“Then why didn’t you…” I trailed off, glancing at Solomon.
Last Breath hung his head. “The scene needs to be preserved and recorded. He was left like this to deliver a message, and that message might be vitally important.” He swallowed, audibly. “And…if I touch him, I will lose what little courage and resolve I have left,” he rasped.
I nodded. “We will get him. I swear it.”
Last Breath nodded, taking a deep breath Then he pointed a claw at my own white clothes—the set given to me by Aphrodite. “Seems we’re a matching pair, but your face and hands are a mess.”
I stared down at my white outfit and blinked. He was right. No blood on my knees or anything. My hands were coated in blood from the pool on the floor, but not my clothes. I wiped my thumb on my stomach, grunting to see no blood transfer. I’d forgotten about that little perk. “Well. Aphrodite knows her stuff.”
Last Breath began backing away, his tail swishing with anticipation. “Let’s go trick a trickster.”
I nodded. “Which way to my mom’s laboratory?” I asked, frowning. “Or the nearest washbasin.”
He pointed back the way we’d come. “Two lefts and a right.”
I was already jogging away the moment he’d pointed, the glowing sphere in my palm causing the shadows to flee my advance, so I heard his directions from over my shoulder.
Between my second and third stride, I heard a strange grunt, followed by a bubbling, gurgling sound behind me.
I skidded to a halt as my heart fell into my stomach. “Last Breath?” I asked, my voice sounding entirely too small in the echoing hallway as I slowly turned around.
57
My mind could not fully process what my eyes saw as I stared down the hall back the way I had come.
A naked blonde woman faced Last Breath, giving me a dim side profile of each of them since I had taken the light with me, leaving the hallway in shadows. Neither moved, neither spoke, but she looked familiar, even in the darkness. I heard a steady dripping sound, like pouring water. I frowned, feeling numb.
“Claire?” I called out, taking a step closer. She did not answer me, but she seemed to be smiling at Last Breath, who still hadn’t moved. I began jogging closer, my pulse accelerating. Claire’s hand was dripping for some reason.
Last Breath fell to his furry knees.
Then his great white lion head fell from his shoulders, landing on the ground with a sickening bounce, before stabilizing so that his dimming blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. Claire lifted a bare foot and kicked Last Breath’s body in the chest, sending him sliding into Solomon’s dead body. “Aww, now they’re holding hands,” Claire said in an overly sweet voice. Then she shook her hand off and slowly turned to face me. In the darkness, her eyes looked blindingly white and I saw her lick her dazzlingly bright teeth before she smiled at me.
My heart stopped beating and I froze, unable to think as I stared at Last Breath’s head lying in a pool of blood. Last Breath…one of the most notorious killers ever, had just been murdered with hardly any effort whatsoever. I heard a shattering sound in the deepest recesses of my mind as I slowly met the woman’s eyes. She had once been my best friend, but that was all gone now. “Claire,” I growled.
She smiled, calling up a ball of sickly yellow flame in her palm, and I realized that she was entirely covered in blood. Last Breath’s blood. Her fingers sported long black claws, easily long enough to decapitate my friend. She rubbed the blood into her skin like it was lotion, purring happily. Then she let out a jubilant laugh. “It is so nice to see you again, Callie.”
I hurled magic at her, screaming loud enough to make my vision waver. She swatted it aside with a familiar laugh that made my skin crawl.
And then I was running for her, closing the distance impossibly fast. She flung her hand out at me and a black sphere of evil screamed at my face. I batted it aside with my angelic gauntlet and grinned as I saw her eyes widen in disbelief. She flung three more and I batted those aside, snarling as the tiles shattered under my feet with each step—I was moving entirely too fast for them to support the force of my strides.
I saw the moment she chose to flee, and I dove forward, grabbing her by the throat with my angelic gauntlet. Her eyes bulged and she choked as I squeezed. I spun and slammed the back of her head against the stone wall, shattering the rock to pieces. I screamed incoherently, wanting nothing more than to rip her in half.
She laughed, taking my beating like it was a pillow fight.
“Y-you…wouldn’t kill your b-best friend,” Claire choked in a taunting tone. I heard shouts from further down the hall, and they sounded familiar.
