I imagined that he would have the power to lure the love of many and the arsenal to punish their trust with devastating accuracy. And yet, until this point, he had remained hidden beneath his robes, had withheld his enigmatic strength and power as if—and I was almost certain about this—he had no desire to use it.
“And now we just need the Grigori leader,” Phoenix said, also stepping forward to stand before the chalice.
“I cannot permit it,” Griffin said.
Phoenix just smiled as if Griffin were doing and saying all the things he’d expected.
“Tsk, tsk.” He turned his attention back to me. “Must I force blood from you so soon?”
The spot in my stomach where Onyx had stabbed me, the place Phoenix now had control over, tingled with fear.
“Very well!” Phoenix said, irritated. I braced myself.
“Stop!” Griffin said, taking a step forward. “I’ll do it.”
Phoenix laughed. “You misunderstand yet again.” He swung his hand around the room encased in paintings. “I need your true leader.”
“Griffin is of a Seraph; you will not find a truer leader,” Rudyard said.
“Of the Seraphim, yes. But your true leader? No.” Phoenix directed his attention back to me. “And you already know that, don’t you, lover?” Phoenix said, looking toward Lincoln at his last word, gloating.
“She is not our leader,” Magda said, sounding horrified. No, mortified.
“Oh, but she is. Like I am born through a unique binding and have chosen darkness. Like Jude has been abandoned by the light on his own say-so in order to deceive deception itself—we are both unique. Violet is more powerful than any Grigori who has come before. Her very arrival awakened the possibility for this discovery. Violet”—he threw his arms wide and raised his voice—“Violet is of the Graced!”
“I…What does that mean?” I asked, looking at Phoenix then to Lincoln, who seemed…stunned. “What does that mean?” I screamed at everyone, who stood shocked or dumbstruck or, in the case of Magda, like she was about to implode.
“It means, lover, that you are the first human to have ever been parented by one of the Sole. As a Grigori, you outrank everyone.” His expression broke. I couldn’t tell if it was triumph or sadness.
“But…I…I…” I looked around the room. Even the other exiles seemed rocked by Phoenix’s revelation. Except Gressil. He looked like he was struggling to restrain himself. Clearly the idea of taking me on got his rocks off.
Lucky me!
Then I did the math and half laughed. I was such an idiot. I’d actually thought that maybe he…And then I realized something else.
“That was why the exile at the airline factory ran away from me. And at the farmhouse. I couldn’t figure it out.” I shook my head, angry with myself. “That’s why you didn’t just kill me at Hades. You needed me for this.”
Phoenix moved from one foot to the other and swept a hand quickly across his face, covering his eyes for just a moment. “Onyx and Joel were on the right track, but they hadn’t found the caves yet. It was only a matter of time, but if they’d had it their way, they would have killed you and destroyed the very key to the Scriptures.”
I looked at Griffin, who had taken a step back, level with everyone else. For some reason, that hurt more than anything else.
“Griffin,” I said, “it’s your call. Tell me what to do.”
“I don’t think you have a choice,” he said with a nod.
I knew he was right. These things always ended with me not having a choice. “Great,” I sighed. “So I guess that means I have to divvy up in the blood donor stakes?” I looked back to Phoenix. “What happens when we get the Scriptures?”
He raised his eyebrows and gave another indecipherable smile. “We can all sit down calmly and discuss donating them to the world history museum.”
I deserved that.
We would do what we always did. We’d fight.
Jude, I noticed, remained silent with his wrist over the chalice, which—now that I knew I had to bleed into it—looked really freaking big.
“Anyone have a dagger handy?” Phoenix asked.
“I do,” said Azeem, raising his machete.
Phoenix looked unnerved for the first time since he had arrived, and I didn’t hold back my smile.
I pulled out my dagger and tried to ignore the feeling that always came when I touched it. The one that made me feel so sick because…it felt right. A part of me.
