I sat there, stunned, my vision blurring instantly.
Shawn moved first. He lunged for the thing that only looked like an elderly man. I barely got out the word No! before I heard another sharp crack. Shawn fell onto the sidewalk. His head on backwards.
People started screaming and running in the opposite direction.
Even more so when Eidolon brought out a revolver. “I have to make an impression.”
He raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The body he’d inhabited fell, bringing the total count up to three.
I slid to my knees beside them and stared, aghast. Why? The man was already dead.
Then it hit me. While I sat confused and focused on the bodies, Eidolon burst into a cloud of smoke—shattering the windows nearby—and enveloped me. Forced himself inside.
A blinding pain, beginning in my chest and spreading through my whole body, clawed its way into every cell. Shredded my tendons and cracked my bones. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. He was trying to rip me apart from the inside out. He concentrated his efforts on my heart, digging as though searching for something.
I clutched at my chest. Fought to take in air, but my lungs were cement. Just as I started to lose consciousness, I felt Reyes close by. Furious. Powerful.
I blinked, tried to focus past the pain, then wondered if I were seeing things, because he had transformed. In my blurred vision, he looked angelic. But there was nothing angelic about Rey’aziel. Colossal black wings. Solid body. Muscles cording with each movement.
He raised his sword and bought it down in one defining stroke.
Eidolon shattered. Swirled. Tried to regroup.
I gulped at the air around me and held my arms to my chest before realization dawned. Everything I felt, every ounce of pain, every spike of fear, was only the human part of me. The miniscule part. The grain of sand.
He had yet to see the rest of me. So I showed him.
The essence that was Eidolon turned to face Reyes. That seemed to make my husband happy. Reyes lowered his head. Watched him for that split second from beneath hooded lids before Eidolon launched forward.
The instant Eidolon reached him, prepared to overpower him with his energy, the malevolent god jerked back as though a dog reaching the end of a chain.
Surprised, Eidolon took an almost human shape. He gazed back at me. And if mist could look surprised, I imagined that’s what it would look like.
I plunged a hand into his center. That part of him that had more mass than the rest. It was what he’d tried to get from me. My heart. The core of my being. The very center of it.
In one quick movement, I ripped it out of him, this beast who was after my daughter. I devoured it. Swallowed it whole. Then I absorbed what was left of him, the feeling one of euphoria as his molecules melted into mine.
Reyes looked on, not surprised in the least. When I turned to jelly, he was there. His arm wrapped around me. His face inches above mine.
I reached up and brushed my fingers against his wings. Astonished.
Then I remembered the girl and her grandfather and … and Shawn. Not to mention the pedestrians around us. Were they caught in the cross fire?
Reyes and I emerged onto the mortal plane, and I scrambled to my feet.
People were injured all up and down the street. One woman was hemorrhaging blood by the bucketsful. A piece of glass had pierced her jugular. Others were screaming and running away, their faces bloodied but otherwise okay.
I knelt beside Shawn. He was draped over the girl as though trying to protect her, but his eyes faced heavenward.
I reached down to touch him. I’d heal him first. Then the girl. Then the woman and anyone else. I didn’t think I could bring the elderly man back. Once a god took up residence, there wasn’t much left to bring back.
“You are forbidden,” came a familiar voice.
I didn’t bother looking back. Michael’s energy, along with that of his spies and a few reinforcements, undulated around me. Pressed into me. Suffocated.
“They died because of a supernatural fuckup. They deserve their lives back.”
“You may restore only if the soul has not already been freed. Only if it has not left the vessel and entered our Father’s kingdom.”
I stood and turned to him. “Their deaths were not natural. The blame lies at the feet of a god. This is on us.”
He drew his sword.
And Reyes drew his as his wings slowly unfolded.
“Rey’azikeen, we have no quarrel with you.”
Reyes’s mouth formed a ravenous smile. “Sure you do.”
Michael refocused on me. “You forget your place here. You are reaper. Nothing more. You have no right to use godly powers in a dimension that already has a God. It’s”—he looked up in thought—“cheating.”
“Somehow I can’t seem to care.”
“But it is what you agreed to when you became the portal of this world.”