No. The Blood Witch might have been the strongest force on Earth, but I had to be stronger. As scary and impossible as that sounded, a light bulb went off in my head.
Stars weren’t part of the Earth. I could be more powerful than her. And if I wasn’t, fake it ‘til you make it, right?
Lux and Aamon were inhumanly still, waiting for my reaction. “How can Agana use her magic in The Gone? We’re supposed to be powerless here.” It felt true. The absence of my power stung like poking an open wound.
When Aamon looked away, I knew I didn’t want to hear the answer, and I knew it was the key to getting back through The Chains. I turned to Lux.
“Tell me how she can use magic. She looks so weak, she’s half-dead. How can she be using so much energy?” I wouldn’t ask how many times a month, a week, a day the demons threw her in that pit to fight for her life. I couldn’t ask how much she was tortured, starved. I couldn’t fix that, but maybe I could use whatever answers they gave me to stop it.
I had to get her home, too.
One thing at a time, Celeste.
Lux’s face turned pink, his sharp jawbone flexing again. “Her own blood is extremely powerful,” he said so quietly I had to lean closer to hear. “The lesser demons and she exchange blood. It keeps her alive, and gives them—”
“Don’t,” I spat. I looked at Aamon, unable to close my mouth, eyes wide. “You let this happen? I thought you loved her!”
“I do!” he roared, pounding his fist on the desk, echoes resounding. “I’ve tried to help her, but she’s a fiend for the blood exchange now. She refuses to live without it.” He sank back against the desk, his words dwindling like the vitality in his eyes.
Anger propelled me to my feet, unsure who to direct my rage at first. “Demon royalty,” I said, sneering at Aamon. I couldn’t be afraid of him, I was too angry. “Royalty, and you can’t take her out of there? You claim to love her and you’d let her be tortured in that pit? Have you seen what they do to her there?”
“I haven’t seen her in countless months. I cannot.”
“Lux? How could you let this happen to the girl your brother loves? To anyone?” My stomach sunk. “Are you just a one-dimensional monster like those things in The Lair?”
“You see what you want to see, Celeste,” he said angrily. “You like me in your own world, poetic and sick. Here, I have one purpose, and that is to be the embodiment of Lust.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “And that includes blood lust.”
My short nails dug into my palms. “You enjoy seeing her like that.”
I expected him to look ashamed, to apologize. But there wasn’t a flicker of regret in those calculating, mesmerizing blue eyes.
I cleared my throat. “Right then. Well, the point is, she can use her magic here. Which means if we—I—try, I can do the same.”
“No,” Lux said with a ferocity I would have expected more from his brother. “There will be no sacrifice that involves you.”
Heat emanated from Aamon, the air around him rippling with his fury. “So it’s fine to drain Agana dry but you won’t even discuss endangering your witch? At least not until you get what you want from her, right?” His muscles shook, chest heaved.
Lux, sitting with his leg crossed over his knee, bared his teeth, and his butcher knife appeared in his hand. Blood poured from his clenched fists. He rose to his feet, pulling his suit jacket tight with his free hand like he was entering the boardroom. The mere implication that Lux would challenge him made Aamon shudder with rage. “Should we play now or later, Aamon? Your call.”
“Play? What the hell are you two talking about?”
Lux’s butcher knife glinted, and brought with it a wicked grin.
“Lux—”
“Quiet, girl!” Aamon shouted at me. “Luxuria wants to play Five Finger Fillet. It’s how we solve things.”
“You guys do this often?” I scoffed. Trying to talk them down was fruitless. “I think you’re all talk, Aamon,” I said. “You’re a bully. We came here, to your room because it was safest, and because, I’m guessing, that if the rest of your brothers found me in The Gone there’d be bloodshed. Not the kind you like.” Aamon’s shoulders relaxed. “I have to stop the Elementals before they kill the Poisons. I want to take Agana with me.”
Aamon suddenly looked smaller in his sadness. “You would take Luxuria, too. Wouldn’t you?”
Lux looked at me between his spider legs of hair. “Would you?” he asked.
