by Lan Chan
“Lex!” Basil called. He dispensed with the magical camouflage. A shot of orange fire ignited along the vine around my foot. The thing reacted by expanding in girth and whipping me around in a circle. I screamed as I was spun like cotton candy in its wheel. The vine started to drag me into the water. I clawed at the sand but it made zero difference. Phoenix grabbed my shirt in his teeth and tried to pull me back. Basil and Isla did the same with my arms. Neither of them was strong enough to halt the pull. Basil let go suddenly and threw his arms in the air. The lightning bore down on us a second later.
He braced against it. The beach became bathed in a bright glow of orange. Again and again lightning struck. Basil took the brunt of it as best he could, redirecting it as far away from us as possible. But he’d already spent much of his energy keeping the portal open. Without him holding on to me, the vines circled around my waist and renewed their pulling. My feet hit the water. Though I was no longer afraid of the ocean, I was for damn sure terrified of the fifty-foot deity who split the cyclone of water and stepped out from between the waves.
She wore a moss-green Grecian dress that fluttered softly despite the hurricane-level winds. The shroud of hatred was still etched on her face. She flicked her wrist and the vines lifted me ten metres into the air. I lost sight of everything as my world turned upside down. I thought I heard Jacqueline calling my name, but the sound was stolen by another crack of thunder. More and more vines grew out of the sand. They swept across the beach in smacking motions, collecting as many of the supernaturals in their wake as possible.
Gaia turned me upright. “You should never have been born,” she moaned. The vines around me constricted. My mouth opened, but I didn’t have enough breath left to scream. I tried to draw a circle around myself so that it slowed the vines from crushing me to death. It was pointless. Her power was comparable to the seraphim. And she was on her home turf. One more squeeze and she shattered my circle. Something cracked in my side. This time I did scream.
“Alessia!” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry at the sound of Matilda’s voice. I didn’t have the wherewithal to check where she was. My knees scraped against each other. Phoenix was on the beach growling. Bright lights flashed all around me like fireworks. The supernaturals were hitting Gaia with everything they had but it did little to dissuade her. Their high magic was nothing more than a mosquito-like irritation.
Tired of their pathetic attempts at fighting back, Gaia waved her hand and the vines offered me to her. She took me in a grip that matched the tightness of the vines. The look in her eyes said that she wanted to feel the life draining from me. All I could think of was that if I had my hedge magic, I might have been able to fight back.
She made a furious derisive sound. “You dare to consider hurting me with the very power I bestowed to your blood?” she demanded. “You betrayed me!”
I was bleeding in a bunch of places. My head was light from having been held upside down. I’d like to think that was why I wasn’t thinking straight.
“Hey, lady!” I yelled, my voice hoarse. “I didn’t do anything to you. And I’m starting to think my great-grandmother had the right idea.”
Of course she took it the wrong way. The circle I weaved around me lasted about two seconds against her crushing grip. I curled myself into a ball and expected to be dead soon. Instead, over the sound of the thunder and the supernaturals fighting in the background, I heard a portal opening. It gurgled and spat, telling me it had opened up in the water. The demon squid with hundreds of tentacles rose up out of the water.
“Kraken!” Professor Mortimer’s voice shouted.
I didn’t get a good look because the next thing I knew, one of the kraken’s tentacles shot out. It snatched Gaia around the waist and tugged. She went flying back into the water with me in her grip. I turned back to look at the foreshore. The last thing I saw was a shot of emerald light raining down from the sky. Kai’s eyes widened as he landed. He sprang for me but it was too late. Gaia crashed into the water, taking me down with her.
39
I was going to die in the water. I held my breath for as long as I could as the kraken dragged us farther and farther down into the dark depths of the ocean. I wasn’t even sure if we were in Australian waters anymore. The portal that had opened up could have originated anywhere. The pressure on my lungs was unbearable. I could no longer see anything. Gaia’s grip on me never slackened. She didn’t need to breathe. She would hold on to my lifeless body for eternity if she had to.
