Bloodrose

by Andrea Cremer

  “It’s the Fallen!” Ethan shouted.

  The sighs became moans, but more noises layered on top of the Fallen’s cries. Shrieks and hisses followed the cracking of stone. Rowan Estate’s statues were coming to life.

  “Not just the Fallen,” Connor yelled. “Here they come!”

  “Block the door!” Adne shouted, still futilely twisting against the ropes around her. She shook her head at my father. “Go help them. You can’t get me out of these!”

  Bosque was laughing. The sound made my chest tighten, stirring me out of regret and self-pity, making the tension in the room crackle like electricity in my fur. The joyful gleam in his inhuman silver eyes set my blood boiling. I’d already lost too much today. I would not lose anything more.

  Snarling, I bolted across the room to the spot where Logan crouched. He rolled his eyes up at me.

  “Just leave me alone,” he whimpered. “Run for your life, Calla. Get out of here.”

  I barked at him, baring my teeth close to his neck so he could feel my breath. He jerked back at the sight of my fangs but shook his head. “I won’t do it. He’ll kill me.”

  Shifting forms, I laced my fingers around his throat.

  “It’s too late,” he said hoarsely.

  “It is never too late,” I said. “The ritual. Now.”

  The groan of heavy furniture scraping along the wood floor filled the room as Connor, Ethan, and my father barricaded the library door. I could already hear bodies slamming against the wood, claws tearing into the barrier.

  I tightened my grip. Logan’s eyes widened and he croaked, “Stop, please. I’ll do it.”

  “Now,” I hissed.

  Logan reached around his back, smearing his hand in the blood that still leaked from the whiplashes. Using the blood as ink, he drew a symbol on the floor and began murmuring in a voice so low I could barely hear.

  Bosque’s laughter died instantly. Apparently it didn’t matter how quietly Logan chanted; the Harbinger could sense that the ritual had begun. The stream of Logan’s whispers faltered.

  “Don’t you dare stop.” I bared my teeth at him. “Stop and I’ll kill you.”

  He continued his fevered whispers, but his eyes were wild as they moved back and forth from me to Bosque.

  “This isn’t wise, Logan.” Bosque took a step toward us. But Shay was there, holding the Elemental Cross at the Harbinger’s eye level. Bosque scowled, but he stopped moving.

  My heart jumped. The shield worked both ways. Shay couldn’t attack Bosque, but Bosque couldn’t move past the swords either.

  Realizing that Bosque’s attempt to reach him had been thwarted, Logan stopped shaking. His voice grew steadier and louder.

  The scratching at the library doors had become banging. Slow, heavy thuds signaled that the Fallen had arrived.

  “Hurry!” Ethan shouted. “We can’t hold them.”

  “No.” Bosque whirled away from Shay. “You can’t.”

  He swept his hand through the air and Ethan, Connor, Sabine, and my father were tossed aside. Bosque struck out with his fist and the doors blew open.

  “Don’t touch the Fallen.” Connor drew his swords, shouting at Sabine and my father. “Ethan and I will fight them. You take care of the rest.”

  The rest appeared as succubi and incubi flew into the room, their shrieks piercing my ears. Ethan took down two with his crossbow before drawing his own swords and advancing on the moaning Fallen. The Searchers began to mow through the slowly advancing mass, which fortunately had formed a bottleneck in the doorway. Thuds began to offset the high-pitched shrieks as Connor and Ethan parted the Fallen’s heads from their bodies. My father, Bryn, and Sabine were dodging the winged creatures’ spears, taunting them to the ground before the wolves wheeled to attack.

  Logan was on his feet, shouting. He thrust his hands at Bosque, fingers outstretched. “Aperio!”

  Bosque screamed. His eyes flashed like lightning as he glared at Logan. “You will pay for—”

  His words stopped as he screamed again, doubling over and clutching his stomach. When he lifted his face, his silver eyes were widening into disks shaped like footballs and just as large. His pupils gleamed red as they morphed into reptilian slits. His features went slack, then slowly puffed out as if someone were pumping air in the space between his muscle and skin. He continued to expand, his skin ballooning until it began to tear, beginning at the top of his head and following a line down the center of his body.

