I reached for some awareness, some sense of grounding or rooting, like Safar had told me to do. But there was no grounding. In fact, there was only the opposite—a floating. Untethered, disconnected, reckless.
Hina was gone. Or maybe just separate now. And even though I’d wished for that for months now, it wasn’t comforting to have lost her. My magic felt empty. Useless. Not enough.
The chasm above that beckoned me was way too big to resist on my own. Without Hina, I didn’t stand a chance.
It was reaching.
And all I could do was let it have me.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alex
Magic crackled all around us, splitting the air and leaving behind the smell of o-zone. I shut out the panic that threatened as the wind grew and the air thickened. I had no idea how much time we had left, but stopping to worry would only slow me down. Indra’s instructions involved a recitation of some language I’d never heard and it took me several tries to get it on my own.
Once I did, she nodded. “You are ready.”
“What’s next?” I asked.
“It’s time for you to fulfill your promise to me.”
“What?” I blinked at her from where I stood over her, my knife still in my hand. I hadn’t figured out yet what she wanted it for, but I’d assumed it would involve slashing my palm like they did in Hollywood movies or something. A blood bonding.
It wasn’t unheard of in old magic.
But that’s not what Indra was suggesting now. She was asking me to—
“Kill me, Alex,” she said. “It’s the only way.”
I shook my head, shocked I wasn’t readily agreeing anymore. But something had changed in Indra. And then something had changed in me. The rage was gone. “No, there has to be another—”
“There is no other way. Arguing will only cost us time and you will lose her. You must kill me to cut off my magic and bring her back. Drain my blood into the cup there,” she pointed at a pile of extra supplies Safar had dumped nearby. “Combine it with yours. Say the words I taught you and then have her drink it.”
“This is crazy,” I said, but I ran over and grabbed the cup.
“Killing me now … using my blood … It is the only way he won’t see it coming.”
I froze.
There was only one “he” whose name wasn’t required.
RJ.
Indra looked up at me with wide, black eyes, unseeing even though she stared right into me. And I knew. Indra was more powerful than Sam’s own magic and even Safar’s. It was why I’d chosen her as a grounding for Sam when everyone else had fallen through. But just how powerful was a fact she’d hidden from us by sitting in silence and pretending weakness. Part of the trap laid by Sushna.
And we’d bought it. All so that she could send Sam spiraling up and out of herself. If this kept up, Sam wouldn’t find her way back. Maybe Hina wouldn’t either.
It’s why RJ hadn’t bothered to show up. Why would he when Indra was here to do the job for him?
“You can stop this right now,” I yelled over the wind.
“I can’t,” she said, the pain in her eyes warring with that psychotic smile that had haunted me from before. Like the darkness was still trying to call her back even now. “I won’t. You must take my life. Besides, a merge requires a sacrifice.”
I stumbled backward, not even sure whether the look she gave me held any magic or not. Maybe I’d stumbled because of my own shock. Or maybe she had enough power to draw me in again.
Either way, Indra was right. I knew what I had to do.
The right or wrong of it suddenly no longer mattered. Bargains, promises, good, bad—none of it mattered. All that mattered was Sam.
Saving her.
I took a step toward Indra, my knife aimed at her chest, but she shook her head. “My throat. The blood. You’ll need as much as you can take from me. If you use it and yours, it will be enough to bring her back.”
I stopped, finally understanding what she wanted from me. For a second, I wished Breck were here to see it because this version of Indra, even with her humanity restored, was definitely more cold and calculated and crazy than Breck ever would be. Anyone who could ask for a death like this one without batting a lash had my respect. Even if she was the only woman I’d ever loathed.
As if to convince me, she straightened and lifted her chin, exposing her throat. An invitation.
Without a single hesitation, I pulled my knife and fell to my knees behind Indra, grabbing her chin in my free hand to hold her still. She didn’t fight it, and I didn’t stop or slow myself as I reached around her and sunk the point of my knife into her throat, drawing it in a quick slash across from left to right.
Blood spilled out of the opening and I leaned back, catching her as she fell forward. She crumpled instantly, her head turning sideways and her black eyes staring, unseeing, into the forest—away from Sam.
The magic crackling around me waned.
The clouds above us slowed in their gathering.
Something heavy in the forest around us lifted.
Indra let out a strangled gurgle, gagged, and then her body went limp.
And that was that.
I’d kept my promise. To her and to myself. I’d killed Indra. And I didn’t feel a single fucking shred of guilt for doing it.
“Thank you,” I said softly, lifting her body in my arms and letting her blood coat my skin as I took us both into the circle—to the woman I was meant to save using the woman I was meant to kill.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sam
I breathed in sharply as something pricked my arm and then burned its way down from my elbow to my wrist. Something in me bubbled up, struggling to break free.
The burning stopped. Footsteps shuffled.
Despite the raging inside me, I managed to open my eyes.
Alex appeared in front of me, his eyes widening when he saw me looking at him. “Sam?”
I tried to answer. Wanted to. But I felt… stuck.
“She’s here.” I felt my mouth move. Heard the voice that belonged to me. But froze as I realized I had not been the one to speak the words. That had been someone else.
