With an instinctive gasp, I scraped the dregs of my blood reservoir, and gathered enough power to call up my cloak of shadow and blood, but it was wispy and threadbare. My vision exploded with painful light at the pathetic attempt, right as Apollo and Artemis released.
The arrows hit my cloak and spun me to the side. I crashed down beside my devils, propped up against a pile of debris at a slant, my vision dwindling as my pulse dropped to almost nothing.
I stared at Natalie and Victoria from inches away, spotting the still quivering arrows sticking out of their hearts like staked flags—Apollo and Artemis were here. I blinked, struggling to lift my hands towards them. I felt our bond sever, snapping back into me like two blows to the chest, making me grunt. That sensation, more than the arrows, told me the truth.
A screaming wail heralded a trio of malevolent green spirits, chasing Apollo and Artemis away with frustrated hisses. I saw Nero race by with his bone claw out, seeming to be directing the spirits. As the gods retreated, I saw arrows whipping through the spirits, causing no harm.
My vision faded to a tighter circle as I shifted my gaze back to Natalie and Victoria’s motionless forms. I saw no pulse in their throats. I finally managed to set my hands on their chests as Izzy skidded up beside me. She slapped her fingers over their throats. “Their hearts have stopped!” she wailed, on the verge of tears. Then she gasped. “You’re almost dead!”
I drew absolutely everything I had left, silently begging to use the last beats of my own heart if necessary…to make lightning. And it worked.
Lightning crackled from my numb fingertips and latched onto them. Their bodies rocked and arched wildly. “Oh my god!” Izzy shouted, cringing from the sudden blast of power.
But the look on Izzy’s face as she touched their throats with her fingers told me the truth. It hadn’t worked. The lightning winked out of me.
I closed my eyes, still touching Natalie and Victoria. We would all die together, it seemed.
I died. I didn’t fall asleep. I could feel the difference.
52
I opened my eyes to find everything slightly…green. Hades, the God of the Underworld, loomed over me with a triumphant grin, laughing excitedly. “I knew it!”
I stared at him, confused as all hell. “Then I really am dead.”
“Not for long!” he crowed, rearing back with his fist.
“Wait. What—” He punched me in the forehead, his ring burning like fire as it struck my skin and knocked me down through the center of the planet. Yet I clearly saw everything zipping past me, and none of it could be described as cavernous.
I flew.
About one thousand miles in the span of a few seconds. Through trees, walls, boulders, buildings, cars, and even people, judging by the shouts and sounds whipping past my ears too fast for me to individually process.
And it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it felt like…I was getting bigger.
Something abruptly snatched me out of the air, hoisting me up by the neck. I stared into the fiery crimson eyes of a large, somewhat homely, perfectly smooth face. I hung limply, unable to move my arms or legs. Despite him holding me by the throat, I didn’t feel any pain or discomfort at being choked. It took me a moment to recognize him.
“Adam!” I snapped incredulously, wondering what the hell was going on, and why it was all so…green.
Adam gasped, dropping me to the ground. “It’s him! He’s not dead!” he hissed. I landed with a wet splat, forming a small puddle at his feet.
Someone else grabbed me off the ground, holding me upside down by my ankles as they hoisted me high in the air. I stared at a pale expanse of gloriously gigantic breasts made of polished marble. “Higher, Eve,” I said, unable to make myself move since I had no actual body.
She did, gripping me by the waist. In a truly sickening sensation, I felt my lower body fold in half over her fist, collapsing in on itself to kick myself in the back of the head.
But it didn’t hurt, at least.
Like…I was a wet towel. “What the fuck is going on?” I snapped.
Eve stared, stunned. “Master Sorin? We just felt you die!”
Adam growled. “No. We felt him die for a second, and then I felt him back at the castle gates.
I was beginning to panic as they debated semantics. “What the fuck is going on?” I repeated in a frantic shriek.
“It’s his soul!” she gasped, shifting me back and forth like she was inspecting a bundle of silk.
