“We scouted five incorporeals guarding the property,” he tells me. Sweat and blood drip off his handsome brow. “And I’ve seen three bodies, including Enlilkian. Kellan is trying to get into the house, which we thought you were in.” He comes in to hug me, only to jerk back when I cry out at the brush of arm against arm. “Mis dioses, Cousin! You look as if you were put through a meat grinder!”
He should have seen me before Cicely did her mojo, I think.
“We need to get you to safety,” Raul’s saying, gently cupping my good elbow.
I disentangle myself just as gently. “I’m not leaving without Kellan.”
“His orders were very clear, Chloe. You are to be extracted as soon as possible. No exceptions. If he found out I let you back toward danger—”
That sounds like Kellan. Only ... “I’m not leaving without him.” It’s clear he wants to argue, so I head him off at the pass. “There’s a little girl in there. A Shaman. I’m not leaving without her, either. There may also be a non who tried to help me. And Lola should take priority over me; she’s hurt far worse.”
“Debatable.” Cora’s husband swears softly under his breath at the same time explosions fire off around the house. Before Raul can say another word, I’m once more entering the house.
“Kellan?” I practically trip across the threshold. Smoke fills the entryway; a couch nearby is on fire. “Kellan!”
Only, he’s not the one to answer me. It’s the Elder wearing Harou’s face. “She’s here!” it shouts.
I sprint toward it, past burning pieces, my hand outstretched to touch something, anything on its body, but it’s clearly on to my tactics, skipping just out of reach.
We hover on either sides of a shattered coffee table in our game of chicken. My eyes do not leave its. “Kellan?”
It smiles at me, like what I’m saying is funny.
“Did the little Creator lose something?”
It doesn’t even see the battering ram that materializes behind it, driving its rotting body right toward mine. I gladly grab hold as it slams into me, all putrid, gag-worthy aromas flooding my senses and soft, liquid like flesh below my fingers. And then it’s gone and my hands are sticky. That makes seven.
A crash sounds somewhere above me, followed by the walls shaking. I plunge deeper into the house, searching for stairs. “KELLAN! KELLAN, WHERE ARE YOU?”
Another crash rattles the few pieces of unbroken furniture around me. I’m screaming now, tearing into a spacious kitchen, his name the only thing my mouth is capable of saying.
WHAM.
A man I don’t recognize slams me into an island; pots and pans scatter noisily around us. This must be Thierry. How many of these things are left already? How many more do I have to destroy?
“Gotcha,” it sneers, but it’s taken aback by my laughter.
Stupid mothereffer. I say, just before I wish it out of existence, “Don’t steal my lines.”
Eight.
The house rolls in anger, dishes crashing out of cabinets. Enlilkian is roaring ... and then laughing. All of the blood cells in my body turn to ice. No. No. No. No.
I can deal with his anger. But his laughter?
I start ripping holes through the walls as I run through the large house, screaming Kellan’s name over and over until I’m hoarse, and then screaming more. I can’t find him. Where are they? I want to tear my hair out, just ... tear everything out. Just destroy the whole damn house until all that’s left are the people inside.
But Cicely is still hiding. And the neurosurgeon might be here, too. I can’t fail her. Them. I lost Jonah. I failed him. I will give my life up before I fail Kellan.
I finally find the godsdamn stairs in the back of the house and charge up them. I switch tactics midway up. I’m shouting the first Creator’s name, letting him know I’m coming, that if he touches one hair on Kellan’s head, he will—
I have to grab hold of the railing when the house shudders again. Enlilkian’s howls fill the air around me until my ears ring and bleed. He’s pissed. Good—pissed is better than delighted. I slam my hand against the stairs, steadying myself. This building isn’t going down as long as I don’t want it to. Nothing is knocking me off my feet again.
I sprint down another hall—gods this house is too damn big—toward the eerie mixture of maniacal laughter and rage. And there, in the last bedroom in the hallway, I find them.
