The Inner Circle: Holy Spirit (33 page)

Countless angels swooped this way and
that, carrying capsules containing what he could only assume was
black powder. The affiliated angels dropped the capsules wherever
they thought they could cause the most destruction. A second black
powder bomb struck the tree higher up. Jakob braced himself as the
structure shuddered and he watched in shock as one gigantic branch
sailed passed him on its way toward the ground. Demons fell after
it, having been knocked out or killed in the explosion.

Without wasting another second, Jakob
scrambled back up the stairwell until he found an entrance point
into the tree. He raced through a tunnel in which half the lanterns
had been blown out. One of them hit the ground and its oil spilt
across its length to burn furiously. Jakob took a minute to stomp
out the flames before pulling open a door on the ground and peering
down into darkness. He could make out the floor below and didn’t
think the drop was very far. Sliding through the doorway, he
allowed his legs to dangle as far as possible before releasing his
hold. The fall was brief but he hit the ground hard and moaned at a
sharp pain in his leg.

The tree shuddered
again, but this time it was accompanied by a
long and low tearing sound. Jakob gaped as cracks splintered their
way along the walls and the ceiling started to warp. He ignored the
pain in his leg and ran for his life shouting at every silt he
passed to do the same. When he reached the central cavity, Jakob
was forced to an abrupt halt.

‘
Hey,’ he called,
having spotted a silt descending from above. ‘Help me down.’ She
merely looked at him disparagingly and continued on her way.
‘Torrid,’ Jakob gritted his teeth, knowing the tree well enough to
be certain that without the Sa’Tanist stairwell he’d never make it
down without assistance.

‘
Jakob,’ Teah called
as she raced out of a library he’d passed a moment earlier. ‘What’s
going on?’

‘
The tree is under
attack,’ Jakob replied, unable to believe the words as he spoke
them.

‘
Maker,’ Teah said
disbelievingly. ‘Come on,’ she called, racing toward the inner
tree. Another large explosion made the tree moan deafeningly. The
walls splintered and the ceiling tilted away from them. Teah threw
her arms around Jakob and leapt over the edge, flaring her wings as
she went.

Twisting around in the angel’s
arms, Jakob caught a glimpse of the upper half of the tree as it
tilted, having been blasted right through. The tree was filled with
gusty wind. The whisp-filled sky was revealed above. Jakob’s heart
thundered in his chest as Teah expertly wove through the
criss-crossing branches as they plummeted.

‘
They will pay,’ he
heard her whisper through clenched teeth. ‘We will make them
pay.’

*

Ilgrin watched a second and then a
third bomb strike the exterior of the tree and explode. Silts
rained down from the sky, along with branches thousands of strides
in length that crushed countless others when they landed. Perhaps
it was shock or disbelief that held him in place. Ilgrin stared,
transfixed, until he realised the tree had been struck one too many
times. There was a deafening rumbling sound as it buckled halfway
up its length.

The upper half of the tree folded
forward and started to fall, knocking silts out of the crowded sky
as it went. Ilgrin leapt into the air and flew for dear life as the
distance between them became increasingly less. The giant mass of
timber flew past and the resulting gust of wind sent him
spiralling. Once he’d regained it, Ilgrin watched the half-tree
crush a massive length of the legion. Near the top half of the
tree, a flood of humans poured through the woods, swords flashing,
arrows shooting, and the occasional pistol going off with a
bang.

‘
Attack!’ Ilgrin
cried furiously. ‘Kill them all!’ He didn’t care who heard him. It
didn’t matter whether they were military or not. These filthy
creatures had destroyed the great tree and he would make them
suffer. ‘Attack!’ he cried out again, launching himself toward the
enemy and lunging for his scythe. Before long, others surrounded
him, flying in allegiance. Every eye was filled with righteous fury
and every hand gripped a weapon.

Ilgrin shut his wings and dove. He
snapped his toes around the head of a soldier and tore him into the
air. The man screamed in terror as his sword fell. He clung to
Ilgrin’s leg begging and screaming for his life. Ilgrin looked down
at him, a tiny voice begging and pleading in the back of his mind
that he not do what he was about to do. Ilgrin ignored the voice
and with a shake of his leg he watched the soldier fall to his
messy death. In a frenzied rage, Ilgrin swooped again in search of
his next victim.

