Thane flew around from the other side. “There’s some kind of block. I can’t get through without killing your home.”
“I’m sorry,” Zacharel told the cloud as he swung his sword through the blackened ooze. This was not the merciful death he’d imagined, but it was a death nonetheless. He had to reach Annabelle. Instantly a doorway was created, the edges sizzling, the fire growing, spreading. Zacharel leveled out and zipped to his bedroom.
Horror filled him. Blood dripped from the walls, covered the bed and the nightstand, and even formed little pools all over the floor—but there was no body. No urn.
Thane approached his side. “She is stronger than she appears. Whatever happened, she will recover.”
“Yes.” Would she, though? A vicious battle had clearly taken place here. “Annabelle,” he shouted.
No response.
Doing his best not to panic, he searched room after room as the cloud continued to burn from the outside in, soon to vanish forever, but found no sign of her. She had simply disappeared. “She’s not here. How can she not be here?”
“Could she have…fallen?” Sympathy laced Thane’s voice.
No. No! Zacharel arrowed out of the cloud and toward land, Thane right behind him.
I watched a demon leave the cloud, he projected. That demon could have taken her with him, and I simply missed her.
If that was the case, she would have fought the demon the entire way down, willing to die rather than be captured and imprisoned. If somehow the demon had managed to maintain his hold on her, she would be hurt, and hurt terribly, but Zacharel would rather she hurt than die.
Hurt he could save. Dead he could not.
Now, however, he had an answer to his earlier suspicion. The demons had attacked the temple for a reason, only he had not guessed they’d desired his distraction and Annabelle’s solitude. Furious with the demons, with himself, he straightened far too close to the earth’s surface, nearly shredding his wings as they slowed his momentum. The landing jolted his entire body, causing him to stumble forward.
The first thing he noticed was the demon carcass in pieces on the ground. A fresh kill, the blood liquid, without clots, and not from impact but from claws. Two demons fighting against each other? For rights to Annabelle, perhaps. Zacharel looked around through narrowed eyes, searching for any sign of her. Miles of forest in every direction, the animals and insects unnaturally quiet.
To the left, moonlight reflected off of something. Something of Annabelle’s? He raced over, leaving a trail of ice in his wake, and picked up—his brother’s urn. It was empty.
The glass shattered in his hand.
“What is it?” Thane asked as he landed.
Zacharel bent down, patted the ground. Dry. His twin’s essence had not spilled here. It could have spilled inside the cloud, and if that was the case, it was gone forever, rendered nothing but ash. Destroyed by his hand just as Hadrenial himself had been. Or one of Annabelle’s attackers could have emptied it out on the way down. But Zacharel didn’t scent—
Wait. Yes, he did. He scented his brother: the morning sky, dew drops and a hint of the tropics. Someone had absorbed his essentia.
Another breath and Zacharel realized the scent was fading. Whoever carried Hadrenial’s essentia was running away. Annabelle? Or a demon? Or both?
“Zacharel?” Thane asked.
“Go. Help your boys interrogate the demons,” he said to Thane. If he had to destroy the world to save Annabelle, he would, but he would not allow his soldier to be blamed in any way.
Without waiting for a reply, he raced forward, telling himself not to allow any more fear or fury. Not now, not later. Already his chest was on fire, surely bleeding, the fissures he’d once felt now full-blown wounds as the emotions poured through him.