by Bella Klaus
“She died recently, but I believe you’re in possession of her son.”
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. Kain was related to the royal family by blood? Maybe that was why Prince Draconius was so obsessed with putting him on the throne.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Valentine snarled. “What did you do with—”
“His soul resides in Tartarus.” Kresnik sagged against the bedpost.
Valentine’s features turned slack.
“Isn’t that part of Hell?” I asked.
“No,” Valentine rasped.
Kresnik grinned. “Adjunct to the Realm of the Gods.”
I swallowed. Greek gods were always throwing each other into Tartarus, but now that their realm had been destroyed in the Great Divide, this new development could mean anything. From Valentine’s shallow breaths and the queasy look on his features, it looked like he understood what Kresnik meant.
“Why didn’t you release his soul for judgement?” Valentine’s voice cracked.
“Because I wanted a lieutenant whose soul could never be retrieved and turned against me, not by gods or demons or angels. Because I saw the potential in Antonius that the Supernatural Council failed to recognize. Because I wanted him to rule at my side.”
My flames burned hotter, with molten fury searing through my veins. He had condemned an innocent man to over five centuries of torment, just so he could have a powerful and soulless minion who would never betray him.
I met Valentine’s glistening eyes and asked, “Do you have enough information?”
With a sharp nod, Valentine stepped forward with the trident.
Kresnik held out a bloody palm. “Hurt me, and you also hurt Hemera.”
“I’ll take the pain,” I snarled. “Valentine, stab him through the gut.”
“Wait!” Kresnik cried. “You didn’t tell me why I’m not healing from the dagger.”
“The blood, bile, and bone of one god can kill another.” Valentine took another step toward Kresnik. “I happened to know that there was a trace amount of the Demon King’s blood on Mera’s weapon.”
“Don’t look so smug.” Kresnik slid off the bed and fell onto his hands and knees. “When Hemera releases her ifrit, you’ll find her body riddled with the same wounds as mine.”
Valentine’s gaze darted toward me, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. My throat thickened, and my sinuses ached with the onset of tears. Even after hearing about how Kresnik had condemned King Antonius, Valentine still hesitated in case I was truly getting hurt.
“He’s bluffing.” I sliced my blade across Kresnik’s shoulder and winced.
“You see,” Kresnik said. “She’s in pain.”
“But you’re dying.” I slid the dagger into Kresnik’s chest and buckled at the onslaught of pain.
Valentine appeared at my side and wrapped his hand around my forearm. “I won’t let you die with him.”
“Then let me deliver a killing blow somewhere it won’t affect me.” I snatched the trident and held it over Kresnik’s prone body.
The wretched creature lay on his side, his chest rising and falling with irregular breaths. He was taking too long to die because my dagger didn’t have enough of Hades’ blood.
Kresnik stared up at me through pained eyes, his face twisted in a rictus of torment. “There’s a special place in Tartarus for those who kill their fathers,” he rasped. “Cronus killed and castrated Uranus, just as you did to me. You know what happened to him?”
I drove the trident into his thigh. Lightning bolts of agony raced across my body, in strikes that were both hot and cold and electrifying. Every flame that made up my body splintered, and my vision turned black.
Valentine’s hands wrapped around my waist, the only thing keeping me from falling into a vortex of unending pain. My hands tightened around the trident. I tried to pull it out of Kresnik, but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate.
“Stop this,” Valentine growled. “This is killing—”
“It’s not,” I said through ragged breaths. “The pain will fade.”
“And what about when you revert back to a woman?” he asked.
The blackness receded from my vision, and I blinked myself back into awareness. Kresnik lay unmoving on the floor with the trident still protruding from where I’d driven it into his leg.
“Look.” I pointed down at him. “Can you sense a heartbeat?”
Valentine released my body, not speaking for a few heartbeats. I turned around to meet his slack features. The flames on the walls receded, and the figures that had once tried to attack the vampires melted into the ground, covering the entire wooden floor in clay.
