But his expression said it all. It felt real. Way, way too real. Real enough to paralyze.
Darek looked over at me. “I’m showing him his worst nightmare,” he said quietly.
Tears stung my eyes as I watched Crowe fall to his knees, just a few feet from the place where the floor gave way to nothingness. He clutched at his head, tearing at his hair. “I didn’t mean to,” he howled. “I would never hurt them!”
“You hurt everybody,” Darek shouted. “Just like your father did.”
It killed me, watching Crowe break like this. And that pain, that love, it was enough to penetrate the fog of animus in my head. As Crowe stared in horror at a scene I was sure involved the sight of everyone he loved dead in front of him, my fingers began to twitch, aching to reach for the crimson threads of Killian’s magic. He stood impassively at my side, sweating and breathing hard, as if he was fighting as well.
“Crowe, I’m a compassionate guy,” said Darek. He walked over to Crowe, who was now on his hands and knees, his head hanging, and grabbed Crowe’s hair, pulling his chin up. As he did, I could see the golden skeins of Crowe’s magic sliding up Darek’s arms, being absorbed by his dark power. “I really want to help you get through this.”
“It’s not real, Crowe,” I whispered, then huffed with frustration. I’d meant to scream it, but Killian still had a hold on me.
“Make it stop,” Crowe sobbed, not resisting as his enemy siphoned away his magic, too caught in the illusion of his own personal hell. “I would never hurt them. I didn’t mean to do it!”
“Make it stop?” Darek asked, turning to me. He pressed his hand to his bleeding shoulder and whispered an incantation, and the wound glowed golden as it healed. “Should I make it stop, Jemmie?”
“Crowe, it’s not real,” I said, louder this time.
Darek’s smile fell away. “Try harder, Killian. Don’t disappoint me.”
Instantly, the ribbons of crimson animus tightened around me, stabbing into my ears, stealing my voice once more.
Darek’s grin returned as he watched my mouth snap shut. “Much better. Now,” he said, turning back to Crowe, “you wanted me to put an end to all your suffering.”
“Please,” Crowe whispered, his eyes locked on the imaginary horror. “I never meant to do this. I don’t ever want to lose control again.”
Darek approached Hardy. Ash and cinders hit my senses as he touched the side of Hardy’s face and siphoned his magic. “Oh, wow.” Darek stumbled back, his aura tinted orange with invictus. “It’s awesome to be you.”
He ambled back over to Crowe as I waged a battle in my own mind. I could see Darek’s strength growing with every step, along with his intent to kill. Crowe knelt, helpless and in the grip of overwhelming grief. How Darek had known to hit him with this—not just the deaths of the people he loved, but by his own hand—I didn’t know. It reeked of an evil and cruelty I hadn’t known existed before that moment.
“I’m going to make this stop for you just like you asked,” Darek said, leaning over Crowe. “You ready to join your old man in hell, big guy?” His fist shot forward and slammed into the side of Crowe’s face. Crowe’s head snapped to the side and he fell hard, blood pouring from his mouth, his body landing right on the edge of the hole in the floor.
Love and determination surged inside me. It was as if I could feel Crowe’s newly shed blood calling out for me. I didn’t know if it was how I felt about him or the blood magic we’d created together, but it was as if his heart beat in my chest. I was not about to watch him die. My hand rose from my side, and my fingers, sparking blue with locant, encircled one of the undulating ribbons of Killian’s magic. It felt silky and loose as I yanked it away from my body.
As Darek stood over Crowe, preparing to kick him into the pit, I whispered protective incantations as I whirled around and let my locant tear Killian’s crimson magic to shreds, ripping it away from Killian himself, who shuddered and staggered.
“Help me,” I said. “Don’t let this happen.” I’d freed the two of us, but it was clear that all of Darek’s intended victims were still held in helpless oblivion.
