by Lan Chan
“I love you,” I told him despite my better judgement. “I’ve loved you since the moment you stole my lunch and forced me to be your friend.”
He chuckled and grabbed me around the nape of my neck with one hand as he wiped away my tears with the other. He bent his head and rested his forehead against mine. “I swear I’ll find you in the next lifetime. No matter where we are. I’ll find you. You belong to me, Sophie. Body and soul.”
My laugh was wet and quivering.
“Well, isn’t this nice?” Agatha cackled. “It’s like a reunion. You still can’t do it, can you, little witch? Even while you watch your world crumble, you still won’t do what’s necessary.”
Max pushed me behind him even though there was no real point. We were surrounded on all sides by demons and malachim. He glanced up into the air where his brother was still being held, as though being crucified by magic. Max turned his head to where his parents huddled with the other alphas. Alastair gave him a nod, his eyes flicking to me.
The mating link rapped against the blood barrier. It alerted me to the tightening of Max’s hand on my wrist. While we were physically connected, an errant thought floated through to me. With the Reserve about to make the ultimate sacrifice, Max knew he couldn’t save them all. Now his intention tunnelled. He would save me even if he died trying. I knew he had every intention of busting down the ward around the Reserve while he still had the element of surprise. Maybe there was shame in leaving his pack undefended, but he didn’t care. All of his concern, all of his fear, all of his soul was focused on me.
How could I give him any less?
When his hand tightened once again and I felt his muscles contract, I drew a circle around myself and held firm. I snatched my hand back and stepped to the side to create some distance between us. His furious eyes lashed at me, but I cast it aside.
Agatha and I raised our hands at the same time. She drew a circle of purple light. I drew one of pink laced with red. Her eyes narrowed. Mine closed. Reaching into my pocket, I crushed the vial of Lex’s blood and felt the glass slice into my hand. The blood alchemy whipped out and grabbed hold of Lex’s blood.
Agatha’s choking laugh filled at the air. “Kill them!”
The malachim drifted forwards. I sank down to the ground and drew the blood circle. This time when they touched it, I shoved back at them with alchemy. It brushed up against the circle of Agatha’s magic. I gritted my teeth hard. Channelling the blood of the civilian shifters, and boosted by Lex’s power, I scraped away at her circle until it broke apart in my hands. The moment the malachim hit the circle, it exploded in a cascade of such blistering midnight blue that for a moment, night turned into day. A phantom hand reached into my chest and squeezed my heart until I felt my blood turning cold.
“Sophie!” Max screamed.
“Go!” I screamed back. His eyes clouded with gold. “Max!”
The pure anguish in my voice forced him to take off running. He ploughed through the barrier of demons like they weren’t even there and launched himself at the wards. I didn’t see anything else as Agatha sailed over the top of me. The demons went into a frenzy. They came at us again.
The shifters dispensed with all order. Guards, parents, and children all moved to defend their home for the last time.
Inside me, something made a loud creaking noise. Warm arms dragged me from the middle of the fight to sit me inside the embrace of a bear. Durin’s white eyes looked down at me as I died. Max pounded against the wards. Thunder cracked in the air as a line of mauve appeared like a fissure opening up in the ground during a volcano eruption.
Sensing that her ward was about to fail, Agatha gave up her hold on the malachim to focus on strengthening it.
Inside, I latched on to the last tether of my soul. It was so thin I could barely feel it throbbing. It slipped through my magical fingers. A figure steeped in shadow materialised in the field before my eyes. That voice that whispered insidious things filled my mind.
Sophie, the thing urged. Come to me.
The browned portion of my soul heeded his command. It sailed towards him, stretching the tether so tight I felt myself being pulled physically closer. Durin’s arms gripped my shoulders. My heartbeat began to slow.
The mating link became riotous inside the blood barrier. I thanked the heavens that blood magic stuck. Even after death.
