A burst of all-consuming terror and then instant rage flooded through him. But it wasn’t his.
So she was still alive, she was pissed, and she faced something bad enough to make the vestrohím Guardian’s fear battle with her anger.
By all the threads, he had no way of knowing if the summoning had completed or if the threat to Jessica now was in fact the Dalu’Rázj stepping through at some other location. It could also have been someone else entirely. Because, of course, his timing had been so brilliantly off the mark that now he had no idea where the Dalu’Rázj was. After unconscionable millennia of always knowing, now he had no clue.
“No, this is ridiculous,” Mel spat. “Don’t touch me—Don’t. I don’t care what he is. Leandras!”
His name called his awareness back to the present, and he left out a shuddering sigh as weight and sound and existence returned to him.
“Hey. Look at me. If you did something to her—”
“I did not do this.” Leandras turned slowly to face the witch’s scowl and smoothed his hair away from his forehead with both hands. “But I know where she is.”
“How did this even happen?” Mel tossed a hand toward the dais. “It’s all gone!”
“I know!” His shout rang through the massive room, and the rising murmur of agitated, confused, nearly hopeless Laenmúr died into complete silence. Leandras widened his eyes at the witch, then raised a hand and addressed everyone at once. “Whoever pulled the Guardian from our grasp took the conjuring circle and everything we need with it. Including the summoning and the doorway we meant to open here. A public park ten miles west, off the trail. Do whatever you can to get to her. Now!”
The basement exploded in a flurry of wordless action. Magicals who could teleport took those around them and vanished, most likely to alert the rest of their chapters outside that the plans had changed. The rest raced toward the stairs up to the bank’s lobby that hadn’t existed until an hour ago.
“A public park?” The changeling who never left Mel’s side approached them now. “Why the hell is she in a park?”
“If I could read the future, I would have suggested we gather there instead,” Leandras muttered, glaring back at the guy.
“Cedrick.” Mel turned toward him with wide eyes. “That could be Windy Saddle.”
“It could be, yeah. Or Mount Galbraith or literally any other area, and even that’s a long shot. How do we know this guy’s not getting rid of us just to finish her off himself?”
They both turned to stare at Leandras with a mix of suspicion and terror that under different circumstances would have made him laugh. Instead, the fae shrugged. “I suppose you’ll just have to trust me.”
“We need to go.” Steve tugged on Cedrick’s arm and nodded toward the stairs.
“No.” Leandras pointed at Mel and Cedrick. “I need you two.”
Steve rolled his eyes and stormed across the basement, his echoing footsteps the last sound before complete and utter silence.
Mel shook her head. “Jessica needs us.”
“Yes, I am well aware. She is also in desperate need of assistance this very second, and though I could be there right now instead of standing here arguing with you, I’m also far less than unequipped to help her on my own. The Hevrikai requires five to cast it.”
“Man, fuck the spell.” Cedrick sneered at the fae. “Jessica’s the priority, and I’m not leaving her stranded again to take the fall for the rest of us—”
With a hiss, Leandras darted toward the changeling and snatched a handful of Cedrick’s collar in one fist before jerking him closer.
“Hey!” Mel shouted. “What are you—”
“Jessica is always the priority,” the fae snarled. “For both sides. We need five who know her magic if any of us are to survive this. Especially Jessica.”
Cedrick’s eyes grew wide, filled with fear and hatred and belief in everything the Laen’aroth told him. “Then why are we still here?”
“Cedrick.” Mel whipped her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through the numbers. “The guys. And Rebeca.”
Leandras released the changeling’s jacket and shoved him backward. “Your friends will agree?”
An uneasy snort escaped her. “Kinda the only thing we’re actually good at. All of us together. I’ll tell them to meet us at the—”
“There’s no time.” The witch squeaked in surprise when Leandras snatched up her wrist, then he hauled her after him until his other hand clamped down on the changeling’s shoulder.
“Dude.” Cedrick tried to pull away. “What the—”
“We go to them.” He drew Jessica’s friends closer, and in an instant, all three of them were gone.
WITH THE LITERAL NIGHTMARE of her past standing right in front of her and the doorway to the Dalu’Rázj now officially summoned, Jessica’s first thought was that she was well and truly fucked.
And dead.
The Brúkii’s dark chuckle coiled around her throat, constricting it in an instant, unbreakable grasp of terror and helplessness and all the shame of a fourteen-year-old girl as he stalked toward her.
It was worse than seeing Mickey show up inside the bank, worse than being attacked by her abuser and the last father figure she’d really known. It was worse than anything the Matahg bastard had ever done to her, because at least when he was alive, Jessica had had plenty of opportunities to stand against him. For herself. For Mel and Rufus and Corpus. For her family.
The grinning, silver-glowing face heading toward her now was Jessica’s demon and hers alone—the magical who had made her an orphan and marked her as a killer all in the same night.
And she was just as alone now as the first time he’d grinned at her like that and stalked her down the dark, glass-littered alleyway between two burning buildings.
She couldn’t move.
