Well, that was likely her demon pet.
“Aaaana,” it screeched, from no mouth I could see, and took a shuddering step toward me. And without even touching my flesh, I felt it reach, ready to taste me again, to rock me back into that nightmare.
I scrambled back, out of the way, hopping over fire, and hauled ass for the great archway that led to the corridor. Maximilian was right—I’d clearly shot enough people already. Time to go.
Pain blasted through my sore limbs with every movement but I ran, turning the corner. At the far end, Nate stood with his back to me, working around a tear in the air like Maximilian had made outside, the blackness of night in the valley showing beyond. Peri was next to him, rocking on her feet, likely giving words of encouragement such as, Get it done or I’ll shoot you.
But it was Mishka running toward me, peasant skirt and blonde hair fluttering, eyes wide. I slowed because when someone terrified comes running at you, it’s natural to take pause.
She reached me but kept going, barrelling straight into me. “This is from Nate,” she whispered.
Pain exploded in my gut.
I blinked. Lips parted. And her mouth turned into a smile as she gave the knife in my belly a twist. Her magic—no longer blocked—seized me, kept me from moving or calling out or doing fuck all as her petite little self shoved me back, back, my feet slipping on the floor coated in my own blood. She drove me around the corner and thrust me back.
“You stay the hell away from my family.” My own switchblade shone in her grasp, dripping with blood. The bitch turned and ran and at last the magic let up; I lost my balance and fell on my ass.
Oh, like hell that was from Nate. She was so fucking dead—
The black monstrosity from Arabelle’s body stood over me, about to pounce.
Chapter Forty-Two
Didn’t See That Coming
A tendril touched me before I could react, before I could stop it, blasting agony through my mind. Silence cut through the sheer chaos of the room, through the crackle of fire and shouts and cries and the saber-tooth cat fighting with something in my peripheral vision—the silence even cut over the piercing sound magic made as it tore through reality. That silence cleaved through me too and darkness crept closer, ready to overtake me.
Leaving you, Ana. All alone. Always alone.
I flailed, cried, the claws biting—oh god the pain, the intrusion, not again, not again, not again—
Nothing left. No barrier and you can’t keep me out...all alone...they left you. Everyone left you. He left you.
That jarred. No. No, he didn’t. He never left me in the dark place.
All alone, Ana. You’re not worth coming back for. Pain sliced through me again, invading—
But no. Fuck no. I am Zara Lain and you will...NOT...touch me!
My fingers were on the shotgun and I moved without seeing, without even really feeling it, and aimed the barrel up. Squeezed the trigger. Noise blasted and the demon screeched.
I scrambled back and away as my vision returned, shaking, skin crawling with violation. My jaw set, I brought the gun up, reloaded and fired again. Black ichor exploded, painting the walls, the ceiling, dripping on the carpet as the demon flung itself back and screamed.
I should’ve run. I could’ve run. But not with that fucking thing at my back. My hands worked quickly, the familiar motions of reloading the shotgun second nature and enough to cease the shaking in my limbs. The wound in my gut was aching, blood clotting far too slowly for my liking, and my strength drained. But I got on my feet in the burning, smoky room, aimed the Rossi again, and fired.
And fired.
And fired.
And each time I squeezed the trigger and the creature took a jerky step back, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t quell the feel of it on my flesh, in my mind and in my body; didn’t ease the bruising ache or the feel of being clawed apart. But I kept on firing because in the future, when I was out of this alive and safe at home, in my own bed, and I awoke from a nightmare, I’d be able to remind myself that it was fucking dead and gone, its demon guts sprayed over a decaying manor that used to house a shadow government.
If I’d had my cell phone, I would’ve taken a picture.
I got the thing backed right up against the wall, stepped over Arabelle’s body myself, and walked until I had the barrel under its would-be head.
“Aanaaa—”
I squeezed the trigger one last time.
It didn’t have a brain but whatever was in the opaque, dark mass blew out in a spray over the wall and the creature slumped.
Ana is dead, kinda like yourself, so fuck you very much.
