Dancing With Monsters (36 page)

I smiled, and curled my fingers around
his wrists. “I’m fine.” I reassured him.

“
The demons—they’re gone.”
Evie looked around smiling in a joyful relief. “You did it April,
and Seth!” She rejoiced. “We are free of the demons!”

“
Not all of them,” said a
voice behind her.

I turned to see Isaiah, hand raised
over his head, eyes fixed on Eveie, and mouth clenched tight as he
held a silver disk in his hand. With one quick movement, he
released the disk towards Eveie as Ella screamed wrapping her arms
around her mother.

Malachi yelled, pulling Ella away from
Eveie and wrapped his arms around the screaming girl.

Pushing Seth out of the way, and
without thinking about what I was doing, I lunged towards Eveie.
The disk sliced through the air like a sizzling blade that I caught
in my hand. It cut into my skin, but I felt no pain, instead, I
felt relieved I had saved Eveie.

Standing in front of Eveie with my arm
extended, I gazed into Isaiah’s eyes. I curled my fingers around
the disk crumbling it like it was a giant cookie, letting the
crumbs trickled from my hand to the ground.

“
This is The Isle of
Stars, and these are my lands you are treading on,” I said, with an
even voice, and a slight uncertainty that it was Ebony or Ezra that
was talking, but I didn’t sense them—only me and my words. “You are
here without permission and attempt to kill and make judgement on
someone you know nothing about.”

“
What is the meaning of
this?” Isaiah extended his questioning gaze to Edan. “Are you a
part of this?!” He yelled as more archangels all dressed in
grey-white clothing that sparkled like flexible armor, came from
behind Isaiah and looked at us with their penetrating
eyes.

I looked at them as they stood tall,
strong and beautiful behind Isaiah. I was in awe of their
beauty—like statues that had come to life. And then, through the
crowd Yolanda and Ayil, who looked slightly out of place among
them, stood beside Isaiah.

“
Have you gone against me,
and are taking the side of monsters and demons?” Isaiah asked as I
turned to Edan.

He didn’t answer as his mouth
trembled. Nessa, with her white hair and strong eyes, stood beside
Edan and slipped her hand into his with a disapproving look from
his father.

“
He can see things you
fail to see. You only see in black and white, good and bad, but
there are the grey places that exist where true loyalty lives.
Eveie is a demon, but she is a good demon that not only saved the
lives of the innocent, but helped protect us from the demons that
could have taken over this world, and you’d be fighting right
now.”

He gave me a disgusted look. “You know
nothing, monster, or whatever mongrel you are.” Isaiah’s mouth
tightened as if he had eaten a whole lemon. “Kill them all, and
take my son. I’ll deal with him later.” Isaiah fixed his eyes on
me. “Keep her body—I want to dissect it later.”

Yolanda and Ayil looked grimly at one
another as the twenty or so archangels raised their swords and
charged towards us.

As if something had suddenly exploded
inside of me, I raised my hands and felt strength blossom in me
like a geyser. My thoughts ran wildly from the first Taking I did
on the man in the alley, to the demon that I had barely touched his
soul. It was swirling inside of me like a tornado throwing around
cars, destroying buildings and reining chaos in its
path.

Stop, little
Fae!

A voice pierced through my head, but I
ignored it as the army of archangels fell to the ground until all
that was left was Isaiah. I locked my eyes with his, and ignored
everything around me as I put a shield up as I stood in front of
him.

Fear erupted in his eyes as his army
and weapons had turned useless to him. It was just him and
me.

“
I could kill you now, and
rid you of my lands, but I won’t.” I kept my unblinking eyes
entangled with his.

“
You’ve killed my army,
and have taken my son,” he breathed.

“
Your army, I did not
kill, and Edan made his own choice, and I’m giving you a choice as
well.” I pulled closer to Isaiah—almost on the verge of doing a
Taking, but different. “Demons are still with us, and will keep
trying to take over any lands they can. We are strong, but stronger
together.”

“
Are you asking me for an
alliance?” He bitterly asked. Isaiah’s ego, even in a dangerous
situation, knew no bounds.

“
Like I said, I could take
your energy and leave on the ground like crumpled paper waiting for
the wind to blow it away.” I held my gaze. “But you are Edan’s
father, and because of that reason too, I won’t hurt
you.”

His mouth tightened. “I’ve been around
for hundreds of years. I don’t think a little mutant is going to
bring me down.”

I reached for his collar and lifted
him up by it until his feet were off the ground.

“
It’s the unexpected
things that get us,” I said as I reached farther into him just to
give him a taste of what a Taking was like.

Little Fae,
stop!

Suddenly, the barrier I had put around
Isaiah and I, shattered. I let go of him as Rowain, the sky
serpent, descended from the sky and with a glance of her colored
eyes, casted me through the air and to the grassy knoll behind
me.

Feeling a sudden weakness, I laid down
on the ground as Malachi came to me.

“
April,” he said my name
as he pulled me up.

I looked to the sky to see more sky
serpent, all translucent, flying in groups like liquefied clouds
drifting in the blue sky.

The archangels slowly got up as the
sky serpents darted towards them like angry hornets.

“
You have proven yourself
to us, April Snow, but they all must die as they are impure to us.”
Rowain said as she took her silver talon and pierced it through
Isaiah.

Seth

“
No!” Edan yelled as he
ran to his father.

The sky serpents darted around us at
first as I ran towards Ayil and Yolanda.

“
Are you alright?” I asked
as they, along with the rest of Isaiah’s stunned army, stood up and
looked to the sky.

“
Sky serpents,” Yolanda
said, with eyes wide on me. “We can never fight them.”

“
How do we protect
ourselves?” Ayil asked. “We’ll never make it back to the
portal.”