The door is blocked by a dresser tilted on its side, but from what I can see, part of the far wall of the room is gone. How did that happen? Did Enlilkian counter me again? It’s a gaping maw, all wood and pipes and chicken wire coated in crumbling plaster. Kellan’s in front of it, one hand gripping onto one of the exposed pipes and my heart stops, just flat out stops, because there is way too much bright red soaking his clothes and hair. I say his name again, more softly now, but he’s completely focused ... on the floor?
I peer down and find Enlilkian on the ground in front of the dresser, only half of his body visible. He’s alternating between laughing and clawing at the ruined carpet in his fury toward whatever Kellan is doing to him. Bits of skin and muscle are left behind between each strike of fist to floor.
But ... he seems to be immobilized, too.
The minute I attempt to cross the threshold, duck under the dresser, the monster whose death I crave like no drug ever could wheezes, “Careful, little Creator. Things are not quite as much in his favor as they seem.”
Ugly shivers break out across my arms as I look back to Kellan. He’s ... oh gods, he’s shaking in his efforts, his attention completely focused on Enlilkian, like he doesn’t even know I’m in the room. I stare harder at his hand, clutching the pipe; the knuckles are white and tight. Is he ... is he swaying? I rise up on my tiptoes to get a better look, and—
No.
There are about two inches of splintered wood jutting out from the edge of the wall he’s teetering on. There is no floor for at least three feet in front of him toward Enlilkian.
“If you kill me,” Enlilkian gasps, “he will fall. I’m the only thing keeping what he’s standing from snapping.”
“Obliterate it, Chloe.”
My eyes fly back toward Kellan. He’s not looking at me; one hand is still angled toward doing whatever it is he’s doing to Enlilkian, but he says again, voice low and angry, “Don’t worry about me. Just obliterate this fucker.”
I should. I absolutely should. This monster is the reason so many people are dead over thousands of years of history. He’s the reason Jonah’s dead.
The dresser between us splinters and then disintegrates into nothing as this reality comes home once more.
“Ah, there she is,” Enlilkian grunts, and then he laughs and laughs and laughs, like my grief is the best thing in the entire worlds.
I try to count, try to find my breaths, but it’s all so hard right now.
“Listen to me, C,” Kellan continues. “You need to focus—”
Enlilkian sing-songs, “It was fun watching him die, wasn’t it, little Creator?”
I think my knees are giving out, because I’m falling fallingfalling. Kellan is saying my name, but all I can see is Jonah falling. And gods, it’s so selfish of me, so incredibly selfish, but I can’t watch Kellan do that, too. I just can’t lose them both.
“Chloe, godsdammit, do it!” Kellan shouts at me.
Enlilkian cackles, but it’s short lived. He writhes on the ground in agony, losing more bits and pieces of Jens Belladonna’s body just inches away from me. All I’d need to do is stretch out my hand and just touch him. Just ... lay a finger on a single hair still attached, and he’d be gone.
Kellan would be gone, too.
“Listen to me,” Kellan’s saying. “Chloe, just ... just listen.” His deep breath is audible. “Jonah isn’t dead. He’s waiting for you back in Annar. You just need to kill this motherfucker, and you can go back to Annar and see him.”
I tear my eyes away from Enlilkian, back to Kellan, but he’s still not looki
ng at me. Jonah’s not ... dead? But ... my chest. It’s hollow. Our Connection’s curse is in full effect. His pain is mine to carry now.
“He’s lying,” Enlilkian hisses, thrashing in pain as Kellan’s hand twists. “My men took ...,”—he gasps sharply—“care of him. You. Saw. Him. Die.”
And I hate myself because I believe this monster. I watched his minions stab Jonah over and over again until he no longer moved. And then they threw him off an eight-story landing.
Rage and grief fight for dominance within me. Could he have survived? Is it even possible?
Enlilkian’s words slide out from between clenched teeth. “If you get the Empath to let me go, I will not give him the same fate as his sibling.”
“Obliterate him, Chloe!” Kellan’s words are bullets, blasts of hard exertion. “Do not let him get away with what he did to my brother! Don’t let what Jonah went through be for nothing!”
