He roared again, realizing he’d missed his mark. But what he didn’t realize is that I’d also ducked low, crunching my body into a small ball. I shot out one hand, and my dagger pierced his skin. The blade dug in deep. So deep I had to grit my teeth to jerk it back toward meagain.
A bluish black blood filled the waters as the demon screamed. If I’d thought his previous roar was ear-splitting, it was nothing compared to this. Wincing, I swam backward and stared in horror at the creature. The blood had begun to surround him now, a cloud of blueish black so thick that I could no longer see anything other than a dark writhing form beneath it. Suddenly, the demon stilled, and the world went quiet around me. My lungs screamed, and my eyesburned.
I needed to catch my breath or I was going to blackout.
Glancing around me, I took in the rest of the battle. Lizzie was still fighting her demon, and a swarm had surrounded the others. With a frustrated grunt, I pushed myself up toward the surface. My head broke free, and I sucked in deep breaths, my lungs still screaming for air. Man, this whole water fighting thing really was tougher than I’d thought. Ramiel was right, because of course he was. He would probably be smug about it when all of this wasover.
Because itwouldall be over soon. And we would win. Wehadto win. I couldn’t bear to imagine anything else would happen butthat.
“Well, well, well. What areyou?”
I jumped and screamed when I heard the slithering hiss from behind me. I twisted and turned but found nothing other than air. A moment later, a head popped up from below the surface. A water demon, her blue skin glowing beneath the light of the full moon. She flashed me a smile full of sharp, pointed teeth, the sides of her gill-like cheeks sucking at the air. And then she dove beneath the surfaceagain.
My heart pounded, and I took a deep breath to follow after, but she bobbed up before me once again, her sleek head parting the choppywaters.
“You’re an angel but you’re not,” she whispered in a sing-songvoice.
“There’s nonotabout it,” I barked out. “I’m an angel, and you’re trying to sink ourship.”
“That,” she said, jerking a webbed thumb at the boat that was drifting further and further away from us. “Is not a ship. Trust me, when you live in these waters, you quickly learn thedifference.”
“Fine. It’s not a ship, and I’m not not an angel. I’m glad we got that sorted. Now, why don’t we just fight and get it overwith?”
The demon hissed and lunged toward me, but no tail knives flashed my way, and her water powers didn’t shoot me halfway toward the boat. Instead, she leaned in close and sniffed. “You’re partdemon.”
Irritation flickered through me, along with frustration. How the hell could she tell? It wasn’t like I’d been using demon powers all my life, and it certainly wasn’t as though I reeked like some kind of demoness. Right? I mean, that was ridiculous. I was an angel, for fuck’s sake. I could barely even control myfire.
“There have been so very few angel-demon hybrids over the years.” She cocked her head and studied me as if I were some kind of unique specimen she wanted to pick apart so that she could see what my insides looked like. I shivered and backed up in the water. “I bet you don’t even know about yourwings.”
Chapter Six
Erela
“Say that again?”I saidflatly.
Her grin widened. “So, then youdon’tknow. I’ll just let you figure that one out for yourself. If yousurvive.”
The green haired demon dove beneath the surface, disappearing into the murky water beneath the boat. I waited for a moment, heart hammering, half-expecting her to pop her head above the waves and deposit another shit-load of insanity on top of my head. For one, she’d been able to sniff me out. No other demon had been able to do that. So far. Did that mean I was becoming more and more demon with every day that passed? Or did it just mean that the water demons could sense things that the otherscouldn’t?
On top of it all, there was that wholewingthing. What had she meant bythat?
Az’s face speared through the water, and rivulets of icy blue ran down his face. He smeared his hair away from his eyes before flicking them down the length of me. “What are you doing up here? Are youokay?”
“I came to get air.” A pause. Should I tell him? Might as well. I’d decided that secret keeping should no longer be a thing between me and any of the other Fallen. “And then one of the demons started talking to me. She could smell me, Az. The demon part of me. And she said I havewings.”
“She was just trying to get under your skin.” He waded closer, and his breath was hot on my lips. “We need you down there. Things are getting dicey. The water demons have the advantage. This is their territory. They thrive in water. Wedon’t.”
Ominous words. Not that I was particularly surprised. Would water dwellers be able to beat us if we fought them in the skies?Unlikely.
“What are we going to do, Az?” I asked in a whisper. It wasn’t as if we could give up. If we boarded the boat, the water demons would only proceed to attack. Again and again until the boat was too damaged to go on. The humans wouldn’tsurvive.
“We fight.” He dropped a hot kiss on my lips, and then shot me a wicked grin. “Just one last taste of you just in case this is the thing that does usin.”
I wasn’t sure if I should smile or run screaming in the other direction. In the end, we both dove back into thedeep.
As we swam toward the fighting, I could now see what Azazel meant. More water demons had joined the first crew, and there were now dozens of them surrounding our little circle of fallen angels. Lizzie was wailing against the same water demon as when I’d left her. Ramiel and Uriel were backed up against the remnants of a sunken ship, and Sam was fighting three water demons at once. Dozens more demons were just off in the distance, sizing up the fight, clearly making a plan on how best toattack.
We were doomed. Fully, one-hundred percent doomed. As strong and powerful as we all were, particularly Ramiel and Az, there was no way in hell we could defeat this many at once. There was just no getting around it. And, for once, my own demon powers could do nothing for me. The anti of my powers?Water.
