Color me impressed.
Even so, Bram barely affected her. She stumbled several steps to my right before attacking him and snarling. Her hand, bright white and skeletal, shot out suddenly and wrapped its fingers around his throat. Even against his skin, she was ghostly pale.
But that wasn’t the point. As Bram scuttled away—not very far, and not fast enough to matter—I caught a glimpse of the pointed wooden stake poking out of her chest. It came from a piece of busted furniture, and was not an officially authorized stake, but wood was wood, so it didn’t matter.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
Meg looked down and saw the stake. She pulled it out with a furious shriek. Mist coiled out of her wounds, shrouding them in black, and when it cleared, the wounds were gone. Her body spat out the splinters like sunflower seed husks.
Well, fuck.
“Mine!” she shouted as she looked at me. But before she could do anything more, I grabbed a fistful of her dark, thin hair. I wrenched her back and, without thinking, sank my teeth into her neck. In the back of my mind, I was vaguely hoping that drinking her body dry might kill her despite everything else.
I managed a single rapid swallow before I let go of her and stumbled back, gagging. The taste was a mixture of rancid cough medicine and spoiled milk. I doubled over. My stomach heaved, and I vomited up her blood. It was black and gummy like pulverized licorice.
I looked up with watery eyes just in time to see Meg lifting Bram clean off his feet and lobbing him across the room like a steel caber. I heard a squishy sound and a shout as he was ruthlessly impaled on a massive splinter of wood jutting out of an old couch. He shouted out his pain as Panic pounded through me in a sharp, rhythmic drumbeat at the thought that she’d just killed him.
“Bram!” I screamed but a second later, I was relieved to see the wood had impaled his shoulder, not his heart and he was fine. For now anyway.
Meg hissed something with a lot of sharp letters at him (“mine” was probably in there somewhere). She didn’t turn back to me but stayed where she was, her legs apart, watching him. She was no doubt waiting to see if he’d get up and try again. As well as defending her “daughter.”
Fuck, I needed for this to be over.
We both heard a ripping sound and turned to see Knight still wrestling with the first abomination. The grey mass of fur and teeth reared with him on its back, his hands under its chin, and Knight’s blood on its face and its hands. He gave its head a sharp twist. I heard the neck snap, and the whole vertebrae began breaking clean away, but he didn’t stop there. He twisted and twisted until the skin started to tear, and the head popped off like the cork from a bottle of champagne, rocketing across the room with the force of his pull. Its knees buckled underneath him and it fell forward.
Knight reached down its demolished throat, found its heart, and ripped it out. Apparently it only had the one, because it crumbled half a second after the heart exited the body. Knight crushed the heart in his hands in a glittery burst of light and sparkle.
Beside me, Meg gasped.
Her eyes were bugfuck-big. Her mouth popped open and she was taking small, unconscious steps away from Knight and her dead creation. Knight stood and wiped blood away from his mouth, leaving the black that coated his hands in its place. He cast his eyes around the room, breathing heavily. Eventually, he found Meg and me.
He looked at her, and she froze.
“You,” she said to Knight, balling up her fists.
I jumped on her back before she could do anything, digging my claws into her chest and her face. “Me,” I said in her ear.
She screamed and reached up, grasping for something, and eventually decided on my wrists. With a swift jump, she landed on top of me. I barely felt the blow (werewolf adrenaline does that), but the floor bent beneath me, breaking everything from the floorboards under the carpet to the concrete foundation.
She whipped herself around, grabbed my hands, and pinned them to the floor on either side of me, digging into the ground with her sharp nails. The smell of her blood raining down on me made me gag.
“They have hurt you,” she said, “they have warped your mind!”
Hades, that was almost funny.
“I can help you.” She took my chin in her hand. “Dulcie, let me—”
I opened my mouth, and white-hot fire poured from the back of my throat.
NINETEEN
Sam
I clung to the wall in one corner of the room, trying to make myself very small. Meg’s dark magic was everywhere, a thick, invisible mist that made it hard to do any magic of my own—not that there was much I could do. My prime offensive was fire, and unless I wanted to burn Bram and Ezra black as coal (as tempting as that sounded), burning the abominations was absolutely out of the question.
I saw Henry darting through the center of the room like a glowing mouse, flitting between bits of furniture, as if trying to hide from the walking corpses all around him. It either worked or they just didn’t care about him, because he made it all the way over to Casey without a hitch. Meg and Dulcie were going at it in the center of everything; Knight was dealing with the abomination; Bram was impaled on a spike, and Ezra was busy with the flailing mobs of dead adversaries. Anyone who did see Henry didn’t have enough time to do anything about it.
I watched Henry kneeling by Casey. He put his head near Casey’s mouth, listening for his breath. After a few seconds, his face scrunched up and he appeared not so much worried as confused. He put his fingers next to Casey’s throat, searching for a heartbeat, or anything else that would validate his existence.
I willed him to look at me so I could ask if Casey was breathing. He did—and Ezra chose that moment to rip out an abomination’s stomach. He tore a hole through its torso, spraying black blood before a grey heart came tumbling out. Black leaked from its calcified arteries and began to pulse, already unstable.
