Fractured Souls by Ava Marie Salinger
11
A figure jumpeddown from a fence covered in climbing plants, landed on the hood of the car parked some thirty feet below, and headed for the road fronting the row of houses behind Joyce’s home at a dead run.
Cassius caught up with the man on the edge of the park.
The sorcerer turned a fraction of a second before Cassius swooped down and brought him to the ground. They tumbled along an embankment in a tangle of limbs and wings, Cassius hanging on grimly to Joyce’s assailant.
A grunt left the sorcerer as they smashed into the low concrete wall surrounding a playground. He whipped a knife out from under his sleeve and stabbed at Cassius.
Heat flared on Cassius’s left arm. He swore.
The sorcerer’s weapon was made of Stark Steel.
The man scrambled to his feet and murmured an incantation, his dark eyes gleaming with evil in the growing dusk. The air grew heavy with magic.
Cassius rose, unsheathed his dagger, and brought out the sword within. His gun would be of no use in this situation.
“What did you want with Joyce?”
The sorcerer’s gaze flicked nervously to the blade. Darkness pooled around his hands as the spell took shape. A savage snarl left his lips as he hurled a sphere of destructive magic at Cassius.
Cassius batted the attack away with his sword.
The black ball crashed into the playground and exploded with a force that shook the branches of the nearby trees and rattled the windows of the closest houses. A ten-foot-wide crater appeared in its wake, melted lumps of rock and rubber mulch tumbling down into the depression.
Cassius narrowed his eyes. “That’s not nice.”
He closed the distance to his attacker in the blink of eye and smashed shoulder-first into his chest. The sorcerer grunted and sailed backward over the wall.
Cassius grabbed his leg before he landed, climbed fifty feet into the air, and released the screaming man above a bridge spanning the playground. A burst of dark magic cushioned the man’s fall at the last second.
“Now, tell me why the hell you tried to kill Joyce Almeda!” Cassius roared as he dropped toward his attacker.
The sorcerer cursed and twisted sharply out of the way of his descending blade.
The sword vibrated in Cassius’s hands as it sliced the ground inches from the man’s head. He tugged the weapon free and turned to face the sorcerer. The magic user had leapt to his feet and was already firing off another incantation, his voice low and urgent.
Cassius scowled. “Your attacks won’t work against me. Now, why don’t you tell me—?” He stopped, his skin prickling at the intense, dark energy he sensed gathering around them. “What the hell are you doing?!”
The sorcerer laughed at Cassius’s low growl. Darkness pooled in the air next to him. He reached inside the wavering wall and extracted an ebony cane with red veins embedded in the wood.
Cassius’s eyes widened.
It was a summoning staff, a magical weapon banned by all agencies. Just having one in your possession meant an automatic death sentence.
Cassius clenched his jaw. All known summoning staffs in existence today were currently held in a secure vault deep under the headquarters of Cabalista, in London.
“How the hell did you get your hands on that?!”
“That’s for me to know and for you to die without ever finding out!” the sorcerer hissed.
He cut his finger on a sharp edge on the staff, smeared his blood on the wood, and slammed it onto the ground at his feet.
“I call thee, my dark brethren,” he shouted, his eyes full of madness. “Come forth and lay my enemy to waste!”
Cassius leapt out of the way of the expanding circle of blackness that exploded where the staff touched the ground.
Shit!
The pool thickened, the darkness sloshing around and spilling over onto the bridge. Violent ripples tore across the surface, as if something were moving beneath it. Cassius knew all too well what would come out of it in a moment. He shot up into the air and drew on his seraphic powers, his fingers tightening on the handle of his blade.
Macabre figures emerged from the living darkness beneath him. The creatures were some eight feet tall and gaunt, with narrow, bat-like faces, forked tongues, and claws as long as their hands and feet. Leathery, spiked wings sprouted from their deformed backs, the membranes so thin they were almost see-through.
Cassius gritted his teeth. Though the monsters looked like they would fall over at the mere suggestion of a breeze, he knew better. These were war demons from the Nine Hells.
Goddammit!
The summoning staffs created by the warlocks who made pacts with the Underworld in the century following the Fall were made out of Bloodsand, a black tree with red veins that only grew in the Hells. When the governments of the world finally realized the destructive powers the weapons could unleash on their own citizens, they had them confiscated and banned their use. Cabalista was put in charge of sealing the demonic artifacts; once created, a summoning staff could not be destroyed by any power on Earth.
Dozens of crimson eyes locked on Cassius where he hovered above the playground. These demons were vastly different from the ones who had tumbled to the Earth with the angels five hundred years ago. They were the remnants of an old war between Heaven and Hell, soldiers created solely for battle, dark beings without soul cores who thirsted for one thing and one thing only. To kill everyone in their path. Once the forces of Hell had realized what they’d inadvertently created, they’d banished the monsters to the deepest parts of their dimensions.
The air trembled as the war demons rose, their wings swinging with powerful thumps that washed across Cassius in waves. The monsters faltered and screeched as white light poured out of Cassius’s eyes and flared across his skin. Having lived in the shadows of the Hells, light was poison to them.
Cassius took advantage of their hesitation and bolted straight into their midst, his blade humming as he slashed and stabbed at them with lightning-fast moves. The best way to dispose of war demons was to take them by surprise.
The monsters retaliated swiftly. Claws sliced into him from every direction and fangs snapped uncomfortably close to his flesh. His wounds closed almost as fast as they formed, his seraphic energy hastening his healing abilities.
Movement below caught his gaze.
The sorcerer was using the battle to make his escape, his figure fading in the gloom as he sprinted north across the park.
Cassius scowled. That asshole!
He blocked the claws headed for his face, kicked a war demon in the gut, and sliced the two coming at him from the left in half. Since war demons didn’t possess soul cores, he didn’t experience the pain he would normally have suffered had they been ordinary otherworldly beings.
The pool of blackness was shrinking rapidly on the ground, the portal closing in the absence of the weapon that had opened it.
Where the hell is Morgan?!
Cassius glanced from the remaining six war demons blocking his path to the fleeing man.
Damnit! I can’t let that bastard get away. I have to end this fight myself!
He hesitated for scant seconds. It was dark enough that any witnesses would struggle to make out what he intended to do next. The sound of approaching sirens took the decision right out of his hands.
It was now or never.
Cassius let the war demons surround him, took a deep breath, and called upon his true powers.