URIEL: The Price (The Airel Saga, Book 6) (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (14 page)

The Brotherhood had been busy. They are now truly beyond number. For the first time in a long time, Ellie found herself afraid.

CHAPTER IX

Somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean, Present Day

I KNEW ONE THING as I flew across the ocean—it was all Michael. This was about him and me. It was about how I loved him, how he had saved my life, even though writing in my book was forbidden. Love compelled us to do things we might never ordinarily do, and sometimes the results we got were unexpected or even wrong. The simple fact was that my life was out of order. I was here and I wasn’t supposed to be. I’m not supposed to be alive. My out-of-order life was the thing that was causing all the pain and death in my life. But I knew what I had to do to begin making it right.

The Brotherhood was now close; I could feel their drain. I drew the Sword of Light and pushed harder, my signature pure-blue light trail stretching out behind for miles.

Michael and I were connected now, connected forever, for better or for worse. He had loved me and risked everything for me. He had lost his father, turned his back on everything he’d ever known, and he continued to risk his life for the greater good. Now I had to do whatever it took to save him from having to give up his life to protect me.

My mission was simple: Destroy the Brotherhood once and for all.

Might I fail? That didn’t matter. With the Sword of Light in my hand, the only thing I knew was that the enemy hadn’t yet been able to produce a foe to equal what was possible in me when I wielded this weapon. But there was more. I felt something stirring deep inside me, and it felt like it was about to boil over. The truth was, I had never truly let go and allowed myself to run wild in battle.

It was time to raise all I had to give to El—the white flag of surrender. I would now be Airel, daughter of Kreios, Son of El, Angel of Death.

Immediately as I did, I felt a change. The heavenly Host are coming.

* * *

JOHN COULD HEAR CURSES billowing inside his headspace. The Bloodstone pressed his soul; he found himself getting lost in its red light.

He was vaguely aware of the growing crowd of men and demons, but as he gave in to the raw power he felt overcoming him, he moved closer to the Bloodstone.

“Come to me, son.” It was inside his head now. “You will find peace and power beyond your imagination. Touch the stone and behold what you seek. Answers will give themselves willingly now . . . Come to me.”

* * *

MICHAEL BECAME ALARMED. THE situation was degrading fast. His plan had banked on the assumption that his anointing would be mostly ceremonial, that the Seer’s cloak was his to deny. But now he looked for a place to hide, and mainly because of the look on John’s face.

Black winged demons filled the room and a low hum resonated in his head as chanting filled his ears. Something shoved him forward.

The Bloodstone called to him. “My son. Surrender to me. I am your rightful father. You can be with Airel forever with the power I offer you. Come and touch me. I will make you a hero. Airel will love you forever for that. She will see you as you have always longed to be seen. Set all those other failures aside and come to me now.”

Michael fought against the pull though he longed to give in to it more than anything. It was so beautiful, so pure! But he knew all about these parlor tricks. It was a manipulative ploy. “No,” he said, but his voice was drowned out by the hum, by the chanting.

John was transformed. Michael had never seen someone so changed by the Brotherhood drain; he brooded over its red light.

The anticherubim were even more skittish than usual, and they showed it by shoving Michael ever harder toward the Stone. Echoes of the Original Tongue sounded off as the anticherubim argued with the other man in the room. Michael wasn’t sure who he was, but they called him Jiki, and he thought of him as John’s sponsor.

This was a development he hadn’t planned for—the competing factious clans. He kicked himself that he should have known better than to walk into a hornet’s nest as the Alexander, the presumptive heir to the Bloodstone. I hope Airel and Kreios get here soon, and that they have the numbers or the power to make this go our way. He didn’t know what to do.

The man they called Jiki growled and bared his teeth at the anticherubim and Michael saw that his mouth was filled with rotten, bloody fangs. The anticherubim snarled right back, shoving Michael forward. Jiki pushed one of them and it lunged for him, pulling him down so fast that Michael lost sight of them in the press of the horde for a split second.

There was another snarl, and the struggling pair crashed into the floor at Michael’s feet. The anticherubim reached up to Jiki’s head, gripped it in its thin arms, and ripped it from his body. Dark blood pulsed from the stump of Jiki’s neck. The demon stood and tossed it aside like a useless stone.

