“Don’t stop, Bryce,” Fury Axtar warned the screen.
Bryce didn’t. Hand by hand by hand, she climbed the ascending chain, fighting for each foot gained toward the surface.
Ten feet from the top. The nøkk reached the platform base.
Five. The nøkk shot up the chain, closing in on her heels.
Bryce broke the surface with a sharp gasp, her arms grappling, hauling, hauling—
She got her chest out. Her stomach. Her legs.
The nøkk’s hands broke from the water, reaching.
But Bryce had cleared its range. And now panted, dripping water into the churning surface beneath the grated floor. Head healed without a trace.
The nøkk, unable to stand the touch of the air, dropped beneath the surface just as the feeding platform halted, sealing access to the water beneath.
“Fucking Hel,” Fury whispered, running her shaking hands over her face. “Fucking Hel.”
Bryce rushed to the unresponsive Syrinx and demanded from Lehabah, “Anything?”
“No, it’s—”
Bryce began chest compressions, two fingers on the center of the chimera’s sodden chest. She closed his jaws and blew into his nostrils. Did it again. Again. Again.
She didn’t speak. Didn’t beg any of the gods as she tried to resuscitate him.
On a feed across the room, the bathroom door fizzled beneath Micah’s assaults. She had to get out. Had to run now, or she’d be ruptured into shards of bone—
Bryce stayed. Kept fighting for the chimera’s life.
“Can you speak through the audio?” Ruhn asked Declan and Jesiba. “Can you patch us through?” He pointed to the screen. “Tell her to get the fuck out now.”
Jesiba said quietly, her face ashen, “It’s only one-way.”
Bryce kept up the chest compressions, her soaking hair dripping, her skin bluish in the light from the tank, as if she were a corpse herself. And scrawled on her back, cut off only by her black sports bra—the Horn.
Even if she got free of the gallery, if she somehow survived the synth, Micah would …
Syrinx thrashed, vomiting water. Bryce let out a sob, but turned the chimera over, letting him cough it out. He convulsed, vomiting again, gasping for every breath.
Lehabah had dragged a shirt up the steps from one of the desk drawers. She handed it to her, and Bryce swapped it with her ruined shirt before gathering the still-weak Syrinx in her arms and trying to stand.
She moaned in pain, nearly dropping Syrinx as her leg gushed blood into the water below.
Hunt had been so focused on the head wound he hadn’t seen the nøkk slash her calf—where the flesh visible through her leggings remained half-shredded. Still slowly healing. The nøkk must have dug its claws in to the bone if the injury was so severe the synth was still stitching it together.
Bryce said, “We have to run. Now. Before he gets out.” She didn’t wait for Lehabah to reply as she managed to get upright, carrying Syrinx.
She limped—badly. And she moved so, so slowly toward the stairs.
The bathroom door heated again, the metal red-hot as Micah attempted to melt his way through.
Bryce panted through her teeth, a controlled hiss-hiss-hiss with each step. Trying to master the pain the synth hadn’t yet taken away. Trying to drag a thirty-pound chimera down a set of steps on a shredded leg.
The bathroom door pulsed with light, sparks flying from its cracks. Bryce reached the library, took a limping step toward the main stairs up to the showroom, and whimpered.
“Leave it,” the Autumn King growled. “Leave the chimera.”
Hunt knew, even before Bryce took another step, that she would not. That she’d rather have her back peeled off by an Archangel than leave Syrinx behind.
And he could see that Lehabah knew it, too.
Bryce was a third of the way up the stairs, sparks flying from the seams of the bathroom door across the library behind them, when she realized Lehabah was not with her.
Bryce halted, gasping around the pain in her calf that even the synth could not dull, and looked back at the base of the library stairs. “Forget the books, Lehabah,” she pleaded.
If they survived, she’d kill Jesiba for even making the sprite hesitate. Kill her.
Yet Lehabah did not move. “Lehabah,” Bryce said, the name an order.
Lehabah said softly, sadly, “You won’t make it in time, BB.”