My brows drew together. “What’s wrong?”
“You did it,” Valentine said, his voice breathy.
The door opened, and Caiman stepped into the room. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. The door melted into the wall, and I couldn’t reach you. You’ll be pleased to know that many of the illusions downstairs vanished, and the preternatural corpses have fallen.”
“Do you have the spheres?” I blurted.
Caiman held up the bag he’d taken from the ward masters. “Yes, My Lady, they’re still in my possess—”
Flames erupted from the butler’s belly, and he fell forward onto his hands and knees. A booted foot kicked him aside, and Brother David stepped in, his eyes burning with amber flames.
“Murdering whore,” he said in Kresnik’s voice. “Now you’ll get a taste of what happened to Cronos.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
My jaw dropped, and all the air escaped my lungs as I gaped at the malice shining from Brother David’s eyes. This was just like when he had exploded Nelson’s Column, crushing Father Jude’s body, and then rose from the debris with his immortal form.
Before I could even scream, clay surged up from the floorboards and wrapped around Valentine’s legs. He leaped toward me, but the earthy substance slammed him to the ground before swallowing him whole.
Caiman rushed to Valentine’s side, tearing off chunks of clay from Valentine’s body. The butler ignored the flames spreading around his middle, moving his hands faster than my eyes could follow.
Kresnik shifted into a fire genie and slammed me against the wall of tapestry, setting the entire work of art alight. “No weapon forged of god or man can kill me.” Huge sparks and chunks of fire flew from his lips. “I underestimated you, but no more. Once I’ve put you in your place, I’ll resurrect my body and rise from my ashes.”
My gaze darted to Valentine, who thrashed from side to side within the clay. Caiman’s movements slowed as the fire spread down his arms. I cried out, but Kresnik grabbed my face, turning my head toward his.
“Your vampire lover belongs to me now. When I remake him as my obedient slave, he will torture you for weeks before I throw you into Tartarus.”
“Stop,” I rasped.
Kresnik wrapped a hand around my neck and snarled. “I have been patient with you, given you multiple opportunities to submit. Now I will take what I want by force.”
Crushing pain wrapped around my neck, bringing with it an agonizing pressure that made my head feel like it would explode. The flames that made up my face heated, and I struggled for breath.
“I can’t breathe—”
“That’s the entire point of strangulation, you stupid slut,” he hissed.
My lungs burned, my flames dimmed, and every part of my body hungered for air. Time was running out. The edges of my vision darkened, and my consciousness drained like sand falling into the lower bulb of an hourglass.
“Hades,” I whispered.
Kresnik’s harsh laugh caused my flames to flicker. “That waste of space is indisposed. Say goodbye to the life you knew, Hemera, and ready yourself for an eternity of suffering.”
I fumbled uselessly at my pockets. Gone was the solid flame dagger, the scythe lay somewhere by the four-poster, and Poseidon’s trident was lodged in Kresnik’s immortal body. Valentine
was buried in clay, Caiman consumed by fire, and I had no idea what had happened to Hades.
Hopelessness settled on my shoulders like a shroud. Kresnik was about to win, and I had nobody to rely on but myself.
Letting my eyes flutter shut, I focused on driving as much air as I could into my lungs and concentrating every ounce of power into my chakras. If Sybil’s attempts to weaken my bond with Kresnik had worked, then our connection would have been severed the moment his immortal body had died.
I made my body go limp, hoping that Kresnik would think he’d rendered me unconscious. His large hand squeezed me tighter around the neck, but I didn’t fight back.
With a satisfied grunt, he laid me on the bed and fumbled with the clasp of my cloak. When it wouldn’t unfasten, he snarled and tried shoving open the cloak’s fabric.
Revulsion slithered through my insides. Was this a test to see if I was awake, or was he really trying to access something in my body, like my heart chakra?
What had he said to me earlier?
He would put me in my place and then resurrect his body. That particular sequence of words had to mean something.