My throat constricted with how much I wanted to protect him, have him with me, see his face every day whether he was a monster or not. “We both know you couldn’t stay. I saw what that world did to you.”
“That was what The Chains did to me, speaking to me from here and above. And my brothers, giving me their constant opinions and irritating orders. But we could change all that. Nothing will be the same if we defeat the Elementals. We’ll rule that world. The Royal Demons could come above, we could have lives of our own.”
“You would not get me to that hellhole, brother,” Aamon said gently. “The Chains are my stomping grounds from afar. No need to go back to the scene of the crime.”
“Quiet,” Lux said.
“She’s not stupid. Give her a minute to think and she’ll know how a feud that lasts for centuries is provoked.”
Lux looked at me, eyes wide. Aamon was right—I figured it out fast. The Wrath Demon had caused the distrust between the Elementals from the get-go.
Sighing, I said, “The past doesn’t matter. Nothing is certain. Nothing ever has been, for any of us. Let’s start to make things certain by getting Agana to help us. She can help us right so many wrongs.”
“She’s a fiend,” Lux murmured, eyes down.
I took the knife from Lux’s hand, and it vanished. “She’s not just one thing.”
Chapter 27
I waited with Lux and a fidgety Aamon on a snowswept street, surrounded by tall buildings that glowed purple, highlighting an iron archway over our heads that read, The Black City. There wasn’t a breath of life around us. Deserted. I wondered if there was even anyone inside those buildings, or if the lights were just on to give the illusion we were less lonely.
We waited for the Blood Witch.
Lux had sent word to the pit through a lesser demon that Agana was needed. Aamon said either she was so fearful and numb that she wouldn’t dare refuse, or she was curious enough to show. Maybe she just thought Aamon would be there and that was all the hope she needed.
The snow suddenly whipped up around us.
She was coming.
A group of demons rounded a corner in the distance, pitch black and dripping trails like tar. In the center of them was the Blood Witch, looking far different than the wraith in the pit. A ruby red silk gown billowed around her. She was still hollow-looking and ghostly white, her cheeks still sunken, and as she came closer, I saw red rings around her eyes like pools of blood. And her eyes themselves were blood red, fiercer than anything I’d seen in The Gone.
On her head, covering her still filthy hair, was a crown. It was tall, brassy, with holes where gemstones had once lived. Clusters of yellowy diamonds hung across her forehead. They made her red eyes look even more cruel. She’d seen terrible horrors, created many, and she wanted more.
When she arrived in front of us, the demons scattered, and it was only then that we saw the cuffs wrapped around her ankles, chains leaving tracks in the dusting of snow.
Chains. They hold her here, even still.
“You,” she said to me, not even sparing a glance at Aamon who stood by my side. Her lips were full, but the color of a corpse’s. It seemed unnatural that she should be able to speak.
“Hi,” I said. So dumb.
“Who do you think you are, coming here escorted by princes, seeking me?”
“Agana,” Aamon whispered.
“What?” She didn’t even look at him.
“I’ve missed you.”
“Save it, Aamon. Love means nothing here,
not to you, not to me. It doesn’t exist,” she said coldly, crimson eyes burrowing into me. “Forget me,” she said more quietly. “Love does nothing, but blood does. That’s all I mean to the three of you. What hell would you like me to unleash?”
Any pity I felt for her before evaporated with the savagery in her smile. She was more evil than the demons by my side could be.
She still looked at me, so I answered her, even though I was frankly scared to death. “We want you to come back to The Chains. Help me and my coven defeat the Elementals.”
Her wicked smile faded so fast it made me wince. “The Elementals? What makes you think I care what they do now? The Chains can rot, the souls attached can die a thousand deaths, I don’t care. I did what I could already. Those lives mean nothing to me.”
“They did at one time, though, didn’t they?” I pleaded, reaching my hands out foolishly like I could hold hers and make her understand. But she glared at them with such offense that I pulled back. “Agana,” I said, risking pissing her off by using her name. “I’m your sister.”
No reaction whatsoever. No reunion hug, no surprise.
“You’re nothing to me.”
