Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1) (31 page)

I could speak, but do nothing else as Abigor’s power held me. “Why?”

“The last seal, of course. A pure blood Nephilim must kill an angel in cold blood. You’re going to kill Cassiel here.
Now
.” He released his grip on me and I nearly fell to my knees as I suddenly got control of my own body again all at once.

I looked back over at Josh who was now on his knees, gasping for air as he looked back at me with pleading eyes. I didn’t see the demon in him anymore. All I saw was my brother who I loved more than anyone else in the world, the life slowly draining out of him. “Stop!” I shouted to Abigor. “You’re killing him!”

“That’s the point. Do as I ask and I’ll stop. Otherwise your brother dies along with everyone else here, including you.”

I looked at the angel, Cassiel. That same look of pity was still on his face. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Do it. It’s okay.”

Eva appeared suddenly at my side. “You can’t do this,” she said urgently. “You kill that angel and the gates will be opened. We’ll all be dead anyway.”

She had a point. I wouldn’t deny that. It wouldn’t make any sense to save Josh just so Abigor could enslave the entire world in a new Hell on earth. But I wasn’t thinking logically; I was thinking about my brother, about how he was dying and how I needed to save him. I didn’t care about the rest of the world in that moment, only my brother, the person I had gone through so much to try and save. I wasn’t about to let Abigor take him away from me, and Abigor knew that. He knew I wouldn’t say no.

I stepped up to the angel, Demon Blade in my hand. Frank and Eva where still behind me, shouting for me to stop, to think about what I was doing, but I hardly heard them. All I heard was the life being squeezed out of my brother’s body. I had to save him.

I raised the Demon Blade, ready to run it through the angel’s chest.

“Not with that,” Abigor said. He handed me a long silver dagger. “With this.”

I took the dagger. It felt heavy in my hand, deadly. I still gripped the Demon Blade in my other hand. It was like I couldn’t let it go after what I had been through to get it, as useless as it turned out to be. “I’m sorry,” I said to Cassiel.

Cassiel looked at me with compassionate crystal blue eyes. “Do what you have to do,” he said. “Have faith.”

I frowned at him a second, wondering what he meant by that last comment.

Faith? What did faith have do with anything?

I plunged the dagger into the angel’s chest, holding it in there for a second before ripping it out again. Blinding white light poured from the angel’s eyes and mouth before it suddenly exploded all at once in a huge ball of light that I had to turn away from, so blinding was it. When the light stopped there was nothing left of the angel except for a scorch mark in the center of the circle. I dropped the silver dagger on the floor and looked at Abigor. “Let my brother go.”

“With pleasure,” Abigor said, dropping his arm to his side again. I ran to Josh, despite the protests of Eva and Frank. Josh was up on one knee, breathing hard as he rubbed at his throat.

“Josh,” I said kneeling down beside him. “Are you alright?”

Josh looked at me with black demon eyes and smiled. “I’m fine, Sis,” he said. “I don’t think you are, though.” He stood up, towering over me. “You’ve just been played.”

The realization of what I had done, of what I had allowed Abigor to do, hit me all at once like a sledgehammer to the chest. I could only remain there on my knees as I looked up at my brother through eyes that were now blurred with tears.

“Good job,” Abigor said to me after he came and stood by Josh. “Exactly as I had planned.” He put an arm around Josh the way a father would put a loving arm around his son. That ripped the guts out of me. “Well, time for us to go. See you all in Hell very soon.”

Then the two of them disappeared and I fell sideways onto the floor, crawling into a fetal  position as I sobbed loudly. I wanted to die . If I still had the dagger in my hand I would have stuck it in my chest. In the vast space of the warehouse, my cries echoing around it, I never felt so alone, so broken by anything, not even when I was stuck in that cave. When I felt hands on me I screamed for them to leave me alone and the hands left me. I don’t know how long I lay there on the cold warehouse floor, sobbing like a child who had just lost her parents to some evil monster. All the while there was one terrible thought going through my mind.

It’s over…It’s all over.