Phoenix looked at the painting again, pointing to the hands on each of the shoulders. “Sheer bleeds dark, dark bleeds light, light bleeds sheer.” He looked back to me, then to the dagger, then he raised his wrist above the chalice. “You’ll need to keep the dagger in there or I’ll heal too quickly. Think you can manage that?”
“Oh, I think I can manage that,” I said, as I punctured the veins in his wrist with the sharp tip. His chocolate eyes penetrated mine and suddenly I wanted to pull away. My mouth was dry and I wanted to escape, but I couldn’t. Phoenix rotated his wrist so the inside was facing me, and blood started to trickle down. His eyes never left mine.
All too soon, the blood was slowing, his skin already healing around the blade, and we still had a long way to go.
“Twist it,” Phoenix said, with a slight twitch of his lip. It hurt.
I didn’t deliberate for too long. Hell, he’d left me bleeding out like a pig the other day. I twisted the dagger in his wrist, reopening the wound, all the while unable to take my eyes from him. He barely reacted, just a slight narrowing of his eyes, not unlike the time I’d seen him eat a chili. Like then, I couldn’t tell if it was self-control or because he actually enjoyed it.
Blood flowed into the chalice while Phoenix continued to watch me intently. I tried to look away from him, tried not to think the thoughts I was thinking. But even in this moment of violence, somehow he invoked something so illicit in me that I was breathing a different kind of heavy.
I could feel him compelling me to keep looking at him. I knew he was feeling it too. I couldn’t turn my eyes away, even though I was sure the entire room of exiles and Grigori knew exactly what I was thinking at that moment. And Lincoln was behind me.
“That’s enough,” said Jude, not even raising his head.
Phoenix turned his wrist upward again, in a way that caused the dagger to bite into him one last time. I quickly pulled it out and tried desperately to slow my breathing.
Jude’s hand went out.
“May I?” Phoenix said, smiling a little but not able to hide the intensity in his eyes too.
I handed him my dagger. His own wrist was now already healed.
“Ready?” he asked Jude, but he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he raised the weapon, point down, and looked right into my eyes as he thrust it through Jude’s wrist until the base of the hilt stopped it from going any farther and the majority of the blade had gone right through to the other side.
I made a sound, but couldn’t speak as my heart thumped loudly over everything else and adrenaline surged through me. I feared I was going to be sick. The room started to spin and I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Girl!” Jude yelled at me just in time. My trance broke and I managed to look away from Phoenix and from Jude’s wrist so that I only heard the scraping sound that came when Phoenix twisted the blade against the bone.
Through such a deep wound, he bled quickly into the chalice and then Phoenix withdrew the blade, wiped it, and passed it on to Jude.
I watched the cut on Jude’s wrist quickly heal as if it had never been there. Was it miraculous? Imagination? Was anything real?
“Just you, now,” Phoenix said, his voice almost breaking.
“Violet,” Lincoln said quietly, from behind me. He was doing everything to hold himself together too. “You don’t have to do this.”
&nbs
p; “Yes.” I glanced back at Phoenix. I felt like he understood this better than anyone. “I do. I always do.”
“Jude, don’t cut her too deep. She’ll bleed freely, much faster than you,” Lincoln pleaded.
Jude nodded but didn’t say anything.
Com-for-ting! Don’t be weak. Remember the rules, Vi. Don’t run; don’t quit.
I raised my wrist over the chalice that was now two-thirds full. My whole arm was shaking.
Damn it.
Jude looked up and into my eyes. He really was a beautiful creature—not just handsome but with a loveliness I couldn’t describe.
“It is better to be quick,” he said, and on his last word I saw the flash of silver that was my dagger as he sliced my wrist open and, I was sure, hit every major vein. But that wasn’t all he hit. I saw instantly the blood pour from the markings around my wrist, causing the power within them to generate and swirl like mercury.
Then, the pain hit and I suppressed a scream and bit down hard. But I was too slow to stop my other hand that flew rigidly into the air, searching for something to hold on to.