Yolanda looked up at the sky filled
with what looked like hundreds of sky serpents. They haven’t
attacked us yet as the archangels in all of their white and silver,
looked up at the serpents that glided past us as if waiting for us
to make the first move.

“
They won’t attack us,”
Yolanda said, stepping out in the open as a sky serpent glided past
her with a hard look of its large eyes bleeding with color absorbed
from its surroundings.

“
I don’t think hundreds of
them would gather to not do anything.” Ayil stepped beside her and
then turned towards the archangels. “Draw your swords!”

“
No! Don’t!” Yolanda
desperately yelled as she waved her arms.

“
What are we going to do,
let them shish kabob us without so much as a fight?!” Ayil glared
at Yolanda as if she had gone mad.

“
Yolanda’s right,” I said,
as more sky serpents began to descend. “They won’t hurt us because
they do not want a fight. They want to see what we want to do. If
we fight, they will, if we don’t, they won’t.”

“
Are you an expert on sky
serpents?” Ayil asked with her hand on the hilt of her sword. “We
are outnumbered, but not by our enemy. This is The Isle of Stars.”
Yolanda looked at Ayil as if this should mean something. “They
would have killed us before we even stepped out of the
portal.”

“
Father!” I heard Edan
yell as he knelt next to his father’s body with April standing
beside him and looking up at Rowain. Nessa was beside Edan, and
both looked down at Isaiah.

Rowian, with eyes fixed on April,
suddenly took off leaving with a rush of wind.

“
They’ve already killed
one of ours…” Ayil slid her eyes to Yolanda.

“
Eveie!” April yelled as
she ran up to her and pushed the archangels that had surrounded the
demon.

April took Eveie by the hand as the
archangels showed no resistance, and went towards
Isaiah.

“
She’s going to heal him,”
Ella said, slipping up behind me.

Ayil, Yolanda and I looked down at her
as she smiled. “That’s what they want her to do.” Ella looked up at
the sky as the sky serpents continued to encircle us, but showed no
strike against us.

Watching from where we stood, Eveie
knelt on one side of Isaiah and April on the other. Eveie looked
down at Isaiah with compassion as she gently ran her hand over the
side of his cheek, and then said something to April and then to
Edan.

Eveie took April’s hand and placed it
over Isaiah’s fatal wound. April closed her eyes as Eveie did the
same and their hands, barely touching one another, glowed with a
bright light.

I watched until the light grew so
strong, it was like looking into the sun. We all turned away to
shield our eyes as the images of April, Eveie, Malachi, Nessa, and
Edan faded into the light.

Everything around us closed in as if a
giant blanket encircled around us, and all we could hear was the
sound of the sky serpents’ wings beating like ceremonial drums. I
looked up to see several of the creatures gliding casually over us.
They were truly magnificent in all of their translucent
beauty.

“
April and Eveie has done
them proud,” Ella said, as the light began to fade.

Yolanda and Ayil, along with the rest
of the archangels, rubbed and tried to focus their eyes from the
near blinding light. When my eyes returned to normal, I ran up to
them to see Isaiah blinking his eyes with confusion as Edan
repeated his name over and over while thanking April and
Eveie.

Ayil and Yolanda and all the
archangels, surrounded the resurrected head archangel with silent
awe and the wings of the sky serpents still beating
overhead.

April

“
You have done well, young
Fae,” Rowain said, as she hovered over us. “But your journey here
has just begun, and there is much to learn from us. Your father
waits for you…time he has not much of.” Her eyes, colorful as they
were, faded slightly. “You will continue his reign as you have
proven your worthiness to us. You rid us of demons, released the
one you had loved, and saved and reasoned with the angel that did
not plan to do the same to you.”

Bravery is nothing without
thought.

Rowain said privately to me, and
though I couldn’t see her smile, or even if she could, I felt her
warmth fill me.

You can come with me
now.

“
I will call for you soon.
Let me say goodbye to my friends,” I said, as Rowain nodded and
then took off.

I watched her go as I turned to see
Malachi halfway up the hill.

“
I think Isaiah must have
at least thanked Eveie at least a half dozen times.” He pointed
behind him.

I looked at them—angels, monsters and
demons all standing beside one another. “I never thought anything
like this would ever happen to me. All my life I felt I never
belonged and I was a freak.” I kept my gaze on them, and then met
Malachi’s blue eyes and smiled. All of my past worries and fears
seemed to melt when I stared into his eyes.

“
What,” he said, with a
laugh.

“
You have amazing eyes,” I
said.

“
So do you,” he replied
quickly.

“
They’re brown—nothing
special there—they are the color of mud.”

“
Well, yeah, a good match,
but where your eyes are the color of mud, as you compared them to,
your wings, and what’s in here,” he patted his chest where his
heart was, “surpasses any form of beauty this world has to offer.”
Malachi’s words where the most sincere words that I’ve ever
heard.

I stepped closer, and let my lips
brush past his. We kissed as we did when we entered the portal at
the night market in Nethopania, all tangled in the panels of
colorful cloth. It was at that moment everything changed, and
nothing would ever be the same for me again.

When I planned my escape from Sunrise
Acres, I just hoped to get a ride far away from there—never did I
expect to find a monster that opened a world that I would never had
guessed existed.

Seth

“
Well, where are you going
to go now?” Nessa asked.

We stood on the steps on the Light
Hall, on The Isle of Stars. How many monsters have done that? I
thought to myself as I gazed at the forest in the distance, and
then the jagged cliffs with waves that crashed into
them.

“
I don’t know,” I said,
with a shrug. “Ayil invited me to join her in Iethia to train with
her.” I looked at the magnificent pillars of clear stone that
pulsated with dim light, and sat in rows as if they were frozen
guards.