My chest clenches. I don’t let myself look at Finger, not wanting to give him away.
“Speak up,” the Heart-Keeper says in a singsong voice. He stops in front of Connor and grabs him by the hair, yanking his face closer. “You seem a promising candidate with all that power ready to come out of you at any minute. Are you the one?” He studies Connor’s eyes intently. “You don’t have to be cagey. It just means you’re first. And you know, it’s always best to get it over with. Rip the bandage off, so to speak. Or in this case, rip the heart out.” He chuckles at his joke.
“Fuck you,” Connor says. And then he spits in the demon’s face.
The Heart-Keeper stiffens. He releases Connor’s hair and stands straight.
He stares. And a horrible finality fills the room. A low growl shakes the air as his hand reaches out slowly, fingers morphing into claws again.
They hover in front of Connor, playing at the air, like they’re trying to decide.
And then they move.
Ripping Connor’s throat out.
The shock of it jars my body. Screams fill the room. I stare helplessly at Connor’s confused face. The torn flesh gurgles. And his body falls forward. Hitting the floor with a thud.
I pull at the fists gripping me, crying out in fury. Blood pools around Connor’s head. The smell of his life fills the room. Horror and desperation are like an ocean trying to drown me. “No!” I yell. I keep roaring it. As if the word will erase what I’m seeing. What I’m feeling. As I watch Connor’s spirit coil and begin to lift from his lifeless body. Because it’s not true. It can’t be real.
We’re all crying out in horror, pain filling every molecule in the room.
The Heart-Keeper watches us with a smile. “Yes, get it all out,” he coos. “Release the agony.” He takes a long breath into his nose and sighs in satisfaction.
Soon the cries become sobs. Kara is hunched over, wracked by her sorrow; Holly’s face glistens with tears, her eyes wide and panicked. Raul weeps quietly, and Jax stares on in silent horror. Finger remains still as death, watching the Heart-Keeper like a cat might watch a bird it’s about to eat.
“I’m going to burn your bones,” I hiss.
“Yes, so you say,” the Heart-Keeper mutters, sounding bored. He turns his attention to Kara again. “He wasn’t the one, so could it be you?”
“I said, don’t touch her!” I growl.
He ignores me, knowing I’m useless, and keeps focusing on Kara. “I was fairly sure it wasn’t you, since the green witch wasn’t the one. The two girls who hold his heart are meant for other things. But perhaps I’m wrong?” He cocks his head like he wants her to answer even though she’s weeping at his feet, not looking at him. “You did come back from the brink of death, though,” he says, reasoning through some mystery.
He takes her by her hair now, pulling her up awkwardly into a standing position.
I look desperately at Finger, wondering why he doesn’t admit he’s the one, the tip of the arrow. Why he doesn’t save her. The silent boy just keeps watching with malice clear in his eyes. No fear. No conflict. Just deadly rage.
The Heart-Keeper lifts his fingers in the same way he did with Connor. They morph into claws and play at the air. Kara just stares at Connor’s lifeless form.
I jerk against my captors again, yanking one arm and then the other, not even caring when the stinger slides into my chest an inch. “No! It’s not her! Just stop!”
The Heart-Keeper pauses, his claw becoming a hand again. He turns to me. “Oh?” He releases Kara’s hair and steps closer to me. “Are we about to snitch to save the girl?”
“It’s not her,” I gasp, my chest stinging.
“Yes, you mentioned that. It’s why I’m standing on this side of the room and not ripping out her throat.” He rolls his eyes like I’m annoying him. “So . . . ?”
I hesitate, knowing there’s no way I can say it. I can’t sentence Finger to death.
“It’s me,” I say, my throat closing even as the words come.
Holly gasps and Jax cries, “Shut up, dude!”
The Heart-Keeper shakes his head, sneering at me. “No, it’s not you, fool. It can’t be you, you’re a part of the hub, like the green witch. You’re the power center. Noble of you to lie in order to save these idiots behind me, but it won’t work. You’re nothing compared to who I seek.”