“Dammit, Jemmie,” yelled Darek. As I spun around to face him, I saw that he’d left Crowe lying right at the edge of the hole and was running back to the trough. He bent over and pulled something from inside the basin—a hunting knife. With a cold glint in his eye, he quickly moved to my mom’s side, and with sharp, brutal slashes, slit her outstretched arms from the crook of her elbow to her wrist. Her blood flowed into the bowl, streaking it red.
“No!” I screamed. Killian and I both ran forward as Darek deftly cut Alex’s wrists, too, and then pivoted around and cut my dad’s.
“I should never have protected you,” Killian roared as he slammed into Darek, his animus magic winding around his nephew. They hit the floor between Dad and Katrina, who stood by, calm as sleepwalkers.
As Darek and Killian wrestled for control of the knife, I sprinted for the only person I knew could save my family—Crowe. I grabbed his shoulders and dragged him away from the edge of the pit, just far enough so he couldn’t accidentally roll in. With clawed fingers and all the love that was in me, I muttered another protective incantation and ripped away the sickly green curse, leaving him groaning and blinking up at the fractured roof. “It wasn’t real,” I said, bending over him as Killian and Darek struggled by the trough.
Crowe’s eyes met mine. “Jemmie?” he asked weakly.
“Yeah. I need your help.”
“I killed you.”
“Nope. Get up. How much magic do you have?” I yanked on his arm, trying to get him on his feet.
Blood dripped from his mouth as he swayed, trying to keep his balance and get his bearings. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “He took a lot.” From the tortured tone of his voice, I knew he wasn’t just talking about his magic.
As we started for the trough where my parents and Alex stood, their blood spilling into the basin below, Darek let out a laugh, and Killian screamed. Before we had a chance to intervene, Darek rose from the floor, the dripping knife in one hand and Killian in the other, bleeding from a terrible wound to his gut. Orange strands of invictus magic wound around Darek’s arm, and he hefted his uncle upward before dropping his entire body, limp and bleeding, into the trough.
“You aren’t worthy to call yourself a Delacroix,” Darek said, then spit on Killian, who shuddered and went quiet, the blood from the others Darek had cut flowing over him.
Darek raised his head and saw me and Crowe standing between the pit and the trough, and then his blue eyes skimmed the people around the bloody basin, as if calculating. A tiny smirk pulled at his lips, and he lunged for Katrina.
He was going to try to complete the curse, and if he did, there would be no stopping him.
Crowe began to move forward, but I grabbed his arm and turned to him. “No,” I said quietly, taking his face in my hands. “You heal anyone who’s been cut, and hurry. You aren’t the monster today.”
Tonight, I was the monster. It had to be me.
Crowe looked down at me, and I watched the same love and determination I had felt spark in his eyes. I wondered if he sensed my heart inside him, too. He crushed his lips against mine, quickly, hungrily. Did he know this was the last time? Did he feel it, too?
“Go,” I said quietly. “Save them.”
Magic surged inside me. It coiled in my bones and in my veins. I charged Darek, calling forth a vault hex. Too late did I sense the glittering blue shield around him, stolen from my father as he bled. My hex bounced off him. Before I could stop my momentum, Darek lunged for me and jammed the blade of his knife into my stomach. Blood poured down the front of me, soaking my shirt and my jeans, squishing in my boots. My insides burned. It wasn’t just a physical pain, but a mental and metaphysical pain, felt to the root of my soul.
“This is what you get for hurting me,” Darek said with a low sob. He grabbed my shoulder, and with his other hand, drove the blade up, hi
tting bone when he reached my rib cage. A reedy, wet gasp escaped me.
Crowe roared my name from the other side of the trough, but Darek threw up a barrier around him, imprisoning him inside.
I dropped where I stood, my entire body on fire, a strange whispering in my ear, calling to me. Mom had collapsed to her knees, her lips blue and her skin pale, but her arms were still held out. My dad bled out into the trough, too, though he was starting to sink to the floor. With Crowe trapped, beating his fists against Darek’s barrier, Darek quickly sliced the wrists of Boone, Gunnar, and Hardy before going to the other side of the trough to cut Flynn and Jane. They stood helplessly, growing paler by the second, as their blood—and their magic—drained from them.
