Chapter 7 - Antithesis

Iris

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"Watch out!"
Valkyre jumped forward on instinct, mind barely registering the smash of glass, pieces of the mosaics raining down in a colorful, broken shower. The hunter hit Iris hard enough to knock the boy onto the ground, Valkyre himself sent flying off as a weight like a toppling mountain slammed into his side, sending him crashing into the nearest row of pews. Pain made white spots flash before his eyes, and the angel barely managed to regain enough of his senses to jerk his head away. A werewolf's jaw snapped milimeters away from his face, saliva lathered over the gleaming ivory teeth, the thick, choking smell of its breath washing over him.
Valkyre hissed at the pain in his ribs, at the six-inch long nails buried in his shoulder and chest, back and side screaming from the impact onto the unforgiving wood of the benches.
The hunter drew his legs under the werewolf's soft stomach and kicked hard, sending the huge animal tumbling off with a howl, pain splashing as blood on the floor as the thick nails driven into his skin were ripped out. The angel stumbled to his feet, wincing as he tried to lift his right arm, only to drop it back down with a hiss.
"Ha, and I was gonna think this would be way too easy!"
Valkyre whirled around at the sound. Something dark dropped out of the air through one of the already broken windows, black boots crunching on once colorful, now bleached and dark shards of glass.
The aura that brushed against him made him shiver. Vampire. ...Then they must've tracked them. It wasn't often that you found a were and a vampire working together, but each creature was especially good at tracking by blood, by scent, or tracks.
Valkyre scolded himself for letting his guard down so much. He'd set up a barrier around the abandoned chapel, yes, but it'd been a weak one, and he'd been careless.
The angel snatched off his seal, links of gold lashing out. Valkyre closed his eyes, felt his power surge up inside. His wings arched themselves as if in slow motion from his back, then snapped out, jet-black feathers matching the darkening sky, glossy smooth and angled, longest tips trailing to the ground.
A growl behind him. Valkyre whirled around, dagger instantly in his left hand, leather handle slick now with his own dark blood.
The werewolf was rising to his feet again, hackles bared, the thick froth around his mouth tinted pink. Its back half seemed smaller and ungainly compared to its broad shoulders and thick chest, long, shaggy dark gray fur hanging from its muscled body.
Great. A were and a leech.
"Hey, over here."
Valkyre whirled around again just in time to block a small dagger slashing down at him, sharp ring as metal hit metal echoing in the shattered silence of the church. The vampire jumped back, landing evenly on the ground. His movements were fast, dark clothes and glinting eyes becoming a blur as he lept again, suddenly materializing upside-down, twisted and thin fingers clenched in crevasses on the vaulting ceiling. Valkyre beat his wings, rising up into the air as well.
His dagger was flashing when the vampire detached from the roof and came at him, extremely fast and heavy, the impact as their thin blades struck overrun by the sheer momentum the other had. Valkyre flared his wings in order to avoid crashing back onto the glass-littered ground, and managed to snap out with a quick kick as he lept away.
His boot caught the other squarely in the chest and sent him flying backwards, the dark form twisting around to land silently on the opposite wall, like a cat dropping to all fours on the ground, but for the fact that this was vertical wall.
"Don't move."
Valkyre turned to the new voice, a low, sultry tone that played like warm water over his ears.
He froze, staring at the arched doorway of the church, ignoring the sounds of the werewolf's ragged breathing behind him, and the crunch of boots again on glass as the vampire stepped closer.
Instead, he was staring at the third member of the party.
A lamia.
A woman with pale, beautiful features, face framed with silky, rippling black hair. Slender, long-nailed fingers curled around Iris's throat and cheek, fingernails finished with crimson red nail polish. She wore a simple, dark-colored shirt which revealed the soft, honey skin of bare shoulders and stomach.
But once past the waist, the skin distorted into patterns, then scales. Like a frozen transformation, the rest of her ended in the curled, muscled length of a snake.
The reptile skin was the color of dusk-darkened roses, glossy scales running like glittering ice along her serpentine length, curling away in soft loops like the trail of a river on flat plains.
The thicker segments of her snake half were twisted around Iris's legs, then trailed out toward an open doorway.
A smile grew across crimson-painted lips, filled with small, sharp teeth.
"Drop your wings, little birdy, or the boy dies. You know the bounty is only one third if he's dead."
Valkyre clenched his jaw, staring at Iris, whose eyes were squeezed closed, face contorted as if in pain, pale skin contrasting to the lamia's own warm flesh, whose one arm draped almost carelessly over the boy's shoulder, other still gripping the boy by the chin, long fingernails digging into his skin.
Iris. No. He couldn't let it all go now, there was so much that should've...
Valkyre tensed as he heard the werewolf's ragged breathing from behind him. He hoped rather pointlessly that he'd at least broken a few ribs.
Slowly, reluctantly, the angel took out his seal again. His wings folded up, folded up until they became nothing again as he slipped the pendant back around his neck, barely managing to latch it back on with his left hand.
No. What was he going to do? He couldn't just let them take Iris, he needed... The angel breathed out a long sigh, trying to control a shiver that ran down his spine. What? What was it he needed?
"Hmn. Guess this kinda sucks for you, eh?"
Valkyre's dark amethyst eyes flickered over to the vampire, who was squatting perched on the back of a pew almost right next to him, chin in one hand, smirking. His grin flashed his elongated teeth, glinting in the paling light.
The angel didn't respond, looked back at the lamia instead.
"...Valkyre."
The word was nothing more than a whisper, a sigh in the air.
Iris blinked open his eyes, looking nothing more than infinitely tired. The lamia hissed under her breath, fingers tightening their grip around his throat, crimson nails digging into his soft skin.