I squeezed harder, feeling cartilage crack. “Cut the shit, Envy,” I snarled, naming her true.
She tried to respond but couldn’t beneath my grip. I relaxed my fingers just enough for her to speak and she coughed, hoarsely. “I am Envy, child. What I want, you cannot have,” she croaked, smiling through her pain. “And let me tell you, this body is so much better than that doddering old bastard, Solomon. One day in that meatsuit was worse than a year in Hell.” Her claws trailed over her hips and she moaned. “But this one got to play with Kenai quite a bit, so I’m understandably biased. He fucks like an animal! I wonder what he’ll do when he learns he was fucking one of the Seven Sins, not his sassy girlfriend, Claire.” She laughed huskily, obviously relishing the thought of his pain and guilt.
“Where. Is. Claire?” I demanded. I shuddered at the thought that Envy had been Solomon from out on the balcony this morning, having breakfast with Last Breath. And Kenai was going to lose his fucking mind when he learned the person he’d been sleeping with had been Envy. I gritted my teeth, remembering that Claire and Kenai had last been seen at Dorian’s party. “Was that you at Dorian Gray’s house?”
Envy grinned—exactly like Claire grinned, and I had to force myself not to release her on instinct. “You interacted with many of us yesterday, you silly fool. Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.” My blood ran cold to hear that I’d been close to more Sins without realizing it. Who? “Lust really hates you, by the way. This,” she said, waving a hand at the two dead bodies, “is nothing personal, I hope you know. Strictly business.”
“They were my family!” I roared, tugging her into the center of the hallway before my emotions got the best of me and I bludgeoned her head against the wall.
Envy tried slicing at me, but her claws did no damage, and I realized my angelic gauntlets now emitted a hazy light that acted as full body armor. “Well, they aren’t anymore, are they—”
I reared back with my free hand and punched her in the face, rocking her head back. She laughed as I hit her again. And again. And again. I screamed at the top of my lungs until my voice was hoarse, and I never once let go of her neck.
I panted, staring into her eyes as she spit out a tooth with a broken grin. “Give me more, mommy,” she cackled in Claire’s voice. “I will never tell you where your friend is—or if I killed her like the rest of your pathetic family,” she snarled, smirking at Solomon and Last Breath.
I squeezed her neck, knowing I didn’t have the strength to kill her but desperately needing her to shut up.
Her eyes bulged and I saw blood vessels bursting in her sclera as she struggled to escape my grip. She had already shrugged off the majority of the pain from my overpowered blows, since Archdemons could do things like that. But that was why I held onto her firmly with my gauntlets—in hopes that it would lock her into place for a few moments to see if I really did have the ability to kill her outright, like Ryuu.
Blood began to drip from her nose and the corners of her eyes as she struggled against me, looking frantic. I loosened some of my pressure, trying to think of anything I could do to actually hurt her.
She took advantage of my leniency. “How are you holding me?” she snarled.
“The Halo Breaker taught me a few things, bitch,” I lied. “This is just foreplay.”
Envy’s eyes darted over my shoulder to lo
ok back the way I had come, and then they widened in terror as I heard a snarl from the far end of the hallway. I spun, froze time, and released the Archdemon’s throat.
Ryuu stood a dozen feet behind me, all his weight on one foot and his arm outstretched towards me like a pitcher on a baseball mound after releasing the ball. But Angel Killer, his black katana, hovered directly in front of my face, floating in mid-air. I leaned my face to the side, analyzing the intended trajectory, and saw that it had been intended for Envy’s mouth and would have missed me by a hair had I not noticed Envy’s fear and moved.
He’d been trying to kill her for me.
Fuck.
That.
I felt a monstrous leviathan of rage bloom deep within my breast and it whispered great and terrible things to me. The Omegabet tickled my ears like a lullaby. I listened with great interest. Then, I snarled, baring my fangs, and snatched the Angel Killer from the air by the hilt. I drew the blade down my forearms, whetting the dark metal with the blood of a Nephilim and a Solomon—one side of the legendary blade for each arm.