Chapter 25

Frank drove to Eva’s house first, where we dropped her off. From my position in the front passenger seat of the Chevrolet I barely nodded at her when she told me not to worry, that we would think of something else and I thought about telling her to wise up, that we were screwed and we had fucked up—
I
had fucked up—but I didn’t because I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I was ashamed. I allowed my own selfish feelings to override the greater good, allowed Abigor to play me so easily.

I broke the last seal.

Hell wasn’t just coming.

It was here.

“It’s over,” I kept saying as Frank drove back to the cabin. “It’s over…we lost…
I
lost it for us.”

Frank drove in silence. I knew what he was thinking. It was written all over his face, it was clear from his every vibration—the stupid little girl let herself get played and now the world is going to end, all because she couldn’t keep her emotions in check.

Loss engulfed me like a hurricane engulfing a small town, wrecking everything in its path. I had never felt so hollow.

When we got to the cabin, I didn’t move from the car. Neither did Frank. It was like it felt pointless to do anything anymore, so we just sat, staring out the window at nothing. We stayed  like that for a long time as if waiting for the end to come.

It was Frank who finally broke the silence.

“Well,” he said. “We have two choices as I see it. We can sit here and wait for Hell on earth to arrive or we can go to that cemetery and fight.”

I could see he was just trying to be optimistic in the face of despair. It was an optimism I didn’t share. “To die you mean,” I said.

“Better to die fighting. That’s what I’m thinking.”

I shook my head. “I can’t Frank. I just can’t. It’s over.”

“Goddamn it!” he slammed the steering wheel hard and I jumped. “Would you stop saying that? You’ve shown yourself to be a fighter. Why stop now?”

I looked at him and laughed. “Because it’s fucking
over
, Frank!” I shouted. “Don’t you get that?”

“Yes, I get that!” he shouted back. “Of course I fucking get it. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to make it easy for that sonofabitch Abigor. If I’m going out, I’m going out fighting. I can’t just sit here and wait for some demon to grab me.”

Some demon.

Demon.

I looked at him.

“What?” he said.

I sat up straight for the first time since we’d left the warehouse. “Abigor said only a demon could bring out the power in the sword. So did the angel.”

“Yeah, so?”

“We still have that demon’s blood, don’t we?”

“Yeah…Wait…I know what you’re thinking….” Frank said as he caught on.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. We just might be able to stop Abigor after all.”

“Normally, I’d say you were crazy, but under the circumstances…”

“It’s the only option we have,” I concluded.

We got out of the car and ran to the cabin. Once inside we went to the cellar where the bucket of demon’s blood we siphoned from Morgana still sat on the floor. “Get me a glass,” I said to Frank.

When he arrived back a moment later with a tall glass I dipped it into the bucket of demons blood. The blood was dark and thick, almost treacly where it had congealed over the last few days.

I looked at Frank and he nodded for me to drink.

Putting the glass to my lips, I drank. It tasted foul, like a spoiled meat smoothie, only much worse. I wretched and gagged after the first mouthful, and spat  blood onto the floor. “Oh my God…that’s…indescribably awful.”

Frank’s face contorted as he watched me try again. I took another mouthful of the blood and quickly swallowed. I gagged again but I somehow managed to keep the vile liquid down. I repeated the process, drinking and gagging until I had drank the whole glass. I closed my eyes for a few moments while I allowed the blood to settle in my stomach. My body protested. The angel DNA in me tried to resist, tried to reject the liquid evil that I was putting in my system, but I fought and kept the blood down.

“How much are you going to drink?” Frank asked, filling the glass up again.

“As much as I can stand.” The second glass was harder to drink since I already knew what to expect. It took me half a dozen attempts to empty it. The blood felt heavy in my stomach, like  lead, but I kept it down. “One more,” I said and Frank refilled the glass. I tipped my head and drank and after two mouthfuls I had to stop as my stomach heaved and I vomited on to the floor. At least half a glass of demon’s blood spewed from my mouth and splattered all over the concrete. Frank jumped back to avoid the crimson splashes.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“No! Let me finish.” Tears streamed from my eyes with all the retching and vomiting but I kept drinking until I finally finished the third glass. “Oh, Jesus…oh, God this is horrible.”

