Better off Dead Book Four

by Odette C. Bell

  Sonos continued to fight through the priests. He couldn’t get to me until he broke through the last one. They were forming a powerful protective barrier. It wasn’t just magic. It was primarily created out of intersecting lines of chaos flame. Every time Sonos bashed into one, it burned him. These lines of seared skin covered his back and forearms. They interacted with the Hell symbols that played over his flesh. Wherever they met, they erupted into hisses of flame and steam. He must be in unimaginable pain, but he didn’t stop. He sure as heck didn’t slow down, either.

  My whole life, I’d prided myself on the fact that I was always my own best defense. I didn’t need anyone else to come to my aid. And frankly, that was because no one else had ever been there to come to help. But now for the first time I couldn’t fight for myself. All I could do was remain there, covered in tears and clutching onto hope as I waited for Sonos to do the unimaginable.

  Finally he blasted through the last priest. The guy did not have a chance. Now there was no one else holding up the line, the chaos flame was bending in on itself. It was inherently unstable. It flickered back and forth like a flame that someone had set down in a gale. As the priest opened his hands and chanted, his voice vibrating as loudly and badly as a tuning fork, the chaos flame suddenly whipped to the side and twisted around him. The next thing he knew, he was completely encircled in it. He screamed, his jaw practically dislocating as he shrieked with all his might. There was nothing he could do to save himself. The chaos flame leaped into his mouth. It pushed into his ears. It found any orifice – any way in. The next thing I knew, the guy exploded. Fortunately bits of flesh and blood didn’t splatter everywhere, but he did turn to ash. It instantly broke against Sonos as he walked through. Wherever it touched his Hell flames, it extinguished.

  The priest holding me hissed. He tried to jerk back, but there was nowhere to go. So he tightened his grip on my throat. He held me there between himself and Sonos as if I was some kind of shield.

  “Move no further, general of Hell,” the priest hissed.

  “Put her down,” Sonos snarled. He opened his wings. I thought they’d been fully open before, but I’d been wrong. Now they became so wide and big, they could’ve encompassed the entire earth. Though I’d always associated demon wings with bad things, there was nothing else I wanted to do in this world than have them enfold me.

  I tried to reach a hand out to Sonos. He glanced at it once, his face breaking in a single moment of compassion until his brow became rigid and his eyebrows locked down over his eyes. He stared at the priest. “It’s over.”

  “Over?” The priest’s voice shot high. It vibrated with true fervor and greed. It instantly told me he was the kind of man who could not envision anything being over. His whole life, he would’ve been imagining this moment – when the Banished would come and finally absorb this world. He would’ve envisioned it and nothing else. In his head, there would be no other future.

  And he would sacrifice everything – including himself – to acquire it.

  “Hilliker is on his way,” the priest said, his voice shaking down low. It shook with this certainty that seemed to try to undermine reality itself. If his voice had possessed pickaxes, they would be gouging out holes in the very world right now, trying to destroy the heart of the earth to crush everyone under its impenetrable weight.

  Sonos just took another step forward. He rounded his hands into fists. He cut quite a figure. He didn’t have a top on, and his pants were bedraggled. They hung off him in wisps. His naked, burned torso was still covered in Hell symbols. They roved over his skin, getting brighter, bursting into blood-red only to fade back into his muscles.

  His body glistened with sweat and a little blood. He rounded his hands into tighter fists and took another step forward, but he didn’t come at the priest. Nor did he try to wrench the bastard’s hand from my throat. Obviously something was holding him back. Though it was clear that Sonos didn’t want to look at me, lest he lost his anger and drive, his gaze darted toward me once, and I saw something flickering within.