It rolled towards Henry.
Henry saw it coming barely a split second after I did. The twitching grew fevered, spastic, and the first fire licked around the edges of the heart. Henry, seemingly without thinking, slammed his hand down on it like he was crushing a bug.
It reacted by bursting open in a flutter of gold.
Henry’s eyes went wide and he spent a long second just staring at his hands. Something must have clicked to him, because his face was suddenly set and stony as he began moving with renewed purpose. He opened Casey’s mouth, inhaled a long breath, leaned down, and blew into Casey’s mouth with air that glowed.
Casey was on his side a second later, coughing up a nasty, black substance.
Relief wasn’t even the word for the way I felt.
###
Dulcie
Every fairy in the world can set things on fire, but I’d never done it with my mouth before. Turns out that shit burns. I might as well have been sucking on a red-hot branding iron like a fucking lollipop.
Meg was rolling around on the floor, chanting, “No, no, no, no, no!” as she desperately tried to put out her hair. She only succeeded in burning the carpet before an ugly grey recliner caught on fire.
I watched her, bleary-eyed, until my gaze drifted from her to the people behind and around her. Henry was patting Casey on the back as Casey hacked up black ink. Ezra was facing off with a draconian-werewolf abomination that hosted an array of lesser bodies, all missing limbs, and leaking black. I didn’t know what it took for something as ancient and powerful as Ezra to feel fatigue, but he seemed to be slowing down. Or maybe that was just a trick of the light.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t; Knight saw it, too. A body collapsed beside him, a golden haze slowly drifting away from his hand. He took one look at Ezra and started to run.
###
Knight
I didn’t get very far.
Taking a single step towards the abomination struggling with Ezra, I felt teeth sinking into my shoulder.
I turned my head and found a vampire abomination with his fangs buried in
to my skin. His eyes gazed vacantly at and through me before he started chewing. In the half-second I was distracted by the anomaly, two more slammed into me like sacks of potatoes, slumping against me, pulling their broken nails across my skin, most of them too dull to do any real damage.
I elbowed the one gnawing on my shoulder in the face, fracturing its teeth and bashing in its already glass-fragile skull. It crumpled to the ground like a ragdoll, and remained unmoving, at least for now. I took the undead draconian by its nose and twisted it until I heard a bone break; then I pressed hard into its face. It felt squishy when the shards penetrated what was left of its brain. Black oozed out of its nose and from half a hundred tiny rips in its skin. It fell sideways, landing on the chest of the one next to it, and they both dropped. I drove my heel into the face of the one still moving.
Their skin felt like wet paper. I barely had to touch the hearts before they burst apart. It was getting much easier to kill them. I hoped that was a good sign.
Not ten steps from me, another abomination screamed. Ezra threw two zombies off his back and turned before the abomination punched Ezra squarely in the face. Being so big, without any conscious mind to restrain it from the damaging levels of physical exertion, the abomination punched the six-hundred-plus-year-old vampire in the nose severely enough to knock Ezra off his feet.
That was saying something.
Then it turned to me and raised its fist. White knuckles broke through the skin, and looked wet as they shimmered in the firelight.
I heard Henry shouting.
###
Dulcie
Looking up at the sound, I saw a bright light leaping onto the abomination’s back.
Henry wrapped one arm around its neck, thrusting a small pocketknife into its throat. Black blood shot out like a geyser around the blade, dissolving when it touched Henry’s skin. When the abomination tried to scream, he thrust his knife even deeper, and the sound cut off abruptly, resorting to static.
“Just fucking die!” Henry shouted. The words sounded odd coming from his mouth. He just was usually so polite… and calm.
A massive, bleeding, black claw rose up and raked Henry across the face, carving a line into his eye and cheek. He gritted his teeth, wrenched the knife out of its neck, and plunged it deeply into the abomination’s eye. Then he slammed the handle down onto its nose so the skewered eyeball popped totally out of the socket. The abomination shrieked and flailed wildly, backhanding Knight and flinging him sideways, straight into Meg.
The two of them hit the wall very hard and slid to the ground. Knight pulled himself slowly to his feet, groaning.
Rather, he tried to pull himself to his feet. Meg sat up, blinked and recognized him, instantly pouncing on him like a jumping spider on a fly.
“You,” she hissed, black muck dripping from her mouth onto his face. “You hurt my baby.” She lifted Knight’s head and slammed it down hard enough to crack something—hopefully the floor boards.
“No!” I yelled.
She ignored me, or maybe she just didn’t hear my protest. “You,” she said again, glaring daggers into him as she hauled herself to her feet. Half her face was black and the other half was chalky white. She stepped towards him—a human step, that was angry, deliberate and furious. She wanted him to see her coming. Or maybe she was just too far gone to be any faster than she was.
“Leave him alone,” I screamed.
Meg looked at me with a sad, broken expression. Like something I’d never seen before. She stared blankly at me for a long time and blinked slowly. She appeared to be lost at sea and totally uncomprehending.
“He hurt you,” she hissed, getting close to tears. “He hurt you. The Darkness showed me. I know.” She paused. “I saw what he did to you. He hurt you.”