“Where’s ‘here?’” Alex asked quietly.
He didn’t seem surprised to hear someone else speaking for me. In fact, he looked pissed and his face had flushed red to prove it. For some reason, that made me feel better.
“She’s inside.” The voice was mine but … not. Deeper. More confident. And gentler. But inside me, it was a storm. So much magic. It heated the air around us. Sent my heart racing with the possibilities of it—with what it wanted to do. What it had come here for.
“Let her out,” he growled.
“I can’t let her out. Only she can do that.” My voice echoed and I heard the power of a hundred other voices inside it. Like a choir of voices all raised together, the sound of it echoed off the trees around us.
And I knew.
Hina was speaking. Hina was in control. I was the one locked in a cage in my own mind.
Alex frowned and reached for something. I remembered the burning in my arm. He held up a blood-stained knife and made a fresh cut in his own arm. “What is this?” I heard myself ask.
“This is the blood of three,” he said, dropping the knife and allowing the blood from his arm to drip into a cup already half-filled. “Indra. Me. And Sam.”
He began speaking in a language I didn’t know. Deep down, my bones seemed to vibrate with an understanding of the words. Hina hummed with them and I felt myself inch closer to the front of my own mind—to the place of awareness that would put me back in control.
Alex finished his reciting and held the cup out. “Bring her back to me.”
My heart leaped.
But Hina pushed it away; it wasn’t enough.
“We cannot accept it,” I heard myself wail and there was regret in the words. Like Hina wanted it to be enough. I damn sure wanted it too. “A merge requires a sa
crifice. A life for a life. Until that is completed, we wander.”
“I have your sacrifice,” Alex said.
Hina and I both went still.
“She’s here,” Alex said, moving aside so that I caught sight of the body crumpled at his feet. A tangle of dark hair covered her face, but there was no doubt with so much blood … so much blood…
Alex grabbed my arm again, and I felt Hina’s shock mirror my own. But Alex’s expression was ferociously determined. His eyes blazed and his entire aura dared us to question him. To question what he’d done.
“She was the darkness. The yin and the yang. And she sacrificed herself willingly,” he added. “I heard that was a requirement.”
Hina and I were speechless.
“This blood I’ve mixed,” he went on, gesturing to the cup, “Belongs to all of us. You, the goddess made human. Me, the conductor. And Indra, the witch who betrayed Ea to save us all.”
“The yin and yang,” Hina repeated. She reached for the cup Alex held out and took it in my own hand, but I was still too shocked at the sight of Indra’s dead body to understand.
“I am the conductor,” he said quietly. “There is more than enough power inside that cup to ground you. Drink it and come back to me. Please.”
“We will drink to your efforts, Alex. You’ve done well.” The voice boomed now, clearly not my own, and I wanted to cover my ears against it. Alex winced and ducked his head against the echoing it made.
Hina’s words finally registered as the cup touched my lips, and I realized what I was about to ingest. I gagged even before the liquid hit my tongue. I was not down for blood-drinking. In fact, at no point had that been discussed anywhere. Ever. And I was pretty sure drinking a chalice full of blood wasn’t a werewolf thing. Or even a witch thing—at least not in this century. But here we were. And the blood slipped down my throat so easily, I wondered why we hadn’t just tried this months ago.
Worry that I’d have to do it regularly made me wonder if I shouldn’t pretend to hate it more than I did.
I opened my mouth, desperate to voice my disgust over the turn this whole thing had taken—but my voice never surfaced.
The moment the cup was empty, it slipped from my hands.
Fireworks went off inside me.
And the magic swallowed me whole.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Alex
All of my concentration, hell, all of my hope, lay in the blood of a dead girl. It was the craziest fucking idea I’d ever had. And it was the only thing that felt right—which probably made me even crazier. But I didn’t have time to psychoanalyze it.
As soon as Hina emptied the cup, the magic worked its way into a frenzy. I felt it in the air, eating away at whatever sanity I had left. Hina had spoken to me—actually spoken—as if she were the only one running the show in there. Sam was losing herself.
I prayed I’d been right.
That Indra hadn’t played me yet again.
That this was really the way I was meant to save Sam.
Above us, the moon had risen to its full height, a bright yellow circle that seemed to pull at me, and I knew it must be doing the same to Sam’s body where she’d fallen against the grass and leaves in an unmoving heap. I held my breath, waiting for something. Anything.
Some sign the blood had worked.
Nothing happened.
I checked Sam for a pulse and let out a heavy exhale when I found it beating strong and hard against my fingertips. I went back to waiting, but all around me, the air had already changed. It was thinner somehow, as if the thickness of Indra’s magic had lifted. And even Hina had dialed it back. If she was even still here.
Farther out, something cracked—like thunder but sharper—and I jumped, a shudder running through me at the yell that followed. I recognized the voice instantly as Brittany’s. Footsteps crashed through the woods and I whipped around, scanning for the danger I already knew was on its way.
A cry like that could only mean one thing: the wards were open and the wolves were coming. I cursed, debating on whether to move Sam. We couldn’t stay here—we were too exposed. But I couldn’t remove her from the circle until the merge was complete. I remembered that much from Safar’s instructions. Fuck, I wished they’d both wake up.