I began to panic even more at her words. Hades had just punched me in the head with…his soulcatcher. Had he been holding onto it this whole time? I decided that it did not matter at the moment. “Gah! Don’t hold me like that! I’ve been looking for this thing everywhere! Put me back!”
She glanced over at Adam with a puzzled frown.
“Maybe we could charge him up enough to at least stand on his own? Give him some spirit bones, or something?” he asked.
Eve turned back to me, pursing her lips. “I want a puppy.”
I stared back at her, wondering if she was joking. She continued to stare at me, and I began wondering if there was only a limited window that my soul could withstand the real world without a body. “Fine! Just give me some damned spirit bones!”
“This is all very strange,” Adam said uncertainly.
Realizing that I was in no position to threaten them since I was technically dead, I hung limply, doing my best to hang appreciatively. “You are exceptional guardians, and I need your help before anyone else dies in there.”
He thought about it, poking me with a finger. “Can I have a puppy, too?”
“Fine! Just give me some spirit bones so I can walk back to my body! I was well on my way before you snatched me out of the air.”
“I didn’t realize it was you,” he argued defensively. “I wasn’t about to let a soul just slip past me. You told me to guard the church!”
“So how did Izzy sneak in?” I argued.
Eve pursed her lips. “She said she was here to save Nosh.”
I winced, not actually sure if she had succeeded or not. “Okay. Give me bones. I have to get back and see what’s happened.”
The two of them touched me, and their eyes suddenly blazed with burnished gold. I felt myself solidify, bone-by-bone, in a sickening, jerking series of movements. It didn’t hurt at all, but it made me want to empty my stomach. I think. Adam and Eve’s eyes slowly dimmed, and they studied me nervously, eyeing me up and down. Triumphant grins slowly stretched across their cheeks. “I told you letting us watch the Titans would be helpful!” Adam hissed, setting me down on my feet with exquisite care.
I took a few hesitant steps, shivering at the prickling sensations across my…soul. I could feel my physical body inside the church, beckoning me. Now that I had bones—of a sort—I was able to withstand the almost magnetic pull. But it gnawed at me like the fiercest, hollow hunger.
“Puppies!” Eve cried out, slapping palms with Adam.
He turned to look at the open doorway, his humor fading rapidly. “Do you want us to come inside and break things?” he asked, his eyes crackling with golden light again. “I’ve got a puppy, now. I’m feeling uniquely parental.”
Eve nodded, slowly drawing one of her crystal scythes. “No one harms Lady Applesauce.”
I stared at her. “Who is Lady Applesauce?”
“My puppy. Of course.” Then she took a step towards the open doorway, her face set in a stern grimace.
I flung my hands up, motioning for them to stop. “Neither of you have puppies yet! And I do not want you to enter the church. I don’t want the Olympians seeing you. I don’t want them knowing about the Titan souls inside you!” They relaxed slightly. Eve sheathed her scythe with a disappointed grumble.
“Now I have to come up with a new name,” Adam complained, under his breath, but loud enough for all of us to hear.
I closed my eyes, wanting to scream.
“I’m going to send everyone out. Do either of y
ou have healing powers?” I asked eagerly. “From your new souls?”
They shook their heads sadly. “No.”
I sighed regretfully. “Just keep them safe, then. And don’t hurt Aphrodite. She’s a friendly,” I said, hoping she was still alive after her numerous arrow wounds.
Their faces hardened and they looked suddenly violent. I winced, having almost forgotten their hatred of Olympians—likely made worse, now that they were harboring Titans.
“Aphrodite might even have some games she can teach you,” I added. “Private games.”
Adam blushed, shuffling from foot-to-foot. “Oh? I like games…” he said shyly.
Eve licked her lips. “I can stay my execution if she can help us with our…romantic executions,” she said, grinning suggestively as she eyed Adam up and down.
He smirked, boyishly.