“Please,” I whimper, “just stop.”
“Not yet,” he says.
The demon turns his attention back to Kara, but Finger steps forward, a guttural noise coming from deep in his chest. Determination spills from him. I want to yell for him to stop, not to do this, but . . . how many will die if he doesn’t?
Fear shakes my body. How is this happening? It’s all spinning out of control.
The Heart-Keeper slowly looks Finger over. Then his thin lips slide up in a wicked grin. “You . . . yessss.”
“No,” I whisper, my heart crushing in my chest.
The Heart-Keeper steps closer to Finger. He sniffs at the air around him. “You give yourself willingly?” he asks.
Finger nods. And then he looks over the demon’s shoulder straight into me. And when our eyes meet, I know, I see why he’s doing this. The knowledge and his assurance fill me like a soothing balm. He tells me it’s all right, that this is how it was always meant to be, that I shouldn’t be afraid. His journey is only beginning. But I can save the others, I can finish it, with this beast, with my sister. But he believes he has to give himself over first for that to happen. He believes that this is what he’s been meant to do all along, to start the dominoes falling, to begin the end.
The Heart-Keeper grips the silent boy’s shoulder. And grins.
And there’s no way for me to stop it, no way to stop any of it.
As the beast strikes.
A thud and crack fill the air around us, and Finger’s eyes go wide. I feel it in my own chest, I feel it all. As the Heart-Keeper tears my friend’s heart out. As his life slips away, to follow Connor’s. I feel it in my blood, in my bones, the agony and loss. It burns, tearing a sob from deep in my gut.
My mind shuts down, the world goes dim. Everything smells like blood. Everything is the tang of death on my tongue and the scent of charred hope in my nostrils.
“You are stunning, though,” I hear the Heart-Keeper say after a minute. Somewhere in the distance, I see him step over a body and move closer to Kara again. He smears Finger’s blood on her cheek as he leans in and smells the skin of her neck. “Just because I found my prize doesn’t mean you and I can’t have a little fun, does it?” His voice turns gruff when he adds, “There is so much I could teach you and your soul. Just as I did the Fire Bringer’s mother.”
All Kara does is stare past him, into nothing. Like she’s left us already, before he’s done a thing to her.
“Your lover was a fool to heal your soul wounds. They were lovely, dark and vicious. I could help you create more.” He pauses, then asks, “Would you like that?”
I have nothing left in me to speak or fight. I watch helplessly as she looks into his eyes. Her gaze seems to urge him closer.
“No, Kara,” I whisper, hope slipping away.
The Heart-Keeper smiles again. “I knew you would bend for me, evil little—”
His voice stops and a dagger point sticks out the back of his neck.
And suddenly Kara’s tackling him, pulling the blade back out of his throat and shoving it into his eye, screaming at him as she stabs him again and again. As she pours her rage and revenge over him. My heart yells for more, my sleeping power sparking a little at the sight. But there’s no black blood, no death. His face just looks like sliced-up putty as he laughs maniacally, letting her stab him, his arms wide.
His disguise protects him. He knows he’s safe.
Or believes he is.
The woman demon guard lunges at Kara to pull her off her master, just as I yell, “Shed your visage, dever!”
The Heart-Keeper’s laugh fades, his
guise beginning to shift away. Kara raises the dagger one more time. And just as the female demon guard grabs for her neck, Kara plunges the blade down into the scaly lips of the horrifying creature before he can move.
She’s yanked off and tossed to the side. But the power-infused blade has already done its job.
The Heart-Keeper’s head caves in with a small sigh. And the body crumbles into ash.
FORTY-TWO
Aidan
Kara hits the edge of the kitchen archway and lands next to the dead blogger. She moans in pain, the sound telling me she’s still alive.
The guard demons all pause, unsure what to do. They look at each other, they look at the room full of weeping humans, at the husk of their dead master. But the three of them don’t seem upset about it all. They just seem confused.
The female demon begins to pace. “This ends nothing,” she says. She motions to the pile of dust that was the Heart-Keeper. “Molech still expects the prize. We can rise from this ash.”
