by Anna Argent
Hedy’s strength faltered slightly. The smile melted from her face. The manic light in her eyes flickered.
Echo stopped her song long enough to pull in another breath.
Hedy screamed and bore down on Echo with all her weight.
Echo let her breath out again, and this time, the tone was clear and bright. It carried energy with it, practically lighting the gloomy confines of the house with its power.
Hedy stopped trying to kill her. She reeled back, sanity returning to her gaze. “Echo?” she asked as if just now seeing her sister.
Echo didn’t respond. She punched Hedy in the side of the head to dislodge her, then rolled out from under her sister’s weight.
Stygian had ripped free the six feet of metal railing from the stairway and was using it to hold the rats at bay. Only one of his arms seemed to work right. The other barely gripped the bottom of the metal to hold it in place. The rats were pushing him back, driving him toward the perfectly scribed circle. One wrong step and it would be destroyed by his heavy boots sliding over the floor.
Stygian struggled to hold his ground. One of the rats bit into his fingers. He cursed and jerked his hand back. Blood coated the rat’s teeth. The other two seemed to become more excited, more ferocious.
Echo rolled to reach for the gun. She came back up and tried to find a target that wouldn’t risk Stygian’s skull.
These were real bullets, not magical ones. They were meant to kill.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. She turned her head just enough to see the rat man watching the fight from just inside the back door.
He’d snuck in and no one had seen him.
His bright red hair gleamed like fire in the sunset. His eyes were glued to the action. He seemed to be moving his hand slightly, as if controlling his rats like puppets. His face was filled with a wicked, delighted grin.
Echo knew what would happen if she killed him. She knew that his shards would become hers—that she would become like him. But if she didn’t do something, Stygian was going to die, then she and Hedy would be next.
Echo couldn’t let that happen. Not while there was still a chance to save the people she loved.
Hedy began to sit up, shaking her head as if to clear it. Her knife was still in her grip. The light in her eyes seemed to flare back to life.
She was going to attack again. There was no question.
Echo was out of time.
She turned the gun on the rat man and fired.
The first bullet grazed his head. The second went through his shoulder. The third hit center mass before he’d even finished twitching from the first two hits.
He went down a few feet away.
Hedy screamed as she came in for another strike.
Echo turned the gun on her sister. Time seemed to stretch out as she watched Hedy coming in for the kill. Echo knew a bullet would stop her deranged sister, but couldn’t pull the trigger.
Wouldn’t. She loved Hedy, no matter what had happened to her in the years they’d been separated.
Lift your voice in song! That was Mom’s voice, as loud and clear as if she’d been standing next to Echo, shouting.
She did as she was told and opened her mouth. What came out was a pure, high scream of pain and loss—a mournful sound filled with all the years they’d lost, all the suffering they’d endured, all the fear, their grief and anger. The noise rose up and filled the room, rattling the windows. It shook the floor and the walls. Dust rained down.
Hedy’s eyes rolled back into her head and she fell to the ground in a limp heap, a few feet away from the rat man.
Echo turned her head toward Stygian.
The metal railing was attached to his arm, dragging behind the misshapen joint. Three dead rats littered the floor, their bodies squished flat like road kill. There was blood on his boots, on his face and hands. More soaked his shirt.
He was alive. Injured, but alive.
The relief that washed through Echo was so powerful she nearly collapsed.
“The spell,” he said as he leaned heavily against the wall. “Now, before it’s too late.”
She didn’t know if there was enough time left or not, but she was going to use every second of it.
She raced to the circle and dug the box from her pocket.
Lift your voice in song! That was definitely Mom, and Melody’s voice was with her. They were together, part of their spirits with Echo, urging her to hurry, comforting her.
Echo rejoiced in their presence and sang. There were no words to her tune, no order to the notes. It was musical nonsense strung together between breathless gasps for air. But inside of it was a sense of gratitude, or warmth.
Her song rang out, and she swore she could hear her family singing along with her.
She sang as she laid the locket in the center of the circle. She sang as she pulled up the spell on her phone. She sang as a swirling wind swept through the room, emanating from that humming circle of power.
Only when she had to read the incantation did she let her song fade.
Across the room, Hedy stirred. Stygian worked to unlock his handcuffs.
Echo began to read. Ancient, alien words fell from her mouth. They were spiny with a life of their own, like hot spiders crawling across her tongue. She had no idea how to pronounce them, but something inside of her did. Something powerful.
She read the screen on her phone, letting the words spill from her. Each one stole some of her strength, each one took a piece of her essence. Still, she didn’t stop.
When she reached the end of the passage, she started all over again.
The wind outside began to swell. Leaves hissed and branches rattled. Birds and insects fell silent.
Echo wanted to glance up, to see if her sister was still okay, if Stygian had killed her, if he was coming after Echo next.
Trust him.
She kept her eyes on the screen and kept reading as fast as she could.
The shingles on the roof rattled. The walls shuddered. Windows groaned as if they might shatter.