It also suggested that he could no longer access my phoenix.
I breathed faster, forcing the power around my chakra to coalesce into a spinning ball, letting it pick up speed, gathering every ounce of my fury and hatred and fear. I had to get this right—to produce a flame hot enough to defeat even a genie of fire.
Round and round the power went, expanding until I felt it would burst.
“Worthless whore.” He slapped my face, but I was too far gone to register the pain.
I thought about the time I created fiery shapes with Coral, thought about Racon teaching me to turn my fingers into talons. This time, when I transformed, it had to be as a phoenix.
The mattress shifted as he slid off the bed, presumably to fetch something to force open my cloak. His footsteps creaked across the floorboards, then he stopped and picked up something that scraped against the wood—my scythe.
Caiman’s hoarse breaths rasped between the snap and crackle of the flames reducing his body. If I could reach him with my phoenix and take over the burning process, there would still be something left of him to salvage. But I had no idea how to save Valentine from the clay.
“This had better work,” he muttered under his breath.
My adrenaline spiked. I shoved the power into my meridians, shifted my ifrit form into the embodiment of fire, and surged off the mattress with my wings outstretched.
Incandescent white flames rolled off my feathers, contrasting with the genie’s crimson. The air around me rippled with the intensity of my heat, and the entire bed was reduced to ash.
Kresnik’s eyes bulged, and he floated back, his flames flickering. He was trying to escape.
With a harsh caw, I surged at him, knocking us both against the floor.
We burned a hole through the wood, landing in a marble hallway with a thud and a scattering of loose flames. Kresnik thrashed beneath me, pounding his fists at my shoulders and outstretched wings.
“Stop this,” he roared.
“Bastard!” The word came out a convoluted squawk, but triumph filled my chest.
I pecked at his fiery neck and clawed at his legs with my talons in a frenzy of fury and hate. Kresnik’s screams rang through my ears, making my fire burn hotter. Our bond might not have been severed by his death, but I would end him even if I died trying.
Minutes passed, and Kresnik fell silent, his pained breaths grating against my nerves until all that was left was the roar of my flames. I kept going, burning him with the ferocity of my hatred, searing him without mercy or restraint.
Eventually, the breathing stopped, and I raised my head, finding an orange puddle spreading across the marble floor. Instead coalescing into a fire genie, it hardened around the edges, forming the beginnings of solid flame.
My eyes bulged.
“Dead?” I squawked.
Plaster drifted down from the hole in the ceiling, along with the memory of Valentine and Caiman.
Raising my wings, I flew up into the blackened room, passing the pile of ash that was once a bed, and swept past a wall tapestry reduced to embers.
Caiman lay scorched and unmoving in the middle of the room within his burned butler armor. He must have rolled on the floor to smother the flames, because the boards beneath his body still smoldered.
The butler’s chest rose and fell with ragged breaths. He was still alive and was in better condition than Lazarus was when the fire users reduced him to a charred skeleton, but it was too early for relief.
Where was Valentine?
Turning in a circle, I glanced around the vast room. Kresnik’s immortal body lay by the ashes of the four-poster, still impaled with Poseidon’s trident. Close by were the Rude Girls’ corpses, sprawled where Kresnik had shoved them.
But there was no sign of Valentine. My gaze landed on the clay gathered in a mound close to the window, and I rushed toward the mass. Without thinking too much about it, I shifted as I ran, but when I reached for the clay, my fingers were still made of fire.
“Shit.” I snatched my hand away. Somehow, I’d kept Kresnik’s ifrit. If I touched that clay in this condition, it would fire it into pottery like a kiln.
Retracting my flames, I shifted back into a woman and let the leather armor slide back into place.
“Valentine.” My voice shook. “If you’re in there, hang on. I’m coming.”
I dug my fingers into the wet clay and scooped out handful after handful, not knowing if he was really inside the mound, if Kresnik had succeeded in remaking him, or if Valentine had suffocated.