Smoke was thick and black; most of the carpet burned now, along with the table and chairs, the curtains along the far wall. Flames licked the remaining black paintings I hadn’t shot yet, fingers grasping through the canvas and reaching, faces screaming.
I might not need to breathe but the heat and smoke irritated me, made my eyes smart and water. My arm zigzagged with pain where I’d picked up a burn and I still bled pretty heavily from my stomach. I had no idea where Spot was, but I certainly hoped he got out alive. A crowd of the remaining Court members were in the corner, standing in a circle, their magic crackling.
Circles are rarely a good thing when talking about multiple magic users so I discarded the Rossi as I was out of shells. Scanned the ground for my pistol but didn’t see it. Instead I jerked one of the broken picture frames from the wall and ran at them. Pain tore in my gut with each movement but I’d come too far to fuck around.
The air wavered between them—none of them was Maximilian, come to think of it, and I hadn’t a clue where he might be—and I figured it was an escape hatch in the making.
I whipped the corner of the picture frame at the back of some guy’s head, the edge scraping his skull. He yelped, stumbled; I raised it again, prepared to whack someone across the face, when a force struck and threw me across the room.
My spine hit the wall, force rattling me to my bones. I hit the ground, limbs like a rag doll’s. The picture frame fell from my grasp, but it was just as well. The remaining half dozen members of the Court were slipping into another reality as the world around them burned.
Bodies littered the ground around me but only about dozen or so; other members of the Court either found another way out or...
Or went after Nate and Peri?
Nate, Peri, and Mishka, of course.
I hauled myself to my feet. She knew, of course, stabbing me wouldn’t kill me, but blood loss could slow me down and feeding me to a giant, scary-ass demon was probably expected to see the end of me.
Little did she know, I could pop back from the dead just as well as she had.
I scanned again for a weapon and my gaze snagged the glint of metal in the corner: my gun. Good. I scrambled, leapt over the reach of flames cutting across the floor. Fire singed my jeans but the fabric didn’t catch, and I kept running. Sweat slicked down my back, my brow, and my tangled hair was soaked to my skin. The flames crackled and spat around me, sparking angrily, and I darted around a burning chair, squinting in the bright light. I snatched up my gun in the corner; the butt was warm but not hot, comfortable in my grip, and I rose again. Glanced around, got my bearings, and jogged back across the room. My eyes closed to slits as black smoke puffed up and heat blasted me, irritating like my one attempt at a tanning salon.
I reached the corridor and blinked a few times, gave myself a shake. The fire was just licking around the doorframe and the long hall seemed especially dark. Smoke had billowed out, though, and people coughed and choked at the far end.
Three of them. The Hell Bitches and my ex-lover. At least it made it simple.
I stalked forward, throwing as much strength into my weakening steps as I could. Pain throbbed in my gut and my shirt was soaked with sweat and blood, skin black with soot, and my hair hung in damp ropes over my eyes. Tremors worked through my arms so I kept the gun at my side as I walked, just in case I couldn’t
aim straight. I’d have one shot before she likely blasted me with some magic and couldn’t blow it.
Nate had the tear between the manor and our world wider now, enough Peri could squeeze through, which she seemed to be trying to do; whether it was the lack of help from Maximilian or remaining magic blocks on the house, I didn’t know. And if we all died here, at that very moment, I almost thought it was worth it, because I’d get some bloody revenge.
Mishka looked back suddenly, her shoulders rising like she startled, and her eyes widened as they settled on me.
I raised the gun just as her hands splayed and magic built in the air, and squeezed the trigger.
The pop was deafening in the otherwise quiet hallway and the flash from the muzzle was blinding, flame leaping from the barrel almost three feet. The recoil jerked up my arm, my tired muscles absorbing it, and a casing ejected, striking one of the large paintings to my left.
The bullet struck her midsection, just below her breastbone. Fresh blood soaked her top, down her skirt, spilled on the floor and pooled. Her hands came up to clutch the wound. Nate was shouting something at me but I didn’t hear it.
Not with the sudden rumbling of the ground under my feet.
