4. Colt

"We'll catch him!" Colt cries, spinning in the air like a torpedo after him, but the cackle of the witch stops him in midair.

"You think it will be that easy, demon?" She huffs a breath of air, fighting against the celestial cage even if it's fruitless. "These caves are nothing but a maze, intricate and impossible to navigate unless you've been shown the way. Even a demon can fall prey to the traps and pitfalls, you?—"

"I've had enough of this," Gabby whispers fiercely.

Colt's head jerks just in time to watch Gabby pull the Spear of Destiny from her bag and throw it like a javelin straight at the witch's chest.

"No!" he cries, but it's too late. The spear pierces the witch's sternum, exploding out of her back in a spray of blood.

"What?" Gabby shrugs, walking over to the dead witch as she waves her hand to dispel the cage.

"She had information, Gabby." Colt flaps his wings, slowly lowering himself to the ground. With concern written all over his face, he puts his hands on Gabby's cheeks. Her eyes are brazen, lacking regret. Her attention keeps darting toward the exit where the last member of the cult fled. Where he took the most important part of the obsidian.

"She said the cult's doing something we don't understand. She said they were trying to keep it out of the wrong hands. We could have questioned her and learned more about Vladimir." He keeps his voice gentle, his thumbs rubbing over her cheekbones as he bends close to her face.

"There will be more people to question, people less dangerous than that witch," Gabby cries, defending herself. She tries to pull away from Colt, tries to remove his hands as she licks her lips. She can't seem to look away from where the obsidian shard disappeared.

"Gabby, please," Colt begs, drawing her attention back to him like a snapping rubber band. "What's going on? You aren't acting like yourself."

"Acting like myself?" she scoffs, shrugging his hands off her and putting the Spear bag in the bag. For a moment her eyes go distant, her hand still in the bag even though the Spear has long since left her grasp. She shivers slightly, and Colt's blood runs cold.

"I think you should let me carry the shards for a while, my angel," he says gently, reaching towards her shoulder bag as if he's worried he'll startle a wild animal.

"What? No!" Gabby gasps, taking two steps away from him. "Listen," she wets her lips again, eyes shifting back and forth from him to the cave exit, "we don't have time for this. If that guy is truly gone, we need to move onto the fourth stone. We can't wait. If we get them all, they'll have no choice but to come to us with the last one, and then…then…" She grins, her arm flexing as her hand wraps around something deep in the bag.

"I don't know…" Colt's voice waivers, but his body responds to the closeness of his angel and melts into her embrace. He's worried about her, beyond worried. As the night progressed, she became more and more obsessed. They set out to save the world, but the gleam in her eyes is making him wonder if the power the obsidian offers has become Gabby's ultimate goal. It's changing her, molding her into someone Colt is beginning to not recognize.

He sets his chin on the top of her head as they embrace, and his eyes wander over to the witch. She talked to them as if they were the bad guys, as if all this time they were fighting the evil presence after the power of the obsidian. Colt shudders, a dark premonition beginning to form in his mind, but he can't quite grasp the scope of what's happening in front of him.

"I think we should go back to Veritas. There has to be another source of power?—"

"Are you kidding?" Gabby pushes away from him, her face drawn tightly in confusion. "We already have two stones, Colt. The third one we missed. We can't fail again. I will not fail again!"

"Gabrielle, you didn't fail," Colt insists, but she's already turned her back to him.

He steps forward, reaching for her, but as he does her bag begins to glow with an ominous, dark pulsation. Gabby's muttering, power spiraling around her and building so bright that Colt has to shield his eyes. Her wings snap out, stretching, pulling as far as they can as they point towards the ceiling. Gravity seems to draw away from her and she rises a foot off the ground, her hair floating as if underwater.

"The fourth stone will be mine, Colt," she says over her shoulder. There"s a flash of something unfamiliar in her crystalline blue eyes, but her soft smile is the same one he knows and loves. She turns forward again, and Colt's breath hitches as she pulls out the two shards and holds them above her head as her chanting continues.