New-age music drifted in through the broken window, combined with Annie Chong’s hoarse voice, repeating the same prayer from over an hour ago. I kept digging, ignoring the ache of my biceps and the muscles of my back, ignoring the sweat pouring down my brow, and finally hit something hard.
My heart soared. It was Valentine.
When I finally dug him out, he was unmoving.
“Valentine?” I shook his arm.
His eyes bulged. His mouth opened. He inhaled a breath and choked.
I rolled him onto his side and slammed both fists between his shoulder blades.
Valentine’s body heaved with wracking coughs. I knelt beside him, holding a hand over my fluttering stomach. He needed to recover as himself and not Kresnik’s creation. We all needed him so much.
When his spluttering faded into rapid breaths, I turned him onto his back, and he gazed up at me with glazed eyes. Silt clung to his lashes, making him look like a statue that had been brought to life. I held my breath and kept my magic below the surface of my skin, waiting to see if he would arise as himself or Kresnik’s new creation.
“Mera,” he croaked. “Shift back. It’s too dangerous for you in this form.”
All the tension that had built up in my chest released, and I reeled forward, finally able to exhale. “It’s over.” I placed my hands on his bicep. “Brother David has been destroyed. I control the phoenix now. Kresnik can’t resurrect his immortal body.”
Valentine’s brows drew together in a frown. “Nothing’s over until we capture Kresnik’s soul. Where is the other corpse?”
My stomach plummeted. I’d been so busy trying to defeat him that there hadn’t been time to find a vessel to trap his soul. Kresnik’s spirit could have floated away by now to any of his powerful followers. For all I knew, there was another one like Brother David lying about for this very occasion.
“The corpse solidified,” said a voice from the other side of the room.
Valentine stumbled to his feet and helped me up.
Hades stood beside the remains of the bed, holding a huge disc of solid flame that he must have gathered from downstairs.
Next to him, Captain Caria clutched the scythe and the trident. After setting the remains of Brother David on the floor, Hades bent down and plucked something out of the ashes—Kresnik’s d
isembodied penis that I’d sliced off with my scythe.
A shudder raced down my back. Kresnik had probably enhanced the wretched organ and made it fireproof.
Hades shook his head and tutted. “Some women should never be allowed near sharp objects.”
Annoyance prickled my skin like static electricity. Now was not the time for quips. Not when Caiman was lying unconscious and half burned to death.
“Where the hell were you while we were fighting Kresnik?” I snapped.
The Demon King grimaced. “He sent a group of his people into the palace and threatened my most treasured possession. I thought he was bluffing, but it turned out he was telling the truth, and the battle in Hell went on for longer than anticipated.”
My mind conjured up Hades’ purple palace of pain. “You ducked out of the most important fight in centuries to save a room full of floggers?”
Valentine placed a hand on my shoulder. “Chastise him later.” He turned to the captain and Hades. “Is there a healer on the bus? Caiman needs urgent medical attention.”
Captain Caria strode across the room, placed the weapons on the floor, and knelt at the butler’s side. “He’s still breathing.”
She placed a hand on his forehead and disappeared.
I exhaled a long breath, glad I hadn’t used my flames to reduce him to ash. This way, he would recover naturally and regrow his body parts under medical supervision. With any luck, he would be restored to his former health.
“Did you examine the corpse?” Valentine asked.
“It’s empty.” Hades tossed the penis into the pile of ash and raised Prometheus’s body by the wrist. “Both of them. My enforcers are roaming the palace and its grounds, searching for suspect souls. As soon as they find Kresnik’s, they’ll return it to Hell.”
I broke free from Valentine and glanced around the room before spotting the bag Caiman had dropped. I upended it and released the ward masters’ spheres. “We need to break this immortal body into small pieces and seal them in these vessels.”
“And scatter them across all corners of the earth?” Hades asked.
“You have to admit that it’s more secure than putting Kresnik somewhere he can regroup and escape,” Valentine said.
