Curran had locked his jaws on Neig’s neck and was chewing through it. Neig flailed, trying to get his clawed foot up against Curran and rip himself free, but my father held him in place.
Neig rolled his head, trying to shake Curran off. A torrent of flames burst from his mouth. The ground yawned at me. Adora vanished in the fire.
No. No, no, no, no . . .
The flames vanished. A charred body knelt on one knee in the dirt, her katana caught in her hand. A soldier brushed by her, and she fell over on her side.
Dead. Adora was dead. Neig had killed her.
There was so much pain it was ripping me apart. I screamed and scrambled up, over Neig’s massive neck, over his horns, up onto his head and face. Two huge eyes, blazing with amber, focused on me for a fraction of a second. I raised my blood swords and plunged them into Neig’s eyes. The amber liquid splashed me, hot and magic.
The dragon howled, shaking his head, trying to knock me loose, but I clung to my blades.
“DIE!” I screamed, feeding magic into my swords. “DIE, DIE, DIE!”
Neig shrieked and tore free of my father’s restraints, shooting up into the sky. Wind tore at me. I held on to my swords, the massive body beneath me trembling and shaking. We climbed up and up and up, higher and higher toward the clouds.
“You have killed me, Daughter of Nimrod,” the dragon whispered. “But I’ll take you with me.”
We plummeted to the ground. The battlefield rushed at us at a dizzying speed.
This is it.
A dark shape surged from the ground and thrust itself under Neig—Curran trying to slow the dragon’s fall—but Neig was too heavy.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and jerked me up, ripping me and Sarrat free. Suddenly I was flying and Neig was still plunging down, my other sword still in his left eye socket. Above me Teddy Jo soared on his midnight wings.
Curran twisted clear. Neig’s enormous body hit the ground, bouncing once. The mighty dragon’s head dropped and lay still. Neig the Legend was dead.
Teddy Jo swooped down. My feet touched the grass. He let go and I rolled clear and up onto my feet.
Curran had collapsed next to the dragon. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive. Ice-cold fear gripped me. Around us the battle still raged.
“DAUGHTER.”
I turned. My father was looking at me from the height of his chariot, and his face was mournful. Behind him his troops stood in a wall, rows and rows of people in tactical armor.
“Don’t do it,” I told him. “Don’t, Father.”
His voice rolled through the battlefield. “Surrender, my daughter.”
He’d betrayed me. I’d known he would. I had expected it, but it hurt so much.
“Don’t,” I asked him. “Please don’t.”
“Surrender and I will let your people live.”
“How can you do this? You’re my father!”
“It’s for your own good.”
“No. It’s only for you.”
Hugh burst through the ranks. Behind him, the Iron Dogs parted Neig’s troops like they were water, and I saw Elara. She glowed with white: her dress, her skin, her hair all snow-white, one color blazing with power. She didn’t feel human.
She opened her arms. I heard a chant floating above the battlefield. The Covens were channeling their power. It hit Elara from the back and burst out of her as a beam of pure white. The beam hit my father. He gasped, spinning toward her. The magic impaled him like a spear.
His troops surged around him and fell on the Iron Dogs.
The beam intensified, so white it was hard to look at. My father staggered. His face relaxed. His eyes glazed over.
We almost had him. Almost. Just a little bit more. Sleep. Please, Dad, for the sake of all of us. Just go to sleep.
Magic surged out of him, blocking the beam.
Elara screamed.
Not enough. The witches weren’t enough.
Slowly, ever so slowly, my father straightened, his face shaking with effort, and thrust one hand against the beam.
He would win and then there was no hope for Atlanta and Conlan.
Julie sprinted between the fighting bodies, her sword raised above her head.
I felt the magic inside my father snap, blocking Elara’s beam. If Julie attacked him now, he would kill her. He would squash her like a gnat.
He would kill my kid.
I saw Julie’s arm roll back as if in slow motion, as she prepared for a jump.
If she touched my father, she would die. I had to stop her. I had to . . .
The muscles of her legs tensed, about to send her into the air.
No!
“Stop!” I snarled, sinking magic into the command.
I felt the precise moment my will crushed Julie’s. She crumbled in mid-leap and fell to the ground.
Oh no. What have I done?
Blood-red light burst out of my father. Elara stumbled back. The white beam died. He turned to me. “Did you honestly think that would stop me, foolish child?”
There were twenty yards between us and a wave of his soldiers behind him. I wouldn’t be able to get to him. They would swarm me and then he would hit me with his magic, and it would all be over. He could hold me in stasis until his troops secured me.
The ruby stirred in my armor, as if alive.
The ruby.
It was my only chance.
“SURRENDER, IN-SHINAR. TAKE YOUR PLACE.”
I love you, Curran. I love you, my son. I love you both more than anything. I love you, Julie. There is no way out.
I raised Sarrat and stabbed myself.
My father screamed.
I felt the blood rush out of me and twisted the blade. There we go. I’d cut the abdominal aorta. Death would be quick.
I dropped to my knees, pulled the ruby out of my armor, cradled it, and fell on my side. My father’s face swung into view. He was weeping.
