by eden Hudson
My arm froze mid-pump. I tried to move, but it wouldn’t respond. It was like when Bailey had stuck that bag of garlic in my mouth or when Lonely paralyzed me.
Finally that nagging thought about darkness and headlights got through to my brain. It was nighttime.
No, not now!
But my arms wouldn’t move. I took a step, but couldn’t drag my other leg forward to catch me.
Not tonight, please, they’re going to be here in five minutes and I haven’t even got to Desty yet, please, please, please— I tipped forward. The shotgun butt slammed into my chest and levered me onto my side rather than let me hit the melted carpet face-first.
Stay awake!
I couldn’t.
*****
At the edge of the blackness, I heard fire crackling and voices yelling. Footsteps circled me. Wings rustled. I tried to force my eyelids open, but it was like they were nailed shut.
Only fucking vampire who sleeps at night. Wake up wake up wake up!
Someone laughed. The volume turned up on the world just enough that I recognized the voice.
“Mikal was right,” Kathan said. “You Whitneys may be annoying as all hell, but you’re so damned entertaining.”
Holding onto consciousness was too hard. It slipped away from me.
She needs you. They need you. Everybody’s depending on your sorry ass. Get. Up.
Gunfire. More yelling close by.
“Tough?” That was Dodge.
Scout yelled, “Is he—”
Dammit. The first team was here and I couldn’t open my eyes. Worthless piece of shit!
“Tough?” Sweaty hands grabbed me by the neck and shook me.
More gunfire. The hands let go.
“Dodge!” Somebody started shooting pop-pop-pop-pop without pausing. Twelve shots, then the snap of a pistol slide locking back. Whoever was shooting had just run dry.
Finally, my eyes cracked enough that I could see a blur. There was a pair of arms and man-boobs in a faded gray-green t-shirt less than a foot from my face. I tried to look up toward the head, but my eyes wouldn’t move. I didn’t need to see his stubbly, razor-burned cheeks and wide nose, though. I recognized the leather bracelet with the bronze bass picks riveted to it.
“Somebody help me!” A smaller set of hands grabbed me by the ankle and started pulling. My face stuck to the floor, then unstuck and squeaked across the tile. “Grab his other leg!”
Coyotes yipped and wings flapped all around me. Gunfire was everywhere.
Then a warm body grabbed me around the knee and elbow and heaved me up onto its shoulders, fireman style. My brain spun. I had to wake up. They were trying to take me out of the Dark Mansion, but I couldn’t leave yet. Desty was still in here somewhere.
“Let’s go!” Clarion yelled. “I got him. Go! Fall back!”
The shoulders jolted underneath me. I tried to move my mouth, shake my head, anything. All I could do was look at the blur of blood and skin that used to be the left side of Dodge Kelley’s face as they carried me away.
Desty
Even though the lunatic’s cell had almost warmed back up to my body temperature, I shivered. The blood was back. I hadn’t passed out or been drugged this time, but red swirled all around me in the darkness, a comforting ocean of blood, soothing away my pain. This time I could feel my hair floating in it, moving with the currents.
Kathan had found a way to make Tempie and me the same again, so he would probably escalate the torture now. At least they had stopped digging inside me with that coat hanger. That was something. Maybe they had finally realized that I couldn’t have been pregnant.
Theoretically speaking, I could’ve been. Vampires are dead, but they come back to life in a way after they drink from a living being. Some start breathing again, others may feel warm for a few minutes after feeding. What’s to say that they don’t make vampire condoms because blood livens up dead little swimmers?
No break in clinical distance came this time. I hadn’t been carefully detached and analyzing my situation anyway. When Kathan had offered to end the pain if I would just give in and become his familiar, something had snapped inside of me. I could feel what was left of it dangling like a bunch of broken cords inside my brain.
