A loud buzzing filled her head. Her hands curled into fists, the chains clinking between them. Her stomach burned and heart pounded blood that felt hot,molten, with rage.
Now, she wanted blood.
“Open your eyes, Raphael.” Her voice was low, but it echoed around the ruined chamber. “Your sense of right and wrong has been warped by blind adherence to a flawed system.Youare blinded.”
“The rules must be followed,” he snapped, stalking toward her. He stopped outside her sigil and jabbed a finger at her. “They are all that keep this Earth from chaos. Demons do not change or grow. Demons cannot love. Demons cannot care for anyone except themselves!”
“Are you dumb?” Eva hissed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and if you took a minute to pull your head out of your ass, you’d know that.Ifyour squirrel brain is capable of that kind of comprehension!”
“Silence, creature!” Raphael shouted, pointing the sword in his other hand at her.
But Eva wasn’t keeping silent. “You think demons are evil? Listen to yourself! You’re planning to murder two people in cold blood just to prove a point!”
“You’re an abomination!” He spun away from Sunshine, Eva’s goading having ignited his temper. “Your very existence is a stain upon this world.” He swept past Sunshine and marched toward Eva’s sigil. “I am the power here! I am the enforcer. I decide who lives and dies!”
“You’re nothing but an overgrown man child that someone made the mistake of giving a sword to!” Eva shouted right back. In her Nephilim form, she matched Raphael’s height, and evidently, his temper as well.
“I will slay you where you stand!”
“Sunshine!”
Sunshine glanced over at Raum’s shout just as Raphael swung his sword, forcing Eva to duck to avoid the deadly blade. Raum was pointing at the floor. Sunshine glanced down…and saw the smudge Raphael’s footprint had made in the chalk line of her sigil when he swept past.
The magic was broken. The sigil’s blue glow had extinguished, but she’d been too distracted by the fighting to notice.
Without a thought, she charged.
In only two steps, she plowed into Raphael. Leaping onto his back between his wings, she flung the manacles’ chain around his neck, pulled taut, and crossed her wrists behind his head. Raphael froze in shock for a brief instant. And then he choked and stumbled back, dropping his sword with a clatter as his hands instinctively rose to his throat.
The cuffs bound the abilities of any angel wearing them. And when looped around Raphael’s neck, completing the circuit for the magic to connect, they bound his too.
He clawed at the chain, trying to get a grip to loosen it and clear his airway. Sunshine pulled her wrists apart in opposite directions, tightening the cross in the metal, closing the gap even further. Raphael’s wings flapped frantically, trying to dislodge her, but she held on tighter, anchoring her legs around his hips. Distantly, she heard Raum and Eva shouting from their respective sigils.
For them, she had to hold on.
Raphael charged backward, and Sunshine’s back slammed into the concrete wall. It felt like she’d been hit by a semitruck. She screamed against the pain but refused to loosen her hold.
Raphael ran forward, stopped, and then charged back. Again, her back hit the wall. This time, her skull smacked against the concrete. Lights danced in her vision, and her head swam.Don’t you dare loosen your hold, Sunshine!
Raum’s shouts echoed in her ears. The look of fear in Eva’s eyes was burned into her brain. The story of how Raphael had betrayed her and ruined her life replayed on a loop.
She’d lost everything because of him, and then he’d had the audacity to blame it on her. He’d left her to suffer in Hell. He’d stolen Raum’s memories. He’d lectured her while she lay sick and traumatized in her bed, criticizing her carelessness for allowing herself to get captured. He’d threatened people she loved—goodpeople—as part of his quest to stroke his narcissistic ego, and he couldn’t recognize the evil in what he was doing.
She was suddenly sure, for the first time in her existence, that she understood the meaning of the wordhate. A dark wrath consumed her until her body numbed and her mind cleared, and she fixed on the target of her newfound hatred with single-minded focus.
As she crashed against the wall again, she screamed at the pain in her spine, but she didn’t loosen her hold.
She held on tighter.
* * *
Raum watchedin horror as Raphael slammed Sunshine into the concrete. His rage was so immense, it felt like his body wouldn’t be able to contain it. He would have shifted into demon form, but the sigil wasn’t big enough.
All he could do was stand there and watch while Sunshine’s screams echoed around the dark chamber.Just let go!he wanted to shout at her, but he knew she wouldn’t.
So he was going to have to help her.
Without really knowing what possessed him, he charged forward to the edge of the sigil he was trapped in. He knew what would happen. He’d been electrocuted by sigil magic many times throughout his life, and it was never pleasant. And Empyrean magic was ten times stronger than Temporal magic.
