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Chapter Fifteen: Triple Crossing End Blow

Annie took us back up the stairs, but we didn't stop in the destroyed throne room. The gray morning light shone through the hole from Gabriel's entrance yesterday and my heart plummeted to my stomach. It was the day. We kept walking, right through the room to a door on the other side.

When she opened the door, I nearly screamed. It was a dank, dark room, complete with windowless stone walls and shackles hanging from the cieling.

"You're gonna hang us?" Jacob asked, and a lesser demon grunted and pushed him in the room with his spear, bringing to my attention the eight demons trailing us for the first time.

Annie ignored him and suddenly Gabriel came striding in.

"Good morning," he said cheerfully. He snapped his fingers and the guards grabbed us, two to a person with the remaining two pointing their weapons at us. Gabriel stood in front of us and grinned.

With another snap of his fingers, Dillon was lifted by the armpits and his feet were put in the shackles. He hung upside down, his face turning red as he swung slightly.

Annie went to grab for Dillon, but one of the demons pushed her away. Her face, once serene and peaceful, contorted with rage.

"You said he would be safe!" she shrieked. "You promised you wouldn't hurt him!"

Gabriel regarded her coolly and frowned. "Sacrifices must be made, Annie. After we lost the older woman, we need another backup soul. Dillon is all we have," he informed her curtly. She glared at him and backed up until she reached the door, then spun on her heel and raced down the hall. I could hear her footsteps echoing as she ran through the throne room.

"Now then," Gabriel said. "You chain them up, you bring the girl with me."

Before I registered that Jacob would be chained as well, I was grabbed around the waist and thrown over the shoulder of one of the taller demons. I stared at the ground while he followed Gabriel, heading deeper into the center of the palace.

It had been three hours since I'd last seen Eve. The demon had picked her up and carried her away while I was hung up next to Dillon. The guards stood just outside the close door, waiting in silence.

Dillon, who hung to my left, wriggled around a bit and swung back and forth. Daniel stared blankly at the ground, his gray eyes swirling. I looked to the door, thinking about Eve.

Would it hurt her to have her soul used as a metaphorical pair of scissors?

"Hey Dillon?" I said hoarsely. My throat was dry and scratchy. He stopped purposely swinging and allowed his body to rock backwards and forwards as he turned to look at me.

"Yeah?"

"I love you man. Hey Daniel?"

"Love you too Jakey," he joked with a pained smile. I grinned and watched Daniel.

Daniel snapped out of his trance on the far end of the room and looked at me. "Yeah?"

"It was great meeting you." Daniel nodded and we lapsed into silence once more. Dillon stopped swinging after his momentum wore off and I began to swing myself to pass the time. My head buzzed and I heard my blood pounding in my ears as I clenched my abdomen and rocked forwards, then swung back and repeated the process until I was practically face-to-face with Daniel on each swing.

I stopped and eventually hung still. I didn't understand why they had to hang us. Maybe they were hoping to kill us off without any effort.

I wondered about Shawn. A strange part of me tried to figure out what it felt like to be erased, and the idea of it made me shudder. I couldn't fathom the concept of simply ceasing to exist; it was too terrifying.

"Do you think they'll-"

I was cut off by a loud thud and the door being shoved open. Annie, her multicolored eyes blazing and her red hair wild, stood in the doorway, a bloody brick in her hand.

"What in the-" Daniel stuttered.

"Annie?" Dillon asked.

Her eyes locked on him and a look of sorrow overcame her. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Sorry doesn't cut it," I growled, swinging my body at her. She dodged me and looked back at Dillon.

"I... I made a deal with Gabriel. If I helped him, he wouldn't hurt you. But he killed Shawn, and that hurt you more than anything else ever could. He broke his end deal, and now I'm here to break my end," she said.

"Why Dillon?" Daniel blurted.

"Because I love him," she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. She grabbed a sword for the dead body of a guard and cut the chains holding us up in one swipe. We hit the ground-hard-and she helped us up. She pushed opened the door and said, "Now let's go save the world."

Sneaking through the palace wasn't that hard, especially with Annie's powers. As it turned out, she had the power of illusion. She made it look as though the three of us were prisoners being escorted to another cell by her and some illusion guards. Nobody noticed a thing.

Because of that, we made it to the place where Eve was being kept fairly quickly.

And when we found her, we also found Gabriel, who attacked us.

My arms and legs felt like they were going to pop out of my sockets. The way they had me set up inside the "Shredder" stretched my limbs to the max.

The whole time, all I could do was watch in desperate fear. Gabriel was chanting something when Jacob, Dillon, Annie, and the guy who's name I still didn't know burst in.

The demon guards tried to attack them, but Annie put out a hand and a blast of black light turned them to ashes. Dillon came out behind her swinging a sword, which made contact with Gabriel's just before it cleaved her head off. Daniel shot an arrow at Gabriel, which he deflected with his sword, but it left an opening in his stomach that Jacob immediately went for with a spear. It jabbed into his side and Gabriel let out an unearthly scream, pushing them all away.

The three backed up into each other and watched Gabriel. The little voice inside my head was screaming at me to do something, but my wrists and ankles were trapped and I was feeling increasingly weaker. It was almost as if I was becoming detached from my body.

The Shredder, my mind whispered. It's separating your physical from your spiritual.

Gabriel suddenly swung his sword at Annie and it cut deep into her side. She screeched and fell backwards onto Dillon, who caught her and desperately tried to cover her wounds. I let out a shocked gasp and Jacob and the stranger both began sparring with Gabriel again, but he merely swiped them away.

"I only need three more deaths!" he shouted triumphantly as Annie's chest stopped rising and falling. Her body disentegrated into a glowing black mist that slowly disappeared, leaving Dillon covered in her blood.

Dillon grasped his sword and joined in the fray. I watched in terror as Gabriel stabbed straight through the stranger's chest, who made a gurgling sound before he evaporated into a glowing white mist and was gone. Gabriel took another swing and his sword cut deep into Jacob's leg. Gabriel made another lightning quick movement and stabbed Jacob's own spear into his stomach, grinning.

Jacob fell to the ground and Dillon stepped in to try to defend him, but Gabriel caught the edge of his blade and spun it out of his hand.

I saw the desperate look in Dillon's eyes as the sword pierced his chest, just like the stranger, and he too was gone in a spray of light.

The room began to glow a bright white. Gabriel laughed victoriously and jabbed the hilt of his sword into the ground at the center of the room. Through all the light, I could see Jacob struggling to breathe. Our eyes met and a tear ran down my cheek.

Gabriel turned to me and grinned. "Now that four lives have been taken here, your soul will be taken from your body and used to destroy the walls between the worlds. Thank you for making this so easy for me, Eve."

I felt an odd detached feeling, and then I couldn't feel my body at all.

The last thing I saw was Jacob mouthing "I love you" and an army of angels bursting through the door.