by Bec McMaster
Cleo took Lascher's gloved hand, her hair falling down her back in straight, silken sheets. Crow feathers capped her shoulders, and she wore a cloak of black velvet, her dress cut low in front to reveal the smooth slope of her breasts.
"Come, sweet child," the demon called. "Open the gates."
"We need one more sacrifice," she said.
"We have to stop her," Bishop told him, strain showing on his face. "If she opens those gates, we’ll all die."
Cleo’s eyes were blank. She took the Blade of Altarrh, and sliced it down her wrist. Not even a flinch betrayed her. Blood welled, and then she squeezed her tortured flesh, and it began to drip into the snow at the demon's feet.
This, then, was London’s doom. This was how it would end, in a world full of blood and the screams of the dying as the Shadow Horde came through. She'd always seen him in the Vision. And herself.
But neither of them had ever realized which one of them would bring about the destruction.
One more sacrifice.... No. Not her. Cleo lifted the Blade, seeking his gaze as she angled it toward her chest. He shoved away from Bishop and staggered toward the inverted triangles.
"Don't!" Lucien cried, but it sounded so far away.
Sebastian slammed into the ward, but it didn't fling him back as it had done to Bishop. It melded around his skin, sound cutting off abruptly, and time seeming to slow around him as he passed through it. Mage globes exploded silently around him like fireworks, and he saw Remington slowly whirling and sending razor sharp ribbons of light from his fingers, cutting down a pair of imps who sought to leap upon Lady Eberhardt's back....
And then the world rushed past him again and Sebastian hit the ground inside the hexagram, rolling to his feet.
It was different in here. Sound muted, but no longer entirely silent. He saw two worlds beyond the invisible walls of the hexagram. The others were still fighting the pack of imps, though every movement seemed to have slowed down. Bishop turned, his knee lifting, and his leg stretching out into a painfully slow extension as an imp launched itself from the top of the garden wall, its lips peeling back in a hiss. His heel slammed into the imp's chin with a visible shudder, its face rippling from the impact. Ianthe and Lucien fought back to back, mage globes of red and blue whirling around the pair of them like a firestorm.
But if he stared past that world he could see another. Stars stretched from horizon to horizon, a black and white checkerboard flowing over the ground.
Two worlds.
Two planes.
And another one visible in the sky above them, fiery red lines boiling there impatiently, like a seamstress’s ragged seam. The seam bulged, and he could see faces there, monstrous faces trying to push their way through. All it would take would be one pull and something would spill out....
"Do you see it now?" the demon whispered. "My world is dying. There are too many of us trapped within, and we have slowly torn each other to pieces. We need new prey. Something to feed this thirst."
"So you wish to destroy my world?" He turned back to them.
"There are many humans. What is the loss of a few million? You breed faster than we do."
"I won't let you have my world." He met the black queen's black eyes. "I won't let you have my wife."
Standing in front of the demon, she watched him come with a sultry expression, the Blade still angled toward her chest. "My king doesn't have a choice. He doesn't make my decisions for me."
Don't trust her, Malachi Gray had said.
She's no longer your wife.
"Cleo," he said hoarsely. He’d never seen her look like this, and it struck him how familiar her cross expression, exasperation, and glowing smiles had become. Cleo couldn’t hide a damned thing, and yet this stranger—this black queen—held the same unblinking qualities as the demon. Whoever this was, it wasn’t his wife. There was a stillness to her expression, a hungry eagerness that was unlike her.
But he could feel the real Cleo in the back of his mind, the bond between them pulsing a little brighter as he came into her sphere.
Cleo was still in there.
He just had to reach her.
The Blade in her hand flipped abruptly, the hilt falling into her palm. One last sacrifice. She hadn't meant herself.
Of course.
"You should have allowed me to kill the incubus," Lascher murmured. "I would have spared you, but the spell needs another death to power it. This is not personal."