The demons that are holding me shift, uncertain.
And I know there’s only one way for me to do what Finger believed I could. One way to end this. One way to bring him and Connor back.
I steel myself and start fighting my captors again, shoving them off. “I’m going to kill you!” I snap, baring my teeth. “I’m going to burn you all!”
The demon woman just chuckles at me, like I’m a child. “With what power?”
I start to chuckle with her and her smile fades a little. And then I scream in Aramaic at the top of my lungs, Zechariah 3:2, “Isn’t this man a burning branch snatched from the fire?” I howl it at her, the question rising from my lips over and over, a warning, a promise. “Isn’t this man a burning branch snatched from the fire?” I laugh and scream and lose my mind, letting all the horror in me loose. I open the floodgates and allow it to spill out, hoping it’ll drown these bastards if my fire can’t help me.
“Shut him up!” the female guard growls, coming at me.
My right arm bone snaps with a jarring crack from the tightening grip of the demon holding it. The stinger at my chest sinks in even deeper. But adrenaline numbs me. I yank, fighting maniacally.
I kick the female demon as she gets closer, sending her stumbling back. “Shed your visage, dever!” I spit at her. “Fight me or kill me, you fucking bitch!”
She snarls as her thin disguise melts away and her bony, scaly form comes clear. Smoke emerges from her slit nostrils as she huffs out her displeasure. Around her feet a ring of the wood floor bursts into flames. “I have my own flames, Fire Bringer.”
“We aren’t supposed to kill him,” grunts one of the demons.
“Oh, we won’t,” she says. “We’ll just melt his face off.” The blaze follows her as she steps toward me, then it spreads out in a slow circle of heat.
I see Jax move in the background; he used my distraction to free himself. He’s trying to cut Raul and Holly’s bonds. He runs over to grab Sid next, but . . . Sid is gone.
“Run!” I scream at him over the crackle of flames. “Just run!”
Holly, Raul, and Jax scramble away, trying to avoid the flames, avoid the dead bodies of their friends. Jax gathers Kara in his arms and then all of them make it out the back door.
Relief fills me as they disappear into the night, just as the flames rise around us and begin to chew at the living room wall. I watch the tongues lick at the mail on the entry hall table and slide against the glass of a picture frame—an image of Sid and Connor on the set of a job.
A fist crashes into my sternum, right beside the spot where the stinger’s embedded.
My vision blurs and air whooshes from my lungs. I gag. I choke and gasp. Pain bleeds through me. And the heat of the demon’s flames stings my legs.
I’m sure she’s stopped my heart, but then there’s a grunt, and suddenly I’m falling to the side, collapsing on a pile of ash.
“Get up, dammit!” It’s Jax. He just killed one of the demons holding me. He hovers, dragging me toward the front door, away from the two demons leering at us from the flames. He’s come back? Why did he come back?
“Get out!” I holler at him. He was safe. He can’t be here!
“Fuck that.”
I stagger to my feet, push him behind me. “In three seconds you better be out of this house, or I’ll come back and kill you myself. Make sure Kara’s safe.” I shove him toward the front door, then lunge forward, tackling the demon with the deadly tail.
Grabbing meaty shoulders, I scream in its face. And with a heavy thrust, the alien spike instinctively impales my chest, cracking ribs, tearing flesh, puncturing my lung, exiting through my back.
I gasp in horror and relief.
The lizard woman panics. “What did you do, you fool!” She grabs her companion and yanks him out from under me, ripping the stinger out, rending my chest cavity as she tosses him like a rag doll. Then she tears off his head with a roar.
Agony. I can’t . . . breathe. I can’t . . . I’m drowning, paralyzed. The glow of flames rises around me.
The smoke-obscured creature hovers. The crushing weight grows.
“You fool,” the blur over me says. “You will be doomed as much as I. The student queen is a thousand leagues more terrifying than the dreaded master.” And then the blur is gone.
