Bound in Black (33 page)

My mother tried to raise herself, but I clutched her by the wrist and forced her back to my side. With the other hand, I pulled the dagger from my shoulder and tossed it to the ground. My VS pooled around the wound, blocking Bamal’s poison from seeping into my body. I touched my fingers to the gash and jerked my mother’s arm forward, wiping a streak of blood on her pale wrist.

“This is my blood…and yours. Can’t you feel it?”

My VS rose from within me, singing with a vibrancy I’d not felt before.

“No,” she cried, her crimson eyes bleaching pale blue. Her gaze shot upward once more, panic filling her small frame. “The Blood Moon is full. It must be now…or we all perish. My lord will be angry.”

“Mother!” I screamed. “Come to me. I am blood of your blood.”

Her trembling hand came out to touch the blood streaking her skin.

I spoke not to her but to the power swelling in my core. “Flame within, if you have ever been mine, show her what is true and divine.”

Closing my eyes, I shot like an arrow a stream of images laced with the power of Light straight to my mother’s heart.
Making s’mores by the fire with Mom and Dad…riding a bike for the first time…watching her paint from the stool in her studio…dressing up for Halloween, both of us smiling for Dad when he took the picture…blowing out candles on my seventh birthday while she laughed and kissed my cheek: “May all your wishes come true, princess.” A swirl of dark, then Mom standing on the rail of the Mississippi Bridge. A bystander yelled, “Lady, don’t do this. It’s not worth it.” My mother’s haunted face turned to the camera, the gusting wind lifting her hair in golden streams around her delicate face. She replied, “Yes. They are,” and disappeared over the edge.

I yanked us from the memory. Her woeful gaze held me, though she said nothing at all. I took her hand and placed it on my belly. “Your grandchild grows here. Your blood…and mine. I cannot sacrifice myself. And I can’t let you kill my best friend.”

My vision blurred from the amping of power building to a boiling point and from the tears pooling in my eyes.

“But there must be a sacrifice,” she said. “Genevieve.”

I sobbed at the sound of my name on her lips. “Mom. There must be another way. There
must
be.”

I hated the whole world at this moment when there was no way out, no way around a fucking prophecy that demanded death to unleash heaven and hell on humanity.

She lifted her hand to my cheek and smiled. “Shhhh…don’t cry, princess.” With a lightning-swift move, she grabbed the dagger from the grassy ground and plunged it into her heart.

“No!” I shrieked.

She fell onto her back. I pulled her into my lap and grabbed the handle of the dagger, but she stopped me, her hand over mine, our blood mingling.

“No, daughter… I tried to sacrifice myself once…and failed.” She coughed. A line of red poured from the corner of her mouth.

“You didn’t fail, Mom. You saved us. I’m safe. I’m alive.”

“Your father,” she said, desperate eyes searching mine.

“Yes. He’s okay. He loves you still. So much, Mom.”

“And I him.” Her mouth quivered into a smile, scarlet staining her teeth. “My lord kept him from me, from my thoughts. He took me away from you both…but now…you’ve brought me back again.” She coughed. A thicker stream pooled from her mouth and the heart wound.

“Mom, don’t talk.”

She smiled, and I saw there in my arms the mother who’d cradled me a hundred times, wishing the bad dreams away, singing me to sleep with the greatest love in her eyes—unconditional and eternal and pure.

She reached up and touched her fingers to my cheek. “Today you are you. That is truer than true,” she whispered.

Her eyes rolled heavenward. The moon slipped out of the earth’s shadow, the sun’s light casting the lunar orb in a radiant glow, as if the sun were letting her go. I grabbed my medal and jerked, breaking the chain.

“Look, Mom. Remember?”

Glazed and content, no longer filled with fear or malice, her gaze landed on the medal I held above her. “Yes.” She smiled, and my heart crumbled. “It keeps…” She stilled. Her head turned and eyes closed. She was gone.

“It keeps the dragons away,” I whispered.