Phoenix grabbed it and squeezed hard. He held me still and I let him. He gripped tighter and tighter until it hurt and it was all I could feel, and—for just a moment, I was sure—he was helping me, distracting me. As if…he cared.
Blood flowed from my right wrist.
When I heard Rudyard gasp and someone else, Azeem, I think, whisper, “Dear God in heaven,” I pulled my eyes away from Phoenix and looked to my wrist.
The blood that flowed was glistening with tiny sparkles of silver. Part of whatever marked my wrists was also flowing into the chalice, which was now almost full, and its contents started to swirl in the cup. When it was close to the brim, Phoenix’s hold on me softened. I glanced at him and swore I saw a look of concern. He knew I had caught it, and in response, he straightened and reached out, moving my bleeding arm away from the chalice roughly. He ran his hand over the wound, smearing the blood up my arm, as he looked at Lincoln.
“You know she feels it,” he said, taking in a deep breath. “It’s almost too easy.” He looked back at me as I yanked my arms away from him. “What? You don’t want me to heal that for you?” He smiled his empty smile, pushing all the buttons he intended.
“Step back,” Jude said. I didn’t need telling twice and Phoenix didn’t seem to either. We both leapt back to our opposite sides of the room while Jude stood at the top.
I resumed my position beside Lincoln. He didn’t look at me; he just grabbed my bleeding arm and started trying to heal it.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just stop the bleeding.”
He nodded, pretending to concentrate on my arm. It was fair enough. He wasn’t the only one who needed a moment.
The blood in the chalice continued to swirl. I was starting to think nothing else was going to happen when the cup itself stated to…dissolve.
We watched with wide eyes, everyone except Jude, who’d repositioned his cloak and hood. The chalice disappeared, along with the long wooden stem it had rested upon. At first I thought the blood was actually reacting with it, like acid, eating away at the wood. But as I watched the blood swirling, now suspended in midair above us, I realized this was just another level of imagination.
The ground beneath where the chalice had been started to distort and then, in the blink of an eye, the liquid suspended overhead dropped and splashed onto the floor, seeping into the sand so it looked like the earth was oozing blood.
Slowly, the red sand bubbled up to form a large box. It hovered a few inches above ground level, unsupported, until suddenly it dropped back to the ground with a whooshing sound. There was no trace of blood, and left in its place was a wooden box with two gold birds—no, not birds, angels—wings outstretched, on top. For a moment, it was ablaze with fire and light, but then, just as quickly, it wasn’t.
Azeem dropped to his knees again. Salvatore grabbed the small cross around his neck and many of the exiles took a step back.
The box sprung open from a middle seam, the two golden angels dropped to the side, and there, lying within the box, were two tightly rolled parchments, bound in a silver ring imprinted with the same intricate feathered design as the Grigori boxes and wristbands.
That was all I had time to see, that and hear someone else scream, “The Scriptures!”
But I didn’t know who it was and there was nothing I could do about it anyway.
I was dying.
“For their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood.”
Proverbs 1:16
Blood poured relentlessly from the wounds that Onyx once gave me and that Phoenix now owned. He stood above me as I fought for my life. Battle surrounded us but Phoenix was uninterested. He remained focused, watching the wound, not looking at my face.
Everyone was fighting. It was déjà vu—just like that night at Hades—only this time, I wasn’t strong enough to do anything. I was instantly at the worst point of the injury. I had a few minutes at best. He had planned it perfectly.
Lincoln was fighting two, maybe three, of them. He was so focused, landing lethal blow after blow as he positioned himself between the oncoming exiles and me. Protector to the end.
The exiles attacked him from all sides. Overcoming them seemed an impossible feat, and yet he was magnificent, superior in speed and strength; it was as if he could anticipate their every move. I couldn’t help but be frightened for him when I saw a series of strikes to his face, but he didn’t slow. He would not fall.
