The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker (29 page)

“You’re right,” Michael cried. “We shouldn’t have brought her here!” Lifting Marianna again, he and Rebecca fled back into the foyer, both enemies and spectral friends giving chase.

“To my office,” Rebecca commanded.

Michael obeyed, and the two of them rushed down several corridors, Marianna still in tow. In the office they found Frederic hopping up and down on a wooden file cabinet, distressed, having shed a few black feathers onto the floor.

“Frederic, you were supposed to take refuge with Marlowe!” Rebecca scolded. The bird squawked.

Michael dumped Marianna in a chair and spun to face their pursuers, whose numbers now equaled six, three having been almost immediately dispatched by a most obliging and efficient Aztec Guard. But keeping six devilish fiends from a vulnerable body was no small task. He and Rebecca started in with a fresh cantus, but they were interrupted by a shriek. It was Percy’s, and it made their blood chill. It was perhaps the most heartbreaking cry they’d ever heard. Alexi’s anguished cry came swiftly after. Something was terribly wrong.

Michael and Rebecca stared at each other, ashen-faced. Thankfully, the Aztec Guard hadn’t noticed, and they went on pummeling the enemy spirits.

“Go, Michael,” Rebecca commanded. “We’re almost done. We can spare you.”

“Rebecca, I—”

“Percy needs you. I feel it. I’ll be all right.”

Tears rimmed Michael’s eyes. “Rebecca Thompson, don’t you dare be some martyr for—”

She reached out, grabbed his neck, pulled him to her and pressed her lips briefly to his. “I may yet have something to live for. I’ll be no martyr. Now go.”

Michael paused, breathless. He nodded and ran out the door, heartened by the battle cry Rebecca unleashed, casting a spirit out into the hall with the gust solely of her own power where it promptly disintegrated. She bellowed an impressive line of Blake, then a psalm for good measure.

Michael stopped at the edge of the auditorium. His friends stood frozen around Percy. Blood was everywhere, and a swarm of insects.

Darkness ignored the cerulean fire Alexi continued to throw, his red robes now ablaze, his eyes like burning coals. His skeletal jaw was a terrifying grin. He hovered a few yards away, held back but barely.

“Oh, you sorry girl. You never should have chosen this path. It is fraught with misery. You’ve so much to lose. You may think you have power over me with your little army of friends, but you see, some part of your body still remembers.”

“I’m not her,” Percy hissed. “You do not own me.”

“Your light is hers.”

Percy shook her head. “She no longer exists. Accept that she’s gone, has rejected your claim once and for all. You can’t now have power over this flesh, for it was never yours.”

“All flesh is mine,” Darkness snarled. “You are what she became, and I will have power over her remains forever.” He lunged, and his frosty aura made The Guards’ breaths crystallize. “All that is and all that
could be
will be mine, too.”

An eviscerating pain doubled Percy over to gasp for air and clutch at Alexi’s arm, causing him to send aside a stray jolt of blue fire. He caught her and cried for Jane in the same instant, pulling Jane back from where she’d been
helping as a hellhound mauled a Norse mentalist. Jane’s eyes widened in horror as she advanced.

Percy’s lower body felt as though it were being ripped open. She clutched at her abdomen and her hands came away bloody. Red poured down from between her legs and rolled down the sloping auditorium pitch. Those insects born from the tread of Darkness frolicked in the crimson pool.

In a horrific sensation, Percy felt energy leaving her: her child, the child she’d not even had a chance to think about, to welcome, let alone cherish. Her heart and body cleaved in excruciating pain. When Alexi realized what was happening, his cry was just as unbearable.

“No!” Percy screamed, tears choking her, her hands clawing at herself with rage, her face contorting in anguish. A great wind whipped her snowy hair, her eyes ferocious suns. “You’ll not have me! Not my love and not my child! DEATH WILL NOT HAVE MY CHILD!”

There were lines, apparently, even Darkness should not cross. He wholly underestimated the breadth of love’s power. He always had. Blinding white light exploded from Percy’s body in a thunderclap of brilliancy that made everyone wince, the rays actually dazzling shards that pierced directly through her foe and every vile spirit that happened to be near. The blast cracked the ribs around where Darkness ought to have had a heart, and it pulverized his torso, sending him hurtling into the lapping water at the bottom of the auditorium. His dogs splintered and dove into the water, howling and whining, the light too bright for their eyes. All insects and agents of decay were incinerated.