I curled the medal into her hand and pressed my lips to her forehead, my heart aching for her sacrifice. Greater than her death, she had sacrificed a decade under the tyrannical, sadistic hand of Prince Bamal.

I let my head fall back and screamed till my voice shook the heavens. The shadow of the earth slipped off the tip of the moon and faded into the night. A violent storm of clouds rushed over the moor. Outside the ring, I could see the grappling bodies of Flamma. Lightning streaked with a crackle, splintering the sky. A shaft bolted from the sky and struck me with Flamma fire, then vanished.

A new burn flooded my body, like a waterfall of light pouring into every cell till I thought I would burst. When the flood subsided, I found myself still alone in the ring with my mother’s lifeless body. The protective veil was gone. The soul eaters waited for their repast, watching the battlefield. While lightning flashed and thunder rolled, a powerful gale swept over the snow-covered moor, whipping it up in stinging blasts.

Before I could even lift myself off my knees, Prince Bamal was there, swinging a sword over my head. I ducked out of his strike zone and scooped the hilt of my katana in hand. As he twisted, I clutched him by the throat and froze him with the new power tingling to my fingertips.

“No more, Bamal. Your time is done.”

Fear skittered behind red eyes. He hissed and bared razor-sharp teeth as his beast rose through the mask of beauty. I stuck him straight through with my blade, my face close to his, fearless of his devil’s grimace. I could whisper the command of destruction, obliterate him into smoky ash and charred bones.

But I had other plans. He shook and writhed, trying to wiggle off my blade, desperate to pull away.

“Be still,” I commanded, and he was. By my will alone, he obeyed. “
Acherontis pabulum.
”

“No!” shouted the once-fearsome demon lord who’d preyed on my mother and made her a slave.

“Yes,” I said with quiet finality.

The ghastly reaper with a black death’s head and crimson eyes whispered into the ring.

“A demon prince to pay my debt, Acheron.”

The unnatural creature nodded and opened his arms. I retracted my blade from the Bamal’s guts and ordered, “Go to him.”

Without hesitation yet screaming defiance the whole way, the great demon prince walked into the arms of Acheron, who opened his yawning mouth and fed on him head-first. I’d not seen Acheron feed like this on the last demon, but perhaps a prince was one to be savored.

Some creature snorted and grunted behind me. I spun to see that one-horned, ugly spawn that had attacked Jude and me in his courtyard once. Three more the same as him charged into the ring for me. I held out one hand and pulsed once, my VS severing them in half as if with a laser. Their top halves, chest up, spun like tops away from their torsos and running legs, all crumpling into flailing piles.

Another darted in, going for Mindy, who still lay there, unmoving.

“No!”

I barreled toward her only to stop when Xander leapt forward, slicing off the creature’s head with a swift and graceful swing. Xander sheathed his sword and leaned over the slab of stone where Mindy lay still and quiet.

“I’ve got her,” he said, giving me a nod before sifting Mindy to safety somewhere.

I walked out of the standing stones, fully awakened. Electric fire poured through flesh, blood and bones. Kat was right. I felt the change in my bones…like falling in love.

My love.

From the elevation where the standing stones stood, I scanned the horde of angels and demons among clanging swords and grappling bodies, seeking out Jude. Mira swooped over the mass, diving and scratching with her powerful talons where she could. Dragon fire lit up a distant skirmish. A flash of a graceful fighter with platinum ponytail swinging alongside the figure of George I knew so well. They fought a dragon together. Perhaps there was hope for those two after all. The soul eaters gorged on the wounded, those too helpless to flee. Phlegethon raised his fiery hammer above his horned head and let it fall, crushing the skulls of two fallen demons at once. I turned away, my stomach queasy at the sight of him scooping up the crushed remains in his clawed hand.

Dorian battled Bamal’s man, Gorham, to my left. And just beyond was Jude, engaged with Bellock. I took one step beyond the stones to find Razor standing his ground with a line of twenty demons behind him—some humanesque, some monsters—standing tall with swords drawn.

“You’re going to pay for Bamal, bitch.”