I leaned close to the demon and drew a symbol on her forehead with my blood—a symbol I hadn’t known moments ago. It crackled to life with green fire, burning into the Archdemon’s flesh as I patiently stared at the space above her head. As the fiery rune burned itself out, a dark, thorny ring flickered into view.
Envy’s Halo.
I reached out and grabbed it, feeling my arm spasm as my muscles locked rigid. I gritted my teeth and screamed, tearing it away from her with a startlingly loud tearing sound. I stood there, panting.
Only then did I release my grip on the flow of time—the ability to speed up my perception of it, at any rate.
Envy screamed in agony, her eyes latching onto the halo in my hand with a look of unadulterated horror and fury. “MINE!” she shrieked in a hoarse croak.
I smirked and shook my head. “That’s the problem with you, Envy. You think everything belongs to you, when in fact, nothing belongs to you. How can I get it through your head?”
She opened her mouth to say something, but my sword arm was already moving. She had time for her eyes to widen in understanding before the Angel Killer slammed into the side of her neck with truly shocking force, powered by my angelic gauntlets. The black katana tore through her neck and whipped out the other side, showering me in her blood.
Just like she had done to Last Breath.
Her head lobbed up into the air and I thrust my sword arm forward in a piercing strike, impaling the severed head at the base of the neck. The body continued to spurt blood out of the gaping wound before Envy’s knees gave out and she collapsed to the side, a large pool of blood forming beneath her.
“Oh. That’s how I get it through your head, bitch!” I snarled, panting heavily.
Ryuu skidded to a halt by my side, his grim face analyzing the chaos of the hallway, noting the evidence and cataloging it in the span of one second. He stared at the severed head as I lowered my arm to inspect it at eye level. We watched as Claire’s face changed to a grotesque, scaled monstrosity, more reptilian than human. The body did much the same, shifting into a wretched, slimy, semi-humanoid structure covered in long, wiry hair and blistering sores.
Ryuu glanced down at my other hand, thoughtfully. Envy’s Halo seemed to be powering down but I could still sense energy throbbing deep within.
“You never cease to amaze me,” he rasped, gently gripping my waist in both hands, and resting his forehead against mine. “What do you need from me right now?”
He didn’t chastise me for putting myself in danger or taking unnecessary risks. He didn’t try to take control of the situation and tell me what he thought we should do. He didn’t comment that I’d just become a Halo Breaker. He…
Asked what I needed.
My lower lip trembled, and I realized I was panting, imagining Claire in some cell where I would never find her, or perhaps tortured to death like Solomon. How long had Envy been using her body? Since I outed her at Castle Dracula days ago? What figurative fires had she started using Claire’s guise?
“I…think I just want a hug,” I whispered.
Even though I was covered in demon blood, Ryuu didn’t shy away from kissing my forehead in a gentle, compassionate manner. His kiss said he didn’t care about situational details like demon blood. All he saw was me, Callie Penrose, alone on the field of battle—the last warrior standing. And that was cause for celebration.
He pulled me close and gripped the back of my head, pulling it to his shoulder as he hugged me, firmly. “I can do that,” he breathed, kissing the top of my head.
58
After a time, I pulled away, staring down at the halo in my hand. “I guess Legion was right,” I said. “I really did see his Hello.”
Ryuu furrowed his brow for a moment, confused, but then his features slipped into a grim smirk. “Cute,” he said, shaking his head. “Gallows humor A Hell Halo. Hello.”
I gave him a hollow smile, shrugging as I studied the thorned ring. “It’s literally the only thing laughable about this,” I whispered, my smile fading as I found I had shifted my attention to Last Breath’s severed lion’s head. The fur and mane were perfectly clean even though it sat in a pool of blood. His magic eraser lion’s mane repelling the blood was a horrifically stark contrast.
There would be no embarrassing stories about Solomon at his great big dinner. The one thing that had made him more excited than I’d ever seen, had been taken from him. From all of us. And all the while, Envy had been helping him plan it, pretending to be Solomon, knowing what she’d done and what she intended to do to Last Breath before it could come to fruition. It was insanely, maddeningly wicked. If she couldn’t have a family dinner herself, she would take ours.