To join Kathan’s side now would be like agreeing to marry one of the foot soldiers who’d raped me if they pinkie swore not to rape me anymore. It wasn’t happening. They could systematically tear me to pieces, but I would not let myself be mentally handcuffed to that evil bastard. He was just as bad as the God who had let this happen. The only downside to not becoming Kathan’s familiar was that I wouldn’t be powerful enough to destroy both of them.
Unless that’s the lie Kathan wanted you to believe—that you needed him so you could destroy the world.
On the stairs after he’d first tried to enthrall me, Kathan had said that he could hear it written in my blood, that I was the other half of the Destroyer. If a person is born something, then they have the abilities of that thing within themselves, maybe coded into their DNA. All Jax had said about the Destroyer was that identical twins born to identical twins—bred in the bone the same, borne in the flesh the same—who were bound as one could unleash destruction upon the Earth.
Tempie was already manifesting some powers. On that first night I’d found her, after she’d hit me, she kissed the spot and healed it. She had also laid the smack down on that jerk vampire, Finn, the other day.
If she didn’t need to be bound to me to display some of the powers of a Destroyer, maybe she didn’t need Kathan, either. Maybe being with him had just enlightened her as to what the powers were, then she had begun using them.
In knowledge, power.
I closed my eyes and felt around my body, making a mental inventory. For this experiment to work, I needed an observable starting point. I found the missing strip of skin on the inside of my leg. It was still weeping blood. Kind of a big booboo to start with. The bite mark on my chest would probably take less effort, but minor healing would produce minor results, and minor results were harder to track.
I laid my palm flat on the bloody spot. The exposed tissue stung from the salt on my skin, but I didn’t move my hand. I wasn’t sure how to begin. How did you heal something? How did you do anything Destroyer-y?
Maybe you had to be kissing it? I tried, but couldn’t bend right to get my lips to the wound.
That would be ridiculous anyway. I was sitting alone in a pitch black isolation cell with no one but the blood to see me and I still felt stupid for trying. You would think that major bodily harm and humiliation would make a person a little less self-conscious, but I guess I was stuck with that particular character trait for life. However short that life might be.
Speaking of which, I should probably speed things up a bit. There was no telling how long I would be left alone this time or how much of that alone-time I had already wasted.
I took another deep breath, trying to hold off the panic, but my heart stuttered inside my ribcage at the thought of the foot soldiers coming back. My hand trembled until I had to take it off of the wound because I was doing more damage than I was magically fixing.
It wasn’t magic, though, it was something else. Will, maybe? Tempie had wanted me to feel better, so she’d kissed the bruise on my cheek and healed it. But I already wanted to feel better. Who wouldn’t want the thigh they’d just had flensed to feel better?
Somebody who didn’t think they deserved to feel better. Somebody who didn’t have a purpose fueling their will to feel better.
I had a purpose—destroy the fallen angels who had done this to me. Pay them back for laughing as if watching my body violated and ripped apart was the height of entertainment. Get my sister away from Kathan and pay him back for everything he’d done to her.
It didn’t matter whether I deserved to feel better or not, if I was better in every sense of the word—not just cuts and bruises healed, but stronger, more powerful, greater—then I could destroy them.
&nb
sp; I drew on all the anger and hatred and bitterness at the things they’d done to me. That helpless rage from being held down and hurt and laughed at and made into a thing, not me, not a person, not someone who could help them fight the God who had misused them and the rest of the world, but a means to an end, some kind of dumb animal they had to break so she would follow them around and do what they told her to do. I poured all of that into the wound and all over myself.
The river of blood swirled around my arms and legs and face, making little ripples and whorls where my power disturbed it. Warmth poured across my skin, soothing away the aches and pains.
I smoothed my hand across the untorn flesh on the inside of my thigh, then over the place where the ridged bite mark on my chest had been. I slid my tongue over my newly unbroken teeth and pursed bloody but scabless lips together.