He took out the exile to his right. When his dagger plunged into his heart—it was the stoic exile who had spoken earlier—it cleared his view to me. Our eyes locked just long enough for me to see the terror register in his as he realized what was happening and for him to scream at me, “Hold on!” before he was fending off a frontal attack.
My entire body burned with pain, organs fighting for survival but on the brink of letting me go. I saw random overflows of power that meant exiles were being returned. I saw the flash of a large weapon flying through the air—it could only have been Azeem’s machete. Sounds of flesh hitting and slamming into flesh filled the room, screams of pain and vengeance equally shrill.
When I saw Gressil approach, and the look in his eyes, I found I could still tense.
He’ll kill me easily, quickly.
But Phoenix had other ideas. Just as Gressil came near enough to strike, Phoenix took a step closer to me and released an indisputable growl. I was his. Much to his chagrin, Gressil backed away, just in time to collide with Azeem.
I looked up at Phoenix. I think he loved me once.
Is this all that comes of love? Is this because I couldn’t love him back?
He was concentrating intently on the battle. He was trying to look relaxed, as if everything was going to plan, but he was playing with the cuff of his shirt. He did that when he was worried. His eyes darted up and fixed on mine, and in that instant, I could see his regret and I realized the worry was for me.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I whispered.
He looked around the room and then back at me, a hint of alarm breaking through his otherwise calm exterior. The battle was taking longer than he’d planned. Just then, the strangest thing happened. He gave me his emotion. For just the blink of an eye—a blink of mercy—I felt his need. My scream filled the room with a sound of pain I didn’t believe possible. I looked to him again, and somehow knew we shared this reality of terrible choice, vengeful motivation, and all things lost—most of all, friendship and love.
The rest happened so quickly.
I saw Magda behind him—she was lunging away from the exile she had just returned, dagger in hand, determination plastered all over her face. Phoenix didn’t turn from me, but his eyes grew wide as if instinctively he knew.
The wounds within me started to close.
I gasped as I saw her leap into the air, dagger raised and pointed toward Phoenix’s heart. In a blur from the left, something collided with Magda’s dagger.
Lincoln.
He’d leapt in front of her, taking the impact in his shoulder. He fell hard to the ground.
No!
Screams sounded from the other side of the room. There was an explosion of rainbow mist, from more than one direction, then a cracking sound reverberated followed by what could only be described as white light.
“Out!” Phoenix yelled. His remaining exiles disappeared with super speed and he followed, leaving a trail of lightly falling desert dust in his wake.
Lincoln was crawling to my side. “Violet, Violet.”
He dropped beside me, Magda’s dagger still embedded in his right shoulder. He pulled it out and dropped it, cringing with pain. His blood mingled with mine in the pool I was lying in.
I was already healing now that Phoenix had gone. In fact, I was almost certain I’d started healing before he’d even left. Lincoln heaved himself onto his elbow and leaned over me. I could tell he was hurting but also knew he would be okay. He pulled my top up to reveal the final stage of the wound healing. A small sound, a cry of relief, fell from his mouth. When we took in the sight of each other, we both exhaled.
“Thank God,” he said, putting a hand on me, which I grabbed tightly. I didn’t tell him that despite everyone’s hails, I was pretty sure God wasn’t in this room with us.
I pushed myself up to sit and that was when the impact of what had just happened hit me.
Lincoln was beside me, Magda standing nearby—in shock or something. Zoe and Salvatore were kneeling over something—someone. In the other corner of the room, Griffin was barely restraining Nyla while Azeem knelt over…
Oh no!
He was kneeling over Rudyard, and if I hadn’t known instantly from the painful wash of the senses that leeched wickedly into my body—the aftermath of exile vengeance—the deathly wail that came from Nyla that moment could leave no doubt.
A scream that held more than life and death, for it also held her soul, as everything she was departed this world with the one she was bonded to forever.
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