The candle’s flame danced and smoked, on the verge of snuffing out. The bowls inside the circle vibrated against the floor. A pale orange glow began to seep out from under the locket.
Echo finished the incantation and started a third and final time.
Stygian was near her now, keeping his distance while offering her his support. “Almost there.”
The alarm on her phone chimed again and didn’t stop. There were only thirty seconds left.
She read faster, being careful not to trip on the awkward words hitting her tongue. Whatever the power was inside of her, it held her steady, supporting her through every syllable. Her mom and her sister were with it, urging her onward.
When the last echo of the last word fell into silence, the world seemed to settle back into place.
The wind outside quieted. The vibrating bowls went still. Only the glow beneath the locket remained, growing stronger with every second.
Stygian’s left arm hung limp at his side. His shoulder was abnormally sloped. Even with his shirt on she could see that it was swelling fast. The bites on his hands and arms were ragged and bleeding, so were the wounds Hedy had inflicted.
Behind him, Hedy moved. There was a flash of red and silver as the knife surged up and down.
She was stabbing the rat man, over and over.
“No!” Echo screamed as she rushed to stop her sister.
Stygian was faster. He reached Hedy a split second before Echo did and grabbed her wrist.
The rat man’s neck was shredded. Blood sprayed out in thick, bright arcs. His chest shuddered once, then went still.
Echo hadn’t killed him. Hedy had.
She struggled to break Stygian’s hold, but it was no use. He was too strong. The knife fell from her numb hand. He used his body to pin her in place.
There was no light of insanity in her eyes. No deranged expressions. Just determination.
“Why?” Echo asked, her v
oice a symphony of shock and pain. “Why did you kill him?”
Hedy went still. Her body relaxed inside Stygian’s grip. “I didn’t want him to be with you forever. I know how afraid of him you are. If I didn’t kill him first…”
Then Echo’s bullets would have. She would have inherited his shards. She would have had a part of the rat man inside of her the way she had part of Mom and Melody in her.
Hedy, Echo’s poor, insane sister, had saved her.
Hedy squeezed her big blue eyes shut. “Hazel is gone, but the others…I can feel them coming. Growing.” She pulled in a pained breath. “I can’t stop them.” Her eyes opened wide. Her pupils shrunk to tiny pinpoints of fear. Her voice grew louder. “I can hear them all. They all want a piece of me.”
The look of terror on her face made Echo cry out.
Stygian lifted his fist and punched Hedy in the temple. Her head lolled sideways. Her eyes closed. Her chest moved with her breathing.
Stygian hadn’t killed her. He had just knocked her out.
He’d saved her from the horror going on inside her head.
“We have to go now,” he warned. “Before she wakes up. We need to get her in a cell.”
“We need to help her.”
“She’s beyond our help here. At least at Asgard we can sedate her.”
“For how long?” she asked.
When his indigo eyes slid away from Echo’s she knew the answer.
Forever.
He pushed to his feet, pulled Hedy up and eased her over his good shoulder. “You’ll have to tie her up in case she wakes up before we get there. I have one dose of sedatives in my first aid kit, but they won’t last long.”
He was injured and bleeding. His shoulder was either dislocated or broken. His fingers were rat chewed and he’d been stabbed and cut by Hedy. And yet he was still doing everything in his power to help Echo.
How could she not love him?
“You’re going to have to drive,” he said.
She would. She’d do whatever it took to find a way to help Hedy.
“We need to go.”
Echo gathered up the keys and grabbed some clean towels from the kitchen drawer. Stygian was already outside, heading to the Mustang.
She was right behind him, but on the way out, the locket caught her eye. It seemed to glow with a faint, orange light. She thought she heard a slight hum emanating from it, but couldn’t be sure.
What she was sure of was that she wasn’t about to touch it, but she also couldn’t leave it laying around.
She used one of the towels to scoop it into the wooden box and shoved that into her pocket. Surely someone at Asgard would know what to do with this kind of toxic waste.
And if not, Echo would drop it into a bucket of wet cement and toss it into the ocean.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Hedy wasn’t going to be okay.
That was the thought that kept spinning through Stygian’s mind as they raced back to Asgard. As dark as the thought was, it also kept him from thinking about how much his body hurt, how badly he was damaged, how his power of seeing a split second into the future was gone and that he’d lost the woman he loved forever.
Echo was never going to trust him again. And he didn’t blame her.
They made it back home in the wee hours of the morning. Argo came out to help get Hedy inside. Echo went with her.
Even if he had been willing to call on Eliana again, she was exhausted from helping Garrick and Holt, which meant that Stygian needed to go to a hospital to deal with his shoulder. Bed rest wasn’t going to cut it.
By the time he got back from having his dislocated shoulder reset and his wounds stitched, it was lunch time the next day.
Marvel was the only one there to greet him, and she did so from a distance.
“Sorry I can’t hug you right now, but I know where you’ve been,” she said, like he’d been bathing in the black plague.
“The hospital?” he asked.