Razor was actually crying. But I had no pity. And I would have no mercy. I remembered the hundreds of tourists and Parisians running from the scene of the Eiffel Tower bombing while Razor had smiled at his handiwork from the sidelines. I remembered the father who fled with his screaming toddler in his arms, the child’s blond curls bouncing, his face a mass of tears and fear a second before they were blown apart.

“No, Razor. You’re going to pay…for every soul you struck from this world. For every innocent you defiled to please your master.”

Razor stepped forward, his demon horde closing in. I laughed. They all froze, puzzled by my maniacal response to a face-off with twenty-one demons, weaponless.

But I had a weapon. It was me.

“Get her, Razor,” called one of the larger fools standing in the crowd. Razor launched into a run.

“Good-bye,” I said, sucking in a lungful of air and blowing my power straight at him. White crystals blew with a gale-force wind. Razor screamed as his skin melted away upon impact. The others followed, howling in pain as they clawed at the skin falling from their flesh. I waved my hand. Razor’s monstrous form fell backward as did the rest like dominos.

“Be gone,” I whispered.

Their bodies liquefied into the ground. Nothing left but twenty-one piles of steam.

Beyond them stood Rook and Simian, the scary-as-hell demon princes. As if they were twins, they tilted their heads in the same direction, like curious dogs at a strange sound. They turned to each other, mirror-like, and sifted away. Creepy but smart demons.

The roar of a dragon Titan filled the battlefield. I gazed across the moor, angels and demons entangled in combat as far as I could see. The black-winged army of St. Michael fought with violent ferocity and skillful precision. Sparks of blue and white Flamma fire shot into the air as a multi-headed beast in the distance fell to the ground, shaking the earth. A streak of white zipped across the night sky as Mira dove and swept triumphantly over the mammoth creature. My lovely hawk had taken down a Fury. And twenty yards away, Jude was getting the best of Bellock.

I smiled and took two steps before I was slammed onto my back, my head cracking against a protruding rock. Dazed, I touched my fingers to the back of my head. Warm stickiness.

“Sorry, love. Did that hurt?”

Damas knelt beside me, one hand clutched in my hair, the other pressing hard on my abdomen.

“You are one brave son of a bitch,” I said. I paid my debt to Acheron, so there was nothing to keep me from blowing this fucker into oblivion and ridding the world of him once and for all.

He yanked my hair, stinging the injury on the back of my head.

“Ah!” I cried out.

With my mouth open in pain, he swept down and pressed a wet kiss to my mouth, so fast there was no need to react, for he was off the ground and standing above me in a blink, gray clouds sweeping above him.

“I wanted one last kiss.”

“Before I kill you? Hope you enjoyed it.”

He pressed his foot to my chest, shoving me down.

“I saw what you did, what you said to your mother,” he said, angling his pretty face with a grin. “I might not have had much luck with you. Perhaps it will be different with your daughter.” He winked.

A thick blade of steel ripped through his chest, sword protruding a full foot. His mouth opened in gaping shock. He coughed. Black blood splattered. George loomed close over his shoulder. “You’ll never know, bloody fucker. You’ll never twist anyone to your will again.” George glanced down at me, where I lay still trapped under Damas’s foot. “Finish him, Genevieve.”

I grabbed Damas’s ankle and thought the word
death
, obliterating him into ash and charred bones, the wake of Vessel light blasting across the moor. Demon shrieks of terror squealed at the flare of power blowing over the battlefield. I didn’t consign him to some deep well of hell from which he could one day crawl to torment more victims. No way. He was gone for good. Finally.

I jolted to my feet, coughing on the ashy remains of the third demon prince I’d wiped out of existence. What looked like a shriveled femur bone rolled down my torso as I stood. I gave it a swift kick.

A slick stream of blood oozed from my head wound down the back of my neck, and my eyesight hazed. Spots dotted my peripheral vision. George grabbed one arm, but I focused ahead at the man running toward me through the mayhem. Jude. Sprinting full speed, jaw clenched, gaze locked…on me. As my knees buckled, he caught me in his arms before I hit the ground.