Can Anybody Find Me?

Chapter 27

Gavin groaned as he tried to carefully roll over. He was mostly mortal now and the rib that had broken from Azazel's casual backhand was trying its best to stab the lung it was supposed to guard. Right now, it still wouldn't kill him but he really didn't want to endure having a bone shard/squishy lung combination and so he had to move slowly. When he was finally able to see his Lone and Azazel, he sucked in a startled breath and nearly inpaled his lung anyways.

Lone's strong features were twisted with manical hatred and murderous glee. There were black lines tracing under her skin, starting at her now purest black eyes and spreading through her veins. It gave her face a ghastly appearance but it hadn't spread throughout the rest of her yet. And somehow Gavin knew that if he didn't stop the spread of whatever that was before it got to her heart, it wouldn't matter what Azazel wanted her for, she'd be lost to both of them.

Azazel stared at the changes in Lone, unsure of how they occured or what that now indicated from the woman. Gavin had a slightly better clue. He could feel the wrongness pulse through their bond, a poison spreading through her veins, spread by the powerful beats of her heart. The King of Hell seemed amused that this little slip of a mortal woman was trying to appear threatening towards a creature such as he, but it was always fun to play with one's food before one eats and so he played back.

Gavin had seen Lone fight fist to fist with mortal men. She was a compent fighter and a brilliant survivor, but this should have been an easy fight to call. Should have being the two key words of that phrase, because to Gavin's unmistakable surprise, Lone was holding her own. Azazel still kept himself contained in the image of Lone's father and he had made a mistake in limiting his own power by wearing a mortal guise. Like all Descended, his natural form was much more formidable than this mere flesh he currently wore, and to boot, Lone was accustomed to fighting in her own skin, Azazel had not fought as a man for eons. His moves were inhumanely fast, and when they landed, Gavin kept expecting to hear the crunch of bones breaking, but they weren't destroying Lone. In fact, it almost seemed that the more Azazel landed blows on her, the weaker her got and the more the blackness under her skin spread. Her entire face was painted with the black in her veins and it was starting to creep down her neck, the pulse of her carotid looking diseased and horribly wrong.

 Lone struck back for every blow that landed and a faint echo of the darkness ate under Azazel's mortal flesh. Not deadly to the being himself, merely toxic to the flesh he wore. The once Guardian Angel stared in horrified wonder as a mortal beat the temporary flesh off of a Demon King. She was a Neutral with something impossible surging under her skin. The sheer wrongness of it all hurt Gavin through their link, sucking the strength right out of him. That was the only way he knew how she was strengthened and what it was that was killing her. That Twisted that had attacked Lone and Rimmon and later Lone and Gavin, the Fallen Uriel Tempted to the Descended. Basically a perversion of the complete natural order of things.

Before Lone could lose herself to the Twisted, and before Gavin could gather his stgrenth Azazel suddenly staggered away, stumbling towards the center of the ampitheatre. Lone stopped moving, chest heaving and he could see the woman she was struggle with the being slowly overtaking her. He stepped towards her but that seemed to be the wrong thing to do. Her entire frame shuddered and she snarled at him, a wet, grotesque sound. Before any violence could erupt between them though, Azazel let out a frustrated bellow from the center of the amiptheatre.

Lone started to laugh manically, a cackle that held no trace of her normal rational self. Gavin just gaped in wide eyed astonishment as he saw the residual flare of a summoning sigil surrounding the King as he screamed in anger and impudent rage. And then vanished with a sound of ripping reality and the lingering stench of sulfur. And then they were alone. Lone growled out a horrific sound, filled with primal frustration and Gavin wondered if there was anything left of the woman to save.