Focused on the kicking dirt, I dove beneath a table, feeling my shirt cut open as Blaise’s knife rocketed through the air. A gentle mist sprinkled from the dining room’s ceiling, like an overpriced relaxation spa. Unfortunately, with no daystriders caught in the crossfire, the poison fell on nothing but the table cloth and expensive, heavy chairs.
Which meant I had one goal: make it to that fucking room and pray that the poison didn’t kill mortals. But if I was hoping for a free pass through the atrium, I would be significantly disappointed. For the atrium’s tool wall itself, formerly static, sprung spikes and began moving horizontally like a modern iron maiden.
I caught the kick of dirt from the corner of my eye. Got the poker up just in time to plunge it through his acolyte’s chest. As the daystrider died, I heard Blaise skid to a halt near the room’s windows, the broken glass crinkling underfoot.
Cautiously crawling out from beneath the table, I watched Blaise pace back and forth in front of the atrium’s massive windows. He was framed by a peaceful late afternoon sky, richly blue and very out of place. The interior was a chaotic storm of overturned dirt mounds and uprooted plants. The space that separated the two of us looked like a series of massive groundhog hills.
“And so it ends, Kalos.” The atrium shook, pots cracking as the spiked wall crunched through a row of hanging baskets. I glanced to my left, toward the bar lounge, sitting room and the landing, which all seemed a hundred miles away. Little tendrils of flame erupted from the bar, covering the floor.
Then a glance at the poisonous dining room, the mist making it look like a jungle movie set.
No retreat.
I began walking toward the dining room.
“You better do the job yourself,” I said.
“It is suicide in there.” I sensed nervousness in his voice, like he was entirely uncertain how a mortal could have survived his onslaught. He was uninjured, but something far more dangerous than a flesh wound had sliced through his soul: self-doubt. “Can you no longer smell it, Kalos?”
“Anything to get away from your miserable ass.”
Blaise stopped pacing, but I didn’t stop. He could camp by the windows if he wanted to. Hell if I cared. He materialized in front of me, blocking the path to the dining room.
“You should relax in your final moments.” The wall rattled and groaned, temporarily slowed by a plastic bed of sunflowers.
“Or you could just let me go.” From downstairs, I heard the faint sounds of Ruby’s gun snake through the halls. “Break her influence.”
“It is not so easy.” Blaise brandished the gleaming, clean-edged blade, refusing to move. The atrium might have been wide—thirty, forty feet, at least—but it seemed awfully small with the spiked wall closing in.
A series of ceramic pots stood between us, like a metaphorical wall. They were filled with flowers of all colors and shapes, so many species that I couldn’t begin to name them all. A slight breeze from the windows fluttered through, rustling through the petals.
I craned my neck to look around Blaise, as if he was of little concern. “You’re still in my way.”
“As you wish, Kalos.” His form blurred, petals tumbling as he crashed through the pots. But I knew which way he was coming. I adjusted my weight slightly, making sure his shoulder glanced off mine. Shockwaves of pain screamed through the bloody cut as he flipped over the hydroponics, into the next row, dirt and leaves churning in the air.
Gritting my teeth, I braced myself against a hanging pot and managed to stay upright. Then, since I’m nothing if not a masochist, I slammed my good shoulder against the nearby hydroponic bed. The plastic trough tumbled over on top of him, knocking over the others like dominos, all the way up to the creaking wall of death.
A groan came from beneath the mountain of dirt as Blaise choked on the soil.
I stumbled in the dirt, reaching for a broken pot shard. Grasping a chunk twice the size of my hand, I gripped it so tight that my hand bled.
And then I stabbed wildly at the dirt, feeling it plunge into the daystrider’s skin. Again and again, until blood trickled through the soil, staining it a shade of crimson brown. The shard was blunted and worn down to a nub, but still I slammed it down.
When I finally stopped, I noticed that the spiked wall had stopped moving. Listening carefully, the rest of the house had gone silent. Arm shaking from exertion, I collapsed and began wiping away the dirt.
A rattling cough, accompanied by a spatter of blood, came as Blaise’s dirty, ashen face emerged.
“I am glad you won, mortal,” he said, his sunken eyes staring at me with only the faintest flicker of life. “Even if I…allowed you to emerge victorious.”
“I bet.” I stared at him as he breathed shallowly. “Where are Marrack and Isabella?”
“No. I cannot say.” His face twisted in pain.
An idea occurred to me. My fingers left bloody streaks on the smart phone’s screen as I tapped in Delphine’s number.
It rang twice before she answered.
“Do you have enough essence to break the spell?”
“Hello to you as well, Kalos.” There was a sigh. “I do not—”
“I mean for one particular area. Twenty seconds at the most.”
I could almost hear her thinking before she finally said, “Yes, but it could have consequences for your future plans.”
“We’ll worry about those later. Just hurry.”
“Very well.”
The call ended, and I looked at Blaise. Dark blood streamed from his teeth. One of his fangs was broken, presumably from my spirited blunt force trauma. It was pretty incredible he was even still alive.