The floor shifted and rolled, marble cracking and crumbling. The walls rocked as the foundation below us gave out and I looked around. Plaster fell from the ceiling and the paintings shifted askew.
The paintings.
I glanced to my left again, at the huge canvas depicting a scene we’d looked at but not understood earlier. The woman with the dark hair, over the valley of black waves; her hand was extended and flames shot from her grip towards the blonde woman.
I’d thought it was Peri. Sworn it was. But realization hit, quick and hard, sinking in my aching gut, and the Desert Eagle in my grip weighed my arm down like lead.
The Desert Eagle with .50 AE ammo that lit the room like fire when a bullet tore through—like I had flames jutting from my hand—and now the antichrist’s daughter’s blood was spilled on the floor of some dimension laid right over the black valley.
Oh shit.
Chapter Forty-Three
Prophecy Fulfilled
How I managed to be a member of Mensa and yet still accidentally started the apocalypse, I had no idea. If I didn’t die, Nic would never let me live this down.
Mishka fell to her knees and the world jerked and shook before me. Blood spread across the floor, soaking through all the cracks; she slumped onto her hands and gasped. I stumbled as the ground lurched, my shoulder striking the wall and I lost my grip on the gun. It was Peri’s hands that wrapped around my arm, brushing bruised and burned skin, and tugged me, her lips moving as she shouted something I couldn’t make out over the ground roaring beneath us.
Nate was on his way back for Mishka when the entire floor gave out.
Weightlessness gripped me, like the feeling in an elevator as it descended. I blinked, hit the ground hard. The heat and smoke of the manor was gone, just the cool, scorched black earth beneath me. In the distance I saw headlights, maybe half a mile away, from an idling car. Wind blew, kicked my hair around, welcome for the brief moment before it blew harder and the earth under me turned into ice.
And not just ice. It went slick, tar-like and sticky, suctioning and grabbing me.
“Get the car!” Nate shouted to Peri over the wind and she nodded, rose and scrambled, fighting through the thickening ground.
I fought to get my feet under me and failed; the scorched earth churned and reached, wrapping around me like quicksand. I looked over my shoulder and saw it—a swirl started in the center of the valley, twisting like a whirlpool. Moving, shifting the darkness, waves rising like a giant’s mouth about to chomp down. My heart kicked up hard at the sound of screams and wails, voices clawing up as the barrier between this world and whatever was beyond thinned. The tar grabbing me had hands now, hundreds of them.
Shit. Oh, shit—get up!
I was weak—too weak. Still I fought, tried to drag myself. The pulsing pain of the wound in my gut stabbed with every movement. The black quicksand ground grew thicker, pulling me back towards the center, cold hands skimming my legs and trying to grab on. Panic rose hotly and I paddled in sludgy tar-water, limbs greatly weakened.
Nate had landed maybe forty feet ahead, where the tar ground wasn’t so thick. Mishka, was closer to me, maybe a half dozen yards to my left, blackness consuming her skirt. He glanced at both of us for a split second and I looked away. The last fucking thing on earth that I saw would not be him saving her. I was determined.
My eyes watered as I squeezed them shut and I reached as far into me as I could, calling on every bit of strength I might have left to get me the hell out of this. They say there are no atheists in foxholes but I sure as fuck didn’t pray; if there was a supreme god or force in the universe, considering my experience with all things supernatural, I was guessing he, she, or it, was a son of a bitch who wouldn’t lift a heavenly finger to help me anyway. And if I died and some deity showed up to say “I told you so”, I’d kick him in the fucking balls.
The cold, clammy hands on my legs gave another tug. Viscous black tar surrounded me now, closing over my ass, my lower back, weighing down my arms. My outstretched hands gripped nothing—not anything that could hold me, give me purchase. I couldn’t move forward anymore, couldn’t fight the tide, exhaustion settling in my bones.