Michael stood in stunned silence.

The two anticherubim fell on the body, devouring it with savagery. The chanting increased, and now the mass of people and demons moved back and forth with its rhythm.

Michael averted his gaze and saw John reaching for the Bloodstone. “It is time.” He heard the voice of the Bloodstone in his head. “You have been rejected, Michael Alexander.”

A blinding red light exploded through the room. Michael was tossed aside into a wall. The darkness was total and the building shook as every man and demon in the ranks of the Brotherhood roared in adulation and victory. The new Seer’s time had come.

CHAPTER X

ELLIE MOVED UP THROUGH floor after floor, reforming just in time to see Airel’s father reach out and touch the Bloodstone. Michael was nearby, one hand extended, horror on his face. The room was packed solid with chanting Brotherhood generals and key members. Some she recognized. Others were new to her.

But Airel’s father, the man whose name was John Cross, was not new. He was no longer a mystery, no longer an unknown quantity. The hijacked memories of the dead rebel from Airel’s house came pounding back through her, storming roughshod over what hopeful doubts she had cultivated. Now that she saw him with opened eyes, she knew who he really was.

She rushed toward him to keep him from touching the cursed Stone. But she was too late. Everything went red-dark, and the shockwave threw her across the room.

She righted herself against the back wall at the feet of the jubilant demon horde, pleading with El that she hadn’t struggled all these years, that she hadn’t come all this way, that she hadn’t gotten here only to have run out of time, only to be a witness to the ultimate atrocity. She cried out to her only son, Qiel—the Seer.

* * *

I PAUSED HIGH ABOVE the desert, the Sword of Light drawn and ready in my hand. Blackness enveloped the city of Dubai below. The Brotherhood moved like locusts, covering every inch of land, leaving nothing in their wake. The ocean surged over its beaches, and weird waterspouts sprang up from it in tendrils that reached and grasped like animals.

A part of me knew I should be scared. But I wouldn’t let myself give into my fear. I didn’t care that I was alone, that it was total insanity to even be here. I was going to kill every last member of the Brotherhood or die trying.

I reached out to Kreios, knowing he was far away but still hoping he could hear me. I could use your help. Come as soon as you can.

She filled me with hope and confidence, and for once, we had nothing to say to each other. As I considered my opening move, I saw a wave two miles out to sea begin to swell. It gathered more and more energy as it moved inland.

The Palm—a manmade set of islands—ceased to exist. The tsunami surge consumed everything. Dry ground farther inland cracked open and water poured upward, flooding streets and crumbling the foundations of many buildings as I hovered overhead.

I had never seen anything like it.

But I had read about it. This can only be the work of Qiel, but he’s dead. Or missing. This was a pretty big assumption, I realized. The Book of Kreios had revealed no information to me about Qiel after the fall of Ke’elei.

It looked like I had our work cut out for me.

El? A calm overtook me and then I looked, and I saw the first wave of the angelic host army descending. They peeled off on trajectories of white, streaking toward the battle. It was time.

* * *

JOHN COULD STILL HEAR the chanting voices of demons, a language which he now understood. He wasn’t sure if he understood it for the first time or if he was beginning to understand it again. They called him master, Seer, lord. His mind atrophied as the stone took over his every thought.

He closed his eyes and his fingers around all the facets of the stone. He allowed the voice to probe deep within. He surrendered everything to it.

There was a beach. It was years ago. Bright sun overhead. The surf rushing in again and again, like the hand of a lover awakening him to the dawn of a new day.

He took his first breath in thousands of years. He opened his eyes.

There were paramedics. An ambulance. A hospital room and bright lights, and he chanted the same word over and over again.

“Derakhshan.”

“Derakhshan.”

“Derakhshan.”

It was his mother. He was calling for his mother.

The staff listed his name as John (Doe) Derackson upon release.

Before that, though, was the stone.

The memories came over him in a new wave as the stone unlocked the secrets of his past. He stood in a tent with a sniveling man. The name “Piankhy” came to him, as did the word “General”. Yes, I have been Seer before . . . John (Doe) Derackson Cross, eyes closed, breathed. He waited for the vision to augment once more. More—give me more.

