Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

Yet they were still not spirit, not ghost, and never could be, because they had no soul. Only their appetites drove them.
    What Adam needed now was an old technology, one of earth, stone, and magic. A barrow, a grave. Khan would suggest something of the sort to Talia.
    The sun was just cresting the horizon. Below Khan, in the forest, Layla was moving with Adam toward the remains of Khan’s first kill, the wight who’d almost had her in its grasp. Dead now.
    A sear on Khan’s skin signaled the approach of yet another race to the field of battle, The Order, shining bright enough to light the bare lawns near the main building of Segue. The wraiths had come for Adam and Talia, but Khan knew the angels were here for him.
    He hung in the sky considering their approach. The wraiths were dead or fleeing. Layla was in Adam’s care, and yes, the angels had to be dealt with. They had the gate in their keeping. Eventually they would have to ask its maker how it might be destroyed.
    After their first failed attempt, he’d been expecting them.
    He left the wood, stretched across the sky, and gathered himself before the five angels who were situated on the dried lawn in a V, as if they were geese flying south for the winter. Custo stood in the ranks, coolly meeting Khan’s gaze, even as Shadow roiled in the boy’s eyes.
    Khan did not concern himself with his appearance, as he did with Layla; they all knew who he was. Whatever their individual conceptions of Death, how they conceived the fae entity before them, Khan didn’t care. To one he was evil-eyed, skeletal. To another, a dark, horned thing. To Custo, he was an echo of Kathleen’s Shadowman, but harsher, more vicious, yet still a man.
    The angels’ combined presence scorched him, but he stood fast as his skin flecked, blackened, sloughed into darkness, then repaired itself again. In mortality, however monstrous the form, pain accompanied the burn, but he preferred it that way. It was something physical, earthly, to feel, and thus brought him closer to Layla.
    The angel at the head of the V was yellow blond, with pale blue eyes, and slightly pink, fair skin. “I am Ballard,” he said. It was an old Norse name, meaning “strong.” “By now you know that we can destroy the hellgate you created.”
    Quiet, somber conviction filled the air around the host—so they hadn’t come to ask him anything; they’d come to state their intent.
    Khan guessed what that was. “No.”
    â€œDoing so,” Ballard continued, “will take the life of Layla Mathews, a life we know to already be at its end.”
    â€œNo,” Khan repeated, with greater force. He should never have let Custo take the gate in the first place. “You cannot. Such an act would be—”
    Ballard held up a hand. “We would certainly do everything in our power to mitigate the pain she’d have to endure. None of us want to cause harm, but we know that nature, in due course, will eventually take her life.”
    Not if Khan could help it. Not today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. They’d just found each other.
    When the sun rose this morning, Khan had thought he’d soon fight a devil. It was a fight he could win without difficulty. In the mortal world, the devil might be stronger, faster, more vicious than humans, but it was still mortal and Khan was not.
    His Shadow burned, his cloak whipping with his fury.
    But never did Khan think he would have to fight the angels. In fact, via Custo he thought he’d found a reluctant peace with them. But if they sought to harm Layla, they sought war. Khan himself would strike the first blow.
    â€œThink a moment,” Ballard continued. “Consider the alternative, the worst possible. She is bound to the gate, that much we know. To destroy the gate, she also must be destroyed. What if the only way to destroy the gate is to take the life that is bound to it? And what if she should die a random death, her fate bearing down on her, and our opportunity is lost? Should she die and the gate remain, it may never be able to be destroyed. We cannot risk that eventuality. We cannot suffer such a thing to exist on Earth. And let us not forget, she should be dead already. So we return to our first course of action: destroy the gate, regrettably killing Layla in the process. It is the only solution, and after great deliberation, Custo Santovari has agreed to take on this