“You have no idea how exquisite this is,” the Brúkii snarled. His laughter rumbled through the grotesque sneer splitting his face as specks of silver mist rose from his shoulders and coalesced above his head. “Ten years, Lilith. And you are...so much more than I imagined you could ever be. Look at you.”
Jessica clenched her fists and stared at the one deadly horror of her past she hadn’t yet faced. Mickey, Rufus, the Shattering, her own shame and self-hatred, her own glorious darkness—every secret and every regret paled in comparison to the one phantom she never imagined she’d be facing again.
This was the nightmare that had started it all. This Brúkii had finished life as Lilith Gray had known it and had sparked her agonizing, broken, desperate transformation into Jessica Northwood. This bastard had been her end and her beginning, and now he’d finally found her. He’d summoned her.
Right here. Right now. In the flesh.
“I’m going to enjoy this very much,” he snarled. “I imagine you will too, won’t you? Now that you’ve come so far...”
His face lost definition now, blooming into that roaring, hissing silver cloud of mist that had plagued her for so long until she’d traded a vestrohím’s chaos magic for a Peddler’s promise to strip the nightmare from her forever.
The terror gripping Jessica quickly morphed into something else—a burning flare of hatred and rage and the desire she’d always carried with her but had tried to subdue every day for the last ten years.
To destroy. To consume. To wreak havoc and devastation because that was who she was.
Not a fourteen-year-old girl who’d lost everything and fled from the horror of what it made her. Not a teenage witch on the run. Not Lilith.
Jessica was chaos itself.
Her one advantage now was that this asshole dissipating into the silver mist of her darkest fears couldn’t fathom what she’d done to get here.
In a flash, the Brúkii’s humanoid form burst apart. The silver cloud howled and careened across the clearing toward her, roiling and clashing with the voices of his victims, thousands and thousands. Their faces contorted in the flashing mist, and then he was upon her.
Half-formed and half-ethereal agony, the Brúkii stopped inches away from her. A silver-glowing hand thrust out of the cloud to seize Jessica by the throat, and his own sneering face emerged to loom toward her. His breath was ice on her cheeks, his silver tongue flickering out of a silver mouth as he hissed. “You belong to me, Lilith. I mean to take the rest of you when this is finished. You and I are the same.”
Whatever disgusting reference that was supposed to be, Jessica understood it in her own way. The Brúkii destroyed, tore apart, took what he wanted from those who had no conceivable defense against the power eating their essence to fuel his own.
His hand tightened around her throat, and she leaned fully into her own nightmare with a mad grin of her own. “You have no idea.”
His silver eyes widened, then Jessica clamped both hands around the wrist protruding from a mass of silver torment and let her own power surge through her.
An explosion of black light flared between them. The searing heat of her magic burst from her chest and raced across her skin, and the Brúkii hurtled away from her with a roar. Black light crackled across the silver mist like another terrible lightning storm, and a sharp tug pulled at the back of Jessica’s neck before the pressure and the tight pain snapped.
Two seconds—that was all it took for her to realize what had happened as the glowing blue pendant and the broken chain strung through it sailed away from her, spinning end over end. It struck a lichen-covered boulder at the edge of the trees and shattered with another burst of crackling blue energy.
Well, shit.
There was no time to mourn one of Tabitha’s final gifts and the one thing connecting Jessica to the bank.
A deafening crack shattered the air around her, and the green tear in the sky widened even more with a furious howl. Then the Brúkii surged toward her again, roiling and screaming. The faces of all those caught within his being flashed and surged against the cloud of mist—mouths gaping open in surprise, eyes wide with the last screams of terror, teeth gnashing in pain and despair.
Jessica met her final enemy head on and fought the last thing standing in the way of her real freedom.
Silver darts flared toward her, but unlike ten years ago, Jessica was ready. She caught every spear and icy dagger and piercing blade of his magic and consumed it with her own before launching it right back at him.
The Brúkii was fast. Hungry. Desperate.
He darted around her again and again, unencumbered by having to move around on actual legs and attacking her from all sides. Jessica spun to follow him, catching glimpses of the silver cloud seconds before he launched more attacks and darted off again.
The green rip in the air widened again, sending a tremor through the ground that made her stagger forward. She almost tripped over her own feet and dropped into a crouch to steady herself with a hiss.
If the Dalu’Rázj broke free now—and that would obviously happen very, very soon—Jessica didn’t have it in her to fight the Brúkii and cast the final Hevrikai spell and take down one seriously powerful destroyer all on her own.
Where the hell was Railen and his order?
A slicing agony ripped through her back, and she staggered again. When she looked down, Jessica found a blade of glittering silver mist protruding from her chest, flickering and whipping around her until she was both impaled by the Brúkii’s magic and wrapped up in it.
Holy fuck, that hurt.
The pain was unbearable, unconscionable, and Jessica could only stare with wide eyes at her flesh torn open as the coiling silver tendrils lapped at her and whipped up toward her face.
The Brúkii’s icy breath was in her ear. “There. Now I have you.”
She gasped for air, her mouth working open and closed as the agony overwhelmed everything.