My lungs were going to burst. Just when I felt myself give in to the inhale, the amulet at my throat pulsed to life. It created an arcane circle around my head. I gasped and sputtered, but the air I breathed was fresh. The light from the amulet gave me enough illumination that I could see the kraken and Gaia were locked in a physical battle. She was holding her own pretty well with one arm. At any moment I thought she might let me go to concentrate on the more dangerous foe. But she continued to hold on no matter what. I felt her body roll as the kraken smashed her across the face with its tentacle. In the water I didn’t know how painful that would be. The way Gaia’s head snapped back said that the laws of earthly physics probably didn’t apply in this instance.
I thought I was chilled to the bone until the first icicle scratched me in the nose. Ice and I no longer got along. Not since the cavern in the Hell dimension. And as I looked down into the depth where the kraken was trying to drag us, that was exactly where I saw we were headed. Towards a portal leading to the Hell dimension. Gaia was a supreme being in the Earth dimension. In hell, I wasn’t sure if that would still be true. And I was sure I would be less than an ant.
The remaining heat in my body leached out. I was so cold I could barely feel my extremities. With that terrifying thought causing my heart to palpate, the sea flickered around me. One second I was cradled tightly in Gaia’s grip and the next I was suddenly free-floating. Her head turned back in my direction. I grinned as I glanced at my freed arms and legs. I’d phased right through her. She tried to reach back for me, but the kraken held firm.
Green light bloomed in the water above me. It flicked and died and bloomed again. I wasn’t sure what was happening until the light reappeared in a different location. Kai was trying to find me but the water was too dark for him to see anything.
Now that she wasn’t preoccupied with me, Gaia drew her hands together. Sparks of lightning flared around her fingers. Holy hell! I flailed my arms and kicked with my legs to try and get away from what was going to be the world’s biggest hairdryer in a bathtub situation. I hoped like crazy that Kai had seen what she was about to do and teleported out.
Gaia clapped her hands together. She directed it towards the kraken. The voltage of electricity she shot was so high it turned the sea into a lava lamp. I had enough time to draw a circle around myself. I dragged every inch of magic I could muster to hold the electricity at bay. The scent of burned hairs filtered through the air bubble, but when the light dimmed, I wasn’t dead. Neither was the kraken. Instead, it was severely pissed off. What kind of messed-up demon was this?
A demon that will save your life, Lucifer said in my head. All around me, thousands of smaller portals opened. Through them, hundreds and hundreds of aquatic demons streamed through. Most of them appeared reptilian. Some of them reminded me of Doctor Thorne. All of them pissed me off. They carried serrated blades that they used to stab the Earth deity. She flinched where they got in a hit. I flinched in sympathy. More of them streamed through the portal and attacked her.
For his own messed-up reasons, Lucifer was trying to save me. Just like he had in my nightmares. To do that, he would kill Gaia. Never mind the consequences of snuffing out a deity. So I was once again stuck in between a rock and a very hard place. And I was bloody tired of it.
Kai appeared beside me. When he tried to grab me, I pushed away from him. There was enough residual light from Gaia’s explosive temper for him to see me gesturing at the deity. He shook his head, his expre
ssion murderous. I tried to kick him in the water, but unlike the kraken, I had zero strength. My own temper was starting to simmer. Kai wouldn’t stop trying to save me. So I had to try and save him. When next he reached out, I wrapped my arms around his waist. As soon as we touched, he tried to teleport, but I phased out of his hold. In the second when he was gone, I sank into the Ley dimension and uncapped the lid on the darker magic that I now associated with death.
Like a soda bottle that had been shaken for too long, the resulting release was catastrophic. The last time I had lost control like this, I destroyed a section of the beach. This time, there was no fear to leash me. The first circle sliced through the demons closest to me. The following ones compounded the effect until I became an explosive. This deep and between dimensions, I sensed no other sea creatures. The magic was free to wreak as much destruction as it wanted. I poured all of my frustration, all of my anguish at the loss of my hedge magic, all of my fear at what was to come, into the fire that propelled the circles. They spun and spun until they were cutting into anything that moved around me.