I closed my eyes. I was so tired, and so cold. “Don’t do this,” I whispered. “Please.”
“I have to,” Darek said, even though he had tears in his eyes. “This is my destiny, Jemmie. I’m going to be a god among men.”
It hit my consciousness hard, awakening a memory from its slumber. Slowly, I raised my head. “No,” I said. “You’re the devil.” I rolled onto my side and glanced at the gaping hole in the floor that stretched all the way down to the river below. It was only feet away.
Up onto all fours, I grabbed the hilt of the knife and pulled it out with one swift motion. Blood hit the floorboards, and my teeth began to chatter. I clutched an arm to my stomach, pressing hard as I leaned against the end of the trough. Avoiding looking at the carnage within, I raised my head.
Darek’s spell had already begun. He threw his left hand over the trough of blood, and with one quick slash opened a gash across his own palm. When the first drops of his blood hit the rest, the crimson liquid vibrated and rippled outward, like a stone had been dropped in the center. Wind kicked up outside and ripped through the cracks of the mill, drowning out the sound of Darek’s voice as he shouted an incantation. He plunged his hand into the trough. The magic immediately took hold and a mushroom cloud of smoke and light burst upward.
Darek rocked on his feet. There was no locant barrier surrounding him now, but his black tollat magic was coiling around him in ribbons, mixing with the other magic to create something new.
Something terrible.
Though I could barely feel my legs, I sensed that they were moving, propelling me to my own end.
Magic glittered like a rainbow of serpents above us, soaring up from the casting trough and arching back down when it hit the ceiling. Darek repeated the incantation over and over again. Bright red lines appeared on his arms, and spread up to his neck, and then up the side of his face.
He looked right at me with black eyes. The blackness seeped out, over the bridge of his nose and back toward his ears. He grinned at me. A devil’s grin.
I took two giant steps and rammed the knife up and beneath his rib cage, straight into his heart.
Darek leaned into me with a groan. I staggered back, caught beneath his weight.
“You really think this will kill me?” he said. “A knife?” He laughed. “It’s too late, Jemmie. I’m already immortal.”
“Not if I take your power from you.”
I gave the knife another shove and he gasped again, then I pressed myself against him, wound to wound, a grisly embrace. I felt the connection between us, our blood mixing, all the different kinds of magic running through our veins. That warm, fuzzy feeling washed over me again, strengthened my own magic in a way I couldn’t describe with words. With my arms around him, I twisted in the ribbons of loosed magic, winding them around us as I staggered toward the open pit. Faintly, I could hear Crowe shouting, but it didn’t stop me.
I was going to throw myself into the sea, and take the devil with me.
The skeins of magic began to weave themselves together around us, closing in. Using my locant power and the connection of our blood, I seized Darek’s siphoning power as my own and bound it, gilding my own bones with it even as I wrenched it from his. Ashy fog billowed around me as I sucked him dry.
“No,” he breathed as the magic abandoned him.
The blackness pulled away from his eyes, just in time for me to see them gloss over. I lost my balance as his body went limp in my arms and his face smoothed. For a brief moment he was just a boy who had once offered me a piggyback ride out of the swamp, a boy with a sweet smile and warm hands.
It was too late, though. For him and for me. My faltering steps had carried us backward, and we were already plunging through that hole in the floor. “Now the sea has us,” I whispered as we fell toward the rushing river below and let the Undercurrent welcome us both.
NINETEEN
I COULD HEAR THE ROARING OF A RIVER.
Not the Sable River. This was different.
This was everywhere. This was bigger.
The Undercurrent whispered to me, called my name.
The rushing of water through my fingertips, the cold seeping into my skin, the blackness running through my veins. As I let the current carry me, I reached out my hand and brushed something vital, something huge and inhuman and very much alive, even in this place of death. It whispered to me in the voice of a monster, singing me a song of blood and power, caressing my soul with its long, spindly fingers, wrapping them around the very essence of me.
