44. Chapter 44
Chapter 44
Andy
T he cultist's killing spell was hurtling toward us as I tried to re-build the shield they had just destroyed. But I knew I wouldn't be fast enough. And even if I was, there was no guarantee it would hold. I felt Dyre and Sunshine's magic surge to me through our bond. Maybe together we could--
I hit my knees hard, quite a distance from where I had just been standing. Strong arms banded around my waist when I reflexively tried to stand, tried to get to my family, who were all now standing in the path of killing magic while I was somehow just out of blast range.
It all happened so fast that my mind had trouble keeping up. It seemed like I only blinked, and the horrific scene unfolded before me. Hasumi was standing awkwardly, a watery shield up as they tried to shelter the place where I had been standing just a second before. Junaid threw Bella away from him… and the spell hit.
I screamed, clawing at the ground as I tried to crawl toward the place where my family were now lying scattered on the ground. Toward the place where Hasumi had just been standing.
I couldn't stop screaming. The arms around me shook, and a deep, broken voice reached my ears through the white noise that was taking over. “Sorry,” he whispered, over and over. “So sorry, Oleander. I'm so sorry.”
I glanced aside long enough to see that it was River who was holding me back. Something was wrong with the shifter. He was shaking. His coppery skin had lost its luster, and there were dark circles under his eyes. But I couldn't focus on that. I could barely breathe.
Struggling free of his grip, I scrambled to my feet and ran. But I was too late. I knew that. And I knew what I had just witnessed would haunt me forever. “Hasumi!” I shouted as I reached the place where the water weaver had just stood seconds before.
Where they had been vaporized by the enemy spell. Steam filled the air, and I whipped my head around, expecting Hasumi to simply reform from the ether and give me one of their unconcerned little smiles.
Bella was sobbing. Holding Junaid's mangled body in her lap. He wasn’t moving and no aura surrounded his body. Dead.
Ambrose was helping a bloodied and stumbling Zhong carry Niamh to the shade of a large oak. She was alive, judging from the state of her aura, but there was a lot of blood. They were both badly hurt. I took all of this in between blinks. Like still frames in an old family slide show. Flat. Emotionless. As if nothing around me was real. It couldn’t be.
Dyre stood in the middle of it all, wearing a truly terrifying expression, his eyes completely black and his gauntly handsome face twisted in bitter rage while his dark aura flared around him like the waving arms of a hungry shadow. His army of corpses had frozen in place, but with a wave of his hand, they rushed forward, moving faster than any undead should move.
They fell on the remaining cultists like hungry super-powered zombies, screams and wet crunches filling the air.
No more spells came at us. Not that I would have cared if they did. I was too busy trying to breathe around the painful vise that crushed my chest. “Hasumi!” I yelled again, spinning in a circle. “Where are you?”
Aahil appeared at my side in a shower of sparks. His eyes were wild and filled with jinn fire, and his graceful motions were sharp and so fast it was hard for my eye to follow. “Weaver!” he demanded in his best impatient, no-nonsense tone. “Show yourself. This isn’t humorous.”
“I can feel their magic,” I said, though I knew I was only trying to convince myself at that point. “They just have to… re-form.”
The mist that had hung in the air around us was beginning to dissipate. I tried not to think about what that mist was. And what it might mean that it was disappearing without leaving a gorgeous water weaver behind. I started shaking uncontrollably and my voice cracked. “Hasumi?”
Dyre came to stand closer, pulling his attention away from the ravenous horde he had created. His black eyes flashed to violet and he lifted a hand to touch my shoulder, then his gaze went black again as Sunshine took over. “The water weaver is dead, my witch,” the wraith said evenly. “There is no use calling their name.”
I slapped his hand away. “No! Hasumi isn't dead. They're just… water molecules right now. They'll be back.” My voice broke as tears spilled from my eyes. “Hasumi…” The name was just a whisper on my tongue.
Aahil let out a low, eerie whine beside me, like a mortally wounded animal, and I couldn't take it. I couldn't take the realization and recognition that filled his blazing golden eyes, the pain that twisted his beautiful features.
“I can feel their magic,” I insisted. Though even that was fading as the breeze carried away the scent of magic, replacing it with the lingering smell of burning trees.
Aahil hissed. “Leftover traces. Nothing more.”
I swallowed hard. “No.”
He closed his blazing eyes and tilted his head back, letting out an inhuman yell. Flames burst from his body, engulfing him in impenetrable jinn fire and searing the earth where he stood. I watched, feeling almost numb, as Aahil lost control. As he lost the anchor that had kept him contained, the powerful fellow elemental who had helped put him back together when he had been broken beyond repair.
Aahil's screams echoed around the clearing, mingling with Bellas’s sobbing. The pain in his soul called to mine as he sank to his knees, shoulders hunched, head hung low, crying silent tears inside his cocoon of fire.
Only the thought that Aahil might hurt himself again got me moving. I somehow put one foot in front of the other until I reached him, ignoring the blistering heat that beat against my skin and lifted my hair.
“Aahil,” I whispered. Then I tried again, my voice louder, but still cracked and raw. “Aahil, please. I can't lose you too. Let me in.”
He lifted his head, his rage-and-pain-filled eyes met mine, and I thought for a moment there that I really had lost him this time. Then he sucked in a breath and his flames went out with a muffled whump of sound. He didn't speak as I sank down before him and wrapped my arms around him, both of us shaking with the force of our pain and grief. His lean arms wrapped around my waist, and he held me so tightly I knew I would bruise. As if it was only me keeping him from losing himself.
Which, I supposed it was now.
Hasumi had kept us all together, at one time or another.
I broke then, ugly-crying against Aahil's soft hair, not caring if the rest of the world fell apart. Fuck the rest of the world. Fuck politics, and the SA, and the cult. Fuck the rebels and their fucking cause. I knew exactly how Aahil felt, because at that moment, I wanted it all to burn until there was nothing left, not even ashes.
I felt darkness stirring within me, and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to fight it anymore.
Elijah quietly knelt beside me and Aahil, the bright branches of his wings curling around us, sheltering us in angelic light. I saw Dyre move out of the corner of my eye, saw him kneel down beside Elijah and take the Angel's hand in his as he closed his eyes, silent in his own grief. Ambrose stood behind Dyre, his hands gripping the necromancer's shoulders so tightly I knew he must be thinking what I was. That it was a blessing any of us had survived at all. And that any of them might slip away from me at any moment.
But I was still lucid enough to remember I had one person to thank for my own life. Someone who shouldn’t be left out of our circle of grief. I lifted my head long enough to reach for River as he turned away, snagging my fingers in his pantleg and tugging, letting him know the only way I could, that I was thankful to be alive… even if being alive hurt so fucking much I didn’t know how I’d survive it.
But when he turned back to me, River’s exhausted face was haunted. He shook his head, his tangled black hair falling forward over his eyes. “I'm sorry,” he said again. And this time, somehow the weight of his words got through the haze of shock. He sounded… guilty.
I had somehow ended up out of harm's way. And River had been with me.
While Hasumi was left to die.