  He glanced down at my wrist, of all things. At first I thought that his gaze was locking on Lilly’s ring. Maybe he wanted me to call on her power. I doubted I could. Maybe I would’ve been able to call on it when I’d had three or four lives left, but now I was a complete newbie. I was the equivalent of a kid. A particularly untalented one. I could recognize magic, sure, and I might be able to practice if I had a lot of help and very powerful charms, but I had none of that right now. But as he flicked his gaze down again, I realized he wasn’t staring at Lilly’s ring, after all. It was something around my wrist.

  What with one thing and another, I had completely forgotten the interaction at the gambling den. A lot had happened since then, and none of it had been pleasant. But now as I cast my mind back, I realized I’d inherited that old lady’s wealth. There was a diamond tennis bracelet around my wrist. It had been with me through thick and thin over the past few hours. Not once had I bothered to glance down at it. Now, when I was firmly tucked in the fatal grip of this priest, was not the time to consider my new acquisition. But as laborious as it was, I darted my head down. I caught a glimpse of those diamonds glittering around me.

  They appeared to have their own light. That wasn’t particularly significant. Most magical objects could create their own glow. Hell, ordinary humans had that down pat, too. All you required was a little bit of electricity and some diodes. But that was very much not my point. The exact way these diamonds glittered told me they had great power within.

  ... I felt like such a fool. Why hadn’t I bothered to tune in to this bracelet earlier? What if it was some powerful talisman?

  Sonos held my gaze for a few more seconds until he realized that I’d understood what he was trying to indicate. He yanked his head up. He spread his lips hard over his teeth. “There will be no hope for you. You understand that, don’t you?”

  The priest chucked his head back and laughed. The move was violent. It was also uncoordinated. It was as if the guy was starting to forget how to move his body – how humans ought to behave in space with gravity and muscles and flesh and blood. He was jerking around as if he was a doll on a string.

  This was the Banished seeping through him, wasn’t it? It was poisoning his mind with chaos. The idiot couldn’t even see that. He just laughed again. It was more raucous. It lost even more control. It seemed to bleed right out of his tone as if someone had stabbed him in the throat with a knife. “There is only hope. For the Banished is imminent. It will be minutes now,” he said, his voice hissing like a biting snake.

  “You dream of chaos, but you do not understand it. You cannot fully comprehend that which you are courting. It will not save you. It will destroy you. The very force you are after will infect you and claim you from within. You will not have a mind – that will be the first thing to go. It will be ripped up, torn asunder by the Banished’s greed. No matter what you do, you will never escape.”

  “You know nothing, demon. Your kind has kept back the Banished for too long, for you have feared his power. But he is coming,” the guy spat.

  All the while as Sonos spoke, he stared at my tennis bracelet then up at my eyes. It was very clear that he wanted me to do something and just as clear that he could not help me with whatever it was.

  What exactly could I do? I tried to pay attention to my tennis bracelet. I could feel it around my wrist. It was unnervingly light. It was probably why I’d paid precisely no attention to it over the past day since acquiring it. If it had been weighty and it had caught on things, it would’ve come to my attention. But the fact was, it was barely there.

  And if it was barely there, how exactly could I interact with it with my meager magic?

  “You don’t have the power to kill her on your own,” Sonos stated flatly. The way he did it – the edge to his voice – told me that he was saying this not just for the priest’s benefit, but for mine.

  The guy laughed. I honestly thought he would lose
his throat. The lining would just rip to shreds and the rest of the muscles would pulverize. For the move was so violent it was clear that he didn’t care what he did to his body. “Hilliker is imminent. It will be minutes now. Minutes until the end is finally here.”

  “As I’ve said before – chaos will not be what you imagine. It’ll absorb you. There will be no reprieve. You will be eaten, over and over again for eternity.”

  “If that is the cost of greatness, then it is a price I will gladly pay.”

  Sonos’s eyes flashed. “Just because you lack an imagination does not mean that you should enforce your flawed realities on others. This world does not deserve to be swallowed in darkness.”

  “This warning comes from a demon of Hell?” This priest spat. “You are nothing but a vile creature. You live off the dead. You murder. You steal. You are the antithesis of all that is good.”

