The blade drops to the ground.
“Jaxen!”
I gather enough energy around me, using my magic to help, and put up a solid barrier between the fire and me.
Bael stops. Touches it with his finger. “You can’t hold this forever.”
“Doubt only fuels me,” I say fiercely, unwilling to let him break me. I keep pulling, tugging on anything and everything I can, and then I feel a certain dark energy entering me. A dark energy I’ve only felt a few times before.
Darkyns are nearby.
Bael slams his fists against my barrier, and the force behind his power feels like blows to my stomach. But still, I hold strong. I won’t let him get the best of me. Not again.
“Enough of these games!” he shouts as he tries to claw his way through my magic. “I’ll burn this whole forest down. Kill every living thing in a fifty-mile radius, until your magic fails you and you have nothing to pull from. Is that what you want? Death for many more innocents?”
I try not to smile… to let on that he has no idea about me. None at all.
“Remove your shield, and I’ll remove mine.”
Anger flares across his face.
“Were you not paying attention to my training? My reach is further than you can even begin to understand,” I say, never backing down. “I’m not the same girl you encountered in the cave. I’m stronger, and I’m going to kill you, Bael.”
At least, I hope, I think to myself.
“You can take him, Faye,” Weldon says through my mind. “I’m close, but you can take him. His magic isn’t as strong in this plane. Push hard and you can take him.”
Beal’s laughter forms a circle around me as Weldon’s words fill me up with much-needed hope. A cruel smile twists at the corners of his lips. “You really think you can kill me?” he repeats, sounding like I just spoke a language he’s never heard before. “Really, Faye? The king of hell can’t be killed by silly fluxes, shadowblades, or sparkling stigmas. I thought we’ve already been over that, back when—” He points to my leg and fire licks up my skin, searing the scream lodged in my throat. “Back when I taught you the first of many lessons to come. Lessons that I suppose, once again, I’m going to have to spell out for you.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Dig my fingers into the palms of my hands. Anything to redirect the crippling pain he’s putting me through as I continue to absorb as much Darkyn energy as I can. I feel body after Darkyn body dropping somewhere within the forest as I take every last breath they have.
“Faye, you’re pulling too much! Don’t do this! Wait for Weldon. We’re right behind him!” Jaxen says, and I feel him trying to break my connection, but I’m too strong. Too absorbed with the need to put an end to this. To show Bael that I’m not someone he can trample over.
“You seem to forget,” I shove out through chattering teeth, ignoring Jaxen’s pleas, “that I was the one who got away. I was the one who took the Dagger from you. I bested you, Bael. And now I’ll do it again.”
I close my eyes, feeling like a balloon that’s one breath too full, and then let it all go.
The energy I’ve absorbed pushes against the wall of demon fire as if it were nothing more than a breeze. The flames turn blue, and then sizzle out, leaving nothing between us but the chilled night air.
Bael is fully aware now of just who he’s dealing with.
“What’s wrong?” I say with a smile. “Not as strong as you think you are?”
He constructs another wall of fire, and I push the energy I now control against it. He’s pushing back. It’s a match that I’m determined to win. That I’m sure I’ll win, because the energy around the forest is coming in steady waves. He made a mistake bringing Darkyns with him, but I won’t say otherwise. I close my eyes. Give one final shove against the flames, and then watch in relief as they falter until there’s nothing left again.
With invisible fists of energy, I wrap them around his neck and lift him up into the air, and then, I squeeze. Alarm widens his eyes. Forces his hands to reach out for something he won’t be able to grab a hold of, and it fills me up with a crazed happiness I’ve only ever felt with Clara before.
Satisfaction. Dark satisfaction.
As everything except killing him fades away from me, I feel his power growing dimmer from misuse in this plane of living. “You’re weak,” I say.
“Tempor…arily,” he sputters out.
I reach out for more energy, ready to make good on my promise, when I feel something sharp pierce my shoulder. I stumble back a step, but I keep pulling. Keep my focus on killing Bael, when another sharp pain pierces the side of my stomach. This time, when I stumble back from it, I trip over a root and lose the connection I had on Bael.
