“Get Nora,” Aisling said, tugging on Drake’s shirt. He said nothing, just nodded at Pál, who had returned with István. Pál disappeared out the door.

“I didn’t steal anything,” Cyrene squeaked, suddenly looking afraid despite the fact that she was in possession of more power than she knew how to use. Her eyes widened as he continued toward her, the black glow between her hands fading to nothing as she pointed. “May gave it to me!”

Magoth whirled around and pinned me back with a look that chilled me to my toenails. “You I will deal with later, slave.”

“This isn’t good,” I muttered to Gabriel. He wrapped an arm around me, narrowing his eyes at Magoth until the latter turned back to my twin.

“Return it, and I will let you live,” Magoth said, gliding toward her.

Cyrene’s gaze flickered from me to him. “I . . . I . . . May wouldn’t like that.”

“No, I wouldn’t, any more than I like Magoth threatening you. If you have a bone to pick with anyone, it’s me, so stop trying to intimidate Cyrene. She has no idea how to give your power away, and she wouldn’t do so even if she did.”

Magoth turned slowly to face me as I spoke, his eyes black pools that promised retribution.

Instantly, Gabriel was in front of me, the wrath demon’s sword held easily in his hand, his legs braced in an obvious battle stance.

Nora and Pál appeared in the doorway just as Magoth said, “You think you can stop me with a pathetic blade, dragon?”

Gabriel raised the sword. “Try me.”

I think Magoth would have—I truly think that even though he knew he didn’t have enough power to confront Gabriel and win, he was enraged enough that he would try to get through Gabriel to reach me. Luckily, Nora took the situation in almost immediately, and slapped a binding ward on him.

He snarled and spat out curses while she quickly drew an even-stronger confinement circle around him.

“I’m sorry, Drake, but I will need Aisling’s help. I’ve never done this before,” she said a few minutes later.

Drake started to object, but Aisling grabbed his arm and used it to haul herself to her feet. “On it, Nora. Drake, stop glaring—your face will freeze like that. You can hold me, if you like, while we do this.”

Magoth realized at that exact moment what they intended, and turned his ire onto me.

“Wife!” he bellowed. “I will take you with me! By all that is unholy, this I swear to you—you will pay for the treachery you have performed this day!”

I leaned into Gabriel, drawing strength from him. “This isn’t going to be pretty, you know.”

He turned me to face him, his mouth warm on mine as he spoke. “I can stop it.”

“No. It really is the only way. I just hope Nora is fast, because Magoth knows that he will have very little time to inflict a punishment on me before I’m summoned back.”

“Is there no other way?” he asked, licking my lips with dragon fire.

“No. Just tell her to be quick, OK?”

Magoth screamed, a horrible sound that was punctuated by several explosions of glass objects in the rooms.

“I’m so glad we had the window glass demon-proofed,” I heard Aisling say as Magoth’s scream rose higher and higher, piercing my brain.

I wrapped my arms around Gabriel’s head, clutching him tight to me as I kissed him, taking in his dragon fire, letting it wrap around me, wrap around us, bonding us together in a fiery melding of love, regret, and passion.

“Shadow, little bird,” was the last thing I heard before Magoth, banished by Aisling and Nora to the Akashic Plain, summoned me to his side.

I hit the ground running, shadowing instinctively as Magoth gathered what remained of his power and whipped it around me, yanking me back to him.

“Did you think you would escape this?” he snarled, his eyes burning with black revenge.

At best guess, Nora would take about three minutes to complete the summoning, which meant I had to stay alive long enough for there to be anything left of me to summon. There was only one answer for that—I shifted into dragon form and slammed my tail upside Magoth.

An interesting note about the Akasha: because it is outside the realm of reality, what applies beyond it does not necessarily apply within. Although Magoth had been stripped of most of his powers, in the Akasha, what he had was amplified, enlarged, and strengthened. He didn’t have the ability to get himself out, but he was overall more than he was in our reality.

I threw everything I had into the slam against him, and fully expected him to go flying. He didn’t. He grabbed my tail as I hit him, and used the momentum to throw me a good fifty feet, striking a spiked outcropping of rock with enough force to knock me out for a few seconds.

When I came to, I was in human form again, and Magoth was crouched over me, my dagger in his hands, both of which were raised over my chest.

“First I will dig out your heart and slowly crush it beneath my heel. Then I will hack off all your limbs, slowly, so you can feel each stroke of your blade; then I will sever the veins in your neck one at a time, so that you can feel each exquisite moment as your brain is starved of blood. The last thing you see will be me, licking your blood off the dagger. The last thought you have will be that I destroyed you even as I helped make you.”

“You always were such a ham,” I said, every atom of my being aching. “Overacting every scene, just as you are now.”

“Cunnus,” he snarled, plunging the dagger into my heart.

Chapter Sixteen

“. . .What mortals sometimes think of as limbo, a place where beings are sent to be punished.”

“I know what it is. I may be an elemental being, but I am familiar with things beyond my domain, like the Akasha. What I don’t know is how you expected to get Mayling out of there.”

“It’s tricky, but not impossible. It helps that Nora had summoned her from Abaddon before. There’s some sort of a sympathetic link between the two of them now that eases the more difficult summoning from the Akasha, which is why it only took Nora three tries to get May. Oh good, it looks like Gabriel has brought her around.”

I opened my eyes to find those of the purest silver peering down at me with concern.

“I’m not dismembered?” I asked the eyes.

Tiny little laugh lines appeared around them as Gabriel smiled. “No.”