“What else do you know about?”
“Many things, mortal,” Blaise said. “Our kind is old.”
I remembered the long-dead language they spoke to one another.
“Older than Ziva?”
“The valley nymph?” He let out a pained, rickety laugh. “Perhaps not that old.”
“And what about Marrack and Isabella’s location?”
His features tightened again. “No. I will never—” His body jerked once. I thought he had died, but after the movement, his eyes opened again. Despite the fact that he was still dying, their luster had returned, free will present once more.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “Their location.”
“The Dark Horse Casino,” Blaise said, speaking quickly. “About three hours from—”
“I’ll use Google Maps. What else do you know?”
Blaise’s eyes closed for a moment, then he said, “A destiny written after the Ragnarök.”
“Mine?”
“Like the vessel, perhaps open to anyone willing to stake their life in pursuit.” His eyes turned toward me. “Perhaps you are the only one foolish enough to do so.”
“What was it?” I shook him, excitement overtaking me.
He swallowed slowly, getting his bearings. “To bridge the gap between mortals and the supernatural.” His voice dropped into a whisper. “And to assist a goddess in healing the rift between the two.”
“But everything is being destroyed.”
“Not destroyed, Kalos.” He smiled. “Annihilation once meant rebirth.”
Then Blaise’s eyes closed, and the last remaining daystrider died.
57
“Ruby? Ruby!” I limped through the winding first floor corridors, making my way through a long trail of deceased daystriders as I searched for my companion. Reaching Remington’s office, I took a quick look inside.
A gruesome scene greeted my gaze. The centaur’s throat was stippled in bite marks, practically hanging open. The daystrider who had tried to have a snack hadn’t fared much better, though. Part of his head was caved in from a vicious left hoof to the skull.
I navigated the carnage and checked the unde
rside of the desk, confirming that someone had shut down the traps. Nothing moved on the security monitors, although about half of them showed nothing but static.
“Looks like everyone lost,” I said, heading back to the kitchen. As I rounded the corner, I ran into the cold steel of a shotgun. I sensed its essence and aura rush through my body, hinting at its massive power.
Guess Argos’s potion did more than I thought.
“From what I heard upstairs, I figured you were dead.” Ruby spun the shotgun in her fingers before resting it against her shoulder. Aside from a thin layer of sweat and the blood spatter covering her oxford shirt, she looked no worse for wear.
As we exited Remington’s house, I checked the time. A quick trip report indicated that we would have just enough time for another stop before heading out to the Dark Horse Casino.
“What’re you thinking?” Ruby asked as we reached the car.
“Charon’s shit might’ve been stolen,” I said, staring back at the damaged mansion, “but there’s a lot of essence in there.”
“We have time for that?”
“Everything goes well, we’ll roll up to Isabella and Marrack’s at eleven tonight.”
“Let’s pray for traffic.”
“You could always just shoot any cars that get in our way.”
“I’m saving my bullets for something bigger.” A flicker of orange—intimately familiar to me—flared at the edge of her eyes, then vanished.
Vengeful saviors.
The world hadn’t offered up a better alternative, so that was what it would get.
A shotgun blast startled me. Smoke trickled from the barrel of Ruby’s gun. A headless daystrider buckled to its knees and tumbled down the front steps.
“Straggler,” Ruby said.
“I noticed.”
“All the bodies aren’t gonna fit in your convertible.”
“Let’s hope Pearl can rent a U-Haul, then.”
“You’re not getting your deposit back,” Ruby said.
“In a few hours, it might not matter anyway.”
Ruby nodded grimly.
And then we set out to work.
58
As twilight set on Remington’s ranch, there was good news and bad news.
Turning Nadia into a goddess—or anything resembling as such—was, at least for the time being, a no go. Because, far as we could tell, it kind of required the various tools that Marrack and Isabella had thieved: the Journal of Annihilation, the essence gauge, the Carmine Chain, Remkah Talisman, King’s Statue and Sabre of Immolation.
And whatever you wanted to call that ancient vase. The Pot of Doom had a nice ring to it.
Maybe if this all worked out, I could begin fulfilling my destiny. After all, both Marrack and the Sol Council had found Nadia’s potential promising enough to take notice. But that was all in a distant, uncertain future.
On the plus side, she was feeling well enough to talk. Argos nudged his flip phone over to her on the other end of the line.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m sorry,” Nadia said, her voice drawn and raspy.
“For what?” I put on the cheese a little too thick to be convincing.
“You know what.”
“A few bullets between old friends,” I said.
“Kalos.”
“Apology accepted.” I watched the gray and blind alchemist totter out of truck, somehow finding the back of the U-Haul without assistance. Pearl had picked up the old woman along the way and still managed to make it here with time to spare. She’d even had time to grab me a new .45. Shockingly organized and on time for a woman who perpetually looked like she’d awoken in a bush. The back axles were ready to fall off from pushing the truck to a hundred.