  Bosque’s human shell cracked open like a husk. A gelatinous yellow substance oozed from the crack. An awful scent filled the air, decaying flesh and ammonia that burned my eyes and nose. I fell to my knees, certain I would be sick.

  Shay made a retching sound and stumbled backward, trying to stay on his feet.

  An appendage covered in bristling spikes emerged from what had been Bosque’s body. Then another. And another. Six segmented limbs pushed skin and gore aside as it struggled to free itself. The thing that shrugged off its human guise stretched to its full height, towering over all of us. Its large silver eyes were set in a quasi-human face that featured Bosque’s aquiline nose and full mouth. A set of pincers sprouted from his cheeks, clicking together as he opened and closed his lips with a hiss. His slicked-back hair had transformed into hard, sharply raised ridges that rippled along the surface of his skull and continued down his spine.

  The skin covering its body was a mottled gray and black, dripping with slime. Wings, iridescent like those of a dragonfly and covered in the same thick yellow slime as the rest of his body, protruded from his back. They fluttered at intervals, trying to rid themselves of the sticky liquid.

  Bosque’s torso still resembled a man’s, except that the thick carved muscles of his chest sloped down not to a human abdomen, but instead swelled to curving mass where skin transformed into a shiny black exoskeleton. His lower body ended in a needle-sharp, curving spine that glistened, making me suspect its sting was venomous.

  The beast stretched its four upper limbs toward the ceiling, shaking its body as if it had just woken from a long slumber. Slime splattered on us and I coughed up bile as I scraped the yellow ooze from my skin. Four of its limbs lashed wildly, clawing at the air in fury. It screamed and the Nether creatures’ shrieks grew louder. They abandoned their attacks on the wolves and Searchers, streaking toward the fireplace to hover above the creature’s head.

  “Oh my God.” Connor, tracking the sudden flight of Bosque’s minions, dropped one of his swords when he saw what was standing in front of the Rift.

  Ethan shoved him aside, swinging his blade as one of the Fallen groped for Connor. Its head went flying.

  “Come on.” Ethan dragged Connor to the center of the room, where Adne was still bound to the floor. Sabine, Bryn, and my father chased after them. They huddled in a tight group around Adne.

  The Fallen didn’t pursue them but stayed close to the library doors. Their empty eyes gazed toward the Rift, mouths agape, as they swayed mindlessly, holding their position.

  Logan fell backward, gazing up at the creature that had taken Bosque Mar’s place. “Behold, the Harbinger. Master of the Nether and Lord of the Keepers.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “I WILL HEAR YOU SCREAM for this treachery, Logan Bane,” Bosque rasped.

  The sound of his voice startled me. It was the same as it had been when the Harbinger had been cloaked in a human body. The only change was the repetitive clicking of his pincers meeting each other in front of his lips.

  He clawed the air with one of his upper limbs and Logan dropped to the floor, gasping in pain. Blood poured from four deep, symmetrical gashes in his chest.

  “No!” Shay rolled to the balls of his feet.

  “The Rift!” Adne shouted. “You have to drive him into the Rift with the Cross!”

  Bosque shrieked his rage at her, raising his spiny limb once more.

  Shay was already moving. The blades of the Elemental Cross whirred through the air, sparks of its power lea
ping from the swords. I could no longer distinguish his body from the whirlwind of light and sound that built up around him. The column of the elements that enveloped his form was ever changing, sliding from the roar of a firestorm to the crash of a waterfall only to morph again into the scream of a hurricane followed by the shuddering strength of an earthquake.

  I knew Shay was there, wielding the blades, only because the limb Bosque had pointed at Logan suddenly went flying. It twitched on the library floor where it landed.

  Bosque screamed as black blood leaked from the stump on his torso.

  “Defend me, children!”

  In a rain of leather wings and sharp talons, the throng of succubi and incubi descended on Shay. The moment they touched the edges of the sphere that surrounded the Scion their bodies dissolved, pouring to the ground in harmless piles of sand.