"No!" A faint scream sounded through the bond. The real Cleo, hammering at her cell.
"Then wield the Blade yourself," he told it. She shouldn't have to watch this happen by her own hand.
"But I want to do it," said the black queen.
"She needs to be initiated," Lascher added. "Your blood will give her strength. And I can't touch the Blade."
The demon and the black queen parted, moving with predatory intensity around him. Sebastian opened himself to the flow of his sorcery. It buoyed him, offering strength, but he wasn't certain if he could face the demon and survive. And he couldn't hurt her.
How to stop this then?
"I love you, and I would do anything to protect you, Sebastian."
A long ago night, Cleo's hand curling in his and offering comfort, but nothing more. Love. He'd never understood it, not truly.
The moment in Lady Beaumont's house came to mind, his father's face rippling as the demon finally threatened Sebastian. The threat had given Drake the strength to rise up and overtake it, even for a moment. His father had been driven by love, the one thing powerful enough to overcome the demon's stranglehold upon him.
This wasn't about fighting them. He couldn't win that way, and the pair of them were anticipating it. A month spent mastering himself was never going to be enough. Lady E had known that.
Could he gamble everything?
Upon love?
"You want a sacrifice?" His voice sounded hoarse, but he let the tide of power ebb from his body as he released it. He looked at his wife, forcing himself to see past those black eyes, trying to find her somewhere within. "Then you have it."
He knelt on the wet lawn, unbuttoning his coat with swift fingers. Nerves fluttered in his stomach, but he cast the coat aside and looked up. Both of them blinked at him.
They're not human. The demon thinks it knows humanity, but it doesn't.
It couldn't see the trap.
"My life is yours, Cleo. It always has been." He started working on the buttons of his shirt, tearing it when his fingers fumbled, and jerking it open.
"Finish it," the demon said remotely, though he could see the bulge in its jaw as Drake fought to rise.
The black queen strode toward him, the Blade of Altarrh in her hands. His blood was already on the knife. He could feel it hungering for more.
Grabbing a handful of his hair, she yanked his head back, revealing his throat.
"The first time I ever met you," he said softly, "I wanted to hate you. I was terrified to see what sort of woman my mother had saddled me with. I knew your father, and so I wasn’t hopeful of much. A forced marriage to Tremayne's daughter?" He laughed gently, free of the bitterness that had once chained him. "And yet, there you were, standing amidst your ducks. Feeding Sir Eiderdown and Lord Featherbottom, and Christ, you were babbling, but there was something about you I’d never seen before. And you were… beautiful. You were everything I think I’d never dared hope for."
She hesitated. Just a faint flicker of expression across that disdainful face, but it was there. He wasn't imagining it.
Could she hear him, deep in her prison? He swallowed hard. "Fight her, Cleo."
"The night I first kissed you, the frozen prison around my heart began to melt," he whispered. "You have been there at every step of the way, forcing me to be a better man. Holding me when I have weakened. And loving me, loving me no matter how much I loathed myself."
"Finish it," the demon hissed, sensing, perhaps, its doom.
"Cleo, I love you." Sebastian cup
ped the back of her calf through her dress. The soul-bond flared with the physical link. She was in there, he could feel her. Her light was small, but he cupped his hands around it and blew on the spark, trying to bring her back to life. "This is not your fault. I give you my heart, my death, if you want to take it. It's yours. My heart was always yours, and it always will be, no matter what. My life is yours. I love you."
The black queen shook her head, her skin rippling from beneath as if some hidden war was waged inside her.
"Fight her," he whispered, touching the link and feeling something brush against him.
Then her expression hardened.
"If you love me, then you’re a fool," said the black queen, lifting the Blade of Altarrh in her hand.
Chapter 30
A THOUSAND MOMENTS stretched out in that second.
And Cleo saw it all.
Sebastian on his knees in front of her. The knife in her hand, growing heavier by the second.
The knife descending toward his vulnerable throat.
