunt. A shadow fell over both of us and I looked up, gasping, with just enough time to dive to the side as Cadan slashed his sword through the reaper’s neck, nearly taking my own off with it. The reaper’s grip went slack and he crumbled to stone in front of me.
Demonic energy exploded in my face, sending me flying across the room like a kicked doll. I landed hard on a table, pain shooting up and down my spine, wood cracking under me. I looked up and stared into the face of the vir as she came down through the air. I rolled off the table and hit the floor just as she hit the table, shattering it beneath her weight. I scrambled toward my swords. She tore at me, claws hooking my clothes as my hands found the silver helves. I bounced to my feet and reeled on her. My sword disappeared into her chest, slipping under her rib cage and shredding her heart. She screamed as her body went up in flames, and another demonic presence flashed behind me. I swung my body around with a cry of desperation, my blade sweeping up toward a bare throat—and I stopped, my sword barely an inch from taking off Cadan’s head as he locked eyes with me. I gasped and the angelfire went out. I lowered the Khopesh and he swallowed hard with a deep breath.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, embarrassed that I’d nearly just killed him.
“No sweat.” He looked around uncomfortably, but we’d destroyed every demonic vir. The female was the last of them—besides Cadan, at least. I took a moment to realize that I had never expected to find myself fighting alongside a demonic reaper. But he’d had my back, very much like Will had always done.
Then I remembered why we’d come here. “Ronan,” I groaned, and searched the club in a panic.
I spotted him darting for the door at the same time Cadan did, but he was faster than me. He moved with ultra reaper speed, vanishing from sight and reappearing in Ronan’s path. He slammed his palm into Ronan’s chest with a rush of demonic strength and sent him soaring through the air. His body crashed through tables and chairs as he hit the floor. Ronan thrashed and was on his feet in moments, but Cadan grabbed his throat, lifted him off his feet, and smashed his back into the floor, shattering tile.
“Stay!” Cadan roared into the other reaper’s face.
Ronan loosed an angry groan of pain, squeezing his eyes shut, fangs lengthening in agony, and Cadan backed off, letting me approach. Ronan looked up as I shoved my foot into his throat and poised a flaming Khopesh at his face. Slowly, he raised his hands in defeat.
My chest heaved as I caught my breath. “It’s over,” I told him. “You’re the only one left. There’s no one coming to save your ass now.” The club was annihilated. Ash and rock littered the floor as if there’d been a landslide. Tables and chairs were shattered, couches shredded, the floor cracked and uprooted. I looked down at Ronan, who didn’t dare let his gaze wander from mine.
“You…are mighty, Gabriel,” Ronan gasped. “I see why he follows you.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant my Guardian or Cadan. That didn’t matter now. “There doesn’t have to be any more blood on this floor. Will you help me freely, or do I have to force you?”
“Not all of us are warriors for Hell,” the reaper replied carefully. “Some of us just want to live.”
I lifted my chin and looked down my nose at the demonic reaper, tapping into Gabriel’s fierceness, giving Ronan my best scary archangel face. “You seem to have been deceived by my mortal vessel. Because you are a demonic reaper who does not reap, I am willing to demonstrate the mercy of Heaven instead of turning you to fire and ash. If you wish to live, then you will tell me what you know. Where can I find the Grigori angel known as virgil?”
“I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Ronan said, his gaze faltering for an instant. “But I have bad news. virgil is dead. He was killed, along with several other Grigori in the past few weeks, presumably by the beast that Bastian unleashed.”