“Faye!” Weldon calls out as my senses slowly begin to return to me.
Blood. It’s everywhere.
“Damn it, Faye! Did you not hear the first gunshot? Let alone the second?” Weldon yells as he drags me behind a large tree and palms the wound on my side. Blood gurgles up from in between his fingers, and I think I’m going to vomit pain and horror.
“I-I’m shot? Who?”
He’s shaking as he presses harder against my stomach. “One of the fifty or so Darkyns piling up behind him. I swear you have a death wish. Either that, or some insane urge to put yourself in positions you shouldn’t be in. Especially not alone.”
My heart drags its feet as my brain desperately scrambles to catch up.
“Heal yourself. Quickly,” he says. “We have to get out of here before he gets back up.”
I risk a glance in Bael’s direction. He’s trying as hard as I am to catch up with what just happened. To place the pieces where he needs them so he can regain control again.
“Faye!” Weldon yells harshly at me. “Snap the hell out of it! Heal yourself, damn it!”
“If you’d stop cursing at me,” I say back as I focus on healing my stomach wound. Inch by agonizing inch, my flesh binds itself back together.
“Jaxen’s going to kill you, you know.”
“He’ll have his turn when Bael’s done trying,” I say hotly as the hole in my shoulder seals shut.
Weldon snickers under his breath. “You know, I admire your total commitment to being a badass chick. It’s kind of hot.”
I turn on him. “Are you hitting on me?”
He flinches back. “Don’t flatter yourself, mouse. You couldn’t handle all of this,” he says, running his hands down his body as if he’s on display.
I shake my head. Turn at the sound of leaves crunching.
“Ahh… Weldon,” Bael says, his hands rested on the openings of his suit jacket. He’s feet away from us now, with only the blood from the gaping wound in his midsection as evidence of his near-death experience. “How kind of you to join us on this lovely night. I was trying to explain what a pickle Faye has put you all in and offer that we settle things in a more compliant way, but you know females,” he says with an eye roll. “They never listen.”
“What are you talking about?” Weldon asks as we make our way to our feet.
Pleasure forms wings on the corners of his lips, lifting them higher and higher. “That nifty little spell the Coccia girl did… the one that called for blood and demon sigils… it led me here to you. All because of her incestuous need for her Grimoire.” He looks at me. “I don’t understand the emotional ties you humans make to material things. Your parents aren’t in that.”
A smile glints in his eyes as he gives his words time to settle between us.
“But I know something you don’t know,” he sings, enjoying the pain creasing my forehead.
I swallow a heartbeat as my stomach cramps. One question burns its way up my throat. Sears against my tongue as it presses against my lips for release. I’m fighting against it, trying with all my might to refrain from asking, because if I do… if I’m given the answer I’ve longed to know, then there will be no more hoping. There will be no more guessing.
Because knowing the truth
is a double-edged sword waiting to stab you in the back. It’s a blessing and a curse. A relief and a heartache all wrapped up in a pretty little package that we, as humans, can’t help but unwrap.
So I force my eyes to open, to harden, and ask. “My parents…are they…are they alive?” I hate that my trembling voice is sadly unrecognizable. Heat rushes in a multitude of waves over my body as flames rise up in front of him and begin to swirl. I’m forced back a step, using my forearms to shield my face as forms take shape within the flames.
I swear the world stops on its axis and everything—gravity, nature, reality—all of it collides against me as the forms of the two people I’ve longed to see again finally appear when the flames die down. I gag on terror when I realize it’s my parents… burning, burning, burning… with no end in sight. I just wanted to see them once more… but not like this.
All rationality is shoved out the window.
“Noooooooo!” I yell out as I lunge for them, feeling my own skin on fire. Feeling like I could plow my way through anything, even Bael, just to get to them.