But the dual strains of the force she commanded and her loss of blood broke Percy’s mortal body. She collapsed, caught by Alexi, who was barking orders for the leaders to continue striking Darkness without mercy. He lent one more blast of his own power, falling to his knees, sweat pouring off his
brow, chest heaving. Remaining the sole living conduit for such a mass of eternal fire threatened to break him, too. But his fading wife needed him.

Beatrice was suddenly at his side, and a handsome dark-skinned man. “Oh, Percy,” she breathed, seeing Percy’s grave state. She turned to Alexi, seeing his and Percy’s flesh reach their limits. She closed her eyes, and a surge of blue fire coalesced through her hands into Alexi, feeding him power to energize the gathered Guard who chanted for strength and to heal the mortal incarnation of their goddess. Alexi was a most powerful leader, but Beatrice had been one, too.

Jane directed the healing, she and Aodhan deftly gathering and cleansing her precious blood from the stones and surging it back toward her, replenishing what had been lost. A small ball of light that did not seem directly connected to Percy hovered just above Percy’s abdomen, hesitant, like a fading star about to fall from the sky.

“Ah, ah,” Jane said, tears falling from her eyes. “Michael,” she murmured, “help!”

With exceeding care, the light of Jane’s hands guided the tiny star back. It hovered as if unsure, confused. Michael dropped to his knees beside it. “ ‘The light shines in the darkness,’ ” he wept at the small, sparkling orb, “ ‘and the darkness shall not overcome it.’
The darkness shall not overcome it!
” The star of wonder dove back into the safety of its mother, and Percy’s drooping eyes shot open. She gasped, a surge of pain accompanying the flood of warmth.

Michael’s tears getting the better of him, he stood and looked around for Rebecca. His soul leaped to see her, ashen-faced, beyond the doorway. He nodded that the worst seemed to be passed, and she put a shaking hand to her mouth, steadying herself against the door frame.

Percy stirred. What had been an unimaginable amount of blood lost was returned again to her veins, the horror reversed.

Leaders pummeled Darkness with inexhaustible vengeance. His bones broke piece by piece; his miserable form disintegrated. The blue Phoenix fire living in the walls of Athens streamed in luminous waterfalls from the bricks, the scale having finally tipped in their favour, the grey pall reversed that had made this place the Whisper-world’s domain.

Percy wanted to sit up, to see. She cleared allies from either side. Healers of The Guards, in rows around her, urged her to sit back and lie still. But she struggled to stand, feeling her strength surge back into her with the force of righteousness, unable to cope with the threat that Darkness might still hang over them.

Alexi’s eyes were wolfish, his jaw clenched. One arm was back to protect Percy; his other hand continued casting fiery bolts into the shuddering pile of bones below, no matter that his magic was past spent; his fury sustained him. He would not stop until Darkness was dust.

Beatrice took the moment to present the distinguished, handsome Egyptian by her side. It was the man who first recognized Percy in the Whisper-world, and the man for whom she had fought so hard. Mr. Tipton bowed.

Percy opened her mouth to greet him, but before any pleasantries could be exchanged, her eyes were drawn to her enemy’s bones, still encased in the neutralizing blue flame of Alexi and many other leaders. But, Darkness yet stirred. He would perhaps always be partly alive.

The bones jumped. Something whistled through the air. A long shard of bone hurtled directly toward her, a clear and unobstructed arrow seeking to pull her into death’s arms after all. Time slowed, aching, terrible. Percy opened her mouth to cry out.

Jane stood just to the right. In that fraction of a moment, something changed on her face.

She took a step to the left.

A sickening crunch sounded as the javelin of bone struck her in the back and burst through her. Blood bubbled up from her lips, a gory shard jutting out just below her brooch.

The wailing cry Percy heard from The Guard, living and dead, would haunt her forever. Jane’s body slowly pitched forward. Aodhan was at her side but unable to catch her with his incorporeal hands. Alexi released Percy and jumped forward, sweeping Jane gently to the floor, his eyes wide with shock.

The Guard healers swarmed. Jane was bathed in light, chants, words, cries. But Jane did not stir. They tried again. Stillness. The healers hung their heads and stepped back, stunned.

Rebecca, shrieking, sank to the threshold of the doorway, shaking her head and refusing to believe. Michael ran to her and cradled her, unable to look at this final unexpected loss. Josephine had backed herself against the stone wall, tearing her hair and ripping her sacred locket from her neck, causing a gash and hurling the pendant aside.