Then it shifted. He saw himself touching the stone, saw Piankhy wrap the chain around his neck, saw as the delicious darkness welled up from beneath his body and took him.

He saw the shadow of his mother, Uriel, the Derakhshan, how she passed by him as she got free of the Bloodstone. Free? Why would anyone want to be free from this?

But then the stone showed him what he did next, and he was ashamed.

He fled.

His first act as Seer was to try to drown himself in the sea. But Qiel could not drown. He took the stone down and down, deep under the deep, lodging himself and the stone within the dark, cold mud of the sea floor. His act of cowardice. The price, as he went to sleep, was losing his memory as the Bloodstone consumed his mind and soul. He was then dormant, the rightful Seer in exile, the Bloodstone cut off from the Brotherhood, the ranks of the rebels in disarray for thousands of years.

The stone had known his plan all along. It did not suffer surprise. And it finally had Qiel, the one it had longed to possess, in its clutches.

But the chain that bound him to the stone rotted and rusted, and soon it was cut off. It allowed itself to be discovered by a seafaring host, and that privateer captain’s demon Brother was Tengu, the Bloodstone’s former master. The Bloodstone waited for centuries. Then the line of the seafarers was cast off by Tengu in favor of another, and the line of the Alexander was forged. A splint, a bandage. A temporary measure. The Alexander could only ever be a stand-in for the true heir to the power of the Bloodstone.

Only Qiel, son of the runaway Uriel, the Derakhshan, the half-breed daughter of the Angel Kreios, Son of El, Angel of Death, could wield the power the Stone craved. Only Qiel, uniquely powerful and equal parts Brother, angel, and man, could unite the Brotherhood with the Sons of El, or indeed, destroy the rebellion once and for all.

The stone and the power of the prince who laid claim to it bided all time in anticipation of the moment when the truth could finally be revealed. Before the seafarers, before the Alexander, before currents and the vicissitudes of time cut off the Bloodstone from its true host, while Qiel lay in stasis under the oceans, the stone wormed its way deep inside his heart, deep inside his mind. There it pricked his conscience, there it had begun the bloodletting, and there it had bonded with Qiel’s very blood.

“It’s in your blood, Derackson.” A laugh resounded, but he couldn’t tell if it was in his head or if it was not. “It’s in my blood.” Qiel—the only Seer bound by blood to the Bloodstone.

Calm washed over him. When he opened his eyes, the lights in the auditorium flickered on, illuminating the room. Demon Brothers and men scrambled to bow to him, muttering their prayers. Qiel looked down to see that his shirt had become torn and filthy. It hung over his body like a rag. He tore it off and gloried at how his skin glowed with youthful vibrancy once more. Muscles rippled under the skin of his arms. The power surging through him from the deep brought a smile to his lips.

“Qiel.” A small voice called to him.

He turned to behold his mother. She was standing before him with flickers of hope and confusion running across her features. “Mother.” Qiel betrayed no emotion.

He watched as tears streamed down her face. The witnesses parted and she walked on unsteady feet toward him. “I thought you were . . . I thought . . . my son…” She reached to embrace him, and he opened his arms. She sobbed into his neck, tears trickling down his chest.

In one swift move, Qiel pushed Uriel away and yanked the sword from its sheath that hung at her hip. “I do hope you are ready to die,” he said, and without hesitation stabbed the bloody blade deep into her belly. “Ah. There it is. The Mark.” He worked the blade in deeper, drawing up.

Blood poured out like water as she fell to her knees. Her mouth swung wide and empty. Qiel didn’t wait for her to find any more words. He heaved the blade free and swung it, decapitating her with her own sword.

A roar ensued and the building shook again, the demons swarming over its skin and fouling the air, beating their chests and issuing their war cry.

“Her debt is now paid. She will not betray again.”

Another ground-shaking roar.

“Brothers, the time has come. We now rid the world of the weak. Those who belong to El.” He called forth the great deeps. He would finish with Airel. She was the daughter he never wanted to have, the offspring who never was, the one person who should never have been born.