But Weldon snatches me back, clutching me firmly by the crook of my arm. “It isn’t real, Faye. They aren’t real,” he’s saying in my ear, but all I can think about is how the earth should be shattering right now, splitting open from the fiery depths, ready to swallow me whole. And I’d go willingly if it would pull them from their hell.
I force myself to look up and regret it as soon as I do. Their screams. Their blood. The horror in their eyes. It sticks to me like tar on my soul. It’s gutted me from the inside out. Trapped me inside a coffin filled with tiny creatures in the shape of each one of my nightmares, picking and tearing at my skin.
“You see, dear Faye, you were never going to win. Not when I have this in my arsenal,” Bael says, extending his hand out to showcase my parents.
“Faye!” my mother’s screaming out as fire climbs up her body until I can’t see her face anymore. Until she collapses into a pile beside my dad.
Ice has frozen my veins. Frozen my thoughts. I feel like I’m strapped down to a merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster, until my stomach flattens against my back and the world is spinning in front of my eyes.
Bael snaps his fingers and their bodies lift. They’re back on their feet, screaming and crying in pain, as Bael opens and closes his fists.
“Stop it!” I scream out, trying to worm my way out of Weldon’s grip, but he’s giving me all he’s got, not willing to let go.
“I control their pain,” Bael says, his eyes gleaming with pleasure as he squeezes his fists harder, pulling more screams from them.
“Please!” I cry out, reaching out to them.
“They aren’t real!” Weldon says as I push at his arm. His words are flies buzzing around my ears. I swat at them. Shove them away from me.
“Let me GO!” I shout. I have to get to them. Have to help them. “Mom!” I wriggle out of his grip, but he’s already grabbing my other arm, spinning me around to face him.
“Listen to me, damn it!” Weldon shouts in my face, shaking me. My breath hitches in my throat. My knees riot against the fact that I’m still standing.
“I do love a family reunion,” Bael says from behind them. He glances down at his wrist, at a watch that isn’t there, and says, “But time is of the essence, and we’re running short.” He lifts his hands before I can even grasp what’s happening, and then they disappear, leaving me staring at nothing but an inky void I want to crawl through. “We’ve had about enough of that, don’t you think? Enough to dip your toes in my offer?”
Murder lives in my gaze.
He slithers forward, stopping a few feet in front of me, his lips curled with disdain. “You see,” he says, looking triumphantly at me. He has me where he wants me, and he knows it. That has always been his intention. To melt me into something pliable. Mold me into a new kind of warrior. A loyal one, bent into doing whatever he wishes, and it makes every part of me writhe against his invisible shackles.
“They’re in Hell, Faye Middleton. A place I control. And they’re burning over and over again, in an endless cycle. Dying as many times as it pleases me for them to, only to be immediately reborn back into a world of unimaginable pain.” He lowers his bushy brows on me, cruelty gleaming in his eyes, and adds, “And they’ll continue to die until I get what I want from you. Do you understand now? Is that a clear enough explanation for you?”
Horror is a fist clenched tight around my throat, and it squeezes me so hard that I’d drop to my knees if it weren’t for Weldon having a tight hold on me.
“What are you offering?” I force out.
“No, Faye!” Weldon shouts from beside me.
Bael’s cruel smile gleams under the moonlight. “Isn’t it funny how the past repeats itself? Like maybe fate or destiny, or whatever you want to call it, is really just some cat-and-mouse game that has no end.” He chuckles to himself as a smirk appears. A smirk that unravels my chords. A smirk I want to slap clean off his face. “It just occurred to me that if this were indeed a cat-and-mouse game, you would play the mouse,” he says knowingly as his eyes shift to Weldon, robbing me of breath. Stealing private moments from me once again.
“Why, you moth—”
Bael’s hand flies up and, just like that, Weldon’s words disappear as if they never were. “I know,” he says, on the edges of light laughter. “Fitting, isn’t it? It’s almost too perfect. And I,” he says, pointing to his chest, “would play the cat of course. I do play a mean cat.” He scratches at the air, and it takes me right back to the night he scratched me when trying to tell me about the Dagger of Retribution hidden in my mother’s Grimoire.