I felt it the second the circles struck Gaia. She recoiled and tried to absorb the energy, but these circles weren’t made of power that originated from her. I threw out my hand and recalled the ones that were hurtling in her direction. The rest acted like a circular saw spinning in perpetual motion. They grazed a tentacle on the kraken and kept going. A thousand arcane circles chopped the sea demon into sushi. It groaned as it died. I closed my eyes against the pity. Especially when I had felt its killing rage when my magic brushed up against it. The only reason it was sparing me was because its master wanted me alive. Were it not for Lucifer, I would be squid food.
My chest heaved when it was over. The pressure of the water made my breath shallow. Even though I had air, the cold coming from the portal to the hell dimension and the depth of the water made me feel like I was drowning anyway. Gaia floated aimlessly for a moment. I feared she might be seriously injured when her arm snatched at my leg.
She hauled me in front of her. A thread of blue magic locked around the amulet at my throat. She crushed the amulet with a flick of her other hand. The bubble of air burst. Water rushed in at me. The pressure was so immense I thought my brain was going to explode. I closed my eyes and forced myself to calm down. One beat. Two beats. Now!
I phased through her hold once more. Green light appeared in the water. Kai grabbed me at the same time Gaia tried to. He got there first. We teleported out of the watery dimension.
She was mere seconds behind. Both of us landed on the foreshore at the same time. She shrank back into the size of a human female. I was soaked through and gasping for breath but she didn’t have a hair out of place. Kai shoved me behind him. He drew his angel blade and advanced. Gaia grinned. The only way I could describe the look in her eyes was: insane.
The Terrans left on the beach raced to her. They fanned out around her in a semi-circle, their poison guns raised. Rachel was not among them. Behind us, I could hear the flap of Nephilim and Fae wings. The choreographed growl of dozens of shifters made me shudder. Light of every colour from the mages lit up the darkened skies.
“You dare to defy me, boy?” Gaia said. She began to grow once more. A diamond-headed spear appeared in her grip.
Kai’s wings unfurled from his back. Spotless white wings shielded by green light. They lifted him up into the air so that he remained in eye contact with her. Gaia’s mouth twisted. “You’re one of Raphael’s,” she said.
“The last one,” Kai said. I was surprised he bothered to speak to her. He was usually so focused on his target that speech was no longer a consideration.
She turned her head to the side. “Yet you would throw your life away for this wretch?” Okay, now I was pissed. It was the vindicated smile on Jessica’s face that really irked me. I took a leaf out of the demon’s books. Their blades could harm her. She was still bleeding metaphysical blood from the many cuts they had made.
I closed my eyes and drew the Ley dimension around me. Morning Star! I called. The demon blade that I’d left behind in my room at Bloodline responded without hesitation. It hurtled through the dimensions and appeared in my grip.
“If you’ve got a problem with me,” I said, “Let’s get this over with.”
“Blue,” Kai growled.
“No,” I said. “If she wants me dead, she can come and get me.”
“Wishful thinking,” she said. She waved a hand, and everyone, including Kai, was a hundred metres away. I saw him scream but couldn’t hear the sound of it. He flew forward only to be rebuffed with a charge of electricity the way Professor Mortimer had been when he attempted to touch the soul gate. My immediate reaction was to run to him. But Gaia stepped in the way.
“He’s not dead,” she said. “Do you know why you need to be?”
“Because you’re a lunatic?”
She moved towards me. The demon blade was weightless in my hands. But I could train for a thousand lifetimes and I still wouldn’t be able to beat her. There was a reason why these deities weren’t supposed to do battle. The ground beneath us rocked as Gaia stepped to me. Each time her feet touched the ground a fissure opened up in the earth. They didn’t stop cracking when they hit the perimeter of where the spectators stood. On and on they went. The earth shook before her wrath.
