Page 44 of Wrath of One
He grabs my wrist and grips me with trembling fingers. “Izara… wait.”
Despite myself, I listen to the command. “Yes?”
His lips are gone, but his jaw moves, displaying the glint of bleeding teeth as he speaks. “You chose the wrong side.”
I seize as magic rips through my insides. I fall back with a scream. His power tears through me from the inside out, and I scream and scream and scream. It’s pain. It’s what comes after pain, and this is worse than dying.
I feel like I’m choking, drowning, and burning all at once in a torrent of storms. Ice and fire, snow and rain, shadows and darkness. It rips through me in a shockwave of sensations. My wings scrape and split open as I seize against the ground.
I can’t hear anything for what feels like minutes but could very well be mere seconds. Then my father is looming over me as the flesh on his burned face knits together. Half of his lips come together, and he smiles. It’s grotesque, and I want to rip it straight from his face, but the pain is consuming, and I can’t stop shaking. My fingers gnarl like the roots of trees, and I can’t straighten them.
“You insignificant, weak offspring.” His foot shoots out and connects with my body. I barely feel it beyond the magic wreaking havoc in my body. “With your weak, angelic fucking heart.” His leg comes back just to kick me again. I wait for a blow I don’t expect to feel when out of nowhere, a wolf flies from over me and snaps its jaws onto my father’s foot.
My father lets out a startled cry, and I know my magic has left him weaker than he should be. I try to angle my body so I can see and end up rolling on the ground, too weak to get up.
My father shakes his leg, but the massive wolf is clamped on tightly. Then my father kicks him and sends Malek flying. He lands on the ground with a whine.
“N-n-n-no-o…” My words stutter out from between my chattering teeth.
Malek doesn’t stay down for long. He hops up on four paws and snarls at his prey, circling him, herding him away from me.
My father laughs. “You think you can go against me alone, mutt?” His skin is regenerating. His power will soon be restored, while I’m worthless and weak on the ground.
Malek’s eyes flash, and his lips pull back into a wolfish smile.
It’s all the warning my father gets before he’s attacked from all sides.
Saint latches on to his back and digs his fangs into his neck, ripping out the knitting flesh. Syko comes in from the left, blasting him with white nephilim magic. From the right, Phoenix prowls, his eyes black and consumed with rage and death that shakes through his every move as he destroys everything in his path.
Together, they attack him from all sides. With claws and teeth and magic, both hellish and heavenly. But they’re tired… they can’t do it… Just as I think my father is going to win, a tornado of glittering dust sweeps around him, pinning him in place.
Jeans-wearing pixies burst from the tornado of dust and latch hungry teeth into his arms, and he cries out. And then Azazel swoops down, landing in a crouch next to me. With a single sweep of his hand, the pain in my body ebbs. He charges toward my father, his magic helping to pin him in place.
Together, they keep him down.
I get up, and not an ounce of agony is left in my body as I stalk forward to face my father once again. They have him held down against the earth, and he’s struggling as the flesh crawls over his cheeks.
“Daughter, daughter,please!”
I stare at my father unkindly, with tears blinking in my eyes, and hold my hand out.
“Die,” I command.
And I let my magic consume him.
We blast back as the world implodes around us in fiery colors. Malek lands over me, shielding my body with his own. The others land beside me as earth and fiery magic rain down around us. It’s death and destruction, and I shield my eyes as I look up.
The rift between worlds is thrown wide open, shrieking in rage at the loss of its master.
I lift my hand and point toward that exploding portal. “Ego eiecto, Regna Infernumae, infenum. Eicto daemonium, eiect dimensio mihi, eicto domus meus. Regina Infernumae filia diabolus et angelus, libero aperi mundi.”
The portal seems to shrink and then all at once, everything is sucked into the vortex of the rift. It’s a storm, a tornado, and the bits and pieces of hell that exploded around us are yanked from where they sit and pulled back to where they belong. I stand on shaking legs, the wind threatening to pull me back down.
My hair whips against my face, and I shove it aside, shielding my eyes from the pain of whipping earth. Creatures of all sizes are being sucked into the portal, screaming as they go. Some try to flee, but their fate is inevitable.
My words were their banishment.
Hell is disappearing right before our very eyes.
