Wings of the Wicked - By Courtney Allison Moulton Page 0,121

planned for her.

“Please!” I screamed at the reapers. “Please don’t hurt her! She’s just a girl! Take me. Take me instead, please!”

Merodach clenched his hand around the back of Emma’s neck and thrust her body forward in front of him as if he offered the girl as a gift to Sammael. I quickly realized that that was exactly what he was doing.

“Don’t do this!” I screamed. “You can’t kill her! Please take my soul! Let the girl go!”

Lilith turned her face to look at me. My blood ran cold. “Be silent. Your time will come.”

Emma stopped struggling. She was sobbing now, her body limp, shoes dragging on the floor as the reaper held her up to Sammael. The Fallen angel of death held out both his hands, but instead of taking the girl, something long materialized out of thin air in the same way my swords did. Through the shimmering air, the thing in his hands came into view: a scythe. The weapon was enormous; the long helve was as big around as my forearm and decorated with bits of bone, hair, and fur, and human and animal teeth. A human skull was mounted at the top of the gigantic curved blade, which was embedded with the desolate eyes of the soulless damned. The eyes all blinked and stared at the whimpering girl before Sammael. Then the scythe—from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the staff—lit up with fire. Flames danced black and blue; obsidian and midnight. Demonfire.

Before I could say or do anything, Sammael slashed the scythe down through Emma’s body like butter, and I let out a sickened shriek as Emma began screaming and writhing in earsplitting agony, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. My stomach twisted and I wanted to throw up but couldn’t. I could only keep staring. But there was no blood, no wound, as if the blade had gone through her like she was a ghost. And then Sammael lifted the scythe, and something clung between it and Emma’s body, something silvery and viscous. I saw Emma slacken, and I thought her pain was over. A spring of hope went through me until I realized what the silvery-blue thing was, clinging desperately to her body. Her soul.

A face formed in the struggling mass caught between Sammael’s soul scythe and the girl’s body, a face that belonged to Emma. A perfect imprint of her pretty hair and face frozen in terror was cast in the soul’s form like ghostly clay, and limp arms and legs grew, but threads reached for Emma’s body, trying to free itself from the blade it was caught on. Sammael grabbed Emma’s soul around the throat and lifted it, parting his deathly blue lips. With a deep breath, he sucked Emma’s soul into his mouth like a vacuum until there was no more silvery shimmer left. I sobbed hysterically, and Emma fell to the floor in a crumpled, dead heap.

I realized suddenly that it was all over. Nathaniel was dead. Will was probably dead. I was chained up in a room filled with demonic reapers and two of the Fallen, and for a moment I gave up. I sagged against my chains, pressing myself against the wall of the Enochian spell binding my power, making me helpless.

Will’s words echoed in my head: “Don’t stop fighting.”

I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t end my ageless existence defeated and surrendered. I had always died fighting, and I would end fighting. If this was it, then I refused to be destroyed while chained to a wall and powerless. I was Gabriel, the Left Hand of God. I was a warrior.

I forced myself to stop crying as Sammael stepped around Emma’s body and moved toward me, raising his scythe.

“I am sorry to have to do this, sister,” he said. “But every last angel must die, including, and most importantly, those closest to God. I cannot have you stand in the way of the Morningstar.”

Something crashed above me, onto the floor above the cellar, and I flinched. I heard shouts and more crashes. I looked up, staring at the stone ceiling, listening to whatever was going on upstairs. Sammael was also looking up, his cold expression stone hard. Someone let out a scream of pain, and then there was another crash.

“You!” Lilith snapped at one of the demonic reaper lackeys. “Go upstairs. See what’s going on.”

He darted up the stairs and out of my sight. I heard the cellar door open, and