Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) by Brian J Moses Page A

silently agreed.
    Or at least, it
resembled a wound from a sword with such an unimaginably sharp blade that it
left a perfectly – perfectly – smooth path cut in its wake. The angle of
the cut was such that Birch would also have expected to see a similar wound in
the man’s shoulder, but there was nothing. If this had been the result
of a sword, whoever had held it had a more exact control of his blade than any
man Birch had ever met, and he’d crossed blades with the best swordsmen the
Prism had to offer.
    His exhaustion
momentarily forgotten, Birch reached forward with one hand to run a finger down
the sheered-off portion of the dead man’s skull. When he touched the bone,
however, Birch jerked his finger back as an intense pain seared through his
hand, as though someone had focused the heat of Hellfire and poured it all into
one spot on his flesh. The jolt of… something surged through his body in
the time it took to blink his eye, then as Birch was still recoiling in pain,
Selti jerked awake from his perch across Birch’s shoulders and launched himself
into the air. He flew agitated circles around their heads, scolding the Gray
paladin furiously. Absorbed in the growing agony in his finger, Birch ignored
the drann entirely.
    “Are you all
right, Birch?” Michael asked, having noticed his reaction. Perklet turned in
concern and sucked in his breath at the sight of Birch’s finger.
    The flesh all
around his forefinger was blackened as though intensely burned, and Birch could
only stare in shock at the sudden injury. Perklet immediately wrapped one hand
around Birch’s outthrust finger and murmured a healing prayer. About the same
time the full sensation of pain finally reached Birch’s brain, it was swallowed
by soothing relief and a few seconds later, the finger was whole again. Even
after the blackened flesh was gone, however, the three paladins continued to
stare at Birch’s finger.
    “What was that?”
Michael asked. “What did you do?”
    “I just touched
the wound,” Birch said in a stunned voice. “I barely brushed against the cut in
the skull, and it felt like I was touching the sun.”
    “But nothing
happened when I touched it,” Perklet said, staring back at the corpse he’d been
examining. “It felt unnaturally smooth to me, but that’s all.”
    “No one else who
looked at or touched these bodies reacted like that either,” Michael said. “We
even had Danner take a look. He said there was something abnormal about them,
but he couldn’t place it.”
    Birch frowned
and took a deep breath as he finally looked away from his now-healed hand.
    “No, I wouldn’t
guess he would at that,” Birch said heavily. “You were right to have him check,
though. Danner’s lack of a reaction would tend to rule out a demon having
caused these wounds, and when you combine it with my own… negative reaction,
I think it indicates rather clearly the nature of these injuries.”
    Perklet’s eyes
widened. “You can’t be suggesting an angel caused these wounds. That’s
unthinkable.”
    Birch noted the
troubled expression on Michael’s face. Selti finally calmed down enough to
resume his perch on one of Birch’s shoulders, but he refused to let the Gray
paladin scratch his eye ridge.
    “Unfortunately,
that’s the only conclusion we can reach,” Birch said. “What’s more, it was
apparently an extremely powerful angel for me to have such an intense reaction.
We know that the stronger the demon, the more powerful the taint left behind in
a wound it causes, so we can assume the same would be true of their angelic
counterparts. I would hazard a guess it has to be someone with at least the
strength of a Dominion, [12] possibly even a Seraph.”
    Perklet stared
at Birch in shock.
    Michael looked
as though he were fighting against a difficult decision. Birch was on the verge
of telling him to just speak his piece when Michael squared his shoulders and
looked Birch right in the eyes. He flinched after a