Chapter 42: Cold as Hell, Part 8

The angel stood up and ran towards him. Sam regained his human form and landed unbalanced by the change in mass and shape as anyone would be. He hadn't transformed that many times either, but it was still frustrating that he couldn't get used to it. Perhaps it was impossible.

"Get away from me!"

Sam ran in the opposite direction, shooting ice, just like that. Without bothering to shape it into spears as he had been doing. Compressed ice balls like the earth Blake had thrown at him. It was the only way to improve his attack speed.

But it didn't matter.

It melted anyway before reaching the angel. Apparently, he had to catch him by surprise by force, or attack him from such a close distance that whatever defense he had wouldn't have time to activate.

He believed it was like that.

Something that simply worked, not something he had to do himself.

Automatic.

Analyzing his situation was fine, but it wasn't helping him get closer to the key to victory or anything like that, only to realize how screwed he was.

A single one of the balls didn't melt, but the angel did it on purpose. To be able to catch it and return it to him with twice the force. Much faster than he had fired it. It hit him in the leg and it was like an iron ball.

Sam fell to his knees, groaning in pain. His leg was broken without a doubt.

That thing... Did it have some kind of sense of humor or just an appetite for poetic justice? In any case, it had fucked up the same leg that he had cut off Blake.

Fantastic.

He was screwed.

Sam had resisted the idea from the beginning, but it was clear that he had no other choice. So he immediately summoned four of the Acheri to his side. It was the only kind of demon he could summon, at least for now.

He didn't like it.

The yellow eyes, the ice magic, even the massacre he had had to perpetrate without being able to hide, thanks to the damned Adams and his own haste.

All of that he could have explained, excused, to his sisters. He didn't say it was probable, but technically possible. However, with this there was no turning back. They had probably studied the Acheri in some old dusty book about the era of darkness, the era in which Satan ruled the world.

But he had saved himself too many times by the skin of his teeth. If he didn't do this, the angel would tear him to pieces.

Despite everything he had seen him do, he trusted too much that he could handle the angel by fighting all together. As coordinatedly as he could with apparently mute demons. Perhaps that hypothesis was true, but he didn't have the luxury of testing it.

The angel twisted his hand as if holding something, and then something indeed manifested in his hand. A blade of light without a handle, vaguely in the shape of a dagger.

He stabbed the first Acheri that reached him (yes, he didn't even bother to move, to take the initiative) before its claws could graze him and the light dagger not only tore the body of what was essentially a ghost, somehow. The Acheri even threw its head back, mouth and eyes opening wide.

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Screaming.

Screaming while burning, vanishing without a trace.

Suddenly the remaining three weren't so confident either.

But they couldn't choose. They had orders, they couldn't disobey him, not him. So they lunged towards death.

The remaining three died as quickly as the first, although they jumped on the enemy at the same time. While one sank a claw into his back and the other into his neck, another Acheri attacked him from the front, the last from the side.

Ignoring the one on his back, as if unable to feel pain, the angel stabbed one of those incompetent bastards. The resulting energy discharge, the explosion that erased it in the same way as the first, also knocked the one off his back. He stomped on it and quickly finished it off, passing the dagger across its neck.

For the last one, he didn't even need to use the dagger. He grabbed it by the head and Sam had to see firsthand what the angel had tried to do to him several times.

The Acheri burned. Not even ashes remained of it.

Demons or not, they had all burned well.

He had quickly realized that they would lose, so he had quickly moved away instead of trying to join them in an effort doomed to failure. Trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and that beast. It might be an angel of the Lord, but there was nothing angelic about the damn bastard.

The maximum distance he could put between them was not nearly enough.

It would never have been enough even if he hadn't had a wound in his guts to worry about, slowing him down. A sound like large wings beating, a blink and he had Adams on top of him.

"How is it po—"

Once again, the palm on the face.

Unbalancing him, throwing him to the ground. Once again, he began to burn, writhe. He would be screaming if he had enough air in his lungs for that.

Nothing he did worked, as if his defeat was predestined. Was it something cheesy like him, the son of the greatest evil, no matter how powerful he was, couldn't do anything against a mere soldier of the greatest good?

He wasn't interested in the how, why, when.

It was maddening with rage and humiliation. He wasn't in this world for this! He didn't even know how he had ended up in this world, much less why, but it definitely wasn't for this.

And although whoever had brought him here, and it clearly hadn't been Satan, might be satisfied that he had massacred the Wright family, the only thing he had accomplished so far in this world, he wasn't.

He wasn't satisfied.

He was the one who said.

I have the whole world at my fingertips, and I won't let it slip away because of you.

Sam's screams soon lost any trace of pain. Only animal rage remained.

Then the angel's chest suddenly exploded. If it weren't because the new and improved Adams had neither organs nor anything like that, he would have been lost with his blood.

The angel staggered to one side, behaving as if it were a slight wound. Everything was a slight wound if it healed quickly, he supposed.

In any case, he hadn't done that.

Christina had done it. She was right there, determination to fight on her face, in her hands more water that twisted and roared.

Even Violet was by her side.

He hadn't told them anything. He hadn't had time. They should believe him a demon, a murderer, and yet they were here to save his life. Surely they would have agonized over their decision, otherwise they would have intervened much earlier. Already at the mansion, not out here. But the fact is that they had chosen him.

Why? Just love, familial or what Christina felt for him besides?

Just that?

Was it really enough, he hadn't even had to deceive them? Well, apart from not telling them his true identity.

Sam covered his mouth with his forearm.

Were they really that easy?

He smiled from ear to ear.

With the help of the two, he could do this. They had received the best education money could buy in the kingdom. They had skill and experience, although he doubted in real fights, that is, life or death. He wasn't saying they were perfect, but they were certainly the best help he could get for many miles around.

The damn Belphegor, if he wasn't dying after Adams used him to sweep the roof, didn't seem to be in any hurry to come to his aid. It wasn't even worth counting on him.

And, perhaps more importantly, they were innocent.

The angel had killed Blake without thinking twice, but his own victim had practically begged for it, and he was a successful businessman. It was rather unlikely that he hadn't done something to deserve it.

He wouldn't be able to do the same to two girls. And if he was, he should find another name, angel didn't suit him.

Sam stood up, the ice burning in his hands again. The pain was a shadow behind the pleasure. It was like a shark that had smelled blood in the water.

Cold as Hell, Part 8: END