I want vengeance, too ... but at the cost of Kellan’s life? I’ll never be willing to pay that—not even for Jonah. And he would never want me to; I know that truth as strongly as I know my own.
So that’s it, then. After all that I’ve gone through, after all that’s happened, in the end, Enlilkian is going to get what he wants after all. I still don’t even know what the hell it is, but ... I’m willing to hand it over if it means Kellan walks out of here alive.
Kellan finally looks away from Enlilkian, toward me, surprise flashing in his eyes as he registers my resolution. And then, like some kind of horrible déjà vu, time slows down: the first Creator is on his feet within a flash, swinging an arm in a wide arc in front of him before Kellan can even move a single muscle or take a lonely breath.
OH. MY. GODS. NO.
I force myself into the room, tackling Enlilkian as I scramble to rebuild the floor before us. But it doesn’t matter. Not when an incorporeal Elder rushes through the opening and grabs Kellan by the collar of his shirt, rendering any floor or lack thereof irrelevant.
From below me, Enlilkian cackles.
The other Elder, he ... he ... his arm is a sword and it goes right through Kellan’s heart, carving a hole right in his chest, right where his heart rests. It all takes a single second in this godsdamn time warp. ONE. FUCKING. SECOND. For me to lose him. My Connection’s eyes go wide, so impossibly wide as time finally catches up to him, and then they roll back as it tosses him to the floor next to us, like this person I love so very, very much is nothing more than a piece of trash easily discarded.
Rage, white-hot and black hole deep, explodes within me. I’m shrieking, just crazed and screaming and tearing my hair out as I pummel the monster below me and I’m sobbing and the Elder in the air explodes, just ... pulses and explodes like a neutron bomb.
It’s not enough. He took my Connections. Both of them.
A new hole punches its fist straight through my chest and fills with acid. The room around me disintegrates, melting until sky is above us and all of those pieces that remain of that murdering bastard sizzle and evaporate.
Enlilkian smiles, wide and joyous, like he’s proud. And then his hands clamp on the sides of my head. “There’s what I’m looking for,” he hisses. “Game’s over.”
He’s trying to suck the life out of me, I marvel. I feel his power tugging at me, trying to coax mine to mix with his. It’s so clear all of a sudden. He wants my power. He can find any body to house in, but ... to rebuild the worlds he’s lost, he can’t do it with what he has. He needs my power.
My sobbing turns to maniacal laughter.
It’s my turn to grab what’s left of his face, the words to erase his existence from the worlds are so close to the tip of my tongue. But ... no. No. He does not deserve such a kind end. He deserves to feel every last thing he’s ever done to my kind.
I’m going to suck this asshole dry. He wants my power? I want his.
He hauls back and slugs me the moment he realizes what I’m doing; I no longer care. My fury doesn’t give two shits about pain any longer. Pain no longer controls me. Vengeance does. He took my husband. He took Kellan.
I’m taking him.
We’re grappling at each other, chunks of his slimy, putrefying skin sliding off with each attempt to gain a firm grip. We hit the ground; it’s softening in the heat of my madness. He’s laughing, just demonical about all of this, which only intensifies my wrath.
I punch my fist right into Jens’ chest, and then I spread my fingers out wide. He howls beneath me, digs the bones of his fingers deep into my skin, but I’m resolute. Howls transition to panic; he’s flailing, screaming at me about mistakes and deals but the thing is I. Don’t. CARE.
I can taste his fear when I yank every last bit of his essence out and into me.
Nine and ten.
It’s just number eleven I can’t deal with.
Power pulses underneath my skin. Oh so much power that I feel like, if I wanted to, I could unravel the universe with a single sigh.
Jens’ still body lies beneath mine. My fingers curve around the still muscle in his chest. “You. Are. No. More.”
It disappears. Every last bit of skin and muscle on the floor, on my hand, disappears along with it. The only thing remaining is his power.