  “Correction. I live with the dead. And as for murder,” Sonos took a step forward, “those who are killed are only killed to save others.”

  “It is all the same in the eyes of God.”

  “I do not believe you have the right to be talking about the eyes of God when you have turned away from your own creator. Now,” Sonos said, his voice vibrating down low.

  He paused, and it was clear that he wanted me to do something, but again, I had no clue what to do.

  When Sonos had broken free from his chains, I’d thought that he would come and save me. He had gotten rid of the priests, but now it was up to me to do the rest. I had no clue what to do. And dammit, I had no power. Yes, I could hold on to hope – and I was. That was the only thing stopping this priest from snapping my neck. But getting myself free was a bridge too far.

  Sonos locked his gaze on me. It was clear he needed me to act.

  I knew we had no time. I understood that Hilliker was almost here. What the Hell could I do?

  Desperation started to pound through me. It was a mistake, because it undercut my hope. The priest’s grip suddenly tightened around my throat. He was obviously surprised by it, and he jolted. But when he realized what he could do, he just squeezed harder.

  Sonos’s calm broke. I saw fear catapult through his eyes. He stretched a hand toward me. He said nothing, though.

  I just managed to claw back my hope. It was like I was thrust down some deep hole. I pulled myself out, second by second. But I could do nothing for the fact that the priest’s hand had already tightened around my neck. I couldn’t force it back. I was halfway through choking, perpetually stuck in a situation where I could not get enough air, no matter how hard I tried.

  If it had been hard trying to concentrate on what Sonos wanted me to do earlier, now it was completely impossible. I was having to use all of my energy to focus on remaining alive.

  The priest laughed. It was exactly what you would expect. It was completely broken. It sounded like his voice was an effigy of his own body – one that he was happily undermining with every second. He didn’t care what he would be once the Banished came. He didn’t care what parts of himself he would lose. All that mattered was winning in his narrow definition of that word.

  But as Sonos had already pointed out, to win when the Banished was involved was to be fed to it for eternity.

  I closed my eyes. Tears welled in them. They practically stained my cheeks as they drained down them.

  I couldn’t see Sonos anymore, but I was hyperaware of his body. My magical senses still worked. They were the only things that stuck with me, through thick and thin. I went to turn them on Sonos, to try to figure out just how he felt for me. It was an indulgence. It wasn’t like it could change anything. But just at the last moment, my old fire rekindled. It redirected my attention until I focused on that tennis bracelet.

  Again it was suspiciously weightless. It was almost as if it was nothing more than a symbol.

  And what do you do with symbols? You use them to convey meaning. You use them to mark significant sites. You use them—

  I stopped. I went back to the second one.

  Symbols can be used to mark things – like an X on a map.

  I already had enough experience with symbols to know how important they could be. It was the symbol of the Deep that had finally unlocked my connection with it.

  Though it was absolute madness, and I was probably wasting my last opportunity, I began to trace the tennis bracelet with my mind. I picked up every sensation I could, and I channeled my attention into mentally twirling around and around each diamond.

  It took time – which incidentally was precisely what I didn’t have. For as I paid attention to the tennis bracelet, it was pretty hard to pay attention to hope at the same time. There was another squeeze, and the priest managed to tighten his hand around my throat once more. Now I couldn’t breathe. I was starting to choke. I needed to throw myself all the way back into hope if I wanted to live. But at the last moment, I realized there was no point in living if there was no opportunity to do more. So I threw myself into the tennis bracelet instead, tracing it with my mind until finally I reached the last diamond.

  At the same time, that bastard squeezed with all his might. I heard something snapping.

  “Eve,” Sonos screamed. His terrified shout shook through the room. It powered up through the floor. It blasted into the priest. It even reached his hand and made me shake on the spot.

  I felt resurrection magic pick up around me. Its glorious light bled in.