Something was happening inside me.

Frank had a hand on my shoulder. “What is it?”

“It’s…it’s like the blood is alive in my stomach…oh God…it feels like it’s crawling through my system.” I fell down to my knees.

“Leia!” Frank kneeled down with me. “You alright?”

“I don’t…” My whole body felt like it was on fire, like I had just drunk acid and it was burning its way through me. It was excruciatingly painful and I fell back on to the floor, convulsing and screaming with the pain. Blood erupted out of my mouth and I coughed, spraying red into the air and over Frank.

“Leia!”

The convulsions carried on for a few more minutes before they finally stopped and the burning sensation died down. One final convulsion forced me to arch my back off the floor for several seconds before my whole body just as suddenly relaxed again and I flopped back to the floor.

When I opened my eyes things looked different.

There was an orange tint to everything and when I looked up at Frank he seemed to have a yellowish aura around him. He flinched when I looked at him. “Your eyes,” he said. “They’re black.”

It worked.

I got up off the floor and stood for a moment while I tried to reconcile with myself what I had become. I could still feel the Nephilim power inside of me but it felt much stronger now, more potent.

I had never felt such power and strength coursing through me.

My mind, which normally had a thousand thoughts running through it all at once, felt almost empty. I thought about nothing. My instincts ran the show now.

When Frank went to put a hand on my shoulder I gripped his wrist and grabbed him by the throat with my other hand, driving him back into the wall and lifting him off his feet. He pressed down on my arm, trying to say my name but unable to breathe properly.

When I looked into his eyes all I saw was a meat suit, not a person, just something to be used and abused as I saw fit. There was no emotion in me, only cold and calculated instinct, like a great white shark going after its prey.

I squeezed harder on Frank’s throat and watched calmly as his face turned purple. I only let him go when I felt something splashing on me and then a horrible burning sensation on my face and neck. I staggered back, my hands clamping my face as I cried out in pain. “What did you do?” I screeched at him.

Frank slumped against the wall, holding his throat, trying to get his breath back. “Leia, you have to…you have to control it…Leia…please!”

The sound of Frank’s pleading voice touched something deep within me, something that was buried beneath the demonic power that coursed through me.

Emotion.

Conscience.

I felt faint traces of both in me somewhere, but they were overwhelmed by the terrible power that had a grip on me.

“Get control, Leia!” Frank said. “Please. We can’t do this unless you get control.”

Frank’s voice somehow touched my buried emotions, just enough for me to realize who he was to me. As I looked at him I no longer saw him as a piece of meat, but as a person, as my uncle. I felt the black power inside of me trying to beat down those feelings. Two different forces vied for control within me.

“You’re in control, Leia,” Frank said, his voice calmer and more measured now that he’d gotten his breath back. “You control the power inside you, not the other way around. Find the strength. Remember what we have to do. Think about saving Josh.”

At the mention of Josh’s name my vision cleared and I saw Frank relax a little. “Your eyes are back to normal,” he said.

I stood, blinking at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.” I felt like myself again but the demonic power was still there, just below the surface, waiting for me to give in to it again, to yield to its awesome strength. I had to maintain control and I knew it would be a constant battle. It was only the Nephilim power that gave me the strength to counter the demon influence.

“It’s okay,” Frank said. “I’m fine. Lucky I had holy water on me.” He held up his hip flask.

“That’s what burned me? That hurt.”

“Now you know why it’s so effective.”

“Don’t do that again.”

“Don’t try to kill me again then.”

“I won’t.”

“Come on. We gotta go.
Now
.”

We made our way quickly upstairs and then out to the car. When I looked down the mountain, to the city below, I stopped. “Frank,” I said, but Frank had already seen because he had stopped to look as well. There was a mass of black swirling clouds forming over the city, an omen that something terrible was about to come.

The demon power in me almost rose to the surface again as I took in the swirling black and gray clouds.