Bryce took one step up, pain flaring up her calf. Each movement kept ripping it open, an uphill battle against the synth attempting to heal her. Before it’d rip apart her sanity. She swallowed her scream and said, “We have to try.”
“Not we,” Lehabah whispered. “You.”
Bryce felt her face drain of any remaining color. “You can’t.” Her voice cracked.
“I can,” Lehabah said. “The enchantments won’t hold him much longer. Let me buy you time.”
Bryce kept moving, gritting her teeth. “We can figure this out. We can get out together—”
“No.”
Bryce looked back to find Lehabah smiling softly. Still at the base of the stairs. “Let me do this for you, BB. For you, and for Syrinx.”
Bryce couldn’t stop the sob that wrenched its way out of her. “You’re free, Lehabah.”
The words rippled through the library as Bryce wept. “I traded with Jesiba for your freedom last week. I have the papers in my desk. I wanted to throw a party for it—to surprise you.” The bathroom door began warping, bending. Bryce sobbed, “I bought you, and now I set you free, Lehabah.”
Lehabah’s smile didn’t falter. “I know,” she said. “I peeked in your drawer.”
And despite the monster trying to break loose behind them, Bryce choked on a laugh before she begged, “You are a free person—you do not have to do this. You are free, Lehabah.”
Yet Lehabah remained at the foot of the stairs. “Then let the world know that my first act of freedom was to help my friends.”
Syrinx shifted in Bryce’s arms, a low, pained sound breaking from him. Bryce thought it might be the sound her own soul was making as she whispered, unable to bear this choice, this moment, “I love you, Lehabah.”
The only words that ever mattered.
“And I will love you always, BB.” The fire sprite breathed, “Go.”
So Bryce did. Gritting her teeth, a scream breaking from her, Bryce heaved herself and Syrinx up the stairs. Toward the iron door at the top. And whatever time it’d buy them, if the synth didn’t destroy her first.
The bathroom door groaned.
Bryce glanced back—just once. To the friend who had stayed by her when no one else had. Who had refused to be anything but cheerful, even in the face of the darkness that had swallowed Bryce whole.
Lehabah burned a deep, unfaltering ruby and began to move.
First, a sweep of her arm upward. Then an arc down. A twirl, hair spiraling above her head. A dance, to summon her power. Whatever kernel of it a fire sprite might have.
A glow spread along Lehabah’s body.
So Bryce climbed. And with each painful step upward, she could hear Lehabah whisper, almost chanting, “I am a descendant of Ranthia Drahl, Queen of Embers. She is with me now and I am not afraid.”
Bryce reached the top of the stairs.
Lehabah whispered, “My friends are behind me, and I will protect them.”
Screaming, Bryce shoved the library door. Until it clanged shut, the enchantments sealing, cutting off Lehabah’s voice with it, and Bryce leaned against it, sliding to the floor as she sobbed through her teeth.
Bryce had made it up to the showroom and locked the iron door behind her. Thank the gods for that—thank the fucking gods.
Yet Hunt couldn’t take his eyes off the library feed, where Lehabah still moved, still summoned her power, repeating the words over and over:
“I am a descendant of Ranthia Drahl, Queen of Embers. She is with me now and I am not afraid.”
Lehabah glowed, bright a
s the heart of a star.
“My friends are behind me, and I will protect them.”
The top of the bathroom door began to curl open.
And Lehabah unleashed her power. Three blows. Perfectly aimed.
Not to the bathroom door and Archangel behind it. No, Lehabah couldn’t slow Micah.
But a hundred thousand gallons of water would.
Lehabah’s shimmering blasts of power slammed into the glass tank. Right on top of the crack that Bryce had made when the nøkk threw her into it.
The creature, sensing the commotion, rose from the rocks. And recoiled in horror as Lehabah struck again. Again. The glass cracked further.
And then Lehabah hurled herself against it. Pushed her tiny body against the crack.
She kept whispering the words over and over again. They morphed together into one sentence, a prayer, a challenge.
“My friends are with me and I am not afraid.”