I scooted closer to Sam, casting a quick glance to Safar to find she still hadn’t moved, and something warm touched my fingertips. I looked down and my eyes went wide. Blood from Sam’s arm and my own had flowed to a meeting point and pooled there, joined by a large river of crimson that leaked from Indra’s still body. There was no way gravity drew it all together that way. It was something else.
Someone else.
I held my breath and stared down at Sam. Her skin had gone pale and her breathing so shallow I could barely see the rise and fall of her chest. But I knew better than to think it was just as calm on the inside. Farther out, wolves howled and people yelled.
I needed to move us. Now.
“Sam,” I called, not sure if I was helping or not by calling her name. She didn’t move. I looked up and saw a flash of fur as something way too large and yellow-eyed to be friendly slipped through the trees. “Sam,” I called again, louder now.
I reached for her cheek, brushing her hair away.
Sam’s lashes fluttered and then finally her eyes opened. I breathed a sigh that came out like a groan and reached for her shoulders, helping her up. I didn’t even know if she was Sam or Hina or both, but she was alive and awake and we had to go.
“Alex?” Sam looked around, disoriented as she sat up, her gaze catching on Indra’s body. Her eyes closed again and when they re-opened, the moment they found mine, we both froze there, so much pain and fear and uncertainty reflected back at me that my breath caught. I almost lost my grip on her writhing arm, but managed to hold it steady.
“Is it you?” I asked.
“It’s … us,” she said and grimaced, holding her head as if it hurt.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Did it work?”
“I think so,” she said and my heart filled to bursting with relief, love, hope, and so many other emotions I couldn’t name. She looked over at me, a crooked smile on her lips. “You saved me.”
I grinned out of sheer relief. “Yeah. You’re sort of inspiring that way.”
Her face fell. “But Indra… you killed her?”
I sighed because clearly there wasn’t time to explain all of that right now. “She’s inspiring that way too,” I said instead.
Sam nodded as if that were enough.
“Does this mean Hina’s … in there with you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I feel … strong. And tired. Exhausted, really. I think I need time to let it settle. It still feels like neither of us knows who’s in charge.”
I nodded at that, about to tell her I could happily give her that time if it meant she was still with me. But movement caught my eye, and I looked over to see a wolf tearing its way through the trees, coming straight for me.
Shit. We were officially out of time.
“Sam,” I warned, pulling her up. “We have to leave the circle.”
Sam hesitated when I tugged on her wrist, her pale skin now tinted green. She shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t know if that’s—”
“The wards are down!” I heard Breck yell as he appeared from one direction and then took off at a run in another for the wolf headed this way.
Growls and snarls filled the air, drowned out by Breck’s insane battle cry. Sam tipped her head back and howled along with them, a long and lonely sound that died abruptly as she suddenly went limp. She crumpled and I barely caught her in my arms, scooping her up and holding her there, cursing the time.
Our ride should have been here by now.
Wolves poured into the clearing, slowing when they spotted Sam and I in the center of the circle. Adrenaline kicked in and I planted my feet, adjusting my hold on the girl I loved so that I could grip the knife with my free hand.
&
nbsp; I glanced over at Indra’s body, the blood pooled around her in a dark stain over dead leaves and tangled hair. One of the wolves had already caught the scent and was sniffing at her. I wrenched my gaze way, certain I didn’t want to see whatever they did to her next.
Safar still hadn’t moved either, but so far, the wolves had left her alone, either uncaring or oblivious to her unconscious body half-hidden by the brush and leaves that had fallen around her when the winds had died. But it was only a matter of time. And I couldn’t protect them both.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. If you’re going to wake up, now would be a great time,” I said in a low voice.
Sam gasped, and I almost dropped the knife in my hand, glancing down at her in surprise. I hadn’t actually expected—
“Alex?” she asked and relief flooded me. If I hadn’t already been on the ground, my knees would have given out and sent me there.
“The wards are down. The wolves are here. Tell me what to do.”
Above, the clouds roiled, once again gathering to blot out the moon. Below, the ground shook. In front of me, wolves poured in until there was a wall of them surrounding us. Nothing but fur, gleaming teeth, and wild eyes.
“I can’t … I don’t …”
My shoulders sagged. Even if it had worked and Sam was merged, she wasn’t in any condition to help right now. I had to get us out of here. It was up to me.
One of the wolves took a step forward, closing the distance between us slowly, like a predator toying with its prey. I huffed and backed away, irritated more than afraid. “You’re wasting my time and yours, asshole,” I said. “If you’re coming, do it now. I’ve got shit to do.”
The wolf snarled and leaped.
I stumbled backward, Sam still clutched in one arm and my knife in the other. I’d never fought anything one-handed before. Never carried an unconscious body through battle either. It was a day of firsts. And probably lasts.
But the werewolf never made it close enough for me to find out. A metal-tipped arrow flew through the air and buried itself in the wolf’s throat before it could reach me. It went down with a yelp and fell still.
Defiance (Heart Lines Series Book 5) Page 23
