Dark Huntress (Guardians of Humanity Book 2)

by Harley James

  Chapter 26

  Desperation could make even a cold heart do foolish things.

  Katherine wiped the wetness from her cheeks, ignoring the people’s cries to deliver them from something they instinctively knew was worse than their nightmares. Their fear clawed at her, but she had to shut them out to do this. The bonding energy she’d tapped into when she’d joined with Ari pulsed under her skin in every vein and sinew. So much power.

  She didn’t regret bonding with Ari. It was awful and beautiful and inevitable with the perfect mortifying rightness she’d imagined.

  If only she hadn’t hurt him.

  Focus, Katherine. None of that would matter if Leviathan annihilated the island.

  Get the Chains. Take her down. She could do this. They could do this.

  As long as the Chains didn’t kill her when she touched it and it sensed the remaining evil inside her.

  It was a chance she had to take. If she didn’t, thousands could lose their lives. Their souls, even. That was worth the risk.

  If she lived, she’d tell Ari how she really felt about him.

  Katherine streamed to the sanctorum, her mind stumbling over the Latin words of the unwarding spell to unlock the door. When she finally got the words right, she looked over her shoulder and stumbled into the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

  She looked around the room with its lovely, but eerie darkness—the low, tray ceiling, the expensive antiques, the imported floor tiles—all to honor a relic.

  A loud boom her made her heart skip a beat and restart on a gallop. Had the first wave struck the building? Were the Rephaim here? Had Leviathan been able to breach the building’s wards already?

  Her throat squeezed. She breathed slowly through her mouth to calm the panic. She’d worked through that. Her Viking had showed her she could control her fear. Could control the very thing she feared. Water was hers to command. Remember.

  She ran to the dark mahogany paneled walls and shoved the Louis XVI chair out of the way so hard the priceless antique splintered. She pressed the right series of raised panel moldings, trembling, whispering the words that would unlock the sanctorum’s inner secrets.

  The impenetrable wood slid away, revealing the ornate gold and glass reliquary containing the heavy iron chains. The chains that had shackled the Apostle Peter when he was jailed in Jerusalem. An angel had come, broken the iron bonds, and led him out of prison the night before his trial.

  The entire room was lit from the glow of the relic, an unmistakable hum of power thrumming in the space. Katherine’s stomach quavered as she lifted the massive gold cover of the container.

  A fine sheet of perspiration coated her body as she set the lid on a velvet stand. Her hand shook, her fingers poised above the old iron shackles. If the Chains didn’t kill her, Ari probably would for attempting this. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. She hoped his words would prove true.

  She listened to the rush of her blood—and something else. A low reverb that made her shiver as it faded away into the darker hollows of her body. A bad taste rose in her mouth, black licorice and tar. Katherine gagged, shook her head, then inhaled and exhaled slowly. “You know what’s inside me,” she said aloud to the Chains. “Help me do what needs to be done to rid this island of evil.”

  She blew out one last shaky breath and wrapped her fingers around the Chains.

  Dense and warm, they vibrated against her skin, mainlining healing energy straight to her Guardian life force. She stiffened suddenly, so filled with light there was nowhere for the toxin to hide. She dropped to her knees, hanging on to a section of the Chains in one hand, the back of a chair with the other as she vomited a black, oily soot that lit on fire and then disintegrated on contact with the Chains.

  She shifted to plop down on the floor, waiting for her trembling to abate. She rubbed her hands on her arms as she closed her eyes and drew inward. Observing, probing. But there was no more static. No darkness hovering at the edges of her consciousness. No desire to appease the archdemon. No muscle weakness or fatigue. No defeatism.

  Well, maybe a little of that, but that was all her. She came by her cynicism naturally.

  She was cured.

  No. More. Toxin.

  She laughed more freely than she had since happier times so many years ago with Ari. Laughed until her belly hurt, and she realized she owed a debt to the relic.

  She’d never held this, or any other relic, before. But as she stood and draped the Chains over her shoulders, she understood for the first time why they were so critical in the battle between good and evil. Could finally comprehend why the Guardians were created to protect not only humanity, but relics such as these.