No! She screamed it with her entire being.
With his hand touching her body, she was suddenly no longer alone, trapped in the dark. The bond between them swelled, and she pushed on the invisible walls trapping her in the dark, raging up within herself.
Sebastian looked up at her, his gaze unflinching. He refused to look at the descending knife. Refused to do anything but pour his emotions through the bond between them. "My life is yours. I love you."
Cleo screamed, the sound breaking from her lips as she fell heavily into her body. She could sense the shadow within her, fighting for control, but she had more power here, linked to him as she was.
The Blade fell harmlessly to her side.
And Cleo looked down into Sebastian's relieved face before closing her eyes. This was not done yet.
Whatever the demon had done to her, it had stripped all the veils from her eyes. The world seemed entirely different, a second plane of existence sitting almost on top of the real world. It was a simple matter to take that sidestep into another world. She opened her eyes and found herself in the dream-plane, the checkerboard tiles stretching from horizon to horizon, and the real world merely an echo.
A woman stood there, dressed all in black. She turned around, and Cleo stared into her mirror image, though she'd never worn an expression like that upon her face.
"I cast you out," she said softly, feeling the steadiness of Sebastian's hair beneath her hand in the real world.
"You cannot. I'm a part of you," said the black queen.
"I cast you out," she said, more firmly this time as she advanced. "You're nothing more than a parasite, and I am done with leeches trying to drain me."
The black queen threw everything she had at Cleo, twisting the dream world into a dark prison, reminiscent of the one she'd just been in. "Without me, you'll be alone. Trapped in here for all your years."
"I'm not alone," she said, taking another dangerous step forward. "My husband loves me. It is you who is alone."
The Blade in her hands shimmered, ethereal light streaming off its runes as it created light in the darkness. She finally understood how Drake, Morgana, and her father had created the Infernal Relics. They'd been crafted in the physical world, but it was here, in the plane between the mortal realm and the Shadow Dimensions, that the enchantments had been laid.
A weapon of both worlds, meant for a creature of both worlds.
"No," whispered the black queen, the dark heart of her.
"Yes. I cast you out." In the real world, she turned to look into the demon's horrified eyes. "You have your sacrifice."
Cleo drove the Blade into her own chest, shoving it down deep into her shadow self. The black queen screamed.
* * *
"Cleo!" Sebastian yelled, as she drove the Blade into her chest, sinking it up to the hilt. The demon bellowed in rage, sinking to its knees, its skin rippling violently.
No. He scrambled to catch her, to stem the blood, to save her, somehow... but those dark eyes were suddenly locking on his face as if she saw him again. His Cleo. Not the black queen.
And she drew the Blade of Altarrh from her chest, a thin line of blood suddenly flaring with golden power as the wound sealed itself. "It can't harm me in this place. I wasn't truly here. We're not truly in the real world."
A shuddering gasp escaped him. He traced his fingers down the center of her chest.
"She's gone," Cleo whispered. "I destroyed her."
"But... how?" No true wound from the Blade would ever heal. A single cut could kill a man, if he was unlucky.
"It's complicated. It's meant to kill a demon, which is not a physical entity, and... well... I'm not entirely human, or so it seems, and I was both here and on a different plane at the same time, so the wound was dealt on the dream plane, and dispatched the black queen—"
He didn't care. She was alive, and clearly not about to die. She was back, her eyes the same color as whiskey, and warm and lit from within with all the spark that made her what she was.
Sebastian captured her face and dragged her mouth to his. "I thought you were about to die." He shoved his hands into her hair, driving his tongue into her mouth, kissing her until neither of them could breathe. "Don't ever leave me again."
"I won't."
Cleo broke the kiss with a gasp, tears glistening in her eyes. "You came for me. You don't know what it felt like to be trapped inside her. Trapped"—her head turned toward the demon—"the way your father is trapped. We have to save him."
"The demon's too strong."