If she’d been anyone else, this would’ve been her end. The asshole who’d just speared her through and now pulled her back against his being—half solid flesh and half frigid, roiling mist—would have been right.
But there was one major difference between a vestrohím and this howling silver cloud.
Jessica didn’t need the ability to draw herself back from the dead.
She just needed the Brúkii’s inability to heal himself the way Jessica could.
The icy fire of that silver blade shooting through her made her scream when she pressed her hands down onto it. Black veins raced across the silver, crackling and sparking, and then Jessica pulled the Brúkii into herself and drew every inch of her power along the shimmering silver tendrils holding her in that deadly embrace.
A sharp inhale hissed against her ear. “What are you—”
Jessica stepped forward and pushed the nearly black blade back through the gaping wound in her stomach, inch by agonizing inch.
This had to be what slicing open his own core had been like for Leandras. She screamed and forced herself forward. The anguish ripped through her back, and then she turned to see a mottled, terrified face as the Brúkii seemed to understand exactly what she meant to do.
Black tendrils of fire and chaos burst from her hand and severed the now fully black blade from the misty cloud’s core. His roar of pain cut out instantly when Jessica jammed the spear of their combined magic through the center of his partially formed being.
Black sparks and flecks of silver erupted from the Brúkii in all directions.
Face after face surged within the cloud, screaming for release and fighting to be let free.
Jessica staggered backward with a hand clamped down on the hole in her gut and all the blood seeping out of her.
The Brúkii howled and shuddered, rippling with more black than silver now but still fighting the power of consumption Jessica had always had inside her.
“The same, huh?” She gasped, her body growing cold even as she knew her fully restored magic would heal the wound that should have killed her. Any second now. “Looks like you—”
Another crack and blistering roar rent the air, and a surge of green light burst from the tear in the sky to shoot straight toward the Brúkii.
It struck him with full force and ripped the motherfucker to smithereens.
Silver and black and green sprayed in every direction before lifting up into the air, howling and raging. Every last speck of the Brúkii that would have already been consumed by Jessica’s magic sucked into the jagged portal scarring the air.
When the last bit disappeared behind the glowing green, the dark, furious laughter Jessica had heard so many times behind the Gateway door flooded the clearing and rattled her teeth. One more pulse of green light, then the portal she’d summoned with hundreds of others and now faced entirely alone ripped wider and wider like it was nothing more than tissue paper.
The green light covered everything now.
Jessica gaped at the two blazing eyes of black fire and the monstrous head emerging through the doorway. Horned, shivering without any real detail. And staring right at her.
Even with her wound nearly healed and all her magic at her command, there was no way in hell she’d make it through this.
Chapter 30
“Jessica!”
The relief of hearing Leandras’ shout behind her and the overpowering dread of seeing the Dalu’Rázj climb through a hole in the sky was too much.
Jessica dropped to one knee, her hand still clamped to her belly and slick with her own blood despite the gaping hole having sealed itself up.
Choking and gasping rose behind her. Someone wretched.
Footsteps raced toward her, then Leandras was at her side, whipping her hand away from her belly to study the damage. “Vrestí! What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” she whispered, unable to look away from the grotesque form peeling away from the severed veil between worlds. “Yet.”
“Jessica, listen to me.” He grabbed her face in both hands and jerked it painfully toward him to look her in the eyes as a terrible tremor coursed through the ground again. “We have five for the Hevrikai. The others ar
e on their way. This is our moment. Do you understand?”
She took a sharp breath and nodded before he hauled her to her feet.
“Holy shit.” Cedrick gaped at the horror spilling toward them out of the portal—a monstrous thing swarming with green and black light, limbs snapping and billowing in every direction.
What was he doing here?
Then the truth finally hit her. Cedrick, Anthony, Damian, Rebecca, Mel—they were all here, with her, ready to...what?
Die as a family?
Mel saw the blood soaking Jessica’s shirt and raced forward. “Shit. Jessica’s, what’s—”
“Get to the circle!” Leandras roared, pointing at the table and the spell reagents that had been summoned to the middle of nowhere with Jessica and an immortal lizard.
Who was nowhere to be found.
The fae shoved Jessica back toward her friends. “Begin the spell. Now!”
She staggered forward as the ground trembled again and the hideous bellowing knocked her off balance.
“And whatever happens,” Leandras snarled after her, “you stop at nothing to—”
A deafening crack cut off his warning, and the green light filling the clearing darkened like a shadow of the end hovering over all of them. Mel reached for Jessica’s hands but stared in horror at something clearly awful behind her.
Black and green light strobed with purple and silver, growing darker by the second and casting horrendous shadows across the ground. Jessica turned and hoped to hell she was hallucinating again.
Because Leandras Vilafor was supposed to be there to help them.
That was impossible now that he was the center of the pulsing, crackling light in every color swarming around him in a tightly constricting cocoon.
His head was thrown back dangerously far as his feet kicked and thrashed helplessly three feet off the ground. His entire body bucked beneath the cage around him—limbs whipping at excruciatingly wrong angles, bones snapping, desperate chokes spilling from his gaping mouth.
Worst of all, he looked worse than he had before the first time he’d died.
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 31