A flash of red out of the corner of my eye surged forward and hit Cale hard on the side, throwing him off Luke and across the floor. I looked as Talia shoved Cale with her shoulder until they hit the wall and she trapped him there.
“Cale!” She shouted at him. “Stop this now!”
“You fucking traitor!” Cale snarled. “You do as I say, not the other way around. Good Angels do as their Witches tell them.”
“Well, I guess I’m not so good, then.” Talia grunted. Cale snarled and turned their positions.
I used my good arm to crawl toward Luke and I saw him turn over and pull himself over to me. I almost cried at seeing him again as we dragged ourselves toward each other
“Danny…” Luke croaked, reaching up to gather me close.
“Well, this turned into a pretty big clusterfuck, didn’t it?” I asked him as he sat up with me in his arms. I checked him for injuries, breathing a small sigh of relief when I saw he was okay.
“Danny…oh, my god, Danny…” He chanted, his voice weak. I reached over to take his hand and put it against my cheek, feeling our shared power make both of us stronger. “I’m so sorry…”
“Sorry for what? Trusting me?” I asked him quietly, grunting as whatever was wrong with my shoulder popped back into place. Luke caressed my arm gently, his fingers soothing the pain away and I watched as the bruises around his throat disappeared.
“I should’ve known it wasn’t you.” Luke scolded himself quietly.
I looked at him, savoring the feeling of his hand against my cheek and took in every aspect of his handsome face that I could, like I could never get enough. I felt such an ache in my chest when I looked at him.
I couldn’t help it. I did the stupid action hero thing and kissed him.
I’m an action hero. And stupid. What can I say?
I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him against me, trying to soak in this feeling as much as I could before I pulled away.
“Do you know it’s me now?” I asked him. He smiled a little and rubbed his thumb along my cheek.
“I love you.” He breathed in answer. I felt my heart swell despite the situation.
“And I love you.” I told him immediately as I folded myself up against him briefly. “But we need to wrap this up because right now I gotta save the world.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Luke grunted, getting to his feet and helping me to mine.
Chapter 39
The knightmares still flooded through the breach and I looked over to see Talia losing her battle with Cale. I turned to Luke, who looked at me expectantly, ready for my instructions.
“Work on getting the breach closed.” I told him. “I’ll take care of Cale.”
Luke nodded and I watched him run toward the Void, his beautiful wings fanning out from his back.
I spotted my wand, still lying up against the pillar where I had dropped it. I scrambled to wrap my hand around it, picking it up and shoving it in my jacket pocket. I urged my legs to go faster as I sprinted over to where Cale had thrown Talia face first into the ground. I ran harder when he raised a boot over the wing she had curled protectively against her back.
“Angels.” Cale spit out before he brought his boot down on her wing, making a revolting crunching noise that I knew meant it was broken. Her scream echoed across the room.
I shouted through my teeth as I rammed my shoulder into Cale, barely feeling the twinge from where it had been injured. Cale went sprawling toward one of the holes in the wall where the knightmares escaped. I chased him and put my knee against his chest, pinning him to the ground and throwing my fist viciously into his face for good measure. He laughed with bloody teeth up at me.
“Doesn’t it feel good, Danny?” he asked. “To know that your Angel would end the world for you?”
I hit him again, my anger getting the better of me.
“That’s how it works, isn’t it?” I asked him, grabbing him by the lapels of his suit jacket. “We do some real stupid shit for the ones that we love.”
“It’s not going to work.” Cale glared at me, punching me in the stomach and knocking the wind out of me before throwing me across the floor. My hands squeaked against the smooth floor as I skidded to a stop, barely keeping myself from tumbling through one of the holes in the wall that dropped off to a long fall into concrete.
“What won’t work?” I coughed, trying to get my breath back as I heaved myself to my hands and knees.
