“Why, Pride, it’s lovely to finally meet you. Any friend of Lucifer’s is an enemy of mine,” he jokes.
Tazreel and Morax go at it.
They clash together like two ocean waves battling for control over the sea. I feel their impact through the ground. They hit hard, and this time, no one is laughing.
I look over to find Nefta practically standing on a hill of bodies as she continues to fight relentlessly against the demons who surrounded us. I abandon my spectator status of Tazreel and Morax’s showdown. I want to get as far from the Ophidian as possible. He scrambles my brain, and I feel like I can’t trust myself with him.
I scan for my demons. I haven’t seen them since I was drop-kicked earlier. I was supposed to look out for them, and instead, I got myself netted and just almost left willingly with the enemy. I need to find Jerif. Maybe I can convince him to punch me in the face to knock some sense in me, or at least tell me what the fuck my problem is.
Out of nowhere, something wraps around my waist, and I’m yanked to the left, like one of those old time acts who get hooked off the stage if they’re bad. Before I can so much as scream, I slam into Echo’s chest and his arms wrap around me.
His hold makes me cry out, and he immediately drops his arms. “Shit, are you okay? Where are you hurt?” he asks me, his shadows running over my body like they’re checking for injuries.
My teeth are clenched as I try not to hurl, and I suck in a breath to try to mentally separate myself from the pain. “My wing,” I manage to say, and Echo moves to look, hissing out an exhale when he sees. “Shit, Delta. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hugged you until I checked…”
“It’s okay,” I assure him as I reach down and squeeze his hand.
“Maverick, Echo, over here!” Iceman yells, and our heads snap to the right to find him twenty feet away, shattering frozen demons where they stand. Echo and I head over, trampling over dead bodies in an effort to get to him. There are so many eviscerated, broken pieces of deceased demons everywhere that I start ashing bodies just to make it easier to navigate the battlefield that was once a tranquil graveyard.
A flash of flame shoots in a straight path toward Iceman, and I see Jerif making his way over too, making another surge of relief hit my soul. Neither of them look injured, but they do look exhausted. I search around us for Crux, apprehension bubbling in my stomach.
Not again, not again,I keep chanting to myself, trying to push thoughts of the Vestibule away. He’s okay. He has to be. If the others are on their feet, he is too somewhere. I won’t let myself think otherwise.
Getting to Iceman is slow going. I feel like I’m wading through molasses while also fighting off stray demons here and there, but every swing of my scythe sends another lightning strike of agony down my wing. I can tell Echo tries to take down every attacker so that I don’t injure myself more, but his power is exhausted. All he has left are a few semi-transparent wisps to work with and the ice sword in his hand looks about a foot shorter than it used to be.
Eventually, we make it to Iceman. “Broken wing,” I blurt before quickly smashing my face against his chest and curling my arms around him. He barely stops himself in time from wrapping his arms around me and touching my wing. I have to force myself to pull away because the fight’s not over yet, and I can’t let myself shut down or bask in his hold.
As soon as Iceman’s eyes land on the break in my wing that I probably don’t want to see, he reaches down, and without warning, sends a sharp rush of cold at the spot. I suck in a surprised breath at the pain, but in the next blink, it’s replaced with numbness. “Better?” he asks, and I nod gratefully.
“Yeah.”
A warm hand tugs at my arm, and then I’m being spun around and Jerif is pulling me against his hot chest, his hands carefully staying on my hips as he holds me to him. I feel like warm laundry fresh out of the dryer is giving me a hug, only it smells like sulfur and blood. Jerif pulls back after a beat, but then a figure pops up on my left out of nowhere. It smells horrible, and I swing at it, pissed that it’s trying to fuck with my reunion.
“Jeter, it’s me!” Crux shouts out, and my eyes go wide with surprise, and I stop my scythe from delivering a blow just in time.
Crux is covered head-to-toe in gore. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he just bathed in the blood of his enemies. His green eyes are prevalent, but that’s the only thing not tainted by the stamp of demon innards.
“Dude!” I say, shocked at his state.
“I know. It’s a messy job, but someone has to do it,” he teases.
Relief finally washes through me at the fact that all four of my Gate Guardians are here. Crux opens his arms for a hug, so I pinch my nose and lean in, patting at him on the back with the safe wood part of my scythe.
He chuckles as I pull back. “When this is all over, I’m going to chase you around until you give me a proper battle kiss.”
“Cool, just hose yourself off first,” I suggest before taking another step back, just in case he tries to tackle-hug me right now. I mean, we’re still technically in the middle of a battle, but I wouldn’t put it past him.
Nefta’s warrior scream fills the night air once again, interrupting our moment, and I look over to see that once again, she’s working with Tazreel, and they’re both fighting Morax now.
“Let’s go kill that fucker,” I snarl as I start stomping off toward the fight. Iceman’s icy-numbness did wonders to help, and now I no longer feel like vomiting every time I move.
“I love it when you get all ruthless,” Echo says as they all move to join me.
“Just don’t let him fuck with my head, okay?” I tell them, but before anyone can reply or ask what I mean, a roar reverberates all around us, and our heads snap in the direction of the mausoleum. The gargoyle is still on the roof like some kind of battle announcer, and it seems like he’s calling any surviving demons back to the Gate, because the horde starts to retreat.
“May I?” Jerif asks, eyeing my scythe and holding his hand out expectantly. I hand it over, and he flips it until the straight blade is facing down. All of a sudden, the curved blade folds down, and in three strides, Jerif chucks my Swiss Army scythe through the air. It moves like a spear through the night and, in a poof, hits its gargoyle target right in the chest, instantly turning him to ash.
“How did you do that?” I ask, shocked and a little jealous that the scythe listened to him and transformed easily into what he wanted it to.