Hunt wrested control of his body enough that he was able to put a hand over his heart. The only salute he could make as Lehabah’s words whispered through the speakers.
“My friends are with me and I am not afraid.”
One by one, the angels in the 33rd rose to their feet. Then Ruhn and his friends. And they, too, put their hands on their hearts as the smallest of their House pushed and pushed against the glass wall, burning gold as the nøkk tried to flee to any place it might survive what was about to come.
Over and over, Lehabah whispered, “My friends are with me and I am not afraid.”
The glass spiderwebbed.
Everyone in the conference room rose to their feet. Only Sandriel, her attention fixed on the screen, did not notice. They all stood, and bore witness to the sprite who brought her death down upon herself, upon the nøkk—to save her friends. It was all they could offer her, this final respect and honor.
Lehabah still pushed. Still shook with terror. Yet she did not stop. Not for one heartbeat.
“My friends are with me and I am not afraid.”
The bathroom door tore open, metal curling aside to reveal Micah, glowing as if newly forged, as if he’d rend this world apart. He surveyed the library, eyes landing on Lehabah and the cracked tank wall.
The sprite whirled, back pressed against the glass. She hissed at Micah, “This is for Syrinx.”
She slammed her little burning palm into the glass.
And a hundred thousand gallons of water exploded into the library.
80
Flashing red lights erupted, casting the world into flickering color. A roar rose from below, the gallery shuddering.
Bryce knew.
She knew the tank had exploded, and that Lehabah had been wiped away with it. Knew the nøkk, exposed to the air, had been killed, too. Knew that Micah would only be slowed for so long.
Syrinx was still whimpering in her arms. Glass littered the gallery floor, the window to Jesiba’s office shattered a level above.
Lehabah was dead.
Bryce’s fingers curled into claws at her side. The red light of the warning alarms washed over her vision. She welcomed the synth into her heart. Every destructive, raging, frozen ounce of it.
Bryce crawled for the front door, broken glass tinkling. Power, hollow and cold, thrummed at her fingertips.
She grabbed the handle and hoisted herself upright. Yanked the door open to the golden light of late afternoon.
But she did not go through it.
That was not what Lehabah had bought her time to do.
Hunt knew Lehabah was killed instantly, as surely as a torch plunged into a bucket of water.
The tidal wave threw the nøkk onto the mezzanine, where it thrashed, choking on the air as it ate away its skin. It even blasted Micah back into the bathroom.
Hunt just stared and stared. The sprite was gone.
“Shit,” Ruhn was whispering.
“Where’s Bryce?” Fury asked.
The main floor of the gallery was empty. The front door lay open, but—
“Holy fuck,” Flynn whispered.
Bryce was sprinting up the stairs. To Jesiba’s office. Only synth fueled that sprint. Only that kind of drug could override pain. And reason.
Bryce set Syrinx on the ground as she entered the office—and then leapt over the desk. To the disassembled gun mounted on the wall above it.
The Godslayer Rifle.
“She’s going to kill him,” Ruhn whispered. “She’s going to kill him for what he did to Danika and the pack.” Before she succumbed to the synth, Bryce would offer her friends nothing less than this. Her final moments of clarity. Of her life.
Sabine was silent as death. But she trembled wildly.
Hunt’s knees buckled. He couldn’t watch this. Wouldn’t watch it.
Micah’s power rumbled in the library. Parted the water as he plowed across the space.
Bryce grabbed the four parts of the Godslayer Rifle mounted on the wall and chucked them onto the desk. Unlocked the safe door and reached inside. She pulled out a glass vial and knocked back some sort of potion—another drug? Who knew what the sorceress kept in there?—and then pulled out a slender golden bullet.
It was six inches long, its surface engraved with a grinning, winged skull on one side. On the other, two simple words:
Memento Mori.
Remember that you will die. They now seemed more of a promise than the mild reminder from the Meat Market.
Bryce clenched the bullet between her teeth as she hauled the first piece of the rifle toward her. Fitted the second.
Micah surged up the stairs, death incarnate.