  They were a symbol of light overcoming darkness.

  They offered hope in times when it seemed so out of reach.

  They should be placed in public instead of hidden away in dark rooms—safe, yet available for all to see and benefit from.

  Katherine chanted a canticle ward—the most powerful, yet risky, magical shield in a Guardian’s arsenal. She sliced her palm with the small dagger she’d tucked into her blouse, using a few drops of her blood to metaphysically link the Chains to her body. If a demon wanted to take the relic, it would have to kill her to sever the relic’s connection with her.

  A soft squeak behind her made her spin toward the door. She froze when she saw the small figure standing in the doorway. “M-Mary?”

  The girl held out her hand, then let it fall, tears gathering in her large, blue eyes and slipping down her pale cheeks. “Kitty.”

  Chills shot down Katherine’s spine. Another of Leviathan’s tricks. She could see it for what it was now. Thank heavens. How she could make Mary look so real? Katherine rushed to the apparition, expecting to be able to walk through it. But two feet from the ghost, the Chains burned Katherine’s shoulders, halting her progress. What was this?

  “Why didn’t you help me? Don’t you love me?” ghost Mary said.

  An enormous knot settled in Katherine’s throat. Don’t answer. She’s not really here. Mary had been an innocent child. She was in Heaven with all the other children, animals, and good people who’d passed from this life to the next. If that was not the case, Katherine would give up right here, right now. Forsake all her duties and just say to hell with it all.

  She attempted to open her pathway to Ari, but found only silence. Same when she tried to send out a general call to the other two Guardians in the building. The humidity climbed to uncomfortable levels, making sweat gather at her hairline. She swallowed hard and attempted to move forward once more, but the Chains burned her shoulders again, rooting her feet in place.

  “Lay down those chains,” the ghost pleaded. “Take me home so we can start over. I forgive you. Leviathan will, too, if you only ask.”

  It’s not Mary. Her sister would’ve wanted to see the Chains, not tell her to put them down.

  Katherine put a hand to her chest and looked around the room, searching for another way out. The screams and wailing outside the room likely meant the possessions had begun. She tried telepathy again, but couldn’t reach anyone. All she registered was water smashing large objects against Aqua’s exterior walls and…

  The rush of fluid in the ghost’s body.

  Odd. A shade typically had only a small percentage of water contained in its form. She focused on the ghost’s respiratory process to latch onto the water molecules in the body. Sixty point three percent. A water ratio compatible with a living human’s.

  Dark arts were being used to reanimate someone.

  Sick laughter in the hallway. The Chains jostled on Katherine’s shoulders, the edges of the iron slicing into her skin. Mary looked over her shoulder, her lips pulling back into a snarl.

  That’s not my sister. Katherine thrust her hands in front of her and closed her fists, savagely extracting water molecules from the ghost’s membranes. Mary’s form sagged to the floor, her skin shriveling, eye sockets sinking, chest rising and fal
ling rapidly with the instant onset of extreme dehydration.

  Mary’s desiccated form shifted, lengthened, changed at the cellular level. The form congealing and curling up on the floor was…male. Before she could identify the new figure, the lips cracked as its mouth opened into a wide maw, spewing out red colloidal smoke that indicated archdemon.

  The red cloud ejected from the desiccated body and circled behind Katherine. She spun, grasping the links of the Chains which hung down over her torso. The demon smoke swooped at her with a shriek so shrill her eardrums expanded and then collapsed with a rush of fluid and pain.

  She swung a segment of the Chains, connecting with the tail end of the red cloud. The smoke sparked brilliantly, twinkling in a kaleidoscope of reds, yellows, and blues. The demon’s pain-filled roar shook the walls, rending a crack in the door’s head jamb as the cloud shot out of the room, gone, but not vanquished, even though it had touched the relic.