Distantly, I was aware of a pull, of something trying to yank me away from this perfection, and I fought it. But the creature that lived in the Undercurrent laughed while it dragged its fingertips along the seams of my soul, knitting me back together in its own image. Go, it said, urging me home, returning me to the living with its fingerprints all over my heart.
TWENTY
“YOU FIX HER, GODDAMN IT, OR I SWEAR TO GOD—”
“Try harder.”
“She has no pulse.”
“She’s not dead, Jane. I can still feel her—”
“Crowe, I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough.”
“Take my blood. Just bring her back!”
“Come back to me, Jemmie.”
Light flashed behind my eyes. I could feel the distant pull of the ground beneath my legs and the grip of strong arms wrapped around me, the press of his face against mine. He was shaking. Shaking. And the earth trembled.
The roar of the nearby river was in my ears, and still he held me.
“Crowe,” I whispered.
He pulled back. “Jemmie?”
“Am I alive?”
A beautiful honeyed glow broke over the treetops on the other side of the river, casting a halo of light behind his head. The sunlight. I could taste it on the tip of my tongue.
I could hear the birds in the trees and the worms in the earth and the fast beating of Crowe’s heart.
I could sense every breath pulled in and pushed out. I could sense the world sighing.
A single tear streamed down Crowe’s face. It glittered in the light.
And then he kissed me and the earth stopped trembling, and held its breath.
I was alive.
TWENTY-ONE
CROWE TIGHTENED HIS ARM AROUND MY WAIST, HOLDING me upright. My entire body had broken in the fall, and water had filled my lungs, but he’d healed me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hadn’t needed it. That my body knew how to put itself back together. I could still feel the aftereffects of Crowe’s venemon magic and mine knitting my bones.
He led me to his car, where my mom and dad waited, looking pale from blood loss but otherwise alive. By some miracle and Crowe’s powerful healing magic, the only people we lost were Darek and Killian.
I fell into my parents’ arms and Mom sobbed against my neck, her tears soaking my hair.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.
When they pulled away, they both looked at me with those concerned Mom and Dad faces, the kind that said they were still worried that something might be broken, something they didn’t know how to mend.
Something was different.
I was different.
I was better.
No one had to say it for me to feel it. The blood magic.
“Me next,” Alex said, and pulled me to her. Her slender arms wove around me and squeezed me tight. Her heart thudded hard in her chest. “I heard you were a badass, just like I always thought you were.”
I smiled. “I suppose I was. And I suppose you were right.”
She let me go but held on to my shoulders. “I was so scared, Jemmie,” she said in a choked voice. “And I was afraid he was going to hurt you, too.”
“He did,” I told her. “But I was stronger than he was.”
She blinked and looked away. “Here,” she said, taking a deep breath and turning back to me. She slid on a large pair of aviator sunglasses over my eyes. “Just for right now,” she said. “Until it wears off.”
I nodded and thanked her and kissed her cheek.
It wasn’t going to wear off.
I’d caught sight of my reflection in the window of Crowe’s car. The blackness I’d seen in Darek’s eyes that had bled across half his face now had a home in mine.
It wasn’t going to fade away. It was a part of me.
Whatever I’d taken from Darek and bound to me, it lived inside me now, rooted at the heart of my soul.
Crowe fed a puffed-up story to the media, blaming Killian’s and Darek’s deaths on the collapse of the mill—which had no doubt actually been brought about by Lori and Boone and their terra magic. There’d been a party, he claimed. A bit too much revelry. No one questioned it. The building was now just a pile of rubble.
I still wondered what Crowe would have done if I hadn’t woken when I did. He was somehow more distant than before, but closer, too. He didn’t say much to me, but he wouldn’t leave my side, either, and his hands were constantly on me.
Devils & Thieves Series, Book 1 Page 21