  But just at the same time, I managed to activate the tennis bracelet.

  I kicked myself for the fact that I had not bothered to explore it before. For as I activated it, this glorious powerful light shone out. It was enough that the priest spluttered.

  As my resurrection force began to pick me up, the tennis bracelet glowed around my wrist. It started to twist back and forth, back and forth. It looped around and around me like a chaotic snake.

  As my eyes were thrust open and my head lolled to the side, the tennis bracelet continued to blaze, even as resurrection magic started to own me.

  The priest went to grab my neck again, but he was forced back. Whatever this tennis bracelet was made of and whatever light it possessed, it was truly powerful, and it could hold back even him.

  That gave Sonos all the opportunity he required. With a growl I would never forget, he shoved himself forward. Rounding his shoulder, he smashed it into the priest just before he could grab my throat once more.

  The resurrection magic took hold completely. I felt my mind fracturing only for it to be remade. This time, there was something completely different about the move. This time, I could tell, deep down in my soul, that this would never happen again. For as the resurrection light spilled around me in its final dance, I saw right through it. I saw deep down to its soul. I glimpsed that realm under Hell. I was back in that chaotic space. But I was no longer struggling. I was standing in the middle of it, my arms outstretched, my mind open even wider. I was absorbing it for what it was – reality on its most fundamental level. Chaos and order all strung together, all mixed into one experience.

  I glimpsed that for one brief second, and it had a chance to calm my mind, but then I was thrust back into reality. I screamed as my head jolted back, my eyes filling with light. But I screamed even more as I watched the resurrection symbols lift off my palms. At first they simply shuddered. Then, line by line, they left. It looked as if they were being erased by God herself.

  As I stared at them, tears hailed down my cheeks. One by one, each of the lines snapped. They would never come back. For I would never be resurrected again.

  It was over.

  Chapter 11

  “Eve,” Sonos screamed, even as he grappled with that priest. The priest was using chaos fire. It circled around him, getting higher, growing hotter. The magical ore beneath his feet didn’t have a chance to react – it was pulverized. As for Sonos, he used every ounce of hellfire he had.

  The resurrection spell was spent. I landed down on my knees. I shook all over. I could not s
tand. My body simply wasn’t strong enough. And it wouldn’t suddenly become strong enough, either. I had no magic.

  As that thought settled into place, terrifying me from the inside out, I glanced at my tennis bracelet once more. It continued to circle around me. The diamonds had turned into these little glowing dragon-like snakes. They chased their way around and around my wrist in this never-ending dance.

  I went to tune in to them – to use my magical senses to figure out exactly what they were and what they were capable of – but... I had no magical senses.

  My eyes widened.

  I pushed up to my feet. Sonos was still grappling with that priest. “Get out of here,” he called, his voice vibrating down low in fear. I watched it as it opened his eyes, as it made his features slacken with impending horror. “Hilliker—”

  I didn’t need Sonos to tell me. I understood fully. Hilliker was on his way.

  I just stood there. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t feel Hilliker – I couldn’t even sense the Banished anymore. But my reason told me that now I’d lost my last life, both would be here soon.

  Sure enough, the whole cavern began to shake. It was so bad that chunks of it began to fall off. Though I just stood there for several seconds, staring around me, Sonos wasn’t about to let me get squashed. As a massive stone shot from the ceiling above then pelted toward my head, he knocked me sideways with a blast of his wings. When another stone sailed down, he simply unfurled one of his wings and locked it over me like an awning. I stared as the stones dashed into those latticelike webs. The rocks vibrated and danced on the spot before pulverizing into dust. They did their damage, though. The magic ore turned into sparks that scattered and burned their way down Sonos’s wings. He didn’t snap the wings back, though, and nor did he stop fighting. That priest used every damn trick in the book. He was now completely consumed by chaos flame, but somehow he was managing to hold it in his very hands without it claiming those very hands and turning them to dust.