Damnation's Door: A Cursed Book (22 page)

It happened in the blink of an eye. One moment Jackson was standing in front of Michael, unable to escape the circle of angels. The next moment, the tip of a sword was poking through Jackson’s back. Warrick screamed from pain and rage. Michael ignored him, holding Jackson in place with his free hand on his shoulder. The demon slayer’s eyes bulged. He looked down at the sword lodged in his torso, like he was trying to understand how it got there. His face mirrored Elle’s, and I felt a horrible twist in my stomach.

“You have done your kind a great service,” Michael told the man dying on his blade. “I regret we could not have saved you sooner.”

Michael stepped back and pulled the sword out of Jackson’s body. The big demon slayer collapsed off it, landing on the ground in a heap. His hands went to the enormous gash in his chest. Blood began to seep through his fingers. He blinked, and tilted his head toward Warrick.

His friend struggled and fought the angels, who were having a difficult time holding him down. Eventually they gave up on niceties and punched him in the stomach. Warrick grunted from the hit and dropped to his knees again. Another hit to his face kept him dazed.

“Sorry, John,” Jackson slurred. His skin began to crack.

Warrick lifted his head. His eyes glistened as he watched his best friend decay. In mere seconds, all that was left of Jackson Argyle was a pile of black ash with dots of red. Warrick lost all of his fight, hanging his head to hide his sorrow.

“Two Keys have been destroyed,” Michael announced, sliding the bloody sword into the scabbard on his back. “Three, if I am to believe you, Sephiel. Which I am not inclined to do.” His eyes shifted to all of us, to Sephiel’s shocked expression, to Max’s nervous glances, to my steel-eyed rage, to Warrick’s obvious grief.

“You shall return with us to draw out Lucifer’s spawn. This time you shall not escape, as Raphael is no longer able to take pity on you.”

Sephiel stared at his former leader curiously. Then he paled, and his eyes widened with horror.

“You… You killed him?” This was the first time I ever heard Sephiel stutter.

Michael’s eyes narrowed furiously. I wondered if it was a shield for his sorrow.

“No, Sephiel. You killed him. When you let the Heaven Gate be destroyed, you killed us all.”

Chapter 18

The angels led us through the streets as if they’d lived on them all their lives. I should have been impressed at their navigation, but the entire group had collapsed in some way. Max was as terrified as I’d ever seen him. Sephiel was trapped in a stunned silence. Warrick was lost in mourning.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jackson said about my sister. That she gave herself up to Lucifer because she couldn’t fight what she was anymore. I didn’t want to believe it, but death and destruction had followed Dro ever since she was a child. It wasn’t the first time she had taken a risk to save my life…

I had to threaten Matt before he let me out of his truck. I gave him the usual spiel– that I would kill him and everyone he loves if he told anyone who I was, who I was looking for, and where he’d dropped me off. I had no intention of acting on any of my threats, but he didn’t need to know that.

Dro had taken refuge in a dilapidated motel in Stanton. It was one of those places that you only had to look at once to know the beds would vibrate if you had a quarter to spare.

The woman behind the counter of the front desk looked like a cross between a librarian and a drag queen. She wore thick, square glasses, a blindingly neon pink sweater, chunky gold jewelry, and had painted her eyelids baby blue. She glanced up at me from her gossip magazine, scrunching up her lips and causing her cheap lipstick to crack.

“Looking for a room?” she asked without interest.

“No,” I replied. “Looking for a person. A teenage girl with white hair.”

The woman scowled and tossed her hair to the side, showing off its cheap blonde streaks in a motion that she was twenty years too old for. She ignored me and went back to her magazine.

“Ever consider that the people who come here are looking for privacy?” she commented in a bland tone.

I matched it when I answered, “Ever consider I’ll smash your face into the desk if you keep ignoring me?”

That got her attention. I gave her a stare that could have frozen a lake, and the magazine began to flap nervously in her shaking hands.

