Incendiary (The Premonition Series (Volume 4)) (75 page)

“
Brenn
,”
Finn says,
his face sad as he looks at me,
“’
tis na da
way ’
tis done.
”

“’
Tis done
!”
Brennus hisses back.

I groan in agony
as I try
to hold
on to the edge of pain so I wo
n’t fall down the dark hole
growing
inside of me.
An instant later, I’m
cradled in Russell’s arms with his face buried in m
y hair. He rocks
me
, groaning in pain along with me as his blood-red wings spread around us, in an attempt to shield us from the fellas.
“
Ahh
, Red,
no…I’m sorry…
” Russell whispers
hoarsely
to me,
pulling me so close t
hat our cheeks me
e
t. He’
s
so warm that I want to pull his
heat to me to wrap around me like a blanket.

Feeling
his
soft tears dampen m
y skin, Russell’s voice cracks as he groans
in my ear,
“What do I do? How do I stop this?”

No plumes of cold air escape
from my lips
, for my breath is turning colder than the air outside, as
I struggle to say, “
Ki
lll
l
..
.
m
eee.”

When the words are out, Russell’s hand tightens
into a fist within my hair. H
e groans again, like he’
ll
be sick.
“I can’t,” he says
in a tortured ton
e
with his teeth gnashing together.

“Please…” I whisper
, no louder than an autumn leaf tumbling over the wintery grass.

Finn bends
nearer to us on the ground, saying sympathetically to R
ussell, “Ye can na save her now
. We’ll take care of her—
she’ll be our own dear one. Ye should leave now, so she does na make ye her first kill.”

Russell
’s
brow wrinkles as he snarls
back, “You
’
ve no idea what I can do!”

“
Ye can na stop it,” Brennus says
, com
ing menacingly closer and baring his fangs.
“And, I tink ye’
d make a fine
first kill.”

Faolan,
m
angled and
beaten,
drops
o
n
the ground right in f
ront of Brennus’ feet. He
let’
s out a groan as his body rests next to us.
Brennus
hisses
, looking
up at the sky before Reed kicks
him hard in the face, thereby forc
ing him off his feet
and
away from me
.

Charcoal
-
colored
wings, of which I know
every line and contour,
s
pread out between Brennus and
us
, blocking the Gancanagh
from coming between Russell and me.
Then, Reed
hurls
himself a
t Declan, in
stantly breaking
his
leg to match his
lower
jaw, while
narro
wly avoiding Declan’s fist as it
swi
ng
s
past his
bare, unprotected
cheek.

The s
ound of harrowing panic threads
through
Reed’s tone as he orders
Russell, “WHATEVER YOU’RE PLANNING TO DO, RUSSELL, DO IT!”

Russell’s eyes
turn
wild, widening while
he breathes
in a massive breath. E
xhaling with flaring nostrils,
he put
s
his
large ha
nd on my chest. His fingers begi
n to glow, heating up like molten metal, penetrating my chest to melt the crystallized ice growing inside of me.

I scream
, suffering again
as the flow
of blood within my veins changes
current, running in the opposite dir
ection. Russell falls
next to
me, sending us like a cascade of
debris to the frozen ground. L
ying side-by-side, Russell
’s
hand re
mains
on my chest, locked together
like Siamese t
wins as he pulls
the poison
ed blood
from my body to flow into his.

Finn, disturbed by what i
s happeni
ng between Russell and me, tries
to pry Russell
’s hand from my heart
. Russell reaches
out his
other hand to rest it on
Faolon’
s
chest
beside him
, and
it, too, begi
n
s
to glo
w. A stricken expression crosses
Finn’s face
before
he abruptly lets go of Russell’
s hand on me and tries to pry the
other
one off of Faolan
.
When he can’
t move it, he looks around, seeing the fight between Reed and Brennus. He gets up then and moves to help his brother.

Faolan
’s face pales to a gray-white color while his veins beco
me engorged, swelling
up
like black, twisting leeches under his smooth skin.
His hair, norm
ally as black as pitch, whitens
with the age of centuries.
Two deep wounds break
open on Faolan
’s neck, the exact size and shape of B
rennus’ fangs. The wounds ooze with what looks
more like thick,
dirty motor-oil than blood.
A brief second more and his
leech-like
veins burst, causing black blood
to ooze up through Faolan
’s pores and fr
om his eyes and ears. He stops
strugg
ling as his eyes become darker
than
the sky above us.