“Why? Why?” He pulled me to him, cradling my head in his arms. “You had everything, Blossom. Why?”
His face was turning gray. His fingers shook. He cried out. I felt his magic fighting for his life, hungry, looking for any source to feed itself. I knew that hunger. It was blinding. He would grab at any magic just to keep himself alive, and I had a source of magic handy.
I opened my arms. They were too weak to restrain the anchor anyway. He saw the ruby. He reached for it.
Take it, Father. Take it and use it.
His skin was the color of crumbled concrete. If he’d had a second to think, he would’ve stopped. But he didn’t have a second. We were dying together, and my father wanted to live. It made him careless.
His fingers closed about the glowing gem. The crimson glow melted over him. He fed on the ruby, absorbing every drop, until everything that made the anchor what it was had been fused with my father.
I struggled to say something. Nimrod leaned over me.
“I win, Father.”
The anchor couldn’t exist without its realm, and it sought to return to it at all costs. My father had absorbed it. They were now one.
A void opened behind him. I only saw the edge of it, but I felt it. It grasped my father and swallowed him whole.
One moment he was there and then he was gone. And all was good.
We’d won. Conlan would live. Curran would live too, if he was still alive. I’d done it.
My blood was all over the ground. I thought it would hurt. It didn’t hurt.
My aunt grabbed at me, frantic. “Stay with me. Hugh! Get Hugh!”
“Too late,” I told her.
Erra stared at me, her eyes wild, and thrust herself at me. Pain smashed into my body, wrenching a scream from me. She was trying to feed her magic into me to keep me alive.
“No,” I whispered. I didn’t
want her sacrifice, but I didn’t have the strength to fight her. She paled and vanished. Magic flooded into me in a cool rush.
It wasn’t enough. Julie was crying. Someone was holding me. The light dimmed. Darkness came.
I wish I could hold Conlan one last time.
I wish I could see Curran. To hear his voice. To hold his hand. To not be alone before I go.
I wish I had just a little bit more time. There were so many things I wanted to do. I would give anything for just one more day.
I love all of you.
* * *
• • •
DEATH WAS A mist.
I walked through it at random, not knowing where to go. It pulled on me, and I let it.
I was fading. The essence of me was fading, unraveling softly into the gray mist around me.
Let go, the mist whispered. Let it all go . . .
And then it parted. I stood on a vast plain, green grass under my feet. Golden sunlight streamed from a blue sky. In the distance, herds of wild beasts grazed, big shaggy shapes.
I felt a presence behind me and turned.
A colossal lion walked toward me across the plain. He was black, and his wings were folded over his body. His big golden eyes brimmed with magic. It glowed all around him, coating every hair of his fur. He was a god.
He reached me and lowered his head.
I raised my hand and put it on his nose. He had come to say good-bye. I would get to see him one last time.
The lion opened his mouth, showing me gleaming fangs.
“LIVE,” he said.
Silver magic erupted from him and into me.
PAIN.
* * *
• • •
AGONY TORE MY body into shreds and I screamed, writhing. There was something solid under me.
“I’ve got her,” Hugh’s voice said.
He was on top of me. I was alive.
I swung and punched him in the jaw as hard as I could. He toppled over to the side. I rolled to my feet.
Curran lay next to me on the bloody grass, human and unmoving. I crawled on my hands and knees to him and grabbed him. “Curran? Curran?”
He opened his eyes, saw me, and smiled. “Hey, ass kicker.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes. Very tired, too.”
“What did you do?”
“I resurrected you,” he said.
The pain blossomed in my stomach and I collapsed on his chest.
“This was the plan the whole time,” he said. “My plan and your aunt’s. Enough divine power for one miracle.”
I curled into a ball, holding on to him. If this was some sort of near-death hallucination, I would resurrect myself just so I could punch fate in the face.
“Sorry it hurt,” he said. “It’s my first time.”
I kissed his chest. He petted my hair.
“Last time, too,” he said. “I don’t have any divine power left, so let Hugh heal you, because if you die now, there is shit I can do about it and I’ll be really pissed off.”
I just held him. Slowly it was sinking in.
“I promised you this morning wouldn’t be the last time,” he told me. “I keep my promises.”
Someone else was screaming. I finally realized it wasn’t me and turned around. My aunt sprawled on the grass, shaking with seizures, naked, mad as hell, and very much alive.
“Oops,” Curran said.
I cried. I lay on his chest and cried.
* * *
• • •
I SAT ON our porch and watched Conlan play in the grass in the fading light of the evening. He pounced on lightning bugs like a big human kitten. Curran sat next to me, his arm wrapped around my shoulders. One week had passed since the battle.
With both Neig and Roland gone, their troops had scattered. We’d won, but we’d lost so much. We buried Adora’s ashes on the small hill behind our house. I’d cried at her funeral. I cried every time I thought about it.
