The Revelation of Gabriel Adam (34 page)

“Damn you, Micah. I can’t do this on my own.” Gabe’s emotions overwhelmed him, and he beat his fist against her chest several times before diving back on top of her and blowing air into her mouth as hard as he could.

Micah’s body shuddered, and Gabe felt her cough into his mouth. He pulled back, and her eyes rolled and fluttered shut. Her chest rose and fell, drawing a breath. It was weak, but she was breathing again.

“Poor girl,” Septis said, watching from the street. “She is broken, can’t you see? Very doubtful that she’ll make it. Shame, I suppose. She was quite beautiful.”

As Septis approached, Gabe’s rage refocused on his enemy. He turned from Micah and pulled himself to his feet and faced him. If those he loved could be saved, he had to end this now.
I have power. Use it
, he told himself.

Gabe lifted his good arm, his hand covered in Micah’s blood, and held it high like Yuri had done under the bridge in Durham and like Afarôt had done in the temple. He willed something to happen, but he was met with only silence. No bluish-white energy shot from his hand. Nothing struck Septis but another howling fit of laughter.

“Stupid boy. Do you really believe yourself to be an archangel? What lies have been laid upon you? You are a fraud. Many battles I have witnessed with their kind, and be assured, friend, you are not of their pedigree.”

Gabe stood helpless, hearing the demon’s words echo his own doubts.

And yet a voice in his head told him to believe. “
Have faith in yourself
,” she said.

Septis moved for Gabe so quickly, there was little time to react before he was seized and lifted from the ground by the throat.

“I will eat your souls before the day is done. I’m especially looking forward to hers.”

Gabe kicked his legs in the air and fought to breathe as Septis took measure. His other hand opened, palm aimed point-blank at Gabe’s chest. Shadows swirled like vapors of smoke around his fingers.

With his good arm, Gabe gripped the wrist of Septis and tried to pry off his hand. He looked to Micah on the ground below and fought to free himself. A tingling sensation came alive on his skin, electrical, and not unlike the feeling he’d experienced when the soldiers had threatened them upon their arrival to the church. His clothes became charged with a building static.

Septis seemed mildly amused. “Is this the extent of your power? Pathetic.”

Electrical currents traveled over Gabe’s body. Small arcs of light leapt from his clothes to his captor’s like tiny bolts of lightning. On his finger, the stone hidden under a swath of blood sparked.

Septis grabbed the wrist and turned it. The ring caught light cast from the gate tower, which had been toppled by the temple’s explosion. It glistened through the blood on Gabe’s finger. His enemy’s eyes narrowed in a moment of confusion from the jewel’s sheen.

Gabe also studied the ring, unsure of what was happening. It was warm on his finger, radiating power into his hand, up his arm, and into his body. He felt like he’d received a double shot of adrenaline after an overdose of caffeine. His muscles tightened, and he felt as though he could bend steel if he wanted.

The confusion in the face of Septis turned to something else. His eyes grew wide as he apparently recognized the weapon on Gabe’s hand. The demon gasped, and his mouth fell open in disbelief.

Gabe recognized the look. He’d seen it many times over the past days.

Fear
.

All his doubts quieted in his mind. All the promises made by his father and Afarôt were now confirmed in the terrified eyes of his enemy. The engraved pentalpha began to glow. “It seems you are the fool,” Gabe said. “I
am
the archangel Gabriel,
friend
.”

The power grew inside Gabe, lit by the flame of hatred he felt for his enemy and what he’d done to those Gabe loved. But unlike the restraint he’d attempted with the soldier, Gabe allowed himself to lose control of the power. The electricity dancing over his clothes became a furious swarm of arcing bursts of lightning, his body a live wire. Like his vision before, his skin started to glow. It covered him like a glaze of liquid light and expanded outward, a barrier of humming energy, becoming something more. Something powerful and physical but raw and undeterred.

Dirt and rock were blown away from the ground where Septis stood still grasping Gabe. Winds swirling with debris spun around them like the eye of a hurricane. Its vibrations shattered boulders of rubble on the ground, reducing them to sand.

The feeling built into a crescendo that Gabe could no longer sustain. He felt the earth quake under Septis’s feet, and as the light field began to quiver under its own power, Gabe saw the ring glow and knew his abilities were being augmented by the ring. A flare of blinding white ignited around them.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

The explosion separated Gabe from Septis and threw Gabe into the air. He landed hard on the concrete stairs by the compound gate. The blast carried Septis until he crashed against a building on the street below. The impact took down part of the roof and a wall.

Gabe rolled to his knees, overwhelmed by the pain in his arm and weakened from the release of energy. Exhaustion overcame his body, stripping away the fight inside. He’d hoped the ring did its job and that Septis had been killed by the blast.

However, as he watched the street below, the fallen wall pushed aside. Septis rose from the remains of the building, his clothes tattered. As he stood, Gabe could no longer see any reservation in his enemy’s expression. Instead, Gabe was met by the hardened stare of a killer. Septis tore away his shredded shirt, revealing the full extent of the intricate scars on his body.

Gabe glanced at the ring, hoping it would do something, but the stone was once again cold, lifeless. Without help from the ring, Gabe knew he could do no more. He felt defeated, a failure, as he looked to the temple garden where Micah lay unconscious. Nearby, his dad was trying to crawl toward him, but Gabe knew his father could not protect him now.

Gabe watched as shadows flowed from the dark crannies of the surrounding buildings and found their master. They became alive and slithered over the ground like serpents toward the demon, leaping into the air, gnashing and striking out in anger, and Gabe now understood, like Carlyle had by the River Wear, that his last moment was upon him.