"I will complete you, obsidian. Lead the way."

Without the spell from Blaise, without the recited words even he's memorized, Gabby's called on the fourth stone. His jaw is slack, eyes wide, as Gabby floats back to the floor. She turns to him with a bright beaming smile, the one he's gotten so used to, and bounces on her toes.

"The obsidian wants to be whole, Colt! It showed me the way. Come, hurry, it's just a quick flight?—"

"Gabby! What was that, what did you do?" Colt cries, grabbing her shoulders and trying to get her to focus.

She blinks, innocently confused, and looks up at him with big, round eyes. "What do you mean? Blaise's spell was letting the cult find the stones before us. Lighting the way to it like a beacon. We're only two people but they're all over the place, searching, waiting for us to point the way. I had to do something."

"How did you know to call on the power of the stones? I've never seen anything like what you just did, Gabby, and I've been around long enough to have seen it all." Colt's voice is laced with a deep-seated worry. The woman before him is the same he's known and loved, her excitement shining through everything that just happened, but he can't disregard what she's just done because she seems normal again.

"The obsidian told me, silly," she says nonchalantly, as if it's obvious. Gabby stands on her tip-toes and pecks Colt softly on the lips before grinning. "You'll never guess where we get to go next!"

The Great Pyramidsof Giza rise from the horizon like the harbingers of death. Colt's flying behind Gabby, watching her closely. The further they got away from the cave, the more determined she became. There"s no more spiraling together in flight, no more wings brushing in an embrace midair. Gabby's streamlining toward the pyramids with hard determination written all over her face.

Colt's mind flashes back to Hell, back to when the corruption of the obsidian first started to leak from Dunabar. The darkness was more like a shadow, nothing to worry about as it crept beyond the walls meant to contain it. It was a queer feeling to be near it, as if you didn't want to be there but had no idea why. It wasn't until the plant life around it started decaying and the demons who lived there became more rash and brutal than ever that anyone noticed the problem.

Dunabar was supposed to retain the great power, protect it, but right before Colt's eyes, the corruption became complete. There were other things going on in Hell, other responsibilities, that kept everyone distracted from the spreading darkness. Lucifer's dream of a paradise had been utterly and completely destroyed. They all knew, but the foreboding of being near the building redirected their minds away from the threat.

Is that what's happening to Gabby? Is she becoming Dunabar personified?

Colt thinks he can see blackness tingeing the tips of her fingers, as if the obsidian's rubbing off in more ways than one. He knows he can't stop her, not without hurting her, so he resigns himself to protecting her at any cost.

"How are we going to get inside?" Colt calls over the wind rushing by his ears.

Gabby laughs, turning in the wind to fly on her back and smile at him. "You'll see," she says, and lets him fly over her long enough so that she can stroke his face lovingly. His Gabby is still there, the love still burning strong in her eyes, but will it be enough to protect her from the corruption she's holding?

Colt follows his angel to the tallest pyramid and lands beside her near the middle of the great stone legend. Their wings snap back in unison, as they always do, but this time Colt makes sure to stroke Gabby's before they disappear. It's as if he needs to touch her, to ground her to this moment on this mortal plane, before she floats away from him into the ether.

"Watch this." Gabby smiles brightly as she pulls one of the shards of obsidian out of her bag. It pulses black light, and the closer she gets to the stones, the brighter the glow is. "Without the first shard, we would never have been able to get this one. They're intertwined, protected. This one demands the first stone like a key." Her voice is quiet, shushed with an awe that she can't contain.

Colt watches in worried anticipation as she presses the shard to the stones of the pyramid and the cold, hard surface seems to melt and shape around the shard. "How…" he gasps, stepping forward and putting a hand on Gabby's shoulder.

Her smile couldn't get wider if it tried, and as the stones melt away into a passage inside the pyramid, she doesn't hesitate. She walks inside, Colt's hand falling empty in her wake.

"Gabby?"

She doesn't turn as he calls her, doesn't even seem like she heard him. Colt's face hardens; it's getting worse. He follows her inside, one foot after the other, his eyes only on Gabby's hand as she clutches the shard so hard her knuckles are turning white.