Sophie. Another spirit emerged beside the demon. One I’d only ever known through stigma and the Book of Beasts. A promise is a promise, my great-grandfather thought to me. You belong to Apollyon.
A hot red pain sliced through every nerve in my body as the last thread of my soul began to fray. I heard myself screaming but my mind no longer registered emotions. The arms around me grew so tight my bones groaned.
Perversely, it was the kitchen magic that reached out at the last minute as the thread of my soul began to degrade. It turned from the pure pink to a discoloured brown. Screams rent the air around me as malachim tore into the shifters. Their dying groans filled my ears. Edward’s tiny wail brought me back to the present. I watched, deadened, as Cheyenne was ripped from his grasp by a malachim. The thing sank its claws into her gut. Her scream was cut off short as it exposed her stomach, and she died with her blood splattered all over her son.
Out of my mind with terror and grief, I sank my hand into Durin’s fur. The thing that looked back at me from his face was not a bear.
“Give me your strength,” I pleaded. “Give it to me and you can have my soul!”
It wasn’t even a contest. Durin was the strongest of the shifters, for now, but I was human. My soul was worth vastly more.
Truthfully, I didn’t even know what I was saying. Right then I would have made a deal with Lucifer himself to spare the Reserve. In that moment, I understood exactly why Lex had done it.
No! Apollyon screamed. He reared up and raised his arms. But when he tried to grab hold of my soul, he was rebuffed by a glowing white light.
The sound that came from the demon prince’s mouth was steeped in vehemence. Ancient and undying. It promised retribution. He disappeared from my sight, but in my mind, I saw him standing beside that Abyss. A black-eyed Kai was with him.
Enjoy your moment of reprieve, Apollyon promised. It will be your last.
My attention was ripped back to the present by the glow of white eyes pinning me still. What I never expected was for it to be pleasurable. The dark ball of malachim smoke that transferred from Durin’s chest into my mouth was blacker than the moonless night. But when it seeped into my body and my alchemy reared up, the blackness raised its head. The alchemy kicked in and began to transmute the malachim’s soul. What the hell?
When I tried to hide inside the alchemy, the malachim snatched at me and forced me to keep going. Fearful that my soul would snap, I struggled.
Sophie, a crackling Caribbean accent admonished. Stubbornness doesn’t become you.
The command in that voice had me complying. I let go of everything and allowed the alchemy to take control. It filtered through the malachim’s essence, drawing away the darkness, separating light from evil.
Screams echoed through the night. For some reason, they came from below me. When I opened my eyes, I was levitating in the air facing Charles. The being inside my head was everywhere and nowhere at once. When I reached out my hand to touch Charles’s face, it was glowing in white light.
This time, when I opened my mouth and spoke the words of light, they blasted through the Reserve like a storm over a tugboat. Charles’s head snapped back, and he screamed. But the malachim that had invaded his body rushed out in a wave of black that exploded in the night air.
Agatha’s wards crumbled in Max’s hands. The moment they broke, he went for her. Leaping into the air, Max used the malachim around her as stepladders. He was on her so quickly she didn’t have time to finish her spell.
Without Apollyon’s backing, she could only rely on her own strength. She was a sorceress. Magic was her strength, and Max was imperv
ious to it. He snatched her from the air as purple blossomed around him. They tumbled to earth the way a crocodile grabbed its prey and rolled into water. It would take more than a fall from a high place to kill Max. I couldn’t say the same for Agatha. They slammed into the ground with her on the bottom. If she hadn’t died from the impact, she certainly did when Max crushed her skull.
The supernaturals charged in once the wards came down. They prepared to meet the malachim and the demons.
“Shamayin,” I said. Rest. With my borrowed strength, the word of light obliterated every scrap of demonic energy in the Reserve. It created a backlash of magic so bright I could see nothing besides white everywhere I looked. It also obliterated every scrap of normal magic in the vicinity. I fell to the ground hard as my kitchen magic and my alchemy disintegrated.
And then, so did the blood barrier.