“No shit,” I replied. I thought Knight flinched when I glimpsed him from the corner of my eye, but I might have imagined it. I heard myself adding, “But you made him do it.”
“No, not me, not me,” Meg said, half laughing and half crying. “I had nothing to do with this.” Every third word came out as an animalistic snarl. Laughter made her form jitter and spark, like she was glitching out of existence.
“What are you talking about?” I screamed at her. I was in no mood for riddles.
“The darkness is all-knowing,” she responded. “And it has shown me all I need to see, my child.”
“Shown you what?” I spat through my teeth.
“What this… this hideous creature did to you, to my dear daughter. My dearest Dulcie.”
She smiled, lifting her hands to her mouth, and blew. The cold, black fire streamed out from between her fingers. Dividing itself into two bulbs of onyx flame, they both flew toward Bram and Knight, heading straight for their eyes. Knight collapsed, and Bram just writhed as he nursed his impaled shoulder. Both of them were screaming.
“For you,” she said to me. She lifted Sebastian’s decapitated head by his hair and flung it at me. It struck the ground and rolled like a bowling ball, coming to a stop at my feet. The empty sockets stared mournfully up at me.
“Justice. They will kill each other for you,” Meg ranted as she looked at Knight and Bram but her crazy ravings were completely lost on me now. “This is not my fight any longer. The conflict is between them now—he who seeks to protect you against he who harmed you.”
I clocked her hard across the face before she could finish.
###
Bram
Meg bared her teeth, every one of them needle-sharp and smeared with blood, most likely her own, as she laughed. She made a choking sound, a thin, rusty metallic noise like whirling pennies in a blender. She lifted her hands to her mouth and blew into her palms as though she were trying to warm herself. A fire appeared, thin, black and inky. It flew through the air towards us faster than even I could follow, first entering Vander’s eyes, then mine. He screamed, and I believe I probably did as well. The pain caused by the fire was not endured for any length of time by either of us. I was not conscious long enough to process it. The grey living room was consumed in darkness, and I went somewhere very far away.
As the darkness receded, I saw not ripped upholstery and black-bloodied walls, but a vast expanse of country and barbed wire fences, similar to those the human farmers put up to keep their cattle from roaming. A handful of trees were scattered about the landscape, half of them completely uprooted, torn out by earthquakes or cleaved by lightning. It was dark, and the moon was at its most distant apogee. The sounds of chirping crickets sang in the night air. The only light by which I could see any of this came from headlights. They belonged to a large, black SUV, upon which I suddenly realized Dulcie was leaning.
Her hands were pulled behind her back and she was a much younger Dulcie. She had not yet experienced the trauma produced by Meg. She also had not yet dethroned her father. How I knew all of this, I cannot explain. But I felt a solid understanding inside me all the same.
I blinked and saw another figure, which was much larger. After a few moments, I managed to recognize Vander’s face in the dark. I watched him lifting the much smaller Dulcie by her upper arms and jerking her forward, slamming the door of the vehicle behind her.
“Why are we stopping here?” Dulcie asked, her voice teetering with anxiety. Somehow, and it still remains unknown to me, I could see Vander's narrowed eyes boring into hers with heated fury.
“Why? Are you scared, Dulcie?” he asked. “Are you afraid I'm going to hurt you?” He leaned into her until less than two inches separated them. “Kind of like the way you hurt me?” he continued as he shook his head. “No, kind of like the way you devastated me?”
I failed to understand what I was witnessing. But something about the vision told me that it spoke the truth, and was an accurate portrayal from a long time past.
“Please don't hurt me,” Dulcie whispered, her expression turning frightened.
My fingernails dug into my palms as my hands fisted of their own accord.
“Knight,
” Dulcie continued softly. “Please just let me explain. I can make you understand how wrong you are about everything.”
“No,” he said, slamming his hand against the door beside her head. Before she could respond, he gripped the back of her neck, wrenching her forward. A short breath later, his mouth was on hers as he snagged a fistful of her glorious hair.
Dulcie attempted to pull her head back to break the seal of their lips, but Vander’s fist at the nape of her neck held her firmly in place.
He pulled away from her and she glared at him. “I want you to stop,” she said in a small voice, her eyes begging him to keep away from her.
“Why, Dulcie? Would it upset Bram?” Vander asked in a lascivious tone, his eyes dancing with sadistic glee. “Have you sworn loyalty to him, just like you did to me?” Then he shook his head and chuckled. “The poor, stupid son of a bitch.”
I could not restrain my shock as Vander’s words coursed through me.
“You know that's a lie,” Dulcie retorted.
Vander shook his head but said nothing, his gaze traveling from her face down to her breasts. He stared at her unabashedly, as if he wanted to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible.
“Please don't do this,” she whispered.
“You know you want me to.”
I swallowed hard, suddenly afraid for where this scene might end. But there was nothing I could do to stop it. And, furthermore, I would not have stopped it even if I could have. I now believed this was something I needed to see. I had to understand how it really was between Vander and my Dulcie. I had to understand what had transpired between them.
“Please,” she said again.
Silently, Vander stared at her and she just watched him, her eyes growing wider.
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