  Because it was a red smoking mist, that had to have been Leviathan. Ordinary demons spewed black mist from their hosts. Also, they would have been destroyed on contact with the holy object much the same way the Nephilim toxin had been when she’d expelled it. She and the others thought contact with a holy relic would have the same effect on archdemons.

  Apparently not.

  Katherine’s upper body sagged as she leaned her butt against the wall and resettled the Chains across her shoulders. Then she glanced down at the body on the floor. “Dorian, good God!”

  She dropped to her knees, ripped open his button-down shirt, and put her hands on his bare chest, rehydrating his body with as many water molecules as she could sift from the room.

  Seconds later, her gaze shot up to meet Siolazar’s as he sauntered across the doorway.

  “Bravo, Healer. I see you worked through your pathetic guilt tendencies to see through Leviathan’s attempt to manipulate you. Even I have to admit, glamour-possessing a Guardian as your dead sister was a rather brilliant and intimidating show of dark arts, was it not?” Siolazar’s cultured voice did not match his leathery, gray-striated skin and red eyes.

  Katherine stood to position herself in front her dazed, but rehydrated and demon-free fellow Guardian. The Chains shook and rattled. With the mojo from the relic, she’d likely be on an even playing field with the fallen angel. The only problem was, she wasn’t sure she could stream both the relic and Dorian from the room. Either the relic would make it easy, or it would be a huge power suck. And she only had one shot to get this right. “Let me pass from here, or I’ll make sure you don’t fare as well as Leviathan did against these Chains.”

  The Rephaim crossed his arms over his powerful chest and cocked his bald head with an indulgent smile. Her heart rate climbed higher. That he wasn’t concerned about the Chains was a bad sign.

  Unless he was bluffing.

  “Aren’t you curious about why I fucked with the Nephilim?”

  Time for talking is over. In one swift motion, she lifted the Chains from her neck and swung one of the ends at Siolazar. The Rephaim ducked and let out a howl as his left ear melted from proximity to the iron. He thrust an arm out at Dorian, metaphysically pushing him across the floor till the young Guardian’s back slammed against the far wall.

  Dorian brought his hands to his neck, making choking gestures.

  Katherine held the Chains in front of her body and sprinted to place herself in front of the energy stream suffocating Dorian. Her hair stood on end as sparks flew off the Chains, but Siolazar’s hold broke. Dorian slumped down on the tiles, coughing violently.

  “Leviathan is going to rip you apart, piece by piece, you stupid bitch. And after I consume your friend, I’m going to pick chunks of him from my teeth with slivers of your bones.”

  Time for Plan B.

  Katherine focused her energy and tapped into the power of the Chains to initiate the epic demolecularization process required to stream her, Dorian, and the relic. Please, please, please work! Siolazar raised his arms in classic Rephaim pre-attack mode.

  Light fixtures fell, and more plaster and wood paneling detached from the wall and ceiling as competing power sources swirled and exploded through the room. With no windows, the room plunged into darkness except for the light filtering from the hall. Backlit in the doorway, Siolazar suddenly dropped his arms and spun away from her. Then he demolecularized and vanished.

  She heard it milliseconds later.

  Water.

  Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.

  Katherine cried out and clawed in the dark for Dorian, pulling his body into her arms as she made for the doorway. The water roared down the hall, bouncing foreign objects against the walls as it careened toward them.

  No, no, no. It wasn’t going to end like this. It couldn’t.

  Katherine struggled to hold Dorian and herself upright against the rush of water, taking huge gulps of air to forestall the panic that threatened to make her curl into a ball and just give up.

  “Ari, please answer me!”

  Where was he? Shouldn’t their mind connection be stronger now that they’d bonded? She grasped Dorian tighter as the water rose to her hips. Find the thread of power. Command the element. She said it over and over in her mind. She’d done it earlier with Ari. She could do it again. Had to.

  But she couldn’t ignore the pull and suck of the salt water, up to her neck now. She tilted her neck back to keep her mouth and nose above it. She couldn’t shut out the screams of the humans beyond the hallway. The horrible sounds rushed over her as furiously as the water. She tried to swim, but with Dorian and the Chains, it was too much weight to keep her afloat for long. And streaming them was out of the question now because that required a quiet, focused mind.