Inside the pyramid the path seems to spiral, one straight line to a corner, and then a sharp right turn. They walk for what seems like ages in a maze with only one direction, the hallways becoming shorter and shorter until they open up in an enormous room in the center. Colt looks up, and up, and up. He hadn't realized the slight decline of his steps, and as he gazes to the ceiling, he can see a light coming through from the pinnacle of the pyramid.

Gabby breathes a sigh of sheer awe, but she doesn't turn to face Colt. "This is magnificent! Can you believe this was in here the whole time?"

Rows and rows like a reversed version of the pyramid outside hold countless treasures. In the center of the room is a solid gold platform on which an ornate sarcophagus lays under the shadow of the Egyptian god Osiris. His hands are held over the sarcophagus, palms up, hundreds of feet in the air.

"Fitting that it would be Osiris we see when we come to claim the shard," Colt says, marveling at the ornate tomb all around him. Osiris, the god of death, ruler of the Egyptian underworld.

"How much do you want to bet the shard is in his hands?" Gabby turns to Colt for the first time since arriving at the pyramids, and Colt swears the whites of her bright eyes flash with shadow. Before he can say anything, her wings snap from her back and with one enormous wave, she vaults into the air.

"Gabby?" he calls, but she doesn't answer. He only has one choice, and that's to follow. His onyx wings come out slower, hesitant even, but he bursts front the ground leaving a plume of dust behind him.

Gabby and Colt land on opposite hands, facing each other, and looking at a pool of dark liquid that's cupped between the giant palms. Gabby steps forward, excited, but Colt leaps over the pool and crashes into her. As one, they plummet from the outstretched hands, only stopping when Colt's wings flap and reverse their direction.

"Let me go, Colt! It's right there!" Gabby hisses, but Colt wraps his arms around her tightly. He stares into her face with such intense concern that Gabby blinks, seeming to come back to herself momentarily.

"Do you trust me?" Colt whispers, and Gabby hesitates. She worries her bottom lip with her teeth, looking from him back to the hands. Silently, she nods, as if fighting some internal battle she can't control. "Look," he says, flapping his wings so they gain altitude slowly. When they finally rise to the level of the hands again, Colt's eyes drift over to what he'd seen before he acted.

"That isn't normal water, see?" Holding her with one arm he points, and it's only then that the steam from the water becomes visible in Gabby's eyes.

"What…what is that?" she balks, shivering in his arms. "I almost walked right in…"

"Al-Hameem, the water of Hell."

"We went to Hell and I didn't see that anywhere," Gabby exclaims, clutching him as if the very real fear she should be feeling is finally setting in.

"It is an Egyptian punishment. Allah cursed the people of Hell with intense thirst, but the only water available is Al-Hameem, a boiling viscous liquid filled with pus and disease. ‘Then shall you, O you who err and call it a lie! Most surely eat of the tree of Zaqoom,'" Colt says, quoting the Qur'an. "‘And fill your bellies with Al-Hameem, and those who are made to drink this boiling water will so have their bowels rent asunder.' One drop of this water on a mountain is said to be able to render that mountain to ash. If you touch it, you'll be cursed with an unquenchable thirst and disease until you die."

Gabby shivers in his arms, tears pricking her eyes as they pool over her eyelashes. "If you hadn't been here…" she whispers.

"We're destiny, Gabby. I was always meant to be at your side."

She sniffles, burying her face in his chest as she slips the shard of the obsidian back in her pocket. "How are we supposed to get it out?"

"I don't know," Colt whispers, landing them both on the fingertips of the statue and staring down into the pools. "Just a moment. Stay right here, promise?"

Gabby looks from the boiling poisonous water to Colt and a single tear rolls down her face before she nods.

"I need to hear you say it, my angel," he presses, every bone in his body telling him not to leave her alone. Not here, not with so much on the line.

"I swear on the life of my mother, I will not move from this spot."

