Finn was gonna do it anyway, though, because dying in an attempt to save Veruca was worth it to him. Even if he just gave Veruca enough time to break free of her undead captor and punch Stefanie in the face, he was sure it was the right move.
Clearing his throat, taking a deep breath and jumping around for a second trying to get his adrenaline pumping, Finn shifted his grip on the knife a few times, trying to remember the ways he’d seen Veruca holding it while she’d trained at home. His skill didn’t match hers either, but she’d mentioned a few things he knew to watch for.
Besides, he wasn’t trying to kill Stefanie. He just needed to make her bleed. Couldn’t be that hard, he thought, even as a tiny voice in his head laughed at him, mocking him relentlessly.
Reaching back to his foggy childhood, seizing a slippery memory of being a child running around the green fields of Ireland with friends, wondering if the Irish he was about to yell was real or made up, Finn went for it. Yowling in Gaeilge as loud as he’d ever managed, figuring he could embody Braveheart even though the idea would probably madden any other Irishman who may hear tale of his deeds, Finn took off. Focusing his attention on Stefanie’s bare arm, Finn hoped with all his might that she’d be so distracted or shocked by his appearance that she wouldn’t dodge or weave right out of the way.
****
Veruca’s mind went blissfully blank for a split second, seemingly unable to comprehend the horror of what was going on around her. She shut down for a moment, closing her eyes against Donald’s corpse, against Darcy’s gushing blood, and against Finn rushing head-long into certain death. Wincing against the awfulness around her, she sat still, just letting herself be for a moment.
Adrenaline had chased off her exhaustion, worry was fueling her, and anger was motivating her. Whatever happened in the next few moments, she knew she wouldn’t go down without a fight.
She opened her eyes just in time to see Finn’s knife make contact with Stefanie’s arm, to see Stefanie’s blood well across her perfect skin, and her face warp with shock and rage. Even as Stefanie was trying to whip around and shake Finn off, he’d abandoned the knife, gripping desperately for the slickest, bloodiest section of her upper arm, and as his skin made contact, Veruca instantly understood what he’d been trying for and found she’d never been prouder.
Through their connection, Veruca could see Finn’s soul react the moment he’d managed to anchor himself to the army of undead, even before he’d managed to take control. His necromancy had perked up the moment he’d cleared the wards, vibrating with insatiable lust for the corpses crowding the street. Then, when Stefanie’s blood spread across his flesh, his power exploded outward like shrapnel, lunging for the nearly empty zombie hearts, gripping Stefanie’s soul like a cat fighting a rival for territory.
Even knowing Finn’s strength, even having felt the power in him intimately, even having borrowed his soul a few times for her own purposes, it surprised her the viciousness inherent in it. Scrappy and tenacious, it chewed through Stefanie’s soul, through the necromancy sewn into it by Belial himself, overpowering it more easily than she’d expected.
Her own soul vibrated with anticipation, having expected to jump in to the chest of every zombie right alongside Finn’s for backup. He didn’t need it, though, and within moments, Stefanie’s army was Finn’s. Including the zombie locking Veruca’s arms elbow to elbow behind her back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Finn felt powerful, disoriented, fractured, and relieved all at once.
The fight for control over the undead went surprisingly quick, with Stefanie’s power folding under his like a wet cardboard box. The sudden input of having forty—sweet Jesus, was it forty? Had she murdered that many people?—viewpoints in his head was dizzying, more intense than any other time he’d raised the dead, but he knew he could handle it. Shuffling through the zombies one by one, he found the ones holding Veruca and Benedict and twitched his fingers, releasing them, before shifting most of the rest of the horde back a few steps, just for comfort.
They hadn’t yet been dead long enough for their hunger for life to become a threat to his control, but he didn’t want to risk one getting bored and trying to take a nibble.
Before she could get any ideas about running away or punching Finn in the nose, he pulled a group of zombies in to grab Stefanie and wrestle her to the ground. As she tried to fight off their mindlessly strong but ultimately unskilled attempts at subduing her, Finn relaxed a bit, hopeful the worst of things was over.