As Septis approached, he raised his arm, directing his dark creatures at their target. They raced forward, honing in like a pack of wild dogs let loose for the kill, their dark forms leaping from the flood of darkness that spilled forth over the ground, their excited hisses growing closer and closer to Gabe.

He dragged his mangled body to the bottom of the stairs, away from the view of his father, so as to spare him from having to witness the death of his only son.

The shadows followed. Hundreds of red eyes smoldered in the blackness, and the shadows resumed their animal forms that stretched and grew, clawing over one another to be the first to the prize.

At once they were upon Gabe. He watched as they rose into the air, blotting out the night sky, a wave of darkness that crashed down and engulfed his body.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Shadows surrounded Gabe, enveloping him in a sort of spinning cocoon that forced the air out, creating a vacuum. He fought for a breath and felt as though he were drowning as his lungs began to collapse. Red eyes flashed by, and beastly heads opened their smoke-formed mouths to chatter their teeth, hissing in the storm.

A tasty morsel . . .

It looks delicious . . .

Bones to gnaw on . . .

The sphere of formless creatures lifted Gabe from the ground, and he let himself go limp as they held his body, beating against it, clawing and tugging at his legs and arms, as if he were being positioned.

The pain in his broken arm became unbearable as it was struck and manipulated, and he felt his consciousness slipping away. His eyes fluttered, and he started to pass out, but instead of fighting, Gabe welcomed the peace of the coming sleep. Images of the broken and disfigured soldiers in the street filled his head, and he accepted his fate as the same. He let go of all remaining hope and prayed he would die quickly.

He closed his eyes, and the world fell into a black silence. Time slowed, the shadow creatures’ presence no longer felt. His mind drifted from the violence, somehow removed from his body. A familiar voice echoed in his mind.

“Why do you still not have faith in yourself, Gabriel? Even now?”
Coren asked.

“I do have faith. I just can’t win,”
he answered in thought.

“No, what you call faith is nothing more than acceptance. Faith requires true belief, and you have yet to truly believe in
anything. Including yourself. Now you are defeated, and all is lost.”

“You’ve made a mistake. I can’t match the demon’s strength. He’s too strong.”

“If that is what you choose to believe, then you are correct. Know that I, too, had a choice. I chose to bestow upon you the ring because I have faith that with it your enemy can be
vanquished. Should you choose to believe and have faith in the power within and not just accept your world as it is, you may discover
greatness
beyond your ordinary dreams. But the choice is still yours to make. It always has been.”

Searing pain in his arm shook him awake. He opened his eyes to see the walls of the shadow storm compacting around him, closing in for the final assault. In the blur of the passing shapes he caught glimpses of the street below flashing by between breaks in the sphere’s shadow wall. Septis stood, manipulating his creatures with outstretched hands, leading his wretched symphony like a conductor.

Gabe could see that he was now being held several feet from the ground, arms outstretched, his body hung in a cruciform ready for the final strike. He turned toward the compound and saw in the gaps of the swarming beasts flashes of his father. The look of anguish stole Gabe’s breath. His dad had raised him as a child of discipline. Taught to try his hardest at school and everything he wanted to do. Now he was a young man, his father’s son. Asked to do the impossible. The unimaginable.

Yet his father still pushed him to do well in this, as he would something as trivial as a soccer game or a history test. He still pushed him to succeed, believing that in all Gabe ever set his mind and heart to, he was capable. A father’s unconditional faith.

That is faith
. Gabe realized he felt the same way about his dad. Even when Gabe doubted his father’s intentions, he understood and believed that his father, with every breath he took, would always be at his side and would always love him. That, too, was faith.

Faith
.
Love.

His dad believed Gabe was special. Faith that he was not ordinary but different. Chosen. An archangel. And Gabe believed in his father. They shared a love that his father would not betray if he didn’t truly believe Gabe could accomplish what had been asked of him. He knew because of his faith in his son that Gabe could stop the enemy.

He began to see himself through his father’s eyes. It became real. True. And in himself, Gabe found his father’s strength inspired by his love and faith. A purpose set into motion.

His
purpose.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

From a distance, Septis held control over the shadow sphere that engulfed his hostage, his hands reaching out before him, as if holding the thing itself, palms moving to come together. Responding to his will, the sphere tightened around Gabriel Adam, spinning faster as it compressed. Across its surface, shadow beasts swarmed in a fury of anticipation, caught in a feeding frenzy. Claws and toothy snouts leapt from its depths only to dive back into the middle, awaiting the order to begin their feast.

Still recovering from the blast that had separated him from the boy, Septis struggled to maintain control. Such a surge could only be contributed to Solomon’s Ring, but Gabriel had not yet mastered the weapon. This pleased Septis, and the reward he stood to gain filled his imagination. He would crush his enemy, tear him apart, and let his pets feed. From the archangel’s corpse Septis would seize the ring for himself, and he would reign over all in this realm. No one, not even Mastema, would hold position above him.

Septis felt in the winds a new dawn approaching. With the death of Fortitudo Dei, he would right all the injustice done to his kind. The humans and their cancerous hold over Earth would be broken, and the pathway to the realm of creation would be shut forever.

The anticipation of the moment caused him to falter. He watched, and for a moment, he thought the sphere seemed to expand. Septis redoubled his efforts, pushing aside thoughts of glory to finish the deed. With all his strength, he tried to collapse the shadows around the boy and at last squeeze the life from him. Responding to the command, his creatures dove inward, forming a tight, smooth surface in the sphere, the shadows tightening, spinning faster.