by Chloe Jacobs
Her. She’d known it since the first time they’d come face to face, and she’d known this moment would come ever since thwarting his escape from Mylena that day.
But she didn’t have to give in to destiny. Just like Isaac and the rest of her friends were out there fighting right now despite the odds, she could take a stand.
It had to be now, whether Siona had accomplished her mission or not. Greta only had about fifteen warriors left with her on this side of the door, but as long as Agramon’s magick was tapped out, there was a chance it could be enough.
“I’ll kill you first,” she said stubbornly.
He laughed and his eyes widened, crackling with power. She felt it coming off him in waves, so much power it made her dizzy, and she realized he’d been masking it on purpose until he could throw it in her face.
Oh no, Siona!
The massive doors behind her swung open again, and Greta spun around. She cried out at the sight of all the bodies littering the ground. Only the handful of faeries remained standing, their hands and faces splattered with the blood of the rest. They crowded the entrance, and she looked into all of their empty eyes. Just minutes ago they had been willing to fight at her side to the death.
He laughed. “Did you think I would let you take any more power from me?” He didn’t even see them as people with lives and souls, only powers to add to his pile, or chess pieces to use against her.
The remaining faeries who’d been trapped inside the chamber with her moved to surround her and the dozen or so goblins.
She glared back at Agramon, but the look on his face said he wasn’t close to being finished, and then she heard someone coming. Behind the faeries, a figure stepped between the fallen bodies gingerly, like dancing around landmines. The faeries stepped aside to let her through, and Greta bit back a scream.
Siona’s eyes were still red. Bright green veins tracked across her face, down her neck and under her clothes. What had Agramon done to her? She didn’t react to seeing Greta. Her eyes didn’t even flicker with recognition.
“Did you seriously believe that you and your friend’s puny ability would be able to smother the kind of magick that I wield?” His laughter shook the rafters.
Her heart sank.
This isn’t going to work!
Her sword grip slipped as cold sweat coated her palms. It ran down the back of her neck and made her shudder. As if he could sense her intention, he raised a hand, and she went flying backward across the room, landing on her ass at Siona’s feet. Her breastbone felt like it had cracked. Another shot like that, and she might not be able to get back up.
The goblin hunter stooped and clasped her arm with a grip made of steel. Had her gaze flickered as she looked down at Greta’s stricken face? She hauled Greta onto her feet and shoved her back across the chamber to stand before Agramon without a moment’s hesitation, so it was more likely just her hopeful imagination that Siona wasn’t completely gone.
One of the faeries standing off to Greta’s left stumbled. She glanced over at him cautiously just as he blinked and the spark came back into his eyes.
Agramon stared at her with a cocky, twisted grin stretching the skeletal mask that had once been Queen Minetta. Thank God, he hadn’t noticed, at least not yet.
More of the faeries were twitching now, and the group outside of the throne room was growing. Siona wasn’t lost. Faeries. Goblins, sprites, and others all stood together. She tried to keep Agramon’s attention on her. “If you just want to leave this world, why bother destroying it?” she asked.
“These people kept me locked up for centuries. They deserve everything they get.” He grinned. “But then you came along and set me free. That makes us the perfect team.”
She sensed rather than saw Isaac nearing. She didn’t want him to get any closer. Agramon would almost certainly notice him.
Siona might be making progress freeing the faeries from within the hive, but Greta realized they still wouldn’t beat Agramon’s magick. His power was too great. The only thing left to try was a direct assault. Everyone else had held up their end, done their part. Now it was her turn.
She charged without thinking about it too much, running for the demon as rage rumbled up from her deepest, darkest corners, the places where Agramon had tried to break her for good.
She caught him off guard. He didn’t dodge quickly enough, and her blade sliced across his chest. She immediately went in for a second shot, and another. He blocked, but she had her dagger in her other hand and stabbed him in the heart. The faerie queen’s chest collapsed with a puff of dust like a papier-mâché balloon. Agramon shouted and stumbled, dropping one knee to the ground and ducking his head. Greta held her breath. She’d done it.
She stepped in for the kill shot, but Agramon suddenly straightened.
He smoothed his hand over the spot where she’d got him, and that black oily stuff spread from his fingertips over the wound, sinking in…and he was whole again.
No!
The rear door crashed open and a swarm of gnomes came pouring out. They split around Agramon like he was parting the sea and went right for Greta.
The entire chamber erupted into chaos. Isaac roared and rushed forward. He beat back the horde as Greta leaped for Agramon again, but she was out of ideas. If not for the magick, she could beat him. She knew she could. You stabbed him in the heart and he wiped it off.
Damn! It was hopeless. Even without the additional power of the faeries, his magick and the magick from Queen Minetta still gave him the advantage.
Magick. If only there were a way to strip him of it completely. A place where it wouldn’t work.
He cracked her across the face. Her cheekbone exploded with pain.
She fell, and Isaac caught her with a growl. He set her aside and launched himself at the demon. Greta yelled out a warning, but she was too late. Agramon lashed out with a blast of blue fire.
Isaac crashed in a heap, but his biceps crunched as he pushed himself right back up, and the two of them stood together in front of Agramon.