As she closed the distance, I forced my heart to slow and pretended that I was inside the Grove with the nymphs. When she brought her spear down on me, I took a breath and phased through it. She struck again without slowing. I evaded once more. This was an inevitable game of cat and mouse. Soon I would slow down and she’d get in a hit. I was sure she was toying with me anyway.
For all of her supposed higher existence, she was so twisted by hatred and anger that she was enjoying my discomfort. I was cold and wet. I still had water in my lungs, and I was pretty sure my ribs were cracked where she’d tried to squeeze my guts out of me. My theory that she was faking it panned out. Her strikes got faster the more I phased. It became impossible to keep up with her. I had only just jumped out of the way of a downward strike when I turned and the tip of her spear was right in front of my face. I twisted and rolled the way Kai had taught me, but she nicked the apple of my cheek.
I gritted my teeth against the pain and phased once more. I landed in a crouch a few metres away from her. My limbs groaned. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up any longer. Seeing that I was having trouble straightening up, she threw her spear in a haphazard manner in my direction. I was sure she didn’t really care if it hit me. It still came hurtling towards me at an ungodly speed. At the last second, I smacked it aside using the demon blade. The metal of the blade clanged against the spear. Pain vibrated up my arm but at least I didn’t get skewered.
“Not bad,” Gaia said. “You would have had so much promise as one of mine.”
I coughed. Blood spattered onto the sand. Awesome. I was bleeding internally. How many times was I going to be wrong today? This was definitely the way I was going to die. I kicked the spear aside thinking she might come for it. What she did instead had pain of another sort bursting in me. She turned her palms up to the sky and greenery burst into life all around me. I tried to get up and run but they grew too quickly. Saplings turned to canes and branches before I could even blink. Around me, a low forest of briars came to life. Now I knew how that manticore I had beaten in my entrance trials felt. The canes curled around my body making it impossible to move without being cut to shreds.
“Got you,” she said.
I snorted. Mostly out of sheer terror. I tended to babble when I was scared. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I asked.
This time, she did smile. “That wicked little sense of humour of yours,” she said. “It comes from him. The reason why your earth magic is so strong is because of him. The prophesy that he will one day break his chains and return to claim dominion over this dimension is because of you. You were made from Lucifer’s blood. He needs you to be free.
I won’t allow it.”
All of my terrified humour disintegrated. I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. “You think I’m his daughter?” I clarified.
“No,” she said. “You’re much worse. You’re a part of him. The worst parts. Your mother knew it. She wanted to take her own life, but your great-grandmother tried to stop her. Hilary betrayed everything she was to save you. Your life dooms all others.”
“You’re lying!”
“Why would I lie?”
I didn’t need to know the answer. I was already searching through the memories Hilary had sent me for corroborating evidence. I found it in the image of a young woman whose body was dashed on the rocks below an outcrop on this very peninsula. I tried to swallow but couldn’t seem to get my throat to work.
“I am not,” I said to nobody in particular.
“You most certainly are. You must be selfless where your great-grandmother couldn’t be,” she said. “It is the only way for him to remain confined.”
It took a few beats for her words to really sink it. When they did, I swallowed. The briars around me disappeared. In their place was a simple dagger. “Do it,” she said.
She was asking me to take my own life for the greater good of all the dimensions.
I stared at the dagger. I was already so weak. It wouldn’t take much to stop everything I’d seen in my nightmares from happening. If I died, it would save everyone I cared about. Something slammed once more against the barrier she had erected. Several somethings.
Basil was throwing balls of orange fire at the barrier. It simply absorbed his energy. I could tell he was shouting at people, but there was nothing anyone could do. Kai’s green light flared again as he rushed the barrier only to be rejected. No matter what he did, Kai wasn’t going to get through. I turned my head and allowed myself to look at him. Professor Mortimer and Jacqueline had him propped up between them. He had survived a second blast from the soul barrier, but the way his wings were singed said he wouldn’t survive another one. He wouldn’t survive at all if Lucifer broke free. None of them would. Despite this, Kai struggled against them. His face was contorted in such rebellious pain that I couldn’t bear to watch him.