“You’re not going to get to me.” Cale kicked me in the side, sending my body rolling. I braced my arms on the floor, stopping my movement for long enough to hook my foot around the back of Cale’s knee. His legs folded under him immediately.
“I think you forget.” I told him, stumbling to my feet as he got to his and meeting his stubborn glare with my own. “I’m your little sister. I’ve had years of practice getting to you.”
“We’re not kids anymore.” Cale growled.
“No, we aren’t.” I conceded. “That’s why I have this.”
I pulled the wand out from my jacket pocket. It caught his eye and he stared at it, unable to take his eyes off of the beautiful piece of wood, pulsing with so much power in my hand
“Why does that matter?” He asked, his voice strained. “We can do magic with anything from the Earth. I can pick up a number 2 pencil and kill you with it.”
“Do be fair, you don’t really need magic to do that.”
“Shut up! Shut up! Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Cale’s outburst was unexpectedly violent. My guess made more and more sense.
“Someone’s really not having a good day.” I said casually, twirling the wand between my fingers.
“I really can’t wait until you’re dead.”
“Is it because of this? Because you know how special it is? That’s why you wanted it so bad, isn’t it?” I pressed, rubbing my thumb along the designs in the wood. “It was Mom’s. Our family’s. A family you’re still apart of and that scares you”
“It’s powerful.” Cale’s voice was wavering, still staring at the wand. “You don’t deserve it. You couldn’t even be Queen without your Angel.”
The sneered accusation was one I had been afraid of - that I wasn’t myself without an Angel. Hell, I have to say that I believed it for a while, that all my problems would just go away when I found my Angel.
Only, it turns out, that is literally how nothing works.
“You see, on the surface, that’s what it looks like. But your math’s a little off.” I told him. ”Meeting Luke was incredible, but I was Queen before I met him…and it looks like I’ll be Queen after I met him, too.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I guess we will. But I digress. I think you wanted this wand for another reason.” I told him. “You’re my brother. I love you and you love me.”
“I don’t.”
The words should have been like a knife, said so confidently, so casually stabbed into me. Perhaps before they would have shaken me, but now I really noticed the way his face looked like it was stretched too tight across his bones and I knew the truth.
“Then this won’t hurt a bit.”
I raced toward him and I heard him grunt as I shoved him into the wall. Bracing my legs, I pinned him there with my shoulder. He raised a hand to hit me and I grabbed it, wrapping his fingers around Mom’s wand in a crushing grip, keeping my hand on top of his. I felt the rush of power go through both of us.
I brought back every memory I could think of. I thought of every fight, every smile, every day we used to play together, every time we hurt each other, every hug, every helping hand, every time we looked up to each other…
All of the love we shared as a family.
I took everything I felt, gathered the power of our mother’s wand and shoved. Shoved until I hit what I was looking for: the putrid skin that had wrapped itself around his soul. I felt it grip him tightly as if it knew I was coming. It was trying to suffocate him.
I blasted i
t with everything that I had.
Cale screamed as my spell rippled through him like water washing away sludge. I felt it ooze out of him before I saw it.
Cale’s scream turned into something unearthly and terrifying, the shriek echoing into every part of me. Pitch-black goo oozed out of his eyes, out of his mouth, out of his ears, and out of his nose. He choked out a gasp, retching painfully as he fell to his hands and knees. The last of it ran out of him and dribbled into a puddle. He collapsed with a groan.
“Cale!” I shouted, scrambling to his side. He took the deepest breath I had ever seen someone take and looked up at me, his chest heaving as if coming to the surface after almost drowning. My heart ached at how clear and open his eyes were.
“Danny.” He choked out shakily, wrapping his arms around me. I hugged him back, gripping him tightly when I felt the way that he trembled. “It…it was inside me. It killed Dad and got inside of me…it made me…it made me…”
“I know.” I told him, unsure of what else to say, words failing me at seeing Cale - the real Cale - again. He clutched at me harder and gave an exhausted sob.
