Ends of the Earth

Exerpt from a novel I'm working on. Sort of a Charmed/Supernatural thing, with more comedy, less sluttiness, and just about as much magic and such. Scarlet is the heroine, and Gabriel is the hero and love interest. Starts up at Scarlet's sister's wedding.

Gabriel

As soon as I’d seen Liz and her best friend waiting in the back of the now-full cathedral without Scarlet, I’d begun to worry even more than I had been. I was on my way over to Liz to ask where Scarlet was when I heard a strangled scream and a crash.

My heart jumped into my throat as I leapt into motion, running toward the scream.

"Gabriel, what-?" Liz asked me as I hurried by her.

"Don’t let anyone else back here." I yelled behind me, not caring if I scared all of the guests, only terrified about Scarlet.

I slammed through the door – which had been locked – just in time to see Scarlet fly through the air and land on the vanity table, the flowers I’d gotten for her falling from the suddenly broken table beside her. I moved forward, drawing my power into my hands as my eyes locked on to the burly demon who’d thrown Scarlet. I shot a bolt of magic right at him, expecting it to at least wound him. Instead, he deflected it with barely a thought, sending it back at me.

Scarlet

I flinched when Gabriel’s own bolt of power flew back and hit him, sending him back into the door and slamming it shut. At least no one would see this demon, who must be upper-level, judging from his power, beat me and my boyfriend up.

Speaking of, the demon – a particularly ugly acid green and black one, with bulging muscles and claws – stepped over to me and reached down to yank me up. He was pulling me up by my arm, probably intending on throwing me again when I crammed whatever was in my hand into his face.

The bouquet Gabriel had given him apparently did some damage to the demon – maybe that protective hyacinth – because the demon roared and dropped me. The whole throwing-and-dropping thing was staring to hurt, and I was getting pissed. So, while the demon was clawing flower fragments from his face, I slammed my feet into the back of his knees, successfully making him fall for once.

By this point, Gabriel, my attempted hero, was back up and gathering magic. He pelted a ball of power, crackling away dangerously, at the demon who was now pushing himself up. The demon put out a hand and shot the magic back at Gabriel again, sending the poor boy careening into the stone wall.

All of a sudden the demon had hauled me back up, and was tossing me again across the room, though this time I hit the floor and rolled. I’d barely stopped rolling when the demon was lifting me again, now up to his face.

"Where’s your power, witch?" He growled into my face, his eyes burning and his breath horrible.

"You need a mint, bud, sheesh." I told him automatically, sort of forgetting that he was a demon probably about to kill me.

He roared again, and threw me into the wall. I figured maybe he liked the whole pick-up-a-witch-and-throw-her thing, since that was about all he was doing.

As he wrenched me back up and demanded my magic again, I decided to let him know the error of his torture. "You know, buddy, this whole pick up a witch, throw her, pick her up again, throw her again thing probably isn’t good for your back. Too much strain on it, you know. You’ll have problems later. If you actually make it to later." As he began to furiously throw me again - very imaginitive on his part - I dug my thumbnails, weapons themselves, into his eyes. He howled and dropped me, his claws going to his eyes.

I saw Gabriel pulling himself up, looking worse than I felt. He’d probably been nearly knocked out twice now, what with his magic hitting him and all. With the demon busy being momentarily blinded and all, Gabriel successfully picked up a chair and slammed it into the demon’s head. I thought this was better than summoning more power, considering the ill-effects that had so far.

I was stumbling up and looking for a weapon when someone else crashed through the door. Upon seeing what looked like a very and extremely hairy man standing there, his fanged mouth open, I assumed that I’d hit my head one too many times. Then, the hairy ape-man thing put its furred hands on its furred hips in a "Never fear, Chewbacca is here!" sort of way. Because, I’d now identified this furry creature as the same furry creature from Star Wars that was supposed to walk Liz down the aisle.

Then, Chewbacca proceeded to pull an athame from somewhere on his person – it was hard to tell where, what with all that fur and all – and hurled it at the demon’s chest.

Unfortunately, the demon recovered from the chair to his head just in time to deflect the athame right back at Chewbacca. The sharp weapon struck the furry chest and stopped, wobbling precariously before falling out of the fur. Chewbacca laughed deeply, and familiarly, catching the athame.

The demon seemed to have had enough of this, since he plowed by Gabriel – knocking him to the floor – and backhanded Chewbacca, all in an instant. I had to fight back a scream as Chewy’s head turned at an impossible angle and he stumbled back, hitting the wall and sliding to the ground. I saw the athame skitter to a stop near Gabriel, and a plan hatched in my mind.

"Gabriel!" I yelled, getting his attention as he sat up and indicating the athame. I strode quickly up behind the demon, who was turning to beat the crap out of me just as I did the thing he didn’t expect; I slammed the heel of my palm into his nose. I heard a satisfying crunch, and saw, out of the corner of my eye, Chewy lift his hands to grab his head and proceed to apparently pull it off. I was confused by this enough to allow the demon the chance to backhand me, launching me across the room again.

I flipped around in the air once, and briefly caught a glimpse of the sharp-looking metal plant stand I was about to crash into. Suddenly, the couch from across the room materialized right in front of the plant stand, and I landed more or less comfortably on that instead.

I turned just in time to see the demon looking with surprise – or as much surprise as a demon can express – down at the athame that was suddenly in his chest, and then at Gabriel who’d plunged it there. The demon made a pissed off noise, and disappeared. However, I was expecting one of the three classic vanquish disappearances; the flames of hellfire and damnation, the poof of obliteration, and the fantastic explosion of your-a*s-is-grass. This disappearance was none of the three, and was instead the classic demon mode of transportation, a shimmer.

I sat up indignantly after the demon apparently escaped. "He shimmered!? The athame didn’t kill him!?" I shouted, forgetting that we were in a church.

Chewy laughed, that same, somehow familiar one, and I turned to look. Gasping, I turned away from my sometimes-almost-friend and business competitor, Master Horus, disguised as Chewbacca.

Horus laughed again. "Let it go, Vervain, I know that’s you."

I turned back to him with a scowl, extremely pissed that my cover was blown. And by him!

Reviews

[Gone]

To start off, I love the title. I'm horrible with titles, but this one sounds great. I liked what I've red so far, the last part interesting me the most. I only had a few small distractions. As you are obsessed with characters, I tend to notice/cringe at words used repeatedly close together. Of course, this is just my opinion and you don't have to change a thing, I just figured I'd tell you what stood out to me.
In line #4 (My heart leapt into my throat as I leapt into motion, running toward the scream.) you have leapt twice.
The next one isn't really close together, but it did stand out to me. You have "now-broken" and "now-full". In the second instance(now-broken) especially, I didn't feel that it needed the "now".
In the paragraph starting with "I saw Gabriel pulling himself up..." you have "and all" twice.
Lastly, when you use the word "very" three times to describe Chewbacca, I feel as if something like "extremely" would work just fine.
Anyway, those are just my little nit picks. Like I said, you don't have to change a thing. The story was good and the ending very intriguing.