Benedict crouched next to the banshee—who looked alive and kicking, much to Finn’s surprise—and did the manly, action-hero move of ripping the sleeve off her shirt to press it to her bleeding throat.
Veruca, though, smiled vaguely at Finn, took a deep breath, and then turned toward the one zombie that Finn hadn’t managed to get his hooks into.
He hadn’t noticed this one before, really. There were so many to control, and his power was so giddy to get hold of the scores of other corpses that not being able to infiltrate one single zombie hadn’t made a blip on his radar. Once he followed Veruca’s attention and noticed who it was, though, once his conscious brain caught up to the fact that his necromancy could read this man in a way it rarely had before, Finn gasped, swearing to himself quietly.
****
Donald’s soul was present, but not as it should be. As souls sometimes did, it hovered around his body, the majority of it drifting lazily through the air, unaware of its environment, used to going where the physical form did, even though it no longer had any reason to do so. Instead, where his soul should have been settled was one she didn’t recognize, a braid of soul threads from two different fae spawn. Ignoring the person controlling him for the moment, unable to deal with whatever other monster Belial had sent as Stefanie’s aid, she closed in.
Gaze on Donald’s, she tried to see something in his face that she recognized, a spark of awareness or his easy, soft smile. There was something familiar there, but it definitely wasn’t Donald. As the puppeteer spoke, Veruca became acutely aware of the way the siren’s soul was moving behind her, drawn to the sudden frenzy of activity.
“Very impressive,” Donald’s master said, focused on Veruca, despite Stefanie’s collapse amid vicious threats and insults. “I was mistaken to send Stefanie in my place, it seems. Perhaps a more powerful necromancer would have been a better choice, but she was quick and she was eager.”
“Shut up,” Veruca hissed, swallowing the lump in her throat as she realized the identity of the Reaper speaking to her through her dear friend’s lips. “Stop using him. You’ve done enough.”
“I’ve done enough?” Belial laughed and the sound of Donald’s baritone yanked tears from Veruca’s eyes. The siren’s soul convulsed behind her, the panicked feel of it nearly pulling Veruca’s gaze around. “My dear, you’ve been much busier than I. I asked a simple thing of you and now here we are, standing amid the wreckage of the human world, risking the wrath of Fairy just by being out in the open. I offered sincere help and you betrayed me. I had thought better of you, but perhaps power is the ultimate aphrodisiac to all Reapers. Maybe I shouldn’t fault you for having the same drive and desire as I.”
“You can’t talk to me about betrayal!” Veruca cried, grabbing Donald’s shirt, yanking Belial close without thinking about the danger in the action. If he chose to snap her neck, Finn wouldn’t have been able to move fast enough to stop him. Rage, despair, exhaustion, and a depressed black hole of sadness at her core were in control and she couldn’t fight it off. “You’re a monster!”
Behind her, the banshee’s soul vibrated, coalescing in a way that Veruca thought she had prevented, the edges of it starting to burn away the siren’s essence. Before she could worry or turn to see what had happened, Darcy’s voice rang out, sending her power outward in an explosion that rocked every soul in its range. The charm, the tiny tuning fork-shaped charm Benedict had sewn into the skin behind her ear rang out, matching the pitch, singing its ow
n song that seemed to drown out the banshee’s voice and form a shield around her soul, refusing to let Darcy’s power touch her. It carried on even as the scream died away, continuing to thrum its protective pitch until the threat was gone.
Belial’s soul punched through the back of Donald’s chest, leaving his body empty to crumple to the ground and nearly take Veruca with it.
Gasping, struggling to keep her footing, she stumbled. All around her, souls floated loose and aimless above corpses in heaps on the ground. Benedict had managed to fall in a way that looked comfortable, rather than a cause of future neck cramps. Finn, however had dropped straight back, flat on his back, and Veruca worried about the state of his skull. Before she could go to him, Darcy looked up, desperation in her inhuman face. She wheezed, clutched her still partially unhealed throat, and then pointed.