Shadows gather in my vision, blocking out the orange light of the flames. Someone takes my arm. I’m being moved but I can’t tell where. All I see is black smoke. Then cool air hits me as my vision fills with midnight, stars pricking the darkness. The sky.
There’s scrambling and crying far off. It hurts filtering through me. It hurts. Everything. And I can’t . . . I can’t . . . bre—
FORTY-THREE
Rebecca
My skin aches with cold. Damp, icy cold. The smells of dirt and night fill my head. I start to shiver. My teeth chatter, my stiff limbs protesting movement as if I’ve been asleep for years. I blink at my surroundings. Outside—I’m outside? It looks like a park or something. Around me the misty night settles in soft greys over the backdrop of black shadow trees and spidery ferns. A winding silver path through the brush is edged in shadows. It weaves off into the distance, but I can’t tell where it leads in the darkness.
I’m under a large oak, on a patch of tiny white flowers; a twisted root is jabbing me in the rib cage. Why would I be in a park?
I try to sit up straight. My head pounds once, painfully, blinding me for a second. I rack my foggy brain, trying to remember what happened, how I got here, I—
I ran. I remember running. I ran like my feet could save me. Because I . . . I saw Charlie.
Pain fills my whole body at the memory. Oh my God, I saw Charlie. He was standing right next to our bench. But . . . that wasn’t Charlie. Because he’s dead. I knew that wasn’t really him, it couldn’t be. No gift from Ava could be that beautiful.
I think I wanted to believe it at first, though. I opened the back door and I stepped outside, for a second, didn’t I? I let myself think it could be real. Believing the miracle was possible. Just for one stunning moment.
Until my feet touched the cool grass and something shifted on his face. When I felt that same odd twinge in my forehead again and Charlie seemed to change, become a beast with horns and claws and eyes made of suffering and agony.
So I ran. I ran from the demon shadow of my brother. I ran from Ava. Until my lungs burned in my chest.
I lost my mind, I didn’t think about where I was going, I couldn’t. So somehow I ended up . . . here? Wherever here is.
I try to rise but pain surges through the soles of my feet. I hiss in a breath and look down, seeing the raw things that carried me here. My soles are coated in dried blood and soil and leaves. The heavy beat of my heart is pounding in my skin, throbbing in my head.
I lift a hand to my forehead, trying to stop it, and my stomach rises.
Something scratches at my cheek as my arm moves, and when I bring my hand down, I see my palms are covered with leaves
and dirt, too. All stuck to them with dried blood. My feet could be raw from running, but my hands? The skin is swollen and tender like it’s been burned.
I sit up the rest of the way, trying to gently wipe some of the bracken off on my shirt. It stings like crazy, and pieces of skin peel off with the leaves, as if my palms were healing around the debris. I need water to clean them, something to soak them in. I look around me, trying to figure out where I am, where I should go and look for a phone. I’m covered in mud and leaves, for heaven’s—
As I turn, my gaze freezes on the tree at my back. The girth of the trunk is huge, at least five feet, the gnarly branches twist at odd angles above me as they reach for the stars. It’s like something out of an old faerie story. A creepy faerie story. But that’s not the reason I can’t stop staring.
The symbol that I drew the other night is burned into the tree, and two palm prints are sunk into the thick bark on either side of it.
I lift a hand, shock gripping me as my palm slides right into the imprint, as if made to rest there. A small vibration hums against my hand from inside the tree, and the smells of earth and sea air fill my head, things blurring—
I jerk back.
I’m shaking again, teeth chattering, this time the cold seems to be deep inside the core of me, as if ice crystals are forming along my bones. What’s happening? What did I do? It was evening when I ran. How long’s it been? Couldn’t be more than a few hours. But I did something to this tree? It doesn’t make sense. And my dad—oh my God, my dad must be freaking out.
Dread fills me, thinking of all the warnings Aidan and Connor have given me about the magic and witch stuff, how much anxiety and fear I always felt from Aidan when he used to talk about it.
I should’ve listened. Ava has made something go terribly wrong.
Darkness Savage (The Dark Cycle Book 3) Page 24