“Great. Fantastic. Keep everyone safe. I’ll see you back home later,” I said, eager to get back to my friends inside the church. I was hoping that since I had just encountered Hades, time was not a concern. Adam had hinted that only seconds had passed, but he wasn’t the best judge of time.
Only one way to find out. I strode through the open doorway of Trinity Church.
Even with so many dead, my work was not finished. I could feel it in…
My soul.
53
I entered the church with a new perspective on life, much as leaders of such noble religious institutions might theoretically hope for from a first-time visitor. However, my perspective was not a quest for meaning or purpose. I was not noble. I was not humble.
And I was not even remotely repentant or apologetic.
Rather than entering on my knees, I was here to bring Artemis and Apollo to theirs.
Even though I was currently a wandering soul, when I saw that everything and everyone was frozen in a dim green glow, I let out a sharp breath of relief. My newly acquired spirit bones, if that was what they truly were, permitted me to feel much like I was back in my own body.
Except I wasn’t. I could feel my physical body pulling at me, begging to be reunited with my restless soul. I resisted the sensation, feeling…restless.
Like a captured light-painting, no time seemed to have passed since I died.
Victoria and Natalie lay where I had last seen them, arrows jutting out of their chests. Izzy’s illuminated hands hovered over my wounds, and her red-rimmed eyes were locked onto my lifeless face. She was weeping and angrily screaming at me as she worked to save me.
The four of us were bathed in pale moonlight from the gaping hole in the roof of the church.
I smiled vaguely at a sudden thought. Trinity Church. Of course it was. I hadn’t even considered that. But…this was where our trinity had died.
Most surprisingly, I suddenly noticed another person in the church who was unaffected by the stoppage of time, although I didn’t understand how or why she was here.
Selene stood over the three of us, crying softly. She seemed to sense my presence at the same time I sensed hers, and she slowly looked up. Her breath caught, and her eyes widened. Her lower lip began to tremble, and her shoulders shook. “Ambrogio,” she whispered, her voice cracking with relief.
“Selene,” I said, unable to make myself move as I tried wrapping my head around her presence. Rather than the violent version of Selene who I had last encountered in my bedchambers with Natalie and Victoria, the woman before me now was gentle and compassionate, her eyes windows to a depthless well of sympathy and patience.
She was a vibrant, seemingly young woman with long, silvery white hair. She wore a white silk toga that was clasped with a crescent moon brooch over her left shoulder. It draped down her chest at the diagonal to leave her other shoulder bare. She wore a loose belt of interconnected silver hoops that seemed to portray the phases of the moon. As above, so below—the bottom half of her shimmering white garment seemed to hitch up over her left hip before cutting down at the same angle, revealing almost her entire thigh, but ending just above her opposite knee.
Metallic lace sandals trailed up and around her calves, ending just below the knee.
Her skin was pale and almost seemed to emit a faint sheen when caught out of the corners of the eye. I was unable to avert my gaze in order to verify that, but I remembered it well from the past. This was the Selene I had first fallen in love with. The priestess who had been used as a tool by her own god, Apollo, to systematically and emotionally dismantle me from the foundation up.
After a few endless seconds, I felt a tear spill down my cheek, startling me. My soul…was crying. Seeing my tear, Selene let out a heartbroken sob. She immediately extended her hand towards me, her wrist shaking.
I let out a shaky sigh and joined her to stand over Natalie and Victoria. I enveloped her small hand in mine, sucking in a breath at the warm sensation of flesh on flesh, even though I was currently a soul without a body. She reacted the same way.
But neither of us let go. We squeezed tighter.
We cried silently—internally. Together.
“How are you here, and how can we touch if I’m a spirit?” I whispered.
“Lord Hades helped you more than you know,” she whispered, eyeing the soulcatcher around my thumb. It throbbed with faint, green light. “And moonbeams are my domain. They are like bridges to me,” she said, lifting her palm to indicate the moonlight shining down on us.
I nodded silently, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I stared down at my broken body. As I stared down at the arrows sticking up from Natalie and Victoria’s chests. “I tried,” I finally whispered. Aphrodite, my protective big sister, had said that to me as well. Before she had shoved me down the aisle towards…moonlight.
