Garrett had caught me to him and held me as Reyes threw Osh across my living room and against the wall to our bedroom.
I screamed something unintelligible as Osh fell to the floor, landing on his hands and the balls of his feet like an animal. He had just enough time to look up from underneath his lashes, his gaze furious, when Reyes body-slammed him again, this time bracing him high against the wall.
“Who summoned them?” he asked, his voice sharp with vehemence.
Osh smiled down at him, as though he’d longed for the entertainment. Then he easily broke Reyes’s hold and attacked.
What happened next defied the laws of physics. They moved so fast, too fast for my mind to register as they each fought for dominance. I made out a flip here that shook the building’s foundation, and a toss there that almost took out my west wall. I tried to yell for them to stop, but it did no good.
Garrett scrambled out of the way as Cookie screamed in the background, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the domestic dispute happening in front of me and all around me at once.
Their movements were animalistic, agile and graceful and yet fierce, utterly deadly like those of a seasoned predator. And they moved so fast, they disappeared for split seconds at a time.
Having no other choice, I filled my lungs with air and focused. “Stop,” I said, forgoing the Latin and getting down to business.
When time slowed, the fighting began to look like an MMA fight I’d seen on TV. The MMA fighters were fast, but I could still see what they were doing. Now, everything froze except the two brawlers who were literally tearing my living room apart. They were moving at almost a normal speed. But they were still moving. So I took it to another level. I centered my energy, let it build, then sent it out in one solid wave. “Quiesce,” I commanded, and finally even the two prizefighters slowed until they didn’t move.
It would take them a minute to realize what I’d done, to join me in my current time zone. Before that happened, I walked toward the frozen scene. Reyes had Osh on the ground, his fist barely an inch from plummeting into Osh’s face. But Osh was still grinning and it didn’t take long to figure out why. His elbow was headed straight for Reyes’s left eye.
I should have just let them continue. If not for my apartment, a space I considered sacred, I would have let them rip each other apart.
Either time began to slip, or they were adjusting to my shift and the fight would recommence any second. I couldn’t let that happen. I quickly knelt beside them, placed a hand first on Reyes’s chest, and said, “Rey’aziel, suffoca.” Then I placed my other hand on Osh’s head and said, “Osh’ekiel, dormi.”
This would either work or I would die. I was rooting for the former. I was very pro-life.
I bit down and said softly, “Redi,” commanding time to come back.
And boy, did it. As always, time crashed into me hard. Stunned me. But I’d taken it further this time, and the bounce-back felt like a brick wall slamming into me. I held my ground. If I was as all-powerful as everyone kept telling me, I would soon have two very cooperative boys on my hands. If not, I was about to get the ever-loving crap knocked out of me. There was no way they could stop the punches they’d thrown that fast.
As the brick wall shattered and I moved between increments of time, I felt like the world had splintered into a million pieces and gravity pulled at me from every direction until I would be ripped limb from limb. I braced myself and fought through it, tumbling back to the present where two men were in the midst of beating each other to death.
I lowered my lids and waited for the blow that would surely end my life. At the very least, it would mess up my hair. The two demons in the room may have been strong enough to absorb such powerful blows, to shake them off and go back for more, but I had a feeling my delicate ass would crumble into dust after the first one.
I clenched my teeth and waited. Nothing happened.
Well, a lot happened, but I didn’t get hit. Instead, Cookie’s scream shot through me like a battle cry. The man under my left hand collapsed mid-punch, going completely limp under my palm, and the other one, the only one in the room with a fallen angel as a father, doubled over, gasping for air.
I let him suffer awhile, just long enough to get his attention and for his face to turn red from either lack of oxygen or extreme anger, I couldn’t be sure.
“Anhela,” I said, letting him breathe again.
He collapsed onto his hands and knees, drinking in huge gulps of air, and in that moment, a flashback hit me so hard and so fast, I almost buckled as well.
I lunged toward him, cradled his head, fought the images swarming my mind.
The first time I’d seen Reyes in the alley that horrible night, when he’d managed to escape Earl Walker and collapsed onto the frozen ground by a Dumpster, he’d been on his hands and knees, gasping in pain, struggling to get air into his abused body.
How could I do to him what Earl had done? How could I ever cause him pain? Refuse him air?
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes stinging with emotion. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
He pulled away to look at me and flashed me a pained grin. “Good girl,” he said, and I felt pride well within him, a fact that astonished me. “You’re getting more and more powerful every day. Just like I said you would.”
“I didn’t mean to do that, Reyes. I’m so sorry.”
“No,” he said, coughing into a shoulder, “no, that is exactly what you need to learn to survive. You did the right thing.”