  “No!” Bosque screamed, and there was real fear in his cry. His bulbous silver eyes searched the room in desperation. His frantic gaze settled on me. Laughing wildly, he grinned at Shay, revealing rows of sharp fangs behind his pincers.

  “Very well, Scion,” he said. “You’ve claimed your legacy. But continue on this path and you shall lose that which you love the most.”

  He stretched his arm out, shrieking an unintelligible order to the surviving Nether creatures. One of the incubi swooped low, dropping its spear. Bosque gripped the weapon, using the spines on his upper left limb like fingers. He turned that terrible smile on me and hurled the spear. I bolted, but not quickly enough.

  Bosque’s aim had been true. It was only my scrambling aside that left me with a spear impaling my shoulder and not my heart. Bosque was strong. Very strong. Not only was the spear lodged deep inside me, but it had pierced all the way through my body to lodge in the wall behind me. I was pinned there.

  “Calla!” Shay’s voice broke through the torrent of power shielding his body. I knew his advance faltered when the storm of elements surrounding him flickered, its light beginning to fade.

  “No, Shay!” I screamed, struggling to break the spear or at least pull it free of the wall. “Forget about me. Kill him!”

  Bosque shouted, “Take her. Tear her apart!”

  The swarming Nether beings shrieked in unison and flew toward me. I thought about shifting, but a wolf pinned on its back was even more helpless than a human.

  “Kill him, Shay!” I threw my arm up over my face as I waited for talons to rip into my flesh.

  The screams of the flying horde grew louder, but the attack I’d been expecting never came. Snarls that were even closer than the furious shrieks made me look up. Bryn was almost on top of me, bristling at the Nether creatures. My father and Sabine stood just beyond her. One dead incubus already lay at their feet. Others dove but were met by the wolves’ teeth tearing through their wings, taking them to the ground and making sure they didn’t get up again.

  “Move it, Scion!” Ethan shouted from the center of room, where he and Connor still stood guard over Adne. “Your lover girl is safe enough.”

  Shay raised the swords again, striding forward. The sound in the room became deafening and the house began to shake. The flying Nether creatures stopped their attack and began to swarm above the fireplace like wasps panicking in their rattled nest. Near the door the Fallen’s moans became frantic. Their shuffling turned to chaos as they started to move, bumping into one another, swinging wildly at bookshelves and tables as if they’d lost any sense of purpose.

  Bosque was backed up against the fireplace. He stretched out the three remaining limbs of his upper body, clawing at the stone frame.

  “I will not be conquered,” he screamed. “I am your master. I gave you everything. You are nothing without me.”

  “The Scion has no master.” Shay’s voice boomed over the chaos of noise in the library. It was his voice, but somehow different than the voice of the boy I knew. It was a deeper, older voice that echoed in my flesh and bone.

  Bosque’s grip on the stones faltered. He slid a foot backward into the fireplace.

  The storm of the Cross pursued him, the voice from within booming through the library. “The earth will no longer bear your corruption.”

  “I will not yield,” Bosque spat.

  The torrent of earth, wind, water, and fire around Shay flared brighter. “Begone, fiend.”

  Bosque winced as the light of the Elemental Cross touched him. “No!”

  “Begone!” the voice that wasn’t quite Shay’s cried out.

  Bosque screamed as the sickly green aura of the Rift expanded, curling around him like arms drawing him into an unwelcome embrace. He screamed again as the thick tendrils wrapped around his body.

  Then I could see Shay moving in the firestorm. He leapt forward, spinning as he hurtled toward Bosque. He brought the swords down in two lightning-fast strokes. Bosque howled in agony as three limbs were shorn from his torso. The green aura in the fireplace flared into immense spires of flame, consuming Bosque. I could hear him shrieking even though I couldn’t see him.

  The roar of the Elemental Cross became deafening and the storm surrounding Shay thickened, making it impossible to find him amid its chaos of sound and motion.

  “Take cover!” Connor shouted, throwing himself over Adne.

  My father shifted forms, grabbing Sabine and hauling her to my side. He pushed her tight against me and Bryn while he shielded us beneath his body.

  Rowan Estate was shaking. Bookshelves groaned and cracked, sending volumes tumbling to the floor in a cascade. The sound continued to grow until the air swam with it, as if the very stones of the building were screaming.