"No." Determination crossed her brow. Above them the skies were roiling, thick black clouds lit by the white light from the hexagram. "It's started the ritual, which is draining its strength. If the three of you distract it, I can get close to it. I know what to do now."
He stared down at the Blade in her hand. If the demon got its hands on her again....
"Start the spell!" Cleo snapped at him, turning to face the hexagram. "You need to trust me."
The demon saw her coming and hissed, driving to its feet. "You could have been great. You could have been mine. My child."
"I am great," Cleo told it, her hair whipping back in the winds as the spell began to suck at the world around it. "And you have your sacrifice."
"You will pay for this." Then it smiled darkly and lifted its arms. "You will be the first to die, White Queen."
Sebastian lifted his arms at the eastern point, feeling Lucien take his place at the southern point of the star. Verity helped Bishop stagger to the western point, her face pale, and Bishop’s determined.
"Three sons," whispered the demon. "Three relics. Three sacrifices." It looked up, toward the black clouds. "And the perfect moment in time…. Can you feel it? How thin the Veil is right now?"
Heat shimmers bathed the air. The snow inside the triangle melted instantly, and Sebastian could feel immense power batter at him.
"Link!" Lucien yelled at him, and Sebastian saw golden light stream along the bloodied line between him and Bishop.
Bishop’s power grew incrementally. He stretched out a hand—and the link—toward Sebastian.
He'd sworn once never to lose control of his body again. Never to be used. Never to trust.
One last chance to save Drake….
One last chance to save all of them, and stop this spell before the veil was torn open and the shadow horde appeared….
All he had to do was open himself up, wholly and completely, in a way he’d never dared before, and let his brother take over his puppet strings.
And he couldn’t do it.
"Yes, you can," Cleo whispered through the bond.
He looked down at the two bloodied lines which led directly from his feet to Bishop and Lucien’s. The two of them stared at him, Bishop gritting his teeth against the stream of power running through him. Bishop needed the lines to connect, so he could earth some of the energy.
It took everything within Sebastian to reach toward both
Bishop and Lucien. It felt like he was pushing against some enormous iron doors in his mind; brushing against Bishop’s psyche in a fumbling attempt to connect.
But Cleo believed in him.
And Bishop had been there for him, and Lucien, and all the others. This was family, the one thing he'd always craved.
And… there.
Bishop’s metaphorical hand caught his own, just as he tumbled from the cliff in his mind.
"Got you." Bishop said along the link, and then power was roaring up through Sebastian’s feet.
He was no longer in control. He was drunk on the feeling of it, Bishop angling the lines of power out toward Lucien.
"Got you," Lucien said, with a wince.
The triangle of light—one half of the hexagram—lit up, burning through the remaining snow. The demon in the center of the star looked down in surprise, clouds of darkness whipping past it, and the tear in the fabric of reality above it pausing. Sebastian could almost see its thought process. It turned toward Bishop, recognizing who held the triumvirate of power.
Who to kill.
"Now!" Ianthe yelled.
And the second triangle lit up as she, Verity, and Lady E took the remaining points of the star.
Ianthe was wielding the second triangle, and where the lines crossed the first, he could feel some sort of shiver of connection.
Bishop started chanting, binding the spell work into the ritual.
Sebastian ground his teeth together.
He'd spent all bloody night learning the words. It didn't truly matter what he said—the key was in the ritual, in his mind recognizing what he wanted to create—but the spell was complex enough that he'd stuck to memorizing Bishop's spell. Words spilled from his lips, echoed by the other five.
The sheer amount of power Bishop was handling was incredible. Not even Drake’s reserves could match it. But the demon was trying to fight, holding them at bay as they channeled energy through the three Relics Infernal.
A trembling hand rested on his forearm. He could barely feel it. The pain behind his right eye was intensifying. And then Eleanor stepped past, hobbling on her cane, her eyes locked on Drake.