The goo that had come out of Cale jerked and twitched as it grew, writhing on the ground, like struggling bodies trapped in tar. It grew and grew and grew until it was almost the size of The Throne Room. The middle of it split, fiery purple teeth flickering out from the repulsive maw.
The screech that came from it shook me to my bones.
The Ancient Scream had arrived.
Chapter 40
I watched in horror as the Scream called another rush of knightmares out of the Void, towering above all of us. It grew monstrously large, the sound of it doubling as the knightmares swirled around it, feeding into its power.
“I WOULD HAVE HAD IT!” I heard the Ancient Scream shriek from deep within its body, the language unknown to me yet I understood what it said perfectly, the vile voice echoing in my head. “I HAD THE KING! I WOULD HAVE RULED ON THE THRONE OF WITCHES! THE POWER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND THE VOID!”
Goddamn it, even this thing didn’t think I was going to be Queen.
I know, I know. I have other things I should be paying attention to right now.
But it didn’t even try to possess me. I’m so insulted.
The doors burst open and I saw Theo and Patrick stagger into the room, The General leaning heavily against his husband. They both looked slack-jawed at the horrific giant that took over the Throne Room.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luke bracing his legs against the floor, his wings quivering with effort as he tried to close the gap. He gritted his teeth as sweat broke out across his forehead. The Barrier began to seal closed, stemming the flow of knightmares. I felt hope leap to life in my chest.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one that had noticed.
The Ancient Scream lurched its putrid body around to face Luke and I felt a thrill of terror tear into me like a lightning bolt. He wouldn’t be able to fend off an attack while he was closing the massive Barrier. He was defenseless.
No.
I grabbed the Queen’s wand and ran toward the Scream, pulling quick bursts of energy from the wood and throwing spell after spell at it to get its attention away from Luke. It absorbed my energy without really noticing me at all.
The Scream pulled a foul tentacle free from its body and lashed at Luke with it, catching him across his lower back. He cried out and squeezed his eyes shut, but kept his focus on the Barrier as blood spread across his shirt. The Void was almost halfway closed.
The Scream let out another stomach-turning screech and aimed more tentacles at him. In desperation, I pulled a swell of energy from the wand and threw a wave of energy to intercept the assault. My spell blocked most of the tendrils.
But not all of them.
I heard Luke grunt in pain as the few I couldn’t manage to catch lashed across his body, grabbing hold of him and picking him up off the ground. It hurled him mercilessly across the room. He hit one of the columns hard, crumpling into an unmoving heap on the floor.
“Luke!” I cried out to him. His body remained still, his wings lying awkwardly around him, his clothes covered in blood. The memory of finding my father lying like that suddenly choked me and I gritted my teeth as tears stung my eyes, my heart felt like it was going to twist until it burst.
No more.
The Scream turned to me and I could swear its voice was laughing as I looked up at it. The power of the rage heating my body was immeasurable and the wand in my hand pulsed with power. Power from both Heaven and Earth, made by the growth from the ground and severed by the strike of a bolt of lightning - the wand of Queens – gifted to me by my mother and her mother before her.
The Ancient Scream opened its revolting mouth and hit me with a wave of soul-shattering sound. I clutched my mother’s wand in a mighty grip, raising it above my head.
And I screamed back.
The wave of my spell broke across The Ancient Scream, sending it stumbling backward to the opening of the Void. I heaved another massive wave of energy at the Scream and its tentacles gripped the edge of the Barrier.
“NO!” It gasped in horror. “I WON’T GO BACK! THIS THRONE IS MINE! IT’S MINE!”
“No.” I growled. “It’s mine.”
Bringing my powers up with every last particle of my being, I gave the Scream one last tremendous shove and savored the terrified sound that it made as it fell across the threshold, seeping through the barrier like putrid scum down a drain.
I fell to my knees and looked at the Barrier, still hanging open like a diseased, gaping gullet.
