68. WEN

Godric’s expression becomes almost genial as jeers explode all around.

As they subside, he speaks, and everything inside me caves under the impact of his mellow tones. If they were directed at me, they would have been enough to break my mind with terror.

“You know, lads, I started today contemplating a massacre. Because some wet-nosed cadets looked at her in a way I didn’t appreciate. Now you go and threaten to damage, degrade and defile her.” He tuts, shaking his head, meeting my eyes, the passion and indulgence there almost short-circuiting my consciousness. “You wanted to start Phase Two? Your wish is my command. It starts right here and now. This is when I start shaping you into the ruthless and unstoppable warrior you’re meant to be.”

A solemn cast enters his flaming gaze as he places his fist over his heart and bows to me, the salute before the first stance of Melek. “This is for you, my bane.”

He turns to the nephilim closing in on him like hyenas around a lion, looking like a god of vengeance about to perpetrate punishment on souls he has already condemned. “I feel remiss that I didn’t train you, you sorry fuckers. Let me rectify my oversight, and give you your first, and last, lesson. I bestow upon you the first strike.”

Soaking in cold sweat as agony starts to recede, I rasp, “Godric, no. Don’t do this. They’re all under the influence.”

“Whatever that influence is, it only unearthed the reality of their feelings.”

“We can’t punish people for how they feel!”

“I can. And I will. They threatened you, my bane. They relinquished the privilege to breathe.”

“I forgive them, okay?”

He gives me a reprimanding glance, the ultimate in posh haughtiness and cerebral wrath. “And I will punish you for that. After I’m done with them.”

“Godric, there are dozens of them! And they’re not run-of-the-mill Chicken Wing Fallen. They’re your kind.”

“They’re not my kind.”

The way he said that. If I ever had doubts he’s unique, I would have had none left.

“Whatever they are, they’re currently insane, and they also hate your guts!”

The men watching our exchange in apparent fascination, laugh uproariously at my distress. They consider it very legitimate, and seem certain they will fulfill their threats to both of us.

Godric’s scary-sexy smile returns. “Your worry for me is both misplaced, and mind-bending.”

I try to rise to my feet, and the forcefield shrinks.

Forced to sit back on the ground I yell, “Your mind is bent all right. Please Godric, you’ve done enough because of me.”

“Nothing I do because of you, or for you, will ever be enough.”

“That would sound great, if you weren’t risking your life and contemplating mass slaughter,” I shout, desperation ratcheting with every breath. “I never want you doing things you can’t come back from, because or for me!”

“I don’t want to come back. I feel right for the first time in my life.”

“You’re all wrong right now, Godawful! Totally fucking insane.”

“I’ll fuck you insane, later.” His dimples reappear, and he even adds a wink. That alone makes me sag against my invisible cage like a wet rag. “Now, sit back and pay attention. This is a rare learning opportunity.”

“No!” My yell yawns like a distorted recording as the damn slo-mo effect takes hold of me again.

As a last gamble, I try to reach him mentally, hoping it might jog him out of this insanity.

It doesn’t work. It’s like the Godric I know isn’t there anymore. Worse, he is, just beyond reach. As if I’m seeing him through a one-way mirror from another plane of existence.

What happens next is too much for me to fully register or retain, even in this slowed-down state.

Their numbers, their speed, the barrage targeting Godric, with the devastation of magical weapons and Grace powers. While he—he just floats there, taking one ripping stab, charring zap and thunderclap blow after another. He’s not hitting back with either his sword, or his Level Nine powers. When he blocks, he only does with Melek.

I understood this when he was fighting Isaiah, who also abided by the same rule. I felt certain it’s a Nephilim thing, that they’re forbidden from using their powers against each other. A powerful enough law not even madness could negate.

But that’s not the case here. Godric has been right to hate having these nephilim in his Guard. They’re a poisonous weed planted in his elite force by the archangels, with no allegiance to him, or to their race.

From the heat that reaches me even at this distance and within the forcefield, many have Elemental Graces, and are channeling them through their magical weapons. These penetrate even Godric’s indestructible clothes, and seem to be burning him from the inside out.

The stench of his charring flesh hits me, and I vomit again.

I no longer care what he does as long as he comes out of this alive, and whole. And I don’t know if it’s possible, for even him, to survive such an all-out attack.

Even if he does, and can heal from any injury, I know it still hurts. Terribly. I will never forget the absolute suffering stamped on his every inch when he came back to save me from Azazel’s Ligare.

I can’t see him hurting like that again.

Tears burn down my cheeks as I scream for him to unleash every iota of his Level Nine powers. Even if the tiny Mani inside me is whispering that if he did, this whole region would go up in smoke.

My screams die down as I see him again, and I realize what he meant when he said to pay attention. And why he’s not using his powers. He’s showing me what Melek can do, even without packing its elements with his super strength.

I thought I’d gotten a full demonstration during his fight with Azazel’s Cadre. But if I thought his performance was a work of art then, he’s taking it to levels that are almost impossible to comprehend, demonstrating hundreds of blocks, each designed to defuse and derail his adversaries’ attack.

Then he moves to counterstrikes, then to strikes. Then to damage. From there, he launches into destruction. In that, he is a virtuoso.

The other lesson he’s imparting is in the value of giving opponents first strike. As these nephilim aren’t his men, he needed to study them and their methods first. He gave them the rope of overconfidence, then used it to hang them with.

I also think he just loves to play with his prey. Even if his pattern seems to be that he loses interest fast.

Now he goes for the kill, showing me how he uses attackers’ momentum and mistakes to dismantle them, literally. “Heads will roll” is no metaphor in his case.

As torn apart bodies rain down from the air to splatter on the ground in slabs of mangled flesh and gory cartilage and bone, a vicious thrill expands inside me. It delights in the privilege of witnessing this god of carnage in his element, in the pride that he believes I have the potential to be as good as that. As terribleashim. And that he’d train me until I am.

I’m wondering if I should be sickened at my twisted desires when alarm swamps everything else. More than a dozen of the largest, and seemingly strongest of those left, surround Godric, and pour all their powers in one lethal surge.

No Melek move can counteract that. He needs to strike back, use his powers, now?—

Everything detonates as I see the shockwave spreading out of Godric, repelling their onslaught. I don’t know if it hits the forcefield or not as all my senses cease and I fall back into the void.

When I’m catapulted out again, I’m lying face down and unable to move.

Panic drenches me, thinking I’ve broken my neck, until the searing pain in my chest registers.

I’ve never welcomed feeling anything more.

Pain means intact nerves. Good. Great. I’d rather not pit my healing ability against something as radical as a severed spinal cord.

I draw a breath of relief, only to choke on it. I cough, and a hot, viscous wetness pours from my lips. It’s then I realize that I celebrated a lesser injury too fast.

Broken ribs are preferable, as long as they don’t injure a lung. From my inability to breathe, and the blood seeping from my mouth, both have been punctured and collapsed.

Even if my healing kicks in instantaneously, it won’t get rid of the blood filling my chest and suffocating me.

A scream for Godric detonates inside my mind.

Godric, please, stop. Come to me. I need you—now!

But I’m the only one who hears my desperation. I have no voice, vocal or mental. I will drown in my own blood, with him right there, within sight, but out of reach.

Always out of reach …