You would think that such speeds were impossible.
You’d be wrong.
“Promise me one thing.”
There was an awkward pause before I said, “Let me hear it first.”
She laughed, and then started coughing. “Okay, fair enough.” A deep breath. “I want you to drive a stake straight through that bitch’s heart.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“Kalos?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I ended the call and strode over to the truck. The alchemist was already setting up her various iron pots and hanging talismans from the utility lights. In the shadows, I saw—and smelled—the bodies, wrapped in whatever was handy within the mansion.
“Just like home, right,” I said as she worked.
“This woman could be the death of you, my child,” the alchemist said. “Perhaps of all of you.”
“You’ve been talking to Gunnar and Argos too much.”
She smiled. We both knew that was impossible. I shivered despite the dry summer heat. The alchemist knew strange things, of events past and future. It would be unwise to dismiss her words.
But I had no other options. The clock was ticking toward my self-imposed midnight deadline, when Delphine—like a thief with an alarm—would short-circuit the mind-control spell. Twenty minutes. That’s all we would be afforded.
That was my window to kill a goddess.
I didn’t even know if we’d be granted the benefit of midnight. There was an ominous sickness in knowing that each second was precious and numbered—the next not guaranteed. If they grabbed that pot in the middle of the sinkhole, then who knew how much time we really had?
I felt sick thinking about all the world’s essence under the control of Marrack and Isabella.
Sensing my discomfort, the alchemist said, “There is nothing to be worried of, my child.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
She sat down cross-legged on the metal floor with a small thump. I heard a match strike, and the truck’s back filled with smoke as a fire erupted beneath an iron kettle. “If you have done all you can, then is that not enough?”
I pondered the words like a Zen koan, trying to ascertain their meaning. When no answer presented itself, I said, “I don’t know.”
“Certainty is the enemy of all greatness,” she said with a nod. “You are ready.”
Her wrinkled hand beckoned for the first body to melt down. I dragged over a sloshing sack of goo and dumped it into the pot. The liquid within hissed and bubbled over.
“Patience, my child,” the alchemist said. “Time is infinite.”
“My watch says otherwise.”
“If you are bound by the same rules as your more powerful enemies, you cannot hope to defeat them.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean,” she said, her wrinkled lips turning into a stern smile, “that I want my damn story from you. Which means you aren’t allowed to die tonight.”
“Yes ma’am.”
With that in mind, we worked in silence for the next hour, turning bodies into power of our own. As I watched the flesh and bones boil into viscous fluid, I remembered Blaise’s final words.
If you squinted hard enough, maybe annihilation really could be rebirth.
59
I sent Delphine a text with where to meet Pearl and the alchemist. If both parties drove fast, they’d cross paths right before midnight.
The rest would be up to me and Ruby.
The two of us settled into the convertible, watching the U-Haul creak away. The alchemist had made remarkable time, cutting a few corners to ensure the transmution would be complete. It had cost a little bit of the yield to do so, but it wouldn’t make or break us. Either we had enough to drop the spell across the nation, or Isabella would shut Delphine out.
Which meant game over.
I started the car and rolled slowly past the wooden gates, glancing at the mirror as Remington’s property
blinked out into the night. Who would inherit his belongings? How long would it take to settle that estate?
These were questions one asked when they wrangled with tax documents for far too long. If I survived tonight and decided to retire from supernatural salvage, I’d have to pick up a new hobby.
Even pushing the car over a hundred, the GPS claimed that our ETA would be right around midnight. Then again, this was one of those instances where it was better to arrive right on time, rather than early. Walking into the enemy’s lair with their defenses fully up would not be beneficial.
After a long stretch of silent road, Ruby asked, “How did you contain it for so long?”
I shrugged. “Not sure what you mean.”
“Wanting to kill them.” She looked over, eyes wild and desperate.
“You mean the whole demon thing?”
“No,” she said, voice deathly quiet. “Revenge.”
I scratched my chin, not answering for a long time. When we had met, more than two centuries ago, I had largely been driven by a thirst for vengeance. I had spent years killing anyone associated with Isabella, eliminating her allies one by one. Even as she sat trapped in the Plains of Eternal Woe, banished there by me, I didn’t stop.
Were all those years wasted? None of her friends were promoting world peace, naturally. But the long toil wore me down, dooming me to a nomad’s life. I did not contain my thirst for vengeance so much as quit it entirely.
Until, at least, Isabella and Marrack escaped their shackles and emerged to torment the Earth once more. But now, driving toward the end, flanked only by black, starry night and the still, empty plains, I didn’t feel vengeful.
I felt necessary.
As we passed a highway marker indicating we had seventy miles left, I said, “What’d you do before?”
“Before I became a Realmfarer?
“No. Before you crashed through my skylight. Before Galleron died.”
Her fingers absentmindedly played with the ends of her brown hair. “I know you’ve heard the stories.”
“Most of them are pretty bloody.”
“Shooting first is the only way to survive.”
Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3) Page 24