Oh gods. So much power. Everything around me is heightened. Every atom bounces and rings, every electron, each molecule’s path is mine to trace. But none of this matters, not when Kellan is lying so still just a few inches away. His head is angled toward me, resting at an awkward angle. All I see are the whites of his eyes. His mouth is open in surprise, his hands bloody from fighting and hanging onto that damn pipe.
Sobs heave up and out of me.
I drag his body toward mine, cradling his head in my lap. His name is my prayer, my confessions for far too many sins in my life. He’s gone.
He’s gone.
I’ve lost them both.
I kiss his face, over and over, crying until my tears look like his. I’ve lost him. I’ve failed him. I failed both him and his brother so spectacularly.
I don’t want to exist any longer if they can’t, too.
“Chloe?”
A small hand touches my shoulder; I jump, but refuse to let go of Kellan. It’s a terrified Cicely.
Oh, gods. In my rage, I must have destroyed so much of the house that she was freed from her panic room. A room only my craft could open.
I close my eyes and rest my cheek against the soft black hair beneath me so I do not scare her any further. I force myself to breathe, but all I can smell is Kellan’s shampoo.
“Is he okay?”
I shake my head, a sob catching in my throat. She needs to get out of here before I lose it entirely. Before she’s at risk, too. I need to get her home, but ... as I have been for so many times in the past, I am entirely too selfish when it comes to Kellan. I won’t let him go. I can’t.
“Are the bad men gone?”
I nod.
“There are some people outside,” she tells me. “Your friends. I think they’re hurt or sleeping. I was watching them on the monitor—one of those shadow monsters found them. I was too scared to go out and see them.”
No. Not Raul and Lola, too.
Her small hand touches Kellan’s face oh so close to mine. “Can I help your friend?”
I shake my head again.
“Can you?”
“I’m not a Shaman.” My whispers are waterlogged.
She’s quiet for so long, I finally open my eyes. She’s sitting crisscross applesauce next to Kellan and me, staring at me like I’m speaking gibberish. “But ... you’re a Creator.”
I want to laugh, but it comes out mangled.
“You destroyed those bad things.” She’s so fierce when she says this. “If you can erase something, why can’t you replace it, too?”
Huh?
“Mama says you can do almost anything. Can you help your friend?”
He’s dead, I want to tell her. His beautiful, generous heart doesn’t work anymore all because I was too sca
red to take a chance.
The earliest memory I have is of when I’m three. I’m in my mother’s greenhouse, and she’s busy doing something ... potting, maybe? I’m not too far away, but I’ve figured out that if I stack some pots together, I can form a ladder. There’s a flower up on the top shelf that I really want to see, maybe smell. The memory isn’t fully complete; I don’t know if any memory at three can be. Anyway, it’s pink and pretty and far too alluring, and I climb up on the rickety wooden shelves, and then, when I’m up there, I feel like I’m on top of the world.
I’m invincible.
I wonder what it’d be like to fly.
I don’t recall exactly why I decided this was the perfect moment to attempt flying. But I do remember spreading my arms out wide, like they were wings. I am a Creator, after all. Maybe if I wish it enough, my arms will transform into feathery white wings, just like an angel’s.
I remember the exhilaration of anticipation. And then, once I jump and my arms remain flesh and bone and simply arms, not wings, there’s a terrible transition into fear.
My father once told me our brains are wired to remember the effects of pain. Burn your hand once on a hot stove, and your brain will never let you forget it. Burn = pain. Pain = bad.
But the interesting thing about pain, and our brains, is that we never can remember the exact sensation. You can remember how it feels to fall in love. You can remember what a silky flower petal feels like, or the softness of your baby blanket, or the prickliness of a cat’s tongue across the back of your hand. But you can never remember specifically what pain feels like.
You only know it hurts, and that it’s bad.
I remember falling that day, and hitting the ground. I broke an arm and an ankle, and I remember it hurting so much that I never wanted, or even dreamed, about flying again. I can’t remember what it felt like specifically, but I know it hurt like hell, because I bawled the entire way to a nearby Shaman’s house. And then I refused to go to the greenhouse for well over a year, terrified it might happen again.
A Matter of Forever (Fate #4) Page 21