Selene let out a whimper. “I know, Sorin. You always do.”
Persephone’s words drifted into my mind like whips to my back. You really should have taken Aphrodite up on her gift…
Not just Aphrodite…It had been Selene’s gift, too.
And here she was, standing over my devils. Paying her last respects.
“You knew,” I whispered, the severity of the situation dawning on me. “You all knew they would die tonight.”
Selene shook, gripping my hand tight enough to hurt. “We feared,” she finally whispered. “We broke rules to try to change the course of events. But the twins broke rules, too,” she admitted.
I glanced back at Aphrodite, recalling how she’d doubled as Izzy, adamant about wanting to accompany me to the church. “That’s why she joined me tonight? To try and kill the twins before they could do…this. It’s why she gave Nosh the ribbons.”
Selene nodded. “Yes.”
“So, she knew Dracula was really Nosh?” I whispered.
Selene shook her head firmly. “No, but she wanted to give your son—her nephew—a gift of protection. She did not know he would need it so soon,” she said sadly.
“Why are you here?” I asked gently.
She sighed. “Lord Hades said that he could save your soul but not your heart. That only I could save you from letting rage consume you. That justice was different from vengeance.” She paused. “I’m not certain that I was the best person for the job. Rage sounds…appropriate.”
I turned away, gritting my teeth. I swept my gaze throughout the church, noticing the others paused in the middle of their fight. Artemis and Apollo stood on the altar, each with drawn arrows. I glared at them, the green glow to the room momentarily replaced with red before snapping back. “I…am going to hurt them,” I stammered, shaking.
Selene nodded. “If you don’t, I will. They have taken everything from us.”
My attention drifted to Bubble’s dead body. “I cannot fail again,” I rasped. I had lost four women to the twins. And now, I was standing by the first. The woman who truly owned my heart. The woman who always would. The woman I could never touch. Until now.
“Do not focus on the failure, Ambrogio,” she whispered. “Do not cry. Get mad,” she hissed with a qu
iet, gentle, bottomless malevolence.
Her words were a balm to my wounded heart. Like a wife putting on her husband’s armor before a battle. “I can do that,” I breathed, taking one halting step towards the twins.
Then another.
I sucked in a breath to see Aphrodite in the process of rising from her stomach. Her taut stomach and legs looked rooted to the ground, but her previously useless arms were planted before her and locked rigid, supporting her bare upper body so that she looked like she was pressing herself up from the ledge of a river bank, emerging from the water after bathing.
Her gaze smoldered with determination as she gritted her teeth against her obvious pain. She was staring at my body further down the aisle. With the silver arrow fletching looming over her back, her pose reminded me of phoenix rising.
She must have heard Izzy’s shout as I died and forced herself back upright. Damn. She didn’t know the meaning of the word quit. And she had suffered all that pain simply to get my body closer to the moonlight.
Lightning abruptly crackled over my clenched fists. I looked around the room at the dozen arrows currently in flight—all aimed at Lucian and Nero, who were doing their best to advance without getting killed. My lightning lashed out and incinerated the airborne arrows to faint puffs of floating ash.
The three green spirits sprinting forward from Nero’s hands slowly swiveled their heads to watch me as I passed. I’d seen them right before I had died, chasing Artemis and Apollo away from me. They nodded appreciatively but didn’t speak or approach. Not knowing what else to do, and appreciating them trying to save me, I nodded back.
I reached my son—who was still trapped in the guise of Dracula. The nullification cuffs Nero had put on his wrists must have trapped his powers—all of them. He’d been relying on Aphrodite’s ribbons to get him out. That was why Nero had been so adamant about asking if he had any last words before we abandoned Dracula to his fate.
Except Artemis had silenced him with her hunting powder, preventing him from goading his abductors into saying the activation word, bonds.
Devil’s Blood: Shade of Devil Book 3 Page 33