As soon as the smallest sliver of space was created, the mating link busted out and snapped taut. A lion roared in my ears. The world exploded in a rainbow of colour and bliss. The smiling face of something so beautiful looked down on me.
Thank you, the malachim said before I passed out.
41
Max
I crouched down in the bathroom adjacent to Charles’s bedroom and waited. Dani knelt in front of me, her tiny body shaking with anticipation. “Now, Maxy?”
Curling my hand around her shoulder, I said, “Just a bit longer, baby.”
Tiny. She was so tiny. Her utter relief and joy when we retrieved her from under the dwarf mountain still ate at me inside. The mating link flared with a bright white that shoved those dark thoughts away. A reminder that this world wasn’t all about darkness and despair. You did what you had to do, a logical part of my mind whispered. Logic. I was more than a little relieved to have some of it back.
I held on tighter to Dani, feeling her rub her cheek on my thumb in the shifter way of giving comfort even though she had no ability to shift.
Outside, I heard the distinct sound of Charles clomping his way up the front path like a herd of oxen. The scent of wood smoke and cedar, as well as spring rain and amber that lingered around him told me Luther and Cassie were with him.
The front door opened. “Mum!” Charles yelled. This kid was like a foghorn. My parents were in the pool house doing god knows what. The thought made my stomach turn. “Mum!”
“Whatever it is,” Dad shouted back at him, his voice strained with something disgusting. “Do it yourself.”
Dani pressed her lips against my arm. Her body shook with anticipation.
“Bloody gross,” Charles muttered. Footsteps came up the stairs. Just a little more.
“I think it’s sweet,” Cassie said.
“Well, you should get your head checked.”
The pattern of their steps filtered through to my senses in vibrations. Charles’s steps were bungling ripples. Cassie trailed after him, her steps barely audible and only because she wasn’t trying to hide. And at the rear, Luther walked calmly, his steps measured. Before they reached the top of the staircase, Luther paused. He must have grabbed Cassie’s arm because she stopped walking too.
Only my bull-in-a-china-shop brother charged forwards. “Now,” I whispered to Dani.
Charles reached his bedroom door. Dani’s chubby little hands clapped together, golden pink light glowing around her. A corresponding boom rocked the hallway.
Charles yelled out. I bolted to the door in time to watch him go flying over the banister. His legs and arms pin-wheeled, his face screwing up when he realised there was nothing to hold on to. The drop wasn’t far, and his reflexes would ensure that he landed on two feet. It was what he landed in that made Luther burst out laughing at the same time I did.
A growl rattled the hallway. “You childish bastard!”
He sat in the vat of green basilisk spit that I had taught Dani to glamour so he couldn’t see it was there. She poked her head between the railing and waved at him.
“Charlie!” she cooed. His eyes were already drooping from the sedative in the spit.
Mum came screaming in from the backyard. Her hair was the quintessential lion’s mane. A testament to what was going on outside. The sight of her still stopped me dead in my tracks. Something curled tight in my chest before the mating link fired again, dispelling the bad thoughts and making me see her as she was right now. Glowing with health and spitting fire with her eyes. Dani skipped down the stairs and into her arms.
“One hour!” she screeched at us. “I just want one hour of peace.”
“Only an hour, huh?” I said. “Dad’s losing his touch.”
Her eyes flashed daggers at me.
“He’s like a two-year-old!” Charles complained. Cassie was helping him up before he fell asleep in the vat and drowned. Her lips were pressed tight together but her eyes sparkled. “He’s still got my demon blade too!”
“I don’t care what anyone’s done. I just want this cleaned up before dinner!”
She disappeared back outside, muttering about immature lions. I leaned over the banister and gave Charles my most innocent smile. “That’s number twenty-three,” I told him. “Only seventeen more to go.”
“Just wait till Sophie wakes up,” he shot back. “Then you’ll see what a prank is!”