“Now we’re cooking with gasoline.” I laughed. Some giddy part of my brain thought that Kathan would’ve cringed if he could’ve seen the levels of hell that self-satisfied smirk held for him and his legions. “Desty Blaine McCormick, ladies and gentlemen—the Destroyer, the Godkiller, and now available in limited edition Fallen Angel Killer.”
Tough
By the time my body was awake enough to blink, Clarion and I were in the driveway of the Dark Mansion. I couldn’t move my arms, but something deep down in my gut was reaching out like a ghost-hand toward the mansion’s busted down front doors, screaming, Get Desty! Leave me there to burn—I don’t care—just get Desty out!
My fingers twitched. I tried making a fist. Pins and needles prickled in my fingers. If I could keep going like that, I might be able to get moving in time to watch one of Lonely’s TBG-7s turn the Dark Mansion into a pressure cooker with Desty inside. I tried to work my hand faster.
In the parking lot, Clarion ducked behind an armored Hummer with shot-out tires and rolled me off his shoulders. “Wave one is falling back. Send in the crows.”
“Got it.”
Somebody whistled, then the sound of flapping took off from every direction. Black flashes passed over the lighter blackish-orange of the sky. Somewhere outside my field of vision, something was burning.
I put everything I had into moving my fingers. This time, I was able to make a fist.
A coyote woman from Clarion’s pack leaned over me. “What happened? Garlic? They couldn’t have gotten their hands on holy water. Could they?”
“I don’t know,” Clarion said. “He’s coming around, though. Must be leaving his system. Where’s Lonely?”
“Set up with launcher-one in the oak by the road,” she said.
“Call him down. See what he can do. If the prophecy’s right, we’re not going to get anywhere without Tough.”
“What about you?”
Clarion glanced toward the mansion. “They’re just kids.”
The woman exhaled a puff of breath. She leaned over my body and bit Clarion on the cheek. He turned his head hard and kind of knocked into her with his face. She smiled at him, then he took off.
Clarion’s girlfriend moved to my peripheral and started shooting, probably covering her boyfriend. Without missing a shot, she whistled again, three staccato notes.
A few seconds later, Lonely swooped down in front of me and shifted.
“Clare said you might be able to help him,” the female coyote said, still firing on the Dark Mansion.
Lonely grinned sideways at me. “You sleep at night?”
If you say anything about entertainment, I’ll shoot your dick off as soon as I can move again.
“Don’t shoot.” He raised black-gloved hands and chuckled. “Ah ha, you are such a fuckup. Come here.” Lonely jerked one of his gloves off and planted his fist on my chest, over my heart. “Huh.”
What?
“Warm. You’re going the wrong direction, tarnished one.” Lonely pulled his fist back, screeched a high-pitched crow screech, then punched me so hard that I felt my breastbone crack.
Icy blue lightning shot down my arms and legs. All my muscles spasmed at once. My lungs sucked in a breath and my heart stuttered like it was trying to make up for the last few days’ worth of missed beats. That fuck-you cold poured back into my bones.
I sat up, shivering and shaking so bad I was almost vibrating.
“Better than cocaine,” Lonely said, grinning.
Get me a gun, I told him.
Tempie
Are they here? I asked.
Yes. For a moment, Kathan pulled back his protective barrier and let me listen to the confusion of shooting and yelling and running boots. An acrid smell like burning plastic flooded my senses.
I felt a tear slip down my cheek. It’s time, then.
He wiped away the tear-track, swept the wet hair out of my eyes, and kissed my forehead. If I could keep you with me always, Temperance, just like this—
I know you would.
Outside the protective barrier, I heard foot soldiers yelling to their leader. Alphas and enforcers, looking to their commander for orders, saying something about another wave of troops.
Your body is safe here, Kathan told me as he left to join them. Stay.
I didn’t answer him. It was time.
There was a trick to staying separate and sovereign like Kathan did, but that was something I’d never been able to figure out. My pieces couldn’t move perfectly independent of one another. What my right hand did, my left hand knew all about.