It had to be closed.
Well, this was going to hurt like a motherfucker.
The muscles in my legs burned as I got to my shaking feet. I held the wand and spread my arms, reaching out with my powers. I closed my eyes and concentrated, pushing every ache and pain I had to the side one last time.
Come on, Mom. I need a little more. Give me just a little bit more.
“Princess, no!” Patrick shouted from across the room, but I couldn’t give him any of my attention. The Barrier began rejecting the source of my powers by lashing out at me, flames burning across my skin. A scream burst out of my lips as I felt the skin begin to flay from my bones, agony splitting through me as I tried to control the cosmic force of the barrier, pulling it together with my power like trying to make the opposite sides of a mountain touch.
“Danny!” I heard Talia shout tearfully in horror.
“Get away from there!” Theo yelled desperately.
I blinked away tears from my eyes, trying to block them out.
“Danny…Danny, please…” Luke’s voice called from across the room, weak, but alive. I felt a peace settle over my heart at that, despite the carnage tearing at my body. Luke was alive.
Everyone would live through this.
That was enough. Enough to keep the pain at bay.
The pull toward the Barrier was getting stronger as I felt it closing. I fought my way through its violent vengeance, fought at the darkness creeping into the corners of my eyes, fought the flames pulling me toward the crushing death that waited for me in the Void.
Just a little more. Come on, just a little more.
“Please, don’t leave me.” Luke’s faint voice sliced at my heart worse than the flames burned my skin.
Without a doubt, if I had gotten to choose the way I was going to die, getting pulled into the Void wouldn’t have made my top twenty. This was going to be painful, to be sure; and not just because my body was slowly being turned into hamburger while my soul was still occupying it.
The thought of leaving everyone behind burned me from the inside out.
Suddenly, I felt fingers close around the wand and slide it out of my weakening grasp. I turned to see who it was and saw Cale looking at me with tears in his eyes.
”I love you.” I dimly heard him say. “I’m so sorry. Tell everyone I love them and that I’m sorry.”
“Cale…” I croak
ed, my pain-filled brain wondering what he meant.
I felt his hand on my shoulder and I had a sudden, terrible realization of what he was doing. “No…”
He shoved me away just as the flames from the closing barrier consumed us both, the sound of Luke’s scream echoing in my ears as the world went black.
Chapter 41
Patrick paused in the doorway of his bedroom watching Theo stand in front of their full-length mirror trying and failing to tie the bow tie around his neck with trembling hands. It seemed he was already getting ready for the ceremony despite it still being a few hours away. After fiddling with the bow tie for a few moments, Theo let the ends slip out of his fingers and settle against his chest, putting his hands in his pockets with a frustrated sigh. The Prince’s gaze wondered over to the crown sitting in its box on the dresser beside him.
Patrick watched him for a few moments more before he walked silently over to stand behind him. Theo glanced at Patrick’s reflection. He saw Theo’s eyes misting a little before Theo looked away, taking up the tails of his tie again.
“I can’t, uh…” Theo sniffed, trying to get himself under control. “I can’t seem to…this tie…”
Patrick draped his arms over Theo’s shoulders, gently replacing the Prince’s hands on the tie with his own.
“Let me.” Patrick offered comfortingly.
Theo let out another sigh, relieved this time, letting his arms drop into his pockets again as Patrick’s deft fingers tied his tie.
“It’s been…been awhile since I’ve worn one of these.” Theo mumbled.
“I know.” Patrick rumbled, pulling the loops tight and adjusting it against the pure white shirt that Theo wore. Finished, the General put gentle hands on Theo’s shoulders and turned him until they faced each other. Patrick laid his hands against Theo’s chest and caught the Prince’s eye, his gaze soft in understanding. “I know.”
Theo looked at Patrick’s shoulder, his hands resting on his husband’s hips, anchoring himself. Patrick had never seen Theo’s eyes look so lost.
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