Christopher got caught in the dragon fire, too. He didn’t die, but he lost a wing. None of us knew if it would grow back. He mourned his flight the way people mourned the death of a child. Desandra lost her beta couple. They were friends and her grief was still raw. Jim lost his sister. The witches lost Maria. The power drain had proved too much for her. Of Curran’s elites, only five remained.
Saiman never came back from the battlefield. He’d always been terrified of physical pain, but for some reason he had assumed his true form and run into the thick of the slaughter. Maybe he’d panicked, maybe he’d become enraged, maybe he’d been trying to protect someone. We would never know. They brought his body to me. He’d been pierced with four spears. I grieved. He’d left a will. He wanted to be buried in Unicorn Lane. We followed it to the letter. It was the least we could do.
Curran the God didn’t make it. None of his divine power remained. His hair no longer grew unnaturally fast, although he’d kept his added height, for how long was anybody’s guess. He’d lost the mystical awareness of us. His divinity had enabled him to know where Conlan and I were at all times, but he couldn’t preternaturally sense us anymore. He said it felt like he’d gone blind. It was a death, of sorts, but I couldn’t have been happier about it.
There was another death I didn’t mourn. Sharratum also died on that battlefield. When Curran resurrected me, I no longer felt the pull of the land. The claimings hadn’t survived my death. I was once again just me. I’d kept my power, but I was now free of Atlanta and the portion of Kings Row.
Ghastek had come to me after the slaughter. He’d seemed lost. He’d told me I would always be the In-Shinar. I told him that he was still my friend, but now he was free.
We buried friends and grieved, but slowly, little by little, Atlanta was waking up from a nightmare. The dragon was dead. Biohazard had claimed its bones, and Ghastek and Phillip had nearly come to blows with Luther over it.
Hugh and Elara both survived and returned to their castle in Kentucky. Hugh didn’t heal Dali. Jim asked her to delay it by six months. From where I stood, that just gave her six more months to work on convincing him, and my gut told me Jim would lose that fight.
Christopher and Barabas set a wedding date. Barabas made a terrible fuss over Christopher’s injuries and kept feeding him gallons of chicken soup, hoping his wing would regenerate. The Druids paraded down the streets in their furs and claimed credit for their part of the victory. Martha was seriously injured, and Mahon got to nurse her back to health. He tried to bake her honey muffins, and they were terrible. My aunt wasn’t speaking to either of us. She took her resurrection personally. Apparently, she had wanted to stay dead.
Julie wasn’t speaking to me either.
I deserved it. I went back on my word. I’d tried to talk to her, but she’d just walked away from me. I had made a promise and I’d broken it. I didn’t know if she would thaw with time. I hoped she would, but even so there was no going back from what I had done. Time would help. I hoped.
“I better do it,” I told Curran. “It’s been a week. He must’ve cooled off.”
“Give him another year,” he said.
“If a week won’t do it, a year won’t.” I set my glass of tea down. “I won’t be long.”
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I walked across the drawbridge of Neig’s castle. The place lay empty. Nobody greeted me. Nobody tried to kill me. The lack of drama was rather disappointing.
The stones shook under my feet. Oh no. Spoke too soon.
The castle yawned and swallowed me. I hurtled through it, or rather I stood still, and it spun past me until I was face-to-face with my father in the throne room. He was back to his older self. He must’ve been waiting for me to show up. He was the anchor of the realm. For all intents and purposes, he was the realm. He could never leave. And since we shared a blood bond
, I could come and see him whenever I wanted. Conlan, Julie, Hugh, all of us who had the benefit of his blood, could call on it at any time and waltz in and out of his realm as we pleased. It had to be killing him. I did my best not to laugh, but it was really hard.
“You lived,” he said.
“My husband resurrected me,” I told him. “He gave up his godhood for me. He resurrected Aunt Erra, too. She sacrificed herself to keep me alive, and apparently, we were in the same body just long enough for the two of us to get hit with the same resurrection wallop. She’s rather upset about it.”
“You banished me,” he said. Fury shivered in his voice.
“It’s not banishment.”
“Then what is it?”
“Retirement, Father. You’ve had lifetimes. I’m on my first one, and if you had it your way, I wouldn’t even get that. It’s a very nice castle. The library is to die for. Think of all the things you can do with this place.”
“The world needs me. I will save it. I will make it better.”
I sighed. “I love you, Father. I’ll bring Conlan by when he is older.”
“Kate,” he said. “I will find a way out.”
“Possibly. If anyone can, it’s you. But it will take you a long time. Meanwhile, we will have peace. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? Peaceful idyllic existence, free of the ever-present doom?”
“This isn’t over,” he said.
“Yes, it is, Father. And should you ever find your way back, I’ll be waiting.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against Curran.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“About as well as could be expected. He’s furious. He’s also easily bored, and within Neig’s realm, he has ultimate power at his disposal. The next time I visit, the place will likely resemble the Water Gardens. I think Conlan will enjoy playing there when he is a little older.”
I kissed my husband. We sat together on the porch and watched our son play with fireflies.
“We should have another one,” Curran said.
I smiled at him. “Maybe.”
“Don’t you want a little girl?”
Magic Triumphs Page 34