The demon lifted both arms over his head. Electricity crackled from his fingertips, and when he gazed back down at her, that black ooze swirled over his eyes. She thought she even saw a film of it shifting over his skin, so thin that it was barely visible.
Suddenly, the bodies of the fallen rose from the ground. Faerie, goblin, it didn’t matter. Their eyes bled black and their limbs moved like bodies overcome with electrical current.
“I don’t need faerie magick for this trick,” Agramon crowed. “It’s all mine.”
People screamed. The dead snarled and chomped and clutched at her friends. More clogged the entrance trying to get in as goblins, faeries, and gnomes banded together to try and force the doors closed against them.
Great Mother. How far did Agramon’s reach go? Could he grab bodies from the battlefield outside the gates of Rhazua? Could he go into the very ground and pull them up through the ice and snow?
She wasn’t about to wait and find out. She had to put them on an even playing field.
And she knew how she could do it.
“Hey, I thought you wanted to get out of here!” she called.
Isaac snarled. Had he also guessed what she was going to do? She danced out of his reach. His claws caught the hem of her shirt and tugged her back. She tripped forward, the fabric giving way like tissue paper, and landed on her knees at Agramon’s feet.
He dug his claws into her forearm and dragged her up against him. The oily coating over his skin stuck to her torn shirt, and she grimaced.
Isaac snarled and lunged for them, but Agramon simply raised his other hand and flung the goblin king across the room like waving away a fly.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She swallowed hard and forced herself to look away, up at the demon. “If you want to leave Mylena, this is your only chance, because believe me when I say that if you don’t do it this very second, I’m going to chop off your fucking head. Let’s see you try and heal
that shit,” she said with a brave sneer.
He only laughed, the rumble causing his chest to rub against hers. “Well then, where should we go first?” He pretended to think about it, and her heart pounded. “I know! Why don’t we pay a visit to your helpless little world? What do you think they’ll make of me?”
She tugged back, but his grip tightened, claws digging into her flesh. She felt the energy building in front of them, and the portal started to open. Part of her thought that maybe it wouldn’t work. Maybe she wasn’t the key, and he wouldn’t be able to go through, but then he held out his hand as if he needed to test it, too. His black fingers disappeared into the small rift.
He started to shake with excitement, like a kid standing in line to ride the roller coaster.
She twisted for one last look behind her. Wyatt struggled to get to Siona, who was holding back a throng of dead faeries with nothing more than her daggers and a look of horror and guilt on her face. Wyatt wielded a sword and hacked at the dead with a fierce snarl on his face that made her shudder. She hadn’t wanted this for him. He wasn’t built to mete out that kind of violence. It would mark his soul.
There were some people she couldn’t see, and her chest ached. Ethan. Dryden.
She searched desperately for Isaac but didn’t see him, either. Her heart sank.
Please be okay. Please forgive me.
She didn’t dare actually say good-bye, even in a whisper. When the smoke cleared and she was gone, he would hate her for giving up, for sacrificing herself.
At least he’ll be alive. He would be king. He would rebuild.
Agramon pulled her into the portal, and the world fell away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As soon as the portal dumped her back into the human world, she scrambled for her sword, digging through the brush and fallen leaves coating the ground…but it wasn’t there. It hadn’t come through.
Damn it, she had nothing! Agramon was just a few feet away, recovering quickly, and she had no weapon. She ran over and kicked him in the ribs before he could get up, praying he wouldn’t be able to heal that frail faerie queen shell of his in this world.
He roared and lashed out, catching her ankle and pulling her off-balance. He wasn’t as frail as he looked. They rolled in the dirt, and she managed to get up on her knees over him. She kicked and punched until his face leaked that sick black blood all over her knuckles. She bent over and grabbed a long stick. It was no sword, but it was thick, with a splintered, pointy end, so she lifted it over her head and readied herself to bring it down into his chest.
He bucked and threw her off like she weighed no more than a feather. The stick flew out of her hand harmlessly. She cried out in frustration, scrambling through the dirt and leaves after it. He caught her high in the ribs with his pointy-toed faerie queen boot. She screamed as something in her side snapped. She curled up into a ball, struggling to breathe through the agony.
Agramon stood over her. “You are only a pitiful human.” He sneered down at her. “And I am a demon…destined to be a god.”
He leaned back and reached out to blast her with that blue fire of his…and nothing happened.
Destiny, my ass. She laughed. At least one thing in all this had gone the way it was supposed to.
He screeched like a thwarted demonic child and buried his fist in her hair, hauling her to her feet and shoving her head first into the trunk of a tree so hard her brain had to have rattled inside her skull.
He clamped his hand around her throat, leaning in close. The smell of his rank breath and the taste of her own blood trickling down her face into her mouth made her gag.
“That was a smart trick, leading me here where my magick is muted,” he said, sounding too calm for someone who’d just realized he wasn’t invincible. “Yes, so smart.”
She struggled in his arms like a wiggly pig, but his demon strength hadn’t been affected by the human world. She could barely breathe, her broken rib stabbing her in the lungs. Her head throbbed so badly her newly mushed brains might start to leak out of her ears.