The battlefield had been
determined with countless thousands of silts swooping about the
trees tearing up and destroying the human army. They were bees
who’d just had their hive sliced in half. Ilgrin’s heart filled
with a strange kind of pride as he watched his demons dominating
and destroying the piteously weak humans. It was almost cruel how
far superior his kind were. Tracing his eyes through the crowds,
Ilgrin sort desperately for one specific face, but he couldn’t find
it. Where was Far-a-mael? No matter how he searched, he couldn’t
find the old man.

Ilgrin threw his feet out as he beat
his powerful wings and snapped his toes around human shoulders. He
pitched his feet forward and watched as the weakling creature flew
howling into the distance. He hit the ground and rolled several
times. Ilgrin pounced on him and breathed into his face.

‘
You’re pathetic,’ he
hissed, pinning the human beneath one foot.

‘
Do what you must,’
the man growled before turning his head sideways to spit in the
dirt. Ilgrin gasped and pulled back at the sight of white pupils
glittering in the dark. He swallowed hard, his heart filling with
pain at what El-i-miir would’ve thought of what he’d
become.

‘
Run.’ Ilgrin pulled
away and launched himself into the air. But something snapped
around his soul and his flesh began to burn. He tumbled toward the
ground. He twisted about in the air to see an angel beckoning him
through dead eyes. His Elglair puppet master stood several strides
away directing his every move. Ilgrin’s eyes twitched toward a hint
of movement over the old man’s shoulder. But the affiliate noticed
Ilgrin’s eyes and was immediately alerted to the fact that Jakob
was sneaking up behind him.

The gil spun around and thrust a hand
out at Jakob, who hit the ground sobbing. Ilgrin hit the earth,
freed of the angel’s crippling power, a slight sieift dusting
itself from his body. He snatched at his hip pistol, threw up a
hand, and pulled the trigger. A bright patch of red bloomed on the
gil’s shirt. He turned in a slow circle, his eyes devastated. He
stared at Ilgrin for just a moment and then collapsed, never to get
back up.

The angel fell to his knees, his eyes
coming alive. He lifted his hands and gazed at them as though he
couldn’t believe it were possible.

‘
You’re free,’ Ilgrin
said. ‘And I promise no harm will ever again come to you on account
of demons.’

‘
I’m . . . free!’ the
angel cried delightedly, immediately leaping into the air and
disappearing from sight.

‘
Thank you,’ Ilgrin
said to Jakob as he got to his feet.

‘
It’s always a
delight to help kill the Elglair.’ He half-smiled before rushing
off through the trees.

When Ilgrin was back in the air, he
realised just how many demons had suffered at the hands of
affiliated angels. He needed to find their gils and kill them. It
was the only way. Immediately, he spotted an older woman several
hundred strides away. She had the blank face of a gil
concentrating, and although she didn’t lift a single hand, not a
sword was able to touch her. Ilgrin kept his distance and attempted
to aim his pistol, which proved to be difficult while in flight.
The second he’d raised his arm the woman’s head snapped in his
direction, she having already felt his intentions through the Ways.
The old woman thrust a hand out at Ilgrin and he immediately
decided to fly face-first at the ground below without slowing down
in order to kill himself.

Snapping shut his wings, Ilgrin
flipped around and plummeted. The ground flew up at him quickly,
but he knew he’d made the right decision. He fell faster and faster
but before he could hit the ground, long toes snapped around his
arms and guided him gently to a softer landing.

Teah looked at him in
astonishment while multitasking and thrusting her sword through the
heart of a human. ‘What the torrid were you thinking?’

‘
I wasn’t.’ Ilgrin
shook his head. ‘An affiliate was thinking for me.’

‘
Gils are rather
tricky to kill head-on.’ Teah nodded. ‘Come on. I’ll show you a
better way.’