Soothing warmth, healing the raw-rotten flesh inside of m
e, leaves
me trembling
and weak. Russell’s hand slips
from me
as it loses its light. I flail
, trying to grip Russell’s chest and pull him to me.

When he coughs and sputters for air, I begi
n to cry, crawling next to him on my hands and knees.

Hovering above
his chest, I peer
down on his face, seeing him
look up at me in a daze.
“Russell,” I gasp, “are you okay?”

“Naw,” he says
, shaking his head slowly. “I feel burned from the inside out.”

“Can you move?” I demand
, trying to get him to sit up.

“You’
re
a
live,” he says
, looki
ng stunned. Then his head moves
to the side and he
notic
es
Faolan
’s
all-dead
body lying
next to him.
“It worked,” he mutters
.

“What worked?
” I croak
, searching the garden and then the sky for Reed
and Brennus
.

“I was gonna take it—
your
sickness, but when F
aolan groaned beside me
, I thought, ‘Y
ou take it, you cold dead freak
,’
so I let your
sickness travel through me to him,” Russell explain
s
with a gravelly voice, rubbing his hand
s together like they ache
.
“It must have fried him
—
they’re so cold
.”

“So, it passed through you to him, like
an
electrical current?” I ask
.

“Yeah,
I guess
,” he replies
absently.

Bright, white light flickers
in the air ne
ar me as Declan’s hands smooth
over his broken leg. Immediately,
his leg
aligns
, losing the compound fracture that Reed had just inflicted on him. Twis
ting his hand up, Declan applies
it to his hanging jaw, pushing it bac
k into place with a loud
crack
and welding it
there
with his
magical light
.

Then, Declan’s mena
cing gaze turns
to Russell and me, lying on the
ground. A sinister growl comes
from
me while my eyes narrow
, like a lioness protectin
g her young,
when Declan’s steely eyes stare
past me to Russell.

“Ye killed Faolan
!
” Declan growls
at Russell
a
s he steps
forward
in furious anger.

Waving his hand toward the
slate-gray stones of the
wall,
Declan mak
e
s
them disassemble and fly toward us in a
tidal wave of rock and mortar.

With Finn’s magic gone, I’m
able to pull energy to me, and then hurl it at the
impending
stones. The first slabs
a
re pulverized into grea
t puffs of dust, but a few break
through, spinning just wide of us. 

“Russ
ell, we have to move!” I order
him, not look
ing back but keeping my focus on
the raging, hulking Gancanagh ahead of me.

“Why, I’m
bigger than him?” Russell asks
wea
kly, stand
ing limply by my side. H
e leans
slightly forward, favoring his left side.

“I’ll hold him off. Go get help,” I w
hisper
to Russell.

“Y
ou
go get help, I’ll
hold him off,”
Russell replies
, wincing in pain.

“Don’t be stubborn
,” I say
between my teeth.

“You’
re
stubborn
,”
he sho
o
t
s
back.

Brennus and Reed materialize
just beyond Declan
. Twisting and turning, they fi
ght fiercely wi
th knives at supernatural speed.
I can
hardly mark their progression as m
y erra
tic pulse quickens seeing
Reed avo
id
Brennus’ brutal swings using
the
weapon I recognize well…
it’
s a
letter-opener…my weapon.
Finn is
also with him, using his own kni
f
e to try to kill Reed, but Reed’
s sole focus seems to be
just on Brennus.

Brennus cricket-leaps
around the garden, defying gravity with iner
tia and bursts of magic. Reed i
s Brennus’ shadow, only a millisecond
behind him, until he anticipates
Brennus’ next move. W
ith a brutal slash, Reed manages
to tear a jagged, bloody line o
f flesh out of Brennus’ back
.
An
other slice soon follows
as
Brennus begi
n
s
to lose more blood.

I’m
so
consum
ed by their fight that
I forge
t about D
eclan in front of me, but he has
n’t forgotten me.
Russell i
s laboring hard beside me to fend off the magic whirling out of Declan. In a powerful burst
of glittering air, Declan hurls
wind at
us. The twirling streams enter
our noses, collecting the oxy
gen within our lungs and snatching
it out of us through our mouths. In ta
ndem, Russell and I both drop
to our knees, fighting for breath.