Lux and Aamon remained silent. I couldn’t stand still, anger taking over my limbs. “What is wrong with you? Look, I don’t know how long you’ve been down here, but were you always this evil? No wonder you don’t want to go back; you’re inhuman.” My chest heated with the feeling of those words. I’d have rewound time not to say something so hurtful to anyone.
She shook her head, unaffected. “I came here to save my own ass. I’d rather be inhuman than… The humanity of you just reeks. You want to save The Chains, save your coven.” She looked around with a mocking smile. “I don’t see them here with you. They’d let you be abolished, and they’ll let you burn.”
“That’s not true. They’re my sisters.”
“They’re your sisters, I’m your sister—it’s just a word.”
“That’s right. Blood is more powerful than words. You don’t have to force it out of my skin for me to share it with you. I don’t know you, but you’re part of me, and that’s the power blood holds.”
“How noble,” she groaned.
Lux was finally getting irritated. “Agana, we don’t want to force you, but—”
“But what?” she snapped. “You will? And you’d let the lovebirds force me to their will, Aamon? More punishment for me?” For the first time, I thought I saw her eyes get shiny.
“Agana,” Aamon said, taking a step toward her. Her name came out as a moan, so full of pain it was difficult to continue listening. “You can go home, back to The Chains and make them your own. You’re more powerful than the Elementals, you can form the world in your image.”
God, that sounded dangerous.
Lux said, “You weren’t able to subdue them on your own, but the power of the blood you share with Celeste contains more strength than any immortals could muster.”
What on earth would she do, this monstrous girl, if she took power over The Chains? She was terrifying in the weakened, imprisoned state the Royal Demons kept her in. She held herself like an empress, owned the depravity and coddled it. If that was unleashed, what would become of us all?
I’d be the one to hold her in check, just like the Elementals and the Poisons did to each other, but I’d be better. Agana would be my sole responsibility, my family, my blood. The most powerful witch, kept honest by the leader of the coven.
It gave me some pride, but I melted with the thought of never being free of responsibility. The Poisons, The Chains, Lux, now this? From one gilded cage to another. Another, far more blatantly frightening one that only I would hold the keys to.
She never blinked, but panned her eyes to Lux, and a surge of overprotectiveness coursed through me. I clenched my fists, as if I could snatch my magic to help me.
Even I feared what I would do with it, in that environment, as the bad will, the wrath, spun evil in and around us all. Evil didn’t just exist; it was made. I would have adapted to it. Just like Agana had adapted.
It was in our blood to survive.
When she spoke to Lux, I wanted to strangle her. “She does have a certain power, and not just over you,” she said without humor. “Our blood together could summon Jesus himself.”
She snapped her head back at me, and I shivered under her gaze. “You’ve fooled yourself with this girly get-up and the thoughtful way with which you speak, Witch of Stars, but the vitality of your blood sings to me like a choir of angels.” She smiled so wide it was like every scary clown I’d ever dreamed of. “With it I can do the devil’s work.”
Aamon laughed.
Chapter 28
Agana knew what to do like she’d been planning to bombard The Chains all along.
“The sun is rising,” she said without looking up at the sky—which was the same pitch black it had been the whole time. “Halloween is in two days.”
“What?” I cried. “That’s not possible….” But when I really thought about it, I had no idea how much time had passed in The Gone. I hadn’t eaten at all, and wasn’t hungry. The sky never changed, the scenery was always the same.
The Blood Witch misunderstood me. “There is no sunrise here. The sun is for The Chains.”
“You can see it,” Aamon said incredulously, his grin never fading. He was completely in awe of her. It was creepy as hell, but really sweet, and made me look at Lux, who was doing his best to ignore me it seemed. The closer we came to returning to The Chains, the more he pulled away from me.
“Bring me somewhere that the earth cries for help,” Agana said to Aamon, putting her hands on his chest. With the promise of doing some kind of blood ritual, Agana softened up to Aamon. Or maybe she just couldn’t deny that she loved him when he was there beside her. Impossible to read her. She was like the Queen of Hearts, if you made her a vampire and a general freak.