One part of me screamed for Kathan. It begged and gibbered and whimpered for me to stay right where he’d told me to. It dug in its heels, trying to hold the other part of me back.
You need him. You can’t do what you’re trying to do. You’ve already ruined so much, now you’re going to ruin the one good thing that’s ever happened to us? What about tomorrow? What about next week? What are you going to do then? When you have to live with yourself and who you are and everything you let happen? Without him, there’ll be no one to shut off your brain. Every single second, every single minute of every single day, you’ll be stuck in here, stuck with yourself.
The worst thing was, that screaming junkie part of me was right. I did need Kathan. Without him, there wouldn’t be any escape from the thing I hated most in the world—myself.
At the edges of the junkie’s shrieking, I could feel the bowstring stretching. My mind wobbled and tried to slip. But if I let go now, I would never make it to the basement.
Kathan’s essence was right there, so close, so strong. The junkie howled, dying for the peace of nothingness, needing to be obliterated by his love and shattered by his too-intense way of looking at the world.
We could die in him and none of this would matter anymore! she wailed.
She was right. Oh no, she was right. The essence was right there, sweet, beautiful black fire to burn away all the pieces of me.
The bowstring wavered and I almost let go.
Don’t think about the essence. Don’t think about what it can do. Don’t think about how it makes you feel. Don’t think about tomorrow or next week or two seconds from now. There’s just right now. There’s just walking. Just keep walking.
The bowstring stretched tight again.
Go back, the junkie screamed. Go back! Please!
We can’t, I told her. It’s too late. It’ll never be like it was. Johnny went marching off to war.
The junkie shrieked.
The other piece of me kept walking.
The bow shook at full draw.
I only had to stay separate for a little bit longer. Just a couple more minutes. If the effort destroyed what was left of my brain, I wasn’t going to spend much time crying over it.
Desty
I felt like I’d just woken up from the deepest and most restful sleep of my life, then chugged a gallon of coffee. I was strong. My muscle fibers were twisting and snapping with electricity.
Power, Tempie had said. But she thought the power came from Kathan. That was the lie he’d wanted us to believe—that we needed him to become the Destroye
r. But “bound as one” didn’t mean “bound as one to a fallen angel commander.” It just meant bound together, maybe in purpose or spirit.
Or fury.
I half-saw, half-felt my way through the darkness and blood to the door. I hit it. The cell’s padding muted the thud. I took a few steps back, felt the power zing through my body, ready to unleash hell. I rammed the door. Wood cracked and the padding on the inside split across a seam.
That door was the only thing standing between me and them. The only thing between me and revenge. I wasn’t going to be stopped by some padding and wood. I was the Destroyer. I rammed it again. The Godkiller. I was the answer to the prayers of every innocent who had been destroyed before me. A door was nothing.
On my next impact, the wood caved outward. The blood flowed through the rip in the padding. I dug my fingers into the tear and jerked the canvas and sound-proofing material away from the cracked door. Then I pulled my fist back and hammered the weak spot until I could force my arm through.
Metal bands had been riveted to the outside of the door as reinforcement, but they didn’t matter now. I felt around until my hand found the padlock and latch. I jerked the padlock. The screws ripped out of the wood.
I shoved the door open with my hip and stepped out into the basement.
Movement on the stairs caught my attention. I snatched the largest splinter of door from the dirty cement floor—a club about a foot and a half long, tapering to a jagged point in my fist.
But the body on the stairs was Tempie. She was slumped over about halfway down the steps, holding her head in her hands. She looked up at me. I lowered the door-club. Blood ran from her nose, down her chin, dripping onto the step between her feet. The drops sounded like rain.
Blood swirled around us like smoke in a burning house. Blood poured from Tempie’s nose, probably coming straight from her brain. Blood dried on my legs, on my body, on my lips, reminders of the bloody gashes and bite marks I’d healed.