This shit storm has no end in sight.
He claps his hands, rubbing them together. Does a small, arrogant dance of giddiness. “Boy, how I do love it when fate comes together like that. Now, if you promise to be a good little mouse, then we can get down to business.”
A rope materializes in front of me.
“Wrap that around you.”
“You think a rope is going to keep her bound?” Weldon says snidely.
Bael flicks his gaze over in Weldon’s direction. He doesn’t say anything for a second. “Enough with the chatter,” he says, glaring at me. “I came here today to make you an offer.”
“She doesn’t want your offer,” Weldon says boldly.
I think he’s lost his mind.
But Bael doesn’t move. Doesn’t strike out, and it makes me wonder why. Before, he would have turned the woods inside out to find me. To kill me. My scar is proof of that. So why not now that I’m standing right in front of him?
“I wasn’t speaking to you, mongrel,” Bael says. “I was talking to her. Do you want to hear it or not?”
I hear my mother screaming. My father crying. And I’m not sure if it’s his doing or not. By the smile on his face, I think it is. Tears well up behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I use my anger as fuel. As a shield.
“No?” he says, still smiling. Always smiling. His head dips to the side, and then he takes a step back. “And here I thought you’d do anything for them. I guess I underestimated you then. I guess you really are more like Clara than I thought. Heartless. Ruthless. Willing to trample on whomever you need to in order to meet your own needs.”
“I’m nothing like her,” I say, disgust spewing from my words.
“No?” he says, his lips pursed in thought. “If you say so.” He tucks his arms behind his back. “I was only going to offer that your parents return to this plane, in exchange for you handing yourself over. I think it’s a fair enough bargain.”
I think the earth has disappeared from beneath me, because I feel like I can’t really be here. He can’t really have offered me this.
“How can I trust you?” I say, barely able to hear my own voice.
“Faye, no!” Weldon hisses through his teeth.
Bael smiles. “If there’s one thing you can count on in a demon, it’s that a deal is a de
al. I don’t play games. My word is my bond.”
“And all I have to do is go with you? Then what?”
“Do I really need to answer that?” he says.
The Unholy Seal. Mourdyn. An endless hell.
But it’d be worth it, if I could save those that I love. If only I’d be the one down there, putting an end to this.
“Don’t you even think about it,” Weldon says in a sharp tone.
“What if I can save Claire? I can do this, and keep others from dying, Weldon.”
“Absolutely not. Not like this,” he says, squeezing my hand hard.
“Your answer, Everlasting,” Bael says, impatience buried beneath his charismatic tone. “The Unholy Seal is at its prime. The full moon is upon us. Time is of the essence. One of these expressions should suffice.”
Grey, shadowy figures begin to take shape behind him, moving in from behind the trees. Masks, just like I remember, with long, metal beaks like some kind of warped, evil crow, cover the faces of the many Darkyns behind him. My stomach sinks to the floor. My heart jackhammers against my chest. There are still so many of them, even after I killed so many. More than my eyes can comprehend. They stretch out like a dark blanket of shadows.
“You see, this is only going to end one way—my way,” Bael says through a throat full of laughter. “Whether you know it already or not, you’re mine.” His eyes go dark as his body morphs into the demonic shape it took the night he tried to capture me at Whiskey Hallow. Large, clawed wings sprout from behind his back. “You will come with me whether you like it or not.”
The hair on my arms begins to rise. Magic lifts all around us like summer heat after a rainstorm. I can feel the spells weaving. Hear the spells being whispered. Black, inky vines stretch toward our feet like hungry fingers. Trees move in behind us, forming a barricade I’m not sure we’ll be able to slip past.
Weldon looks over at me, eyes raised, and I’m sure my heart is going to gallop out of my chest at any moment. “Time to go,” he says, and then he takes a hold of my hand, sprinting us away from Bael and the Darkyns.
Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3) Page 31
