Page 12 of Fated Angel

Colt stands up, presses his lips to her temple, and then follows her line of sight. “It’s like he’s mocking us,” Colt says, feeling the same effect. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think his eyes just…got brighter?”

Gabby jolts, staring harder at the statue, and then her lips stretch into a smile. “Colt, the water is a decoy!”

“What?” he looks back to her, confused.

“Trust me?” she asks, repeating his previous words, and he nods.

She reaches in her bag and pulls out the stones, holding them in her palms like Osiris holds the Al-Hameem. Colt watches as the shards begin to glow with their dark eerie light, but as he watches, he sees the reflection of the stones in the water spread apart. That shouldn’t be possible, it can’t be a decoy if they’re still in there.

“Look up,” Gabby whispers, and Colt lifts his chin slowly to look Osiris in the face again. His eyes are glinting, glowing. The same black light as in Gabby’s hands. “The water only shows the reflection, a distraction. The stones are in the pupils of the statue’s eyes.”

“Uriel, you damned genius,” Colt says, grinning at the statue.

As one, Colt and Gabby take wing, then hold themselves in midair as each of them goes for an eye. As one, they reach forward, and the moment Colt touches the shard, he knows what Gabby felt. The jolt of power, so strong it feels like electricity in his veins, hits him just as fast as it fades. Colt eases the shard from the pupil, leaving an empty hole in its place. He can feel the evil in it, just like that of Dunabar. As Gabby flies closer to retrieve it, he instead places it directly in her bag.

“Just in case contact is what’s making this worse,” he assures Gabby as she frowns at him.

He watches her as she slowly puts her stone in the bag, noticing the tips of her fingers are indeed blackening slowly. They get even blacker when her hand is inside the bag and Colt realizes she touched the shard, anyway.

Fear seizes his heart, but he hides it from his face. He doesn’t think she can control the urge to touch them, to possess them.

The fight to save the three realms just amped up.

He’ll have to help Gabby save the world, and then find a way to save her as well.

Images of the dream he had so long ago pop into his mind unbidden, the table, the stones. He remembers how they pulled together to become one, remembers what happened when Gabby touched it.

He won’t lose her to the obsidian.

He’ll die first.

5

Gabby

“Ialready know where the next shard is,” Gabby tells Colt, wrapping her fingers into her palm. They tingle, almost burn.

Imagine what it would feel like if she was holding all of the pieces…

“How?” Colt asks, his voice hard enough to be sharp. “You haven’t done the location spell.”

Gabby pulls up a smile, fueling it with the sense of rightness that’s filtering into her bones. “The shards call to each other. I’m sure Blaise knew that when she provided the location spell in the first place.”

Colt frowns. “Gabby?—”

“We need the obsidian, Colt,” she says, her own voice sharpening. “This is the only way.”

The only way to stop the Grigori.

The only way to save the world.

He sighs, then glances up at the faint light high above them. “It’s getting close to midday. We’ve been going all night.”

Yet Gabby isn’t tired. Seems the drive to save the world doesn’t wane. She takes Colt’s hand. “Rest is for those who have all seven shards of the obsidian,” she says, only half joking.

She leaps into the air and Colt does the same, following her as she shoots for the hole at the top of the pyramid. “Where are we going?” he calls, slipping out right behind her.

Gabby twists high above the pyramid, enjoying extending her wings to their full span. She grins. “Jerusalem. Where else?”

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