“Get him.”
“What?” Veruca asked, looking around, expecting to see someone fleeing or maybe hiding behind a bush, but no movement caught her eye.
“Belial,” Darcy said, jerking her head as if to punctuate her words. Fresh blood trickled and Veruca winced. “Follow the thread.”
“The—”
Despite her initial protest, Veruca could feel it, the line of reddish gold that led away, weaving through the neighborhood toward a house at the end of the block. Focusing her power on it, extending herself farther than she’d ever tried to read, she followed the thread, something in her calling her to do as Darcy said.
“He’s here,” she whispered, realizing that, at the very edge of her range, beyond her normal, conscious awareness of souls, she could feel Belial. It was him as she’d always known him, a small sun worth of power and brightness, molten and dense. There was a lack of focus to it this time, though, the threads fraying where they were usually tightly braided. Realizing that the banshee scream had somehow reached him, that the man who’d laughed in her face using the mouth of her dead friend was close, she let out a small roar of rage and took off running.
There was no real plan, no thought to the pursuit, no knowing what she would do when she reached Belial. No words sprang to mind, no threats or demands. It was just pure anger, hurt, exhaustion, and desperation. She needed answers, she needed revenge, she needed to feel powerful again. So much of the last few days had involved feeling lost and out of her depth, incompetent and unsettled, and she couldn’t take it anymore.
Donald’s slack face flashed in front of her as she hit the front door to the house in which Belial was hiding and she let out a sharp sob, wanting to kick the door to the ground rather than settling for opening it like an invited guest.
There, standing at the front window, as if enjoying the view, was Belial. Nothing much had changed since their breakfast meeting, though his expression was slack, his typical dynamism nowhere to be found. His soul, further frayed—the threads loose, appearing to her as if they yearned to unravel and be free—vibrated in the center of his chest. The sight of his blank face somehow maddened her more than if he’d smirked or greeted her with a sarcastic wink and another laugh.
Rushing forward, needing only to blow off some of the steam inside her, Veruca lifted both arms, shoving like a child at his chest, wanting to knock him off balance, to push him to the ground, and kick him until he cried out.
Like Finn, he merely toppled backward, stiff and wooden. Detached from the physical form, his soul hovered, threads clinging loosely to his heart like tentacles reaching out to follow his body to the floor, the bulk of his power remaining close enough to touch.
Without conscious awareness of what she was doing, Veruca reached out, grabbing the closest thread.
It was alluring, not only in appearance, in the soft buzz of it, but in the strength it promised. Upon contact, she could read it in a way she’d never been able to do before in Belial’s presence. This poor soul had been a young woman, a child, really, with the ability to create and control lightning. Wrapping it around her hand, pulling it into her skin, finding it was as easy as taking a soul given up by contract, she tugged, watching the life pull at the others bound to it, each of them coming to her smoothly.
Her own power reminded her of Finn’s then, though quieter in its greed, the eagerness repressed by her own moral character and the way her parents had brought her up. Some small part of her knew it was wrong to take—not from Belial, but from the thousands upon thousands he’d tricked and murdered and captured—but her power whispered that it was right, it was necessary, it was deserved.
Veruca had endured so much in the last few years, putting those she loved at risk, and setting her own good sense on hold to help others. More power, especially when taken from such pure evil as the Prince of Hell, was justified. It was necessary.
The power filled her, little by little, quicker and quicker as she worked, as her own strength grew. She read each soul at first, conscious of who they had been in life, how long they’d been with Belial, when they’d lived, and whether they’d loved. After a point, she lost interest in the individuals, concerned less with who they’d been and more with what they could do for her, what they could help her do, how they could bolster her, and what they could let her control. The world around her went away, becoming meaningless when up against the raw absorption of power.