This was what I got for taking on a secret society. For trying to save myself, for trying to save the world, for failing to be a step ahead and dropping my guard. And I was so fucking tired, so damaged, so hurt, I almost didn’t care. The thread in me that once promised a nameless, bloody vampire—a broken woman hovering in the skin of a dead girl—that she would not die spoke up only briefly, but this time it wasn’t enough. I gazed up at the black, starless sky, my lips parted in a gasp as everything dragged me down—
Fingers clamped on my wrist.
I tried to jerk my arm away but the hand tugged me forward. My strained gaze settled on the figure in the sludge pulling me to him and the farther we went, the easier it became to move. His arm looped around my waist, clutching me like a lifeguard, his steady gaze at the de facto shore. His free arm fought the current, treading through the black, not-water, and I kicked my legs behind us, trying to swim with him.
Headlights moved closer, tires spitting up dirt, as Peri approached behind the wheel of the SUV. I scanned the area, didn’t see Mishka—I thought maybe he’d had time to come back, maybe...
But her frustrated shout caught my attention, drew my gaze back; she was near the center of the black whirlpool now, black sludgy hands reaching up to drag her down.
Maybe I was dead. Seeing things. Crazy. Maybe it was some surreal dream, but Nate was locked onto me, easing me to where solid ground waited, and Mishka was being consumed by the black whirlpool the valley had become.
A gasp of relief left my lips as he pulled me onto solid ground. We slumped a few feet from where the vehicle idled, then fell apart, both turning to glance back. A car door opened, vehicle ticking with irritation over the keys left in the ignition, feet thumping on the dry, cracked ground. Then Peri came to a halt next to me.
No one spoke.
Mishka’s pale blonde head disappeared into the blackness, the great, gaping black mouth of the valley closing on her. The faint outline of her hand reached up for an instant before being sucked down as well. Silence descended, wind dying, what we’d been clawing through slowly solidifying; it turned to ash on my skin, on his, and fell away.
The valley was still once more—like Mishka was all it came for.
Peri cleared her throat. “So there’s a giant saber-tooth cat in the back of the SUV. If anyone cares.”
Maybe later that sentence would make sense, but right now I couldn’t think.
My lips trembled around words I couldn’t speak and I was afraid to blink, afraid it would all be a dream if I shut my eyes. I turned my head, looked at him. He stared at the spot wher
e she’d disappeared, shadows from the headlights not enough to hide his disturbed, reddened eyes.
And then he looked at me.
A long, weighted gaze passed, anything I wanted to say gone. I had no snark. Nothing profound either. There were no words because one look from him and I knew. Knew he went back for me fully aware he couldn’t grab her too, knew he’d left his child motherless, knew we’d never forget he’d made a choice that would either save us or damn us.
Maybe both.
Epilogue
Happy Ending
The metal blinds over my windows were shiny and new but I’d been eying them warily for days, just in case they fell apart.
I’d done the same thing several months ago when Sean O’Connor—in Ellie’s body—hurled himself through them. Those ones had held until I’d been thrown through a week and a half earlier, so if I just kept the fuck away from magic users, surely they’d be safe. That was a good plan since I didn’t have any new jobs yet and my homeowners insurance didn’t cover Acts of Unstable Rogue Mages.
It probably should, though.
The apartment smelled of fresh paint, too; I’d had to do a repair job in the living room and my bedroom, and with only a few windows to open at night to let air in, there wasn’t much I’d been able to do to help it dissipate. And then there was always the tinge of kitty litter, no matter how many freakin’ times a day I cleaned it. I didn’t feel much like going out and catching fresh air, so I just stopped breathing.
Packing tape gave a shriek from the roll as I dragged it over the top of a large cardboard box. Almost in echo to my action, the elevator rumbled upward. Nervous prickles ran up my spine, tension crept over my shoulders. I set the roll of tape on the coffee table and turned toward the elevator, its venture up toward my apartment seeming excruciatingly slow. My fingers smoothed my dark yoga pants and I spared a quick glance down at my shapeless T-shirt. I looked a mess and knew it; no makeup, hair woven back in a loose braid, clothes dark and plain. I didn’t want to look a mess—I wanted to seem normal, to seem okay. But it would’ve been dishonest and I was a whole lot of things, but not that.
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