“Take me to her,” I demanded. “Now.”

The woman didn’t need a lot more encouragement. I watched her like I was going to kill her the second she sneezed on me. I don’t think I would have, but I was tired, cold, and stuck in the middle of nowhere trying to find my missing sister. My patience was all but gone.

She led me outside to the parking lot of the motel, glancing nervously at all the windows, probably hoping someone would come out and help her.

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t even have a knife pulled. If I were going to kill her, I’d have drawn it and pressed it into her back to get her moving. Nothing motivates people like the concept of–

Before I knew what was happening, my senses were overloaded. In the blink of an eye, I felt heat, saw a searing light, smelled smoke, and heard crumbling construction.

I blinked to register it all, and that was when I saw the giant orange blaze rising from the corner of the L-shaped motel.

I knew exactly where Dro was.

I left the motel owner in a shocked state of screaming “Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” and I ran for the fire as fast as I could.

None of the other patrons noticed me as I passed them. They launched out of their rooms in various states of undress, shrieking into their cell phones or just shrieking all together. I swung around the banister and darted up the steps, feeling the heat spreading from room to room. Water was building in my eyes and smoke dried out my throat.

“Dro!” I screamed. I didn’t think she could hear me past the roar of the flames. Which meant I had to get closer.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t afraid of fire. I was. Any sane human being who has seen a forest fire on TV thinks, “There is no stopping this,” until the fire trucks and water-bombers show up to save the day.

But until then, you’re at the mercy of a powerful force set on nothing but destruction. Fire consumes everything, and it doesn’t care what stands in its way. It will burn until it decides it wants to be put out.

I kept myself close to the banister, bending away from the flames licking toward me. I could barely see through the tears blurring my eyes, and if I was breathing in oxygen, I couldn’t tell.

“Dro!” I shouted again, before I started coughing.

I was standing in front of the open door of her room, staring at a wall of flame. How the hell was I going to get in there? The floor hadn’t been totally destroyed, but it wasn’t going to last much longer. Every other time I’d seen Dro, she’d been unharmed by the flames she created. But through the racket of the blaze, I heard a noise.

It was faint, but I knew a scream when I heard one.

I covered my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket, and stepped inside the room.

I moved just past the doorway, not trusting the stability of the floor. It was like stepping into an open furnace. Fresh air had been replaced with smoke. The heat slapped my skin and pulled beads of sweat from it. Tears streamed down my cheeks and dried on my face.

I coughed and looked to the left, locking eyes on the bed and the girl in it.

Dro was still screaming, white-hot flames circling her skin and dancing on the edges of her hair. I took a couple more careful steps, wincing whenever the floor groaned underneath me. I got as close to Dro as I dared, too nervous to touch her but unable to back away.

“Dro!” I screamed again. There was no way she could hear me past the fire and her own agonizing screams.

I didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t wait for help. God knows how we’d explain her miraculous survival to cops and firemen. And I wouldn’t leave her like this, to awake alone in a room full of fire. So I shrugged out of my lucky jacket and tightened it like I was wringing out a towel. I frowned for having to do this, but desperate times, desperate measures.

I whipped the jacket along her stomach.

The reactions were immediate. Hers, and mine.

Dro snapped awake and shot up from the bed, the white flames going out from her body. Me, on the other hand, had to deal with the consequence of sticking my arm over a white-hot flame. I yanked my hand back to my chest, gasping at the razor sharp pain tingling around it. I smelled burning flesh and knew it was horrifically damaged. My new tears of pain mixed with the tears created by the smoke and heat.

I stumbled back, hardly able to see anything anymore. I could barely breathe, and I was getting dizzy from the lack of oxygen. I knew I had to get out of this room, but I couldn’t remember where the exit was.

Dro was suddenly in front of me, looking awake and terrified. I smiled stupidly at her, not sure what else to do other than be grateful she was alive.