“He did not die afraid,” Ryuu said, kneeling down on one knee and bowing his head, honoring the fallen warrior.
I saw something vaguely familiar poking out of Ryuu’s pocket and I frowned, pointing. “What is that?”
Ryuu glanced down to see what I was pointing at. He sighed, pulling out a small, thick card and I gasped. “It was my RSVP to a dinner. Richard said that I was a part of the family,” he said, clenching his other fist hard enough to crack knuckles. “He came by this morning to invite me to a private dinner tonight with just the four of us, but only if I promised to fill out this RSVP for a…celebration dinner party tomorrow with a lot more people. He said something about it being professional to hand deliver this back to him,” he said, petting Last Breath’s mane with two of his trembling fingers. Then he turned to look up at me and his eyes were red-rimmed and furious. “I wanted to speak with you, first, but when I returned to your rooms and saw the hilt of my sword poking out from the covers, I knew you had left. I felt you come here, and I assumed you were speaking with Aphrodite, and that I could drop off my RSVP like Richard had asked. I found Roland, who was also searching for you and he had an RSVP of his own to deliver, so he made a Gateway here for us.”
I frowned. “Roland is here?” I whispered, my knees trembling. Ryuu leapt to his feet and caught me before my legs gave out entirely. He smiled down at me, sadly. “I told him to stay back as soon as I saw the blood and realized you held Envy. I didn’t want anyone else dying. He would have been a liability.”
“I can hear you,” Roland’s voice growled, and I looked over to see him jogging towards us, his face pale, and his fangs out. Ryuu gently set me down, remaining close in the event my legs gave back out. Roland’s crimson eyes glowed with protective fury. He brushed some of my hair back and clenched his jaw in relief to see that I was all right. His eyes flicked towards Solomon and Last Breath and he shuddered. “Oh, Callie,” he whispered, cupping my cheek in his palm.
I didn’t even try to hide my tears. “Where is Aphrodite and Phix?” I croaked.
Roland smiled. “She might have those cuffs on, but that crazy woman sure knows how to use a blade. She killed two demons before we even knew what was happening.”
; My eyes widened in alarm. “What?”
Roland nodded, motioning for us to follow him. “The temple is secure. When we arrived, we bumped into Solomon. He took one look at us, cursed, and then fled. The next thing we knew, half-a-dozen demons spilled out of a side room and attacked. Aphrodite and Phix leapt into the fray and I stayed back to help while Ryuu ran to find you. After that, I just followed the screaming,” he said, dryly.
My eyes widened suddenly. “My sword!”
Ryuu grunted, lifting up Envy’s head on the end of the Angel Killer. “My sword,” he corrected with a faint smirk. His eyes drifted to my hands and I realized I still held the Hello. It no longer vibrated or hurt, but I could sense the dormant power within. “I don’t want to think about that right now,” I breathed. I slipped it into the satchel Last Breath had given me…
The last gift he would ever give me. I pointed back over my shoulder. “Can you grab the satchel Last Breath is holding. He was keeping it safe for me.” Roland nodded, disappearing for a moment to do the grim work of retrieving it from my friend’s lifeless body. He returned and handed it to me. I slung it over my shoulder and gritted my teeth. It was time to get to work. I turned to Roland. “Give me an update on the vampires. Did you get them all?”
He shot Ryuu a wary look before turning back to me. He finally gave a grim nod. “Actually, they are all waiting for me at Castle Dracula. Everyone is waiting to hear why hundreds of vampires moved in over the last twenty-four-hours.”
I frowned. “What do you mean everyone?”
Ryuu cleared his throat. “The Divines. Eae. Your Nephilim. My ninjas. They have all come to see you.”
I slowly turned to look at the two of them. “And was I supposed to telepathically get this calendar invite?” I asked.
Roland shrugged. “Well, Hermes showed up with Asterion and King Midas to sign paperwork of some kind. Alucard came back with them, bringing a hundred werewolves as if he thought we were under siege. Then everyone started coming for one reason or another. All I did was announce that I would speak to the new and old residents about the vampires moving in so there weren’t any…bloody misunderstandings.”
Trinity: Feathers and Fire Book 9 Page 34