With that, Teah raced through the
woods on foot. Ilgrin followed as quickly as he dared, weaving
between trees, often the homes of presently dead silts that’d been
very recently adopted as human hideouts.

‘
What’re you
planning?’ Ilgrin called, but Teah refused even to acknowledge him
as she raced on.

‘
There.’ She stopped
behind a rather thick tree. ‘Is that your gil?’

‘
That’s her.’ Ilgrin
peered through the trees to see the old woman focusing on her angel
as it attacked a free angel above.

‘
Watch this.’ Teah
shoved Ilgrin so hard that he stumbled into the small
clearing.

The gil’s attention snapped toward him.
‘You’re persistent. I’ll give you that.’ She pursed her lips
irritably and pointed at his chest.

Ilgrin vanished from existence, only to
reappear moments later. He was in his home outside of Sitnic.
‘Mother?’ He called. ‘Fath--’ But the word stuck in his throat.

The smell of blood filled Ilgrin’s
nostrils. Baen and Urelie had been tied up. Their faces were beaten
and bruised and their throats were cut. A deep sob escaped Ilgrin’s
throat and he fell to his knees in the middle of the woods outside
of Hel. It was all his fault. He was the reason they’d been found
and killed.

‘
No, no, no!’ he
cried.

Ilgrin’s aura was released as an
agonised howl snatched him back to reality. The old woman squirmed
on the ground, Teah looming over her as white mist leached away
from her flesh. The gil pleaded for mercy, slamming the back of her
head against the ground. She made mad gesticulations, undoubtedly
snatching for the Ways, but found herself to be in too much pain to
do anything useful with them. Ilgrin looked away, unable to stomach
the slowness of her death.

‘
Please!’ the woman
screamed at his back. ‘Please!’ Finally her cries stopped and Teah
put a hand on Ilgrin’s shoulder.

‘
I’m sorry. That was
ugly,’ Teah whispered, ‘but it had to be done.’

‘
I know.’ Ilgrin
looked at the old woman with the thought in mind that she was
probably about two hundred years old. She probably had
great-great-great-grandchildren. It seemed like such an awful way
to complete such a long life. But she’d made her choice. They all
had.

‘
Hey,’ a stranger
called from the branches above. Ilgrin glanced up to see a silt
smiling down at them. ‘Thanks.’ He smiled, his halo glimmering
momentarily.

‘
Thank us by helping
us,’ Ilgrin replied tiredly. ‘Free as many others as you can. Teah,
you do the same.’

CHAPTER
Twenty-Five

Hel Fire

Ilgrin sailed through the air, scoping
out the mayhem of the battle below. Both human and silt alike had
been enlisted into slow games of cat and mouse. Such was to be
expected when fighting within the constraints of a heavily wooded
forest. Several of the affiliated angels had been killed. Others
still worked patiently with their black powder bombs. Half the
legion burned with deadly fire, starting at the base of the tree
and continued to the west. As a result, the armies of mankind
favoured an easterly direction for their assault. Having spotted
Jakob trapped behind a wall of flames, Ilgrin banked toward the
ground only to lose sight of the man behind a veil of smoke.

‘
Jakob?’ Ilgrin
called. ‘Jakob, where are you?’ He stumbled around a burning tree,
pulling his shirt up over his nose.

A New World soldier screamed as he
leapt through the smoke with his sword raised. Ilgrin sidestepped
the man, spun him around and slammed his face into the burning
tree. He stumbled back, howling and slapping at his face.

‘
Jakob?’ Ilgrin
called again, but his toe touched something soft and warm, which
served to steal his attention. ‘Jakob!’ He gasped, finding his
friend collapsed on the ground. He threw his arms around the man
and lifted him easily. He beat his wings and leapt into the air.
‘Wake up.’ He shook the human. ‘Come on!’

‘
Maker,’ Jakob
groaned, taking a shuddering breath. ‘What’d you do that
for?’

‘
I need your help,’
Ilgrin said determinedly.

‘
What
for?’

‘
We must have our own
black powder bombs, right? And oil . . . anything to make fire burn
faster.’