She hesitated, then grabbed my shirt and led me toward the door. We made it out just as the roof caved in behind us. The change in temperature brought goose bumps to my skin, but I didn’t stop following Dro. I cradled my charred hand and practically fell down the steps after my sister. She eventually led us behind the motel, away from prying eyes, even though I knew the motel owner was going to report both of us as soon as the cops arrived.

We lost ourselves in the forest, running until we couldn’t move anymore. I leaned back against a tree and slid down it, breathing heavily. I was exhausted, in pain, and I hadn’t even gotten into a fight with anybody.

Dro sat next to me, holding her knees to her chest and watching me with tear-filled eyes.

“You found me,” she whispered.

I grinned at her. “Course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”

She shivered and burst into tears. I reached out with my unburned hand and rubbed her back. She stiffened under my touch, but slowly relaxed. I pulled her closer to me so her head was on my shoulder. We sat there in relative silence, the only sounds coming from the burning motel and my sister’s gentle crying…

I stopped thinking about my sister when our Heavenly parade came to a stop outside an abandoned high school. I frowned at it. I went to school until I was fourteen, and was never able to return to it when the demons started chasing us. Dro and I took some homeschooling when we were living with the Blood Thorns, just so we would have some semblance of an education, but it was another regular life-thing that I’d missed.

Not that I would have gotten much from school. I was the average student, coasting by and needing to be forcibly dragged out of bed so I wouldn’t be late. Still, it would have been nice to suffer through the mediocrity of school instead of spending the next two years running from demons, living on the streets, and learning how to kill people.

Dro on the other hand, loved school. Of course she would. School was where she made friends, learned new things, got to feel normal. What supernatural child with anxiety issues wouldn’t love that?

I sighed. There I went again, trying not to think of my sister, and ultimately thinking about my sister.

The angels led our tragic group inside and locked the door behind us. To my surprise, they didn’t immediately tie us to chairs and put swords against our throats. Michael looked at me, as if sensing my confusion.

“You are free to come and go through this building. The hybrid is not with you, so I am not concerned about any resistance.”

I had a small fantasy about punching Michael in the mouth and asking, “Are you sure about that?” but I was just too tired and depressed to bother with the attempt. Instead, I walked with the guys down the shadowed halls and cold metal lockers.

After shuffling in silence for the better part of five minutes, I turned in front of the group and looked at them all. No one met my eyes.

“We should get some sleep,” I said. “It won’t be long until Michael decides to pound answers out of us.”

Not one of them moved. My three friends had become three statues. Max was the first one to crack.

“I’m not sure sleep is a good idea for me right now,” he whispered.

My chest stung for him. It always amazed me how much Max loved my little sister. Without her, he was like a lost puppy. He was awed by everything she did, happy when she laughed at his lame jokes, and found a purpose in making her feel human. Max wasn’t a fighter, but he knew how to protect Dro from herself almost as well as I did.

But almost wasn’t enough anymore.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find her, Max.” I said it for myself as much as him.

He nodded automatically, as if he knew I was going to say that. He probably did.

Max walked out from under my hand to the classroom on the left. He closed the door with a silent click. The next person on my radar was Sephiel.

His shoulders were slumped, and there were a couple more streaks of silver at his temples. He looked older and more human every day. I wondered if it was his immortality wearing off, or because being a human in our group was tiring him out.

“It was not supposed to be like this,” Sephiel said softly, as though hiding his pain. “I was going to protect her, honor Everiel’s last wish. I knew it would be a challenge, that it would test me beyond all measure, but...” He shook his head slowly. “I never imagined how much chaos it would reap.”

Sephiel wasn’t directly blaming Dro for anything. He had a million chances to turn on us or to just leave all together, but he was fond of Dro. Either because she reminded him of the woman he’d loved for thousands of years, or because he respected her struggle to overcome what she was. He’d stayed, and I wouldn’t ask him to leave.

It was selfish, given how much he’d lost and was continuing to lose, but Sephiel was my friend just as much as anyone else’s.