Bryce whirled toward the open interior window. She threw out a hand, and the third piece of the rifle—the barrel—flew from the desk into her splayed fingers, borne on magic she did not naturally possess, thanks to the synth coursing through her veins. A few movements had her locking it into place.
She ran for the shattered window, assembling the rifle as she went, summoning the final piece from the desk on an invisible wind, that golden bullet still clenched in her teeth.
Hunt had never seen anyone assemble a gun without looking at it, running toward a target. As if she had done it a thousand times.
She had, Hunt remembered.
Bryce might have been fathered by the Autumn King, but she was Randall Silago’s daughter. And the legendary sharpshooter had taught her well.
Bryce clicked the last piece into place and dropped into a slide, finally loading the bullet. She careened into a stop before the gaping window, rising onto her knees as she braced the Godslayer against her shoulder.
And in the two seconds it took Bryce to line up her shot, in the two seconds it took for her to loose a steadying breath, Hunt knew those seconds were Lehabah’s. Knew that’s what the sprite’s life had bought her friend. What Lehabah had offered to Bryce, and Bryce had accepted, understanding.
Not a chance to run. No, there would never be any escaping Micah.
Lehabah had offered Bryce the two extra seconds needed to kill an Archangel.
Micah exploded out of the iron door. Metal embedded in the wood paneling of the gallery. The Governor whirled toward the open front door. To the trap Bryce had laid in opening it.
So he wouldn’t look up. So he didn’t have time to even glance in Bryce’s direction before her finger curled on the trigger.
And she shot that bullet right through Micah’s fucking head.
81
Time warped and stretched.
Hunt had the distinct feeling of falling backward, even though he was already against a wall and hadn’t so much as moved a muscle.
Yet the coffee in the mug on the nearest table tilted, the liquid endlessly rocking, rocking, rocking to one side—
The death of an Archangel, of a world power, could shudder through time and space. A second could last an hour. A day. A year.
So Hunt saw everything. Saw the endlessly slow movements of everyone in the room, the gaping shock that rippled, Sandriel’s outr
age, Pollux’s white-faced disbelief, Ruhn’s terror—
The Godslayer bullet was still burrowing through Micah’s skull. Still twisting through bone and brain matter, dragging time in its wake.
Then Bryce stood at the office’s blown-out window. A sword in both hands.
Danika’s sword—she must have left it in the gallery on her last day alive. And Bryce must have stashed it in Jesiba’s office, where it had stayed hidden for two years. Hunt saw every minute expression on Sabine’s face, the widening of her pupils, the flow of her corn-silk hair as she reeled at the sight of the missing heirloom—
Bryce leapt from the window and into the showroom below. Hunt saw each movement of her body, arcing as she raised the sword above her head, then brought it back down as she fell.
He could have sworn the ancient steel cut the very air itself. And then it cut through Micah.
Sliced his head in two as Bryce drove it through, the sword cleaving a path into his body. Peeling him apart. Only Danika’s sword would do for this task.
Hunt savored these final moments of her life, before the synth took over. Was this the first sign of it—this madness, this pure, frenzied rage?
Bryce. His Bryce. His friend and … everything they had that was more than that. She was his and he was hers, and he should have told her that, should have told her in the Comitium lobby that she was the only person who mattered, who would ever matter to him, and he’d find her again, even if it took him a thousand years, he’d find her and do everything Sandriel had mocked him about.
Bryce still leapt, still kept cutting through Micah’s body. His blood rained upward.
In normal time, it would have splattered. But in this warped existence, the Archangel’s blood rose like ruby bubbles, showering Bryce’s face, filling her screaming mouth.
In this warped existence, he could see the synth heal every sliced, bruised place on Bryce as she cut her way down through Micah. Cut him in half.
She landed on the green carpet. Hunt expected to hear bone cracking. But her calf was wholly healed. The last gift of the synth before it destroyed her. Yet in her eyes … he saw no haze of insanity, of self-destructive frenzy. Only cold, glittering vengeance.
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Page 69