Eventually, she’d taken on so much of Belial that he ceased to be the Prince of Hell, becoming just another man. It was around then that she stumbled on the smallest bit of her soul, tucked away within the whole of his, such a minor twist of herself that she’d never even realized it was gone.
****
The one mastery Belial didn’t seem to possess was that over time, but Veruca still wondered if the passage of such had stopped while she’d stood over him, bleeding him dry of nearly every soul he’d possessed. She left his own, crudely stuffing it back in his chest, knotting it harshly around his heart, wanting to force him to be conscious, to be aware of how fucked he was.
His eyes fluttered open, groans of pain lurching through his lips. He looked like a man, now, no longer beautiful, ageless, the luster of competence wiped away. Crouching down next to him, Veruca slapped his cheek lightly, reaching her new ability in and forcing his body to respond to the order to open his eyes and sit up. His bones were sore, his muscles weak, probably not used to working on their own, and the multitude of healer souls within her could feel the pain he was in from hitting the floor.
She laughed at his discomfort.
“You killed Donald,” she said, hoping just a little he’d piss himself with terror.
“You killed Donald,” he countered, holding her gaze with more moxie than she honestly wanted to see from him. “You called me here, you caused all this. Perhaps I should have stayed away, watched from afar through the eyes of a dead man, but I couldn’t help myself. Hubris at its worst.”
Shifting, grunting with discomfort, Belial adjusted to get to his feet, brushing himself off with the stiffness off an old man who’s spent too much time on a deeply cushioned couch.
“What comes now? You abandon your necromancer, your mercenary? You run off and rule the world?” He lifted his gaze and met hers, waiting until she stood again to speak. She realized in that moment that he was her height, softer, older, rounder than she’d ever noticed—no, than he’d ever let her see.
“You murder me? Leave my corpse here to rot? You take your banshee and face down the queen?” Belial smiled and it drove a spear of insult through Veruca’s chest that made her shake. “Has power corrupted you so immediately? Can you feel the soul of the last Reaper who tried to take me down? The last Reaper to team with your banshee? She’s in you, now. Probably struggling to get out, to take over as she’s done against me.”
Leaning in, his ear tipped toward her chest like someone eavesdropping on the room next door, Belial cupped his hand loosely in the air.
“Fight, Nysgrogh. You may get your chance yet. Hell hath no fury like a Reaper scorned.”
Chuckling to himself, brazenly indifferent to the threat that Veruc
a posed, Belial walked around her, moving to the ugly couch in the corner of the cramped living room, settling into it awkwardly, looking up to Veruca as if he knew exactly how this would play out.
“Nys. Darcy told me about her,” Veruca said, keeping her place by the window, wanting the distance between herself and Belial. She’d come to the house intent on maiming, destroying, fighting him to the best of her ability, and the souls inside her, the glow that threatened to crack open her chest, still wanted that. So much that it was all she could do not to set her own rage free and burn up the entire neighborhood.
“She told me she wanted her freedom, that you denied them that.” Veruca pressed a hand to her own chest, rifling around the souls, shuffling them until she could feel Nysgrogh’s, until she could almost read her true name, and pulled it loose from the whole. “She told me you stopped them.”
“I should have. I would have,” Belial said with a shrug, his gaze focused on Nysgrogh’s loose soul floating between them. After a moment, his brows drew in, concern pinching his face. “She didn’t give me the chance. She had other plans—she had these plans. She’d like to be where you are now, in fact. The new ruler of Hell.”
“I’m no such thing,” Veruca said, brushing him off, leaving Nysgrogh to taunt Belial, as she liked the way the long-dead Reaper made him nervous.
“On the contrary,” Belial said, his lip quirking, a mask over his unease. “Hell is in you, my power, my empire, everything I control and every demon at my disposal—hell, every Reaper who may have designs on my position, and there have been a few—they’re all at your feet, now. You’re responsible for keeping the peace, for keeping the human world and the Fairy world separate. You have no idea what you’ve stepped in or how shitty it truly is. Careful.”
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