The ground fell away underneath us, caved into itself with a wild screech like a tractor-trailer accident. I screamed, jumping back and grabbing at Lux’s arm before I realized my companions weren’t reacting at all to the natural disaster. The four of us hovered over the gaping hole, while the buildings still stood tall and unmoving around us. My stomach fell to my feet at the weightless feeling, and a new place rose from the cavern that had been the main street in The Black City.
An endless flat landscape of scorched grass swallowed the cold city until everything around us felt thirsty. The buildings were gone, and the sky lightened into the rusty shade of dried blood. It was Hell’s copy of the field where I celebrated my birthday with the other Poisons and our mothers. I got my footing and looked at Agana, unsurprised to see her eyes trained on me.
“You know this place. I remember it,” she said. Tears pooled in her red-rimmed eyes.
“Yes. You went there, too?”
“I did. But looking at you I know that you’ve had better birthday celebrations than I did there. You were loved. Are loved.” With a sneer, “Our mother loves you.”
The L word hung in the air between the four of us.
“Yeah, well she doesn’t love me enough,” I said and walked to a darker spot, away from them all. I was in no mood to wait, and in even less of a mood to watch Aamon and Agana make googly eyes at each other in their end-of-the-world way. Lux, who I would have traded my soul for, grew colder and more distant every minute.
I couldn’t lose myself in fear of abandonment, our inevitable separation to our own worlds once this was over. There were too many things to fix. My own life to save.
I wanted to live. It was that simple. I was barely seventeen and I loved being alive. I wanted my life, with my growing magic, and with my sisters. It would take time to love it again without Lux, but I would survive. Part of me would.
The edge of the field was trimmed with bare and burnt trees. I found a stump and sat on it to pass the time. I couldn’t think anymore, it was amounting to nothing.
“This is a terrible place to cry.�
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Lux suddenly stood over me. I wanted more than anything to be back at the park that night when I’d seen inside him, to be back where we knew each other so deeply. This strain was more than my heart could bear. I felt so alone already.
“Is there a good place to cry?” I snapped.
“A place like this will soak up your tears and ask for more.”
“These riddles, this poetry you use—it was meant for me when we felt closer than this. Why are you pulling away from me?”
He slid his hands in his trouser pockets, a gesture so cool that I wanted to wring his neck. “Celeste—”
“No. Don’t talk to me like you’re the prince and I’m some groupie.” Agana laughed across the field, like a real girl, with a real love life. Happy. She deserved it I suppose, but I wanted that. Instead, I had this.
Lux looked over his shoulder at his brother and my sister.
“Happiness becomes them,” Lux murmured. “They weren’t meant to have it. Look at how wrong they look in this dead place, laughing like that.”
“Let them have it for now,” I said, the bitterness creeping into my voice. “Wrath and Blood can’t have anything pleasant for long. But hey, neither will we, right? So keep playing your emotional disappearing act. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Must we talk about it?”
“Yes, we must. You came to find me in The Chains, and now that you have me, you’ll give me up, just like that,” I said, snapping my fingers. “You won’t treasure every second we have together? You don’t want to spend every moment like the world might end tomorrow? Let me tell you, Luxuria, it might.”
“Should we dwell on what we can’t have, Celeste? Would that make it seem less unfair?”
I stood to take his hands in mine, moving from resentful to the bargaining phase in a matter of seconds. “We don’t know that we can’t be together, Lux. You might be perfectly fine up above once the Elementals are defeated. We have no idea what will happen to The Chains then. Those souls could be freed, and they won’t always speak to you, driving you crazy. I don’t want to keep my f-family…” I faltered, thinking that The Chains, the souls of my family, were held captive partly by my own hand. That was the real Hell, not The Gone. “I won’t let my flesh and blood be twisted and held prisoner any longer. I won’t be part of it,” I said, a little more steel in my voice. “We can do anything together. We can remake the world from scratch, and yes, it will be terrifying and a lot of it has to be my work, but if you’re there with me, suffering it with me, I’ll never look back.”
The Wind Between Worlds Page 21