My lion picked up its head at the mention of her. Its mouth opened in a silent roar. A myriad of emotions spiralled through me. Fury, hunger, tenderness. The lion clawed at my gut, swiping away the logic of the man and surrendering to pure instinct. She’d hidden the link from us. We both could have died without acknowledging the greatest gift the old gods had given to our race. The lion brimmed with violence, its primal nature shaken to the core with fear, as it stewed in what ifs. Still too raw to be soothed by the mating link itself, the lion paced around in my mind, impatient for its mate to awaken.
Charles knew exactly what he was doing but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. I leaned against the door as Cassie shooed him inside. “Don’t crack your head on the tub,” I said.
He tried to lunge at me but ended up falling on his ass. I laughed all the way to the conference room.
“You’ve got contracts with the skin walkers,” Durin murmured. He sat behind the oak desk in the office I’d gladly relinquished.
“I’ve signed contracts with a lot of factions.”
His black eyes watched me over the rim of the parchment. “They take on any form without discrimination,” he said. “Is that the kind of thing we want to be associated with?”
“They’re honourable. And loyal. They’ll be good allies.”
He grunted. “Didn’t one of their huntresses try to mate with you?”
I shrugged. The faces of all the women who’d come and gone melded together in my head. I couldn’t pick any of them out of a haystack.
Durin pressed on. “They’re also ritualistic.”
“So?”
“So how isn’t that just another step down from a magic user?”
I shrugged. “Things change, Durin.”
He eyed me with the speculative cunning of an alpha. I leaned back in my chair, arms crossed over my chest.
“Uh huh. And the fact that they’re West African doesn’t come into the equation?”
“Why would it?”
This time, he leaned forward. Setting the papers down, he threaded his thick fingers in front of him. I couldn’t help smiling inside. His skin still held a ghostly pallor, but for the most part, he was Durin again.
“Should I expect all your decisions to be made for the good of your mate rather than the pack from now on?” he said with typical bluntness. I matched it.
“Yes.” And then, “But Sophie would never accept anything that would harm the pack. So it’s a moot point.”
He scrubbed at his face, messing up his beard. He really did do a good impression of a mountain man. “I suppose you’re not going to back down on this Sisterhood thing either?”
“Not on your life.”
“Uh huh.
” His eyes narrowed slightly. “When the day comes, you’ll be alpha of the Reserve. But that day isn’t today. So I would appreciate it if you asked before you reinstated them.”
I leaned forward too, the lion in my eyes. Once I would have allowed his dominance to keep me silent. But I’d been somebody else for too long and it chafed. I was never going to change again.
“It was a mistake to allow the Council to exile them in the first place.” My voice was like a steel blade. “Because of that decision, Sophie was running around unprotected in the fens for six months. They’re lucky I don’t take their heads for it. So the Sisterhood stays. We’re done punishing the humans, when we dropped the ball. I’m done being scared.”
He sighed heavily. “It’s not that simple.”
“Since when?”
“Since we allowed a human with unknown powers to remain in our community.”
I snorted. “Come off it! You’re the one who voted for Lex to stay.”
He ran his hand through his hair this time. His eyes clouded over, and my hunting instinct became deadly sharp. “What did the malachim show you?” I found myself asking with my breath held.
Durin shook his head. “Nothing solid. Just a feeling of oppression. That we’re being stalked by a danger that will change the face of our world forever.”
I let it sit for a moment. And then the mating link showed me the image of Lex on her first day at Bloodline Academy. Small, skinnier than a stork, and wearing mismatched clothing. She’d come running through the corridor behind Sophie as Basil screamed his head off. Bewildered by what was happening, she’d looked into my eyes without understanding it was a challenge. The lion went completely silent in my mind, its voice and claws stolen by something it recognised in her. Locked inside that breakable human body was a will that would dwarf most of the Reserve.
The tattoo on my chest burned. I slapped my hand over it, massaging to stop the pain.
“When the day comes,” I said, “I would rather embrace a change that Lex is fighting for than hold on to a world that stops us from growing.”