  Her feet slipped when a dead body barreled into them. Her arms tightened reflexively around Dorian as they plunged beneath the surface. Opening her eyes, the water was cold and opaque with pollution from the tide rushing unnaturally over the wave breakers and city streets. She swam in a circle, blowing out the last of her air, suppressing her body’s natural urge to inhale for life-sustaining oxygen.

  A dead woman’s hair caressed her face, and Katherine’s mouth opened in a scream as her feet pushed off something soft. She broke the surface of the churning water, gasping. She kept one hand on Dorian, grabbing on to a sconce in the hallway with the other. She caught her breath, lungs on fire, arms and legs trembling.

  Why wasn’t Dorian coming around? She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, begging the water to part. It vibrated and separated in a bizarre two-foot-long crevasse in front of her before crashing back together. Caught in the water’s backflow, her fingers slipped off the sconce, and she and Dorian were flushed backward and underwater, careening them toward the floor by the weight of the Chains.

  North!

  Her knees scraped on something sharp. Dorian’s body floated up. Dead? Her fingers strained through the dirty water trying to recapture him.

  Head foggy.

  Need…air…

  Hang on, North! It’s coming.

  It? The water was frigid, but her whole body burned with the need to inhale.

  She clawed up toward the ceiling, seeking the narrow strip of open air when a bubble slammed into her, encircling her head. Her mouth opened on an aggressive inhale, bringing oxygen to her vital organs. Panting, her fingers curled under the ceiling tile seams as she moved forward, searching for Dorian.

  There. She grabbed him, bringing his head into the large, artificial air bubble Ari had created. Then she concentrated on flushing the water from all the wrong places in his body. “Come on, breathe!” She rammed him up against the wall and compressed his chest. Dorian’s body seized furiously, then he coughed until Katherine thought he’d spew out the lining of his esophagus.

  By now there were only weak rays of dirty light slicing through the cold, swirling currents. Before long, the water would be too deep to escape, and Ari’s artificial air bubble might not be enough to save them.

  �
��She’s going to kill everyone on the island.” Dorian’s thready voice made Katherine’s heart stutter.

  “Calm down, you’re not helping.”

  “She was inside me, Lady K. We’re not gonna make it. She’s too strong.”

  Katherine shook him once more. “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you. Do you see these Chains around my neck? They are a holy weapon. We’re as strong as she is. Do you understand?”

  When he nodded, she swiveled in the water toward the dance floor, still clinging to the ceiling tiles with one hand. Swimming against the current would wear her powers down faster than she could recharge them, which would leave her seriously underpowered for her confrontation with Leviathan. I need to think.

  First, she needed to part the water and get the hell out of here.

  Yeah, right. She’d already tried that.

  “I’m almost there, North. Calm your mind and use your element.”

  Katherine exhaled heavily, relieved to hear Ari come back online. “Hurry. I don’t know how.”

  “Yes, you do. More innocent people are going to drown—right now—if we don’t get this water under control. Focus. I’ll keep feeding you fresh oxygen. You can do this.”

  She gritted her teeth and looked at Dorian. “When I release you, hang on to me so I can concentrate on getting us out of here.”

  He swam around behind her and placed his hands on her hips.

  The air bubble around them quivered. “Beware my wrath, rookie.”

  Dorian’s hands released her immediately, but Katherine replaced them. “Survival mode here,” she pushed on the frequency Ari used between the three of them.

  She felt Ari move faster.

  The water continued to surge into the hall, the powerful rush of the ocean consuming the entire building. Katherine grabbed onto a ceiling light, praying it would be enough to anchor her against the tremendous force of the water push-pulling against her, banking off the walls, and surging into any available space. Then she closed her eyes, trusting Ari’s air bubble to keep her safe. She focused on the warmth of the ancient iron around her neck. Warm, it was surprisingly warm, in spite of water so cold it made her teeth chatter.