Page 55 of Semi-Fallen

Rion pushed off the ground to take flight, but Lucien caught him by the throat. The muscles in his shoulders and neck bulged and strained as he tried to contain Rion, but as strong as he was, Lucien wasn’t a match for the archangel on his own.

So, it was a very good thing that Lucien wasn’t alone.

Seven and Riddick moved in just as Lucien lost his grip on Rion’s throat. Seven dropped and swept Rion’s legs out from under him. As he started falling, Riddick kicked him in the jaw with enough force to kill a normal man.

But Rion was not a normal man. He staggered back several feet before snarling like a pissed off bear. “You think you can hurt me? You think you have power? You have nothing!”

He raised his hands and just like that, threw Seven, Riddick, and Lucien into the wall at the far end of the gym. Lane lifted her hands, but stumbled when Gabriel shoved her out of the way.

“You want power, motherfucker?” Gabriel yelled. “You got it.”

Gabriel and Adrianne hit him in the chest with a combined blast of hellfire so hot Lane was pretty sure everyone in the room would be sunburned the next day.

If they survived this fight, of course.

Rion bellowed his outrage as he struggled to protect his face from the blast.

Lucas—fully shifted into his wolf form—and Fluffy the hellhound took Rion’s distraction as their opportunity to join the fight. They dove in under the hellfire and Fluffy clamped her jaws around Rion’s thigh, worrying it between her massive teeth. The wolf took a big bite out of the archangel’s side.

Rion dislodged Fluffy with a kick to her ribs. The hellhound whimpered as she fell back, clearly favoring her left side. The wolf was harder to dislodge, but Rion managed by grabbing him around the middle and squeezing before tossing him aside like a broken rag doll.

Seven rushed to her husband’s side as he tried—and failed—to get to his feet once again.

Benny, Harper, Nikolai, and Quinn were firing every weapon they had at the archangel, but now that he was ready for them, each bullet, crossbow bolt, and knife fell harmlessly to the floor before they could hit their target.

They were going to get themselves killed. Lane could see it in Rion’s eyes. All they were doing was annoying him. She had to end this.

But once again, her mother and father shoved her behind them. “Get down!” her father yelled. Adrianne and Gabriel pulled back their hellfire as Hunter threw every bit of power he had at Michael.

The archangel flew back twenty feet but didn’t fall, stuck in midair by Hunter’s powers. Mischa and Nikolai dove immediately at the suspended archangel and tried to clamp a power dampening collar around his throat, but he managed to throw them off even while being stuck in place.

Rion looked like he’d been through a war. He had a bloody chunk torn out of his thigh and abdomen, knives and a crossbow bolt from the first attack were still sticking out of his chest, and most of his clothing had been reduced to singed rags by Gabriel and Adrianne’s hellfire. And still he fought.

Not only did he fight. He laughed at them.

“You can’t win!” he taunted. “Did you honestly think you lowly creatures could destroy me? I have more power than you could ever know! The power of Heaven and God Himself flows through my veins, you barely evolved apes!”

Harper, Hunter, and Mischa all glanced at each other. Then they did something that shocked Lane. Something she never would’ve expected to see under these circumstances.

They smiled.

And, wow, did that ever piss Rion off.

The earth shook as he raged at them, “Don’t you realize you’re all going to die? What could you possibly find funny?”

Lucien hobbled to Lane’s side, cradling his ribs with one arm and said, “I think they’re laughing because you just told the most powerful vampires in this world that your power is in your veins.”

Rion’s eyes went wide a split second before Mischa grabbed his wings and wrenched them together before leaping onto his back and sinking her fangs into his neck.

He bellowed and tried to shake her off, but Hunter threw more power at him to hold him immobile. Lucien added his own to the mix as Mischa drained the angelic grace from his body.

It would’ve worked, too. It was working. But that’s when they realized Rion had been holding back.

As his rage grew, his entire body started to glow until he was so bright it almost hurt to look directly at him. With a quick twist of his torso, he swatted her mother away like she was a pesky mosquito. Then he turned on Hunter and Lucien, flinging them away with enough force that she felt the impact when their bodies hit the floor several feet away.

OK, now she was really pissed.

And that’s when she decided it was far past time for her to fight her own battles.

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