Agramon smashed her head into the tree again until black globs swam in her vision and she groaned. “Such a smart girl, you’re going to open that portal again, and we’ll move right on to the next world.”
“Suck it, corpse-face,” she spat, literal spittle landing on his paper-thin cheeks. If she was so smart, she wouldn’t have lost her sword, lost her advantage. “It’s not going to happen.”
His expression went disturbingly calm. “I think you’ll change your mind if I provide the proper amount of motivation.”
“There’s nothing you could do—”
He squeezed harder. She clawed at his wrist, her nails coming away with slimy pieces of his skin beneath them, but he didn’t let up. It was too much. She couldn’t breathe. Her head swam, darkness rising as consciousness decided it had had enough.
“If I hadn’t lived inside you and invaded every little crack and crevice of your soul, perhaps you could convince me…” His voice was just a faraway whisper, or did it only sound that way because of the wind tunnel suddenly whooshing in her ears? “But remember, I know your every human fear and failing, all your pathetic hopes and dreams.” He paused and smiled. “I know all the people you love.”
Her eyes widened in horrified comprehension. “N-no—” she choked.
His scratchy, dry, already-dead person lips brushed her cheek. “I know where you live.”
She fought him with everything she had, but it was already too late. The tree came up to meet her one more time, and everything went black.
A soft rumble shook the ground, like the footsteps of an angry bjer. She struggled to lift her head, but that amount of muscle control was more than she could manage. Even opening her eyes was too difficult, and she gave up with a heavy groan.
For a couple of seconds, she drifted. She couldn’t remember why she felt like death warmed over, but her rib poked her lung as she breathed, and it all came back, bearing down like a ton of bricks.
Agramon. He was going after her parents. He would kill them if she didn’t figure out a way to open the portal. Hell, he would probably kill them no matter what she did. And he knew exactly how to find them because of her. Just like she’d known things about him because of the connection they’d shared…the knowledge went both ways.
Another rumble, but she realized it wasn’t that the ground was shaking. Someone was carrying her, walking with her.
Her heart leaped as she realized that the arms around her were strong but gentle. She forced her eyes open. “Isaac,” she croaked, heart in her throat. “How did you get here? How will you get back? What about Mylena?”
“None of that matters now.” He looked into her face, fear and concern stark in his amethyst eyes. “I will get you to the facility where they help your people heal,” he said.
Hospital. He was talking about a hospital. “No, wait. You can’t. Stop, please!”
He immediately lowered her to the ground. She grimaced as the change in position sent shooting pain…everywhere. She waited until the nausea passed and fumbled for his hand. “I failed. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t stop Agramon.”
His face twisted with regret and guilt. “I should have been with you.”
She nodded. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry that I thought I had to do it alone. I was wrong,” she admitted. “I’ve been wrong a lot. Together we would have been able to take him, but now…” her voice broke. “Now he’s going after my parents, Isaac.”
He paused and swore. “Then we will meet him there and do together what we should have done long ago.”
She agreed, but… “I can barely move. I think my ribs are broken, and I might have a concussion.”
“You’re going to let such a thing stop you?” He raised a brow like he knew her better than that.
She groaned and gazed up at the sky, praying for the strength he seemed to believe she still had. “If I had a sword…”
He stood and reached over h
is shoulder, drawing exactly what she’d asked for from a sheath strapped to his back.
She gasped. She hadn’t even noticed it…maybe because he’d been carrying her. “You are the best!”
He smiled. “Remember this always, and we will have no more problems between us in the future.”
“That’s just crazy talk.” She chuckled, then winced as the pain flared. “Okay, can you help me down the hill where we left Wyatt’s car? If we’re really lucky, it’ll still be there.”
He picked her up again, and they slowly made their way. She let out a hissing of relief when the car finally came into view. “Okay, open up the glove box and see if it has a first aid kit,” she said, then pointed out the storage compartment to him. If Wyatt’s parents were even half the boy scout types that he was, there’d be something there.
She wasn’t wrong, and after downing a handful of Tylenol to dull the pain, Isaac helped wrap her ribs tightly with a long stretchy bandage. Then he cleaned the blood off her face and clumsily stuck some gauze to her forehead. She almost chuckled when the medical tape stuck to his fingers.
Finally, she stood and took a practice breath. “It hurts, but the bandage helps.”
He looked like he was still considering the hospital. “Don’t even think it,” she said. “You know I have to do this. You need me. I need you. Let’s finally be a real team and do this together.”
“Yes, but we must hurry.”
She nodded. She looked down the long dirt road. Beyond that, there would be more highway, and a bus ride back to her parents’ house that would take hours. Too long. She looked at the car.
“Get in,” she said. She had never even driven so much as a go-kart in her life, but like Wyatt had said, how hard could it be?
In the driver’s seat, she flipped the visor and the key fob dropped right into her lap. She jabbed it in the ignition and turned the engine. Thank the Great Mother it started right away. If she lived through this, she was going to send Hyundai a great big thank you card for making a reliable vehicle.