The blue-fire mortar of Athens, still working on bringing the room back to its normal state, erupted in its own reaction. Alexi’s fury melded with it, fire leaping from every pore of his body, tumbling Percy aside with its intensity. Every Guard leader gasped, for their bodies, too, gave up the borrowed ghost flame to create a roiling, gigantic flurry of winged fire and talons.

The watery traces of river reversed to again become the lip of the Athens auditorium stage. Alexi’s fiery bird swept down toward the pile of bones, raging, evaporating any lingering vile spirit and enveloping the shards of Darkness in an oblivion of blue.

To Percy’s ears, all went quiet. All she could hear was her own breath and her heartbeat. And fainter still, she imagined another heartbeat. A tiny one. Her tears flowed as she stood deathly still, but the world kept wailing silently as they stared down at Jane’s body.

A glimmering, shimmering transparent form—sexless, gorgeous, its hands lit with glowing light, a pearlescent spirit unlike any ghost the London Guard had ever seen—lifted from Jane’s body. The spirit had a music to it; as it wafted in the air it made a sparkling noise, a symphony of stars, the exquisite orchestration of their Grand Work.

“Her possessor,” Rebecca choked from the doorway, stumbling forward into the room. “A Muse.” The healing spirit looked sadly down, bent to kiss Jane’s body and took flight. It soared to the front of the stage, where it swept in and among the other Guards, administering music and glory, beauty and hope, though it had lost the bodily instrument it so adored.

It suddenly dawned on Percy that something not of this world had long had hold on Jane, and that perhaps she’d wanted to give over to that embrace, as Beatrice had even suggested. Percy forced herself to look at the body. Aodhan floated nearby, kneeling at Jane’s side, stroking her cheek with phantom fingertips, murmuring odes of aching love, his grey face paler than she’d ever seen it.

Jane’s greyscale spirit, lacking colour not vibrancy, lifted out of her body with a laugh. She floated several feet above the melee to look down at everyone. Aodhan leaped up with a cry, reaching to touch the hem of her garment and thrilling that he finally could. He did not bother to hide his joy.

Beatrice, who’d been watching with her hands clutched around Ibrahim, moved forward. “You see? It’s all right.”

The spirit of Jane smiled and moved to take her outstretched hand. She turned to her fellows. “What on earth are you all wailin’ about?” she insisted, her brogue thick with delight. They stared at her dumbly, so Jane turned to Percy. “Oh, that’s right, Percy. Would you tell them what I’m sayin’?”

“She…” Percy gulped. “She wonders what on earth you all are wailing about.”

“We need you,” Josephine cried.

Jane looked around and shook her head. “No, you don’t. It’s over.”

“I…I didn’t deserve that, Jane,” Percy murmured, guilt overtaking her in a feverish rush. “I didn’t want you to die so that I might live.”

Jane batted her hand in the air. “You and your child are desperately needed in this world. In that moment, there was no other way. Just like Beatrice said. Some sensible sacrifices have merit.” Percy translated, tears coursing down her cheeks. “Now I’m needed in
this
world,” Jane declared, floating to Aodhan’s side and caressing his cheek. “We needed to each follow our hearts to get to the appropriate end of this journey. I finally followed mine.” She glanced at Michael. “And Darkness has not overcome me.”

Aodhan took her hand. Jane closed her eyes in bliss, bringing his now-tactile hand to her lips, kissing it slowly, relishing contact after a lifetime separate. Giggling, she glanced at her friends. “Don’t worry, you’ll see me haunting about. And Percy, tell Alexi that if he blames himself for this—as I’m sure he will—that I will swap his sherry out for Irish whiskey until the end of his days.”

Percy related this information, and The Guard, while they could not laugh, at least gave a few shaky smiles. The tears returned soon enough, especially once Jane’s ghost jigged out of the room with Aodhan, Beatrice and Ibrahim floating out alongside them, chatting gaily. The living Guard were left with the gruesome reality of Jane’s body, which now lay in the aisle between auditorium seats, the last of the Whisper-world’s dreadful amphitheatre having vanished.

Alexi bent and lifted the body, the bone that had pierced her having turned to sand. But they were not spared gore, as Jane’s blood poured down his vest and dripped onto the floor in a thick trail. He laid her down upon a ledge at the back of the hall and unclasped his cloak to place over her body, his face a mask of pain.