Page 95 of Crimson Soul
“Yeah.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
Gabriel wasn’t always a horrible being. He wasn’t always led by anger and jealousy. Those emotions consumed him, making him a shell of the sweet angel I used to know. Unrequited love could do that to any being susceptible enough, but right now, lying on the ground of purgatory in the last few seconds of his life, that gentle essence came back to him.
“Be happy, Lilith.” His lungs crackled as he pulled in a shallow breath. “You’ll make a great Queen.”
“Rest, Gabriel.” I moved my palm to his forehead, healing his pain. “And thank you for saving my brother.”
His forehead became colder than usual, and his chest stopped rising and falling as his breaths ended and his body gave out. The grip on my hand released as his hand dropped into the clay dirt beside him.
Anger welled up in my throat as the angel I’d known all my life succumbed to a fate delivered by a fucking blood witch.
“I won’t let his soul be consumed for Mystia’s purpose.” I pulled my hands away and leaned back into the guys’ arms.
“You can’t stop his soul from leaving his body,” Aziel mumbled.
“Maybe not, but I can deprive whatever fucking spell she’s using with of soul, thus nullifying the sacrifice.”
“How?” Kai asked as the ground beneath us began to convulse. The walls vibrated and pieces crumbled down around us.
“What’s happening?” Titan asked, standing above us and whipping his head left and right.
“The sacrifice of a soul was made to awaken the coven…with her blood magic. She’s fucking up balance, which is making the realms collapse, and the coven is awakening.”
Gabriel’s soul rested inside his body, which meant I still had time to stop it from being destroyed and her sacrifice from working.
I got to my feet and turned to face everyone. “I need help.”
“What can we do?” Thaddeus asked.
“Thaddeus, Blaise, and Kai, cut your palms with your fangs and hold hands around Gabriel’s body. You're all vampires so you should have a hint of an ability to stop blood magic from working. Focus your intent on not letting Gabriel’s soul leave his body and refusing her access to it.”
“Refusing who?” Kai bit into his palm along with the others and made a circle around Gabriel.
“Me!” Mystia’s familiar cackle boomed around us as the walls shook and floor rocked. Chaos descended upon us as more and more unstable laughter and voices spoke.
“Don’t you know it’s rude not to stay dead when someone kills you?” I shouted as the wind spun around, whipping my hair in my face. If wind was in purgatory, it meant the realms were merging. A step before they would collapse.
Time was of the essence right now, before the end of the realms as we knew it, and we had one fucking shot to make it work.
More maniacal laughter waited through the wind, and I growled. My wings that had folded back in some time when I was with Gabriel exploded back out and I folded my hands together in front of me before flapping my wings and pushing my feet off the ground.
I hovered over Gabriel and the guys as a bright light began to glow in the center of Gabriel’s chest. His soul was ready to leave, but Mystia and her coven were surrounding us and once they had his soul, they’d take corporal form.
Sucking in a deep breath, I held my hands down toward him and the glowing orb floated into my hands. “Your death wasn’t in vain.”
An angel reaper appeared next to me, hovering above the protection circle the guys made for his soul. She glanced around at the situation before sighing. “I knew there was a reason to come.”
“What do you mean?”
“No other reaper wanted to take this job because the realms are collapsing. Everyone thinks this is it. Everything as we know it is ending.”
“By answering my call, you just saved the realms.” Holding his soul out to her, I smiled. “Please help this soul pass on to be reincarnated.”
She tilted her head, black wavy hair falling down her shoulder as her silver eyes bore into me. “Lilith, I knew your soul was special when I collected it last time. But why are you saving the soul of the man who killed you?”
“That’s my soul!” Mystia cried out, and the barrier the guys were making shook violently. “I need it!”
“Maybe I’m an idiot, but I also don’t want the realms to collapse,” I said, Gabriel’s soul swirling in my palms with a magnetic pull toward the reaper. “He was sacrificed to bring back the blood witch coven, which is exactly why everything is falling apart. Take his soul and all of this will be fixed.”