Valkyre stared into Iris' colorless gray eyes, forgetting the vampire next to him, forgetting the were and the lamia. Just seeing his soft gray eyes. Were they really that cold...?
The angel blinked suddenly as Iris smiled at him, just a slight spread of his lips, expression almost peaceful, eyes fluttering closed.
He saw the boy draw in a breath, saw the frail chest rise, but nothing could've prepared him for it.
A shriek cut the air, like life and soul ripped straight out of the throat, piercingly high and painful, slamming like a physical wave of power over the angel. He gasped as he dropped to his knees, staring in shock as the windowpanes all shattered, clear, crystalline shards snapping and exploding, images cracking then collapsing in on themselves.
And then, suddenly, it was like he was ripped apart from himself. Valkyre was still there, staring as the windows shattered and as the glass fell, staring as the lamia's face contorted in agony and she fell back, Iris still standing there as if on tiptoe, face lifted to an unseen sky, eyes squeezed closed, as if hanging suspended in the air.
But he could hear nothing. A muffled silence, like watching a movie spliced in half, everything still spinning in slow motion, but the sound gone, replaced by deathly silence, echoing nothing on nothingness.
Valkyre stared, frozen, as a tiny shard of glass fell to the ground. He heard its soft tinkle as it bounced off the ground, and suddenly the sound was all back, an empty ringing after the wave had passed. Glass trickled to the ground, and the night air swept in with a sigh, oblivious to everything.
"...Iris..."
His voice was nothing more than a choked-out whisper in the resounding echoes.
"-You!"
The lamia's once sultry voice was a serpentine hiss, her warm face contorted in fury, words a hiss through clenched teeth. She snapped forward, rising up into the air on her coiled snake body, crimson fingernails like sharp talons, veins showing pale blue through her tan skin.
Iris didn't seem to notice. The boy was curled up onto himself, face hidden in the tangled mess of bangs, arms wrapped around his shoulders. Valkyre blinked, realizing that the bandages on the boy's arm were soaked in fresh blood.
There was a sudden, huge ripping sound, like someone was peeling apart the sky, like matter itself was being ripped apart. It was thick and wet, whispering and screaming at the same time.
And Valkyre watched in amazement as the wings rose into the air.
Ebony darkness, like an eternal night folded in on itself, now stretched itself out to the boy's left, glistening velvet on silk, the demon wing spanned out, membrane stretched tight over the vast expanses, shape given by the pale outline of the structural bone, the arch of the wing tipped in an inky-black talon, shadow on shadow in the infinite darkness.
And on the right, like a whispered sigh on marble, there rose the graceful, curved line of an angel's wing, feathers singing softly as it spread out, each inch of the expanse of the clearest, purest white, clean and fresh like falling snow, soft and gentle and hushing, like the soothing words of a mother on a child, the brilliant white illuminated like something astral and otherworldly in the dark.
Both wings rose from the same body, from the tiny, crumpled form of Iris. Valkyre was frozen, unable to move, barely able to think, to comprehend what he was seeing.
Impossible. An angel and a demon... at the same time? ...It couldn't be. It couldn't happen, it defied every law in existence, it...
Iris.
The boy was screaming, screaming as he lifted those impossible wings, his cry so pained and tortured, it made Valkyre wince, gasping as if he was feeling the pain himself, sharp knife stabs at his heart, crippling him, a discarded shell in a discarded wasteland...
The wings flared, and a wave of pure energy swept over him, power like the endless pull and push of the ocean itself, a vast, untapped explosion of force, like the birth of a star from dying dust...
The lamia was thrown back, screaming, her serpentine body slamming into the rows of pews, splintering wood and sending them crashing to the floor.
Valkyre gasped as he staggered to his feet, stunned.
...He wasn't hurt. He hadn't been touched by the shockwave, at all.
...What was going on?
Iris dropped to the ground, magnificent, paradoxed wings sagging as if burdened by some too-heavy weight.
Valkyre stumbled forward, hearing the stirring behind him, the growling as the were tried to rise again, long nails clicking and scratching on the floorboards, something wet splattering onto the ground.
The angel ripped off his seal again as he limped forward, fingers slippery with his own blood and sweat. He willed his wings to rise once more, and he bit his lip to hold back the pain as he bent and pulled the still form of Iris into his arms. The boy's wings curled up as he was lifted, folded over and over onto themselves until they vanished, leaving nothing more than the frail, bare shell of the body.
Valkyre half-dragged, half carried Iris and himself out of the church door, muscles straining as he beat his wings. The night air swelled and enveloped him as he rose up into the air on uneven strokes, then leveled off, taking through the night sky, a brush of dark color on midnight black.

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AN: Whoo, super crunchy action! ^_^-
Wow, I'm surprised by this chapter... I did almost all of it in one breath, and when I went back to review it, there was almost nothing I wanted to change! I'm surprised by my own writing, hehe.
Well, hope that was fun for you all. This kinda was the scene that matches the pic I gave DD_DM for her b-day, but I think I did a better job here. Heh.
As obvious, things are coming together... I really, really want to get around to the next few chappies, I should be getting the two charries together and explaining a bit more about them, which I really, really need to do. Heh.
Weekend's over though, and it's last week for science fair, so the next few updates might take a while. Hope this chapter made up for it, huh?
...I rather like the vampire dude here, not sure why... Just little one-chappie dispensible character though, I'm afraid...
Don't worry, these aren't the charries I said I'd introduce. But I WILL be bringing some new ones in! Real soon! [Hopefully...]
Okay, enough blabbing. Have fun, and thanks for reading!

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