Darkness Devours: A Dark Angels Novel by Arthur Keri

Author:Arthur, Keri [Arthur, Keri]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: urn|isbn|9781101588765
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2012-06-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Azriel, I thought, you’d better get your ass back here right now, because I am not facing this thing alone.

But I drew Amaya regardless. She slipped eagerly into my hand, the lilac fire dripping from her black edges sizzling as it splattered across the floor.

Then energy of a different kind swept around me and, a heartbeat later, Azriel appeared. Valdis was drawn, her blade running with blue electricity. The fires of the two blades filled the small room with light and, in the other room, that gathering of dark energy began to fade.

“It has sensed my arrival and retreats to the gray fields,” Azriel said. “Quickly.”

And with that, he disappeared. I swore, sat down, and closed my eyes. I didn’t bother reaching for calm, didn’t bother to center myself. I simply wrenched my soul free from my flesh and flung myself onto the fields. For a moment everything spun around me, a whirl of gray that had my stomach churning and my pulse rate shooting through the roof. Or maybe that was simply fear.

The Dušan exploded from my arm, her lilac form quickly gaining flesh and shape, until she seemed so real that I wanted to reach out and touch her. She swirled around me, the wind of her body buffeting mine as her sharp ebony gaze scanned the fields surrounding us. I wondered if she sensed the Rakshasa, or if she was merely reacting to the knot of fear growing in the pit of my stomach.

I spun around, my gaze searching the silvery plains. But there was nothing; no one was here. Then I remembered what Azriel had said—if spirits traversed the fields, it was only via the paene. I’d come too far into the fields.

I dove for the shadowy divide between the fields and the real world, and spotted it. The Rakshasa was a boiling, writhing mass of dark gray that almost merged into the mist that was this part of the fields. And it was quickly receding into the distance.

Azriel was easier to find—he was a blaze of sunlight in this ghostly otherworld, a force whose very presence throbbed through my being. He was closer to the creature than I was, but nowhere near close enough.

I ran forward, Amaya gripped tightly in my right hand and the Dušan’s serpentine form swirling around me. Her eyes glittered fiercely as she continued to scan the fields around us—searching for trouble. Searching for a threat.

I hoped like hell she didn’t find it.

But even as that thought crossed my mind, trumpets echoed, the sound oddly haunting in the hush of the fields. The last time I’d heard those trumpets, it had meant the Raziq were hunting me.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I kept my gaze on the receding forms of Azriel and the Rakshasa, trying to increase my speed and catch up, but having little success with either. I might walk the fields, but this was not my world, and it seemed that the constraints of my flesh were affecting me here. Speed had never been one of my gifts.

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