  An explosion rocked the library. I buried my face in my father’s chest, biting my lip as the violent movements of the earth made the pain in my shoulder—where the spear still pinned me to the wall—almost unbearable. Sabine shifted forms and gripped my other arm, distracting me from the throbbing wound. I looked at her, grateful for the strength I found burning in her gaze. She leaned her forehead against mine and I laced my fingers through hers.

  Crashes echoed all around us. I thought I heard Connor shouting. My father, Sabine, and I clung to each other. Bryn’s fur pressed into our bodies and she whimpered. Though Sabine’s hair whipped around my face, I caught snatches of the chaos just beyond our huddled trio. Clouds had poured into the room, swirling in the sickly green shades of the Rift itself, mirroring the sky just before a tornado. The winds that raged around us made me wonder if a funnel cloud had indeed touched down nearby. Shapes were hurling past us. Succubi and incubi screamed as they were sucked into the Rift, clawing at the air as they were dragged from the earth. Some had horrified Keepers locked in a fatal embrace, pulling their masters shrieking into oblivion. A few husk-like bodies sailed past, skin so parched that I could hardly believe they didn’t crumble as they were battered by the storm. Though lifeless, the dusty figures weren’t the Fallen. I couldn’t tell what they were, but at least a dozen sailed past us, falling into the Rift alongside the other Nether creatures.

  The screaming wind built into a final sudden gust, followed by a low rumble. The sound built, finally rolling through the library like the loudest thunderclap I’d ever heard.

  It was followed by silence.

  The wind was still there, but the violent blast had become a steady, gentle pour of cold winter air.

  My father slowly unfurled himself from the protective ball he’d been curled into around Bryn, Sabine, and me. I winced, straining against the spear that impaled my shoulder, as I searched for any sign of Shay, but my gaze was caught by the shocking source of the icy wind. The wall of the library had been obliterated. The room opened up to the snow-covered ground outside. Only the stone frame of the fireplace remained, standing tall in a stark outline against the winter night.

  “You all right?” Connor shouted to us. He was helping Adne to her feet. The ropes that had been holding her fell away as she stood. Only frayed threads remained. Ethan was hopping over piles of books and splintered wood in an attempt
to reach us. Sabine squeezed my hand before running to meet him. He pulled her against him, drawing her into a long kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him as he buried his fingers in her hair.

  “Brace yourself, Calla.” My father had taken hold of the spear still lodged in my shoulder. Bryn, now in human form, took my hand. I gritted my teeth, managing only a brief cry as he dislodged the spear from the wall and jerked it out of my body.

  “Here.” He already had his bleeding wrist pressing against my lips. I tried not to think about the pain in my throbbing shoulder, focusing instead on the soothing warmth that poured over me as I took my father’s blood.

  I leaned back against the wall, drawing a slow, shuddering breath. “I’m good.”

  He smiled at me. I took his hand, letting him pull me to my feet.

  “They’ve all gone.” Ethan came toward us, hand in hand with Sabine. “No more Nether freaks.”

  “Where did they go?” I asked, scanning the room. There was no sign of the creatures that had assailed us.

  “No idea,” he said. “I pretty much went for duck and cover once the building started coming down.”

  “That’s not all that’s gone,” Connor said. “I think Logan made a run for it.”

  A drying pool of blood marked the spot where Logan had fallen, clutching the gashes Bosque had carved in his chest. The pool lengthened, stretching into a line and then becoming splotches as the trail headed toward the door.

  “Good riddance,” Adne said.

  “I’d rather have him where we can keep an eye on him,” Ethan muttered.

  A shiver raced up my spine. Logan was gone. But where? Had he gone after Lumine? Would he come back, seeking revenge?

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Connor said. “We’ll have to track him down eventually. But he’s not a threat with Bosque gone. He has no power to draw from.”

  “If the Nether creatures are all gone, why are the Fallen still here?” Sabine said, looking over her shoulder.

  “They aren’t Fallen anymore,” Connor answered. Adne was beside him, rubbing the rope burns on her arms.