Colt nods once, grimly, and dives off the hand. He doesn't spread his wings until he's a few feet from the ground level, and when he does the force of the wind caused by his flight throws jewels and coins into the air all around him. Colt reaches out, snatching a solid gold ring with a ruby inset in his hands. He looks up, his lips a thin line of worry, but he can still see Gabby's wings trembling slightly in Osiris' hands.

"I've got what I need," he calls up to her.

She looks down and smiles sadly. He decides then and there that he'll do everything in his power to make her smile again. It's not her fault the stones are affecting her, and she needs to know that.

When he lands beside her again, he scoops her up under his arm and kisses her forehead. In his free hand he rolls the ring showing it to her, and her lips thin as she nods. Colt tosses it in the water, neither of them needing to communicate because they're so in tune. The moment the metal hits the surface it starts to bubble, sizzling and popping. Colt jerks Gabby behind his back protectively as the water sputters, using his wings to shield them both. They watch in disbelief as the ruby cracks and shatters into a million pieces, the gold liquifying almost on impact.

"Oh, my god," Gabby breathes, and she turns her face away from the sight. "I almost walked right into that!"

"I know." Colt sighs, rubbing her hands as she wraps them around his waist from behind.

"Thank you." Her voice is small, full of pain, and Colt's heart constricts. He turns in her arms and cups her face.

"Whatever's happening, Gabby, I need you to tell me. I need you to trust me. If you died just now? I would have followed you in." Colt's shoulders heave with emotion.

Gabby tangles her hands in his wine-red hair and tries to hold back her own sobs. She turns her face up to the pinnacle of the pyramid and closes her eyes tightly.

"I love you, Colt."

"I love you, too."

For a moment they stay like that, just embracing, proving to themselves they're still alive. When Gabby opens her eyes she's looking right into the face of Osiris, and the statue"s eyes seem to glint with victory. As if it knows there's no way to get the fourth stone.

Colt stands up, presses his lips to her temple, and then follows her line of sight. "It's like he's mocking us," Colt says, feeling the same effect. "If I didn't know better, I'd think his eyes just…got brighter?"

Gabby jolts, staring harder at the statue, and then her lips stretch into a smile. "Colt, the water is a decoy!"

"What?" he looks back to her, confused.

"Trust me?" she asks, repeating his previous words, and he nods.

She reaches in her bag and pulls out the stones, holding them in her palms like Osiris holds the Al-Hameem. Colt watches as the shards begin to glow with their dark eerie light, but as he watches, he sees the reflection of the stones in the water spread apart. That shouldn't be possible, it can't be a decoy if they're still in there.

"Look up," Gabby whispers, and Colt lifts his chin slowly to look Osiris in the face again. His eyes are glinting, glowing. The same black light as in Gabby's hands. "The water only shows the reflection, a distraction. The stones are in the pupils of the statue's eyes."

"Uriel, you damned genius," Colt says, grinning at the statue.

As one, Colt and Gabby take wing, then hold themselves in midair as each of them goes for an eye. As one, they reach forward, and the moment Colt touches the shard, he knows what Gabby felt. The jolt of power, so strong it feels like electricity in his veins, hits him just as fast as it fades. Colt eases the shard from the pupil, leaving an empty hole in its place. He can feel the evil in it, just like that of Dunabar. As Gabby flies closer to retrieve it, he instead places it directly in her bag.

"Just in case contact is what's making this worse," he assures Gabby as she frowns at him.

He watches her as she slowly puts her stone in the bag, noticing the tips of her fingers are indeed blackening slowly. They get even blacker when her hand is inside the bag and Colt realizes she touched the shard, anyway.

Fear seizes his heart, but he hides it from his face. He doesn't think she can control the urge to touch them, to possess them.

The fight to save the three realms just amped up.

He'll have to help Gabby save the world, and then find a way to save her as well.

Images of the dream he had so long ago pop into his mind unbidden, the table, the stones. He remembers how they pulled together to become one, remembers what happened when Gabby touched it.

He won't lose her to the obsidian.

He'll die first.