She shuddered like even the word could make her sick. “I’ll hug you in a few days. Maybe. Until then, I can at least make you something to eat.”
He was tired and sore, but not hungry. Still, she was the only person around and he really didn’t feel like being alone right now.
“How is Hedy?” he asked, though he already knew.
“Physically, she’ll be fine. But the shards she adopted are nasty. Even getting rid of the bits of Hazel she had in her didn’t make up for everything that rat dude had to give her.”
“And Echo?”
Marvel turned on the oven and pulled out a frozen pizza. “She hasn’t even changed clothes. She’s sitting outside of Hedy’s cell. I thought she was going to attack Argo when he said she couldn’t go inside.”
He put his good arm on the table and rested his forehead against it. “What about Hazel? The locket?”
“The librarian says that Hazel is definitely trapped. He also thinks that might have been her backup plan all along. Echo said something about you loading a gun with real bullets when you thought they were mine. She thinks Hazel may have planted that in your head so you’d kill off some of her vessels and absorb the shards yourself.”
“Sounds like her. She’s definitely gone, though.”
“How can you be sure?”
“No powers.”
Marvel scoffed. “Bullshit. Things may have rearranged in that thick noggin of yours, but I doubt you’re powerless. It may take you a minute to figure out what it is you can do now. Maybe Eden can help.”
“Maybe. I’m more worried about what we’re going to do with the locket.”
“I think we should drop it into an active volcano or something. You know, dump it Mount Doom style.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Harold can figure out that one. You need to worry about how we’re going to get Echo out of the dungeon. It’s not safe for her down there. Not to mention, it’s got to be uncomfortable sitting on the floor like that.”
“As much as I want to help, I don’t think I’m your man. Echo doesn’t trust me anymore, seeing as how I tried to kill her.”
“Wow. Okay. Bad dog. Still, she’s got to realize that it wasn’t all you. The bitch in your head holds most of the responsibility.”
Stygian closed his eyes and willed away the pain splitting his heart open. “I also killed her mother.”
“Oh,” was all Marvel had to say to that. The fact that she actually backed away from him told him all he needed to know.
Some sins were unforgivable.
***
Garrick went to see Eliana as soon as she’d had a little time to rest. He knew she had to be exhausted, but he couldn’t resist seeing her in person and knowing she was okay. His worry over her safety had stolen all his concentration to the point that he had no choice but to give in.
He tapped lightly on her door, but she didn’t answer.
A shadow moved beside him. He turned, expecting to see her, but instead, Argo was there, hovering like a pale, silent ghost.
“She needs her rest,” he said.
“I know. I was just going to check on her.”
“I don’t think you do know. The girl is tapped out, Garrick. Empty. Has been for a while.”
Denial was Garrick’s first reaction to the statement, followed closely by fear. “What do you mean?”
“Have you seen her out of her room in weeks? I haven’t.”
“She’s always kept to herself.”
“Not like this.”
Garrick went back through his memory. He spent nearly every waking moment aching to see her, so when he did, it was a big deal. His heart pounded and he started sweating like a boy on his first date with the girl of his dreams.
Argo was right. She had been absent a lot.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Garrick asked. “Is there something I should know about?”
“Probably, but you won’t learn it from me.”
“What is it? I’m ordering you t
o tell me.”
Argo grunted. “I’m fine with you being in charge and all, but no way am I worried about following a selfish order like that. You want to order me into combat, so be it. You want a snitch, find a different man.”
“At least tell me she’s okay.”
“She’s not. That’s what I’m trying to get through your thick skull. Problem is, she won’t admit it.”
“Then I’ll make her.” He put his hand on the knob, but Argo stopped him.
“Don’t do that to her. Not now, while she’s still weak from healing you. At least let her tell you the truth in her own way.”
“I need to know what’s going on.”
“You do, and you will. No way around that. No way for her to hide for long.”
“What is she hiding?” Garrick was almost frantic with worry now. The woman he loved was going through something and he couldn’t even get Argo to tell him what it was.
“Just let her rest. Give her a few days to come to her senses. And for the love of God don’t let her do so much as bandage a scratch until she’s better.”
“I’ll let Marvel know Eliana’s services are off limits.”
“You’ll have to block calls to Eliana’s phone. She always comes when someone calls.”
“Fine. I will, then.”
Argo nodded, satisfied, but he didn’t leave, as if he hadn’t yet finished saying all he’d come to say.
“What is it, Argo? Spit it out. I’m sick of riddles and you have a prisoner to tend.”
Argo’s chest expanded on a deep breath, as if preparing for a deep dive. “Eliana has been with us longer than most healers. They usually don’t last as long as she has.”
“That’s because she’s strong.”
Argo looked unconvinced. “She has a younger sister who is next in line to inherit, right?”
“Yeah, Poppy. Why?”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No idea.”
“I suggest you find her and bring her here, just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
Argo hesitated for a moment. “I know how you feel about Eliana. I know how bad it’s going to be when she burns out. But all healers do. That’s just the way they’re wired. They give and give until there’s nothing left.”
